Intro🔗
I'm 28 almost 29 years old Israeli repatriate from Donetsk, Ukraine. The current war with Hamas is not the first war in the lands that I consider my homeland. I was lucky not being in Donetsk in 12.04.2014, I was lucky not being in Ukraine in 24.02.2022. While the Crimea occupation by Russia and the creation of so-called Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics didn't affect me emotionally much (since I was young enough to just ignore these events and continue to study in jewish university in Moscow), the full-scale invasion of 24.02 put me into a shock. It was the first and for now the only time in my life I participated in protests, it was the first time I doom-scrolled so much that I needed to pull a real effort to stop myself.
The Russian-Ukrainian war raised a lot of questions that people usually don't ask themselves in a peaceful time, but I once again avoided most of them since I wasn't affected by Russia propaganda. I lived in Donetsk, I lived in Kiev, I knew that all of the reasons that Putin declared as a cause for a war (to protect Russian spoken Ukrainians from ethnic cleansing) are bullshit. I helped some refugees remotely from Israel, but since I wasn't there I didn't dive into those topics. Up until now, up until the moment that war almost caught up with me
Sometime it's not that complicated🔗
Since Putin started war in my birth city, I knew who is an aggressor and who is a victim. So nobody from the Russian propaganda could convince me that something here was more complicated than it looked like. Ukraine didn't plan to attack Russia, Ukraine doesn't bomb their own territory nor it bombs civilians. I'm sure of it.
Returning back to Israel I'm relatively new here. I live in Israel only from 2018, I didn't study its modern history in school, I googled it a couple of times, but nothing more. So after the Hammas carried out a massacre last Saturday and even then some people in the media continued to call for "Free Palestine" I needed to find something to answer. Not to them, I don't think I can argue with somebody on this and be un-emotional, but for myself.
Most of the Palestine supporters claim Israel to be an occupant, the Palestine to be the biggest open air prison and so on. I almost decided to go learn the conflict roots, but suddenly it ticked for me. It's not that complicated! You can claim whatever you want: that Israel doesn't have right to be here or that there are nazis in the Ukrainian government... You can demand whatever you want: UN finances and donations or so the NATO won't accept more Eastern-European countries... But the moment you start murdering people, you are aggressor and nobody else. There is no history that can justify death of even one innocent person, there is no half-truth in those situations as there are no half-killed people.
"Are you criticizing? Offer suggestions!" is not a full nonsense🔗
One of the first actions that Israel government did to Gaza Strip is it cut them of from electricity and water. It seems that even those that don't yell "Free Palestine" were shocked by the "humanitarian disaster" that Israel causes there, they call it non-proportional response, they blame Israel in death of thousands of civilians there.
For me personally it was news that Israel up until now was giving electricity and water to Gaza Strip in the first place. I still don't know whether it was for free or not, but imagine that somebody would provide for the state that launches rockets at him/her on a regular basis, WFT?!
I wonder what exactly they mean by "proportional response"... I wonder how exactly Israel should destroy Hamas without bombing the Gaza Strip... For the first time in my life I agree with the claim of "Are you criticizing? Offer suggestion!" and now I know why I didn't agree with it earlier. You see I thought that even without suggesting some alternatives the criticism on its own has a value, it can open eyes on something that people didn't notice. It is built on top of the assumption that person that you are criticizing doesn't know something or didn't try something. But Israel knows the situation, Israel tried to solve it peacefully for decades and unfortunately nothing worked...
In order to be reasonable, there has to be somebody reasonable on the other side🔗
Both Russia in Ukraine and Hamas in Gaza Strip are calling for a peace negotiation. Both Ukraine and Israel decline them. Russia and Hamas can look like more reasonable side of the respective sides, but let me give you an example.
First lets look on the situation that Ukraine is in. You live your own life in your apartment. One day your neighbour takes a baseball bat, enters your apartment, bits the shit out of you and claim that your kitchen now belongs to him. After you came to your senses you start to fight back. At exact this moment your neighbour starts to ask for a peace negotiation. You are a reasonable person after all, aren't you? No, it doesn't work like that. Returning of occupied territories is not part of the negotiation, it is a basic condition to start even talking about peace. Anyone suggesting otherwise is just a manipulator.
Coming back to Israel there is a "Two-state solution", that everybody who doesn't live here believe to be a solution to the problem. Do you know what is the basic condition for this to be true? Both sides should be at least theoretically OK with it. Israel agreed to and voted for it for several occasions, but Palestinian side rejected it. Who is presenting the Palestinian side now? Hamas, the both terrorist organization and main political force in Gaza Strip. The same organization that claims full annihilation of Israel as the main goal they try to achieve. The same organization that consider each and every Israel citizen to be an occupant and therefore a legit military target. You can't come to any compromise with somebody who is only satisfied with your death.
Outro🔗
I don't have some good ending for this. There was only one rocket alarm warning in my city, but I hear every missile interception over Gush-Dan district and Jerusalem. I do have a shelter room in my apartment and I do believe in Israel Defense Forces, but but I'm still afraid and here is why.
Israel is basically black-box fully surrounded by Arab countries. In case of full-scale invasion there is noway to run for me and my wife as a refugees. Israel has only one international airport and some occasional chartered sea voyages to Cyprus. In the meantime Palestinian civilians have a land border with Egypt, one Arab country, and a land border with Jordan, another Arab country. Both of those countries are OK with closing their borders for their muslim brothers-refugees, but somehow everybody is still blaming only Israel for for besieging them. I can't wrap my head around on how it happened to be so...
!עם ישראל חי