Gaza: Les Katiouchas et les Grads ne sont pas livrées par Allah via DHL (Katyushas and Grads are not delivered via DHL from Allah)

Les Katiouchas et les Grads ne sont pas livrées par Allah via DHL. Garry Kasparov

Les Grad parviennent en pièces détachées à Gaza, puis sont assemblées par les experts du Hamas qui ont été formés en Syrie ou en Iran. Le Figaro (le 03.01.09)

Le Mouvement pour la paix, dans les années 1950, était actionné depuis Moscou. Il attaquait les États-Unis, vilipendait l’impérialisme, dépeçait le colonialisme, tout en protégeant le stalinisme, les camps, le goulag, l’exploitation éhontée des républiques sœurs, le totalitarisme. (…) Le pacifisme ne sort pas de son impasse. Ici, il est en guerre contre Israël. Après avoir été pétainiste, il a longtemps été adossé au totalitarisme communiste; aujourd’hui il est adossé à l’islamisme radical représenté par le Hamas. (…) Le PCF, la LCR, le NPA, le Parti de gauche de Mélenchon lorgnent avec envie sur cet avenir qui pourrait être celui de l’islamo-gauchisme. Robert Redeker

Pacifistes à l’Ouest, fusées à l’Est, l’histoire serait-elle condamnée au perpétuel bégaiement?

Pendant que la planète d’idiots utiles unanime ne ménage pas sa peine pour prolonger, par sa prétendue compassion même, la souffrance largement auto-administrée de la population de Gaza…

Et ne trouve pas de mots assez durs pour en accuser un Israël qui persiste (on se demande bien pourquoi) à refuser de collaborer à sa propre extinction …

Tandis qu’après ses ridicules gesticulations (notamment la pantalonnade des prétendus 70 000 candidats à l’attentat-suicide que, n’ayant aucune relation diplomatique avec l’Egypte, il était bien incapable de dépêcher sur place), l’Iran fait tout son possible (menaces de coupure de fonds et d’armement) pour repousser un cessez-le-feu …

Qui pourrait peut-être encore sauver les chefs du Hamas apparemment quelque peu refroidis (sans parler de l’idée même… d’un Etat palestinien!) de l’impasse dans laquelle ils les ont entrainés …

Rien de tel qu’un dissident russe et un Gary Kasparov pour pointer l’incroyable aveuglement occidental devant un autre acteur rarement mentionné de l’équation.

Qui, chute du prix du baril oblige, n’a pas non plus ménagé sa peine pour pousser, entre une invasion et un coup de racket gazier contre ses voisins, les feux du chaos sur le dos de la population palestinienne …

Why Russia Stokes Mideast Mayhem
Petrodictators have a permanent interest in instability.
Garry Kasparov
The WSJ
January 12, 2009

Those looking for a bright side in the global economic meltdown are fond of invoking the old line about finding opportunity in a crisis. But also keep in mind that there are those who will incite a new crisis to escape or distract from the current one. This is the scenario looming in Russia as the Kremlin faces increasing pressure on multiple fronts.

Russia and its fellow petrodictatorships are in dire need of a way to ratchet up global tensions to inflate the sagging price of oil. Petrodictators, after all, need petrodollars to stay in power. The war in Gaza and the otherwise inexplicable skirmish with Ukraine over natural gas have helped the Kremlin in this regard, but $50 a barrel isn’t going to be nearly enough. It will have to reach at least $100 and it will have to happen soon.

The effects of the financial crisis are rapidly reaching every level of Russian society. With no avenue for political expression left open to us, Russians are ready to take to the streets. Vladimir Putin has reacted true to form, ramming through new « anti-extremism » laws, building up the interior ministry’s paramilitary police forces, and increasing the volume of the xenophobic propaganda in state-controlled media.

The natural place for the Kremlin to find its new crisis is the Middle East. Open hostilities between Iran and Israel would lift the price of oil back to a level that would allow Mr. Putin and his gang to keep funding the crackdown. Israel’s anxiety over Iran’s nuclear-weapon ambitions is the most vulnerable link in a very weak chain.

There persists a very damaging myth in the West, spouted by politicians and the press, that says Russia’s assistance is needed with Iran and other rogue states. In fact, the Kremlin has been stirring this pot for years and has a vested interest in further increasing turmoil in the region. The Hamas/Hezbollah rockets, based on the Russian Katyusha and Grad, are not delivered via DHL from Allah. It doesn’t require the guile of a KGB man like Mr. Putin to imagine a way to accelerate Iran’s nuclear program, which has been aided by Russian technology and protected by the Kremlin from meaningful international action.

So the question for Western leaders is whether they doubt Mr. Putin would hesitate to provoke a war in the Middle East. If his regime falls, he and his cronies will face the loss of their immense fortunes and criminal prosecution when their looting is exposed. What are thousands of lives in the Middle East to a Kremlin mob that is openly preparing for the day when they will have to open fire on their own citizens to stay in power?

This « mad bear » theory is even more plausible when you consider how tolerant the current cohort of Western leaders has been regarding the destruction of democratic rights around the world. There appears to be no line the world’s despots — and would-be despots — cannot cross with impunity.

It is time to bury the failed model of dealing with the world’s antidemocratic and bloodthirsty regimes. The real change we must effect in 2009 is toward a new global emphasis on the value of human life. Anything less confirms to the enemies of democratic civilization that everything is negotiable. For Mr. Putin that means democracy; for Hamas it means Israel’s existence. The Free World must take those chips off the table.

Israel has the capability to annihilate Gaza to secure the safety of its people, but it chooses not to do so because the Israelis value human life. Does anyone doubt for a moment what Hamas would do if it had the power to wipe out every one of the five-and-a-half million Jews in Israel? Hamas should not be considered less a villain simply because it does not as yet possess the means to fulfill its genocidal agenda.

Terror suspects such as the United Kingdom’s « liquid-bomb » plotters and the recently convicted group plotting to kill U.S. soldiers at the Fort Dix military base were arrested before they were able to carry out their lethal plans. Those who call Israel’s assault on Gaza disproportionate should write down on a piece of paper exactly how many Israelis should die before the Israeli Defense Forces respond.

The leaders of Europe and the U.S. are hoping that the tyrants and autocrats of the world will just disappear. But dinosaurs like Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chávez and Iran’s ayatollahs are not going to fade away by natural causes. They survive because the leaders of the Free World are afraid to take a stand.

Years from now, when Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is either dead or deposed, his legacy will lead to another genocide trial in The Hague. Why don’t Western powers, many of whom are condemning Israel’s action in Gaza, take action now to stop the extermination in Zimbabwe instead of waiting a decade for a trial? Criticizing Israel is easy while rescuing Zimbabwe is hard. Choosing the path of least resistance is moral cowardice. It does not avoid difficult decisions, it only postpones them.

Mr. Putin’s Russia has invaded one neighbor and is threatening to freeze much of Europe by shutting down natural gas pipelines that flow through Ukraine. But since confronting Mr. Putin would take courage, Western leaders pretend his help is needed. This policy of self-deception will have disastrous consequences.

The futile pursuit of balance and neutrality by Western leaders and the media has become nothing more than a cover-up for the gravest of crimes. No doubt they would have judiciously considered the « legitimate grievances » of Stalin, Hitler and bin Laden. The time to stand up to such monsters is before they have achieved their horrific goals, not after.

Mr. Kasparov, leader of The Other Russia coalition, is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

Voir aussi:

The No-State Solution
Hamas cares more about Shariah than ‘Palestine.’
BRET STEPHENS
The WSJ
January 13, 2009

Of all the errors in the West’s understanding of Hamas, none is more fundamental than the routine characterization of the group as a Palestinian movement. It is nothing of the sort.

This isn’t to say that the Islamic Resistance Movement — to use Hamas’s proper name — isn’t led by Palestinians, or that it’s unpopular among them. On the contrary: Even before the current fighting, Hamas was almost certainly more popular than its secular rival Fatah throughout the Palestinian Authority, including the West Bank. The only difference with Gaza is that Israel remains a presence on the West Bank, able to prevent Hamas from gaining sufficient strength to rout Fatah in an armed contest.

Hamas’s claim on Palestinian hearts has only gained force in the last three weeks, though whether the feeling lasts will depend largely on how it emerges from the war. But the test of Hamas’s Palestinian-ness, as it were, has nothing to do with its popularity. The test is whether it actually believes in something called Palestine. There is scant evidence that it does.

Bear in mind that there has never previously been an independent state by that name; politically, it remains a notional place. The idea of a Palestinian people, referring to the Arab inhabitants of the land, is also of relatively recent vintage. (The late, great Israeli pianist David Bar-Ilan, my predecessor as editor of the Jerusalem Post, was known, as a Jewish child during the British Mandate, as the « Palestinian piano prodigy. »)

This isn’t to deny, as Golda Meir famously did, the existence of a Palestinian people. But it is to say that a Palestinian people — as opposed to merely an Arab one — exists only as a kind of counterpart, perhaps a twin, to the Israeli people. Put simply: No Israel, no Palestine.

That’s why the creation of the Palestinian Authority, on the basis of the 1993 Oslo Accords, could only happen once Yasser Arafat’s PLO had recognized Israel’s right to exist. Israel later learned, at great cost, that Arafat’s « recognition » had been a lie. Yet the principle remains valid regardless of the lie.

Hamas, to its perverse credit, does not lie, at least not on fundamental issues. It has never accepted the Oslo Accords. It is sworn to Israel’s destruction. Its charter is nakedly and aggressively anti-Semitic; no fig leaf of « anti-Zionism » there. The closest it has ever come to terms with the Jewish state is the offer of a long-term hudna, on the model of the Prophet’s 10-year truce with the tribes of seventh century Arabia. « Anyone who thinks Hamas will change is wrong, » said supreme leader Khaled Mashal in 2006. Could he be any clearer?

Of course, Hamas enjoys « democratic legitimacy » by virtue of its parliamentary victory in January 2006. And with the quiet expiration last week of Mahmoud Abbas’s presidential term, it is the only Palestinian party that enjoys such legitimacy. But this turns out to be no legitimacy at all, since Hamas refuses to recognize the legal basis of the Authority it purports to represent. And this is to say nothing of the putsch through which Hamas came to power in Gaza.

Still, it isn’t merely Israel’s right to exist, or the Palestinian Authority’s, that Hamas denies. It denies Palestine’s as well.

The Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is merely an affiliate, has never been keen on the concept of the nation-state. Hamas’s charter describes the land of Palestine as an « Islamic Waqf, » or trust, « consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. » Hamas’s charming slogan — « God is [Hamas’s] target, the Prophet is its model, the Quran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of God is the loftiest of its wishes » — is tellingly silent on the subject of Palestine.

This isn’t so different from the old Soviet model, which disdained nationalism in theory even if it made use of it in practice (and sometimes vice versa). It is nearly identical in its totalitarian aspirations. Above all, Hamas is a revolutionary movement, similar in spirit, if not theology, to Khomeini’s revolution in Iran, or Lenin’s in Russia.

It’s easy to understand why so many Palestinians would be keen to join the movement: What comparable form of moral and political transcendence can a little Palestinian state offer? But in choosing Hamas and the fantasy of pan-Islamism over secular Palestinian alternatives, they are also choosing to abandon Palestine itself. Good luck to them with their corner of the caliphate.

Western pundits and policy experts are now in full-throat about the threat that Israel’s war in Gaza poses to the possibility of a two-state solution. It’s a shopworn lament. That solution always depended on the willingness of Israelis and Palestinians to treat their conflict as a territorial one, amenable to the drawing of borders, rather than a religious one. Israel made its preferences clear with its Gaza withdrawal. As for the Palestinians, the people who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity have missed one, again.