Photograph: Andrej Tarfila/REX/Shutterstock
It is common knowledge that we Slovenes are a hard-working, neat but in essence spineless folk. Our favourite pastime is oppressing our fellow citizens, especially our neighbours, peers and co-workers – always putting them into their designated places, preferably somewhere beneath us.
We remain silent, however, when truth should be spoken to power. Oppressing others and staying silent is hard work! Our inability to resist the will of the great and the mighty – our bosses, rulers, domestic or foreign governments – makes us highly corruptible and, therefore, unreliable. It’s not a coincidence that Slovenes are usually depicted with bowed heads and clasped hands: those are images of obedience, and obedience is, without a doubt, a calculated behaviour.
Have I caught your attention? Sad, if true. I admit, I’ve ensnared you with an autostereotype, a belief about one’s own social or political group. You might have noticed that my version is gloriously self-deprecating, and you might already understand that stereotypes and self-stereotypes shouldn’t be believed or reinforced.
But what if the Slovene self-stereotype is not completely wrong? What if it is a narrative like any other – a large lie, organised around a tiny truth?
I’ve been obsessing about these questions since 22 March, when Robert Golob, our prime minister – along with his counterparts from Ireland, Malta and Spain – signed a statement on the recognition of Palestine. As the Slovene government last week endorsed the recognition of Palestine, which will be put to a vote in the National Assembly on 4 June, I really shouldn’t worry any further about our government’s integrity – it is doing its duty.
The government has a parliamentary majority, so, despite some rightwing opposition, we can expect that Slovenia will soon recognise the existence of Palestine. Nevertheless, this road has been long and convoluted. It leaves a bitter aftertaste.
In May, Slovenia’s foreign minister, Tanja Fajon, after a visit to Israel and the West Bank, stated in a TV interview that there was “no better time to recognise Palestine than in the very near future”. Many days had elapsed between 22 March and this interview, so you had to wonder what “the very near future” meant. According to the logic of Slovene ministers, it suggests a span of several weeks.
On 9 May, the 216th day of Israel’s war on Gaza, it was reported that Golob’s government was starting the procedure for the recognition of Palestine as an independent and sovereign state. The decisions it adopted, however, would include a set of conditions.
Progress would have to be made in relation to a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages. If these were achieved, the government would forward the proposal for the recognition of Palestine to the National Assembly at the latest by 13 June.
On 9 May, it was therefore seemingly decided that Slovenia would wait to decide about this oh-so-exhausting affair until after the European elections. It was also decided that … something something. That’s what I read. Just something something. Because to set conditions for how an unfolding genocide should develop isn’t really anything.
On 17 May, Golob spoke about the war in Gaza on CNN and explained that he was calling, in a letter, on leaders of other EU member states to join “Slovenian efforts” to recognise Palestine. Should I describe how I stared at the screen, confused, asking myself whether our prime minister understood that Slovenia would only be able to set an example by actually recognising Palestine?
Should I also explain how, throughout this time, it has become increasingly difficult to take the Slovene government seriously? It seems to me that the “very near future” the foreign minister had spoken about materialised as soon as it was known that Spain, Norway and Ireland would recognise Palestine on 28 May. From afar, dear foreign minister, this could be interpreted as the very opposite of sticking one’s neck out or showing any other country a lead.
I shouldn’t explain all this, right, because you’ve caught the drift. It’s better to stress that by the time the government announced that it intended on 30 May to propose the formal recognition of Palestine to the National Assembly – apparently out of outrage over the massacre in Rafah – Slovenian civil society organisations had already been on the streets calling for a ceasefire and the recognition of Palestine.
A petition signed by more than 350 Slovenian intellectuals made the same demands. Students at the University of Ljubljana’s faculty of social sciences occupied the college and demanded that its leadership accept that Israel “is committing genocide in Gaza”.
People flooded their social media accounts with news about Gaza, urging the Slovenian government to do something about it so Slovenia doesn’t turn into Germany. They displayed their solidarity and humanity daily. They showed their deep understanding that the very near future had swished by several times in the history of independent Slovenia.
By now you have probably realised that the Slovene autostereotype I presented to you at the beginning was nothing more than a cheap, sensationalist trick. I needed to lure you into my article. I needed you to familiarise yourselves with the frustration some Slovene citizens have experienced after realising, yet again, that the spineless, calculating folk are not them, but the ones in power.
To prove otherwise would have demanded the government’s immediate action, an immediate decision to propose the recognition of Palestine to the National Assembly – well before 22 March or some other random date. To me, doing it so late, after such a tangled process, is like silently admitting they have no idea what this independent and sovereign Slovenia is for. In my eyes – and I strongly believe I am not the only one – independence and sovereignty are watered down every time an ethical decision is obscured by a set of conditions or postponed.
Yes, dear Slovene government, you are doing the right thing, but you will still have to demonstrate you mean it. That you meant it all along. Well, at least from 22 March, when glimpses of a possible ethical foreign policy began to show.
Ana Schnabl is a Slovenian novelist, editor and critic
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