Russia, Israel and the values of “western civilization” – where is the truth?

[This article was written for the Unz Review]

First, what’s the deal with this obsession about bombing entire nations back into the “stone age”?

Very interesting article in RT today: “IDF chief turned PM candidate touts body count & bombing Gaza into ‘stone age’ in campaign ad” (please read the full thing – it is short and very enlightening). When I saw that, I immediately had a flash back to a (truly brilliant, if evil) US diplomat, James Baker, who promised Iraqi Prime Minister Tarik Aziz (whom the Empire kept in jail until his death in spite of the fact that 79 year old man suffered from depression, diabetes, heart disease, and ulcers) that the Empire would “bring it back to the stone age“.

Now, Benny Gantz is your typical Israeli Zionazi nutcase with all that entails, but this can hardly be said of James Baker who was one of the most educated and brilliant diplomats the USA ever produced. So what’s this thing about bringing those who dare defy the AngloZionist Empire back to the “stone age”. Coincidence? You tell me!

I sure don’t think so.

The Israeli butchery in Gaza enjoyed the massive support of the Israeli people who even organized special “viewing locations” for the joy of seeing Palestinian civilians (the vast majority of the people the Israelis murdered in Gaza) massacred. Which is not very different from the way the US Americans (and their European vassals) organized “viewing locations” in their TV sets for the joy of seeing Iraqi civilians (the vast majority of the people the USA and its vassals murdered in Iraq) massacred. The difference is only in numbers: in Gaza the Israelis only murdered “only” about 1500 Palestinians whereas the USA can pride itself on having massacred well over a million Iraqis.

Still not convinced?

Then how about Mr MAGA promising to “devastate” the DPRK? or, even better, to make Iran “SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE” (all in caps as in the original).

Now if this was a schoolyard or, say, a Harley-Davidson biker meeting, I would say that this is just the kind of empty talk of insecure males trying to compensate for their insecurities by clumsily affirming their manhood with roaring macho threats.

After all, in the real world, both the US and Israel got thoroughly whooped each time they took on an enemy which was not defenseless (the best example being, of course, the “Divine Victory” of Hezbollah against Israel (and the US, of course, which had promised a “new Middle East” just before the Israeli attack) in 2006.

But our planet is not a schoolyard and thousands and even millions died as a result of that kind of mindset. And a President who thinks in “tweets” worthy of a 7th grade pimply 13-year old is outright frightening (or, at least, ought to be).

Now it is rather unsurprising that the western Zionazi press would 1) blame it all on the Palestinians and their supporters 2) turn away its prudish eyes from such language and massacres 3) go back to blaming Russia for everything imaginable (and even unimaginable).

What is more interesting is all the self-declared anti-Zionists who actually blame *Russia* for not doing enough to protect Syria, or Iran, or [fill in the blank]. I already thoroughly debunked the flawed logic and arguments of that group in my article “Why is Putin “allowing” Israel to bomb Syria” so I won’t repeat it all here and will assume that the reader will have read that.

And yet, after the latest Israeli air strikes in Syria (which also follow a pattern I predicted here) I am, again, getting panicked emails about Putin/Russia “betrayed/gave up” Syria or how the S-300s/Pantsirs are “not working”, Putin is a “Zionist agent”, etc. Sigh, rolleyes…

[Sidebar: for one thing, that kind of nonsense shows an amazing level of illiteracy in military affairs. Why? Because all these Israeli attacks on (alleged) pro-Iranian or even Iranian positions were small, even if annoying, pinpricks, especially when compared to the very real losses suffered by Iranian and pro-Iranian forces in combat (real combat, not the pretend-combat for Hollywood the Israelis and their US vassals have mostly performed in the past decades). Just because each such pinprick results in hours of Israeli (and pro-Israeli) chest-thumping does not mean that it was in any way effective in deterring Iran or its allies. The truth is that Iran and its allies are all over Syria (they mostly came after the AngloZionist decided to trigger a revolution against Assad – bravo AngloZionist geniuses!!) and that they ain’t leaving].

In Russian this type of behavior, which is really a political manipulation tactic, is called “перевести стрелки” or, roughly, “change focus”, or simply “obfuscate” (again, for a detailed discussion of this, please see my article “Why is Putin “allowing” Israel to bomb Syria“). So let’s bring the focus right back to where it belongs: Israel and the total support the so-called “West” has given it for decades.

By the way, Russia is also guilty, at least in my opinion, of overlooking the plight of the Palestinians (I made my own distress about the Russian position very clear in my piece “It All Depends On Your Values“). And yes, there is most definitely a powerful pro-Israel lobby in Russia too, including, alas, in the Russian White House and even in the Kremlin. But the difference between Russia’s stance towards the issue of Israel and it’s murderous policies and the stance of the West could not be more different anyway. Simply put:

Russia does condemn Israel when the latter acts in violation of international law and norms of civilized behavior and Russia does offer support, both political and military, to “resistance” countries such as Syria.

when the latter acts in violation of international law and norms of civilized behavior and Russia does offer support, both political and military, to “resistance” countries such as Syria. The West supports Israel no matter what and finances and arms it to the teeth and supports its genocidal policies to the hilt.

Most importantly, Russians never say that Israel stands for “Russian values” or is the “only democracy in the Middle-East”. So while Russia does not, to my immense regret and shame, take a truly principle-driven position like Iran, she does not obsequiously use every opportunity to show her total and unconditional love for Israel and everything Israel does.

The difference here is not only one of quantity, but also one of quality or, if you prefer, a quantitative change which eventually leads to a qualitative shift. There is a difference between first looking out for your own self-interest and being a prostitute, is there not?

Blurring or otherwise obfuscating such crucial and profound distinctions is a clever form of deception.

You might ask “but what *are* Russian values then?

What’s the deal with Holy Russia then?!

Fair enough. Right now Russia is still in search of herself. She is a project, a moving target, a nation desperately trying to re-gain her true and full sovereignty and to (finally!) get rid of a powerful 5th columnist gang inside the ruling and wealthy elites who simply want to make more money while aping the West. And yet, even that somewhat confused nation which is looking for her true roots and identity (which might take a very long time, Solzhenitsyn predicted that 200 years would be needed for Russia to truly recover) did not lose the very core of her true civilizational values.

In the distant 13th century the Russian Prince and Saint Alexander Nevsky famously declared “Не в силе Бог, а в правде” which can be translated as “God is not in force/power, but in truth/justice“.

Many centuries later, in a year 2000 movie (the year Putin came to power) called “Brother 2” a very different kind of Russian hero, Danila Bagrov, has a (now famous) monologue with an American and rhetorically asks him “tell me American, where is strength/power found? In money?” and proceeds to answer himself and say “I think that strength/power is in the truth/justice, he who has the truth/justice is stronger“.

[Sidebar: I am translating the word “pravda” (yes, yes, that same word “pravda” as in the Soviet newspaper) as “truth/justice” as depending on the context it can have either one, or even both, of these meanings. And even more complex Slavic concept of truth would be “istina” which Father Pavel Florensky discussed in this famous book “The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters” of which I posted a translated crucial passage here and which I *highly* recommend as a “must read” to anybody interested in understanding the Russian civilization, culture and history]

So one 13th century Russian said that God is in Truth and another 20th century Russian said that strength is in Truth. And both were facing a threat from the West when they made their statements; seven centuries later, and so little has changed… amazing, no?

Not a coincidence if you ask me.

I already hear the reply of those lobotomized by western materialism who will, no doubt, say something along the lines of “oh please! don’t give us this propaganda about “Holy Russia” again! One quick look at Russian history immediately shows that Russia was never so holy and that, in fact, amazing levels of evil, depravity, corruption and even pathological sadism could be found throughout her long and bloody history and also in our times!“.

And I can only admit that there is, alas, much truth to that statement. And there is still much evil, pathology and corruption in today’s Russia, no argument here!

But there is also much this statement is completely missing.

First, right next to an amazing degree of evil and depravity, Russian history is also filled with no less amazing cases of true holiness, from Saint Boris and Saint Gleb to the millions of saints and New Martyrs and Confessors of the 20th century.

But that is not even the main issue here. The main issue here is that the concept of “Holy Russia” is not primarily descriptive, but *prescriptive*. It is a call, an ideal, something which modern people with the crude consumerism and generally materialism-suppressed nous simply cannot understand or even imagine, but which inspired many generations over the 1000 years+ of Russian history to live a life maybe still in the world, but not “of this world” (John 15:19)!

This is why, in spite of three centuries of rule by foreign elites and 70+ years of materialism run amok, an otherwise very modern suspense movie hero like Danila Bagrov can still speak of what the truth is and where it can be found and why the Russian audience “gets it”, even the atheists.

Check out this dialog in this short, English subtitled, excerpt:

Notice something important here: Danila does not think that only the American is a money-worshiping and clueless idiot, he says “even my brother believes [that the truth] is in money“. So yes, there are plenty of nous-suppressed people in Russia too. And I won’t even go into what most Russians who live in the West think as so many of them need to justify their own voluntary exile from Russia by either advocating that Russians resume aping westerners or by declaring that Russia is really no different from any other western country. These are the folks who have rejected any form of true spirituality for a rather bizarre form of worship of consumerism. And yeah, a lot of them are Russian, at least by birth or by language (if not by culture or spirit).

[Sidebar: there was a time when the West was no different from the East in terms of spirituality, ethos, values and even holiness. But that all came to a gradual full stop with each passing century following the breakaway of the Frank-occupied Rome from the rest of the Christian world. Now all is left is either a post-modern wasteland à la Conchita Wurst (see “it” “pray” with Latin officials here – amazing sight to behold indeed!) or a rather nasty nationalist and even racist blow-back to this postmodernism degeneracy à la Alt-Right. What a crying shame after 1000 years of real western Christianity! There have been many western saints and martyrs like SS Boris and Gleb, but there is no “Danila Bagrov” on western TV screens today. All that is left of the once Christian West are thousands of holy relics of western saints nobody cares about, least of all the Pope and his minions at the Vatican…]

Back to our original topic:

And finally, what’s the deal with the “only democracy in the Middle-East“?

What is “Israel” really? It is a democracy only in the modern Russian sense of the word, meaning that “democracy is the power of the democrats“. In this case, these “democrats” happen to be racist nutcases who have a religious belief (literally, see here) in their racist uniqueness and their God-given right to massacre the semi-human goyim (again: literally, see here) and who don’t give a damn about “western values” (well, other than impunity, consumerism and violence). It is most certainly the country which is the only and last *official* racist state on the planet (see here, here, and here).

And contrary to the fantasies of various Jew-haters, this has absolutely nothing to do with “the Jews” or being Jewish, and everything to do with an exceptionally toxic interpretation of the Old Testament by Pharisaic rabbis who developed a God- and man-hating religion in response to the galut (the exile from Palestine of those Jews who rejected Christ) and to the tremendous success of Christianity. As for modern Zionism, it is nothing more than a transposition of the very same racist assumptions and implications of Pharisaic Judaism to a materialistic milieu, that’s all.

Does that make Israeli a part of the “western civilization”?

You tell me!

But if your reply is “yes”, don’t come whining when I point that out to you! And if your reply is “no” – then, tell me: how is it that no western politician can agree with you without risking his career and reputation?

Anyway, I think that it is high time for those who find the mote in Russia’s “eye” to look at the huge and densely populated forest of their own civilization’s “eye” and maybe try to imitate the beautiful example of those westerners who sailed for Gaza and still do all they can to help the oppressed Palestinians, no? And how about showing some gratitude to Iran for being pretty much the only country on the planet not only to support the Palestinians, but actually accept the sacrifice of a lot of lives (and resources) to help them?! Don’t they deserve our gratitude and admiration for their courage?

You really don’t like Putin? Fine. But rather than place your trust and hopes in the lies of Mr MAGA or the Clinton gang, maybe you ought to make Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei your true hero, no? Or, at least, “al-Sayyid Hassan” (Nasrallah)!

If the West persists on it’s current path, it will die like the “sad old man” in Roger Water’s superb title “Dogs”

You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder

You know it’s going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you get older

And in the end you’ll pack up and fly down south

Hide your head in the sand,

Just another sad old man

All alone and dying of cancer

And when you loose control, you’ll reap the harvest you have sown

And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone

And it’s too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around

So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone

Dragged down by the stone

Time will tell, of course, but my own belief is that both Russia and the West can only be truly saved by a return to the values of repentance and self-limitation which Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about while still in the Soviet Union in the distant year 1973 (full text in PDF format here). The same Alexander Solzhenitsyn, already in the West a full decade later, also warned us that only a return to true spirituality and God could save the world. Again, I can only agree with him no matter how ridiculous this may sound to western (and Russian!) materialists, “cultural Christians”, or any other nous-suppressed person nowadays.

But that’s only one simple guy’s opinion.

So you, tell me! Where do you think strength comes from? Israel?

The Saker