On a recent morning I came to a section titled “Confessions of a Slavophile” in the July and August 1877 issue of Dostoevsky’s A Writer’s Diary. Here Dostoevsky identifies himself as among those for whom Slavophile doctrine means
a spiritual union of all who believe that our great Russia, at the head of the united Slavs, will pronounce to the whole world, to the whole of European humanity and civilization, its own, new healthy word, a word that the world has not yet heard. This word will be uttered for the sake of a blessed and genuine union of all humanity in a new, fraternal, universal alliance whose fundamental principles are already found in the animating spirit of the Slavs and above all in the spirit of the great Russian People, who have suffered for so long, who have been condemned to silence for so many centuries, but who have always possessed mighty powers for the future clarification and solution of many painful and fateful misapprehensions of western European civilization.
The passage is written against the backdrop of Russia’s alliance with Bulgaria and Bulgar Slavs rebelling against the Ottoman Empire. Russia sought to recover territory lost during the Crimean War two decades earlier, reestablish a presence on the Black Sea, and not least from Dostoevsky’s point of view come to the aid of Slavs oppressed by the Turks.
Putin and his circle stand in a long tradition of Slavophiles whose feelings of victimization and resentment toward Europe are coupled with belief in Russia’s messianic, world-historical mission. One hears echoes of this in Putin’s celebration of Crimea’s annexation in 2014, a return “to its home harbour” where it would move forward with Russia “hand in hand” (Wong, Russian election), and his designation of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as part of “New Russia” following the invasion of 2022.
It is widely expected that with last weekend’s election charade behind him and the congratulatory messages of Xi Jinping, Nagendra Modi, and Mohammad Bin Salman ringing in his ears, Putin will step up the assault on Ukraine. He moved quickly to link Ukraine to the terror attack in Moscow for which Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) claims credit, setting the stage for a new wave of atrocities. Russia has produced no evidence of Ukrainian involvement.
There are conflicting reports about where things stand in the war. The situation is surely grave for Ukraine, desperate for additional Western aid, its soldiers reportedly exhausted and short on ammunition, but maybe not so rosy for Russia either. According to unnamed Western officials Russia too “is facing ‘extreme challenges’ in obtaining sufficient equipment and material” (Corera, Russia). Cathy Young, one of my go-to sources on Russia and Ukraine, writes that
After the capture of Avdiivka in mid-February at huge cost, the Russian offensive in the east seems stalled, with Ukrainian forces holding back and sometimes pushing back Russian troops even without the benefit of new deliveries of weapons and ammunition from the United States.
House speaker Mike Johnson claims that he understands the urgency of sending additional aid to Ukraine yet fails to act with urgency. The House spent the week passing the remaining spending bills that will keep the government funded and prevent a partial shutdown. It is now adjourned for a two-week recess, much needed by Republicans weary from their unstinting efforts to find a reason to impeach the president. Action on Ukraine is now pushed back until at least April 9.
One might suspect in this some of the sly mendacity on display since Johnson’s ascent to a position two heartbeats removed from the Oval Office as he rejects separation of church and state as a principle of American governance, finesses ties with Christian nationalists, denies suggestions that he is an “election denier,” refuses to confirm that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and refers to the former president as President Trump. Johnson continues to link Ukrainian aid to border security after rejecting a bipartisan compromise crafted by Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford in negotiation with his fellow Senators Kyrsten Sinema (Independent–Ariz.), and Chris Murphy (Democrat–Conn.) that incorporated most of what border hawks had demanded and agitated Biden’s left flank in the process, all the more reason, one might think, for Republicans to vote for it. Whether this is chicanery or the dithering of someone in over his head is up for debate.
Those three senators are not known to be soft on border security. Only Murphy could possibly be accused of a leftward lean, and that is of a pragmatic, liberal-to-moderate flavor. Sinema is reviled and loathed by progressives. Lankford is a former Baptist youth minister, “known as one of the most sincere and well-liked members of the Senate…a conservative who rarely votes against his party, has long championed stricter measures at the border and has been supportive of former President Donald Trump” (Jalonick, Groves, GOP senator Lankford).
Yet Lankford was hung out to dry by Senate Republicans and condemned by members of the Oklahoma GOP when Biden’s predecessor weighed in against the proposed legislation. As Sinema put it, “Less than 24 hours after we released the bill, my Republican colleagues changed their minds. Turns out they want all talk and no action. It turns out border security is not a risk to our national security. It’s just a talking point for the election” (Jalonick, Groves).
Linkage of additional aid for Ukraine with aid to Israel may once have seemed a reasonable tactic. Israel blew that up with a response to the Hamas attack of October 7 that goes so far beyond self-defense that it makes a mockery of any claim to that right, leaving some in the Democratic ranks reluctant to provide arms for Israel or opposed altogether. MAGA Republicans make support for Ukraine conditional on border security while rejecting legislation for which Biden might get credit. Meanwhile, isolationist and authoritarian strains in the party grow more pronounced. Somewhere along the line Republicans began advocating aid to Ukraine in the form of a loan instead of a grant. Maybe a case can be made for that, maybe not. The more cogent point is that the goalposts are moved again and again.
There is in this country a deep well of good will and instinctive support for Israel. I suspect that I was not alone among my generation when in my youth I absorbed the narrative that Israel is a small country where Jews fleeing persecution in Europe found a largely uninhabited land and made the desert bloom. The mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians who improbably made their homes in this largely uninhabited land barely registered. We saw only a tiny Israel surrounded by enemies bent on its destruction. US policy and popular opinion alike have given Israeli leaders benefit of the doubt whenever they claimed the need to defend their country as justification for actions that would be unacceptable in other circumstances. The history is more complicated.
This is some of the context within which Joe Biden voiced unwavering support for Israel when it was attacked on October 7. Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling coalition took Biden’s words as carte blanche to run amok in Gaza, heeding Lindsey Graham’s call to “level the place.” That this is not what Biden had in mind is irrelevant to his left flank. Subsequent efforts to rein in Netanyahu have been ineffective. Biden’s critics slam him for doing too little too late. They are not altogether wrong, but they crucially fail to recognize, or admit, the limits of American power. Netanyahu has always thumbed his nose at American counterparts when push comes to shove, as did other Israeli leaders before him, and those counterparts have always been timid about shoving back too hard.
Progressives show solidarity with Palestinians with fashion statements and accusations of genocide lobbed at Netanyahu, Biden, and Tony Blinken. I tend to steer clear of that term because it invites wrangling about whether what is happening meets the technical, legal criteria of genocide. The savagery of Israel’s assault stands on its own demanding unequivocal condemnation, genocide or not. That is where focus should be.
“Genocide” joins “racism,” “sexism,” “fascism,” and so on in the left’s lexicon of demonization, words used for demagogic purposes without regard for any strict definition. The right has its own parallel lexicon with terms such as “socialism” and “Marxism.” Netanyahu and the pro-Israel lobby use “antisemitism” in the same fashion to smear criticism of Israel. That lobby is well funded and wields its influence with a heavy hammer. There is nothing antisemitic about acknowledging that or about robust debate on the issues.
This is not to deny that antisemitism, racism, etc., continue to infect our social and political culture. That should never be overlooked or downplayed. For a time antisemitism, like racism, lurked in shadows, expressed in code words, with a knowing wink and a nod, rather than openly. It was generally taken to be a feature of the reactionary right. The resurgence of antisemitism on the right and its rise on the illiberal left have brought it out into the open again. This is the subject of an excellent article by Franklin Foer in the April issue of The Atlantic (The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending), well worth checking out if you subscribe to the magazine or can otherwise gain access to a copy.
The situation in Gaza is heart-wrenching, but Gaza is only part of the story. The illegal expansion of settlements and settler campaign of harassment and violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has been going on for years with the complicity of Israeli authorities. It has ramped up since October 7. Israeli policy in both regions operates on the same principle as Republican policy on the US southern border: If you make the lives of desperate people miserable enough, they will go away. The cruelty is the point.
Netanyahu remains categorically opposed to a two-state solution and actively engaged in thwarting efforts to that end. He boasts that “everyone knows that I am the one who for decades blocked the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger our existence” (TOI, Netanyahu boasts) and maintains that Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River…That collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can we do?” (Netanyahu says). What, indeed? And what, then, does one expect Palestinians to do?
No one imagines that Netanyahu envisions a single state where Palestinians are citizens with all the rights of citizenship in a democracy, which would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. He can only have in mind some variation of the status quo ante with even more heavy-handed, so-called security measures in place than before and perhaps the dream that Palestinians will eventually emigrate to Arab countries or Europe or America or somewhere.
But Hamas. Pro-Palestinian progressives cannot seem to bring themselves to acknowledge that Hamas is part of the problem. The Hamas revised manifesto of 2017 states in Article 11 that “the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [endowment] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day” and in Article 27 that “There is no alternative to a fully sovereign Palestinian State on the entire national Palestinian soil, with Jerusalem as its capital.” (Doctrine of Hamas, Hamas Principles and Policies in May 2017). There is not much room for negotiation here. Demands for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire never seem to take into account Hamas’s commitment to the establishment of an Islamic state from the river to the sea and to violence as a means to achieve that goal.
But Israel. How can anyone believe that reduction of Gaza to rubble and the mass starvation of Palestinians will bring about the elimination of Hamas? Is it not more likely to further harden the hearts of people whose lives are left even more wretched and impoverished than they were before? Is it not more likely to increase support for Hamas or some successor equally committed to the destruction of Israel?
The urgent immediate need is the provision of humanitarian aid, food, medical care, shelter, to the people of Gaza and a pause in the fighting. In Ukraine it is the provision of weapons for its people to defend themselves against a barbaric aggressor. Beyond that lies the imposing task to come up with more effective measures to counter the zealots of Hamas, Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, and the Kremlin, whose terrible ambitions bring devastation down on many innocent people.
Keep the faith. Stand with Ukraine. yr obdt svt
References and Related Reading
Doctrine of Hamas, Wilson Center, October 20, 2023
Explainer: What is ISIS-K, the group that attacked a Moscow concert hall?, March 23, 2024
Netanyahu rejects international pressure for Palestinian state, Reuters, February 16, 2024
Associated Press, Netanyahu says he told U.S. that he opposes Palestinian state in any postwar scenario, NPR, January 19, 2024
Emma Burrows, Dasha Litvinoa, Jim Heintz, Putin extends rule in preordained Russian election after harshest crackdown since Soviet era, Associated Press, March 18, 2024
Gordon Corera, Russia 'struggling with supply of weapons and ammunition' for Ukraine war—Western officials, BBC News, February 21, 2024
Fyodor Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary: Volume 2, 1877–1881, tr. and annotated by Kenneth Lantz, Northwestern University Press, 1997 (orig. pub. 1994)
Guy Faulconbridge, Andrew Osborn, Thousands of Russians join Navalny-inspired 'noon against Putin' election, Reuters, March 17, 2024
Franklin Foer, The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending, The Atlantic, April 2024
Mary Clare Jalonick, Stephen Groves, Abandoned by his colleagues after negotiating a border compromise, GOP senator faces backlash alone, Associated Press, February 7, 2024
Mike Lillie, Mychael Schnell, Speaker Johnson, GOP face crunch time on Ukraine, The Hill, March 19, 2024
Amna Nawaz, What’s next for Israel and war in Gaza as rift between Netanyahu and Biden widens, PBS NewsHour, March 19, 2024
Keith Robinson, Who Governs the Palestinians?, Council on Foreign Relations, February 27, 2024
Paul Ronzheimer, Joe Stanley-Smith, Netanyahu denies Palestinians are starving, Politico, March 10, 2024
Oleg Sukhov, Putin ‘wins’ rigged Russian election; Ukrainians in occupied territories vote at gunpoint, Kyiv Independent, March 17, 2024
TOI staff, Netanyahu boasts of thwarting the establishment of a Palestinian state ‘for decades,’ Times of Israel, February 20, 2024
Victor Wong, Russia election: Putin hails illegal annexation of Crimea after claiming election win, BBC News, March 18, 2024
Cathy Young, A Fake Vote for Putin, a Win for the Protesters, The Bulwark, March 19, 2024
well thought out