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Is the West Revealing Double Standards When It Backs Ukraine But Not the Palestinians?
(Ha'aretz) Prof. Dov Waxman - A recent poll found that 57% of Palestinians believe the U.S. and its European allies are guilty of a double standard in how they've responded to the war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the West has quickly embraced the use of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Russia, there is far less support for the BDS movement against Israel, and there are even efforts to ban it or penalize its proponents. Yet the claim of a double standard rests on a false equivalence. First, the war in Ukraine is the result of an unprovoked act of aggression by Russia against its neighbor, which posed no real threat to Russia. Israel, by contrast, conquered the West Bank and Gaza during a war it fought against three neighboring Arab states that did pose a serious threat to Israel. Second, Russia's invasion of Ukraine - an independent state, whose sovereignty is universally recognized by the international community - is a clear violation of the most basic international norms and a clear danger to the international rules-based order. Israel's military presence in the West Bank does not violate the cardinal principle of state sovereignty nor does it threaten to upend the international order. Israel's actions towards the Palestinians no longer have major regional, let alone global, repercussions. Third, boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning Russia is intended to pressure Putin to stop this war of aggression, not change the regime in Russia or the nature of the Russian state. The BDS movement, by contrast, doesn't just want to pressure Israel over the West Bank. It seeks to change the very nature of the Israeli state. It's the objectives of the BDS movement that people, and governments, take issue with, especially its rejection of Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state (a rejection that some see as anti-Semitic). Finally, Ukrainian armed resistance is solely directed against the Russian military. Russian civilians haven't been targeted. Palestinian armed action, by contrast, is also directed against Israeli civilians. There have been scores of terrorist attacks by Palestinians against Israelis and indiscriminate rocket fire by Palestinian militant groups towards Israeli population centers. The writer is director of the Center for Israel Studies at UCLA.