To Russia with love: Rational, pragmatic politics and decisive action

I’ve never been to Russia; all I know about Russia is what comes to me through the media in English filtered as it would have to be through the opaque lens of a deep rooted Western bias, a xenophobic dislike (or call it distrust) of Slavic peoples, and a right-wing viewpoint that brands Putin a new Stalin (according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, comparisons with Hitler seem warranted) and the Russian Federation a reincarnation of the old USSR. I have a sneaking suspicion that Russia is so much more and Putin I suspect is smarter and more disciplined and astute than all his Western counterparts put together, certainly more so than the Western media make him out to be.

I fear I shall never know Russia as I would dearly love to before I master its language that makes its speaker resound with the dulcet tones of authority and majesty that its truly glorious and remarkable history has imbued it with. Russia has done a remarkable thing, it has unmasked the US and its NATO allies as little more than bullies and thugs, poking and prodding the Russian bear from the Balkans to the Baltic, and from Georgia to The Crimea, which is as Russian as stupidity is synonymous with the 19^th century British officer corps that led the ill-fated charge of the light brigade in Crimea! It seems the endemic stupidity of that era still hangs heavy over the military and political councils of the West, in particular in the US (Dr. Strangelove comes to mind) and in the UK whose media spearhead the Putin vilification campaign.

I’ve promised myself that I will book a trip soon to Russia, as soon as the weather is suitably warm for a ‘Desert dweller’ like myself that is! In fact, I hope to see as much of Russia as I can and meet as many ordinary Russians as I can. In short, I want to see for myself what I only saw through the internet or on television. I want to see the truth with my own eyes and not through the eyes of the Western media that bends and distorts simple facts into a convenient narrative that falls in line with the selfish aims of their governments’ murderous foreign policies.

For many Arabs, there is a naïve dream that Russia will help us restore the whole of Palestine to the Palestinian people, and maybe even help us throw some of its Zionist settlers into the sea for good measure. I say this is naïve because, one, any rational human being knows full well that throwing people into the sea is utter insanity and, two, Russia is committed to maintaining the integrity of Israel as a homeland for the Jews.

So, knowing this, why, you ask, do I have such high hopes for Putin-politics to succeed in our region where so many before him have failed in securing an end to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict? I am a pragmatist, not a suicidal idiot of Oslo fame, and not someone who would make peace at any price. But I think Palestinians can work more symbiotically with a Russian peace mediator than they can with an American mediator. There is room for maneuver with a Russian peace broker.

The right of return is sacred, return to 1948 lands and 1967 lands. But such a tide of people would turn a Jewish State into a State with a Jewish minority. This is difficult for Israel to accept, but not impossible in time. I say in time because I know the journey is going to be long and hard. The more pressure Israel is under the more likely it will accept a ‘better than nothing’ solution, a solution that secures the rights of Israeli Jewish citizens in what will become an Arab majority State. In short, Palestine becomes all things to all people, these are the Holy Lands after all and they should encompass and embrace all of God’s people.

I feel the Russians would be more receptive to taking on the role of brokering a peace based on a one State solution model than the US would be and the Russians would certainly have a lot more credibility in the Arab countries than the US has these days. The return of refugees and the descendants of Palestinians forced to leave their country in 1948 and 1967 is the bedrock of any peace agreement. What follows this ‘reverse exodus’ will define the coming period of coexistence, i.e. Arab living next door to Jew, conservatively: four Palestinian Arabs for every one Israeli Jew. Not an ideal situation by far for the hardliners in Israel’s government right now, but a likely eventuality in the event the life support machines of American funding are switched off.

Russia has proved that it has its ear to the ground in the Middle East as is courts Arab governments and military strong men. Its constant support to the Syrian Government has allowed the armed forces of that country to keep the armed opposition and the lunatic fringe both at bay and prevented them from achieving any significant victory for over three years. Russia did not lend its support to Assad out of some misguided sense of loyalty to a former ally or out of stubbornness or because of some innate mental deficiency that made them unable to make new allies among the Syrian opposition, although the Western media would like you to think so, no, the Russians knew how dangerous civil war in Syria would be not only for Syria but for the whole Levant and the Middle East. The Russians were always the ones who warned against needlessly rash decisions with regard to Syria, not that the Gulf countries, or Turkey, or the US or Europe ever listened as they had an agenda in Syria and they were pushing ahead full throttle. Diplomatic relations were severed with unparalleled speed, the Arab League expelled Syria and suspended its membership, and all bridges were burned with the regime. I was stunned, I though back then ‘they must know something I don’t’, and who could blame anyone for thinking the same so soon after Gaddafi’s fall?! But, time has proved the Russians right.

The West is not the standard bearer of good that people think it is. We are talking about countries that have done bad things in their recent past. The UK and most European governments terrified of the Bolsheviks in the 1930 backed Generalissimo Franco in the Spanish Civil War against the legitimate Republican Government of the time. Franco’s Spain was spared any reprisals in the post World War Two environment, a man who was a noted ally of Adolf Hitler died of old age in his bed in the new Europe! In the last three decades of the 20^th century the US managed to align itself with some of the Middle East’s and South America’s most notorious and blood thirsty right wing dictators all for political expediency and to achieve a bulwark against communism. Had the US been smarter than it was, it would have foreseen the ultimate collapse of a deeply corrupted Soviet Union. But only after the USSR’s fall did we know how truly inadequate US and Western intelligence gathering really was. Ideology and political systems aside, who would you rather see lead the world today, the US or Russia?