A report from the 2025 European Forum Alpbach
At this year’s European Forum Alpbach under the motto of “Recharge Europe” the sense of urgency for Europe to act with one voice and to level up its leadership in an increasingly volatile world was palpable. The 80-year-old conference brings together both young people and leading experts from across Europe and the world to “drive ideas for a strong and democratic Europe.” This year’s Forum happened in the shadow of the growing autocratisation of Europe’s key ally, the United States. However, while there was little public acknowledgment that the US is quickly turning from ally to adversary, there was much talk about the need to rapidly increase investments in defense and ensure Europe’s ability to secure its own territory. Attention centred on how to prepare for the real possibility of a Russian attack on European soil.
Yet in one packed room of the Forum, the Heinrich Boell Foundation’s Global Unit for Human Security organized a discussion focused on a different crisis: the collapse of European moral leadership in light of its failure to uphold international law and human rights in Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. The Human Security team organized this panel precisely because such discussions were notably absent from the 2024 Forum, despite the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
Moderated by Siavash Eshghi, this panel confronted a fundamental question: How can Europe claim to be a moral leader and defender of the rule of law, when it arguably remains complicit in what a steadily growing number of international human rights organizations and leading scholars describe as genocide? The composition of the audience itself – mostly young, engaged, with few policymakers in sight – reflected the very disconnect the panel sought to address; between the normative positioning of the majority of people in Europe and the political actions of their elected officials.
Journalist Killings on a Livestream
Journalist Dalia Hatuqa’s opening statement cut through diplomatic abstractions: “We just witnessed the killing of four journalists in Gaza, live-streamed because they had been reporting on the shelling of medical facilities.” Her question reverberated through the room, “What are we doing here while the killing of my peers is being livestreamed?” Indeed, Gaza is now widely recognized as the most dangerous place in the world for journalists and the UN Human Rights Office has condemned Israel’s targeting of journalists.
While European member states do not pursue a unified foreign policy, Europe's failure to take meaningful action as a collective and exert concerted pressure on the Israeli government, she argued, effectively lends support to Israel’s actions in Gaza. “Europe has a chance to be different [from the US] because it is also geographically closer. The genocide in Gaza can be stopped, if the EU – Israel’s biggest trading partner - would suspend the trade agreement and impose crippling sanctions.”
Historian and author René Wildangel pointed to the double standards inherent in the language that European commentators use to describe what is happening in Gaza – as was exemplified in one of the opening panels at Alpbach, when a prominent speaker spoke of “Russia’s brutal war of aggression” and “the conflict in the Middle East.” According to Wildangel, such framing disguises the asymmetry in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and in particular, the disproportionate harm imposed on the civilian population in Gaza, from the very beginning.
Germany’s historical responsibility “dangerously one-sided”
Wildangel’s analysis focused particularly on the fraught question of Germany’s historic responsibility. For decades, Germany has paid reparations to Israel and, in 2006, Chancellor Merkel declared the preservation of Israel's security as fundamental to the existence of the German state (German Staatsräson). Yet, Wildangel considers this interpretation of historical responsibility as dangerously one-sided. The lesson of the Holocaust, he argued, should not be unconditional support for an extremist Israeli government, particularly one that is executing genocidal policies, but rather the protection of all people from persecution and the strengthening of international law: “It is a perverted understanding of historic responsibilities that we are talking about here.”
Tshepo Madlingozi, Commissioner at the South African Human Rights Commission, expanded the analysis through a decolonial lens. From the Global South perspective, the lack of action from Europe, “is a colonial response, not seeing Palestinians as full human beings.” According to Madlingozi, the failure does not just stem from a lack of courage but is also structural – Europe has not dismantled the colonial frameworks that continue to shape its worldview. As he stated, “from the perspective of the Global South, there is no future integrity until Europe decolonizes itself.”
As highlighted by Madlingozi, South Africa’s Genocide case before the International Court of Justice represents more than a legal strategy affirming the principles of international law – it is forcing the international community to see Palestinians as fully human. This legal approach has galvanized a global civil society movement, which he hopes would lead to call for meaningful reparation and restitution for colonial injustices done against Palestinians.
No equal playing field between “occupier and occupied”
Sigrid Kaag, Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and former Deputy Prime Minister of Netherlands, shared impressions from her last visit this June to Gaza City, in her former capacity as Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza: “All the civil society activists - without water, housing and having lost relatives – showed up. They were clean and dressed. For two reasons: they respected themselves and more importantly, they needed to protect the dignity of everyone they represented.” In addition to thanking the people – not the politicians – of Europe for their solidarity, the Palestinian representatives conveyed one important message given the current famine: “We are more than food. We are human beings; all we want is our rights. Don’t feed us to survive another extended occupation.”
Kaag's assessment of where things are right now was sobering: the “traditional so-called peace process framework” is broken. “You cannot negotiate in an asymmetrical relationship of occupied and occupier. It’s impossible. You don’t have an equal playing field.” Her experience leads her to conclude that justice and accountability needs to be imposed – a departure from decades of failed negotiations that, she argued, have provided cover for Israel’s continued occupation and settlement expansion. The panel also critically examined the recent wave of European recognition of Palestinian statehood. While symbolically important, the panelists questioned whether this represents a genuine commitment or merely a cost-free and symbolic approach that has no consequences for the lives of Palestinians. As Hatuqa pointed out, Western governments have treated the two-state solution as a “political slogan” while permitting Israel to annex Palestinian territory and making a viable Palestinian state increasingly impossible. The E1 settlement project, which would effectively cut the West Bank in two, exemplifies this contradiction.
Recognition without addressing facts on the ground turns into, as Hatuqa suggested, “a fig leaf for the elimination of the two-state solution.” Kaag added that statehood recognition is “neither a present for Hamas, nor a punishment for Netanyahu. It is a right.” During the discussion Kaag poignantly pointed to the need for Gaza to act as an inflection point for a “total reset” - one in which Europe looks at international law (including HR law and IHL) “through the lens of equity, equality and impartiality regardless of who their allies are.” Kaag pointed out the importance of this approach not just for the future of Palestine but also of the Israeli society.
Palestinian voices missing
The panel identified several structural obstacles preventing European action. The media bias was highlighted as particularly problematic, when Wildangel called out the total absence of Palestinian voices in German media and a lack of trust for Palestinian voices. Hatuqa also criticized the Palestinian Authority for not investing in making sure that journalists have access to a variety of Palestinian voices: “I constantly receive field messages from European journalists who ask me: who can I talk to. I am happy to help but I am only one person.” The speakers contrasted the said biases and limitation with the media coverage of the war in Ukraine, as reflected in the words and phrases that are being used by journalists. “When something happens in Ukraine, it is written as a fact. When something happens in Gaza there are many disqualifiers used,” highlighted Kaag.
The panelists all emphasized the need for international media access to Gaza, with Kaag noting that “seeing is believing” and warning that no one is prepared for what they will encounter. According to her, the deliberate exclusion of independent media observers inside Gaza allows the Israeli government to continue to deny the extent of the humanitarian crisis. The speakers also highlighted the fear of political blowback as a major obstacle. Kaag described her personal experience of being labelled as “married to a terrorist” simply because her husband is Palestinian. She illustrated that in the current context “islamophobia, anti-refugee politics, weaponisation of ‘the other’ are coming together in a toxic mix.” The result is that most European politicians avoid the issue entirely rather than face potential slander.
Wildangel said the “overuse of antisemitism accusations makes a mockery of the term and makes fighting real antisemitism more difficult.” The weaponisation of such allegations has created a taboo around discussing Palestinian history and rights, leading, for example, to an Arabic language ban at protests in Germany.
The discussion culminated in a shared call for fundamental change in the European approach. As Madlingozi emphasized, this requires more than just a moral reckoning, it demands historical accountability. In the face on an increasingly anti-democratic US, Europe has a responsibility to be the bulwark for the values of democracy, human rights, and rule of law. Whether it can credibly live up to that responsibility and win back the trust of Global Majority partners and a young generation of Europeans will depend in no small part on how it engages with the question of Palestine.