“There’s a model for Ukraine’s long-term security: Israel.” So proclaimed the headline on a June 23 editorial. On the same day, a front-page article, “Escalation in West Bank may further entangle U.S.,” reported that “both sides” — Israel’s military and Palestinian resisters in the occupied territories — are “introducing new and more powerful weapons and tactics that hark back to the all-out war of the second intifada more than 20 years ago, when Israel occupied much of the West Bank.”
Israel and Ukraine are both in crisis. Escalating arms races, entangling alliances, war profiteering and nationalistic dreams of territorial expansion have led the world to this moment, and these were among the key causes leading to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. That’s a “model” we should be worrying about.
Steven Sellers Lapham, Gaithersburg