Netherlands Foreign Affairs Minister Caspar Veldkamp addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on April 1, 2025. Photo: ANI Photo/Sanjay Sharma via Reuters Connect

The Netherlands is spearheading efforts to suspend the European Union-Israel trade agreement amid rising EU criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, while simultaneously refusing to recognize a Palestinian state, contrasting with other member states as international pressure mounts.

On Thursday, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp announced that the Netherlands will push the EU to suspend the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement — a pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with the Jewish state.

This latest anti-Israel initiative follows a recent EU-commissioned report accusing Israel of committing “indiscriminate attacks … starvation … torture … [and] apartheid” against Palestinians in Gaza during its military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.

Following calls from a majority of EU member states for a formal investigation, this report built on Belgium’s recent decision to review Israel’s compliance with the trade agreement, a process initiated by the Netherlands and led by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.

According to the report, “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under the 25-year-old EU-Israel Association Agreement.

While the document acknowledges the reality of violence by Hamas, it states that this issue lies outside its scope — failing to address the Palestinian terrorist group’s role in sparking the current war with its bloody rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israeli officials have slammed the report as factually incorrect and morally flawed, noting that Hamas embeds its military infrastructure within civilian targets and Israel’s army takes extensive precautions to try and avoid civilian casualties.

In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Gaza on Thursday, Veldkamp also announced that the government would not recognize a Palestinian state for now — a position that stands in sharp contrast to the recent moves by several other EU member states to extend recognition.

“The Netherlands is not planning to recognize a Palestinian state at this time,” the Dutch diplomat said.

“This war has ceased to be a just war and is now leading to the erosion of Israel’s own security and identity,” he continued.

This latest decision goes against the position of several EU member states, including France, which has committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood in September.

The United Kingdom has likewise indicated it will do so unless Israel acts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and agrees to a ceasefire.

For its part, Germany said it was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term, and Italy argued that recognition must occur simultaneously with the recognition of Israel by the new entity.

Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia all recognized a Palestinian state last year.

Israel has been facing growing pressure from several EU member states seeking to undermine its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

On Thursday, European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera strongly condemned Israel’s actions in the war-torn enclave, describing the situation as a “grave violation of human dignity.”

“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera told Politico. “If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning.”

Until now, the European Commission has refrained from accusing Israel of genocide, but Ribera’s comments mark one of the strongest European condemnations since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.

She also called on the EU to take decisive action by considering the suspension of its trade agreement with Israel and the implementation of sanctions, while emphasizing that such measures would require unanimous approval from all member states.

Students listen to a speech at a protest encampment at Stanford University in Stanford, California US, on April 26, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.

Higher-education-based unions controlled by United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) are rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionist discrimination, according to a new letter imploring the US Congress’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce to address the matter.

“Tracing its roots to communism in the 1930s, the UE is a radical, pro-Hamas labor union that has a long history of antisemitism,” the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), one of the US’s leading labor reform groups, wrote on July 30 in a message obtained by The Algemeiner. “The UE openly supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to cripple and destroy Israel economically. Today, the UE furthers its antisemitic agenda by unionizing graduate students on college campuses and using its exclusive representation powers to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The hostile environment includes demanding compulsory dues to fund the UE’s abhorrent activities.”

NRTW went on to describe a litany of alleged injustices to which UE members subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University. At MIT, the letter said, “union officers” aided a riotous group which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the BDS movement. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”

The situation requires federal oversight and intervention, NRTW said, including Congress’s possibly clarifying that student-employees are not traditional employees and are therefore afforded protections under sections of the Civil Rights Act which apply to the campus.

“These continuing patterns of antisemitism are illegal, immoral, and must be stopped,” the letter continued. “We encourage you to do all that is in your power to investigate and help bring an end to the UE and its affiliates’ nonstop harassment and intimidation of Jewish students … The Trump administration can also use tools available to it under Title VI and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against colleges who work with unions to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.”

July’s letter is not the first time NRTW has publicized alleged antisemitic abuse in unions representing higher education employees.

In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.

That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.

“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

US President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, June 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard

US President Donald Trump said this week that the United States had “wiped out” Iran’s capacity to produce a nuclear weapon with its recent bombing of Iranian nuclear sites and suggested there could be further military action if Iran moved to restart its nuclear program.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday, Trump did not directly respond to questions about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent suggestion that Israel could launch a full military occupation of the Gaza Strip. Instead, he emphasized what he described as his administration’s success in reshaping the regional security landscape.

“We have stopped wars in the Middle East by stopping Iran from having a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “As soon as they start, we’ll be back.”

In June, the US military bombed three key Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel.

“We wiped out their nuclear capacity for weapons,” Trump said. “They would have had a weapon within two months, maybe less, and that was totally obliterated.”

The US president credited the US military, noting the use of B2 bombers and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles. “That was a big threat. That was a nuclear threat,” he said.

The degree to which Iran’s nuclear program was set back has been a subject of much debate, with some experts arguing the damage from the US strikes was not as extensive as Trump has claimed and warning that Iran can quickly regain the ability to enrich large amounts of uranium at levels approaching weapons-grade.

On Thursday, Trump expanded on his comments in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, writing, “Now that the nuclear arsenal being ‘created’ by Iran has been totally obliterated, it is very important to me that all Middle Eastern countries join the Abraham Accords.”

“This will insure peace in the Middle East,” he added, using a misspelling of “ensure.”

The Abraham Accords are a series of US-brokered agreements during the first Trump administration that normalized ties between Israel and several Arab countries.

In recent days, Trump has faced renewed questions over whether he supports a full Israeli military occupation of Gaza, a prospect that has been debated among leaders in Israel.

Asked on Tuesday whether he would back such a move, Trump said he was not familiar with the proposal and offered no position.

“I can’t really say. It will be up to Israel,” he said.

Instead, Trump focused on humanitarian aid, pointing to a recently announced $60 million assistance package for Gaza. He said both Israeli and Arab governments would be involved in distributing food and other support, characterizing his priority as addressing “humanitarian needs in the region.”

Then on Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel intends to take full military control of Gaza to secure its borders until it can hand governance of the enclave over to Arab authorities, vowing to “liberate” the Palestinians of Gaza from the ruling terrorist group Hamas.

Axios reported hours later that Trump does not oppose the plan, citing anonymous US and Israeli officials.