The world indeed is divided as West versus ‘Rest’

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202404/26/WS662ae962a31082fc043c4143.html By Chen Weihua | China Daily | Updated: 2024-04-26 07:38

The world is now divided more or less between pro-United States or pro-West countries and „the Rest“ as most countries are appalled by the double standard, hypocrisy and bullying of the US and some of its allies.

That the US uses double standard was evident on April 18 when it vetoed the UN Security Council resolution on granting full membership of the United Nations to the State of Palestine. The fact that 12 of the 15 Security Council member states, including close US allies Japan, the Republic of Korea and France, voted in favor of the resolution, and the United Kingdom and Switzerland abstained makes the US action even more shocking.

This is just one sign of how isolated the US has become due to its blind support for Tel Aviv in the Israel-Palestine conflict, which entered the 200th day on Tuesday. Worse, the US now doesn’t even feel the need to hide such bias.

On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden signed a bill providing a $26 billion foreign aid package to Israel, including a large cache of weapons despite the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. In December, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken played a key role in bypassing US Congress to provide US military weapons to Israel at a time when the entire world was shocked to see the incessant Israeli bombing of Gaza.

At a press conference on the 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices on Monday, Blinken said: „Hamas’s horrific attacks on Israel on Oct 7 last year and the devastating loss of civilian life in Gaza as Israel exercises its right to ensure that those attacks never happen again, have also raised deeply troubling human rights concerns.“ His speech is disturbing because US politicians have been saying that Hamas should be held responsible for the deaths of 34,000 Palestinians, including more than 14,000 children. But the rest of the world strongly disagrees.

The US and some of its allies have doubled down on their double standard after Iran retaliated against Israel for attacking the Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria and killing two senior Iranian generals. The US and G7″condemned Iran in the strongest terms“ and threatened to impose fresh sanctions against Iran, in sharp contrast to their silence on Israel’s actions and their description of the horrific situation in Gaza as merely „unacceptable“.

When the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, applauded the condemnation of Iran’s retaliation at the UN by 48 members assembled by the US, she accidently revealed that more than 140 UN members disagreed with the US on the issue.

European Union Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell said in February that „if the current global geopolitical tensions continue to evolve in the direction of ‘the West versus the Rest’, Europe’s future risks being bleak“. But the US has refused to recognize that. As Blinken pointed fingers at the human rights records of one country after another, he forgot to mention the worsening human rights situation in the US.

After being complicit in the atrocities in Gaza, the US has kept mum in the face of the gross violation of women’s rights after the US Supreme Court abolished the abortion rights in November 2022, revoking Roe v Wade.

Besides, rampant gun violence, widening wealth gap, and increasing racial discrimination and homeless people are plaguing the US society. The UN Human Rights Committee’s report in November criticized the US for its policies on not just women’s reproductive rights, but also torture of women, excessive use of force by law enforcement agencies and, its policies on immigration.

The US’ barbaric embargo against Cuba has been condemned by the UN General Assembly members every year for more than 30 years, but no US leader has had the guts to correct the US policy. The US continues to abuse its financial power to sanction numerous countries, including its latest threat of imposing sanctions on Pakistan if it continues work on a gas pipeline linking Iran.

Such bullying and double standard used by the US will only sow the seed of division and hatred, and isolate the US and some of its allies from the rest of the world.

The author is chief of China Daily EU Bureau based in Brussels.

chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn