cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/34910549

There’s a word for the EU’s inaction over Gaza: racism

Europe’s domestic and external biases are feeding off and sustaining each other. This connection is not abstract. It is glaringly visible in the disparity of treatment of Ukraine and Gaza. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine was rightly condemned by the EU, which imposed severe and unprecedented sanctions on Moscow, gave more money to Kyiv and repeatedly condemned other states that did not follow suit. Palestinian lives, however, are treated as expendable, their suffering is minimised while children are robbed of their childhoods. The suffering in Gaza, framed as a humanitarian crisis rather than a deliberate political choice, is decontextualised, depoliticised and sanitised. EU policymakers should listen when the Palestinian-American academic Rashid Khalidi says this conflict is “the last colonial war in the modern age”.

The moral reckoning over the EU’s inaction on Gaza cannot be partial or piecemeal. It must include a recognition of how Europe’s past and present intersect, not only when it comes to Palestine but in many of its actions on the global stage. An EU that sees itself as a defender of international law and global justice should be willing to have these difficult conversations – in fact, it should encourage them. But the largely Eurocentric EU-policy circles see such talk as divisive.

Without serious self-examination and long overdue action, the EU’s very visible double standards will continue to undermine its democracy at home and its credibility abroad.