“Annexation” of Crimea: is it good for (Israeli) Jews?

I really wanted to consider the drama that erupted in Crimea from the perspective of an unbiased outside observer. But our desires do not always coincide with our capabilities: having paid 80 rubles in the late 900s to renounce Soviet citizenship, I plunged headlong into Hebrew and into the problems of my state. This is how I live. In complete intellectual and emotional isolation from the “scoop” - past and present.

However, perhaps because of the viral flu, which powerfully confined me to bed precisely in those days when Arab terrorists again fired rockets at our southern region, I accidentally switched to Russian TV channels. On Main they showed Vladimir Vladimirovich (he looked, I note, younger than his years). On the second, and also Main, they broadcast a report from the Kyiv Maidan. The popular Dozhd patiently explained that Putin and the post-Soviet armed forces had invaded Crimea and intended to pull it out of Ukraine, which (the West is not to joke with!) is a NATO partner state, and then forcibly bring it into the Russian Federation.

From the stream of contradictory information that fell upon me, the key word burned into my inflamed (due to the virus) brain: “NATO.” Logic dictated: if pro-Western sentiments prevail in Ukraine and the European Union and the United States support the new liberal Kyiv, then this is good (remember the election slogan that ensured Bibi’s victory in the 1996 elections) for the Jews. Something like: “NATO. Good for the Jews."

By Sunday, the situation had reached a boiling point: it was decided to hold a referendum in Crimea. Illegal! So, at least, Dozhd claimed, according to EU officials. “President Obama is concerned” ... - “The White House supports the Maidan, and not only morally” ... - the Chiefs objected. As for Vladimir Vladimirovich, Putin is a bullshit. This simple thought was introduced into my virus-infected subconscious not only by Dozhd commentators, but also by dozens of friends on the social network Facebook. The majority of Russian-speaking Israelis are for the “vile independent” Maidan and against the authoritarian Putin, who also managed to consult by phone with the President of Iran on the eve of the Crimean referendum.

Iran is definitely bad for Israeli Jews. What about Maidan? Especially in light of the support guaranteed to the new, pro-Western anti-Semitic (let’s listen to the familiar “Jewish” melodies) Kyiv by Baroness Catherine Ashton and Barack Hussein Obama?! Is it not Obama and Ashton who are artificially inflating the Arab-Israeli conflict, which has died out in recent years (even against the backdrop of sporadic shelling in the south and terrorist attacks in the north), trying to pass it off as the main and only problem of the Middle East region, which is blazing in the fire of bloody interethnic wars? In the south - that's right! - they shot. From the “state” of Hamastan, born on the ruins of Jewish villages wiped off the face of the earth. In the north, you can’t escape the facts! – over the past two weeks they have tried to attack Israeli soldiers three times. Either Hezbollah, fighting on the side of the pro-Iranian Assad regime, or al-Qaeda militants, who have come close to our border. Whoever planted the explosives in the Golan blew up four of our soldiers. The condition of one of the wounded remains serious. But at least it blew through in the south - the rocket men missed.

Israel, as usual, responded to the terrorist actions of the Islamists with a demonstrative attack on militant training bases in the south and artillery fire on the positions of Assad’s army in the north. The Syrians were outraged: one soldier was killed, seven were wounded. However, against the backdrop of 146.000 (one hundred forty-six thousand!) dead - and these are the “intermediate” results of more than three years of bloodshed in Syria, the death of one serviceman is unlikely to be the reason for an invasion of Israel by Assad’s divisions (or the Islamists of the opposing al-Qaeda "). Assad does not yet care about “Israeli aggression” - the earth is burning under his feet.

However, as a citizen of Israel, what most touched me in recent tense (from the point of view of the international situation) days was the reception given by President Obama to the head of the PA administration, Mahmoud Abbas. They met in the Oval Office. They thoughtfully exchanged views on the issue of the hopelessly stalled “peace process.” Among other things, Abu Mazen transparently hinted: I’m 79 years old, guess what, whether a moderate leader like me will appear in the PA in the foreseeable future. Obama (and with him the “big” Israeli press, obsessed with retreating to the 1967 borders) grabbed these words with both hands: indeed, what if tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, Allah forbid, something happens to Abu Mazen - who will Israel hand over strategically? important hills of Judea and Samaria? Well, not Hamas... And not Islamic Jihad.

It was at this critical moment that the malicious virus capitulated, the temperature began to drop rapidly - my mind cleared up and prompted: “But if Abu Mazen is... by the way... power in Ramallah will most likely be seized by the same bloodthirsty guys who have been since the summer of 2007 They have been ruling for years in Gaza, cleared of Jewish presence, firing rockets at the “Zionist enemy.” And even if Abu Mazen successfully reaches 120, this in no way guarantees that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow the same Islamists - in the wake of the “Islamic winter” that has become a chronicle - will not throw him out of Ramallah in the same way as they kicked him out 7 years ago from Gaza”... So what is better for the Jews: without thinking at all about the foreseeable future and without relying on the experience of the past, hand over Judea, Samaria and half of Jerusalem to an overdue “rais” from Ramallah - or patiently wait for a new ruler and new shocks in our unpredictable region?

The trap ... The trap ... Dead end ...

And then, as luck would have it, the Crimean referendum, exemplary and indicative, from the point of view of popular democratic will: the faces of Russian women, drenched in tears of joy (it’s unlikely even at the point of a gun) the faces of Russian women... Men stunned with happiness... An off-scale indicator - 95 s extra percent and transparent (transparency is the idol of the XNUMXst century) ballot boxes at polling stations. And then – Putin’s speech: the whole history of Crimea is connected with Russia. Against the background of this irrefutable fact (Khrushchev’s voluntarism does not count!), the sanctions imposed by the European Union on Russian apparatchiks seemed as delusional as a boycott of products produced in Israel in the “occupied” (liberated in the Six-Day War) territories.

"Do not dare! – I ordered myself imperiously, just in case, tapping my left hand on my right hand, which was still reaching for the laptop keyboard. – Your Facebook friends will lynch you in the town square! You never know what parallels creep into a brain inflamed after an illness. The United States and Europe are the bulwark of Israel’s viability, even if their current leaders don’t know a damn thing about the processes taking place in the Middle East. Obama was fatally mistaken with his forecasts for Egypt, and then - remembering Afghanistan and Iraq - he cowardly avoided interfering in the internal affairs of Syria and, instead of overthrowing the Assad regime, began to flirt with its patron, Iran. As for Madame Ashton, on the day the anti-Russian sanctions were approved, she was wearing a colorful trouser suit, it’s so touching, so feminine. Hands off the Baroness!

In order to completely get rid of seditious thoughts, I climbed into Google: the English-speaking information field does not lie!

But what is this?! One of the first to appear was an article published in the blogosphere of the authoritative publication The Economist under the headline: “Crimea seems a useful distraction.”

“Can the Russian occupation of Crimea provide a reprieve for Israel, which is under pressure from the United States to end its occupation of Palestine? – I read the first phrase. – Against the backdrop of the crisis that has erupted in Ukraine, shuttle diplomacy between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, in which Secretary of State John Kerry became entangled over the course of nine months, seems to have lost its practical meaning. After his meeting with Mahmoud Abbas on March 17 in Washington, Barack Obama looked absent. These days, he needs involvement in the Middle East peace process like a "loch in cop" (Yiddish for "hole in the head"), wrote Hemi Shalev, Washington correspondent for Haaretz, Israel's main liberal newspaper.

I liked the idea of ​​“loch in cop”, even despite Hemi and Haaretz, and I continued reading:

“America’s failure to prevent Russia’s occupation of Crimea could help Israelis remain in the West Bank, the territory of a potential Palestinian state with roughly the same population as Crimea,” the author writes.

“The situation in Crimea is seen by many here as a good idea,” said a former Israeli diplomat. A senior defense official noted Russia's historical ties to the Crimean peninsula, not forgetting to mention as a miracle the fact that Egyptian General Al-Sisi overthrew his country's legally elected Islamist government last July. In both cases, he noted, America was unable to reverse the situation.

“Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a former Soviet citizen, issued a “painkiller” statement on the eve of his next meeting with Kerry, expressing concern about the situation in Ukraine,” I continued reading. “However, officials privately and commentators publicly contrast Putin, who wore a yarmulke at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, with fascist and anti-Semitic tendencies among his Ukrainian opponents.”

“It is in our national interest, without any illusions, to maintain ties with Russia, whose leader appears to have made a sharp break with Tsarist and Bolshevik anti-Semitism and is demonstrating his friendship with the Jewish people,” the Economist quotes Izy Liebler, a right-wing immigrant from Australia, who spoke on March 16 in the newspaper Israel Hayom. — Israel’s flirtations with Russia are not just flirting. Several key ministries, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, are headed by Russian-speaking citizens of Israel who left the Soviet Union at one time.”

“Israeli officials also feel that Russia may just be filling a vacuum left in the White House after the United States failed to move anything in the direction America wanted in the Middle East. Putin turned into success the disaster he suffered in foreign policy by supporting the bloody regime of Bashar al-Assad. “He not only saved Assad from American military action in Syria, but also helped him stay in power.”

“After a series of failures, Putin achieves one success after another, and America loses all the battles,” Alon Liel, former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told the Economist. “The world has become aware of America’s chronic weakness and reluctance to pull the trigger. Nobody's afraid of Obama."

Did not the Israeli Defense Minister Moshe (Boogie) Ya'alon say the same thing, hinting transparently that perhaps in the summer of this year Jerusalem would have to stop the Iranian nuclear program alone.

“We thought the United States should lead the campaign against Iran,” Yaalon told students in Tel Aviv on March 17. “But in this matter we can only rely on ourselves” (end of quote).

No, it seems that the viral infection didn’t bring me to complete dullness. And although I sincerely sympathize with the freedom-loving Ukrainians and no less sincerely empathize with the Russians living in Crimea, I have one passport - an Israeli one. And my own shirt (sorry for selfishness) ...

Crimea achieved independence? Well done. כל הכבוד! Maybe the United States will leave us at least briefly. Well, at least a half or two (ideally - three) years. And then - Allah is great ...