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.
The civilians in both sides are not equal imo.
On the Palestinians side, the Hamas isn’t an elected group. It’s an independent terrorist group. People that don’t get recruited, and people that don’t harbor them willingly are innocent.
On the Israelites side, anyone that voted for the governments that commit those atrocities are slightly more guilty in my eyes.
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?
Absolutely not. I’m not saying that what’s the Hamas is doing is fine. I’m just calling out the hypocrisy of the whole situation.
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.