So, I've heard a lot of leftists pulling this double standard of "oh well the west supports Ukraine, but they don't support Palestine, isn't that hypocritical? And honestly? I would say...no.
I kinda touched on this already, but honestly, if we wanna be nitpicky about it, ALL land has been seized by force one way or another. No nation state arguably exists in a manner that would be justified. We like to act like at some point our ancestors just homesteaded virgin wilderness and that their land claims are legitimate. Almost all of them established their claims by force, and many larger empires conquered their neighbors. Our entire world history at this point has been mired in conquest, with people fighting over virtually every scrap of land on the planet outside of Antarctica.
What is the thing that justifies one conquest but not the other? Time. That's what. Ukraine was sovereign from 1991 on. It was invaded by Russia in 2022. They flat out invaded another sovereign country basically because they wanted more land to buffer themselves from the west. They were afraid of Ukraine going to the west, and establishing a NATO presence on their borders. So being a great power themselves, and recognizing their geographical vulnerabilities, they wanted to push westward to keep us away from them. If they had their way, they'd probably go back to their full on cold war borders and go into eastern Germany, if not further.
Of course, given how the soviet satellite states broke away in the 80s and 90s, and given how many of them are sovereign nations now, and given how many of them clearly do not want to remain under control of Russia, and have actively sought out protection from NATO for that purpose, NATO expansionism has largely been voluntary, and it's been done mostly by voluntary states wanting protection from Russia. because Russia can't be trusted and clearly just invades its neighbors full stop. Ukraine in a way justifies NATO's presence in a post cold war era if anything, and yeah.
Anyway, Russia just invaded Ukraine like last year, and the war is still going on, and obviously people have been displaced, and this has been a massive humanitarian crisis, and yeah.
Now, as for how that's different from Palestine. Israel was founded in 1948. And while yes, it was obviously done through the remnants of colonialism, and while yes, it displaced a lot of Arab Palestinians living there, that was 75 years ago. Since then, several generations of Israelis have grown up and lived their entire lives in Israel, and they know no different. Those who did the morally questionable acts to establish the state are now dead, and the ones who were alive to remember it were very young at the time. If you were 18+ in 1948, you would be 93+ now. So you're either in a nursing home or dead.
I know the palestinians have really horrid conditions sometimes, and I honestly think criticizing israel is valid for that. They should, IMO, try to integrate Palestinians into their country or give them their own land to rule over and compromise with them to improve their standing, but the Palestinians don't want that, they don't want to share the land. They want the Israelis dead or gone, period. And at this point, it just seems ridiculous.
You're not getting rid of generations of Israelis without creating another humanitarian crisis. Two wrongs do not make a right. The two factions need to learn to live with each other, and to tolerate each other, and this tolerance and move toward peace has to be a two way street, with both sides making concessions to the other. This isn't gonna happen as long as at least one faction is just full on "these other people need to die, period." Say what you want about the Israelis, but they're at least not openly genociding Palestinians. That already makes them one step more moral than palestine here.
And yeah.
Contrast this with Ukraine. The war is still going on, Russia just invaded them a year ago, and they're the ones CREATING a humanitarian crisis. Things were fine, until Russia decided to go full butcher on the Ukrainians. And with that war still fresh, and going on, then Ukraine is fully justified in trying to repel the armed invaders. And Russia needs to be punished for invading in the first place. They broke the peace, and they need to suffer the brunt of the consequences.
If Russia wins their war, genocides the Ukrainians living there, and then Russians live there for 75 years, and then some time around the year 2100 some Ukrainians decide to start genociding russians claiming they want their land back, at THAT point I'll be just as sympathetic toward Russia as I am toward Israel. At some point you just gotta admit, give it up, the insurgent faction lost. It lost decades or even a century or more ago in some cases, and your dream of a homeland is not gonna happen. You gotta make best of the current situation, and you gotta move toward peace.
Heck. Russia HAS a situation like this. I know China likes to dispute "Northern Manchuria", ie, Vladivostok with the Russians. And it's like, give it up, Russia has owned the area for 150+ years. Wanting it back because it was yours many generations ago is stupid. Russians live there now, they've lived there for generations. Just stop already.
Seriously, at some point, it just moves from "okay we need to repel these invaders" to "okay these invaders have been here for generations and their claims are as legit as anyone else's." Conflicts may rage for generations, but at some point you just gotta give it up already. You gotta admit that you lost, you're never gonna have your homeland to yourself and by killing others you are the terrorists, you are the bad guy. You are just as bad as the people who killed and removed your ancestors in the first place.
That's where I'm at with Israel. I'm not interested in litigating land disputes from 75 years ago. Israel has it now, they've had it for generations, the people living there are innocent and merely inherited the situation, move on, make peace.
At this point, turning Israel back over to the Palestinians is like turning over the Americas back to the native americans. Some weirdo leftists might argue for that, but the whole idea is absurd.
It gets even worse when you consider like 70%+ of Israel is Jewish and the Muslim minority is only 20% or so. So we're going to ruin the lives of 3 people to make the life of one better. Yeah, that sounds like a utilitarian calculation.
None of this is to suggest that the Palestinians get all of the treatment they have coming to them. I might be particularly unsympathetic to hamas, but I do understand that at some point, yeah, Israel needs to integrate their ethnic and religious minorities into their country in a meaningful way. And those minorities need to graciously accept and lay down their arms. It's the only way there's gonna be peace in the region unless one side genocides the other outright and assumes 100% control. Which isn't an acceptable solution.
As for Ukraine, well, the best solution is to push Russia back into their own country. See? Context is everything. You can try to make a moral equivalence, but to some extent, my views here are represented by what's actually practical. Id rather preserve the world map as it is with its borders and all, and I think fighting over old land disputes from generations ago is ridiculous. And while normally I dont weigh into these kinds of discussions on here, given the current situations going on in the world right now, it seems appropriate to actually discuss it.
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