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.
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.