PNN – Guardian analyst Shada Islam wrote in an analytical note: By supporting Israel, the European Union has lost the prestige it had been able to gain with the civil society of Africa, Asia and the Middle East with great difficulty.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network from the Guardian, the European Union’s failure to prosecute the Zionist regime for allegedly violating international laws in Gaza has questioned the claim of supporting international values, democracy and human rights of European countries. Governments of developing countries are accusing the European Union of a “double standard” for condemning Russia’s attack on Ukraine but remaining remarkably silent on the Israeli regime’s genocide in Gaza.
Shada Islam, an analyst based in Brussels, said in his note: It is true that the governments of some of these countries, such as Egypt and Tunisia, will continue to trade and interact with the West, but the European Union must protect itself from losing the trust of civil society, human rights activists and Supporters of democracy in third world societies should be alarmed.
Students, labor unions, academics, young politicians, entrepreneurs, women’s rights leaders and supporters of ethnic minorities are the groups that the West has tried for decades to win their hearts and minds by taking the initiative and establishing “dialogue” in Arab and Islamic countries.
Referring to the report of the “Council of Europe think tank on foreign relations” and the evidence in the Arab, Asian and African societies, Shada Islam emphasized that the soft power of the West in the civil society of these countries is eroding due to the weak performance in the Gaza issue.
For 6 months, European leaders have remained silent in front of the killing of more than 33,000 Palestinians, including women and children, and in the best case, they have limited themselves to rhetoric, and when they intervened, they acted not for a “ceasefire” but under the name of a request for a “humanitarian stop”.
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According to a survey in 16 Arab countries, 75% of Arabs evaluate the positions of France and Germany towards Gaza as “bad or very bad”.
Emphasizing that the European Union is the biggest trade partner of the Israeli regime, Islam added: public opinion in developing countries is asking why the EU did not use this fact as a lever of pressure against the Israeli regime.
This inaction is a mockery of the Union’s action plan 4 years ago, which is to respect human dignity and human rights as the basis of all aspects of politics.
In addition, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell rejected in October that the EU should stop interfering in the “human rights” of other countries, calling it Europe’s permanent duty.
Although countries such as Spain, Ireland, Belgium and in some cases Germany have corrected their positions towards the Israeli regime, Islam has emphasized in his analysis that the overall position of the European Union is decisive.
In the eyes of the civil society of third world countries, the West’s anger towards the killing of the members of the “Global Central Kitchen” is compared to their silence regarding the killing of thousands of Palestinians.
In the end, Shada Islam described the damage to the international reputation of the European Union as irreparable and especially the gap between the European governments and the citizens of this Union regarding the issue of Gaza is significant and significant.