Slovenia’s “feminist” foreign policy, led by Tanja Fajon, is leading us further and further away from official Western policy, into the embrace of Arab despots and other autocrats, away from a part of the world that puts personal freedom and democracy first. Tanja Fajon’s recent tour of the Middle East has only underlined once again that the irrational sympathy of Slovenian left-wing politics for Palestine (which is ruled by de facto terrorist cells) is something that will not only cost us our international reputation, but sooner rather than later, our economy will also feel the consequences.
Tanja Fajon visited Israel and the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank during her recent tour of the Middle East. The national media outlet’s web portal MMC reports that she visited Israel and the “occupied West Bank”, but it is not clear what they are trying to say, because the West Bank has been under the rule of the self-declared Fatah movement for years, and the Jewish settlements in the disputed territories of the West Bank do not mean what the MMC implies.
Palestine Recognition Tour
According to the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, the Minister met with Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Kats and subtly told him to leave the terrorists holed up in Rafah alone.
Fajon told Television Slovenia that Slovenia is at a crucial moment in the region. “We are all waiting to see if there will be an agreement for the release of the hostages and for a ceasefire. As we understand, it is a question of the duration of the ceasefire. Different information is coming from one side and the other. But this is a crucial moment that must be seized.” Even more puzzling is her message of recognition of Palestine, which she dared bring to Israel.
She said that the recognition of Palestine is no longer an issue for Slovenia, which is an extremely radical position for a Western leader to take. “If there is no ceasefire, and no serious efforts for a lasting peace, the time for recognition of Palestine is fast approaching.”
It was no surprise, given these views, that she was then summarily dismissed by Israeli leaders and the meeting with Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog was cancelled due to poorly explained reasons, and that Israel called on Slovenia to reconsider its desire to recognise a state entity made up of two terrorist enclaves.
Meeting her “friends,” the autocrats
Fajon then met with her friends, the Arab despots – who have ruled for years without elections – with whom our Minister seems to feel most comfortable.
In the West Bank, she met the Palestinian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Mohammad Mustafa, and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas.
She promised them both that if there is no ceasefire, Slovenia will recognise Palestine, which will be “at least a symbolic hope for the people”.
That is to say, if Hamas continues to hold hostages, it will be rewarded with recognition of Palestine as a state. Indeed, any ceasefire depends entirely on Hamas releasing the hostages it took on the 7th of October – which they are refusing to do. All the hostages who have already returned say that they lived in impossible conditions, where torture, rape and even murder took place. It is, therefore, possible that most of the hostages are already dead and that Hamas is playing poker with empty cards.
Recognition of genocidal terrorist cells as a state?
Of course, it is clear that a Western leader cannot go to Israel with the idea that the statehood of an entity that only a few months ago was slaughtering children and women in the Jewish border kibbutzim should be recognised. The ideas of Slovenia’s ‘feminist’ foreign policy are bizarre and completely at odds with logic and the reality on the ground.
It is clear that Gaza is currently being run by a terrorist organisation with strong popular support. On the other hand, Fatah in the West Bank is also, in reality, only a partially reformed terrorist organisation, whose modus operandi from the start was even more extreme than that of Hamas today.
Fajon dreams of “reforming and empowering the Palestinian Authority so that it can take control of Gaza,“ but it is not clear which Palestinian Authority she is talking about – there have been no elections held in the West Bank for a long time, either, because Abbas is afraid that most of the West Bank is more supportive of Hamas than of Fatah.
The Palestinian Authority rules without any decree of the people, while paying financial rewards to the families of ‘martyrs’ (terrorists) who have killed Israeli terrorists – none of which Fajon has raised as a problem.
There is no one in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank who can take power at the moment, because there is only complete chaos, corruption, sympathy for terrorism and the idea – held by both Fatah and Hamas – that the only way out of the eternal conflict is to expel the Jews from Israel and murder those who remain. That is still the official charter of both organisations. The two-state solution is something that Fatah talks about for international (Western) politics but promises a holocaust against the Jews for the domestic public.
It is more understandable to the Slovenian public why Fajon behaves the way she does – the Western world has not yet learnt the big family secret that most of the Slovenian left are descendants of the Non-Aligned Movement, with strong ties between the communist predecessor state and Arab despots. To the Western allies, who do not care so much about an obscure country like Slovenia, what is happening naturally seems strange.
A serious blow for Slovenian foreign policy
It is clear that we belong to the Western world, which includes Israel. Israel is thus of central importance to the Western alliances because of its intimate connection with the USA. In US diplomacy, however, everything happens behind the scenes. Economic ties, investments in a country, alliances in the negotiation of international interests … All these things happen behind closed doors in international politics. Of course, no US politician will tell us that an American company has reduced investment in Slovenia because of our support for the Palestinian autocrats, or that the USA does not support Slovenia’s territorial claims with Croatia for the same reason. These things will happen as fait accompli, for seemingly unknown reasons. Israel is also an important business partner for Slovenia – we exported 102 million euros worth of goods there in 2022, however, we exported only 75 million euros last year and only 13 million euros this year in almost six months – these are exports of Slovenian companies that pay taxes in Slovenia. And we will all feel the shortfall.
It is very clear that there will be consequences. The government led by Robert Golob has caused a true economic cataclysm in Slovenia, reducing one of the world’s best workforces to stagnation, and the foreign policy of Tanja Fajon has pushed us into the arms of autocrats – quietly flirting with Russia, quite openly with Iran, while supporting the pan-Arab colonialist dreams in the Middle East. The consequences will probably be felt for years – if not decades.
Mitja Iršič
