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‘Death of European values’
EU staff members protest Israel’s war in Gaza
Protesters laid three rolled-up white sheets with red stains on them on the square outside the European Commission’s head office in the Belgian capital.
On the three ‘bodies’ the words International Law, EU Treaties and Genocide Convention were written, in a protest of the way Israel has responded to the attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7.
“We’re coming together in a peaceful assembly, to stand up for those rights, principles and values that the European institutions are built on,” EU Commission staff member Manus Carlisle told Reuters.
“The reasons why we work here and love to work here. Those values of human rights, human dignity and freedom especially.”
Sara, one of the EU officials taking part in the protest, told Euronews that EU leaders needed to “go further”.
“I am here as someone who works every day to make the EU a better place, and the EU cannot be a better place if the world is not a better place,” she said.
“We as the European Union have a huge responsibility towards Gaza, towards Palestine,” she added. “We cannot tolerate the hatred, we cannot tolerate the violence, we cannot tolerate this genocide.”
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 34,800 Palestinians in seven months of war in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Israel on Wednesday continued its strikes on the overcrowded Gaza city of Rafah, where it has launched a ground incursion, as talks resumed Wednesday in Cairo aimed at agreeing the terms of a truce in the seven-month war. Despite international objections, Israel sent tanks into Rafah on Tuesday and seized the nearby crossing into Egypt.
Rafah has been a vital conduit for humanitarian aid since the start of the war and is the only place where people can enter and exit. Israel now controls all of Gaza’s border crossings for the first time since it withdrew troops and settlers from the territory nearly two decades ago.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said the Kerem Shalom crossing – which Israel shut after a rocket attack killed four soldiers on Sunday – remained closed. Meanwhile, Gaza health workers uncovered Wednesday at least 49 bodies at Al-Shifa hospital – the latest such discovery at the facility previously raided by Israeli forces.
The Israeli military has repeatedly targeted Al-Shifa, the Palestinian territory’s largest hospital, and other medical facilities in its war since October 7. Israel claims that Palestinian fighters use hospitals as command centers. Hamas denies the accusation.
Motassem Salah, head of the emergency department at Al-Shifa, told journalists that “a third mass grave was found inside this hospital.”
Last month, around 30 bodies were reported found buried in two other graves in the hospital courtyard. So far 520 bodies have been recovered from “seven mass graves” found at three different hospitals across Gaza in recent weeks, the media office said.