Why I See the Wars in Ukraine and Gaza Differently

To answer a question I keep getting...

Since nearly everything I post here is hijacked by a debate over the war in Gaza, I thought I would dive directly into the belly of the beast and give you my thoughts on the two proxy wars America is fighting, with the caveat that foreign policy is not exactly my strong suit.

I’ll start with this: I do not believe either of these wars would be raging if Joe Biden wasn’t in power. The sloppy exit from Afghanistan showed the world that American leadership was compromised with a weak, incapacitated leader who was too arrogant to listen to military brass.

The media spent four years doing nothing but ridiculing, doubting, and mocking every decision Trump made on foreign policy. Then, when Biden committed the biggest military blunder of my lifetime (or certainly one of them), it was crickets.

I don’t think Putin or Hamas would have been as bold if they worried about what the United States might do. They are not afraid. They are flaunting their fearlessness before the world.

When a gaslighting, partisan press leads one political party, they are so disconnected from reality that they think putting Biden in power would be fine. Well, it isn’t fine. From open borders to flagrant attacks in other nations, we can see that elections have consequences.

But let’s set that aside because there isn’t anything to be done there, at least for now. Why do I feel differently about these wars? That appears to be the question. And where so many go with this is that I am a “Zionist.” As embarrassing as it is to admit, I didn’t understand what that meant until this war broke out.

My father was Jewish, and his family was from Russia. My mother is not Jewish and raised us without any religion. I spent time with the Jewish side of my family, but I was never traditionally or technically Jewish. Yet I was Jewish enough to feel the sting of being Jewish in a mostly Christian country, even if not technically.

I do not have an allegiance to Israel in the way that others do. I’ve never been. I have never particularly cared about preserving the state of Israel. People like Bari Weiss, Ben Shapiro, and others are outspoken with their loyalty to the state of Israel. I suppose that makes them Zionists. But I also haven’t been a “free Palestine” person either because that would make me a hypocrite. More on that in a bit.

To my mind, Israel had to attack back after what Hamas did on October 7th. They had to get the hostages back, for one thing, and they had to try to end Hamas once and for all. Raping women, burning babies, taking hostages was the kind of thing you only do if you want war. And they did. Partly they knew how the world would respond, post the Great Awokening, but partly out of desperation. They do not want to keep living the way they are, in occupied territory, in poverty.

The situation was dire and getting even more dire by the minute. And yet, they also refuse any negotiation that isn’t all Jews leaving Israel. Right?

This is a good piece in The Spectator about where they are now:

Israel’s far-right minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, warned on Monday that “if the prime minister decides to end the war without launching an extensive attack on Rafah to defeat Hamas, he will not have a mandate to continue serving as prime minister.” Netanyahu has confirmed that he will attack Rafah, and that he has a date for the operation in mind. While that announcement might appease his far-right government allies, it will do little to improve relations with the United States.

And on the flipside:

The pressure on the Israeli government is now mounting and Netanyahu has been urged to halt the planned offensive in a joint statement signed by Egyptian president Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, French president Emmanuel Macron and Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Writing in France’s Le Monde newspaper, they warned the plan would have “dangerous consequences” and “threaten regional escalation.” They wrote: “The war in Gaza and the catastrophic humanitarian suffering it is causing must end now.”

The humanitarian costs are now off the charts. Even if Israel wins the battle, they won’t win the war. That means too many have turned against them to continue to root for their survival, which will likely extend much worse conflicts for the foreseeable future.

The piece ends this way:

If the assault on Rafah goes ahead then what? Will Netanyahu claim “mission accomplished?” At some point a political solution will need to be found, and the Israeli prime minister could do worse than to heed the wise words of former MI6 chief Sir Alex Younger, an avowed supporter of Israel, who told the BBC Radio 4 Today program: “This [the war in Gaza] is fundamentally a political issue. There is not a military solution. You cannot kill all the terrorists without creating far more than you began with, and without a political strategy you are not going to succeed.”

So that’s the politics. Now, I’ll tell you my personal feelings. I

’m not on a street corner chanting “from the river to the sea” because I would feel like a hypocrite for doing so. Darryl Cooper, Katie Halper, Krystal Ball, Dave Smith, and all of the usual suspects calling what is happening in Gaza “genocide” and blaming Israel entirely do not seem to realize who they are and where they live. I enjoy the country that white Europeans colonized.

Israel exists now. Whether it has a right to be there doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it is there, like the United States. I don't want to hear it unless Cooper, Halper, Smith, and Ball are prepared today to give up their property in America. Put up or shut up.

They live here, too, on land conquered by people who were better educated, better funded, and had better weapons than the Natives they slaughtered and displaced. That’s what humans do. We build tribes and fight wars over territory or the territory's religion. We have been doing this forever. One kind of person's only advantage over another is their ability to make bigger and better weapons.

When the Puritans came to the New World from England and settled in Salem, Massachusetts, they were continually attacked by Native Americans. The attacks were so brutal they made what Hamas did look like child’s play.

Would you like to know how bad it was? Here is just a taste.

There was no diplomatic solution back then or ever throughout our history. There was only “This was your land, and now, this is my land.”

“More than one in four Indians live in poverty, the highest rate of any racial group in the United States.” We benefitted from the destruction of all the people who were here before us.

Throughout our history, humans have done nothing but conquer lands, migrate, destroy, loot, and colonize. The winner is the one who outlives, outlasts, and outplays the others.

All empires eventually fall. Maybe ours will, too. If another kind of human rose up—say, a transhuman, like a robot army—maybe we, too, would be displaced. Or maybe a super species will evolve to become smarter than us.

Maybe people of the future will then send John Connor back to save the human species from the robots.

But seriously, as an American, I accept what it took to settle this land and that many of us live lives of unimaginable wealth and freedom compared to the Puritan's early colonizers or the Native Americans they displaced.

I’m sorry to be so cynical. War is hell.

Because the United States funds the war in Gaza, that makes us directly involved in whatever horrors come out of the war. That has to be weighed against the threat of showing the world Biden is weak and can’t finish the job. I think a temporary ceasefire to get the civilians out of Rafah might be the way to go. Where do you then put them? I have no idea.

I think calling it genocide is stupid. It’s like calling Trump a fascist. It is not true. The truth matters. And remember, nearly all countries in the Arab world want all Jews out of the region. The opposite is not true for Israelis.

As far as Ukraine goes, I see this 100% as a blunder by the Biden administration. They should have negotiated. They could have avoided the war. I don’t care enough about Ukraine to think this level of war is necessary. It probably drags us into a world war, with the exact people that the Biden administration has thrown away like human garbage sent off to fight and die for what is a useless, pointless war.

Again, it comes back to intent, this notion that Putin will expand like Hitler did. There is no evidence of that. Putin isn’t Hitler. He doesn’t seek world dominance. But he also doesn’t want the US or NATO breathing down his neck. Do we allow both Ukraine and Israel to lose their respective wars? Probably not. It would signal extreme weakness. Are they both losing wars? Probably.

I hope that answers lingering questions.