Last week, I attended the Mediterranean Dialogue Forum in Rome, which is held annually in Italy, and is attended by a group of state leaders, foreign ministers, officials, decision-makers, study centers and international organizations.
The forum focuses annually, by the nature of its name, on issues of concern to the Mediterranean region. This year, the forum focused on 4 axes: combating terrorism from a security perspective, extremism from a social perspective, illegal immigration, global food security, and the energy crisis.
What was remarkable in the words given by the majority of European ministers and officials;
It is the almost absolute absence of talking about democracy and the paths of democratization, and the total absence of talking about the concepts of human rights and their place in the equation of international relations.
The European campaign against Qatar directly brought to mind the World Cup in Russia only 4 years ago, when the Russian position on gay rights and all the human rights violations committed by Russia did not prevent the French President from sitting on the podium alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.
What happened in the forum represents a prevailing pattern that can be observed in many similar forums and the most important in the orientations and policies of Western countries, where Western countries most of the time turn a blind eye to the system of human rights and democracy in favor of the system of interests, and even prefer in most cases to support dictatorial regimes and those that violate human rights It works to disrupt and even fight any effort to weaken these regimes.
This approach appears in a number of clear models, where the Syrian model can be used as a representative case study for it, as many European countries seek normalization with the Syrian regime, without having a clear interest in that, and despite their knowledge of Moscow and Tehran’s control over the decision-making system in Damascus, and their knowledge Of course, with all the crimes carried out by the Syrian regime since 2011, and even in the decades that preceded that.
The disgraceful European stance towards the Syrian regime is not limited to normalization efforts. Syrian regime officials invest their looted money in Europe, and their children and families reside there. Security cooperation with the regime has not been interrupted, and even visits by security officials to them have not stopped.
This European pattern in dealing with the Syrian regime dates back to the eighties of the last century when France, Spain and Britain hosted the war criminal Rifaat al-Assad and his sons and supporters with billions of dollars looted from the Syrians, until Rifaat recently returned to Syria, but many of his investments are still there.
The talk about Western double standards towards the human rights system was revived by the recent European campaign against Qatar, where several European countries, cities and institutions chose to engage in an open battle against Qatar and against its hosting of the World Cup as a "support for human rights", as there was a resurgence of talk about violations of workers' rights, and violations of human rights. LGBT rights!
The European double standards appeared remarkably and brazenly, as it came at a time when these countries seek to strengthen their economic relations with Qatar in order to obtain gas supplies from it, meaning that Qatar can be a friendly and ally country when it comes to gas, even if it is a country that does not share Value system with European countries when it comes to the World Cup.
Also, the European campaign against Qatar directly brought to mind the policy of the countries themselves, and in most cases the same politicians, in dealing with a very close and similar event, which is the World Cup in Russia only 4 years ago, when the Russian position did not prevent gay rights and all human rights violations. human made by Russia;
The French President was prevented from sitting on the podium next to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and these violations did not, of course, affect the coverage of European media keen on the "human rights system" as is happening today in Qatar.
The Western and European campaign, in particular, against the Qatari organization of one of the best World Cup tournaments since its inception, is due to many factors, none of which have anything to do with human rights and democracy.
The most important factor in this campaign is due to the Western view in general and the European view in particular, which looks down on non-whites first and Muslims second, and which believes that football and the World Cup are a European product and that the leadership in it should be unchallenged.
This supremacist European view was the founding factor of the anti-Qatar campaign, but it combined with other factors that fueled and deepened it. Among them was the left's position in defending gay rights and trying to impose them as a "new religion" and a value above all other human rights.
The left benefited this time from organizing the course in an Arab and Muslim country, and therefore the various left-wing factions will participate in such a campaign, in contrast to the fact that the organization in Russia is the kiss and idol of the left.
Western right-wing currents also participated in this campaign for considerations unrelated to gay rights, as these currents mostly share the Qatari and Russian position on this issue, as the right felt the need to distort the image of the Arab Muslim other, who was portrayed decades ago as either a terrorist who blows himself up and kills The innocent, or an idiot who is not good at managing the money he owns, at a time when Qatar presents during the World Cup a different and bright picture of what an Arab Muslim can do.
In short, the Western campaign, European in particular, to target Qatar and its organization of the World Cup contributed to distorting the image of those in charge of this campaign more than it contributed to harming the image of Qatar. They shut their mouths when Russia was organizing the World Cup, before they were recently forced to "discover" that Russia is a country that violates every value of human rights, and carries a bloody record of war crimes.