On February 24th 2022, Russian troops invaded the country of Ukraine, in order to (as the Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed) ‘demilitarise’ and ‘denatzify’ Ukraine.  This is not the first invasion of Ukraine by Russia by any means, or even of this century: this is merely an escalation of the bad relations between the countries which includes the illegal annexation of the Crimea by Russia in 2014.

In 2014, NATO declared the annexation of Crimea illegal, and increased military co-operation with Ukaine and Georgia.  In 2022, NATO condemned the invasion in its ‘strongest possible terms‘and has since been providing logistical and military support (armaments and training) to the Ukrainian forces.  It may have taken 8 years for a concrete reaction from them, but NATO has taken a stand against the illegal invasion and occupation of another state’s land.

This week, Israel launched yet another military attack into the Israeli-occupied West Bank in what they say was a targetted attack on a Jenin militant command centre.  The West Bank is often referred to as being Israeli-Occupied, the reason for which is simply that the land does not belong to Israel – despite Israel saying it does, and moving settlers in to live there.  In fact, after Isreal illegally siezed the land in 1967, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 242 telling the Israelis to leave.

The is a long history of violence in this area and I do not have the deep grounding in a history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.  What I can say for certain is that this land does not belong to the Israelis according to international law, and yet they have been illegally occupying it for more than 50 years.

I wonder then why NATO isn’t condemning the occupation of the West Bank in the ‘strongest possible terms’ and why NATO countries aren’t sending patriot missile defence systems to the Palestinians so that they too can protect themselves from u,wanted invader…