Posted on 09/06/2004 5:17:41 PM PDT by Valin
Russia looks to Israel in the face of a gathering jihad
“There is a line connecting this weekend's mass murder in a school in North Ossetia, the ongoing genocide in Sudan, the bomb blasts on Madrid trains, the bombing of Istanbul synagogues and the suicide bombings in Be'er Sheva,” Ha’aretz journalist Ze’ev Schiff wrote in Sunday’s paper. “That line is Islamic - for the most part Arab - terrorism and it endangers world peace.”
In the post- 9/11 world, where many still view Israel as a greater threat to humanity than the concentration camps of North Korea or nuclear ambitions of Iran, the news that Arab jihadists made up at least 10 of the two dozen so-called Chechen freedom fighters that killed some 350 children, parents and teachers in a southern Russian school on Friday has generated shockwaves.
"We have to admit we showed no understanding of the danger of processes occurring in our own country and the world at large. We failed to react appropriately to them and, instead, displayed weakness,” President Vladimir Putin said in a somber televised address that followed a week of devastating terrorist attacks, including the loss of two domestic passenger aircraft and a Moscow subway blast, at the hands of three separate female suicide bombers. "And the weak are always beaten," he added.
In the Egyptian capital of Cairo a prominent Arab writer and television executive admitted on Saturday that Muslims worldwide are the main perpetrators of terrorism, and it is high time the Arab world acknowledge it.
"Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture," Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television wrote in his daily column in the pan-Arab pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. The article ran under the headline, "The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims!"
Meanwhile in Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sent condolences to Russia, proposing on Sunday that Moscow and Jerusalem work together in the global fight against Islamic terror on the eve of scheduled talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
According to an Israeli official quoted in The Jerusalem Post, President Putin's speech following the bloody end to the school seizure in Beslan marked a significant break from Russia's attempt in the past to separate Chechen terror from the wider stream of radicalized Islam, represented by al-Qaeda.
In the past, the official said, the Russians "isolated their problem, said it was a Russian problem that they can handle themselves. Now it seems they realize that in Chechnya, like here, you have local organizations supported from outside sources residing in places where they have immunity and sanctuary."
Although Lavrov was scheduled to arrive in Israel on Sunday evening to discuss the road map diplomatic plan together with the impending pullout from Gaza, Israel believes Russia is more interested now in opening dialogue on the war on terror.
Israel meanwhile is to propose unprecedented anti-terrorism security cooperation with Russia, including sharing of sensitive intelligence data. Sharon is also expected to offer to help rehabilitate a significant number of child victims of the hostage siege in Israel.
"Our countries are both in the crosshair of terrorism," Lavrov told Ha’aretz in advance of his trip last week, before the Beslan hostage tragedy began. "To fight this universal evil in a vigorous way is one of the areas where we can and should unite our efforts.”
"[The] fight against terrorism has nothing in common with [the] fight against Islam," he added. "To present this fight as a kind of a religious conflict or a clash of civilizations would only play into the hands of terrorists who in reality have neither national nor religious identity."
According to Ephraim Michaeli, former Israeli military attache to Russia, Moscow holds Israeli counter-terrorism capabilities in high esteem even though to date, co-operation has been limited.
"In this regard, it could be said that in the eyes of the Russians, we represent a superpower like the United States and Russia, no less than that," Michaeli told Army Radio on Monday.
But all the co-operation in the world will fail, Schiff warns, as long as “most members of the United Nations,” including Russia, “support ‘justified terrorism’ if it is carried out in the form of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians,” while turning a blind eye “to the fact that countries like Syria and Iran fund terror operations and harbor the culprits.”
“The massacre in North Ossetia,” Schiff concludes, “…shows that there is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ terrorism.”
Israel is often described as the caged canary in the mineshaft of the world. As it goes for her, so too soon for everyone else. As Russia buries almost 500 killed in its bloodiest week of Chechen terror the question remains whether Moscow really believes what it says.
In the midst of building an Iranian nuclear reactor, which Tehran has openly said will furnish weapons to destroy the Jewish State – one wonders whether, despite their grief, the Russians fully understand yet.
Well, the Russkies oughta know....they've been beating up on weaker folks since the early 1900's. In fact they weren't really ever stopped cold until they ran into the likes of OBL in Afghanistan in the 1980's. I guess they didn't pick up on the cues then. Islamofascists are a lot like the BORG if you'll excuse a Star Trek TNG analogy. Once they become aware of your existence, and they know you've not yet been absorbed into the "collective" that is Islam, they'll be coming for you, eventually.
That's a lesson that I just can't hammer into the skulls of my Haitian kids who care not a DAMN if we win or lose the war on terror, because if this country gets too uncomfortable, they'll just "go back to Haiti." I always tell them to not wait...go NOW. That always leaves them perplexed. Maybe they'll take some time to think it through when the Red Chinese wind up in Haiti.
If Russia goes through the wrenching psychological re-evaluation of national identity that America went through because of our 9-11, then they will emerge a very different society from their mostly xenophobic past.
I worry that any new extremism in Russia, if it occurs because of this horrendous event, will be highly unpredictable.
Timeline:
1810: Russia attacks and conquers Caucasia
1840-45: Repeated attempts to vanquish Chechen forces fail.
1918: Soviet power claimed in these regions.
1920: Stalin opts to give the Chechen’s their own republic but it falls through. 1924: Ingush and Chechen Autonomous Region established.
1934: The two regions were merged as one.
1944: Russians again attack Chechnya and thousands are exiled.
1990: Russia shows interest in Azerbaijan oil and the pipeline in Chechnya.
1991: The fall of the Soviet Union allows Georgia, Latvia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Tajikstan and Chechnya to declare independence. Russia refuses to allow Chechnya independence.
1992: Chechnya separated from fellow Muslim province Ingushetia.
1994 November: Chechnya’s president Dadaev declares independence. Russia’s attack to keep Chechnya with 40,000 troops coincides with Boris Yeltsin’s reelection.
1994 December: Yeltsin decides to invade Chechnya again after embarrassing defeat in November.
1995: Peace treaty signed but sporadic fighting continued.
1996: Dudaev killed. Cease-fire ended fighting.
1997: Peace treaty signed.
1999 August: Radical Muslims stage uprisings in neighboring Dagestan. September
1999: Russia declares full scale war in Chechnya.
1999 November: In effort to surround capitol Grozny, Russian captures neighboring cities.
2000 February: Russia claims it captured Grozny, while Chechen forces flee to Southwest portion of country.
2000 June: Russia appoints Islamic cleric Ashmed Kadyrov to head the separatist state. Kadyrov supported Russian invasion and disliked former Chechen president Maskhadov. Later Russia removes 3/4 of forces from Chechnya.
IMO the Russians should of left a long time ago. Now I don't see that as happening.
A coalition of the terrorised?
If Russia goes through the wrenching psychological re-evaluation of national identity that America went through because of our 9-11, then they will emerge a very different society from their mostly xenophobic past.
Different cultures. Remember 9-11 happened after we came back of the loss of Viet-Nam and Americans are basically optimistic forward looking and (from what little I know of Russia) the Russians aren't.
What worries me (like you I suspect) is they'll embrace that xenophobic past.
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Waiting......
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