Flogging Rubbish at The Age

Far out! The opinion editor of today's Age seems to think that Jeffrey Goldberg's latest bout of Zionist flatulence is just what those seeking enlightened opinion on Palestine's bid for observer status in the UN need to make sense of it all. Actually, I doubt the silly bugger even bothered reading it first.

How else to explain why a piece, originally titled How Palestinians can finally achieve independence, was retitled in the Age Palestinians doomed by intransigence when the only intransigence referred to in the text is Israeli intransigence?

Any masochist bothering to sniff Goldberg's emission at once enters that strange parallel world of the Zionist propagandist, where words you thought you knew the meaning of take on a whole new meaning, and history is replaced by mythistory, the reverse of what actually happened.

Did you know for example that the word resistance means indiscriminate murder? No? Read on:

"The Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza said, in a televised speech last week, that his group remained committed to a policy of indiscriminate murder. He gave the policy a different name, of course. 'Resistance,' he said, 'is the shortest way to liberate Palestine.'"

Did you know that "Arab nations... invaded the nascent state of Israel"?

He's referring, of course, to Palestine in 1948, but what he asserts happened there at the time bears not the slightest resemblance to historical fact. Far from invading 'Israel' Arab forces were engaged in resisting - in the usual sense of the word - an attempt by Zionist forces to overrun as much of the country as possible, regardless of who was assigned what by the UN.

Here, for example, is the testimony of the man who commanded the most effective of the Arab forces engaged in trying to stem the Zionist offensive, the Arab Legion's John Bagot Glubb:

"The claim that, on 15th May, 1948, the Arab states attacked Israel has already been disproved. We have seen that the Zionists attacked the area allotted by the UN to the proposed Arab state several weeks before the 'Arab Invasion'. Apart, however, from the time factor, no Arab army attacked Israel, except the Egyptian, which crossed from Sinai into an area allotted to the Jewish state in the partition plan. The Jordanians only entered the Arab state, which they found had already been invaded by the Israelis. All the battles fought between the Arab Legion and the Israeli army took place on the territory of the Arab state or in the Jerusalem international area, both of which had been attacked by the Israelis before the Arab Legion arrived. Jordan never, on any occasion, attacked Israel. Of the other Arab states, Lebanon took no part in 1948. Syria fought one border action at Samakh and then withdrew. She did not invade Israel. The Iraqi army sent a token force of 3,000 men, which engaged the Israelis across the Jordan at Jisr al Mejama. It then withdrew through Amman and joined the Arab Legion in defending the Arab state in the Nablus-Jenin-Tulkarm triangle. When holding Jenin, it was attacked by an Israeli force which tried to seize Jenin (a town allotted to the Arab state) but was repulsed. The Iraqis, throughout all the fighting, remained on the defensive inside the Arab state. They also did not attack Israel." (Peace in the Holy Land, 1971, p 309)

Then there are the ludicrous premises that underpin Goldberg's proposed 'strategy' for Palestinians wishing to acquire an independent state of their own. These are:

a) American Jews are so enamoured of civil rights in the US that they would clasp the Palestinians to their bosoms if only they'd drop both their guns and their demand for independence and call instead for the right to vote in the Knesset;

b) Given a), Israeli Jews would be so terrified of Israel being called an apartheid state, and so eager to avoid the attendant pariahdom, that they'd present an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza ("with security caveats," of course) to the Palestinians on a platter. In which case, problem solved, the Palestinians would have a state of their own!

What a genius!

Frankly, any opinion editor who thinks that kind of nonsense suitable fare for readers deserves nothing less than a public flogging with rolled-up copies of his paper.