The West and Hypocrisy: I Wish I Had the Bluest Eyes!

By Fatima Haydar

To begin with, not a single person deserves to go through the horrible atrocities of war, regardless of their nationality, race and religion. My heart goes out to all the people in Ukraine – as it does first and foremost to the persevering people in Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia – hoping they would find safety and security.

Beirut – The conflict in Ukraine has been the talk of the town, with masses and politicians in the west showing their undivided support to the people in Ukraine. Statements of solidarity from western leaders outpoured. But what catches one’s attention is the hypocritical way the conflict has been dealt with.

Since day one of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Western media hypocrisy has been the bone of contention. Three weeks have passed since the conflict began, and corporate western media has relentlessly continued its double-standard coverage of the events.

The hypocrisy of the media coverage of the Ukrainian conflict is so obvious that many news outlets have written on the matter over the past weeks, highlighting that to the West, having blue eyes and blond hair is the criteria by which victims of conflicts are worthy of the international community’s sympathy. 

As the conflict prolongs, the dark and ugly side of western media unfolds and the aforementioned criteria solidifies the notion that our looks and economic factors play a role in determining whether the war is somehow normal and expected in areas of the world and not in others; that: it’s ok when non-blue-eyed people get killed!

A quick search on the definition of HYPOCRISY discloses that it is “the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform.”

To put it in clearer and simpler words, hypocrisy is when western media wants the world to treat the situation in Ukraine “equally” to the way other conflicts are being treated, when “western democracies” themselves don’t.

Let’s take the refugee crisis as an example. The West wanted the world to welcome with open arms the refugees from Ukraine and denounce what it called a “Russian invasion”, while it launched a calumnious attack on the Indian government over the Citizenship Amendment Act [CAA] and the riots, deported African migrants from its shores in Italy and Spain, and turned away Syrian refugees from its borders in Poland and Denmark; regardless of the fact that it turned a blind eye on the wars backed or waged by the United States and its allies in every corner of the globe.

And the list goes on.

Recently, in a small multireligious Middle Eastern country on the Mediterranean Sea called Lebanon, a Lebanese woman has been targeted by US sanctions. Mrs. Abir Khalil, mother of martyr Mohammad Tamer who was gunned down during last October's massacre in the Tayouneh neighborhood of Beirut, says she has been banned from social media, including Whatsapp, and her travel and tourism company has been sanctioned.

Mrs. Khalil explained that she was first blocked from using her and her martyred son’s Facebook pages, until they banned the pages and now both pages do not exist.

Regarding her business, she can no longer send or receive money to and from her customers via Western Union. Afterwards, she used her daughters name in her business’ monetary transactions, but after a couple of money transfers, they were banned again.

Mrs. Khalil says that on February 25, she was banned from using Whatsapp for violating the Terms of Service over allegations of violence and terrorism. “The funny thing is,” she says, “I just use the application to post pictures of martyr Mohammad. I’m not waging a war or anything and I don’t post pictures of weapons!”

As she details the incidents, she sheds light on the hypocrisy of western media coverage of the double-standard measures by “western democracies” headed by the US.

“This weakness and cowardness of the US government… they are intimidated by the simplest word we write, picture we post or voice we utter that they attempt to silence us by silencing these, but they will not be able to silence the word of God in us! We will be stronger than ever and nothing will stop us from striving,” she explains.

Regarding the US sanctions, Mrs. Khalil says, “Those who have sacrificed their most precious for the sake of this path, will not yield to trivial sanctions.”

What is worth mentioning is that martyr Mohammad Tamer was a civilian and is not a member of the Lebanese Resistance movement Hezbollah, and yet his mother has been targeted by US sanctions just because she “persists on proving the injustice against the fallen martyrs”.

Here the hypocrisy is two-folded; double-standard on the part of the US which claims to be a “western democracy” and the other by western media that claims to report news objectively.

First, the US did not practice what it preached. In the US constitution, people are protected by The First Amendment which guarantees the right to free expression and free association, which means that the government does not have the right to forbid anyone from saying what they like and writing what they like. Under the constitution, people can form clubs and organizations, and take part in demonstrations and rallies.

This is hypocrisy in action! So, it is OK for Americans to express themselves freely, but it’s not OK for other nationals to do so!

Where is the media coverage on this? Why aren’t more people talking about it?

Mrs. Khalil’s story has not been mentioned, neither was the actual incidents of the martyrdom of her son. And if the incident was spoken about, then it was manipulated to suit the interests of the west.

The western world seems to care the most when the country suffering is full of white people, because it only matters when those suffering are Europeans.

This war has highlighted the hypocrisy and the double-standards of the West where suffering does not warrant empathy but skin color and interests do.