During and after the IDF’s brief surgical campaign against Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in the Gaza Strip, “the usual suspects”—as Richard Kemp terms them—rushed to express their dissatisfaction with the Jewish state. The condemnations began with the initial strike that killed Tayseer al-Jabari, the terrorist group’s senior figure in Gaza. Kemp writes:

UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland was “deeply concerned” by “the targeted killing today of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader inside Gaza.” . . . Wennesland’s “deep concern” was aggravated by comments from Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” who managed in one tweet both to condemn Israel and contort its actions into a darkly malign parody of reality—so far, so UN. [Without evidence], she claimed that Israel’s actions were to “deter Islamic Jihad’s possible retaliation for its leader’s arrest,” going on to describe the strikes as “flagrant aggression” in breach of international law.

This is pure fiction. Israel has not claimed its operation in Gaza—codenamed Breaking Dawn—is to deter. The government has made it clear that the strikes were to prevent an imminent threat to the Israeli population. It had hard intelligence that PIJ, led by Jabari, was planning attacks across the border from Gaza. Protecting its people from violent external attack is not only permitted under international law, it is the duty of every government. If deterrence of such attacks were possible, Israel would have taken action to deter.

Jabari’s illegal attacks were to be in retaliation for the IDF’s arrest of Bassam al-Saadi in Jenin last week. Saadi is the leader of PIJ in Judea and Samaria, and since May last year he has been consolidating his terrorist bases there, bringing together an assortment of other terror gangs including Hamas, the Fatah-linked al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

This left PIJ’s city strongholds, mainly in the north, largely ungovernable by the Palestinian Authority, with their Kalashnikovs calling the shots and PA security forces afraid to enter. The deteriorating situation contributed much to the wave of terrorist attacks against Israelis that [left] nineteen dead in March and April this year.

Established in 2012 and maintaining branches in Europe, North America, and Iran, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Network claims its goal is merely to show “solidarity” for imprisoned Palestinians. The organization’s leader, however, has admitted to being a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a notorious terrorist group whose most recent accomplishments include murdering a seventeen-year-old girl. As Arsen Ostrovsky and Patricia Teitelbaum point out, Samidoun is just one example of how the European Union allows Iran-backed terrorists to operate in its midst:

The PFLP is a proxy of the Iranian regime, which provides the terror group with money, training, and weapons. Samidoun . . . has a branch in Tehran. It has even held events there, under the pretext of “cultural activity,” to elicit support for operations in Europe. Its leader, Khaled Barakat, is a regular on Iran’s state [channel] PressTV, calling for violence and lauding Iran’s involvement in the region. It is utterly incomprehensible, therefore, that the EU has not yet designated Samidoun a terror group.

According to the Council of the European Union, groups and/or individuals can be added to the EU terror list on the basis of “proposals submitted by member states based on a decision by a competent authority of a member state or a third country.” In this regard, there is already a standing designation by Israel of Samidoun as a terror group and a decision of a German court finding Barakat to be a senior PFLP operative.

Given the irrefutable axis-of-terror between Samidoun, PFLP, and the Iranian regime, the EU has a duty to put Samidoun and senior Samidoun leaders on the EU terror list. It should do this not as some favor to Israel, but because otherwise it continues to turn a blind eye to a group that presents a clear and present security threat to the European Union and EU citizens.