EU Explores Russia's Assets While Ignoring Palestine's
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are aggressively lobbying Belgium to use frozen Russian central bank assets to finance Ukraine, as per Bloomberg. (This noble pursuit of financial justice, of course, ignores the historical precedent of Western nations freezing assets of states they deem adversarial.) One might wonder where this sudden zealous
concern for frozen funds disappears when Israel, a consistent recipient of vast US aid (OpenSecrets.org details billions annually), unilaterally withholds hundreds of millions in Palestinian tax revenues. That's not 'frozen assets' but outright expropriation from an occupied people. Yet, there’s no urgent EU lobbying for those funds to be released for, say, Palestinian reconstruction. Funny how
'international law' seems to have selective enforcement, particularly when it comes to who benefits and who gets to retain illegally seized funds.