Motion to brawl: Swedish MEP and staffer come to blows over Gaza

[Celerity]

The exact circumstances remain unclear, with both sides offering conflicting accounts.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/swedish-mep-and-left-staffer-involved-in-fight-in-eu-parliament/

The escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas spilled into the halls of the European Parliament on Wednesday as a physical altercation broke out between a left-wing staffer and a centre-right MEP over the contentious issue. According to two sources with knowledge of the incident, the staffer reportedly followed the MEP inside the Parliament and when the staffer began filming with her mobile phone, the situation turned physical.

The MEP in question is Alice Teodorescu Måwe, a first-term Swedish parliamentarian who sits on the civil liberties and defence committees, Euractiv has learned. Her office said in a statement late Wednesday that she was the victim of the attack and that suggestions to the contrary were "baseless".

Teodorescu Måwe has grabbed headlines recently with her robust support of Israel, saying that recognising the Jewish homeland should be a prerequisite to obtaining Swedish citizenship. The staffer, a Swede of Middle Eastern descent, works for the Left Party in the European Parliament. Both parties filed separate complaints to the police, Swedish media reported.

"This morning, my colleague came into my office in a state of shock and showed me marks on her arm. It turned out that a Swedish parliamentarian had simply physically attacked my colleague," said the Left Party’s Secretary, Marie Antman, in a comment to news agency TT. However, according to Liza-Maria Norlin, Secretary-General of the Swedish Christian Democrats, it was Teodorescu Måwe who was attacked. “On her way to a meeting, Alice was accosted without provocation and faced threatening accusations," Norlin wrote in a Facebook post. "The situation was extremely unpleasant for Alice.”

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