The Middle East calls out West’s hypocrisy

“We have seen every means we were told could not be activated for over 70 years deployed in less than seven days... Amazing hypocrisy,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said in Turkey earlier this month

Within days of the Russian invasion, Western nations invoked international law, imposed crippling sanctions, began welcoming refugees with open arms and cheered on Ukraine’s armed resistance. The response has elicited outrage across the Middle East, where many see a glaring double standard in how the West responds to global conflicts.

“We have seen every means we were told could not be activated for over 70 years deployed in less than seven days... Amazing hypocrisy,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said in Turkey earlier this month. 

The Biden administration said the US has assessed that Russian forces committed war crimes in Ukraine and would work with others to prosecute offenders. But the US is not a member of the International Criminal Court and staunchly opposes any international probe of its own conduct or of its ally, Israel. In Yemen, a grinding yearslong war between a Saudi-led coalition and Iran-backed Houthi rebels has left 13 million people at risk of starvation. But even searing accounts of infants starving to death have not brought sustained international attention.

When Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war on behalf of President Bashar Assad in 2015, helping his forces to pummel and starve entire cities into submission, there was international outrage but little action. Syrian refugees fleeing to Europe died on perilous sea voyages or were turned back as many branded them a threat to Western culture. 

Israel’s occupation of lands the Palestinians want for a future state is well into its sixth decade, and millions of Palestinians live under military rule with no end in sight.  Many feel their suffering is taken less seriously because of pervasive views that the Middle East has always been mired in violence—never mind the West’s role in creating and perpetuating many of its intractable conflicts.

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