[News] Westerners live in denial, convinced they’re the good guys

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/westerners-live-denial-convinced-theyre-good-guys>
Westerners live in denial, convinced they’re the good guys
Jonathan Cook - October 14, 2022
------------------------------
[image: image.png]

No one took responsibility for the explosion over the weekend that ripped
through a section of the Kerch Bridge that links Russia to Crimea and was
built by Moscow after it annexed the peninsula back in 2014.

But it was not just Kyiv’s gleeful celebrations that indicated the main
suspect. Within hours, the Ukrainian authorities had released a set of
commemorative
stamps
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/10/08/ukraine-stamps-celebrate-kerch-bridge-explosion-hours-crimea/>
depicting the destruction.

Had the Palestinians openly celebrated blowing up a bridge, and killed
Israeli civilians, who can really imagine western media reports being
similarly supportive?

Russian President Vladimir Putin was under no illusions either. On Monday,
he struck out with a torrent of missiles
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63199721> that hit major Ukrainian
cities such as Kyiv and Lviv. It was a pale, Slavic echo of Israel’s
intermittent bombardments of Gaza, which are expressly intended to send the
Palestinian enclave "back to the Stone Age"
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/only-the-strong-survive-gantzs-new-campaign-videos-laud-his-idf-bona-fides/>
.

If the scenes looked familiar – an attack by one party, followed by a
massive retaliatory strike from the other – the mood and language that
greeted the Ukrainian attack and the Russian counter-attack felt noticeably
different from what passes for normal western commentary about Israel and
Palestine.

The blast on the Kerch Bridge was welcomed with barely concealed excitement
<https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FesdkEkXEAAeX5u?format=jpg&name=900x900> from
western journalists, politicians and analysts, while Moscow’s strikes on
Kyiv were uniformly denounced
<https://uk.news.yahoo.com/biden-condemns-utter-brutality-russian-230133982.html>
as Russian brutality and state terrorism. That is not the way things work
when Israel and Palestinian factions engage in their own rounds of fighting.

Had the Palestinians openly celebrated blowing up a bridge in East
Jerusalem, a territory illegally annexed by Israel in the 1960s, and killed
Israeli civilians as collateral damage in the process, who can really
imagine western media reports being similarly supportive?

Nor would western academics have lined up, as they did for Ukraine, to
explain in detail
<https://twitter.com/MattLightCrim/status/1578819183793811456> why
destroying a bridge was a proportionate act and fully in accordance with
the rights in international law of a people under belligerent occupation to
resist.

Instead, there would have been thunderous denunciations of Palestinian
savagery and "terrorism".

In reality, Palestinian resistance nowadays is far more modest – and yet still
receives western censure
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/international-condemnation-of-rocket-fire-from-gaza-that-injured-seven/>.
Palestinians need only to fire a home-made rocket, or launch an "incendiary
balloon", usually ineffectually out of their cage in Gaza – where they have
been besieged for years by their Israeli persecutors – to incur the wrath
of Israel and the western powers that claim to constitute the
"international community".

Even more perversely, when Palestinians solely target Israeli soldiers
<https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2006-06-30/kidnapped-by-israel-the-british-media-and-the-invasion-of-gaza/>,
as they are unambiguously entitled to do under international law, they are
similarly reviled as criminals.
Regular rampages

But the double standards do not end there. Western media and politicians
were unreservedly appalled
<https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/horrific-biden-officials-condemn-russias-sweeping-strikes-ukraine/story?id=91299948>
by Moscow’s retaliatory strikes on the Ukrainian capital. Despite the
media’s emphasis on Russia’s targeting of civilian infrastructure, the
number of civilians killed across Ukraine by the wave of missile hits on
Monday was reported to be low.

Western media are far less horrified
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/09/israel-renewed-hamas-attack-bbc-balance-palestinian>
when it comes to Israel’s regular rampages across Gaza – even when Israel
"retaliates" after much less provocation and when its strikes inflict far
greater suffering
<https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/16/bbc-defends-coverage-israeli-airstrikes-gaza-palestinian>
and damage.

And, of course, it is not just Israel that is benefiting from this
hypocrisy. The United States’ “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign that
initiated the war on Iraq
<https://www.medialens.org/2016/the-great-iraq-war-fraud> in 2003 – and so
impressed western commentators – killed many thousands of Iraqi
civilians. Russia’s strikes on Kyiv pale in comparison.

There are other glaring inconsistencies. After Russia’s missile strikes,
Ukraine is gaining an even more receptive ear in western capitals to its
demands for additional weaponry to help regain the eastern territories
<https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-vows-strengthen-its-armed-forces-after-major-russian-air-strikes-2022-10-10/>
Moscow has annexed.

By contrast, no one in the West is suggesting that the Palestinians should
be armed to help them fight off decades of Israeli occupation and siege. Quite
the reverse
<https://theintercept.com/2022/05/19/israel-gaza-us-weapons-aid-projects/>.
It is invariably western weapons that rain down on Gaza, supplied to the
belligerent Israeli occupier by the very parties now condemning Russia.

And in stark contrast to Britain’s whole-hearted support as Ukraine battles
to stop Russia’s annexation of its eastern territories, the UK’s prime
minister Liz Truss stated only last month that she may reward Israel for
its illegal annexation of Jerusalem by moving the British embassy there
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/uk-israel-liz-truss-move-embassy-Jerusalem-disastrous>
.

Irish lawmakers on Wednesday called out the West's “double standards” for
imposing sanctions on Russia after invading Ukraine but not doing the same
to Israel over its violations in Palestine. pic.twitter.com/wbMI6meivW
<https://t.co/wbMI6meivW>
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) March 8, 2022
<https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1501173420754624512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Whereas Palestinians are constantly inveigled to postpone their liberation
struggle and wait for their occupier to agree to peace talks, even when
Israel openly scorns engagement, Ukrainians are pushed by the West to do
the exact opposite. They are expected to delay any negotiations with Russia
<https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-comments-talks-with-west-not-constructive-legitimate-offer-us-state-dept-2022-10-11/>
and focus on the battlefield <https://archive.ph/Bippa>.

Similarly, those who promote talks between Israel and Palestine that are
never going to take place are praised as peacemakers
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMEipeyC2e4>. Those who advocate for talks
<https://twitter.com/ClareDalyMEP/status/1578018332531642368> between
Ukraine and Russia – when Moscow has expressed a repeated willingness to
negotiate <https://twitter.com/BMarchetich/status/1576983835492855808>,
even if its overtures are disparaged by the West – are rounded on as
appeasers.

Russia, meanwhile, faces sustained and comprehensive sanctions imposed by
western states to bring it to heel
<https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/08/behind-moscows-bluster-sanctions-are-making-russia-suffer>
.

By contrast, those proposing a far weaker tool – grassroots boycotts – to
pressure Israel to loosen its choke-hold on Gaza are smeared as antisemites
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54999010> and face legislation
to outlaw their activities by the same western states sanctioning Moscow.

It is almost as if the "freedom-loving" West has an entirely inconsistent
agenda when it comes to the plights of Ukraine and Palestine. Israel’s hold
on Palestine is unfortunate but justified; Russia’s over Ukraine is
emphatically not.

Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s “unprovoked aggression” is heroic.
Palestinian resistance to Israel’s violence – invariably presented as
self-defence – is terrorism.
Double standards

Western news at the moment is a litany of these double standards and legal
and ethical contradictions – and yet barely anyone seems to notice.

Westerners, for example, are currently cheering the protests in Iran
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-protests-over-womans-death-persist-despite-crackdown-oil-workers-strike-2022-10-11/>,
where women and girls have taken to the streets and created mass
disturbances in schools. Their protests were sparked by the death of Mahsa
Amini after she was taken into custody for wearing her hijab head covering
too loosely.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/video/al-aqsa-raid-international-community-guilty-double-standards-palestine#autoplay>

Al-Aqsa Raid: International community guilty of ‘double standards’ on
Palestine

Western media celebrate these young women casting aside the hijab in
defiance of the unaccountable clerics who rule over them. The West bewails
the beatings
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/10/05/iran-security-forces-fire-kill-protesters>
and
attacks they receive from a tyrannous, patriarchal Iranian theocracy.

And yet there is no comparable solidarity with Palestinians when they
collectively defy an unaccountable Israeli occupation army that rules over
them. When they turn out to protest at the fence Israel has built all
around Gaza to imprison them, preventing them from leaving for work or to
see family overseas, or to reach hospitals much better equipped than their
own that have been under Israeli blockade for years, they are shot down by
Israeli snipers.

Where is the applause for those brave Palestinian protesters standing up to
their oppressors? Where are the denunciations of Israel for compelling
Palestinians to endure a tyrannous, apartheid-enforcing Israeli military?

Why is it entirely unremarkable that Palestinians – young and old, men and
women – are regularly beaten
<https://twitter.com/Partisangirl/status/1578858406181359616> or killed by
Israel
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/10/palestinian-child-shot-by-israeli-army-in-jenin-dies-from-wounds>,
while the death of a single Iranian woman is enough to reduce the western
media to paroxysms of outrage?

And why, just as pertinently, does the West care so much about the lives of
young Iranian women and their hijab protests when it appears not to give a
damn about these women’s lives, or those of their brothers, when it comes
to enforcing decades of western sanctions
<https://iranfocus.com/economy/48949-a-tsunami-of-malnutrition-in-iran/>?
Those restrictions have plunged parts of Iranian society into deep and
sustained poverty that puts Iranian lives at risk.

Such is the reflexive hypocrisy that Israeli women who have shown no
solidarity with Palestinian women abused and killed by the Israeli army turned
out last week to cut their hair
<https://twitter.com/Israel/status/1578064255059902474> in a public act of
sisterhood with Iranian women.
Western dictates

There is nothing new about these double standards. They are entrenched in
western thinking, based on a profoundly racist, colonial worldview – one
that sees “the West” as the good guys and everyone else as morally
compromised, or irredeemably evil, if they refuse to bow to western
dictates.

That is highlighted by the current battle of an 88-year-old Palestinian
businessman, Munib al-Masri, to win an apology
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-63145992> from Britain.

At his instruction, two eminent lawyers – Luis Moreno Ocampo, a former
chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, and Ben Emmerson, a
former United Nations expert on human rights – have been reviewing evidence
of crimes committed by British forces
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220527-ex-icc-prosecutor-calls-on-uk-to-compensate-palestinians-for-balfour-declaration/>
in the years before 1948, when the UK ruled Palestine under a mandate.

Westerners dwell permanently inside their own bubble of disinformation that
allows them to imagine themselves the good guys – whatever the evidence
actually proves

When Britain withdrew, it effectively allowed Zionist institutions to take
its place and create a self-declared Jewish state of Israel on the ruins of
the Palestinians’ homeland.

The evidence documented by Ocampo and Emmerson – which they describe as
"shocking" – includes crimes such as arbitrary killings and detentions,
torture, use of human shields, and home demolitions weaponised as
collective punishment.

If that all sounds familiar, it should. Israel has been terrorising
Palestinians with these same exact policies over the past 74 years. That is
because Israel incorporated the British mandate’s "emergency regulations"
<https://www.btselem.org/legal_documents/emergency_regulations> permitting
such crimes into its legal and administrative codes. It simply continued
what Britain had started.

Masri hopes to present the 300-page dossier to the UK government later this
year. According to the media, it will be "reviewed thoroughly" by the
Ministry of Defence. But do not hold your breath waiting for an apology
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/07/munib-al-masri-palestinian-petitions-uk-for-apology-over-alleged-abuses-during-british-rule>
.

The reality is that Ocampo and Emmerson did not need to conduct their
research. Nothing they tell the UK government will be a revelation. British
officials already know about these crimes. And there is no remorse – as
demonstrated by, if nothing else, the fact that Britain continues to back
Israel to the hilt even while the Israeli military continues the same reign
of state terror.

Israel’s task was to rebrand as a "western-style democracy" the British
mandate’s brutal colonial rule over the Palestinian population. It is the
reason Israel receives billions of dollars
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57170576> in aid from the US every year, and
why it never faces consequences for any of the crimes it commits.

The ugly truth is that westerners dwell permanently inside their own bubble
of disinformation, one puffed up by their leaders and the media, that
allows them to imagine themselves as the good guys – whatever the evidence
actually proves.

The double standards in the West’s treatment of Ukraine compared to
Palestine should be a moment when that harsh realisation finally dawns.
Sadly, western publics just seem to sink ever deeper into the comforting
illusion self-righteousness.

*The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20221014/20d02422/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 2182333 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20221014/20d02422/attachment.png>