Authors

Jerzy Łazor¹;  ¹ Warsaw School of Economics, Poland

Discussion

The paper’s goal is to analyse Polish public discourse on the current war in the Gaza Strip. As a major disruption in Middle Eastern geopolitics, it is a topic that has received significantly more attention than the region generally gets, with both simple reporting, and longer opinion pieces appearing in newspapers and internet portals representing a wide spectrum of political positions. This included media which generally focus on domestic Polish politics, rather than international reporting. Moreover, as in the Anglo-Saxon world, the war has caused a wave of student protests in major universities, with camps, occupations, and pressure put on university administrators. This is likewise untypical in the landscape of Polish student politics.
The paper is based on two groups of sources, representing this increased interest in the region. First, articles on the subject from newspapers and internet portals representing the Polish left-wing, right-wing, and centre. Second: interviews with student protesters and university administrators at Polish universities participating in the global protests. These sources will be analysed with three questions in mind: first, whether the Polish discourse conforms to expectations of the right supporting Israel and the broad left supporting Palestine. Second, whether Polish historical experiences and attitudes, including antisemitism and recent high levels of Islamophobia influence the portrayals of the situation in Gaza. Third, how the conflict in Gaza is placed within wider analyses of rising global tensions, especially the war in Ukraine.