Even the mainstream media is beginning to pick up on the hypocrisies generated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
What took the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa decades to achieve was carried out against Russia in a matter of hours and days– including FIFA adopting measures to punish Russian teams and athletes. Palestinians are baffled, since they have been informed by FIFA, time and again, that “sports and politics don’t mix”. Not only are Israeli athletes welcomed in all international sports events, the mere attempt by individual athletes to register a moral stance in support of Palestinians, by refusing to compete against Israelis, can be very costly.
Asked if the White House supports the Ukrainian people’s right to resist the occupation through any means necessary, spokesperson Jen Psaki says Yes. “We certainly support the rights of the Ukrainian people to fight back. I would note that we have seen many Ukrainians; many, many members of the Ukrainian military; and certainly President Zelenskyy in leadership fight bravely, courageously over the course of the last 12 days.” Now does that apply to Palestine? twitter voices ask.
Israel is now walking a tightrope above very unpredictable waters of public opinion in the west. The overwhelming wave of opposition to Russian aggression is justifying boycott, divestment and sanctions as well as resistance as responses to the Russian military occupation, measures for which Palestinians have vainly sought western approval. And meanwhile, Israel is playing footsie with Russia so as to maintain its freedom to conduct missile attacks in Syria against Iranian targets.
You see no universal Western outrage over the US support for the Saudi blockade on Yemen, which has killed an estimated 377,000, most of them children dead of famine. The Western press sometimes does report on Western atrocities, but with nothing approaching the rage it reserves for the crimes of our enemies. If there isn’t a constant drumbeat of stories about our atrocities as there is for Putin’s, and pundits aren’t constantly agonizing over our need to do something, the unspoken message is that our crimes simply aren’t that important or bad. Yes this is an argument for whataboutism– but you must be a moral imbecile to think there is something wrong with it because of that.
Alya Zoabi has advocated for countless Palestinian families whose loved ones have been attacked, or killed, by the Israeli forces. But the injustice of the Israeli system hit home last month when her own brother was beaten and arrested by Israeli police in Jerusalem.
From US government officials, to our biggest news broadcasters, and social media networks, Ukrainians were being applauded as heroes for going to whatever lengths to protect their land. The same exact things that Palestinians are labelled as terrorists for, imprisoned, and even killed.
“The first Intifada was a struggle to end Israeli occupation by establishing an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories,” political scientist Ian Lustick writes. “I supported that struggle. Tragically, it failed. Three decades and half a million settlers later, that objective is no longer attainable. The BDS movement has effectively taken its place as a grassroots popular movement, based on an absolute commitment to nonviolence, a long-term strategy, a fundamental commitment to equality, and insistence on the realization of Palestinian rights, rather than calling for a specific kind of institutional arrangement.”
“The Zionist left is the real enemy of freedom, of fighting the occupation in Israel, much more than the right wing is,” says Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy. “They are the founding fathers for the settlement project. Who started it? Netanyahu, Begin, Sharon? No no no no no! Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin– Nobel Peace Prize winners, peacemakers– they are responsible. They also enable us Israelis to feel so good about ourselves. Because they were always the laundry of any crime. We have this prestigious, world-famous Supreme Court, this castle of liberalism and freedom, part of the Zionist left, and this Supreme Court enabled any crime of war, from the settlements to the tortures, everything went through the Supreme Court and everything was washed there, and it was accepted. If the Supreme Court says there are no torturing or the settlements are legal– so who are we to say or to think different?”
Democratic lawmakers harshly criticized Republicans who denied the 2020 presidential election results. Now some of them are linked to these same election deniers via AIPAC.