B’nai B’rith International recently released an alarming report that exposes the extent of the anti-Israel activity among purportedly friendly EU countries.
The report, titled “Aligning Principles and Practice: EU Assistance to the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian NGOs, Rethinking the Approach to Meet Normative Goals,” exposes the EU’s tacit support of terrorism against Israel.
BRICS stands united in resolving Israel-Palestine, Middle East conflict
Coupled with the waning support of the US, it is clear that Israel has no friends left in the international arena.
This leaves Israel with a very hard choice: Unite over its deep divisions and face the headwind, or disintegrate and vanish from existence.
Despite a press release by the EU, stating that it “has never and will never finance or support any terrorist organizations,” and that “it exercises maximum diligence to avoid any such situation and takes such allegations extremely serious,” the reality is very different.
The B’nai Brith report quotes Member of the European Parliament David Lega stating that the EU “has … aided and abetted persistent human rights abuses by the Palestinian Authority and has turned a blind eye to unconscionable practices such as the payments to families of convicted terrorists, considered martyrs for the killing of Israeli civilians.
The European Union has for the longest time also failed to hold both UNRWA and the Palestinian Ministry of Education accountable for gross anti-Semitism and incitement to violence against Jews and Israelis in Palestinian textbooks.”
No one likes bad news, but I always prefer being painfully aware to being blissfully ignorant.
The financial (and other forms of) support that EU countries give to terror-supporting Palestinian organizations expresses their genuine view: They would like to see Israel gone.
Nevertheless, it cannot be otherwise before we realize our task here in Israel.
In 1929, Dr. Kurt Fleischer, leader of the Liberals in the Berlin Jewish Community Assembly, sensed why the Germans were becoming increasingly antisemitic.
He stated, “Anti-Semitism is the scourge that God has sent us in order to lead us together and weld us together.”
Regrettably, the awareness of the linkage between antisemitism and internal disunity did not penetrate deep enough, and the result was catastrophic.
Division has always plagued the Jewish people, as has antisemitism.
Yet, if we look at history, and if we notice what our own leaders have been telling us since the inception of our people, we will see that the two are inseparable: When division intensifies, so does antisemitism.
We do not have the privilege of testing history; the house is on fire, and we are bickering over every petty issue, just to spite our antagonists.
We may not realize it, but it is precisely the malice among ourselves that is evoking the world’s hatred toward us.
As Fleischer said, the purpose of antisemitism is to weld us together, to fuse us into a nation whose members transcend all divisions, love one another, and care for one another without denying or suppressing the differences among them.
This is our vocation—to rise above our divisions and form the union that our ancestors pledged to form, “as one man with one heart.”
If out of 19 condemnations that the UN completed in the previous year, 14 were against Israel, and 5 were against other countries, it means that the world holds us to a different standard than it holds the rest of the world.
We, too, have it in our core values that we aspire for TikkunOlam [the correction of the world], so we, too, demand of ourselves more than we demand from the rest of the world.
Yet, we must realize that the Tikkun begins at home, with one another.
This is the example that the world needs to see from us, and the lack thereof is the reason it condemns us so much more than any other nation.
We do not need to correct anyone else, and the nations of the world do not need us to love them.
They need us to love each other. If we let it sink into our minds and hearts that this is what we need to do, the world will change its attitude toward us and will be happy to see us living here and setting an example of love that covers all the crimes, as King Solomon put it in.
“Foam at the mouth” as much as you like; NATO is in the process of being thoroughly humiliated in Ukraine.”
What has just taken place in Moscow is nothing less than a new Yalta, which, incidentally, is in Crimea.
But unlike the momentous meeting of US President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in USSR-run Crimea in 1945, this is the first time in arguably five centuries that no political leader from the west is setting the global agenda.
“There’s no turning back on the demolition of the remnants of Pax Americana.”
It’s Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin that are now running the multilateral, multipolar show.
Western exceptionalists may deploy their crybaby routines as much as they want: nothing will change the spectacular optics, and the underlying substance of this developing world order, especially for the Global South.
What Xi and Putin are setting out to do was explained in detail before their summit, in two Op-Eds penned by the presidents themselves.
Like a highly-synchronized Russian ballet, Putin’s vision was laid out in the People’s Daily in China, focusing on a “future-bound partnership,” while Xi’s was published in the Russian Gazette and the RIA Novosti website, focusing on a new chapter in cooperation and common development.
Right from the start of the summit, the speeches by both Xi and Putin drove the NATO crowd into a hysterical frenzy of anger and envy: Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova perfectly captured the mood when she remarked that the west was “foaming at the mouth.”
The front page of the Russian Gazette on Monday was iconic: Putin touring Nazi-free Mariupol, chatting with residents, side by side with Xi’s Op-Ed.
That was, in a nutshell, Moscow’s terse response to Washington’s MQ-9 Reaper stunt and the International Criminal Court (ICC) kangaroo court shenanigans.
“Foam at the mouth” as much as you like; NATO is in the process of being thoroughly humiliated in Ukraine.
During their first “informal” meeting, Xi and Putin talked for no less than four and a half hours.
At the end, Putin personally escorted Xi to his limo.
This conversation was the real deal: mapping out the lineaments of multipolarity – which starts with a solution for Ukraine.
Predictably, there were very few leaks from the sherpas, but there was quite a significant one on their “in-depth exchange” on Ukraine.
Putin politely stressed he respects China’s position – expressed in Beijing’s 12-point conflict resolution plan, which has been completely rejected by Washington.
But the Russian position remains ironclad: demilitarization, Ukrainian neutrality, and enshrining the new facts on the ground.
In parallel, the Russian Foreign Ministry completely ruled out a role for the US, UK, France, and Germany in future Ukraine negotiations: they are not considered neutral mediators.
A multipolar patchwork quilt
The next day was all about business: everything from energy and “military-technical” cooperation to improving the efficacy of trade and economic corridors running through Eurasia.
Russia already ranks first as a natural gas supplier to China – surpassing Turkmenistan and Qatar – most of it via the 3,000 km Power of Siberia pipeline that runs from Siberia to China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province, launched in December 2019.
Negotiations on the Power of Siberia II pipeline via Mongolia are advancing fast.
Sino-Russian cooperation in high-tech will go through the roof: 79 projects at over $165 billion.
Everything from liquified natural gas (LNG) to aircraft construction, machine tool construction, space research, agro-industry, and upgraded economic corridors.
The Chinese president explicitly said he wants to link the New Silk Road projects to the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). This BRI-EAEU interpolation is a natural evolution.
China has already signed an economic cooperation deal with the EAEU.
Russian macroeconomic uber-strategist Sergey Glazyev’s ideas are finally bearing fruit.
And last but not least, there will be a new drive towards mutual settlements in national currencies – and between Asia and Africa, and Latin America.
For all practical purposes, Putin endorsed the role of the Chinese yuan as the new trade currency of choice while the complex discussions on a new reserve currency backed by gold and/or commodities proceed.
This joint economic/business offensive ties in with the concerted Russia-China diplomatic offensive to remake vast swathes of West Asia and Africa.
Chinese diplomacy works like the matryoshka (Russian stacking dolls) in terms of delivering subtle messages.
It’s far from coincidental that Xi’s trip to Moscow exactly coincides with the 20th anniversary of American ‘Shock and Awe’ and the illegal invasion, occupation, and destruction of Iraq.
War is entertainment for US public
In parallel, over 40 delegations from Africa arrived in Moscow a day before Xi to take part in a “Russia-Africa in the Multipolar World” parliamentary conference – a run-up to the second Russia-Africa summit next July.
The area surrounding the Duma looked just like the old Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) days when most of Africa kept very close anti-imperialist relations with the USSR.
Putin chose this exact moment to write off more than $20 billion in African debt.
In West Asia, Russia-China are acting totally in synch. West Asia.
The Saudi-Iran rapprochement was actually jump-started by Russia in Baghdad and Oman: it was these negotiations that led to the signing of the deal in Beijing.
Moscow is also coordinating the Syria-Turkiye rapprochement discussions.
Russian diplomacy with Iran – now under strategic partnership status – is kept on a separate track.
Diplomatic sources confirm that Chinese intelligence, via its own investigations, is now fully assured of Putin’s vast popularity across Russia, and even within the country’s political elites.
That means conspiracies of the regime-change variety are out of the question.
This was fundamental for Xi and the Zhongnanhai’s (China’s central HQ for party and state officials) decision to “bet” on Putin as a trusted partner in the coming years, considering he may run and win the next presidential elections.
China is always about continuity.
So the Xi-Putin summit definitively sealed China-Russia as comprehensive strategic partners for the long haul, committed to developing serious geopolitical and geoeconomic competition with declining western hegemons.
This is the new world born in Moscow this week. Putin previously defined it as a new anti-colonial policy.
It’s now laid out as a multipolar patchwork quilt.
There’s no turning back on the demolition of the remnants of Pax Americana.
‘Changes that haven’t happened in 100 years’
In Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350, Janet Abu-Lughod built a carefully constructed narrative showing the prevailing multipolar order when the West “lagged behind the ‘Orient.’”
Later, the West only “pulled ahead because the ‘Orient’ was temporarily in disarray.”
We may be witnessing a similarly historic shift in the making, trespassed by a revival of Confucianism (respect for authority, emphasis on social harmony), the equilibrium inherent to the Tao, and the spiritual power of Eastern Orthodoxy. This is, indeed, a civilizational fight.
Moscow, finally welcoming the first sunny days of Spring, provided this week a larger-than-life illustration of “weeks where decades happen” compared to “decades where nothing happens.”
The two presidents bid farewell in a poignant manner.
Xi: “Now, there are changes that haven’t happened in 100 years. When we are together, we drive these changes.”
Putin: “I agree.”
Xi: “Take care, dear friend.”
Putin: “Have a safe trip.”
Here’s to a new day dawning, from the lands of the Rising Sun to the Eurasian steppes.
As concern in Washington is growing over Israel’s anti-democratic turn, new questions are arising about the underlying strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Such a reflection is welcome, especially if it produces recognition that for much of the past quarter century, Israel has acted as an adversary of the U.S.
Indeed, while enjoying the status and perquisites of a U.S. special ally, it has pursued policies not only in variance with American strategic interests but often directly adversarial to them.
And it has done so on a wide array of fronts, in the Middle East and across the globe.
The adversarial shift began with the ascendance of a specific leader: Benjamin Netanyahu.
From his first rise to power in 1996 through the more than years 15 years he has held the reins—after losing an election in 1999, Netanyahu returned in 2009 and, with the exception of an 18-month hiatus between June 2021 and December 2022, has been prime minister ever since—
Netanyahu has consistently and increasingly advanced foreign and security policies that, whether directly or indirectly, undercut U.S. strategic interests.
Notably, these policies pertain not only to areas in which Israel could be argued to hold overriding interests, such as the Palestinian one.
Although Netanyahu’s diplomatic approach on this front has been at odds with U.S. interests for all but the Trump years, Washington should, and has been, understanding of this divergence between the two allies.
The same case can be made for Netanyahu’s policy on Iran, even as he has unequivocally sabotaged and derailed American efforts on this front.
But the remarkable fact is that Netanyahu’s Israel has pursued policies at odds with American strategic interests across much of the world.
Let us recount the ways.
In Europe, Netanyahu’s Israel has adopted a policy aimed at undermining the European Union and the liberal democratic order for which it stands.
In fact, it has aligned itself not merely with some of Brussels’s staunchest adversaries—such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński and Mateusz Morawiecki, and Italy’s Matteo Salvini, to name a few; it has openly embraced some of Europe’s most far-right parties and their populist leaders whose opposition to Brussels transcends E.U. politics and turns on an illiberal agenda with, astonishingly, neo-fascist and even neo-Nazi strains.
For Netanyahu, these relationships have been first and foremost transactional.
In exchange for Israel turning a blind eye to their historical and ideological links with neo-Nazism and present-day anti-Semitism at home, these parties provided their support for Israel’s policy on the Palestinian front.
Such support, moreover, has also served a wider strategic aim for Netanyahu: by undermining E.U. consensus on foreign policy toward Israel, these relationships contribute to sowing divisions within the E.U. itself and weaken Europe’s core liberal norms.
Of course, Netanyahu’s brazen diplomatic posture against the liberal democratic order—the cornerstone of American foreign policy since the end of the Second World War—has been reflected most strikingly in his intimate relationship with Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin.
As Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu should certainly maintain cordial and constructive relations with Moscow, a major world power with a growing presence in the Middle East, including across Israel’s northern border of Syria.
But the relationship Netanyahu has cultivated with Putin has gone far beyond what has been strategically necessary to safeguard Israeli interests; worse, it has often come at Washington’s expense.
The full cost to U.S. strategic interests became apparent in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Although launched during Netanyahu’s brief hiatus from leadership, the relationship he had cultivated over the years with Putin has made Israel into a natural outlet for Russian capital and commodity exports.
The conduct is not limited to Jewish Russian oligarchs, for whose welfare (more in the sense of their wealth than health) Israel could claim to care; enter any supermarket in Israel since Western powers imposed sanctions on Moscow, and the number and variety of products from Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea will settle any question as to where Israel truly stands.
Regardless of whether Israeli supply of arms to Ukraine would make a difference on the battleground, its blank refusal of Kyiv’s requests poked a hole in American efforts to present a unified front against Russian aggression.
And although Israel has shifted its rhetoric of neutrality somewhat in favor of Ukraine and is reportedly ready to consider supplying it with some defensive weapons systems—the result, no doubt of Iranian military assistance to Russia and U.S. pressure—Netanyahu’s intimacy with Putin should be regarded as Israeli betrayal of the special relationship with the U.S.
A similar approach can be seen in Netanyahu’s policy toward China, the other global player determined to undercut American leadership.
China’s rivalry with the U.S. alone should have restrained Netanyahu from forging a comprehensive partnership with it.
Yet under his leadership, Israel has become a leading supplier of R&D and cutting-edge technologies and accelerated China’s transformation into becoming America’s “most serious competitor,” as President Biden has defined it.
Remarkably, Israel has also at least declared itself a a geo-strategic backer of China.
At a 2017 meeting with President Xi, Netanyahu encouraged China to assume its rightful place “on the world stage,” and waxed romantic by describing the Israeli-Chinese relationship as “a marriage made in heaven.”
Meanwhile here on earth, Netanyahu’s Israel has opened itself up to strategic investments by China in its infrastructure, such as the mass transit system in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, which will also run in sensitive underground locations abutting Israel’s military and defense compound, and parts of the Haifa Bay Port, which may steer the U.S. Sixth Fleet elsewhere.
Perhaps most egregiously, Netanyahu has had the temerity to meddle in American domestic politics.
He has used Israel to sow divisions between Democrats and Republicans, to anathematize a sitting U.S. president (Barack Obama), and to manipulate—we are using this word advisedly—another one (Donald Trump) to withdraw from a hard-reached international agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. The withdrawal is widely recognized to have been a huge strategic mistake, not only for U.S. security interests but, ironically, also for Israeli ones.
Disagreements between allies are par for the course in international relations.
Yet in the case of Netanyahu’s Israel, the kind and quality of its foreign-policy divergences with the U.S. are the stuff of an adversarial relationship, not a friendly one.
That there is a certain reluctance to designate Netanyahu’s Israel an adversary of the U.S. is understandable.
After all, the U.S. and Israel are bound by a special relationship.
And in many ways they are.
The very fact that it can contain and subsume the detrimental foreign policies of Netanyahu makes it a very special one indeed.
“If the Jewnited Snakes begins firing shots, they will do so in a panic as a last gasp.”
Basically, there is a looming crisis of the US dollar at the same time that the Chinese are taking their place as the dominant world power.
China is moving rapidly now, playing cards they’d been holding in their hand.
The importance of the Iran-Saudi peace deal cannot be overstated.
The US media is downplaying it, saying that this simply restores 2016 norms.
In actual fact, if you read about the details of what has been agree to (which I just had the time to finally do today), this deal takes relations between these two countries to a level they haven’t been at since before Khomeini’s 1979 revolution.
It is incredible that this was effectively a kind of surprise announcement.
The US has been taking the alliance with Saudi Arabia as a given, even though it has been collapsing ever since the American media made such a massive deal about Saudis killing one single terrorist-supporter journalist.
After the US put those lunatic sanctions on Russia, it was obvious that the relationship was over – but somehow, the US didn’t act as though they understood that, just as when they did the sanctions, they didn’t act as though they understood that China and India would refuse to sign on to the
The China deal with Iran means that Saudi is solidly on China’s side.
In the larger context, what this shows is that China is able to solve problems that were previously considered unsolvable in order to form strong alliances and is able to counter the US system of violence and threats by uniting people under a common goal of national independence underlined by a cooperative system of global trade.
Along with constantly threatening war and sanctions, the US functions by playing nations off against each other.
If you look at the history of US involvement in the Islamic world over the last 4 decades, the entire strategy has been keeping Shiite and Sunni at each others throats.
The US will switch sides back and forth, supporting whichever is perceived as the underdog, in order to prevent one side from becoming dominant.
The US also insists on manipulating the domestic politics of its victims, given that the US is guided by a Jewish agenda of total global domination – a world world government supported by a one-world culture of mixed multitudes of peasants with no national or religious identity.
The Chinese counter strategy hits every weakness of this system by reinforcing the rights of national identity and culture, respecting national sovereignty, and basing global cooperation on the positive goal of universal prosperity rather than the negative goal of undermining human instincts.
This is lining up with an emerging banking crisis.
Yesterday, I wrote that I don’t necessarily agree with predictions of immediate doom, but the claim that the banking system has backed itself into a corner is absolutely true.
These people thought they were invincible and acted like they were invincible and as it turns out, they are not invincible. They are now forced to attempt to shore up their books while the Saudis and others draw knives.
If the Jewnited Snakes begins firing shots, they will do so in a panic as a last gasp.
They’ve walked straight into their own demise.
No one forced them to do these Russian sanctions and prove all of the Chinese prophecies of lunatic mania.
No one forced them to do the coronavirus hoax and follow it with an orchestrated collapse of the market that brought the US banking system to the brink.
They acted haughtily, like the enemies of King David, and God turned their evil to good.
No one can predict how long this will take to play out, but the game is already over, and has been for some time. There is no longer any series of moves the Jews can make and win.
What it looks like now is that Emperor Xi is going to start rapidly laying cards on the table, creating a situation where the Whore or Babylon and her slaves are isolated in America and Europe.
It will be like that emo song we all hate.
Very bad things could start happening in these places as the Jews realize that their global agenda is over and then completely turn on the populations of these countries and just try to hurt the people as much as possible in a sadistic way.
What is going to happen is going to happen, and that is all that is going to happen.
China is now the global peace broker. They announced this last week with the incredible Saudi-Iran deal, now they are going to present their peace plan for the Ukraine, and the US is going to be forced to say “no, we want this war to continue until we can collapse the government of Russia, we don’t care how many people die or what it does to the global economy.”
They’ve already said this, in fact. John Kirby was out there this weekend, and he said that any cessation of hostilities is “completely unacceptable” because Russia must be destroyed and prevented from acting in the world in the future.
Xi is in Moscow now. This is the big play. There is zero chance that the US is going to allow Zelensky to do peace. He tried to do it in March of 2022 and they told him no.
After the US is forced to make a big show of “war at any costs,” China then has a blank check from every allied country to do whatever it takes to put down this mad brute.
If the US falls into the trap – and they almost certainly will, given what we’ve seen – and sanctions China with the same sanctions they’ve put on Russia, the house of cards falls. Further, China will be in a position to declare a formal blockade against the US.
It’s all perfect timing, as the US has been indicating it wants to end the war anyway – but they can’t end it on China’s terms, or they’re just openly bowing to the Emperor.
European countries will begin breaking off soon enough and siding with the East. The US has been planning this world war, and they are going to be in a situation where they are at war with the entire world.
Xi this week published an op-ed about his Glorious Mission to save the earth for Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
In the piece, he declared the dawn of a new world order, led by Russia and China, where nations have independence and the right to self determination and are not bullied by pigs.
Lauding the unbreakable bonds between Russia and China, he announced “the formation of new types of international relations and a community of shared destiny for humanity” and noted that Russia China relations are strong enough to withstand any pressure.
Xi called for mutual respect between nations, writing that “the international community is aware that no country in the world surpasses all others.”
In a clear reference to the US assertion that they represent an absolute moral order to the universe, he writes: “there is no universal model of governance, and there is no world order where the decisive word belongs to a single country.”
He continues with his criticism of the Jewnited Snake:
Profound changes are taking place in the modern world.
Peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit are an unstoppable historical trend. Multipolarity, economic globalization, and democratization of international relations are an irreversible trend.
At the same time, both traditional and non-traditional security challenges are rapidly increasing.
Actions of hegemony, despotism, and bullying cause serious harm to the world.
It will take a very long way to restore the world economy.
The international community is deeply concerned and in desperate need of ways to get out of the crisis.
…
In the past decade, universal values such as peace, development, equality, justice, democracy, and freedom have taken deep root in people’s hearts.
More and more countries are united in their common aspiration to build a clean and beautiful world where durable peace, universal security, shared prosperity, openness, and tolerance prevail.
The international community is fully aware that no country in the world is superior to others.
There is no universal model of governance, nor is there a world order where one country has the final say.
Solidarity and peace on the planet without rifts and upheavals serve the common interests of all mankind.
Every problem on earth is coming from the same place.
Xi then outlines his plans for peace, which are of course, very obvious, and could only ever be denied by Jewish lunatics intent on using the conflict to push a globalist and satanic agenda on the world.
Further, he made reference to a “long and tortuous global economic recovery,” clearly indicates that China is prepared to deal with whatever fallout results from open opposition to the Western world order.
Xi closes with a statement of intent: he writes that China has spent the last decades getting its own house in order, and they are now ready to take on global challenges, the primary problem, as he’d already explained, being US global hegemony.
Meanwhile, the media is flipping out, saying China is moving to take over the world.
The Guardian published a fascinating op-ed by celebrated former Moscow correspondent Jonathan Steele that effectively outlines everything I just wrote above with slight moderation.
From it:
Now, 30 years after the demise of the Soviet Union, there are signs that the unipolar world of US dominance may be coming to an end.
The main challenger is not Putin’s Russia, but an increasingly confident China.
Leaders in the global south are also stirring.
In the first flush of shock over Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in February last year, more than 140 UN states voted to condemn it.
But only around 40 countries in total have joined the US in imposing sanctions on Russia.
As the west floods Ukraine with military hardware, the notion that it is merely helping to defend Ukraine looks questionable to many Asian, African and Latin American states who suspect the end goal to be regime change in the Kremlin.
A survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) reveals a significant shift in public opinion in several key countries.
People want to see a quick end to the war in Ukraine, even if it means Ukraine giving up western-supported aspirations to victory and accepting the temporary loss of some territory.
It is not only citizens of authoritarian China who think this way. So do citizens in India and Turkey.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, told the Munich Security Conference last month: “I see how powerful the Russian narrative is, its accusations of double standards.”
France’s Emmanuel Macron said he was “shocked by how much credibility we are losing in the global south”.
Some fear a new cold war, this time between the west and China. Looking 10 years ahead, others expect to see a multipolar world in which states will not be pressured to align themselves with one side or the other.
Either way, in spite of the resurgence of US power in Europe as a result of the war in Ukraine, the era of US supremacy in the rest of the world may soon be over.
Just so you understand: I am far from the only one saying all of this.
In fact, it is difficult to find any serious people anywhere disagreeing with my basic assertions.
The only thing you can find is vulgar American propaganda made for morons.
This is the same media which makes claims like “the Ukraine is a democracy” and claims that the US is dumping all these weapons on the country for humanitarian reasons.
This media portrays the US as invincible, and effectively argues that there are no problems on earth at all beyond the annoyance of Chinese, Russians, and the entire third world not being gay enough.
I don’t think you will be able to find anything written at an adult level that does not concur with the conclusion that following the events of the last three years, the US empire has backed itself into a corner and really has no clear way out.
The only difference between these mainstream analyses and my own is that I take these things to to their logical conclusions – the most important of which being that if the US does not maintain global hegemony, the US financial system collapses, which will make the nation nigh entirely irrelevant on the world stage.
There is an “all or nothing” dynamic to the US system which would be admitted in other contexts, but is too scary for most to admit in the context of this present decline of the empire.
Hold Tight
It’s happening now. Moves are being made. China goes all in. Cards on the table.
It feels so wonderful to see it all finally coming crashing down.
The Jews and their anti-Christ culture of filth and degradation destroyed my family.
As an adult, I have been hounded by these people relentlessly.
They destroyed my company, costing me tens of millions of dollars, and ran me out of my home country.
But much more than this, they completely destroyed the nation my ancestors built, and they succeed in destroying most of the people in it with their revolutionary ideologies, sexual perversions, drugs, and spiritual rot.
But God is good and everyone is going to get what they deserve.
The only thing I ever wanted in my life was to see this whole system come crashing down, and here it is.
What happens next is all but irrelevant, given that it can’t possibly be worse than what is happening now.
But what will happen is that Nick Fuentes will become dictator of America and Ye will sing at my homecoming event.
Then I will be the president of Harvard after a brief term as Secretary of State, during which I will go on a world tour and apologize, on behalf of all Americans, for allowing our country to be taken over by Jews and used to terrorize the entire world with violence and gay sex.
This new generation has already proved that they will not give up the fight until the oppression of the Palestinian people is over.
This time it is different – the Palestinian struggle for equality and freedom has reached a new and radical stage.
In the face of Israel’s most recent assault on their rights and lives in occupied East Jerusalem and Gaza, the Palestinians not only demonstrated unprecedented courage and unity, but also embarked on a landmark general strike, the first in decades, with the full support of both Fatah and Hamas.
Moreover, there has been an equally new outburst of solidarity with the Palestinians in the international arena.
On social media, thousands of people from around the globe condemned Israel’s latest deadly attacks on the Palestinians under hashtags like #SaveSheikhJarrah and #Gazaunderattack.
Despite relentless attempts by Israel and social media companies to silence them, they raised awareness about Israel’s illegal occupation as well as its repeated violations of Palestinian human rights and international law.
Also, for the first time, many members of the United States House of Representatives, including Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have publicly called Israel an apartheid state.
Senator Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, has introduced a resolution to block a $735m weapons sale to Israel in response to Israel’s 11-day bombardment of Gaza, which killed 253 Palestinians, including 66 children.
Even a correspondent for staunchly pro-Israel Fox News, Geraldo Rivera, condemned on air the US complicity in Israel’s war crimes and voiced his support for ending arms sales to Israel.
Public figures and celebrities including John Oliver, Bella Hadid, Susan Sarandon, Malala Yousafzai, Paul Pogba, Kyrie Irving and many others have condemned Israel’s apartheid practices and used their platforms to raise awareness about the Palestinian struggle for justice and peace.
And this global outburst of support for Palestine is unlikely to be temporary: As demonstrated by the growing influence of social justice movements like MeToo and Black Lives Matter, young people around the world are more eager to confront injustices at home and abroad than ever before.
They are more supportive of the Palestinian struggle than any generation before them and are not afraid to scrutinise and criticise Israel’s propaganda about its occupation and other inhumane and unlawful actions.
This, of course, does not mean this new generation – dubbed Generation Z – is not facing any obstacles in their efforts to show solidarity with the Palestinians.
Big tech companies like Facebook and Google are working overtime to erase criticisms of Israel and Zionism from their influential platforms.
Since the beginning of the latest escalation in violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Gaza, these companies have been censoring posts and videos by activists, campaigners and other Palestinian allies aiming to raise awareness and share information about Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations.
YouTube has even added age restrictions to Al Jazeera Arabic’s live stream amid the channel’s continuing coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The restriction was removed only after widespread criticism of the move.
Gaming platforms and blogs that are popular among Generation Z, such as IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku, and Game Informer all published statements of support for Palestinians and compiled links to Palestinian charities after the beginning of Israel’s latest bombardment of Gaza.
Nevertheless, several of these companies later removed these statements and articles, raising concerns that they, too, are being pressured to silence any criticism of Israel on their platforms.
And the censoring of criticism of Israel is not limited to social media and blogs. Leading Western media organisations are still covering Israel-Palestine with an undeniable pro-Israel bias, and refusing to acknowledge Israel’s apartheid, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Moreover, despite the growing calls for social justice at home and abroad by young Americans, the current US administration is showing no desire to change Washington’s Israel policies and cease its support for Israel’s routine deadly assaults on the Palestinian people.
And perhaps most crucially, Generation Z’s social justice activism and radical support for Palestinian human and land rights are being countered with a narrative that seeks to infantilise and pathologise them.
In media, members of Generation Z are often labelled as anxious, depressed and mentally disturbed individuals who waste their time sharing meaningless videos on the popular app TikTok.
As a result, their political activism is ridiculed and dismissed as a form of intellectual dysphoria.
This method of delegitimising resistance and activism by depicting as irrational and emotional is of course nothing new – racial, sexual and political minorities have long been suffering from such attacks.
Despite these myriad obstacles, however, generation TikTok already triggered a new and radical wave of solidarity for the Palestinians and successfully brought their decades-old struggle for justice under the spotlight.
Sure, we have already been reading reports, studies and news stories about the growing support for Palestine among young people back when members of Generation Z were much younger – but Generation Z’s activism is different from those who came before them.
Unlike Millennials whose limited support for Palestine often remained cosmetic and never translated into concrete action, Generation Z is doing a lot more than issuing hollow statements of solidarity.
They are organising campaigns and pressuring universities and other public institutions to take action.
They are not only relentlessly confronting anti-Semitic rhetoric but also taking those spreading Israeli propaganda and trying to dehumanise Palestinians to task.
They are actively calling on their governments to stop selling bombs to Israel that they know will be used to kill Palestinian civilians. They are not afraid to call Israel what it is: A settler-colonial apartheid state.
This cultural shift on Palestine came on the back of the highly influential BLM and MeToo movements which highlighted the intersectionality of social justice issues from racism and gender discrimination to colonial oppression.
Now that young people overwhelmingly see the Palestinian struggle as a crucial part of their efforts to achieve justice, equality and freedom for all, it is logical to assume that voices in support of Palestine are going to become louder and more influential over the coming years.
Israel’s latest assault on the Palestinian people may have ended in a ceasefire, but the Palestinian struggle is far from over.
Yet today, I am more hopeful than ever before, thanks to a new generation who sees fighting injustice and oppression as their duty and privilege, that freedom and justice are no longer out of reach for the Palestinian people.
Palestine is one of the most historic places in the Middle East and it’s also one of the most unique locations in the world.
This is the destruction that the U.S. supports by supporting Israel’s land stealing apartheid government.
Before Israel
While their dispossession has been maintained through numerous wars and repression, their number in Israel/Palestine will soon outstrip that of the Jews. It is the realisation that Israel’s Palestinian residents in occupied East Jerusalem and its citizens in Israel itself will now be subject to ethnic cleansing that has brought so many Palestinians onto the streets. In East Jerusalem, families in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan face court-ordered evictions to make way for Jewish homes. In Israel, ultra-nationalist and fascistic parties have for years been calling for “population transfers” and far right forces have moved into mixed population towns like Lod, which saw forced evictions in 1948 and is now subject to emergency rule and curfews, with the explicit aim of “judaicising” them.
“… Israel should have taken advantage of the suppression of the demonstrations in China [Tiananmen Square], when the world’s attention was focused on what was happening in that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the Territories. However, to my regret, they did not support that policy that I proposed, and which I still propose should be implemented.”
The concept of endless wars for Greater Israel was working and producing impressive results.
Opportunistically, through aggravation of war after war, chunk by chunk of Arab land was usurped and the map of Greater Israel was slowly materializing.
No matter the unstable chaos surrounding the State of Israel for the past seven decades, and no matter the undying Palestinian resistance and the violent Intifadas that erupted internally, the Zionist dream of Greater Israel remained consistently intact and was progressing unabated and unchallenged by anyone.
But dreams, by their diaphanous nature are easily interruptible – can easily turn into sudden nightmares.
Indeed, dreams do, in the blink of an eye, simply end.
Nobody expected the Zionist dream to come to a sudden halt like this.
Nobody.
Israel in turmoil
Nobody expected Russia, literally in the blink of an eye, to suddenly assert itself militarily in the Levant and in the process turn the Zionist dream into a geopolitical and existential nightmare.
No further territorial expansions are even remotely possible now with Russia’s military presence in the Levant.
The Russian army is in the Levant to stay and the Israelis know it.
In the Zionist universe, it’s as if a mighty big-footed contender had suddenly appeared in the dream and instantly stepped on the Greater Israel map like it was a castle made of sand.
Russia is not a declared enemy of Israel.
Russia did not squelch The Greater Israel dream on purpose.
The destruction of the Zionist dream is the result of an unintended consequence that purely serves the regional and global interests of Russia.
Happenstance that the Zionist dream was in the way of Russian ambitions, that’s all. Dog eat dog world.
But what are Russia’s interests in lassoing the Levant?
Well, first, Putin intends to re-fulfill the old Russian dream of establishing sizable military foundations and bases in the ‘warm waters’ of the world, in the Mediterranean, to be more precise, in order to pivot and project power westwards with practical ease.
And also, to use Mediterranean naval bases as a first line of defense against a Western creep towards its own territory.
Russia’s growing military presence in Syria is a matter of “national security”, Putin has declared several times over.
Establishing multiple bases in the Mediterranean has not been possible for Russia to do since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war when it lost the Middle East chess game to America, symbolized by Egypt, a major Soviet client at the time having its Soviet military hardware devastated by Israeli-operated, made-in-USA weaponry.
Russia today considers its growing presence in Syria to be a most vital geopolitical maneuver for re-establishing a seat of power again in the Middle East, in tandem with its progress into future Superpowerdom.
In the current uncontrollable chaos of the Levant, this is an ambition that Russia must begin implementing immediately, lest the region falls dangerously under ISIS and Zioconism, making it thus harder for Russia’s old dream to be realized.
Secondly, Putin sees the cloth of American Empire as fast fading, especially in the Middle East, and he’s taking advantage of this: putting forth a challenging proposition to the American Emperor.
Yes, Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, a man considered to be a cold-blooded realist, is aware of America’s weaknesses, but he’s also aware of its current strengths and he is in Syria as a power salesman – he’s in Syria to make a deal with Empire Americana.
Respectfully, but firmly, he is pitching to Empire: ‘Look, you remain supremely powerful, but you are hemorrhaging in the Middle East and the situation is now critical.
You cannot afford a new large-scale war in the Middle East that may or may not reassert your hold on the region; and you have lost all your proxy wars there as well – there are no more black-clad joker cards in your deck.
You cannot continue on this disadvantageous path, you cannot stand still either and you also cannot withdraw from the region.
All these are strategically inferior options and will not stop the bleeding of your powers.
The only way out is through pragmatism.
The only remedy is to share control of the Middle East with us, Russians.
We have together shared power in the Middle East under the shadow of the Cold War and yes it created dangers and complexities for both our countries in the past.
But today is different: there is no official Cold War between us and so our new partnership can only serve to strengthen us both’.
This, dear reader is Russia’s diplomatic speak, received with quiet relief by the White House and cussed and scorned by the Ziocons in DC.
Simplified, Putin is in Syria and his realist message to America is: ‘Share the Middle East with us now or we both fall in the future’.
And it looks like Obama has quietly taken heed, in the interest of Empire and realism and not out of cowardice or submission to Putin.
Obama’s problem is that although he begrudgingly agrees with Putin’s analysis and remedy, he cannot be seen to be supporting it in public because the Neocons would immediately set the dogs of treason on him, bogging him down with political obtrusion and smear campaigns in his last 15 months of power – possibly damaging his party’s winning chances at the next elections.
Thirdly, in my opinion, Russia is in Syria also for the purpose of redressing Russian military image and history.
After the devastating defeat of the Soviet Union at the hands of the American-backed Afghani Mujahedeen, and considering the profound nationalism that Russian society feels especially towards its military institutions, it behooves any modern Russian leader thus to conceive and create a military victory against a modern version of the same old enemy who had previously defeated them – a military morale-booster both for the Russian populations and for the history books.
A utilization of the sentiments of the ‘comeback kid’ for mass consumption so as to boost levels of nation devotion.
Russia, being the largest nation in the world, landmass-wise, it has to regularly make grand spectacles and gestures in the name of national unity enhancement.
Killing Takfiri terrorists in Syria, nay smashing them to smithereens with Russian Air Power is an opportune event to balance out and positively update Russian history books.
Yes, the Russian military buildup in Syria, especially in marine and air power, now looks to be, relatively speaking, permanent.
And this is what is causing Israel and its Ziocon friends in Washington sleepless nights and hectic, nefarious group-brainstorming sessions.
They know that the dream of a Greater Israel cannot be realized with Russia dominating the skies and waters of the Levant.
This is the current and silent inescapable reality.
This is the wall that suddenly sprung up and instantly separated Zionists from their beloved Greater Israel dream.
Because of a ‘wall’, the dream is now impossible.
Some would call this, poetic justice.
The ‘dream destroyed’ being the current unspoken reality, Israel is left with no expedient and transforming choices.
It cannot go to direct war with a more powerful Russia and win back domination over Levant skies and waters.
It couldn’t even defeat Hezbollah who lack any form of Air Power back in 2006.
And more frustratingly for Israel, it cannot blackmail, coerce or buy President Putin either.
Moreover, presently under the leadership of Obama, it is clear that America is not prepared to go to direct war with any nation, let alone Russia, on behalf of Israel.
The current architects of expansionist Zionism are at a complete and utter loss to recognize all these chokehold factors – blood is draining from their faces.
No more meetings over what Arab country to genocide next so as to steal more land and resources, the issue now is not when and how the Zionist dream can be finally fulfilled, but how to safely bring the corpse-dream back from the dead without anyone noticing.
Alas, there are no clever Zionist ideas on the architects’ table.
They are truly and absolutely in utter speechless shock.
And what compounds this hectic catatonia that the Zionist Sensei are currently experiencing is the fact that they know that Israel’s global credibility is at its lowest ever, and that sooner or later, the international community – seeing Israel’s geopolitical weakness – will start pressing hard, even imposing the 2-State solution on Israel, based on the 1967 borders.
This is the double nail in the Greater Israel dream coffin.
Not only will Israel be unable to expand territory, but it will also be forced into giving up territory currently under its (illegal) control.
Something that the Israeli public are psychologically not prepared for, nor is there any political will in the Israeli halls of power to do so either.
Observations of the behaviorism of Zionists tell us that what they cannot change, they usually endeavor to spoil.
And the only thing they are still capable of doing is spoiling it for Arabs.
They will undoubtedly attempt to expand the current regional conflicts into another one hundred years of Arab on Arab wars.
This is a given – they breathe to spoil life for their Arab neighbors.
And we also observe that when Zionists are not willing or able to go to war, they usually endeavor to send other capable and willing nations to war on their behalf.
Ukraine proxy war between Russia and USA.
But as noted a few passages above, this is currently impossible under the Obama administration.
The dream of Greater Israel remains smashed.
What to do then? What is the ultimate solution?
Would Israel prefer that America directly and militarily confront Russia in the Levant? I call it a yes.
Even at the cost of causing World War Three? Yes.
Even at the risk of igniting a nuclear war? Yes.
Yes, yes, and a triple yes. The global Zionist congress pathology shows every indication of this.
‘The tribe above all’ is their core belief.
They are Masadian-ISISians in suits with basements full of nukes. Their narcissistic intentions are always clear – their motives and maneuvers are never to be trusted.
We are currently at a very serious and sobering point in the fast-evolving dramas taking place in the Levant and the Middle East at large.
Everyone concerned is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the unknown.
This alignment of overwhelming unknowns is rare in history.
The geopolitical stress and distress levels – despite the equalizing Russian presence in the Levant – remain excruciatingly high for all parties concerned.
All actors have so much to lose with a single wrong move.
A cluster of unknowns is forcing everyone into extreme caution.
Hesitant steps are made then quickly unmade.
If you were to privately ask Obama or Putin what would happen to the world the day after a war between their two nations ignites, they would both be likely to look you somberly in the eye and say, ‘I don’t know’.
The unknown is upon us and we are upon the unknown.
For now, Zionist masterminds plan on keeping the death of the dream of Greater Israel a secret, in the hope that the next American president would be more malleable and more reactionary than Obama.
They will be quietly biding their time and hoping that the next President of America would be more Zionist that Theodore Herzl.
More ideologically violent than ISIS and Tarantino.
Hoping against all hope that the tiny state of Israel would survive a Word War Three catastrophe with little damage inside its boundaries.
Hoping against all hope that the Arab world surrounding Israel, all of it would literally be bombed back into the stone ages, while Israel continues to be the hi-tech bride of the Middle East.
Hoping against all hope that Russia would again be defeated by America in the Middle East – just so that Israel can again dominate the skies and waters of the Levant, allowing it thus to revive the corpse of the Greater Israel project.
Hoping against all hope that igniting World War Three would actually solve all of Israel’s problems.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said here Thursday that China firmly supports the Palestinian people’s just cause of restoring their legitimate national rights.
In his meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Xi said China always firmly stands together with the Palestinian people.
He added that China stands ready to strengthen communication and cooperation with the Palestinian side in promoting relations between China and Arab states, and implementing the Global Development Initiative and Global Security Initiative.
Xi pointed out that China-Palestine friendship is deeply cherished by their people, adding that over the past five decades and more, the two sides have always trusted and supported each other.
No matter how the international and regional situation changes, China always firmly supports the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore the legitimate rights and interests of their nation, and always stands with the Palestinian people, Xi said.
The international community should prioritize the Palestinian issue on the international agenda, keep to the direction of the two-state solution and the principle of “land for peace,” and facilitate resumption of peace talks on the basis of relevant UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative, Xi said, adding that China will continue to work for an early, just and durable solution to the Palestinian issue.
Noting that next year marks the 35th anniversary of China-Palestine relations, Xi emphasized the need for the two sides to make good plans for celebrating the anniversary.
The two countries signed a tourism cooperation document, actively advanced negotiations for a China-Palestine free trade agreement and successfully held the second session of the Chinese-Palestinian Joint Committee for Economic, Trade and Technical Cooperation, Xi said, adding that China has provided a large amount of vaccines and other anti-COVID supplies to Palestinian refugees, and will continue to do what it can to help Palestine develop its economy and improve people’s well-being.
China commends Palestine’s active participation in and efforts to promote the collective cooperation between China and Arab states, and will increase communication and cooperation with Palestine on advancing China-Arab relations and delivering the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative, Xi said.
For his part, Abbas said that the Palestinian people are deeply proud of their friendly relations with the Chinese people, adding that China is Palestine’s sincere and trustworthy friend and has always firmly supported the just cause of the Palestinian people by offering Palestine all-round and unconditional support on the political, economic, moral and other fronts.
All Palestinian people hold sincere affections for the Chinese people, he said, noting that China’s positions on the international stage are fair and just, and its initiatives and propositions are positive and constructive.
Pointing out that Palestine stands firmly with China, Abbas reaffirmed Palestine’s steadfast commitment to the one-China principle and firm support for China’s just position on issues related to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
Palestine firmly supports and actively participates in Belt and Road cooperation and stands ready to work with China to continue strengthening cooperation in all areas, Abbas said, adding that Palestine looks forward to working with China to make the first China-Arab States Summit on Friday a success.
Ding Xuexiang, Wang Yi and He Lifeng were present at the meeting.
The UAE Foreign Ministry ordered Emirati Ambassador to Israel Mohammed Al Khaja not to meet with any Israeli government officials or attend events where Israeli ministers and politicians will be present in response to inflammatory comments by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who this week said that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.”
According to Saudi news outlet Elaph, Abu Dhabi is considering downgrading the level of its diplomatic representation in Israel.
UAE sources revealed to Elaph that officials in Abu Dhabi were taken aback by the lack of response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the face of provocative actions and violent rhetoric from his Jewish supremacist allies.
Emirati officials reportedly view the actions of senior Israeli officials as “harming the stability of the region, inflaming hatred, and serving only extremists.”
The report adds that Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco are also considering reducing diplomatic ties with Israel.
Smotrich’s comments created a diplomatic firestorm for Israel, as several of the country’s allies strongly rebuked his statements.
“Hate speech and violence should be confronted, and values of tolerance and human coexistence should be promoted to reduce escalation and instability in the region,” the UAE foreign ministry said in a statement.
“We found those comments to not only be inaccurate but also deeply concerning and dangerous,” US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters on Tuesday.
Similarly, EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell called Smotrich’s comments “unacceptable,” “disrespectful,” and “dangerous.”
Saudi Arabia also slammed Smotrich’s words as “offensive and racist,” deeming them “hateful and violent speech.”
“Is there a Palestinian history or culture?
No … After 2,000 years of exile, the people of Israel were returning home, and there were Arabs around [us] who do not like it …
So what do they do? They invent a fictitious people in the land of Israel and claim fictitious rights in the land of Israel just to fight the Zionist movement,” Smotrich said in Paris last week.
The Israeli finance minister made these comments while standing on a podium featuring a map that included Jordan, parts of Syria and Saudi Arabia, and the occupied Palestinian territories as part of Israel.
In response, the Jordanian government accused him of violating the 1994 peace treaty and summoned the Israeli ambassador for consultations.
Smotrich – who is also responsible for the civil administration in the occupied West Bank – also came under fire earlier this month after he called for the Palestinian village of Huwara to be “wiped out.”
“The Palestinian village of Huwara should be wiped out. The state needs to do it and not private citizens,” Smotrich said in a forum hosted by the Marker business newspaper on 1 March.
Huwara was the site of a pogrom carried out by Israeli settlers with the support of the Israeli army last month. One Palestinian was killed, nearly 400 were injured, and dozens of homes and vehicles were set ablaze.
As global power dynamics continue to shift, Israel’s close western alignment could limit its ability to engage with emerging powers in the east.
Arch-rival Iran, which has established ties with Russia and China, will be better positioned to gain from the shifting geopolitical landscape.
March 21 2023
Israel’s ability to leverage its western connections for geopolitical gain has shrunk considerably while its rivals race ahead to establish themselves comfortably in West Asia’s new multipolarity.
Great-power competition has the potential to significantly impact the future of Israel.
As a key player in West Asia, Israel is likely to be affected by the actions and strategies of major powers such as the US, China, and Russia.
The US has historically been a strong ally of Israel, providing significant military and economic aid.
However, Washington’s current strategy of thwarting growing Chinese and Russian political and economic influence around the world may lead to increased pressure on Israel, a western-creation, to align with US interests in the region.
At the same time, China and Russia are rapidly expanding their stakes in West Asia, which may set back Israel’s recent rapprochement progress with neighboring states.
In the past few years, Tel Aviv has offered itself to Arab states as a strong regional replacement for waning US presence, and a buffer against Iran’s rise.
But Beijing’s key role in brokering an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran is likely to impact Israel’s dealings with both of those countries – and other Arab states.
Will they need that Israeli military buffer if global power China – or Russia – can troubleshoot conflict and usher in peace?
Furthermore, as great-power competition intensifies, Israel, like other small states, will come under pressure to align with one side.
This could impact Israel’s ability to maintain its independence and pursue its own interests in the region.
Great Power competition: a heavy burden on Israel
In recent years, Israel has developed multifaceted relationships with both China and Russia, which have reaped both economic and political benefits for Tel Aviv.
China has been one of the top global investors in West Asia and North Africa, with Israel ranking eighth on the list of beneficiary states since 2005 and receiving just over $12 billion in Chinese investments since 2010.
In the past, Washington has given Israel some leeway in its foreign policy initiatives, but since the Ukraine conflict, US flexibility has been abruptly halted
Senior analyst on Israeli affairs at Al-Akhbar newspaper, Ali Haidar, told The Cradle that “Israel has a specific margin to preserve its interests.
This is something that the United States understands and considers.”
“At the same time, there are red lines that Israel cannot cross, but it can, through its relations and contacts with the US administration and influential parties, contribute to adapting and circumventing them to some extent.”
As the competition between the US, on the one hand, and Moscow and Beijing on the other, intensifies, Israel’s ability to maneuver is becoming increasingly limited, and Washington’s pressure is mounting.
This pressure demands that Tel Aviv take positions more aligned with US interests, which in turn constrain cooperation between Israel and Russia, and China.
“The increasing pressure on Israel to pivot in this context presents it with weighty dilemmas, and a policy change in the wake of that could significantly reduce its space for political-security maneuvering.”
This was exemplified by Israel’s attempts to mediate the conflict in Ukraine, which were quickly abandoned under coercion from Washington to take a clear position in support of the west and against Moscow.
This US pressure was also reflected in Israel’s military aggressions against Syria.
In March 2022, the number of Israeli strikes targeting Syria decreased to only one strike from four the month before, suggesting that Tel Aviv was apprehensive of a Russian reaction.
As a result, any imbalance in the relationship between Israel and Russia may have direct consequences for Israel’s interests – if Moscow decides to take action.
China’s presence in West Asia and North Africa
In the early 2010s, China began to expand its presence in the West Asia-North Africa (WANA) regions.
One of the major milestones of China’s modern foreign policy was the announcement of its ambitious, multi-continent Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013.
To date, at least 17 countries from the region have joined the initiative:
WANA states that have joined China’s BRI
China also signed bilateral partnership agreements with 13 countries in the region between 2014 and 2022.
Notably, Israel has not entered into any association agreement with China and has not joined the BRI.
WANA states with bilateral strategic partnerships with China
By brokering the Iran-Saudi deal in the aftermath of high-profile visits to Tehran and Riyadh by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing has now signaled that it intends to play a more active role in resolving conflicts and disputes in the region, much to Washington’s alarm.
US reaction to this game-changing agreement has been hyper-focused on the geopolitical ramifications of China bringing the two parties to the table, rather than discussion about the agreement itself.
As China’s influence in the region continues to grow, Israel remains constrained by “American concerns,” preventing it from deepening its relations with China, while other regional states are lining up to strike deals with Beijing.
Analyst Haidar has noted that “the US’s obstruction of Israeli engagement with China will limit Tel Aviv’s ability to forge strong economic and political ties with Beijing,” adding, “This is a practical example of Israel’s commitment to what the United States regards as its vital interests, which Israel is prohibited from crossing.”
In 2019, in order to protect Washington’s interests, the Israeli government established a committee to evaluate the national security implications of foreign investments – with a specific focus on China.
Furthermore, the US and Israel have agreed to tighten control over the export of advanced technologies to China.
That noose will further tighten as the economic competition between Washington and Beijing intensifies, and Israel – a major recipient of US technologies – may well be forced into this confrontation with China.
Iranian cooperation with Russia and China
After Argentina and Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt also show interest in joining BRICS
One significant consequence of the intensifying competition between great powers is China and Russia’s efforts to strengthen their cooperation with key states, particularly those that oppose aggressive western hegemony.
Their alignment of interests has led to a palpable warming in relations between Iran, Russia, and China, and some concrete steps forward.
Hostile US policies aimed at Russia and China have encouraged them to seek out and establish supportive multilateral institutions such as the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Tehran has, in turn, applied for membership in both organizations, which led to Iran’s formal ascension to the SCO last year – making it the organization’s ninth member state and its first West Asian participant.
In this context, Haidar points out that “One of the most important concepts that resonate on the tongues of officials and experts in Israel is the seriousness of the repercussions of the intensification of the international conflict on the region and Israel.”
This, he argued, is “centered on Iran’s openness to Asian powers and the implications of that.”
He also contends that “rapid international changes” could present new opportunities for Iran, which is currently facing an economic assault from the west.
These changes, Haidar explains, may enable Iran to counter the sanctions pressures, which undermines Israel’s multi-pronged strategy for confronting Iran.
Today, Israel’s position in the western axis limits its ability to keep up with Iran’s geopolitical expansion eastward.
As the Global Power conflict intensifies and the opposing poles become more defined, Israel’s maneuvering room will shrink, while the Islamic Republic – never reliant on the west – will have a wider range of options available to it.
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former national security adviser, Meir Ben-Shabbat, argued that Iran occupies an important place in the process of reshaping the axis of countries hostile to the US and the west:
“The Iranian regime is positioning itself as an active player in the confrontation with the liberal democratic camp led by the US. It identifies the West’s weakness and is exploiting it as far as possible.”
Israel’s shrinking geopolitics
According to the latest annual intelligence estimate of the Israeli military’s Intelligence Directorate, global trends, the Iranian and Palestinian theaters form Tel Aviv’s 2023 threat triangle.
“At the center of this triangle will be the international tendencies that affect Israel and its security; the global instability that stems mainly from the conflict between the United States and China will continue and intensify.”
Today, Israel faces some momentous challenges to its future, not only from extreme domestic polarization but particularly from the intensification of global conflict and the decline of western hegemony.
Iran’s growing international engagement, and the solidification of its relations with Asian powers, are unfolding as Tel Aviv’s options are shrinking.
There is also a correlation between the strength of US deterrence and influence in the region and Israel’s ability to exercise its own deterrence capabilities.
As US power weakens, it is likely to have a negative impact on Israel’s ability to deter its enemies.
Moreover, the growing number of states “oscillating” between east and west, and maneuvering to take advantage of great-power competition, is another challenge for Israel.
Even staunch US allies in the Persian Gulf – once scrambling to normalize relations with Israel – are looking for room to maneuver with the rising east, as seen with Riyadh’s readiness for Chinese mediation in negotiations with Iran.
While Israel may have some margin to distance itself from direct confrontation with China and Russia, the repercussions of the Great Power conflict are likely to buoy the fortunes of the region’s Axis of Resistance – in Iran, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq – with any balance of power shift away from US and Israeli hegemony.
In short, Israel’s ability to leverage its western connections for geopolitical gain has shrunk considerably while its rivals race ahead to establish themselves comfortably in West Asia’s new multipolarity.
The benefits of U.S. support no longer outweigh the costs.
The latest round of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians ended in the usual way: with a cease-fire that left Palestinians worse off and the core issues unaddressed.
It also provided more evidence that the United States should no longer give Israel unconditional economic, military, and diplomatic support.
The benefits of this policy are zero, and the costs are high and rising. Instead of a special relationship, the United States and Israel need a normal one.
Once upon a time, a special relationship between the United States and Israel might have been justified on moral grounds.
The creation of a Jewish state was seen as an appropriate response to centuries of violent antisemitism in the Christian West, including but hardly limited to the Holocaust.
The moral case was compelling, however, only if one ignored the consequences for Arabs who had lived in Palestine for many centuries and if one believed Israel to be a country that shared basic U.S. values.
Here too the picture was complicated. Israel may have been “the only democracy in the Middle East,” but it was not a liberal democracy like the United States, where all religions and races are supposed to have equal rights (however imperfectly that goal has been realized).
Consistent with Zionism’s core objectives, Israel privileged Jews over others by conscious design.
Today, however, decades of brutal Israeli control have demolished the moral case for unconditional U.S. support.
Israeli governments of all stripes have expanded settlements, denied Palestinians legitimate political rights, treated them as second-class citizens within Israel itself, and used Israel’s superior military power to kill and terrorize residents of Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon with near impunity.
Given all this, it is not surprising Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem have recently issued well-documented and convincing reports describing these various policies as a system of apartheid.
The rightward drift of Israel’s domestic politics and the growing role of extremist parties in Israeli politics have done further damage to Israel’s image, including among many American Jews.
In the past, it was also possible to argue Israel was a valuable strategic asset for the United States, though its value was often overstated. During the Cold War, for example, backing Israel was an effective way to check Soviet influence in the Middle East because Israel’s military was a far superior fighting force than the armed forces of Soviet clients like Egypt or Syria. Israel also provided useful intelligence on occasion.
The Cold War has been over for 30 years, however, and unconditional support for Israel today creates more problems for Washington than it solves.
Israel could do nothing to help the United States in its two wars against Iraq; indeed, the United States had to send Patriot missiles to Israel during the first Gulf War to protect it from Iraqi Scud attacks.
Even if Israel deserves credit for destroying a nascent Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 or helping develop the Stuxnet virus that temporarily damaged some Iranian centrifuges, its strategic value is far less than it was during the Cold War.
Moreover, the United States does not have to provide Israel with unconditional support to reap benefits such as these….
BRICS memo: Time ‘to take decisive action against the increasing Israeli Occupation as well as Israel’s apartheid policies’
MOSCOW, Aug 23 (Reuters) – Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday condemned Israeli missile attacks against Syria, in comments that underline a chill in once-warm Russian-Israel relations.
Lavrov was speaking at a joint news conference alongside his Syrian counterpart, Faisal Mekdad. Russia is a key backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government.
“We strongly condemned the dangerous practice of Israeli strikes on Syrian territory,” Lavrov said.
“We demand that Israel respect the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and, above all, respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria.”
Israel hit Iranian targets in a series of strikes on Aug. 14 near Assad’s ancestral home region and also close to Russia’s main Syrian bases on the Mediterranean coast, regional intelligence and Syrian military sources said. read more
Speaking at the same news conference in Moscow, Mekdad gave Lavrov his backing to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special military operation” to disarm and “denazify” its smaller southern neighbour.
Israel has spoken out against Moscow sending troops into Ukraine and bilateral tensions have grown in recent months.
In May, Lavrov said Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had Jewish roots – a statement which triggered outrage in Israel and forced a rare apology from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russian authorities have also opened legal investigations into the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency, Sochnut, which promotes emigration to Israel.
