Both Ukraine and Palestine are fighting against an invading force. We can unanimously agree that Palestinians have have been illegally occupied in an open air prison/concentration camp for 75 years. And we seem to agree that Palestine cannot be a perfect victim and it is reasonable that they seek support in Hamas instead of their Israeli oppressors.
Now why can’t the same logic be applied to Ukraine? There is absolutely a nazi problem in Ukraine. A nazi problem that needs to be wiped out. But Russia isnt trying to denazify Ukraine, they’re trying to maintain borders and resist NATO. But while doing so they are indiscriminately killing civilians and are the aggressors.
Personally, I believe in what Norman Finkelstein has to say about Hezbollah and the red army. Both are not perfect, but I don’t care about their politics. I care that they are a resisting force and believe a country should have the right to self determination.
So how are these situations diametrically opposed that you seem to be hostile towards Ukraine but supportive of Palestine?
I don’t mean to come off as shaming or judgemental. I genuinely would like to hear your perspective.
Edit: I appreciate all of the thoughtful and patient responses. Even though I might not respond to everything here I am reading all of it. I was operating under a lack of information, which I’ve never seen any Western media source report on. Ever since leaving reddit, hexbear has been a great source of alternative perspectives and context. It’s opened my eyes to a lot of how I’ve been misled by papers that I’ve trusted.
When I say I don’t support the Ukrainian resistance, I don’t mean I would like the Russian army to mow down Ukrainians. It is rather an acknowledgement of the historical realities that are ignored by mainstream Western presses, namely:
- NATO is an imperialist military and intelligence alliance that exists to preserve American hegemony.
- NATO and the US want to weaken and destroy Russia. Since they have not been successful in doing it from within like they were with the USSR, they are enacting a policy of encirclement by having more and more European countries join NATO which allows them to have a tangible military presence very close to Russian borders.
- Ukraine is currently a Western ally only because of the US-backed coup Maidan coup that removed the existing government and installed pro-US leaders in their stead. Armed neo-nazis played a significant role in this colour revolution.
- Areas like Lugansk, Donbass which do not accept the outcome of this coup have been targets of military aggression from Ukraininan neo-nazis. They have been shelling these regions since 2014 and do not mind targeting civilians.
- Ukraine and NATO have tried their best to not reach any sort of peace agreement. Minsk agreements were done in bad faith as Angela Merkel admitted. Zelenskyy campaigned on a platform of seeking peace with Russia for his presidency but allied with neo-nazis upon assuming office.
Because of these points, there is no positive peace to be achieved in the region by cheering for a war and supplying arms to Ukraine. They are fighting a proxy war for NATO to weaken Russia militarily, economically and diplomatically. The best solution would be to seek peace and ceasefire agreements between Russia and Ukraine. Despite what the Western media says about the Russian leadership, a deal like this is definitely possible. The only problem is that Russia will likely stipulate that Ukraine never be allowed to join NATO and that they be allowed to keep at least some of the conquered territories. This demand is not as outrageous as Western media would lead you to believe. The conquered territories are already Russian-speaking and sympathise with Russia. They have also been targets ethnic repression like legislations to prevent them from speaking Russian. Ukraine’s Western masters are not interested in peace anyway so the war rages on. But the narrative that Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked and that they are trying to conquer territories because they are an imperialist force following a Duginist doctrine is maliciously incorrect. It is really baffling why Westerners hold this point of view there is no evidence to support for this except for allegations of vague ties between Putin and Dugin.
Some people say “Russia could just leave if they wanted to”. This implies that positive peace can be achieved if they stopped the invasion. But this does not remove the element of the existential threat that they face from an expanding NATO encirclement.
To sum it up, I don’t support the Western narrative of Ukraine being a smol bean victim of an unprovoked invasion. I support peace that is positive and that can only be achieved by removing Western meddling from the region.
On the other hand, Israel’s expansion is a naked quest for territory and removing Arabs from the region. There isn’t much common with the Russian invasion of Ukraine here. It is easy and straightforward to support any uprising that resists settler-colonial genocide.
Some people say “Russia could just leave if they wanted to” implies that positive peace can be achieved if they stopped the invasion everything would be alright. But this does not remove the element of the existential threat that they face from an expanding NATO encirclement.
To develop this point further: Russians did leave after the ceasefire agreement following the Ukrainian civil war in 2014, and they honored the Minsk agreements that would gradually allow the Donbass republics to be returned to Ukraine (but with more local autonomy to protect their local culture/language rights etc to prevent future ethnic cleansing by the Ukrainian ultranationalists).
Instead, what they saw since 2014 was NATO training and arming Ukrainian neo-Nazis and supplying Javelins and Stingers and all sorts of military equipments to Ukraine. Anyone in the Russian leadership who actually believe that they can “just leave” after being fooled the last time is an idiot.
I can see the response to this being:
“I don’t care that America wants to destroy Russia, Russia is bad and should be destroyed.”
My response is that multipolarity matters. Multipolarity weakens colonialism and protects real people
Imagine you are a poor nation in the global south — say, Niger — and you want to escape from under the imperial boot without suffering the same fate as Libya, bombed back to the stone age and plunged into an unspeakable humanitarian crisis. When Russia, the only nation willing and able to protect you, offers you a hand, you don’t give a shit what Russia’s motives are.
Russia — however cynical, however capitalist — does provide a service to the global south. Because western capital threatens Russian capital, Russia resists western capital, and in the process often helps defend global south countries from subjugation. Niger, the second poorest nation on earth despite being rich in resources, just overthrew their French colonial puppet government this summer, and now, to avoid military intervention, they are appealing to Russia for security partnership. Without Russian backing, they’re probably fucked.
If you’re not a western chauvinist then you give a shit about this. If all your lesser-evil support for liberal politicians comes from a genuine place, then the more you study what’s happening in the world the more you’ll find yourself lesser-eviling Russia. This is what has happened on hexbear. None of us like Putin or the Russian government, but we see the trolley problem.
You’ve summed this up really well, agree 100%. I would just emphasize the suffering by the eastern regions under the post-Euromaiden government - The only major demand of Ukraine in the Minsk agreements was to give these regions self-determination and protections for minorities. Ukraine agreed to these terms, twice, then just admitted they would never implement them (explicitly admitting these regions would never vote to be part of Ukraine again).
So even without (the very important) wider political context, Russia spent 8 years trying to broker protection for these regions from war and discrimination, but Ukraine refused and instead pursued endless militarization. If Ukraine got into NATO, the west gave 0 shits, so the only way to protect those regions would’ve been starting a World War. So what options were left to protect the Donbass and Luhansk populations from being shelled into oblivion?
Ironically libs start salivating at the mere thought of regions splintering off as independent states based on linguistic characteristics (Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong) but when the rare situation arises where it would make some sense to do this they shut off their ears and live in an alternate reality.
