International community's response to Palestinians exposes Western hypocrisy

Israeli army forces and Palestinian protesters clash with Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus on April 13, 2022. PHOTO XINHUA With the latest skirmishes at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, analysts say that the international community's response to the plight of the Palestinians, when compared to their response to the Ukraine conflict, exposes Western hypocrisy.

Experts believe that these double standards are in the Western-dominated mainstream media's influence on storytelling, policy adoption, and even the censorship of social media content when it comes to the Palestinian cause.

Hayder Oruc, a Turkey-based independent analyst on Middle East and Israel-Palestine affairs, said if the world does not end this hypocrisy, a fair world for all will not be possible in the near future. He said that the first step begins with acceptance of a free and independent Palestine state.

As of April 20, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights recorded 5,121 civilian deaths in Ukraine -- 2,224 killed and 2,897 injured.

The UN earlier said around 2.1 million people need humanitarian assistance, including 933,994 children, in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

As a Palestinian living my whole life under occupation, we are against any killing or targeting civilians anywhere, said Mohammad Abualrob, an assistant professor and chairperson of the Department of Media at Birzeit University in the West Bank.

At the same time, we are refusing the double standards that the international community is using toward us when dealing with the Palestinian cause compared to other conflicts in the world. Dina Yulianti Sulaeman, director of the Indonesia Center for Middle East Studies, said the Ukraine crisis reveals double standards in the foreign policy of Western countries, especially the United States.

The rights of the Palestinian people were not enforced for more than 70 years, while the US continued to provide military aid to Israel, Sulaeman said.

Sulaeman said that defenders of Palestine, especially in Western countries, experience bullying.

Oruc sees the Palestinian cause and Ukrainian suffering as the same, two different reactions. While Ukrainians are characterized as heroes, the Palestinian groups are labeled by the West as terrorists, he noted.

Some netizens have reported the suspension or censorship of their social media accounts due to support for the Palestinian cause. Palestinian American supermodel Bella Hadid claimed that Instagram blocked some of her posts related to Palestine.

Abualrob at Birzeit University hopes that stories from Palestine can focus more on the human aspect rather than just reporting the clashes.

This is one of the obstacles that people are not getting enough information from the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Abualrob said that they wanted to see a balanced coverage in the international media.

Oruc, the Turkish-based analyst believes that the most negative aspect of the unbalanced situation is the lack of support for Palestinians despite being under occupation for a long time In March, Michael Lynk, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, called for the international community to accept and adopt a report on Israel's 55 year occupation of the Palestinian territory, and said that apartheid is being practiced by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory.