Israel v. Ukraine – who’s right?

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), now Speaker of the House, wasted no time in signaling a sea change in that body. As his literal first order of business, he teed up a resolution to support the State of Israel. That measure had been pending since the Fourth Arab-Israeli War began. (It passed 412-10, with 7 members voting “Present” and four absences.) Yesterday, in an interview with Sean Hannity, he spoke of separating the questions of aid to Israel and Ukraine. The White House has asked for $100 billion in aid to both countries – and Johnson is demanding an accounting, as he believes the American people have. CNAV fully agrees: the government should give an accounting – and not merely of the budgets for these two countries. In point of fact, one of these countries has a good casus belli, and the other hasn’t.

Ukraine does not have a good case for war

Too many Americans – and other ordinary Western citizens – assume that Ukraine has casus belli because the Russian Federation invaded it. It has become fashionable with too many people to assume that invasion never has a good cause. National boundaries are sacrosanct, this theory states, and are adjustable only by peaceable negotiations and treaties.

Alger Hiss, who “built” the United Nations, introduced that theory. In point of fact, he introduced it under false pretenses. The mission of the United Nations is to unite the world into one government. Under it, all boundaries would be fluid and totally unsecured – therefore, meaningless.

The particular case of Ukraine introduces a complication that only serious students of the history of Russia would catch. Ukraine has been a part of Russia for centuries. After the Khazars disappeared from history, the beginnings of a State emerged in the region. Its name: Kievan Rus’. From it came Vladimir the Great, who introduced Christianity to the Slavic peoples. More to the point, Russians have a good, traceable claim to ancestry from this region.

Catherine the Great absorbed most of what was called “The Ukraine,” and it was all a part of Russia at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. Nikita S. Khrushchev cynically declared it an “independent” state, but only so he could send an ambassador in its name to Alger Hiss’ UN. Khrushchev still called it “Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic,” and no one thought to call Ukraine a separate country in fact.

After the Soviet Union

Of course, in 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. Western diplomats moved in and carved up the former country along the borders of its former “Socialist Soviet Republics.” That’s how long Ukraine has been a separate country in fact. (The old Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic is all that’s left of the U.S.S.R. and persists as the Russian Federation.)

As was the case after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, those who drew “national boundaries” in the region, did so arbitrarily and capriciously. This left ethnic Russian communities out of Russian control and beyond Russian protection. At first that didn’t matter – but it has mattered a great deal since the Maidan Revolution of 2014. Ethnic Ukrainians have never treated ethnic Russians as anything other than second-class citizens.

Vladimir V. Putin, who currently runs the Russian Federation, knows this – and feels this. Those ethnic Russians – in Crimea and throughout the Donbass – have applied to him for protection. He has granted it. Perhaps he does wish to become a “Tsar of All the Russias” without the hereditary trappings of the Imperial Crown. But he does not actually desire to control people who do not want his protection.

Nevertheless, a certain intellectual, commenting on the attacks on Israel that occasioned its present war, said something more profound than he himself realized:

Virtually all land is “stolen land” if one rolls the tape back far enough.

And again: those who carved up the Soviet Union had no more thought about the history of the region, than had the British when they carved up the Ottoman Empire.

Other causes of war between Russia and Ukraine

Aside from questions of maltreatment of those who share his ethnicity, Putin has a great many other causes of war. Our own government turns out to have repossessed Soviet-era biological weapons development laboratories in Ukraine. Those laboratories today have American funding, American direction, and American staffs. Furthermore, the United States Embassy in Ukraine admits as much. In fact, the first revelations came on the very day of the Russian “Special Military Operation.”

In his interview with Sean Hannity, Speaker Johnson, all too quickly, repeated the old line about Putin “not stopping” with the Donbass, or even all of Ukraine. CNAV begs him to reconsider. If he wants an accounting, he should investigate these bioweapons laboratories.

Perhaps Speaker Johnson should investigate something else: whether Ukraine was a child sex-trafficking hub. Two and a half weeks after Sound of Freedom premiered, a thread dropped on X confirming what CNAV had already heard from confidential sources. Those sources spoke of a raid on Chernobyl, the infamous “reactor town,” and the liberation there of hundreds of children, or thousands. The thread, released in March, spoke of a notoriety that Ukraine-based child trafficking rings had, apart from the Chernobyl story.

All these reasons make Ukraine not a fit recipient of American largesse. Furthermore, if Putin succeeds in “de-Nazifying” Ukraine and cleaning out those operations, he’ll have done the world a great favor.

Israel does have a good cause for war

In sharp contrast, the State of Israel does have a good cause for war. If all Israel had were the latest attack on it, that would be cause enough. No one dares forgive atrocity – and judgment of atrocity is anyone’s responsibility, who can intervene, or aid its victims. (Nor would intervention in this case be necessary, apart from interdicting attempts to aid the atrocious actors.)

Apologists for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Arabic Harakah al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmiyyah, abbreviated HAMAS) at first tried to deny the accounts of their atrocious acts. Then one apparent apologist tried to suggest that Binyamin Netanyahu stood down his forces, hoping these bad things would happen. Far more likely, according to a contributor familiar with Israeli politics, is that elements of the Israeli intelligence community, sympathetic to the political left, let these attacks happen in order to discredit Netanyahu and force a crisis of confidence, with new elections. Everyone knows that the last Knesset elections saw a swing toward civilizational politics. The left sought to thwart this. Instead, Israel has a wartime National Unity Government with a former IDF Chief of Staff in it.

Beyond that, evidence for the atrocities is overwhelming. HAMAS elements turned out to be high on an amphetamine-like stimulant. Worse yet, they have made atrocity part of their tactical command doctrine. Read for yourselves:

You must sharpen the blades of your swords and be pure in your intentions before Allah. Know that the enemy is a disease that has no cure, except beheading and removing the hearts and livers. Attack them!

“Removing the hearts and livers” might not be in the Qu’ran. But “fight[ing] and slay[ing] the infidels wheresoever ye find them” is.

Israel has history on its side

Beyond the immediate cause, Israel, not Gaza, has history on its side. Anyone who doubts that should consider that Israel preserves antiquities, whereas Muslims destroy them. That applies not only to Gaza but also to the regime in control of key cities in Judea and Samaria. (The United Nations is pleased to call these regions “The West Bank.”)

The Bible tells us that the Jews, or their ancestors, or a contingent of them, have lived in the Land for 3500 years. Archaeological evidence attests to the reign of King David (including coins of his realm), the Jericho action, and much else.

Sadly, this war has divided the right as well as the left. Not everyone on the left can defend atrocity, and some of them know it. But many on the right suggest mediation of the conflict – and sometimes they suggest mediators who would scarcely be impartial. (The Turks? YGTBK.) Others, relying on covenantal theology and preteristic interpretation of the Revelation to St. John of Jerusalem, insist that “God is through with national Israel,” and therefore any Christian should be, too. CNAV reminds them that:

1. The last person to say, “God is through with national Israel,” came a cropper predicting the end of the world. He then suffered a stroke and died, and his radio-network enterprise died with him.
2. Such triumphalism went down with the Titanic. And finally,
3. The cavalier dismissal of national Israel is an appalling failure of charity – which Paul of Tarsus held a cardinal virtue.

Conclusion

Speaker Johnson is correct to ask for an accounting, but he needs to broaden the scope of that accounting. The broad sweep of history, and the recent actions of the combatants involved, show that Israel has a good cause, whereas Ukraine does not. CNAV hopes that the new Speaker can come to understand that. One who, in his Constitutional law practice, defended the Ark Encounter park, likely can understand thousands of years of history. He should apply that discussion to the present debate, when judging which country at war to support.