It's not extremely close, but it's close enough to be fodder for authoritarian regimes. Both conflicts involve a larger power claiming ancestral and ethno-religious dominion over a territory that is also claimed by a smaller ethnic group, which the larger group refuses to acknowledge has any kind of inherent ethnic or national identity. Both conflicts involve widespread bombardment of civilian areas by the larger power, ostensibly to root out terrorist elements (Hamas in the case of Israel, and "Nazis" in the case of Russia) and atrocities against civilians justified as necessary to remove the ability of the smaller group to take action while claiming that the smaller group is responsible for their own civilian casualties. Both conflicts also involve a pseudo-dictatorial strongman in charge of the larger polity whose continued well-being (physical in the case of Putin, legal in the case of Netanyahu) is dependent on the successful prosecution of a war that cannot be successfully prosecuted, although Russia probably doesn't want to make that comparison.
The parallels start to break down there. For one thing, Ukraine is not under the control of an equally awful force (for the parallel to apply, they'd basically have to be run entirely by the Azov Battalion.) Israel is also, for all its faults, not nearly as far down the fascism pipeline as Russia is, and the populace still has some ability to resist and protest - the entire staff of Haartez would be in jail if they were Russian - but on the other hand, they have far more authority and power over the region they're attacking than Russia does.
Except for the
extremely obvious part where,
unlike Ukraine, Gaza's initiation of the latest stage of the conflict was marked by the indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians, the mass taking of hostages, and the mass rape, torture and executions of civilians, combined with a periodic pattern of randomly lobbing rockets at Israeli population centers. And where unlike Ukraine the explicit ideological goal of Hamas is the extermination of Israelis from Israel.
These are not small things!
Moderator Text:
By saying "Gaza's initiation of the latest stage of the conflict", you are equating all Palestinians with Hamas, something we
very explicitly told people not to do. Also, Monochrome Tide, your posts in the Israeli threads have generated more reports than pretty much all of the other posters combined. So, we are banning you for a week, as well as from this thread and any future iterations. Additional sanctions may be forthcoming once we discuss it Backstage.
