Israeli Drugs coming to a Pharmacy near EU

On Tuesday 23rd October, the European Parliament voted on the EU-Israel Trade Protocol that we sent out as an Action Alert around the country to ensure that Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) showed Israel that its apartheid actions were not going unnoticed by the international community. 

Unfortunately, the Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA) which would remove barriers to trade between Israel and member states in industrial products, especially pharmaceuticals, was passed, with 379 votes for the agreement and 230 against.

By passing ACAA, the EU has given the green light for more medicines to be exported from Israel, thereby strengthening the Israeli economy, but more importantly, giving a big thumbs up to Israel to basically say that "we don't care if you force Palestinian women to give birth at check points, we're still going to deal with you as if you were a peace-loving state."

If Israel were Iran, and tried to reach such an agreement, the uproar would be resounding and there would be no chance for such a protocol to get passed, but when an illegal country that is continuously breaking UN Conventions does it, it's no problem.

Furthermore, the fact that there are MEPs - like the Conservative Marina Yannakoudakis - who have supported this motion, shows that even though they would like us to think that they "care about patients before politics", they are lying.

The right-wing section of the European Parliament have once again allowed an apartheid regime to prosper whilst ignoring the plight of the Palestinians.

It was heartening to see that there were MEPs from the UK who were against this motion and were genuinely disappointed at it being passed, but the question for the Muslim community is where were our Mosques and Islamic Societies in the build-up to this motion being voted on?

There have been MEPs & groups to muddy the waters and divert the attention from Israel needing to be taught a lesson, but where were our groups?

Does your local mosque or ISoc even know about ACAA?

Do they even know what an MEP is?

This protocol being passed confirms two things - one, Muslims need to get their act together and two, the fact so many MEPs could support such a protocol means that like Obama, the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize because of their peace-loving actions.