> or at least a lack of desire to get involved
This sounds like the very definition of neutrality. Neutrality in a dispute is about not getting involved.
Neutrality is the store owner who chooses to ignore two customers who are loudly arguing about something. He will sell his wares to either customer, but he doesn't want to alienate either one by stepping in. Maybe one of the customers is obviously at fault, but as a neutral party he stays out of it.
It sounds like what you are implying is that there is no such thing as neutrality, either in this specific case or more broadly. Or you could be saying that neutrality itself is "wrong" in some sense, that's a philosophical argument and you could try to make a convincing argument. But if you accept the existence of neutrality as a concept, claiming that a clearly neutral party is not actually neutral because they are acting neutrally is a hard sell.