The latest Israeli-Hamas war has polarized the world, but Russia has resisted immense pressure upon it to pick a side and has instead doubled down on its policy of principled neutrality towards this conflict. The preceding hyperlinked analysis explains this in detail citing one of Foreign Minister Lavrov’s interviews. It also includes a list of prior analyses on this subject that go more into detail. The present piece, however, focuses exclusively on the insight that he shared with the Federation Council last week.
In this top diplomat’s words, “The perpetuation of the injustice against the Palestinian people that were solemnly promised a state in 1948 is fertile ground for breeding serious terrorist and extremist sentiment. At any rate, it is allowing the terrorists to use the frustration of Palestinians and other Arab peoples to recruit even more supporters of waging armed resistance and creating terrorist groups.” This bold warning flies in the face of contemporary “political correctness” towards the conflict.
Global opinion is strongly on Palestine’s side, both due to international legal reasons but also for humanitarian ones stemming from Israel’s collective punishment of its people, which has solidified support for the Palestinians. It’s nowadays taboo for any non-Western analyst, journalist, or official to say anything that could even remotely be interpreted as mildly criticizing this cause. Those who do risk being maliciously smeared as “Islamophobes”, “Western agents”, and/or “Zionists”.
None of those accusations will stick to Russia’s Foreign Minister after he just warned that terrorists are exploiting this cause, however, since his country is Islamophilic, fighting a proxy war against the West in Ukraine, and condemned Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinians. Lavrov can therefore speak freely knowing that anyone who attacks him with such unsubstantiated smears has ulterior motives that only they can account for if publicly challenged to do so.
No matter how noble many regard the Palestinian cause as being, it’s dishonest to deny that bad actors are taking advantage of it to advance their nefarious agenda. A lot of average folks who already felt very strongly about this issue even before the latest war are at risk of radicalization after now feeling powerless to stop Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinians that’s killed over 18,000 civilians so far. They don’t just feel mad and decide to boycott Israel or protest it, but some start plotting revenge.
Shared notions of justice have been an important mobilizing force throughout history, and there’s nothing wrong with that either, but ill-intended individuals could manipulate some of those people who feel this way into doing their bidding. Such is the growing risk when it comes to Palestine from the perspective of Russia’s top diplomat, who’s concerned about how the tragic images and footage that already impassioned pro-Palestinian people feel could be exploited for evil ends like terrorism.
Once someone gets roped into such groups, it’s oftentimes difficult to safely extricate themselves, especially if they’ve come to have tangible stakes of some sort in their success such as if they’ve already carried out crimes like kidnapping or worse in the name of that cause. One thing quickly leads to another and involved individuals easily end up ruining their lives before they realize it. Their families can also be affected, thus spreading the contagion to other people and contaminating even more of society.
While there’ll always be psychologically at-risk individuals who are vulnerable to terrorist recruitment due to their preexisting instabilities regardless of origin, the problem that the Palestinian cause poses is that it’s a legitimate cause that understandably evokes intense emotions from average folks. Precisely because it’s so mainstream, there are innumerable people who could become radicalized by the injustices before their eyes, especially if they’re exposed to extremist religious influences.
Even if they don’t join terrorist groups, they might still carry out illegal activity whether on their own prerogative or after being guided in that direction by such groups, with late October’s airport riot in Dagestan serving as a perfect example of the latter. As was observed at the time, “Rioting In Purported Support Of Palestine Discredits Its People’s Independence Cause”, yet a growing number of people across the world are participating in these illegal activities due to their growing radicalism over this issue.
Many of them are average folks who simply lost control of their emotions after feeling powerless to stop Israel’s killing of so many Palestinian civilians throughout the course of this war, and while they must take full legal responsibility for what they’ve done, few among them would consider joining a terrorist group. The social disruptions and the security challenges associated with them could therefore be preemptively averted by removing the “trigger event” that “provoked” them in the first place.
Therein lies the importance of a fair and legal resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as soon as possible so as to reduce the pace at which radicalization over this issue spreads through global society. The threat is especially acute in majority-Muslim countries like those in West Asia-North Africa and sub-national regions like Russia’s Dagestan, but it’s also materialized in Western countries too. It’s only through these means that the larger-than-ever potential terrorist recruitment pool can be drained.
To be clear, those who participate in riots shouldn’t automatically be considered terrorists since each case should be assessed on an individual basis, but these social disruptions do indeed present certain security challenges that could in turn be exploited by terrorists whether right then or sometime later. It’s altogether better for everyone that riots don’t take place at all, but they’ll remain a threat so long as average folks are at risk of being radicalized into carrying them out due to this unresolved issue.
As a responsible Great Power, Russia is taking the lead in raising awareness of these Hybrid War threats via the bold warning that was just shared by its Foreign Minister last week. Lavrov’s words might be deemed “politically incorrect” by the Global Majority that strongly supports Palestine, but they’ll resonate with members of those countries’ permanent intelligence and security bureaucracies who are struggling to deal with this too.
Raising awareness of this shouldn’t be misinterpreted or spun as supposedly discrediting the Palestinian cause but should instead be seen as one of the most pro-Palestinian actions that anyone of influence can do since it’s a strong argument in favor of finally bringing justice to these people. The longer that justice is denied, the greater that Hybrid War (terrorist and riot) threats will be, which is why even the West should urgently work towards resolving this issue since it’s at risk of being destabilized by them too.
