Palestinians are watching with empathy the suffering of millions of Ukrainians facing war, particularly the over two million refugees seeking safety in neighboring countries. In harmony with the absolute majority of humanity living in the Global South, the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the largest coalition in Palestinian society that leads the global BDS movement, opposes war, whether it is Russia’s illegal aggression in Ukraine today, which violates the UN Charter regardless of persistent NATO provocations, or the many patently illegal and immoral US- or NATO- led wars of the past decades which have devastated whole nations and killed millions.
We see in the West’s warm reception of Ukraine’s white refugees an example for how all refugees escaping the ravages of war, economic devastation, or climate injustice should be treated by the West, particularly when these calamities are primarily caused by Western imperialism. This warmth, however, stands in sharp contrast with how these same countries have treated Brown and Black refugees arriving at their shores and borders, with racism, walls, “push-backs,” forced family separations, even drownings – the same bigotry that non-white refugees from Ukraine have experienced.
This Western double standard is painful, enraging, and humiliating for people in the Global South, including for Palestinians. After all, Israel’s decades-old regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid is not only “Made in the West,” but is still armed, funded and shielded from accountability by that same deeply colonial and racist West, in particular the US, UK and EU.
Palestinians are watching with empathy the suffering of millions of Ukrainians facing war, particularly the over two million refugees seeking safety in neighboring countries. In harmony with the absolute majority of humanity living in the Global South, the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the largest coalition in Palestinian society that leads the global BDS movement, opposes war, whether it is Russia’s illegal aggression in Ukraine today, which violates the UN Charter regardless of persistent NATO provocations, or the many patently illegal and immoral US- or NATO- led wars of the past decades which have devastated whole nations and killed millions.
We see in the West’s warm reception of Ukraine’s white refugees an example for how all refugees escaping the ravages of war, economic devastation, or climate injustice should be treated by the West, particularly when these calamities are primarily caused by Western imperialism. This warmth, however, stands in sharp contrast with how these same countries have treated Brown and Black refugees arriving at their shores and borders, with racism, walls, “push-backs,” forced family separations, even drownings – the same bigotry that non-white refugees from Ukraine have experienced.
This Western double standard is painful, enraging, and humiliating for people in the Global South, including for Palestinians. After all, Israel’s decades-old regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid is not only “Made in the West,” but is still armed, funded and shielded from accountability by that same deeply colonial and racist West, in particular the US, UK and EU.
