by ANDREW MITROVICA
The coverage of Putin’s war in Ukraine by Western media has revealed a sickening score of hypocrisies and marquee-sized blind spots.
As another war engulfs Europe, it was left to a squash player to remind the world of a few awkward truths.
After winning a tournament in England late last week, Egyptian squash champion, Ali Farag, noted that since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, all sorts of usually demure types – including athletes trained by their agents to shut up for fear of censure or losing money – have, remarkably, emerged from comfortable silence to condemn the “oppression” of Ukrainians by a larger and ruthless occupying power.
Indeed, these suddenly uninhibited voices have been amplified by a lot of Western media that, as a general editorial rule, believe that athletes should keep quiet and play their silly games and let better-equipped journalists continue to lecture the rest of us on serious matters like war and peace.
Given this newfound licence to speak out without inviting the blanket wrath of an agitated swarm of condescending Western scribes, Farag said that just as the killing of innocents in Ukraine was unacceptable, the 74-year-long “oppression” of Palestinian innocents was unforgivable too.
Telling that truth, he added, did not fit the West’s “narrative” of what kind of “oppressed” people are worthy of praise, sympathy and attention and what other kinds of people – who have also suffered the inhumane whims of a large, ruthless occupying power – are not.
“Please keep that in mind,” Farag urged.
Well said, sir.
Beyond this blatant hypocrisy, the coverage of Putin’s war in Ukraine by Western media has not only revealed a sickening score of hypocrisies but marquee-sized blind spots about prickly subjects that, like clockwork, provoke hysterical outbursts of outrage by a swaggering tribe of easily triggered journalists and politicians.
Exhibit A:
Western columnists and editorial writers have been busy lately trying to outduel each other in resurrecting the sullied ghost of Winston Churchill to demand that Putin, his insanely rich pals and not-so-well-off Russians, pay a debilitating price for invading Ukraine.
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