War strips off all the make-up

The reactions to Russia's attempt to invade Ukraine are washing all the make-up off Europe's face. From beneath that make-up emerges a Europe very different from the one that has long been presented to us.

There is no make-up running off Russia's face in this war, because Russia is already a state that does not try very hard to hide its ugliness, as crude as it can be. While bringing the houses of millions of people down on their heads in Syria, while massacring tens of thousands in the most savage fashion, it regarded what it did as "simply a requirement of its interests" and made not the slightest effort to explain this to people.

All the historic buildings of Syria's historic cities were razed and reduced to ruins. In its crudest form, Russia, which withers whatever place it enters, explains everything it does simply and solely in terms of its own interests. Whether it is a human being that dies, or an animal, a building that collapses, or mountains and rocks, it felt, and let others feel, not the slightest concern that any of it mattered to it.

It did the same in Libya. Through its operations carried out there by the defense company Wagner, fighting against the Libyan people and taking from the Libyans what belonged to Libya, the only thing it saw was its rivals trying to do the same thing a little more hypocritically. In fighting them, the rights and law, the lives and property, the honor of the inhabitants and owners of the land it was fighting over counted for nothing at all.

A heartless war machine, Russia does not agree to enter into any dialogue on this matter either. The only thing it understands is power. It can be drawn into, and is drawn into, possible games between its own power and the power of others. The Soviet Union perhaps put the imperial desire and disposition within it in another guise, but did not destroy them. Today it has become somewhat clearer that the imperial gene within Russia is not a mere attribution and a story of the West. When it finds the opportunity, its gaze at neighboring countries is like the wolf's gaze at the sheep. Like someone who seeks and finds a way to devour, whatever it takes.

DOES THE POLICY OF THE US AND EUROPE ABSOLVE RUSSIA'S AGGRESSION?

Although all this expresses Russia's reality in this process, these facts do not make the Europe facing it spotless and pure. Just as the provocations of Europe or the US, their provocative prophecies and policies against Russia, do not justify Russia's invading reaction.

In the end, the face emerging from beneath the make-up that the reactions displayed from the European side to the Russian attack on Ukraine are washing away is very ugly, very decrepit and ignorantly racist. Not one, not two, not three. The way many reporters or commentators on many television channels describe Ukrainian refugees reveals a perspective far beyond a slip of the tongue, an ignorance that does not even see the racism underneath it, an indifference, a racial discrimination internalized to the marrow.

That is just what racism is. Those who practice it are generally not even aware of it; they do not know how deep racist attitudes and behavior have taken root. Asked, they are more opposed to racism than you and I are. Because even as an evil, the reference point of racism is their own position, their own attitude.

Russia's savagery and inhuman attitudes were in fact engraved in the minds of the Muslim world in Syria through merciless child and civilian massacres and the constant support given to a blood-blinded dictator. What is strange is that Europe has been able to see the dimensions of Russian savagery only now, on the occasion of events of a comparatively much lower profile.

That all the European countries have opened their arms to Ukrainians fleeing the Russian attacks in search of a safe haven is in fact what ought to be, perhaps a tear-jerking example of human solidarity. But the justification put forward while displaying this solidarity gives no hope at all for humanity. The haste to set these refugees apart from Syrian, Arab or African refugees in particular, and the fact that this haste can be expressed almost en masse, presents of course a hope-shattering sight on behalf of humanity.

WHAT WILL THE "FOREIGN FIGHTERS" DEFEND IN UKRAINE?

The positive side of the matter is perhaps that on this occasion it has drawn attention to the crimes, the oppression and the war crimes Russia has committed in Syria for 11 years in cooperation with the bloody Assad regime and Iran. Perhaps on this occasion some empathy and self-questioning can be expected. I am not entirely hopeless. Such events can have a warning, enlightening side. Who knows?

The "foreign fighters" who came to the war in Syria from all over the world with one motivation or another were also for years used as a phrase to taint the Syrian popular resistance. Rushing to help from every corner of the world against a dictator who massacres his own people could not be countenanced for Syria or for an Islamic country. Yet in the Ukrainian case we see the concept of "foreign fighters" who come in solidarity with the Ukrainian people suddenly turn positive. First Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked for people from abroad to join an international force. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, asked her view on this, said openly that she supported it, and that she supported people coming of their own accord to join this war, which is for the sake not only of Ukraine but of all Europe, for the sake of freedom and democracy.

Thus the "foreign fighters," who for years could appear only in the same sentence as "terrorism," passed through Europe's baptism and became honorable defenders of EU values.

Do you think this change will be reflected in the way "refugees" or "foreign fighters" are regarded in the Syrian context?