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Hamas rockets are intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome (EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images)
Within hours of Hamas’s attack on Saturday, the celebrations had started in Iran. The Office of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei released a new propaganda video, glorifying the so-called “Al Aqsa Storm” operation. In Tehran’s “Palestine Square”, regime flunkies handed out drinks and sweets to passers-by.
In the coming days, Israel and Hamas will dominate the headlines. But, beyond the latest battle in a war between Israel and the Palestinians that has lasted for almost 80 years, something else is going on. Two autocratic states — Iran and Russia — are consolidating a relationship centred on certain ideological tenets. The first is hostility towards the West; the second, a deep-seated desire to overturn the US-rules-based order; and the third, as far as Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is concerned, a clash of civilisations.
Iranian hatred of Israel, and its resulting support of its enemies, is so long-standing as to be banal. Iran’s Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has funded, armed and trained Hamas since the early Nineties, and while funding stopped in 2012 after a fallout resulting from Hamas’s refusal to support Iran’s client Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, it was resumed in 2017. Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a military adviser to Khamenei, has declared his unequivocal support for the attack, while the spokesperson of Izzuddin Al-Qassam Brigades went even further. “We thank the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said. “Who provided us with weapons, money and other equipment! He gave us missiles to destroy Zionist fortresses, and helped us with standard anti-tank missiles!”
Russia has generally been more circumspect. It has had good relations with Israel, and President Vladimir Putin welded himself into his job by raging against Chechnya’s supposed “Islamic terror”, which he used as an excuse to level its capital city Grozny. But the more he has allowed his appetite for conquest to curdle into gluttony, the more he has yanked Russia away from the Western order that he once hoped to join.
Last year, Putin clearly decided that becoming a Western pariah was a price worth paying for filching Ukraine. But the price has been higher than he expected, so he’s had to improvise. Since February 2022, we have seen between Russia and Iran what amounts to an alliance of “rogue states” who need each other’s help as they are further locked out of international agreements and trade deals.
Only last month, Russia’s Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu (who has never actually served a day in the absurdly-medalled uniform he wears) visited Tehran to meet with Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, to discuss “strengthening bilateral defence and military cooperation”. Shoigu was then taken on a tour of Iran’s drone, missile and air defence arsenal at the IRGC Aerospace Force Headquarters in Tehran.
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Subscribe“For Tehran and Moscow, Ukraine and Israel have become two fronts in a wider clash between East and West.”
This is a plausible connection, and I buy it. What I don’t understand is why we should think this poses any more serious threat to the North Atlantic order than any of the previous threats of the post-war era. How long can an alliance between totalitarian states with mutually exclusive ideological bases (Russian nationalism vs. Islamic jihad) survive? It is a marriage of convenience that will dissolve just as fast as it arose.
No, it seems to me that the primary threat to the North Atlantic order is not the BRIC’s newfound confidence and assertiveness, but the newfound self-doubt and moral indecision of the US and her European allies. The most interesting thing about the policy implications of the Hamas attacks, from my perspective, is the response of many Muslim immigrants and refugees in multiple European countries: celebrating terrorism.
How will this affect North Atlantic views on immigration and refugees? How long will the nebulous ideals that have motivated open immigration and refugee regimes continue to drive policy in the face of the culture shock of seeing people whom you have welcomed into your country dance in your streets as random civilians in other liberal democracies are massacred in their streets?
If those nebulous ideals of ours were to be more insistently focused and distilled… if the West’s power brokers had a clearer vision as to whether Israel really was in the right… it would take about two seconds to eliminate Hamas. It would come at a real cost to non-combatants, no doubt – but non-combatants that danced in the street, that gave “aid and comfort” to the terrorists. When will we decide we’ve had enough of that? That is what will determine the longevity of the Russia-Iran alliance.
Besides the sheer brutality of the attack, and its focus on civilian targets, the most disturbing thing to me has been Palestinian supporters dancing in the streets across the west. We have people throughout the west taking joy at the brutal slaughter of innocent civilians – women, children, grandmas, people at a music festival of all places. There is something truly wrong with these people. Even if you distrust Israel, how can you possibly justify terrorism on such a brutal scale?
Be careful what you believe. It could be propaganda. If you are shown images of people dancing in the street, you don’t know for sure that the media has reported who they are, what they are doing there, and what they are saying (if speaking in a language you don’t understand). After 9/11 there were images of “people dancing in the street” broadcast that turned out to be from a completely different time.
You can’t make a comment on UnHerd without being accused of being on one side or the other. Your comment is totally correct because you can’t believe anything you see today – all news has been doctored in some way.
Really?
So, if you see Muslim filth celebrating slaughter of Israelis, it is just vivid imagination?
…oops, I think you poorly fitting mask just slipped there! Now the problem is anything you say related to Muslims or Islam isn’t worth reading. Noted.
Liam, you should have realised by now, indeed even from reading the article, exactly how an alarmingy large number of Muslims and Muslim states view the West and westerners……we are the enemy and they will not rest until we are subjugated…… It is naive of you to think that somehow this is not the case. The anger and righeous indignation displayed by Andrew F in response to the weekends atrocities is what any right minded person would feel. Anyone glorying in the slaughter is filth as far as I am concerned as well and they are doing so purely as a result of being Muslim. Religion of peace, my arse…….
This isn’t happening because Palestinians are Muslim. Any people dispossessed of their land and confined to a tiny corner of it would react. Name the people who would not? Understanding this is not to condone the recent viciousness, but merely to recognise it’s inevitability.
Yes, but Israel is going nowhere, its there to stay. The Palestinians will never get Israel ceded to them, this needs to be understood. The Israelis would co exist quite happily alongside their neighbours, as evidenced by long periods of “peace” between episodes when Arab terrorists and states repeatedly attack Israel…….if the arabs would only let them. The land is as much the Jews as the Arabs, and Israel is perfectly happy to let arabs reside within its borders peacefully………The problem here is miltant arabs repeatedly attacking civilians in Israel.
The two-state solution has been rejected by Israel. The viciousness of the dog chained up in the garden? It wasn’t vicious when it was chained up. Now it snarls and will bite when it gets a chance. No surprise.
The same can be said about the Jews. “A dead Arab is a good Arab” if you’re a newcomer to the situation and have nothing constructive to say, and obviously you don’t, then shut up
Overstated when you say “all news” doctored. News is subjectively filtered. Doctored implies a premeditation which is there some of the time. Many journalists try to be objective knowing that they are prone to subjectively mediate events.
The BBC famously reversed footage of the miners strike in the 80’s to show miners throwing objects at the police and then being charged at by the police on horseback, the reality (now admitted) was that the police charged first the objects were thrown after. Even Andrew Marr admitted this ‘terrible’ account on his Sunday show. Just to repeat, this was 40 years ago, imagine what happens now with technology…
Happily, today we have unbridled gullibility and mind-blowing naivety not to mention rank stupidity, all a nice fit for the endless propaganda spewed out by MSM.
Thank you
..glad to hear it ..a dying breed within MSM ..hence they’re escaping to indie online where their integrity has some chance of surviving.
I saw a huge crowd of people flying flags in celebration of what Hamas did, ostensibly in support of a free Palestine, with my own eyes, on an overpass in Toronto.
I am sure many others in Western cities saw the similar demonstrations themselves, as well – and similarly have it burned into their brain, as I do.
That it is unbelievable does not mean you can’t believe it.
Better word is astounding, or simply disgusting.
Don’t you support a Free Palestine then? Or do you think Hamas should present a strongly worded letter of protest whenever the IDF bombs mosques, schools, hospitals and homes; when they see their beautiful children blown to bloody poeces before their eyes; when they see their children tortured and frightened, the land stolen etc. Yeah, 75 years of endless, brutal, cruel oppression on a daily basis! ..yeah, a strongly worded letter is the appropriate response. Yeah, right.
The only reason any Mosques, schools or hospitals get bombed by the IDF is because the cynical Hamas terrorists that the Palestinians put in charge of Gaza ( great idea BTW….) site their missiles, ammo dumps and command centres etc in these places so they can go crying to the useful idiots in the west when the Isrealis hit back. They deserve everything they get. Hamas routinely torture and execute their own people who do not toe the line …. You are deluded and ignorant of whats really going on……..
You are delusional. You have no authority to comment. You don’t have friends in Gaza. I do. I have first hand information. Not media bias towards Israeli. Shut up
Thank you
You think Hamas goal is to come to a reasonable solution that is best for all involved?
The western media didn’t show Israeli’s celebrating over Palestinian suffering. This the problem. It’s biased media coverage. Nothing constructive to say, then shut up. You don’t have friends in Gaza, l do. I know what’s going on there with first hand information. Not MSM propaganda and lies
This is the Gaza, “the world’s largest open air prison”, that’s conveniently never displayed by the mainstream media. The poorest sections of Gaza are always sensationalized, but the wealthy neighborhoods where the Hamas leadership lives and recreates are blacked-out. Google search beautiful Palestinian neighborhoods, you’ll be shocked.
This is the Blue Beach Resort in Gaza, located on the beautiful Mediterranean .
?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1&resize=900%2C506.25
This house belongs to a Palestinian businessman in the “occupied” West Bank
Is this a joke? Something of a Jet Lag Travel satire?
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g663088-Gaza_City_Gaza-Vacations.html#/media/663088/
that’s an eye opener
Hopefully this pictures are from few weeks ago?
Now it should be just pile of rubble.
Nothing to do with politics.
No planning permission and terrible architecture.
Shut up
Doesn’t the daily, indiscriminate bombing of homes and hospitals affect the tourist trade at all? ..or is that part of the attraction? And would you say that house is fairly typical of a Palestinian home or is it exceptional? You’re giving propaganda a bad name man.. tone it down a bit!
Hamas doesn’t care about the entrepreneurs that work hard to cater to tourists; they don’t care if those livelihoods are destroyed by Israeli air strikes. Hamas gets rich from NGO donations, donations from empathetic nations (included the U.S.A.), and funding from allied terrorist organizations. Again, Google beautiful or wealthy neighborhoods in Gaza, Ramallah or Jenin and you’re NOT seeing the wholesale abject poverty that the mainstream media is always pushing. Yes, there’s poverty in the Palestinian territories, just as there’s poverty in every State in the U.S.A., and every country in the EU and in England.
Above is the Palestinian community of Taybeh, 7.5 miles N.E. from Ramallah, which happens to be majority Christian. It wouldn’t suck to live there.
Below is Jenin…not shabby…quite livable if you’re not Jewish.
Look up Irish MP Richard Boyd. He went to Palestine. You have nothing constructive. Shut up
It’s not propaganda that a Kosher restaurant in north London had its windows smashed, or that Free Palestine was daubed on a bridge nearby to taunt the local Jewish community after the weekend’s atrocities. There can be absolutely no doubt that a significant number people here in the UK are delighting in the slaughter, burning, kidnapping and dismembering of innocent children, men, women, grandparents, babies and young people enjoying a Peace Festival.
Bullshit….they have been out on every university campus.
They were burning and stomping Israeli flags right here in Times Square. I live in New York. These were not made up images.
You need to look up the dancing Israelis, now that’s an interesting dance group
Yes I guess it IS just possible that MSM might distort the truth on this occasion. I’m not sure if MSM has ever distorted the truth before but that may be due to my extreme gullibility, naivety and credulity.
In other words you can’t believe a single thing in any media, including Unherd. Is that what you are saying? Maybe the attacks last week were also propaganda, according to your theory?
If they had mounted a disciplined attack on Israeli military positions, or even targeted infrastructure in the illegal settlements, I could have defended that on the basis of a right to resist occupation. But this is just senseless nihilistic slaughter. It has no military strategy behind it and now the innocent Palestinians captive in Gaza will suffer the reprisals.
By their very nature ‘terrorists’ tend to avoid “disciplined attacks on military positions”.
Just ask the IRA.
Don’t be so Sanctimonious.
The nuclear bomb
did not differentiate between civilian or soldier !
Nor does a hand grenade for that matter, but can’t you stick to the point?
Incidentally I have never before been described as sanctimonious! Thank you.
That’s not true, pompous and sanctimonius.
What a ‘chippy’ fellow you are Valentine!
Please convey my commiserations to Mrs Valentine.
Charles, always like your comment on Unherd. This only reinforces the fact that Hamas are terrosists, intent only on death. They do not want peace. Anti-Israel sentiment has surfaced worlwide and their true colors are shown. In 1947 Israel fought to exist, and now have the capcity to obliterate any foe. I encourage them to do so.
The uncritical acceptance of the news reporting is, I think, evidenced here. The civilian deaths both sides have been high in the past. And are so in all conflicts. Count the body bags in weeks to come. The Palestinians are powerless in almost all respects, and they certainly do not control the reported narrative. To say so is not to support the Palestinians, but to seek the truth.
They slaughtered a bunch of kids at a music festival.
IDF slaughter Palestinians kids on a daily basis. Just doesn’t make as good a read
Thank you
You turn a blind eye to Israeli crimes
In 2023 prior to 7-Oct a total of 43 Palestinian children were killed by Israeli militias and the Israel army. Not one headline in the Western media! Now, I am not arguing for revenge, but it seems you do this. Now, a month later 10,000 Palestinians are dead, many many of them are children. Have you had enough now, are you hoarse from cheering, do you need to wash your hands?
The truth is that Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank are populations like that of North Korea, oppressed by their own more than anyone else.
Shut up. You are delusional
You have no authority. You don’t have friends in Gaza. I do. I have first hand information. And no, I’m not Palestinian. FYI I’m Italian and l stand with Palestine
That may be true. But it ignores the history. The Palestinians were evicted from their own land and have been cooped up in Gaza for decades. What kind of people anywhere would not revolt against this? To understand this is not the same as condoning the nature of the recent violence.
I was expecting comments like this. There is no justifying the slaughter of hundreds of young civilians. This was a focussed attack and not collateral damage.
Yes, and any commenter who thinks this is not a fight between civilizations is completely deluded. I originally thought the West has had their head in the sand, but given what the U.S. has done in the last several years, how can one conclude that it is not adding fuel to the fire? Does any rational human being still believe that Iran wants nukes for peaceful purposes?
IDF slaughter Palestinian kids on a daily basis. Just doesn’t make fine reading
Shut up. You turn a blind eye to Israeli crimes. Look up Rachel Corrie. She was murdered by the IDF. But of course, Israeli’s got away with murder
Nonsense. They control the whole narrative. Colonialist Israel. Apartheid Israel. White Supremacist Israel. Genocidal Israel. All lies told by the Palestinian propaganda machine and eaten up by woke elites and their lapdogs in the media. On almost every level our institutions have been captured by the work mind virus, and anti-Semitic anti-Israel narrative is a particularly cartoonish mapping of identity politics victimology onto an actual and easily verifiable history.
This is not true. This week a brilliant cartoonist was fired by The Guardian for submitting a cartoon showing Netanyahu wearing boxing gloves preparing for precision surgery on Gaza. MNBC has placed it’s three Muslim presenters off air. This is the picture throughout the established media which may as well be under Israeli control: The Palestinian POV is not being represented.
Thank you. But the Palestinian suffering in terms of beatings, jail, brutal occupation, killings eclipses that of the Israeli’s
“There is something truly wrong with these people.” That’s racism and bigotry. “These people” are just like you and me. I do not support what they do, but I think it’s easy to understand, and I think I might react like them in their position. More to the point, and this is my point, I think you might too.
Understanding is not condoning. But the idea that “these people” react as they do unprovoked is to dehumanise them. They can now be slaughtered in return with a clear conscience. By the likes of you (and me), I suggest.
If judging people who dance on the graves of slaughtered children makes me a racist, I’m okay with that.
Do you judge the young British Jews that fly across the world to join Israel’s military, rather than that of their own country, to oppress people that never hurt them?
You are conflating issues. So convenient,
IDF slaughter Palestinians kids on a daily basis. Just doesn’t make fine reading
Live in peace if you want peace. The Palestinians chose War and reaped Death. Why do you refuse to see it.
How do you just live in peace when you’re land is being systematically robbed and turned into settlements and you’re subject to daily humiliation?
Why do you refuse to see that?
No it isn’t, it is a shocking fact that ‘those people’ belong to a medieval sect and they are behaving in the medieval manner proscribed by that sect.
It would be good if it was ‘proscribed’ but I think the word you’re looking for is ‘prescribed’.
Do you refer to those who 1948 evicted 700,000 Palestinians? No. There’s nothing inherently bad or vicious about Palestinians more than there is of any other people on Earth. This recent vicious behaviour must be condemned, as must everything 1948 onwards, but you dehumanise an entire people and nearly 2 billion adherents of a religion.
These people might indeed be like you but they are not like me. That’s a big insult!
Of course I cannot tell for sure what you personally would do. But most people turn a blind eye to the underlying injustice, as I think you do here. In different circumstances many willingly join the Nazi SS or whatever. Would you? I can’t say but human nature leads to othering and one demonises the other. Of course, and I’ve said it already, I do not support the recent Palestinian actions, but they weren’t mad and bad when they were chained up in a corner of the land from which they were evicted. Palestinians are not mad and bad by inclination any more than you are. Oops.
No. There is no universal humanity. The arabs and muslim people are the product of a real lived history and present day education that makes them low empathy towards others and capable of the most inhumane acts – worse than the Germans ever did, more in line with the machete wielding Hutu militias.
You can call that racism all you want and denounce it all you want, that wont change a thing, there is sits, staring back at you – Reality.
I’ve said it already, I do not support the recent Palestinian actions, but they weren’t mad and bad when they were chained up in a corner of the land from which they were evicted. Palestinians are not mad by inclination any more than you are. Oops.
Let’s be clear about the ‘Palestinian supporters’ you refer to dancing in the streets. They are not only extremist Palestinians and other misguided Musilms but seemingly anybody with left leaning political views. These people openly support a terrorist organisation. This must not be tolerated in any civilised society!
Israel has been terrorising Palestinian children for decades. Doesn’t make good reading though
It’s such a shame that Islamic culture prioritizes Victory and Success for Islam over the lives of their children.
Does it? You clearly haven’t a clue. The shariahs first objective is the preservation of life. Check it out for yourself
“Left leaning”? I would say right leaning but certainly not right.
Anybody with left leaning political views would celebrate this barbarism! I personally know no one who leans left celebrating this. This is “imaginary” thinking on your part.
The New Left are morally bankrupt slugs. We must defenestrate them from our Public Institutions, especially the Universities and the Government Bureaucracies.
Fortunately the perps leave detailed records – its not just the German’s love of paperwork and rules that bit them in the rear – the UK labour party membership lists and donations/membership subscriptions in the bank system records will lead any future law enforcers to the perpetrators if there is a sudden re-surgence in the rule of law.
It makes a change from Israel celebrating its destruction of mosques, schools, hospitals and homes in Gaza and the blowing to pieces of innocent men, women and children. The brutality of freedom fighters will isually be proportionate to the brutality of the invaders. Bombing civilian targets in Gaza is an almost daily event! No outrage for that of course..
If you torture my child and bulldoze my home and murder my family and steal my land and starve me with blockades don’t expect me turn up with a strongly worded letter of protest will you!
Freedom Fighters my Ass. Leave in Peace or Die by War. Choose your destiny.
You are turning a blind eye to the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians for 75 years
News channels in countries like Australia are at least wary about offending lefty/woke masses. So what they show is consistent with accepted public sentiment: celebrations, marches, handing out sweets, dancing in the streets in support of what Hamas stand for. In addition to at best measured support for Israel’s right to fight back.
This is in response to other replies claiming doctored footages.
They have been taught to hate them.
Have you ever been to Gaza? I think the Israeli general in charge of the blockade spoke of dealing with “animals” – if you treat people as animals long enough then that’s what they become.
Remember that “War to End All Wars” !o!
Great post.
However, it was obvious for centuries and definitely for decades that Muslim savages have nothing useful to contribute to the West.
No so called “mainstream” politicians in Europe would point this out.
They will come up with usual platitudes about peaceful Islam and how multi culti is a future.
While using useful idiots like archbishop of Canterbury and other Christian leaders to support this moronic narrative.
Unfortunately our King and the rest of Royal Family, it pains me to say it, are part of the same plot to justify mass immigration from cultures which want to kill us.
You forget: One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. To expect freedom fighters to abide by the Marquis of Queensbury rules is naïve in the extreme. Indeed, the more brutal and oppressive the invaders are the more terrorist will be the freedom fighting. While I’m a pacifist myself I’m not naïve.
When discussing IRA terrorism in my own island with an Englishman I would ask: If Hitler had successfully invaded England in 1941 would you have fought back? Yes, of course. In the light of his oppressive and brutal tactics what limits would you impose on your freedom fighting? Usually the conversation stopped at that point as the penny dropped. When your mosques and schools and hospitals and homes are bombed and when your children are blown to pieces before your eyes, the ol’ MoQ rules are kind of out the window.
If the rule you followed led you to this place, of what use was the rule.
Tell me Liam, how is the future of Ireland looking today? Will it even be Irish? And what pray tell are you doing about it my brother in Liberation?
“As the penny dropped…”
The solution to this problem is to explain and acknowledge that the British are nothing like the Nazis… and to show where Israel fits in these ludicrous metaphors, too.
False moral equivalences have become the stock-in-trade of the activist class.
Off-topic and proud of it:
Just hang on a minute: “Like many unreasonable old men, Khomeini had a binary view of the world.”? Seriously? It’s a function of AGE?
Sorry, I hadn’t realised that the binary “net zero or boil” brigade, the binary “only white people can be racist” activists, the binary “support Remain or you’re a racist” brigade were all so OLD. Whatever face cream they use, whatever “work” they have had done, I want me some o’ that, because they sure as hell look like dummy-spitting infants to me.
Outstanding. And funny. Something socialists never are…
Also deflection from the women being brutalized for standing up to the regime?
Those people celebrating in New York, Berlin and London should be identified, rounded up and deported to Saudi Arabia or Iran today. I don’t think liberal societies can survive much longer if they allow the enemy – and they are the enemy – to enter, settle, take root and infiltrate our institutions. Academics who have declared support should be deemed enemy aliens and interned. Clinton wants MAGA to be sent to the gulag for de-programming….There is no middle ground anymore
Here we again or as history put it “once more into the fray”!
Or history repeating its self.
Itself damn it!
Of course there is a middle ground – tolerance. Once you start rounding up people, you are as guilty as the authoritarians you oppose.
There is no room for tolerance with religious fanatics.
I agree; it’s like the fantasy that you can bring up a child without ever disciplining it. Maybe it’s time to admit that Voltaire’s idea of defending everybody else’s right to say whatever they like is deluded rubbish.
We’re being played like idiots held to some magical ideal of behaviour which is used as a stick to beat us with, while those who basically wish to destroy us are given free rein to do whatever they like and their actions are always excused by our useful idiots.
But there’s a difference between words and actions.
This is very naive.
There should be no freedom for enemies of freedom.
People celebrating slaughter of Israelis don’t belong to the West.
Deporting them to systems they clearly claim to prefer, is perfectly reasonable option.
But what if they expand the enemies list to include you and I?
Tolerance has not worked so far.
The problem is that very many members of our Muslim communities who where not out on the street were quietly celebrating
Really? You are just a racist idiot for making that comment.
We were in the mosque in our hundreds, praying for peace and end of oppression.
But you carry on you you racist prat.
Just because it is true does not make me a racist
I saw an awful lot of pale skinned people in photos of protestors.
It seems like we are now beyond the pre-game show of WWIII and just witnessed the opening kick-off.
Palestinians are no enemy of mine, nor would I class Israel as an ally. In fact when Argentina invaded the Falklands, Israel was selling them weapons.
This isn’t to say I support these attacks or the Israeli response, the honest answer is I just don’t care. I’ll wager more Palestinians will be dead by than Israelis by the time it all calms down again, many of whom will be just as innocent as those killed by Hamas at the weekend
You are right about the weapons
Israel agreed to stop supplying the weapons if the UK stopped supplying weapons to Israel’s enemies. The UK did not agree.
Palestinians are not the problem. Hamas and their supporters are.
Pretty tough to round them up. Better to give their identies to Massad, they will take care of the rest. Think Munich 1972, the terrosists who survived were ultimately assasinated by Israel. You won’t read about the next “wrath of god”.
And yet Biden and Blinken, Sunak and Cleverly, Macron and Colonna, von der Leyen and Borrell etc., etc., persist in imagining that Russia, Iran, China etc., etc., talk the same language as us and are ultimately amenable to negotiation.
I wouldn’t attribute much of anything to Biden personally, as he seems to barely know where he is half the time. All that talk is just that, talk, something to spoon feed to the younger generations who have no experience with or appetite for civilizational conflict and will for some reason believe it when politicians tell them ‘everything is fine’. It also serves as a distraction for how it’s been their policies that got us to this point. They’d like us to forget that three decades of unrestricted globalism and the resulting de-industrialization of the west has drastically weakened the west’s ability to fight the conflict that’s coming.
It’s not accurate to make a sweeping accusation against the younger generation, because you haven’t spoken to all of them. There a lot of young people who are very well informed and sophisticated regarding politics.
A wise man once said all generalizations are false. Nevertheless, I’ll stand by the assertion that the vast majority of young people, even including people up to my own age, who barely remember the 80s have become far too accustomed to a unipolar world where we could pretend to be one big happy planet and everybody could get along if we just all talked things out and traded with each other. Such delusions were only possible to sustain while there was nobody to challenge American dominance. I woke up to it sooner than most but there are far too many that haven’t yet and some who are so deluded that they won’t or can’t let go of that ‘one world’ dream. I’ll grant I’m not unique in this regard and there are plenty of others who get it. A small minority out of several hundred million is still a lot of people, and better than nothing, but I’d wager a lot of money that they’re far outnumbered by silly headed idealists who still believe the globalist nonsense and who are not prepared for the reality that we are a world made up of many nations and peoples, and sometimes the goals and activities of these nations will be mutually exclusive with the goals of other nations, and in such times, the only options are surrender, or some form of conflict. That is what I contend young people are mostly unprepared to face.
I don’t think that’s true.
This “New World Order” looks a lot like the one that began in 1939.
Didn’t work out well.
For those who dream of a “Multipolar World,” well, you’re getting your wish.
Enjoy!
A unified world would need good “kings” to lead it, who are seen as fair and just by most. That really isn’t where we are, right?
More evidence for a budding Russia/Iran/China axis. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room. I saw this coming a couple years ago after the pandemic and so did a lot of others. We’d best hunker down for a civilization level conflict because we’ve got one whether we want it or not.
I decided not to comment after all.
I imagine the US Republican resistance to a massive foreign defense spending bill will evaporate following these events. Calls on Raytheon anyone?
Does any rational human being still believe that Iran wants nukes for peaceful purposes?
I don’t think anyone ever did.
I don’t see a Russo-slavic civilisation independant of the West. Though diverse, I suspect the populace prefers the Western standard of living. Russia will be a non-threat the day the West becomes independant of Russian oil.
China on the other hand willl continue to advance its agenda on the world stage. However, given its dependance on Western consumption, it will not strive to destroy the West.
Iran on the other hand will continue to promote an agenda to destroy Israel and thereby the West. One gets the feeling that the populace is held hostage by religious fanatasicm. As they openly support murder of civilians, perhaps it is time to step up the secret ops against the state. Personally, I would take the gloves off against Hamas and its supporters. It is also time to take a close look at the what Biden has done to facilitate Iran.
This grand thesis is resting on a flimsy assumption, that Hamas displayed military might. Their operation was certainly well planned but its success depended on a colossal screwup by an incompetent government. No $6billion was required…
Interesting thought this New World Order. I suppose we Europeans have imposed our thought processes, laws, priorities on the rest of the world for a very long time. But I do think we are looking like the last days of Rome now. We have become complacent, obsessed with minutiae, trivial, atomised into our special interest groups and it is at this point in our demise that we are filling our continent with people who do not care about the life we have made for ourselves. It may take a revolutionary resolve to wake us from this torpor and unite us once again to save our way of living, even our race.
Is it not very strange that we go from Covid, to energy crisis, to Ukraine, to migrant crisis, to gender ideology, to israel, and all whilst the west totally in-debts their nations whilst bringing in dystopian censorship rules pushing freedom of speech and freedom of movement and the right to protest out of the window. Society should wake up the plan and stop getting involved in mainstream propaganda. The small focus on narrow windows keeps your vision occupied by fake issues when the world is crumbling. I only wish we could collectively move to a better platform which does not allow us all to be split by differing views. Tolerance and love and compassion will be the only thing that frees us.
We’re beyond that. Our brains have not evolved. The climate is changing faster than we are.
Israel is a force to be reckoned with and I’d suggest they’ll target Iran munitions stocks and factories very soon. On the grounds of denying Hamas, justifiable, while denying Russian procurement, oh dear, sorry. Hamas will be hunted down and slaughtered as they cower behind civilians and hostages. A cynic could say Israel’s hawks didn’t intercept the attack deliberately in order to motivate a devastating reaction. I doubt they ever sleep. Unfortunately those peaceful innocent Gazans left are pawns in a deadly game. The mere shooting of an Archduke triggered WW1. What lies ahead? Whatever, the West will have to wake up.
The problem, to my mind, is that neither side is better than the other – they have heartfelt reason to distrust and even hate the west, whilst the corruption of the west is plain to see, perhaps through the contempt of the elite for their electorates, more likely through the recent wars fought under our flags. I guess neither side rules the world (yet)
Zzzz… All this is true, in spades, for Washington and London. I seek out differing views to my own, but what is the point of articles like this that just reheat standard US imperial rhetoric? The main prism is the continuing attempts by the United States (and its Western surrogates) to maintain their domination of the world. Even John Lewis Gaddis is prepared to speak of the US Empire, so anything (like this article) that ignores such a salient feature of international affairs can contain little to nothing of interest. The Western “rules-based order”!!! Funny.
Could Israel completely destroy the infrastructure of Gaza (shops residences etc) much like what happened to german and Japanese cities in WW2. Do they have the fire power to do it. The civilians would be given notice to leave.
They could do it. The only reason Israel doesn’t commit genocide (they’ve done literally everything else to the Palestinians) is that it doesn’t look too good for the soi-disant Jewish State to be doing something like that. Supporting genocide in Guatemala is one thing, but Israel actually doing one itself doesn’t look too good.
Looks like they are going todo it
Bring it on. The rules they seek to destroy constrain us far more than them. It’s time The West reverted to an old school foreign policy devoid of moralism and those who so desire to see the end of this world order reap the whirlwind.
The bear has made an enemy of Europe with his war in the west. He has embraced China and forgot that China plans to eat Russia far east. His aemy has been destroyed and now NATO will not help as the dragon eats Siberia. His alliance with Iran is even stupider. Note the Bible refers to the war of gog and maygog in which Russia is broken
Israel and its settlers have surreptitiously occupied major portions of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This movement has been supported by military might and suppression of protests, and passively accepted by the West. Basically the West, apart from some token lip service, would like the Palestinians to disappear into a rightwing apartheid state. And when armored resistance appears we ask: how and why did this happen?
Israel’s best in the world HUMINT, OSINT and SIGINT capabilities did not serve their purpose: the world’s worst terrorists have learned how to defeat *INT. The same capabilities sold to Australia’s billionaire bikies work perfectly against crime-witnesses like me. We have mortgages to pay and we attend regular gym classes.
The hugely impressive Gaza fence which sensed a ladder gently placed against it was breached multiple times without anyone notified. Sabotaging tech is such a triviality, sadistic pervert government insiders from e.g. the Australian Signals Directorate have been entertaining themselves with not just sabotaging, but weaponizing technology in Melbourne for more than a decade.
Have we learnt a collective lesson yet?
I don’t see the connection though Israel and Russia have good relations.
Where there may be a paradigm shift is the possible use by both nations of a tactical nuclear device on Gaza and Kiev.
I pray this doesn’t happen to the poor people of Kiev despite their corrupt government, but it may well be a rational response to the unfortunate persistence of this terrorist state.
Yes, rational genocide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEKFbB-v86c&t=1m34s
And Russian government is what?
Democratic and not corrupt?
You are just “sovietsk**a scat*na”.
Pity about the first half with its one-sidedness and its peppering of poorly disguised hatred, because it morphed into an interesting piece later on. I particularly liked…
“… the arc of history is bending: towards the birth of a new world order in which three civilisations — a Russo-Slavic civilization led by Russia, an Islamic civilisation led by Iran’s Shia Islamists and the Chinese Han civilisation — are all in conflict with a declining West”
It does indeed seem clear that there is now no turning back as the prime mover, money (isn’t it always) shifts away from the US dollar to the new BRICS+ counter reserve currency. Hopefully, it is still possible for the West to participate as the 4th part rather then die an ignominious death trying in vain to assert its One World Order and failing miserably.. as that may end in a nuclear holocaust.
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The price of the West’s courting of Ukraine just keeps getting higher.
“Iran and Russia see Gaza as a challenge to the West”
When did UnHerd turn into the Daily Telegraph?
The neocons want war with Iran
I agree.
You imply that this quotation indicates some kind of unthinking right-wing stance. It looks 100% plausible to me. What’s your objection?
All violence is to be regretted and abhorred. Let’s get that clear. But to frame this uprising as provoked-supported-celebrated by Russia and Iran is to deny-ignore the real predicament of the Palestinians. In any other world circumstance this would be universally recognised as an oppressed people rising up.
The dog is chained up in the corner of the yard not because it was angry or vicious but because others wanted the yard. The dog chained up in the corner of the yard has become angry and vicious. When one understands the behaviour of the dog in that light one is not supporting the behaviour of the dog.
This is NOT about Russia and Iran and to make it so is dishonest.
The Russia connection I don’t get. But to claim that Iran has no hand in this conflict is at best naive and at worst lying to themselves.
It’s the same as ignoring the US backing of Israel.
We could have had Russia on our side. Russia isn’t in any way ideologically aligned with Iran, it is simply the case that ‘Mine enemies enemy is my friend’ and as Russia grinds down the West’s infatuation with Ukraine, it will feel less need to align with Iran.
Biden, and Obama, never were friends of Israel.
They slaughtered innocent women and children. They didn’t go after military targets. If feel bad for the Palestinian people because they are ruled by authoritarian dogs. I have nothing but contempt for the Hamas.
Exactly.
The biggest oppressors of the Palestinians and the Iranians are their own leaders. The fact that an Israeli NGO was recently exposed as attempting to deliver up a Palestinian to the West Bank authorities and the ‘death penalty’ for the horrific crime of selling some land to a Jew tells you all you need to know about who the real oppressors are.
It was through purchasing parcels of land that Zionists began their conquest of Palestine and the ethnic cleansing of its indigenous Arabic-speaking population.
So, one party wants to buy a piece of property and the other party wants to sell it. Money is paid, a bill of sale is generated, the title to the property is transferred…how it that ethnic cleansing? My father grew up in a Jewish section of Newark, New Jersey in the 1920’s to 30’s, the same neighborhood as Philip Roth. Now that neighborhood is all black. Is that ethnic cleaning, or just a natural shift in local demographics?
This is a false equivalence. Eastern European Jewish migrants to the US had no intention of taking a part of the territory of the US, a country founded by Englishmen, and declaring it an independent Jewish homeland.
This is exactly what they did in Palestine.
Read a book. Jews from outside of the Middle East were immigrating to Israel starting in the late 1700’s, then increasing in the1800’s, during the time when the Ottoman Empire controlled the region, continuing to the time when Great Britain oversaw Mandatory Palestine (which has nothing to do with the people who now call themselves Palestinians). These Jews came to this precursor of Israel with money to buy land from Arab owners. They bought land from the indigenous Arabs…straight real estate transactions. Of the land that the Jews bought, 52.6% were bought from non-Arab landowners, 24.6% from Arab landowners, 13.4% from the controlling government, churches, and foreign companies, and only 9.4% from fellaheen (farmers).
None of this contradicts my position or supports yours. I don’t know why you bothered writing it.
I think the Native Americans of North and South America, whose lands the English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, and Russia claimed as their own, would argue with you about who owned what property and when.
Israel was “founded” on lands control by the British, which was earlier control by the Ottoman Empire, which at one time was controlled by the Roman Empire. The Arabs in question, who only started called themselves Palestinians in the 1960’s, were displaced Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Jordanians…caught in limbo after those countries lost Gaza, the Sinai, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank in war. And, in war, with the apparent exception of Israel, to the victors go the spoils.
Where are all these bills of sale? The 700,000 Palestinians were evicted point of a gun, blade of a bulldozer from their own land. I do not condone recent happenings but the demonisation of Palestinians as being mad and bad for absolutely no reason is ridiculous. Here in comments to this article is denied the history taught as fact even in Israeli universities.
Read a book. After WWII, and the establishment of the Jewish homeland of Israel, over 700,000 JEWS were expelled from: Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Jordan.
The Arabs, not Palestinians, who fled Israel, not at gun point, did so at the behest of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, who explained that they should leave for their own safety while their armies destroyed Israel. There armies lost…so, refugees camps were established in these countries, and after all these decades, the “Palestinians” still have been offered citizenship. The Arabs that stayed (Muslims, Christians, Druze) now make up 25% of the Israeli population and electorate, with full rights of citizenship. If you don’t believe that…try taking the time to read about the political, social, economic, religious, ethnic demography of present day Israel. It’s all available in black & white…or you can visit the country in person.
As for “bills of sale”, my title and bill of sales are registered with my county clerk…I’m certain that the same is true in Israel. Land ownership registration is universal in democracies.
You seem to have only read Leon Uris who was employed as a propagandist by the nascent Israeli state. To deny the name “Palestinians” to those who were expelled from Palestine is a nonsense. People are what they call themselves. Palestine is the name most commonly used for the area since Roman times. It’s like saying denying those from France to be French by calling them Europeans. Yes, Palestinians are Arabs but they are also the people from Palestine, they are Palestinian. Yes, some did advise Palestinians to flee, but mostly they did flee because of the advice, they fled the violence of the Israelis. This is well documented and is what is taught even in Israeli in universities, albeit sotto voce.
Who now “owns” the land, according to some doubtless meticulous land registry, does not obscure the fact that land was once lived on by Palestinians, and they were not paid for it.
Yes, some 20% or a bit more of those living in Israel are not Jews. I note that in South Africa not all Blacks were condemned to live in the Homelands, a similar proportion were Section 10 blacks, permitted to live in White SA. But nobody denies Apartheid by quoting this fact. Whether you like the SA comparison or not, 700,000 Palestinians were forced of their own land barrel of a gun, blade of a bulldozer.
Read something which is not just confirmation bias.
I’m having a second go at a response to this. The often voluntary movement of Jews from Muslim countries to Israel happened AFTER the expulsion of the Palestinians. The expulsion of the Palestinians was not in retaliation to any movement of Jews. The LATER event can not cause the EARLIER. Yet you here justify the EARLIER expulsion of the Palestinians from Israel by the LATER movement of Jews from Muslim countries. That’s just dishonest argument.
Even by your twisted logic, Jews were trying “reconquista” of lands which was stolen from them by Muslim/Arab invaders.
No different from reconquista of Christian lands in Spain from Muslim invaders.
The West stupidly allowed 5th column of Muslims to invade Europe again.
Time to cleanse the land again.
The Jews were expelled from Palestine by the Romans in 70 AD, several centuries before Islam.
The Muslims who were expelled from Spain were ethnic Spaniards. Only the ruling elite of Spain were of Arab-Berber descent and after centuries of intermarriage even they were almost entirely of Spanish blood.
Sorry, but the “Jews were NOT expelled from Palestine* by the Romans in 70AD”.
In fact their somewhat chaotic rebellion of AD 66-70 was crushed and Jerusalem plus the Temple were thoroughly sacked.
Move on 60 or more years and there were still plenty of Jews around for the next unsuccessful rebellion, that known as ‘Bar Kochba’.
(*Then the Roman Prefectorial Province of Judea.)
Even Jewish sources I can find claim mass expulsion of Jews from Palestine by the Romans in 70 AD. There must have been some Jews left there if there were further revolts, but the point here is that by the time of the Arab conquest Palestine was no longer a Jewish country.
The dog is chained up in the corner of the yard not because it was angry or vicious but because others wanted the yard. The dog chained up in the corner of the yard has become angry and vicious. When one understands the behaviour of the dog in that light one is not supporting the behaviour of the dog.
You’re so in love with your narrative of the oppressed Palestinians rising up that you’re willfully blind to the bigger picture. Liberals just love their black and white myths, which give them the sense of righteousness that they so desperately crave.
Rubbish, the black versus white, good versus bad thinking is rampant with the MAGA crowd.
Far left liberals would have been a better term for me to use. I don’t deny that Trump supporters have their own deluded mythology but I’ve always despised ivory tower elitists making excuses for violent predators while saying nothing about the people that they victimize. And it’s become even more odious with today’s social justice warriors advocating rioting, reverse racism, segregation, government censorship, and the genital mutilation of children among other odious policies.
Yeah, you’re wrong, because you’re using simplistic woke ahistorical pop psychology to describe a situation going back long before any accusation of ‘oppression’ made any sense. From the very start, it’s been a matter of Israel making concessions and offers of peace and showing restraint in the face of an entity that has always explicitly wanted Israel’s total destruction, and to that end has propagandized its people with virulent anti-Semitic venom the Nazis would be proud of. Comparisons of this invasion with the actions of the Nazi Eisantzgruppen death squads have been made and they are apt.
The recent happenings are not supported by me. But understanding the real history is important. 700,000 Palestinians were evicted point of a gun, blade of a bulldozer. The idea that those who left centuries ago were entitled to the land is a nonsense. It would be like restoring France to the Huguenots today. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia 1905 there were then 25,000 Jews in Palestine. In 1948 6% of what is Israel today was owned by Jews and their proxies. Where is the bill of sale?
Your narrative is what has allowed the Palestinians to be cooped up in Gaza. Whatever you think of them now, they were not mad and bad when chained up.
Well, I suppose that you and your ilk have to say that you do not support the recent atrocities (you call them happenings), your narrative suggests otherwise. There are plenty “bills of sale” & who were the “proxies”? The lies about bulldozers & point of a gun and only promoted by leftists and those with a hatred of Jews. What is nonsense is that the “Palestinians” who were only invented in 1964 have a right to ALL the land.
1964? That’s a nonsense date. Palestine as an area has had that name since Roman times. Germans are Germans and Italians are Italians despite neither name existing so firmly in history as does Palestine, and neither Germany nor Italy existed as a nation until the 1870s. Palestinians were those living in Palestine. Palestinians do not claim ALL the land, you must be referring to the Israelis, they claim only that land they occupied for centuries before being evicted.