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Rabat – On February 24 last year, the US led Western countries in making strongly-worded statements in condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As he expressed his country’s unwavering support for Ukraine’s right to resist Russia’s “unprovoked” aggression, President Joe Biden emphatically called on the world to join West-led efforts to punish Russia and thwart President Putin’s “imperial” ambitions.
“What would happen if we walked away? We are the essential nation,” president Biden said in one of his fiery and long speeches in which he condemned Russia’s invasion and accused Russian President Vladimir Puttin of being a “bully” and a threat to global security.
“Vladimir Putin has been planning this for months, as I’ve been – as we’ve been saying all along… He moved blood supplies into position and built a field hospital, which tells you all you need to know about his intentions all along,” a White House’s readout quoted Biden as saying.
In between the speech and White House statements, various other US departments, including the State Department, issued numerous readouts in which they consistently reiterated the Biden White House’s unwavering support for Ukraine.
Observers monitoring the situation understand that the US statements primarily reflect Washington’s approach and political interests, within the context of an enduring rivalry with Russia.
To this day, the US continues to denounce Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, still calling it a reprehensible assault on Ukrainian national sovereignty. Earlier this year, Joe Biden even went as far to accuse Putin of committing war crimes against international law.
Read also: Complicity in Gaza Genocide Unmasks the West’s Moral Decay, Inherent Brutality
He also celebrated the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant against the Russian President, describing it as a justified announcement.
Similarly, the EU expressed its desire to set up a specialized court to investigate and prosecute possible war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine.
Other countries in the Global North made similar statements, denouncing Russia’s Ukraine offensive as a brutal and unjustified attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Mere hours after news broke of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, France, one of the self-styled keepers of the Global North’s cherished “rules-based world order,” joined the US in vowing to firmly respond to what French media and intellectuals described as Russia’s unconscionable and inhumane war against a member of the civilized and democratic world.
“The events of last night mark a turning point in the history of Europe,” Macron said, saying that his country would respond to Russia’s war with “Cold blood, determination, and unity.”
Since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, the US and and its close EU allies targeted Russia by imposing sanctions weakening Putin’s government and the country’s economy and its ability to wage a full-scale war against Ukraine.
The EU strongly supported the sanctions and even pushed for their expansion through encouraging action against the Russian government.
In March last year, the UN General Assembly also rushed to vote on a resolution, condemning Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine.
One hundred and forty one countries voted for the resolution, which was followed by similar UN General Assembly texts seeking to put pressure on Russia to end its war on Ukraine.
Since February 2022, reports confirmed the killing of 10,000 in the Ukraine war, while thousands of others were injured. The death toll recorded nearly two years in Ukraine equals the number of Palestinians killed in just one month as Israel intensifies its genocide in Gaza.
Israel massacres is not a war
A similar wave of condemnatory statements emerged online on October 7. This time, however, the statements were not directed at Ukraine but at Israel, an occupation power that for decades has been oppressing, detaining, and massacring thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, including children.
The condemnatory statements denounced the attacks launched by the Palestinian militant group – describing it a war and against international law.
Readouts from the White House came out one after the other, describing Hamas as a “terrorist group” and attributing a series of unverified crimes to the Palestinian resistance movement – including “rape, behadings, [and] bodies burned alive.”
Since then, the US has been touting its alliance with Israel and pledging unwavering support for its “self-defense” acts in spite of reports of an unfolding genocide in the besieged and the relentlessly shelled Gaza Strip.
The US, and other countries like the UK put Israel’s action, including provocations, and massacres under the category of “self-defense” despite the disparity in numbers and resources between the warring sides.
Read also: Israel Massacres Nearly 10,000 Palestinians Amid Western Rejections of Ceasefire
While Hamas’ response to the Jewish state’s decades-long occupation and oppression of Palestinians by mounting a surprise attack on southern Israel was called terrorism, the US, the UK, and other Western countries have endorsed Israel’s massacres by rejecting appeals supporting an immediate ceasefire.
Israel has mercilessly and indiscriminately murdered thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank on a daily basis since October 7.
Israel massacred at least 10,022 Palestinians in Gaza, while 152 were killed in the occupied West Bank, according to the latest data confirmed by reports. At the time of writing, many reports, disturbing videos and other content continue to document Israeli aggression against residential areas, hospitals, ambulances, schools and places of worship – turning Gaza into a mass grave amid divided opinion and the West’s reluctance to stand for humanity instead of political interest.
The bombardment is indeed criticized, but not by the entire international community. It’s criticized only by UN agencies, pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and a number of Arab and other countries that issue statements against the actions of the Israeli occupation forces.
Unlike in Ukraine, calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza have been dismissed by major Western powers, notably the US and the UK.
Even as the Israeli occupation forces continue to defy international law and murder defenseless Palestinians, including babies, pregnant women, and the elderly, the oft-repeated reason by countries that have dismissed calls for a humanitarian ceasefire is that such a move would only benefit Hamas
“The Israeli government knows this,” Yara Hawari, senior analyst at Palestinian policy network Al Shabaka wrote for Al Jazeera last month.
“It also knows that moving 1.1 million people in a space like Gaza, in a matter of hours, is logistically impossible. But the evacuation order serves its purpose – it provides cover for the Israeli government to commit mass atrocities by using the age-old fallacy that Hamas is using human shields.”
Despite the systematic and arbitrary massacres of Palestinians, US Secretary General Antony Blinken shamelessly reiterated his country’s opposition and rejection of a ceasefire during his visit to Israel last week.
“It is our view now that a ceasefire would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7,” he said.
