In a December 3, 2008 press release, War on Want, a British charity that is actively involved in the anti-Israel boycott movement, “urged members of the European parliament to vote against EU moves to strengthen links with Israel over its human rights abuses.”  John Hilary, War on Want´s executive director added, “it is high time the EU put real pressure on Israel to end the Palestinians’ torment.” As NGO Monitor´s report demonstrates, War on Want manipulates Christmas to advance its political agenda, and in some cases, may be promoting anti-Semitic canards.

Amnesty International has also lobbied the Czech Republic, which assumes the presidency of the EU in January 2009, to deal with the “serious[] deficien[cies]” of the current EU-Israel agreement and “agree [to] a ´new generation´ Action Plan with Israel that contains not only the space to discuss human rights concerns, but also concrete benchmarks, commitments and programmes to address these concerns.” This follows Amnesty and other NGO campaigns in June 2008 to derail EU-Israel diplomatic negotiations on the basis of human rights rhetoric.