US President Joe Biden has repeatedly compared the Hamas attack on Israel to Russia’s fighting in Ukraine, writes Frankfurter Rundschau. But as civilian casualties in Gaza rise as a result of Tel Aviv’s revenge action, these identifications only more clearly expose Washington’s hypocrisy and undermine its moral authority. It is increasingly difficult for Americans to defend the position that what is going on in Ukraine is not a proxy war, but a struggle for values and world order.
US President Joe Biden often compares Russia’s attack on Ukraine with the Hamas attack on Israel, but as the number of Palestinian casualties from Tel Aviv’s revenge operation increases, such parallels sound less and less convincing, Frankfurter Rundschau writes. The accusations voiced by the White House chief of staff against Russian President Vladimir Putin are bouncing back and undermining not only his own moral authority but also international solidarity with Kiev.
Apparently, by closely linking Ukraine to Israel, Biden wants to use one political appeal to reinforce another. Namely, to use the determination and cohesion that American politicians have shown in supporting Israel to spur the fading enthusiasm for more financial aid to Kiev.
But this has had the opposite effect, the paper continues. Attempts to compare the two conflicts have only exposed the hypocrisy and double standards of the White House administration. It also reminded the world of the generally ambivalent attitude of the United States to war crimes, which, in turn, is evidenced by the unwillingness of the Americans to recognise the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
Now the US inconsistency may undermine the world’s conviction, so important for Ukrainians, that Putin’s actions violate not only territorial but also moral boundaries. The head of the Kremlin himself can only rejoice, as the double standards of the Americans confirm his statements that Washington is merely using ethical standards as a weapon in the propaganda war.
At the same time, the Biden administration did not limit itself to accusations of war crimes against Russia alone. The US has hinted that countries that supply Moscow with weapons, which are then used against Ukraine, will also be prosecuted by them. The Americans argue that their moral authority is based on their rejection of certain types of violence, namely the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the killing of civilians with bombs and missiles. “If this is true, it appears that the foundation of the Americans’ moral authority has now been severely shaken,” the publication states.
Civilians are dying every day as a result of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. According to the logic of the US itself, as a supplier of military aid to Tel Aviv, it should take responsibility for these war crimes. But it appears that Washington is not going to adhere to its own moral standards. Besides, there is also no indication that supporting Tel Aviv gives the Americans the ability to influence the course of hostilities and restrain the Israelis to save the Palestinians. So all this reasoning is more like self-deception.
Biden did not do the Ukrainians themselves any favours with his comparisons. After all, they would have preferred that instead of talking about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict he paid more attention to their problems. The fighting in Gaza has already pushed the Ukrainian conflict out of the headlines in the Western media, and has also moved it to a lower position on the list of priorities of many allies. The situation in Ukraine is a bloody pat. This makes it increasingly difficult for democrats to defend the position that there it is not an indirect bloc war, but a real struggle for values and international order.