B’nai B’rith President Robert Spitzer and CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin have issued the following statement:

B’nai B’rith International repudiates the biased “service report” produced by the EU’s External Action Service for European Union Member States which was leaked in its entirety on June 20.

The report, produced in support of the counterproductive and unconscionable push to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement, fails to recognize and take into account the context of the multifront terrorist aggression faced by Israel—the EU’s only democratic ally in the Middle East.

By its own admission, the report entirely fails to mention Hamas atrocities on and following Oct. 7, 2023, when over 1,2000 Israeli civilians were murdered, hundreds taken hostage, many raped or burned alive in the most gruesome conditions. It entirely omits the annihilationist attempts by Iran, through its proxy terror groups— Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels—and, through its own barrages of ballistic missiles that have— both in the past and in the last two weeks—targeted exclusively civilian populations in Israel.

Hamas started the war and has conducted it in a particularly brutal fashion against Israeli civilians. Hamas has used Palestinian civilians as human shields in a deliberate attempt to maximize the number of civilian casualties, actually hiding terrorists under occupied hospital beds, to cite just one example. Hamas has been stealing the thousands of tons of humanitarian aid Israel has delivered to Gaza. Hamas, through the laughably fictitious “Gaza Health Ministry,” has been inflating casualty numbers. Hamas has held, and is continuing to hold, hostages for nearly two years. If Hamas would surrender and release the hostages, the war would end today. And yet the EU can’t refrain from blaming Israel’s conduct.

In its one-sided account of Israel’s actions in Gaza, the report entirely omits Hamas persecution of Palestinian civilians, including violent beatings and executions of perceived opponents, large-scale theft of humanitarian aid and the use of Palestinian civilian infrastructure as human shields.

To support its findings, the report relies on a set of U.N. reports and allegations, the same body whose United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff were involved in the atrocities of Oct. 7. The same body whose representatives—most notoriously Francesca Albanese—have regularly peddled in anti-Semitic libels and virulent anti-Israel positions. The same agency which has had to retract its situational evaluations upon proof that its employees had irresponsibly presented false and misleading data.

We thank all countries that have until now taken the principled stance of opposing attempts to invalidate the EU-Israel Association Agreement and reiterate our concern at the lack of situational understanding, if not ill-will showcased in this report.