Gilad Erdan’s speech at the UN General Assembly

 

Gilad Erdan is Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations  

Many thanks to Rami Pinku for generating the transcript by sending the extracted audio with his Python code to OpenAI 

Thank you, Mr. President. 

Distinguished colleagues, we are gathered here in this hall today as a result of a resolution called Uniting for Peace. Sadly, this emergency session has nothing to do with peace. Every member state here today who is convinced that we are about to discuss yet another round of conflict in the Middle East, another dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, is wrong. 

The October 7th massacre and what ensued has nothing to do with the Palestinians, nothing. It has nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Palestinian question. This is not a war with the Palestinians. Israel is at war with the genocidal jihadist Hamas terror organization. Only. It is the law-abiding democracy of Israel against modern-day Nazis. Nazis. 

These are the facts. Hamas do not care about the Palestinian people. They do not care about peace or dialogue. Hamas has only one goal - to annihilate Israel and murder every single Jew on the face of the earth. Their original charter makes this very clear. I'll read you a few lines:

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it. 

Another quote. 

There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by jihad.

 Another quote. 

The day of judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them.

 Friends, on October 7th it became clear to the entire world that Hamas's charter was not a compilation of empty words. It was an action plan. An action plan. 

Imagine a bright sunny day, clear skies, music in the air, young people are dancing, a rave, a concert for peace. Yes, for peace. It is really, it is early morning on the holy Sabbath. The sun has just risen to mark a new day. It is also a festive Jewish high holiday, Simchat Torah. Simchat Torah means the joy of the Torah where we celebrate the book of books, our holy Bible. And then in one split second this idyllic Eden became hell on earth. The peaceful morning air was pierced with the wail of rocket sirens. Thousands, I'm telling you, thousands of Hamas mortars and rockets rained down indiscriminately on many Israeli cities and villages. 

But the rockets were only cover for the pogrom, the pogrom that followed. Barbaric Hamas terrorists invaded Israel from the sea, the land, and the air. They came with one purpose, one purpose only, to savagely murder every living thing they encountered. Hamas Nazi murders went from house to house with hit lists, a thoroughly planned, willful, premeditated attack. They brutally murdered civilians in their beds. They drove pickup trucks with machine guns. Yes, we all remember, just like ISIS and fired blindly at hundreds of young people at a concert. 300, 300 were burned alive or butchered in that concert. Much of what remained were clumps of flesh and bloody limbs. Parents had to bring their children's toothbrushes for DNA so they could so they could figure out whose limb belonged to who.

These Hamas monsters raped women and children, parading naked girls that they raped and bodied that they defiled through the streets of Gaza while thousands, and I'm telling you thousands, you can see the footage, jeered and cheered. The savages tortured small babies. Just like the Nazis, Hamas terrorists removed infants from their cribs. Yes, we have it on video. Swung them repeatedly against the ground until their skulls became a pulp. Children were murdered in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. I've seen a video of a terrorist filmed by him, by himself, who tossed a grenade into a bomb shelter with a father and his two young boys inside. The father was killed instantly and the two boys ran out of the shelter screaming that their father is dead and that they want to be dead too. All this is occurring, believe it or not, as the monster who murdered their father calmly helps himself to the contents of the family's fridge. 

Yes, no horror movie compares to the pure brutality that Hamas carried out. No, none. 

Amit Mann, a 22-year-old from Kibbutz Be'eri and a paramedic for Magen David Adom, Israel's Red Cross. She dedicated her life, literally, and you will understand why, to saving others. When the Hamas monsters invaded the Kibbutz, Amit ran to the clinic to treat as many wounded as she could. For hours, hours, Amit worked non-stop trying to save lives. She knew the sadistic terrorists were outside her clinic because she heard the gunfire, but she stayed there. She was committed to saving lives, not running away. Finally, the terrorist burst into her clinic and put a bullet, a bullet, through her brain. She was a Magen David Adom paramedic, the Israeli Red Cross, in uniform, but that didn't stop these savages. This is how the rescue teams found Amit. 

Ambulances were set on fire, not one, many. Dozens of Magen David Adom medical teams were intentionally targeted on the way to tend to the wounded, and many other paramedics were murdered. Barzilai Hospital in my hometown city, Ashkelon, in Israel, suffered direct hits from Hamas rockets, not for the first time. Hamas has been deliberately firing rockets at it for years, for years, intentionally, yet not a single condemnation of this barbarity has been mentioned here. Not here, not by the Security Council, not by the Secretary General and not by this absurd resolution. It seems that hospitals and medical teams only need to be protected as long as they are not Israeli.

 The hypocrisy is beyond belief, beyond belief. 

The brutal ISIS-like monsters abducted over 220 hostages from Israel and dozens of other countries, including babies, babies, children, persons with disabilities, the elderly and Holocaust survivors. Kfir Bibas, Kfir Bibas is nine months old, nine months old, and he is being held right now in Gaza as a hostage, nine months old. What barbaric terrorists can do such a thing? And together with him, 30 other children, 30 other children. We saw Hamas's brutality in Israel. I cannot begin to fathom what horrors the hostages are enduring right now as we speak here. Twenty days have gone by and Israel is still counting her dead. It took weeks to collect all of the bodies. Some bodies are burnt like pieces of coal. It is almost impossible to identify them. 

Countless burned bodies have been found with ash in their throats, meaning they were still alive, still alive when lit on fire, intentionally, by the Hamas terrorists. A clump of charred human remains that was burned beyond recognition was found. At first, the medical personnel couldn't figure out what they were looking at. Yet, after a CT scan, it became clear that they were two spines, not one, two spines bound together with wire, one belonging to an adult and the other, the small spine of a child. So just try to imagine that parents feeling as they and their child were burning alive, burning alive. The painful screaming of the love of their life was the last thing they heard, the last thing. 

Do you not think it's unbelievable that this resolution here today and this session are not solely focused on Hamas's atrocities? When reading this resolution, Hamas seems to be missing in action. The drafters of the resolution claim to be concerned about peace. Yet, the depraved murderers who initiated this war are not even mentioned in the resolution, not even mentioned. They see each one of you as a puppet. They write a resolution completely devoid of any content related to the situation. They assume that you have already forgotten who it is that is responsible for the inhumane violence, and they just expect you to support it automatically. This resolution is a disgrace to your intelligence, a disgrace. It is unfathomable that such a resolution, one that doesn't even mention Hamas, could possibly be voted upon here. Let that sink in, please. 

Distinguished representatives, Hamas carried out atrocities, the likes of which we have not seen since the Holocaust. Yet, unlike the Holocaust, where the evidence we have is mostly black and white photographs and soundless footage, here, the proof is in high definition. Because some of it is from, yes, security footage, but much of it is from the cell phones and GoPro cameras belonging to the Hamas Nazis themselves. Many may be asking, why did they film this? Why did they film their sadistic violence? Well, I'll tell you why. Very simple. They filmed it in order to terrorize the Israeli public, to release these videos and put fear in the hearts of the citizens of Israel. By the way, this is what terrorists do. They terrorize.

 I have seen much footage over the past weeks that will be seared into my mind forever, but there is one sight that I keep on seeing when I try to sleep. In the video, one can see a terrible injured civilian, bloodied yet alive, laying on the ground as a Hamas savage, screaming Allahu Akbar repeatedly, pummels the man's neck with a garden hoe in order to decapitate him. The man on the ground is an agricultural worker from Thailand. He's not Israeli. He's not Jewish. He was merely alive, trying to make a living for his family. But he was decapitated with a blunt gardening tool. 

Horrifying. Israel is not at war with human beings. We are at war with monsters. Here is the video. My mission distributed and will continue to distribute QR codes with a direct link to files where you can see this horror and many other Hamas atrocities. What you see here are not pictures from Auschwitz, but Israelis raped, butchered, and burned alive. This is not Auschwitz. This is Hamas. 

There are no words in the English language, in any language, to describe the evil that we all just witnessed. And the reason it is not describable is because it has no place among humankind. Over 1,400 have been slaughtered, 1,000 injured, and over 220 hostages are being held right now by Hamas ISIS terrorists. To say that this is Israel's 9-11 would be an understatement. Proportionally, the death toll of this atrocity is 15 times bigger than 9-11. 

By the way, our enemies are not 7,000 miles away. They are 7,000 feet away in our own backyard. So for this reason, Israel's mission is to eradicate this evil from the earth. Eradicate. ISIS was the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and Hamas is the Islamic State of Gaza. So just as was done with ISIS, Hamas must be no more. Our goal is to completely eradicate Hamas's capabilities, and we will use every mean at our disposal to accomplish this. Not for revenge. No. Not for retaliation. No. But to ensure that such depravity, such atrocities never occur again. 

Israel is at the forefront of the war on radical jihadist terror, and if Israel doesn't succeed in obliterating, obliterating Hamas's terror capabilities, the whole world will pay the price. Hamas's genocidal ideology, just like ISIS, Al-Qaeda, or the Ayatollah regime in Tehran, of Iran, is not just about destroying Israel. You all know it. It is ultimately about world domination. World. It is about bringing the jihad war to the soil of each and every one of your countries. They will not stop until they murder all of the infidels, as they call us. 

Colleagues, for the past 16 years, the international community and the UN have been complacent to Hamas's terror buildup in Gaza. Complacent. The world has kept its head in the sand as Hamas embedded its missiles and rockets deep within and under the civilian population of Gaza. It accepted an absurd reality that a law-abiding democracy could live side by side with cancerous genocidal terrorists that fire tens of thousands of missiles indiscriminately at our civilians. Unprovoked. 

We have seen that nothing can change Hamas's genocidal ideology. Not, sadly, not the rehabilitation of Gaza. Not economic incentives. Not any promise of a brighter future. The UN tried. Many of you tried. But everyone failed. Everyone failed. And you know why? Because nothing can change a genocidal ideology. Nothing.

 There is only one solution to curing a cancer. And it is the evisceration of every cancerous cell. The international community has poured billions of dollars into Gaza. And it all went to Hamas's war machine. It went to its subterranean city of terror. It went to its missile manufacturing facilities. And you remember, 18 years ago, Israel unilaterally withdrew from all of Gaza. We withdrew from all of Gaza. Hamas could have invested the international funding it received into building power plants, water desalination plants, every other civil infrastructure. But no. Instead, Hamas exploited every inch of the Gaza Strip for their violent goals. Because to Hamas, Gazan civilians are nothing more than mere cannon fodder. Human shields, who in death become pawns for Hamas's libelous propaganda campaign. 

Hamas is counting on you. They are certain that despite the terror and massacre, the UN will still come to their rescue and prevent Israel from defending itself. 

Friends, Israel is on a rescue mission. A rescue mission to save our hostages, to save our future, and to save the people of Gaza from their savage tyrants. A rescue mission. And colleagues, the rescue mission can end quickly. Now. It can end now. No need for complicated, empty resolutions. It can end now. Should Hamas put down their arms, return our hostages, and turn themselves in, this war will end without one more shot being fired. Not even one. Why do you not unite and call on Hamas to do this? If the drafters of this resolution truly want peace, if they truly want an immediate solution, then why do they not demand this of Hamas? 

Instead, this resolution does the exact opposite of finding a solution. The exact opposite. Rather than promoting peace, it only ensures more violence. It should be called uniting for terror, not uniting for peace. Israel has been attacked and continues to be attacked. This is a fact right now in the south from Hamas and in the north from Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the resolution calls for an immediate ceasefire. A ceasefire means giving Hamas time to rearm itself so they can massacre us again. This is not speculation. They will do so. You all know this. Any call for a ceasefire is not an attempt at peace. It is an attempt to tie Israel's hands, preventing us from eliminating a huge threat to our citizens. 

But the resolution's distortions go even deeper than that. Hamas, the terror group that started this war, I reiterate, is not even mentioned. Not even once. In fact, the only hidden reference to these barbaric terrorists can be found in calls on both parties. Both parties? This is a false, immoral comparison between the law-abiding democracy of Israel and a genocidal jihadist. And the drafters are counting on the fact that each and every distinguished representative here will blindly go along with their ploy. This resolution is an insult to your intelligence. And the only place this resolution belongs is in the dustbin of history. The dustbin of history. 

But colleagues, this resolution is not the only thing here today that is detached from reality. In a short time, a representative of the evil regime that trained, funded, and armed Hamas for the October 7th massacre will address you. The Ayatollah regime of Iran has the blood of thousands of Israelis on its hands. It has the blood of hundreds of thousands of oppressed Iranians, of Ukrainians, of Americans, of Emiratis, and so many others on its hands. Iran is known as the world's number one state sponsor of terror. And for good reasons. It's completely natural that the foreign minister of this brutal regime should be the speaker following the resolution drafter. The country with a Nazi ideology of annihilating Israel, publicly says, stands in solidarity with its proxy Hamas, which shares the same Nazi ideology and aims for our destruction. This is completely understandable. Indeed, mere days ago, he spoke with the leaders of Hamas and its twin terror group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, praising them, praising them for the slaughter. And today he is here to fill your ears with poison. Indeed, uniting for peace, uniting to butcher every Israeli to pieces. This man, the mass murderer or any other representative of the terror regime in Iran, has no place at the UN, let alone in the family of nations. It is a moral stain on the UN and the values it was founded upon. 

Distinguished colleagues, this week the UN celebrated its 78th birthday. Yet, looking at this resolution and the honorary guests hosted today in these halls, this organization has shown that it is so broken, so morally corrupt, that I do not have high hopes that it will make it to 90, let alone 100. I'm just a realist. Today serves as the clearest proof that this body is bleeding its relevance, legitimacy and justification. What we are witnessing today is a desecration, a desecration of what the UN was meant to be. Following the horrors of the Holocaust, this institution was established to prevent atrocities from repeating themselves. Yet, in these very halls, we have perpetrators of the most grotesque human rights violations and crimes against humanity who also exploit their power and so-called members of the family of nations only to single out law-abiding democracies such as Israel. If this organization wants to maintain any shred of legitimacy, it is imperative that you, please, distinguished representatives, no longer play along with this farce of anti-Israel double standards. Vote against this biased resolution. 

Stand on the right side of history. Don't stand with the genocidal jihadists committed to your destruction. Rise above internal political considerations and do what is moral and right. 

Mr. President, Israel will not stop fighting for the truth, even if we remain the sole voice of reason in these halls. Israel will continue combating the genocidal terrorists committed to our destruction. We will not rest until Hamas is obliterated and our hostages are returned home. And we will bring them home.

I will conclude with a moment of silence for all the victims of Hamas's atrocity. If the supporters of this resolution choose to ignore the victims in their text, I will pay respect to their memory.  

Thank you, Mr President. 

The Iron Dome in action

 

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Let’s face it -  1400 Israelis were murdered because Israeli politicians were ignorant about political Islam. For Hamas, jihadi ideology always takes precedence over economic incentive, and Israeli politicians should have known it.

 

Victor Davis Hanson: Biden will not stop Israel’s righteous retribution on Hamas

 

6:00 Victor Davis Hanson: …..    And so they really inflamed Israel justifiably in a way that we have never seen before, and they’ve woken up, and the reaction is going to be exactly like in the Yom Kippur war, except to the n-th degree. And I don’t think that Hamas understands that this is the first time in our lives, John, that there is no restraint to speak of. I know that Joe Biden will go there and he will say do this and do that and do that, but he is not gonna stop this righteous retribution on Hamas and then Hezbollah is talking, talking, talking and Iran is talking, talking, talking and beating their chest and tomorrow is supposed to be a day of reckoning, but they don't understand that they’re widely despised in the Western Europe, is sick of them and Europe is clamping  down on their own unassimilated immigrant Muslim population and we are  getting very angry at ours. You have a problem as well in Australia and I think there is no patience anymore.

The second thing is that Joe Biden is not leading events, he has been driven by events.

They have 100000 rockets in Lebanon. If they get full of themselves and they send, I don’t know,  5000, 4000 at the US fleet, perhaps one might hit it, a lot might hit it. But they don’t understand that there is no patience with them any more, there is no restraint on the United States . Russia is bogged down in Ukraine, China has one, two concerns. One, everything that hurts the United States they are up for, but #2 they don’t want  40 percent of their oil disrupted and they don’t want a big war in the Middle East, not right now with the economic difficulties and what that means is that the clients of Iran are not going to be eager to get into a war with the United States or the West in general, and so Iran has no client, it has no backup. And I don’t know if they know that.  They keep thinking that because of  the weakness of this administration that it’s systemic and will continue forever, but I do not think that Joe Biden will be able to stop the righteous anger if they do something stupid and they may well do something stupid because we’ve lost deterrence. 

John Anderson: That is very Interesting that you are seeing, as you say, perhaps we are being dragged to it rather than leading events, but nonetheless, as the Russians discovered, and now the Middle East is observing, the rest of the world is observing, when it comes to foreign affairs, when it really comes down to it, America is still resolute enough to stand up, it has the willpower That seems to be one of the great messages out of this?

VDH: I think so. There is a weird calculus going on because there are people in the Democratic party, not their crazy lunatic squad base, but are very strong supporters of Israel, and they are shocked by this nihilist blood curdling support for Hamas’s barbary and savagery, and they want Israel to retaliate. That is not coming from the Conservative or the Right, that’s coming from the mainstream Democratic party. They are telling Joe Biden you’ve got to let Israel go, and do what they need to do, and that’s very new. When you have a Democratic president. I don’t think that people abroad fully comprehend -you have no restraint. Typically  a Republican or a conservative Administration wants to have deterrence and then the Left almost in Pavlovian fashion says this is imperialistic, neo-colonialist, provocative. Trump killed Solemaini, he got blasted for it,  Trump bombed Isis, he got blasted for it. But when the Democratic people are in, there is no restraint because no Republican would say please don’t hit Iran or please don’t hit Hamas. You have members of their own party who were outraged what happened to Israel and what Hamas and  Hezbollah and Iran are saying about that but what they are going to do in addition to that. 

I don’t see when I look at the landscape here or abroad, I don’t see any restraining voice that is going to say you better not do that or else, or you cannot do that because that would be amoral or it’s against UN rules of war. There is nothing of that. I don’t hear any of that. 

How the West can and must win World War IV

Andrey Piontkovski

Translated from Russian using google translate from

https://piontk045.comv.info/material.php?id=652C24525859A

Andrey Piontkovsky: It is necessary to somewhat change the sequence of moves  

After the “exercises” in Ryazan in September 1999, it became obvious to everyone except those who wanted to deceive themselves that a series of house explosions in Russia were organized by the de facto  security officers who had seized power with the aim of blaming the Chechens, starting a war and victoriously immersing  both  Chechnya and Russia in their patriotic toilets.

More than 20 years later, the mature Putin and Patrushev set their sights on a much larger-scale performance - an epoch-making Victory over the West in the Fourth World War as revenge for the defeat of the USSR in the third (cold) War. The historical victory that has been cultivated for decades smoothly morphed into victory live.

The grievances of the “good Hitler” towards the West are much larger and more painful than simply the loss of certain zones of dominance. For centuries, the West has been perceived by Kremlin rulers as an existential threat to their power by the very fact of its existence as a possible historical alternative. Fascinated by the technological and consumer fruits of the West and greedily wanting to master (implement) them, our Horde khans - “modernizers” always with animal fear rejected the roots of Western civilization and its air - the hated air of Freedom and Human Dignity.

Putin and Patrushev were absolutely convinced themselves and convinced the entire ruling elite that they had a unique opportunity to replay world history with one throw of the dice and take revenge for the defeat of the USSR. “The Yankees will retreat to nuclear blackmail and surrender the Baltics,” the Kremlin sages believed. “Like Chamberlain surrendered Czechoslovakia, like Obama surrendered Syria, abandoning his own red lines, when no one even threatened him.”

“Get your belongings and get out,” the fat-faced deputy minister demanded from 30 NATO countries. “If you refuse, you will suffer catastrophes unprecedented in your thousand-year history,” the future Lord of the World threatened.

 

The chance to humiliate and trample the West with one clash of wills, showing its confusion, indecision and helplessness, despite all its colossal economic and military superiority, was so attractive and promised such dizzying geopolitical dividends that the under-Führer of the under-empire could not avoid the temptation and stubbornly walked towards his nuclear Austerlitz. Which turned into a conventional Waterloo.

The fate of the world was decided at the Battle of Gostomel in February 2022. If Kiev had fallen and, in the aura of his “victory,” Putin, menacingly waving his nuclear cannon, had appeared on the borders of the Baltics and Poland, then the West of the spring of 2022 could have wavered and the crazy plan of two Ps would have triumphed.

A lot has changed over the past year and a half. Ukraine, with its heroic feat of the 300 Spartans of the Free World, literally dragged the hedonistic West back into world History by the scruff of the neck. The United States finally responded to nuclear blackmail with dignity, explaining very clearly to Pu what would happen to him personally if he only reached for nuclear weapons. Pu himself never doubted the conventional superiority of the West. He completely lost World War IV, which he declared to the West, and now dreams of a ceasefire in Ukraine, which he could sell to the deep people as a fake “honorable draw.” But World War IV itself, declared to the West, did not end. Another ambitious scumbag appeared from behind the unlucky St. Petersburg hooligan.

The Islamofascist regime of Iranian religious fanatics and executioners, which has been cursing Satan No. 1 for half a century, has come to the same strategic conclusion as their Kremlin brothers in mind. To morally crush the weakening United States and throw it into the dustbin of world history, it is enough to demonstratively and with impunity defeat one of the United States’ allies. The Kremlin simply demanded the surrender of a dozen Eastern European NATO countries to them. The Ayatollahs have long dreamed of the destruction of Israel, Major non-NATO ally USA.

The terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, monstrous in its boundless cruelty, became the first step in a multi-step operation conceived by Tehran (with the interested complicity of Moscow) to finally resolve the Jewish question in the Middle East.

 

The atrocities ordered by the organizers and demonstratively broadcast live to the whole world had one goal - to make inevitable a ground operation by the Israeli army to destroy the infrastructure and personnel of Hamas.

When the army gets deeply bogged down in the hardest, long-term cleansing of the ruins and dungeons of Gaza, accompanied by heavy losses, the facilitators  will  unleash a 50,000-strong horde of Hezbollah thugs on the North of Israel. This simple plan was so obvious that it was thwarted the very next day, October 8, when the Leader of the Free World, the United States of America, finally woke up from a politically correct sleep.

Two aircraft carrier formations and very kind words from Biden, Blinken, and Austin are a convincing argument for Hezbollah and its handlers. Now they will limit itself to constant shelling and raids, without deciding on a large-scale invasion. Israel, thanks to its powerful ally, will have the opportunity to complete the cleansing of Gaza without being distracted by other serious challenges. It would seem a very favorable prospect for Israel.

Let us imagine, however, the final situation the day after this conditional victory. There were very large losses among Israeli military personnel; most likely, most of the hostages died; against the backdrop of the growing joint howl of Islamic fascists and Western liberals about the suffering of civilians in Gaza, an insoluble problem arises: what to do next with a million of these “civilians.” Especially when the Iranian mycelium of Islamist terror has remained untouched and left unpunished, continuously generating, financing and arming similar Hamas throughout the Middle East.

Are there other scenarios possible, more rosier for Israel, for the absolutely necessary physical destruction of Hamas? In our opinion, yes. Only the allies (Israel, the USA) need to understand that in the course of the total war they have declared, they have more urgent problems today than revenge on Hamas, and it is necessary to slightly change the sequence of moves.

But first, I would like to remind readers of the remarkable words of US Secretary of State Tony Blinken, which he said on October 12 regarding the nature of the allied relationship between the United States and Israel: "The message that I bring to Israel is this: You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself – but as long as America exists, you will never, ever have to. We will always be there, by your side.”

Based on this message delivered by Blinken in Jerusalem, let me offer the allies an alternative scenario for a convincing Western Victory over their mortal enemies.

Hezbollah, which is preparing for a large-scale attack on Israel but is still hesitant, is dealt a withering blow by the power of two aircraft carrier formations of the United States and the Israeli Air Force. Hezbollah's military infrastructure and the fashionable mansions of its leadership in Beirut are being destroyed. What kind grandfather Biden threatened a certain “organization” on October 8 if it “messed around” is being realized.

So, according to all formal grounds, at the time of writing this text, Hezbollah had already “attacked.” In the end, it is the prerogative of the author of the warning to determine whether she has "poked" or not.

A just act of retaliation against Hezbollah terrorists for all the crimes they have already committed and are still preparing has independent political and military significance. But it is also an absolutely necessary precondition for the Allies' main operation, the air strike on Iran. Iran does not hide the fact that the huge missile arsenal it supplied to Hezbollah, aimed at Israel, is, among other things, a tool to deter the Jewish state from striking the Iranian nuclear complex.

Israel has long warned that it would carry out such a strike on its own if Iran came close to possessing nuclear weapons. The United States has also repeatedly stated that it does not rule out a military solution to the Iranian nuclear problem. And just recently, the Pentagon announced that, according to US military intelligence, the ayatollahs are two weeks away from receiving the first nuclear warhead. It is no longer possible to hesitate. Israel has always emphasized that, if necessary, it is independently capable of carrying out nuclear castration of Iran.

But now the city and the world are told very loudly that Israel must never, ever do this alone. America will always be there.

Moreover, in today's circumstances, the list of targets for air strike(s) should be significantly expanded. Israel can no longer cope alone. The Iranian military-political leadership, waging a war of physical destruction of Israel and the moral destruction of the United States, is worse than ISIS and must be mercilessly eliminated. Therefore, the list of targets, in addition to all facilities of Iran’s nuclear complex and missile industry, should also include decision-making centers (ayatollahs on the list, starting with the supreme one, the leadership of the IRGC, the army).

An outside observer of these dramatic events inside Iran, the Turkish-Azerbaijani army will immediately offer security guarantees to 30 million of its compatriots, who will greet it with delight as the liberating army. Erdogan and Aliyev will adjust their famous formula “One people – two countries” to “One people – three countries”.

The wonderful little state of Israel does not have territorial strategic depth. Therefore, every big war for him is a war of survival. In 1967, Israel launched a preemptive strike and won a brilliant victory. In 1973, he refrained from such a blow and put himself on the brink of disaster.

This time Israel has a powerful ally, much more determined in its support for Israel than in 1967 and 1973. He won't go into the catacombs of Gaza, but he's capable of much more. Moreover, Israel, like Ukraine, is today at the forefront of a world war, declared by the axis of absolute evil, primarily against the United States of America.

After two crushing, if you will, preventive strikes by the allies against Hezbollah and Iran, the delayed ground cleansing of Hamas, which overnight lost its sponsors and inspirers, will take place in a completely different political and psychological atmosphere. The losses of Israeli military personnel will be an order of magnitude less than expected today. And in response to the question of what to do next with Gaza, in the absence of Iranian Islamofascists, quite constructive answers may appear. Not only Gaza, but the entire Middle East will be able to unhindered continue its positive transformation in the spirit of the Abraham Accords.

The allies will still have to strike at Hezbollah and Iran. But delivering these two successive strikes today is much more effective from both a military and political point of view than after the IDF’s grueling expedition into the underground of Gaza.

Glory to Ukraine! Glory to Israel! Glory to the USA! To the victorious powers in World War IV, unleashed by the mortal enemies of the Free World.

Andrey Piontkovsky

Douglas Murray: ‘Treat UK Hamas supporters like Isis supporters’

 

Andrey Piontkovski’s take on the Hamas/Iran - Israel war

I just watched the analysis of the situation by Andrey Piontkovski who used to be a Soviet mathematician  (a hundred papers on applied mathematics) and who is now a political analyst and lives in Washington, DC. This was in a discussion with Mark Feygin who used to be Piontkovski’s lawyer.  

Here is what he thinks of the situation:

He has no doubts whatsoever that Israel is going to attack Iran. He said that Biden’s decision to send the USS Gerald Ford carrier force came after he had been pounded by both Republicans and Democrats for giving $6 billion to Iran (the US ended up financing the attack on Israel), and that dispatching the carrier group is one of the most significant development in the crisis. It would stop Hezbollah from attacking from the north. Whether the US would directly participate in the attack on Iran he does not know, but it would definitely help. Biden is embarrassed and wants to atone. 

It has now crystallized that we have two fascist regimes fighting two democracies. Iran through Hamas is attacking Israel while Russia is bombing Ukraine. He also mentioned that there has been an explosion of anti-Semitism in the Russian pro-Putin media the magnitude of which he has not encountered in years.

He has been shocked by the failure of Israeli intelligence, the reasons for the fiasco wil be determined after the war, but that now Bibi should go for an emergency unity government just like Churchill did with Atlee in 1940.

Piontkovski believes that Israel should get off the fence and give more support to Ukraine, now that we have a clear case of  totalitarian regimes vs democracies.  He compared what Hamas was doing to the Israeli civilians to what Russian soldiers had done in Buche . He even believes that there should be a military  agreement between Ukraine and Israel 

He understands the horrible predicament the Israeli government is now facing with having to  save the lives of the hostages on the one hand and destroying Hamas on the other. 

Hamas’ atrocities have finally exposed to the liberal West who they are. 

His time-line  predictions for the war are as follows: 

1st week - cleaning up the area around Gaza and trying to save the hostages

2nd and 3rd  week -  destroying Hamas

4th  week  - destroying the Iranian threat once and for all. He said Israel could do it alone but preferably with US help.

Director of the Institute for the USA and Canada Valery Garbuzov on the Lost Illusions of the Bygone Era

It is bizarre to read the article which got Valery Garbuzov fired as Director of the prestigious Institute for the USA and Canada at Russia’s Academy of Sciences.  After all,  what he writes is quite self evident for us in the West.  However, we must not forget Orwell: “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

Valery Garbuzov                   

The following is a slightly modified google translate from Russian in Nazavisimaya Gazeta

For self-knowledge Russia needs knowledge, not myths

By Valery Garbuzov

About the author: Valery Nikolaevich Garbuzov - Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Director of the Institute for the USA and Canada Academician G.A. Arbatov RAS.

The passing era takes a lot with it: illusions and hopes die, myths are destroyed, a new reality appears, the living environment changes. What generations lived for is forgotten.

Often, the ruling elites of authoritarian and totalitarian political regimes deliberately formed utopian ideas and myths, purposefully spread among the masses. Such massive manipulation of the consciousness of society immediately gives rise to a utopian picture of the perception of the world among millions of people, making it possible to unite disparate political and social groups around a national leader in the name of a specific goal. However, it is also a powerful tool for long-term retention of personal power. And Russian history is by no means an exception.

It's no secret that the charge of foreign policy expansionism has never left Russia, pursuing it throughout its entire historical development. It was that which became one of the engines of the formation of the Russian state.

This trend was manifested during the years of the existence of the early feudal Old Russian state of Kievan Rus in the 9th–12th centuries, and during the specific period of feudal strife in the 12th–15th centuries, and during the time of the Moscow centralized state of the 15th–18th centuries, and after the formation of the Russian Empire in 1721, when Eurasian continental expansionism became the focus of Russia's often aggressive foreign policy activity, which turned it into the world's largest power by the beginning of the 20th century.

The myth of world communism

The Bolsheviks, who came to power in October 1917, enthusiastically took up the banner of Russian continental expansionism. True, they gave it a communist color and a global scale.

After the Russian revolution of 1917, the ruling elite of the young Soviet republic adopted the expansionist idea of ​​a world proletarian revolution, in which the first Soviet Bolsheviks (Zinoviev and Kamenev, Lenin and Trotsky, Stalin and Bukharin) wholeheartedly believed. Few of them doubted that after October 1917, following Russia, a revolutionary fire would break out in the rest of the world, and all of Europe (and even America) would certainly be Soviet.

A special revolutionary radicalism then came from Trotsky, who claimed to be the main organizer of the October Revolution and the ideologist of the permanent revolution - a continuous revolutionary process on a global scale.

In order to organize a world revolution in 1919, its headquarters, the Comintern, was created in Moscow, which formed its own sections - national communist parties and turned into a foreign policy instrument of the rapidly growing Soviet empire. However, it soon became clear that this idea was just an empty myth, an unrealizable utopia. In 1943, under pressure from the allies in the Anti-Hitler coalition, the Comintern announced its own dissolution.

Soviet mythology

The state propaganda of the USSR in the 1960s and 1970s was built around several points  that formed the Soviet foreign policy mythology.

One of them was the thesis of American imperialism taking over the entire globe and preventing the rest of the world from advancing towards a bright communist future. The fact that the foreign policy of the USSR during the Cold War years was its mirror image, today, few people doubt. The two superpowers held each other back, practically using the same tools to create their own spheres of global geopolitical influence.

At the same time, another thesis has become widespread in Soviet scientific and educational literature - about the historical doom of capitalism, which has entered its last stage - imperialism, and about the three centers of inter-imperialist contradictions (USA, Western Europe and Japan), the accumulation of which will lead to its inevitable death and victory of world communism.

The main forces of the anti-imperialist movement were declared to be three main liberation flows: the countries of the socialist camp, the world communist movement and the national liberation, anti-colonial movement, through whose efforts the powerful imperialist dam that impedes the progress of mankind should be destroyed.

The aggravation of the contradictions of imperialism, the collapse of its colonial system, the strengthening of political reaction, the deep crisis of bourgeois politics and ideology were declared symptoms of the “general crisis of capitalism” that gripped Western society. This utopian theory existed for decades, completely spreading in the USSR and socialist countries, never being questioned.

Similar utopian dogmas were enshrined in the Third Program of the CPSU, adopted by the XXII Congress of the CPSU in 1961, aimed at building communism within 20 years, and in its new edition, adopted by the XXVII Party Congress in 1986, which was based on the utopian doctrine of “developed socialism” .

Each time, the ideological hesitation of the irreplaceable Soviet party and state elite, plunging society into a world of illusions, led to the creation of a false picture of the world.

The evolution of capitalism

 

However, the reality (as is often the case) turned out to be completely different. The "general crisis of capitalism" never led to the victory of world communism. On the contrary, the Soviet Union disintegrated under the weight of internal deep contradictions, and along with its collapse, the system of socialism, which had reached a dead end, collapsed. The world communist movement found itself in a deep crisis, never reaching its goal.

The situation was different in the West. Overcoming crises, Western capitalism did not die, but evolved predominantly in socialist and neoliberal directions. Following the rule “if you want to survive, change,” it became more and more regulated by the state, more and more humane and attractive to its own citizens. The social responsibility of the state and business has become the norm of the Western world.

This ability of capitalism, under the influence of crises, to quickly adapt, getting rid of its own vices, to constantly develop and improve, turned out to be beyond the vision of the “visionary” Soviet thinkers.

 "Old Songs About Main Things"

Today, in the wake of anti-Western sentiments in an atmosphere of pseudo-patriotic frenzy that has gripped the population of Russia, which regularly listens to “Old Songs About Main Things” and who with amazing ease, naively and thoughtlessly perceives the theses of total state propaganda, new myths are being created, and with them a modern utopian consciousness is being formed. These myths are being spread day and night by a new generation of well-paid professional political manipulators and panelists on numerous television talk shows.

In the context of the creeping restoration of Stalinism, through their efforts, new dogmas are being introduced - about the crisis of globalization and the entire “Anglo-Saxon” world (what would this mean in the 21st century?), about a new anti-colonial revolution (there are only 17 colonies left in the world!), about the loss of the American domination (and this is after the collapse of the USSR?), about the great world anti-American revolution, in general about the decline of the West (the second coming of the “general crisis of capitalism”?!).

Such statements require compelling reasons. Do they exist? Let's try to figure it out.

Informal empires of the modern world

The dominance of the United States is an objective, constantly acting factor that began the process of its formation from the beginning of the 20th century and exists (to the deep sadness of modern domestic pseudo-patriots) to this day. True, the scale of this factor, as well as the nature and forms of its manifestation, have evolved.

Over the almost 250-year period of its existence and development, thanks to the global expansion of the United States in the 20th century, it has become an "informal empire of the modern world", penetrating itself and simultaneously integrating almost all countries and continents. This is what has become the long-term strategic course of the United States - the "nation of all nations" and the superpower of modernity.

Today, the United States, producing 25% of the world's industrial GDP, continues to be the economic giant of the modern world. With the help of 12 military-political blocs and more than 1,000 military bases and facilities located in strategically important regions of the world, they ensure their global dominance: the American military presence is recorded in more than 80 countries.

The United States is a nuclear superpower that maintains global leadership in such areas as the global economy, finance, military, innovation, direct investment and culture. They still retain their attractiveness, as evidenced by the inexhaustible massive flows of immigrants from all continents. About 1 million people arrive in the United States each year.

Possessing more than 70% (8150 tons) of the world's total gold reserves, the United States is the undisputed leader in terms of gold reserves. This allows us to maintain the position of the US dollar as a world currency. And although only 3% of Russians today believe in its reliability (paradox: about 60% of Russian citizens keep their savings in dollars, the volume of which is a record 226.6 billion!), in the long term it continues to be the most popular and stable currency in the world - the world's main reserve currency.

American global dominance evokes different reactions, from rejection to support. In the world, almost 70% of the population recognizes the leadership of the United States and has a generally positive attitude towards this power. At the same time, anti-Americanism has always accompanied the movement of the United States on its way to the geopolitical pinnacle. A persistent rejection of this superpower remains today in countries such as Jordan, China, Palestine, Pakistan, Lebanon, North Korea, Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Austria, Slovenia, Venezuela, Iran.

The anti-American foreign policy of the USSR, aimed at counteracting the United States and the entire West, helped in its time to create an alternative socialist empire that lasted only a few decades and collapsed due to its own unviability. Its global collapse should have been a good lesson to all mankind.

Any attempts to cobble together a new anti-American coalition on a global scale (stubbornly undertaken today by the Russian authorities, seized by the desire to "return what was lost") are unlikely to lead to success. The interests of most states of the world are too integrated into the American ones, forming a strategic interdependence between them and thus deterring any aggressive anti-Americanism.

Having challenged the United States and begun its rise more than 40 years ago, China is following a similar path to the US, conquering more and more new markets and spheres of influence around the planet. Having turned into a world factory, this power is on the verge of transformation into the second “informal empire of the modern world”, the main (after the collapse of the USSR) global competitor of the United States. However, the factors that ensure China's imperial future are likely to be different.

According to macroeconomic forecasts, within the next 10 years China may surpass the United States in terms of the nominal size of its economy. This process will be accompanied by the fight between the yuan and the dollar and the possible displacement of the latter from the position of the world reserve currency. Will this happen? It is still difficult to answer this question. But if this happens, the world will undoubtedly face big changes.

Thus, today there are only two informal empires on the planet - the USA and China. Russia is a former empire, the heir to the Soviet superpower, experiencing an extremely painful syndrome of suddenly lost imperial greatness.

The fact that Russia today has a pronounced post-imperial syndrome is more a tragic pattern than a historical anomaly. Its peculiarity is that it did not appear immediately after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, but made itself felt much later, with Putin coming to power. More than 30 years later, the delayed syndrome, the possible occurrence of which was previously not given much importance, has acquired a threatening character.

Three geopolitical programs

In today's world, there are only three powers with their own global programs: the US, China and Russia.

First of all, the United States, which throughout its history has been shaping its own geopolitical program based on the ideas of American exceptionalism and messianism, the universalism of American values, American dominance and undeniable leadership. Pursuing a policy of global expansionism, spreading their own values ​​and institutions beyond their borders, having turned into an informal empire of the modern world in the second half of the 20th century, they have long secured the status of the main superpower of the planet.

China has relatively recently embarked on the path of shaping its own global course. Its main stages were the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the “One Belt – One Road” policy and the concept of “Creating a community with a common destiny for mankind.” All of them are one way or another aimed at achieving a leading position for the Celestial Empire on the path to world progress.

One thing is clear: the USA and China are two informal empires of the modern world. Moreover, both of these empires, born in different parts of the world, in different eras, are very similar in their methods of spreading their global influence. It is no coincidence that the main confrontational axis of the modern world lies precisely between them.

Russia has its own - special - orbit. As the main heir to the Soviet superpower created on the ruins of the Russian Empire, it became a hostage of its own imperial complex. This is precisely what explains its current foreign policy behavior and the problems that it brings to the world.

It is no secret that after the collapse of the colonial empires, all metropolises experienced an inevitable nostalgia for the lost greatness - the so-called post-imperial syndrome. It was formed almost immediately, when it was clear that the former colonial power was collapsing.

 

For example, Winston Churchill was not very happy about the victory in World War II, because something happened that he was clearly not prepared for. Having grown up and formed in the British Empire, he could not come to terms with the fact that this empire was falling apart before his eyes. The same can be said about his contemporary, General Charles de Gaulle. Brought up in French society with an imperial consciousness, he could not get used to the fact that France was irretrievably losing its colonies one after another. But, having overcome their imperial feelings, they still managed to adapt to a fundamentally new situation. 

Russia, which today is going through an extremely painful post-imperial syndrome, is also trying to form its own global geopolitical program. But it is still too shaky, unstable and eclectic. Judge for yourself: the program (rather a set of guidelines) is based on a mixture of ideas of Eurasianism, the “Russian world”, aggressive anti-Americanism, confrontation with the unipolar world and the “decaying” West as a whole.

It also contains the ideas of “sovereign democracy”, “deep people”, longing for traditional values ​​and the Orthodox faith. This entire mixture is held together by a conservative glue that connects its dissimilar components. In some ways, this mishmash is reminiscent of the anti-Western ideological inventions of almost 200 years ago - the “theory of official nationality” of the permanent president of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences for 30 years and concurrently the Minister of Public Education, Count Sergei Uvarov. His triad “Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Nationality" was the ideological embodiment of Russian monarchism, which, along with Orthodoxy and the guaranteed support of the people by the autocratic government, supposedly act as reliable guarantors of the existence and greatness of Russia.

As for conservatism, which the current Russian authorities are so fond of, it is not so clear-cut. There is no single, timeless and universal conservatism in the world. This is a flowing phenomenon, the objects of conservation are different, and it is individual in different countries. And the conservatism that existed in Russia once at the beginning of the twentieth century and is sometimes taken as a model today is hardly suitable in the current circumstances.

Modern Russia, which turned out to be the main successor to the Soviet superpower and feels nostalgic for its past greatness and lost influence, today experiencing a delayed post-imperial syndrome, despite its small share in the world economy, still has a strong expansionist charge and an as yet unrevealed ambition for global geopolitical influence .

Having a rich experience of communist expansionism associated with the activities of the Comintern, quickly creating a sphere of its own regional and global influence after the victory in World War II, and immediately losing it with the collapse of the USSR, modern Russia is trying, so far unsuccessfully, to take belated revenge.

To this end, it initiated the creation of new integration associations (CSTO, EAEU, SCO, BRICS), thereby forming its own geopolitical fields and spaces. The same goals were pursued by Russia’s once successful energy strategy, which was perceived in the world not only as a tool for securing reliable markets for energy resources, but also as a key element in organizing its own spheres of global influence.

Trying to rally around itself on an anti-Western platform the former colonial and oppressed peoples of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, involving them in the struggle against the countries of the “golden billion” that has been pushing its world domination and has been dominating the world for decades, Russia today claims to be the leader of “ the global majority."

However, it has not yet managed to compete with the United States and China and become an independent geopolitical anti-Western locomotive. And with the help of the newly created state mythology, it is unlikely to be able to do so.

The purpose of all this is quite obvious - plunging one’s own society into a world of illusions and accompanied by great-power and patriotic rhetoric, the undisguised and deliberate indefinite retention of power at any cost, the preservation of property and the political regime by the current ruling elite and the oligarchy integrated with it.

In the conditions of the information age, replacing realities with illusions, Russia seemed to be frozen in the past, still relying on the tsar-priest or another firm hand of the supreme power, while trying unsuccessfully to regain its former greatness, lost possessions and world influence.

In this regard, we note that many today are inclined, according to the expert on autocratic-bureaucratic reality M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, confuse two concepts: “Fatherland” and “Your Excellency.” The words spoken by the great writer during the era of tsarism are still relevant today. The current domestic minions of authoritarianism (like the satraps of ancient Eastern despotisms that have sunk into oblivion), apparently completely devoid of historical consciousness, without hesitation, with touching emotion, sincerely identify the head of state with the state itself, the temporary ruler of the country with a great national and historical constant.

It's a shame, gentlemen, and humiliating!

Every nation, like every person, has its own biography. They even have their own official place of residence.   And the most valuable thing is its unique character, which gives each one a special individuality and exclusivity. Only by knowing it, it is possible to build a line of civilized and responsible international behavior, a clear lack of which exists in today's world.

But that's not all. Knowledge, and not myths, about another people and state allows you to understand not only them, but also yourself, forming a comprehensive and at the same time critical view of your own country, its history with all the difficult pages, its difficult and tragic past, even if it was mixed with illusions that captivate society. True, long ago and irretrievably lost.

*** 

Notes:

Not clear why Slovenia is in the group of anti-American countries.

"Old Songs About Main Things" is a series of musical films nostalgic about the USSR