What do the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have in common?

On Monday, Israel marked the anniversary of the Hamas attacks that left around 1,200 dead – most of them civilians – with another 250 taken hostage. In Israel and around the world, people awoke on 7 October 2023 to the shocking news and tried to make sense of events as they unfolded. There was an outpouring of sympathy for Israel. Candles were lit, vigils held and buildings were illuminated in the blue and white of the Israeli flag.
 
How things have changed a year on, with so much of Gaza now laid to waste and tens of thousands killed during the Israeli offensive that ensued. On top of that, Israel is now at war with Lebanon too, violence has escalated in the West Bank, Iran has fired barrages of missiles at Israel, and the prospect of all-out war in the Middle East is inching ever closer.
 
Closer to home, North America and Europe have witnessed a surge in antisemitism as a reaction to Israel’s unrelenting offensives. And all our lives will be affected in myriad ways if Israel takes revenge on Iran by targeting its oil facilities. The resulting spike in energy prices as winter approaches would exacerbate the cost-of-living crisis that many of us have experienced, pushing up inflation yet again and edging us closer to another global economic crisis.
 
Israelis saw the savage cross-border raids by Hamas a year ago as a threat to their country’s very existence. The same is true for Ukrainians of the full-scale invasion of their country by Russian forces in February 2022. This is just one of several parallels between the two conflicts,although there are marked differences too.
 
In Ukraine, the war began when one sovereign nation invaded another, making it a more conventional conflict. The war in Gaza, in contrast, was instigated by a non-state militant group (albeit one that is a quasi-governmental agency) with an audacious terrorist attack on the territory of another nation state. In the ensuing war, by way of defending its sovereignty, that nation state has unleashed the most devastating revenge on neighbouring territories.
 
The death toll in both conflicts is truly shocking, with Russia, Israel and Hamas all showing scant regard for human life. In Ukraine, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has recorded nearly 12,000 civilian deaths since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The actual total is expected to be far higher. Nearly six million Ukrainians are refugees, both within the country and abroad. Ukrainians repeatedly accuse Russia of genocide.
 
The number of soldiers killed in combat in the two-and-a-half years of the full-scale war is difficult to ascertain, but the Wall Street Journal last month estimated Ukrainian losses at 80,000 killed and 400,000 wounded, with Russia suffering 200,000 military deaths and 400,000 wounded, putting overall military casualties at over a million.
 
The staggering number of Russian army dead reflects its military leadership’s utter disregard for the lives of its own soldiers. It sacrifices them by the hundred in ‘meat grinder’ or ‘human wave’ attacks aimed at wearing down Ukrainian forces and exposing their positions to Russian artillery, for the sake of capturing a few metres of territory. New recruits are given insufficient training or weapons before being sent to the front line, where they may survive for just a matter of weeks.
 
Just like the Russian army in Ukraine, both sides in the Gaza war are alleged to have committed terrible war crimes. The scenes of flattened buildings in Gaza City and Khan Younis are reminiscent of Mariupol and Bakhmut; in Israel, the decomposing bodies scattered across the grass verges of Kibbutz Kfar Aza and Kibbutz Be’eri are reminiscent of Bucha and Irpin. Every image of a dead child, whatever its nationality, is unique and devastating.
 
As in Ukraine, the G-word is often repeated in Gaza too, with Palestinians frequently accusing Israel of genocide. The shocking death toll – to date around 42,000 mostly civilians have been killed in Gaza, according to Palestinian health authorities – reflects the tragedy of their situation. Hamas instigated the October 7 attacks knowing full well that Israel’s retaliation would be swift and deadly, knowing that civilians would pay with their lives for Hamas’ use of residential areas and civilian infrastructure for military purposes. Not only does Hamas use human shields, but it also fails to open its tunnels to shelter civilians. The people of Gaza are victims of their own leadership as much as victims of Israel.
 
What is more, unlike Ukrainians, the inhabitants of this densely populated territory have been unable to flee to safety. Gaza’s three border crossings have remained blockaded by Israel and Egypt, which wants to avoid being drawn into the conflict and having to absorb a flood of refugees. Egypt also fears accusations of facilitating ethnic cleansing if it establishes refugee camps for the people of Gaza, potentially allowing Israel an opportunity to occupy their land – as some in the Israeli government have advocated. For the same reason, many Gazans would be reluctant to cross into Egypt even if it were possible, fearing that Israeli citizens would resettle their homes and communities, leaving them as permanent refugees without a homeland.
 
In the aftermath of the Hamas attacks, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined his goals to eliminate Hamas and to bring the hostages home. A year on, neither of these objectives have been met. A terrorist organisation and an ideology are harder to destroy with missiles and guns than a regular army. There is no end in sight.
 
Both Netanyahu and Russia’s Vladimir Putin stand accused of putting their own political survival ahead of the lives of their citizens. Both are long-standing leaders whose legacies will be defined by their current wars. Putin is already subject to an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, and warrants have been requested for Netanyahu and Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.
 
For Israelis, and Jews everywhere, the events of 7 October were a painful reminder of the past. For centuries, Jews had faced persecution and pogroms in Europe – nowhere more so, ironically, than in Ukraine – culminating in the six million murdered in the Holocaust. With the formation of the state of Israel, Jews thought they could finally put all the horrors of the past behind them. They came to the new Jewish state vowing ‘Never Again’. Never again would they be discriminated against or murdered just for being Jewish. They built themselves a new promised land, conscripted their youth and created a fortress, protected by some of the world’s most sophisticated military and intelligence operations to prevent the antisemitic atrocities of the past. The Hamas attacks a year ago finally shattered the dream and Jews’ sense of security around the world. 
 
Photo by MohammedIbrahim on Unsplash

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