The SMH Gets Real (At Last)

The Bulldozing Entity has been illegally bulldozing Palestinian homes for as long as I can remember. One hundred and seventy-nine allegedly 'illegally built' Palestinian homes are currently awaiting that fate in illegally BE-occupied & illegally BE- annexed Arab East Jerusalem. (See Ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem, Marcy Newman, electronicintifada.net, 10/3/09) We even have the case of a Palestinian resident who, in the certain knowledge that his home is about to be illegally bulldozed by the Bulldozing Entity, has asked a friend to do it for a fraction of the $20,000 demolition fee charged by the Entity. (See Facing Israeli demolition, Palestinian razes his home, Mohammad Assadi, wire.antiwar.com, 6/3/09)

Retired Israeli anthropology professor and co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) Jeff Halper is now in Sydney blowing the whistle on such, and related, bastardry. And the usual suspects are upset: Robert Magid, owner and publisher of The Australian Jewish News, has pulled an ad for a talk by Halper in a Sydney synagogue because "I don't like the crowd who are bringing him out... They use their Judaism to bash other Jews and issues associated with the Jewish community" (Academic's visit divides Jewish groups, Andrew West, Sydney Morning Herald, 12/3/09). The "crowd," being Jews Against the Occupation, Independent Australian Jewish Voices, and the Coalition for Justice & Peace in Palestine. And now it seems even the synagogue crowd have developed cold feet: "We have a deep committment to free speech... but [some] members were very worried about what the professor might say," said a synagogue source (ibid).

That Herald report was followed next day by a somewhat exasperated editorial (With friends like these...) which dared to cast doubt on Magid's motives in pulling the ad: "Maybe it's because criticism that can't be easily shrugged off as ill-informed or even as anti-Semitic is harder to answer." The editorial then topped that by linking Magid's move to the US Israel lobby's mugging of NIC nominee Chas Freeman and drawing a rare conclusion of some relevance:- "Unlike the previous failed Obama appointments, the problems with Mr Freeman clearly stem from his outspoken, independent views rather than tax arrears, suspected abuse of office or conflicts of interest. His withdrawal augurs badly for Mr Obama's administration as it shapes up to dealing with a new Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu. As Mr Freeman has bitterly pointed out, many of Israel's overseas supporters identify Israel with one faction of its politics, meaning Mr Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party. That hardly speaks to Israel's great strengths. It will only make many think twice about the shrill messages about Iran's nuclear threat, Shiite extremism or the danger of even attending the forthcoming Durban Review Conference on racism and discrimination... "

The carry-on over Jeff Halper's visit has been comprehensively dealt with by Australian Jewish anti-Zionist journalist and blogger Antony Loewenstein. Suffice it for me to focus in the rest of this post on just two matters arising: the Herald's flawed framing of its otherwise highly relevant editorial, and the issue of what's eating Robert Magid.

The Herald has adopted the pc convention that before you can venture a criticism of the Bulldozing Entity, you've first got to praise it to the skies. Hence the opening sentence: "Israel is a democracy." Bulldust! It's actually a country under the control of a minority Jewish supremacist regime. Think about it. Four to five million of its potential citizens, the descendents of Palestinian Arabs ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces under cover of war in 1948, live, disenfranchised and stateless, outside its borders. The Bulldozing Entity has defied international law now for over 60 years by vetoing their return. Over one million of the Entity's current population of around 7 million are Palestinian Arabs, the descendents of those who escaped the ethnic cleansing of 1948. When the Bulldozing Entity allows the 4-5 million Palestinian refugees to return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled in 1948, and grants them full citizenship rights, including the right to vote, then and only then will talk about the Entity being a democracy cease to ring hollow.

As for Mr Magid, remember the "crowd" he doesn't like? Jews in various stages of bucking Zionist orthodoxy? Those who "use their Judaism to bash other Jews"? Yes? Well, like all dyed in the wool Zionists, he can't bear Jews who don't swallow political Zionism hook, line & sinker, including, I've no doubt, Jeff Halper.

In an extraordinary obituary on the late British plawright Harold Pinter published in his paper on January 23, Magid vents his Zionist spleen at one of that 'dreadful' "crowd". The following extracts reveal infinitely more of the suffocating tribal madness which is Zionism than they do of Pinter:-

"Later in the [Charlie] Rose [2006] interview, Pinter stated: 'I am speaking as a Jew and I deplore what Israel is doing. I deplore the continual harassment of the Palestinians... who are stopped by Israeli soldiers, who are actually [he pauses and screws up his face] thugs'. Pinter should have applied his rich imagination to envisage his only son, straight out of high school, scared, stationed at a checkpoint, evaluating whether the woman before him was really pregnant, or wearing a suicide vest... [H]is website didn't contain a trace of his Jewishness, and this was reflected in Pinter's life - until it came to Israel-bashing. Then surprisingly, he found his Jewish soul. He joined Independent Jewish Voices and underwent a metamorphosis where he found a Jewish voice within a British gentleman's body. And with this voice, he proclaimed, 'Israel's injustice to the Palestinians was an outrage' and 'the central factor in world unrest'. What do we make of this man, who was born a Jew, yet only displayed hatred and contempt for his own?... The tragedy of Pinter's life was that he was a great talent who provided insights into human nature. But his final betrayal, after a life denying his Jewish ancestry, was to define himself as a Jew in order to attack his fellow Jews. This transformation from Lear to Iago is worthy of a play."

IOW, Jews who are not Zionists are traitors to the cause.