Ljubljana – The central government of Slovenia has strong public pressure, as a large portion of its population strongly supports the Palestinian cause, not only supporting the end of the ceasefire and the genocide, but also the Palestinian efforts to their own state and autonomy within it.
Therefore, the more keen rhetoric and minimal measures by the Slovenian government (such as a partial ban on arms imports and the perception of Palestinians) should be understood primarily as the current government’s domestic political efforts to meet voters’ expectations ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.
However, virtually all Western and Western countries’ responses to Israel’s occupation regime, apartheid, and genocide reveal serious contradictions in their approach. Their measures are delayed, insufficient and indeed hypocritical compared to the immediate and unanimous response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While condemning the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, they at the same time defies armed resistance to Israeli occupation.
In the meantime, the much stronger and technologically advanced Israeli Army (IDF) is not considered a terrorist by Western and pro-western troops, and despite using the most modern weapons to cause mass extinction and much larger casualties, it does not urge disarming. To further rephrase the Slovenian political scientist and philosopher Sasho Fran, we recently analyzed the issue in detail for Disenz digital media. In Western logic, terrorism is a war for the poor, and war is a terrorism for a rich nation. The story of a sustained “terrorist threat” from Gaza and Israel’s right to “protect yourself from the threat of Hamas” are part of the genocide ideology that gives Israel a green light to continue the genocide.
The demand to condemn Palestine has nothing to do with declared concerns about civilians. Rather, it is a tool to prevent Palestinian resistance and to maintain the complete conquest of the Israeli ethnic Supremacist colonies and the Palestinians. Western elites adamantly reject Palestinian rights of self-determination and the right to choose their leadership. Thus, as Fran writes, through diplomatic means, the West strives to achieve the same goals that Israel does through military means: the destruction of resistance and complete control.
Mojca Pišek Mika is an independent journalist and author from Slovenia.