The EU's Leaked Report on Israel
Proof of Hypocrisy, Coercion, and Complicity
Exposed: How Brussels Violates Its Own Agreements While Bankrolling Israel
A leaked, RESTRICTED European Union document has laid bare a political scandal hiding in plain sight. The report, dated June 2025, authored by the Office of the EU Special Representative for Human Rights, concludes unequivocally: Israel is in breach of its human rights obligations under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
That clause, far from symbolic, is supposedly the legal backbone of the entire EU-Israel relationship, making respect for human rights a mandatory condition for political, trade, and military cooperation.
But while EU officials quietly confirm Israel’s serial violations, from collective punishment in Gaza to systemic discrimination in the West Bank, the EU’s other hand signs trade deals, pours millions in research funding, and maintains deep security ties with Israel.
A leaked European Union document has ripped the mask off Brussels’ double game on Israel. The report, stamped RESTRICTED and circulated only among EU insiders, bluntly concludes that Israel is in breach of its human rights obligations under the EU-Israel Association Agreement. That agreement, signed in 2000, supposedly makes respect for human rights an essential condition for trade, political ties and military cooperation between Israel and the EU. On paper, it serves as a legal safeguard. In practice, it has been little more than a smokescreen for complicity.
The leaked assessment pulls no punches. It documents Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon in Gaza, its imposition of collective punishment on civilians, the targeting of journalists, the destruction of critical infrastructure, and the system of racial discrimination and segregation in the West Bank that amounts to apartheid. The findings are not new to Palestinians, but they are politically explosive when spelt out in cold bureaucratic language by EU officials themselves. It’s a rare moment where the hypocrisy is impossible to deny.
For years, the EU has wrapped its dealings with Israel in the language of international law and human rights, while quietly deepening ties that fund, equip and legitimise the very violations now being catalogued. The EU remains Israel’s largest trading partner, overseeing over €46 billion in annual trade. It has poured millions into Israeli tech and defence sectors, often under the guise of research cooperation. While Gaza burns and the West Bank fragments under settler violence, European officials have shaken hands with Israeli counterparts, signed deals, and issued the occasional muted statement of “concern.”
This isn’t accidental. The EU’s human rights clauses have long functioned as binding principles. Similar agreements exist with Egypt, Tunisia, and others, where abuses are met with silence or hand-wringing so long as Europe’s economic and security interests are protected. The pattern is clear: human rights language buys legal and moral cover, but when it becomes inconvenient, it’s buried under technical jargon and confidential notes. The law becomes a tool of leverage rather than justice.
In the case of Israel, that leverage cuts both ways. By keeping Israel technically in breach of the agreement but never enforcing the consequences, Brussels maintains quiet influence, the ability to apply pressure when it suits European geopolitical ambitions. The violations, horrific as they are, become a bargaining chip, not a line in the sand.
What this leak reveals is not just the scale of Israel’s abuses, though they are undeniable. It exposes the EU itself, its selective enforcement of international law, its instrumentalisation of human rights, and its role as an enabler of a system that leaves Palestinians stripped of land, rights, and basic dignity. While EU leaders parade their commitment to a “rules-based order,” they have, by their admission, overseen the systematic breaking of those rules, all while the cheques, contracts and military cooperation flow uninterrupted.
If the EU applied its standards consistently, the Association Agreement with Israel would be suspended, trade would be curtailed, and diplomatic relations would be re-evaluated. Instead, what we have is a carefully managed charade. The public hears platitudes. Behind closed doors, restricted reports quietly document the legal breaches no one intends to act upon. For Palestinians, the price is paid daily in demolished homes, military sieges, and a future disappearing behind walls and checkpoints.
This leak didn’t just slip through the cracks. It tore them wide open. What remains to be seen is whether European citizens will let Brussels paper them back over.