Editor Note: Actually 6 types can be seen.

The conflict between Israel and Iran is distinct from that between the Arab population of Palestine and Jewish immigrants. Contrary to popular belief, the Persians have never been the enemy of the Jews. In fact, in ancient times, it was Cyrus the Great who enabled the Jews to escape from Babylon, where they had been held in slavery.

After the Second World War, when the United States seized the remnants of the British Empire, US President Dwight Eisenhower reorganized the Middle East. To dominate it, he appointed two regional powers to represent him: Iran and Israel. The two countries were both friends and rivals.

Eisenhower sent his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles (brother of CIA Director Alan Dulles), to Syria to organize an Iranian-Syrian alliance to contain Israeli ambitions. A mutual defense treaty was signed between Damascus and Teheran on May 24, 1953. At the time, the Syrian president, General Adil Chicakli, was pro-British and anti-French. This treaty still exists today [1].

At the same time, the UK came into conflict with Shah Reza Pahlevi’s Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who wanted to nationalize oil production. With the help of the United States, London organized a coloured revolution ("Operation Ajax" [2]). MI6 and the CIA paid thousands of people to demonstrate and overthrow Mossadegh. Responding to the "call" of his people, the sovereign changed his Prime Minister to Nazi general Fazlollah Zahedi [3].

Cooperation between the Shah’s autocratic regime and Israel began in 1956 with the construction of the Elian-Ashkelon pipeline. Above all, in 1957, Mossad sent a team of "revisionist Zionists" [4], led by Yitzak Shamir, to set up the dreaded SAVAK political police [5].

In 1956, to seize the Suez Canal, which Egypt wanted to nationalize, the declining colonial powers, the United Kingdom and France, enlisted the help of the colonial state of Israel. After this operation, the France of socialist Guy Mollet thanked Israel by secretly sharing its atomic research with it. This research continued unbeknownst to the United States.

However, when the U.S. became convinced that Tel Aviv was heading for the bomb, it made sure to give it to Iran too. In 1974, French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing brought Iran into the Eurodif consortium. It undertook to supply it with enriched uranium and to train its scientists. Two years later, US President Gerald Ford authorized Iran to pursue its own bomb.

While the Western media had always portrayed the Shah of Iran as a sovereign who respected human rights, they began to prepare public opinion for the revolution when Imam Khomeini took refuge in Paris. On December 19, 1978, TF1 suddenly discovered the practice of torture by the SAVAK.

In 1978, the United States took a dim view of Shah Reza Pahlevi’s military ambitions, which threatened Israeli power, and decided to impose a new Prime Minister with a new policy. Zbigniew Brzeziński, President Jimmy Carter’s security advisor, decided to rely on the Shiite clergy, some of whose assets had just been nationalized by the Shah (the "White Revolution"). In his view, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, whose preaching was circulated on audiocassettes throughout the country, had the authority to become the monarch’s Prime Minister. Despite the opposition of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, he organized his exile to the Paris region, where he stayed for four months before being flown to Tehran by Air France on a special plane. The United States had persuaded the Shah that they were in control of the situation, and only intended to fight his opposition. They had even asked the Savak to assassinate the philosopher Ali Shariati (a personal friend of Frantz Fannon and Jean-Paul Sartre) in London, so that his ant colonialist ideas would not interfere with their scenario. The Shah had agreed to take a leave of absence while Washington sorted out the problem at home.

However, on the day of his return, February 1, 1979, a crowd of one million people acclaimed the Ayatollah. From the airport, he made his way to the cemetery where 800 Iranian victims of political repression had just been buried. To the astonishment of Westerners, he delivered a violently anti-imperialist speech. There was no longer any question of a revolution within the Persian Empire, but of the establishment of an Islamic Republic.

At the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, Ayatollah Khomeini apostrophized the army, calling on them to liberate the country from the Anglo-Saxons. The man the CIA took for a doddering preacher was in reality a tribune who inflamed the crowds and convinced everyone that they each could change the world.

Israel immediately seized the Iranian half of the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline. A long dispute ensued, which was only secretly settled much later.

Khomeini questioned the recognition of Israel as a colonial state, had the premises of its embassy seized and handed them over to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In 1985, Robert McFarlane, Security Advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, planned to deliver arms to Nicaragua’s counter-revolutionaries, the Contras, without the knowledge of Congress. To this end, he first approached Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. The two men agreed that it was not possible to involve a revolutionary Arab state like Libya, but perhaps Iran. Through the intermediary of MP Hassan Rohani (future President of Iran), they contacted the President of the Iranian Assembly, the hodjatoleslam Hashemi Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani agreed to buy weapons to fight the Iraqi aggression, and to transfer some of them to the Contras. Thanks to this deal, Rafsanjani, already a large landowner, became the richest man in his country [6].

In 1988, Iraq used chemical weapons of mass destruction against the Iranian army and population. The result was a huge number of cripples. Even today, the threshold of tolerance to air pollution is very low in Iran. Often, the state issues an alert and the city of Teheran has to be evacuated for several days. I remember my friend, the great journalist Nader Talebzadeh, who, interviewing me on television, suddenly left the set, coughed up his lungs and was hospitalized. Responding to the suffering of his people, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini declared weapons of mass destruction in general to be contrary to his vision of Islam. Since then, Iran has ceased its nuclear, biological and chemical military research. This ethical decision made the war last a little longer.
In 1992, Hashemi Rafsanjani, now a professional arms dealer and President of Iran, organized secret exchanges with President Carlos Menem’s Argentina. Now publicly collaborating with the United States, he sent troops to fight under NATO orders in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He also supplied Argentine arms to the Bosnians. Officially, he did not question Khomeini’s anti-colonialist vision of the world, but supported the Bosnian president, Alija Izetbegović. Israeli military personnel also took part in the operations.

The Iran-Argentina arms trade was interrupted by Israel, which organized the attack on its own embassy in Buenos-Aires (1992), followed by the attack on AMIA (1994) [7] and finally the assassination of Argentine President Carlos Menem’s son, Carlitos (1995) . [8].

In 2001, Washington abandoned its policy of balance in the Middle East. Gone were the ties between Israel and Iran (1953-79), Israel and Iraq (1979-91) and Israel and Saudi Arabia (1991-2001). The Pentagon intended to sow chaos throughout the "wider Middle East" (excluding Israel), i.e. from Afghanistan to Morocco [9]. Those who had chosen this new strategy had pulled out all the stops to impose it: the September 11th attacks.

In 2003, a former Guardian of the Revolution, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, became President of Iran. He reversed the policies of his predecessors and returned to the ideals of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini. He never ceased to clash with the religious authorities, and even with the Supreme Leader. He industrialized his country, built social housing and tried to help the Shiite populations of the Middle East to find their own independence. Questioning the unspoken alliance with Israel
in 2005, he explained that the State of Israel would disappear like Apartheid South Africa. Reuters falsified his words, crediting him with announcing the destruction of the Israeli people [10].
In 2006, he organized a conference on the Holocaust in Teheran. His aim was not to deny the truth, but on the contrary to show that the State of Israel was not reparation for Nazi crimes, but a British colonial project. Israel then asserted that it is anti-Semitic, which it absolutely is not.

At the same time, Israel launched a worldwide press campaign claiming that Iran had resumed its military nuclear program. This was based on the fact that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had launched a vast civilian nuclear program. Indeed, he intended to discover another way of producing energy, through nuclear fusion rather than fission as in atomic bombs. At the time, Iran was planning to help the Third World develop by escaping Western control of hydrocarbons. A very long battle in international institutions began for Iran [11].. In addition to Iran’s pseudo-military nuclear program, Israel began to denounce Iran’s pseudo-imperialism in Iraq.

The agreement concluded in secret on March 2, 2008 in Baghdad between Admiral William Fallon, Commander of U.S. Forces for the Middle East (CentCom), and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was broken by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. The US military intended to pacify Iraq with Iran, not against it [12]. But Dick Cheney, who had been involved in the September 11th attacks, would not budge from the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski doctrine. That’s why he launched a colour revolution during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s second election [13].

On September 23, 2010, at the United Nations, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for an international inquiry into the attacks of September 11, 2001, causing panic in the White House.

The situation changed again in 2013. U.S. President Barack Obama wanted to put an end to the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski doctrine, which would require decades and millions of deaths before there would be any hope of a return on investment. He therefore planned to renew ties with the Iranian personalities who took part in the Iran-Contra affair, in other words, with Hashemi Rafsanjani’s team.
He began secret contacts in Oman [14]. In the end, his interlocutors [15] promised to prevent Ahmaninedjad’s team from fielding a candidate in the next presidential election, so that Hassan Rohani could win. Simultaneously, in August, Barack Obama withdrew from Syria, where he claimed to have drawn a red line, leaving his French partner, François Hollande, alone with his warmongering.

As soon as he was elected, Hassan Rohani once again abandoned the ideals of Imam Rouhollah Khomeiny and began negotiating the sale of Iranian oil to the Europeans. Bribes were paid by Austria. On the other hand, the Islamic judiciary arrested and sentenced, one after the other, all the collaborators of former president Ahmadinejad. His vice-president, Hamid Beghaie, was arrested on a secret charge, tried behind closed doors and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment [16].
President Rohani’s cabinet then proposed the creation of a Shiite federation with the various Shiite communities in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, in short, the restoration of the Persian Empire. At the same time, the 5+1 negotiations began in Geneva. Within a few days, an agreement was reached. A first document was presented on November 24, 2013. The Chinese and Russian ministers, Wang Yi and Sergey Lavrov, declared that the agreement was easy to draft because all parties knew that Iran does not have, nor seek to have, an atomic bomb. A long year of silence followed, with the initial text not signed until July 14, 2015.

A little later, in 2016, Hassan Rohani concluded a discreet agreement with Israel to settle the Eifat-Ashkelon pipeline dispute. In 2018, the Knesset discreetly passed a law punishing any publication about the pipeline’s owners with 15 years’ imprisonment.

General Qassem Soleimani, symbol of Iran’s anti-imperialist revolution.

The new American president, Donald Trump, realized that he could not be cordial with his counterpart, Hassan Rohani. In the eyes of everyone, and especially the Iranians, their country is the unwavering enemy of the United States. So, on May 8, 2018, he tore up the nuclear agreement without warning. Washington and Tehran played this comedy as they did with Reagan and Rafsanjani: officially, they hate each other, in private, they do business. The Iranians, who continue to tighten their belts, discovered with amazement on social networks the incredible standard of living of their leaders and their families.

The two groups that have been at loggerheads for half a century in Iran - international businessmen and anti-imperialist fighters - are now crystallizing around President Hassan Rohani and General Qassem Soleimani. The latter promoted an alternative: the "Axis of Resistance". In the name of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, he armed and trained foreign Shiite groups, not to federate them, but to give them the means to achieve independence. From Ansar Allah (Yemen) to Hezbollah (Lebanon), each group would be responsible for itself, coordinating with others but refusing orders from Tehran. The men trained by Soleimani won victories against Daesh, against some of their own governments and against the West. He himself became the most popular man in the Middle East. Officially, he is not involved in politics, but his speeches inflame the Arab and Persian populations. If he stood for election, he would surely be elected president. The veterans of the Iran-Contra affair then decided to eliminate him. On January 3, 2020, he was assassinated at Baghdad airport by a US guided missile strike. President Donald Trump claimed responsibility for the operation, but the local consensus was that it had been conceived in Tel Aviv. The Iranian president, Ebrahim Raissi, could be elected without difficulty.

The Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus should not be interpreted as directed against President Ebrahim Raissi’s team, but against the Revolutionary Guards.

“Have you no sense of decency?”

The recent Congressional hearings leading to a bloodbath of university presidents brings back memories from my teen-age years in the 1950s when everyone’s eyes were glued to the TV broadcast of the McCarthy hearings. And the student revolts incited by vicious college presidents trying to stifle academic freedom when it opposes foreign unjust wars awakens memories of the 1960s protests against the Vietnam War and the campus clampdowns confronting police violence.

I was the junior member of the “Columbia three” alongside Seymour Melman and my mentor Terence McCarthy (both of whom taught at Columbia’s Seeley Mudd School of Industrial Engineering; my job was mainly to handle publicity and publication). At the end of that decade, students occupied my office and all others at the New School’s graduate faculty in New York City – very peacefully, without disturbing any of my books and papers.
Only the epithets have changed.

The invective “Communist” has been replaced by “anti-Semite,” and the renewal of police violence on campus has not yet led to a Kent State-style rifle barrage against protesters. But the common denominators are all here once again. A concerted effort has been organized to condemn and even to punish today’s nationwide student uprisings against the genocide occurring in Gaza and the West Bank. Just as the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) aimed to end the careers of progressive actors, directors, professors and State Department officials unsympathetic to Chiang Kai-Shek or sympathetic to the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1975, today’s version aims at ending what remains of academic freedom in the United States.

The epithet of “communism” from 75 years ago has been updated to “anti-Semitism.” Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin has been replaced by Elise Stefanik, House Republican from upstate New York, and Senator “Scoop” Jackson upgraded to President Joe Biden. Harvard University President Claudine Gay (now forced to resign), former University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill (also given the boot), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth were called upon to abase themselves by promising to accuse peace advocates critical of U.S. foreign policy of anti-Semitism.

The most recent victim was Columbia’s president Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, a cosmopolitan opportunist with trilateral citizenship who enforced neoliberal economic policy as a high-ranking official at the IMF (where she was no stranger to the violence of “IMF riots”) and the World Bank, and who brought her lawyers along to help her acquiesce in the Congressional Committee’s demands. She did that and more, all on her own. Despite being told not to by the faculty and student affairs committees, she called in the police to arrest peaceful demonstrators.

This radical trespass of police violence against peaceful demonstrators (the police themselves attested to their peacefulness) triggered sympathetic revolts throughout the United States, met with even more violent police responses at Emory College in Atlanta and California State Polytechnic, where cell phone videos were quickly posted on various media platforms.

Just as intellectual freedom and free speech were attacked by HUAC 75 years ago, academic freedom is now under attack at these universities. The police have trespassed onto school grounds to accuse students themselves of trespassing, with violence reminiscent of the demonstrations that peaked in May 1970 when the Ohio National Guard shot Kent State students singing and speaking out against America’s war in Vietnam.

Today’s demonstrations are in opposition to the Biden-Netanyahu genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. The more underlying crisis can be boiled down to the insistence by Benjamin Netanyahu that to criticize Israel is anti-Semitic. That is the “enabling slur” of today’s assault on academic freedom.

By “Israel,” Biden and Netanyahu mean specifically the right-wing Likud Party and its theocratic supporters aiming to create “a land without a [non-Jewish] people.” They assert that Jews owe their loyalty not to their current nationality (or humanity) but to Israel and its policy of driving the Gaza Strip’s millions of Palestinians into the sea by bombing them out of their homes, hospitals and refugee camps.

The implication is that to support the International Court of Justice’s accusations that Israel is plausibly committing genocide is an anti-Semitic act. Supporting the UN resolutions vetoed by the United States is anti-Semitic.

The claim is that Israel is defending itself and that protesting the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank frightens Jewish students. But research by students at Columbia’s School of Journalism found that the complaints cited by the New York Times and other pro-Israeli media were made by non-students trying to spread the story that Israel’s violence was in self-defense.

The student violence has been by Israeli nationals. Columbia has a student-exchange program with Israel for students who finish their compulsory training with the Israeli Defense Forces. It was some of these exchange students who attacked pro-Gaza demonstrators, spraying them with Skunk, a foul-smelling indelible Israeli army chemical weapon that marks demonstrators for subsequent arrest, torture or assassination. The only students endangered were the victims of this attack. Columbia under Shafik did nothing to protect or help the victims.
The hearings to which she submitted speak for themselves. Columbia’s president Shafik was able to avoid the first attack on universities not sufficiently pro-Likud by having meetings outside of the country. Yet she showed herself willing to submit to the same brow-beating that had led her two fellow presidents to be fired, hoping that her lawyers had prompted her to submit in a way that would be acceptable to the committee.

I found the most demagogic attack to be that of Republican Congressman Rick Allen from Georgia, asking Dr. Shafik whether she was familiar with the passage in Genesis 12.3. As he explained” “It was a covenant that God made with Abraham. And that covenant was real clear. … ‘If you bless Israel, I will bless you. If you curse Israel, I will curse you.’ … Do you consider that to be a serious issue? I mean, do you want Columbia University to be cursed by [God of the Bible](http://1 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=syPELLKpABI 2 https://stefanik.house.gov/2024/4/icymi-stefanik-secures-columbia-university-president-s-commitment-to-remove-antisemitic-professor-from-leadership-role 3 Nicholas Fandos, Stephanie Saul and Sharon Otterman, “Columbia’s President Tells Congress That Action Is Needed Against Antisemitism,” The New York Times, April 17, 2024., and “Columbia President Grilled During Congressional Hearing on Campus Antisemitism,” Jewish Journal, April 18, 2024. https://jewishjournal.com/news/united-states/370521/columbia-president-grilled-during-congressional-hearing-on-campus-antisemitism/#:~:text=Columbia%20President%20Grilled%20During%20Congressional%20Hearing%20on%20Campus%20Antisemitism 4 Miranda Nazzaro. “Netanyahu condemns ‘antisemitic mobs’ on US college campuses,” The Hill, April 24, 2024.)?”

Shafik smiled and was friendly all the way through this bible thumping, and replied meekly, “Definitely not.”
She might have warded off this browbeating question by saying, “Your question is bizarre. This is 2024, and America is not a theocracy. And the Israel of the early 1st century BC was not Netanyahu’s Israel of today.” She accepted all the accusations that Allen and his fellow Congressional inquisitors threw at her.

Her main nemesis was Elise Stefanik, Chair of the House Republican Conference, who is on the House Armed Services Committee, and the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Congresswoman Stefanik: You were asked were there any anti-Jewish protests and you said ‘No’.

President Shafik: So the protest was not labeled as an anti-Jewish protest. It was labeled as an anti-Israeli government. But antisemitic incidents happened or antisemitic things were said. So I just wanted to finish.
Congresswoman Stefanik: And you are aware that in that bill, that got 377 Members out of 435 Members of Congress, condemns ‘from the river to the sea’ as antisemitic?

Dr. Shafik: Yes, I am aware of that.

Congresswoman Stefanik: But you don’t believe ‘from the river to the sea’ is antisemitic?

Dr. Shafik: We have already issued a statement to our community saying that language is hurtful and we would prefer not to hear it on our campus.

What an appropriate response to Stefanik’s browbeating might have been?

Shafik could have said, “The reason why students are protesting is against the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians, as the International Court of Justice has ruled, and most of the United Nations agree. I’m proud of them for taking a moral stand that most of the world supports but is under attack here in this room.”
Instead, Shafik seemed more willing than the leaders of Harvard or Penn to condemn and potentially discipline students and faculty for using the term “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” She could have said that it is absurd to say that this is a call to eliminate Israel’s Jewish population, but is a call to give Palestinians freedom instead of being treated as Untermenschen.

Asked explicitly whether calls for genocide violate Columbia’s code of conduct, Dr. Shafik answered in the affirmative — “Yes, it does.” So did the other Columbia leaders who accompanied her at the hearing. They did not say that this is not at all what the protests are about. Neither Shafik nor any other of the university officials say, “Our university is proud of our students taking an active political and social role in protesting the idea of ethnic cleansing and outright murder of families simply to grab the land that they live on. Standing up for that moral principle is what education is all about, and what civilization’s all about.”

The one highlight that I remember from the McCarthy hearings was the reply by Joseph Welch, the U.S. Army’s Special Council, on June 9, 1954 to Republican Senator Joe McCarthy’s charge that one of Welch’s attorneys had ties to a Communist front organization. “Until this moment, senator,” Welch replied, “I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. … Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

The audience broke into wild applause. Welch’s put-down has echoed for the past 70 years in the minds of those who were watching television then (as I was, at age 15). A similar answer by any of the three other college presidents would have shown Stefanik to be the vulgarian that she is. But none ventured to stand up against the abasement.

The Congressional attack accusing opponents of genocide in Gaza as anti-Semites supporting genocide against the Jews is bipartisan. Already in December, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) helped cause Harvard and Penn’s presidents to be fired for their stumbling over her red-baiting. She repeated her question to Shafik on April 17: “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Columbia’s code of conduct?” Bonamici asked the four new Columbia witnesses. All responded: “Yes.”

That was the moment when they should have said that the students were not calling for genocide of the Jews, but seeking to mobilize opposition to genocide being committed by the Likud government against the Palestinians with President Biden’s full support.

During a break in the proceedings Rep. Stefanik told the press that “the witnesses were overheard discussing how well they thought their testimony was going for Columbia.” This arrogance is eerily reminiscent to the previous three university presidents who believed when walking out of the hearing that their testimony was acceptable. “Columbia is in for a reckoning of accountability. If it takes a member of Congress to force a university president to fire a pro-terrorist, antisemitic faculty chair, then Columbia University leadership is failing Jewish students and its academic mission,” added Stefanik. “No amount of overlawyered, overprepped, and over-consulted testimony is going to cover up for failure to act.”

Shafik could have pointedly corrected the implications by the House inquisitors that it was Jewish students who needed protection. The reality was just the opposite: The danger was from the Israeli IDF students who attacked the demonstrators with military Skunk, with no punishment by Columbia.

Despite being told not to by the faculty and student groups (which Shafik was officially bound to consult), she called in the police, who arrested 107 students, tied their hands behind their backs and kept them that way for many hours as punishment while charging them for trespassing on Columbia’s property. Shafik then suspended them from classes.

The clash between two kinds of Judaism: Zionist vs. assimilationist

A good number of these protestors being criticized were Jewish. Netanyahu and AIPAC have claimed – correctly, it seems – that the greatest danger to their current genocidal policies comes from the traditionally liberal Jewish middle-class population. Progressive Jewish groups have joined the uprisings at Columbia and other universities.
Early Zionism arose in late 19th-century Europe as a response to the violent pogroms killing Jews in Ukrainian cities such as Odessa and other Central European cities that were the center of anti-Semitism. Zionism promised to create a safe refuge. It made sense at a time when Jews were fleeing their countries to save their lives in countries that accepted them. They were the “Gazans” of their day.

After World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism became passé. Most Jews in the United States and other countries were being assimilated and becoming prosperous, most successfully in the United States. The past century has seen this success enable them to assimilate, while retaining the moral standard that ethnic and religious discrimination such as that which their forbears had suffered is wrong in principle.

Jewish activists were in the forefront of fighting for civil liberties, most visibly against anti-Black prejudice and violence in the 1960s and ‘70s, and against the Vietnam War. Many of my Jewish school friends in the 1950s bought Israel bonds, but thought of Israel as a socialist country and thought of volunteering to work on a kibbutz in the summer. There was no thought of antagonism, and I heard no mention of the Palestinian population when the phrase “a people without a land in a land without a people” was spoken.

But Zionism’s leaders have remained obsessed with the old antagonisms in the wake of Nazism’s murders of so many Jews. In many ways they have turned Nazism inside out, fearing a renewed attack from non-Jews. Driving the Arabs out of Israel and making it an apartheid state was just the opposite of what assimilationist Jews aimed at.

The moral stance of progressive Jews, and the ideal that Jews, blacks and members of all other religions and races should be treated equally, is the opposite of Israeli Zionism. In the hands of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and the influx of right-wing supporters, Zionism asserts a claim to set Jewish people apart from the rest of their national population, and even from the rest of the world, as we are seeing today.

Claiming to speak for all Jews, living and dead, Netanyahu asserts that to criticize his genocide and the Palestinian holocaust, the nakba, is anti-Semitic. This is the position of Stefanik and her fellow committee members. It is an assertion that Jews owe their first allegiance to Israel, and hence to its ethnic cleansing and mass murder since last October. President Biden also has labeled the student demonstrations “antisemitic protests.”

This claim in the circumstances of Israel’s ongoing genocide is causing more anti-Semitism than anyone since Hitler. If people throughout the world come to adopt Netanyahu’s and his cabinet’s definition of anti-Semitism, how many, being repulsed by Israel’s actions, will say, “If that is the case, then indeed I guess I’m anti-Semitic.”

Netanyahu’s slander against Judaism and what civilization should stand for

Netanyahu characterized the U.S. protests in an extremist speech on April 24 attacking American academic freedom.

What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel, they attack Jewish students, they attack Jewish faculty. This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. We see this exponential rise of antisemitism throughout America and throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists, genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians.

It’s unconscionable, it has to be stopped, it has to be condemned and condemned unequivocally. But that’s not what happened. The response of several university presidents was shameful. Now, fortunately, state, local, federal officials, many of them have responded differently but there has to be more. More has to be done.

This is a call to make American universities into arms of a police state, imposing policies dictated by Israel’s settler state. That call is being funded by a circular flow: Congress gives enormous subsidies to Israel, which recycles some of this money back into the election campaigns of politicians willing to serve their donors. It is the same policy that Ukraine uses when it employs U.S. “aid” by setting up well-funded lobbying organizations to back client politicians.

What kind of student and academic protest expressions could oppose the Gaza and West Bank genocide without explicitly threatening Jewish students? How about “Palestinians are human being too!” That is not aggressive. To make it more ecumenical, one could add “And so are the Russians, despite what Ukrainian neo-Nazis say.”
I can understand why Israelis feel threatened by Palestinians. They know how many they have killed and brutalized to grab their land, killing just to “free” the land for themselves. They must think “If the Palestinians are like us, they must want to kill us, because of what we have done to them and there can never be a two-state solution and we can never live together, because this land was given to us by God.”

Netanyahu fanned the flames after his April 24 speech by raising today’s conflict to the level of a fight for civilization: “What is important now is for all of us, all of us who are interested and cherish our values and our civilization, to stand up together and to say enough is enough.”

Is what Israel is doing, and what the United Nations, the International Court of Justice and most of the Global Majority oppose, really “our civilization”? Ethnic cleansing, genocide and treating the Palestinian population as conquered and to be expelled as subhumans is an assault on the most basic principles of civilization.

Peaceful students defending that universal concept of civilization are called terrorists and anti-Semites – by the terrorist Israeli Prime Minister. He is following the tactics of Joseph Goebbels: The way to mobilize a population to fight the enemy is to depict yourself as under attack. That was the Nazi public relations strategy, and it is the PR strategy of Israel today – and of many in the American Congress, in AIPAC and many related institutions that proclaim a morally offensive idea of civilization as the ethnic supremacy of a group sanctioned by God.

The real focus of the protests is the U.S. policy that is backing Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide supported by last week’s foreign “aid.” It is also a protest against the corruption of Congressional politicians raising money from lobbyists representing foreign interests over those of the United States. Last week’s “aid” bill also backed Ukraine, that other country presently engaged in ethnic cleansing, where House members waved Ukrainian flags, not those of the United States. Shortly before that, one Congressman wore his Israeli army uniform into Congress to advertise his priorities.

Zionism has gone far beyond Judaism. I’ve read that there are nine Christian Zionists for every Jewish Zionist. It is as if both groups are calling for the End Time to arrive, while insisting that support for the United Nations and the International Court of Justice condemning Israel for genocide is anti-Semitic.

What CAN the students at Columbia ask for:

Students at Columbia and other universities have called for universities to disinvest in Israeli stocks, and also those of U.S. arms makers exporting to Israel. Given the fact that universities have become business organizations, I don’t think that this is the most practical demand at present. Most important, it doesn’t go to the heart of the principles at work.

What really is the big public relations issue is the unconditional U.S. backing for Israel come what may, with “anti-Semitism” the current propaganda epithet to characterize those who oppose genocide and brutal land grabbing.

They should insist on a public announcement by Columbia (and also Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, who were equally obsequious to Rep. Stefanik) that they recognize that it is not anti-Semitic to condemn genocide, support the United Nations and denounce the U.S. veto.

They should insist that Columbia and the other universities making a sacrosanct promise not to call police onto academic grounds over issues of free speech.

They should insist that the president be fired for her one-sided support of Israeli violence against her students. In that demand they are in agreement with Rep. Stefanik’s principle of protecting students, and that Dr. Shafik must go.

But there is one class of major offenders that should be held up for contempt: the donors who try to attack academic freedom by using their money to influence university policy and turn universities away from the role in supporting academic freedom and free speech. The students should insist that university administrators – the unpleasant opportunists standing above the faculty and students – must not only refuse such pressure but should join in publicly expressing shock over such covert political influence.

The problem is that American universities have become like Congress in basing their policy on attracting contributions from their donors. That is the academic equivalent of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. Numerous Zionist funders have threatened to withdraw their contributions to Harvard, Columbia and other schools not following Netanyahu’s demands to clamp down on opponents of genocide and defenders of the United Nations. These funders are the enemies of the students at such universities, and both students and faculty should insist on their removal. Just as Dr. Shafik’s International Monetary Fund fell subject to its economists’ protest that there must be “No more Argentinas,” perhaps the Columbia students could chant “No More Shafiks.”

Image by Ivana Tomášková from Pixabay

INTRODUCTION

            Reading perhaps Russia’s greatest thinker, Nikolai Berdyaev, during the horrors of the NATO-Russia Ukrainian war, I thought it might be of some interest to examine Berdyaev’s views on war, Russia, and Ukraine. Berdyaev was born near Kiev, in Obukhov, Kiev Oblast’, lived in Kiev and its environs, and attended a series of educational institutions in Kiev, including Kiev University. However, like many born in Ukraine over the centuries, he identified exclusively as a Russian, having no Ukrainian but rather noble Russian, noble French, as well as Polish and Tatar ancestry.

Living in the Russian Empire, he was caught up in many of its intellectual trends and political events. Drawn to Marxism in his university days and exiled to Vologda in 1897 for anti-Tsarist activity, Berdyaev soon abandoned such thought in favor of a moderate conservatism and revival of his Orthodox faith. He was very much opposed to the atheistic communist Bolshevik regime, and was arrested and interrogated by Cheka chief Felix Dzerzhinskii and deported from Soviet Russia along with hundreds of other philosophers and conservative intelligents in 1922. Berdyaev remained loyal but critical both of the Tsarist regime and Orthodox Church. As a thinker, he produced a free religious, historical, and political philosophy, with his greatest contributions being made to philosophy of history, so popular among the Russian intelligentsia both in his and our time. His thought reflected many of the elements extant in Russian culture and thought during the late 19th century, as I have analysed in my Russian Tselostnost’: Wholeness in Russian Culture, Thought, History and Politics (Europe Books, 2022) and my working paper “Russian Historical Tselostnost’” (https://gordonhahn.com/2023/04/13/working-paper-russian-historical-tselostnost-parts-1-3-conclusion/, 13 April 2023), including: monism, universalism, communalism, solidarism, messianism, historicism, transcendentalism and anti-bourgeoisism.

Berdyaev’s monism, like that of most of Russian religious and philosophical thought, held that God was present in the world and the Heavenly Kingdom and Divine were interconnected with the material world, humankind, and individual persons’ lives. Humankind’s purpose should be to prepare for the full unity of the universe and the Heavenly Kingdom, between spirit and matter, God and humankind. Berdyaev’s very Russian belief in or aspiration to unity or wholeness or tselostnost’ enveloped other types of tselostnost’: universalism, communalism, solidarism, and historical unity (Hahn, Russian Tselostnost’, pp. 138-42, 380-2, 567-8, 725-6, and “Russian Historical Tselostnost’”). As an Orthodox Christian, Berdyaev believed in the ultimate unity of all humankind in Christ—putting his Russian univeralist and monist tselostnost’ in brief (Hahn, Russian Tselostnost’, pp. 138-42, 380-2).

Similarly, Berdyaev shared the Russian aspiration to and belief in the propriety of communalism—the priority of the group’s interest over individual interests and the benefits of this to individuals and humankind (Hahn, Russian Tselostnost’, pp. 567-8). Although he was critical of Slavophiles, he saw their belief and that the Russian agrarian socialists in the advantages and moral superiority of the village commune as a reflection fo Russians’ preference for a communalist rather than individualist culture. He also endorsed Slavophile Aleksei Khomyakov’s views of spiritual communalism or sobornost’ – ‘communitarianism’ or ‘conciliarism’ – under the protective divine wing of Christian love in the community of Orthodox believers and the Church (Nikolai Berdyaev, “Slavyanskaya ideya,” in Nikolai Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii (St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2016, pp. pp. 161-70, at p 162. )].

The Russian preference for political, social, cultural, and ontological (identitarian) unity or solidarism is also present in Berdyaev’s work as an aspiration, since he was well aware of the great schisms that plagued Russia historically and in his own time. As I discuss below, these foundational elements of Russian tselostnost’ in Berdyaev’s thinking accompany his equally Russian messianism, historical tselostnost’, his vision of Ukraine, and his views on war. 

Berdyaev, Russia, and its Fate

Berdyaev was neither a revolutionary nor a reactionary. He was, rather, a Russian patriot, Orthodox believer, a moderately conservative for his time and place, but he was critical of the Russian elite, intelligentsia, people, and orthodox Church. Presaging Soviet culturologist Yurii Lotman’s work on Russian duality, he was particularly struck by and quite penetrating and eloquent in describing the stark contradictions in the Russian character—its abundant antinomies: “In other countries one can find all these contradictions, but only in Russia does the thesis turn into its antithesis, the bureaucratic state is born from anarchism, slavery is born from freedom, and extreme nationalism from supra-nationalism” (universalism) [Nikolai Berdyaev, “Sud”ba Rossii,” republished in Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii), pp. 11-44, at p. 29]. He points to other antinomies. Russian nationalism also coexists, it not produces Russian universalism: “Supra-nationalism, universalism” is “an essential trait of the Russian national spirit… The national in Russia is precisely supra-nationalism and its freedom from nationalism; in this Russia distinctive and unlike any other country in the world. Russia is called upon to be the liberator of nations” (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 20). In this last phase we see one way in which one particular trait generates Russian messianism, a belief in a special global mission for Russia in shaping world history. In another antinomy, “(t)he other side of Russian humility is an unusual Russian self-opinion. The humblest Russian is the greatest, most powerful, and uniquely called” (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 21). Here again, another essential trait leads, in Berdyaev’s thinking, to Russian messianism. In order to attain its proper status in the world and have its say in History’s course and outcome, it needed to overcome the negative sides of these antinomies.

Being a Russian patriot and imbued by Russian monist Christian, teleological historicism, Berdyaev, much like Fyodor Dostoevskii, developed a faith that Orthodox Russia would overcome its shortcomings and play an important role in leading humankind to Christian unification at the end of History. He certainly saw Russia as properly a “great Empire” (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 276) and was supportive of Russia’s colonial advancement of less developed peoples and of Russia’s “heroic” army in World War I (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 100). At times, he wrote as if Russia was destined to overcome its insufficiencies and play a pivotal or leading role in history, but at other times he was urging changes to achieve this, thus implying an element of uncertainty in his own mind. For example, in his article “Spirit and Machine,” Berdyaev wrote: “If Russia wants to be a great Empire and play a role in history, then this lays on it the obligation to start on the path of material-techonological development. Without this decision, Russia will fall into a situation without exit. The soul of Russia will be freed and its depths disclosed only on this path (of material development)” (Nikolai Berdyaev, “Dukh and mashina,” in Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 266-76, at p. 276).

Berdyaev’s own nationalism and messianism were reflected in his belief in a special historical role of the Slavs—his “Slavic idea.” He was no enemy of the West but was highly critical of its bourgeois materialism, which he blamed for the outbreak of World War (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 207, 217-18). “Russia is the most non-bourgeois country in the world,” lacking the “despotism” of the bourgeois family life and concerns Berdyaev averred. He conterposed to this Western ‘bourgeoisism’ the transcendence of the world exemplified by Russians: “The Russian person with ease of the sul overcomes any bourgeoisness and departs from any custom and from any normed life. The wanderer (strannik) type is so characteristic of Russia and so wonderful. The wanderer is the freest person on earth. …The greatness of the Russian people and the calling of it to a higher life are concentrated in the strannik type. … Russia is a fantastic country of spiritual drunkenness. … The Russian spirit cannot sit in place, it is not )of) the shopkeepers’ soul, not a local soul. In Russia, in the soul of (its) people there is a kind of endless searching, a searching for the invisible city of Kitezh, and unseen home. … Before the Russian soul open great exapanses, and there is no marked horizon before its spiritual eyes. The Russian spirit borns in a fiery pursuit of the truth, absolute, divine truth and salvation for the whole world and the universal resurrection to a new life” (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 24-6). Here, in Berdyaev’s perspective, is a classic Russian vision of the Russian soul, replete with its monist, universalist, transcendental, and messianic expanse. Berdyaev was himself typically Russian in his tendency towards transcendentalism and wholeness, preferred over the everyday mundanity of Western bourgeois life and understanding. Berdyaev’s very Russian transcendentalism, symbolized by and reflected in the strannik, is evidenced by his own belief in and aspiration to wholeness in its various forms as well as by his messianic hopes for Russia (see Hahn, Russian Tselostnost’: Wholeness in Russian Culture, Thought, History and Politics).

Oddly enough Berdyaev did not view Russia’s main opponent in World War I, Germany, as having been soiled by its very bourgeois life and even denied it had a fundamentally materialist culture. German culture and messianism derived from a far deeper cause, its own peculiar idealism. German bourgeoisism, industrial-techological advancement were the consequence of the German spirit. “The German is a metaphysician” (Nikolai Berdyaev, “Religiya Germanizma,” in Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 195-204, especially p. 197). In contrast to Russian idealism’s humility, however, German culture, in Berdyaev’s view, is imbued with an egocentric nationalism and aspiration to instill rationality, organization, and order in the world. While Russian messianism and universalism accepted chaos as the nature of human history before salvation, German messianism and universalism pursued humankind’s salvation through the willful elimination of chaos, and only Germany, Germans thought, can accomplish this task (Berdyaev, “Religiya Germanizma,” pp. 195-204, especially p. 200). In this way, like Russian nationalism, German nationalism contained and indeed nurtured the germ of universalism, however different a species of universalism it might be, not to mention imperialism.

Despite its own sprituality, Germany had chosen the path of “prideful” nationalism and the machine in excess and thus was in conflict with Russia and potentially could be better opposed by the Slavic idea, Slavic unity, and Slavic messianism. In his earlier writings, which have been the focus herein so far, Berdyaev adhered to some pan-Slavist tendencies and even proposed Slavic unity and messianism as an antidote and counterforce against German militaristic messianism. For example, in his article, “The Slavic Idea” (“Slavyanskaya ideya”), he emphasized that two of the 19th century Slavophiles’ and pan-Slavists’ shortcomings was to ignore or underestimate as well as a failure to address divisions between the various Slavic peoples and to harbor an inappropriate disdain for Poland because of its Catholicism, leaving the “Slavic idea” in a “sad condition” (Nikolai Berdyaev, “Slavyanskaya ideya,” in Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 161-70, at pp. 162 and 163-5). Instead, Russia ought endeavor to unify the Slavs under the “Slavic idea” against the threatening danger of Germanism”, should emphasize ethnicity over religion in order to unify Slavdom, particularly its two greatest states, against Berlin (Berdyaev, “Slavyanskaya ideya,” in Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 161 and 168). Indeed, Russia must, according to Berdyaev, “redeem its historical guilt” before the Polish people (Berdyaev, “Slavyanskaya ideya,” in Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 165). “The idea of Slavic unification, first of all Russian-Polish unification, should not be external-political, utilitarian-statist” but rather “spiritual and focuses on internal life” in the Slavic world, which presumably means a concentration on overcoming religious schism, cultural differences, and historical grievances (Berdyaev, “Slavyanskaya ideya,” in Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 170).    

One cannot help but be struck by the analogous configuration of the contradiction and conflict between Berdyaev’s view of world affairs, World War I, the idealistic orgins of German militarism in the aspiration to organize and order humankind, and the Slavic idea he counterposed to German imperialism, on the one hand, and Russia’s perception of American hegemony, Washington’s rules-based new world order, and Russian neo-Eurasiainism and Sino-Russian-led, Greater Eurasian-centered alternative multi-civilizational model for the international system, on the other hand,   reflected by BRICS+, the One Belt One Road Initiative, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Indeed, Berdyaev perhaps presaged Eurasianism in writing that “Russia should be demonstrate types of eastern-western cultures and overcome the one-sidedness of Western European culture with its positivism and materialism and the self-satisfaction of limited horizons. … We should move out into the worldly expanse. And in this expanse the ancient wellsprings of culture should be visible. The East should become of equal value to the West again” (Berdyaev, “Slavyanskaya ideya,” in Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 159).  

Berdyaev’s endearment to the “Slavic idea” centered on a Russo-Polish rapprochement and alliance and his disdain for Germany’s imperialism and war machine suggest that similarly he would have rejected American positivism, materialism, and hegemony, NATO expansion, and its splintering of Slavic peoples away from Russia and if alive today would accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to block NATO expansion even at the cost of war in Ukraine. It is reasonable to conclude, in fact, that Berdyaev’s views of Ukraine, if held in comparably relative form today, might have facilitated not just his acceptance, nut perhaps even support for Russia’s ‘special military operation’ against Kiev.

Berdyaev, Ukraine, and Russia

As noted above, Berdyaev was born and lived his youth and young adult years in Ukraine, indeed even attending university in Kiev. So he could have succumbed to ideas of Ukrainian nationalism which intensified at the time or rejected them based on his essentially Russian ethnicity and identity as well as his later adult life’s deep imbeddedness in the life and culture of Russia in its imperial centers, St. Petersburg and Moscow. Initially, he dabbled in Marxism as much of his generation did but then turned to a religious idealism rooted in Russian Orthodoxy. The issue of Ukrainian nationalism and separatism was already a burning issue in the Russian Empire by World War I and was intentionally aggravated before and during by Vienna, and Berdyaev did not shy away from blaming St. Petersburg’s policy for damaging Russia’s prestige and strengthening separatism in Galicia (Nikolai Berdyaev, “Natsionalizm i Imperializm,” in Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 132-40, at p. 139).

Berdyaev’s preference for and perhaps belief in Slavic unity would naturally have been predisposed him to oppose Ukrainian separatism. At the same time, in discussing the divisions in the Slavic world, he noted the tendency of ethnically close or related peoples to be less able to understand each other and so to more easily reject each other than peoples culturally and linguistically more distant from each other. (Nikolai Berdyaev, “Rossiya i polskaya dusha,” in Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 187-95, at p. 188). This dynamic can be seen in stark relief nowhere better than in Russo-Ukrainian relations, though, to be sure, much of the antagonism has been seeded by Russia’s foes, seeking to sow separatism for centuries there—not to mention Poland’s and Austro-Hungaria’s own colonial relations with Ukraine. Therefore, Berdyaev was and would be today keenly attuned to the complexities of the Russian-Ukrainian relationship – compounded after his writing on the subject by the Soviet experience in a myriad of ways – and its role in fomenting the crisis that led to the NATO-Russia Ukrainian war.

Consistent with his pan-Slavist idea, Berdyaev fully rejected in his time the idea of a separation of Russia and ‘Malorossiya’ (Little Russia) or Ukraine. In his 1918 article “Russia and Great Russia” Berdyaev denied both the Great Russians and “Little Russians” any status as separate nations or peoples. Just as there is no separate Ukrainian nationality, he aasserted, so too there is no separate Great Russian nationality; there is only a single, united Russian nation, with “tribal differences” between Russians and Ukrainians (N. A. Berdyaev, “Rossiya i Velikorossiya,” Nakanune, No. 3, April 1918 republished in A. Yu. Minakov, ed., Ukrainskii Vopros: V russkoi patritiocheskoi mysli (Moscow: Knizhnyi mir, 2016), pp. 413-19, at pp. 413-14.). In other words, he perceived solidarist tselostnost’ and supported solidarism of the Russian nation as a united ethno-cultural entity, noting its centuries’ long continuity until 1917. He did so in the unique way of denying the Great Russians any national status separate from its union with Ukraine and other traditional territories and even Russia’s colonized peoples. Berdyaev was prepared to sacrifice even the well-being of each of the eastern Slavic nations for the sake of a unified Russia. “A suffering, sick, misfit Russia would be better than well-off and self-satisfied states of Great Russia, Little Russia, Belorussia, and other regions, thinking themselves independent wholes” ( Berdyaev, “Rossiya i Velikorossiya,” p. 418). For him, “(i)t is not possible to think of Great Russia without the south and without its riches. And it is impossible not to see a terrible betrayal and terrible crime in the destruction of the entire cause of Russian history which carried out the idea of Russia” (Berdyaev, “Rossiya i Velikorossiya,” p. 419). Assuming Berdyaev would not have acquiesced to constructivist arguments regarding nations, his pan-Slavism would have inclined him to refuse to recognize the formation of a separate Ukrainian identity and the idea of a separate Ukrainian nation and state. Moreover, Berdyaev asserted that annexations can be historically useful and condemned Europe for failing to help the Christians of the Ottoman Empire and wrote of Russia’s historical “calling” in his discussion (Nikolai Berdyaev, “Dvizhenie i nepodvizhnost’ v zhizni narodov,” in Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 227-33, at pp. 229-32). Given his pan-Slavism, one can suspect that he had in mind any future Russian attempt during the war to help Turkey’s Slavic Christian peoples breakaway from Constantinople. Although whether Berdyaev, if he was alive today, would have or would not have backed Russia’s ‘special military operation’ into Ukraine is a considerably different matter, by all appearances he could very well have accepted it and the annexations of Ukrainian territory both in 2014 and 2022.

Berdyaev on War

In numerous articles written during World War I and before the fall of the Romanov dynasty and Imperial regime, Berdyaev discussed nationalism, imperialism, universalism, messianism, the role of words in politics and society, war, and Russia’s relations to all these elements (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii). The theme of war was directly related to the time in which he was writing, during World War I, when Russia was in the midst of a mammoth struggle of competing imperialisms of which Russia’s was but one and hardly focused on Europe proper. Berdyaev’s monist tselostnost’ was reflected in his belief that war was a reflection not just of humankind’s inner, spiritual world but of the divine world (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 205-18). War is material reflection of spiritual world, a symptom of internal disease in humankind, a reflection not cause of evil. In this way, all were to blame and responsible for and participates one way or another in the ‘Great War’ (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 205-7, 210-11). But most of all, it seems, materialism in its most concentrated social form – bourgeois life and values – was responsible for the outbreak of WW I. Here, Berdyaev’s very typical Russian transcendentalism emerges to indict non-spiritual, bourgeoisie life, which, he argued, kills human spirituality (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 207).

But on the grander scale of things, war is inevitable, an integral part of tragic nature of human history, which Berdyaev emphasized in his monist philosophy of history and historicism (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 217). His religiosity availed him to parse differing attitudes towards war he perceived in Russians and perhaps others between materialists and positivists. Berdyaev asserted that materialists’ greater fear of death more contributed to their greater fear of war and therefore their pacifism. Consistent with his monism, Christians (such as he himself), he argued, see war more deeply as a symptomatic expression of “spiritual violence”, which all inflict on others (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 208). There is a “dark irrational source” in the depths of humankind from which comes “the deepest tragic contradictions.” Evil in humankind was gaining full reign in the absence or insufficient ubiquity of the Divine. Yet war is a mix of good and evil. In terms of the latter, it involved violence and death inflicted by man against man. A truly Christian war (and state) were impossible for Berdyaev.  In terms of the good, war moved the tragedy of history forward towards its apocalyptic apotheosis of all humankind and the advent of the ultimate triumph of “Christ’s sword”, the Second Coming, and Heavenly Kingdom (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 209). Thus, Berdyaev’s views on war are based on his Christian philosophy of history and historicism intermixed with his Orthodox monism and universalism.  

Later, Berdyaev would develop a sophisticated religious philosophy of history in which he elaborated on the connection between the worldly and spiritual worlds’ struggle between good and evil and its relationship to world history and its ultimate apocalyptic, yet Christian outcome with the second coming of Christ and the advent of the Heavenly Kingdom to the material world. Here was a mix of beliefs in monism and historical unity. A hint of his subsequently more deeply developed Christian eschatology and teleology of History’s ultimate outcome and the following salvation can be seen in a religiously and metaphysically philosophical passage on war:

The responsibilityof man (for the war) should be broadened and deepened. Truly, man is violent and a murderer more often than he suspects and than (others) suspect about him. It is impossible to see violence and murder only in war. All our earthly life rests on violence and murder. Even before the beginning of today’s world war we were violent and murdered in the very depths of life more than during the war. The war manifested on the material plane our old violence and murder, our hatred and antagonism. In the depths of life there is a dark, irrational wellspring. The most profound tragic contradictions are born from it. And humankind, not enlightened within itself divine light because of this dark ancient element, inevitably is passing through the baptismal horror and death of war. There is an inherent redemption of ancient guilt in war. There is something foolish in the abstract wishes of pacifism to avoid war, leaving humankind in its previous condition. This is the wish to remove responsibility from oneself. War is intrinsic punishment and intrinsic redemption. In war, hatred is remolded into love, and love into hatred. In war the furthest extremes touch, and the devilish dark intersects with divine light. War is the material manifestation of the ancient contradictions of being and the revelation of the life’s irrationality. Pacifism is the rationalistic negation of the irrational dark in life. And it is impossible to believe in an eternally rational world. It is not for nothing that Apocalypse prophecies about wars. And Christianity does not foresee a peaceful and painless end of world history. Below is reflected that which is above, and on earth it is at it is in Heaven. And above, in Heaven, God’s angels fight with Satan’s angels. In all spheres of the cosmos there is fiery and furious elements, and war is conducted. And on earth Christ brings not peace but the sword. The deep antinomy of Christianity is in this: Christianity cannot answer evil with evil, resist evil with violence, and Christianity is war, the division of the world and its outgrowth until the end of the redemption of the cross in dark and evil (Nikolai Berdyaev, “Mysli o prirode voiny,” in Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 205-13, at pp. 208-9).

The above exegesis is not only Berdyaev’s metaphysical analysis of the meaning of World War I and war in general. It is Berdyaev’s recommendation to Russians on how they should interpret the apocryphal events they were witnessing.

Indeed, Berdyaev argued that Russians’ failure to adopt such a religious-metaphysical attitude towards the war that recognizes the “(c)reative historical tasks” related to the war led to a need for self-justification for Russia’s involvement. Self-justification was achieved by placing themselves above the Germans, who were portrayed as morally inferior. Russia’s “hasty justifications for the war or, more precisely, our self-justifications came to one conclusion: we are better than the Germans, moral right is on our side, we are defending ourselves and others” (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 220). He continued: “For some (Russians) the German people were acknowledged as the bearer of militarism and reaction, and that is why it is necessary to fight with them—it is a progressive cause. Even anarchists such as Kropotkin stood for this point of view. For many the German people seemed the bearer of the anti-Christian principles and a false spiritual culture, and that is why war with them is a holy war” (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 221). Berdyaev would likely see this less the less than humble and sufficiently arrogant and self-righteous today in both the Western and much of Russia’s perceptions, proclamations, and propaganda surrounding the NATO-Russia Ukrainian war.

There was no shying away from criticism of Russians’ behavior at the outbreak of the war, on Berdyaev’s part. He castigated the bloodthirsty nationalism that swept through Russia at the time as it did throughout Europe: “The orgy of chemical instincts and the ugly profiting and speculation in the days of the great war and the great trials for Russia are ourgreat shame and a black stain on national life” (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 99). He saw this as a consequence of Russia’s weak moral education, lack of a civil society and civic honesty and honor, and one alternative side of Russian smirenie: susceptibility to the “temptation of easy gains,” which he saw elevated by in Russia’s bourgeois-philistine layer” (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, pp. 99-100). Thus, he today would be dismayed by similar war mongering and the like coming from the ultra-patriotic wing of Russia’s political spectrum as well as from more ‘bourgeios-philistine’ elements such as Russian Security Council Secretary, Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission, and former Russian president Dmitrii Medvedev.

Finally, Berdyaev placed the war in another larger context of the struggle between peoples for a “dignified national existence” that was part of the development of the world’s historical tragedy in which no nation had a monopoly on morality in war. “Тhe historical struggle is a struggle for being and not for forthright justice, and it is implemented by the comprehensive spiritual forces of nations. (The historical struggle) is a struggle for national being and not a utilitarian struggle, and it is always a struggle for values, for creative strength and not for the elementary fact of life and not for simple interests. One can say that the struggle among nations for historical being has deep moral and religious meaing, and it is necessary for the higher goals of world process. But it is impossible to say that in this struggle one people wholly represents the good, and another people wholly represents evil. One people only can be more right than another relatively speaking. The struggle for historical existence of each people has an internal justification” (Berdyaev, Sud”ba Rossii, p. 223).

CONCLUSION

Berdyaev’s thought on Russia, Ukraine, and war are a clear function of his Russianness and Orthodoxy filtered through his own personal struggle to understand the visible and invisible world and cosmos around him. In Berdyaev’s Christian eschatology, teleology, and soteriology dictated an even-handed treatment of the relative good and evil of the world’s peoples in the making of humankind’s tragic history, which was to end in apocalypse ushering in Christ’s second coming and the Heavenly Kingdom. This even-handedness is reflected in Berdyaev’s harsh criticisms of Russia alongside his attribution of a special mission. It is also evident in Berdyaev’s refusal to support Russian chauvinist positions in relation to Ukraine as well as Poland and even Germany. Great and Little Russians are co-equals in the Russian nation, in Berdyaev’s view. Finally, all are responsible and participate in the human evils of hate, violence, and war through which humankind must suffer to attain a divinely determined, not any man-made worldly and metaphysically historical outcome on earth as in Heaven.

Probably the most famous actor and theater man in Germany, Dieter #Hallervorden, has unexpectedly clearly, albeit in subtle lyrics, sided with the people bombed in the #Gaza Strip. The video shows harsh images with a sensitive song, not only for the Palestinian people, but also for a peaceful future for Israel.

On May 15, 2024, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was evacuated by his bodyguards after suffering serious injuries.

As the European Union prepares to transform itself into a single state, its political evolution is taking an authoritarian step.

The election of MEPs and the President of the Commission is already a done deal

The election of MEPs promises to be deliberately confused. There are still no political parties at European level, despite the fact that they have been talked about for fifty years and enshrined in the treaties, but only European coalitions of national parties, which is not at all the same thing. These coalitions each present a Spitzenkandidat, literally a "head of list", who is not, however, a candidate for Parliament, nor does he or she appear on any of their national lists. Five of them will be debating their plans to preside over the European Commission in Eurovision. They are :

– Walter Baier, European Left ;
– Sandro Gozi, Renewing Europe Now;
– Ursula von der Leyen, European People’s Party;
– Terry Reintke, European Greens;
– Nicolas Schmit, Party of European Socialists.

The "Identity and Democracy" group was not invited to this show. This is because the five previous groups have a particular conception of democracy. They consider that Identity and Democracy doesn’t play the game they do, and therefore refuse to debate with it.

This debate will not take place in the studio, but in the hemicycle of the Parliament; a setting that imposes itself. The President of Parliament, Roberta Metsola, took advantage of the fact that the elected representatives were in the middle of an election campaign to grant the producers this set, without informing the parliamentarians. Many would have had their say.

It will take place in English. This is another of the Union’s subtleties: each member state has the right to request that all official documents be translated into a language of its choice. The Union therefore has 23 official languages for 27 member states, i.e. 552 possible language combinations. However, no state has requested that English be one of the languages of the Union. Malta, for example, which has made English one of its two official languages, has preferred Maltese to be used in Brussels. Yet, de facto, English has become the 24th language of the Union, and the only one common to all. This, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that the EU is not a European project, but an Anglo-Saxon one.

Incidentally, this strange debate is of little importance, since everyone knows that the Commission President will probably be chosen from outside this cenacle: it is likely to be banker Mario Draghi [1]. This is not impossible, since in 2019, Ursula von der Leyen did not take part in this debate and yet became President of the Commission.

Don’t get me wrong: Mario Draghi may be 76 years old, but he’s the former governor of the European Central Bank. In this role, he did everything to make the euro irreversible. He managed, "Whatever it takes", to save it from the sovereign debt crisis of the 2010s. It hasn’t solved any problems, and has exacerbated the gulf separating the economies of the member states. From the point of view of the member states, he’s an incompetent, but not from that of the investment bankers, a caste that has always been his (he was Goldman Sachs’ number 2 for Europe).

Confirmation of the Belgian (Brussels), German (Mönchengladbach) and European corruption investigations into Ursula von der Leyen leaves no room for doubt [2]. The institutions urgently need to get rid of her. Similarly, parliamentarians caught red-handed have been discreetly sidelined, including Vice-President Eva Kaili. The impression must be given that the Union’s administration is honest and at the service of its "citizens" (sic); an impression, because in reality, there are neither European people nor citizens, as evidenced by the absence of European parties.

The EU’s choices are already made

The Union, which is a political structure that goes far beyond the original "common market", faces a number of external challenges:
It has signed several free-trade agreements with states or blocs that do not respect its internal rules. The balance of competition, which was established via a complex system of subsidies, is therefore no longer assured, given that there is no comparable financial system on a global scale [3].

Instead of linking the fact of trading with a third party to its compliance with the Union’s internal rules, it has linked it to its respect for human rights. Yet two of the EU’s trading partners are posing very serious problems, without the EU reacting.

– For 76 years, Israel has not complied with any of the United Nations resolutions concerning it. Moreover, it has just begun an ethnic cleansing of Palestine, massacring some 50,000 civilians and wounding around 100,000 others.

– Ukraine, whose constitution is explicitly racist, has carried out two successive coups d’état (2004 and 2014). It has since elected a president, but his term of office ends today, May 21, 2024. No elections have been called and eleven opposition political parties have been banned.

In recent weeks, the EU has not moved one iota in the face of the free trade agreements it has signed in violation of its internal rules. In its view, all we have to do is wait for the problem to disappear: within a few years, the affected agricultural sectors will have disappeared.

On the other hand, the EU has announced its support for a solution for Palestine, while continuing its aid to Volodymyr Zelensky’s undemocratic regime.

– On the first point, the EU seems eager to recognize Palestine as a full member of the United Nations. It points out that it does not support the plan of the UN’s special envoy, Count Folke Bernadotte (assassinated in 1949), but refers to the plan of the Colonial Commission chaired by William Peel: there should be two separate states, and certainly not a bi-national state where Jews and Arabs would have equal rights.

– With regard to Ukraine, the EU persists in ignoring the Minsk agreements, endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2202, and the responsibility to protect that derives from them. Not only does it fail to congratulate Russia on ending the massacre of Russian speakers in the Donbass region, but it persists in accusing it of invading its neighbour.

When it comes to defense and foreign policy, the EU’s positions are exactly those of the G7, in which it participates. There is not a single case in which it differs from them, or even simply expresses a nuance. The EU is therefore building up an arms manufacturing industry and coordinating each country so that it continuously supplies the Kiev government. Until 2022 (the Russian army’s special operation in Ukraine), the EU had no involvement in defense issues. Indeed, the European Treaties stipulate that this is not its responsibility. The defense of the Union’s territory does not depend on its member states, but on NATO, whether or not they are members.

However, on a permanent basis, the Atlantic Alliance defined interoperability standards between its members, which it passed on to the European Commission, which in turn had them adopted by the European Parliament. These were then transcribed into national law by each of the 27 member states. These standards ranged from the composition of chocolate (there’s a chocolate bar in the rations of Alliance soldiers) to the width of main roads (so that US tanks could use them).

The Commission had no difficulty in taking up arms issues. It had already done so for drugs during the Covid epidemic. It’s worth noting that the generalization of these drugs has not proved its usefulness in the face of Covid-19. But that’s not the point. This was not a devastating epidemic, but a pretext for a mobilization exercise in which each power showed what it could achieve. From this point of view, the Commission proved that it could take on an issue that was not within its remit, and that it could even conclude gigantic contracts on behalf of its members without revealing the secrets of its negotiations.

When the EU becomes a single state, the Commission should demonstrate the same dexterity and more, since its action will no longer be hampered by the 27 member states. They will have disappeared. After the merger, banker Mario Draghi is expected to achieve "economies of scale". For example, there’s no need to waste money on embassies for each member state, as a single network will suffice for the single state. While we’re at it, the privileges of some will be put at the service of all. For example, the French permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council will revert to the Union. Or the French atomic bomb will be handed over to the Union’s Defense Department. Neutral states, such as Austria, will have disappeared anyway.

What’s true in politics is also true in economics. Mario Draghi has long been advocating a reorganization of the EU economy along Soviet lines: each region with its own specificity. In fact, it was with this in mind that the EU concluded the free trade agreements to which I referred at the beginning of this article. While livestock farming will remain a particularity of Poland, the Netherlands has taken the lead by authoritatively putting its farmers out of work, and it won’t be long before France devotes its talents to other tasks.

Eliminating obstacles

The real obstacle to the creation of a single state can only come from those member states that refuse to disappear. It lies in the Council of Heads of State and Government.
Two diametrically opposed and irreconcilable points of view face each other. The two extremes are in the former Czechoslovakia: for just over a year now, the Czech Republic has been governed by General Petr Pavel, former Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee. His agenda is that of the G7 (affirmation of a world governed by rules [4], containment of Russia, support for Ukrainian fundamentalist nationalists, preparation for confrontation with China). Robert Fico, on the other hand, has governed Slovakia, for six months. The alliance on which he relies certainly includes a few nostalgic supporters of Father Jozef Tiso, who established a national Catholic regime under Nazi protection during the Second World War. More seriously, it is founded on supporters of independence from the USSR, who did not recognize themselves in the figure of Václav Havel, the CIA agent who took power during a colourful revolution, the "Velvet Revolution". A former Communist, Robert Fico distinguishes Russia from the USSR. He defends a world organized around International Law (and not G7 "rules"). He supported Security Council Resolution 2202 and consequently approved Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. He is the one and only EU leader to have held this position (Viktor Orbán’s Hungary avoids broaching the subject).

A few days ago, the problem was solved: on May 15, 2024, an individual fired five shots at him at point-blank range. Robert Fico was immediately evacuated (photo). He has already undergone two operations and his life is no longer in danger. The debate he was leading in the Council was interrupted. It is not expected to resume.

The history of the EU is already written. The wonderful thing about this project is that, as it unfolds, we discover why Brussels has imposed rules and facts that made no sense when they were first decided, but now make sense.

The grotesque Spitzenkandidaten debate, in English and in a grandiose setting, but with nothing at stake, will have played its role: occupying the crowds while the people who count decide their future in the shadows.

Footnotes

1) “Paris 2024 and Berlin 1936 in the service of an impossible imperial dream”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 30 April 2024.

2) “The Von Der Leyen case”, Voltaire Network, 5 April 2024.

3) “The European Union against farmers”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 27 February 2024.

4) “What international order?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 7 November 2023.

Although the massacres in Sudan and Congo are far more deadly than those in Palestine, it’s the latter that I’m going to talk about today. Indeed, this is the first time we’ve witnessed ethnic cleansing live on our cell phones. I’d like to come back to some information that I’ve already covered in various articles, but which some media obviously don’t want to include in their analyses. I would like to tell you that there is no community fatality: this conflict was not provoked by the people of Palestine, be they Jews, Christians or Muslims, but by outside powers who, for a century, have wanted them never to know peace.

Behind the screens, the Prince of Wales (protector of the Muslim Brotherhood) sees God and becomes King Charles III.

The British creation of Israel

To make myself clear, I’ll start by telling you about the United Kingdom. You attended the coronation of King Charles III. You’ll remember that, in the middle of the ceremony, he took off his rich clothes and dressed in linen. His pages set up screens to prevent the audience from being dazzled. When the screens were removed, he had become king. He was then presented with the symbols of his power, the sceptre and globe. What had happened in those few moments out of public view? The Prince of Wales had seen God, like Moses before the burning bush [1]. This explanation probably sounds far-fetched to you, and you wonder how his subjects could believe such a tall tale. In fact, since James VI in the 16th century, British sovereigns have declared themselves kings of Israel [2]. It was against his conception of divine right that Oliver Cromwell overthrew his son Charles and proclaimed the Commonwealth. However, the Lord Protector was equally enlightened, professing that all Jews should be regrouped in Palestine and Solomon’s Temple rebuilt there [3]. In the end, successive dynasties kept this myth alive. They adopted various rites and imposed others on their subjects, such as Jewish circumcision, which was performed in maternity wards on all newborn males in the Kingdom at birth, during the XIX century.

Two years before the Balfour Declaration (1917), which announced the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine, a Jewish diplomat and future Foreign Minister, Lord Herbert Samuel, wrote a memorandum on the Future of Palestine (1915). In it, he argued for a Jewish state that would place the entire Diaspora at the service of the Empire. A little later, he specified that this new state should never be able to ensure its own security, so as to be eternally dependent on the English Crown. This is exactly what we are witnessing today. This is the fate that has cursed the people of Palestine.

Lord Arthur Balfour’s declaration was followed by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points. In them, he describes the objectives achieved by his country during the First World War. Point 12 is strangely worded, but at the Paris Conference that drafted the Treaty of Versailles, he specified in writing what was to be understood: the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine (and Kurdistan in Turkey). The World War had brought about a rebalancing of forces, so that Washington was now working alongside London in the defense of common interests.

During the interwar period, Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine went smoothly. Arab landowners readily sold some of their land to Jews. However, as early as 1920, Arab terrorists began murdering Jews. Among the murderers was Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, who was sentenced by the British to 10 years in prison, but never executed. On the contrary, Lord Herbert Samuel (the man who had written that there should never be security in Palestine), who had become the British High Commissioner in Palestine, pardoned him and appointed him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, ostensibly to maintain a balance between the two great local families.

Then came a Salafist (i.e. a Muslim wishing to live like the Prophet’s companions in the 7th century), Izz al-Din al-Qassam, who had already organized a revolt against the French in Syria and became imam in Haifa. He decided to wage jihad, not against the British occupiers, but against Jewish immigrants. Various attacks and pogroms against Jews followed. To maintain civil peace, the British killed al-Qassam, after whom the current Hamas al-Qassam Brigades are named.

The death of al-Qassam had solved nothing. The British, true to their colonial technique of "divide and rule", have always developed with one hand what they fought with the other. In 1936, Lord Willam Peel, at the head of an official commission, assured us that peace could only be restored by separating the Arab and Jewish populations into two distinct states. This is what is known today as the "two-state solution".

During the Second World War, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem became an ally of Chancellor Adolf Hitler. In particular, he rallied the Muslims of the Balkans to join the SS and supported the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". For their part, the Jewish fascists (the "revisionist Zionists") of Ukrainian Vladimir Jabotinsky fought alongside the Axis against the British. The Zionists, for their part, fought on the side of the Allies, while challenging the limits that the British theoretically imposed on Jewish immigration - only theoretically.

Fascist historian Benzion Netanyahu and his son, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Source: Prime Minister’s Office

They met in May 1942 at the Baltimore Hotel in New York, under the chairmanship of David Ben Gurion. They laid down the principles of the future State of Israel. Until now, we have been assured that Ben Gourion was a man of good will. However, he had been Jabotinsky’s companion during the inter-war years, and had spoken out in favor of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. A book, released in Hebrew in Israel two weeks ago and published by a major publishing house, assures that he was kept abreast of the Hungarian Rezső Kasztner’s negotiations with Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann that lasted until the fall of the Reich. Kasztner claimed to buy the escape of a million Hungarian Jews. In reality, he saved only his family and friends. Above all, he extorted 8.5 million Swiss francs in gold (a colossal sum at the time) from wealthy Jewish families in Hungary, making them believe in a possible escape [4]. If the documents quoted in this book are accurate, David Ben Gurion would also be a swindler, having deceived his own people.

The United Nations proposed
• not to divide Palestine (not the "Peel two-state solution") ;
• to establish a republican, democratic and representative regime;
• to guarantee the cultures of the various minorities;
• guarantee religious freedom for Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Conferences and negotiations followed in vain. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly (which then comprised only 56 member states) approved the partition plan drawn up by a special commission [5]. It was immediately rejected by all Arab countries.

On May 14, 1948 (two and a half months before the end of the British mandate), David Ben Gurion cut short the discussions and unilaterally proclaimed the independence of the State of Israel. The day after the coup, as the 100,000 British troops began to withdraw, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and North Yemen sent their troops to defend the Arabs of Palestine. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood also sent a group of fighters, under the command of Saïd Ramadan (son-in-law of founder Hassan el-Banna and father of Tariq Ramadan), to join them. At the time, however, none of these countries had an army worthy of the name. They were quickly defeated. The myth of the invincibility of Tsahal was born.

However, as my Lebanese friend Hassan Hamade told me, this narrative is a lie. In reality, the Arab heads of state were already committed to Israel, and the Jews were no more valiant than the Arabs.
In this way, Emir Majid Arslan, the Lebanese Minister of Defense, led his troops without encountering much resistance to Bethlehem, which he liberated. The Lebanese President, Bechara el-Khoury, immediately ordered him to abandon the battlefield, which he refused to do. He dismissed him, but he continued the war as a mere officer. In the end, his troops were not defeated by the Jews of Palestine, but by the "Jordanian" army commanded by a British general, John Bagot Glubb (known as "Glubb Pasha") and a hundred or so British officers. In reality, Jordan had no soldiers, but the Arab Legion, formed by the British during the Second World War, had changed its name to the "Jordanian Army" on the first day of the war, while retaining its British officers. It was the British and Jordanians who saved Israel from the start, just as they saved it again when Iran attacked last month. This war was not an attempt to crush Israel, but the first manifestation of Arab Zionism.

The United Nations, worried by these developments, dispatched a special envoy, the Swede Folke Bernadotte, to recuperate the situation after the Israeli coup and the Arab-Israeli war. As soon as he arrived, he realized that the Special Commission that had drawn up the partition plan was ignoring demographic realities: the Israelis were claiming a territory disproportionate to their numbers, and enjoying the support of Arab Zionist governments that had first pretended to play the role of good offices and then to wage war.

On September 17, 1948, "revisionist Zionists" (i.e. Jewish fascists) assassinated Folke Bernadotte and the head of the UN observers, French colonel André Serot. My maternal grandfather, Pierre Gaïsset, was in the next car. He was unharmed and replaced Colonel Serot in his duties. The assassin, Yehoshua Cohen, was never arrested. Two years later, he became the official bodyguard of Prime Minister David Ben Gourion. The leader of the "revisionist Zionists", Yitzhak Shamir, was immediately appointed head of a Mossad department. He carried out secret actions on behalf of the United Kingdom and the United States throughout the Cold War, from Guatemala to the Congo, and later became Prime Minister (1983-84 and 1986-92).

On November 29, 1948, the Ben-Gurion government, which claimed to be searching for the assassins of Folke Bernadotte and André Serot, submitted an application for membership of the United Nations, accompanied by a letter declaring "that the State of Israel hereby accepts, without any reservation whatsoever, the obligations arising from the Charter of the United Nations, and undertakes to observe them from the day it becomes a Member of the United Nations". Convinced, on May 11 1949, the United Nations General Assembly accepted [6]. Today, in view of Israel’s systematic failure to respect its commitments, several states are calling for its membership to be "suspended".

Operation "al-Aqsa Flood”

Let’s move on to the present day. On October 7, 2022, the Palestinian Resistance, on the initiative of Hamas, launched a vast operation against an Israeli military base and also against civilians. Under international law, the Arabs of Palestine are an "occupied population" within the meaning of the Geneva Conventions. However, they can only attack military targets, not Kibbutz or raves. The aim of the operation was to take military prisoners, and possibly civilian hostages too, in order to negotiate the release of Palestinian hostages in Israel, i.e. administrative prisoners. It is not known how many prisoners and hostages they have taken, let alone how many are civilians and how many are military personnel. According to Hamas, more than 30 officers are being held.

This operation, " al-Aqsa Flood”, has been prepared over the last three years in full view of everyone [7]. Hundreds of kilometers of tunnels were dug using tunnel-boring machines, which could only enter Gaza with the approval of Israeli customs. At least 1 million cubic meters of earth and rubble had to be evacuated under the eyes of the Israeli security services. Several training camps were built and hang-glider training was carried out. Not only did the Israeli intelligence services observe all this, but so did other powers such as Egypt and the USA. Numerous reports were sent to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet he did not react. Worse still, he dismissed his Defense Minister, General Yoav Galland, in August 2023, because Galland complained about this lack of reaction in the cabinet. However, given the public reaction to this dismissal, he preferred to reinstate him rather than have to explain the reason.

Israel accused the journalist who published the photographs of October 7, long before the security services intervened, of being a member of Hamas.

The various Palestinian factions (Islamic Jihad, PFLP and National Initiative) were awakened by Hamas at 4.30 a.m. to take part in an operation starting at 6.30 a.m. (i.e. before sunrise). It began with the destruction of all the robots monitoring the Separation Wall. So, from 6.30 am, the alarm was sounded. By 8:00, news agencies around the world were broadcasting images of the attack [8]. However, the Israeli security forces did not intervene until 9.45 am.

From the outset of their intervention, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) applied the "Hannibal directive"; an instruction that orders one to kill one’s own soldiers rather than see them taken prisoner by the adversary. The Israeli government’s casualty figures do not distinguish between attackers and defenders. Similarly, the Israeli government has reported exactions that fighters do not normally have time to perpetrate during a surprise attack. The Mauritian Pramila Patten, UN Special Rapporteur on sexual violence, interviewed victims and witnesses of Operation Flood of al-Aqsa. She concluded that some sexual exactions may have been committed, but that the most serious accusations (notably the castration of soldiers) were not credible [9]. Reports of the beheading of babies were withdrawn after an investigation by Al-Jazeera.

For the moment, the Israeli opposition refuses to address the question of the Prime Minister’s possible role in the organization of this operation. But it must be asked: Benjamin Netanyahu is the son of the fascist Benzion Netanyahu, private secretary to Vladimir Jabotinsky (Benito Mussolini’s ally, who died at the start of the Second World War). He has always expressed his admiration for both men.

Benjamin Netanyahu has always supported Hamas as a tactical ally in the fight against Yasser Arafat’s Fateh. However, until 2017, Hamas referred to itself as the "Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood". This organization was restructured in 1949 by the British secret services on the model of the United Grand Lodge of England [10]. In 1950, it became part of the Anglo-Saxon Cold War apparatus. That’s when Sayyed Qutob, the jihad theorist, became its star. Admittedly, in 2017, Gazans who wanted to defend their country joined it, but they demanded that Hamas break with the Muslim Brotherhood and the British. In the end, the two currents coexisted [11]. On October 19, 2022, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad received Khalil Hayya, leader of Hamas’s revolutionary current. But he refused to receive Ismaël Haniyeh and Khaled Mechaal, leaders of the Hamas Brotherhood [12]. From an Arab point of view, then, there is not one Hamas, but two. Indeed, throughout the Syrian war, Hamas fought alongside al-Nosra (the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda), the IDF and Nato Special Forces, against the Syrian Arab Republic. On December 9, 2012, Hamas elements came to the Damascus suburb of Yarmouk to assassinate leaders of the Palestine Liberation Front (PFLP), including a friend of mine [13].

Not only is it wrong to attribute the October 7 attack to Hamas alone, but it is also wrong to ignore the fact that there are two Hamas. These lies make it possible to present the "Deluge of al-Aqsa" operation as a vast anti-Semitic pogrom, in the words of President Emmanuel Macron, when in fact it was an act of Resistance, as pointed out by Francesca Albanese, UN Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The massacre of Gazans with the Anglo-Saxons

We have witnessed the massacre of 35,000 people, the disappearance under the rubble of 13,000 others, and the serious physical injuries of a further 120,000. Anyone with human feelings can only be horrified. This has nothing to do with the identity of the victims; it’s just a question of humanity.

According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this is just a police operation to arrest the assailants of October 7, but everyone has understood that there is no connection between this attack and the current Israeli operation. It’s all about making life unbearable for the Gazans until they leave of their own accord. This was the program of Vladimir Jabotinsky and his secretary, Benzion Netanyahu. It had been validated by the Nazi negotiator and founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion.

Throughout the massacre, and even today, the Anglo-Saxons provide Israel with weapons to carry it out.

However, just as demonstrations against the bloodshed have begun in American universities and are spreading across the country and then to France, the Biden Administration has considered dismissing Benjamin Netanyahu in favour of General Benny Gantz. Admittedly, the decision is not legally his to make, but Washington has a long history of coups d’état and color revolutions. Secretary of State Antony Blinken therefore invited him to "discuss the situation". Benny Gantz accepted, while arranging a meeting with the Sunak Administration during his return trip. But things didn’t go well [14]: Benny Gantz understood perfectly well that Washington was asking him to stop the massacre, which he approved of, but he insisted on informing his interlocutors of his desire to protect his country by destroying Hamas. His interlocutors were taken aback and realized that he was not "a son of a bitch, but our son of a bitch", in the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. They immediately notified the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. When Benny Gantz arrived in London to meet the Special Security Advisor, Sunak invited himself to their meeting. He tried to explain to a bewildered Benny Gantz that the Hamas "sons of bitches" should not be touched, because some of them are "our sons of bitches". So the Anglo-Saxons didn’t overthrow Benjamin Netanyahu.

The British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has come to tell Benny Gantz not to touch our Hamas.

Seen from London and Washington, the massacres of civilians are deplorable, but are merely adjustment variables. As it stands, Israel is an indispensable state. If it were to be pacified and become normal, it would no longer serve any purpose. Like the Republic of Corsairs in the 18th century, Israel enables the most extensive money-laundering operations and serves as a haven for some of the world’s greatest criminals.

An official of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) told me that he was a waiter in the bar of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. One day, he witnessed the arrival of a group of diamond dealers, who had arrived without passing through customs and were being escorted by the military. These men and a few customers exchanged diamonds and cash, then left incognito. This kind of deal could not take place in any other state.