Visiting evil on the world

On 7 October, 2023, Hamas launched a well-orchestrated, well-equipped and well-executed attack on Israel. I’m deliberately describing it in such unemotive terms to draw your attention to the planning involved, not the savagery displayed.

Experts in such matters agree that such an operation couldn’t have been improvised. Veteran commanders of special forces from around the world insist it had to be planned for at least a year in advance.

Keep this in mind when reading reports of Hamas and Iran officials visiting Moscow. Taking a stab in the dark, I’d venture a guess that Abu Marzook of Hamas and Ali Bagheri, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, aren’t there to admire the Italian architecture of the Kremlin. They must have some serious terrorist business to discuss.

That the three evil regimes are launching a coordinated assault on Western interests, indeed civilisation, is beyond doubt. Everyone knows that Russia has been arming Iran, with the latter now reciprocating by supplying Russia with suicide drones. As to the links between Russia and both Hamas and Hezbollah, no one, including the parties involved, denies them.

Russia has been funding, training, arming and inspiring Muslim terrorist organisations since the time she was still the Soviet Union and they were neonatal. But so much for general knowledge. What about the 7 October raid specifically? Was Russia involved and if yes, how?

There is plenty of circumstantial evidence of such involvement, starting with the old cui bono principle. The conflict unleashed by Hamas’s savagery benefits Russia by diverting the West’s resources and – more important – attention from Russia’s own brutality in the Ukraine.

The pronouncements of Russian leaders and spokesmen leave little doubt as to which side Russia supports. And the very fact that the Kremlin has seen fit to entertain Hamas and Iranian officials at this time does little to contradict that impression.

None of this, however, proves Russia’s direct complicity in the massacre. You could say that Hamas bandits wouldn’t have had their own knowhow to set up such a clockwork raid, and you’d be right. But take this evidence to court and see how far you’ll get.

It’s all conjecture for now, which doesn’t mean it can’t condemn. Provided circumstantial evidence has reached a certain critical mass, it may be sufficient to convict. In this case, we need one last piece to complete the evidential jigsaw – so here it is.

Remember that the Hamas operation would have taken a year to plan and prepare. Well, it so happens that exactly a year ago, in September, 2022, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh visited Moscow for discussions with Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Lavrov.

Again, I doubt they spent the time discussing the relative merits of vodka and fermented mare’s milk. Some serious business was on the table, which for Hamas means nothing but terrorism.

Was it then that the 7 October raid was requested by Hamas and authorised by Russia? Was it then that the planning began? It seems likely, and the dates add up.

Meanwhile, Russia’s own banditry is proceeding apace. As wave after wave of badly trained and ill-equipped Russian soldiers are being mown down at Avdeyevka, reports say the Russians are routinely executing their own retreating soldiers and threatening to kill whole units if they display insufficient valour.

To that end, so called blocking units have been formed, with their machine guns placed behind crowds of soldiers going on what the Russians call ‘meat attacks’. It has to be said that both human-wave assaults and blocking units lack novelty appeal.

The former has always been a time-dishonoured tactic of Russian commanders. Back in the 18^th century, Alexander Suvorov, worshipped in Russia as history’s greatest general, formulated the strategic doctrine that’s still doing good service: “The bullet is stupid, the bayonet is clever.”

Of course, for a bayonet charge to show its cleverness, the attackers first have to go through a murderous barrage unleashed by the entrenched defenders. Hence the inordinate casualties Russia has suffered in all her wars, far in excess of those she inflicted on even vanquished adversaries. Hence also the high numbers of soldiers who get cold feet.

To treat those frozen extremities, the Russians have always regarded their surrendering soldiers as deserters. Thus, when the 16^th century Polish king Stefan Batory released 2,300 Russian prisoners of war, they were all summarily slaughtered on return.

This fine tradition survived until modern times when Stalin declared, “There are no Soviet POWs, only traitors.” He practised what he preached: most of the returning POWs during the Russo-Finnish and Russo-German wars were shot, imprisoned or exiled (my father was fortunate to have fallen into the last category).

And the practice of executing retreating soldiers started in 1941, immediately after the German attack on the Soviet Union. That noble effort was formalised in July 1942, when Stalin issued his infamous ‘Not a step back’ order. Both the blocking units and military tribunals went into high gear and started killing Soviet soldiers with alacrity.

The output of the tribunals is known: 157,593 Soviet soldiers were sentenced to death and executed during the war. As far as the number of those machinegunned by the blocking units, it’s estimated at twice as high, though such calculations are never precise in Russia.

One way or the other, the Soviets inflicted more casualties on their own troops than the US armed forces suffered altogether – and possibly even more than the overall British losses. By contrast, the Nazis executed only about 8,000 of their own soldiers.

Evil comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but today’s shapes all seem to have a Russian imprint on them. Yet evil can seldom conquer on its own. Outsiders must display at least acquiescence, ideally tacit support, to help it along.

In that spirit, Hungary and Slovakia have blocked a £43.6 billion EU aid package for the Ukraine. Hungarian PM Orban, a Putin admirer of long standing, explained the rationale: “Everybody knows but they do not dare to say it out loud, that this strategy has failed. The Ukrainians will not win on the front line.”

Quite. So let’s do what we can to make sure they lose. Actually, the Ukrainians have already won on the front line, by preventing Russia from achieving her war objectives. These were stated at the outset as “de-Nazifying and demilitarising” the Ukraine, which is to say expunging her as an independent state.

While mildly critical of the Russian prong of evil in the Ukraine, our own dear BBC still refuses to brand the Hamas raid as terrorism. Doing so, Beeb claims, would undermine its reputation for objectivity.

That admirable quality was displayed by Rami Ruhayem, BBC Middle East correspondent, who emailed Director General Tim Davie earlier this week to formulate the broadcaster’s strategy in reporting on the conflict.

“Words like ‘massacre’, ‘slaughter’ and ‘atrocities’ are being used – prominently – in reference to actions by Hamas, but hardly, if at all, in reference to actions by Israel,” he wrote.

“The power of emotive coverage and repetition is well understood. The selective application of emotive repetition is sure to have an impact on audiences, and it is exactly the kind of impact Israeli propagandists are aiming for as they dehumanise Palestinians and set the stage for the mass murder they have pledged – and begun – to carry out.”

So much for objectivity. And so much for promoting evil – by both omission and commission.