A big mistake in the discussion of the current Palestinian-Israeli war on the part of Muslims is to get into debates on abstract issues imposed by the opponents. Who has the right to this land, who is more indigenous and who is an impostor, who represents good and who represents evil — it is clear that everyone will stick to their own positions in these discussions. But today we are dealing with a specific war that started in May 2021. And it didn’t start because of disputes about all these issues, which have been going on for decades, while there have been no wars for several years.
It started at a specific time and under specific circumstances — after the elections that took place in March of this year and just a few days before the formation of a new coalition government in Israel by the opposition with the support of the Arab party Ra’am, which was supposed to replace the weakened rule of Benjamin Netanyahu. And then a series of events occurred that turned everything upside down: The eviction of Arab houses in Sheikh Jarrah and their transfer to Jewish settlers, i.e. to Netanyahu’s voters; a march of Netanyahu’s supporters to Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, which led to protests by Palestinians, their dispersal by the police, including the storming of Al-Aqsa and its burning; Hamas’ demand for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from there and the beginning of Israeli attacks after it was rejected, and the retaliatory shelling of Palestine; Arab-Jewish clashes in Israel.
As a result, the opposition coalition falls apart because the Jewish parties can no longer negotiate with the Arab party and vice versa, and the one that seemed to have no chance remains in power. It is striking that even in such an obvious situation, many «defenders of Israel,» even supposed opponents of Putin, do not see direct analogies between his actions and those of his good friend Netanyahu. The same people who talk about the bombing of houses in Moscow that allowed a person to come to power do not see that the same scenario is unfolding in Israel today. Of course, one can joke that it is «something different», a regime that only activates when it is in its own interests. We are already used to what the Russian-speaking liberal community considers native and blood. But, Israeli patriots, why do you want your beloved homeland to play out the scenario of «Ryazan sugar» and a lifelong «national leader» as it happened in Russia? It’s understandable that you stepped on these rakes in Russia — Russia is no pity, but can’t you at least have some sympathy for your own homeland, having learned from bitter experience?
Reasonable Israelis today are angry that a corrupt scoundrel, who has lost his allies and had no chance to stay in power, will be able to do so by staging a bloody farce. They are convinced that this is being done in collusion with Fatah and Hamas, which have the same goal for themselves, but among the Arabs — to maintain the status quo and neutralize new Arab forces that could take the initiative. But while there may be similarities in the motives of the existing political leadership of the two peoples, their actual situation is fundamentally different.
Unlike the Jewish people, the Palestinian people today are deprived of the right to their own state, recognized by the international community; the right to their capital in East Jerusalem, also recognized for them but denied by the campaign to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel alone; The right to the land they currently live on, which has been repeatedly taken from them in defiance of international condemnation of the establishment of Jewish settlements (not to mention the territories they initially lost during the creation of Israel and after the Seven Years War); the right to free movement between their territories, which have been turned into blockaded enclaves by the occupation; the right to access to water and energy resources, which have been taken from them and held by the same occupation.
In such a situation, any people would at least resist new encroachments on their remaining lands and their dignity. The question is, why do you support this, why do you justify these encroachments? The overwhelming majority of Israelis don’t need these new lands taken from the Arabs — it’s the fanatics who support it, similar to those who support the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in Russia. Normal Israelis wanted to remove a crook and a thief from power, as you proclaim in Russia, and ensure the peaceful transfer of power, and Israeli Arabs were ready to support them in this, and the Palestinians did not interfere until they were oppressed and provoked.
And it is precisely to disrupt all this that the «gatherer of Jewish lands,» the «defender of the covenant,» and the «Jewish world,» in other words, an exact copy of everything you ridicule in Russia, has staged a bloody scenario. How can you support this? How can you be so unteachable and allow such obvious double standards? It speaks not only of the moral but also of the intellectual inadequacy of those who simultaneously try to free Russia from Putin and justify the dirty deeds and bloody provocations of his copy in Israel.