The Snatch

By Israel Shamir

A fast guy had thought that a wallet was unattended, and tried to snatch it. But to his distress, he was stopped in his tracks by a burly wallet owner. This might be a fair description of Saddam Hussein’s effort to snatch Kuwait. It also fits the war over South Ossetia.

Georgian President Saakashvili thought he could take South Ossetia while nobody was looking; while everybody was busy watching the Olympiad. In order to maximise the surprise factor, he declared barely three hours before the snatch that he would never send troops in.

Here the similarity ends. While Saddam succeeded in taking Kuwait, Saakashvili failed to take over the SO. Saakashvili’s strategy also was different, and more reminiscent of the Israeli conquest of 1948: he wanted to have Ossetia without its native folk, the Ossetians. To this end he bombarded the SO capital, Tskhinvali, causing a mass exodus of the people – some thirty thousand of them, or almost half of population crossed the high mountains to the Russian side. The Russians rolled in and kicked Saakashvili’s troops out.

So far, so good.

(1) Saakashvili has had it coming for a long time. His flirtation, no, his heavy petting with the US and Israel, his fervent anti-Russian sentiments, his Kartveli nationalism had led him and his country to trouble. Like young Fidel, he wanted to turn his land into a match to set the global fire. He was the first to be burnt.

(2) Russia fulfilled its residual imperial duty: as the successor of the Soviet Union, it is duty bound to guarantee some well-being of its erstwhile junior member-states. Russia could not allow Saakashvili to ethnically cleanse the Ossetians, for practical reasons, too: fifty thousand refugees from South Ossetia would destabilise the North Caucasus.

(3) Russia demonstrated that beyond its bark, it has bite, too. Probably other adventurous neighbours, namely pro-American leaders of Estonia, Poland, and the Ukraine will entertain second thoughts before their next paroxysm of anti-Russian sentiment.

(4) Russia proved that it can use force quickly, efficiently and with moderation. There was none of the old Soviet overkill; rather it was a moderate and modest, well-executed military operation. The best thing about it was its brevity, two or three days of actual fighting and the rest just a bit of mopping-up.

(5) Russian leadership proved that they are not scared by Washington’s rhetoric. This is a very good thing after so many years of complicity and impotence.

(6) Military defeat may be very good for the Georgian soul. Georgians are wonderful people, warm, handsome, pleasant and generous. However, they are ferocious nationalists of the tribal kind. Like some of their neighbours, they tend to see others mainly through an ethnic prism. The first thing the Georgians did when they became independent in the wake of 1917 Russian Revolution was to expel all Armenians and confiscate their property. Joseph Stalin also acted in the Georgian way when he expelled the Chechens from their mountains and the Germans from Prussia. Georgia is by no means homogeneous: it is populated by a few smaller ethnic groups, in addition to the Kartveli majority (or at least plurality). Since Georgia became independent a second time, in 1991, the Kartvelis have tried to deal with the minorities by harsh methods, undermining their culture and language and even expelling them on the first suspicion. This was the reason three autonomous areas of the country decided to split off from Georgia. SO is one of the three, but unless the Kartvel nationalism would be reined in, Adgars, Svans and other ethnic communities may rebel, too. Military defeat might just cause the Georgians to re-think their attitude towards their immediate neighbours.

(7) Though Russia did not send in its troops in order to remove Saakashvili, this does not make such an outcome any less desirable. Saakashvili is dangerous for Georgia, Russia, Ossetia and the world. What a pity he did not lose the general elections a few months ago; what a shame that other candidates met with untimely deaths under suspicious circumstances or were jailed. One may hope the true patriots of Georgia will kick him out and choose a better president, opting for neutrality and for friendship with Georgia’s neighbours including Russia.

(8) Georgian communists expressed their distaste with the Saakashvili’s attack; they would like to lead their country back into a close union with Russia. It should be considered: many Georgians, say the Communists in their letter from Tbilisi, would love to see the end of Saakashvili’s adventurism.

(9) A neutral and neighbour-friendly Georgia would be able to re-integrate South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Kartvel and Mingrel refugees would be able to return into their villages. The Caucasus is so poly-ethnic that mutual expulsions and transfers are unacceptable.

(10) This is the time to stop anti-Georgian propaganda in Russia and anti-Russian propaganda elsewhere. Russia has a long tradition of friendship with the Caucasian nations, with Georgians, Ossetians, Circassians; the tradition has been well established by Leo Tolstoy, Lermontov and Griboedov. Let it prevail. As Marshal Stalin would say, Saakashvili come and go, but the Georgian people endure forever.

Europeans showed more understanding of the Russian action than some might have expected. There was no mass hysteria, and the Ossetians were allowed to express their viewpoint. Israel stopped its supplies of military hardware to Georgia. While American leaders responded to the victory of Russian arms with expected verbal severity, they wisely avoided any action likely to enhance the military standing of Saakashvili. They could have made an airlift of American armour to Tbilisi, they could have shown more muscle, but they did not.

This was the true mystery of the campaign. Did the Americans encourage Saakashvili? Did he act at his own foolhardy will? There may be a few explanations of the enigma.

(1) Every Georgian president has tried to regain the lost provinces, so Saakashvili could have decided to give it a try, perhaps being carried away by the magic of auspicious triple eight, as his offensive was begun on 8.8.8.

(2) Saakashvili may have failed to understand the Americans. This happened to Saddam Hussein when he snatched Kuwait. He was convinced that the Ambassador Gillespie had given him the green light for the operation.

(3) The Americans and Saakashvili may have failed in their prognostication. They interpreted Russian inaction in the past as a harbinger of their inaction in the future. On 8.8.8, a pro-American Russian newspaper Gazeta.ru predicted that the Russians would not move their forces and would swallow the defeat, as otherwise they would have acted earlier.

(4) The Americans are planning some kind of operation in Iran, and they encouraged this Georgian diversion to keep the Russians busy. This could still be the case, as in its present position Russia has a weak hand in the UN to deal with the American demands or with direct aggression.

(5) Iran expressed its support for the Russian operation and condemned the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia. The New York Times and similar papers editorialised that the US should not push Russia too hard, in order to get Russian approval for anti-Iranian sanctions or other measures.

My preferred version of events is that the Americans (and the Israelis) encouraged the Georgian president as they were curious to see the Russian reaction and to observe the preparedness of the Russian Armed Forces. In military parlance, such a minor operation is called “contact reconnaissance”, or just a “feeler”. No one could be certain how the Russian army would operate. In 1996, having been sent to retake the rebellious Grozny, the Russian Army ran away in disarray leaving its burning tanks behind. Since then, the Russians had not fired a single shot in anger; they have been very much a mystery for the West. In such a situation, there is no substitute for a bout of actual fighting, and Saakashvili unwittingly presented this opportunity to the West.

This is rather an optimistic view, as the following comparison will make clear. In the 1930s, the Japanese occupying Manchukuo faced the Russians. The Japanese did not know whether the Soviet Russians would fight well or run away, as they had easily defeated the Russian Imperial Army in 1903-5 war but had taken a beating from the Bolsheviks in 1918. This is why they carried out a contact reconnaissance raid at Khalkhyn Gol (Nomonhan) to take the measure of Russian resistance. After General Zhukov destroyed their attacking force, they decided to keep peace with Russia, and despite many pleas by Hitler, Japanese troops stayed put.

If this reading is right, we may be optimistic. Weakness invites war; the Neocons attacked Iraq because it was the weakest link. Now, the Russian army demonstrated its fighting capability, the Russian diplomats have confirmed their abilities and the Russian society has shown itself remarkably united. Russia is not so weak as to invite pressure or war.

July Thunder

By Israel Shamir

Since the recent Russian presidential election of Medvedev (which shifted Vladimir Putin to the less prominent post of Prime Minister) and even for a while before that, Russian foreign policy was a matter of guesswork. There was a widely-held view that Mr Medvedev would take a more submissive line towards the US and the West, and eventually surrender the positions taken by his mighty predecessor. Assuming that Russia is the main hindrance to Bush’s wet dream to take over Iran, this was not just a theoretical question, and many observers around the world (including this one) followed these developments in Russia with great apprehension.

Recent developments have disabused those fears. The Russia of Medvedev-Putin is even more independent and coherent than the Russia we knew last year. The transfer of power has been hanging like a dark cloud over the Russian skies for a very long time, and only now, with the July thunder of Russian-Chinese veto over Zimbabwe, can it be said to be over. It had been preceded by a small warning: Russia had demanded the dismantling of the Yugoslavia Tribunal, this last vestige of NATO’s war against the once-independent Balkan state.

This was a richly symbolic demand. Yugoslavia had indeed been the arena of a terrible crime, but the crime was not a NATO- invented and Photoshop-produced “genocide”. So many years of the Tribunal’s operation produced zero proof, while “mass graves” and “million victims of Bosnian Holocaust” turned out to be a figment of somebody’s imagination. The real crime was NATO’s intervention, blockade and bombardment which eventually led to the Balkanization of the Balkans, and to endless suffering for all its residents. This crime was made possible by Russia’s disappearance from the world arena. After 1991, the broken, impoverished, mentally exhausted and spiritually colonised successor states of the USSR became objects rather than subjects of international relations. With a great black hole where the USSR used to be, the West was able to act freely for the first time since 1920, and it did so by reverting to the colonialist-imperialist policies of Nineteenth Century: The brutal rape of Yugoslavia and the first Bush war on Iraq were the high points of the 1990s.

But the Russian people proved their resilience once again, just as they did after the German invasion of 1941. Sobered out of her silly pro-American sentiments by the bombing of Belgrade, Russia regained her legitimate place in the world. She did not acquiesce in the Anglo-American attack on Iraq, Afghanistan and (now) Iran. She supplies Chavez with weapons. Russian leaders routinely meet with Hamas, the much-demonised though democratically elected governing party of Palestine. In friendship with China, Russia may yet reshape world politics.

There is one area where the 1990s still lingers, and that is Africa. The Black Continent is in terrible shape, and the US-proposed resolution on Zimbabwe would have made it even worse by repeating the experience of Somalia. Somalia is a disaster: the US-sponsored Ethiopian invasion has destroyed virtually all of its life-sustaining economic systems; Somalis are now being starved, and a flood of refugees flows freely, from South Africa to Sweden. The Ethiopians invaded when Somalia had just recovered from the previous American intervention under the UN flag, and they formed a rather stable rule of local autonomous bodies called Islamic Courts. This invasion – and consequent disaster – would not have happened without the relevant Security Council resolution. Salim Lone, a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq, wrote:

“The US pushed through an appalling resolution in December [2007] saying the situation in Somalia was a threat to ‘international peace and security’ and basically gave the green light to Ethiopia to invade. Not much different in text and intent to the current failed attempt by the Bush administration to bulldoze a Security Council resolution on Zimbabwe. Unfortunately for Somalia, neither Russia nor China intervened then, resulting in a blatantly false resolution setting up the country for an American-backed invasion leading to inevitable losses, including displacement of millions.”

This time around, Russia and China united in vetoing the Zimbabwe resolution, supporting the view of virtually all African and Asian countries, including Zimbabwe’s own neighbour, South Africa. One does not have to be an expert on African affairs to bless this veto. We have had enough of the many neo-colonial interventions since Gorbachev’s time: Iraq, Panama, Nicaragua, Yugoslavia, Somali, Eritrea, Congo and what not. It is a good thing that in Zimbabwe, this wave has been broken -- the principle of sovereignty has been upheld. If today the colonial masters were to be allowed to ride into Zimbabwe, tomorrow Iran would follow, and sooner or later Moscow and Beijing would be besieged. Now we can hope that Russia and China will use this right more often, and will block every colonialist attempt to strangulate Iran or squeeze Burma.

For too long a time Russia and China have hesitated to use their right to veto; this right has been used mainly by the US in the interests of its Middle-Eastern proxy, Israel. Now, the Brits and the Americans are enraged that this right is being used by Russia and China. Let them rage, and let them discover that the world has changed once again, and that the lull of opportunity they have had since 1990 is over.

What was going in Zimbabwe? There was a failed “orange revolution”, like those the US and the UK instigated in Ukraine and Georgia and failed to achieve in Burma and Mongolia. Pro-Western forces tried to remove President Robert Mugabe. Mugabe won elections just like Milosevic in Yugoslavia, or Lukashenko in Belarus or Hanieh in Palestine, but the West never accepts democratic elections if the results are politically unsatisfactory. The main opposition candidate opted out of the second tour of elections by his own will, and it does not make the elections’ results illegitimate. Moreover, even if they were not legitimate, it should not provide green light for the US intervention.

Stephen Gowans wrote: “At the core of the conflict is a clash of right against right: the right of white settlers to enjoy the stolen land against the right of the original owners to reclaim their land.” This is not exactly correct. Everywhere the imperialists try to use a local minority in order to undermine an undesirable regime. This is not a White against Black struggle. The white settlers could be a useful and important element of national economics, but some of them have made a wrong choice. The Zimbabwe whites should not ally themselves with the imperialist West. Their problems, along with other local problems, may only be solved locally, with help and advice of South Africa and African inter-state organisations.

Our friend, South African Joh Domingo explained the situation: “There was an opportunity for individual White farmers to utilize their experience and embed themselves into the fabric of African society, but they chose the path of aligning themselves with big agribusiness, and with exploitation of the mineral wealth of Zimbabwe.”

Mirroring the campaigns in Belarus, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Venezuela, reports of electoral bias fills the media. - "The opposition is being starved, they are assaulted, and the elections are rigged": So goes the refrain. At the same time, progressive groups bemoan their fate, and ask why they cannot champion saints instead of savages. Instead they should ask why all those at odds with the Global superpowers are always savages: Mugabe, Saddam, Milosevic, Aristide, Castro… the list goes on and on.”

For sure Zimbabwe goes through a difficult period, but the way out of crisis goes through regional consultations, without overseas intervention. Russia and China are working for stabilisation of the region; but the final word will be said by the people of Zimbabwe.

Russian Intifada

By Israel Shamir

The decision by the Estonian nationalist Prime Minister, Andrus Ansip, to uproot the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Tallinn brought this small Baltic state to the verge of civil war and severely disturbed peace in the region. The usually tranquil and delightful, Hansa-built Old Tallinn, surrounded by its long city wall with “Long Hermann” and “Fat Margaret,” two 15th century towers, is now full of heavily armed police, hundreds of detainees locked up and beaten up in Terminal D of the harbour, burned-down shops, torture and mistreatment, open ethnic conflict, vocal support of neocons – not what one expects to find in this pleasant country with its peaceful folks. The Eestlanes, the aborigines of the land -- tall, quiet and blue-eyed peasant folk -- were supposed to be so calm that “a red-hot Estonian lad” is a synonym for slow-wit among their neighbours. On the other hand, these good craftsmen and fishermen, fond of taking their coffee with the sweet liqueur Vana Tallinn, volunteered en masse for Nazi SS divisions and were prominent in ethnic cleansing campaigns.

For an Israeli, these Tallinn events had a strong touch of déjà vu. Uprooting of the Unknown Soldier Tomb was done by the nationalist government in a pointedly insulting and arrogant way. This triggered the Russian Intifada, the spontaneous uprising of the unprivileged. In a like manner, the provocative and arrogant visit of Ariel Sharon to the al-Aksa Mosque in the fateful September of 2000 had jumpstarted the Palestinian Intifada. In both cases a provocation was initiated by extreme nationalists of the ruling ethnic group keen on spoiling fragile inter-communal relations, for they feed on strife. In both cases, they claimed their unlimited right to do whatever they wish. In both cases, the media attention was concentrated on the response to provocation, rather than on its causes. For sure, the violent response of Palestinians in 2000 and Russians in 2007 -- their rioting, stone-throwing and shop-burning -- was obvious, visible and unpleasant. What is less visible is that each was a result of provocation, and of a long sequence of injustices leading to the outbreak of violence.

Estonia is notorious for coming as close to apartheid as any country in Europe since 1945. The Columbia Encyclopaedia tells us that “Estonians (Eestlanes) make up about 65% of the population; Russians constitute almost 30%, and there are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Finnish minorities. Since independence (1991), citizenship has generally been limited to ethnic Estonians, a practice widely criticized because it denies political and civil rights to the many Russian-speaking inhabitants. In 1993 ethnic Russians were officially declared foreigners, raising even stronger objections.” The “Russians” of Estonia are of various origins – ethnic Ukrainian, Georgian, German, Armenian, Jewish, Russian – all non-aborigines are called “Russians”. The Russians were stripped of their citizenship, their ID cards are now stamped “Alien”, while in private, they are called ‘Negroes’ – an abbreviation of Ne-Gr, non-citizen.

This is not your ordinary immigrants-versus-natives conflict. The non-Eestlanes are no more “immigrants” in Estonia than Parisians are immigrants in Corsica, or Londoners in Wales. Estonia became Russian in 1721, before Corsica became French (in 1768), and remained in union with Russia until 1991, except for a short break (1921-1940). Non-aboriginal Estonians would be considered equal and ordinary citizens in every European country but new Estonia. Even “recent immigrants” moved to what became Estonia over fifty years ago in a perfectly legal way.

Estonia had all the preconditions for peaceful co-existence between its communities. The Russians had a positive attitude towards the native Eestlanes, their culture and their language in keeping with their tradition: indeed, the Eesti language survived and flourished, while the tongues of peoples with comparable territory and population, such as Breton, Cornish or Sorb (residing in the UK, France and Germany respectively) have all but vanished. Russian writers and poets were attracted by Tallinn’s Baltic charm, and made it a setting for many novels. While neighbouring Swedes considered Eestlanes uncouth and clumsy (“Estonian ballet” is a Swedish synonym for heavy and clumsy gait), the Russians nourished a flattering image of an Estonian as a silent, pipe-smoking he-man.

There is no clear racial divide, either: ethnic Russians are a fusion of Slav and Finnish tribes (like the French are a fusion of Celtic and Germanic ones), and they can’t be distinguished from the ethnic Estonians by their facial features. In the present conflict over the monument, Jurgen Ligi, Estonian ex-minister of defence, called for the removal of “the idol with monstrous Russian face”. The ignorant racist did not know that the “monstrous Russian face of the idol” was an Estonian face, sculpted after a known Estonian sportsman by Estonian artist Enn Roos.

The local Russians were extremely pro-Estonian: they liked the Estonians, they supported Estonian independence in 1991 and expected to remain citizens with full rights in new Estonia. “When the Eestlanes demanded independence, the Russian Estonian intelligentsia [the educated classes] not only supported them, but were in the forefront of the struggle” – writes Lara Larson, a Russian Estonian, whose blog http://laralarsen.livejournal.com/ is extremely popular these days. “Now we understand that the reasons were different: Eestlanes fought for their separate isolated life, while the Russians fought for democracy. The newly independent Estonia fitted the Eestlanes’ vision, while the democracy we looked for did not materialise. Non-Eestlanes were stripped of their civil rights. That was the first blow. There were many insults, we were habitually slighted. At first, we hoped it was a temporary development; and that soon, equality and fraternity would blossom. Indeed, there were improvements, but two years ago, an extreme nationalist government made things worse.”

“The Russian-speaking community is discriminated against. Officially, they just have no right to vote for the Parliament. But unofficial discrimination is much worse. The Russians suffer from heavy unemployment, they earn less; there are practically no Russians at the top. There are no Russians in the beefed-up state organisations. The Eestlanes practice full segregation in the working places. Does it mean that the Russians are less able, can’t be taught, are doomed to sweep streets? Probably not. The Language Laws provided the perfect machinery for discrimination, for they made it almost impossible for the Russians to become citizens: one has to show such a proficiency in the Eestlane language that an ordinary Eestlane can’t pass it. For instance, one has to pen a long essay extolling the advantages of investments in Estonia.”

“You could not get any job, even a verbally-non-demanding one, unless you pass the exam. The exams became more demanding every year; one has to be an extraordinary well-read and well-educated person to pass the test. Now they introduced a new measure: the language commission can check you anytime and void your exams if they would decide your knowledge of Eesti is not up to scratch. But even Estonian citizens of Russian origin were kept out of jobs and were discriminated against in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways.”

“The Tomb’s demolition was a trigger, rather. The discriminated part of population did not agree to take it laying down. Such sustained pressure and mistreatment could not last forever. Masses of people went out to the streets in protests, they had no leaders, no organisers, but they were fed up with discrimination. This is not a political conflict; this is a movement for civil rights, for equality.”

The strange idea of stripping natives of their citizenship because their fathers were born just across the present border seems out of place in Europe. In neighbouring Sweden every immigrant obtains Swedish citizenship, and becomes as much a Swede as the king (who is a descendent of immigrants himself, from France on his father’s side and from Germany on his mother’s). It is not necessary to master Swedish, though one may learn it at the state’s expense – as opposed to Estonia. An immigrant may take exams, get his driver’s license and fill out applications in his native tongue. In Finland, a small Swedish minority has full rights, and can freely use their language everywhere. There are no problems between the native majority and ethnic minorities in these countries.

The outbreak of the Russian Intifada should sound an alarm for Estonians. Instead of bewailing the burnt shops and writing offensive letters to their newspapers, they should give thought to what caused the riots, and change the situation to fit Swedish and Finnish model. They should void their language laws, give citizenship to their Russian-speaking minority and forbid discrimination. They should strive for equality, and elect a Russian for president, as the Indians elected a Muslim. Follow the Human Rights declaration. In short, they should get off the tree and enter 21st century.

The problem is, Estonians are the least believing, most godless folk in Europe, tells the Answers.com: according to the most recent Eurostat "Eurobarometer" poll, in 2005 [4], only 16% of Estonian citizens responded that "they believe there is a God". This, according to the survey, would have made Estonians the least religious people in Europe”, while the Russians of Estonia believe in Christ. So, though there are twice as many Eestlanes than Russians, Lutherans are 39% while the Orthodox are 28%. Godless population is easily trapped by nationalist myths. That is why they erect monuments to their SS fighters, foam about Russian occupation and Stalin’s repressions and publish racist attacks on “Slavic degenerates”. Forget Haider, forget Le Pen – these guys are liberals and democrats in comparison with the present Estonian leaders.

While Germany was severely punished and fully denazified, Estonia was considered a Nazi victim, rather than a willing collaborator with the Nazis. The Jerusalem Post noted “the active participation of numerous Estonians in WWII era crimes and the support of much of the local population for the Nazi occupation. There was no anti-Nazi underground or resistance movement of any kind in Estonia.” “Stalin’s repressions” were a form of de-Nazification less severe than that carried out by the Americans in occupied Germany. While Anglo-Americans caused the death of millions of Germans, while the French killed probably some 50,000 of their collaborators, Stalin’s denazification was not thorough enough. After 1991, the Nazi elements in Estonia made their come-back.

Ephraim Zurov of the Jerusalem Post writes: “The Estonian judicial authorities have invested much effort in prosecuting Communist criminals, mostly Russians, at least 10 of whom have already been convicted in Estonia. The same cannot be said, however, of the investigations carried out regarding Estonians who collaborated with the Nazis in the crimes of the Holocaust.
Not a single Estonian citizen who participated in the persecution and/or murder of Jews during WWII has been brought to trial by the Estonians, despite the existence of abundant incriminatory evidence”.

I have now spent a few days in Estonian Internet and it has been a shocking experience. Their writing oozes with hate and racism, much of it aimed at Russia. An official guide to Tallinn says that a Russian Tsar had built the beautiful Alexander Nevsky Cathedral “to obliterate the grave of Kalev, the Estonian hero”. It refers to destruction caused by the Red Army while taking Tallinn in 1944 in a most dramatic manner: not even the neo-Nazis in Germany speak in such terms.

This is one of the reasons for the trouble between the Eestlanes and the local Russians: the latter celebrate the V-day, while for the former this is a day of mourning. Surely there were native Estonians in the Red Army, but now their sons and daughters apologise that “they were forced to join”.

The pro-Nazi apartheid regime of Estonia is tolerated and supported by the West because the US and NATO needs an anti-Russian Estonia. The neocon flagship, the Wall Street Journal (30 April 2007, Estonia and the Bear), encouraged the Eestlanes to escalate their conflict with their Eastern neighbour. Once this newspaper pushed the Iraqi WMD threat, now, it decries “Russian involvement”: “Some of the 1,000 rioters arrested arrived only in recent days from Russia”, “The real inspiration was Moscow”.

This is far from true. Russia is doing good business with Estonia. Independent Estonia is rather useful for Russia, as a nearby banking centre, a good place for transhipping, for small import-export operations, for popular tourism. Russian businessmen send their oil via Estonian harbours and develop its infrastructure, use Estonian airline connections and build tourist projects. Russia does not want trouble in Estonia.

The Wall Street Journal and its neocons have no moral considerations; they preach human rights when it suits them, and ignore their breach when it fits their plans. They write: “[Estonians] insist, not unreasonably, that Russians learn a few words of their language to gain citizenship.” This is a lie. All inhabitants of Estonia know enough of the native language, but they can’t pass the test as its purpose is to deny equality to non-purebred Eestlanes. “And the majority of Latvian and Estonian Russians have gotten their citizenship”, says the WSJ, and this is another lie. Estonian apartheid is real, and it is obvious, but the neocons ignore it.

The Estonian PM Ansip explained his actions by the urgent need to rid central Tallinn of the graves of “marauders, drunkards and occupants”. His actions were applauded by the Wall Street Journal: “The Estonian government transferred the bronze statue of a Red Army soldier and exhumed remains of Soviet troops to a military cemetery near the capital. Estonians are generous to keep them at all: France doesn't have a memorial to the Nazi occupation.”

Who was buried there? The Unknown Soldier’s Tomb was a common grave of 12 Soviet soldiers who perished while taking Tallinn from the Germans. One of the twelve was a twenty-year-old Jewish girl soldier, Nurse Elena Warshawsky, born in Ukraine. Her revolutionary father Moses called her Lenina, but she preferred her less exotic name. She was killed in action on September 23, 1944. She was not an occupant; she was a young woman who died fighting the Nazis. Now her remains and the remains of her eleven comrades-in-arms have been removed by a tender Estonian bulldozer, while she is compared to the Nazis by the neocon WSJ.

The neocons are notorious for their lack of scruples, but this case takes the cake. A comparison of Israeli Jewish soldiers with Nazis is usually met with an outcry of condemnation by Israel and by its American friends including the WSJ. But no one objected when the WSJ compared Elena Warshawsky to the Nazis. Israel kept mum. Jewish organisations were silent as fish. The Jewish-owned and edited WSJ usually is quite vocal, and rightly so, when a Jewish grave is vandalised. But in this case, they applauded vandals.

Indeed why should they care about the dead Jewish girl, when they have bigger fish to fry: they try to cause confrontation between Estonia and Russia, they try to convince the Eestlanes that they may pull the bear’s whiskers under protection of the NATO shield: “the Kremlin can still stir the Baltic pot. Fortunately, as a NATO member, little Estonia doesn't fear for its life, circa 1940.”

Wrong again. In the 1930s, the predecessors of NATO, England and France, enticed Poland and Czechoslovakia in similar way to confront Russia and Germany. The Poles and the Czechs fell for the trick, they did all they could to provoke Russia and Germany believing that the West would help them. But in their time of need, the West dropped them like a hot brick. Tomorrow the West will repeat this manoeuvre with Estonia.

Estonians may learn much from their neighbour, Finland. In the 1930s, the Finns embraced an ambitious anti-Russian policy, to the great pleasure of the neocons’ spiritual fathers. They paid for it with two lost wars and a chunk of lost territory. After this painful lesson, Finland swapped its Mannerheim’s Line of confrontation with Russia for the Paasikivi Line of friendship with Russia. Finland has never had reason to regret it. The country flourished, prospered on its transit trade with the USSR, and afterwards with the new Russia. Finland stayed out of NATO, out of anti-Russian blocs, and remained perfectly independent, free and prosperous.

The external anti-Russian course of the present Estonian leadership is inherently connected with their internal apartheid. Unless Estonians change both, the days of their independence are numbered. One fine day, when the US tanks move in to establish “democracy” in Teheran, a Russian airborne division may provide an asymmetric answer by removing the apartheid regime in Tallinn. Great countries have their ways, and Russia may learn from the US treatment of independent and hostile Panama. The passage to the Gulf of Finland is no less important for the Russian fleet than the passage through the Panama Canal is for the American Navy. Unless the Estonian leadership wants to share the fate of President Manuel Noriega they should give thought to whether the US will fight for them. The Eestlanes will always have the Russians for their neighbours, unless they plan a great trek to Manitoba. The elimination of apartheid and the establishment of a Paasikivi Line of friendship with their great Eastern neighbour will guarantee Estonian independence better than NATO and the WSJ neocons.

It's Spring!

By Israel Shamir

Spring has come to our Northern retreat: The snow has melted and uncovered meadows that somehow managed to stay pale-green; thick ice on the lake has broken up and crawled up on the shore like so many white crocodiles; now a warm wind blows and the sun shines as if it means business. The Spring has come to conclude the gorgeous winter: our soul needs darkness as well as light, and here at latitude 60°N, a snowball-throw from the Arctic Circle, where I am spending a few months far away from the relentless Mediterranean sunshine, darkness has been provided in heaps as generous as the mounds of ice cream in a child’s dream. God knows, I have longed for darkness and seclusion -- for cold, dark low skies, with plenty of prickly stars -- for snow-bound fields and snow-embroidered pines -- for low-lying sun, for the laze of late mornings, for short days and long evenings, for live fire in the fireplace, for skates on the ice and skis on the slope -- and it has been given in full. And now radiance pours into our world, promising the resurrection of Light from Light, Lumen de Lumine.

This is the time for good news. In London, Palestinian Solidarity dismissed a motion by Jewish activists to ban Deir Yassin Remembered, the most dynamic and non-apologetic of Palestinophile bodies, because of (among other sins) their association with me. On Saturday March 10th at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Annual General Meeting, two motions were proposed by Tony Greenstein and Roland Rance, both extremely long and explicit, demanding from friends of Palestine that they make the “fight against antisemitism and Holocaust denial” their main agenda. Chutzpah is an understatement for such impudence. These guys are so dishonest that I was not at all astonished when Greenstein was outed as a credit card fraudster. Greenstein had besmirched DYR, DYR Chairman Prof Dan McGowan, the British Director of DYR, Paul Eisen and our friend Gilad Atzmon in the Guardian in a piece called The seamy side of solidarity, and had attacked me in a long text called Anti-Semitism is no response to Zionism. They tried to stop DYR, though DYR provides scholarships to Palestinian children, brings awareness to masses and commemorates Palestinian struggle and suffering. They were answered by Paul Eisen, Ramzy Baroud and Gilad.

Both motions were voted down by an astounding absolute majority - 95%, reported Mary Rizzo’s blog. The British friends of Palestine decided in favor of freedom of thought and in favor of pluralism, and rejected the Procrustean bed of narrow social analysis forced by the Jewish activists. If accepted, the motion would have delegitimized not only Gilad or Paul Eisen or myself, but Michael Neumann and Jimmy Carter and Walt and Mearsheimer as well. Anybody referring to the Israel Lobby would have been deemed an antisemite and banned. It would have made obligatory belief in the Jewish antizionist myth of creation: only Imperialism is guilty, while Jewish Lobby is an invention of antisemites, a view beautifully deconstructed by M. Ahmad. Preoccupation with holocaust would have become a duty for any friend of Palestine. But those who wish Palestine to be free, want to be free themselves: free to read, write and say whatever is their wont. And so to protect this sweet freedom they rejected the Jewish diktat.

This is a small thing compared to the wonders of nature, or even compared with some major fights people have elsewhere; but do not pooh-pooh it -- this was an important battle and a great victory, albeit on our turf. As Churchill once said, it is not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of beginning. For many long years, they’ve gotten whatever they wanted. Right-wing Jews attacked Ken Livingstone and Jimmy Carter for their “antisemitism,” while left-wing Jews attacked my friends and me for the same reason and with the same viciousness. One could not mouth the word “Jew” without worshipful admiration and still retain one’s place in society.

Scared by this onslaught, timid allies would opt out, partake in the ostracism themselves, stop answering letters, join in condemnation. Websites, let alone printed media, wouldn’t publish my essays, conference organizers would disinvite. Like the leather-coated Commissars of the dreaded Cheka, Jewish activists would barge into any discussion enforcing their one and only true discourse, and folks would stand at attention. Only the strongest in spirit, the most determined and the most freedom-loving withstood their swarm assault. Is the London vote a harbinger of change? Could it be that the long winter of our discontent is finally over?

It is possible, for this is the prevailing wind from the East. Despite its own wonderful civilization and creature comforts, the West has always taken its better and more profound ideas from the East, be it Christianity from Palestine or Socialism from Russia. And now Russia offers Volya, unlimited and untranslatable Russian freedom, as its antidote to the war on liberties otherwise known as the “war on terror.” Russia is unbelievably free, or rather full of volya: one may smoke in a restaurant or in a pub, one does not have to brace a seatbelt, even parking is free if available. More importantly, one may say and write and publish practically anything at all. Beside all the freedoms available in the West, Russians may be gays or sneer at gays, bewail the holocaust or regret it was over too soon, be feminists or bait them, love Israel or call for its speedy dissolution. Yes, every liberal and Jewish-owned newspaper in the West bemoans the lack of freedom in Russia under the ‘bloody KGB dictator Putin’ (or in Venezuela under the bloody dictator Chavez, or in Cuba under the bloody dictator Castro – whoever they do not like is always a bloody dictator, isn't he?), but Russians are free from political correctness and Jew-worship, that annoying features of the post-war West.

Recently a group of Russian writers visited Israel and met there with their readers: there are more than a million Russian-speaking Israelis. The readers did not beat around the bush and demanded from the authors that they swear allegiance to the ruling ideology: condemn Iran, glorify Israel, this fortress of democracy in the Middle East, denounce the Russian supply of weapons to Arabs, and slam Russian antisemitism. Jews usually feel like creditors, and easily come up with demands.

A Western visitor would deliver the goods, though he would probably complain to his spouse afterwards. Denial of omnipresent and eternal antisemitism is not better than denial of the holocaust. But Russia is free, and when readers asked the Russian writer Maria Arbatova to tell them how she suffers from antisemitism and how dreadful life in Russia is under Putin’s dictatorship, she demurred.

Forget it, she said. Moscow today is like the Paris of the 1960s: we have more events in a day than you have in a month. Today, glorious Moscow is a world center. As for you, we are tired of you, and the Arabs are tired of you and of your demands. This failed Western project has outlived its usefulness. If my children were to even think of moving to Israel, I’d tell them: over my dead body! Russia never had antisemitism. I never experienced it in the whole of my fifty years of life. You say Jews could not find a job? It happened once to my Jewish mother that she was rejected, but she immediately found another, better job by using her family connections.

This was the answer a prominent Russian liberal writer gave to the Israeli readers. Far from being a Russian nationalist, the leading feminist writer Maria Arbatova’s grandfather was an important Jewish leader, and her great-grandfather was a founder of the Zionist movement in Tsarist Russia. But her reply was universal and paradigmatic. In the West, Tony Jutt and Harold Pinter could say that -- maybe Philip Weiss. Others are still scared. But the words that the German bishops mouthed and then repented can be easily said in free Russia, by descendents of Jews, or by anybody. The mystic charm of Jews has worn off in Russia, where Political Correctness is unheard of, and where the churches are full and people bless each other with “Christ is Risen”. Instead of scaring and offending Jews, as American multicultural theory would have it, so many of my Moscow friends consider themselves ‘just Russians’ despite having a Jewish parent or two, and with an intermarriage rate of about 80% Russian Jewry is a thing of the past. Many of them had been misled by Zionist propaganda, but they had enough time to recognize it and regret their haste.

Israel did much to disabuse them: Even very wealthy Russian Jews found themselves less than welcome in their “historical homeland”: The oligarch Gusinsky is under police investigation, and whenever he comes from his Spanish home he is taken straight to police HQ; one of the richest Russian Jews, Gaidamak, had his bank account sequestered. Less prominent Russians were mistreated and exploited by established Israeli old-timers and their progeny, just as exiles from Morocco were mistreated and exploited some forty years ago. Hardly any of them carved out a career worth mentioning. The eternal war proposed and advanced by Israeli leaders has little appeal for them; Hizbullah missiles taught them that Israel is not immune and invulnerable anymore, and a forthcoming Israeli offensive against Syria or Iran may cause many casualties among Israeli civilians. Corrupt even by Middle Eastern standards, prejudiced to the point of jaundice, Israel is probably the least attractive place for the upward-mobile and dynamic.

As the result, tens of thousands of Russian Israelis trek back to Russia and find their real country and their real home there in their native land. The Zionist idea had romantic appeal, but such things do not last. In the 1970s, I met in Tanzania with some American Blacks who moved to Africa on a wave of romantic search for their roots. The experience rarely lasted more than five years tops. During that time, they came to recognize that they are Americans for better or for worse, while Africans are organized into many nations and tribes, none of which they could fit into. You can’t “come back” after two hundred, let alone two thousand, years.

Russian scientist Dan Axelrod from St Petersburg told me of his Israeli relatives who would dearly love to return to that city and buy back the apartments they sold some ten years ago, in Yeltsin’s days. The only thing that stops them is the sad fact that these apartments’ value has increased tenfold since then. Axelrod has no worries of this sort: this son of Jewish parents is a regular church-goer, observes strict Orthodox Lent, is married to a Russian woman, baptised their children and loves his country Russia. It seems Russia has found an answer to the Jewish Question: neither by German fury nor American submission, but through assimilation in Christian love. This Russian model is the only one that can work, and it will eventually work in Palestine, too.

This is an additional reason why Putin’s Russia is much hated and much denigrated in the official zionist-controlled Western mainstream, and this is why she is loved by friends of Palestine. A Swedish friend of mine and of Palestine, Stefan L., wrote to me: “You're absolutely right about Putin. That he is a hostage of the oligarchs is one thing, but when he for one reason or another speaks the truth - we love him, the little rat-faced spy with a Kalashnikov accent. And every time we are reminded of Yeltsin’s existence we swear him eternal loyalty.”

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

By Israel Shamir


The villain kills innocent people in order to frame Roger Rabbit, that much I remember of the marvellous Zemeckis 88’ cartoon. The movie spoofs Hitchcock private eye films where the hero wades waist-deep in dead bodies, all killed to frame him. Chandler and Hammett developed this genre being bored by always-safe violin-playing Holmesian detectives: their heroes unravel murders while being accused and pursued by police.

The Russian president Vladimir Putin found himself in the uncomfortable position of Roger Rabbit. Soon after the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist, a defected spy died in London – and accused Putin on his death bed. The third death, that of obese ex-Prime Minister Gaidar, was avoided but not a new accusation. It appears that every violent or suspicious death is automatically placed at the doorstep of Putin, in the best Chandleresque tradition. Roger Rabbit was framed in order to take over the Toon Town; Putin is framed in order to take over Russia’s policies and resources.

Only a very young, innocent and sincere person may believe that media owners and editors, the Masters of Discourse care about minor Russian political figures like Politkovskaya and Litvinenko. They put Putin on the hot seat so he’ll surrender Iran to the US bombers and Sakhalin-2 to the Western oil companies, sell gas and other national assets at cheap price, forget about his independent political course. They show him and us the impressive might of the mass media machine, this unique device built to zombify millions. They can establish the world agenda and present Putin as a killer, Clinton as a sex offender, Chavez as an antisemite, Ahmadinejad as a new Hitler, Palestinians as the offenders and Israelis as victims. Not even the popes had such power in their best days: whatever they say, goes.

They never fail to mention the KGB career of Putin, though the CIA past of Bush and the Mossad past of Tsipi Livni is never referred to in polite society. They remind us of a Bulgarian defector killed 20 years ago, but they do not refer to the greatest organised assassin of our days, of the Jewish state, unless with admiration moderated by political correctness as in Spielberg’s Munich. However, Israel kills, kidnaps and jails its political opponents on a daily basis: all Palestinian leaders active 20 years ago have since been assassinated by the Jews. They use poison as well as guided missiles and bunker-busting bombs, and Nes Tsiona centre for chemical and biological warfare produces poisons and other tools for 007, like “bionic killer wasp”

They used their poison in an assassination attempt on Khaled Mashal, the Hamas leader; the assassins were apprehended and caught red-handed. There is no doubt that they used poison to assassinate Yasser Arafat: the Haaretz published a clear hint to that effect; and intelligence-related Israelis are convinced of it. And here we come to the most interesting part: Arafat’s post mortem revealed the presence of Polonium-210, the same poisonous medium that killed the Russian defector. However, the Masters of Discourse and their world-opinion-producing machine pooh-poohed this discovery and connected it to chemotherapy treatment possibly given to the Palestinian leader. Now they say this isotope points to Putin, though Polonium-210 is freely sold over the internet in the US.

Everything points to Putin. In today’s Israeli paper, a Russian demand for reciprocity in the treatment of arrested criminals (quite an ordinary and usual request) is described as “Putin’s blackmail”; a Russian desire to own petrol stations in the West, to sell oil at the pump and not only at the well, is described as “Putin’s world dominance drive”. Putin is not made of iron like the old Bolsheviks, and he is liable to submit to pressure, to allow Israel to bomb Iran, to give the Western oil companies a free run in his land, like Gorbachev and Yeltsin did. Then he will become a darling of the mass media and his alleged crimes will be forgotten.

This was the case with Muammar Qaddafi – he was personally accused of every mishap and his country was forced to pay zillions for the Lockerby disaster though they had no connection to it, as admitted by international observers at the trial. Qaddafi surrendered to the supreme will of the Masters of Discourse, and all attacks on him ceased immediately. It will happen to Putin, too, if he will just fulfil the desire of Israel and expose Iran to bombs.

Wonderful Indian writer Arundhati Roy wrote that all our leaders are awful; but as long as they let the West to steal their assets they are safe. Only when they object to it, do they become monsters in the eyes of ever so docile public opinion. We should try to stop this trend; we can’t fight off the US Cruise missiles, but we may and must sabotage the Masters of Discourse’s most powerful weapon, their mass media brainwashing machine by never accepting their line.

Russia Hesitates – Part 2

By Israel Shamir

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.

[1] Over 50 % of the Jews (as opposed to 13 % of the Russians) supported the pro-Western coup of President Yeltsin. In 1995, 81% of the Jews voted for pro-Western parties, and only 3% for the Communists (as opposed to 46% of Russians), according to the publication by the Jewish sociologist Dr. Ryvkina in her book, Jews in Post-Soviet Russia (1996). The divergence was even greater in the following election campaigns.

Russia Hesitates

By Israel Shamir, from Moscow[1]

Israel and the US, the terrible Siamese twins conjoined by their Jewish communities, are on the warpath. The usually knowledgeable Uzi Mahanaimi wrote in the Sunday Times that the plans have been laid out, and preparations are being completed for the resumption of the war on Syria and Iran temporarily stopped by the Hezbullah fighters in the mountains of Southern Lebanon. President Bush hopes to improve his sagging popularity by the war, says Alex Cockburn. A condemnation of Iran by the Security Council is all he needs before the attack at dawn. Until now, such resolutions were produced after a short period of haggling. Now there is a chance Russia will use its veto, and then the US plans would be shelved and the assault on Iran cancelled.

Before 1990, such a vote would be certain. In those days of the much-maligned Soviet Union, the Russians advanced many causes of which we still enjoy the fruits: together with their Cuban allies they stopped the apartheid tanks in Angola and brought about Mandela’s release and the creation of a more egalitarian South Africa. The Russians supported European trade unions and Communist parties, preventing the onslaught of privatisation, outsourcing and globalisation. If you had it better before 1990, and you probably did, it was due to this Russian influence. The Russians supplied the enemies of the Empire with their cheap and good weapons, and they blocked the Empire’s attempts to legitimise its aggressions via UN resolutions. Their planes and their ground-to-air missiles helped the Vietnamese and the Koreans to win the war. Their influence and abilities were limited: the Russians never could compete on an equal footing with the immense power of the West harnessed by Washington. But they could spike the wheels of the American Juggernaut, and so they did. The Empire hated them and wished them dead, and many Western intellectuals supported this wish.

My friend, Russian maverick poet Edward Limonov, wrote a short story in the 1980s: what would happen if Russia were to disappear altogether from the face of Earth? The US would intervene all over the world on massive scale, and capitalism and imperialism would regain ground lost since 1917 with a vengeance, he prophesied; and so it has happened: Panama, Nicaragua, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan were invaded. The rich grew richer, the middle class shrank, freedoms were undone on the pretext of a "War on Terror."

The Western Left contributed a lot to this unhappy development, for Soviet Russia was undone by double perfidy. In the end, their elites betrayed their masses and privatised the wealth created by the Soviet people. But before that, we, the Western Left, had internalized the Evil Empire cliché and repeated every slogan manufactured by the enemy. We chanted Let My People Go, and demanded an extra privilege for Jews, the right to emigrate. We did not care that the Palestinians had no right to return to their homes, while the Russian Jews wanted to move into settlements in occupied Palestine. We supported Russian dissidents, though they hated all we stood for and considered Pinochet ‘a soft leftist’. We accused Russians of their long-gone Gulag, and brought in Abu Ghraib. We condemned Russians too much, and contributed to their feeling of isolation, and to the second, fatal betrayal by their elites.

We, good and sincere people, were misled and tricked by the media machine into an outburst of condemnation against our only mighty ally. The Western Left did not survive the collapse: it went into self-destruct mode, and what remains is represented by the likes of Tony Blair. All over the Western world, the elites celebrate their unlimited wealth and luxury, while ordinary people are worse and worse off. Not only industrial workers: unless you are a CEO you live worse than you did, and your chances to improve your lot are worse than they ever were.

But luckily Russia did not disappear forever, though it was a close call. Boris Yeltsin sold its resources to his cronies and to Western companies, shelled the Parliament and transferred media and oil into the hands of Jewish oligarchs. Yeltsin installed Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB officer and would-be Pinochet, with orders to keep the stolen property in the hands of thieves and the country in the Western grip. Now it appears that the enemies of Russia miscalculated with this man. Instead of doing a Pinochet on behalf of the oligarchs, Putin broke the oligarchs’ grip; he exiled and jailed some crooked tycoons, and restored a semblance of law and order in the country. He returned the main TV channels to the people. My wealthy Jewish acquaintances in Russia tell me that money does not rule in the country anymore. One can buy comforts, but not the power.

The oil revenues began to flow into the country, not only to private coffers in Swiss banks. This revitalised the economy. The infrastructure ruined by Gorbachev and Yeltsin is being restored and improved; housing is being built in vast amounts; the once-degraded army is receiving new hardware; main streets shine with bright new shops; new and repaired highways with millions of cars connect villages and cities. The Chechen war is over; that republic has been reintegrated into Russia, and its dwellers enjoy full civil rights. Russian ballet again captures eyes and hearts. After the total collapse of the film industry in the 1990s, Russians are again making many movies, even blockbusters with mass appeal (like The Night Guard) as well as “festival art”. Obsessive, guilt-ridden lamentation has given way to new prose and poetry. Thousands of churches have been refurbished and their onion domes gilded; all the churches are full on Sundays. Historically a country of Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam, Russia preserves this tradition, and here the Christians and Muslims live in relative harmony despite the efforts of pro-American forces to inject Islamophobia into Russian hearts. The state TV, taken away from Jewish oligarchs and freed from PC tyranny, shows a lot of footage of the venerable grey-bearded Patriarch (the Russian Pope) and the nimble karate-fighter of a President enforcing the faith-and-authority tradition of Russia.

A mammoth 1500-page-long novel by the Russian painter Maxim Kantor, The Drawing Textbook , le dernier cri of Russian literature, has been received by many readers as a proclamation of volte-face: Russia’s ideological subservience to the Mammonite West is over! Kantor does not stop at condemning comprador capitalists: they were preceded by comprador intellectuals. Kantor defends Christ from the humanist assaults: Christianity was betrayed by humanists, in his view. Kantor is not fond of the new Russian regime: he regrets that Russia gave up its socialism, and considers 20 years of capitalist development as a flop: “barracks’ socialism was replaced by barracks’ capitalism”. With this book, a modern War and Peace, Russia’s re-invention is officially on the way, and this great country with its great people may yet turn the tide of history.

It is doubtful whether Russia will turn leftwards anytime soon. But the international activism of adventure-seeking Americans is not acceptable to any independent Russian state. Russians are not happy with the American military bases surrounding Russia, with the aggressive push of NATO, or with politically motivated limitations on Russian companies. The Russians feel that they were cheated 20 years ago, when the West proclaimed its desire to reach full peace and harmony, and to respect the independence of nations. Believing this bull, the Russian troops left East Europe, but American troops still lounge in Germany, Italy, Japan; they advanced into Poland and this summer tried to land in Crimea, next to the Russian fleet's home base. The Russians left Vietnam, but the Americans still occupy Okinawa.

Russia’s leaders feel unsafe: since the Soviet Union’s demise, leaders of independent sovereign states – Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic - have been snatched and imprisoned for denying the will of Washington. Neither is Russian wealth safe: Russia, like many nations, is obliged to keep its savings in the bottomless pit of the American economy, but nobody can collect on these investments yet. Norway invested all its oil income in the US stock market, and lost all of it; Swedish pension funds went the same way. If this is the case with the best friends of the US, what will happen to its enemies? Iran, Iraq, Palestine lost all their savings by decisions of the US administration. Moreover, its legal system allows the US to sue foreign states for unlimited amounts. Thus, the families of victims of the Lockerbie crash received from besieged Libya a cool ten million dollars per passenger, although the American courts authorise ten thousand times smaller sums for the victims of American bombings – if indeed they receive anything at all.

Russia feels unsafe, for the US has invaded other sovereign countries more often and with greater impunity than Hitler ever did. This feeling is shared by a less vocal China. “The great issue that divides the U.N. is no longer Communism versus capitalism, as it once was; it is sovereignty”, preached the New York Times. Its scribe, James Traub, lists many countries that “abuse their citizens under protection of sovereignty”. In vain will you look there for the name of Israel, though the Jews killed over a thousand people in Lebanon, and over 200 civilians last month in Gaza alone.

The great divisive issue of our times is actually somewhat different: whether the US and Israel are the only sovereign countries, while others have a limited "demo" version. Why does Israel get away with aggression (and now with its sea and air blockade of a sovereign UN member state, Lebanon) while peaceful Iran must be censured? Why has Israel been able to reject all pertinent UN resolutions and yet never had sanctions applied against it, while Iran is about to be bombed? Are non-Jews less valuable than Jews? The case of Iran provides a good opportunity for Russia and China to present a case for sovereignty and non-interference.

Some of better Soviet policies were embedded in the Christian ethos of Russia, and the tradition of helping the downtrodden and the weak, of resisting aggressor is one of them. Post-Soviet Russia inherited these traditions. But in this case practical need coincides with the call of compassion. Unless President Putin views with equanimity the possibility of being snatched and brought to some American kangaroo court himself, he may want to contemplate stopping this orgy of invasions. Iran is a case of one invasion too far. Iran is a sovereign country; it did not break international law. Its decision to enrich uranium is fully within its rights according to the NPT. Whether they worship Allah or Jehovah is entirely their internal affair. And by applying its right of veto, Russia would signal that interference in internal affairs of sovereign states will not be tolerated and legitimised in the UN. Russia won’t be alone – China, equally unhappy with US interference, may support it with its own veto.

The alternative is too much to consider: even if the UN resolution doesn't refer to sanctions, the US is famous for its cavalier way of interpreting UN text. Any condemnation (even a soft one) will be used as carte blanche for nuking Iran and taking it over; then the US chain of military bases will run continuously around the south flank of Russia and China, through Turkey, Georgia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan. "Rebellious" Ahmadinejad will be brought to Tel Aviv in iron chains, while the US takes over the oil resources of Iran, and by using Iran and Iraq oil, undermines the Russian position in the world economy. Afterwards, under this or some other pretext, they may confiscate Russia’s assets, threaten Putin with Ahmadinejad’s fate and return Russia to its miserable position of Yeltsin’s days. Thus, using their veto in the Security Council would be a very prudent and wise step for both Russia and China, especially if it were accompanied by granting Iran full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The results of a Russian veto would be greater than just postponement of the US assault on Iran: it would send a strong signal that the end of Pax Americana is nigh. The “Old” Europe may take it as a cue and regain its independence, even demanding to remove those vestiges of WWII, US military bases, from Europe. The “New” Europe may understand it is out of step, and curtail its pro-American and anti-Russian partisanship. Japan could demand an end to the occupation of Okinawa. The Law of Nations will rule the world again, instead of the will of the Pentagon.

And then the time for a new American independence drive will come, independence of America from its Jewish Lobby. Such a drive took place in the revolutionary Russia of the 1920s, when Russian Communists argued about whether they should go for world revolution, as Trotsky demanded, or for creating socialism in their own country, as proposed by Stalin and Bukharin. If their militant activism is rejected, Americans may discard their neo-Trotskyites, both Republicans and Democrats keen on spreading their “world democratic revolution”, in favour of isolationists who prefer building to spreading. Supporters of spreading – from George W. Bush to Hilary Clinton – are great friends of Israel. The bipartisan support of Israel within the US political elites means also their subservience to the Jewish Lobby. Rejection of the Lobby may become the single slogan of a new American revolution, of a new American political party of independence and non-interference on the way to creating a United States the world can live with.

Language editing: Ken Freeland and Roger Tucker

[1] [A Russian version of this article was published in the http://www.politjournal.ru/index.php?action=Articles&dirid=40&tek=6204&issue=176]