vor a few days ago, an initiative of Ukrainian artists, intellectuals and activists published a letter of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Like all such appeals, Ukraine’s includes framing the entire conflict as Israel’s sole responsibility. What distinguishes the Ukrainian letter from others and makes it interesting is that Palestine is identified with Ukraine and Israel with Russia.
Unfounded accusations, repeated endlessly
On the one hand, it is particularly absurd, because in one case it is an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state, in the other it is a protracted conflict between several parties in which there was a lot of mutual violence and injustice. And yet anti-Israel and anti-Ukrainian propaganda are very similar because they feed on and reproduce each other and have a common origin – in Stalin’s USSR. The Ukrainian appeal contains the four main elements of this propaganda.
1. Delegitimization through a freely invented alternative history and “red herrings” – unfounded accusations that are repeated endlessly and therefore have an impact. In the case of Israel, this is the formula “settler colonialism, genocide and apartheid”. In comparison, Ukraine is portrayed as an artificial invention (e.g. by Lenin); In addition, there are allegations of discrimination against Russians and also of genocide, grotesque as they may be. Putin accused Ukraine of genocide against the Russian people on the grounds that if Ukrainians no longer wanted to call themselves Russians, then the Russian people would be reduced by several million people. Juggling with names is also part of it: Ukraine as a periphery, “Okraina”, Palestine as the entire area “from the river to the sea”.
2. Exploiting the dark pages of history to delegitimize the modern state. In the case of Israel, for example: the participation of right-wing extremists in the Zionist movement, the violence against the Arab population during the founding of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli War, terrorism as part of the struggle for independence. In the case of Ukraine: Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian unit of the Waffen-SS, massacre of the Poles in Volhynia.
Reversal of perpetrator and victim
3. Instrumentalization of internal criticism (criticism by the political opposition and the media as well as marginal criticism by radicals) to delegitimize the state.
4. Use of disinformation and distortion of facts to shift responsibility from the perpetrator to the victim.
The most fundamental element used to defame Israel is the accusation that it is a “project of imperial settler colonialism.” Jews have lived continuously in what is now Israel for several thousand years; Jerusalem was built by Jews as the capital of a Jewish state. Even after the expulsion, several thousand of them remained in Jerusalem, which became a very small city in the 19th century.
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