The Ukraine war and the Israeli war are both similar and different conflicts, but they are much more different than we might imagine.

Ukraine was invaded by a huge Russian state with 3.5 times the population, 10 times the gross national product, and 30 times the area.

In contrast, Hamas is a terrorist group consisting of approximately 50,000 to 70,000 gunmen and terrorist kingpins who run Gaza. Considering Israel's population (20 times), economy (27 times), and area (60 times), it seems small.

Both Russia and Hamas started wars. Russia was confident that it could easily crush its smaller neighbor. Hamas hoped to spark a pan-Islamic jihad against the Jewish state.

Most of Europe, the United States, and the Western world, unsurprisingly, supported arming Ukraine to repel President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Russia.

By contrast, this support for democratic Israel was strangely mixed.

In many elites, politicians, academia, and media circles, Israel is criticized for large-scale retaliation after October 7, 2023.

Western attitudes toward the two wars have become even more inconsistent, if not more disjointed.

Following the massacre of nearly 1,200 Jews, the majority of civilians in the Gaza Strip, there are constant calls for “proportionality” from Israel.

However, it is natural for the West to seek to provide Ukraine with more and better weapons than Russia in order to ensure the disproportionate response necessary to win the war.

Israel is accused of being collateral damage in efforts to destroy Hamas, even as terrorists lurk inside and underground hospitals, mosques, and schools.

Israeli hostages are being used as human shields to protect Hamas militants.

it doesn't matter. Israel sent text messages warning civilians in Gaza to stay away from impending air attacks, even as Hamas fired 7,000 rockets at Israeli civilian centers without such warning. It is expected that they will carry out similar activities and distribute leaflets.

On October 7, Hamas tortured, beheaded, raped, and killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, along with some Gazan civilians, to start the war.

In contrast, no one in the West is asking Ukrainians to warn surrounding civilians in occupied Ukraine or Russia to stay away from their intended targets. This would obviously reduce the surprise effect of a Ukrainian attack.

Western countries have relentlessly criticized Israel's right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his “disproportionate” retaliation in Gaza.

He is being closely monitored by his U.S. backers for signs of absolutist rule or failure to create an inclusive war cabinet that represents a wide variety of Israeli politicians.

However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy not only suspended elections during the war, but also declared martial law for the entire country.

Zelenskiy continues to be a rock star in the West without facing Western condemnation. Few seem to care that he has suspended most political parties and blurred the high ground distinction between authoritarian Russia and supposedly democratic Ukraine.

Note that Israel, like the United States during World War II, has not declared martial law. Instead, a bipartisan coalition government was formed with opposition members.

The United States continues to lecture Israel to restrain its response to avoid a broader regional war in the Middle East. We are concerned that Israel's retaliation for October 7th is clearly more incendiary than Hamas's unprovoked invasion and killing of Israelis.

But sometimes offering Ukrainian proxies to attack Russia in the Black Sea or inside Russia appears to be a far more dangerous ploy.

Hamas' allies do not have Russia's 6,000 nuclear weapons, nor do they have allies comparable to those currently aligned with Moscow, such as China and North Korea.

Western media and politicians rightly downplay Russian propaganda emanating from Moscow, especially unsubstantiated claims about Russia and Ukraine's relative casualties and Ukraine's setbacks and atrocities.

Yet many of these same Westerners strangely take Hamas's casualty numbers at face value.

They have been fooled to the extent that they even accepted Hamas's lie that the Islamic Jihad rockets that hit hospitals in Gaza were Israeli bombs.

By any fair standard, Hamas has proven to be no more honest than Russia's state media, and perhaps far more inaccurate.

So what accounts for the strange disconnect in Western attitudes towards these two wars?

Indeed, what does it mean to consistently side with the side that started the war, or to always side with the more democratic power, or even to side with the side logically more likely to commit atrocities? It doesn't matter.

The answer is both obvious and unsettling.

With anti-Semitism resurgent in Europe and America, many Western countries are prejudiced against the Jewish state.

Western popular culture often glorifies Hamas killers as freedom fighters and collectively demonizes Russian citizens as stereotypical Hollywood villains.

Oil money in the Middle East and mass immigration to the West are dwarfing the influence of ailing Russia.

Left-wing politicians in Europe and America are courting a growing Muslim base and have no qualms about commensurate Russian lobbying.

And this disconnect develops into something absurd.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of Basic Books' The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.You can contact him via email authorvdh@gmail.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.