They oppose any aid to help Ukraine fight the Russian invasion, but they’re licking their chops to back Israel’s assault on Gaza.
OPINION
A video making the rounds on social media makes a shocking claim: Officials at Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense sold weapons to Hamas that were used in last weekend’s attacks in Israel.
The claim is backed up with multiple layers of supposed authority. The video is done in the style of an explainer video from the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and there’s a BBC logo in the corner. The on-screen captions say that the purported Ukrainian arms deal with Hamas was confirmed by the fact-checking and “open source intelligence” source Bellingcat.
No one should be surprised that it’s all complete nonsense. A lie from start to finish. Straight-up intentional disinformation.
To begin to unpack this falsehood, the idea that Ukraine would be selling arms to anyone while they’re in the middle of a bitter and prolonged land war with Russia—and need all the gear they can possibly get their hands on—should stretch credulity. The idea that they would sell them to Hamas, which would infuriate the countries whose aid Ukraine is totally reliant on—the United States and its allies—seems even less likely.
Unsurprisingly, Bellingcat has “confirmed” exactly none of this and whoever made the video has no connection to the BBC. The more interesting part is who’s been spreading this bit of low-rent fraud—and why.
The claim has spread like wildfire and been boosted by at least one MAGA Republican, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Relatedly, Donald Trump, Jr. pushed the conspiracy theory that Hamas’ weapons were supplied by the Taliban, after being abandoned by the U.S. military when it withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. (There is no evidence for either of these claims.)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)
Of course, this isn’t the first time that either of them have played fast and loose with the truth—or spread fanciful conspiracy theories (like QAnon and the Big Lie about the 2020 election, for example).
What’s interesting, though, is that the “Ukraine is arming Hamas” conspiracy theory is a kind of transitional fossil in the rapid political evolution of their wing of the right. For the last year and a half, President Joe Biden has championed U.S. funding for the war in Ukraine. Many on the right have been led by their partisan positioning to disagree, with some MAGA firebrands cosplaying as critics of the military-industrial complex. About a week ago, Greene even did a photo-op with protestors from the peace group, Code Pink.
Now, as Israel prepares a massive assault on Gaza, they’re all changing their tune.
In my early 20s, President George W. Bush responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by declaring that the entire world was “with us or against us.” He cluster-bombed, invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, tortured suspected terrorists in CIA “black sites” around the world, and declared that since the entire planet was one big battlefield in the “global war on terror” the U.S. had a right to extra-judicially execute alleged terrorists sitting outside cafes in Pakistan with unmanned drones.
In between these Republican presidents, Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were hardly doves. Clinton bombed Iraq and Yugoslavia, and Obama helped overthrow the government of Libya and dramatically expanded George W. Bush’s drone program.
But the GOP was the party of the most extreme hawks. Throughout the 1990s, Republicans attacked Bill Clinton for supposedly endangering American readiness by cutting military spending. Fox News hosts railed at Barack Obama for being a wimp who wouldn’t say the magical words “radical Islamic terrorism.” How, they asked, could we effectively fight our enemies to the death if we weren’t able to apply this label to them?
As hard as this can now be to remember, Republicans during the Obama years often attacked the president for being soft on Russia, particularly criticizing him for refusing to send heavy weaponry to Ukraine for that country’s war against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas. (Obama worried that doing so would escalate the conflict.) They also attacked him for not deepening U.S. involvement in the civil war in Syria, even after Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad used chemical weapons.
And, of course, their most consistent attack was that Obama wasn’t “strong” enough in backing America’s ally, Israel.
The GOP’s super-hawks considered Israel’s war of occupation in the Palestinian territories to be a front-line conflict in the broader war between “the west” and “radical Islamic terrorism.”
On a superficial level, all this started to change with the rise of Donald Trump to the leadership of the Republican Party in 2015 and 2016.
Trump was retroactively critical of Bush’s war in Iraq, although his claim to have opposed the invasion at the time doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. He would sometimes talk like a peacenik, and indeed many of his supporters have convinced themselves that he “kept the peace” as president—although they have to retcon away a lot of inconvenient facts to make that narrative work.
In reality, Trump doubled the rate of drone strikes, tore up Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, assassinated Iranian Gen, Qassem Soleimani, tightened the embargo on Cuba, vetoed the Senate’s attempts to stop U.S. funding of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, bombed Syria, and oh, by the way, reversed Obama’s decision not to send heavier weaponry to Ukraine. Even so, the myth of Trump the Dove persisted.
And during the Biden presidency, many Republicans really have reversed their party’s historic position. While the majority of Republicans in Congress have repeatedly voted for U.S. military aid to Ukraine, a substantial majority have opposed that intervention. While some simply want other western powers to pick up the tab, some have actually talked about de-escalation and peace negotiations. Some of them have used anti-war rhetoric that have made them sound disconcertingly like Noam Chomsky or (full disclosure) me. When Republican presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley sparred about Ukraine at the first GOP debate this year, Ramaswamy snarked, “I wish you success on your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.”
I can see how a casual observer could look at all that and wonder if a genuine partisan realignment was happening on issues of war and peace. Or at least I can understand how someone could have thought that—last week.
This week, they’re back to sounding like Obama-era Republicans screaming about “radical Islamic terrorism” and a clash of civilizations.
Ben Burgis
Published Oct. 11, 2023 1:05PM EDTOPINION
A video making the rounds on social media makes a shocking claim: Officials at Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense sold weapons to Hamas that were used in last weekend’s attacks in Israel.
The claim is backed up with multiple layers of supposed authority. The video is done in the style of an explainer video from the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and there’s a BBC logo in the corner. The on-screen captions say that the purported Ukrainian arms deal with Hamas was confirmed by the fact-checking and “open source intelligence” source Bellingcat.
No one should be surprised that it’s all complete nonsense. A lie from start to finish. Straight-up intentional disinformation.
To begin to unpack this falsehood, the idea that Ukraine would be selling arms to anyone while they’re in the middle of a bitter and prolonged land war with Russia—and need all the gear they can possibly get their hands on—should stretch credulity. The idea that they would sell them to Hamas, which would infuriate the countries whose aid Ukraine is totally reliant on—the United States and its allies—seems even less likely.
Unsurprisingly, Bellingcat has “confirmed” exactly none of this and whoever made the video has no connection to the BBC. The more interesting part is who’s been spreading this bit of low-rent fraud—and why.
The claim has spread like wildfire and been boosted by at least one MAGA Republican, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Relatedly, Donald Trump, Jr. pushed the conspiracy theory that Hamas’ weapons were supplied by the Taliban, after being abandoned by the U.S. military when it withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. (There is no evidence for either of these claims.)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)
Of course, this isn’t the first time that either of them have played fast and loose with the truth—or spread fanciful conspiracy theories (like QAnon and the Big Lie about the 2020 election, for example).
What’s interesting, though, is that the “Ukraine is arming Hamas” conspiracy theory is a kind of transitional fossil in the rapid political evolution of their wing of the right. For the last year and a half, President Joe Biden has championed U.S. funding for the war in Ukraine. Many on the right have been led by their partisan positioning to disagree, with some MAGA firebrands cosplaying as critics of the military-industrial complex. About a week ago, Greene even did a photo-op with protestors from the peace group, Code Pink.
Now, as Israel prepares a massive assault on Gaza, they’re all changing their tune.
Republicans Reverting to Form
For most of my life, the GOP was the party of America’s most rabid militarists. When I was a kid, Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush between them sent troops to Lebanon and Somalia, bombed Libya and Iraq, invaded Grenada and Panama, openly supported the proto-Taliban mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan, illegally armed and funded Contra death squads in Nicaragua, and somehow propped up both sides of the Iran-Iraq War.In my early 20s, President George W. Bush responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by declaring that the entire world was “with us or against us.” He cluster-bombed, invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, tortured suspected terrorists in CIA “black sites” around the world, and declared that since the entire planet was one big battlefield in the “global war on terror” the U.S. had a right to extra-judicially execute alleged terrorists sitting outside cafes in Pakistan with unmanned drones.
In between these Republican presidents, Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were hardly doves. Clinton bombed Iraq and Yugoslavia, and Obama helped overthrow the government of Libya and dramatically expanded George W. Bush’s drone program.
But the GOP was the party of the most extreme hawks. Throughout the 1990s, Republicans attacked Bill Clinton for supposedly endangering American readiness by cutting military spending. Fox News hosts railed at Barack Obama for being a wimp who wouldn’t say the magical words “radical Islamic terrorism.” How, they asked, could we effectively fight our enemies to the death if we weren’t able to apply this label to them?
As hard as this can now be to remember, Republicans during the Obama years often attacked the president for being soft on Russia, particularly criticizing him for refusing to send heavy weaponry to Ukraine for that country’s war against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas. (Obama worried that doing so would escalate the conflict.) They also attacked him for not deepening U.S. involvement in the civil war in Syria, even after Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad used chemical weapons.
And, of course, their most consistent attack was that Obama wasn’t “strong” enough in backing America’s ally, Israel.
The GOP’s super-hawks considered Israel’s war of occupation in the Palestinian territories to be a front-line conflict in the broader war between “the west” and “radical Islamic terrorism.”
On a superficial level, all this started to change with the rise of Donald Trump to the leadership of the Republican Party in 2015 and 2016.
Trump was retroactively critical of Bush’s war in Iraq, although his claim to have opposed the invasion at the time doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. He would sometimes talk like a peacenik, and indeed many of his supporters have convinced themselves that he “kept the peace” as president—although they have to retcon away a lot of inconvenient facts to make that narrative work.
In reality, Trump doubled the rate of drone strikes, tore up Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, assassinated Iranian Gen, Qassem Soleimani, tightened the embargo on Cuba, vetoed the Senate’s attempts to stop U.S. funding of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, bombed Syria, and oh, by the way, reversed Obama’s decision not to send heavier weaponry to Ukraine. Even so, the myth of Trump the Dove persisted.
And during the Biden presidency, many Republicans really have reversed their party’s historic position. While the majority of Republicans in Congress have repeatedly voted for U.S. military aid to Ukraine, a substantial majority have opposed that intervention. While some simply want other western powers to pick up the tab, some have actually talked about de-escalation and peace negotiations. Some of them have used anti-war rhetoric that have made them sound disconcertingly like Noam Chomsky or (full disclosure) me. When Republican presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley sparred about Ukraine at the first GOP debate this year, Ramaswamy snarked, “I wish you success on your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.”
I can see how a casual observer could look at all that and wonder if a genuine partisan realignment was happening on issues of war and peace. Or at least I can understand how someone could have thought that—last week.
This week, they’re back to sounding like Obama-era Republicans screaming about “radical Islamic terrorism” and a clash of civilizations.
