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.

-6 points

Toeing the company line?

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24 points

Not necessarily, just not fucking stupid enough to say otherwise while his own country is also fighting a defensive war against what might be considered russian terror. 101 public relations

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2 points

His own country could also be considered to fight against illegal occupants violating their territorial integrity. I really feel like you got the sides switched on this one, chief.

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-1 points

Im not sure what this is trying to say. Obviously the Ukraine is fighting a defensive war, which I rephrased a bit so the statement regarding Israel might fit on their situation as well. What sides did I get supposedly switched here?

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0 points
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I read like like he can’t say that Ukranians vs Russians is like Palestinians vs Israelis because if he did it, he would be losing military support from several countries for his defense of Ukraine (namelly the US, where there is a massive and well-entrenched pro-Israel lobby which would quite likely fuck up any further funding and military help from the US to Ukraine), so he has to choose his words and say what’s best for Ukraine.

For the good of Ukraine there is really only one thing he can say, and that’s what he said.

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1 point
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Until Ukraine attacks a music festival of civilians in Russia, the analogy really doesn’t work.

Hamas embodies the part where Russia is wantonly killing civilians.

Israel’s government embodies both the killing of civilians and illegal occupation.

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-2 points
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For him to point out the similarity of being faced with a much large occupier nation than themselves between the position of Ukranians and Palestinians, would pretty much guarantee the end of US military support to Ukraine as the US Congress has several “Friends of other country” groups of parliamentarians (how exactly is being in the parliament of one country defending the interests of a different country not treason?) for various countries, the largest of which is “Friends of Israel” and that group probably controls more than enough members of Congress to stop any future funding of military help to Ukraine.

So yeah, Zelenswky is doing the correct thing in diplomatic terms for his country, unlike many other politicians who don’t act for the good of their own country.

Also lets not forget Hamas is supported by Iran, who has provided drones to Russia to kill Ukranians for over a year now, so yeah, even if he empathises with the plight of Palestinians that’s a whole different thing from agreeing with Hamas.

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11 points
Removed by mod
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73 points

And what about palestianians defending themselves form Israeli terror? Or do brown people not get that right?

Or if everything Israel is doing is “defending itself” then maybe we should let Russia “defend itself” against Ukrainian terror?

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72 points
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It’s a stupid article that didn’t deserve reposting.

Zelensky is obviously going to take Israel’s side, since Israel might actually provide Ukraine with weapons, aid, or intelligence, whereas Hamas will provide Ukraine with nothing and is aligned with Iran who are actively supplying Russia with the drones that are murdering them.

But yeah, from an analagous standpoint, Israel would be Russia who has illegally occupied the land of Palestine, and this is roughly the equivalent of Ukraine striking back at Russia in Russia’s territory, though there certainly seem like far far more civilian casualties than in any of Ukraine’s operations, at the same time Palestinians are also far more desperate and have face decades and decades of oppression, conditions likely to foster extremism.

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5 points
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Also ukraine has high tech guided munitions and drones. Hamas has incredibly low tech and Inaccurate rockets.

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6 points

Immaculate?

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1 point

I think you meant to say inaccurate. Immaculate is when you set someone free, particularly of social or legal restrictions.

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3 points

There’s another way to spin the analogy, and I believe that’s closer to what Zelensky had in mind.

Both Russia and Hamas target civilian buildings with rockets. Both recently advanced in a military invasion into the sovereign territory of Ukraine / Israel. Both kidnapped and murdered citizencs. So the analogy is Russia / Hamas vs Ukraine / Israel.

I think it’s a bit weird Zelensky would ally with a country which behaves like Russia from his point of view. I agree he probably might still do it, since he needs the weapons. But given this incentive, I think the alternative analogy becomes far more appealing and convincing.

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2 points

Eh, that alternative analogy is a worse one though, since it falls apart the minute you look at Israel’s past indiscriminate killing of civilians and current unilateral and internationally condemned occupation of Palestinian territory.

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2 points

Both Russia and Hamas target civilian buildings with rockets

Thats disingenuous. While im sure Hamas would have 0 problem with targeting civilians if they could, the reality is their rockers are far too primitive to target much of anything.

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25 points

gunning civilians down during a music festival is “defending themselves” now? God I’m sick of people outright defending literal monsters. IDF and Hamas are both evil organisations. the people being killed on both sides are not. I cannot understand how anyone can sit here and justify killing civilians on any side for any reason.

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0 points

Thats kind of my point. Im pointing out the absurdity of claiming Israels actions are “self defence” by comparing them to Hamas’ actions which are just as clearly not self defence.

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-2 points
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you won’t believe, but that’s what Russia is doing – preemptively defending itself.

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0 points

My dude, for your own sake get a hobby or something. Spending your time being a troll on lemmy is just about the most wasteful thing you can do with you life. When youre old you dont want to look back on your life and realise then how much time you wasted on this nonsense.

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-1 points
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You’re my dude, read the history of the war way back to 2014. Read about Donbass. Find other sources.

Can you speak russian, you expert?

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5 points
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Of course it does, just like any other nation. In this case, the extreme islamists don’t care about geopolitical resources like land or oil. They care about exterminating Jews. Plain and simple. If Hamas had free reign, they would execute every last person on planet earth, including you, unless you converted to Islam. It’s in their ideology–dying in a holy war against non-muslims is the ticket to eternal life. That’s literally what they believe. And because of that, they sew chaos and terror wherever they go.

Clearly the large majority of muslims do not believe this way. But the extremists do, and that’s how history is made. The peaceful, normal civilians who’d rather just live their lives, aren’t the decision makers. And of course this all traces back to a long series of stupid decisions and badly drawn maps after the world wars. But make no mistake, Hamas is no different than Nazi Germany in their desire to exterminate Jews, and eventually they will need to be dealt with in exactly the same way.

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0 points

Exactly. No issues with moderates, but moderates aren’t the ones suicide-bombing and throwing suspected gays off the top of buildings. An Islamic society creates safe spaces for the extremists, and the extremists will do whatever they can to take power.

Other Muslims are the ones targeted most by Islamist extremists. It’s in the Muslims’ best interest that they be kept a minority and out of power. There is insurmountable evidence that when the majority is Muslim, life gets worse for everyone, women’s rights are stripped away, and freedom of thought and religion is gone.

Quite similar to how if Scientology became mainstream we would all be worse off.

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3 points

There is insurmountable evidence that when the majority is Muslim, life gets worse for everyone, women’s rights are stripped away, and freedom of thought and religion is gone.

Quite similar to how if Scientology became mainstream we would all be worse off.

The last sentence hints both might have a common cause whis is not “being Muslim”. I think it might be “being extremist”. The opposite would be a pluralist society, which embraces diversity and encourages respectful coexistence and exchange.

This then also includes the rise of right-wing populists in democracies all over the world, with exactly the same consequences as you said.

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-3 points

My friend, these anti-Israel zealots won’t be happy unless Israel just rolls over and lets Hamas kill Jews without consequence.

The anti-Israel crowd thinkd Israel is the devil of it fights back.

They think Israel is the devil, if, as you mentioned, they call buildings ahead of time, and give people time to evacuate, before Israel bombs terrorist. Headquarters, because I guess they think Palestinian buildings are more important than Israeli lives.

They think Israel is the devil if they build a security fence to keep our suicide bombers.

Mostly they think Israel is the devil because Israel offered the most general peace deal in history, but refuse to give Palestinian’s the Right of Return, which would have allowed Palestinians to claim voting rights, and literally vote to turn Israel into an anti-Jewish theocracy.

Now… Most of the people HERE haven’t the foggiest clue about any of that. And if you talked them through the situation and the options, they’d understand that Israel does not now, nor have they ever had a partner on the Palestinian side with which to make peace. They want Israel gone, full stop. And you can’t make peace with people who believe in literally no situations in which you still exist at the end.

Israel, on the other hand has showed throughout it’s history that it will do extraordinary things for peace. They gave up land for peace with Egypt. They have offered extraordinary concessions.

But the people who really needed to read this downvoted me in the first paragraph and are already typing a rant.

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-1 points

yup precisely. well, im with you, and so is more than 50% of the internet i think lemmy.world world news sub seems to have a particularly high proportion of 23 year old basement dwellers who’ve never suffered a day in their lives

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18 points

If nothing else, Zelensky knows he has to toe the American policy line. I don’t blame him, really. It’s self-protection.

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-36 points

He has to pay back the people who got him the presidency, after all.

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