European sanctions on Israelis won’t succeed in pressuring Jewish state, Sa’ar says

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Monday that the European Union’s attempt to impose political views on Jerusalem through sanctions on Jews living in Judea and Samaria “is unacceptable and will not succeed.”

Israel “firmly rejects” the E.U. decision, describing it as “arbitrary” and “political,” Sa’ar said.

The Israeli official decried the “outrageous” comparison between Israeli citizens and Hamas terrorists. “This is a completely distorted moral equivalence,” he stated.

The E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas stated earlier that her organization “just gave the go-ahead to sanction Israeli settlers over violence against Palestinians.” She added that it had “also agreed new sanctions on leading Hamas figures.”

“It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery,” Kallas said. “Extremisms and violence carry consequences.”

“Israel has stood, stands and will continue to stand for the right of Jews to settle in the heart of our homeland,” Sa’ar responded. “No other people in the world has such a documented and longstanding right to its land as the Jewish people have to the Land of Israel.”

“This is a moral and historical right that has also been recognized by the law of nations, and no actor can take it away from the Jewish people,” he stated.

Earlier on Monday, Ireland’s national public service broadcaster reported that according to E.U. officials, “seven settlers or settler organizations” were set to be blacklisted, and that the bloc was also preparing sanctions against representatives of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Israel Gantz, head of the Binyamin Regional Council and chairman of the Yesha Council, also strongly condemned the E.U.’s decision to impose sanctions on organizations and residents in Judea and Samaria, calling it a “shameful decision” and “the height of hypocrisy and double standards.”

Placing sanctions on Israeli citizens in the same framework as measures against Hamas terrorists represents he termed “an unprecedented moral low.”
Gantz said the E.U. is unfairly targeting Israelis who, in his view, are “on the front lines of the struggle against Palestinian Authority terrorism,” while ignoring the Palestinian Authority’s role in rewarding violence.

The E.U. has turned “the victim into the culprit,” he said. Instead of confronting rising antisemitism in Europe and backing Israel as “the only democratic state in the Middle East,” it has yielded to political pressure. Gantz called on Israel’s prime minister and foreign minister to engage directly with the E.U. to “stop the political persecution” and work to have the sanctions lifted immediately.

Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, said, “The E.U. is giving a tailwind to terrorism. This is ignorance and anti-Israelism. There is no greater double standard than this. In the Palestinian Authority, terrorism is the rule, in Israel, violence is the exception.”

“The European Union is once again ignoring the facts,” Dagan said. “There are no two violent sides. There is a side that murders babies in their beds and rapes women, and there is a side that chooses life.”

Dagan said the term “settler violence,” was a dehumanizing label that unfairly stigmatized half a million Israelis living in Judea and Samaria. He argued that it reflected the entrenched anti-Semitism and a persistent “double standard” in Europe. “The attitude toward Jews will always be different from the attitude toward the Palestinian Authority’s terrorism.”

He accused Europe of ignoring official Palestinian incitement to violence, noting that no sanctions have been imposed on Palestinian organizations that promote terrorism, including Fatah. He pointed to an advertisement calling for harm against himself and argued that a similar act by an Israeli institution against P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas would provoke immediate international outrage.

Accusations of Israeli “settler violence” against Arabs in Judea and Samaria are part of what Israeli officials, experts, military sources and activists describe as a long-running, well-funded and coordinated campaign aimed at delegitimizing the State of Israel and its residents in the region.

None of the sources denied that Jewish violence exists but said it is less widespread than portrayed in the media, involves fewer incidents than reported, is broadly condemned and is carried out by a relatively small number of individuals.

An April 2026, Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security position paper by Brig. Gen. (res.) Erez Winner and Col. (res.) Gabi Siboni describes the campaign as a “modern-day blood libel” against the State of Israel.