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Russia Hesitates – II

(follow-up of Russia Hesitates with readers’ responses)

By Israel Shamir (Moscow- Tel Aviv)

Unwillingly, the world rolls down to a next bout of war, as Israel and the US are pushing for sanctions on Iran. Of the great powers, the UK seems to follow orders of Washington, Germany is unable to say “no” to Jews, while France is about to elect the most pro-American and pro-Israel president, Nicolas Sarkozy, in its history. China is unwilling to get involved, and is rumoured to go along as long as sanctions do not refer to oil and gas. Russia appears to be a lonely voice for peace in the Middle East, for reasons of its own.

A few days ago President Putin called Prime Minister Olmert, and enquired whether Israel intentionally goes the way of the Crusader Kingdom to perish and oblivion by refusing to settle with its neighbours? Olmert was shocked: nobody dared to speak to him like that. European and American leaders usually stood up smartly and declared their support of Israel’s right to defend itself. Russians were equally considerate towards Israel - since 1991, when its ambassador in Tel Aviv, a late Mr Bovin, was frequently mistaken for an Israeli ambassador in Russia.

When Russia began to assert itself after the catastroyka, and Russian leaders made their first modest proposals regarding the Middle East, Israel took it as an insult. This defeated country should never give us advises, fumed Shimon Peres in live broadcast. But Russia continued to gather strength, and Russians again became active participants in the process. The recent visit of Russian Foreign Minister Mr Lavrov to Damascus and Tel Aviv gave another expression to it. Lavrov tried to convince Israeli leaders to give up on Iran sanctions. Sanctioned Iran will feel isolated, threatened and will leave the NPT. Sanctions will lead to war, explained Lavrov, but Israeli officials did not mind the war, they insisted on sanctions. Then, the Russians pulled out their proposal of a new international conference for Middle East, Madrid-2. This idea has support of Arab states, but Israel rejected it, as well. It seems that Israel marches to war and considers it inevitable.

This feeling of inevitability has much to do with the US policy. Unravelling of 9/11 mystery in the US may push Bush administration to speed up its war plans. For the first time since 2001, the mainstream US media gave coverage to “conspiracy theories”, and revealed that more than a third of American population believes in Administration involvement. Major European newspapers followed the path. Though there are many faulty small and large details in the official version, the main reason for public doubt lays elsewhere: if some bad and hard Muslim terrorists could perpetrate the 9/11 attack, why they failed to do anything similar afterwards? Ridiculous attempts to present ‘liquid explosives plot’ as a new 9/11 further undermined popular trust. Bush may feel that the war with Iran is the only way to escape trial.

There are hard-nosed Russian experts who do not mind the forthcoming war. In their view, America’s involvement in Iran will mirror Russia’s own unfortunate experience in Afghanistan. If you call Vietnam ‘bogging down’, and Iraq ‘quagmire’, you’ll have to invent a new word for Iran. The oil price will go up to $200, - enough to gold-plate every loo in oil-producing Russia, as Marx prophesied. Attack on Iran will destroy America – why bother? Why should we try and stop it, say the experts.

But Putin has strong internal reason for trying to defuse the war, as the Zionist plot of inflaming inter-religious conflict may undermine Russia. The roots of the plot are to be found in the transition period from the USSR to post-Soviet Russia, when a young and fresh Israeli Lobby in Moscow was formed. Its members were supporters of Market Democracy, Neo-liberalism and Privatisation. Support for Israel was a shibboleth for deference to the West’s wishes. While ordinary Russians regretted the demise of the Soviet Union, Russian Jews – together with upwardly mobile Russians - actively supported the market reforms and cheered suppression of democratically elected Parliament in 1991 and 1993.[1] These pro-Market forces seized media; like in the West, Jews own large share of media owners and editors, as well as large banks and capitalist enterprises. Though not obsessively Zionist, they still harbour a warm feeling for Israel. For them Israel is not a place to escape mythic antisemitism, but a place to escape criminal police, as so many Jewish crooks from the US, France, England and Russia did.

Pro-Israeli forces in Russia successfully promoted a conflict between the Christians and the Muslims; proposing to integrate Russians into anti-Muslim “white” front. The Jewish-owned and edited media imported anti-Muslim discourse wholesale. Though it was quite foreign to Russians who are used to live together with Muslim Tatars since the dawn of their history, media succeeded to poison minds. Chechnya was the key to this development: generously supported by the Jewish tycoon Berezovsky, Chechen fighters by their acts of terror enforced anti-Muslim feelings. “Gaza is our Chechnya”, used to say Israeli emissaries, though Chechens (as opposed to Gazans) had all civil and political rights of Russian citizens.

In the same time, hundreds of thousands of Chechens and other Muslim ethnic groups migrated into northern Russian cities, where – as opposed to Western Europe – they were economically very successful and caused much envy among the native population. Recent riots in Kandapoga were a result of this success. Immigration is a tricky issue, and on the whole it is good for Zionists, whether in Europe or in Russia. The Russian nationalists of Le Pen style (and worse) became friends of Israel and of Zionism. They support Israel’s fight against the Muslims, and they hope the Jews will go away to Israel (needless to say, this pipedream is not likely to occur with thousands of Russian Jews moving back to prospering Russia each month). Heads of the Russian Jewish Congress were reported to transfer large sums of money to the more obnoxious racist groups in order to point them against the Muslim immigrants.

Thus Putin’s administration is gripped in a vice between pro-Western liberals with their sympathy to Israel on the ‘left’, and on the ‘right’ by Russian ‘white’ nationalists who object to influx of Muslim immigrants and support rabidly anti-Muslim Tel Aviv. This vice endangers cohesiveness of the country, as not only North Caucasus, but Tatarstan may break away. As opposed to Europe, Russia has not only Muslim immigrants, but a prominent native Muslim minority. Preservation of Russia depends on defeating this anti-Muslim trend, for otherwise, the country will be devastated and broken into warring fiefs. Thus Putin’s Russia opposes the Conflict of Civilisations’ paradigm.

But will it suffice? The Jews, that is organised Jewry and the Jewish state, are definitely keen on promoting war between Christians and Muslims. Their powerful media gave us recently the Satanic Pictures and cared to deliver them to each Muslim. Now they gave great publicity to the Pope speech, while pro-Zionist Pakistan delivered the Muslim opinion. This is not the first direct involvement of Pakistan’s ruler in promotion of the Zionist plans: a few weeks ago Pakistani Secret services provided support for the “liquid explosives plot”, totally discredited since then. (No less an authority than Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Nigel Wylde, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer, who was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for his command of the Belfast Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit, has suggested that the police and government story about the "terror plot" was part of a “pattern of lies and deceit.”)

Nor are they satisfied with media coverage: Amira Haas, the courageous Haaretz reporter in the West Bank, indirectly accused (in Haaretz September 20, 2006) Israeli Secret Services of an attack and arson of churches in Nablus, Tubas and other Palestinian cities. Our American correspondent Tom Mysiewicz wrote: “This is obviously just another effort to create a war of mutual extermination between the Christian and Islamic worlds.” While our French friend Xavier Lavaud explained: “The goal of Zionists was to obscure the recent condemnation of Christian Zionists by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. They chose a sentence of the Pope out of context.” While regretting the Pope’s comment, we should spend more effort in trying to defuse this situation than in blaming the head of the Catholic Church beset as he is by the enemies of the Church and of Christ. The war can be stopped, but it calls for our strong and concerted effort.