Domestic debates conceal the scenarios where the future is at stake: Ukraine and Palestine

The invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops under the orders of Putin, and the massacre that the Palestinians have suffered for three months in Gaza at the hands of Israeli troops under the orders of Netanyahu, are the two events that are most likely to influence our lives (and especially the generation that is 18 to 40 years old). And yet the attention of a majority of citizens in European countries and in the United States is focused on domestic political problems.

Public opinions seem totally devoted to the contemplation of a political polarization that increases year after year to the point, as Ivan Krastev of the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna explained in a recent interview, that the biggest problem for democracies is that “every election is starting to look like a regime change.”

In an increasing number of countries, parties that have lost elections act “as if they had never seen the results of the polls,” says Krastev. It is happening in the United States, where Republicans block everything within their reach; in Poland, where the PIS, the ultranationalists who lost the elections a few months ago, are fighting the Tusk administration tooth and nail; and in Spain, where the conservative Popular Party (PP), just three months after the formation of a leftist government by Pedro Sánchez, is already demanding his resignation. That attitude of “you may have a majority, but that doesn’t mean we are going to let you govern” is becoming the new reality in European politics, warns the Bulgarian analyst.

All of these internal problems are serious, but they are acting as a smokescreen that prevents citizens from paying the necessary attention to the two international problems that can really radically change their lives: Ukraine and Gaza. In both places, international law is at stake and that of two peoples to organize freely, as they are crushed by other states that do not even recognize them as such. The Russian government believes that Ukraine is part of its empire, and the government of Israel believes that Palestinians do not have the same human rights as Jews and that the latter can be expelled from their land. The defeat of the Ukrainians and the Palestinians would destabilize the institutional framework created after World War II, and ignoring it would place Europe (and very likely Asia) in the most dangerous possible scenario. Overwhelmingly, the same people who believe Russia will win the war also believe there will be no European Union within 20 years, Krastev explains.

Helping Ukrainians defend themselves is as urgent as any domestic political problem. In the case of the Palestinians, it is not about defending themselves, something that is not within their reach against the merciless Israeli army, but about preventing them from being crushed by an apartheid regime that Israel has been building before the distracted eyes of Europe and that, if consolidated, will destroy the reason for being of the European Union itself towards the world. Today it is urgent to ensure that the definition of antisemitism does not include criticism of the policies of the State of Israel (something that Josep Borrell rightly demands), but rather remains founded on the concept that “antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish),” as stated in the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism, signed in 2020 by 200 specialists. “Antisemitism is denying the right of Jews in the State of Israel to exist and flourish, collectively and individually, as Jews, in accordance with the principle of equality,” explains that text, where the concept of equality is fundamental.

Compassion seems to be the sentiment with which Europeans view Ukraine and Palestine. But compassion, as Susan Sontag wrote, is an unstable emotion and needs to be translated into action or else it withers. It is not easy to be optimistic about the ability of Europeans to act in the face of their two greatest and very real threats. The important thing, again, is to know what historians have demonstrated time and time again: that nothing is preordained.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition