It was revealed today (Thursday) that for the first time, pilots from the Israeli Air Force participated in a training exercise with military pilots from Pakistan and the UAE. The joint-drill was conducted during Exercise Red Flag that ended last week in Nevada, US. Fighter aircraft from the US and Spain also participated in the drill. Exercise Red Flag is a unique training drill during which air forces from all over the world work together in several types of missions.
After the Gaza war in 2014, the Jewish community all around the world especially in the UK was targeted by extremists. Some cases were highlighted in the media and many disappeared as usual but the Police tried hard to bring the offenders to justice. One of the cases was about 52 year old Mr. Yisro’el Shalom, who brought his case to me. Mr. Shalom had been living in the Borough of Newham in East London for nearly 22 years and in the last three years, he was attacked 340 times and verbally abused nearly 60 times. He was physically tortured, kicked and punched in his face by a gang of Asians (most probably Pakistanis) because he was a Jew living within the Muslim community.
“I don’t know if these people are acting on orders from Russia, but they are clearly what Lenin called ‘useful idiots,’” said Mika Pettersson, the editor of Finland’s national news agency and an organizer of the editors’ open letter. “They are playing into Putin’s pocket. Nationalist movements in Finland and other European countries want to destabilize the European Union and NATO, and this goes straight into Putin’s narrative.”
It plays this way (excerpted from the above cited article by Higgins):
Mr. Backman, who also represents the Donetsk People’s Republic, the breakaway state set up with Russian support in eastern Ukraine, denied targeting Ms. Aro as part of any “information war.” Rather, he insisted that Russia was itself the victim of a campaign of disinformation and distortion conducted by the West.
Also in The New York Times (published two days ago):
STOCKHOLM — With a vigorous national debate underway on whether Sweden should enter a military partnership with NATO, officials in Stockholm suddenly encountered an unsettling problem: a flood of distorted and outright false information on social media, confusing public perceptions of the issue.
The claims were alarming: If Sweden, a non-NATO member, signed the deal, the alliance would stockpile secret nuclear weapons on Swedish soil; NATO could attack Russia from Sweden without government approval; NATO soldiers, immune from prosecution, could rape Swedish women without fear of criminal charges.
This report analyses Russian propaganda and disinformation – here collectively called strategic deception – concerning the conflict in Ukraine. The strategic deception is not exclusively a Russian term, but it does capture what we think is an essential feature of the current Russian foreign and security policy. It is driven by attempts to put the adversary into a defensive posture and off balance, and thus, to create conditions for surprise.
The methods utilized in contemporary Russian strategic deception are partly the same that were already used in Soviet propaganda. But where Soviet propaganda was anchored in ideological truth claims, the contemporary Russian variant can be compared to a kaleidoscope: a light piercing through it is instantly transformed into multiple versions of reality.
The rise of Novorossya is the most significant political development since the collapse of the USSR. It is a new politics, one that combines nationalism and socialism into a Christian, humane and just political order that has not been seen before. That it rises on the ashes of “independent Ukraine” and on Orthodox territory is no accident.
Posted to YouTube by DailyMilitary.News, Feb. 16, 2016.
Addenda
The characteristics of Russian propaganda are: generating very strong emotions, aggression, and a dramatic departure from reality. Russian television stations, with very few exceptions, create a more and more complicated and unpredictable reality, ‘generate fears, bringing people to the brink of chaos and panic’. Once created, the huge stress damages the mechanism of rational thinking, people are herded into a crowd, where archaic instincts take over, triggered by the simplest of emotions’.[1]
In Russia, whoever is not with the Kremlin, whoever criticizes Putin, or even doubts the righteousness of his policies, is considered a traitor and an enemy. Against the very few who dare express minimal reservations towards official policy, a movement formed recently, with the blessing of power, the Anti-Maidan movement, with the express objective to combat any position, to wipe out the smallest trace of doubt towards Putin’s wisdom. Anti-Maidan fights against the ‘5th column’, the enemy within.[2]
A surprise combat-readiness check of the Russian Armed Forces began on August 25 and is due to finish on August 31. As part of the exercises, the southern district troops, part of the troops of the western and central districts, as well as the northern fleet, the Russian Aerospace Forces, and the high command of the Airborne Troops were put in full combat-readiness mode.
The composition of the Free Syrian Army is the most sensitive issue at this moment because we have been very critical about it. I think these troops are somehow controllable, but there is no guarantee for the future. Experience shows that, in the end, these kinds of groups are steered by global forces. Yet, Turkey considers these groups as moderate opponents to the regime, but we know that Syria and the countries supporting it like Russia consider these groups to be terrorist organizations. So, I believe this is the most difficult issue for Turkey to deal with in cooperation with neighboring countries and Russia. I think that in the upcoming stages of the operation in Syria, this issue will be coordinated in detail with regional countries as well as with Russia. This problem should be solved if we want to create a united front against terrorist groups and the countries supporting them.
It is an awful campaign as well as an awful politics for Americans.
Hillary Clinton – Red-Green alliance Donald J. Trump – Brown new nationalists
Both themes go back to Moscow (but I may try to give up that obsession for a while). 🙂
Basically, we are too divided a nation, and we should really be wrestling with the sources of that division. They’re not necessarily in our lifestyles nor justified by the latest outrages appearing in the news.
We’ve been a compassionate people, a Christian-majority nation, with a secular Constitution and the courage to have come this far with much of the implementation of its ideals and sense of mission. Why the candidates and the public are whipping up so much mud — or getting into so much trouble — and spattering the same everywhere eludes answers.
Has our nation simply become bored with itself and in a mood to rumble?
Although the Obama Administration appears to be taking the pacifist tack of refusing enmity with Moscow (say, over the demise of Turkey as a NATO-spirited state and potential European Union partner), BackChannels finds it impossible to dismiss the presence of the Cold War’s “Russia v NATO” / “Moscow v Washington” contest over existence beneath the shadow of nuclear mutually assured destruction.
That argument seemed to have been settled in 1991 while functioning democracy and rule of law seemed also to have been on its way to the former Soviet communist state.
What perhaps has gotten in the way is an inherent medievalism characteristic of Russian political culture.
Flipping from the tsars to the Party to the “vertical of power” federation has changed primarily who is in charge, not produced (in the Soviet Era) any “dictatorship of the proletariat” or now in Putin’s era the distribution of power and expansion of economic development familiar to the more true democracies of the west.
One may ask what is happening to those democracies — as well as America’s — as each “Allahu Akbar attack” promotes xenophobic nationalism and post-Soviet disinformation produces legions of misdirected “old comrade network” politicos and strident (also anti-Semitic) Muslims and “Islamists” (on BackChannels, the two intertwine to become the “Red-Green Alliance” involving organizations as familiar as Black Lives Matter, Palestinian Solidarity, and International Solidarity).
One should ask: what is Syndicate Red Brown Green doing in the United States?
How is it that whether generally aligned with the Democratic Party or the Republican, we appear — at least as portrayed through general mass media — to have become vicious toward one another?
While Russians in their majority continue on track with economic suffering (and Syrians not directly protected by Assad continue suffering Russians), “Moscow” appears to be getting “Washington” to look much like itself with breathtaking corruption associated with candidate Clinton and in Trump the now recognizable brawling, sprawling, and outsized narcissism more familiar to Moscow lackeys like Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yanukovych.
Trump, to his credit and perhaps innocence after all, has yet to rack up a record of scandals associated with a term in office, but for that odds may be even between Clinton, the consummate Washington insider, and himself, the very opposite as a Washington outsider.
Here at the beginning of this day, the heightened “Red-Green” presence in the Democratic Party and its reflection in the “Brown” resurgent populist nationalism of the Republican Party bode ill for the United States as we approach the November elections.
This online journal is a forum for some of the more recent academic essays of Professor Matthew Raphael Johnson. Given current events in eastern Ukraine and Russia’s extraordinary rebuke to American liberal arrogance internationally, alternative and revisionist work on Russian history and politics is sorely needed. He was the first among English speaking Orthodox writers to understand Putin as a needed balance to the American empire. This postmodern imperium, headquartered in the US, is a demonic, serpentine dominion that spreads the postmodern acid of American mass-zombification to the world. It is Antichrist.
The Soviet empire was malignant, but what replaced it in the 1990s was worse. The Russia that survived Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin almost disappeared under liberalism. It was the creation of the American postmodern Imperium. It is more insidious and sophisticated than the USSR because it is not based on state power. Instead, it is based on the rule of private capital. The cosmopolitan and neurotic American capitalist seeks to “liberate the individual” so as to more easily enslave him to his passions. Then, this isolated mass-man, this crippled, malformed cipher of a human being, is offered the satisfaction of his passions for a fee.
The rise of Novorossya is the most significant political development since the collapse of the USSR. It is a new politics, one that combines nationalism and socialism into a Christian, humane and just political order that has not been seen before. That it rises on the ashes of “independent Ukraine” and on Orthodox territory is no accident.
A Palestinian activist and scholar, Ruba Salih, who is chairing a session tries to correct Ilan Pappé at one point, saying:
“Well the Palestinains launched BDS in 2005.”
“Yes, yes,” replies Pappé. He makes a face which shows that he knows that what is being said is not true. “Not really, but yes. OK. For historical records, yes.”
Ruba Salih then smiles, strokes his shoulder and makes clear: “That’s important”.
Pappé replies to her, nodding and smiling, quietly, embarrassed, patronisingly, knowingly: “It’s not true but it’s important.”
Ilan Pappé knows that it is a lie that the boycott campaign was launched by a “call” from “Palestinian civil society”. He knows it is a lie, but he’s content nevertheless for it to be solidified into what he calls “historical records”.
In the 1970s and 80s the ANC, which positioned itself as…
Wasatia is a movement that advocates achieving peace and prosperity through the promotion of a culture of moderation that would walk away from the current climate of religious and political extremism that escalates fear and violence. Wasatia claims the centrist position—that balance, between passion and hate, between amity and enmity, between deep despair and false hope, would lead the Middle East out of its chronic conflict and despair.
Wasatia name derives from the term wasatan which appears in verse 143 of al-Baqarah Surah in the Holy Quran. The term wasatia in Arabic means center and middle. In the Holy Quran it means “justice, moderation, balance and temperance.” The word wasat appears in verse 143 of the second chapter, which is 286 verses long, so it appears exactly in the middle. The verse says: “And We have created you a middle ground (moderate) nation” or “a centrist ummah [community].” The passage demonstrates that the need to be moderate and temperate is a central message within Islam.
Wasatia addresses all aspects of life: the way you eat, the way you dress, the way you spend money. Those of us in the movement interpret this to indicate justice, balance, moderation, middle ground, centrism, and temperance. In studying other faiths, particularly Judaism and Christianity, it becomes clear that they too uphold the same values, thus offering fertile ground for inter-faith understanding and peaceful co-existence.
But it’s not merely moderation as a religious principle that should replace the radicalizing rhetoric of militant extremists. It is at its core a deeply human principle, a willingness to see those on the other side of the conflict not as “the enemy” but as fellow human beings, shaped by different histories but all looking towards the day when they can live in peace and security.
This belief may seem an incongruous attitude, coming as it does from someone who, as a Palestinian university student in the humiliating aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, espoused guerilla warfare as the only possible way to achieve justice for his people. But then I left to pursue post-graduate studies, first in England and then the United States. It was an enlightening experience. Viewing the situation from a distance and with new knowledge, I came to reject any notion of violence as an answer to the problem.
Later personal experiences strengthened my belief that at a human level, where bigotry and hatred are replaced by moderation, empathy, and understanding, there exists a common desire for peaceful accommodation.
In late 2006, during the month of Ramadan, I observed from the balcony of my house, which overlooked the Dahiet al-Barid/Ram Checkpoint in East Jerusalem, a situation that had the potential to escalate into violent confrontation. Hundreds of Palestinians from the West Bank were trying to pass into Jerusalem to pray in al-Haram al-Sharif and al-Aqsa Mosque. The Israeli soldiers pushed them back and threw tear gas grenades at them, but to no avail. I was waiting for gunfire to erupt when quite quickly the volatile standoff appeared to have been defused. I soon discovered that the leading officer had agreed to a compromise. Buses were arranged to take the Palestinians, who agreed to hand over their ID cards, into Jerusalem to pray. Afterwards the buses brought them back to the checkpoint where their cards were returned.
It struck me as very significant that these Palestinians, religious though they clearly were, favored a negotiated solution. Had they been extremists, they would have escalated the event in the hope of precipitating a violent clash that could then be used to further their narrative of a demonic Israeli enemy. On their part, the Israelis recognized the Muslim faithful for what they were, religious yet moderate people. This in turn prompted me to ask myself who represents such religious moderates in Palestine and, as a response, to found Al Wasatia.
Shimon the Righteous taught: “On three things does the world stand—on Torah, on divine service, and on acts of kindness [charity].” Wasatia teaches: “On three things does the world stand—on the Holy Books, on divine service, and on acts of voluntarism and kindness [charity].” Wasatia rejects the view that extremism is the best way or the most authentic Islamic way, quoting Prophet Mohammed saying, “The best way to run affairs is through moderation.”
Wasatia is a movement that advocates achieving peace and prosperity through the promotion of a culture of moderation that would walk away from the current climate of religious and political extremism that escalates fear and violence. Wasatia claims the centrist position—that balance, between passion and hate, between amity and enmity, between deep despair and false hope, would lead the Middle East out of its chronic conflict and despair.
I believe that part of the religious animosity problem is related to ignorance—both about our own religion and that of the ‘other’. Religion has played a big role in agitating the conflict to date, and I believe it is time that religion becomes a catalyst in resolving it. Many Muslims don’t know very much about Judaism or Christianity, and what many of them know about Islam is distorted. Interfaith dialogue helps to dispel stereotypical images, myths, and misperceptions. In any conflict, religious peace is a prerequisite for a sustainable political peace.
Achieving our goals will take time, probably a long time, because it involves overcoming the malevolent influence of the religious militants, their distorted interpretation of the Qur’an, and the deeply ingrained attitudes and prejudices thus engendered, particularly among the poor, young, and uneducated. But it’s no good standing by and doing nothing—not when we are confident that our message of moderation is the key to a much brighter future for all sides.
Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, the founder of the Wasatia Movement of Moderate Islam, is also the inaugural Weston Fellow at The Washington Institute. He previously worked as a professor of political science at al-Quds University in Jerusalem and served a visiting fellow at the Institute in 2012.
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