Russia and Israel – The national blood mist

On the occasion of Easter Could a Bible verse perhaps be enlightening? Therefore, in a slightly modernized translation of the Gospel of Matthew 7:3, it says:

– Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but not the beam in your own?

Here we see a simple picture that explains how we often justify our own mistakes, even if they are bigger than “the other person’s”. A not particularly Bible-schooled interpretation of this fine literary image is, moreover, that even with a small splinter in the eye it becomes difficult to get an overview. If, on the other hand, you were to have an entire beam in your eye, you can imagine that it would be completely impossible to see clearly. Here, one is doomed to lose perspective, or become blind.

There was some of this – with or without wood in the eye – which led to what the former cultural editor of Dagbladet, and the editor-in-chief of Arbeiderbladet/Dagsavisen, Steinar Hansson, called the blood fog. He talked about the blood mist on the desk in a newsroom, which causes a murder or an accident to be blown up into completely disproportionate dimensions. It was us journalists who were taken by the blood mist.

That which however has happened since 24 February two years ago, and 7 October last year, is that the blood fog has affected more or less entire established nation-states. We have had many wars since World War II. But despite civil wars in the Balkans and in Africa, we have not seen two established nation-states eclipsed by the collective fog of blood to the same degree as now because many prefer to see the mote in their brother’s eye, but not the beam in their own. It is in this fog of blood – in this blind rage of self-righteousness – that the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza are now being fought.

The deepest reason to warrior-president Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is fury that the Ukrainians refuse to be “Russians”, as Putin claims they really are. The collective penalty for turning away from holy Russia, and for turning towards the deceitful and decadent West, is death. Either with rockets and sudden death, or by destroying the basis of life, as the Ukrainian power grid has been systematically and devastatingly bombed in recent weeks, partly because the West has not delivered the air defenses they promised to the Ukrainians.

Russia and the Russians have been manipulated into a blood fog where violence and death are romanticized. At the weekend, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, said that the war in Ukraine is an existential and civilizational “holy war”. This is an escalation of the rhetoric about the war which is officially referred to only as “the special military operation”. Putin’s closest ideological ally in the war is precisely the church. In connection with the mobilization a year ago, the patriarch assured that those who die in this war have a ticket to eternal life.

This is it the official position, despite the fact that a sober assessment of Russian involvement in this war has only one outcome, a weakening of Russia. Both when it comes to the economy and demographics, the warning lights are red. Last year’s economic growth is about the establishment of a war economy that is not sustainable in the long term. And not even during the Second World War, when the men were at the front, and the prospects for life were miserable, were fewer children born than last year. And with dramatic depopulation in large areas of Siberia, how to populate the conquered areas of Ukraine, “New Russia”, with new people?

The blood fog leads, according to most reasonable parameters, to the path towards national decline or ruin.

If we go to the war in Gaza does not look any better. The Israeli fury after Hamas’ terror on 7 October last year was understandable. Around 1,200 Israelis were killed or kidnapped. But so far around 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. Only a small percentage of them may be Hamas fighters, which the Israelis say they are looking to capture. Most of those who die are children. Many of them are now about to starve to death because, among other things, Israel prevents food from arriving.

A UN report established last week that Israel is carrying out what by definition is genocide in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing is another term that probably affects Israel, and which should ring a special bell in the country. A majority of Israelis nevertheless support the war in Gaza, and many make no secret of the fact that they want to throw the Palestinians out of the area forever. Nevertheless, “everyone” knows that a two-state solution is the only realistic one in the Holy Land. But as with the Russians in Ukraine, Israel is facing its own defeat – and perhaps downfall – with open eyes.

It is again the blood mist we are witnessing. Or the beam in your eye that blinds you to the violence and injustice you inflict on others.