Israel: Italy eyes swift EU sanctions against Ben-Gvir, whose treatment of captured Gaza flotilla activists 'violated all human rights'

Italy's foreign minister Antonio Tajani is raising with European colleagues the possiblity of rapid sanctions against Israel's far-right police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for his videoed harrassment and humiliation this week of detained activists from the Gaza aid flotilla, which "violated all human rights", Tajani said Friday at a Nato foreign ministers' meeting in Sweden.

“I am already speaking with all European ministers at this very moment so that a decision can be reached quickly," Tajani told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting taking place in the southern Swedish city of Helsingborg.Recalling that there will be an informal summit of European Union foreign ministers on 27-28 May in Lemesos, Cyprus, which holds the rotating EU Council presidency, Tajani said: "I hope that a decision can be made at the first formal meeting.""After what we saw the other day in Israel, we cannot fail to call for sanctions against a minister who has violated all human rights - indeed, who organised a sort of media spectacle by humiliating people who had committed no crime," Tajani added.While questioning the utility of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which has since April made two unsuccessful attempts to sail to blockaded, war-razed Gaza with humanitarian supplies, Tajani underlined: "Human rights must be respected.""Our condemnation is total," Tajani added.Ben-Gvir’s video on Wednesday shows him walking around a tent where the activists were being held, believed to at the port of Ashdod, wearing the traditional kippah,a black shirt and waving the Israeli flag. “Welcome to Israel, we are the masters of the house,” and “The people of Israel live,” the minister tells Flotilla activists, who seen are blindfolded and forced to kneel crouched forwards with their hands zip-tied behind their backs.The detention and taunting of the activists by Ben-Gvir after the 50-vessel Global Sumud Flotilla was intercepted off Cyprus sparked an international outcry with Italy, France, Canada, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands summoning their top Israeli diplomats in their countries.Israel’s premier Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign minister Gideon Saar strongly criticised Ben-Gvir and US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said he had“betrayed the dignity of his nation.”