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.
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.
I will freely admit that I was flippant and incorrect earlier, I apologize. I thought that it was the Balfour Declaration that started everything off, and that some nationalists had convinced them. I assumed it was just like India I guess (although there probably are deeper reasons there too that Jinnah wanted a Muslim state – Modi and his Hindu nationalists are doing a very good job of defending that advocacy).
Turns out the declaration was just a small stepping stone along the way, and it was just one link in a chain of events spanning multiple centuries and nations.
It really makes you wonder what should be done, and even more difficult, what could be done.
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return
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)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora
Because Ukraine does not suppress ethnic russians and does not currently still takes more land.