Genocidal Warfare and Permanent Security Entwined: Ukraine and Gaza

CBEES Advanced Seminar with A. Dirk Moses Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the City College of New York, and Çağla Demirel, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at CBEES, Södertörn University and Visiting Scholar at the Stockholm University Institute for
Turkish Studies (SUITS).

Speakers: A. Dirk Moses, Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the City College of New York, and Çağla Demirel, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at CBEES, Södertörn University and Visiting Scholar at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies (SUITS).

Discussant: Alaa Tartir, PhD., Senior Researcher of Conflict, Peace and Security at SIPRI.

Chair: Yuliya Yurchuk, Associate Professor in History of Ideas, Södertörn University.

Abstract: Today, the Russian occupation of and military expansion into Ukraine and the Israeli occupation of and military expansion into Palestine have been destabilizing entire regions and leading to mass demonstrations around the world. Public opinion globally, including in Europe, is generally against Israel’s destruction of Gaza and its Western backing in particular. Outside Europe, the Western support of Ukraine is seen as partisan. Indeed, this Western partisanship and the persistent hierarchies within the international security system that privilege certain victims and downplay others have led to a growing criticism in the Global South, where meaning-making, truth, and justice are articulated through different histories, solidarities, and horizons of struggle.

Despite clear parallels in occupation, expansion, and global response, many struggle to see them, particularly those who display Ukrainian and Israeli flags side by side in their social media profiles. Within this context, those who are willing to look beyond the media’s lazy Manichaean frames can see how entangled narratives of heroic resistance and genocidal victimhood simultaneously drive and conceal imperial expansion and genocidal violence. Both Ukraine and Gaza show how entrenched power continues to sustain violence—whether through a settler-colonial legacy in Gaza or through Ukraine’s postimperial and decolonial struggle for independence—by casting entire peoples as threats and justifying their subjugation in the name of permanent security: absolute safety from present and future threats by destroying anticipated threats now.