Israel’s Foreign Ministry is up in arms over a video posted to Facebook by an Israeli settler NGO that depicts the EU’s ambassador to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, as Hannibal Lecter – the iconic cannibal murderer from cult movie The Silence of the Lambs.
The video shows the EU official wearing the kind of face muzzle reserved for especially psychotic inmates, and which immortalized the image of actor Anthony Hopkins as the brutal and cunning killer.
Jerusalem Periphery Forum is an NGO that deals with settlement issues outside Jerusalem, especially those around Route 1, which terminates at the Dead Sea. It is strongly opposed to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
According to the Times of Israel, the Sunday night video posted to Facebook alleges that Faaborg-Andersen is “the man that stands behind the illegal building around Route 1. He is creating facts on the ground so that there can be contiguous territory for a terrorist state in the future.”
This appears to refer to the homes Israel says were built illegally between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, along Route 1, in the West Bank. They are mobile homes the EU gifted to Palestinian and Bedouin families.
The caption continues: “It would be unthinkable for Israeli ambassadors in Europe to create outposts for the refugees. In that same way, we can’t let [Faaborg-]Andersen challenge us by acting in a way that endangers all of us. We have to restrain [Faaborg-]Andersen.”
The video closes with the words “Andersen must be restrained!” and a picture of the EU official – the lower half of his face obstructed by the iconic cannibal muzzle.
But this sort of creativity did not go down well with the Foreign Ministry. Director-General Dore Gold’s office hit back at the NGO with a press statement in which Gold “condemns the disrespectful way the European Union ambassador was presented.”
Some in Israeli circles have always shown distrust toward the EU’s initiative to help those Palestinians who are most in need. The EU said the housing was akin to humanitarian aid and insisted there were no political undertones.
The pro-Israeli NGO isn’t exactly popular at home, either. Leftist Israeli MP Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg was quoted as saying that it “systematically [works] to sabotage Israel’s foreign relations.” He further urged the government to examine the NGO’s sources of funding and investigate whether deliberate incitement to violence is taking place.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has lashed out at Israel for its alleged excessive use of force and extrajudicial tactics against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
The special investigator quoted statistics by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, which says about 5,680 Palestinians, including children, were administratively detained by Israel as of the end of October 2015.
But this is not the first condemnation of this type from the UN, and it joins a long list of similar and other grievances leveled at the Jewish state by governments and organizations from near and far.
John Dugard – professor of international law and former special rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council concerning Palestinian affairs – recently spoke to RT, emphasizing the need for Israel’s own settlement building to be treated as “colonialism.”