Press Day hosted by the Europe Israel Press Association (EIPA) on 10th December devoted one of its central sessions to the question “Boycotts vs Dialogue”, examining whether the current “battle of narratives” around Israel risks destroying its image and legitimacy, or whether there remains space for constructive engagement, writes Gary Cartwright in EU Today.
In a panel moderated by EIPA’s senior media adviser Yossi Lempkowicz, Israeli and European journalists explored how Europe and Israel now see each other amid rising antisemitism, polarised politics and repeated calls for sanctions.
The discussion brought together Elad Simchayoff, European correspondent for Israel’s Channel 12 and founder of the daily news podcast One a Day, and Eddy Wax, a British journalist and editor of Rapporteur, Euractiv’s daily newsletter on European politics. Lempkowicz framed the debate against what he called “challenging times for Europe–Israel relations”, noting that policy shifts within the EU institutions over the past two years had coincided with a sharp deterioration in public discourse.
Simchayoff described Israelis’ long-standing view of Europe as a “love–hate relationship”, rooted in trade, travel and family history, but now marked by a sense of estrangement. Europe remains Israel’s largest trading partner and a major destination for Israeli tourists, while many Israelis trace their family origins to European countries. Yet, he argued, attitudes hardened after the 7 October attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza. “There is a bond, a close relation,” he said, “but… after October 7th… many in Israel looked at Europe and said, ‘It’s lost. They’ll hate us no matter what we do.’”
He illustrated the shift with a personal example from London, where he has lived for 13 years. In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, he said, the first messages of concern he received were not from European friends but from acquaintances of Middle Eastern background. “The first ones that actually contacted me were my Arab friends in Europe,” he recalled. In his view, many Europeans “didn’t know how to approach” Israelis and Jews coping with shock and grief, and that hesitation has since shaped perceptions on both sides. The result, he suggested, is “a sense of betrayal” alongside a continuing desire in Israel “to bring the relation back to a positive path”.
For Simchayoff, October 7th also reinforced a very stark mindset. “October 7th crystallised for Israelis that the world is divided between those who are with us and those who are against us,” he said. In such circumstances, he argued, “it is very hard to have a complicated conversation”, whether among Israelis, Palestinians, or pro- and anti-Israeli movements in Europe. This binary outlook, he continued, feeds directly into comparisons between the United States and Europe. At government level, he said, “it was very clear that President Trump, to some extent President Biden before him, is an ally of Israel”, while several European governments “took a different route”, which many Israelis interpreted as opposition not only to Israel but to Washington’s approach.
Wax focused on how that political divergence has played out in EU decision-making, particularly around mooted sanctions and trade restrictive measures. He described the last two years as “a disaster for Israel in terms of diplomatic relations with European countries”, arguing that the European Commission’s move to prepare trade measures against Israel had been a “watershed moment”. Economically, he suggested, the impact might have been limited, but diplomatically it signalled that “the European Commission… took this moment” to contemplate a level of pressure many in Israel had not anticipated, especially given Germany’s prominent role.
Although no such measures were ultimately adopted, Wax said the debate has left EU–Israel ties in “a strange kind of zombie grey area… diplomatically, where these sanctions are still kind of… on the table. They’re not off the table. But they’re not being implemented.” That ambiguity, he argued, has allowed governments critical of Israel “to point to them and say, ‘Look, we’ve done something’”, while others insist that sanctions are “de facto dead”, turning the issue into a tool in domestic politics rather than a coherent foreign-policy instrument.
More broadly, Wax portrayed the EU as largely sidelined in US-led diplomacy on Gaza and the wider region. Referring to Trump’s “board of peace” concept and a 28-point peace plan, he said it was “kind of desperate” to see how European leaders were trying to secure a seat at the table. “They have no real chance of getting one,” he argued, and even if they did, “will these board members even have a say?” Efforts by France and others to claim a role in brokering agreements had, in his view, been swiftly discounted by Washington. The EU, he concluded, had effectively been “reduced to a bystander”, with member states at times pursuing their own initiatives but struggling “to have any sway in the front”.
Simchayoff agreed that Europe appeared uncertain about its strategic direction. The debate over recognition of Palestinian statehood, he suggested, had underlined the lack of a common line: “Keir Starmer said, I will recognise the Palestinian state if Israel does not comply by certain conditions. Macron said, I will recognise… in any case. In Germany, they said, it’s the beginning of a journey. Italy said it’s not the time.” This fragmentation, he said, reinforced the impression in Israel that “Trump is running the show”, while Europe “doesn’t have this very clear view of where it stands and what should be done”.
The panel then turned to the domestic European climate, where rising antisemitism and anti-Israel activism have raised questions about the boundary between political protest and hate. Lempkowicz referred to posters placed in central Brussels bearing the faces of Jewish and pro-Israel figures, and to similar incidents in other European cities.
Wax, who wrote about the Brussels posters for Euractiv, said they had made a particular impact because of their location. He works in the EU quarter, an area “populated by bureaucrats, diplomats, well-to-do people”, not usually associated with mass protests. Seeing “basically wanted posters” there, he said, brought home that such sentiments “are spreading everywhere” and that “nowhere is safe from people with bad intentions who basically make no distinction between Jewish life and what they describe… as Zionism”.
He noted that, across Europe, Jews had become accustomed to hostile graffiti and chants that would have caused far greater shock only a few years ago. While stressing that law-enforcement is primarily a member-state competence, he argued that European governments needed to respond earlier and more clearly to such trends. Citing a recent controversy in Ireland over the attempted renaming of a park dedicated to former Israeli President Chaim Herzog, he suggested that governments which do not challenge extreme rhetoric “end up fostering, whether on purpose or inadvertently, a climate where saying the most disgusting things about Israel and Jews… becomes acceptable”.
Simchayoff reported a sharp rise in concern among Israelis about travelling to Europe. “The number one question that I have received in the past two years,” he said, “is whether it’s safe or not to travel in certain places in Europe.” He referred to a “huge” increase in online searches such as “what’s the least antisemitic city in Europe” and to incidents in which business owners had expelled Israelis or Jews or posted signs stating “no Zionists here”. In some cases, he noted, “even just seeing a business fronting the Palestinian flag” was enough to make Israelis feel uneasy.
This situation, he argued, should be seen not only as a problem for Jews and Israelis but as a wider European issue. “When it’s no longer safe for Israelis or for Jews to walk freely in the streets of Europe, when it’s no longer safe for Jews to have any sign of their Jewishness… it means that Europe has a problem,” he said. Echoing a long-used metaphor, he described Jewish communities as “the canary in the mine”, suggesting that “when the Jewish community is not safe, the whole of Europe is not safe”.
The discussion also addressed the interplay between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and the extent to which Jewish anti-Zionist voices are deployed to deflect accusations of hatred. Questioned from the floor about protests that insist they are only “anti-Zionist” and point to Jewish participants as proof, Simchayoff said that although anti-Zionism and antisemitism are “not necessarily” identical, “more often than not… they’re intertwined”.
He recalled covering a large demonstration outside the Israeli embassy in London on 9 October and deliberately broadcasting from the centre of the crowd. When protesters realised he was Israeli, they challenged him as a “Zionist” but denied any problem with his being Jewish, pointing to a group of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators aligned with the extreme Neturei Karta movement as “our Jews”.
In his view, the visibility of a “very small but very vocal minority” of Jewish anti-Zionists complicates attempts to explain where criticism of Israel crosses into antisemitism. At the same time, he acknowledged that “a lot of Jews and a lot of organisations” sometimes invoke the antisemitism label where it may not apply, which also weakens public understanding. The central task, he suggested, is for governments, communities and the wider public “at least to acknowledge that the problem is there, to know how to point it when it does, and then to help fix it”.
On the organisation behind protests and boycotts, Simchayoff argued that anti-Zionist networks in Europe are “very well-funded, organised, sophisticated” and have been active for years. Since moving to London, he said, he had gone undercover to BDS meetings, marches and strategy discussions. The events of October 2023 did not create these movements, he insisted, but gave them “an opportunity” to push long-standing campaigns. He cited an encounter in London with a man later exposed by the British press as a Hamas operative raising funds from Lebanon and “partially funding the anti-Israeli marches”, describing this as a “direct linkage” between Hamas and some street activism.
In the closing part of the session, the panel examined how Europe’s internal political shifts are feeding into the debate on boycotts and dialogue. Wax noted that parts of the far left had recalibrated their stance on the Middle East in line with domestic electoral calculations.
In France, for example, he said that Jean-Luc Mélenchon “is seeking a part of the Muslim vote… and in some parts of the Muslim communities, some of these anti-Zionist views go down very well”. Simchayoff added that Green parties facing an identity crisis had, in certain cases, become “political vessels” for movements “that are very critical of Israel” or aligned with “extreme Islamic movements”.
At the same time, both speakers pointed to Israel’s deepening ties with a number of European right-wing parties, with Wax observing that the current Israeli government has fostered relations with “basically every far-right party except the AfD in Germany”. This dynamic, combined with the far left’s positioning, has reinforced what he called a “left–right issue” around Israel in Europe, with elements of both extremes at times converging on similar narratives.
Against this background, the original question – whether boycotts and sanctions work, or merely deepen division – acquired a practical dimension. The panel did not attempt a definitive answer, but their interventions suggested that, at present, punitive economic or symbolic measures taken by European actors are interpreted in Israel less as policy tools than as signs of fundamental hostility. At the same time, the climate of fear among Jewish communities and the politicisation of the issue across the European spectrum make sustained dialogue more difficult.