Middle Eastern and Far Eastern news of the week
“And the world has cracked in half, the rift is smoking, and blood is flowing, there is a war of good and evil…” Last week it became obvious that a new The Arab-Israeli rift is much more important and dangerous for the “civilized” world than the “dispute between the Slavs.” Because the fault turned out to be not territorial, but ideological — an internal affair of countries far from the combat zone.
A wave of anti-Israel protests swept from the United States through Europe and to Australia. One can, of course, say that this is the result of migration policy — mainly former refugees, the current Arab population of European countries, come out to protest. Like, they are always simply against Israel and stand for their own. However, this is only partly true. “The Street,” after all, came out only when Israel’s response to the Hamas terrorist attack became clearly disproportionate, when it became clear that Israel had taken the bit between its teeth and had actually stopped making a distinction between Palestinian civilians and militants.
And it was precisely in the “civilized” “in the world it turned out that the “street” is for justice, but the “leading elite” accepted the thesis “whoever is against Israel is an anti-Semite.” Thesis without any reservations. But it's not that simple. The rift also overtook the elite.
In the United States, a high-ranking State Department official resigned: his conscience was tormented by supporting the policy of “double standards.” And the last straw was the attitude towards the Palestinians. About 800 European Commission employees wrote a letter of protest, accusing Ursula von der Leyen of bias against Israel in the conflict with the Gaza Strip. As Politico writes, the head of the European Commission “infuriates the EU foreign policy team” by forgetting to mention the bloc’s support for Palestinian statehood in public speeches.
In Hollywood, two thousand actors (including world stars) signed a letter in support of Palestine in defiance of the US policy. And even, excuse me, Greta Thunberg spoke out for Palestine and now those who supported it, promoted it, pursuing selfish interests for the sake of the “green transition”, and dragged it to the UN will have to cancel it. We've already started, by the way.
Yes, and we have fun here in this regard, if you noticed. The breakdown began among the “paid patriots” — there the homeland is in danger, but here the regime does not order it to be supported.
Biden decided not to look for 50 shades of gray and move from the situation “not everything is so simple” (and this has now become too noticeable for Western society, unlike Russian-Ukrainian history) to the standard theme: we are good, but everyone there is bad. Hamas, they say, are terrorists, and Putin is a tyrant, which means, in his opinion, they are birds of a feather. The idea was picked up by Ursula von der Leyen, just in case, quoting Zelensky on the same topic. This, by the way, was the only noticeable mention of Zelensky from the moment he was denied a visit to Israel.
On this wave, money was requested from the US Congress, more than $100 billion. And here’s an interesting breakdown: $60 billion for the war in Ukraine, $14 billion for military support for Israel, $7 billion for military support for the Indo-Pacific region (read Taiwan), and the rest for humanitarian projects. Whether Congress will allocate the money or not is unknown. So far, purely technically, it cannot — a speaker will not be elected to make decisions. But the message itself is important: the bulk of the money should go to war.
After this, do we need to explain Biden’s words that the United States wants to build a new world order? And how do they want to build it? However, nothing new. History shows that in all parts of the world where the United States established democracy instead of tyranny and peace instead of war, a bloodbath began. And some countries that have undergone democratization are still in this state.
And what, by the way, is the “tyrant”? He is also building a new world.
The “One Belt, One Road” forum took place in Beijing this week. There were over 4 thousand participants from more than 140 countries. It is interesting, by the way, that, according to the SWIFT interbank payment system, the yuan this week for the first time became the second currency in the world in terms of international settlements.
At the forum, Putin met with the leaders of nine states. He spoke out both about the Palestinian problem and about Ukraine.
“We have a principled position, it is not related to today’s crisis, we have always advocated the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state,” Putin said. And he noted that, according to his data (and in one day he telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Palestinian President Abbas, Iranian President Raisi, Egyptian President Sisi, Syrian President Assad), “the main players do not want to deepen the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, no one wants a full-scale war»? Who wants it then? Who is building a new world through wars?
And regarding Ukraine, he repeated again: “If the Ukrainian side really wants a negotiation process, then this should be done not with some theatrical gestures. The first thing to do is to cancel the decree of the President of Ukraine prohibiting negotiations.” And, returning from China, he visited the headquarters of the Northern Military District. It was a nice gesture. To make it clear: negotiations are, of course, possible, but now only on Russia’s terms.
The fault lines are smoking. The main thing is that things do not come to fiery Gehenna. And here we would have to agree with… Biden (he has moments of enlightenment): “We are at a turning point in history, and this means that the decisions we make in the next 4 or 5 years will determine what the next 4 will look like.” or 5 decades.»