RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18511/middle-east-moderation-holocaust

The real danger lies not only in denying that the Holocaust took place, but, worse, in rewriting history, especially by those who oppose peace and stability. Their main motive seems to be to perpetuate hatred and hostility so that the conflict — their raison d’être and possibly also their careers — remains continuous and immortal.

The real dispute in the Middle East is actually between two axes: an Axis of Moderation and an Axis of Resistance (to moderation, non-violence, normalization and peace).

Nothing, it seems, infuriates extremist groups or the Axis of Resistance more than bringing them face-to-face with such historical facts, and being able to cast aside all doubt about everything that is going on in Israel and that has been so maliciously and falsely reported

If matters were more peaceful and normal, everyone could go there and see the reality for themselves. This suppression of the truth seems, in fact, the main reason that so many are against normalization and fostering relationships between people across cultural and political divides: they want their own people to see only their version of reality.

Mohammad Dajani, a former Palestinian professor at Al-Quds University, had a different experience: he still lives in the midst of the conflict. His life is at risk because of the pragmatic position he chose: to solve the conflict rather than to perpetuate it.

[The Abraham Accords] made the voice of the Axis of Moderation louder and bolder. Supporters of the Axis of Resistance can no longer embarrass supporters of the Axis of Moderation, as they have done in the past, simply by accusing them of treason, or for doing nothing for the Palestinians or the Palestinian cause.

Peace cannot be built as long as extremism and ideological terrorism exist, and there can be no independent Palestinian state if generations are raised on violence and hatred in the absence of reason and logic.

Through the new Abraham Accords, which differ from previous models in that they actively promote peace and prosperity for the civil society, there is finally a glorious opportunity for people to see for themselves the reality of the Holocaust, for example, and better understand the dangers of radicalism, intolerance and racism to their own societies.

For the first time in history, a delegation of journalists, academics and influencers from across the Arab and Muslim world — including citizens from states that have not yet signed peace agreements with Israel, such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon – came to see first-hand the horrors of the Holocaust and to promote education and awareness of them in their societies.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18510/putin-victory-parade

Rather than signaling the end of hostilities, Putin may announce a widening of the perimeters of a war he no longer controls.

The invasion [of Ukraine] has led to an unexpected strengthening of creaking political and military bonds among Western powers and whetted their appetite for regime change in Moscow, something that many, perhaps even most, would have shied away from before Putin began raining his missiles on Kiev.

US President Joe Biden has publicly called for ending Putin’s domination of Russia. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says the Western aim is to so weaken Russia that it is never again able to invade another country. French Minister of Finance and Economy Bruno Le Maire says the aim of the war is to “destroy the Russian economy.” Other senior Western officials speak of bringing Putin and his close associates to justice on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The British government has already asked a commission to start working on that scheme.

Like Hussein and Milosevic, Putin dreams of surrounding Russia with countries with regimes that resemble his, ignoring the fact that reality was developing in the opposite direction with Russia or Iraq or Serbia, ending up resembling the geopolitico-cultural sphere in which fate or events of history has located them. Putin invaded to prevent Ukraine from becoming European, not knowing that Russia itself will eventually have to bury its Slavophile illusions and adopt the “Westernization” strategy supported by such unlikely partners in a dream as Peter the Great, Herzen, Turgenev and Belinsky.

What do you do when you have called a victory parade but have no victory to parade?

This is the question that Russian President Vladimir Putin faces as his faction factory prepares to churn out a gigantic street show in Moscow with Tsarist eagles with varvels bearing Volodya’s coat of arms.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/05/the-thinking-of-a-postmodern-warlord/

In 2008 Vladimir Putin provoked a war with Georgia by giving its president, Mikhail Sakashvili, the poisoned choice either of losing two “breakaway” regions of his country to pro-Russian separatists and Russian “peacekeepers” illegally present there or of risking an attempt to recover them by military action. Sakashvili chose the second course—which was also a Russian trap—and was defeated. Russian troops advanced to within twenty-five kilometres of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, where they halted and have remained.

At that time I was the executive editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague which broadcast to twenty-two countries in twenty-eight languages. Our Georgian service was an especially influential one with first-class journalists in Prague and Tbilisi. I took the crisis as a chance to visit the Tbilisi bureau, and after a few days of meeting local politicians, diplomats, economists and journalists, I set down my thoughts in a commentary for RFE/RL’s English language service.

My first thoughts, slightly abridged here, were that the Russo-Georgian war was a very postmodern experience.

***

Tbilisi, August 2008. Seated in an open-air restaurant overlooking the Mtkvari River, enjoying a light lunch of mountain trout and Georgian salad, one finds it hard to believe that Russian tanks are only about twenty-five kilometres away—indeed that they may be even closer by the time the Turkish coffee arrives.

Tbilisi has few signs of being a capital city at war. National flags hang from many buildings. Newspapers have emphatic anti-Russian headlines such as “Peacekeepers Go Home”. Some pavement satirist has sprayed the features of Vladimir Putin on the pathways so that pedestrians tread on his face.

But there are no bomb shelters; no one looks up anxiously at the sky when a plane is heard; and refugees head into the capital from South Ossetia for help rather than away from it in panic.

This postmodern invasion looks very different to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia forty years ago. In 1968, Soviet tanks reached the centre of Prague. Today, Russian tanks seem to be going back and forth around major Georgian towns, but they will not head straight for Tbilisi without an additional (and highly improbable) Georgian provocation. In 1968, Czech leaders of the Prague Spring were rounded up and deported, reappearing years later as gardeners and furnace-men. Today, Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, addresses large anti-Russian allies in the capital and hosts visits from Western leaders. In 1968, the Soviet invasion was a “multinational” one drawn from the entire USSR and Eastern Europe; today, most members of the CIS have either criticised the Russian invasion or remained silent.