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ACCORDING TO LIZ - The leaders of Russia and Israel have something in common, but not anything for which people would commend them.
In March of 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest for war crimes stemming from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of the previous year claiming a need to “demilitarize and denazify” its neighbor. This, following the egregious unilateral annexation of Crimea in 2014 and ongoing meddling in the resource-rich Donbas region which had been aggressively settled by Russian loyalists over the past century.
The warrant also cited the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia, apparently in a grotesque Stalinesque attempt to “re-educate” them into model Russian citizens to betray and leverage their homeland. Moscow has denied the allegations and labelled the warrants “outrageous.”
In November of 2024, as the full extent of civilian casualties resulting from its invasion of Gaza, purportedly to exterminate Hamas in the wake of the vaunted Israeli military-industrial complex’ embarrassment at the hands of the terrorist organization, the ICC issued warrants for the arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Benjmain Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.
Netanyahu took a similar stance to Russian despot, calling the warrants “a moral outrage of historic proportions” while Gallant dismissed the charges as “disgraceful.”
But there is only so much global opinion can excuse because of the Holocaust before people start pointing out that the actions of the belligerent state born in the wake of the Holocaust, like the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, are too often emulating those of the Nazis.
And there is only so much Russian ego the world can tolerate.
At least, for now, international disapproval is being pursued through political avenues with the rest of the world holding back from the bellicosity of a Russia, an Israel… or a United States which too often choose to flex their military might rather than pursuing diplomatic means to settle their differences.
Perhaps because, ultimately, they know that they are in the wrong.
Even in paying lip service to negotiation, the agents of both Putin and Netanyahu are demanding the concession of land and power over the futures of their Lilliputian opponents.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov contradicted the American president’s proposal that a tri-lateral meeting between him, Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy was imminent, demanding all Russian-claimed territory revert to Mother Russia before even discussion of any meeting could commence.
He also claimed that Zelenskyy does not have the authority to sign a treaty – which sounds awfully like a dictatorship assumption that Ukraine is still part of Russia… because Putin wants it so.
Because Lavrov’s boss holds misty-coated memories of holidays in what was then a Russian province as a young man.
Paralleling the fantasies propelling the desires of right-wing factions in the United States to go back in time, instead of forging a future based on current and rapidly changing realities.
As for Netanyahu rejecting reports of widespread atrocities and famine in Gaza, what fantasy is he living in?
Today, over half a million living, breathing beings are suffering from a lack of food, a lack of clean water, a lack of housing and healthcare. Driving destruction of infrastructure, destitution, disease, famine, death… and that it is human-caused and entirely preventable makes it all the more horrific.
Ratification of Netanyahu’s pogrom by radical Israelis, calling for the furthering of an eye-for-an-eye retaliation against Hamas to ensure a never-again repeat of the 2023 attack, is completely unacceptable when civilian lives are on the line, especially those of children and their physical and emotional well-being.
No matter the initial cause, no matter the pockets of virulently vocal support, nothing justifies the deliberate torture and death of children, nothing justifies Gazan civilian deaths exceeding 50 to one for those lives lost on October 7, nothing justifies Netanyahu recreating the holocaust om Gaza and on the West Bank.
Netanyahu and the current Israeli leadership deserve to be hauled into criminal court for crimes against humanity and severely sentenced for promoting renegade state actions.
Ditto Putin and his enablers for its continued oppression of dissident voices and minorities within Russia’s own borders, hardly changed since the days of the tsars, and for destroying nascent democracies in its sphere including its egregious attempt to dismember Ukraine.
Most Ukrainians doubt that Putin has any intention to ending the conflict short of Ukraine’s absolute capitulation.
In a 1991 referendum, 92 percent of Ukrainians voted for independence, including a majority in the eastern territories Putin claim as Russian.
Tremendous public protest in 2013 drove the pro-Russian president Viktor F. Yanukovych from office. And the roots of the current conflict date from Putin’s retaliatory invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula during the 2014 Olympic Games, and its unilateral annexation.
This weekend, on the day celebrating the rejection of Soviet rule by Ukraine’s parliament, Zelenskyy called for continued independence and an end to war so that “under our own flags, on our own land, our children and grandchildren will celebrate Independence Day — in peace.”
World leaders must rally around the ICC, support the conviction of both Putin and Netanyahu, and commit to forging plowshares and implements that aid humanity from the swords and technology of war.
Sidebar: Some contend that Zelenskyy is illegally holding on to office but, despite the suffering of its citizens, most strongly support maintaining their sovereignty as a free nation. The calls for the president to be removed come primarily from outside the country from those who see Zelenskyy as the strong backbone of Ukraine and the main reason Russia could not annex it quickly and without international protest.
Earlier this year, Ukraine’s parliament passed a resolution affirming national elections cannot take place while the country remains under martial law, contradicting Trump’s questioning of Zelenskyy’s legitimacy, and formally extending Zelenskyy’s mandate until martial law is lifted.
Let’s hope the American president can’t force his sycophants to do the same, giving him more reason to seize despotic control of this country. Which has seen virtually end-to-end foreign and domestic war since its inception.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected].)
