Congress will soon discuss funding measures that would link U.S. military assistance to Israel and Ukraine as they wage war against, respectively, Hamas and Russia. While such a move may strike some as simply a parliamentary maneuver to improve the bills’ passage, there are ample reasons to link the two countries’ aid and to see both as allies in a common cause.
In his address to the American people on Oct. 20, President Joe Biden drew several parallels between Russia’s war on Ukraine and Hamas’ attack on Israel. “Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy — completely annihilate it,” Biden asserted. Since then, his administration has backed off from that kind of rhetoric, shifting to a more reserved tone while Democrats and Republicans push back against Biden’s linking Israel and Ukraine. (READ MORE: On Foreign Policy, Dirty Joe Piles Up the Ls)
Biden’s comparison correctly noted that both Russia and Hamas seek the elimination — not just the defeat — of a neighboring state. But in his analysis, he simply scratched the surface.
The Goal of War Is Annihilation
Russia and Hamas not only engage in attacks against democracies, nor are their aims limited to a military victory. They have each made abundantly clear in their rhetoric and actions that they are pursuing the eradication of cultures and peoples. Each openly and deliberately commit atrocities against civilians; the murders of Ukrainians and Israeli Jews are neither random nor accidental but instead deliberate, indeed central, to their ends.
Integral to both Vladimir Putin’s and Hamas’ eliminationist ideologies are their claims that Ukraine and Israel, respectively, are artificial creations of the Western powers. This idea animates Putin’s infamous essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” in which he claims that Ukrainian nationalism was devised by the Poles, reinforced by the Austro-Hungarian and German empires, and later nurtured by the United States as a means of weakening Russia.
Hamas, in its 1988 Covenant and more recent propaganda, employs similar anti-Western tropes, asserting that Zionism is the product of “the Crusaders” and “imperialistic powers” that usurped supposedly Muslim land — and, in doing do, conveniently ignores the presence of indigenous Christian Arab and Jewish populations in both Ottoman and British Palestine. Just as Ukraine is portrayed by Putin as an “anti-Russia” entity, Hamas sees Israel as a hostile and artificial state created to suppress Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East. Hamas’ charter and statements — including the recent vow by a senior Hamas official to repeat the Oct. 7 massacre “again and again” — make it abundantly clear that the group seeks not a two-state solution but the total eradication of Israel.
Both Putinism and Hamas’ Islamist ideology not only refuse to acknowledge the right of Ukraine and Israel to exist but also rely on a drumbeat of hatred as an important mobilizing force, frequently employing dehumanizing tropes. Former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, today deputy head of the Russian Security Council, has referred to Ukrainians as “cockroaches” and “grunting pigs” slated for extermination. Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov and other public figures have demonized Ukrainians and their Western backers as “Satanists.” This rhetoric of degradation and extermination is virtually identical to how Hamas’ leaders, spokespeople, and affiliated clerics describe Israelis and Jews. (READ MORE: The Satanic Temple Attempts to Bring Abortion to Pro-Life States)
In their propaganda, both Hamas and Russian media describe their adversaries as “Nazis” and “fascists” — even as they pursue racial and ethnic policies similar to these regimes. Just as a wide array of Russian state propagandists have called for the genocide of Ukrainians, Hamas officials have made open calls to attack and kill Jews worldwide.
It is no accident that the cruelty and barbarism of Hamas in Kfar Aza, Nahal Oz, and Reim are matched by the mass incidents of torture, rape, and summary executions of civilians committed by Russian forces in Bucha, Irpin, and Mariupol. The latter city, once home to nearly half a million people, has been mostly razed to the ground, and it is believed that no less than 25,000 of its inhabitants were killed. In all, tens of thousands of civilians are believed to have perished in the Russia’s frenzy of destruction.
These atrocities are an outgrowth of two totalitarian ideologies that deny any rights to their adversarial “other.” Moreover, these barbarous attacks are the fruit of a steady drumbeat of hate propaganda that systematically dehumanizes the opponent, remains integral to the justification for war, and is removed from domestic debate and criticism. In both Russia and Gaza, teachers and schoolbooks in primary and secondary education repeat the xenophobic narratives of the ruling elites and argue for the destruction of neighboring states. In Gaza, media censorship, suppression of dissent, and intolerance of alternative viewpoints ensure that there is no debate or discussion of the Oct. 7 atrocities. Whereas the suppression of freedom of the press and speech in Russia is well known, Hamas’ control of news and images coming out of Gaza is less recognized, but it is just as ironclad. In a 2022 report, Amnesty International described the state of internal political freedom in Gaza (and the West Bank) as follows:
[Authorities] continued to unduly restrict freedom of expression, association and assembly, at times using excessive force to disperse peaceful gatherings. In the Gaza Strip, a general climate of repression, following a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests against the rising costs of living in 2019, effectively deterred dissent, often leading to self-censorship.
Leading Western media would do well to consider this censorship before they uncritically transmit Hamas’ statements about alleged Israeli airstrikes.
Citizens in democracies, including Israel and Ukraine, are not immune to demagoguery, jingoism, and ultra-nationalism. And, yes, democracies sometimes wage wars in which war crimes are committed. But these crimes, if they occur, are the product of war — not its aim, a distinction that is often forgotten in today’s heated debates. What’s more, the misdeeds of democracies can be openly challenged by a free press and informed public. None of this applies in the darkness of totalitarian rule.
Anti-Semitism Grows in Russia as Israel and Ukraine Align
Hamas’ killing spree against Israeli civilians has evoked revulsion in Ukraine, where support for Israel’s embattled and imperfect democracy is widespread. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, has been vociferous in his support of Israel — to the discomfort of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has cultivated a friendly relationship with Putin. From the outset of Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine, however, the Israeli public has generally expressed sympathy and solidarity. According to a July poll, 76 percent of Israelis supported supplying Ukraine with anti-missile defense, which Netanyahu has so far refused to do. In 2022, another poll showed that three-quarters of Israelis backed Ukraine.
Last month, an anti-Semitic riot took place in Russia’s Dagestan region, and anti-Semitic tropes recently have become common in the Russian media. Imperialist xenophobe Alexander Dugin and others have begun to question the loyalty of Russian Jews, and the Kremlin has jointly hosted Hamas and Iranian officials. Russian political commentator Sergey Mardan, who has called Ukrainians “ghouls” and asserted that Ukraine “should be erased off the map,” has recently started cheerleading for Israel’s mortal enemies. “Israel is an ally of the United States,” he wrote on his Telegram channel on Oct. 7. “Therefore choosing a side [in this conflict] is very simple.” In this context, Netanyahu’s cordial relations with Putin have begun to face a growing backlash in Israel. Israelis, too, are angered by a failed U.N. Security Council resolution, backed by Russia, that neglected to explicitly condemn Hamas’ mass murders. (READ MORE: Sarkozy Courts Controversy With Pro-Russia Comments)
The return of anti-Semitism in a Russia rife with state-promoted xenophobia is hardly a surprise. Nor is the malignant axis that joins Russia, Hamas, and Iran, their mutual ally. Each revisionist entity propagates the eradication of states and the subjugation, if not the outright annihilation, of peoples. Their shared values and deepening cooperation — as well as the solidarity between Ukrainians and Israelis — should be a clear message to Americans and to Congress that simultaneous support for Ukraine against Russia and Israel against Hamas is not something artificially paired to increase chances of the bill’s passage. Rather, it is part of a crucial battle against a common evil — one that increasingly is looking for ways to work together in undermining free peoples.
Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, is co-director of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter and author of a forthcoming history, Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the War with Russia (Yale University Press).