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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Navigating our Humanity: Ilan Pappé on the Four Lessons from Ukraine</h1>
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<strong>By <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ilan-pappe" title="Display all articles for Ilan Pappe">Ilan Pappe</a> - March 4, 2022</strong>
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<img src="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/towers-gaza-678x455.png" alt="" title="towers-gaza" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="263">
Israeli warplanes
attacked hundreds of towers and civilian 'targets' in the Gaza Strip. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)
<p><strong>By <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ilan-pappe" title="Display all articles for Ilan Pappe">Ilan Pappe</a></strong></p><p><span>The </span><i><span>USA Today</span></i><span>
reported that a photo that went viral about a high-rise in the Ukraine
being hit by Russian bombing turned out to be a high-rise from the Gaza
Strip, </span><a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/24/fact-check-gaza-strip-not-ukraine-pictured-explosion-photo/6922317001/"><span>demolished</span></a><span>
by the Israeli Air Force in May 2021. A few days before that, the
Ukrainian Foreign Minister complained to the Israeli ambassador in Kiev
that “you’re treating us like Gaza”; he was furious that Israel did not
condemn the Russian invasion and was only interested in evicting Israeli
citizens from the state (</span><i>Haaretz</i><span>, February 17,
2022). It was a mixture of reference to the Ukrainian evacuation of
Ukrainian spouses of Palestinian men from the Gaza Strip in May 2021, as
well as a reminder to Israel of the Ukrainian president’s full support
for Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip in that month (I will return to
that support towards the end of this piece).</span></p>
<p><span>Israel’s assaults on Gaza should, indeed, be mentioned and
considered when evaluating the present crisis in the Ukraine. It is not a
coincidence that photos are being confused – there are not many
high-rises that were toppled in the Ukraine, but there is an abundance
of ruined high-rises in the Gaza Strip. However, it is not only the
hypocrisy about Palestine that emerges when we consider the Ukraine
crisis in a wider context; it is the overall Western double standards
that should be scrutinized, without, for one moment, being indifferent
to news and images coming to us from the war zone in the Ukraine:
traumatized children, streams of refugees, sights of buildings ruined by
bombing and the looming danger that this is only the beginning of a
human catastrophe at the heart of Europe.</span></p>
<p><span>At the same time, those of us experiencing, reporting and
digesting the human catastrophes in Palestine cannot escape the
hypocrisy of the West and we can point to it without belittling, for a
moment, our human solidarity and empathy with victims of any war. We
need to do this, since the moral dishonesty underwriting the deceitful
agenda set by the Western political elites and media will once more
allow them to hide their own racism and impunity as it will continue to
provide immunity for Israel and its oppression of the Palestinians. I
detected four false assumptions which are at the heart of the Western
elite’s engagement with the Ukraine crisis, so far, and have framed them
as four lessons.</span></p>
<p><b>Lesson One: White Refugees are Welcome; Others Less So</b></p>
<p><span>The unprecedented collective EU decision to open up its borders
to the Ukrainian refugees, followed by a more guarded policy by
Britain, cannot go unnoticed in comparison to the closure of most of the
European gates to the refugees coming from the Arab world and Africa
since 2015. The clear racist prioritization, distinguishing between
life seekers on the basis of color, religion and ethnicity is abhorrent,
but unlikely to change very soon. Some European leaders are not even
ashamed to broadcast their racism publicly </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe-welcomes-ukrainian-refugees--others-not-so-much/2022/02/28/96981546-9867-11ec-9987-9dceee62a3f6_story.html"><span>as does</span></a><span> the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Kiril Petkov:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span>“These [the Ukrainian refugees] are not the
refugees we are used to … these people are Europeans. These people are
intelligent, they are educated people. … This is not the refugee wave we
have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people
with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists…”</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span>He is not alone. The Western media talks about “our kind of
refugees” all the time, and this racism is manifested clearly on the
border crossings between the Ukraine and its European neighbours. This
racist attitude, with strong Islamophobic undertones, is not going to
change, since the European leadership is still denying the multi-ethnic
and multicultural fabric of societies all over the continent. A human
reality created by years of European colonialism and imperialism that
the current European governments deny and ignore and, at the same time,
these governments pursue immigration policies that are based on the very
same racism that permeated the colonialism and imperialism of the
past. </span></p>
<p><b>Lesson Two: You Can Invade Iraq but not the Ukraine</b></p>
<p><span>The Western media’s unwillingness to contextualize the Russian
decision to invade within a wider – and obvious – analysis of how the
rules of the international game changed in 2003 is quite bewildering. It
is difficult to find any analysis that points to the fact that the US
and Britain violated international law on a state’s sovereignty when
their armies, with a coalition of Western countries, invaded Afghanistan
and Iraq. Occupying a whole country for the sake of political ends was
not invented in this century by Vladimir Putin; it was introduced as a
justified tool of policy by the West.</span></p>
<p><b>Lesson Three: Sometimes Neo-Nazism Can Be Tolerated</b></p>
<p><span>The analysis also fails to highlight some of Putin’s valid
points about the Ukraine; which by no means justify the invasion, but
need our attention even during the invasion. Up to the present crisis,
the progressive Western media outlets, such as </span><i><span>The Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post</span></i><span>
etc., warned us about the growing power of neo-Nazi groups in the
Ukraine that could impact the future of Europe and beyond. The same
outlets today dismiss the significance of neo-Nazism in the Ukraine.</span></p>
<p><i><span>The Nation</span></i><span> on February 22, 2019 reported:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span>“Today, increasing reports of far-right violence,
ultra nationalism and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to
the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the
Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and
state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.”</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span>Two years earlier, the </span><i><span>Washington Post</span></i><span>
(June 15, 2017) warned, very perceptively, that a Ukrainian clash with
Russia should not allow us to forget about the power of neo-Nazism in
the Ukraine:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span>“As Ukraine’s fight against Russian-supported
separatists continues, Kiev faces another threat to its long-term
sovereignty: powerful right-wing ultra-nationalist groups. These groups
are not shy about using violence to achieve their goals, which are
certainly at odds with the tolerant Western-oriented democracy Kiev
ostensibly seeks to become.”</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span>However, today, the </span><i><span>Washington Post</span></i><span> adopts a dismissive attitude and calls such a description as a “false accusation”:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span>“Operating in Ukraine are several nationalist
paramilitary groups, such as the Azov movement and Right Sector, that
espouse neo-Nazi ideology. While high-profile, they appear to have
little public support. Only one far-right party, Svoboda, is represented
in Ukraine’s parliament, and only holds one seat.”</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span>The previous warnings of an outlet such as </span><i><span>The Hill </span></i><span>(November 9, 2017), the largest independent news site in the USA, are forgotten: </span></p>
<blockquote><p><span>“There are, indeed, neo-Nazi formations in Ukraine.
This has been overwhelmingly confirmed by nearly every major Western
outlet. The fact that analysts are able to dismiss it as propaganda
disseminated by Moscow is profoundly disturbing. It is especially
disturbing given the current surge of neo-Nazis and white supremacists
across the globe.”</span></p></blockquote>
<p><b>Lesson Four: Hitting High-rises is only a War Crime in Europe</b></p>
<p><span>The Ukrainian establishment does not only have a connection
with these neo-Nazi groups and armies, it is also disturbingly and
embarrassingly pro-Israeli. One of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s first
acts was to withdraw the Ukraine from the </span><span>United Nations
Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian
People – the only international tribunal that makes sure the Nakba is
not denied or forgotten</span><span>. </span></p>
<p><span>The decision was initiated by the Ukrainian President; he had
no sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian refugees, nor did he
consider them to be victims of any crime.</span><span> In his interviews after the last barbaric Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in May 2021, he </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGY6fHodcUY"><span>stated</span></a><span>
that the only tragedy in Gaza was the one suffered by the Israelis. If
this is so, than it is only the Russians who suffer in the Ukraine. </span></p>
<p><span>But Zelensky is not alone. When it comes to Palestine, the
hypocrisy reaches a new level. One empty high-rise hit in the Ukraine
dominated the news and prompted deep analysis about human brutality,
Putin and inhumanity. These bombings should be condemned, of course, but
it seems that those leading the condemnation among world leaders were
silent when Israel flattened the town of Jenin in 2000, the Al-Dahaya
neighborhood in Beirut in 2006 and the city of Gaza in one brutal wave
after the other, over the past fifteen years. No sanctions, whatsoever,
were even discussed, let alone imposed, on Israel for its war crimes in
1948 and ever since. In fact, in most of the Western countries which are
leading the sanctions against Russia today, even mentioning the
possibility of imposing sanctions against Israel is illegal and framed
as anti-Semitic.</span></p>
<p><span>Even when genuine human solidarity in the West is justly
expressed with the Ukraine, we cannot overlook its racist context and
Europe-centric bias. The massive solidarity of the West is reserved for
whoever is willing to join its bloc and sphere of influence. This
official empathy is nowhere to be found when similar, and worse,
violence is directed against non-Europeans, in general, and towards the
Palestinians, in particular. </span></p>
<p><span>We can navigate as conscientious persons between our responses
to calamities and our responsibility to point out hypocrisy that in many
ways paved the way for such catastrophes. Legitimizing internationally
the invasion of sovereign countries and licensing the continued
colonization and oppression of others, such as Palestine and its people,
will lead to more tragedies, such as the Ukrainian one, in the future,
and everywhere on our planet. </span></p>
<div><p><img src="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Pappe.png" width="180" height="180"></p><p><span></span></p><p><em>-
Ilan Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a
senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is
the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East,
A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths
about Israel. Pappé is described as one of Israel’s 'New Historians'
who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government
documents in the early 1980s, have been rewriting the history of
Israel’s creation in 1948. He contributed this article to The Palestine
Chronicle.</em></p></div>
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