One of the key features of war in the modern era is the need to demonize the “other” in order to create a justification for military action.
In the Russia/Ukraine war, Putin has claimed that Ukraine is being taken over by “Nazis”. There is a carefully cultivated “grain of truth” in Putin’s claim - several military units who have been fighting back against Russian attempts to annex parts of eastern Ukraine do in fact have Nazi / neo-Nazi leanings. Is that “all Ukraine”? Nope - not even close. Putin has simply used it as a pretext and as fodder for a propaganda campaign to justify what really is little more than a war of conquest.
Similarly, when we look at what’s going on in Gaza, we can see unfolding in real-time the propaganda machine. Yes, Hamas is a bunch of rotten bastards - I don’t think that’s in question here. Israel’s propaganda however is outright dehumanizing not only Hamas, but ultimately it is really aimed at the Palestinian people as a whole.
In both conflicts, we have to recognize that the “underdogs” in these conflicts have been subject to decades of oppression at the hands of others. Ukraine at the hands of Stalinist USSR, and the Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government - especially since Netanyahu came to power, but arguably since so many were forcibly evicted from their homes in 1948, creating the now permanent “refugee camps”.
Russia has shown a repeated pattern of targeting civilian infrastructure and homes throughout the conflict. You can’t tell me that there’s convincing evidence that an entire block of flats is “all occupied by Nazis” - that just doesn’t make any sense. Yet, when Russia deigns to respond to these claims, they swear up and down that they’re not targeting civilians. (If you believe that, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Saskatchewan I’d like to sell you).
Similarly, Israel swears up and down that they’re not targeting civilians in Gaza, yet we have verified instances where Israel has told people to move to locations, and then bombed those very locations a few days later. Similarly, Israel is making bold claims about the number of Hamas militants they have killed. I’m sure that when you carpet bomb an entire neighbourhood out of existence, you will no doubt kill some number of militants, but in doing so, you are ignoring the fact that no matter how selective you claim to be, the fact is that those bombs you’re dropping simply aren’t selective weapons.
Just as I don’t believe Putin’s argument that he’s removing fascists from Ukraine, I don’t believe that Israel is interested in “destroying Hamas” - if they were, they’d have their espionage units taking out Hamas leadership in other countries. More and more, this looks like Israel has decided that it is going to depopulate Gaza and push its peoples into the Sinai.
In both conflicts, there is an enormous propaganda campaign that is designed to dehumanize the other side in the minds of the public. That dehumanizing serves the purpose of making it easier for people (and combatants especially) to accept the idea of killing another human being. In the past, it was mostly reserved for the troops - they got fed a steady stream of invective designed specifically for that - now that is making its way into the public discourse.
Consider, in WWII, the Germans were referred to as “Jerries” or “Krauts” (a reference to sauerkraut - pickled cabbage); in Vietnam, the Viet Cong were referred to as “Gooks”. In these conflicts, Russia is referring to Ukrainian soldiers as “Nazis”, and we’ve had Israel refer to Hamas as “dogs”. While I can guess what Hamas tells its people, it’s fairly clear that they’ve spent the last 15 odd years developing quite a line of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish propaganda. It’s not difficult to see the purpose of all this.
The first casualty in any war is truth - and in particular - the truth about the other side. I grew up in the middle of the so-called “Cold War”. We were inundated with propaganda about the USSR and Communism. To the point that even today, some 3 decades after the collapse of the Soviet empire, we still have a lot of people who mistake democratic socialism for totalitarian communism as implemented by Stalin. It’s kind of stunning actually.
Make no mistake when you are looking at the news and how they recount what is going on - there is a metric ton of propaganda being fed to us. Israel wants us to believe Hamas is “a bunch of cowardly dogs” that they have to eradicate, but the truth is not so simple. Russia wants us to believe that all they’re doing in Ukraine is “purging Nazis”, and the truth there is not so black and white either. Intriguingly, Putin’s fingerprints are in both conflicts.
I’ve suspected for a long time that the Ukraine war serves two purposes for Putin. First, he sees it as the beginning of rebuilding the old Russian Empire, thus putting him into the same league as Tsars like Peter the Great. Second, it acts as a wedge in an effort to draw NATO into open conflict with Russia. He’s argued for years now that “NATO is expansionist” because countries that used to belong to the old Warsaw Pact have joined NATO in an effort to hold Russian territorial ambitions at bay.
Putin’s fingerprints on the latest events in Israel and Gaza show up in a couple of ways. First, it’s no secret that Iran has been funnelling resources into Gaza, assisting Hamas with building up their munitions and probably providing training and materials. Second, we know that Hamas leaders had meetings with Putin back in May, 2022. As the old saying goes, it takes a lot of planning for coincidences to happen.
Why now? It’s a matter of timing. Putin sees this as a way to weaken the US and NATO by taking focus away from the Ukraine conflict, but also he’s leveraging the chaos that a GOP controlled House of Representatives in the US can create. The GOP has been signalling for months that they are tired of pouring money and resources into Ukraine, and the Israel conflict is a perfect opportunity for them to push for a redirection of resources. There’s plenty of good reason to suspect that the GOP’s caucus in the legislature is in fact compromised by Russian operatives and money - including the ongoing politicking of Trump.
Looked at through that lens, the Israel / Hamas conflict is an easily provoked bit of violence that provides a needed distraction from what is going on in Ukraine, and potentially distracts enough US attention from Ukraine to allow Russia to capitalize on that by ramping up it’s activities in Ukraine. (We’ll see how this goes over the winter months)
The point here is that there’s a huge amount of political maneuvering behind the rhetoric and violence we are seeing. So while we all have our own perspectives and sympathies in these matters, it takes work to put on our filters both to put bias to one side, and to filter out what is propaganda designed to inflame opinions and what is reasonably factual.
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