A friend, who ardently supports Ukraine against Russia, writes the following. He is attempting to countermy separation of these conflicts in which I am ardently for Israel and indifferent to Ukraine.
What say you?
Conservative opinion is divided on support for Ukraine. Some conservatives support the struggles of both Ukraine and Israel while others support the Israel effort “only” rejecting Western aid to Ukraine for a variety of reasons too lengthy to detail here. Yet it’s becoming increasingly clear that this is “one war” and that if you support Ukraine then it follows by circumstance that you should also support Israel. Conversely if you support Israel then - if this is indeed one war - you must also support Ukraine.
Support for Israel and the rejection of support for Ukraine should be abandoned
How do we arrive at the “one war” scenario?
By examining “who” is behind these wars - the moving force behind each conflict. In the case of the Russia/Ukraine war it’s a slam dunk: Russia unilaterally invaded a sovereign nation - a war crime in and of itself. But what about the Israeli/Hamas war, who’s behind it?
In short, Russia is behind it.
True, Russia isn’t directly involved in the fighting but it’s using proxies to do the fighting for it. Iran is a bitter enemy of Israel who has threatened time and again to wipe the Jewish state off the map. Iran is also Russia’s number one ally in its war with Ukraine providing Russia with tens of thousands of drones and more lethal cruise missiles currently in transit. It’s also been reported that Hezbollah fighters have turned up in Ukraine, fighting side by side with Russian troops. Hezbollah fighters are currently waging war against Israel from (thus far) safe bases in Lebanon. How long they will remain safe remains to be seen. Iran has also been the primary funder of Hamas, sending that terrorist group hundreds of millions over the years. There would be no Hamas were it not for Iran.
Russia is also tied to Hamas in several ways but most of all as it’s now emerging there’s a military connection: Recent disclosures have Russia deeply involved in the training of Hamas fighters who invaded and butchered Southern Israel.
Then there’s the Russia/Syria connection. Russian troops saved the day for the Assad regime entering the country years back on the side of that regime, pulverizing the opposition with massive artillery assaults on civilian areas to say nothing of using poisonous gas on civilians.
What of Syria?
It just declared war on Israel.
Syria is a client state of the Russians and doesn’t make moves like this without Russian approval and encouragement along with guarantees that: “If you declare war on Israel we will protect you.”
A puzzle remains: Why would Russia stand behind the murder and rape of hundreds of Israeli citizens? Because Russia’s war with Ukraine isn’t going that well and a “second front” may cause NATO to have second thoughts about supporting Ukraine, inasmuch as NATO and the US will now have to divert resources otherwise meant for Ukraine to the Israeli front. There’s also the “world weariness” situation that European and American publics will become tired of war and withdraw electoral support for continued funding of Ukraine.
What then was Russia’s reasoning in opening a second front doomed to military failure? I must admit this had me flummoxed for a while. After all, a Russia/Hamas victory would only be temporary after which the IDF would wipe the floor with the terrorist group. So if Russia was to obtain the greatest benefit from a second front that front had to have more payback attached to it. The Russian calculation appears to have been the following:
In the process of training Hamas, instruct them well in savagery and atrocity, debauchery, decapitation, mutilation and hostage taking. This will so outrage the Jewish state that it will launch a full scale attack on Gaza, thus outraging Muslim street opinion throughout the Middle East causing a rush to Islam’s defense. Thus far both Egypt and Turkey (militarily two of the most powerful Muslim countries) have answered the call - Egypt is sendings its tanks into Gaza and Turkey is committing its elite forces to Gaza.
So what are we looking at here?
We’re looking at a full blown Middle Eastern war.
Now that’s a second front with dividends.
But it gets better at least for the Kremlin. Not only was the Gaza invasion intended to evoke Muslim outrage in the Middle East it was also intended to evoke Muslim rage throughout the Western World. Thanks to western policies premised upon “diversity is our strength,” millions upon millions of Muslim immigrants have flooded into the Western world where they have taken to the streets in massive shows of protest against “Israeli genocide.” The underlying premise of all this protest is this: If Canada, America and Germany - to name but three of many examples - continue to support Israel then we have something more drastic in mind for you.
So you can bet your bottom dollar that there are Hamas sleeper cells all over the place just waiting for that signa (from where, from Moscow?) to unleash hell on the West that dared to support Ukraine. Either by design or intent the Biden Administration has facilitated the infiltration of Hamas terrorists into the North American continent with its wide open border policy with Mexico. Eight million people have in effect been allowed by Biden to enter the country illegally with an absolute minimum of background checks if there were any at all: A substantial number of this total entered Canada illegally via the Roxham Road entry point. This big question is this: Just how many of these 8 million migrants are terrorists on the make is anyone’s guess.
Here we have the Kremlin taking advantage of a self inflicted wound. Time and again we were told by our elites that “diversity is our strength.” If so, it follows that our choice of immigrants is based upon “how different you are from us,” and god forbid that it should be based on “how similar you are to us.” The greater the cultural difference, the more attractive you are as immigration material. So for decades immigrants that have flooded the West have had an especially hard time assimilating, especially when told by Woke elites that “your assimilation is the worst of all possible worlds. Stay as you are, stay as different from the rest as you possibly can.”
"Diversity is our strength!
To make a long story short it just hasn’t worked out that way but more like:
“Diversity is a disaster.”
Be that as it may, Putin’s second front takes geopolitical advantage of the Western meme that diversity is our strength and uses it against us to create turmoil and unrest - anything to take the Western ouvre away from Ukraine as the West becomes absorbed with its own internal problems while questioning support for Ukrainian war effort.
It follows as surely as night follows day that this is one conflict primarily moved by Russia not only in collusion with Iran but also North Korea and China. North Korea just shipped 90 containers of weapons to Russia while China stepped on board by condemning Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Here both Russia and China are telling Muslims: We are your friends while those in the West are your enemies.
[Check this out hot off the press: Vladimir Putin who never tired of slandering Ukrainians with the Nazi epithet is now hurling the same slander at the Jews. Also see China lining up with the Russian position, backing Hamas and spurning Israel].
Thus it follows that the Russia/Ukraine war and the Hamas/ Israeli war are not two separate discrete entities hermetically sealed but critically intertwined as part of a larger geopolitical equation: Growing global tension spearheaded by Russia’s imperial ambitions supported by imperialist nuclear powers China (Taiwan), North Korea (South Korea) and Iran - a soon to be nuclear power sworn to destroy Israel and exert hegemony in the Middle East, absorbing Iraq and replacing Saudi Arabia
Claims explicit and implicit by some conservatives that the two conflicts are qualitatively different is like saying that Mussolin’s war in Ethiopia was a different kettle of fish from the London Blitz or that America’s Pearl Harbour had no connection to Germany’s invasion of Poland, further that the Battle of the North Atlantic had nothing to do with Guadalcanal. On the contrary, when all is said and done they were all part of the same war - the Second World War.
So it goes that the Russia/Ukraine War and the thus far Israeli/Hamas war are part of a larger geopolitical conflict arena in which two sides are ominously lining up in what could be a portent of World War Three. Islam has to some extent been a non-aligned factor globally although we should probably exclude Iran that has had close ties with Moscow for many years now. Hence the Iranian/Shia branch of Islam had already been captured by the China/Russia axis; it was the by far larger Sunni branch of Islam that remained out of reach with the Saudis in particular playing hard to get. But the Sunni branch of Islam has now been secured or at the very least some distance has been travelled in securing Sunni Muslim support seen by the entry of Turkey and Egypt into the fray, both countries standing beside the Russia/Iran concordat while spurning Israel and the West. It goes without saying that the aggregate opposition to the West etched before the reader here is a formidable adversary by any stretch of the imagination.
Conservatives should thus reconsider their classification that (a) Ukraine is a bad war that deserves no support and that (b) Israel is a good war that deserves every support. This is a problematic dichotomy - because if this discussion has any credibility at all - Ukraine and Israel are two peas from the same pod and we support one at the expense of the other only at our peril.
Malcolm MacKinnon, Oct 2023