The EU has reached the historic agreement to grant migrants from Ukraine the right to live and work within the bloc. We will see more double standards in weeks and months to come, especially when it comes to migration. European wars have a tendency to escalate. But no one will emerge safer out of the terrible situation in Ukraine. I know the same world order brought devastating and unjust invasions to countries outside Europe. “Never again” seems to have lasted roughly 75 years. An imperfect one for sure, but NATO, the United Nations and what eventually became the EU were all born out of the desire to never again see that kind of destruction on European soil. I hear the terrified disappointment that everything that was done to prevent another war on European soil seems to have failed.Ī new world order was created post-1945. When I, as a continental European, hear my fellow European friends and colleagues use the phrase “I can’t believe this is happening in Europe”, I don’t hear superiority, though that is often there too. And it is certainly not represented by journalist Daniel Hannan, a staunch Brexit supporter, who in a recent article for The Telegraph about Ukraine, wrote that war no longer happens in “impoverished and remote populations”. What I feel right now about this war is not represented by their voices. This matters because when we talk about “Western media” we are almost always talking about British and American channels and journalists. The clue is in the title.ĭespite other historical sins Britain may arguably still have to atone for, when it comes to World War II, it was on the right side of European history. I felt firsthand how painful these stories can be when I made my film Fascism in the Family. And after the fighting finally stopped, it did not have to engage in painful national soul-searching to try to understand how Nazism, fascism and collaboration could have taken root.įor continental Europeans now, these are not just chapters from history books but family stories, some of whose survivors are still alive to tell them. It did not watch as its Jewish populations were rounded up and deported to certain death. Because while the UK suffered relentless bombardment during World War II, it was never invaded the way its European neighbours were. I use the term “continental” European intentionally, to differentiate it from the United Kingdom, where I am now based. As a continental European, I know full well that Europe is anything but immune from war. Quite the opposite: Europe has been ravaged by wars in living memory, wars whose scars continue to be felt today. Over the past few days, many commentators and journalists have suggested that Europeans think war, destruction and displacement belong in “uncivilised” countries far away.īut this is the point I disagree with most profoundly, and which is at the heart of my sense of dread. He looks like Alan Kurdi, the Syrian Kurdish three-year-old who never made it to his destination, but washed up dead on a Turkish beach on September 2, 2015, while trying to reach a Europe that denied him, an innocent victim of war, safe and legal passage. My young son does not look like the many blond, blue-eyed Ukrainian children making the freezing journey to the safety of neighbouring countries. My maternal homeland of Sicily is a few hundred kilometres from the Tunisian coast. But the truth is that like most Southern Europeans, my colouring and features are much more typically Middle Eastern than Slavic. And my heart has broken for the people involved in every conflict that the channel has covered.īut as a continental European, I have to admit that I now feel a particular dread over the current war in Ukraine.Īm I falling foul of the same double standards I have been working against for years? Do I feel this way because Ukrainians, being fellow Europeans, “look like me”? Since then, along with brave and talented colleagues past and present, we have always strived to redress the imbalance in international news which gives the West prominence over the Global South – an imbalance which has been on full display during the coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Īl Jazeera exists to be the voice of the voiceless, or certainly of the least heard, and I have never sat at the anchor desk without keeping that mission at the heart of my work. I have been an Al Jazeera English news presenter since the channel’s launch in 2006.
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