Prices are rising in Gaza due to the war in Ukraine. “What do I have to do with this war that is making the price of flour go up nine shekels?” a beleaguered taxi rider in Gaza city asks.
Palestinians are evidently not entitled to the same rights as other people. This is the only Western standard that has been applied in the last hundred years.
“Regime change in Iran shouldn’t be a taboo” is an idea that gets traction in the Washington foreign policy establishment. Ukraine’s brave resistance to Russian invasion ought to dispel that idea forever. Even people who don’t like their rules won’t accept foreign control.
Palestinians are reacting to the difference in how the Western media is covering Ukraine from how it covers Palestine. This has been most obvious in two places: the issues of refugees and resistance. “When I see double standards like this I feel that I as a Palestinian don’t exist on this planet,” Sabreen Abu Libdeh, a college lecturer from Ramallah, tells Mondoweiss.
The PA has refused to condemn Russia following its invasion of Ukraine despite pressure from the Biden Administration. One reason for this is that joining the anti-Russia western chorus would further isolate an already isolated Palestine.
European Mathematical Society members welcome the decision to freeze cooperation with Russian state institutions in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, and call on the organization to apply the same universal principles to Israel.
The Western double standard when it comes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is painful, enraging, and humiliating for people in the Global South, including for Palestinians. In addition to the hypocrisy, the speed with which all these Western-dominated entities boycotted, expelled or otherwise sanctioned Russia and ordinary Russians, only days after its invasion of Ukraine, sends a clearly racist message to Palestinians, Yemenis, Iraqis, Afghanis and many others, that our lives and rights as people of color do not count. Ironically, these acts and the statements that justify them also effectively demolish almost all the anti-BDS excuses propagated by Israel and its anti-Palestinian apologists in the West against us over 17 years to thwart our calls for accountability and justice.
Activists for Palestine are considering the knock-on effects of the western support for Ukrainian resistance. Does the Zionist lobby think that they can carry on with their anti-BDS bashing as usual, once the Ukraine crisis is no longer in the news? Or are we witnessing a qualitative shift? The number of social media posts talking about the bravery of Ukrainian women, usually in fatigues and holding a gun, are too numerous to count. While pro-Palestinian organizations continue to have their social media posts censored for milder fare.
As Doaa Alremeili watches Israel welcoming Ukrainian Jewish refugees who will join its army and oppress Palestinians, she dreams of getting out of besieged Gaza and studying in Egypt. “I have survived four wars so far. And every level gets more difficult to pass. In every war of them, I was unarmed, unprotected and waiting for death. I’m in my late twenties and I have never stepped out of Gaza. I don’t know what Jerusalem really looks like or the Pyramids or Mecca or Minnesota.”
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.