International Politics

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28.8.2024

War on Gaza Crystalizes Israel’s Image

(240812) — GAZA, Aug. 12, 2024 (Xinhua) — People flee from the Hamad City, a neighborhood in the northwest of the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, on Aug. 11, 2024, following the latest evacuation order issued by the Israeli authorities. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua) (Image by Xinhua) Modern Israel attracts much attention from […]

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18.8.2024

Ascending the Temple Mount: An Unholy Act in a Site of Holiness

(Image by Prensa Latina)   Every year, Jews recite the entire Pentateuch aloud in synagogues. It is divided in weekly portions. Last week’s one (Vaet’hanan, Deuteronomy 3 :23 – 7 :11) contains passages that are central to Jewish liturgy, including the Shema, a declaration of loyalty to God, or more precisely, a declaration of love […]

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12.05.2024

Antisemitism and Antizionism: A Dangerous Conflation

This post is also available in: Spanish, French Anti-Semitism is making the headlines. The Israeli Prime Minister describes as anti-Semitic the accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and even American students who are calling for a ceasefire. What Israel is doing does in fact provoke anti-Semitic acts against synagogues, Jewish schools and even individual Jews. […]

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13/12/2023

From Kishinev to Gaza

Pogrom. This Russian term denotes a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring Jews and destroying their property. One of the deadliest pogroms (50 Jews were killed and nearly 600 wounded) took place in Kishinev a hundred and twenty years ago, in April 1903. But the trauma of Russian Zionists facing the oppression in […]

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04/01/2024

How Long can Israel Defy the World?

This post is also available in: French (Image by Bansky, London december 2023) Palestinians in Gaza are being decimated. Over 20 000 have been killed, mostly women and children. Three times more have been wounded. Some experts qualify it as genocide, others as massacre. Two million people have been displaced, many more than during the entire […]

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29/01/2024

From the Siege of Leningrad to the Siege of Gaza: Colonialist Mentality

Eighty years ago, on January 27, 1944, people in the street were hugging each other and weeping with joy. They were celebrating the end of a nearly 900 days brutal siege. Soviet forces lifted the siege of Leningrad after ferocious battles. Exactly a year later they liberated Auschwitz. Even today, walking in Saint-Petersburg’s main avenue, […]

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01.11.2023

On the Impasse of Political Violence

On the night of the October 7, 2023 attack in Southern Israel, I was staying overnight at my nephew’s place in Saint Petersburg, in the apartment I had grown up in, prior to emigrating from the Soviet Union over fifty years ago. The following morning, as I walked in the neighbourhood located in the very […]

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11.10.2023

Palestine and Ukraine: Peace is Possible

    Эта статья доступна также по-русски. The Brandenburg Gate and the White House are laser-painted in Israeli blue-and-white colours. They used to harbour the Ukrainian blue-and-yellow colours. In both cases, Western governments pledge unlimited support and declare the recent attacks on Israel, as earlier on Ukraine, allegedly unprovoked and evil. Déjà vu. But there […]

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04.10.2023

An Ominous Context of the Nazi Debacle in Canada

(Image by Demolition of a memorial to the Soviet army in Poland.) A few days ago, I raised questions that stem from the standing ovation for Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian veteran of the SS in the Canadian parliament (https://www.pressenza.com/2023/09/a-nazi-on-the-parliament-hill-is-an-antidote-to-self-righteousness/) . These questions deserve answers. Here are some of them. How is it that the background […]

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27.09.2023

A Nazi on the Parliament Hill is an Antidote to Self-Righteousness

The triumphant visit of President Zelenskyy to Ottawa in late September was marred by an episode in the Parliament of Canada. Anthony Rota, the Speaker of the House of Commons, invited Yaroslav Hunka, an elderly Ukrainian from his riding to attend Zelenskyy’s speech. He was honored during a session of Canadian parliament in which Zelenskyy […]

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30.05.2023

Pensamiento único: cincuenta años después

Este artículo también está disponible en: francès, ruso e inglés (Imagen de Yakov Rabkin) Hace cincuenta años emigré de la Unión Soviética. Mi única razón fue el deseo de libertad. Deploraba el pensamiento único mantenido por la ausencia de publicaciones extranjeras y la interferencia de emisiones de radio occidentales como la BBC o Radio Canadá […]

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30.5.2023

Unfreedom: Fifty Years Later

This post is also available in: Spanish (Image by Yakov Rabkin) Nearly fifty years ago I emigrated from the Soviet Union. My only reason for leaving all that was known to me was a deep longing for freedom of expression. I resented restrictions on foreign publications and deplored the practice of jamming foreign radio stations like […]

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11/01/23

Decolonization of Russia and its Ramifications

The war in the Ukraine has revived Western plans of dismembering Russia and, in the words of the promoters of this idea, to complete the dismantlement of the Soviet Union. Active efforts, including ample funds, are being spent on fomenting ethnic nationalism among Russia’s many ethnic groups. Meetings are convened outside Russia in order to […]

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23/12/22

A Deeper Understanding of the Ukraine War Could Prevent Further Bloodshed

In February 2022, began the longest military conflict in Europe’s post-World War history. But what were its main causes? Although the war in the Ukraine has inflamed emotions across the Western world like never before, the answer requires a realistic and cool-headed approach. Aristotle, admittedly neutral as far as this conflict is concerned, outlined three […]

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June 2022

Peter the Great: Legacy and Celebration

Peter the Great: Celebration and Legacy Yakov M. Rabkin, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Montreal, co-author of Demodernization: A Future in the Past. My arrival in Saint-Petersburg coincided with a celebration. June 9 was the 350th anniversary of Peter the Great, the founder of this city. He changed Russia’s course of history, turning the country […]

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28/05/2020

The Spectre of a “China-centric World”

A spectre is haunting the United States—the spectre of a “China-centric world”. By voicing this concern President Trump pledges to “Keep America Great”. Some of the European allies echo this concern. Others remain conspicuously silent. But what exactly is this concern about? The United States has enjoyed the status of a sole superpower for three […]

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21/052019

Illusory Freedoms

On April 19 Google disabled the accounts of Press TV, an Iranian news service.  Google denied Press TV access to all its services, including the video streaming platform YouTube and the e-mail service Gmail.  The company’s move took place without prior notice or subsequent explanation. Iran is a founding member of the United Nations and a country that […]

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17/07/2017

Fairy Tales and Globalisation: Bringing Up the Young in the Values and Virtues of Great Civilisations

Introduction Globalisation affects children’s values, self-images and world outlook through targeted marketing of fairy tales, games and assorted media products. This article analyses these effects and proposes a number of measures to counteract them. Pro-active, grassroots approaches on the part of educators, writers, and artists should help produce specially designed storybooks, animated cartoons, and online […]

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16/05/2017

Russia on the International Checkerboard

This article is not an exhaustive analysis of Russia’s foreign policy. Rather, it is a reflection based on Russian and Western sources, without adopting mainstream positions of either. Society gives university professors time to think; presenting original views is our way of repaying our debt to society. Regurgitating mainstream ideas would betray this vocation of the intellectual. It […]

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20/11/2015

The Paris Terror Attacks: Canada Helps Avoid Pitfalls of Irrationality

The recent massacres in Paris have so far produced predictable emotional reactions. President Hollande called for national unity and intensified bombardment in Syria. Citizens lit candles and commemorated the victims. Observers continued to mull over the content of the Koran, deploring “the alienation of Muslims from Judeo-Christian civilization”. The focus has shifted to essentialism, to […]

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15/11/2015

Canada: Citizen Participation Does Not End On Election Night

“This is not my victory, this is your victory.” This sentence uttered by the elated Trudeau on the election night is not a compliment to the millions of Canadians who voted strategically to bring about change but a call for continuing engagement. Civil society’s engagement must not end in the wake of the Liberals’ victory […]

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17/08/2015

Canada’s Stephen Harper Wants to Redesign a New Collective Memory of World War II

Stephen Harper has been changing our collective self-image. He has emphasized the martial, rather than the peace-making episodes, in our history, and had a war memorial replace art and literary images on the ubiquitous 20-dollar bill. Now his government wants to leave an even more durable trace of its rule: a “monument to the victims […]

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16/08/2015

The Iran Deal: A Triumph of Irrationality

It took years of intense negotiations, travel by diplomats equal to 16 around-the-world trips and thousands of pages of position papers to solve a problem … that never existed. Intelligence services of major powers, such as the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, repeatedly concluded that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon. Crude attempts to […]

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September 2006

About the War on Terror

a talk at McGill University, September 20, 2006. President Bush cast the battle against Islamic extremism as a “struggle for civilization” that will set the course for the world in the 21st century. Harper believes that Canadians live in a “dangerous world.” In the wake of the arrests in Toronto last summer, he said that […]

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