LJUBLJANA – There is strong public pressure on the centre-liberal government in Slovenia, as the majority of the population strongly supports the Palestinian cause—not only calling for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide but also backing the Palestinians' efforts toward their own state and autonomy within it.

Therefore, the sharper rhetoric and some minimal measures by the Slovenian government (such as a partial ban on arms imports and the recognition of Palestine) should be understood primarily as the current government's domestic political efforts to meet the expectations of its electorate ahead of next year's parliamentary elections.

However, the responses of virtually all Western and pro-Western countries to the Israeli regime of occupation, apartheid, and genocide reveal severe contradictions in their approach. Their measures are late, insufficient, and, compared to the immediate and unanimous response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, downright hypocritical. While condemning the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, they simultaneously categorically reject armed resistance against the Israeli occupation—labeling it terrorism and demanding a completely demilitarized Palestine without Hamas.

In the meantime, the much more powerful and technologically advanced Israeli army (IDF) is never considered terrorist by Western and pro-Western forces and is never urged to disarm, despite its use of the most modern weapons for mass extermination and causing far greater casualties. To further paraphrase the Slovenian political scientist and philosopher Sašo Furlan, who recently analyzed this matter in detail for Disenz digital media: in Western logic, terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of rich nations. The narrative of a persistent "terrorist threat" from Gaza and Israel's right to "defend itself from the threat of Hamas" is part of the genocidal ideology that gives Israel the green light to continue the slaughter.

The demand to demilitarize Palestine has nothing to do with the declared concern for civilians; rather, it is an instrument to prevent any further Palestinian resistance and to preserve the Israeli ethno-supremacist colony and the complete subjugation of the Palestinian population. Western elites resolutely reject the right of Palestinians to self-determination and to choose their own leadership. In this way, as Furlan writes, through diplomatic means, the West is striving to achieve the same goal as Israel does through military means: the breaking of resistance and total domination.

Mojca Pišek Mika is an independent journalist and writer from Slovenia.