Is Europe finally beginning to realize what is happening? “The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable … We call on the Israeli Government to stop its military operations in Gaza.” In their Joint Statement from May 19, 2025, the leaders of France, the United Kingdom, and Canada condemned Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza. “We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli Government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate.” It remains to be seen what “concrete actions in response” these leaders will take.

In Germany too, the tone is shifting. “Harming the civilian population to such an extent, as has increasingly been the case in recent days, can no longer be justified as a fight against Hamas terrorism,” Chancellor Merz said on May 26. There is a growing understanding that preventing the next Holocaust does not demand silencing critique against Israel, but voicing it. In mid-May, the Left Party, Die Linke, officially rejected the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, widely used by German authorities to delegitimize criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitic.” Using Jews to justify war crimes “does not serve the protection of Jewish life,” but undermines the fight against anti-Semitism, Die Linke reasoned in adopting the less problematic Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, formulated in the Israeli capital by hundreds of scholars, many of them Jews.