By Julia Roknifard and Eldar Mamedov

BRUSSELS, Belgium: The hypocrisy of the Western elites was not the only thing revealed when Zionist bombs started raining down on Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023 in the backdrop of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. To understand what it was, we need to rewind to another tectonic event and date – Feb. 24, 2022.

Soon after Russian troops crossed the borders of Ukraine, many members of the country’s intellectual elite, media practitioners and academics, the self-proclaimed lovers of free thought and speech, went into self-exile in the West. 

These individuals explained their exodus over an expectation of increased authoritarianism that follows in times of war and that would be directed precisely at them. At the places that received them with open arms, access to the “free media” would be unhindered and criticism of the Kremlin could be freely broadcasted. 

However, these liberals found that same information space quickly turning poisonous and going against their preferences with the start of the Israel’s devastating operation in Gaza, as they unequivocally sided with Israel. 

At first, their reaction might have been written off as an emotional response to the Hamas strike against Israel on Oct. 7, which many ignorantly saw as a cause to this round of escalation, all the way to the genocidal intent by certain Israeli politicians being established by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). 

It could also be ascribed to that some from the intellectual and artistic crowd chose Israel as a destination for migration after the war started in 2022. The picture is more complex, however, as far not everybody relocated to Israel, with many of these scholars, intellectuals, and media instead shifting their base to Europe or the U.S. 

There were different outlets for expressing support for Israel for the past two years. There was the “October Seven” virtual memorial where Russian celebrities of various kind including journalists, academics, writers, actors and TV-anchors took turns throughout 2023-2024 in reading stories of the details of Oct. 7 as they saw it through social media posts on the supposed righteous struggle of Israel against the Palestinians. 

However, as anti-Russia protests faded away and anti-Israel protestors took their place on the streets, universities and on the airways, these same liberal-intellectuals started to lament the loss of global interest over Ukraine.

‘Good versus evil’

After the start of the recent events in Ukraine, the spectrum of opinions split into two much extreme cohorts – the ‘pro-Putinist’, pro-war one and the one against both, against the background of reflection on what Russians as a people did wrong and if there is such a thing as a collective guilt. 

Those more cautious in their personal or professional estimates became uncomfortable to be in the middle of this spectrum, as both sides rolled out the discourse of ‘everything good against everything evil’, therefore those in between would be complicit in crimes committed. 

Yet, the real discomfort ensued after the Hamas strike and the Israel’s bloody response against it. The enlightened liberal elite earlier standing on the position of the ‘sacred war’ against the Russian government’s supposed brutality, tyranny, unlawful imprisonment and crackdown on all existing rights, including the one to life, turned around. 

The brutality of response rendered by the regime of Benjamin Nethanyahu that has cost over 60,000 Gazan lives and left many displaced, malnourished or starved, did not invoke much empathy from those screaming over Russia’s actions against Ukraine. 

The messaging moved along the lines of the ‘forces of light fighting the forces of darkness’, where Israel represented the former. Wishes expressed online included the quick release of hostages and evisceration of Hamas, while the plight of the people in blockaded Gaza remained purposely unnoticed.

‘Civilised versus uncivilised’

With the release of hostages as a result of the peace deal imposed by US President Donald Trump, the narrative remained focused on one major premise, that the escalation started on Oct. 7 solely because of the actions of Hamas which was dubbed an uncivilized group representing an uncivilized community of people against the civilized people of Israel. 

Therefore, the deal is bad until Hamas is disarmed, because only then there can be civilized administration in place that can coexist side by side with Israel.

The way the discourse unfolded among these self-exiled liberals on Gaza remained surprisingly Russia-Ukraine-centric, as if everything else deserved to be seen through the prism of the that conflict. 

The ‘uncivilized’ Kremlin would be on the same side with the leadership of Hamas, threatening the ‘civilized’ aspirations of Ukraine and Israel respectively. Furthermore, support for the humanitarian cause of the people of Gaza would probably invoke the logic that the person stands on the side of Kremlin in the Russia-Ukraine divide, because why support the dark entity of Hamas if you aren’t a supporter of Putin? Moscow spoke out for Palestine on multiple occasions after all.

The Gaza conference in Sharm el-Sheikh was seen along the same divide – that the Global South was put aside while the group of ‘annoying Western states’ led by none other than Washington forged the deal between Israel and Hamas, with no involvement of Russia. 

Hence, the alleged disdain attributed to Kremlin for the deal being imposed on the most irreconcilable enemies, and in the case of Hamas which is not even a state, but ‘a sect of armed religious fundamentalists’, while Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to dare Trump on Ukraine. 

In this vein, the Palestine-Israeli issue is being reduced by the Russian ‘liberal-minded’ intellectuals to a mere footnote in the story of Russia fighting against the whole West in Ukraine for its imperial ambitions in the new, for the near-term at least, chaotic world order. 

However, this approach just underlines the maxim of that brutally realist world order that they think they are standing against where every man is for himself (or in the words of the Russian proverb – ‘one’s shirt is closer to the body’), as they demonstrate inability to think with empathy about other conflicts and plight of other people and make a distinction between what is near, and hence is more visible, and something more grand on the global scale, even as it happens thousands kilometers away.

Of course, the newly acquired European pastures and funding, as well as social surroundings dictate the terms. 

But for the educated and enlightened, there must be a portion of intellect that dictates to look beyond skin color, religion and immediate geography. 

Ultimately, their outrage is not at suffering itself, but at suffering that inconveniently challenges their worldview. When they lament the Palestinian flags replacing Ukrainian ones in European squares, they are not defending a universal good. They are merely echoing the Kremlin's own propaganda about a weak and confused West – the very narrative they fled.

Their voice of reason was meant to be a global one. On Gaza, we have yet to hear it.

*Julia Roknifard is a senior lecturer at Taylor’s University while Eldar Mamedov is a non-resident fellow at Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.*