Ukraine sought to ethnically cleanse Donbass’ indigenous Russian population and genocide those who remained had it reconquered that region, which is what Israel also appears interested in doing to Gaza, but Kiev’s strategic role is conceptualized by the West as broader than Tel Aviv’s. Whereas Israel is fighting over a small strip of territory in pursuit of narrow Western geopolitical interests, Ukraine is utilized by the West for much more far-reaching civilizational-imperialist ones.
The latest Israeli-Hamas war has exposed Western hypocrisy in more ways than one. It was earlier observed that “The West’s Double Standards Towards Israel & Ukraine Discredited It In The Global South”. The whole world saw how the “humanitarian” dimension of this bloc’s “rules-based order” rhetoric was absent from its assessment of the aforesaid conflict despite Israel being responsible for many more civilian casualties in the span of a month than Russia was allegedly responsible for in twenty.
Far from lambasting the self-professed Jewish State like they did that Eurasian Great Power, they’re enthusiastically cheering on its blockade and bombing of Gaza’s over two million people while downplaying the deaths of civilians as a result. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that “This is war. It is combat. It is bloody. It is ugly, and it's going to be messy. And innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward.”
After Israel expanded its ground operations in Gaza despite the much greater risk of even more civilian casualties, he then told the press that “We’re not drawing red lines for Israel. We’re going to continue to support them.” This approach contrasts with the West’s relative silence towards Kiev’s bombing of Donbass in the eight years leading up to the special operation. During that time, they fully supported this fascist regime, but they were also careful not to draw too much attention to its attacks against civilians.
Ethno-bigoted double standards arguably account for these different policies despite both categories of civilians – the Palestinians in Gaza and the Russians in Donbass –being “othered” by the West in the sense of being seen as separate from their “exceptional” civilization and thus considered “expendable”. Although physiognomy varies, Palestinians as a whole are widely deemed by the West’s ruling liberal-globalists to be “non-White” whereas Russians as a whole are considered “White”.
This pseudo-distinction would ordinarily lead to those elites sympathizing with the “non-White” Palestinians for ideological reasons, but the reason why their policymakers show no compassion for them is because they consider them part of a comparatively more dissimilar civilization. The erstwhile Orthodox-led and majority-Slavic Russian Empire that used to control Donbass was historically much closer to Western Civilization than the Muslim-led Turkish-Arab Ottoman one that used to control Gaza.
The emerging civilizational paradigm of International Relations has been exploited by these policymakers to justify the West’s self-perceived “exceptionalism” and provoke a “Clash of Civilizations” for dividing-and-ruling Eurasia to their hegemonic benefit. In pursuit of this end, their political elites are amplifying the misleadingly implied narrative that the latest Israeli-Hamas war is a clash between the Western-aligned and partially European-descended Israelis and the Islamic-aligned and entirely Arab Palestinians.
To be clear, these are superficial and spurious optics, but they’re nevertheless intended to manipulate the targeted Western audience into rallying around Israel on faux-“civilizational” and associated “values” pretexts aimed at justifying their elites’ support of Israel for purely geopolitical reasons. The self-professed Jewish State is considered to be their bloc’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in West Asia, which is why it’s always supported by them, even when it’s responsible for many civilian casualties.
The liberal-globalists’ academic, activist, and media classes are increasingly at odds with the hypocritical Machiavellian worldview of their ideology’s political elite, however, which explains the large-scale anti-Israel protests that have swept across the West over the past week. It’s beyond the scope of this analysis to elaborate on their differences in this context and the interplay between these factions, but interested readers can refer to these two analyses here and here for more insight into the matter.
The preceding paragraph’s observations are pertinent to the present piece because they account for why the liberal-globalists’ political elite have enthusiastically cheered on Israel’s blockade and bombing of Gaza’s over two million people. This class’ US leaders have an interest in drawing attention to the misleadingly implied narrative that the latest Israeli-Hamas war is a “Clash of Civilizations” despite some differences between them and their European vassals, not to mention between other sub-classes.
By contrast, both Western political classes and this ideology’s trans-Atlantic academic, activist, and media sub-classes remained relatively silent in the eight years that Kiev bombed Donbass, which can be explained via the civilizational paradigm introduced in this analysis. Ukrainians and Russians are deemed to be “Western-adjacent” “Whites” whose historically Orthodox-led and Slavic-majority shared civilization can be subsumed into Western Civilization upon its “Balkanization”.
This analysis here from early October elaborates on that grand strategic goal, which can be summarized as the West utilizing Ukraine as their “Trojan Horse” for dividing-and-ruling Russia’s cosmopolitan civilization via Hybrid Warfare after first turning it into their “anti-Russia” following “EuroMaidan”. The liberal-globalists sought to weaponize multiculturalism under a faux “decolonization” guise to cloak Western imperialism as argued here, which risked tearing Russia to pieces as Medvedev warned here.
Russia’s special operation foiled that plot, but the point is that it was and still is being pursued, which accounts for why the West was silent about Kiev’s bombing of Donbass from 2014 onward. From their political elites’ perspective, Ukraine and Russia’s historically Orthodox-led and Slavic-majority shared civilization is much easier to subsume into the West’s newly liberal-globalist one than Palestine’s historically Muslim-Arab civilization, which is “othered” to a greater degree and deemed “incompatible”.
Ukraine sought to ethnically cleanse Donbass’ indigenous Russian population and genocide those who remained had it reconquered that region, which is what Israel also appears interested in doing to Gaza as explained here, but Kiev’s strategic role is conceptualized by the West as broader than Tel Aviv’s. Whereas Israel is fighting over a small strip of territory in pursuit of narrow Western geopolitical interests, Ukraine is utilized by the West for much more far-reaching civilizational-imperialist ones.
The West never expected Israel to ethnically cleanse, genocide, and/or “Balkanize” all of West Asia’s historically Muslim-Arab civilization but it did indeed expect that Ukraine would facilitate these goals and especially the last-mentioned divide-and-rule one against Russia. Accordingly, promoting the “Clash of Civilizations” narrative in the latest Israeli-Hamas war defends the West’s limited geopolitical goals on a faux “values” basis while doing the same in Donbass risked discrediting them in that context.
Russia was supposed to be “Balkanized” and then subsumed by the West’s newly liberal-globalist civilization, which wouldn’t have been possible by “othering” its comparatively more civilizationally similar people to the same extent as they’ve done Palestine’s seemingly more dissimilar ones. The West’s goals in the first conflict are to directly expand the scope of its “exceptional” civilization while its ones in the second are limited to upholding Israel’s geopolitical role as their “unsinkable aircraft carrier”.
It’s understandable if readers might be a bit overwhelmed after being introduced to such complex insight into civilizational, geopolitical, and strategic affairs, which is why they’re encouraged to reflect on what was shared in this analysis and perhaps review it once more after taking a rest. Upon doing so, they’ll hopefully be able to better comprehend the reasons behind the West’s ethno-bigoted double standards to the bombing of Russians and Palestinians whereby the first is ignored while the second is cheered on.
It's easy to understand the US Empire's double standards. If ethnic cleansing is good for the Empire, then it's not ethnic cleansing, it's self-defense by the imperial proxy. It it's somebody the Empire doesn't like doing the ethnic cleansing, then it's a horror. Orwell pegged this quite nicely back in 1948 when he wrote 1984.
I have a suggestion for you, Andrew. Draw a contrast between the Israeli destruction of Gaza in two weeks and what the Russians have actually done to places like Kiev, Odessa, and Lvov/Lviv/Lwow in well over a year. Ask your readers who is deliberately trying to kill as many civilians as possible and who is trying to avoid doing the same. Use pictures.
The US Empire narrative has shattered at home over the cognitive dissonance caused by being told to oppose one "colonial" power in Europe, while cheering on one in Southwest Asia at the same time, all while Americans are denied literally lifesaving help from their government at home.