European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s apartheid era, speaking during closed-doors high-level talks in Mexico City last month, E.U. affairs news website Euractiv reported, citing officials and diplomats.
Kallas, a former Estonian prime minister who took up her post as the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy in December 2024, visited Mexico City on May 20-22 as part of an E.U. delegation attending a summit. During closed-door meetings with Mexican government representatives, Kallas compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, Judea and Samaria to the racist policies of apartheid South Africa, according to the report.
Officials and diplomats, including those present at the meeting, told Euractiv that she described how moved she was by a visit last year to South Africa and its apartheid museum in Johannesburg.
“The comparison with apartheid is unacceptable and not E.U. policy. It is a big problem if she is making these kinds of statements while officially representing the E.U. on the world stage,” said one E.U. diplomat, according to Euractiv.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.
Kallas ‘fueling the antisemitism fire in Europe’
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the Brussels-based European Jewish Association (EJA), which represents Jewish communities across the continent, said that Kallas’s comments are “fueling the antisemitism fire in Europe.”
“Apartheid, just like genocide, is a very important word. It carries weight and is pregnant with emotional and historical meaning. To use it in such a context diminishes it. It is an absolute falsehood: There is absolutely nothing that even resembles apartheid in Israel,’’ said Margolin, adding that “it also plays directly into the hands of those... responsible for the antisemitism crisis that is plaguing the continent and making life so incredibly difficult for European Jewry.”
Kallas “should know that Jewish activists played a disproportionately large role in the South African anti-apartheid movement. Driven by a cultural history of persecution, many risked their lives, imprisonment, and exile to fight the regime as lawyers, underground operatives, and political leaders,” he continued.
“Kaja Kallas, through her words, is directly adding fuel to the antisemitic fire. The EJA urges foreign ministers to recognize this danger, and to distance themselves from her remarks,” Margolin concluded.
The American Jewish Committee said it was ‘’deeply concerned by reports that European Commission Vice President Kaja Kallas compared Israel to apartheid-era South Africa. Such a characterization departs from the longstanding position of the E.U., misrepresents the historical reality of apartheid and fuels a dangerous campaign to delegitimize Israel.”
The AJC urged Kallas “to clarify and retract these reported remarks,” adding, “The apartheid label has been repeatedly rejected by the E.U. itself, the United States, and many democratic governments around the world.”
