Op-Ed: Israel is Banned from Events Funded by the EU

By Giulio Meotti

Israel is erased from the map and banned from the festival - the 1930's all over again.

In Hebrew it is called Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael. It is the Jewish National Fund, the nonprofit organization born before the State of Israel existed, that reclaimed barren land and planted 280 million trees. 

The Israeli ambassador in Helsinki, Dan Ashbel, said “that this approach is what led to the Holocaust”.
What could be better than boycotting one of the very symbols of the rebirth of the Jewish people in its land, a people which now cooperates with so many countries to advance agricultural projects? In Israel you are able to distinguish a Jewish village from one that is Arab at first sight, because you see plants and greenery everywhere in the first. And it has nothing to do with water rights, which are the same.
What could be a better choice to boycott Israel than an ecological event whose banner words are sustainability, anti racism, humanitarian aid, human rights, Third World, globalization and interaction between different cultures?

This is what happened in Helsinki, where the Jewish National Fund has been banned from participating to the Maailma Kylässä, the World Village, the festival organized by the multicultural organization Kepa, which includes three hundred different NGOs and is funded by the European Union and the Red Cross.

The Israelis first received an invitation to participate, only to find Israel being banned because of the “existence of question marks about the legitimacy of its activities”.

The Israeli embassy in Finland protested to the government of Helsinki about the ouster of the Jewish National Fund, only to be told that “it is a private event on which the Foreign Ministry has no authority”, when in fact the World Village is funded by the Finnish Foreign Ministry (17 million euro over two years), as well as by Brussels - the European Union. The Israeli ambassador in Helsinki, Dan Ashbel, said “that this approach is what led to the Holocaust”.  

At the World Village of 2014, the Palestine Forum distributed - and was allowed to distribute - maps of the Middle East from which the Jewish State was absent. A year later, they have been able to erase Israel from the family of nations.

Doctor Goebbels would have been proud of them.