EU Foreign Policy Chief Reportedly Compared Israel to South African Apartheid in Closed Talks

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top foreign affairs official and a former prime minister of Estonia, reportedly compared Israel’s policies to apartheid-era South Africa during closed-door discussions with Mexican officials in Mexico City. According to diplomats and people present in the room who spoke to Euractiv, Kallas described impressions from a visit she made last year to South Africa and to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, and used them to draw parallels between Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and racial segregation under apartheid.

The remarks are said to have triggered deep unease in Brussels, where the comparison is highly divisive. Some EU states, including Spain and Ireland, have previously shown sympathy for such language, but major member states such as France and Germany reject it outright. The apartheid comparison is also central to South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Pretoria accuses Israel of violating the Genocide Convention.

Kallas’s office did not respond to the report and neither confirmed nor denied it. European diplomats criticized the comments as a serious departure from her mandate and from the common line of the member states. One senior EU diplomat told Euractiv that while the bloc is indeed critical of Israel and supports a two-state solution, the apartheid analogy is unacceptable and does not reflect official policy.

Jewish community leaders in Europe also reacted sharply. Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association, accused Kallas of following the approach of her predecessor, Josep Borrell, and said her statements on apartheid fuel antisemitism. He added that Jews played a role in opposing apartheid in South Africa, and that many risked their lives in that struggle.