Israel and Ukraine are two acts in one tragic opera
As pressure mounts, Russia and Iran ban together to "not go gentle into the good night"
"My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour.
I believe it is peace for our time...
Go home and get a nice quiet sleep." - Neville Chamberlain, 30 September, 1938 after the Munich Conference
The war in Ukraine and Israel are two sides of the same coin minted by dictatorial, terrorist regimes in Russia and Iran, increasingly isolated and under extreme pressure. The fighting in Israel may be carried out by Hamas and Hezbollah, but it is highly likely that it is done at the behest of the Kremlin and Tehran. The wars in Ukraine and Israel present an existential threat to peace, freedom, democracy and stability the world has not known since 1945. Moreover, it is a relatively safe bet to assume that they are precursors to an ever greater number of political danger zones lying in wait in the Far East, Latin America and, potentially, the US and Europe as Putin and Khamenei seek to hold on to power in a world grown tired of their presence in it.
Appeasement is not an option
As the war in Ukraine drags on, voices in the West, powerful, distinguished voices such as David Sacks, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswany, Donald Trump, Robert Kennedy Jr., and others, have been calling to stop funding Ukraine and to give Putin what he wants in an effort to avoid a nuclear war. As Israel ramps up its response to the atrocities committed by Hamas, we will hear other calls for deescalation and appeasement.
It is time for the West to recognize that appeasement and deescalation in Ukraine and Israel are misguided. Dictatorial regimes have proven throughout history that they cannot be appeased, they can only be slain. Appeasement does not work. No foreign policy has been more disastrous and brought more death and destruction in its wake, than efforts to appease dictators. The expectation that by sacrificing a small part of the world you do not particularly care about, you will be securing peace and tranquility for yourself, has been proven wrong time and again. Dictatorships are fundamentally wired differently, they do not exist for the benefit of the many but rather for the enrichment of one.
The core motivation is the preservation of the regime, regardless of the detriment it causes to its domestic population and the international community. Dictatorships and democracies can coexist, but with significant moral gymnastics on the part of democracies. Wars in Ukraine and Israel are the result of two authoritarian regimes facing imminent extinction, finding common cause in wreaking havoc upon the world to prolong their grip on power.
A marriage of convenience amidst regional turmoil
This is in now way to suggest that both wars were pre-planned and coordinated. Like all marriages of convenience, Russia and Iran found common ground upon which their relationship blossomed and spawned a bacchanal of shocking brutality. Iran has experienced numerous popular uprisings over the last few years. While the regime succeeded in quelling the uprisings, the scope of latent opposition to the ruling elite could not be ignored.
Putin was shocked to the core by Prigozhin and the Wagner Group’s half-hearted attempt at a coup. What was most unsettling to Putin is the lack of resistance to Wagner by the people and the power block that he lavished with huge budgets and special privileges. The extent of his fear was made clear by the mass purges carried out within the military and across the ultra-nationalist patriots. For the first time in his reign, Putin realized that when the chips were down, he stood alone.
Complicating the situation further is the never-ending restlessness of the Caucasus. Azerbaijan has emerged as a military and economic force and is no friend of Iran, having established strong ties with Israel and openly supporting Israel in the current war. What makes Azerbaijan so dangerous for Iran is that it has an estimated 13 - 23 million Azeris living in northwestern Iran, a population larger than the 10 million residing within Azerbaijan, providing an ever-present threat of secession.
Iran and Russia’s support for Armenia over the battle for Nagorno-Karabakh heightened tensions between the two countries. Russia also has a long-standing interest in the region as both Azerbaijan and Armenia are former Soviet republics, and vassals of the Russian Empire. Russia, while doing everything to meddle in Armenia’s internal affairs and supporting the regime in Nagorno-Karabakh, was unable to play a meaningful role when fighting broke out and had no choice but to pull out of the region, underscoring its inability to project power in the near abroad and losing all pretense as a political player in the region.
The Caucasus is of vital importance to Russia. It fought two bloody wars in Chechnya in the 90’s and early 2000’s. It is a region with the most restive national minorities with a sharp axe to grind with the Russia over hundreds of years of bloody conflict, deportations and oppression. Ramzan Kadyrov is paid handsomely for keeping a tight lid on Chechnya, but his loyalty is only as strong as the Kremlin’s pocket book is thick. Russia’s and Iran’s vulnerabilities in the region present the most compelling case for tight cooperation and a coordinated effort to keep the respective regimes in power.
Islam has nothing to do with it
Hamas, Hezbollah, Ramzan Kadyrov, Wagner Group or the Revolutionary Guards are indistinguishable for the cruelty, savagery and indiscriminate nature of the violence they mete out. Women, children, the elderly, are not collateral damage but prime targets of military activity and particular breed of depravity. The exploitation of Islam by Hamas, Hezbollah, Kadyrov and Iran as justification for the perpetration of unspeakable cruelty serves as the height of irony.
It would be easy and comforting to ascribe the beheading of infants to Islamic fundamentalism and be done with it. The only problem is that we have seen this film before, in Bucha, Irpen and all across Ukraine, where the boot of the “Christian” Russian soldier trod. Religion has nothing to do with what is happening in Israel and Ukraine. The barbarity of the regimes is displayed in the barbarity of their soldiers trying to cudgel the West into submission by instilling fear through acts of unspeakable horror.
Political miscalculation
While Putin may have started the war in Ukraine on a personal whim, his failure to deliver a swift victory, “Kyiv in three days,” placed him in a precarious domestic situation. As news from the front worsened, the vitriol of Kremlin propaganda reached a boiling point. Talking heads on Russian state television channels have long-called for nuclear strikes on London, Berlin and Washington. Recently, their rhetoric switched from nuclear armageddon to applying pressure on those supporting Ukraine at their most vulnerable pressure points, the Middle East, Latin America, the Korean Peninsula and, with the help from China, in Taiwan. Considering that nothing is said on Russian prime-time television without sanction from the Kremlin, these statements should be treated as warning of imminent state policy.
Iran, despite its apparent rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, faces an existential threat from Israel’s recent successes in normalizing relations with much of the Arab world. Its imminent peace deal with Saudi Arabia seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back. As Russia’s ties with Iran deepened through weapons purchases, economic trade and military cooperation, the relationship seems to have evolved into a more coordinated alliance bent on maintaining their hold on power by fomenting political and military upheaval globally.
United by antisemitism
"The greatest anti-Semites are often those who hide behind the false accusation of anti-Semitism." - Sir Jonathan Henry Sacks, Baron Sacks Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013
Both Russia and Iran are inherently anti-semitic. Iran’s spans forty five years, Russia’s centuries. It was in Russia that the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was published in 1903, and where pogroms that killed thousands of Jews were used as weapons of state-sponsored terrorism. The KGB, which gifted us with Putin, was an unabashedly notorious bastion of anti-semitism. The Soviet Union’s support for extremist Islamic terrorist groups is well-documented. The irony of Russia accusing Ukraine of Nazism was quickly made apparent when state media and talking heads such as Solovyov, Skabeeva, Norkin and Kiselev were not bashful in their glee and support for Hamas. Russia has a centuries-old history of propagating anti-semitism both at home and abroad. Iran’s reaction to Hamas’ action needs no comment.
Support of Hamas, Hezbollah and extremist terrorism
There is some evidence to suggest that Russia and the Wagner Group have been helping to train Hamas operatives and provided them with weapons. In 2021, a report by the Israeli think tank Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center claimed that Russia had been training Hamas fighters in Syria on how to use advanced weapons systems, such as anti-aircraft missiles. The report also claimed that Russia was providing Hamas with financial assistance.
In 2022, the US government accused the Wagner Group of training Hamas operatives in Sudan. The US Treasury Department said that the Wagner Group was providing Hamas with training in urban warfare, guerrilla tactics, and the use of explosives.
Iran’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah has been lengthy and well-documented. The fervor of the rhetoric and the readiness expressed by the Iranian regime to join the fight in support of Hamas and Hezbollah leaves little doubt as to Iran’s involvement in shaping Hamas and Hezbollah for the inevitable battle with Israel. Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon, the West’s tepid reaction and Israel’s fervent assertion that it would not allow Iran to develop weapons-grade plutonium all contributed to the inevitability of a major conflict in the region. The question was who would be first to pull the trigger and now we have our answer.
In conclusion
It would be easy to ascribe the war in Israel as simply a continuation of a decades-long regional conflict, a festering boil that has been too painful to ignore yet not painful enough to lance and let heal. But in truth, it has never been regional nor just about Israel’s right to exist. The dispute between the Palestinians and Israel was the proxy centerpiece for the larger battle between the USSR and the West, Communism and Capitalism, Good vs. Evil. It was only with the fall of the Soviet Union that the conflict took on a more regional character and real progress in Israel’s normalization of its relationship with the Arab world made significant headway. The regional part of the conflict Israel was more than capable of resolving. The same can be said for Ukraine which, with all of its faults and shortcomings, was a democratic country for the entirety of its thirty years of freedom.
We face an extremely dangerous period in our history, one that will test our commitment to our principles of basic morality, human dignity and freedom. This is a time for bravery and resolve and not for cowardice and appeasement. The people of Israel and Ukraine are not just fighting for their homes and their lives, but for the very principles that underpin our society. It is a sacrifice worthy of unequivocal support and as clear a battle of good versus evil as the struggle against Hitler and Nazi Germany. I pray that we have the stamina to do what is right.
Thanks Alexander. I cannot begin to imagine the awfulness unfolding in Israel. There weee Irish casualties too. As long as the bond of humanity, especially for our children, remains intact, then there is always hope.
I sincerely wish your friends and relatives well and that we can somehow how end this bloodshed by our collective cry for justice.
Please keep up this blog. My comments are only meant to add to what you write.
With all the invective about these days online, your posts are a welcome and sane alternative in an increasingly crazy world
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
My own reply to your post was sincere. I like to believe I am not given to rhetoric. I see things as I find them. Since you write that the bad guys ( Russia, Iran etc) are involved in the Israel problem, I just felt it necessary to give you my take on that.
It is, in the end, just an opinion of one person.
I agree with part of your conclusion. But not with your choice of language.
‘cow us into submission?’
Should there be bloodletting in the Pacific, make no mistake, it will be from the USA too.
They are not without fault in their historical involvement. Their use of indigenous people for nuclear tests in the 1950s has to be on a par with what Mengel might have enjoyed, had the Nazis not lost the war. It was still a crime, and as with many others, the USA has not been held accountable.
The choice for the inhabitants of that part of the world is which bully do they want on their side.?
With the USA, a deeply violent and paranoid country, teetering on authoritarianism, it might become a difficult choice for Taiwan.
Your contention that Russia is involved with the Hamas attack?
Well, only time will tell. I would not be at all surprised. Their detonation of the Kakhovka dam shows to what lengths Putin will go in war. He is increasingly desperate.
But if it’s true, your contention of Russian involvement. Then it could be the precursor to a nuclear war. Till now Israel and Russia relations have been, well - cordial.
Where will Turkey stand I wonder? Erdogan will do what suits his personal rule.
In war, there are always agent provocateurs from both sides as well as propaganda. And they find pawns to use in their war game. Palestinians are not an exception, nor is Ukraine.
In the meantime I fear we are already in a global conflict, and that NATO is, without official declaration, at war with Russia.
China will be next which, unless calmer heads prevail, is increasingly likely to happen.
Over what? The desire for Hegemony by the powerful.
The history of Israel’s occupation, despite its breach of international and humanitarian law, cannot be waved away. Hamas is, relatively speaking, a fairly recent problem. They are now useful to the powerful on one side, just as mollifying and supporting an increasingly fascist Israel was expedient to the powerful on another side.
Pulling out of Gaza whilst simultaneously rolling out settlements in the West Bank was not the peace which the PLO fought for.
The radicalisation didn’t just pop from nowhere. It is rooted in historical injustice.
Extremist interpretations of Islam, whether it is Shia, Sunni, filling the void, just as Christianity did in Ireland. Offering false hope and ultimately self destruction to the oppressed. Meanwhile the innocent suffer.
The Hamas slaughter was, tragically, the first time that Israelis experienced what its own government has been meting out to the Palestinians for many many years.
There have been summary executions in people’s homes, of children too. These are testimonies by former Israeli soldiers.
Israel’s record of detention and torture of children is well documented, but ignored.
Somehow the world has been convinced that one of the most powerful nations on Earth, a nuclear state, is ‘defending’ itself against refugees from its very occupation.
When Governments finally condemn an atrocity in Israel in unison, it is only when the latest tragic death count is Israeli.
Just reading today that actor Jamie Lee Curtis accidentally posted a photo of Gaza’s children in a post supporting Israel.
My earlier point about cognitive dissonance!
A Palestinian friend, a refugee, who despite receiving her visa some time ago, is at the back of the refugee housing list here in Ireland. Unlike many Ukrainian refugees, she has given up hope of returning.