Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar reacted very strongly to a remark made by the European Union’s foreign policy chief. During a closed-door meeting in Mexico, Kaja Kallas reportedly compared Israel to the former apartheid regime of racial segregation in South Africa.
Kallas has not denied the reports that subsequently became public. As a result, Sa’ar announced that he would sever all contacts with her.
“For a long time, Ms. Kallas has acted against the State of Israel with an obsessive bias and blatant dishonesty.”
Sa’ar wrote in a Facebook post criticizing the EU’s top diplomat, adding that he had no choice but to suspend all contact with her until she retracts what he called a “blood libel” directed against the world’s only Jewish state and the Middle East’s only democracy.
A Contested Comparison
Internationally, it remains a highly controversial position to compare Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, or its military operations following the Hamas attacks of October 2023, to the apartheid system. Some countries, such as Ireland and Spain, partly agree with such assessments, but the European Union does not officially endorse this characterization.
Not the First Controversy
This is not the first controversial statement made by the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. On May 28, during a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Cyprus, Kallas incorrectly stated that despite Russian threats, every European embassy stayed in Kyiv while the Americans left. In reality, American diplomats did not leave Ukraine’s capital.
