Numerous European countries, including Spain, summoned Israeli ambassadors in their territories yesterday to protest the humiliating treatment that National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir gave to the activists of the Global Smud Flotilla detained by Tel Aviv in the port of Ashdod.
In a video the smiling Israeli minister can be seen welcoming the activists and mocking them while they are kneeling, with their hands handcuffed behind their backs and their heads resting on the ground, some of them crowded under the sun.
Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, and Canada, in addition to Spain, summoned their respective ambassadors from Israel yesterday to express their protest against the attitude of the far-right minister and the treatment given to the activists.
Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares announced yesterday from Berlin that he had summoned Israel’s Chargé d’Affaires in Madrid, Dana Erlich, for the second time in two days, to “express our complete rejection and disgust at this absolutely abominable and unacceptable treatment.”
Albares described the israeli minister’s treatment of the activists as “monstrous, undignified, and inhumane“. From France, Minister Noël Barrot called the images “unacceptable”. The Greek government labeled what happened as “unacceptable”. And the Turkish government declared that “the minister (Ben Gvir), one of the main actors of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, has once again openly shown the barbaric mentality, focused on violence, of Netanyahu’s government to the world.”
Even Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has also criticized that the “ultra” minister recorded himself humiliating the detainees and spread the images himself.