Common Grounds

Our Friday News Analysis | In Search of a Nation's Soul (Part 7)

October 21, 2022

A Soviet monument to a friendship between Ukrainian and Russian nations has been demolished in central Kyiv, Ukraine

Let's Get Radical … Be Kind!

“As the war in Ukraine escalates out of control, out comes vicious, scapegoating slurs against those who speak for peace: ‘cronies,’ ‘puppets,’ ‘stooges,’ and ‘agents.’

Opposing the horror of war is not ‘anti-European,’ ‘anti-Ukrainian,’ or ‘pro-Russian.’

It's common sense.”

Clare Daly, Member
European Parliament

What is better?

A cataclysmic apocalypse or a catalytic thrust toward mutual trust!

Are a Ukrainian-Russian and an EU-US/NATO – Russian Quest to Co-Exist on the horizon?

Is there another choice?

Should terror for or against, perpetrated by either or both with the inevitable repercussions of reprisals, reign?

Blood begets more blood, triggering the warring parties to fortify their resolve to regain their dignity.

The people of Ukraine have split apart, as are the people of Russia. The world is enraged.

The task is no longer a question of 'who is right' but focuses on building a path that will best serve all in a way that embraces mutual interests and human courtesy.

Can and will the GOOD Ukrainians and the GOOD Russians destroy their enemies by becoming friends (again) with all the give and take to make and keep the friendship?

Can and will the GOOD people living under the EU-US/NATO Axis and the GOOD people of the Russian Federation and their allies destroy their enemies by becoming friends (again) with all the give and take to make and keep the friendship?

What does it take to destroy one’s enemies? Friendship!

What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive?

By Abraham A. van Kempen, featuring Westerners live in denial, convinced they're the good guys by British Journalist Jonathan Cook based in Bethlehem.

Cape Canaveral, 21 October 2022 | If you know of any story that is decisive, tell the world. We're still searching.

We can move toward a better tomorrow. There are good and bad people. Good people on all sides can learn to get along. Corrupt people can't. Of course, the good can become ruthless and vice versa because we all have the good, bad, and ugly within us. What we choose defines who we are. Right now, and for too long, the depraved people in the region hijack the good people, a minority tyrannizing the silent and scared majority.

Most Ukrainians and most Ukrainians of Russian descent, tired and stressed out, seek a future without war. Both do not support indiscriminate brutality against the other. They desperately want security and peace. Many of the Ukrainians (73.8%) and the Ukrainians of Russian descent (85.7%) want peace, heretofore, either not realized or denied by all sides of the Divide. This is breaking news.

Breaking News! They Want Peace

Most respondents are shocked when they discover that the other craves peace and that just about all misconstrue each other's intentions. It gets worse. Most everyone wants peace, but few agree on the route to getting there. Even if I invite only the 'peace makers' to partake in a feast of culinary delights buffet-style, I will have to separate them into two rooms. Why? One group, a slight majority, wants a two-state solution. The other group, a minority, wants a one-state solution. But then you might think each group would break bread together in separate rooms. Wrong! Instead, they'd probably be cracking each other's skulls (figuratively speaking), arguing who's right and who's wrong. Some will still claim, "what's mine is mine. What's yours is mine also."

Impotence Among Leaders. What are they waiting for?

The leadership should concoct more palatable recipes. And, if leaders can't stand up to the heat, tell them to get out of the kitchen. Leaders who cannot hammer out an acceptable peace resolution are not worth their salt and should be democratically replaced. Of course, it is easier said than done from my ivory tower. But the region's leaders must creatively combine the many regional contradictions to produce a well-balanced yet spicy feast.

The alternative would be another Israeli-Palestinian Quest to Co-exist for decennia to come. Europe cannot survive that long without Russian oil and gas.

Seventy percent of the people on either Divide fear the other. Seventy percent of all Americans loathe the Russians and vice versa.

Most Ukrainians fear neither. A small percentage of Ukrainians of neo-Nazi persuasion hate the Russians.

Almost 100 percent of all the people on all Divides, whether they hate the other or not, don’t want a nuclear crater in their backyards.

The clowns in Brussels and their stooges in Washington, DC, parading as world leaders, have their work cut out for them.

Westerners Live in Denial, Convinced They're the Good Guys

Source: Middle East Eye
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/westerners-live-denial-convinced-theyre-good-guys

By Jonathan Cook
Published October 14, 2022

Stark contradictions in the West’s treatment of the Ukraine war and the occupation and siege of Palestine should serve as a wake-up call

A woman poses for photos in front of the giant poster form of a postage stamp depicting the Crimean Kerch Bridge on fire in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 8 October 2022 (Reuters)

The ugly truth is that Westerners dwell permanently inside their bubble of disinformation,
one puffed up by their leaders and the media,
that allows them to imagine themselves as the good guys.

No one took responsibility for the explosion over the weekend that ripped through a section of the Kerch Bridge that linked Russia to Crimea and was built by Moscow after it annexed the peninsula back in 2014.

But it was not just Kyiv’s gleeful celebrations that indicated the main suspect. Within hours, the Ukrainian authorities released a set of commemorative stamps depicting the destruction.

Had the Palestinians openly celebrated blowing up a bridge and killing Israeli civilians, who can imagine western media reports being similarly supportive?

Russian President Vladimir Putin was under no illusions either. On Monday, he struck out with a torrent of missiles that hit major Ukrainian cities such as Kyiv and Lviv. It was a pale, Slavic echo of Israel’s intermittent bombardments of Gaza, which are expressly intended to send the Palestinian enclave "back to the Stone Age."

If the scenes looked familiar – an attack by one party, followed by a massive retaliatory strike from the other – the mood and language that greeted the Ukrainian attack and the Russian counterattack felt noticeably different from what passes for typical western commentary about Israel and Palestine.

Western journalists, politicians, and analysts welcomed the blast on the Kerch Bridge with barely concealed excitement. At the same time, Moscow’s strikes on Kyiv were uniformly denounced as Russian brutality and state terrorism. That is not how things work when Israel and Palestinian factions engage in their rounds of fighting.

Had the Palestinians openly celebrated blowing up a bridge in East Jerusalem, a territory illegally annexed by Israel in the 1960s, and killed Israeli civilians as collateral damage, who can imagine western media reports similarly supportive?

Nor would western academics have lined up, as they did for Ukraine, to explain in detail why destroying a bridge was a proportionate act and entirely under the rights in international law of a people under belligerent occupation to resist.

Instead, there would have been thunderous denunciations of Palestinian savagery and "terrorism."

In reality, Palestinian resistance nowadays is far more modest – and yet still receives western censure. Palestinians only need to fire a homemade rocket or launch an "incendiary balloon," usually ineffectually out of their cage in Gaza. Gaza is their open-air jail. They have been besieged for years by their Israeli persecutors – to incur the wrath of Israel and the western powers that claim to constitute the "international community."

Even more perversely, when Palestinians solely target Israeli soldiers, as they are unambiguously entitled to do under international law, they are similarly reviled as criminals.

Regular rampages

But the double standards do not end there. Western media and politicians were unreservedly appalled by Moscow’s retaliatory strikes on the Ukrainian capital. Despite the media’s emphasis on Russia’s targeting of civilian infrastructure, the number of civilians killed across Ukraine by the wave of missile hits on Monday was reported to be low.

Western media are far less horrified regarding Israel’s regular rampages across Gaza – even when Israel "retaliates" after much less provocation and when its strikes inflict far greater suffering and damage.

And, of course, it is not just Israel benefiting from this hypocrisy. The United States' “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign that initiated the war on Iraq in 2003 – and so impressed western commentators – killed many thousands of Iraqi civilians. Russia’s strikes on Kyiv pale in comparison.

There are other glaring inconsistencies. After Russia’s missile strikes, Ukraine is gaining an even more receptive ear in western capitals to its demands for additional weaponry to help regain the eastern territories Moscow has annexed.

By contrast, no one in the West suggests that the Palestinians should be armed to help them fight off decades of Israeli occupation and siege. Quite the reverse. Western weapons invariably rain down on Gaza, supplied to the belligerent Israeli occupier by the parties now condemning Russia.

And in stark contrast to Britain’s whole-hearted support as Ukraine battles to stop Russia’s annexation of its eastern territories, the UK’s prime minister Liz Truss stated only last month that she might reward Israel for its illegal annexation of Jerusalem by moving the British embassy there.

Irish lawmakers on Wednesday called out the West's “double standards” for imposing sanctions on Russia after invading Ukraine but not doing the same to Israel over its violations in Palestine. pic.twitter.com/wbMI6meivW
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) March 8, 2022

Whereas Palestinians are constantly inveigled into postponing their liberation struggle and waiting for their occupier to agree to peace talks, even when Israel openly scorns engagement, Ukrainians are pushed by the West to do the exact opposite. They are expected to delay any negotiations with Russia and focus on the battlefield.

Similarly, those who promote talks between Israel and Palestine that will never take place are praised as peacemakers. Those who advocate for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia – when Moscow has expressed a repeated willingness to negotiate, even if the West disparages its overtures – are rounded on as appeasers.

Russia, meanwhile, faces sustained and comprehensive sanctions imposed by western states to bring it to heel.

By contrast, those proposing a far weaker tool – grassroots boycotts – to pressure Israel to loosen its choke-hold on Gaza are smeared as antisemites and face legislation to outlaw their activities by the same western states sanctioning Moscow.

It is almost as if the "freedom-loving" West has an entirely inconsistent agenda regarding the plights of Ukraine and Palestine. Israel’s hold on Palestine is unfortunate but justified; Russia’s over Ukraine is emphatically not.

Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s “unprovoked aggression” is heroic. Palestinian resistance to Israel’s violence – invariably presented as self-defense – is terrorism.

Double standards

Western news at the moment is a litany of these double standards and legal and ethical contradictions – and yet barely anyone seems to notice.

Westerners, for example, are currently cheering the protests in Iran, where women and girls have taken to the streets and created mass school disturbances. The death of Mahsa Amini sparked their protests after she was taken into custody for wearing her hijab head covering too loosely.

Western media celebrate these young women casting aside the hijab in defiance of the unaccountable clerics who rule over them. The West bewails the beatings and attacks they receive from a tyrannous, patriarchal Iranian theocracy.

And yet there is no comparable solidarity with Palestinians when they collectively defy an unaccountable Israeli occupation army that rules over them. When they turn out to protest at the fence that Israel has built all around Gaza, they are shot down by Israeli snipers. The wall imprisons them – preventing them from leaving for work, seeing family overseas, or reaching hospitals much better equipped than their own that has been under Israeli blockade for years – Israeli snipers shoot them down.

Where is the applause for those brave Palestinian protesters standing up to their oppressors? Where are the denunciations of Israel for compelling Palestinians to endure a tyrannous, apartheid-enforcing Israeli military?

Why is it entirely unremarkable that Palestinians – young and old, men and women – are regularly beaten or killed by Israel? Is the death of a single Iranian woman enough to reduce the western media to paroxysms of outrage?

And why, just as pertinently, does the West care so much about the lives of young Iranian women and their hijab protests when it appears not to give a damn about these women’s lives or those of their brothers when it comes to enforcing decades of western sanctions? Those restrictions have plunged parts of Iranian society into deep and sustained poverty that puts Iranian lives at risk.

Such is the reflexive hypocrisy that Israeli women who have shown no solidarity with Palestinian women abused and killed by the Israeli army turned out last week to cut their hair in a public act of sisterhood with Iranian women.

Western dictates

There is nothing new about these double standards. They are entrenched in western thinking, based on a profoundly racist, colonial worldview that sees “the West” as the good guys and everyone else as morally compromised or irredeemably evil if they refuse to bow to western dictates.

That is highlighted by the current battle of an 88-year-old Palestinian businessman, Munib al-Masri, to win an apology from Britain.

At his instruction, two eminent lawyers, Luis Moreno Ocampo and Ben Emmerson, reviewed the evidence of crimes committed by British forces before 1948, when the UK ruled Palestine under a mandate. Luis Moreno Ocampo is a former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, and Ben Emmerson is a former United Nations expert on human rights.

Westerners dwell permanently inside their bubble of disinformation that allows them to imagine themselves as the good guys – whatever the evidence proves.

When Britain withdrew, it effectively allowed Zionist institutions to take its place and create a self-declared Jewish state of Israel on the ruins of the Palestinians’ homeland.

The evidence documented by Ocampo and Emmerson – which they describe as "shocking" – includes crimes such as arbitrary killings and detentions, torture, human shields, and home demolitions weaponized as collective punishment.

If that all sounds familiar, it should. Israel has been terrorizing Palestinians with these same policies over the past 74 years. That is because Israel incorporated the British mandate’s "emergency regulations" permitting such crimes into its legal and administrative codes. It simply continued what Britain had started.

Masri hopes to present the 300-page dossier to the UK government later this year. According to the media, it will be "reviewed thoroughly" by the Ministry of Defense. But do not hold your breath waiting for an apology.

In reality, Ocampo and Emmerson did not need to conduct their research. Nothing they tell the UK government will be a revelation. British officials already know about these crimes. And there is no remorse – as demonstrated by if nothing else- that Britain continues to back Israel to the hilt even while the Israeli military continues the same reign of state terror.

Israel’s task was to rebrand as a "western-style democracy" the British mandate’s brutal colonial rule over the Palestinian population. Israel receives billions of dollars in aid from the US every year and never faces the consequences for any crimes it commits.

The ugly truth is that westerners dwell permanently inside their bubble of disinformation, one puffed up by their leaders and the media, that allows them to imagine themselves as the good guys – whatever the evidence proves.

The double standards in the West’s treatment of Ukraine compared to Palestine should be a moment when that harsh realization finally dawns. Sadly, the western public seems to sink deeper into the comforting illusion of self-righteousness.

_________________________

Next week, the American Soul Versus the Russian Soul. Stay tuned!

Here is one Russian perspective, summarized by the Russian philosopher Alexandr Dugin:

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine's (AFU’s) counterattack in the Kharkiv region is a direct attack by the West on Russia. Everyone knows this offensive was organized, prepared, and equipped by the US and NATO military command and under their direct supervision. It is not only the use of NATO military equipment but also the direct involvement of Western aerospace intelligence, mercenaries, and instructors. In the eyes of the West, this is the beginning of 'our end.’ Once we have made a weakness in defense of the territories under our control in the Kharkiv region, we can be further defeated. This is not a small success of the Kyiv counteroffensive but the first tangible success of the NATO forces ‘Drang Nach Osten’ (obsessed to spread Eastward).

The spiritual and religious aspect is at the heart of the global confrontation. Russia is at war with an anti-religious civilization that fights God and overthrows the foundations of spiritual and moral values: God, the Church, the family, gender, and man. With all the differences between Orthodoxy, traditional Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or Buddhism, all religions and the cultures built upon them recognize divine truth, the high spiritual and moral dignity of man, honoring traditions and institutions - the state, the family, the community.

The modern West has abolished all this, replacing it with virtual reality, extreme individualism, the destruction of gender, universal surveillance, a totalitarian 'abolition culture,' a post-truth society. Open Satanism and outright racism flourish in Ukraine, and the West only supports them. We are dealing with what the Orthodox elders call the 'civilization of the Antichrist.' Russia's role is, therefore, to unite believers of different faiths in this decisive battle.

It would be best if you did not wait for the world's enemy to destroy your home or kill your husband, son, or daughter. At some point, it will be too late. God forbid we live to see such a moment. The enemy offensive in the Kharkiv region is just that: the beginning of a real war of the West against us. The West demonstrates its intention to start a war of annihilation against us - the third world war. We must bring together all our most profound national potential to repel this attack, including thought, military force, economy, culture, art, and internal mobilization of all state structures.

Russia is at war with the collective West, with NATO and its allies (though not with all of them: Turkey and Greece have their position, and some European countries, primarily but not only France and Italy, do not want to participate in a war with Russia actively). Yet, the threat of a third world war is getting closer and closer.”

_______________________

Related Articles Recently Posted on www.buildingthebridgefoundation.com:

Our Friday News Analysis | 'In Search of a Nation's Soul (Part 6),' 14 October 2022.

Our Wednesday News Analysis | Why Being a ‘Bad Jew’ Is No Longer Bad for Jewish Americans,' 19 October 2022.

The Evangelical Pope| 'Live, Let Live,' 16 October 2022.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of the Building the Bridge Foundation, The Hague.