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.
The Ukrainian and Israeli governments have a common goal: ethnic cleansing of a helpless captive population. Both governments have agreed to various peace processes over the years mediated by foreign governments, then actively ignored the stipulations of those agreements, and those foreign governments were nowhere to be found when Ukraine/Israel continued the ethnic cleansing.
So some further questions
Have you heard of Donbas? No shame if you haven’t, you have to go out of your way to know much about it. Ukraine has been shelling civilians in Donbas since 2014. The people there and in Crimea are ethnically Russian, that’s why they want to be independent from Ukraine and why Ukraine hates them for it.
Nope, I did not and will read about that further. Asking questions to learn :)
the kind that won’t be one for long
Further to this, the agreements were the Minsk agreements.
This might be helpful as well, a language map of Ukraine I found on wikipedia. The red areas are the areas with a majority of Russian speakers, in Crimea and the southeast. It’s a census from 2001 too, so it’s not like this is a recent thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ukraine#/media/File:UkraineNativeLanguagesCensus2001detailed-en.png
Here’s another wikipedia map of the area called Donbas. It lines up pretty well with the Russian speakers in the first map. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donbas#/media/File:Donetsian_Region_in_Ukraine_(claims_hatched).svg
Now here’s where things get complicated. Eastern Ukraine and Crimea have a pretty stark political split that also follows these lines. Here’s an election map from 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Другий_тур_2010_по_округах-en.png
Yanukovich, the blue guy, was overthrown in the Euromaiden coup in 2014.
Interestingly, in 2019 a certain Russian speaking presidential candidate from Eastern Ukraine ran for president and won, with his strongest political support coming from these same regions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_election#/media/File:2019_Ukrainian_presidential_election,_round_2.svg
I don’t claim to fully understand the history of the country, or the various coups/revolutions, or even really what modern Ukraine is like, but whatever is going on it probably has something to do with this.
Ukranian citizens who are non-Ukranian speakers have been getting targeted for years leading up to this by language laws, this hasn’t just been ethnic Russians but also Greeks, Romani, Hungarians.
This then turned into routinely shelling the parts of Ukraine where these civilians predominantly live, and was leading into a full invasion before the SMO happened.
The Russian speaking minority population in the east of Ukraine, particularly in the breakaway republics that formed after 2014, who are subject to policies to suppress the Russian language as well as the republics being subjected to prolonged bombing campaigns and attacks by far right militias.
Minsk agreements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements
Yes I know wikipedia is garbage