Recently, supermodel Gigi Hadid posted a message on Instagram announcing she was donating her Fashion Month earnings “to those suffering from the war in Ukraine” and “those experiencing the same in Palestine.” 

Never mind Russia and Israel are invading, occupying and annexing territory that doesn’t legally belong to them in defiance of international law, the comparison infuriated supporters of Israel who took to social media to denounce the Palestinian-American model as a Jew-hater.

Former Entourage star Emmanuelle Chriqui accused Hadid of “fanning the flames of antisemitism.” 

Weaponizing bogus charges of antisemitism to whitewash Israel’s misdeeds is nothing new, but the hysterical overreaction to Hadid’s post suggests Israel’s advocates know there’s a kernel of truth to the comparison: while the two situations are not identical, there’s a reason the International Criminal Court is investigating both Russia and Israel for alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine and Palestine, respectively. 

Colonizing Occupied Territory 

In 2014, Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, and resettled hundreds of thousands of its citizens there to cement its hold on the area. 

How is that any different from what Israel is doing in the West Bank, where since 1967, Israel has sent 600,000 Israeli citizens to colonize the territory and prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state?  

An occupying power moving its own citizens into an occupied territory violates Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which clearly states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Palestine isn’t a real country but part of Greater Israel, say right-wing Zionists, and Jews have every right to live in their ancestral homeland, an argument that closely parallels Vladimir Putin’s contention Ukraine is really part of Russia and therefore Russians are justified in taking back what was originally theirs.

The legendary Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote: “Both see the occupied land as the land of their forefathers, part of their heritage, belonging rightfully to them. Ukraine is the cradle of Russianness, the West Bank of Judaism.”

Bombing Hospitals and Residential Buildings

The similarities don’t end there. 

Decent people are rightly appalled by Russia’s indiscriminate bombing of schools, hospitals and apartment building in Ukraine, especially the bombing of a maternity ward last week in Mariupol, which left three dead and 17 injured. 

The World Health Organization has documented 43 attacks on health care facilities since the war began. 

The destruction of civilian infrastructure absent military necessity is a war crime, as is failing to distinguish between civilians and combatants. 

But the world seems less appalled when Israel repeatedly bombs civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

During last May’s 11-day conflict in Gaza, Amnesty International accused Israel of “crimes against humanity” by deliberately targeting residential buildings without warning. 

“In some cases, entire families were buried beneath the rubble when the buildings they lived in collapsed,” said Saleh Higazi, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Israel also attacked at least eighteen hospitals and clinics, according to the World Health Organization, and killed two of Gaza’s most prominent doctors. 

Just like Russia, Israel blames the high civilian death count on the other side using women and children as human shields, which, even if true, doesn’t absolve the attacking army from doing everything it can to minimize the death of innocents.

Expanding Borders Using Force

The prohibition on countries gaining territory by force is the cornerstone of the rules-based international order put in place after World War Two to prevent a repeat of Nazi-style war crimes. 

Last December, foreign ministers from the G7 countries issued a warning to Russia: “Any use of force to change borders is strictly prohibited under international law. Russia should be in no doubt that further military aggression against Ukraine would have massive consequences.”

We’re now seeing the consequences the G7 warned about with a crippling regime of sanctions designed to force Russia to withdraw from Ukraine 

Yet, Israel has used force to change its borders on at least two occasions, first when it annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, and then when it annexed the Golan Heights the following year, territories Israel initially seized during the Six-Day War.

But instead of being punished, Israel is rewarded with $3.8 billion a year in U.S. military aid. 

If Israel was held to the same standard as Russia, it would be severely sanctioned until it withdrew from the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem, none of which are legally part of Israel. 

As the Irish politician Richard Boyd Barrett said, calling out his own country’s double standards on imposing sanctions against Russia but not Israel: “The government has moved instantly within five days to sanction Putin's regime and take urgent action. And the strength of language that was used, rightly against Putin, as a barbarian, as a thug, as a murderer, as a warmonger, all of which are true; all of those things apply to the state of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians.”

Resisting Occupation

Just after Russia invaded Ukraine, a video clip circulated on social media said to depict a blonde-haired young girl waving her fist at a Russian soldier, which was touted as an example of Ukrainian bravery in the face of Russian aggression. 

Except the girl was Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager who was sentenced to eight months in prison for slapping an Israeli soldier.

When Ukrainian civilians make petrol bombs to throw at Russian tanks, they’re hailed as heroes by the Western media. But when a Palestinian child throws a stone at an Israeli vehicle, the child is labelled a terrorist and thrown in jail, while the world looks away.

Don’t the Palestinians, like the Ukrainians, have a moral right to resist the military takeover of their land? Or is that right only reserved for Europeans? Isn’t it a double-standard to insist Palestinians protest peacefully against their oppressors, while encouraging Ukrainians to take up arms against Russia?   

Peter Beinart pointed out in Jewish Currents: “In the days since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukrainians and their supporters have been lionized for the same forms of resistance to oppression for which Palestinians are routinely condemned.”

Supporters of Israel argue the Russian-Ukraine conflict differs from the one taking place between Israelis and Palestinians because Ukraine isn’t bombarding Russian cities with rockets. 

True, Hamas indiscriminately firing rockets at Israeli civilians is a war crime and Israelis have a right to defend themselves from such attacks. 

But that right doesn’t extend to wiping out entire Palestinian families or flattening entire neighborhoods, as Israel did during the Black Friday massacre in Rafah in 2014, when it destroyed hundreds of Palestinian homes and killed 135 civilians, including 75 children, to retrieve the body of a dead IDF officer kidnapped by Hamas fighters. 

Israel and Russia justify violently invading other people’s land by claiming they are acting in self-defense.

Russia claims it invaded Ukraine to prevent the genocide of Russian-speakers in Eastern Ukraine and to combat the threat posed by NATO to Russia’s security, while Israel says it’s trying to prevent the genocide of Israelis at the hands of Hamas and counter the threat to Israel’s security posed by Iran. 

Both claims are wildly overblown, but only one is taken seriously by the Western media.

The West’s newfound fondness for upholding international law should be welcomed, but only if it’s applied in all cases. You can’t hold Russia to account for its criminal violations and give Israel a free pass for doing the same thing, not unless you’re a hypocrite. A war crime is a war crime. The nationality of the war criminal or the war criminal’s victims should be irrelevant. 

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