On the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas militants attacked Israeli territory adjacent to the Gaza Strip, simultaneously with rocket attacks on Israeli towns and settlements "within range" of Gaza. They were particularly brutal toward prisoners and civilians, taking large numbers of civilian’s hostage. The attackers also openly declared their ultimate goal to be the liberation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Israel's response was to attack Gaza and prepare for a ground operation in the Strip. There were numerous casualties on both sides, both military and civilian.

Most of the world community, including Georgia, condemned the action of Hamas, which has already led to a bloody war and disrupted the Middle East peace process. Most Arab and Muslim countries have also spoken out against the Hamas action. The war that has broken out has predictably affected first and foremost the Palestinian civilian population of the Gaza Strip, where many more Palestinians have already been killed in the attacks on peaceful neighborhoods than were the victims of the Hamas attack on the Israelis. And unfortunately, there will be more victims to come.

But the reaction of the Khai nationalists, who not long ago were whining to the whole world about their "long suffering" and "genocide", is indicative of this. They do not hide their joy, they are openly happy about the deaths of Israeli civilians (just look at the posts of representatives of the "long-suffering nation" in their social networks).

The fact that peaceful Palestinians will suffer and die from the war and attacks on Gaza does not bother the Hai nationalists much either, because most of them are Muslims, whom they hate. The Hai nationalists simply gloat. "This is for Israel for 'Artsakh' and for helping Azerbaijan" - this is the leitmotif of most of their publications.

In fact, the current aggressive anti-Semitism of the Hai nationalists shows that their veneration of the Nazi criminal Garegin Nzhdeh was not at all accidental. One can have different attitudes towards Zionism as such, but it is too much to rejoice in the death of peaceful people, no matter what nationality they are.
Many analysts have linked Hamas's actions to Iran, but this is probably an exaggeration. Hamas on the one hand and the authorities in Tehran, the IRGC and Hezbollah on the other have little in common except a "shared hatred" of Israel, if only because Hamas is a radical Sunni group that is openly hostile to Shiites. Most likely, Hamas is thus "framed" by Iran because, on the one hand, those who sympathize with the Palestinians are waiting for it to "open a second front" against Israel, which Tehran clearly does not want today, since Iran's relations with the U.S., which is allied with Israel, have warmed up again.

To understand the situation "looking from Georgia" - the extremist organization Hamas together with the Lebanese extremist organization Hezbollah were the first to recognize the so-called "independence" of the separatist Abkhazia and the so-called South Ossetia. Hamas did this on the same day that the Russian Federation, which carried out the aggression against Georgia in August 2008, recognized the so-called independence of these separatist regions. Later, we should remind, the Kremlin tried to "buy" the recognition of the so-called "independence" of the separatists in the Russian-occupied territories of Georgia from other countries (Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru), but it managed to do it with great difficulty and after quite a long period of time. The Assad regime in Syria, saved by the Russian Federation, under pressure from the Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry headed by Sergey Lavrov-Kalantrov, recognized the separatists of Sukhumi and Tskhinvali only in 2018.

And Hamas recognized the separatists without even waiting for "requests and admonitions" from the Kremlin. In fact, Hamas became the fourth so-called "entity" to recognize the separatists of Sukhumi and Tskhinvali - after separatist Artsakh, separatist Transnistria and Russia.

It is not quite clear why he needed it? Just like the current attack on Israel.
Hamas has no chance of winning a new war, despite its apparent initial "successes". The forces are too unequal. But there will be many casualties, and Hamas has deliberately "endangered" almost 2 million civilians in Gaza, as well as Palestinians in the West Bank, against whom a real "police terror" has been unleashed. It is difficult to rationally explain the motives of Hamas, unless one assumes that this organization plays the role of "agent provocateur" for other geopolitical forces.

Most importantly, what has happened has already embittered Israelis against Palestinians. The Hamas attack will greatly strengthen the positions of the "War Party" and the ultra-right in Israel, who demand, for example, the complete closure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the construction of the Third Temple in its place. Not long ago, these forces were looking for an excuse to take the Al-Aqsa Mosque away from the Muslims, and now Hamas itself is giving such an excuse. Not to mention that the rights of the Arabs and Palestinians of Israel will be further violated during the current war (the extent and "bloodiness" of which is not yet realized by everyone) and after it.
The events of October 7 and the following days in Israel and the Gaza Strip have pushed the war in Ukraine "into the background" of the world information agenda. And by a "strange" coincidence, the "intensity" of this war has sharply decreased.

First of all, the intensity of missile and drone attacks on the territory of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has significantly decreased. After October 7, in most regions of Ukraine there were either no air alerts or they were short-lived. Since the beginning of October, there has not been a single missile attack on Kiev or western Ukraine, although they were observed quite often before, and a year ago, on October 10, the most massive Russian missile and drone attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure took place. New missile strikes were expected on the sad "anniversary," but they did not happen, contrary to expectations. The military actions "shifted" to the area around Donetsk, where Russian troops are trying to capture the city of Avdeyevka, but in principle the same military actions and firefights will take place there all 8 years until the full-scale Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.

It may turn out that the war in Ukraine, some "invisible hand of the director" is winding down in parallel with the incitement of war in the Middle East. These days Israel is literally "ironing" Gaza and its suburbs. This causes the death of hundreds and thousands of civilians and the bitterness and desire for revenge among the survivors. According to most analysts, no matter how the announced Israeli "ground operation" in Gaza goes, the war and violence here will continue for a long time. The safety of civilians "on both sides of the front line" will be a major problem.

It is symbolic that "refugees from the war" in Ukraine have returned to Ukraine from Israel. Here, compared to Israel, it has suddenly become relatively safe to live only in the "frontline" areas.

So far, the new immigrants are returning to Ukraine. But the mass of Israeli citizens who have "roots" in Ukraine and can therefore claim Ukrainian citizenship are beginning to think about moving.

It is no secret that Ukraine was historically on the "Jewish settlement line" of the Russian Empire. Just as in many cities of Georgia under the Russian Empire, the majority of the population was made up of Armenian immigrants (in Tbilisi), in most cities of Ukraine before 1917, Jews made up from 20-30 to 70-80% of the population. The Ukrainians, like the Georgians, were then a predominantly "rural" nation. Almost every second family in Israel has "grandparents" from Ukrainian cities.

At the same time, because of the war, real estate in Ukraine became much cheaper. Especially in the regions of Odessa, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson and Zaporozhye, which are close to the front. Not to mention the Russian occupation zone, where apartments can be bought for next to nothing.
Masses of Ukrainians, especially women, the elderly, and children, fled the war abroad. According to some estimates, as many as 10 million, compared to the country's official pre-war population of 43 million.

With the end of hostilities, according to a number of analysts, the number of Ukrainians will not increase much. Some refugees will return, but there will be another "outflow" from the country. A significant part of men of "conscription age", whose exit from the country is now restricted, may leave the war-torn country to join their families settled abroad. Of course, those of them who remain alive will not become hopeless cripples. The population of Ukraine may decrease by almost 1/3 of the pre-war population.

There is a separate problem with the occupied territories, first of all Crimea. The example of Karabakh shows that the restoration of Ukraine's territorial integrity is irreversible. And it will not necessarily be "recovery". It can happen, for example, after a change of power in Moscow and a "goodwill gesture" of the new Russian authorities to lift sanctions.

Then those who have joined the "Russian world" and have Russian passports can leave Crimea and southern Ukraine. Almost like the "Artsakh" hai, who have passports of the Republic of Armenia and do not want to accept Azerbaijani citizenship, left Karabakh. Only a relatively small number of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars who have no other homeland will remain in Crimea. But this is no more than 30-40% of the current population. I.e. for "potential" migrants from the Middle East there is an opportunity, after the "restoration" of Ukrainian citizenship, to move legally to its most fertile lands, to Crimea.

And here we should recall the already forgotten idea of "Jewish autonomy" in the Crimea. The fact is that in the USSR under Stalin, many Jews were dissatisfied with the location of the "national formation" of the Jewish Autonomous Region of the RSFSR (which still has this status in the Russian Federation) in the Far East near the border with China. There were very few "enthusiasts" willing to settle there because of the harsh climate. According to a number of historians, after the illegal deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea in 1944, many people began to hope for the "transfer of Jewish autonomy to Crimea," but it did not happen.

Interest in the "Jewish hearth" in southern Ukraine and Crimea has been revived in recent years. "Conspiracy theorists" have even given it the names "New Jerusalem" or "New Khazaria" (Crimea and southern Ukraine were historically part of the Khazar Khaganate). But before the Russian-Ukrainian war, such a project seemed unrealistic. It seemed almost impossible to force the huge masses of the population to leave the "settled" places and "free" them for new settlers, who are also unlikely to want to exchange "prosperous" Israel for "poor" Ukraine.

But the "Karabakh precedent" and the flight of the population from the war in Ukraine showed that the situation favorable to the "New Khazaria" or "New Jerusalem" is forming "by itself. Whether it will reach its "logical conclusion" is hard to say. But clearly certain forces see this prospect and are working in this direction.

And based on such assumptions, many of the "accidents" during the Hamas raid of October 7, 2023, do not seem "accidental" at all. Neither does the ostentatious brutality "in front of the camera". Those Israelis who will remain in Israel after that will be even more intransigent against the Palestinians, and "out of principle" may seize the Al-Aqsa Mosque and "complete" their Third Temple. And those who will get scared and leave Israel will be much more willing to move to Ukraine, which until recently seemed "dangerous" to them, thus creating a New Khazaria.

George Mazniashvili