LIVE: Joe Biden Addresses Nation On Israel, Gaza AND Ukraine
www.wonkette.com
Discover more from Wonkette
Wonkette is filthy, hilarious, liberal news. YOU CAN HANDLE THE TRUTH!
Over 18,000 subscribers
Continue reading
LIVE: Joe Biden Addresses Nation On Israel, Gaza AND Ukraine
Yes, all of them.
We’re quite certain some like Russia and Iran would absolutely love for the US to forget all about Ukraine right now. Nah.
Here’s the president.
Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.
@evanjosephhurst on Threads!
I have profiles those other places but I think I forgot how to log on.
If you're shopping on Amazon anyway, this portal gives us a small commission.
LIVE: Joe Biden Addresses Nation On Israel, Gaza AND Ukraine
Someone needs to give OHJB a crash course in the proper usage of analogies and comparisons. First, he conflates Putin, a dictator with no appreciable internal opposition, and who controls what was thought to be the second most powerful military on the planet (until events proved otherwise), with Hamas, a political party with a security apparatus, that might be the 185th most powerful 'military' of 200 or so countries, that governs by committee and does have internal opposition (ex., PIJ, a vastly smaller armed organization without a political apparatus).
This leads to a false equivalency, that Russia presents the same existential threat to Ukraine that Hamas does to Israel. Which is utterly ludicrous, given how quickly the West (US, UK, the EU, NATO) rushed tens of billions in military aid to Ukraine after demonstrating a capacity to successfully resist; and how more quickly most of the same powers (US, UK, most EU members) rushed aid to Israel after Hamas's one-off raid, with no capacity what so ever to resist the predictable Israeli retaliation (unless the IDF really is stupid enough to launch a ground invasion).
It also means having to deny the relevance of 76 years of Israeli policy of aggression through wars of conquest and occupation for the purpose of colonization, against a stateless population with a negligible capacity to defend itself. A policy of absolute refusal to give Palestinians their own state, despite signing the "where's Waldo" Oslo Accords 30 years ago (as the late Uri Avnary wrote, "Israeli never signed a treaty it didn't bomb its way out of later").
Which brings us to the role that "stateless" peoples have in origins of these two conflicts. To draw from the language of the Dred Scott Decision, 'stateless people have no rights that established states are bound to respect'. Putin used a highly propagandized version of (mostly falsified) Ukrainian history to justify annexation by arguing Ukraine never was a county, and Ukrainians never had a sense of national identity, which makes them stateless people with no rights to self-determination. In doing so, Putin is repeating early Zionist propaganda that Palestinians never had a country or national identity, and set about dispossessing the locals from their lands by force, citing Scripture as if it was a property deed issued by the Almighty Himself, granting perpetual title of ownership to returning absentee landlords (Ashkenazi, whose claims to direct descendance from Palestine are very tenuous), as it were.
All of which leads to two ironies First, even in Biblical times, there never was a single 'nation of Israel'. After conquering the Holy Land, the various Tribes claimed their territories and established separate political entities (aka, 'kingdoms') which have more in common with Native American tribes, or Afghan war-lord/clans than modern notions of unified, national states. This prevailed until the Roman conquest, which reduced Palestine to province, that was later replaced by what would become the Ottoman Empire, as an administrative district. In terms Americans might understand, ancient "Israel" didn't have their Articles of Confederation (and modern Israel still doesn't have a formal Constitution).
Second, if Palestinians and Ukrainians didn't have a sense of nationalism, the Russian of invasion of Ukraine, and Israeli's unrelenting campaign of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, gave them one.
History. It's complex, confusing, confounding, and contentious. To be ignored or dismissed at one's peril.
‘Silent annexation’: Settlers dispossess West Bank Bedouins amid Israel war
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/20/silent-annexation-settlers-dispossess-west-bank-bedouins-amid-israel-war
Biden gave a good speech, but he did not call for a cease-fire. He did call for restraint, but the idea of a restrained invasion is unrealistic. Nor did he address the ethnic cleansing, still ongoing in the West Bank, where armed Israeli settlers continue to drive Palestinians from their homes.