Times of Israel: Vladimir Putin clearly likes to talk about Jews and Israel.
This time he suggested that Israel offered a good model for his designs on Ukraine.
Looking back at a panel on energy in 2017, the Russian president launched into a 90-second joke about a smartass Israeli soldier who was quizzed by his commander on how to engage multiple enemies. The soldier’s advice: Send more troops.
In 2019, hearing about the financial challenges of a rabbi in Crimea, Putin joked: “So the Jews have problems with finances!” Then he told the rabbi “Todah rabah,” Hebrew for “thank you very much.”
But Putin’s latest take, which he made Tuesday on television, went quite a bit further, affording some rare insight into how he thinks about the Jewish people. Essentially he suggested that Slavic peoples take a cue from Israelis and unite as one people despite different ethnicities, origins and maternal languages.
”Look, Jews come to Israel from Africa, from Europe, from other countries of the world. Africans are Black, yeah? People come from Europe — they speak Yiddish, not Hebrew. They seem to be unlike each other, but all the same, the Jewish people value their unity,” he said. Read More …
Opinion: Putin’s fondness for the Jewish people began in his youth.
The earliest of those contacts was with a Jewish family who lived on his family’s apartment block in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. They helped take care of Putin as a boy with his parents working long days.
“They were observant Jews who did not work on Saturdays and the man would study the Bible and Talmud all day long,” Putin wrote in one of his biographies. “Once I even asked him what he was muttering. He explained to me what this book was and I was immediately interested.”
So, if it turns out that Putin is Gog of Ezekiel 38:1-2, what would cause him to form an alliance with Turkey, Iran and North Africa to attack the Jewish state of which he is so fond?
“I will turn you around, put hooks in your jaws and bring you out with your whole army—your horses, your horsemen fully armed, and a great horde with large and small shields, all of them brandishing their swords.” Ezekiel 38:4
(hooks in the jaw, an ancient method of moving slaves)
And what could be the possible cause for the attack?
The life blood of the Russian economy is oil and gas, and Israel, Greece and Cyprus are building the East-Med pipeline that will make the vast natural gas resources of the Jewish state a competitor of Russian gas sales to Europe in 2025.
