Surviving in a tribal world: Ukraine, Israel, bullies and double standards

I hope this post is not all over the place and hope we can all have a constructive dialogue.

Ukraine: A country chose to go west and sign a trade agreement with the EU instead of with Russia. Putin skillfully manipulated the feelings of the then pro Russian population in Ukraine living mostly in the East and South to make them feel persecuted and then outright invaded the country. Putin believed he would conquer the country in 3 days and that Ukrainians would welcome his troops, failed, he then declared all Ukrainians who don’t want to be annexed by Russia are nazis, proceeded to treat the whole Ukrainian population as an enemy and here we are. This is how bullies act and Putin needs to be stopped.

Israel: A democracy that is also an occupying power since the first Arab Israeli war. Receiving billions in military aid from the US, the population there has grown to feel safe behind an iron and technological wall while ignoring they are still occupying more than 5 millions of Palestinians and the territory where they live, slowly annexing it with settlers, making impossible they have a normal life we in the west (and people in Israel) take for granted. Low level violence against Palestinians by settlers has been normalized, nobody cares about the open air prison that is Gaza. After the Hamas incursion in Israel with episodes of baffling violence and 1000 dead Israelis, Israeli authorities are using genocidal language calling Palestinians animals, have blockaded the territory, not letting in even humanitarian aid and even Biden, a president who claims to be a liberal and whom I always considered a supporter of a rules based international order and human rights basically gave Israel a free hand to do whatever they want in Gaza, ignoring the thousands of civilians that’ll get killed by the unmatchable power of the Israeli army when Israel sends in the troops. Israel has been treating all Palestinians in Gaza as enemies for decades and nobody cared, but the moment it became clear Russia was about to invade Ukraine, we in Europe and America rallied to send them Javelins and NLAWs.

We in Europe and America love to say we stand up against bullies, but apparently only against those bullies we don’t like: This double standard baffles and saddens me: most Ukrainian supporters in the West I’ve heard have simply sided blindly with Israel, repeating its right to self defense, while ignoring that Israeli attacks have killed UN staff helping the Palestinian population, ignoring that not every Palestinian is a terrorist, ignoring that Israel is occupying foreign territory, exactly the same Russia does in Ukraine, ignoring that if Israel invades Gaza, much more civilians will die than militias. The Ukrainian government, a country partially occupied by another country also told an occupying country it respects its right to self defense while saying nothing about the occupied territories or the occupied population.

This is ironic, but above all I’m speechless and saddened.

Suddenly, I’m not sure I should keep supporting sending weaponry to Ukraine: It’s not justice, rule of law and open societies what we want, it's simply geopolitics, rules for thee and not for me. Russia does it in Ukraine, but Ukraine, America and Israel do it as well.

If our foreign policy is pure geopolitics, I’m a gullible idiot for being an idealist who believes in rule of law, equal application of the law, human rights, multi party democracy and freedom of press and speech and I’m even more of an idiot for believing everything Biden or any liberal politician says.

And I don’t know how to react to this. What do I do now? Where do I go now? I always considered me a liberal, now I feel politically orphaned.

To be clear: I believe we have to keep sending arms to Ukraine till every Russian troop leaves Ukraine, because Putin is a bully and Israel needs to end the occupation and annexation of Palestinian territory, reach an agreement with the Palestinians and give them their own country so they can prosper like anyone else, so atrocities like this one don’t repeat again. If Palestinians don’t get their own country, things like this will happen again. Israel is acting like a bully. We should stand up to any bully.