Excerpts from 'Hypocrisy and Genocide' article on RT, by Tarik Cyril Amar

These labels were handy because they implied three fashionable – if silly – ideas… [including] that Ukraine can be recast as a victim of imperialism on par with, say, the Belgian Congo or Vietnam fighting off first the French and then the Americans. … Where is the concern for Palestine, a country that, clearly, is a real victim of imperialist violence at the hands of Israel and the West? Where are the calls for arming the Palestinian Resistance with the best of NATO’s arsenals? Transferring tens of billions of euros and dollars to the Palestinians so they can sustain their fight against Israeli aggression?

An article on RT by Tarik Cyril Amar that resonates strongly with many of my views:

Hypocrisy and Genocide: Here’s who the West should really be ‘decolonizing’

Russia’s supposed imperial ambitions get a lot of airtime, but Israel gets a free pass to do what it wants with Palestine

RTRT

Hypocrisy and Genocide: Here’s who the West should really be ‘decolonizing’

Russia’s supposed imperial ambitions get a lot of airtime, but Israel gets a free pass to do what it wants with Palestine. […]

During the war between Russia and Ukraine (and de facto the West), many Western academics, journalists, and experts have not been able to get enough of displaying their rhetorical toughness. While badly misled Ukrainians have been doing all the dying, going to verbal extremes was all the rage among the West’s chairborne brigade.

Some tried to accuse Moscow of genocide. Others felt that the least they could do was demand that Russia cease to exist. That fantasy of disintegrating a geopolitical rival was usually dressed up as a call to “decolonize Russia,” also disparaged as “the last empire.”

These labels were handy because they implied three fashionable – if silly – ideas: First the claim that the modern, post-Soviet Russian Federation consists of a colonizing center and colonized peripheries. Second, the wish that Russia simply must fall apart because all empires do (never mind it’s not an empire). And third, that Ukraine can be recast as a victim of imperialism on par with, say, the Belgian Congo or Vietnam fighting off first the French and then the Americans.

None of the above makes sense. Russia is a federation, its population features more than one ethnic identity, and there are imbalances. If you think that’s the definition of colonialism, go right ahead and take apart Great Britain or France. As for a “last empire,” maybe try the US first. After all, that is the one country on Earth that considers itself officially “indispensable,” thinks the whole globe is its God-given (literal) sphere of influence, has just used up Ukraine as a proxy in Europe, and is reducing its EU vassals to penury, sponsoring an ongoing genocide in the Middle East, and gearing up for a big war in Asia to defend its “primacy.”

But the inherent absurdity of these clearly politically – propagandistically, really – motivated charges is not really their most interesting aspect. For one thing, it’s just too obvious. What is really intriguing is something else, and it has happened only recently. We are now in the fifth month of witnessing – 24/7 and in real-time – the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. That is the outcome of Israel’s very structure, its Zionist source code: that of a classical European settler colony whose existence in its current form is premised on the removal of indigenous populations.

And yet, the same brave voices courageous enough to loudly shout what every political leader (and editor, and employer) in the West has wanted to hear about Russia – where are they now? Where are their demands to “decolonize Palestine,” that is, free the Palestinians from Israeli oppression and mass murderous violence? Where are their demands to end the “last settler colony”?

And, make no mistake, ending Israel as it is now, a state based on persistent violence, in permanent violation of UN rules with impunity, does not require or imply indiscriminate mass violence against Israelis. It simply means that this state – not its Jewish population – commits the very imperialist crimes Western talking heads keep accusing Russia of.

Where is the concern for Palestine, a country that, clearly, is a real victim of imperialist violence at the hands of Israel and the West? Where are the calls for arming the Palestinian Resistance with the best of NATO’s arsenals? Transferring tens of billions of euros and dollars to the Palestinians so they can sustain their fight against Israeli aggression? Nothing. With very few exceptions, the silence of the Western intellectuals is deafening.

The contrast with past grandiloquence is stark, even grotesque. […]

And yet, Israel has clearly and deliberately targeted civilians with a strategy of forcing ethnic cleansing. The methods of warfare used by Israel – for instance, systematic starvation blockade; the publicly encouraged mistreatment of civilians, including children and women, as combatants and of combatants as without any rights; the destruction of all medical infrastructure and the systematic murder and abuse of medical staff; the systematic mass slaughter by bombing – have no parallel in Russia’s fighting in Ukraine. And, for Israel, there can be no doubt about “intent,” which is a key factor in proving genocide. […]

But [Western intellectuals'] response – or often complete failure to respond – to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, however, is so much worse again. It is at that point – that is now – that their blatant disregard for the Palestinian victims and their needs and rights reveals them not only as biased careerists and ideologues, but as bereft of conscience and compassion.

By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory

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