Arab world has no claim to staking the moral high ground

A pro-Palestinian protester holds up a banner during a demonstration in Washington, DC. Picture: Getty Images

Israel is being criticised in the Arab world over its retaliatory attacks on Gaza but the attempts by Arab nations to take the moral high ground in the Israel-Hamas conflict are laughable. Muslim nations in the Middle East have largely displayed double standards in this war, and stoked tensions wherever possible, while giving the appearance that they want peace.

The latest offender is Turkey’s authoritarian President Recep Erdogan, who defended Hamas while accusing Israel of deliberately targeting civilians in a “premeditated act of crime against humanity”. “Hamas is not a terror organisation,” he said. “It is an organisation of liberation, of mujahedeen, who fight to protect their land and citizens.”

Erdogan added that he didn’t support the targeting of civilians but it is clear his sympathies lie with the murderous Hamas and he believes Israel has no right to defend itself.

Turkey is not some tiny extremist tinpot regime. It is a member of NATO and therefore Western Europe, including the US, would be obliged, if Turkey were to be attacked, to come to the defence of a country whose President believes a terror group, Hamas, is a force for freedom and Israel, the only democracy in the region, is a force for evil.

It is a dismal trend for Turkey, which has tilted against the West under the increasingly authoritarian Erdogan, refusing to back Western sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and delaying Sweden’s membership of NATO. Erdogan has even been willing to play politics with Gallipoli, claiming after the Christchurch mosque massacre that Australians and New Zealanders had invaded Turkey in 1915 because of a fear and hatred of Islam and would again be returned in “caskets … like your grandfathers”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Picture: AFP

Elsewhere in the region, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Kuwait, Iran and Saudi Arabia reacted to the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, which killed more than 1400 Israelis, mostly civilians, by either blaming Israel or by simply calling for calm. Not one of these countries directly criticised Hamas for its murderous rampage.

Since then, the criticism of Israel over its retaliatory bombing of Hamas targets in Gaza has only escalated. Arab leaders have mischievously fuelled the anger of their people by misrepresenting the deadly explosion at Gaza’s Al-Ahli hospital last week as an Israeli atrocity.

Within hours, the streets of Arab nations from Morocco to Jordan were filled with demonstrators who assumed Israel had destroyed the hospital. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah II cancelled meetings with US President Joe Biden in response to the tragedy, also assuming it was fired by Israel.

But doubts about who fired the deadly rocket surfaced almost immediately and after several days it was clear – and independently confirmed by the US, Canada and France – the tragedy was caused by a misfired rocket from within Gaza by Islamic Jihad, not from Israel. But no Arab leader, as far as I am aware, has come out to correct that narrative, leaving their people convinced Israel bombed the hospital and therefore further fanning the flames of hatred and division on the basis of a known falsehood.

Palestinians with duel citizenship wait outside the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Picture: AFP =

Saudi Arabia has responded to the Israel-Hamas conflict by placing on hold its discussions on normalising ties with Israel. It has also been highly critical of Israel’s bombing of Gaza and while it also criticised Hamas’s attacks on Israel, Saudi elder statesman Prince Turki al-Faisal says the Hamas attacks were not unprovoked. “What more provocation is required … than what Israel has done to the Palestinian people for three-quarters of a century?” he said.

And what about Egypt and Jordan, the nations best placed to provide sanctuary and accept refugees from Gaza? Jordan has labelled Israel’s bombing of Gaza as a war crime and both countries have expressed anger about the humanitarian crisis now unfolding in Gaza. But neither country will offer safe haven to their fellow Palestinians in Gaza. Both argue the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza would undermine the cause of a Palestinian state.

Egypt worries that if it lets Gazans into the Sinai Peninsula, that could become a staging ground for terror against Israel for which Egypt would be blamed. But these long-term concerns pale against the immediate humanitarian crisis in Gaza. This is the same across the Arab world. For all of the anger directed towards Israel amid accusations of war crimes, how many of these countries have offered to provide safe haven to their fellow Palestinian Arabs in Gaza whom they profess to care so much about? Precisely none.

So, while debate continues in the international community about the rights and wrongs of Israel’s retaliatory bombing in Gaza, the Arab world is poorly placed to take the moral high ground.