The world marked marked the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine last week, and the western press glorified Ukrainian resistance fighters and the American president went to Kiev and denounced Russians as war criminals. “They’ve targeted civilians with death and destruction… in an attempt to steal Ukraine’s future… Bombed train stations, maternity hospitals, schools, and orphanages.”
Never has the west’s double standard on Russian and Israeli aggression been so glaring. Just after Biden spoke, the center of Nablus was torn apart by an overwhelming Israeli raid on a resistance cell that caused massive destruction in the ancient city and killed 11 Palestinians and wounded scores of others– with the heavily-armed invaders showing utter indifference as to whether their targets were armed or not.
Read Mariam Barghouti’s wrenching report from Nablus the day after. In one instance a paramedic finds his own father lying there dying — 61-year-old refugee Abdelhadi Al-Ashqar.
But that war crime by an occupier went unremarked in the western press, and though the young fighters of Nablus are revered by Palestinians as courageous defenders of the land, our establishment does its utmost to brand Palestinians terrorists. (Ayman Mohyeldin did point out the double standard at MSNBC. “In Ukraine, resisting occupation is celebrated and its struggle is heralded as a fight for freedom…”)
It wasn’t a good week for American consciousness. Though Rashida Tlaib denounced Israeli war crimes in Nablus using our aid, the Biden administration continues to make apologies for Israeli extremism. And our press heralds the big demonstrations against judicial overhaul in Israel as the sign of a vibrant democracy.
When Palestinian rights have little place in those demonstrations, and you can never sell a system of Jewish supremacy as democracy. Even when our ambassador tells us Palestinians want “money”, not rights.
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“The perception that Israel, which in 2018 declared itself to be legally the nation state of the Jews with “exclusive right of self-determination,” is already an apartheid state that casually commits what many would describe as war crimes is growing and will almost certainly impact on the international acceptance of the Israelis. But in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and France in particular, such concerns might be considered overwrought as Jewish hard power and money have effectively bought into and even dominate some aspects of their respective political and economic systems. A clear majority of British Members of Parliament are members of various “Friends of Israel” associations and in the US both parties are heavily dependent on Jewish/Israeli donors for campaign funding and also to ensure a friendly media. Most congressmen have learned the lesson that criticizing Israel is a red line that must not be crossed if one wants to remain in office, so it is most likely that the US love affair with Israel will continue no matter what Netanyahu and company do.”