The EU flag. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Here is the legal reasoning behind today’s decision by the European Union General Court to de-list Hamas as a terror organization:

On 27th December 2001 the Council of the European Union adopted a common position and a regulation to combat terrorism. These measures require the freezing of the funds of those people  and entities included on a list adopted and regularly updated by Council decisions. The same day the Council adopted its first decision establishing that list. By this decision the Council included  Hamas on the list and has maintained them on that list ever since.

Hamas contests the measures maintaining them on this list.

In today’s judgment, the General Court finds that the contested measures are based not on acts examined and confirmed in decisions of competent authorities but on factual imputations derived  from the press and the internet.

However, the Common Position and the case-law of the Court4 requires that an EU decision to freeze funds is based not on factual elements that the Council may have derived from the press or  the internet, but on elements which have been concretely examined and confirmed in decisions of national competent authorities within the meaning of the Common Position.

Therefore the Court annuls the contested measures while temporarily maintaining the effects of those measures in order to ensure the effectiveness of any possible future freezing of funds. The effects of the measures are maintained for a period of three months, or, if an appeal is brought before the Court of Justice, until this appeal is closed.

The Court stresses that those annulments, on fundamental procedural grounds, do not imply any substantive assessment of the question of the classification of Hamas as a terrorist group within the meaning of the Common Position.

The European Union General Court is saying that it has never independently confirmed that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and that it relied on external sources in making that determination against its own policies.

That’s fine, any organization must follow its written policies.

But this means that ever since the EU was founded in 1993, despite spending tens of thousands of man-hours and untold millions of euros on Middle East topics and on the ground in Israel and the territories, no effort has been made to document Arab terrorism.

Think about it. The EU wants to be a part of the peace process – it is part of the Quartet – and it has given lots of money to anti-Israel NGOs. It has no problem criticizing Israeli actions and parsing the statements of Israeli ministers to find evidence of anything offensive.

Yet in all that time, no EU official has felt it was important to research and report on Arab terrorism! Not one bothered to visit the site of suicide bombings and read official Hamas statements taking credit for them. Not one bothered to follow up on Hamas incitement, on Hamas antisemitism, or on Hamas’ public statements declaring all of Israel “occupied” and all Israelis to be targets for attack.

Not one.

Apparently, the entire EU presence in the Middle East is meant to document Israeli building in the territories and to ferret out “price tag” attacks. Thousands of pages are written about whether Israeli products that are manufactured on one side of the Green Line but packaged on the other side are considered contraband in Europe. But not one official report has been written that says that Hamas took credit for a terror attack.

There is a huge blind spot in the most studied place on the planet, and yet in 21 years the EU has not been able to write up a single report on Palestinian terrorism.

Is there any more evidence needed of EU bias against Israel than this?