Our community is justifiably very focused on Hamas and the threat of Iran right now. However, I feel like we should not ignore the evil of Russia. Regardless of whatever feeling the Jewish community might have about past actions of Ukraine, there was no justification for Russia’s invasion. Since World War II, we have lived in a world where nations do not just invade other nations to increase their area of sovereignty. If we look the other way when Russia does it, we risk opening the floodgates. Now, one could reasonably argue that it is unrealistic to think that Russia will give back all the territory that they illegally took, but I think that we should certainly not be supportive of reversing the crippling economic sanctions that the West has put on them if they don’t.
We all support similar sanctions on Iran. We were all justifiably horrified by the evil Hamas perpetrated on Oct 7, but sadly, the Russian army did many of the same things. What Russia is doing is a threat to all of Europe. When people say we should not be concerned about what happens so far away from us, they are sadly repeating what people said when the world kept on appeasing aggressors in the 1930s, with horrific consequences.
