Several Spanish ministers have slammed the ongoing Israeli “genocide” in the Gaza Strip, urging their government to do more to stop the regime’s atrocities against Palestinians.
“Bombing hospitals, refugee camps, children, defenseless elderly people, Israel is demonstrating the worst of humanity. How long will European leaders make us accomplices of this barbarism,” Ione Belarra, Head of the Podemos party and Minister of Social Rights, posted on X.
Belarra has already Spain and the EU to break off ties with Israel.
On Wednesday, she praised Bolivia for cutting off its diplomatic relations with the occupying regime.
After Israel admitted to bombing a refugee camp on Tuesday, Spain’s Minister for Consumer Affairs, Alberto Garzon, also shared his condemnation.
“The impunity of Israel and its crimes is an international disgrace. A genocide that will weigh on the Western governments that support and justify it,” he posted on social media.
Meanwhile, Spain’s Equality Minister, Irene Montero, re-shared Colombian leader Gustavo Petro’s post calling Israel’s actions genocidal and saying “its allies cannot speak of democracy.”
In response, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain accused the Spanish minister of “anti-Semitism.”
The Israeli embassy in Spain also slammed them as having “aligned themselves with ISIS-like terrorism” for prior comments.
The country’s Foreign Affairs Minister Jose Manuel Albares and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez have called for an urgent humanitarian ceasefire and criticized the Israeli siege.
Albares said on Wednesday he was “appalled by the civilian victims of the bombing in Jabalya.”
Sanchez is also trying to organize a peace summit to give the warring sides a “concrete horizon” for lasting solutions.
“The international community already recognizes Israel and now what we need to do is to recognize the Palestinian State,” he said.
Lone Belarra had earlier posted a video on her X account unequivocally condemning Israeli crimes.
“Today we are here accompanying all the decent people of our country and also all those people throughout Europe who want to ask and demand an end once and for all to this planned genocide, this ethnic cleansing of the people of Palestine that is being carried out by the State of Israel,” Belarra said.
The European leaders, including those of Spain, are “not up to the gravity of the circumstances,” she said, adding, “We do not want to be complicit in this planned genocide and we think that Europe must act urgently. I believe that Europe is going to pay dearly for this hypocrisy.”
The ongoing Israeli offensive has pushed the Gaza Strip to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians enduring immense suffering and loss.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk also warned on Saturday that there was the potential for thousands more civilians to die if Israel pressed ahead with a ground offensive in Gaza.
