by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
To reflect upon, today’s Sabbath reading comes from two Russian texts.
One was a prepared script followed by impromptu elaboration which took place in Sochi on November 7. The second text followed in Moscow after the notorious football match in Amsterdam which happened later on the same day.
The first reading is from President Vladimir Putin, some of whose friends are Jewish. The second reading is from Yevgeny Krutikov, whose grandfather was a Soviet trade commissar during the Stalin administration and who has himself served in the GRU, before becoming a regular essayist for the semi-official Vzglyad publication.
Reading from papers on the lectern, Putin said: “The peril lies in the imposition of totalitarian ideologies and making them the norm, as exemplified by the current state of Western liberalism. This modern Western liberalism, in my view, has degenerated into extreme intolerance and aggression towards any alternative or sovereign and independent thought. Today, it even seeks to justify neo-Nazism, terrorism, racism, and even the mass genocide of civilians.”
This was the first time Putin has said the word “genocide” to refer to the killing by Israel of the Palestinian Arabs, although in his speech transcript the specificity of the reference was omitted.
A year ago at the previous Valdai Club convention, Putin had used the word genocide with particular reference to Ukrainian killings in Galicia in 1943 of “Jews, Poles and other civilians.”
Late in last week’s Valdai Club session, Putin was asked by an Algerian journalist, Akim Karief, to be specific about the Palestine genocide. “Mr. President, in light of the monstrous genocide that is currently unfolding in Palestine, would Russia support, would it help the international community to re-support the initiative to criminalize Zionism? There was such an initiative at the UN in the 80s to declare Zionism criminal.”
The exchange between Akim Karief and President Putin can be watched from Minute 3:35:53.
Putin’s reply: “I understand that I have talked about this many times, saying that any actions should be proportionate to the threat and what is happening on the other side. We certainly condemn any manifestation of terrorism; the attack on Israel is a manifestation, it happened on October 7. But, of course, the answer must be proportionate.”
“You know, now we need to strive to minimize, to zero, the suffering of the Palestinian people. It is necessary to immediately stop the fighting there, and everything must be done to ensure that both Israel and Palestine, in this case Hamas, agree on this. You can escalate, blame, condemn as much as you want, but now the most important thing is to stop fighting immediately. Israel is fighting, and it would seem that there is no place to fight anymore, but the fighting continues, the armed formations of the same Hamas are fighting. How long can this go on?”
Putin has made several earlier mentions of genocide, according to a search of the Kremlin archive. Almost all Putin’s references were to the German genocide against Russians during World War II. He has also identified the genocide against the Belarusians by the Germans; and the genocide by the Germans and Ukrainians in Galicia against “Jews, Poles and other civilians. This was the verdict of the international Nuremberg trials.”
Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/
Putin has often referred to the Nuremberg trials of the International Military Tribunal, 1945-46. About the International Court of Justice, Putin has referred to its judgement on Kosovo of July 2010; he has not acknowledged the ruling of January 24, 2024, on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Putin has also described the Kiev regime attacks on the Donbass since 2014 as genocide. He has defended Serbia from the allegation of the Srebrenica, Bosnia, genocide in 1995; he has also identified the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915.
“We are taking action to save the [Donbass] population from genocide and terrorism,” Putin told a meeting of Russian Defense Ministry officers to discuss the Special Military Operation in December 2022.
A year later, when the Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi met Putin at the Kremlin in December 2023, Raisi told Putin: “Humanity is suffering from unilateral measures and an unfair global system. We can clearly see this in the events unfolding in Gaza which are surely genocide and a crime against humanity.” Putin did not respond.
Five months ago, asked by a Turkish journalist what Russian role the president intends to play regarding “the attacks against the people of Gaza, which amounts to a level of genocide right now”, Putin replied: “First, I want to say that we are against terrorism in any form and any attacks against civilians, anywhere, in any country. However, what is happening in Gaza in response to the infamous terrorist attack in Israel does not look like a war. It appears to be the complete destruction of the civilian population. The only thing I can do is to reiterate Russia’s official position on this matter. We believe that this is a result of the United States’ policy, which has monopolised the Israeli-Palestinian settlement process and pushed aside all the instruments created for collective efforts to resolve this complex issue.”
The second reading for this Sabbath is from Yevgeny Krutikov’s Telegram platform which was published on Saturday afternoon, November 9.
Yevgeny Krutikov and his Telegram platform, Мудрая птица – “The Wise Bird”. This is the Reuters report of the sequence of events before, during, and after the game between Ajax Amsterdam and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
“Here is the chronology, as follows:
1. The people who came to Amsterdam from Israel, London, Paris and Berlin before the start of the football match refused to observe a minute of silence in memory of those who died in Spain due to flooding, because, according to these Neanderthals, Spain supports Palestine (this is not the case, by the way). They shouted, whistled and swore obscenely, while the Europeans were silent for a minute, because people had drowned.
2. Maccabi lost [to Ajax] 0-5. This in itself was an irritating factor.
3. After the football match, the same Neanderthals who refused to remember the innocent Spaniards in silence began to tear down other people’s flags on the streets of the foreign city, shout ‘Fuck Palestine!’, and carry on with general hooliganism.
4. For all this, they began to be beaten up a little and, according to an old Dutch tradition, bathed in the canals.
5. Then began what is described by the untranslatable word chutzpa. And what about us? A wild cry to all the world’s liberal media about anti-Semitism, pogrom, and for some reason the Holocaust, which is ‘not fully implemented.’ [There were] even almost scientific articles about European leftism. Even Putin [was reported] to have managed to put his particularly nasty peppercorns in there.”
“Or maybe we should put the question in a different way? Maybe it is necessary to explain to the Neanderthals among the Maccabi fans that a minute of silence must be observed, even if the drowned are uncircumcised Catholics. That you have to behave yourself in a foreign city. That no one owes you anything at all. You are no better than the Dutch, no God has made any personal covenant with you and has not promised you any land. You are not smarter either genetically or otherwise. And the Holocaust has nothing to do with the case, especially the “unprocessed” one. We’ve already seen through this camouflage.”
“Israel continues to mimic a secular state, although in fact it is an extremist religious sect in which children are taught from birth the theory of being chosen and that everyone around them owes them something. If you speak out against this religious extremism, you immediately become an anti-Semite. Or maybe something can be fixed in Israel? Should I write a secular constitution, for example?”
“And all it took was for a bunch of teenagers to just keep up appearances and be silent during a minute of silence. But no, they are God-chosen, and the Holocaust has not been completed, as foreign agents and refugee-liberal media keep explaining to us here for the second day.”
This is the gospel as it has been written. Let us pray.
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