- Russia offers Volya, unlimited and untranslatable Russian
freedom, as its antidote to the war on liberties otherwise known as the
"war on terror." Russia is unbelievably free, or rather full
of volya : one may smoke in a restaurant or in a pub, one does not have
to brace a seatbelt, even parking is free if available. More importantly,
one may say and write and publish practically anything at all. Beside all
the freedoms available in the West, Russians may be gays or sneer at gays,
bewail the holocaust or regret it was over too soon, be feminists or bait
them, love Israel or call for its speedy dissolution. Yes, every liberal
and Jewish-owned newspaper in the West bemoans the lack of freedom in Russia
under the 'bloody KGB dictator Putin' (or in Venezuela under the bloody
dictator Chavez, or in Cuba under the bloody dictator Castro whoever
they do not like is always a bloody dictator, isn't he?), but Russians
are free from political correctness and Jew-worship, that annoying features
of the post-war West.
-
- Recently, a group of Russian writers visited Israel and
met there with their readers: there are more than a million Russian-speaking
Israelis. The readers did not beat around the bush and demanded from the
authors that they swear allegiance to the ruling ideology: condemn Iran,
glorify Israel, this fortress of democracy in the Middle East, denounce
the Russian supply of weapons to Arabs, and slam Russian antisemitism.
Jews usually feel like creditors, and easily come up with demands.
-
- A Western visitor would deliver the goods, though he
would probably complain to his spouse afterwards. Denial of omnipresent
and eternal antisemitism is not better than denial of the holocaust. But
Russia is free, and when readers asked the Russian writer Maria Arbatova
to tell them how she suffers from antisemitism and how dreadful life in
Russia is under Putin's dictatorship, she demurred.
-
- Forget it, she said, Moscow today is like the Paris
of the 1960s: we have more events in a day than you have in a month. Today,
glorious Moscow is a world center. As for you, we are tired of you, and
the Arabs are tired of you and of your demands. This failed Western project
has outlived its usefulness. If my children were to even think of moving
to Israel, I'd tell them: over my dead body! Russia never had antisemitism.
I never experienced it in the whole of my fifty years of life. You say
Jews could not find a job? It happened once to my Jewish mother that she
was rejected, but she immediately found another, better job by using her
family connections.
-
- This was the answer a prominent Russian liberal writer
gave to the Israeli readers. Far from being a Russian nationalist, the
leading feminist writer Maria Arbatova's grandfather was an important Jewish
leader, and her great-grandfather was a founder of the Zionist movement
in Tsarist Russia. But her reply was universal and paradigmatic. In the
West, Tony Jutt and Harold Pinter could say that -- maybe Philip Weiss.
Others are still scared. But the words that the German bishops mouthed
and then repented can be easily said in free Russia, by descendents of
Jews, or by anybody. The mystic charm of Jews has worn off in Russia, where
Political Correctness is unheard of, and where the churches are full and
people bless each other with "Christ is Risen". Instead of scaring
and offending Jews, as American multicultural theory would have it, so
many of my Moscow friends consider themselves 'just Russians' despite having
a Jewish parent or two, and with an intermarriage rate of about 80% Russian
Jewry is a thing of the past. Many of them had been misled by Zionist propaganda,
but they had enough time to recognise it and regret their haste.
-
- Israel did much to disabuse them: Even very wealthy Russian
Jews found themselves less than welcome in their "historical homeland":
The oligarch Gusinsky is under police investigation, and whenever he comes
from his Spanish home he is taken straight to police HQ; one of the richest
Russian Jews, Gaidamak, had his bank account sequestered. Less prominent
Russians were mistreated and exploited by established Israeli old-timers
and their progeny, just as exiles from Morocco were mistreated and exploited
some forty years ago. Hardly any of them carved out a career worth mentioning.
The eternal war proposed and advanced by Israeli leaders has little appeal
for them; Hizbullah missiles taught them that Israel is not immune and
invulnerable anymore, and a forthcoming Israeli offensive against Syria
or Iran may cause many casualties among Israeli civilians. Corrupt even
by Middle Eastern standards, prejudiced to the point of jaundice, Israel
is probably the least attractive place for the upward-mobile and dynamic.
-
- As the result, tens of thousands of Russian Israelis
trek back to Russia and find their real country and their real home there
in their native land. The Zionist idea had romantic appeal, but such things
do not last. In the 1970s, I met in Tanzania with some American Blacks
who moved to Africa on a wave of romantic search for their roots. The experience
rarely lasted more than five years tops. During that time, they came to
recognise that they are Americans for better or for worse, while Africans
are organized into many nations and tribes, none of which they could fit
into. You can't "come back" after two hundred, let alone two
thousand, years.
-
- Russian scientist Dan Axelrod from St Petersburg told
me of his Israeli relatives who would dearly love to return to that city
and buy back the apartments they sold some ten years ago, in Yeltsin's
days. The only thing that stops them is the sad fact that these apartments'
value has increased tenfold since then. Axelrod has no worries of this
sort: this son of Jewish parents is a regular church-goer, observes strict
Orthodox Lent, is married to a Russian woman, baptised their children and
loves his country Russia. It seems Russia has found an answer to the Jewish
Question: neither by German fury nor American submission, but through assimilation
in Christian love. This Russian model is the only one that can work, and
it will eventually work in Palestine, too.
-
- This is an additional reason why Putin's Russia is much
hated and much denigrated in the official zionist-controlled Western mainstream,
and this is why she is loved by friends of Palestine. A Swedish friend
of mine and of Palestine, Stefan L., wrote to me: "You're absolutely
right about Putin. That he is a hostage of the oligarchs is one thing,
but when he for one reason or another speaks the truth - we love him, the
little rat-faced spy with a Kalashnikov accent. And every time we are reminded
of Yeltsin's existence we swear him eternal loyalty."
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