Putin's Great Triumph

"[Russia's repeat illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory is] the largest attempted annexation of European territory by force since the Second World War."

"[The war is at a] pivotal moment [and Russia's moves to claim sovereignty over 15 percent of Ukraine marks] the most serious escalation since the start of the war."

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary-General 

"The entire territory of our country will be liberated from this enemy. Russia already knows this. It feels our power."

"De facto, we have already proven compatibility with alliance standards [regarding Ukraine's NATO application]. We trust each other, we help each other, and we protect each other."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy

"History has called us to a battlefield to fight for our people, for the grand historic Russia, for future generations."

"I want the Kyiv regime and their sponsors in the West to hear me, to heed me."

"The United States is the only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons twice, destroying the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan,"

"And they created a precedent."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony in Moscow on Friday to declare the annexation Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, after holding what Russian authorities called referendums in the occupied areas of Ukraine that were condemned by Kyiv and governments worldwide. (Sputnik/Grigory Sysoyev/Pool/Reuters)

Vladimir Putin ceremoniously signed treaties in his illegal annexation of additional Ukrainian territory. In response, Ukrainian President Zelenskiy accelerated an application for NATO membership. What is an obvious 'red line' for Ukraine has been challenged by a 'red line' for Russia. Bringing each country that much closer to full-scale war. Putin feels entitled to send his military into Ukraine, appearing to think that should Ukraine go further than opposing Russian entry, to begin sending missiles directly into Russia, that would be an act of war, not a mere 'special military operation'.

As far as Putin is concerned the annexed areas of Ukraine belongs to him, to the Russian Federation; the signing ceremony made it all legal, in his opinion. What is essentially illegal as far as Putin is concerned, and not to be countenanced is NATO, the world's larges military alliance, welcoming Ukraine into its midst. Putin is serious about his outraged version of NIMBY.

 

While inviting Ukraine to meet for peace talks, they must be without 'conditions', such as a polite request to return Ukrainian territory back where it belongs, with Ukraine. "We are ready for a dialogue with Russia", responded Mr. Zelenskiy, "but with another president of Russia". The 27 member-states of the EU roundly rejected Russia's occupation and annexation of the four areas "as a pretext for this further violation of Ukraine's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity".

Russian President Vladimir Putin poses with Denis Pushilin, Leonid Pasechnik on the left and Volodymyr Saldo and Yevgeny Balitsky on the right, the Russian-installed leaders in Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, at a ceremony to declare the annexation of the Russian-controlled territories on Friday. (Sputnik/Dmitry Astakhov/Pool/Reuters)

Putin's speech included the warning that he expects Ukraine to treat the votes that took place in the occupied areas "with respect". Sham votes where armed military officers accompanied movable voting apparatus to neighbourhoods, banging on doors to force residents to come out and vote for their region to join Russia. For, as Putin iterated and reiterated, Russia was only honouring a historical mission in reclaiming post-Soviet great-power status to counter Western domination.

 

The Donetsk and Luhansk, southern Kherson region, and Zaporizhzhia, partially occupied by the Russian military since the beginning of the invasion, now, according to Vladimir Putin, reunited with greater Russia, as the universe spins as it should. Now comes completion of the charade, where both houses of the Kremlin/s parliament must rubber-stamp the treaties to bring into law Russia's possession, when they are to be sent back to Putin for 'approval'. 

 

And in Russia? Russians at state-operated companies and institutions were informed they must attend celebrations, concerts, rallies, along with students urged to skip classes to wave Russian flags and watch entertainers celebrate the great event.

 

Russian fighting vehicles destroyed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces during a counteroffensive operation are shown near the town of Izium, Ukraine, on Friday. (Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters)

Israel, as a Vassal State of the European Union

"Annexation of Palestinian territories, whatever the perimeters, would seriously throw into question the parameters to resolve the conflict." 
"An annexation decision could not be left without consequences, and we are examining different options at a national level and also in co-ordination with our main European partners."
Jean-Yves Le Drian, French Foreign Minister

"As a life-long friend, admirer and supporter of Israel, I am fearful that these proposals will fail in their objective of securing Israel's borders and will be contrary to Israel's own long-term interests." "[Annexation] would put in jeopardy [the gains Israel has made in recent years in improving relations with the Arab world]."
"I profoundly hope that annexation does not go ahead. If it does, the UK will not recognize any changes to the 1967 lines, except those agreed between both parties."
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

The Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, the largest in the occupied West Bank, is seen with a view the Jerusalem skyline in the background. (Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)

"The Trump administration and Netanyahu are no longer in perfect sync. … Kushner has always seen this as a peace plan, and it’s become clear that Bibi sees it more like an annexation plan."
"The administration is invested in other equities it would like to balance. It would like to keep Gulf Arabs happy. And it understands that there’s fierce criticism of this [annexation] plan, not just in the Arab world but in Europe and in the U.S."
"You can’t have diplomats in Washington saying this about a more, you know, realistic Palestinian state and then have people in Israel saying [there will] never be a Palestinian state."
"Both cannot be true."
David Makovsky, fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy

"[The administration] wants to show that this is being done responsibly. They want to minimize the blowback from various parties. That gave a veto back to Gantz, which he didn’t get in the coalition agreement itself." 
"At the moment, there is not a compatibility among all the parties."
Dan Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, fellow, Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Tel Aviv University

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says settlements - on land claimed by Palestinians - will become part of Israel  AFP

The international community is never tardy in giving their studied opinions on when, why and how Israel must proceed to satisfy their judgement in dealing with the Palestinians in the never-ending search for a peace settlement that would launch the formal recognition of a nascent Palestinian state to be established alongside that of the Jewish state. The beginning and end of the continued refusals on the part of the Palestinian Authority to accept all reasonable offers proffered by Israeli negotiators is its denial of Israel's existence as a Jewish state.

A state re-established in the ancient Judean homeland of Jews. Jews finally making good on the prayer "Next year in Jerusalem", a fervent wish and determined aspiration of the diaspora, to return to the place of Judean indigenous heritage. The interminable exile with its wide dispersion and its never-ending oppression, discrimination, threats, hate campaigns and pogroms, culminating in the European Holocaust led by Nazi Germany of Europe's Jews slated for an organized mass extermination through a general consensus of anti-Semitism, leavened with contempt and supporating hatred.

Israel however, is a reality, the return of far-flung diaspora Jews to the land of Zion, recapturing the landscape, memory and promise of the past. The Palestinians returned. Only to discover that squatters had lifted the nomenclature that identified them as Jewish Palestinians living in their ancient geography, swapping it for Arab Palestinians claiming the land to be their ancient geography, dismissive of archaeological proof, of Biblical proof, of vibrant affirmative narratives of ancient coevals validating Jewish presence on the land.

Though Europe was complicit with Nazi Germany's Final Solution, Europe now feels entitled to dictate to what is left of world Jewry -- which after almost a century has been unable to replace the numbers that were annihilated -- how they must proceed lest they 'disappoint' the expectations of the world community. Continually placating the rage of Palestinian Arabs in the pretense that a peace agreement is reachable despite that one after another has been presented, ceding most Arab demands only to start all over again with contemptful dismissal of the offers by the PA.

Which, discreetly removed from non-Arab attention, incites Palestinians to demand no less than the entire narrow land mass upon which Israel sits, to be 'restored' to Palestinian rule. There never was Palestinian rule. The Arab League, which might have conferred upon the Palestinians their version of statehood, never felt the urge to deliver statehood and sovereignty to Palestinians. But Israel must defer and do just that, according to UNRWA and the EU, welcoming the 7 million descendants of the original 700,000 Arabs who fled temporarily with the intention to return in triumph after the assembled Arab armies destroyed  Israel -- only the intention failed.

This is a Jewish state, moreover, that unlike a proposed Palestinian state that made it clear it had no intention of permitting the presence of any Jews among them, accepts almost two million Arabs as citizens of Israel, where democratic elections place Arab Palestinians as lawmakers in the Israeli Knesset, despite their sympathies with Fatah and Hamas, two terrorist groups whose mandate is the destruction of Israel.

Mind, the Arab villages located within Israel, given the opportunity would balk at being ceded as territory to be ruled by the Palestinian Authority, in exchange for a similar amount of land carved out of [Judea and Samaria] the 'West Bank' occupied by Jewish settlements being transferred to Israeli sovereign rule. A reasonable compromise slammed by the Palestinian Authority which is devoted to the rousing war cry of "Palestine, from the river to the sea", obliterating the presence of Israel altogether.

What seemed a reasonable goal to achieve that would complement the existence of both Israel and 'Palestine' in a much-vaunted idealistic 'two-state-solution' that Europe still focuses on despite continual PA denials of reasonable solutions under the impression that the Palestinians are entitled to all their demands, while the Israelis must capitulate to all those of the Palestinians prepared to sacrifice nothing in the interests of establishing peace, is no longer feasible, in the wake of never-ending refusals to bargain for peace and hence a legitimized Palestinian state.

For the demand of the PA that all UNRAWA-recognized Palestinian 'refugees' must be welcomed into Israel, while the world fails to recognize, and sees no reason why it should, a like number of Jews exiled from Arab countries in 1948, their heritage and properties confiscated, where in a fair arena of justice also should be recognized as refugees and reparations offered them in compensation for loss of possessions and their past status as Jewish Arabs, by an Israel-hostile Arab world, we have the ultimate double standard.

Palestinian artists draw murals depicting the Dome of the Rock and the West Bank as part of an awareness campaign against Israel's West Bank annexation plans, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on July 1. SAID KHATIB/AFP via Getty Images

Courting the UN Vote, Revealing Unsubtle Bias -- It's The Liberal Way

"All the plans offered to us in the past included renouncing parts of Israel, withdrawing to the 1967 borders and dividing Jerusalem while allowing refugees to enter Israel."
"This plan offers the opposite. We are not the ones required to give up [territories], the Palestinians are."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Canadian Press

"I've been very direct with the Israeli leaders. We deplore such actions, which are going to delay any prospect of lasting peace in the Middle East."
"So, we should be working while respecting the concept of dialogue. And we are very concerned."

"I have highlighted both publicly and directly to Prime Minister Netanyahu and alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz the importance of staying away from measures that are unilateral and our deep concerns and disagreement with their proposed policy of annexation."
"We think that the path forward is a two-state solution reached to by dialogue between the parties involved and anything that is unilateral action by either side is unhelpful in the cause of peace."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

"The comprehensive U.S. Peace Plan is the only viable peace initiative currently on the table trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel has accepted its foundations, despite concessions which will be required on our behalf. However, the Palestinians have rejected it outright, once again closing the door on any option to negotiate a peaceful future."
"While it is dismaying that diplomats would choose to attack Israel rather than try to facilitate dialogue between the two sides — or at the very least urging the Palestinians to return to direct peace negotiations – Israel will nevertheless remain committed to the U.S. peace plan, in hopes that we eventually find a way to resolve our differences."
Ohad Kaynar, chargé d'affaires at the Embassy of Israel in Canada
 
"Annexation of the West Bank is clearly an issue that most UN members disagree with and this is likely to be seen favourably by those states still trying to gauge what kind of Canada they would get on the coveted UNSC [United Nations Security Council]."
Bessma Momani, Middle East expert, University of Waterloo

"Today's comments by the prime minister do not change this long-standing entrenched track record of acting as an asset for Israel."
"Ireland and Norway have not voted against any UN resolutions on support of Palestine during this century."
Karen Rodman, spokeswoman, Just Peace Advocates

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and his wife Sara, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, attend ceremonies at the Arc de Triomphe Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018 in Paris. (Francois Mori/The Associated Press)

Peace negotiations? They've stalled, the Palestinian Authority refuses to rejoin Israel at the negotiating table. Time and again. A reasonable proposal was made to carve out areas in Israel with majority Arab-Palestinian populations to transfer them to Palestinian rule, while doing the same with the Israeli 'settlements' in what the world insists on calling the 'occupied' West Bank, an equal measure of territory that would be governed and held by Israel. Made part of a potential plan for peace, that too was rejected by the Palestinians.

Tellingly, the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship living in those areas of Israel that were proposed as transferable to Palestinian rule, themselves rejected the proposal, preferring to live under Israeli governance as opposed to Palestinian. As Israelis, they have their elected Arab legislators, as Members of the Knesset -- the Israeli parliament -- who advocate on their behalf and who also agitate to the extent that some of their actions can be construed as anti-Israel. In contrast, the Palestinian Authority has made it clear that no Israeli Jews will ever live among the Palestinians.

Countries of the European Union, Canada and others who insist that Israel keep sacrificing itself to satisfy the ever-growing demands of the Palestinian leaders have never had to live under the constant threat of a neighbour inciting its people to violence against them. Constant vigilance to ensure that as many of the violent threats that can be apprehended as possible takes its toll, both on the civilians being targeted and the security forces tasked with their protection.

In insisting that Israel maintain its laser focus on a peace settlement without exerting pressure on the Palestinian Authority to do likewise, Israel's critics are satisfied to hold the Jewish state to account for not living up to its critics' expectations, while forgiving the Palestinians all their blatant, obvious efforts to destabilize Israel by attacking its people with knives, vehicles, rockets and suicide attacks, expecting nothing better of them and signalling that whatever they do is justified.

Someone like Justin Trudeau who has mismanaged the governance of a peaceful, prosperous country like Canada to the extent that east and west have become disengaged from one end of the country to the other has nothing whatever to teach a nation of survivors like Israel. Justin Trudeau, as prime minister of Canada, has constantly exhibited himself as a selfish narcissist, a thin-skinned ideological partisan, a hypocrite and vindictive in character.

His personal assault by proxy on the second in command of the Canadian military, Vice-Admiral Norman, his aggravated harassment of the nation's former Minister of Justice to flout the law in favour of a Liberal stronghold in Quebec, his shocking lack of ethics in matters of personal gifts by influential wealthy government lobbyists, his lack of leadership in failing to support a vital energy sector in extracting fossil fuels in part of the country that has traditionally given financial support to economically weaker provinces, all paint a sordid picture of failure.

He and the party he represents have nothing whatever to teach the executive branch of other nations. Not only is Justin Trudeau preciously sanctimonious, flaunting himself as a theatrical superstar, he is also a shallow ideologue, an intemperate egotist whose presence on the theatrical stage would never have done the harm to the country he now governs that his decision-making has caused to national unity, Canadian pride and civil functioning. He has succeeded in destroying the Democratic process in Parliament under guise of a necessary response to SARS-CoV-2.

His ambition to have Canada under his imprimatur be voted a temporary two-year seat on the revolving UN Security Council where he believes he would have access to the movers and shakers of the world as his just due, directs many of his actions in his preoccupation with prestige for himself on the world stage. And his statement regarding Israel's decision to reclaim its heritage rights against the claims of wrongful ownership of Arab 'settlers' on heirloom Judean land is meant to favour Canada's UNSC bid with the voting blocs that the UN's Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Non-Aligned Movement and the African Group represent.

Amusingly enough, right in Canada he has opposition to his ambition for that UN revolving Security Council seat, with a coalition of 100 organizations and people which collectively support 'justice for the Palestinians', which equates with destruction of the State of Israel, in their demands for 'right of return', to swamp the population of Israel with majoritarian Arabs, over and above the million and a half who now hold Israeli citizenship.

Israeli soldiers taking position as Palestinian demonstrators gather during a protest against the expansion of Israeli settlements, in the West Bank village of Beita, near Nablus, March 2, 2020.  Credit: Majdi Mohammed/AP