Since 2022, the West has rightfully condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, providing military support, humanitarian aid, and relentless diplomatic energy to help Kyiv resist what it calls a “brutal violation of international law.”
The outpouring of solidarity was swift and united. President Donald Trump has even pushed for a negotiated peace between the two nations. Russian President Vladimir Putin was labelled a war criminal, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him over alleged war crimes.
But when Israel began its assault on Gaza – an assault that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, including journalists, doctors, and children, there was no similar outcry. No airlifts of humanitarian aid. No high-level summits calling for peace.
And when the ICC sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, many of the same Western governments that cheered the court’s action against Putin were suddenly outraged. It begs a brutal, shameful question: Is Palestinian blood not as red as Ukrainian blood?
Two wars, two realities
In Ukraine, Russian shelling of civilian targets rightly drew condemnation. Civilian casualties were treated as tragic and unacceptable. The deaths of journalists were decried by leaders from Washington to Brussels.
Every missile strike prompted more military aid, more sanctions, more resolve to hold Moscow accountable. To this date, peace negotiations continue to rule the airwaves in President Trump’s push to ‘end the killings’ in Ukraine. In Gaza, however, the response has been silence, or worse, complicity.
Since October 2023, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has led to an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. Entire neighbourhoods have been flattened. More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to UN sources, with nearly half of them being children. Civilians queuing for food have been bombed.
International aid workers and journalists have been targeted and killed in numbers unseen in any modern conflict. Where is the Free World’s moral outrage?
The ICC double standard
When the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin, the U.S. and EU welcomed it. President Biden said the move was “justified,” and European leaders echoed support for holding war criminals accountable.
But when the same court took aim at Israel’s leadership for war crimes, including the intentional starvation of civilians as a weapon of war, the response from the West was swift and hostile. U.S. President Joe Biden called it “outrageous.” Britain rejected the charges. Germany questioned the court’s legitimacy.
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Yet the legal grounds were the same: disproportionate use of force, targeting of civilians, and violations of international humanitarian law.
You cannot claim to uphold a “rules-based international order” while exempting your allies from those very rules. That’s not justice. That’s geopolitics dressed up in moral pretence.
Reputational collapse
For decades, the West positioned itself as the global guardian of human rights and international law. But Gaza has revealed how hollow those claims can be.
When Ukrainian civilians are killed, it’s a war crime. When Palestinian civilians are bombed in their homes, it’s “Israel’s right to self-defence.”
When journalists die in Ukraine, it’s an attack on the free press. When more than 100 journalists have been killed in Gaza, making it the deadliest conflict for media workers in modern history, the world shrugs.
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When aid workers are targeted in Ukraine, it sparks outrage. But in Gaza, even when World Central Kitchen staff were killed in a clearly marked convoy, there was no action against Israel other than mere rhetoric.
This two-faced approach has destroyed the moral authority the West once claimed. In the eyes of much of the Global South, it’s no longer a defender of human rights, but a global power that picks and chooses whose lives matter.
Why this matters
The hypocrisy is not just morally offensive – it’s strategically dangerous. The rest of the world is watching. As the West demands solidarity against the war in Ukraine or warns about the Chinese takeover of Taiwan, its silence on Gaza sends a clear message: the rules don’t apply if the victims are not European or Western.
The exceptionalism of Western lives was summarised by CBS correspondent Charlie D’Agata early in the Russia-Ukraine war, while reporting from Kyiv. He said:
“This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan…this is a relatively civilised, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully too – city, where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen.”
This double standard undermines support for Western-led initiatives across Africa, Latin America, and Asia, where colonial memories and imperial double standards are not easily forgotten.
It erodes trust in international institutions. And it plays directly into the hands of those who argue that Western values are little more than tools of convenience.
Not bargaining chips
This is not a debate about whether Hamas’s actions are condemnable – they are. But the collective punishment of over two million people in Gaza is not self-defence. It is not a surgical operation. It is a campaign of annihilation.
The West’s unwillingness to even say that out loud exposes the moral rot at the heart of its foreign policy.
If the West can call Putin a war criminal, it must also be prepared to hold Netanyahu to the same standard. If Ukrainian lives deserve solidarity, Palestinian lives do too.
Otherwise, the question will only grow louder on university campuses, in protests, in U.N. votes, and in the court of public opinion: Is Palestinian blood not that red?
Festo Mulinda is a political analyst and freelance columnist focusing on international relations and geopolitics. He can be reached at mulindafesto@gmail.com or on X as @fmulinda_III. The opinions expressed here are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Chanzo. If you are interested in publishing in this space, please contact our editors at editor@thechanzo.com.
