Why is there no outcry for Ukraine civilian deaths? | GARY COSBY JR.

There is a terrible outcry over civilian deaths in Gaza. Campus protesters at some major U.S. universities are screaming that genocide is underway, but there is no outcry over Ukrainian civilian deaths at the hands of the Russians.

In Gaza, the Gaza Health Ministry reported 28,000 civilian dead. In Ukraine, the United Nations has reported more than 10,000 civilian deaths and more than 20,000 injured. So why is there this great outcry over Gaza’s civilians but no one has uttered a word about the Ukrainians?

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There is a very ugly answer to that question and it can be summarized with a single word: Antisemitism. One would have thought World War II would have put that word to death along with the millions of Jews who were slaughtered in the Nazi extermination camps. Unfortunately, the attitude did not die.

This makes it doubly peculiar that charges of genocide would be directed at Israel, a people who know more about genocide than any other culture in the world. That is not to say their military campaign in Gaza has been kind and benevolent to civilians. It has not. It has been brutal.

There are striking differences between the two conflicts. Ukraine was attacked by Russia without provocation. Israel was attacked by terrorist forces coming from Gaza, a condition which has repeated itself nonstop since 1948 on one front or another. Hamas terrorists based in Gaza are heavily backed by Iran, a government whose intention is the eradication of the state of Israel.

The United States response has been mixed. Our support for Ukraine has ranged from relatively firm to tepid. Our support of Israel has mostly been firm, but we have begun expressing reservations and urging a cessation of the offensive in Gaza.

Republican lawmakers have been behind efforts to block aid to Ukraine and Israel, at least in part at the urging of Donald Trump. He obviously hopes to win the election then sweep in and magically end both conflicts. Given his past foreign policy track record, that seems highly unlikely. His foreign policy as it relates to Russia is akin to opening the vault to a bank robber.

His policy in Israel when he was in office was to give the Israel a blank check as far as his support goes. While that may not have led to this particularly heavy response by Israel, it would not be without precedent that U.S. policy in the Middle East was misunderstood by one nation or another, particularly when administrations change.

Joe Biden’s response, especially in the Gaza situation has diminished from firm support for Israel to demanding the fighting stop. That is called bending to the wind. Either you have a policy or you do not. It is hard to discern Biden’s resolve in this situation because on the one hand we demand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stop the fighting, while on the other hand, U.S. fighters and missile-armed warships helped shoot down a massive drone and missile attack that originated in Iran.

Congress is withholding aid from Ukraine, a move that reveals whose side the Republicans are on. The hard right group in Congress is attempting to abet Vladimir Putin and Russia by stopping U.S. aid. Perhaps they have forgotten that we spent 40 years after World War II and expended the lives of servicemen in Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War to bring down Soviet Communism of which Putin was a player in the notorious KGB. But Donald Trump likes the man, or is being manipulated by him, so Republicans play with the lives of Ukrainian civilians by holding up aid to that country.

The problem in both situations is civilians are dying needlessly. For Israel to be prosecuting a war that has so heavily damaged infrastructure upon which the civilians in Gaza must rely for the essentials of life is unconscionable. While any nation has a right to defend itself against an attacking enemy, I think almost everyone outside Israel, and many inside it, now see that enough is enough.

This is a situation into which a strong U.S. president, and I am not speaking of Biden or Trump here, would step in and demand a cessation of hostilities. As we are very closely allied with Israel, our influence should be enough if there was a man or woman with the will to do it.

It is time to end this ridiculous bickering in Congress and send whatever Ukraine needs to force Russia out of its territory and end this bitter war that is nothing more than an exercise of Putin’s ego.

If there is one lesson learned from any European war of the last century it is that stopping a would-be tyrant before he gains strength is excellent policy. The Allied Powers waited far too long to oppose Hitler and it cost the world between 60 million and 100 million lives. We eventually managed to stop Soviet expansionism through the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars over decades, but we did it without shedding the kind of blood that was poured out on Europe's battlefields during two world wars. This is no time to get cheap. Money is definitely less costly than blood.

Gary Cosby Jr. can be reached at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Why is there no outcry for Ukraine civilian deaths? | GARY COSBY JR.