Russia right to take Crimea?

from Trevor Hoyle

If Russia was Israel, the annexation of Crimea... 

...would be taking place without the slightest Western, by which I mean American, objection. And our media and commentators would be bending over backwards to justify the take-over as the righting of an historic wrong. Think of how it would look if we weren't talking 'nasty, nasty Russians' but 'wonderful, wonderful Israelis': Crimea's history, ethnicity, culture and religion would be *instantly* adduced as justifications for the annexation -- as would the presence of hostile states on Russia's borders, and anti-Russian sentiment within Ukraine. And that referendum wouldn't be 'sham' or 'illegal' -- it would be the icing on the legitimating cake: proof of the oh-so-touching way that an oppressed people had kept alive their sense of identity and their traditions over all these years of separation and oppression... In short, we'd see a narrative in our media that presented Crimea as a region that was being 'rejoined with its rightful owner', as part of the 'correcting of an historic mistake'...