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.
I did not suggest that Iran is orchestrating the Houthi attacks. like Hezbollah, the Houthis hav their own motive for action, in particular to buttress their effort to play a full role in Yemen politics, if there is ever a deal to end the civil war. But I don't think Iran is going to stop offering political and military support and sabotage part of what it describes as the Axis of Resistance.
As you know, parts of the League of Nations' Mandates for the Middle East matched British colonial desires (and French, too) for post-WW I as laid out in the secret Syjes-Picot Treaty. Under Sykes-Picot, the UK asked for Palestine and that is what London got; it was not forced on the Brits against their will. Certainly, Arabs do not think that the Mandate was somehow forced on London against its will: Sykes-Picot was signed in 2016; the Mandate was laid down in 1922. The Balfour Declaration , 2017, was sandwiched in-between. At least, the Palestinians and other Arabs see the sequence as an example of domineering imperialistm.
Especially your recognition that the Houthis can and do act unilaterally and are not simply Iranian puppets, and that their motivation has nothing to do with the Gazan war. They have an eye to publicity when their cause was not just flagging, but beginning to falter.
There is clear racism here, not on your part, but on the part of those in the current conflict who object to the League of Nations Mandate. The Ottoman Empire was an empire, and had less legitimacy than the British in Palestine given the Mandate. We have all read and heard some within the parties to the current conflict who criticise the UN and yet almost in the same paragraph and breath then make demands of the international community. The UN took over where the League left off, as demonstrated by my link (it's a UN, not a League or FCO link, because the documents reside with the organisation that maintains international peace and security). Just because the imperialists were brown did not make it right, what made it right was the rule of international law, and that was only with the British.
The very fact that we are having an argument over history - and yes, I brought it up - demonstrates to me the futility of those in the war bringing it up again and again to make themselves right and their opponents wrong. The sooner we boycott, divest and sanction the criminals, racists and religious bigots on both sides the better until such time as they abide by international law and the rulings of the organisation that inherited all the resolutions, declarations, and conventions of the League of Nations.
For this reason, I welcome the USA's and UK's divesting in UNRWA, an organisation that since its inception has fostered welfare dependency and been a breeding ground for terrorism. The sooner it outlaws all those involved in Jewish settlements in the West Bank the better. There will need to be alot more done to bring the State of Israel to heel, the least of which will be the dismantling of the Israel Lobby in the USA for perverting US national interest, and I have some confidence that the law in America will play its part in doing so.
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.
I did not suggest that Iran is orchestrating the Houthi attacks. like Hezbollah, the Houthis hav their own motive for action, in particular to buttress their effort to play a full role in Yemen politics, if there is ever a deal to end the civil war. But I don't think Iran is going to stop offering political and military support and sabotage part of what it describes as the Axis of Resistance.
As you know, parts of the League of Nations' Mandates for the Middle East matched British colonial desires (and French, too) for post-WW I as laid out in the secret Syjes-Picot Treaty. Under Sykes-Picot, the UK asked for Palestine and that is what London got; it was not forced on the Brits against their will. Certainly, Arabs do not think that the Mandate was somehow forced on London against its will: Sykes-Picot was signed in 2016; the Mandate was laid down in 1922. The Balfour Declaration , 2017, was sandwiched in-between. At least, the Palestinians and other Arabs see the sequence as an example of domineering imperialistm.
Good points all.
Especially your recognition that the Houthis can and do act unilaterally and are not simply Iranian puppets, and that their motivation has nothing to do with the Gazan war. They have an eye to publicity when their cause was not just flagging, but beginning to falter.
There is clear racism here, not on your part, but on the part of those in the current conflict who object to the League of Nations Mandate. The Ottoman Empire was an empire, and had less legitimacy than the British in Palestine given the Mandate. We have all read and heard some within the parties to the current conflict who criticise the UN and yet almost in the same paragraph and breath then make demands of the international community. The UN took over where the League left off, as demonstrated by my link (it's a UN, not a League or FCO link, because the documents reside with the organisation that maintains international peace and security). Just because the imperialists were brown did not make it right, what made it right was the rule of international law, and that was only with the British.
The very fact that we are having an argument over history - and yes, I brought it up - demonstrates to me the futility of those in the war bringing it up again and again to make themselves right and their opponents wrong. The sooner we boycott, divest and sanction the criminals, racists and religious bigots on both sides the better until such time as they abide by international law and the rulings of the organisation that inherited all the resolutions, declarations, and conventions of the League of Nations.
For this reason, I welcome the USA's and UK's divesting in UNRWA, an organisation that since its inception has fostered welfare dependency and been a breeding ground for terrorism. The sooner it outlaws all those involved in Jewish settlements in the West Bank the better. There will need to be alot more done to bring the State of Israel to heel, the least of which will be the dismantling of the Israel Lobby in the USA for perverting US national interest, and I have some confidence that the law in America will play its part in doing so.
US President Joe Biden has approved sanctions on four Israeli settlers accused of attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. HMG has copied >
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68173904
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?