The thing that worries me most about Palestinians is their similarity to early Zionists. Palestinian terrorists are patriotic, yet not a part of their traditional communities. Like left-wing Zionists, they consciously develop a “new Palestinian” outlook and mentality: no longer a suffering peasant whose highest praise is endurance in the face of oppression, the terrorists rely on the “rifle alone.” Like Jewish guerrillas, they are unwilling to stop violence in return for vague promises of statehood, but hunt down those whom they see as occupiers even while they are withdrawing. Like the Jewish underground, Palestinians manufacture their own weapons, smuggle some more, and relentlessly employ them. Like Jews, they understand that fighting is the only way for statehood: Israel won’t care to cede land to peaceful Palestinians.

Gaza’s Arab identity is defined by refugee camps. Most European Jews who entered Israel for years after Holocaust were not Zionists but spent years in the camps for displaced persons, which considerably shaped their identity: communal with Jews and violent with Arabs.

Gaza’s groups fight among themselves just as the Jewish ones did in pre-state period. Fatah collaborates with Israel the way the Jewish Agency collaborated with British occupiers: betraying co-religionists, faking resistance, and submitting to the decisions on partitioning the land.

Gaza’s military structure is troublingly similar to the winning Jewish one. It spans the entire spectrum of interconnected but formally disparate organizations: apolitical recipients of welfare funds, professedly moderate political parties, their armed wings, and totally wild militias. Jews had a like structure during the pre-state years. One of the most successful operations, briha, was conducted by dozens of independent armed groups and hundreds of daring Jewish individuals. Often, they got no money from Zionists but relied on robbery, racket, and in one major case, counterfeiting. After the war, briha snatched possibly 150,000 Jews from the communist bloc and Western Europe into the displaced persons’ camps, to be transported into Palestine.

Israeli political establishment and army evolved into mammoths, unable for quick and smart moves. The military maxim speaks of the army advancing like water, filling pockets of least resistance, exploiting opportunities. Though spared of Amir Peretz, Israeli army is not that daredevil entity it had been earlier, but a bureaucratized, lazy entity modeled on the US Army but lacking its mind-boggling funding which compensates for inefficiency. Israel could have long done away with Gaza by setting her military brigades loose, hiring mercenaries, or allowing common Israelis to organize into terrorist groups to counter the Kassam, PIJ, PFLP and the like on equal terms. Israeli army needs decentralization in low-intensity encounters.

Palestinians are smart compared to other Arabs. Hamas developed a serious, popular organization which survived repressions, assassinations, ostracism, and blockade. Steadily, Hamas expands its international relations. The militant Islamic organization found the unlikely friends in Russians and peacenik leftists. Palestinians manipulate the sophisticated world media by Al Dura-type shows, and shame Islamic regimes by breaching the border with Egypt, thus implicating Egypt in the Israeli-led blockade.

Hamas is way more honest and dedicated to its people than left-wing Zionists. It embraces basic traditional values and stands by its POWs fearlessly upping the stakes in the prisoner exchange debacle. Unlike Zionists in 1947, Hamas refuses to partition the land it considers Arab. Unlike Egypt and Jordan, Hamas rejects politically correct lies about peace, and only offers Israel what it can offer without compromising its Islamic conscience: a truce.

The Cyprus-Gaza boat affair recalls the Exodus project. Rationally speaking, Jewish illegal immigration was unimportant: the British intercepted most boats and allowed some into Palestine at the account of the legal immigration quota. The illegal immigration was never a big thing for left-wingers, but after Holocaust they stepped up their efforts in order to push Britain to relinquish its mandate and the UN – to accede to a Jewish state. Even after Holocaust, the notion of a Jewish state was too much for the world. Unlike the normally clandestine immigration projects, the Exodus 1947 was heavily advertized from the day one to make the British react. Their Navy subsequently clashed with the passenger ship; British bullets killed thirteen Jews. Escorted to France, the passengers refused to disembark, and the British transported them back to Germany, to the professed horror of the world media. International leftists structured the boat trip from Cyprus to Gaza and back also as a media event. Unusually for the illegal immigration, the Exodus took on the board old people, pregnant women, and hundreds of babies – for the maximum media effect. Gazans similarly sent media-friendly personalities on the boats to Cyprus.

It is always dangerous to rely on a protecting empire: Jews tried that with Assyria, Rome, and Persia.
Fortunately, Israel need not rely on anyone: her arsenal of nuclear bombs, if wielded wildly enough, would force everyone from Tehran to Washington to behave in our region to our liking. No one would like the mad Jews to nuke the oilfields, and no one can do anything to prevent us from doing so. To be mad is easy and feasible: reduce the army to the level clearly insufficient for a conventional war and pass a law which mandates automatic nuclear strike over the enemy’s attack, mobilization, or nuclearization.

In terms of alliances, the American one is empty. Our earthly protector gives Egypt and Palestine more aid than us, supplies Arabs more weapons than us, and pushes us around diplomatically. Russia is better: it never pushed a client to suicidal peace with its enemies. Russia, if aligned with Israel, would be interested in our expansion rather than shrinking into the eight-mile-wide borders. Being a normal rather than professedly moral state, Russia would want its client to win rather than capitulate to the defeated enemies. Russia would love to lure the proverbial American client and in a brink of eye establish control over the Middle East.

Russia cannot give us as much aid as America in nominal dollar terms, but can match it in purchasing power parity terms because Russian weapons cost three to ten times lower than the comparable American systems; Russian weapons are not perfect, but good enough against Arabs. More importantly, Russian military support would be unwavering: the Soviet Union has been arming Egypt for years and free before the US started meager deliveries to Israel at high prices. During the Yom Kippur war, Russia launched airlift to Egypt on the day one and brought nuclear missiles to its client’s defense, while the US Administration procrastinated until Israel decided the war with available weapons.

Israel the American client invokes no fear because everyone knows that Americans are slow to react. It’s totally different with Russia which has no money to bribe its enemies and therefore choose to fight, sabotage, or otherwise uproot them. Russia arouses the kind of raw-power respect among Arabs, and they would not dream of attacking Israel a Russian associate. Palestinian and Lebanese terrorists, Syria and Iran would suddenly become nice to Israel. It is not nice to join thugs, but if you can’t beat ‘em… Maccabees were more practical: they had no qualms switching from the progressive Syro-Grecians to the relatively barbarous Roman thugs.

True, Russians are anti-Semitic, but so were the Romans and so are the Americans. It was a joint Anglo-American-Russian decision to refuse ransoming a million Jews from Germany. All the Allies refused announcing the ongoing Holocaust during their radio broadcasts onto the occupied territories, so that Jews may know and flee. America, Europe, and Russia condemned Israeli attack on Osiraq. Jews have no friends, but our allies should better be mad.

Madness is the only operational approach to foreign relations. The madness in question is a strong determination to achieve one’s ends regardless of costs, by any means, despite any objections. This type of madness can be of a genius such as Bismarck or simpleton such as Putin. The madness consists in their unwillingness to negotiate rationally in the give-and-take manner; the mad leaders don’t give – and in doing so, they invariably win.

Rational people mind their beer and chips rather than national ideas. Successful nationhood is always a bit mad: from the club-wielding Hebrews in Canaan to quasi-messianic Zionists in kibbutzim, also in Canaan. Another name for madness is passion, and it takes a lot of passion to prevail over the enemies who want neither your house nor money but vague pride and sovereignty.

Western powers submitted to Ho and Gromyko because of their simple approach: “no” to any concessions. Affluent countries don’t really need the things they negotiate for, whether South Vietnam or ballistic missiles in Turkey, and give way once faced with unrelenting opposition.

War-making is irrational. Rational powers have no credibility in military matters. Obviously, they would negotiate rather than fight. Even when fighting, they do so for no apparent reason and follow no predictable (thus fearful) pattern, like in Iraq.

Mad rulers understand others of their ilk well: Russia clamped on Georgia but not on Lithuania because the West would have no choice but to react at least with sanctions. The art of madness is to feel the extent of the other side’s bluffing, and not cross the line.

Credibility hinges on zero tolerance to infringement of one’s interests. Russia lets Lithuania go thus far, but cannot allow the same to Georgia because South Osetia and Abkhazia are de facto Russian provinces, a sphere of legitimate interest. Russia can tolerate them being nominally ruled by a friendly regime in Georgia, but not a pro-American one. The same holds for Ukraine: Russia would accept Crimea as part of Ukraine insofar as Ukraine remains closely aligned with Russia (“Let me carry your bag, and you would carry me”). Israel’s credibility is completely destroyed by her inaction in the face of rocket attacks: if semi-nomads from Gaza can lash out against Israel, then everyone can. It’s better to overreact and kill an extra thousand enemies than to expose your weakness by inaction.

Madness is a very safe strategy for the relatively self-sufficient power: no one wants to mess with mad government, but few want to deal with it. Even the German government’s insane attitude elicited no substantial international opposition until 1939, when every Western European country finally felt threatened. Foreign powers refrain from messing with a mad government until the clear and present danger arises to themselves, and even that danger they are willing to discount. On numerous occasions, the US betrayed its vassals to a mad enemy: South Vietnam and Georgia are just two examples; also note the Kurds and Hungary, whose populations the US government radio, other agencies incited to revolt – and abandoned. On other hand, the US is forthcoming to its allies when the enemies are rational: America diplomatically defended Egypt against Israel-Britain-France in 1956. Rational governments normally lose conflicts with mad enemies because, rationally speaking, some territories or concessions, especially those of allies rather than one’s own, are not worth the risk of major military confrontation.

Israel has a successful history of madness, defined as hyper-reaction: Jews took Arab hostages to exchange for Israeli MIAs, destroyed the entire Lebanese civilian air fleet in retaliation for hijacking of Israeli planes, and shelled Jordan in response to terrorist attacks. Israelis did not apply the mad response to Egypt, and that country bugged us incessantly in the wars of attrition. When Israel calmed down a bit with Lebanon, the PLO guerrillas increased their attacks, leading to the 1980 war. Even so, the PLO violence was moderate, largely in the spiral of Israeli and Palestinian strikes where the difference between attack and counterattack has evaporated. Overall, our mad reaction critically deterred the enemy.

Though the policy of madness incurs setbacks in foreign direct investment, their extent is questionable. Western corporations both small and large dealt extensively with pre-war Germany and communist China. Investors line up for tenders even in Iran despite the bizarre regime and sanctions. If Israel creates an internationally competitive economy, no amount of political adventurism would impede the development.

But haven’t it been said, An eye for an eye? Such reading is simplified. The lawgiver really meant, half of your enemy’s eyes for half of yours. If the immediate Muslim enemies are sixty times more populous than Israel, then we should retaliate against sixty of them for each Jewish casualty. Also, criminals are fined two to five times the amount of immediate damage, apparently in order to punish them for undiscovered crimes. Since killing the most wanted enemies in any strike is unlikely, we’re justified in avenging the damage five times over; five times by sixty times is three hundred times. And there is also a precedent by Joshua bin Nun who offered the enemies a choice between exile, surrender, and extermination. The lesson which is fully applicable today.

When the Russian FM asked his British counterpart rhetorically, “Who the f*ck are you to lecture me?” he knew what he is doing. Lavrov’s response cuts down to the core of Russian diplomatic mentality exemplified in the Soviet-era joke about Diplomatic Corps students drafting a response to the hypothetical protest from an African country about the Soviet nuclear submarine violating its territorial waters: the student who prepared an otherwise good note was denied the highest grade because “asshole” should be written as one word.

And in one respect, Lavrov is right: who is that young Jewish British fellow to lecture him? Like France’s, Britain’s superpower status only exists in its hallucinations, and now that it outlawed opium, the hallucinations became rather weak. Western Europe is swarmed with Muslim migrants, drowned in liberalism and laborism, lacks meaningful armies, and depends on Russian oil and gas – who is it indeed to lecture Russia?

It doesn’t matter that Russian economy is on par with the Saudi one, based entirely on natural resources. Poor barbarians conquered the advanced Rome.

It matters little that Russian military expenditure is 2% of the US one in the nominal dollar terms, and new equipment purchases are hardly noticeable. Credibility of Russian military threat is based on its nuclear weapons, which Russia is presumably ready to use.

It is not critical that Russia’s allies are poor. They compensate for poverty with roughness, for the shortage of weapons with the high likelihood of using them.

For the effeminate Western world, Russia’s unwavering determination is a deadly approach. The NATO may expand whatever it likes, but Venezuela makes a better ally for Russia than all the Eastern Europe’s countries combined - for America. Poland, Czech, or Ukraine would think a million times before antagonizing Russia, but Venezuela admitted Russian nuclear-capable bombers and fleet and expelled the US ambassador on a whim. With such allies as Venezuela, Syria, and Iran Russia prevails in any diplomatic confrontation with the West simply because unlike them the West is afraid of confrontations.

Still more importantly, Russia can succeed in courting China. With a country ruled by a handful of communist bureaucracy, you never know whether China would opt pragmatically for open markets with the West, or for the international supremacy in conjunction with Russia.

The Russian KGB/FSB elite learned the arms race lesson, and now uses the tool against America. Russia’s minor moves prompt massive American expenses such as billions of dollars in aid to Georgia and Ukraine. Russia acquires allies cheaply, merely with diplomatic support to rogue regimes and profitable arms sales to them. America buys allies for aid, but paid vassals are contempt of the master who is weak enough to offer them money. America often antagonizes friendly countries by moralizing; Russia supports its allies with no moral qualms. In one example, America subverted its close friend South Africa because of the perfectly legal apartheid (the Blacks were allocated their own country, Bantustans); it is unthinkable that Russia subverts a friendly regime over racial issues.

Russia spends on its military frugally. It mostly relies on the PR effect from very small events: patrolling Europe with nuclear-armed bombers, selling weapons to rogue regimes, and developing wonder-arms which would never come to mass production. America’s shows are hyper-expensive, such as the Iraqi and Afghanistan affairs. Russia, even though on diplomatic offensive, maintains budget surplus while America runs deficit.

(The lack of clear political objectives costs America dearly. Why impose sanctions on Iran instead of cooperating profitably with the oil-rich nation? Iranian nukes are Israel’s problem, not America’s. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost America hundreds of billions of dollars and led to budget deficit – for no good. Billions of dollars of US aid to Egypt and Palestine are a complete waste. Morality in foreign politics is a breach of trust toward one’s own population: the government is elected to maximize the interests of its voters rather than pursue moral objectives of faraway peoples.)

The most important thing to understand about the KGB/FSB establishment is its conservatism. New doctrines are foreign to Russian security elite. They re-assembled the country from economic shambles of the Yeltsin era, nationalized much of the oil revenues, control the balance, but have no positive economic program. Likewise, they ended the post-Soviet era feudalism, centralized political power, but have no idea what to do next. Like any nation, Russians are most interested in affluence, then freedom. Both of those objectives align them with the West, but ruin Russia’s traditional political and economic framework. The establishment is not only concerned about its own vanishing role, but also the apparent inability of Russian economy to rebuild itself quickly into a market system with reasonably fair income distribution.

It took America two hundred years to achieve that end. The Russian situation is worse. America had a huge advantage of relative lawlessness. Extreme corruption was common in the nineteenth-century America almost as much as in today’s Russia, but vigilantes from slandering reporters to citizens’ committees to lynch mobs succeeded in making corruption both unpopular and outright dangerous. Russia, a strong police state even under Yeltsin, curbs citizen activism, and in doing so opens the way to corruption. Russian economy is thus more likely to follow in the way of Nigeria than the United States.

Russia’s security establishment has no firm policy yet, but tests Western response to hardline measures. So far, the response was pretty encouraging: the West is unwilling to fight the next Cold War. As mammoth oil and gas revenues trickle down the Russian society, the population is economically satisfied and longs for political goals. The only such goal on the agenda is strong Russian semi-empire. An empire needs a good enemy, preferably a non-dangerous one, and Russia engages the West. The KGB/FSB establishment won’t attack the United States; peripheral conflicts suffice. So Russia returns to the old Soviet policy of kindling as many fires on the globe as possible on the cheap. The opposition to sanctions on Iran, weapons supplies to Syria, diplomatic contacts with Hamas and Hezbollah, encouraging Venezuela, wooing China into separate agreements with Russia serve the goal of troubling the West. A troublemaker automatically becomes a VIP.

Theoretically, it is easy to stop Russia. Its clients must be made to understand that the collaboration doesn’t pay. Syria welcomes Russian fleet? freeze its dollar accounts. Venezuela hosts Russian strategic bombers? stop buying oil from there. Russian troops enter Georgia? supply Georgians with TOW anti-tank missiles. Russians mess in Ukrainian politics (and so do the Americans)? support independence movements in Russia. Russia strikes an alliance with Germany? stir anti-Russian sentiments in Germany, recollections of the wholesale rape of its women in WWII and the annexation of Konigsberg. Zero tolerance to Russian expansion in any sphere, any issue would not be only efficient on its own, but will also signal the KGB establishment the impossibility of launching the Cold War-lite. It is critical to check any Russian advances on the spot, not allowing its government any PR benefits whatsoever. Such politics requires a genius and strong leader, and is entirely unrealistic.

Other than that, there is really nothing to be done to curtail the Russian diplomatic expansion. Western Europe cannot refuse Russian and Iranian oil and gas. America cannot defend obscure Georgia with its own troops. Germany and France, spiteful of the United States for helping them out during the Cold War, cheerfully align with Russia. This trend is less prominent under Sarkozy but would resurface under a less pro-American president. The world returns to its normal bipolarity of Russia-Germany-France versus Britain-America. Given the huge number of Muslim immigrants in Britain, even it can defect to the Russian camp.

Russian expansion is its own worst enemy. One cannot keep pedaling expectations forever. Russian people will get used to anti-American, anti-Georgian, anti-Ukrainian, anti-everyone hysteria. Russian government-controlled media resorted to an easy way of rallying public opinion: they heavily employ the familiar Soviet propaganda moulds down to outright curses and expletives toward hostile foreign leaders. There is a problem with that mould: Russians know about the eventual bankruptcy of Soviet propaganda. In some time, they will become cynical toward the imperial propaganda. At that point, Russian government would need a victorious war; depending on its availability and outcome, Russian society can turn further inwards or break out of its KGB-imposed policies.

A downturn in oil prices can provide major impetus for political changes in Russia. Short of the oil and gas revenues, Russian military, government, and welfare expenditures are insupportable. Russia, thus, has a tremendous interest in fanning the Iranian conflict and instability in the Middle East generally – that’s besides a sheer pleasure of subverting American policies there. Faced with economic hardships, Russians would behave unpredictably: follow the reformers who promise them the Western-style affluence, brace for US aid, or – if lost all hopes – support the hardliners who promise them at least the equality in the poverty.

But so far, welcome back to the Cold War.

Russia assisted India with its nuclear program to kick Pakistan for its support of anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Russia considered retaliating against Israel for supplying arms to Georgia with SAM deliveries to Syria. Syria offered Russia to retaliate for the US ABM deployment in Poland with the Russian one in Syria. Israel bombed Syrian nuclear reactor with North Korean consultants. Russia sells ABM to Iran to counter American expansion in the Middle East.

The difference between offensive and defensive weapons is artificial. Israeli offensive aircraft is used for strategic defense. Iran uses its strictly defensive SAM to protect its nuclear offense capabilities.
Can weapons suppliers be held responsible? If so, by direct attacks or by arming their enemies in quid pro quo manner? What if quid pro quo is not available: Syria threatens Israel’s very existence with Russian weapons, but Israel cannot arm Georgia sufficiently to wipe out Russia?

Rules and justice exist only on microlevel, among people, because people are about even when compared to the overwhelming law enforcement power of state and interactions among them conform to statistical pattern. In international relations, there can be no rules because subjects are highly uneven, the interactions are too few, and abstract rules therefore cannot be developed. In foreign relations, Israel has to hit as hard as she can in every particular case, and disregard the screams abroad.