Roving Periscope: Hamas ‘predicts’ the USA’s Soviet-type collapse!

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: As Israel relentlessly encircled Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip, killing many and wounding even more people, the Hamas terror outfit ‘predicted’ that the USA, the chief supporter of the Jewish state, would “collapse just like the USSR”, at a time US Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned to the Middle East a fourth time since the October 7 incident in a bid to broker peace and persuade other nations to resist from jumping into the conflagration.

“All of America’s enemies in the region are consulting and getting closer, and the day may come when they join the war together, and turn America into a thing of the past,” a Hamas official warned, according to the media reports on Saturday.

Amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official, warned that one day the United States of America will be a “thing of the past” and “collapse like the USSR,” the Jerusalem Post reported.

Ali Baraka made these remarks in an interview with a Lebanese YouTube channel on November 2.

“The United States was established by Britain and global Freemasonry, and it will collapse just like the USSR did,” the Post quoted him as saying in the interview, which was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“America will not remain powerful,” he added.

Ali Baraka also praised North Korea’s ability to strike the US.

“Yes. As you know, the leader of North Korea is, perhaps the only one in the world capable of striking the United States. He is the only one,” Ali Baraka said.

“North Korea can strike America. The day may come when North Korea intervenes, because it is, after all, part of (our) alliance.”

“Today, Russia contacts us daily. The Chinese sent envoys to Doha, and China and Russia met with the leaders of Hamas. A Hamas delegation traveled to Moscow, and soon, a delegation will travel to Beijing,” the media outlet quoted Baraka as saying.

“Iran cannot strike America. If Iran decided to intervene, it could strike the Zionist entity and the American bases in the region. Let us say things as they are, Iran does not have weapons that can reach America, but it can strike Israel and the American bases and ships in the region if the US expands its intervention.”

Meanwhile, the media reported, that the Israeli government on Friday lampooned Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s recent speech as “boring” and “long and rambling” after the latter took a jibe at the Jewish nation. Government spokesperson Eylon Levy hit back at Nasrallah, saying he “was hiding in a bunker like a coward.”

“We listened to Hassan Nasrallah’s long and rambling speech. I admit it was so boring that I don’t know whether his speechwriter was killed in recent IDF (Israel Defense Forces) strikes on Hezbollah up in the north,” Levy was quoted by The Times of Israel as saying.

“I would note that despite the large crowds, Nasrallah himself was not on stage. He was hiding in a bunker like a coward. If I were giving an hour-long speech defending the pedophile rapists of Hamas, I would be afraid to show my face in public as well,” he said.

In his lengthy virtual address, Nasrallah praised the Hamas attack of October 7 in which the terrorists attacked farming villages, towns, and military posts in southern Israel. More than 1,400 people were killed in Israel in the attack.

“This great, large-scale operation was purely the result of Palestinian planning and implementation,” Nasrallah said, suggesting his militia had no part in the attack. “The great secrecy made this operation greatly successful.”

He also said that October 7 had come as “proof that Israel is weaker than a spider’s web” and that one month into the war, it “had not been able to make any achievements.”

Nasrallah also criticized the strong US backing of Israel in its bombardment of Gaza, which has killed more than 9,000 people, mostly civilians. The US is now calling for a “humanitarian pause” in the war.

Many in the Middle East dreaded that Nasrallah’s speech would expand the ongoing Hamas-Israel war throughout the region.

Hamas leaders have been pushing — sometimes publicly — for their ally Hezbollah to widen its involvement in the war. Nasrallah met last week in Beirut with senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri and with Ziad Nakhaleh of the Palestinian-allied group Islamic Jihad. But Hezbollah has merely been throwing missiles at Israel from within its haven of Lebanon.

Since the war began, Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters have been engaging in border clashes.