After failing to reduce their reliance on Moscow for energy, Hungary and Slovakia now want help from Brussels.
You reap what you sow.
Privately, that’s the exasperated sentiment among EU diplomats as Hungary joins with Slovakia to try and leverage EU rules to preserve access to a discounted product nearly everyone else has had to shun: Russian oil.
Their maneuvering comes in the wake of Ukrainian sanctions blocking the transit of pipeline crude sold by Russia’s largest private oil firm, Lukoil, which could strip the two countries of a third of their oil imports.
Hungary and Slovakia have gone to the rule book, arguing the penalties violate a 2014 trade deal between Kyiv and the EU and asking the European Commission, the EU’s executive, to intervene.
For the real record, the BBC is extremely pro-Israel.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/israel-palestine-bbc-news-coverage-bias-gaza-war/
https://jacobin.com/2024/05/bbc-gaza-reporting-bias
https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/govs/loughborough_final.pdf
See that last one, even they knew it 20 years ago and it still continues. Sounds to me like you’re buying into the Israeli propaganda.
The primary complaint seems to be the lack of historical perspective in recounting who is ultimately responsible for the conflict.
This is sadly not a legitimate complaint, because the historical context for who deserves to live where should not have any arbitrary beginning date. Ultimately, none of us should deserve to live anywhere, when where we live is based in patterns of migration and conflict spanning thousands of years, and every acre of land could be rightfully claimed by many different groups.
Instead, if we truly seek peace, we must acknowledge that the status quo changes over time, and it is the breaking of the current peace that conflict should be framed against, over and above any historical redress. From this framework, someone who loses land is not allowed to begin a new conflict in an attempt to regain what they have lost. This may seem unfair, but ultimately it is necessary if we are to forgo humanity’s long history of warfare.
So, I’m sorry, but it does not matter how Palestinians feel about their ancestral homelands or historical atrocities committed against them. When they begin fresh violence in any effort to reclaim land they have lost, those warriors become the enemies of peace. Same as how the Israelis became the enemies of peace when they pushed fresh settlement into the West Bank in violation of the Oslo Accords. This is not a pro-Israeli position, it it not a pro-Palestinian position. It is an anti-war position that rejects both Israeli and Palestinian propaganda points. It is distinct from any position that would give Palestinians preferential justification for violence, which would be pro-Palestinian propaganda. It similarly gives Israelis no preferential justification for violence, which would be pro-Israeli propaganda.
Any responsible news organization should work from within this framework.
Yes it is a legitimate complaint, ignoring the traditional owners of the land and favouring the settler colonists is a problem. Likewise the historical context is within living lifetime for many people in the world, Israel isn’t even a 100 year old state.
The “status quo” was decades of apartheid and systematic abuses against Palestinians by Israel.
The ‘anti-war’ shit was what that the Russians tried to pull with Ukraine in re-framing their invasion by discrediting support for their opposition, not buying it here either.
Fight against genocide, don’t sit on the fence and act morally righteous because ‘both sides’.
Tradition is not, and should not, be the compass by which we chart our course.
Russia began an attack. Why? Historical redress. Hamas began an attack. Why? Historical redress. Redressing of historical grievances, from any point before the current day, makes you an aggressor.
This is so disgustingly dishonest.
Israel was and is still abusing and killing Palestinians, this isn’t historical it was every day leading up to Oct 7th and continues every day after.
No, there were other options. Movements like BDS, civil disobedience, etc were possible. Now, however, hamas has doomed the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s ethnic cleansing will likely be successful now, and the world will not halt it any more than we are halting the genocides in Sudan or Xinjiang.
You do not need to start a war to prevent killing, and starting a war only makes it worse.