Seven months have passed since the terrorist attack by Hamas and the start of Israeli retaliation in the Gaza Strip. How did the Czech debate on the conflict develop? Was it appropriate to hang Palestinian flags at UMPRUM? “In the given context, it is an unfortunate step, it is perceived as support for Palestinian terrorism,” says philosopher Daniel Kroupa. Euro magazine commentator Petr Fischer was not surprised by the students’ reaction. “The context has changed, now they are reacting to military operations,” he says.
Pros and cons
Prague
5:00 a.m May 8, 2024
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Demonstration in support of Palestine | Photo: René Volfík | Source: iROZHLAS.cz
Kroupa admits that the action of the students of the University of Arts and Crafts is moderated by their statement that by raising the flags they showed their solidarity with the civilians in the Gaza Strip. But he draws attention to other actions in support of Palestine.
How has the Czech debate on the conflict developed in the seven months since the terrorist attack by Hamas and the start of Israeli retaliation? Lukáš Matošek asks Daniel Kroupa and Petr Fischer
“Even in Prague, there were marches with Palestinian flags and people chanting ‘from the river to the sea’. Which, of course, represents identification with the genocidal demand to control the whole of Palestine by the Islamist movement,” states the former politician, now a university teacher at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem.
Fischer points out that it is necessary to look at the context of the slogan. He recalls that something similar was once heard by Israeli politicians.
“The first famous political declaration of the Likud, that from the Jordan to the sea it will remain Israel, has a genocidal effect. Yes, we can say that it was a reaction to the Palestinian defiance at the time. But I don’t feel that way. I try to get into the psychology of people on both sides, because that’s the only chance to understand the dispute and how not to be a fan of one side and be unfair,” he suggests.
According to Kroupa, the statements that come from the radical parts of the Israeli political spectrum are not the policy of the Israeli state. “Likud is one of the government parties, it does not have a majority by itself,” he points out.
One-sided interpretation
According to Fischer, the current Israeli government is perhaps the most extremist in decades. Which distorts the Czech view and forgets that the state of Israel is not primarily defined in this way.
“It is interesting that it is precisely the residents of Israel who are protesting against the government who feel this very intensely. A number of them have a very negative attitude and criticize her,” states the commentator. According to him, Czechs are often more Israeli than Israelis and do not understand the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
“They don’t understand that it’s not defined by us destroying the Palestinians. We are actually taking the wrong side of the argument. Because at the healthy core of both sides of the dispute there is some civic principle, an attempt to live as people in some space relatively safely and contentedly. It is definitely not possible to say that a Palestinian is a terrorist. Just like you can’t say what an Israeli is an extremist. And this is completely lost in the Czech debate,” describes Fischer.
American Students Against Israel. They are bothered by the war and the disproportionate suffering of the Palestinians, the journalist reports
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According to Kroupa, the debate on the Middle East conflict in the Czech Republic is more or less substantive. It is significantly different from what we watch in the West.
“In states where there are millions of Muslim populations, both politicians and journalists have to be very careful with their wording and sometimes tend to overrule these minorities if it suits their political agenda.”
“I’m glad that the Czech debate is not as ideological as in the Western media, for example on the BBC. Many politicians there come out in support of the Palestinians not out of sympathy for the suffering of the people in Gaza, but from a purely pragmatic point of view to get the relevant Muslim majority on their side,” the philosopher judges.
Fischer describes the Czech interpretation of the conflict as one-sided. According to him, the foreign debate is far more critical of Israel’s progress.
“He is far more sensitive to the suffering of everyone who lives there. But Mr. Kroupa named it very precisely. Our interpretation is completely different. In the sense – we have to support Israel, because the conflict there clearly started on October 7th. And we ignore all other connections,” suggests the commentator of the Euro weekly.
Listen to the full debate from the recording above.
Lukáš Matoška,
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