Russia’s and China’s Irregular Warfare Against Israel, Israelis, and Palestinians
Introduction
Jonathan Winer’s must-read report for the Middle East Institute last November chronicled and discussed circumstantial evidence of timing, communications, training, modes of operation, financial, and weapons support by Russia for Hamas and for Iran, Hamas’s chief sponsor before and after the terror organization’s October 7, 2023 terror war on Israel. This, provoking a predictable Israeli defensive-offense campaign against Hamas no matter where it or its agents fled, with related collateral civilian deaths and damage.
Argument
Anyone who did not think Israel would respond with extreme vigilance to eliminate Hamas and mop-up its remnants has not been monitoring the history of Israel and Palestinian conflict. Yet it is certain that President Vladimir Putin and those in his elite silovarchy and in China’s power complex who participated in aid and encouragement to the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-IRGC-PIJ-Hamas terror complex have monitored the history of Israel and Palestine.
Thus, Putin and Xi could predict what Israel would do if Hamas was equipped, trained, and informed to attack Israel on a larger scale than ever before; and predict the geopolitical benefits to Putin’s and Xi’s regimes. Such knowledge in the Kremlin and Beijing includes that of likely heavy collateral damage against Palestinians subject to Hamas and its agents using them as coerced accessories after the fact, human shields, and propaganda props after Hamas’s latest terror campaign had begun.
After the surprise attack, as the Hamas charter’s and Israel’s Likud Party platform words “from the river to the sea,” agitated fear and hostility as Russia and China fanned the flames in the information space. On international agitation benefitting Russia and China after the attack, the Jerusalem Post cited the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) finding that “convenors of the Shut it Down For Palestine coalition, Answer Coalition, The People’s Forum, and the International Peoples’ Assembly are linked by a complicated web of financial, personal, personnel, and ideological ties to CCP associates Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans, according to NCRI.”
The two major terror war assaults on Israel by Hamas, its sponsors, and co-proxies in Lebanon and Syria have involved large numbers of imported rockets, missiles, and or components from and through Iran. Yet nothing rivals the scale of warfare and the volume of munitions of October 7th, 2023.
Iran’s elevation by China and Russia as a rising military industrial power in axis with the military objectives of the alpha dictatorships was an existential threat trend that Israel could not miss, ramping-up the intensity of its urgency to eliminate terrorist aggressors in and adjacent to its borders. Winer accurately identified how Russia benefits from the diversion of Western aid from Ukraine to Israel. And China’s interest in Russia’s success in Ukraine goes to Beijing’s desire for Taiwan.
The question addressed here is how, if at all, the evidence Winer and others cite about the Russian connections to the Hamas terror war on Israel fits known Russian irregular warfare behaviors.
In “Divide and rule: ten lessons about Russian political influence activities in Europe,” Geir Hågen Karlsen writes that, “Russia is targeting the West through a divide and rule approach, using multiple tools of influence. The population is mainly reached through media and social media, exploiting divisive issues. Minorities, refugees, and extremists are used to further this divide and rule approach.” True to the methods and useful proxies specified in Karlsen’s report on Russian subversive methods in Europe, Hamas is not only designated as an extremist group, Palestinian refugees sympathetic to Hamas leadership, and global minority groups that feel headwinds where they live can emotionally and erroneously conflate Hamas with Palestinian state solutions. These unwitting and witting proxies are prime targets for Russian political influence divisors, whether diplomacy, HUMINT influencers, promoted personalities, slogans, memes, ideas, viral videos, speeches, and or more.
Russia, it has been widely reported since invading Ukraine in 2022 has escalated from mental and emotional influence to global coercion, equipping, and partnership in militant sabotage operations. Whether by covert Russian private military companies, GRU, FSB, SVR, or all of the above, with regard to Hamas, Russia’s use of Iran and Iranian regional proxies surrounding Israel (Syria, Lebanon) was likely its primary conduit of aid and encouragement of Hamas.
Direct Russian involvement in equipping, providing intelligence for, facilitation for, arming, and joining in attacks covertly cannot be ruled-out given Russia’s open, conventional warfare and expanding imperial militarism across Africa, Latin America, and the Mideast.
Two weeks after the Hamas attack as Israel’s response geared-up, Reuters reported that a Hamas delegation visited Moscow to talk about hostage negotiations, and that:
and more evidence of the strategic propaganda motives:
Finally, Hamas’s praise for Russia, an early Russian-born hostage release, and the role of a longtime Russian envoy practically embedded with Hamas, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, suggests that the Russian hostages may have been taken as friendlies to give Russia deniability and propaganda props for involvement in the Hamas terror war of 2023.
Conclusion with Free Nation Policy Considerations
The role of, and benefit to Russia and China in aiding and encouraging the Hamas attack on Israel knowing of the predictable Israeli responses call for a new policy among free nations to seize and repurpose all nation state and private military assets in the Middle East and Africa that have sponsored or fomented free or emerging government destabilization, insurgency, terror, war crimes, and humanitarian crises. Assets that cannot or will not be subject to seizure should be subject to retirement as free nations may define it.
Free nations should form a new international organization of free nations and observer nations to replace the U.N. while repurposing U.N. HQ and monetary support for the new organization. Some portions of the UN that foster open deescalation communications, humanitarian, and disaster cooperation among all nations could remain in place.
NGOs should not be allowed to privately lobby the new freedom nations organization, however, should be legally required to appear before the organization to issue overt, public communications about their activities for freedom. Their influence should be overt, express, and subject to the organization’s membership adoption of all, part, or none of the NGOs’ recommendations.
The new free nations organization should have its own security and economy councils with eligibility requirements favoring proven, stable free nation status for a term. Observer nations interested in becoming constitutional republican democracies with basic bills of rights who verifiably implement same for a sound term could earn eligibility to become a voting member of the new organization and become eligible to eventually join security or economy councils.
Feature Image
Ecrusized, influenced by user Rr016. – Own work, Israeli military presence in Gaza Strip citing Institute for the Study of War & Critical Threats Project. Maximum Palestinian advance citing NYT & WSJ. Made using OpenTopoMap data.
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- File:October 2023 Gaza−Israel conflict.svg
- Created: 8 October 2023
- Uploaded: 1 June 2024
