Ukraine’s Jewish president says world must stand united against terror as Hamas launches deadly surprise assault
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country is fending off a Russian invasion, said Saturday that Israel had an unquestionable right to defend itself from attacks from Palestinian terrorists.
The Hamas terror group launched an unprecedented assault on Israel in the morning, firing thousands of rockets, sending gunmen into Israeli communities and military bases by land, sea and air, killing at least 200 people, injuring over 1,400, and taking hostages.
“Israel’s right to defense is indisputable,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, said on Telegram.
Personally, it’s hard to agree with either side when there are very clearly religious motivators. Both sides have done things that are clearly wrong. It’s not about people vs state, or people vs foreign state, it’s always framed as Jewish vs Muslim. It’s hard to imagine a future where each side does not stop until the other is wiped out. It’s hard for people of different religions to live in harmony when the state is so intertwined with religion. Israel gets a lot of international support because at least they have a relatively stable government.
It’s also hard to imagine people will live in harmony when one side literally enforces an apartheid regime on the other side.
Agreed, but again, both sides are not innocent here.
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They seized control later on, but Hamas was elected in 2006. Still though, of course there’s plenty of Palestinians who don’t support Hamas
Guilty enough to deserve death?
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Something this attack has shown is that we interchangeably make geopolitical statements and value judgments – or rather, that there is no distinction between the two in discourse. Talking about how Israel’s far right policies are responsible for this is a geopolitical analysis for instance, but that in no way diminishes value judgments that the murderers are to blame for the murders. I suspect this difference between “how we got here” and “what just happened” is causing a lot of tension and miscommunication.
I genuinely share this view, while also having doubts about it. There’s still much I need to (re-)learn about this conflict, but I think both religions coexisted peacefully in that area for centuries. The current conflict might have much to do with colonialism-like European nations drawing borders in other countries, assigning people to lands, without fully considering who they are and what they want.
Tbf to him, there’s a significant difference between taking their own land back between Ukraine and Palestine
When Ukraine fighting back against illegal occupation they didn’t purposely target the civilian while Russian is the indiscriminate one.
Hamas’s goal is to take their land back while also trying to wipe Jew off the map. Them parading a woman’s naked dead body tells it all, they’re as savage as the Israeli that treat Palestinian as sub-human. All far right Muslim across the globe hate Jew because of what Israel does for decades.
If tomorrow Putin suddenly gave back all occupied territories including Crimea, Ukraine will stop. If tomorrow Netanyahu gave back all occupied territories, Hamas will not stop until Israel did not exists.
So yeah, for Ukraine vs Russia, one side is the terrorist. For Palestine vs Israel though, both side is terrorist.
Fun fact about that Zionist army in 1948, it was made up of literal terrorist organizations, one of which (the Lehi) wanted to fight alongside the Nazis during WW2 because they hated the British so much.
Hitler said no to their offer of support. But the offer apparently reached his desk. Well, offers. They tried multiple times in 1940 and 1941.
The sort of mind that it took to want to join with the Nazis after Kristallnacht…
One of the Lehi’s main activities during the build up to the 1948 war, was to assassinate Jews who they viewed as “traitors” i.e. Jews who cooperated with or were friendly with either the British, or Arabs (Palestinians). Add in a few bombings and the odd mass rape/massacre, and you have one of the bloodiest terrorist organizations of the mid-century.
Anyway, in 1980, all the surviving Lehi members got medals of honor from the Israeli government.“for military service towards the establishment of the State of Israel”
This, Israel has so effectively white washed the creation to the general public. I’d venture to guess the average American couldn’t point to our tell you when Israel was created.
Nor could the average person tell you that in 1948 Israel expanded and took Palestinian land as the result of a war where several Arab nations occupied Palestinian land to attack Israelis.
People would like to believe that their side is blameless, but the truth is that ever since the British partition (which created civil tensions like all other colonial partitions), it has been a tit for tat where Israel has sometimes been at fault and sometimes been the victim.
Edit: Oh boy. It goes back much further than this even.
A war that started after they bombed the Palestinian embassy at a civilian hotel killing 91 iirc.
Dear God. I’m following the trail of events on Wikipedia and this is absolutely nuts. It just keeps going, and going, and going…
I’ve made it to Russian pogroms of Jews in the 19th century, which seem to have sparked the Zionist goal of a Jewish state, complemented by a preceding Judaism enlightenment era. And then that is all under the geopolitical backdrop of a separatist sultan in the Ottoman Empire and a British thought (helped by evangelical Christianity of course) that they should grow their sphere of influence in that region by growing a Jewish population there.
And that’s just the genesis of the Balfour Declaration and Jewish/Arab enmity!
I’m going to read into the Russian pogroms more, but I suspect the underlying cause of that is increased migration into Russia by Jewish refugees fleeing Muslim oppression in the Ottoman Empire and Christian oppression in Western Europe.
Jesus fucking Christ what a mess. It’ll probably trace back all the way to the Romans in Israel at this rate.
Yup it’s voluminous and complex indeed.
This infographic very conveniently leaves out that 1948 is the result of the Arab Israeli War, where civil war tensions resulted in several Arab nations occupying Palestine to take over Israeli land.
I’m not going to say that Israel shouldn’t have given it back to the Palestinians, but it’s very dishonest to leave out the war and simply say Palestinians were expelled.
I’m not taking a side either way on this comment. I would just like to point out that Ukraine claimed their land in 1991 while Israel had theirs since 1948 (according to this image.) If you would argue that Ukraine is Ukraine because they have been since 1991 wouldn’t it be even more fair to say that Israel has been Israel for even longer? If Palestine wants to take back what was theirs pre-1948 why can’t Russia take back what was theirs as recently as 1991?
Coming from someone who is mostly ignorant about Palestine vs Israel politics and happy to be educated!
There are huge differences. One country came into existence due to a federation disintegrating, because its members called for independence. The other country came in existence because an occupier forced it upon the people living there.
There wasn’t also a huge amount of migration involved with Ukraine. People mostly continued their lives when Ukraine became independent. The founding of Israel involved many Jews for all over the world migrating to that area. You can imagine that affects the people already living there.
Thank you for taking the time to post a thoughtful response. Can you provide more information on the point that Jewish people migrated from all over the world? Being non-religious, my understanding is that Jewish people were historically always in that area since pre-Jesus times.
I’m just not entirely convinced that migration, in of itself, is enough of an argument against Israel considering UN Human Rights allow for cross-border movement of people. I can definitely understand if the government gets involved with purposefully displacing people who were already there.
Interested to hear your perspective on this issue.
There’s been like three or more major calls for “repatriation” ie. colonization the last was iirc 2015ish.
To follow up on what the other commenter said, the term “Jew” started as a label for Judahites outside of Judah (part of the historical kingdom of Israel)
badly drawn maps are a major culprit. its clear many commenters are young and don’t know the actual history. i’m a bit surprised by just how many pro-hamas posts ive seen. its a little disturbing. read your history. there is very little that the modern state of Israel could have done to prevent any of this. these extremists want total annihilation of israel. what can israel do against terrorists whose stated goal is to participate in a holy war which they believe is their ticket to heaven? it’s an unwinnable conflict. peace talks only work if all sides actually want peace (and just disagree about how to accomplish it) every insane group of extremists across history has had to be dealt with forcefully, at some point, in some way or another, for all of human history. the japanese, germans, soviets, koreans, all needed to be dealt with, and in all cases it required overwhelming force sustained by wide coalitions over many years.
this is no different. if you are young, don’t know the history, and are sitting in your room thinking there is some special concession Israel could give, that would turn this all around, its time to hit the library. The reality is that there isn’t really any land in the area that would work for that. The available land that is compatible with human civilization in that part of the world, is completely full. There is no “amazon” that could be cut down to build new areas for Palestinians to live. It’s a hot, arid, inhospitable part of the world, and civilization is clustered around natural rivers and mountainous locations. There’s no place for anyone to go.
And then there’s the ideology. Even if Israel and some broad coalition decided to invest trillions in some massive infrastructure project to make Gaza the best place in the world to live, the terrorists would still do exactly what they’re doing today. The point you have to understand, is that Hamas does not care about Palestinians. Repeat that to yourself 10x and commit it to your brain forever. Islamic extremists do not care about achieving peaceful cooperation with people of other faiths and ideologies on planet earth. Nor do they even care about their own people.
People in the west are extremely soft and ignorant in some ways. They’ve grown up immersed in a culture of relative stability, judeo-christian ethics, etc. They have no concept that there are people out there who share none of that. They literally don’t care. And the proof is all over twitter. Go watch, let it soak in.
Only a broad coalition with massive force can end this, just like every other time. otherwise its just on an endless cycle.
When Ukraine fighting back against illegal occupation they didn’t purposely target the civilian while Russian is the indiscriminate one.
Eastern Ukrainian civilians and Russian minorities since 2014: Am I a joke to you?
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I mean he does need those israeli anti missile shields so I get where he’s coming from. But this is straight up hilarious. Israel is occupying Palestinian terriroties ilegally just like Russia is doing in Ukraine.
Of course it does, just like any other nation. In this case, the extreme islamists don’t care about geopolitical resources like land or oil. They care about exterminating Jews. Plain and simple. If Hamas had free reign, they would execute every last person on planet earth, including you, unless you converted to Islam. It’s in their ideology–dying in a holy war against non-muslims is the ticket to eternal life. That’s literally what they believe. And because of that, they sew chaos and terror wherever they go.
Clearly the large majority of muslims do not believe this way. But the extremists do, and that’s how history is made. The peaceful, normal civilians who’d rather just live their lives, aren’t the decision makers. And of course this all traces back to a long series of stupid decisions and badly drawn maps after the world wars. But make no mistake, Hamas is no different than Nazi Germany in their desire to exterminate Jews, and eventually they will need to be dealt with in exactly the same way.
Exactly. No issues with moderates, but moderates aren’t the ones suicide-bombing and throwing suspected gays off the top of buildings. An Islamic society creates safe spaces for the extremists, and the extremists will do whatever they can to take power.
Other Muslims are the ones targeted most by Islamist extremists. It’s in the Muslims’ best interest that they be kept a minority and out of power. There is insurmountable evidence that when the majority is Muslim, life gets worse for everyone, women’s rights are stripped away, and freedom of thought and religion is gone.
Quite similar to how if Scientology became mainstream we would all be worse off.
There is insurmountable evidence that when the majority is Muslim, life gets worse for everyone, women’s rights are stripped away, and freedom of thought and religion is gone.
Quite similar to how if Scientology became mainstream we would all be worse off.
The last sentence hints both might have a common cause whis is not “being Muslim”. I think it might be “being extremist”. The opposite would be a pluralist society, which embraces diversity and encourages respectful coexistence and exchange.
This then also includes the rise of right-wing populists in democracies all over the world, with exactly the same consequences as you said.
My friend, these anti-Israel zealots won’t be happy unless Israel just rolls over and lets Hamas kill Jews without consequence.
The anti-Israel crowd thinkd Israel is the devil of it fights back.
They think Israel is the devil, if, as you mentioned, they call buildings ahead of time, and give people time to evacuate, before Israel bombs terrorist. Headquarters, because I guess they think Palestinian buildings are more important than Israeli lives.
They think Israel is the devil if they build a security fence to keep our suicide bombers.
Mostly they think Israel is the devil because Israel offered the most general peace deal in history, but refuse to give Palestinian’s the Right of Return, which would have allowed Palestinians to claim voting rights, and literally vote to turn Israel into an anti-Jewish theocracy.
Now… Most of the people HERE haven’t the foggiest clue about any of that. And if you talked them through the situation and the options, they’d understand that Israel does not now, nor have they ever had a partner on the Palestinian side with which to make peace. They want Israel gone, full stop. And you can’t make peace with people who believe in literally no situations in which you still exist at the end.
Israel, on the other hand has showed throughout it’s history that it will do extraordinary things for peace. They gave up land for peace with Egypt. They have offered extraordinary concessions.
But the people who really needed to read this downvoted me in the first paragraph and are already typing a rant.
yup precisely. well, im with you, and so is more than 50% of the internet i think lemmy.world world news sub seems to have a particularly high proportion of 23 year old basement dwellers who’ve never suffered a day in their lives
Believe it or not, it is possible to publicly defend Ukraine, be against the long-standing brutality that Israel has dealt to Palestinians, and also be horrified about the thousands of years of injustice that Jews have faced in history.
Toeing the company line?
Not necessarily, just not fucking stupid enough to say otherwise while his own country is also fighting a defensive war against what might be considered russian terror. 101 public relations
His own country could also be considered to fight against illegal occupants violating their territorial integrity. I really feel like you got the sides switched on this one, chief.
Until Ukraine attacks a music festival of civilians in Russia, the analogy really doesn’t work.
Hamas embodies the part where Russia is wantonly killing civilians.
Israel’s government embodies both the killing of civilians and illegal occupation.
I read like like he can’t say that Ukranians vs Russians is like Palestinians vs Israelis because if he did it, he would be losing military support from several countries for his defense of Ukraine (namelly the US, where there is a massive and well-entrenched pro-Israel lobby which would quite likely fuck up any further funding and military help from the US to Ukraine), so he has to choose his words and say what’s best for Ukraine.
For the good of Ukraine there is really only one thing he can say, and that’s what he said.
Yes, I can fully agree with that. However, with these and other incidents by now, can we stop acting like Zelensky possesses some kind of intrinsic moral high ground? He’s doing his best to secure further military and economic support for the war, and he’s implicitly or openly supporting genocidal regimes in order to do so. As you said, he’s trying to achieve his goals through whatever means are necessary. I’m just tired of pretending that he’s some sort of saint.
I also take issue with your implication that further arms deals and military funding = best for Ukraine. I really cannot see a world where continuing to fight on (with no clear end in sight) is better than making territorial concessions and beginning to rebuild the wrecked nation.
The solution of territorial concessions was the one tried between Ukraine and Russia after the latter took over Ukranian territory in the form of Crimea and the occupation of part of the Dombas by proxy forces, and the result was, some years later, a new and far more aggressive and deadly invasion by Russia to get more territory.
Add to that the very openly repeated desires of the russian leadership - to conquer Ukraine and beyond - and it’s not in any way form or shape logic to assume that repeating the very same “solution” of territorial concessions to Russia and the exact same leadership would result in anything but a new attempt by Russia in a few years - after they had time to rebuilt their military power - to take over Ukraine, destroying all that “rebuilding of the wrecked nation” you claim your “peace through concessions” would yield.
Your suggestion would make sense at the time of the Crimean invasion and in fact was what was done back then, but given that now we have seen that the result over the medium/long term of giving such concessions to Russia is more and more deadly invasions by them, trying it again at this moment and with the knowledge of the results of that from last time around, and expecting a different result, is the very definition of Insanity.
You want to trade the current situation conquered by Ukranians at great cost, of a limited front were 2 armies fight each other and thus the death and destruction happens almost entirely there and almost entirelly between military forces, for a future replay of massacres of civilians like the ones the Russians did in Bucha, Irpin and Melitopol when the Ukranian military was not yet in a position to stop them.
Given all that has been going on since 2014 and especially all that the Russian leadership did and said since this invasion started, such a “territorial concession to Russia” suggestion is at best insane or idiotic, and quite possibly just plain evil.
And I haven’t even gone into the Morality of rewarding mass murder with land, and I’m not so sure “insanity” or “idiocy” explain wanting a mass murderer to be rewarded for it.
Im not sure what this is trying to say. Obviously the Ukraine is fighting a defensive war, which I rephrased a bit so the statement regarding Israel might fit on their situation as well. What sides did I get supposedly switched here?
Palestinians are fighting a defensive war against the occupation of their territory that has been steadily progressing since 1948.
Ukrainians are (reportedly) fighting a defensive war against the occupation of their territory. (I would dispute that fact somewhat, but that s a whole another can of worms).
That’s the reason for me saying you got the sides switched.
For him to point out the similarity of being faced with a much large occupier nation than themselves between the position of Ukranians and Palestinians, would pretty much guarantee the end of US military support to Ukraine as the US Congress has several “Friends of other country” groups of parliamentarians (how exactly is being in the parliament of one country defending the interests of a different country not treason?) for various countries, the largest of which is “Friends of Israel” and that group probably controls more than enough members of Congress to stop any future funding of military help to Ukraine.
So yeah, Zelenswky is doing the correct thing in diplomatic terms for his country, unlike many other politicians who don’t act for the good of their own country.
Also lets not forget Hamas is supported by Iran, who has provided drones to Russia to kill Ukranians for over a year now, so yeah, even if he empathises with the plight of Palestinians that’s a whole different thing from agreeing with Hamas.
I thought he was on the right side of history. Looks like he took one big step to the wrong side.
Jewish guy defending own country against terrorists makes obvious statement in regards to situation where terrorists are being armed by the same mob the clown army of Russia are being armed by, and you think this makes him on the wrong side of history?
Fighting against occupiers is the right side of history
Russia trying to occupy Ukraine is bad
Israel occupying Palestine, forcing the natives into shitty ghettos as they keep stealing land, is also bad
But zelensky has to keep America happy for geopolitical reasons, and America has to keep Israel happy for geopolitical reasons. And so, principle and ideals stop mattering
Ukraine isn’t killing Russian civilians at bus stops and music festivals. hamas is. whatever your grievances and “justification”, this makes you a amd anyone who supports this a monster
But how is Hamas the same as the entirely of Palestine? Ukraine is a country, Hamas is a military group that hasn’t held elections in 16 years.
Also could you explain how exactly this always boils down to Israel VS Hamas and not Israel vs Palestine? Because last time I checked, when you rape, kill, and murder people and keep them in prison with no fair trial and no means of peaceful protest, things will eventually backfire with an extremist group taking over the steering wheel. We have Israel to blame for Hamas. If they had not created such impossible circumstances for Palestinians and especially those in Gaza, no one would have to stand behind an Islamist organization that effectively detached itself of all other Palestinian resistance groups.
well that’s just cooker nonsense
What does cooker mean?
do your own research champ
Yes, standing with an apartheid state aggressor and occupier (aka Israel) is standing on the wrong side of history. It adds to the irony that Russia is doing the same to Ukraine.
Being Jewish doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to support Israel’s “right to self defence” which doesn’t mean what you may think it means. We discovered (over several decades) that Israel “defending its borders” means killing and oppressing disproportionately more civilians and children than it does killing “terrorists” and keeping Gazans in an open air prison. In essence, every country has the right to self-defence, this statement is true. However, no county has the right to commit one war crime after the other and get away with it.
“get away with it” = “murder a few hundred civilians” in your eyes. what a cooked view
How do you mean?
