#the Not Big Enough occupied territory was already nearly twice as large as I+P combined btw. but who's counting

[merrymorningofmay]

you know when people go "funny how ukraine got instant western support and palestine didn't, blegheugh" and the usual counter argument to this is that the support was actually 8 years late and before that the west was perfectly comfortable with mass human rights violations and torture camps because there was russian oil to buy and netrebko galas to attend.

and that's all true and relevant.

but what gets to me is that even if we agreed that russian violence in the donbas+crimea before feb 2022 was Not Big Enough to warrant attention, it's just so disingenuous to pretend as if ukraine got handed that juicy western support on a silver platter just for being very sad little guys, when in fact literally all help the us+europe is giving us is because our diplomats and officials work fucking hard for it, demand it, negotiate it, haggle for it; because our activists, public figures and experts use every platform available to argue for it, to reason with the west and explain our needs to it.

(the only "support" we didn't have to fight tooth and nail for was like, von der leyen tweets. which. if that's the help you're demanding for palestinians, then sure.)

if we are in any way privileged compared to palestinians, it's not our """whiteness""" that makes us so. it's that we have a government that represents us and can speak with other governments for us. it's that we have institutions that can speak with other institutions on our behalf.

and, yeah, we truly did luck out in this regard, and i'm grateful for it every day. has nothing to do with the west's supposed good will (lol) or affinity for us (lmao), though.