The situations are not exactly parallel, though that will not make much difference to anyone.
Putin uses some of your logic to justify his invasion of Ukraine and the Russian military presence in the Crimean, Donetsk and Luhansk, provinces that he established in 2014.
He argues that Crimea is rightfully Russian territory, so his takeover in 2014 was not an invasion but liberation. He also set up an ethnic Russian government in eastern Ukraine that then invite him in to occupy, so that too, was not an invasion.
Putin has justified the current war in Ukraine on the grounds that Ukraine is and was always Russian territory, so he's also not invading but simply liberating. Unfortunately for the theatrics useful to buttressing that narrative, the KGB was unable to organize a Fifth Column to support his logic of liberation.
In any event, Ukraine is a sovereign country under international law and therefore permitted to invite and accept aid from the West or any else.
Israel, like Russia, is occupying foreign territories, though through a quirk of history, Palestine is not a sovereign state. Indeed, like Putin, Netanyahu has declared that the West Bank is Jewish sovereign territory dating from Biblical times. Hence, he and religious Zionists refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria.
The Iranian proxies nor Iran are not themselves laying claim to territory in Palestine. Rather, it is Israel that is in breech of international law by denying self-determination, a status that became especially prominent across the globe after Word War I.
Unfortunately, the eventual concession of sovereignty in the Middle East did not happen in Palestine--the British, whose pre-World War II sins are numerous, managed to muddle the march to decolonization in Palestine. He declared the area a future home for Jews. The Holocaust created conditions for that promise to become a n opportunity for persecuted Jews to escape European antii-Semeisim.
The Arab anti-colonialists used a liberation tactic that at least obscured, even if only emotionally, their legal case, at least in the eyes of the US: terrorism. It was a tactic used by the Algerians to expel France in the early 1960s. Israeli freedom fighters also employed the tactic to get the British out of Palestine.
Oct. 7 pitted the use of terror tactics vs. the legal demands of anti-colonialism. Israel contends that history started on Oct. 7 and showed that Palestinian are not due nor can be trusted to rule themselves. Most other countries contend that history dd not begin on Oct. 7, and though the perpetrators must be punished the Palestinian statehood issue must also be resolved.
The US government has been entrapped in its overweening dedication to anti-terrorism. I think Blinken is of the history-did-not-begin on Oct. 7 camp.
As far as I am concerned, history did not begin on Oct. 7. But nor is terrorism, as defined by attacks on civilians, the only rout to liberation. I acknowledge I live in the past: Lucia and I covered the first intifada, which was largely a civic, mostly non-violence revolt. It eventually failed for reasons that are too many to add to this long missive, b ut it represented a moving confluence of liberation and peaceful resistance. Neither Putin nor the mullahs and perish not Netanyahu believe in that civil political tactit either
Many navies from many parts of the world have been fighting those attacking civilian shipping in the region for a couple of decades now, this is nothing new. It's an escalation due to the Houthi action which indeed could go on, damaging not just Egypt's economy but those of all the navies (and more) whose trade depends on cheaper transport via the Suez Canal, so it won't go on indefinitely. Furthermore, the Houthis will try the patience of China, on whom Iran depends.
On the different issue of the Gaza war, Israel will soon be severely censured for its ongoing action because the ICJ ruling. If legal cases are brought in the USA, as surely they will be in the UK and EU, then Israel will find itself even more isolated. If Israel plays this wrong - and it so easily could in many ways - the ramifications and fallout could become an existential threat to the Jewish state in a way that 1400 deaths on 7 October never were.
But the war is a different issue to Houthi attacks on civilian shipping. While Iran in the short term benefits from the actions of these maritime terrorists, there is no evidence that the Mullahs are orchestrating them. Sooner rather than later, though, the Houthis will need re-arming and will be asking Iran to give them further support, and also sooner rather than later, Ebrahim Raisi's phone is going to ring and on the other line will be Xi Jinping.
On a second disconnected issue, and just a little point of history concerning your comment to Peter Wellington. Britain was not in Palestine as an imperialist, but because the League of Nations handed it the Mandate after the imperial Ottoman Power had collapsed spectacularly at the hands of British manoeuvre warfare in WW1. See a presaging of the Arab-Israeli conflict in Churchill's White Paper of 1922 in the letters of the Palestinian Arab Delegation and Zionists Organisation > https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-202945/
And on a counterfactual from that history: had the war against the Ottoman Empire turned into a defensive war of attrition as it was in Europe, Britain would either: have had to withdraw its forces needed for the Flanders trenches, in which case the Ottoman, though the Sick Man of Europe, might have prevented the flood of Jews arriving in Palestine; or it would have decimated the Turkish army, and successfully prosecuted it for the genocide of Armenians.
Let’s think this thru. If Iran’s support for groups striking the US makes Iran a legitimate target for the US to attack, does NATO members’ support for Ukrainian strikes against Russia make NATO members legitimate targets for Russia to attack?
The situations are not exactly parallel, though that will not make much difference to anyone.
Putin uses some of your logic to justify his invasion of Ukraine and the Russian military presence in the Crimean, Donetsk and Luhansk, provinces that he established in 2014.
He argues that Crimea is rightfully Russian territory, so his takeover in 2014 was not an invasion but liberation. He also set up an ethnic Russian government in eastern Ukraine that then invite him in to occupy, so that too, was not an invasion.
Putin has justified the current war in Ukraine on the grounds that Ukraine is and was always Russian territory, so he's also not invading but simply liberating. Unfortunately for the theatrics useful to buttressing that narrative, the KGB was unable to organize a Fifth Column to support his logic of liberation.
In any event, Ukraine is a sovereign country under international law and therefore permitted to invite and accept aid from the West or any else.
Israel, like Russia, is occupying foreign territories, though through a quirk of history, Palestine is not a sovereign state. Indeed, like Putin, Netanyahu has declared that the West Bank is Jewish sovereign territory dating from Biblical times. Hence, he and religious Zionists refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria.
The Iranian proxies nor Iran are not themselves laying claim to territory in Palestine. Rather, it is Israel that is in breech of international law by denying self-determination, a status that became especially prominent across the globe after Word War I.
Unfortunately, the eventual concession of sovereignty in the Middle East did not happen in Palestine--the British, whose pre-World War II sins are numerous, managed to muddle the march to decolonization in Palestine. He declared the area a future home for Jews. The Holocaust created conditions for that promise to become a n opportunity for persecuted Jews to escape European antii-Semeisim.
The Arab anti-colonialists used a liberation tactic that at least obscured, even if only emotionally, their legal case, at least in the eyes of the US: terrorism. It was a tactic used by the Algerians to expel France in the early 1960s. Israeli freedom fighters also employed the tactic to get the British out of Palestine.
Oct. 7 pitted the use of terror tactics vs. the legal demands of anti-colonialism. Israel contends that history started on Oct. 7 and showed that Palestinian are not due nor can be trusted to rule themselves. Most other countries contend that history dd not begin on Oct. 7, and though the perpetrators must be punished the Palestinian statehood issue must also be resolved.
The US government has been entrapped in its overweening dedication to anti-terrorism. I think Blinken is of the history-did-not-begin on Oct. 7 camp.
As far as I am concerned, history did not begin on Oct. 7. But nor is terrorism, as defined by attacks on civilians, the only rout to liberation. I acknowledge I live in the past: Lucia and I covered the first intifada, which was largely a civic, mostly non-violence revolt. It eventually failed for reasons that are too many to add to this long missive, b ut it represented a moving confluence of liberation and peaceful resistance. Neither Putin nor the mullahs and perish not Netanyahu believe in that civil political tactit either
Many navies from many parts of the world have been fighting those attacking civilian shipping in the region for a couple of decades now, this is nothing new. It's an escalation due to the Houthi action which indeed could go on, damaging not just Egypt's economy but those of all the navies (and more) whose trade depends on cheaper transport via the Suez Canal, so it won't go on indefinitely. Furthermore, the Houthis will try the patience of China, on whom Iran depends.
On the different issue of the Gaza war, Israel will soon be severely censured for its ongoing action because the ICJ ruling. If legal cases are brought in the USA, as surely they will be in the UK and EU, then Israel will find itself even more isolated. If Israel plays this wrong - and it so easily could in many ways - the ramifications and fallout could become an existential threat to the Jewish state in a way that 1400 deaths on 7 October never were.
But the war is a different issue to Houthi attacks on civilian shipping. While Iran in the short term benefits from the actions of these maritime terrorists, there is no evidence that the Mullahs are orchestrating them. Sooner rather than later, though, the Houthis will need re-arming and will be asking Iran to give them further support, and also sooner rather than later, Ebrahim Raisi's phone is going to ring and on the other line will be Xi Jinping.
On a second disconnected issue, and just a little point of history concerning your comment to Peter Wellington. Britain was not in Palestine as an imperialist, but because the League of Nations handed it the Mandate after the imperial Ottoman Power had collapsed spectacularly at the hands of British manoeuvre warfare in WW1. See a presaging of the Arab-Israeli conflict in Churchill's White Paper of 1922 in the letters of the Palestinian Arab Delegation and Zionists Organisation > https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-202945/
And on a counterfactual from that history: had the war against the Ottoman Empire turned into a defensive war of attrition as it was in Europe, Britain would either: have had to withdraw its forces needed for the Flanders trenches, in which case the Ottoman, though the Sick Man of Europe, might have prevented the flood of Jews arriving in Palestine; or it would have decimated the Turkish army, and successfully prosecuted it for the genocide of Armenians.
Let’s think this thru. If Iran’s support for groups striking the US makes Iran a legitimate target for the US to attack, does NATO members’ support for Ukrainian strikes against Russia make NATO members legitimate targets for Russia to attack?