Ulf Carmesund has worked with three Palestinian civil society organizations for four years on training in good governance for officials in municipalities and ministries in Gaza and the West Bank. Now he wonders if they might not be the ones who should be invited to train leaders in Europe and the United States.
Beautiful principles of good governance (eng. Good governance) from Europe carries no weight, neither in Israel nor in Palestine. Israel was built by a people who were almost exterminated in Europe. The people of Palestine are all too aware of Europe's verbal support for democracy, but at the same time remember Europe's colonialism and contemporary support for dictatorships in the Middle East.
Today, Europe is almost completely unable to criticize Israel for its occupation – colonization – of the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza, while Europe criticizes Russia for occupying parts of Ukraine. The double standards are striking to many.
Today's war in Gaza is the result of a chain reaction that started in Europe. We can start with the Dreyfus trial in Paris in the 1890s. At the time, public opinion in Paris was strongly anti-Semitic. Dreyfus was clearly innocent, but was convicted because of his Jewish background. The father of political Zionism – Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) – was a journalist from Vienna and covered the trial. He was so deeply affected by French anti-Semitism that in 1896 he published the book The Jewish State, the starting point for political Zionism, Jewish nationalism.
Anti-Semitism in Europe drove Jews out of Europe. After the Holocaust, Europe and the UN wanted to give the world's Jews their own country and Israel was created. But they brought Europe's national ideals and colonialism to the Middle East and drove Palestinians away. That's how the Palestine issue was created. We discussed this chain reaction in detail when I lectured at al Azhar University in Gaza City in December 2021 and when I lectured in Gaza City at Gallery Jamal in August 2023.
Today, Jews in Israel and the rest of the world carry an infinitely heavy trauma from the Holocaust. Hamas's bestial attack on October 7, 2023, awakened this trauma. At the same time, the state of Israel creates other traumas for Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank who are forced to flee and flee again under threats and bombardments. The victims create new victims. Today, an estimated 53 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and over half a million are on the brink of starvation. Europe has failed both peoples. Europe therefore has reasons to learn from those who have suffered at our hands.
From Theodor Herzl we can learn, among other things, that anti-Semitism and other forms of racism should be opposed, but also that good intentions are no guarantee against colonialism.
The West talks about values – but practices exceptions
Malik Ben-Nabi (1905–1973) was an intellectual Islamist who wrote about how Algeria could free itself from France. He used Islam as a starting point, and did not want to be intellectually dependent on France or Europe. He criticized Muslim society for being morally bankrupt and lacking ideas. Even if the colonized is militarily inferior, Ben-Nabi argued, he can be morally superior. In one story, Ben-Nabi was visiting Paris in the late 1930s, during France's ongoing brutal occupation of Algeria. From 1848 to 1962, France ruled Algeria as part of France.
According to the story, Ben-Nabi visited a restaurant along the Champs Elysées and ordered the most expensive dish. He then ate with his fingers. All the French people around him stopped eating and looked at him in horror. After a while, a lady of good character stood up and walked up to Ben-Nabi. She pointed to the cutlery and asked sourly if he knew why people had cutlery. Ben-Nabi thought for a moment and replied:
– Cutlery is for people with dirty fingers. My hands are clean.
The story of Ben-Nabi's restaurant visit made everyone in our workshops in the West Bank and Gaza gasp. Then we talked about double standards in Europe, about double standards in Israel, and we ended by talking about how at that time, in September 2023, the UN Committee Against Torture was visiting Gaza and the West Bank to investigate torture in Palestinian prisons. Double standards undermine the legitimacy of all governments.
Our workshops involved conversations with officials in municipalities and ministries in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Smart people who want to do decent work. We discussed whether municipalities and countries – both in the Middle East and in Europe – have a deeper vested interest in applying the Council of Europe’s twelve principles of good governance. The answer was yes. And one way to reduce the risk of double standards is to follow these twelve principles. In fact, these principles are the homework that politicians and officials should do between each election, in order to get re-elected and keep their jobs. In order to gain and maintain legitimacy.
The era of double standards requires new teachers
Israel today – in May 2025, when this text is written – is a democracy governed by Jewish right-wing populists. Gaza, in turn, is governed by Muslim right-wing populists.
For right-wing populists and hardline ethnic nationalists, a person is not first a citizen, but first a member of the right or wrong religious/ethnic group. Both Israel and Hamas are part of the wave of right-wing populism that is spreading globally: in Sweden, in Germany, in France, in Iran, in the USA and in India. In the war against Hamas, Israel has received about 70 percent of its weapons from the USA. Both the governments of Israel, Trump and Hamas have no objection to expelling those who have the “wrong” ethnicity. In democracies that follow principles of good governance, however, every person is first and foremost a citizen with rights.
In these days, when even Europe and the West are being haunted by right-wing populists, there are many in Europe, the US and the Middle East who, like a Malik Ben-Nabi or a Theodor Herzl, can help us see Europe's double standards. Voices that can be invited to educate the governments of Europe, the US and Israel in good governance. They are found, among others, among those who were active in the Arab Spring, among the women demonstrating for freedom in Iran or among the Palestinians and Jews who want a Palestine and an Israel where everyone has equal rights.
The exercise requires critical conversations about our common history. But with these conversation partners, we in Europe will probably also learn the meaning of the Council of Europe's 12 principles.
About the Citizens First project
The civil society organizations Civitas Institute and the Society for Women Graduates (SWG) are active in Gaza City and Al Marsad in Ramallah in the West Bank. Since 2023, they have been receiving EU funds to train, mainly, civil servants in municipalities and authorities in good governance. In 2021 and 2023, Ulf Carmesund contributed to the project as a consultant. His last visit ended just over a week before the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023 and the state of Israel's ongoing attacks in Gaza would redraw the political map. The name Citizen First means that each individual's political identity is first to be a citizen, rather than their ethnicity or religion.
This is a guest column. The writer is responsible for analysis and opinions in the text.
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