Only Reflect

John Howard renews his vows: "Renowned champion for Israel and former Australian prime minister John Howard was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Jerusalem last Sunday. Hebrew University president Professor Menachem Magidor flew from Israel to bestow the honour in person. 'The gesture of this degree is something I will value for the rest of my life', Howard told a 200-strong crowd gathered at the Sofitel Wentworth Hotel gala dinner hosted by friends of the Hebrew University. 'I have an enormous respect and affection for the State of Israel... I'm proud of the voting record of my country, Australia, in the United Nations during the 11-&-a-half years of my prime ministership. It was deliberate because I believe, in so many ways, the State of Israel was being pushed around by the rest of the world, and on many occasions by countries that have no understanding of democracy'." (An honour for John Howard, The Australian Jewish News, 5/12/08)

As delusional as ever, of course. The late Australian journalist Matt Price had the bugger's number: "Asked... to reflect on the Vietnam War during his visit to the country, the Prime Minister displayed the sort of knee-jerk defensiveness not often seen since Geoffrey Boycott's retirement from international cricket. 'I supported our involvement at the time and I don't intend to recant', was how the PM opened. 'In public life you are accountable for the decisions that you take'. Had Howard stopped there he might have sounded half sensible - declaring his stance and resisting the temptation to rewrite history. But the PM rattled on: 'I mean, I didn't hold any position of authority then but I supported the reasons for Australia's involvement and nothing has altered my view that at the time on the assessments that were made then I took that view and I took that view properly and I don't intend to indulge this preoccupation that many have in recanting everything that they supported when they were in positions of authority'. Ignoring the tortuous prolixity of this sentence, it was also revealingly feverish. Surely leadership demands reflection as well as backbone, and, where necessary, concession, even reversal... And then this breathtaking admission about taking positions in public life: 'If I ever develop reservations, well I hope I would have the grace to keep them to myself because I think you take a position and you've got to live by that and be judged by it, and that's my position'. So when it comes to war, it seems, recantation is for whimps. What must Howard, the history buff's history buff, think of Robert McNamara, US defence secretary during much of Vietnam, whose stupendous recantation was delivered 30 years later? '(We) acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation', wrote McNamara. 'Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. I truly believe that we made an error not of values and intentions*, but of judgment and capabilities'." (For PM, recanting is one for the wimps, The Australian, 23/11/08)

[*Pull the other!]

Howard's earlier justifications for his romance with Israel are as lame and cliched as his nonsense about Israel being "pushed around by the rest of the world." When asked by the AJN in 2006 to elaborate on his government's "extraordinary support for Israel," this is as good as it got: "Well, it's support based on merit. I've always admired Israel's extraordinary fortitude and resilience in being able to survive the constant attacks despite the determination still of many countries to destroy it. Like anybody of my generation, I was very conscious of the Holocaust and the appalling treatment of the Jewish people by the Nazis and anybody of my age certainly can't not be influenced by that. But the essential justice of the cause of Israel's survival has always been quite manifest as far as I'm concerned." (Howard's way, 22/9/08)

After first choking on Howard's references to "merit" and "essential justice," I am led to reflect that what is "quite manifest" here is that "the history buff's history buff" is totally ignorant of modern Middle East history.

Finally, in this age of spin and cant, it is worth recalling what genuine reflection, based on a solid ethical foundation and real knowledge of its subject, looks like. Here's the great British philosopher Bertrand Russell: "The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was 'given' by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East." (Statement to the International Conference of Parliamentarians, 3/2/70)