Hashem, a Gaza-born medical professional who obtained Ukrainian citizenship after nearly a decade living in the country, said the contrast in how Palestinians and Ukrainians are treated internationally has long been apparent.
“Travelling as a Ukrainian opens doors; travelling as a Palestinian closes them,” he said, describing the stark difference in freedom of movement, visa access and public sympathy attached to each of his identities.
“This is not a competition of suffering, but a question of principle. If human rights are truly universal, they cannot depend on nationality or passport,” said Hashem, who requested Al Jazeera withholds his surname.
Aaisha Aroggi, a 25-year-old student from Gaza City, was displaced 10 times in the first months of Israel’s war. She later made it to Egypt via the Rafah crossing, then to Ukraine, where she was granted residency because her brother was living and working in Kyiv.
Compared with the brutal conditions in Gaza, Kyiv felt like a safe haven at first, she said. But now, with constant Russian attacks on infrastructure, she feels she has gone from one place of destruction to another.
“War has the same face everywhere,” she said.
I'm really hoping on mindsets changing, though very difficult given the media's manufacturing of consent and empathy for some conflicts but not others.
I remember at the onset of the Russian invasion how one reporter (among many others) was openly racist in comparing Ukrainians to Middle Easterners
CBS News senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata stated last week that Ukraine “isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen”.
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