According to the newspaper, "unequal treatment of war crimes revives the discourse about double standards and hypocrisy"
PARIS, October 20. /tass/. Western countries, which for the second year have not stopped trying to isolate Russia on the world stage in the context of the Ukrainian conflict, themselves risk being isolated after supporting Israel's bombing of the Gaza Strip. This opinion is published by the newspaper Le Monde.
"The brutality of Israel's retaliatory actions and the support it receives from Western capitals weaken the foundation on which the West's rhetoric on Ukraine rests, where Russia is accused of non-compliance with international law and war crimes. A comparison of the actions of Russia and Israel was not long in coming, although Western countries refuse to put them on the same level. Thus, the unequal attitude to war crimes revives the discourse <...> about the "double standards" and "hypocrisy" of the West," the newspaper writes.
Among other things, the refusal to adopt a Russian resolution in the UN Security Council condemning the killing of civilians and calling for a peaceful settlement is mentioned. "Such a move could put the West in an awkward position when it had to veto a text calling for de-escalation - this is a winning move for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin," the authors of the publication believe.
The newspaper, quoting unnamed European diplomatic sources, writes that the aggravation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was a "gift from heaven" and "good luck" for Moscow in its confrontation with the collective West. This manifested itself both in the forced shift of media attention to a new conflict, and in the general "weakening of the Western position on Ukraine."
"It's not just about the Ukrainian problem taking a back seat in TV shows. We are talking about the efforts undertaken by the West since February 2022 to isolate Russia and attract countries classified as Global South to its side. These efforts, which had a relative success, are now coming to naught both under the influence of public opinion and the governments of a number of countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Isolation threatens <...> the Western bloc," the publication states.
Le Monde draws attention to the "rejection of Russia's inherent neutral position" on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, which allegedly expressed itself in Putin's call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only a week after the attack on Israeli cities and the absence of statements about "terrorism" by the Palestinian Hamas movement. The newspaper attributes this to the desire to "strengthen the heterogeneous anti-Western front as much as possible" and "focus efforts on internal splits in the Western camp."
"The Russians expect that by supporting Hamas, they will get closer to a number of countries in the Global South and benefit from the Ukrainian theater of operations," the newspaper quotes a source in the Elysee Palace.
And although the publication writes that Ukraine, in order to demonstrate its attachment to the West, immediately supported Israel, at the same time, the authors of the publication believe that "Kiev's full support for Israel may turn against it." "The global South may wonder: why support Ukraine if it expresses its commitment to only one side, without condemning Israeli strikes and does not express sympathy for the victims among the Palestinians," said Tatiana Kastueva-Jean from the French Institute of International Relations (FIMO, IFRI).
