Middle East Reality Check

False Historical Narratives

2012-01-30T09:36:00.013+11:00

The next time you hear some ignoramus out there prattling on about competing narratives in the context of the Palestine/Israel 'conflict', along the lines of the old cliche that there are always two sides to every story, recall the following, lucid analysis of the false historical narrative by evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers in his critically important new book, Deceit & Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others (2011):

"False historical narratives are lies we tell one another about our past. The usual goals are self-glorification and self-justification. Not only are we special, so are our actions and those of our ancestors. We do not act immorally, so we owe nothing to anyone. False historical narratives act like self-deceptions at the group level, insofar as many people believe the same falsehood. If a great majority of the population can be raised on the same false narrative, you have a powerful force available to achieve group unity. Of course, leaders can easily exploit this resource by coupling marching orders with the relevant illusion: German people have long been denied their rightful space, so Dass Deutsche Volk muss Lebensraum haben! (German people must have room in which to live!) - neighbors beware. Or the Jewish people have a divine right to Palestine because ancestors living in the general area some two thousand years ago wrote a book about it - non-Jewish occupants and neighbors better beware. Most people are unconscious of the deception that went into constructing the narrative they now accept as true. Nor are they usually aware of the emotional power of such narratives or that these may entrain long-term effects.

"There is a deep contradiction within the study of history between ferreting out the truth regarding the past and constructing a false historical narrative about it. As we have seen in this book, we make up false narratives all the time, about our own behaviour, about our relationships, about our larger groups. Creating one for one's larger religion or nation only extends the canvas. Usually a few brave historians in every society try to tell the truth about the past - that the Japanese army ran a vast, forced system of sexual slavery in World War II, that the United States committed wholesale slaughter against Koreans during the Korean War and against Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotians in the Vietnam War, that the Turkish government committed genocide against its successful sub-group of Armenians, that the Zionist conquerors of Palestine committed ethnic cleansing against some 700,000 Palestinians, that the United States has waged a long campaign of genocide and murder against American Indians, from the nation's founding to the murder by proxy of more than a half million in the 1980s alone, not counting before or after, and it has sought through military means to determine the fate of the entire New World for well over a century. But most historians will tell only some version of the conventional, self-aggrandizing story, and most people in the relevant countries will not have heard of (or believed) the factual assertions I just made.

"One noteworthy fact is that the younger the recipient of the knowledge, the greater the pressure to tell a false story. So we are apt to tell our children a heroic version of our past and reserve for our university students a more nuanced view. This of course strengthens the bias, since views learned early have special power and not everyone attends college, or studies history if they do. Fortunately, the young often appear naturally to resist parental and adult nonsense, so there is at least some tendency to resist and upgrade. Just the same, there are strong pressures on professional historians to come up with a positive story, in part to undergird what is taught more widely.

"Make no mistake about it. People feel strongly about these matters. One person's false historical narrative is another's deeply personal group identity - and what right do you have commenting on my identity in the first place? Many Turkish people may well feel that I have slandered their country regarding its Armenian genocide, while I believe I have merely told the truth. The same may be true (though less strongly) for some Japanese people regarding their country's practice of sexual slavery during World War II. Most Americans could hardly care less. So we wiped out the Amerindians - so what? So we repeatedly waged aggressive war on Mexico and stole nearly half their country. They probably deserved it. And, yes, since then we have fought a staggering series of wars ourselves and by proxies - even recently supporting genocide in such diverse places as Central America, Vietnam, Cambodia, and even East Timor, while blocking international action against it in Rwanda - but so the hell what? Only a left-wing nutcase would dwell on such minor details. Isn't that what great powers do, and aren't we the greatest?

"Israel is no different from any other country or group in having its own false historical narrative, and Israel's is especially important because it exacerbates a set of troubled international and intergroup relations. The narrative is also one that is accepted almost wholesale in the United States, the most powerful military nation in the world. As the old joke goes, why doesn't Israel become the 51st state? Because then it would have only 2 senators. Again, feelings run high. Some regard as anti-Semitic any attack on the behavior of Israel (or its underlying narrative). I regard this as nonsense and follow instead what seem to me to be the best Israeli (and Arab) historians - and their (largely Jewish) American counterparts - in describing a false historical narrative used to expand Israel at a cost to its neighbors by waging regular war on them to seize land and water (with near-constant US support), all in the name of fighting terrorism, while using state terrorism as the chief weapon. The narrative inverts reality: Israel wants only peace with its Arab neighbors (from as early as 1928), who to this very day reject peace at every turn and seek the total destruction of Israel and its Jewish population.

"But what are we to do? Yes, feelings run high, but false historical narratives are a critical part of self-deception at the group level, often with horrendous affects on others - if not on those practicing them. To discuss the subject we need examples. Are we to leave out this important topic because on any given example feelings are easily bruised and controversy aroused? I see no sense in this. A theory of self-deception is not of much use if it can't be applied to cases of actual human importance. Of course, I am more likely to be biased on these topics than on, say, the immunology of self-deception, but for me the risk of appearing foolish, indeed self-deluded, is preferable to the cowardice of not taking a position." (pp 215-218)

Lord Gingrich

2012-01-29T09:18:00.020+11:00

"One of my new year's resolutions was to ignore the Republican primaries in the United States, but I have broken it already. They have a horrible, irresistable fascination, not unlike watching a funnel web spider crawling across your lounge-room carpet. All those spray-on tans, spay-on first names - Mitt, Newt, Rick, Ron - and worse, those spray-on opinions confected out there on the lunar right. These people have spun so far off any rational policy axis that they make George W. Bush look like a Roosevelt liberal." (A field so scary that you can't turn away, Mike Carlton, Sydney Morning Herald, 21/1/12)

What more is there to say than that?

Plenty! Did you know, for example, that Newt Gingrich is a reincarnation of Britain's Lord Balfour? Allow me to explain.

I sort of half suspected it when Lord Gingrich blithely declared last month that the Palestinians are an "invented" people (See my 19/12/11 post Newt Gingrich, 'Historian'), an utterance, need I tell you, which took me back to the Balfour Declaration's "existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" (who just happened at the time - 1917 - to make up over 90% of Palestine's population), and Lord Balfour's later, blithe announcement that, as far as these barely discernible non-Jews were concerned: "[W]e do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of [Palestine]." (See my 11/11/11 post Guilty As Hell.)

And then when I learnt that Gingrich has a Zionist in his ear, one Sheldon Adelson, a multi-billionaire casino mogul, Bibi buddy, AIPAC and Gingrich campaign donor, I thought immediately of Chaim Weizmann (who was surely worse than any flea in Balfour's). Oh, and there was also Lord Gingrich's blithe promise to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem with quite cavalier disregard for the implications of same. But that still wasn't enough to catapult me into the ranks of those who believe in reincarnation. No, it was the following revelation that did it:

"The Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has promised to establish a permanent base on the moon by 2020 if elected... 'By the end of my second term [!], we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American', Reuters reported the presidential hopeful as saying. 'We will have commercial near-Earth activities that include science, tourism and manufacturing, because it is in our interest to acquire so much experience in space that we clearly have a capacity that the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching', he said... 'If we do it right, it'll be wild and it will be just the most fun you've ever seen', he said." (Gingrich pledges to relaunch space race, Sydney Morning Herald, 27/1/12)

No, that didn't really have me thinking of a Balfour-style Gingrich Declaration: Lord Gingrich's Government view with favour the establishment on the moon of a space base for the American people... etc. What really persuaded me were Lord Gingrich's words: 'If we do it right, it'll be wild and it will be just the most fun you've ever seen'.

Pure Balfour, my dear!

I mean, listen to Lord Balfour defend (in the House of Lords on 21 June 1922) what he called the "great ideal" of establishing on the moon - sorry - in Palestine a National Home for the Jewish people: "It may fail. I do not deny that this is an adventure. Are we never to have adventures? Are we never to try new experiments?"

Pure Gingrich, my dear!

With My Own Eyes. Really!

2012-01-28T12:18:00.020+11:00

Schlock horror:

"Syria is deploying large numbers of Hezbollah and Iranian snipers as 'military consultants' to murder anti-regime protesters, a senior government defector has told The Times... [Mahmoud Haj Hamad, the top auditor at the Defence Ministry said,] 'At the beginning there were hundreds, then when things started to get worse, they started to bring in more outsiders. The numbers were huge - in the thousands'. The foreign recruits are prized by the regime for their street-fighting abilities, having crushed dissent in Iran and Lebanon." ('Foreign snipers' in Syria, Nate Wright & James Hider, The Times/The Australian, 27/1/12)

But hang on a minnie! Let's think this one through. Back in 2009, at the height of the anti-government protests in Tehran, not only Hezbollah, but Hamas as well, were allegedly helping the Iranian regime to put them down. What's more, your Hezbollahs were alleged to have been riding motorcycles whilst doing so - presumably because the Iranians haven't quite mastered that species of tres sophisticated technology yet. (See my 23/6/09 post Hezbikies Ho!)

So what I want to know is, if Iran's Revolutionary Guards were so bloody incompetent in 2009 that they needed Lebanese and Palestinian ring-ins to do their dirty work for them, why would the Syrian regime today be importing the same incompetent Iranians to do its dirty work?

But that's not all. If Lebanon's Hezbollahs could cycle all the way to Iran in 2009, despite the absence of a common border, how come they're bikeless in Syria (which borders Lebanon) today?

And - need I ask? - where the hell's Hamas this time around?

Finally, Hezbollah is supposed to have cut its teeth crushing dissent in Lebanon? After Messrs Wright and Hider have revealed exactly what "dissent" it is that Hezbollah is supposed to have "crushed," perhaps they could tell us if that was that with or without Iranian and/or Syrian assistance?

Oh, and here's one for our intrepid journalists: Are you guys sure 'Mahmoud Haj Hamad' is really from Syria? He wouldn't by any chance be an Iraqi with a vivid imagination who answers to the name Curveball*, would he?

[*See my 17/2/11 post Words Fail Me.]

Israeli Pheromone Madness

2012-01-28T07:26:00.019+11:00

I guess addiction is something we all have to struggle with in one form or another. Take Israeli pheromone abuse, for example.

Apparently, once and future (?) prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who once admitted mainlining this most addictive of substances - 'Support for Israel is in my DNA' - is struggling with the habit, albeit with little success so far:

"Mr Rudd, the current Foreign Minister, split with the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, over Palestinian efforts to win membership of the key United Nations cultural body, UNESCO, recommending that Australia abstain in the vote, only to be overruled. Professor Evans will argue [in an Australia Day speech] Mr Rudd has made a 'so far not completely successful' effort to recalibrate Australia's total support for Israel's security while at the same time encouraging a breakthrough in the peace process." (Rudd aims worthy of support, says Evans, Daniel Flitton, Sydney Morning Herald, 26/1/12)

Alas, present prime minister Julia Gillard shows no such inclination. In fact, far from kicking the habit, this sad, drug-addled creature is actually stocking up on supplies:

"Julia Gillard has moved to strengthen her already close relations with the Jewish community by giving her new business liaison adviser, Bruce Wolpe, the specific task of liaising with it. Some caucus colleagues think treating the Jewish community in this special way is unwise, even weird. One called it 'a curious decision'. Another said: 'This is amateurish. Singling out the Jewish community when there are so many other components of Australian society is hard to comprehend'. A third said that the level and quality of access for the Jewish community was already superior to that of others and this could further that perception." (PM's Jewish move queried, Michelle Grattan, The Age, 25/1/12)

Unfortunately, we never seem to learn from the American example. Over there, Congress has become a virtual Israeli pheromone den, and US presidents can be heard abjectly babbling about the 'unbreakable bond' which is the bane of their lives and reduces them to the pitiful wrecks we see before us on news bulletins. Is this really what we want here in Australia?

Invasion Day 2012

2012-01-26T11:33:00.013+11:00

"From humble beginnings, we have spread across this vast continent to become the vibrant, diverse and free nation that we are today. In populating this 'continent for a nation', we have joined the world's oldest continuing culture with other cultures from all over the globe. This population continues to grow, and with a proper concern for the natural environment, our economy remains prosperous." (Editorial: Celebrating our Australia Day, The Australian)

"The first Maliangapa stronghold to fall was the watered swampland of Torowoto. It became the property of Edward Henry of Victoria, a holding that also took in the long, deep waterhole on Yancannia Creek some 30 kms east of Torowoto. The white men built a log hut beside the waterhole as headquarters for the station that took its name from the creek. The owner did not come to live there himself, but left it to manager Hazlewood to superintend the stocking of the Maliangapa grasslands with sheep. The dark people disliked having to share the waterhole with the station men and the tribal land with the sheep. They had frequently in the past extended courtesies to white travellers journeying through their territory, but they raised serious objection to the takeover of their lands. They resented the discourtesy of this uninvited invasion of their privacy, and the arbitrary demands made upon them by their guests. When it became clear that the 'visitors' had every intention of making an indefinite stay, they rebelled. In fact they rebelled repeatedly, and angry spears flew, the Europeans fighting back through the chinks in the walls of their hut. There had already been some tribal unrest when W.H. Tietkens called at Yancannia in 1865, and met a young warrior decked out in paint and feathers, armed with spear, shield, and boomerang. Previously worsted in at least one engagement, he had accepted the name of 'Monkey' bestowed by the mocking whites, and learned to ride their horses and smoke their tobacco. Yet it required further chastisement to bring the Maliangapa to a proper state of submission. Some time after Tietkens had left the station, where an uneasy peace reigned, the warrior Monkey lost his life in another forlorn bid to burn down the log hut and kill its immovable occupants." (Lament for the Barkindji, Bobbie Hardy, 1976, pp 117-118)

"Neither the magic of the mekigar nor the potions of the white men could avert the moment when the Barkindji peoples were outnumbered on their own land, for as their numbers diminished so did those of the conquerors increase. That time came more quickly for some than for others. Probably until the gold rush to Mount Browne in 1881 the Maliangapa were not overwhelmed numerically, and could still cherish an illusion of themselves as an entity. But by the end of the 1860s there was no part of the frontages that was not entirely overrun with whites, not only on the stations that lined the riverbanks all the way from Wentworth to Fort Bourke, but in the spate of hotels and small port towns that came in the wake of the river steamers. In them the Barkindji of the Darling first experienced the joys of urban living, and the taste of grog that dulled the ache of despair." (ibid, p 141)

"It was the second generation of the subjugated who felt the all-engulfing silence, for their fathers of the pastoral era had not been similarly deprived. True, the quietly breathing hills of the Maliangapa had long been overrun with the sheep of Mount Poole Station, and the people been forced to bend, not without some coercion and contesting of rights, to the will of the white man, before that day in 1880 when a predatory prospector first had an inkling of the gold that was in them... Regardless of the dry remoteness of the supposed El Dorado, the white men flocked there in hundreds when the news leaked out. Many perished by the way, or in the typhoid-ridden shanties of Mount Browne. The survivors fanned out over the Maliangapa hills, and north and west beyond their borders. Most of the gold they found was a nine days' wonder, like the ephemeral settlements that sprang up and as quickly died, leaving the ravished hills to nurse their scars in solitude but for the omnipresent bleating of the sheep that not even the magic of the mekigar could dispel." (ibid, p 150)

"Wave after wave of subdivision of the land had thrown out the survivors of the Barkindji peoples on to the scrap-heap of white society. The Maliangapa at Tibooburra were the last communal group of any size to be dislocated, and this final coercive blow virtually completed the process. During the days of the station blacks the dark people had been working towards a compromise between the tribal condition of their fathers and the demands of their white conquerors. Even after the era of paternalistic squatters had ended, many were able to continue their forward drive as nomadic workers and stockmen on the remaining large holdings. But the story had been one of continuing displacement and disruption, and there had been no stability to nurture their adaptation. It was impossible for them to make the difficult transition from tribalism to Westernisation when the white man's hunger for land was so intense. They needed time and help to adjust to a system of economic values and techniques, to say nothing of social values and ideals vastly different from those of their own tradition. Instead, they were progressively squeezed out from the land that gave them continuity and contentment. Even though for many it was it was an adopted land and often defaced almost beyond recognition by pastoralism, they still drew strength from association with it, and from their own ability to live self-respecting Aboriginal lives within its borders, while working European-fashion to support themselves.

"Those who were transferred to the reserves faced artificial and cramped living, and were subjected to tension-producing coercions and unhealthy European influences. The education designed for their acclimatisation was neither palatable nor stimulating, and while the old people clung to a Dreamtime that was strictly yesterday's, the young aped the brittle modes that they saw on the surface of the new white 20th century. They could see no deeper, for the white man, despising them, kept them apart and separate from his own society. And with their continued but hardly surprising failure to conform to his standards, he despised them the more.

"Almost all trace of the tribal imprint on the land was obliterated. The Darling, the tribal Barka, was taken over now by white fishermen who wrote angry letters to the paper when outsiders came there to poach on their preserve. A local cleric attributed the sterling character of his outback parishioners to their British ancestry. The dust storms rose as the tribal land was ravaged. In 1938 the white Australians celebrated their 150th anniversary in occupation of the black man's land. There was a 'back to Wilcannia week' in which its first people, the Aborigines, took their place in the procession that wended its way down the main street. It was quite an occasion, and the Governor of New South Wales paid a visit to the town. At the local school he was presented with a carved Aboriginal shield. A less publicised item of news was that the local Parents' & Citizens' Association was currently up in arms regarding the presence of the shield-maker's descendants at the school.

"Celebrations were also held in Sydney that year. It was deemed appropriate that a corroboree should be staged on this gala occasion, and a combined party from the Brewarrina and Menindee missions was invited to give the performance. Their conduct throughout the tour was exemplary, a gratified Board was able to report, and the little troupe played a prominent part in the landing ceremony at Farm Cove and the subsequent pageant that traversed the city streets. These dancers who performed so courteously on a white man's holiday were the only Aborigines left in New South Wales who had even a glimmering of the old corroboree steps, for their subjection had come long after the Cammeraygal and other tribes around Sydney were destroyed. Yet in their own homeland much water had already flowed down the Barka since its name was changed to Darling. Some day perhaps the survivors of the Barkindji would win through to enrich the values of a more mature and less arrogant Australia. Their children are still waiting for this to happen." (ibid, pp 221-222)

Howler 2

2012-01-25T09:18:00.024+11:00

"People will die. They died the last time the navy forced boats back to Indonesia and they will die the next. They have always died. That's why the navy hates these operations and that loathing is deep in the DNA of the service. It goes back to the violent blockade carried out by the Royal Navy before and after the Second World War to prevent Jews reaching Palestine. Jews were trapped in Europe. Jews and sailors died at sea. The film is called Exodus." (Turn the boats back & people will die - Abbott knows this)

These are the opening two paragraphs of David Marr's otherwise relevant and accurate analysis in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald of the latest twist in the LibLab muscle-flexing competition over which party can be tougher on asylum seekers - Tony Abbott's declaration that, if elected prime minister at the next election, he'll order the Navy to turn refugee boats back to Indonesia.

Unfortunately, Marr has once before put his foot in his mouth with this Exodus-asylum seeker analogy, but, presumably in the absence of anyone (MERC excepted) having drawn his attention to what amounts essentially to a caricature of postwar events off the Palestinian coast, he's gone and done it again. Getting it wrong once may be excusable, but this reappearance of his initial howler does no credit to his reputation as a serious scholar. (See my 29/12/10 post Howler)

The sad fact is that Marr obviously still believes - in 2012! - that Exodus (1958), Leon Uris' best-selling Zionist propaganda novel, and the Otto Preminger film (1960) of the same name based on it, is historically supportable.

Whatever the worth of his expert opinion on the history and plight of asylum seekers heading by boat to these shores from Indonesia, Marr's portrayal of the 1940s Exodus phenomenon as a simple matter of desperate Jews with nowhere else to go up against an implacable British government presumably presided over by some earlier British incarnation of Tony Abbott is nothing more than an ill-considered retrojection of the Australian present into the Palestinian past. Had these same Exodus Jews been off the coast of England, knocking on England's door, Marr's analogy might have been on surer footing, but, in that event, it would have been the Zionist movement, not the British Navy, resisting their entry.

Hypothetical historical scenarios aside, what Marr's simple-minded Exodus version of history overlooks is the then Zionist leadership's cruel and cynical campaign to use displaced European Jews as a propaganda weapon in their violent struggle to dislodge their former ally, Britain, from Palestine and gain the upper hand there over the majority indigenous Palestinian Arab population.

Now I've dealt with this matter before, particularly in my 17/6/10 post Cannon Fodder for Zion: Exodus 1947, but seeing Marr's specifically referenced the film Exodus this time, I can do no better than clarify the matter by quoting from M.M. Silver 's recent study, Our Exodus: Leon Uris & the Americanization of Israel's Founding Story (2010):

"The Exodus incident, in its real and fictionalized guises, was about politics. Throughout the real-life saga of the Exodus, the Zionist leadership grasped its political implications. 'From the very start', writes Tom Segev, the Exodus ship affair 'was intended as a public-relations tool for the Zionist movement'. For instance, throughout the... affair Palmach chief Yigal Allon displayed a keen awareness of its political and public relations utility. Allon cabled Palmach comrades in Europe, saying 'it's inconceivable that Jews can be expelled from Eretz Israel without their doing the utmost to resist deportation'. Much like the fictional Ari Ben Canaan, Allon understood that while Jews would need to fight to win political independence, the value of this particular battle over Exodus was not to be measured in terms of what actually happened on the boat. Its worth was the way waves lapped from the ship in public consciousness. Resistance to the British, Allon explained in his June 21, 1947, cable, "should make the process of deportation as difficult as possible, since this, anyway, is one of the less pleasant tasks an oppressive administration has to fulfill. Now and then resistance has to rekindle the support of our people in the Diaspora, who might be able to help us and to awaken the conscience of those nations of the world who have not yet lost theirs'.

"In the battle for public perception, one of the Zionists' strongest cards was the ship's name. A brilliant, and highly deliberate, designation chosen by Moshe Sneh, the head of Mossad le-Aliyah Bet (the organization that spearheaded the illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine), the name Exodus reinforced a contemporary understanding that the Jewish campaign for survival and rebirth had universal implications... In the annals of illegal Zionist immigration to Eretz Israel, the name Exodus was uniquely rooted in biblical ground recognizable to Christians and Jews alike. The name powerfully associated the age-old Jewish struggle for freedom with the uplifting sense of democratic triumph in the postwar world. 'The name is a stroke of genius', noted the highly communicative director of the Jewish Agency's Political Department, Moshe Shertok (Sharett). 'This name by itself says more than anything which has ever been written about it [the boat's story]'.

"Few parties connected to the Exodus affair questioned the morality of relating to the 4,500 DPs as instruments operated to promote political visions of Mandatory Palestine's future. Few wondered whether it was cynical to exploit the fate of Holocaust survivors for political purposes. In this important respect, fiction followed real life. In Uris's fictional Exodus, Kitty Freemont remonstrates here and there about how Ari Ben Canaan is an 'inhuman beast', after the Yishuv partisan orchestrates an 85-hour hunger strike to stir world sympathy for the boat... Overall, however, Ari's act is lauded in the book as consummate politics, and Kitty, his American admirer, comes to accept the necessity of his methods. Similarly, in the real-life Exodus episode, the political and public relations effects of the DPs plight took precedence over their actual suffering - virtually nobody among the Zionists or their supporters identified this tendency as cynicism... The Jewish Agency, functionally the government of prestate Israel, was a political institution, and the politics of the Exodus affair were inextricably tied to calculations about world public opinion. The intensity of the Exodus ha'apalah struggle was calibrated strictly in line with public responses. As soon as Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders judged that UNSCOP's officials had turned the corner and were formulating recommendations in favor of a Jewish state, they knew that the time had come to scale back the Exodus struggle." (pp 78-80)

David, no third time, please!

American Clueless

2012-01-24T19:20:00.005+11:00

"About 18 months before I arrived in Iraq, one of my predecessors had ordered My Arabic Library, $88,000 worth of books, an entire shipping container. My Arabic Library was a Bush-era, US government-wide project to translate American books, so we now have Tom Sawyer, The House of the Seven Gables, and Of Mice & Men in Arabic. The Embassy had big plans for the books, claiming, 'It is so important that the children of Baghdad, the next generation of leaders of Iraq, obtain basic literacy skills. A love of learning and literacy will mean better job opportunities for them when they grow up. They will be able to better support their families and help build a more prosperous Iraq'.

"Everyone forgot about the books until we learned that a truck was bringing them in from Jordan. After our prayers that the driver would abandon the truck en route failed, my team was stuck with the problem of what to do with a container of books that no one wanted. Apparently, there was little interest among Iraqi schools in reading The Crucible or Moby-Dick, as the books didn't fit into their centralized curriculum. I was charged with getting rid of them, to anywhere; the lucky winner needed only a truck. We cajoled a nearby school to take the whole mess from us as a personal favor. Their only condition was that they would not have to do the loading themselves, so that is how a couple of us ended up humping books into a flatbed truck while a high school principal and a local truck driver sat in the shade smoking, watching us. We heard later from a third party that, failing to sell the books on the black market, the principle just dumped them behind the school." (We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts & Minds of the Iraqi People, Peter Van Buren, 2011, p 1)

"The newspaper men to whom I talked in Syria were particularly difficult. They were bitterly nationalistic and bitterly opposed to Israel and they badgered me with questions about why I should support the Israeli cause. 'The Balfour resolution [sic] for establishment of a Jewish homeland was accepted by the United States and Great Britain after the First World War', I usually replied. 'This action encouraged the buying of land by the Jews on the assurance that a homeland would be created for them in Palestine. I feel that it practically committed our government to assist in the creation of a government there eventually, because there cannot be a homeland without a government'. The Syrian reporters were never satisfied with this answer and the most I ever persuaded them to admit was that I was honestly expressing my point of view. That, however, obviously did not mean to them that I was entitled to a point of view on this controversial and important subject.

"One evening in Damascus we had dinner with the head of of the Syrian foreign office in a kind of night club and restaurant. There were a number of guests and I noticed that a handsome, uniformed man who sat opposite me at the table seemed to be someone of importance. 'Who is that gentleman?' I asked the man sitting next to me in a low voice. He looked startled and raised his finger to his lips. 'That', he said in a whisper, 'is the dictator of Syria, General Fawzi Selo'.

"The General seemed to have little to say and did not even speak to me during the meal, so I paid no more attention. But after dinner, with no preliminaries but with the air of a man accustomed to giving commands, he walked around to me and said: 'Madame, you have been very friendly to Israel'. 'Yes', I replied, 'I am friendly to all. I am equally friendly to your people'. 'But', he persisted with some sign of irritation, 'you have worked for Israel!' 'That is true', I said. 'When I think a thing is good, I also think it should be given help'. He did not reply, but he stared at me with what I thought was anger. Then he turned on his heel and, without another word, walked away." (On My Own, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1959, pp 119-121)

No Whispering in the Heart?

2012-01-23T07:46:00.027+11:00

You may have noticed that one of Australia's most prominent Zionists, lawyer Mark Leibler, is heavily involved in the current push to recognise indigenous Australians and remove racially discriminatory provisions in the Constitution:

"Mark Leibler, better known as a leading corporate and tax lawyer at Arnold Bloch Leibler, was co-chair, with Patrick Dodson, of the expert panel. Its report, Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution, was released yesterday with a national referendum to be held either before, or at, the next federal election next year. Speaking to Prejudice yesterday, Leibler said he was asked by the Prime Minister to take on the co-chair role in 2010. 'I felt it was important and I agreed', he said." (Constitution report leaves Leibler proud, Susannah Moran, Prejudice/The Australian, 20/1/12)

As he explained recently in an Age opinion piece, Leibler felt the issue was very important and agreed to Gillard's request for very personal reasons:

"Racism turns your life into a lottery. It reduces your ability to control your destiny or make decisions for yourself. To stay or go becomes a matter of life or death. Racism condemned my maternal grandparents to being murdered in Auschwitz. In 1939, it drove my parents from Belgium and the Nazis to find sanctuary in Australia." (Racism still shadows our history, 20/1/12)

A cris de coeur, indeed. And so beautifully put. But something nags.

As Leibler wrote this, did he for one moment pause to consider that whole generations of Palestinians have had their lives turned upside down so that, in addition to his parents' Australian sanctuary, he (and they) could also call Israel home? Did it cross his mind for so much as a nanosecond that Israel is because Palestine isn't? Did he perish the thought that maybe, just maybe, Palestinians too are the victims of a profoundly racist project?

Unsurprisingly, following his deeply felt prelude, fine, noble sentiments followed:

"As far as the constitution is concerned [Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people] are invisible; no mention of their heritage and cultures; no mention of their place as the first inhabitants of this country and as the world's oldest continuing cultures. How did this happen? Because the constitution, understandably, reflects the values and beliefs of the time it was drafted. The founding fathers'... perspectives - including those on race - were of the 19th century, not the 21st... Today, there is no more pressing need than to remove the sections in the constitution dealing with race and to end the exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from the document and, at the same time, acknowledging their place, cultures and languages as integral to our nation's identity."

But did it ever enter the mind of this Zionist advocate that, where the indigenous Arab inhabitants of Palestine are concerned, Zionists have written the book on invisibility - whether it's a 'people without a land for a land without a people', or Golda Meir's "non-existent" Palestinians or Zionist lobby-funded Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's "invented" Palestinians, or a myriad other variations on the theme?

Dit it occur to him how so 19th century is the idea of an ethnographic state such as Israel, a state which excludes ethnically-cleansed Palestinian refugees simply because they're not Jewish, but hoovers up any Jew, anywhere on the planet, even ferreting out and uprooting so-called 'lost tribes', proclaiming that the land of Israel is their exclusive and God-given birthright?

Did he possibly reflect that there is no more pressing need than to remove the panoply of apartheid legislation, beginning with the thoroughly racist Law of Return, which underpins Israel's 'Jewishness' and forever excludes non-Jewish Palestinians from becoming integral to its identity?

I seriously doubt it.

I'm reminded here of the 19th century Sydney barrister, Richard Windeyer. Australian historian Henry Reynolds describes a man as dismissive of Aboriginal rights to the land of Australia as any latter day Zionist is of Palestinian rights to Palestine.

Windeyer, writes Reynolds, in the context of an 1842 debate, "took particular exception to the proposition that the Europeans 'had no right to take the land'. That claim, he argued, begged the whole question 'which is whether the land be theirs'. Europeans who ventured into the interior of Australia had met Aboriginal people and had assumed the land was 'more or less appropriated'. But the tribes didn't actually inhabit the land. Rather they ranged over it. 'That they have never tilled the soil, or enclosed it, or cleared any portion of it, or planted a single tree, or grain or root, is acknowledged'. As a consequence there was no ownership. Aboriginal occupation of the land did not 'by the law of nature establish any title to the substance of the soil'. It was, indeed, 'the height of absurdity to talk of the title of these men of the woods to anything not under the control of their bludgeons'... In a sweeping peroration Windeyer declared: The consideration of the rights of the Aborigines to the enjoyment of their laws and customs, to the soil of the country, to its wild animals is done. The argument is sound, the chain of reasoning is complete'." (This Whispering in Our Hearts, 1998, pp 20-21)

But something still nagged at the man. As Reynolds puts it:

"And yet that was not the final word. His powerful analysis had not satisfied his own conscience. 'How is it our minds are not satisfied?' he asked. 'What means this whispering in the bottom of our hearts?' (ibid)

No such whispering in your heart, Mark Leibler?

Why So Shy?

2012-01-21T10:55:00.031+11:00

So shy, apparently, is Melbourne "businessman and philanthropist" (AJN, 20/1/12) Albert Dadon about his Australia Israel Leadership Forum (AILF) - which, in its latest manifestation, has grown like good old Topsy into the Australia Israel United Kingdom Leadership Forum (AIUKLF) - that a complete list of those attending its January love-in in Jerusalem cannot be had - not even on Albert's very own Australia Israel Cultural Exchange (AICE) website!

A cast of thousands, both Aussies and Brits, with more Israeli prime ministers, past and present, than you can shake a stick at, and with 'is Lordship Tony Blair 'imself in attendance, and we barely know who fronted!

All we get are gnomic references in The Australian Jewish News such as this: "There was also a raft of international journalists on hand, including The Australian newspaper's foreign editor Greg Sheridan." (Bibi, Blair headline at leadership forum, 20/1/12)

Rafts of international journos, slews of political 'talent', and we the public, their adoring readers/fans, know virtually nothing about it, dammit!

Why isn't the corporate press crowing about this celebrity confab? Why must we first scour a Sheridan column, or stumble across a disclaimer at the foot of a piece by the Herald's now twice-rambammed Asia-Pacific editor, Hamish McDonald (see my 13/1/12 post Ain't love Grand?), to discover even the mere existence of this muted manifestation of movers, this shadowy shindig of shakers? Why must it be left for a humble citizen journalist, such as myself, to scratch around the internet in a near vain effort to round up the revellers?

My gleanings so far reveal only that, in addition to Sheridan and McDonald, "British and Australian lawmakers from both sides of politics were represented. Among the Australian contingent in Jerusalem was Mark Arbib, federal minister for sport & assistant treasurer; Jewish members of Parliament Michael Danby and Joshua Frydenberg... The Britons included Alistair Burt, minister for the Middle East, and Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard." (Joint Australian, British delagation meets Netanyahu, Fayyad, m.jta.org, 17/1/12)

Minister for the Middle East? Is this a first? You couldn't make this stuff up!

OK, so much for the event itself. In Australia, how's the AIUKLF bearing fruit?

I've already registered Sheridan's two lemons and noted that by McDonald (See Ain't Love Grand, 13/1/12, and Faulty Connection, 14/1/12), but observe that the latter's back in today's Sydney Morning Herald with another - Life in Israel an ultra-orthodox paradox - that, in addition to its decidedly desiccated substance, fairly gives me the following pips, which I've taken the trouble to extract for you:

"In Israel itself, the old mix of nation-building pioneers - Ashkenazi Jews steeped in European high culture, kibbutzim making a wilderness bloom, doughty women doing what were then 'men's jobs' everywhere else - is fading fast."

Now if that ain't an A-Z collection of Zionist cliches I don't know what is.

"Internally, the dominance of the right and ultra-orthodox are removing bit by bit Israel's old liberality."

Funny how none of that old Israeli liberality managed to benefit the Palestinians, eh?

"Israelis say Abbas and his non-party Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, can't modify the 'right of return' (to pre-1948 homes) in their demands, and still indoctrinate children that Israel has no right to exist (an accusation disputed by European Union and British monitors of West Bank schools)."

I suppose the bit about EU monitors is about as good as we're going to get from Maccas.

So this is the kind of AIUKLF-generated tripe we're reading in both wings of the corporate press here in Australia. Can't imagine what UK readers are having dished up at the moment by the rest of that mysterious raft of international journalists.

The Pop-Up Propagandist

2012-01-18T11:22:00.049+11:00

On the rare occasion when corporate press reporting of Palestine/Israel gets real an interesting pattern emerges:

Take, for example, Fairfax Middle East correspondent Ruth Pollard's informative and harrowing snapshot of Israeli colonial metastization in the West Bank in Monday's Sydney Morning Herald:

First there's the statistics, giving the reader some idea of the overall scale of the problem:

" A 20% rise in settlement construction across the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the past year has taken land critical to the creation of a Palestinian state and placed a two-state solution further away than ever a report has found. Building has started on at least 1850 housing units, while there were 3500 units already under construction, the Israeli settlement watch group Peace Now said. Eleven new settlements - home to 2300 settlers and 680 structures - were recognised by Israel last year when it legalised those outposts (outposts are created when a settlement expands to a new area of land). A further 1577 units were flagged as part of the Ministry of Housing's official list of pending tenders, the report found. 'The Netanyahu government is promoting several plans precisely in disputed areas which could prevent the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel', Peace Now found..." (Palestinians live in fear for their lives as two-state solution hopes fade)

Then there's the account of Israeli settler wolves descending on the Palestinian fold, giving the reader an insight into what life is like for Palestinians at the pointy end of the process:

"The West Bank village of Asira, just south of Nablus, knows too well the challenges of living under Israel's military occupation in the shadow of a settlement. Villagers said they were consistently attacked by residents of the neighbouring settlement of Yizhar, as often as once a week. But the house that bears the brunt of those attacks is the Maklouf residence. It is the last home in the village and closest to the settlement. The family has an extraordinary collection of home movies, shot by their mother on a hand-held video recorder, that depict life on the front line of settler violence. In video after video, seen by the Herald, armed settlers, their faces covered by scarves, charge down the hill towards the Maklouf home, firing guns, throwing stones and weilding iron bars, and screaming obscenities against the prophet Muhammad, the family and the village. One settler rampage that began at 12.15am on December 12 lasted at least half an hour, the family said. The family - mother Khadra, father Ibrahim and their 6 children - said they thought they would die. Desperate calls to the Israeli Defence Forces, stationed just kilometres away, went unanswered as the group of at least 100 settlers surrounded them, throwing rocks and bricks at their house and banged on their walls with iron bars. 'You cannot imagine the fear', Khadra Maklouf said, 'The girls were screaming... I was terrified somebody would get shot and killed'. Ibrahim, her husband, said: 'Now the younger boys are too frightened to use the toilet, and the girls will not even go to the kitchen to get a glass of water. We are worried whenever they are playing outside that the settlers might harm them'." (ibid)

Finally, along with the stats and human interest material, but always in the next day's edition and on the letters page, there's your pop-up Zionist propagandist, with his grab-bag of bald assertions, half-truths and evasions, taking Pollard to task for alleged sins of omission, the purpose being, of course, to somehow blunt the impact of her report. And in this instance, you'll be surprised to know, it's Vic Alhadeff, CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies:

"Ruth Pollard tells only part of the story. The reported attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers are condemned unequivocally by the Israeli government and perpetrators are regularly prosecuted. As for the settlements, Israel has demonstrated repeatedly that settlements have never been an obstacle to peace. It has withdrawn from settlements in Gaza, Sinai and the West Bank itself. And the last 6 Israeli prime ministers, including the incumbent, are publicly committed to a two-state solution." (More to the story, 17/1/12)

Mind you, the pop-up propagandist is really only an integral component of fair dinkum news stories on Palestine/Israel. Search for him following an item on any other international issue and you'll search in vain. Interesting, eh?

Now lest anyone accuse me of a bald assertion of my own, to whit, that Alhadeff's peddling propaganda here, I offer the following thoughts on his letter:

1) Reported attacks! Why, reported attacks are hardly attacks at all, right?

2) The Israeli government condemns the attacks and 6 Israeli PMs are publicly committed to two states, but given such supposed striving for what is right and proper, isn't it amazing how the prospect of a Palestinian state, as Pollard's report indicates, is receding at a rate of knots as the years roll by? Unless, of course, Alhadeff's really talking about an Israeli state and an Israeli settler state but is simply too shy to let on.

3) The key to Israeli condemnations, public commitments and like blather was brought to us back in 2004 by Pollard's predecessor Ed O'Loughlin, who quoted Peace Now's Dror Etkes' classic advice: "We shouldn't believe in anything that is said. We should just monitor what happens on the ground." (Israel ploughs on with huge settlement, 14/8/04)

4) Ploughing on, what about those regularly prosecuted perpetrators? What's really going on there? Are Israeli jails filling with settler thugs and pogromists? Hardly: "According to OCHA, 80-90% of the files opened against Israeli settlers following attacks on Palestinians and their property are regularly closed by the Israeli police without prosecution." (Palestine Monitor Factsheet-Update, 15/3/10)

But, you might say, that was then, what about today? These days your Israeli settler pogromists even attack their IDF minders. Surely, you'd think, for that they'd be locked up and the key thrown away, right? Think again: "[Major General Avi Mizrahi] expressed frustration at the treatment of the settlers who commit violence. 'The entire circle has to be closed from the police to the prosecution... If yesterday I had arrested 20 people here, it is clear to you that they would have been released next morning'." (Jewish settlers storm Israeli base, John Lyons, The Australian, 15/12/11)

Ashrawi Redux?

2012-01-17T07:57:00.026+11:00

Remember how, back in 2003, Australia's Zionist lobby did its block over the Sydney Peace Foundation's award of its Peace Price to Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi, and how the resulting furore embroiled a host of prominent figures, including the Premier of NSW, Bob Carr, the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Lucy Turnbull, and Sydney City Councillor, Kathryn Greiner?

Unfortunately for the lobby, which naturally prefers night to day, the Ashrawi affair (if I may call it so) gained wide media coverage, including a remarkable full-page feature (in The Australian of all places) by journalist Elisabeth Wynhausen. Wynhausen's expose began thus:

"The 2003 Sydney Peace Prize fracas reveals how a powerful minority of Jews stifle debate." (Take the free out of speech, 4/11/03)

It ended with the clearly fed-up director of the Sydney Peace Foundation, Stuart Rees, saying:

"[However many times] I try to explain why we made the award to Ashrawi, our critics come back with the same questions: Am I an apologist for Palestine? Am I against the Jewish community? I've taken stands on issues before and got some static, but not this onslaught, bullying and intimidation."

That the firestorm whipped up by lobby bullying ended up singing the firebugs who started it was as good as admitted at the time by the then editor of The Australian Jewish News, Vic Alhadeff, who was quoted by Wynhausen as complaining that:

"The whole thing 'has spun out of contol. The Jewish community has become the focus of this issue rather than whether or not Dr Ashrawi is a worthy recipient. It looks like the Jewish community is anti-free speech when the reverse is true."

I recall here the Ashrawi affair because the latest outbreak of Zionist bullying and intimidation, centring on SBS's screening of The Promise, has today finally surfaced in the Fairfax press:

"Australia's peak Jewish body is seeking to halt promotion and DVD sales of the SBS series, The Promise, a dramatic portrayal set in Israel it has likened to Nazi propaganda. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) said the British-made drama, inspired by accounts of British soldiers who served in Palestine during the 1940s, was anti-Semitic and in direct violation of of the SBS code covering prejudice, racism and discrimination... In its 31-page complaint to the SBS ombudsman, the ECAJ said historical inaccuracies and 'consistently negative portrayals' of The Promise's central Jewish characters 'without any redeeming virtues' compared to the 1940 Nazi film Jud Suss, as well as Palestinian propaganda that 'all Jews are collectively guilty of the wanton shedding of innocent blood'. It contended that identifiably Muslim characters would not be similarly portrayed by SBS. In a letter to the broadcaster, ECAJ executive director, Peter Wertheim, said the complaint also related to any marketing, promotion or sale of the DVD, which would be 'inappropriate' while the determination was pending. 'Nothing should be done by SBS or SBS Shops which pre-empts or presumes the outcome of your final decision', he wrote." (SBS fields complaints over series set in Israel, Leesha McKenny, 17/1/12)

It will be interesting to see where this leads. Will it receive the media attention it deserves? Will it click with those who understand the vital importance in a free society of vigorously resisting attempts to undermine the right to freedom of speech? Or will McKenny's welcome report be it? A lot, of course, depends on whether or not SBS continues to show the kind of spine which led to the screening of The Promise in the first place. For the nonce, SBS appears to be playing a straight bat:

"An SBS spokeswoman said the broadcaster had received a high level of positive and negative viewer feedback to the series. She said that it was expected the ECAJ's complaint would be resolved well in advance of the February 8 DVD release, 'it is unnecessary to provide any undertaking regarding the DVD release. SBS will assess its position in relation to the sale of the DVDs once the complaint has been resolved', she said." (ibid)

Whatever the upshot, it is to be hoped that the ECAJ intervention will result in increased publicity and sales (even if online) for this most worthy DVD.

PS (18/1/12): Three letters in support of The Promise were published in today's Age. Curiously, no such letters appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.
PPS (19/1/12): One letter appeared in today's SMH.

Faulty Connection

2012-01-14T17:07:00.036+11:00

Those of you - the vast majority - who would rather gouge your eyes out than read Murdoch's Australian will have remained blissfully unaware that Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, while on his latest Israeli rambamming with Albert and the lads (see my previous post), scored a one-on-one with Benjamin Netanyahu in his office:

"Benjamin Netanyahu is cast as the ultimate 'heavy' of the Middle East. But after a long discussion in this small office, a discussion sandwiched between the Indian foreign minister and a delegation of powerful US congressmen in the afternoon, Netanyahu extends our time together for a few minutes because there's one thing he likes to show visitors. He leads me over to his window. 'You see this', he points to a small collection of stones taken from an archaeological dig. The stones are dated from nearly 3000 years ago. This is the signet ring of a Jewish official of that time. And the official's name was Netanyahu'. The Israeli leader never misses an opportunity to emphasise the long, deep connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel." (Making his case on Iran's menace, 14/1/12)

Of course this huckster never misses an opportunity to hawk his version of 'the true cross' or 'the true shroud' by way of harping on the long, deep connection of your Danbys and your Dadons to the land of Israel. He probably does it in his sleep.

To what must have been squirming embarrassment for those present possessing critical faculties more advanced than that of a retarded chimp, 'Bibi' shamelessly invoked his 'sacred' relic before the UN General Assembly last September:

"In my office in Jerusalem, there's an ancient seal. It's a signet ring of a Jewish official from the time of the Bible. The seal was found right next door to the Wailing Wall, and it dates back 2,700 years, to the time of King Hezekiah. Now there's a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu. That's my last name. My first, Benjamin, dates back a thousand years to Benjamon - Binyamin - the son of Jacob who was also known as Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Samaria 4,000 years ago, and there's been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since."

To broadcast the fact that this faker's father was actually Benzion Mileikowsky* of Warsaw, that his grandfather, Nathan Mileikowsky, also of Warsaw, was a Zionist fanatic who used the name Netanyahu as his nom de plume, and that, in the Zionist fashion, Benzion jettisoned his Polish name on entering Mandate Palestine and replaced it with the Hebrew 'Netanyahu' is to assail Benjamin Netankowsky's mummery with inconvenient truths, no doubt anathema to the pious and gullible Sheridan, even assuming he'd heard them before. The truth is that Sheridan's as credulous as any gormless medieval pilgrim being shown a piece of 'the true cross' or a scrap of 'the true shroud'.

The most interesting aspect of Benjamin Netankowsky's performance, however, is not his 2,700 year-old signet ring, but that which it's supposed to signify - Sheridan's long, deep connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

Of course, this stock-in-trade of Zionist mumbo jumbo has about as much relationship with reality as Netankowsky with the ancient 'Netanyahu', or the rest of us with Adam and Eve. No matter, it's been around as long as political Zionism itself and even managed to find its way into the preamble of Britain's Mandate for Palestine, thus illustrating the fact that, for Zionists and many of their gentile supporters and dupes, incantatory versions of 'the true cross' are the real thing.

Our indispensible guide to the drafting of the Mandate is, of course, its pre-eminent historian, JMN Jeffries. Keeping in mind that it was drafted, as Jeffries puts it, "in the quiet between the Government and the Zionists, mostly by the Zionists, and then was issued under cover of the League of Nations, as though it were the result of the collected debates of the world's lawgivers," the 'historical connection' incantation first appeared in a June 1919 draft as "... recognized the historical connection of the Jews to Palestine and the claim which this gives them to find a national home in that country," suspected by Jeffries as coming from the pen of Lord Balfour. Typically, the Zionists, who, given the proverbial inch always reach for the mile, wanted the even stronger "historical title" substituted. What they got, in late 1919, was a reference to the recognition of "the historical connection with Palestine and the claim which this gives [the Jewish people] to reconstitute Palestine as their National Home (Erez Israel)." This had vanished by June 1920, with Jeffries suggesting, however, that it was more than made up for by the insertion in the draft-Treaty (with Turkey) of the Balfour Declaration, but was restored in August 1920. Following US State Department intervention, it vanished again in October, only to reappear the following month as: "Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." In December 1920, the final draft Mandate for Palestine appeared with the foregoing clause in its preamble and was published in The Times in February 1921. In August of that year it was tabled - but not debated - in parliament, and came into being by a resolution of the Council of the League of Nations in September 1923.

"The sincerity of the business," writes Jeffries, "and the extent of the belief of the Government in this 'historic connection' plea, can be gauged from the fashion in which the phrase appeared in one draft as the basis of everything, and in the next was removed as superfluous." (Palestine: The Reality, 1939, p 531)

As its appearance in Sheridan's interview with Netankowsky indicates, the long, deep connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel mantra remains, for Zionist deadenders such as the Israeli prime minister and his fawning Australian acolyte, the very bedrock of Zionist dogma, despite the devastating assaults on its fundamental premise by such scholars as Shlomo Sand, Keith W. Whitelam and others.

Surely, no belief in medieval religious relics could have been as strong.

[* See my 24/9/11 post Benzion, My Father.]

Ain't Love Grand?

2012-01-13T18:49:00.017+11:00

Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, ace foreign editor of The Australian has just returned from a tryst with his beloved. Although he's still reeling from the encounter, and the sweat has hardly dried, it so rankles when everyone else reckons she's fugly as:

"I have been spending a week in Israel, and visiting some of the Palestinian territories, under the auspices of the Australia Israel United Kingdom Leadership Dialogue*. This quite unique private organisation is the creation of Melbourne businessman Albert Dadon. Remarkably, the dialogue met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and former British prime minister Tony Blair, although those meetings were off the record. Spending time in Israel is dangerous because it is impossible to reconcile the evidence of your eyes with the accepted international narrative about Israel. In the international media, Israel is presented as a militarist, right-wing, oppressive. In fact it is the only pluralist democracy in the Middle East, the only nation where women's rights - and gay rights - are protected. It has a vibrant Left wing, a cacophonous democracy and an innovative economy." (Territorial compromise loses ground in Arab Spring, 12/1/12)

It happened last time too. Same heart-thumping elation. Same eruptions from every nook and cranny. Same nagging thought: Why can't they see her as I do?:

"I have my very own Israel problem and it is this: the Israel I know... bears no relation to the Israel I see in most of the Western media. That Israel of the Western mind (and indeed of the Arab mind) is a hateful place: right-wing, militaristic, authoritarian, indifferent to world opinion, indifferent especially to Palestinian suffering. Yet the Israel I know is mostly secular, raucously, almost wildly democratic, has a vibrant left-wing, having founded in the kibbutz movement one of the only successful experiments in socialism in human history." (Israel still looks good, warts & all, The Australian Literary Review, 6/5/09)

Poor Greg. But, hey, that's love for you!

[14/1/12:* OK, Greg was there, naturally, and Michael Danby I hear, but why is it so difficult to get a list of these junketeers? As it happens, another journalist, the Herald's Asia-Pacific editor Hamish McDonald has just outed himself: Israel struggles with threat from Iran.]

Secret White Mens Business at San Remo

2012-01-11T17:26:00.037+11:00

I notice that one of the arms of the Zionist lobby, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), has formally complained to the SBS Ombudsman about the station's screening of The Promise, Peter Kosminsky's stunning dramatisation of the unfolding of the Palestinian nakba (catastrophe) in the late 1940s, intercut with the Palestine of 2005. One monster moan, it may be viewed in its entirety at the Australians for Palestine website.

Relying on the patently absurd pretence that the colonial Zionist project in Palestine of 'out with the indigenous Arabs & in with Jews from wherever they can be scrounged' - with the lavish assistance of first the British and now the Americans - is really little more than just a "conflict of narratives," the document wails that "The Jewish [not Zionist you'll note] narrative is either falsified or simply not told."

An example of this, we are informed, is that "no mention is made of... the fact that the international community, as early as 1920, recognised the legitimacy of the Jewish people's [Zionist movement's] aspirations to reconstitute their national home in Israel [Palestine] and obligated Britain, as the Mandatory power, to 'facilitate Jewish immigration... and close settlement by Jews on the land...'"

'Wow!' the SBS Ombudsman is expected to exclaim, '"the international community," even as far back as 1920, was clamouring for a Jewish state in Palestine!'

And to ponder thus: 'That settles it then. If it was good enough for "the international community" in 1920, then it's good enough for me now. Who could possibly go up against "the international community"? If they, in their infinite collective wisdom, said in 1920 that the Zionists could have Palestine, who am I, or the people who actually lived there at the time for that matter, to get sniffy?'

Well, hopefully the SBS Ombudsman wasn't born yesterday and will ask herself just who was this exalted "international community" of 1920?

Footnote 8 informs us that:

"In April, 1920, following the end of World War I, a Council of the victorious Allied and Associated Powers met at San Remo and granted Britain a mandate to govern Palestine, the terms of which were ratified by the League of Nations in July 1922 and included an obligation that Britain 'should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Brittanic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

So, it transpires that, according to the fine print, this august entity, "the international community," turns out to be merely "the victorious Allied and Associated Powers" (AAP).

But who am I, or the 90% of the Palestinian Arab population at the time who were distinctly leery at the prospect of having their newly liberated turf handed over to some mob from Europe, to question the AAP's authority to confer legitimacy on whomever it chose? I mean, weren't the AAP the very fount of wisdom and probity in the post-war world of 1920? Were not they, of all people, in a position to somehow channel the will of the world when it came to disposing of the former Turkish province of Palestine?

Well, before we go along with the ECAJ's little sleight of hand here, maybe we need to learn a little more (if this isn't getting a tad too contradictory) about the secret white men's business transacted at San Remo. And who better to guide us than our good friend, JMN Jeffries, whose eye is nothing if not forensic:

"The next day, the 25th, was a Sunday. Two communiques were issued that same evening... The first said: 'The Supreme Council met at 11 am today at the Villa Devachan. There were present Signori Nitti and Scialoja, MM. Millerand and Berthelot, Mr Lloyd George, Lord Curzon, M. Matsui and Mt Underwood Johnson. [Mr Johnson was the United States 'observer'. He did not take an active part in, nor have any responsibility for, the proceedings.] The question of the Mandate for Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia was discussed, and the question of the new Armenian State was settled. The Council finally discussed the resumption of commercial relations with Russia...' The second communique... dealt with the afternoon session, and held no reference to the Near Eastern countries, as the Adriatic question and Germany's attitude to the Treaty of Versailles were the subjects of debate.

"So that the sole official information given to the world upon what had happened at the morning session of the 25th, as far as the Near Eastern countries were concerned, was that 'the question of the Mandates for Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia were discussed'. Discussed, indeed! During that session, which lasted for 3 hours, the 'examination of the Palestine question' which had begun upon the Saturday had been concluded, and Britain had been granted, or awarded, or indemnified with the nomination as Mandatory. And at this session, the Balfour Declaration had been inserted into the draft-Mandate which was being prepared as part of the coming Treaty [with Turkey].

"In fine, Sunday the 25th was the fateful day, the day of days, and that particular session was of pre-eminent interest, was a moment when the destinies of the most sacred land on earth were determined for, at the very least, a long period. A type of government, too, never before essayed in human society was inaugurated, or was introduced after some fashion, and the countries which were to govern thus unprecedentedly were named.

"Yet no faintest suggestion of what had been done was vouchsafed by the Conference chiefs in their official report of their transactions. They said that the question of the Mandate for Palestine (and for the other Arab lands) had been discussed, as though there had been some talk about it, and then they had gone on to other matters. More than this they never disclosed. The nearest they reached to any sort of explanation of their business was the last sentence of the previous day's communique, stiff wth constraint and wariness.

"It is true that official communiques are noted for their reticence. It is also true that international Conferences are fatiguing affairs, and that at the end of a long day tired men may cut their labour by giving the shortest possible account of what has happened. But reticence, not saying much about the event of the day, is one thing, and concealing it altogether when it is a final decision is another. The crucial meeting in this case was held in the morning, and there was ample time to announce what had taken place during it. The news could have been given in less than 20 words, in as many words as were employed to obscure it.

"That 25th of April something of great moment had been accomplished, though the absolute character of the act remained undefined. It was, therefore, the duty of the Allied plenipotentiaries to make clear in an official statement what (in the current phrase) 'they thought they were doing'. That they made no such explanation shows how ill at ease they were about the character of the day's work.

"Babies born that April morning have become young men and women, and yet we are about as ignorant as they were in their mothers' arms of what occurred at the Villa Devachan. This only we know, that the Balfour Declaration was slipped into the Mandate, and that it was Signori Nitti and Scialoja, M. Matsui, Lord Curzon, Messrs. Berthelot, Millerand and Lloyd George between them who somehow nominated as Mandatories the countries represented by MM. Berthelot and Millerand and by Lord Curzon and Mr Lloyd George. It was a very intimate occasion, so intimate that 4 of those present suffered from ingrowing functions, nominating and being nominated at one and the same time. The sole clue to what a spectator might have witnessed of their proceedings from start to finish is to be found in the statement of a correspondent that 'One cheerful feature about the Conference so far is the progress made in settling the Turkish Treaty. Discussions have run on the most cordial lines'. Indeed they had done so.

"This is the most living account of what happened which we possess. The League of Nations' own account of the birth of Mandates is highly significant because, in an Irish way, there is no account. 'There is no record of the conversation by which Great Britain was selected as Mandatory for Palestine', confesses the League's official handbook.

"Under such circumstances, it is impossible to prevent imagination from playing with the scene at the Villa Devachan. One pictures the bustling but superfluous helpfulness of the other delegates as Mr Lloyd George efficiently levered the Balfour Declaration into the draft-Mandate. But the assumption of the draft-Mandate itself is not so easy to picture.

"Did Signori Nitti, Scialoja, Millerand and Berthelot segregate themselves and then propose Great Britain as Mandatory for Palestine? Did Mr Lloyd George simper and blush acceptance, or look sternly before him and say duty was duty? Did the French delegates then go to the chairs at the foot of the table? Did the British delegates take the vacated seats at its head, along with the Italians and the Japanese, meditate their choice with them for a pensive second, and then in chorus with them offer 'Syria' to France? Whereon did the French delegates, with national immunity from humbug, nod and thank the British for carrying out the arrangement of the previous September?

"Maybe it happened after this fashion: more probably it did not. Procedure demanded that all the Principal Allied Powers should nominate the Mandatory, so Mr Lloyd George and poor Lord Curzon, completely out of his element, one imagines, will, in some way that we cannot guess and upon which unhappily silence has been maintained, have taken part in nominating themselves.

I interrupt Jeffries' narrative flow at this point to remind you of ECAJ's characterisation of the San Remo cabal as "the international community." Well - surprise, surprise - where Zionist propaganda is concerned there is indeed 'nothing new under the sun':

"The official silence concerning the details of this odd performance has not prevented a hundred writers and orators in the service of the Zionist thesis from projecting ever since, through the best part of 2 decades, moving pictures of the moral glory which descended on the Villa Devachan that day. Mr Lloyd George has been presented, as upon the screen, in the role of the world's knight, bending a knee to receive Britain's obligations in Palestine. Like an accolade they were laid upon his shoulders by the incarnate kingly conscience of mankind.

"Whatever happened then, this did not. At San Remo the nomination of Mandatories, after the manner of the dubbing of knights, was not practicable, or rather was not picturable. Britain and France had long fixed their respective Mandatory spheres between them, and the story of their being 'chosen' now for these positions is only elaborate and disingenuous pretence. Mr Lansing, the American Secretary of State till that February, who knew all that was afoot, passed on these League and Mandate manoeuvres a judgment so apt that it must be quoted here. 'If the advocates of the [mandate] system', said he, 'intended to avoid through its operation the appearance of taking enemy territory as the spoils of war, it was a subterfuge which deceived no one. It seemed obvious from the very first that the Powers, which under the old practice would have obtained sovereignty over certain conquered territories, would not be denied mandates over these territories'.

"Pure clap-trap also is the story of the resigned acceptance by the Mandatories of their nominations, which in fact they 'accepted' with the resignation of stockbrokers accepting profits. Mr Lloyd George... already had blurted out in one of his unguarded moments that 'France would be compensated for the oil-wells of Irak by the Mandate for Syria'. As for what are called 'obligations', it would have been a rash statesman who would have dared to refuse a full load of them to Mr Lloyd George himself. That was the real situation. The chivalrous parties concerned were each responsible for his own knighthood, and even such a political gymnast as the same Lloyd George could hardly have laid his obligations upon his own shoulder and have bade himself to rise without throwing his frame and his features into contortions too unmannerly ever to be displayed to the public. Why, the secret of the scene could not even be risked by one word about it in a turgid little communique!" (Palestine: The Reality, 1939, pp 344-347)

Memo to the SBS Ombudsman: should an impeccably presented, high-falutin' document from any of the following outfits - ECAJ, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, the Zionist Council of Australia, or the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) - darken your doorstep, for God's sake, read the fine print.

What Gillard Will & Won't Be Learning from Her Holiday Reading

2012-01-09T19:40:00.028+11:00

"But for the less sporty and more literarily inclined, here's a taste of what is on our MPs' reading lists this summer. Julia Gillard is reading Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse and Tony Bilson's memoir, Insatiable: My Life in the Kitchen. No comment on the remaining books on her list: Mighty Be Our Powers, by Nobel Prize winner Leymah Gbowee, A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, by Margaret Drabble, and David Lloyd George: The Great Outsider, by Roy Hattersley." (What can we read into our pollies' habits? Stephanie Peatling, The Sun-Herald, 8/1/12)*

Let me guess. Lloyd George, British Prime Minister, 1916-1922, was chosen because he's Welsh. And Roy Hattersley because he's Labor (specifically, Deputy Leader of the British Labor Party, 1983-1992).

Well, assuming she actually does gets around to reading David Lloyd George: The Great Outsider, what is Gillard going to learn from it?

Maybe she'll see herself, at least in part:

"[Lloyd George, said Keynes,] is rooted in nothing; he is void and without content; he lives and feeds on his immediate surroundings; he is an instrument and a player at the same time, which plays on the company and is played on by them too; he is a prism... which collects light and distorts it and is most brilliant if the light comes from many quarters at once; a vampire and a medium in one."/ "Hattersley... sees Lloyd George as essentially a destructive character... [with] a killer instinct... matched by an extraordinary ability to feed men lies, half truths and high-minded waffle, a capacity which brought short term triumphs and long-term distrust." (Welsh wizardry & venom, Paul Johnson reviews Roy Hattersley's life of David Lloyd George, The Spectator, 18/9/10)

No doubt, she'll marvel at Lloyd George's capacity for invective, thrill to his talk of raising 'the deserving poor', chuckle (with Timbo?) over his insatiable appetite for sex, and more besides - but, admittedly without having read the biography myself, I'm pretty sure, that with Hattersley as biographer, she'll unfortunately be spared an examination of the worst and most enduring of Lloyd George's legacies - laying the foundations for the creation of the State of Israel.

To begin with, not one of the half dozen reviews of Hattersley's book that I've read so much as mentions this grievous matter, which inclines me to believe that Hattersley himself has omitted any reference to the issue. Perhaps the following Q&As from House of Commons debates in 1976** demonstrate why:

Mr Walters: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that one of the main lessons to be learned from the tragic and horrid events in the Lebanon is that there will be no settlement but, rather, continuing instability, bloodshed and war until the rights of the Palestinians and the question of Palestinian statehood are resolved? They cannot be resolved without a peace settlement. Do not the Government intend to do something more active to try to break the present deadlock?

Mr Hattersley: The hon. Gentleman's question fell into two parts. On the first part, I agree substantially that there needs to be a recognition of the special problems of the Palestinians and an understanding that they must be accommodated within any lasting settlement. I cannot share the hon. Gentleman's view with regard to his second point. There is always a tendency in this House to expect Britain to take initiatives when they would not produce solutions but might actually complicate the prospects of success. Certainly the British Government are available to act if that seems right, but to take an ill-considered initiative is not the way in which the British Government should proceed."

Britain taking an ill-considered initiative in regard to Palestine? Who would have thought?

Mr Colin Jackson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many Arab nations are deeply disappointed about the supine attitude of the British Foreign Office towards the Middle East crisis? The fact that, apparently, our policy in the past [which] has been step by step behind Dr Kissinger may lose its validity as Dr Kissinger may take his final step out of office?

Mr Hattersley: I do not think that a policy based on our wish to do what we can as long as that is practical and right is properly to be described as 'supine'. I reiterate what I said earlier. There is a tendency to believe that any initiative is better than no initiative. I do not share that view.

Supine? Really, after our initial ill-considered initiative in Palestine back when, haven't we now a right to rest on our laurels?

Mr Robert Hughes: Will my right hon. Friend seek an early meeting with the Foreign Minister of Israel to express disquiet about reports that Rhodesian forces are at present training with and awaiting shipments of Israeli-made machine guns? Will he make it clear to the Foreign Minister of Israel that it would be a great disappointment to many of Israel's friends in Great Britain if Israel were to conclude an arms deal in respect of arms and equipment to South African forces?

Mr Hattersley: As I have not heard of such reports, I am reluctant to comment on them. I share my hon. Friend's view that, if such reports were proved to be accurate, they would represent a great mistake, and many of Israel's friends in this country, among whom I number myself, would be deeply grieved."

Say no more. Just your common and garden supine Labor friend of Israel.

No, we couldn't possibly expect a verdict on Lloyd George's most lasting and toxic legacy, the nightmare we all of us wake up to every morning, the apartheid state to die for, the Zionist project (because by no means complete), from an Israel-friendly hack such as Hattersley. No, for that we need someone with an unswerving commitment to truth and justice, someone with a real nose for the fuckwit(s) behind the clusterfuck. Someone, for example, like Lloyd George's contemporary, JMN Jeffries, war correspondent extraordinaire and historian of the tangled roots of Britain's disastrous Palestine Mandate:

"The probability... is that 'The Principal Allied Powers', the junta which, seated round a table at the San Remo Conference of 1920, introduced the establishment of the 'National Home' as an obligation of the Mandate, knew and cared nothing about any such [ancient Hebrew] phases [in Palestine]. I should not credit the Principal Allied Powers, as far as they found form in flesh and blood at San Remo, with much or any reading of the Scriptures, except indeed the important section of the Principal Allied Powers which came from Criccieth in North Wales. That body politic has stated in a speech, 'I was brought up in a school where I was taught far more about the history of the Jews than about the history of my own land. I could tell you all the kings of Israel but I doubt whether I could have named half a dozen of the kings of England... We were thoroughly imbued with the history of the Hebrew race in the days of its greatest glory'." (Palestine: The Reality, 1939, p 7)

And Jeffries' verdict? Deadly, damning, definitive:

"Such being the origin of the Mandate it is not strange that it was a document which broke every law and principle it was supposed to safeguard. But though the Zionists had drafted it a hundred times over, it is not upon them that the supreme censure for this must fall. They were drugged by a delusion, and they were pretty frank about what they were doing. It is the Government of the day, the Government of Mr Lloyd George which, to say nothing of its betrayal of national pledges, must bear once more the responsibility for deliberate violation in Palestine, through the imposition of such a Mandate, of the Covenant of the League [of Nations] which elsewhere it professed so glibly." (ibid p 559)

[*Mind you, it's just possible that this reading list, or at least the bit about Lloyd George, is an invention of Gillard's spinmeister. After all, this is how the subject of what she'd be doing during the break was first reported: "Julia Gillard has revealed she will eschew political tomes and spend her two-week Christmas holiday break reading chef Tony Bilson's memoir and catching up on episodes of Miss Marple." (Miss Marple, Socrates to engage rival leaders, Lauren Wilson, The Australian, 15/12/11); **hansard.millbanksystems.com]

Looking For a Job? Try Politics

2012-01-08T07:25:00.013+11:00

To all you bright young things out there, ever thought of a career in politics?

Just join one of Australia's two approved parties and, as you climb to the top of the party tree, you'll start to look so trim, taught and terrific the ABC'll be after you for a regular spot on Q&A!

But more than that, you'll acquire the kind of mental stamina that the rest of us can only dream about.

Take Minister for Whatever Tanya Plibersek, for instance. She was as raw and uncouth as any to begin with, a real wild child. Why, even as late as 2002, firmly ensconced in federal parliament, Tanya thought nothing of shooting her mouth off something terrible:

"I can think of a rogue state, which consistently ignores UN resolutions, whose ruler is a war criminal responsible for the massacres of civilians in refugee camps outside its borders. The US supports and funds this country. This year it gave it a blank cheque to continue its repression of its enemies. It uses US military hardware to bulldoze homes and kill civilians. It is called Israel and the war criminal is Ariel Sharon."

Forsooth she must blush at the very thought of it today!

But all that's in the past. The rough diamond of 2002 has been ground down to the photogenic perfection we see before us today. Now she's cool, calm, and collected, having finally acquired a most remarkable mental discipline and such a capacity for whispering sweet nothings you'd scarcely recognise in the Tanya of today the superbrat of yore:

"Dear ***,*

"Thankyou for your recent correspondence regarding Palestinian statehood. Australia strongly supports a negotiated two-state solution that allows a secure Israel to live side-by-side with a secure and independent future Palestinian state.

"The Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon Kevin Rudd MP, underlined to both sides Australia's strong support for a negotiated two-state solution during his visits to Israel and the Palestinian Territories in December 2010 and March and April 2011, and urged parties to return to negotiations.

"I have raised this issue with the Foreign Minister who assures me that Australia's decision to vote against the Palestinian resolution reflected Australia's strong concern that consideration of Palestinian membership in UNESCO was premature. The matter of Palestinian membership of the United Nations (UN) had only recently been placed before the UN Security Council (UNSC).

"Australia believed we should allow the process of UNSC consideration of Palestinian membership of the UN to run its course, rather than pre-empt it by seeking to address this question in different UN forums. The Foreign Minister assures me that if a Palestinian resolution is introduced to the UN General Assembly the Australian Government will consider it carefully before deciding how to vote.

"The Australian Government strongly supports the aspirations of the Palestinian people for their own state and is providing practical support for Palestinian institution-building in support of a future state"... yadda, yadda, yadda.

So come on boys and girls, whether it's Lab or Lib, why not consider a career in politics today? Oh, and our pollies have just had a wage rise! Tanya, who was getting $243,000 per annum is now getting $319,125 per annum! So there you go...

[* For the letter to which Tanya responded, and for that vital yadda, yadda, yadda, see This is how Australia handles Palestine: contempt with a smile, 6/1/12, antonyloewenstein.com.]

Publishing Poison

2012-01-05T15:56:00.016+11:00

After 8 years of murder, mayhem, pillage and plunder in Iraq, you'd think a paper like The Age would be wise to the kind of journalistic propaganda barrage that preceded that particular Crime against Humanity. But no, today's Age sees nothing wrong in peddling more of the same, designed to soften up the public for yet another round of shock and awe, this time against Iran.

Is the editorial memory so short these days that good old-fashioned USraeli neoconservative sabre-rattling, masquerading as scholarship, passes under the radar?

Check out just the concluding lines of Michael Rubin's The West should hand Iran's leadership a chalice of poison:

"While no Australian, American, or European wants to pay more at the petrol pump, the status quo is unsustainable. Should the Islamic Republic develop nuclear weapons, Tehran will have a free hand to lash out indiscriminately, feeling secure behind its own nuclear deterrent."

That didn't remind the Age's opinion editor of a certain other Middle Eastern regime with a track record of lashing out?

"A limited conflict in the Persian Gulf might add $20 to the price of oil for a month, but a nuclear Iran could permanently add $100 a barrel."

Gee, wasn't Iraq supposed to be a limited conflict?

"History can be a guide. Twice, in the Islamic Repulic's history, revolutionary authorities have sworn no surrender. In 1979, they said they would not release their American hostages until Washington met revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini's demands."

What has that to do with the present situation? And why, since history's been invoked, would Khomeini have bothered releasing said hostages given that "Reagan Republicans were eager to derail [President Carter's promise to airlift arms and spares already purchased under the Shah in return for the hostages] and had already met Iranian officials to agree not to release the hostages before the election, but to do so afterwards in return for the direct supply of arms." (The Iran-Iraq War, Rob Johnson, 2011, p 91)

"Then, they said they would accept no end to the Iran-Iraq war until Saddam Hussein was in Iranian hands. In both cases, however, isolation and sanctions took their toll. When Khomeini announced a ceasefire with Iraq, he likened it to drinking a chalice of poison but said the cost of continuing to fight gave him no choice. When it comes to Tehran's nuclear program and its Hormuz threats, it is time to hand Iranian leaders such a chalice, not to relieve the pressure."

Notice how slippery Rubin's history is? To read him you'd think the "isolation and sanctions" faced by Iran during the Iran-Iraq War (1979-1988) were identical to those imposed against it today. But Khomeini's drinking from the 'poisoned chalice', that is, reluctantly agreeing to a ceasefire with Iraq in 1988, bore no relation to today's USraeli-inspired, anti-Iranian sanctions. Here's the context in which Iran agreed to a ceasefire with Iraq in 1988: "[T]he cost of the war could not be sustained any longer. According to an Iranian source, Iran's war costs had reached $1,000 billion, but its estimated oil income over 80 years (the longevity of its industry from first discovery to the outbreak of war) was $260 billion. In essence, Iran had spent 4 times its actual oil income and, like Iraq, was mortgaging its future. Iran was also losing the military campaign in the southern theatre. It had too few armoured vehicles left, was losing ground rapidly, and there were signs that the military personnel had reached their limit." (ibid pp 175-176)

One really has to wonder about the circumstances in which such tripe was given the nod at the Age. Did the opinion editor (or editors - I believe there are two) bother checking Rubin's background beyond the following snapshot supplied with the piece: "Michael Rubin is an author and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC"?

If he/she had, they might've unearthed the following:

"Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) who worked as a Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq during the first George W Bush administration. An outspoken and contoversial proponent of hardline US foreign policies, Rubin is closely associated with neoconservatism. His track record includes working for a number of groups associated with the US 'Israel lobby' (including AEI, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Middle East Forum), championing the US invasion of Iraq, suggesting assassinating foreign leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, allegedly misrepresenting translations of statements by Iranian officials, serving as a consultant to the heavily criticized Pentagon Office of Special Plans, and consulting for the PR firm the Lincoln group, which was accused of planting propaganda in the Iraqi press." (rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Rubin_Michael)

And how about this from the same source?

"Gregory Djerejian sums up Rubin's time working for the Bush administration...'Rubin was part of a group associated with Doug Feith at the Pentagon that were, in the main, [Ahmed] Chalabi-cheerleaders, and swallowed with alacrity the kool-aid that the 'liberation' would be swift and welcomed by the Iraqis and that the US government would be able to hand off the governance quickly and without much pain to Chalabi & Co."

Seems like it's either a case of any old rubbish goes at the Age these days, or else the paper rather likes the prospect of yet another Middle Eastern war. Either way, by publishing neocon propaganda such as Rubin's the Age will be as complicit in the coming slaughter as any Murdoch rag.

The Good Old Days

2012-01-04T19:03:00.013+11:00

Where would the letters pages of our papers be without the wit and wisdom of venerable correspondents such as George Fishman, Vaucluse, NSW?

The re-emergence of Dear Leader John Winston Howard on the public stage appears to have awakened a flickering flame in the old codger:

"Pity it's taken the Queen of England to recognise John Howard's great service to Australia." The Australian, 3/1/12

Remember John Howard? Iraq? The glory days? George sure does. Those were the days, my friend:

"John Howard has confirmed the superman status conferred on him by George W Bush. He can see as far through a brick wall as anybody. By signing up for the Coalition of the Willing he garnered valuable brownie points with George Bush and Tony Blair but was canny enough to being our troops home before the real war in Iraq, the war of peace, got under way." (Sydney Morning Herald, 10/7/03)

"Those in the US Administration, notably Colin Powell and the State Department, who live in the past and believe that by making concessions to countries that harbour terrorism the problem will go away, must yield to so-called neoconservatives who live in the real world and are prepared to stand and fight to bring an end to terrorism." (SMH, 2/1/04)

"The casualties of the war in Iraq are high but those in Australia and elsewhere calling for a 'cut and run' policy should get some perspective. A recently released study by the WHO and the World Bank showed that each year about 1.2 million people die as a result of road accidents worldwide, yet there are no plans to abandon the use of motor cars." (SMH, 9/4/04)

Brings tears to the eyes, doesn't it?

The Language Spotter

2012-01-02T06:39:00.033+11:00

This post, on the ruminations of Chris Elliott, the UK Guardian's 'readers' editor', on "language within articles [about the Middle East] that [he] agreed could be read as anti-semitic," (The readers' editor on... averting accusations of antisemitism, 6/11/11) covers much the same territory as my last.

As examples of language that could be read as antisemitic Elliott cites "references to Israel/US 'global domination' and the term 'slavish' to describe the US relationship with Israel"; reveals that the Guardian's website is checked by a "team of moderators... experienced in spotting the kind of language long associated with antisemitic tropes such as Jews having too much power and control, or being clannish and secretive, or the role of Jews in finance and the media"; and cautions that "newspapers have to be aware that some examples [of anti-semitism] involve coded references. They need to ask themselves, for example, if the word Zionist is being used as a synonym for Jew."

As you may gather from Elliott's generalised examples, sorting out the wheat from the antisemitic chaff is far from being an exact science. If his problem is merely dealing with blanket, idiotic and racist statements to the effect that either Jews/Zionists are plotting to take control of the world or have already succeeded in doing so, then I take his point.

If, on the other hand, he is seriously suggesting that it is antisemitic to talk:

(a) of US global dominance or of Israel as the dominant military power in the Middle East, or of Israeli hands and arms often mysteriously turning up in trouble spots around the globe; or

(b) of US presidents and congressmen kowtowing before the Israel lobby; or

(c) of Zionist lobbyists in places like the US, UK and Australia winning friends that matter and influencing people that matter (if pulling strings is too plainspeaking for you) for Israel; or

(d) of wealthy men, who identify as Jews and make no bones about their support for Israel, lavishing serious money on political parties to ensure they toe a blindly pro-Israel line; or

(e) of pro-Israel lobbying - as with most lobbying - taking place away from the public gaze; or

(f) of the Murdoch press, to take but the most obvious example, pushing a ferociously Zionist editorial line, or of certain of its key staff, whether gentile or Jew, espousing blind support for Israel

- if that's his notion of antisemitism, then I'm afraid he's lost me.

And as for using the word 'Zionist' as a synonym for 'Jew', has he not been around long enough to realise that far and away the most flagrant flouters of this elementary distinction are the Zionists themselves?

Elliott's pretense at rocket science is about what you'd expect from a corporate media flak-catcher unable to admit straight up that the vast majority of complaints directed against press reports and commentary critical of Israel are the product of Israel's propaganda mill. But what particularly caught my eye, the absolute stand-out paragraph in his otherwise predictable effusion, was the following bizarre defence of the Guardian's bona fides:

"This is not a fresh concern. It is a particularly sensitive issue for a core of the Guardian's Jewish readers because CP Scott held strong Zionist sympathies, as did WP Crozier, who came after him as editor. In the Guardian's archives is a letter of thanks from the first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, thanking Scott for his help in securing the Balfour Declaration, the 1917 statement by the British government approving the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine."

Leaving aside the apparent absurd suggestion that because Charles Prestwich Scott, owner/editor of the Manchester Guardian from 1872-1932, was a staunch Zionist today's Guardian should still be following his lead, what Elliott can only be saying here is: 'Listen up, guys, CP Scott helped Wiezmann bag the Balfour Declaration in 1917, OK? - so give us a break, will you?'

I'll return to his defence, or what appears to me to be so, in a minute. For the nonce, Elliott's done us all a service by raising the issue of CP Scott. As a student of history usefully reminds us:

"The role Scott played in getting the Balfour Declaration... [should not] be understated. Without his patronage Chaim Weizmann might very well not have risen to the decision-making heights of the Zionist movement and hence they may well have failed to utilise one of their most persuasive, persistent and powerful voices whose war-time dealings with the British government was paramount to securing the pro-Zionist announcement. For as one of Weizmann's biographers and former President of Brandeis University, Jehuda Reinharz, concluded - and it's worth quoting in full: 'Without the help of a small group of young men and women in Manchester and London - and of course various Rothschild family members and CP Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian - Weizmann had little, if any, individual or institutional support' in his efforts to secure the British government's historic pronouncement. Thus from such an observation we cannot but gauge the untold significance of the function Scott played for Zionism. For it was largely through Scott's efforts with his one time close confidant Lloyd George that Weizmann received as an outlet, quite possibly, some of the most influential - and favourably inclined - men in the country. Furthermore it was through Scott that Weizmann acquired the vital work in the Ministry of Munitions, something that would further indebt the British government to the Zionist movement and help bring about the Balfour Declaration. It is thus clear that Scott was a key player in the achievement of the Balfour declaration, less through the pages of the Guardian - which would wait until after its announcement to take up full blown advocacy - than through his invaluable network of contacts and political sponsorship of Chaim Weizmann." (Adopting Zionism as a liberal cause: CP Scott, the Manchester Guardian and the Zionist movement, 1914-1932*, Cillian Stephen Doyle, MA thesis, ucd.ie, 2010)

That being the case, let me ask you, dear reader, after fairly surveying the 94 bloody years following the Balfour Declaration's issuance, and perishing the thought of all those still to come, would you, as an employee of the Guardian, be boasting of your paper's part in a promise of which the scholar who has meditated on it and its baneful consequences more deeply than any other - JMN Jeffries - wrote definitively and damningly in 1939:

"[I]t is a pity that it cannot be lost from sight, and a greater pity that it has not yet been removed from the public record. Unlawful in issue, arbitrary in purpose, and deceitful in wording the Balfour Declaration is the most discreditable document to which a British Government has set its hand within memory." (Palestine: The Reality, p 201)

For which part, the current owner and/or editor of the Guardian, instead of putting his seal of approval to Elliott's lame ramblings, should be issuing a front page, banner headline, retrospective apology to the Palestinian people.

[*A fascinating read in toto.]

Beware of Israel Lobbyists Bearing Guidelines

2011-12-30T19:43:00.014+11:00

Apparently, it's not enough that pro-Israel comment is allowed to dominate the opinion pages of the corporate press. Now one of the apartheid state's most active lobbyists, Vic Alhadeff of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies has just been given a platform - in the Fairfax press - to pronounce on what the public should or should not be allowed to say on the internet.

In his opinion piece, Time for blogosphere to exercise discipline, published in both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age on Wednesday, Alhadeff argued, in essence, that too many "offensive," (read 'anti-Semitic') comments are "making their way into the public domain," that this is "untenable and unacceptable - not just for the Jewish community but for all who value a tolerant society," and that greater "vigilance" and "self-regulation" by media outlets is the answer.

Then, as if that wasn't worrying enough, the Sydney Morning Herald editorialist weighed in next day with this stamp of approval: "Alhadeff is not arguing for more regulation, just more effort by the mainstream media outfits to moderate what appears on their internet fringes - maybe emulating the New York Times model of 'trusted commenters'. Self interest would suggest they take his advice," (A case for online moderation).

Yes, it all sounds eminently reasonable, and yes, some of the examples of offensive comments proferred by Alhadeff in his opinion piece are indeed offensive. Yet we have a problem here. Are Zionist ideologues and Israel lobbyists such as Alhadeff, who routinely conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, in a position to offer guidance on this matter? With Alhadeff and friends supplying the guidelines for those in control of the delete button, what is there to guarantee that the anti-Zionist baby will not be thrown out with the anti-Semitic bathwater?

One may be forgiven for wondering whether some act of 'guidance' or other was what led to SBS Television pulling the plug on all website comments during the channel's recent screening of Peter Kosminsky's 4-part Nakba drama The Promise - despite the fact that none of the comments even remotely approximated those Alhadeff cited in his opinion piece. (See my 14/12/11 post Now You See It...)

Thankfully, if not the clueless editorialist, then at least one Herald letter writer in yesterday's issue had the sense to know that veteran Israel lobbyists and their nostrums should be taken with a grain of salt:

"The vile abuse that is a feature of the blogosphere is symptomatic of the polarisation apparent in our society (Time for blogosphere to exercise discipline, December 28). For democracy to function tolerance and compromise are essential. I'm disgusted at the rejection of the eruv in St Ives. I'm also dismayed that Israel is trying to pass a law that will stop the broadcasting of the call to prayer in mosques (Mosques row, December 14). I eagerly await a copy of Vic Alhadeff's strongly worded letter of protest to the Israeli government. Steve Castleau Bexley

Crocodile Tears for Iraqi Christians

2011-12-29T20:53:00.015+11:00

Why should anyone bother reading The Australian? After all its editorialist doesn't. Here's what he had to say on 27 December:

"The flight of despairing Christians is being seen no less starkly elsewhere. 900,000 of Iraq's 1.4 million Christians have fled since 2003. In that time 54 churches have been blown up and 1000 Christians killed." (Religious violence deplorable: Christians increasingly attacked by Islamic extremists)

And who's responsible for this sorry state of affairs? Islamic extremists, of course. But who let them loose? Peter Wilson's report in The Australian of 24 December spells it out:

"'After Saddam fell, Christians were targeted and attacked because everyone thought we were somehow attached to the Americans but the truth is that the US did not do anything for the Christians', Mr [Ra'ad] Emmanuel said. 'A lot of Christians worked for the Americans as translators or in other rules but the Americans have actually left us in a much worse state than we were under Saddam. Saddam did not persecute Christians as much as he did the Shia (Muslims) and Kurds...'" (Terror kills Christmas in Baghdad)

For the Australian's editorialist, neo-conservative ideology dictates that the spotlight must always be fixed on the anti-Christian sectarian genie, never on those responsible for unbottling him - even if that means ignoring the evidence painstakingly gathered by one of its own correspondents.

And why is that? Because, when it came to corporate media barracking for regime change in Iraq, the Murdoch press cheered loudest of all.

Follow the Thread...

2011-12-29T07:19:00.014+11:00

.... from this...

"Even though the Great Recession technically ended in 2009, incomes fell, poverty rose and the number of Americans without health insurance jumped again in 2010, the federal government announced Tuesday. The nation's poverty rate increased to 15.1% in 2010, up from 14.3% in 2009 and the highest level since 1993, according to the US Census Bureau's annual Income, Poverty & Health Insurance Coverage report for 2010. An additional 2.6 million landed in poverty lat year, bringing the total to 46.2 million - the highest number since the government started tracking poverty in the 1950s." (US poverty rate climbed to 15.1% last year, total number hit all-time record, Janell Ross, huffingtonpost.com, 13/9/11)

... to this...

"Israel's defence ministry said on Sunday that the United States has agreed to provide it with an additional $235 million to finance its rocket defence system... The additional funds come on top of the $3 billion dollars of annual military aid given by the US to Israel." (US 'to give Israel extra aid for rocket system', AFP, news.yahoo.com, 25/12/11)

... and, finally, this:

"Within the US, Obama has laid the groundwork for a new and bigger war in the Middle East by relocating troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrating them facing Iran. To undermine Iran, Washington is expanding clandestine military and civilian operations against Iranian allies in Syria, Pakistan, Venezuela and China. The key to the US and Israeli bellicose strategy toward Iran is a series of wars in neighboring states, world-wide economic sanctions, cyber-attacks aimed at disabling vital industries and clandestine terrorist assassinations of scientists and military officials. The entire push, planning and execution of the US policies leading up to a war with Iran can be empirically attributed to the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) occupying strategic positions in government, mass media and 'civil society'. A systematic analysis of policymakers designing and implementing economic sanctions policy in Congress finds prominent roles for mega-Zionists like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman; in the White House, Dennis Ross Ross, and Jeffrey Feltman in State; Stuart Levy and his replacement David Cohen in Treasury. The White House is totally beholden to Zionist fund raisers and takes its cue from the '52' Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations. The Israeli-Zionist strategy is to encircle Iran, weaken it economically and attack its military. The Iraq invasion was the US's first war for Israel; the Libyan war the second; the current proxy war against Syria is the third. These wars have destroyed Israel's adversaries or are in the process of doing so. During 2011, economic sanctions, which were designed to create domestic discontent in Iran were the principle weapon of choice. The global sanctions campaign engaged the entire energies of the major Jewish-Zionist lobbies. They also faced no opposition in the mass media, Congress or the White House. The ZPC faced virtually no criticism from any of the progressive, leftist and socialist journals, movements or grouplets - with a few notable exceptions. The past year's relocation of troops from Iraq to the borders of Iran, the sanctions and the rising Big Push from Israel's fifth column in the US means War in the Middle East. This likely means a 'surprise' aerial and maritime missile attack by US forces. This will be based on a concocted pretext of an 'imminent nuclear attack' cooked up by Mossad and transmitted by the ZPC to the Congress and White House for consumption and transmission to the world. It will be a destructive, bloody, prolonged war for Israel. The US will bear the direct military cost by itself but the rest of the world will pay a dear economic price. The Zionist-promoted US war will convert the recession of early 2012 into a major depression by the end of the year and probably provoke mass upheavals." (A doomsday view of 2012, James Petras, petras.lehaine.org, 24/12/11)

Zionism in the Dock

2011-12-26T16:49:00.033+11:00

Towards the end of Peter Kosminsky's powerful television drama, The Promise, depicting the final years (1946-1948) of the British Mandate regime in Palestine, Sergeant Len Matthews, leaving behind a land now completely given over to Zionist terror, rapine and plunder, writes in his diary: "The Jews have their precious state, but it has been born in violence and cruelty to its neighbours. I'm not sure how it can hope to survive."

Based primarily on the hitherto largely forgotten testimony of British troops who had served in Palestine at the time, The Promise cannot help but constitute an indictment of the ruthlessness and rapacity of the movement that gave birth to the modern state of Israel. "Overwhelmingly, the veterans [interviewed by Kosminsky] told a similar story," says the Wikipedia entry for the series, "they had started out 'incredibly pro-Jewish'; but, almost to a man, they had shifted their allegiance and by the end of their stay 'were feeling a great deal of sympathy for the Arabs'. A big change came in the final months, as they saw what would happen to the Palestinians, and realised both sides were to be abandoned to a war'."

Len's words, if anything, are understated. While the native Palestinians might be factually described as neighbours to individual Jewish settler communities, with whom some form of coexistence had perforce developed, there is no ignoring the fact that the Jewish community in Palestine, the bulk of whom had arrived from Europe over the previous 30 years in the teeth of opposition from Palestine's indigenous Arab majority, were sponsored and led by an extremist movement that aimed, all rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, at the wholesale dispossession and expulsion of that majority, and its replacement by a Jewish supremacist regime over as much of Mandate Palestine as could be secured by force of arms at the time. Sgt Matthews and his fellow soldiers, leaving behind the train wreck which was British Mandate Palestine in mid-May, 1948, could hardly have been aware of the extent of the ethnic cleansing of Arab Palestine still to come. Had they been so, they may well have concluded, to adapt Len's final diary entry: The Jews have their precious state, but it has been born in such violence and cruelty to Palestine's indigenous majority as to fall into the category of a Crime against Humanity.

Matthews and his colleagues were well-placed to deliver such a verdict on the Zionist movement at the end of the Mandate era, but, as it happens, the British troops who had helped the Arabs wrest Palestine from the Turks in the First World War, many of whom formed the nucleus of the military administration which governed the country from 1918 to 1920, had a verdict of their own on the earliest manifestations of Zionist arrogance and bullying which followed the movement's official insertion into Palestine in the form of a 'Zionist Commission'. While the British military government was bound by the laws of war to maintain the status quo in a newly occupied enemy land, the Zionist Commission, in effect a parallel government with its own cabinet and government departments, immediately set about attempting to implement their aim of reconstituting Palestine as a 'National Home' for 'the Jewish people' under the aegis of the British Government's ill-conceived 1917 Balfour Declaration, despite the opposition to their plans of 90% of the country's population. A clash, both with the British military administration and the Arab population, was inevitable.

Suffice it to say that the behaviour of the Commission was such as to elicit the following extraordinary condemnation from a clearly exasperated Sir Louis Bols, the last British military governor of Palestine:

"I cannot allocate the blame [for the 1920 Jerusalem riots]," wrote Bols, "to any section of the community or to individuals while their case is still sub judice, but I can definitely state that when the strain came the Zionist Commission did not loyally accept the orders of the Administration, but from the commencement adopted a hostile, critical and abusive attitude. It is a regrettable fact that with one or two exceptions it appears impossible to convince a Zionist of British good faith and ordinary honesty. They seek, not justice from the military occupant, but that in every question in which a Jew is interested discrimination shall be shown in his favour. They are exceedingly difficult to deal with. In Jerusalem, being in the majority, they are not satisfied with military protection, but demand to take the law in their own hands. In other places where they are in a minority they clamour for military protection... It will be recognized from the foregoing that my own authority and that of every department of my Administration is claimed or impinged upon by the Zionist Commission, and I am definitely of opinion that this state of affairs cannot continue without grave danger to the public peace and to the prejudice of my Administration. It is no use saying to the Moslem and Christian elements of the population that our declaration as to the maintenance of the status quo on our entry into Jerusalem has been observed. Facts witness otherwise: the introduction of the Hebrew tongue as an official language; the setting up of a Jewish judicature; the whole fabric of Government of the Zionist Commission, of which they are well aware; the special travelling privileges to members of the Zionist Commission; these have firmly and absolutely convinced the non-Jewish elements of our partiality. On the other hand the Zionist Commission accuses me and my officers of anti-Zionism. The situation is intolerable, and in justice to my officers and myself must be fairly faced.

"This Administration has loyally carried out the wishes of His Majesty's Government, and has succeeded in so doing by strict adherence to the laws governing the conduct of the Military Occupant of Enemy Territory, but this has not satisfied the Zionists, who appear bent on committing the temporary military Administration to a partialist policy before the issue of the Mandate. It is manifestly impossible to please partisans who officially claim nothing more than a 'National Home', but in reality will be satisfied with nothing less than a Jewish State and all that it politically implies. I recommend, therefore, in the interests of peace, of development, of the Zionists themselves, that the Zionist Commission in Palestine be abolished." (Cited in Palestine, the Reality, JMN Jeffries, 1939, pp 358-359)

As to the Army as a whole, Jeffries had this to say:

"Various Zionist controversialists, with their usual skill, when dealing with [the] matter [of the British Military Administration of Palestine], do not so much blame or attack the Army as write regretfully of its ignorance and its lack of comprehension. They say that the Army never really grasped the merits of Zionism, or 'only half understood the Balfour Declaration' (Leonard Stein) or did not appreciate the policy of the 'National Home'. The suggestion is that if only the Army had not been quite so dull, it would have perceived the value of all these things, and then would have thrown all its weight upon the Zionist side or at the very least have shown itself entirely sympathetic to Zionist claims.

"Now the truth is that far from not grasping or only half-understanding or not appreciating Zionist policy, the British Army in Palestine grasped and appreciated it and understood it all too well. That is the absolute clue to the Army's attitude.

"Nor was the Army a dull body, drilling unappreciatively through life. It had eyes and ears and used these organs. It was composed of a sound average body of British citizens. Sir Ronald Storrs records that 'apart from a few professional soldiers our administrative and technical staff included a cashier of a Rangoon bank, an actor-manager, two of Messrs. Cook's assistants, a picture-dealer, an Army-coach, a clown, a land-valuer, a boatswain, a distiller, an organist, a cotton-broker, various architects, British civil-servants, a taxi-driver, two schoolmasters and a missionary'. This was the staff of his Governate, inherited from the Army, a sample of the diversity of the whole military body.

"The Army, therefore - and this is what is so important - was the sole large category of average British citizens which had direct access to the facts of the so-called 'Palestine problem', the sole such category which had encountered Zionism in Palestine and had experienced what it meant. It was the sole such category which was aware of the Arabs' true situation, which knew that they were not the fantastically dubbed 'non-Jewish community' which the home politicians called them, but the people of the land of Palestine, whose native rights had been guaranteed and now were about to be betrayed. The humblest of private soldiers possessed a first-hand acquaintance with the realities of the subject which was denied to the united faculties of all the learned societies of the British Isles. Those privates' commanders, the authorities of the military administration, had a knowledge of the subject which the Prime Minister and other Cabinet Ministers of Great Britain had not acquired, and indeed had steadfastly refused to obtain.

"So the undoubted fact that the Army in all its ranks was, with the fewest exceptions, anti-Zionist, that hostile catchwords borrowed from the Arabs, such as 'Yehoudi Mushquais!' ('Jews no good!') were on the lips of the soldiers, that, as the Zionist executive complained, 'jeers and gibes at the Zionists, at the Jewish colonies, at the [Zionist] Commission, were heard in every officers' mess from Dan to Beersheba', is but the most convincing proof that officers and men were alert to what was going on around them. They reacted, more earnestly than politely, against the great wrong planned in the interests of the 'National Home' against the population amidst which they lived. Their estimation of the wrong may be traced in their behaviour. It takes something phenomenal to cause the easy-going British soldier, who never even hates his foes, to turn to gibes and jeers.

"One of the least politically minded units amid all our institutions, our Army when it gives attention to politics must have a very powerful reason to impel it. In Palestine it had one, and the lessons of its espousal of the Arabs' cause is instructive beyond anything. There never will be a better proof of the justice of that cause than this favour shown to it by the one mass of ordinary Britons who came into contact with it and knew more than any other persons about it. As the Army at that time was constituted, its soldiers sprang from every class and were of every type of the British people, and the whole evidence was before them. In a way, they were empanelled by their presence upon the scene, and it was in a great trial by jury that they returned their verdict of 'Guilty' upon Zionism as practised in Palestine." (pp 368-370)

NB: On the experience of our own ex-Tommy, Peter Cundall, see my 7/7/08 post Peter Cundall's Palestine; on Israel lobby misrepresentation of our Light Horse Brigade, see my posts Anzac Day Special: Diggers Die for Israel (25/4/08) and Zionist Myth In-formation (1/5/08).

Been There, Done That

2011-12-25T19:48:00.024+11:00

Apparently, stir crazy "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is refusing to pen an op-ed piece for The New York Times, signalling the degree to which he is fed up with the influential newspaper's editorial policy on Israel." (Netanyahu snubs NY Times, Herb Keinon, The Jerusalem Post/The Australian Jewish News, 23/12/11)

Oh dear! Oh dearie dearie dear!

But the last straw, it seems, came when hip* liberal Zionist "Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that the resounding ovation Netanyahu received in Congress when he spoke there in May had been 'bought and paid for by the Israel lobby'." (ibid)

OMG! Did he say thaaat?

Fraid so. And the following denunciation, by AIPAC-funded Israel firster Steve Rothman** (Democrat, New Jersey), is just the tip of the denunciatory iceberg:

"Thomas Friedman's defamation against the vast majority of Americans who support the Jewish state of Israel is scurrilous, destructive and harmful to Israel and her advocates in the US. Friedman is not only wrong, but he's aiding and abetting a dangerous narrative about the US-Israel relationship and its American supporters." (ibid)

But this really is the proverbial storm in a teacup. Friedman had, in fact, said as much, if a tad less forcefully, back in 1989, in his book, From Beirut to Jerusalem:

"Having become organized and energized around support for Israel [after 1967], the American Jewish community began to really assert itself on the American political scene. The so-called Jewish lobby, the American Israel Public affairs Committee (AIPAC), became one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in Washington, thanks to its ability to organize important constituencies of Jews all across America to vote in their local elections on the basis of which candidate was most supportive of aid to Israel... In the old days, when American Jews were known to support an array of liberal issues, an American politician who received campaign contributions from Jews could not really know if that support was linked to his position on labor rights, civil rights, abortion, or school prayer. However, as key Jewish philanthropists formed political action committees [PACs] focused exclusively on contributing money to those office seekers ready to support Israel, it became obvious to candidates that the most efficient way to raise funds was not by focusing on the 500 issues which span the spectrum of liberal ideology, but rather by focusing exclusively on Israel... The more that happened, the more American Jews realized that they could ride Israel... into the corridors of power. Jews did not get invited to the White House to discuss the Jewish aged or prayer in public schools. But a Jew who contributed large amounts of money to AIPAC, either at the local or national level, might find himself being consulted by his congressman about a particular foreign aid bill, or, if he was really lucky, invited to the State Department for an audience with the Secretary of State himself." (pp 457-458)

That was then. Imagine now.

[*I mean how hip is this: "There are many Iraqis embedded with US forces in Kirkuk. In the dining hall on the main base, I like to watch the Iraqi officers watching the melting pot of US soldiers around them - men, women, blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics - and wonder: What have they learned from us? We left some shameful legacies here of torture and Abu Ghraib, but we also left a million acts of kindness and a profound example of how much people of different backgrounds can accomplish when they work together." (Goodbye Iraq, and good luck, NYT, 15/7/09). Such a pity Friedman's melting pot didn't do it for Pvt. Daniel Chen, who was dragged across a floor, pelted with stones, forced to hold liquid in his mouth while hanging upside down, and mercilessly taunted for his Asian background such that he either committed suicide or was murdered, the jury being still out on this one. (See War with fellow soldiers proves deadly, AP/The Australian, 22/12/11); ** According to the document Pro-Israel PAC Contributions to 2000, Congressional Candidates 1999-2000 cycle, Rothman had bagged a 'career total' of $20,503, wrmea.com]

Making Deserts Bloom 2

2011-12-24T08:22:00.023+11:00

The following report should be compulsory reading for Christians at this time of year. Astonishingly, too many need reminding that the Zionist Grinch is stealing Christmas, dunum by dunum:

"If Joseph and Mary were making their way to Bethlehem today, the Christmas story would be little different, says Father Ibrahim Shomali, a parish priest in the town. The couple would struggle to get into the city, let alone find a hotel room. 'If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed', says the priest of Bethlehem's Beit Jala parish. 'He would either have to be born at a checkpoint or at the separation wall. Mary and Joseph would have needed Israeli permission - or to have been tourists. 'This is really the big problem for Palestinians in Bethlehem: what will happen when they close us off completely?'... A strip of Israeli settlements built on 18 square kilometres of what was once northern Bethlehem threatens to cut the city off from its historic twin, Jerusalem... One of the settlements, Har Homa, is built on land where angels are said to have announced the birth of Christ to local shepherds. A narrow corridor of land between Har Homa and another settlement, Gilo, still connects Bethlehem to Jerusalem, but the construction of Givat Hamatos, a settlement announced in October, will fill this in a matter of years." (If Jesus was born today 'Bethlehem would be closed', Phoebe Greenwood, Guardian/SMH, 24/12/11)

But none of this should come as any surprise. From the very moment Lloyd George and Lord Balfour, in a fit of madness, unleashed the Zionist movement on an ill-prepared and unsuspecting Palestine in the 1920's, the malign makeover of the Holy Land proceeded at an unholy pace, with scant regard for the ecology, either environmental or spiritual, of the place - as doughty Christian missionary Frances E. Newton bore witness at the time:

"The [1922] Rutenberg scheme [for the electrification of Palestine] has so far been dealt with from the point of view of its political reaction in the Arab world. But there is another aspect of it which should not be lost sight of. Christendom too has its deeply-rooted interests in Palestine. Are these interests also menaced by the industrialisation of the Holy Land? Admittedly the enterprise is a step forward in the process of developing the amenities of civilised life and has benefited the Arabs as well as the Jews; but this is only a plea in its favour, for, as an Arab quoted in an article which appeared in the Observer some little time ago: 'Man doth not live by bread alone'. Rider Haggard wrote, in a letter to The Times of December 11th, 1917: 'Material progress in general has to justify itself in such cases. It is not enough to show that such and such an undertaking means progress for the beginning of work upon it to be at once licensed. Christians as well as Jews have interests in the Holy Land and, where Palestine is concerned it has, and forever will have, its God-given traditions and its inalienable rights.

"Surely one of these rights claims the safeguarding of sacred sites, the spiritual value of which is a focal point in the life of Christians throughout the world. When a friend of mine pointed out to a prominent Zionist that Christian sentiment was being outraged by the desecration of the shores of the Lake of Galilee as the result of the activities of the Electric Power Station in the Jordan Valley, the answer he received was, 'All development involves vandalism; that is inevitable'.

"The Power Station may be - as is claimed by the Zionists - a great engineering feat; it is none the less a horrible blot on a lovely landscape. It harnesses the waters of the river Yarmuk flowing down from the highlands of Gilead to the east, with those of the Jordan, half way in their courses to the Dead Sea. In the spring, after heavy rains of the winter, and when the melting of the snow on Mount Hermon causes the Jordan to 'overflow its banks all the time of harvest' (ie, in May and June for the region is semi-tropical) more water is available than is required, while, during the later summer months the supply is not sufficient. This called for the erection of a dam where the Jordan flows out of the Lake of Galilee, in order to control the supply from that source; less in the winter, more in the summer.

"When closed in the winter the dam holds up the water thus causing a rise of several feet in the level of the Lake, and the river Jordan loses its character of a swift flowing turbulent stream, and becomes a mere trickle in its almost dry bed, while huge deposits of mud dredged from it top its banks on either side. A modern St. John the Baptist would find himself very much out of place! The rise in the level of the Lake not only causes the inundation of houses by the Lakeside in the town of Tiberius, but also that of not inconsiderable areas round its shores which have for generations been cultivated by Arab peasants.

"When opened in the summer and autumn months, water is drawn from the Lake as required, thus reducing its level and leaving large stretches of hard sunbaked crinkled mud around the shores and, what is more, the lowest level of the dam lies deeper than the bed of the Lake itself, so that - though in its own interests it is not likely to do so - the Company could, if its electrical requirements called for it, drain the Lake dry.

"The alterations in the Lake level affect not only the human population, they bring consternation also among 'the humbler creation', for the fish which, in their multitudes, used to swarm from the Jordan into the Lake for spawning purposes, can no longer do so, and the eggs of those already in the Lake, which are laid in the shallow waters round its edge, become dried up when the water recedes. Arab fishermen have already found their means of earning a livelihood so seriously interfered with that some have given up their craft. It may not be long before the industry hitherto carried on in much the same manner as when, in the days of our Lord, He called His disciples to be 'fishers of men', may disappear altogether.

"It is, therefore, not going too far to say that the 'inevitable vandalism' which accompanies the industrialisation of the land results in the desecration of sites and scenes hallowed by 'those holy feet', which it is surely one of the inalienable rights of Christians to preserve." (Fifty Years in Palestine, 1948, pp 206-207)

Merry Christmas...

Mea Culpa? You're Joking!

2011-12-23T10:38:00.006+11:00

"The misery in Iraq has resulted in democracy - something all the Arab people are pursuing with fervour. Make no mistake that George W. Bush was the catalyst for what is happening in the Middle East today. Nobody wants to be governed by brutal despots and the Arab people are putting their lives on the line in their quest for democracy. Misery is a price they are willing to pay." Letter to The Australian, 30/3/11, James D'Angelo, Melbourne, Vic

OK, the Sunni Vice President is currently the subject of an arrest warrant, signed by no less than 5 judges, on what are likely trumped-up terrorism charges, his bodyguards have been singing like the proverbial canary on television, and it's snap, crackle and pop all over Baghdad as bombs and rockets claim the lives of over 80 people.

But there's one thing as certain as death and taxes: you'll never see a mea culpa from the James D'Angelos of this world. No ray of light is capable of piercing that sort of darkness.

'Americans Can Do Anything'

2011-12-22T09:38:00.007+11:00

"For my own generation, the defining image of America was the landing on the moon... I'll always remember thinking that day: Americans can do anything..."* (Julia Gillard)

"'My heart goes out to the Iraqis', said Warrant Officer John Jewell, acknowledging the challenges ahead. 'The innocent always pay the bill'." (First-light convoy departs Iraq, AP/ The Australian, 19/12/11)

"The conflict, which quickly descended into chaos, corruption, terrorism and sectarian slaughter, has claimed the lives of almost 4,500 American troops and cost $US1 trillion. Yet there is little tangible indication in Iraq that the Americans were ever here. Whereas signs of the British colonial-era occupation in the first half of the previous century are still evident in bridges, schools and monuments to the war dead, signs of the US presence, which peaked at more than 170,000 troops, are almost negligible. There is precious little to show for a venture that was supposed to create a new Middle East and establish a US strategic ally in the oil-rich region. Many of the schools renovated in the heyday of the 'hearts & minds' campaign after the invasion are peeling and neglected, victims of shoddy workmanship and corruption. Even sections of the highway between Baghdad and Nasariyeh, the southern city where the US's final logistics crews are packing up and leaving, remain unpaved because the foreign contractors building it fled amid a surge in kidnappings in 2004." (Iraq now on its own & ill-prepared to face challenges, James Hider, The Times/The Australian, 16/12/11)

"'I wish I could put my head on a pillow and sleep comfortably', [Sheikh Mustafa Kamal] said. 'Is it better than before? Of course it isn't. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with anyone, you just had to be careful not to go near his chair'." (Caught between fear & hope, Martin Chulov, Guardian/SMH, 17/12/11)

"The UN Development Program marked the exit of the last US troops by releasing data from a survey of 28,000 Iraqi homes that was conducted by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning in the first quarter of this year. It found that public services provided homes with an average of just 7.6 hours a day of electricity, only 30% of homes are connected to sewerage, just 38% of households rate availability of drinking water as 'good' or 'very good'; and 1 in 8 Iraqis who dealt with a civil servant over the past year was obliged to pay a bribe. Despite Iraq's oil wealth, the country has failed to attract foreign investment in infrastructure or other industries, with foreigners deterred by the lack of clear laws and security problems which mean that more people are still killed, wounded or kidnapped each year in 'post-war' Iraq than in Afghanistan." (Economic boom bypasses man on the street, Peter Wilson, The Australian, 19/12/11)

[* See my 11/3/11 post Mistress of Reinvention.]

Spot the Difference!

2011-12-21T17:55:00.009+11:00

OK, here's your classic North Korean rambamming:

"Visiting the country does little to increase one's understanding. I have made 6 visits and all were tightly organised propaganda tours. My only significant interactions were with the people known as guides - medium to low-level minders - whose job it was to convey us from monument to palace to mausoleum, attempting to maintain confidence and good humour in the face of sceptical questions. I became persuaded that, although they knew they were lying cynically about many smaller things, their naive faith in the rightness and goodness of their government was, in many cases, unfeigned." (Life of paranoia the norm in North, Richard Lloyd-Parry, The Times/The Australian, 21/12/11)

Essentially, Israeli rambammings differ in only one respect from the above. Can you work out what it is?

Congratulations! Well done! You're absolutely right!

Journalists and politicians who go on an Israeli rambamming don't ask sceptical questions.

Newt Gingrich, 'Historian'

2011-12-19T21:42:00.030+11:00

"What [history] does is, it gives you a really rich background to go to, to analyze things, to think about things, to put in context what you would do in a way that if you don't know history, you can't possibly reinvent it." (Newt Gingrich: historian? (Fact Checker biography), Josh Hicks, washingtonpost.com, 15/12/11)

So babbled one-time (h)academic historian and current Republican presidential wannabe Newt Gingrich on Iowa Public Radio earlier this year.

Gingrich donned the mantle of historian again this month when he pronounced that "we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places" (See my 12/12/11 post File Under: Israel Lobby? What Israel Lobby?)

But, sadly, that wasn't the end of the matter. In an exchange with rival Mitt Romney, he proceeded to dig an even deeper hole for himself:

"The fact is the Palestinian claim to a right of return is based on an historically false story. Somebody ought to have the courage to go all the way back to the 1921 League of Nations Mandate for a Jewish Homeland and point out the context in which Israel came into existence, and Palestine did not become a common term until after 1977. This is a propaganda war in which our side refuses to engage, and we refuse to tell the truth while the other side lies, and you're not going to win in the long run if you're afraid to stand firm and stand for the truth." (abcnews.go.com, 10/12/11)

Given the prevailing ignorance of Palestinian history, which Gingrich is doing his best to improve on, and considering the dread prospect that he might actually succeed O'bomber as president, I thought it might be useful to scrutinise the man's utterances.

Starting with his earlier excavation about "invented Palestinians," while it is of course true that the Palestinian people are Arabs, along with the Lebanese, the Syrians, and the Jordanians, to venture no further afield, that does not, however, mean that they have "many [other] places" to go to, or should, in fact, go anywhere if they choose not to.

People are not chess pieces for the likes of Gingrich and his Zionist mates. One can only imagine, for example, what his response would be if anyone suddenly turned up on his doorstep in Georgia and handed him marching orders.

As a self-described historian, Gingrich of all people should know that folk generally don't take too kindly to other folk coming along and telling them it's time to move on. In fact, they tend to resist. As Israel's first prime minister David Ben-Gurion put it candidly in 1937: "Were I an Arab, I would rebel even more vigorously, bitterly and desperately against the immigration that will one day turn Palestine and all its residents over to Jewish rule." Or, as Netanyahu's spiritual godfather, Vladimir Jabotinsky, put it: "Colonization has its own explanation, integral and inescapable, and understood by every Jew and Arab with his wits about him. Colonization can have only one goal. For the Palestinian Arabs this goal is inadmissable... Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population." (See my 12/6/08 post Pemulwuy in Palestine.)

As for "the Palestinian claim to a right of return" being "historically false," what he seems to be saying, clarity not being his thing, of course, is that no one was using the term Palestine at the time of what he calls "the 1921 League of Nations Mandate for a Jewish Homeland."

Leaving to one side the fact that our erstwhile historian gets the date wrong, Britain's Palestine mandate coming into effect in 1923, Gingrich's fundamental deceit resides in his reference to it as "the League of Nations mandate for a Jewish Homeland." In fact, it bore no such title, its various monikers all containing the word Palestine: The British Mandate for Palestine, the Palestine Mandate, The British Mandate of Palestine and the Mandate for Palestine. And, surprise, surprise, for a document correctly referencing Palestine in its title, the 'P' word is found throughout the text.

Someone ought to have the courage, to borrow Gingrich's own words, to tell him to drop the pretense that he's still a historian - if he ever once was. On this issue, he's merely an echo chamber for Zionist talking points.

The Israeli Faith

2011-12-18T13:37:00.024+11:00

A letter in The Australian of 16 December 2011 from Vic Alhadeff, Jewish Board of Deputies, Darlinghurst, NSW:

"A Sydney school has shelved references to Santa, Christmas carols and Christianity so as not to offend Jewish and Hindu pupils. To be clear: we support the right of Christians to celebrate Christmas, just as Indians have the right to celebrate Divali [sic], Muslims to mark Ramadan and Jews to celebrate Chanukah. It's what makes Australia Australia."

A 25 July 2011 tweet from Vic Alhadeff:

"What a 'Jewish state' actually means. http://bit.ly/qENIsQ#Israel"

Which takes us to:

"Judaism has never seen itself exclusively or even primarily as a religion; indeed, you won't find the modern Hebrew word for 'religion' anywhere in the first 5 books of the Bible. The Biblical terms for what we today call Jews are Am Yisrael - 'the nation of Israel' - and Bnei Yisrael, 'the children of Israel'. And that's precisely the point: From a Jewish perspective, the Jews are first and foremost a nation. Thus, the term 'Jewish state' is in no way analogous to 'Christian state'. Rather, it's analogous to 'French' or 'Danish' or 'German' state. Just as these are the respective homelands of the French, Danish and German peoples, a Jewish state is the homeland of the Jewish people." (Misunderstanding what a 'Jewish state' actually means, Evelyn Gordon, commentarymagazine.com, 21/7/11)

Standard Zionist fare, of course. Whatever else they're up to the French, the Danes and the Germans are emphatically not in the business of urging foreigners, who can lay claim to 'French', 'Danish' or 'German' mothers, to pack their bags and emigrate forthwith to 'their' respective, alleged 'homelands'.

Nor do France, Denmark and Germany insist that they are the one and only 'homeland' for such foreigners, deeming them exiles. Nor do they scour the globe for supposedly 'lost' French, Danish and German tribes with a view to their uprooting and 'repatriation' to 'their' French, Danish and German 'homelands'.

All stuff and nonsense, of course, but it's all there in Gordon's chapter and verse: For political Zionists, Jews are not so much a faith community as a 'nation'.

Which brings us back to Alhadeff's letter, in which he presents as nothing more than a champion of freedom of religious expression. Yet, were he pressed on his interpretation of Judaism, as a political Zionist, he's bound to reduce it all to little more than unconditional support for a political entity.

In the interests of accuracy and transparency, therefore, shouldn't he have written: 'We support the right of Christians to celebrate Christmas, just as Indians have the right to celebrate Diwali, Muslims to mark Ramadan, Jews to celebrate Chanukah, and Zionists to whoop it up on Yom Ha'atzmaut'?

Witches Brew 10

2011-12-17T08:50:00.034+11:00

Continuing my dissection of the NSW Legislative Council's anti-BDS emissions of September 15...

The Hon. Shaoquette Moselmane, Labor:

"Like my colleagues, I was not aware that this motion [condemning the targeting of Max Brenner outlets by BDS protesters] was to be debated today."

But our two broadly-grinning Israel lobbyists in the gallery knew it was on. It didn't catch them by surprise.

"I support paragraph (d) of the motion and condemn all forms of discrimination, anti-Semitism and racism... I ask the mover of the motion not only to condemn anti-Semitism but also to follow my lead in condemning the cheap political motivation behind the rest of the motion. I do not believe that the rest of the motion is genuine."

Too right! You've been caught up in what is essentially a shameless, American-style swearing of fealty to the Lords of the Lobby. So why then did you not push an amendment along these lines: That this House stop wasting its time with what is transparently nothing more than an attempt to smear and stifle legitimate dissent over Israel's serial violations of Palestinian rights?

But no, you wimped out with this tiresome reiteration of Anthony Albanese's pronouncement that "Foreign policy is a fair way outside of the parameters of Marrickville Council..."*:

"Just as we argued that Marrickville Council should not interfere in international politics, we in this House also should not interfere in international politics."

The Labor line has to be toed - always. Too bad that it always leads back to Lobby Land.

[*See my 18/1/11 post A Rising Tide of Pro-Israel Bias at the ABC.]

Then comes this:

"I do not know Max Brenner but I offer him my best wishes. I have not eaten the chocolate or the waffles that his shops offer. However, I wish him the same success that I wish any Australian business operators who are doing the best they can for their family."

As in, I've never met the Australian businessman Ronald MacDonald but I offer him and his family my best wishes?

You are taking the piss here, aren't you?

But then:

"I also know nothing about the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, but I do know that the politics motivating the movement should be condemned. Although that movement is shameful, this motion is designed simply to drive a wedge between members of this House."

Let's get this clear: You know nothing about the BDS movement (despite toeing the party line on Marrickville Council) but you condemn its politics. Pure genius! Alhadeff and his mate in the gallery must've been in stitches!

Next comes what appears to be a real cris de coeur:

"I cannot support what the Israelis are doing. I come from southern Lebanon, which the Israelis have invaded many times. I was there when the tanks rolled in and the jets roared overhead. My family was there when 10 of my father's first cousins in a car were the victims of an Israeli missile attack and 8 were killed. The Israelis have occupied southern Lebanon for 25 [sic: 29] years and created a southern Lebanese army of mercenaries whose job it is [sic] to punish the local people. That must also be condemned. I support the comments made by Dr John Kaye and Mr David Shoebridge to the extent that people who have suffered under the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon or elsewhere - leaving aside the Palestinians at this point - must have a say and their rights must be recognised. The Palestinians, who have been made homeless as a result of the Israeli state for the last 60 years [sic: 63], must be recognised. They are human beings who have rights. They have as much right as Israelis, and everybody recognises that. In my inaugural speech I said that Israelis and Palestinians have a right to exist side by side. The Israelis must have their state, as should the Palestinians. They are, like you and me, human beings who have a right to live in their homeland. Although it has been 60 years, some of them still have keys to their homes and wait for the opportunity to return."

OK, I see you're big on Palestinian rights. Well, what do you think BDS, which you've described as "shameful," is all about if not securing Palestinian rights? Let's run through BDS 101 for you. Paying attention?:

"For the Palestinian people to exercise its right to self-determination, Israel must end its 3 forms of injustice that infringe international law and Palestinian rights by: 1) ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands [occupied in 1967] and dismantling the wall 2) recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality 3) respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights pf Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties, as stipulated in UN resolution 194." (BDS: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, Omar Barghouti, 2011, p 6)

Yet you "condemn the politics motivating the BDS movement"?

OK, moving along:

"It is not [too] much [to ask] for people to be able to protest, to have a say democratically in a non-violent way. People can protest on the streets here if they wish. I am happy for them to [do] so as long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others. I do not think these protests will infringe upon the rights of others. I do not support targeting a business, but there is a principle behind this, human beings are behind this and the Palestinian people have suffered for so long. I call on the Israeli state to make peace with the Palestinians, to give them their rights and to allow Palestinians a homeland. If it does not do so, we will continue to have this debate for many years to come."

But wait a minute, didn't you just say that the "politics motivating the [BDS] movement should be condemned"? And here you are, calling on Israel to "make peace with the Palestinians" after invoking the Albanese line that only the feds have the right to deal with foreign policy issues.

"In conclusion, I respect the Hon. David Clarke. I have had good relations with him since becoming a member of this Chamber. I call on him, as he condemns anti-Semitism, to move motions to condemn the vilification of the Muslim community in this House and outside. I ask the Hon. David Clarke to move a motion condemning all forms of anti-Muslim sentiments happening here in this House."

Oh, I see! You've just expressed support for key-carrying Palestinian refugees denied their right of return by Israel for over 60 years now, but you respect David Clarke, who spoke out strongly against the Palestinian right of return because it might mess with Israel's "Jewish character." (See Witches Brew 1). Then you're calling on the man, whom the openly Islamophobic Fred Nile called a "fearless and uncompromising leader on moral and Muslim issues," to move a motion against Islamophobia. (See my 19/9/11 post Friends.) ???

OK, I could put up with your contradictions if you'd at least voted for John Kaye's amendment opposing Clarke's motion, but what'd you do? Why, vote it down with the rest of your LibLab pack of course. Cris de coeur and Palestinian rights:0 - party line: 1.

What Goes Around...

2011-12-16T18:58:00.013+11:00

... comes around.

"In a series of 'price-tag' incidents, angry right-wing extremists in the Samaria area of the West Bank attacked a military base, two IDF commanders and Palestinian vehicles late on Monday night and early Tuesday morning to protest the pending demolition of the unauthorised Ramat Gilad outpost." (Right-wing extremists attack IDF base, Herb Keinon, The Jerusalem Post/The Australian Jewish News, 16/12/11)

Let's get this right. Israeli settlers attacked an IDF base because they thought the IDF were preparing to demolish one of their cubby houses.

Blimey, what kind of pumped-up psychos go around attacking people just because they think they're going to strike first?

Why, the IDF, of course:

"On Thursday, the IDF bombed a car travelling in Gaza and killed a Aksa [sic] Martyrs Brigades operative who the army said was plotting an attack on Israel via the Sinai. The bombing of the car is part of an IDF understanding that since it cannot operate in Egypt it needs to stop such attacks while they are in the planning stages in the Gaza Strip." (Egypt: no Sinai base for Hamas, Yaakov Katz, The Jerusalem Post/The AJN, 16/12/11)

What a Buzz!

2011-12-15T19:58:00.025+11:00

They were busy little bees back in 1922, just beginning to whip Palestine into shape:

"Such, in bare outline, are the terms of this Concession granted to [Pinhas] Rutenberg in 1922 [for the electrification of Palestine]; and now we turn to the manner in which it was granted. But here let it in all fairness be said that if patient perseverence in pursuit of the object aimed at deserves recognition, then the Zionists deserved the recognition they met with. For with the activity displayed by bees in the high tide of the honey flow, the Zionists contacted with British politicians and flitted from flower to flower gathering pollen as they flew, with the punctilious attention to preliminary detail shown by bees, in preparing the necessary documents for presentation to the British Government. No one would cavil at the successful result of unceasing toil and clever strategy on the part of the Zionists in their application for the grant of this concession, if Whitehall had examined it with scrupulous regard for the 'absolute impartiality' promised to the people of the country as a whole. But did it do so?" (Frances E Newton, Fifty Years in Palestine, 1948, p 198)

And they're just as busy today, whipping up support for Israel, aka engaging with key sectors to advance social harmony:

"A modest farm at Bingara, 300 kilometres east of Coffs Harbour... will become a haven for Israel Defence Forces (IDF) graduates and Israeli backpackers if Ralph and Jo Waters' dream comes to fruition. The Waters, who are devout Christians, recently spent 6 weeks in Israel and wanted to help Israelis who defend their country. 'We met many wonderful people there and we became aware of the outrageous injustices being perpetrated against the people of Israel across the world and the siege against the Jewish people', Ralph Waters told NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBOD) chief executive Vic Alhadeff in Bingara last week... Alhadeff met the couple while addressing the Israeli Awareness Group at the Christian Outreach Centre in Narrabri last Tuesday night as part of the JBOD's latest bridge-building tour to Narrabri, Coonabarabran, Gunnedah and Tamworth... The bridge-building tour comprised a total of 24 engagements - meeting Catholic, Anglican, Baptist and political leaders at state and local government level, speeches to Rotary clubs, radio and newspaper interviews and school presentations on the Holocaust, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Jewish practice. Alhadeff said... 'It was vital to engage with key sectors throughout regional NSW in order to enhance understanding of Jewish people, Jewish issues and Israel, and in so doing advance social harmony'." (NSW couple to set up IDF getaway, The Australian Jewish News, 9/12/11)

Coming soon to a key sector, aka church/politician/Rotary club/radio/newspaper/school, near you. Brace yourselves for a spot of social harmony, aka Israel/Zionism 101. Or, alternatively, tell these self-described bridge-builders that Israel's a bridge too far and ask them to buzz off.

A Girl with a Conscience

2011-12-15T18:04:00.004+11:00

"Charlotte Salusinszky from Pymble Ladies' College topped advanced English but definitely won't be following the footsteps of her father, Imre, a journalist with The Australian. 'Never', she said." (Girls bring A game, Henry Budd, The Daily Telegraph, 14/12/11)

Most wise, Charlotte. And God bless!

Now You See It...

2011-12-14T19:45:00.026+11:00

Now you don't.

One can only imagine the ructions over at SBS Television at the brave decision to screen Peter Kosminsky's insightful and historically accurate recreation of modern Palestinian history, The Promise, the final episode of which is to be screened this Sunday. Alas, absent a whistleblower, we cannot, of course, be privy to the gory details.

We are lucky, however, to have been afforded a tiny glimpse into what happens behind the scenes when a mainstream media outlet such as SBS throws caution to the winds and gives the Palestine problem the attention it deserves.

The glimpse I refer to is the fact that, while SBS's website hosted a forum for viewers' comments following the first two episodes of the 4-part series, this was abruptly terminated a mere 4 days after episode 2 and has not resurfaced since.

Why?

Well, the short and winding road which led to the termination of same seems to have begun with a comment from a certain 'surferbob' which appeared on the thread following episode one. From memory, I found it a model of rational and informed discourse on the subject at hand. And yet, without explanation, it was soon removed by the SBS moderator. Its disappearance prompted another commenter, 'Emile', to ask why. As it happens, it was at this point that I began printing off some of the comments, which enables me to quote verbatim the conversation that ensued:

SBSMegan: Hi Emile, surferbob's comment was removed because it contained racist expressions that were deemed inappropriate for this forum.

Emile: These were not apparent to me, I'm afraid. I really think the alleged 'racist expressions' you took exception to should be discussed in the interests of fairness and openness. Could you kindly list them for us, Megan?

Emile's response went answered, but the forum, with contributions from sundry commenters, including Emile, continued on - until, on Thursday 8, 'surferbob' resurfaced and addressed SBSMegan thus:

"Well, Megan, if you diagree with my comment that Israel has taken a seismic shift towards the right - sliding into fascism - read respected Israeli commentators such as Uri Avnery for their opinion. Better still, go there and see the living proof. I have witnessed protesters blinded, disfigured and killed at peaceful, non-violent protests against the ongoing theft of Palestinian lands. I myself, at 70 years of age, have been tear-gassed and shot. Welcome to the real Israel - or would you rather just censor comments you find unpalatable and label them racist?"

As I said earlier, a model of rational and informed comment. The above comment remained on the thread and was joined 3 hours later by this from 'Emile':

"With respect, Megan, I really do think you've had long enough on this. What precisely was your problem with surferbob's previous comment? What are your/SBS's criteria for alleging that his earlier comment contained 'racist expressions'? In the absence of any clear statement on this, commenters can only conclude that your decision to delete his comment was based on nothing more than your own, not necessarily informed (How would we know?), individual opinion."

Not only was there no response to this comment from 'SBSMegan', but the entire forum was closed, without notice or explanation, the very same day, and has not reappeared since. What - and this is, of course, an entirely rhetorical question - is SBS afraid of?

But there's more: In addition to the moderator's unilateral, and, on the face of it, contemptuous pulling of the plug on SBS's rightly questioning audience, a disclaimer of sorts - "This is a drama inspired by the accounts of British soldiers who served in Palestine" - appeared as an appendage to the precis of episode 3.

It would seem that SBS is reacting here to complaints from Israel lobbyists contesting the drama's historical veracity, the absurd and insulting (to both Kosminsky and to the historical record) insinuation being that The Promise is really little more than a dramatisation of the anti-Semitic attitudes of British troops serving in Palestine at the time.*

The following salutary letter in this week's Australian Jewish News by Arje Singer of Castle Cove only serves to highlight the crackling hysteria coming from Israel lobbyists on the one hand - "Forget Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial is old hat. The new strategy... is to depict the Holocaust in all its horror in order that Jews can be charged ('You of all people') with failing to live up to it."** - and the evident cowardice of certain quarters at SBS on the other:

"As an Israeli citizen, I couldn't find any anti-Israeli parts in The Promise. Every person has the right to bring his views to the general public. Not every picture or book must be Zionist. The TV series has historic background. It is completely ridiculous to write: 'Viewers unfamiliar with the facts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may come to view Israel more negatively'."

[* Maybe I'm reading a bit too much into this. In an interview with Kosminsky in The Guardian of 23/1/11, Britain's humiliation in Palestine, Rachel Cooke writes: "Between 1945 and 1948, some 100,000 soldiers served in the British-controlled Mandate of Palestine. Kosminsky's team spoke to around 80; he found the men's stories to be both gripping and moving, so he carried on, wading next through letters, diaries, memoirs and history books. Slowly, a theme began to emerge. 'The thing that came out most strongly', he says, 'was that the men all arrived in Palestine feeling incredibly pro-Jewish. A few of them had helped to liberate the [concentration] camps, so they had seen what had happened [to the Jews] with their own eyes... Over time, though, the soldiers' attitudes changed. Some of this was just the usual British support for the underdog; there's no question that by 1948 [when Israel declared itself an independent state] the Arabs were perceived as that. But also, if you're being attacked on a daily basis [by the Jewish resistance], if you're under constant threat of kidnap, if you're confined to barracks behind a lot of razor wire, your feelings are bound to change'."; **Howard Jacobson, Ludicrous, brainwashed prejudice, The Independent/AJN, 2/12/11]

Daley of Damascus

2011-12-13T08:48:00.042+11:00

Fairfax columnist Paul Daley is one of those corporate fence-sitting types who, while not going over to the Zionist dark side entirely, never fail to cut the Israelis lots of slack, as in:

"I've been to Israel many times. I like its people, Arab and Jewish. As someone who acknowledges Israel's right to exist, I also accept its right to defend its borders... I do not consider it contradictory that I also have reservations about Israel's conduct during the invasions of Gaza and Lebanon, and its occasional excesses in the West Bank. So, too, do many Israelis." (With friends like Israel..., Sydney Morning Herald, 27/2/10)

Reservations about... occasional excesses... To say Daley's shallow is to enter the realm of the bleeding obvious.

However, where the dirty deeds of a certain Arab regime are concerned, one BTW that has never colonised another people or exiled them or stolen their land or lashed out at its neighbours, Daley doesn't just have reservations, he hearts a NATO-style intervention by - wait for it - "the civilised world":

"When should the civilised world intervene and use military force to stem murder and human rights abuses? How many bodies do we need to count before we act? History, some of it much too recent for our moral comfort, has a way of repeatedly posing such questions to us - and then aswering them. Think Armenia. Think Nazi Germany. Think Rwanda and Bosnia. Now think Syria." (An uncomfortable lesson, The Sun-Herald, 11/12/11)

But that opener wasn't what struck me at first. It was in fact this:

"Two years ago when I was last in Syria, the seeds of democratic uprising were sprouting. There was an intense curiosity in the new president of the US, Barack Obama, and a sense that he could well be the one to bridge the chasm that had grown between the West and Arab countries - not least Syria - since the September 11, 2001, attacks on America." (ibid)

Let's quantify this intense curiosity in Obomber, shall we? A 2009 Gallup Poll revealed an increase in Obomber's approval rating among Syrians from 4% in 2008 to 15%. FIFTEEN PER CENT. And if this staggeringly small percentage of incorrigible Syrian optimists had been asked why they felt as they did, they'd have answered, simply: 'Well, he's not Bush'. So much for bridging chasms with the West.

And this:

"People spoke with resignation about Syria's continuing ties to Iran and its support for Hamas and Hezbollah. But they spoke of it lamentably, albeit with a faint flicker of hope that things might change if the Syrian leadership made good its promise to ease up its oppressive internal rule and look just a little to the West." (ibid)

This, of course, presupposes Daley wandering around Syria, quizzing the multitudes, in fluent Arabic, of course, on their thoughts about Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. It then presupposes said multitudes lamenting thus: 'Oh, Paul, if only we could free ourselves of these terrible ties to Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas and rush, unfettered, into the warm and eager embrace of the country which provides Israel with the wherewithal to occupy part of our country'. Yeah right.

And this:

"As the so-called Arab Spring took hold, the people of Syria watched the force of change in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere. And they watched the West, through NATO, help to militarily push regime change in Libya, having done so by different military means in Iraq and Afghanistan." (ibid)

Oh yeah. Iraq - every Syrian's hope and inspiration! I guess if Daley (and his fluent Arabic) were doing the rounds in Syria today, he'd be 'reporting' the multitudes lamenting the complete absence of some of that good old 2003 Iraqi shock & awe, not to mention the 100,000+ bloodbath which followed.

Finally, from the author of Beersheba: A Journey Through Australia's Forgotten War (2009), comes this little concluding homily on history:

"Australian history with Syria runs deep. Our mounted troops were the first to Damascus when it was liberated from the Turks in late 1918. Too many Australian soldiers are buried there. That's history. And the problem with history is that we know its lessons too well but always allow them to repeat." (ibid)

Is it just me or do you get the suggestion of an impression here that without Australian troops Damascus would still be in Turkish hands today? Now the indigenes couldn't possibly have had a hand in rolling back the Turks, could they? Well, as it happens, yes they did:

"Meanwhile, British cavalry had forced their way across the Jordan to the south and north of the Sea of Galilee and were riding at a gallop, fighting their way stubbornly towards Damascus. The Arab regulars covered their right flank, dogging the steps of the [Turkish] Fourth Army; while the tribal hosts, always at their deadliest in a war of movement, charged wildly at the retreating Turks, galloping and fighting as they went, in a mad race towards the goal of the [Arab] Revolt. The first to arrive were the Sharif Naser and Nuri Sha'lan with their forces who, having ridden 70 miles in 24 hours, fighting part of the way, reached the outskirts of Damascus on the evening of the 30th of September; but, in deference to the wishes expressed by the commander-in-chief, they abstained from entering it that night and contented themselves with sending in a strong contingent to carry the tidings to the population and a message enjoining the setting up of an Arab government. This had already been done, and Naser's messengers, as they reached the main square, beheld the Arab flag flying. Four hundred years of Ottoman domination had passed into history. Early on the following day - the 1st of October - a detachment of British cavalry entered the town, closely followed by the Sharif Naser, Nuri Sha'lan and their retinues. Two days later, Allenby drove in from Jerusalem just as Faisal, attended by some 1,200 retainers, was making his entry on horseback at full gallop into the former capital of the Arab Empire." (The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement, George Antonius, 1938, pp 237-238)

Forgive me if I see a connection between Daley's imperial hyping of Australia's role in the liberation of Damascus in 1918 and his current interventionist fantasies centring on that mysterious entity he calls the "civilised world."

File Under: Israel Lobby? What Israel Lobby?

2011-12-12T07:12:00.024+11:00

Mark Twain once noted that "If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times." And at another time, that "... policemen and politicians... are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum... in America."

Now if we combine, tweak and update the two, we get something like this: 'American politicians are the arse-licking pimps and slaves of AIPAC scum and this is nowhere more apparent than at election time' - an apt introduction to the following compilation of clueless kowtowings and gibbering genuflections to the Israel lobby by the current crop of Republican reptiles. Warning: Scream quietly or the neighbours will hear you:

Rick Perry: Listen Wolf, if Israel built a settlement up your bum it'd be legal, OK?

Wolf Blitzer: Since '67, every US president, Democrat and Republican, have called Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories, in the West Bank, illegal under international law. Would you continue that policy?
Rick Perry: Are you talking about Israeli settlements?
B: Yes.
P: ... No I wouldn't. I consider the Israeli settlements to be legal, from my perspective, and I support them.
B: Even if they're in the West Bank?
P: Where there is arrangements that have been made, where the Israelis are clearly on Israel's land that they have hard fought to win and to keep, absolutely.
B: But this is seen by the State Department as occupied Palestinian territory.
P: I don't always agree with the State Department. I think our State Department from time to time gets it wrong. I happen to believe that Israel spends way too much time defending itself from people who want to do terrorist acts against them, whether it's Palestinians, whether it's Hezbollah, whether it's Hamas, and the US needs to be standing with Israel, strongly standing with 'em and supporting...
B: Would you move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?
P: Absolutely.
B: When?
P: As soon as I could. I would clearly say, 'If you want to work for the State Department of the United States, you need to be packing your bags and moving to Jerusalem as soon as you can'.
B: Would you fear negative reaction from the...
P: No, listen. How many other countries do we have our embassy not in the capital of the... the country, in..?
B: We're going back to '48 when Israel was established. No American president has recognised Jerusalem as being the capital of Israel.
P: There may not have been a president of the United States who feels as strongly about Israel as I do.
B: Well, Ronald Reagan didn't feel strongly about Israel?
P: Obviously, not as I do... I'm not saying...
B: GW Bush or GHW Bush?
P: Not as strong as I do.
B: So you would move it right away?
P: I would move it, yes sir.

Michele Bachmann: Israel is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures... Oh... oh... OH!... Yesss!

"Most Americans recognise that Israelis and Americans are two sides of the same coin because we share the same values and the same aspirations. We even share the same exceptional mission: to be the light to the nations. After all, the image of America as the shining city on the hill is taken from the Book of Isiah. I was raised in a home full of love for Israel. We learned that our Christian faith is rooted in Judaism. Without the laws of Moses, without the temple in Jerusalem, there would have been no Sermon on the Mount. It was this love and appreciation for Israel and the Jewish faith that brought me to Israel in the summer of 1974 to volunteer at a kibbutz... and it was during my time at the kibbutz... that I came to understand that Israel is not merely the cradle of my faith, it's the greatest strategic asset that the US has in the region and I realise that the forces of terror, mayhem and hatred that Israel needs to keep at bay are the same forces that threaten Americans..." (Update from Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on Israel, youtube.com, 10/6/11)

"It's over 800 billion dollars that we have expended [in Iraq]. I believe that Iraq should pay us back for the money that we spent, and I believe that Iraq should pay the families that lost a loved one several million dollars per life, I think at a minimum." (Bachmann wants Iraqis to pay 'several million dollars per life' for every American who died in Iraq, Ian Millhiser, thinkprogress.org, 13/12/11)

Newt Gingrich: Can you believe it? Those Palestinians, who don't exist BTW, refuse to recognise Israel's existence!

"I see myself as being in many ways pretty close to Bibi Netanyahu's thinking about the dangers of the world. I believe in a tough realism. I believe if somebody is firing rockets at you, they're probably not engaged in a peace process. I believe if somebody goes around saying you don't exist, they're probably not preparing for peace." (The Jewish Channel exclusive interview with GOP representative & former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, 9/12/11)

"Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places." (ibid)

Mitt Romney: OMG! Obummer told Bibi what to do! I can't believe he actually said that. No one, but no one tells Bibi what to do, OK?

Interviewer: You said that the President threw Israel under the bus when he said that Israel should go back to the '67 borders... explain what you meant.
Romney: I think it's pretty clear that when Bibi Netanyahu got here that something very dramatic had happened and that the President, by insisting on the '67 borders, laid out what a bargaining position might be that perhaps the Israelis might take the lead on, not America. You don't tell your ally how you would settle a dispute between them and another people. You stand by your ally, you link arms with your ally. Israel is one of our best allies in the Middle East - the best ally in the Middle East. We don't dictate to Israel what the terms of their agreement ought to be." (Mitt Romney interview 'Obama threw Israel under the bus', youtube.com, 3/6/11)

"I've known Bibi Netanyahu for a long time. We worked together at Boston Consulting Group and... would get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say, 'Would it help if I said [the Palestinians are an 'invented people']? What would you like me to do? Let's work together because we're partners." (Mitt Romney goes after Newt Gingrich on Israel, abcnews.go.com, 10/12/11)

Doug Anderson's Eureka Moment

2011-12-10T07:07:00.035+11:00

Doug Anderson, the Sydney Morning Herald's resident square eyes, gives Peter Kosminsky's riveting drama, The Promise, the thumbs-up - and me a few laughs:

"The best drama series on television at present is this lacerating story about a feckless British teenager who runs away to Israel when her best friend, Liz, is called up for national service with the Israel Defence Forces - today's equivalent of the Irgun and the Haganah."

You said it, Doug! You should know that no less a Zionist than Churchill called the Irgun "the vilest gangsters." (See my 26/12/09 post A Murky Legacy) So, with your and Winston's blessing, I'll cap this off with a little syllogism: The IDF is today's Irgun. The Irgun were the vilest gangsters. Therefore, the IDF are the vilest gangsters. Neat, eh?

"Erin is 18 and has with her a diary compiled by her grandfather, Len. After serving with Allied forces during the liberation of German concentration camps at the end of World War II, grandad was posted to Palestine where his duties included helping to manage the foundation of Israel."

Managing the foundation of Israel? Oh, really? Churchill again, Doug. The old boy, who referred to the end of the British mandate period as a "Hell-disaster," would've choked on his cigar over your little circumlocution. I would have thought the more modern expression 'clusterfuck' not only more appropriate but more you, as in '... where his duties included mopping up after Britain's clusterfuck in Palestine'.

"His work was fraught with conflicts of every imaginable kind and Erin discovers that contentious issues in 1947 are just as potent 60 odd years later. Division and anger are continuous despite the tranquility and generosity she finds with Liz's family. Erin is just a wafty teenager really but her intuitive sense of conscience and a rapport with her grandad conspire to make the endless conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians very personal."

Endless conflict? Doug, must you keep on putting your foot in it? Seems like only yesterday you were banging on inanely about "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth... in perpetuity," and declaring this an "intractable dispute" for which "neither [side] can claim the high moral ground." (See my 2/7/09 post The Palestinian Golan Heights) Hopefully, The Promise will help dispel this wafty teenage illusion of yours and teach you that the conflict has a recent, colonial, history, thanks first to the Brits, and now to the Yanks, and that even seemingly intractable colonial problems sooner or latter undergo, and must undergo, a decolonisation process.

"She isn't sufficiently sophisticated to appreciate the complex politics but morality isn't logical and in following her feelings, Erin finds herself exposed to the same kind of ethical and moral issues that old Len faced in his unenviable role. This is powerful stuff, distilling enormous difficulties to a deeply personal level where conscience alone cannot determine the outcome. Peter Kosminsky's series is manifestly even-handed but it's hard not to feel that the Palestinians have been screwed - just as the European Jews were screwed during the Holocaust."

No, you're right for once, Doug. But you've gotta resist that feeling, OK? Thinking such a thing won't get you anywhere. In fact, you could be called an anti-Semite! True! Thankfully, help is at hand. Just learn the following neat little poem by heart and recite it over and over and over again till that crazy feeling about the Palestinians having been screwed has vanished:

Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
North Korea is the only democracy in Asia.
The moon is made of green cheese.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a man of peace.
Attila the Hun was a man of peace.
My dog speaks 5 languages.
Zionism is not racism.
Apartheid was not racism.
The Earth is flat.
The U.S. is a peace-loving country.
The mafia is a peace-loving organisation.
The sun rises in the west.
Gillard is not Obama's poodle.
Buddy was not Clinton's labrador.
The Pope is not a Catholic.

"This isn't a historical treatise but it invites viewers to arrive at a more informed viewpoint based on facts, matters of expediency and the rather elastic concept of a fair crack of the whip." (9/12/11)

By George, I think he's got it!

How Green are the Greens?

2011-12-09T14:37:00.037+11:00

Just how green are The Greens? The answer is very - and I'm not talking about deep ecology here.

I am moved to this quite depressing conclusion by the NSW Greens' decision to, in the words of a December 4 media release, "replace the BDS resolution adopted by the Greens NSW in December 2010," with a recognition that, while "BDS is a legitimate non-violent political tactic seeking to alter the policies and actions of the government of Israel," there is "a variety of views within the community, NSW Greens and the Australian Greens on the BDS," and that, therefore, "each participating individual or community group may choose whether to do so and in a way which is suitable and practical for themselves."

IOW, support for BDS has been relegated from a plank in the party platform to a conscience vote for individual party members.

What this, in fact, means is that the NSW Greens, despite all that they should have learnt regarding the power, influence and tactics of the Israel lobby and its pre-eminent Murdoch mouthpiece, The Australian, over the past year, have not understood the following:

1) There is no "variety of views within the community."

Given that, like most progressive folk, the Greens shun the Murdoch press like the plague, and so are simply not wise to its tricks, it is my feeling that they mistake its periodic crusades and beat-ups (against BDS/Greens*, Lee Rhiannon, Sheik Hilali**, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Muslims in general) for actual community attitudes when these are in fact propaganda tropes concocted and broadcast by Australia's Israel lobby (or Zionist Power Configuration (ZPG) to use James Petras' more accurate terminology). The overwhelming majority of fair-minded Australians (the Greens' natural constituency), even despite the pro-Israel bias that pervades much of the corporate reporting on the Middle East conflict, either 'get it' or, with a little leadership (and guidance) from the Greens, could 'get it'.***

2) The so-called "variety of views within the NSW and Australian Greens," is merely a mix of the aforementioned ignorance and confusion and the penetration of the party by Zionists whose bottom line, whatever else they show an interest in, is heading off, blunting, or at least neutralising, the adoption of pro-Palestinian policies and initiatives by the party. It is, to say the least, bizarre that an otherwise progressive and anti-racist party should tolerate the present-day equivalents of supporters of South African apartheid in its ranks.

3) The backdown on BDS will not, as the Greens no doubt hope, stem Murdoch's crusade against the party, but simply embolden it. All the NSW Greens have succeeded in doing with their new, pale green resolution is giving Murdoch and 'friends' a stick to beat them with. Nor was the beating long in coming, with consecutive 'reports' over the following two days by Imre Salusinszky, the Murdoch foot soldier charged with spearheading the anti-Greens/BDS attack in the pages of The Australian:

a)Here's Salusinszky recycling the 'received wisdom' on former Marrickville mayor Fiona Byrne's failure to win the state seat of Marrickville for the Greens:

"The Greens in NSW have backed away from the divisive policy on Israel that was widely seen as costing them a potential lower-house seat at the state election in March." (Greens shy from Israel boycott policy, 5/12/11)

The words which give Salusinszky's game away are "widely seen." But by whom? By the Murdoch press, that's whom! Further along in his piece, Salusinszky drops even this and simply asserts: "[c]ontroversy over the party's stance on the BDS cost Fiona Byrne" the seat.

b) And here's Salusinszky cock-a-hoop over the divide within the party that he has helped generate. (Note too the blatant attempt at guilt by association. This is not objective reporting):

"The move is seen as a victory for the more conservationist element among the Greens in NSW and a defeat for NSW senator Lee Rhiannon and her former state upper house colleague Sylvia Hale, who have marched and carried anti-Israel banners with controversial Muslim cleric Taj Din al-Hilali." (ibid)

But there's more:

"Three of the party's 5 NSW upper house MPs have distanced themselves from the BDS and did not oppose a motion in parliament condemning protests outside cafes of the Israeli-owned Max Brenner chain." (ibid)

And more:

"Moderate Greens in NSW have welcomed the party's decision to ditch its official support for the 'destructive' international campaign to isolate Israel... The move... is being widely interpreted in party circles as a defeat for NSW Senator Lee Rhiannon. Former state Greens MP Ian Cohen... said last night the shift represented the 'maturation' of the Greens political organisation in NSW." (Israel move welcomed, 6/12/11)

c) And, just to remind you that The Australian's not off on some lone frolic, here's Salusinszky on the relevant ZPC connection: "NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president Yair Miller said, 'We welcome this small but significant step... but reiterate that they are still wrong to argue that BDS is a legitimate tactic'." (ibid)

It's time the Greens wised up on Palestine.

To read the whole sorry saga of how the green Greens got spooked by Murdoch and the ZPC over BDS, just click on the 'The Greens' label below.

[*See my 8/4/11 post The Australian Goes on the Warpath; **See my 20/1/11 post Get the Sheikh!; ***For example, a November 2011 Morgan Poll on Israel/Palestine indicated that, while 28% of Australians surveyed supported the Palestinians and 26% the Israelis, 21% supported neither and 24% couldn't say. Surely it's not too much to expect that a forthright and principled, which is to say a pro-BDS, position by the Greens could bring around many in the last 2 categories.]

Nothing is Sacred...

2011-12-08T09:38:00.019+11:00

... for the Barnetts of this world:

"Colin Barnett's description of James Price Point in Western Australia, where Woodside is preparing to build a liquefied natural gas terminal, as an 'unremarkable beach' shows a callous dismissal and ignorance of Aboriginal people and their beliefs (Secret men's business threatens $30 billion gas bonanza, December 5).

"If the place is part of a song cycle, a dreaming place sacred to the people of the region, it is disgraceful that politicians like Barnett can disrespect the real pain and distress that Aboriginal people feel if these places are threatened. These feelings could not have been made more dramatically to me while filming in the Central Desert in early 1987.

"I took a nearly blind Papunya artist, 'Old' Tutuma Tjapangati back to his 'dreaming place'. After 2 days following tracks through the sand he suddenly indicated that we should turn off. Unerringly, he guided us through kilometres of sand and spinifex. Then, very quietly, he started to sing, and tears welled in his eyes. Gradually the song became a wail. Then he indicated that we stop. I looked around. The place looked the same as the hundreds of kilometres we had travelled through. Continuing to sing, he sat motionless for a whole day often with tears rolling down his ancient face. 'Unremarkable' to me, this was a place of indescribable importance to him. Old Tutuma died later that year, aged 78, and I was later told he was waiting to see his dreaming place before he died. Such emotions, beliefs and sensibilities cannot be so easily dismissed by people such as Barnett." (Letter, Christopher McCullough, Bilgola Plateau, Sydney Morning Herald, 7/12/11)

Neither here nor in Palestine:

"A glance at the map of Palestine shows the great importance of the Plain of Philistia lying on the sea coast, which provides a great highway from Jaffa to Haifa, that is, from south to north... A leading Zionist is reported to have said words to this effect: 'If we are to build up our national home we must sit down on the nerve centres of Palestine', and this certainly applies to the Wady Hawareth area situated in the middle of the plain of Philistia which was sold by its landlords in Syria to the Zionists.

"When the Jews sought to gain possession, the Arab occupants refused to move. They were (several thousands of them) living in tents with great herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and goats. These tent-dwellers had lived, and their flocks had grazed, on this same land for many generations. 'Where are we to go?' they asked.

"After a long trial in the Court in Nablus, for the case was a very complicated one, judgment was given in favour of the Zionists, who applied for an order of evacuation. The following letter, dated November 22nd, 1930, which I wrote to my sister after I had paid a visit to the Arab camp, speaks for itself:

"'I must tell you of my long day's outing to visit the Bedouin tribe which the Government had evicted from its lands in the Wady Hawareth, now sold to the Jews. A good 340 kilometres I covered that day over some appalling ground. On arrival I found a miserable tumbled-down hut into which I was ushered by a crowd of men who immediately collected out of the blue on seeing the car, for there was not a soul in sight when I first got out of it, with the Moslem lawyer who had accompanied me from Haifa. We entered the hut - a rickety old bedstead with a laharf on it, a very shaky chair on which I perched with care, while Mohammed Ali el Tamimi, the lawyer, sat still more gingerly on the edge of the bedstead. The other friend who guided us from Tul el Karm sat with the men on the bare earth of the floor.

"'He started telling them who I was, when they broke into his remarks with, 'Lo, he comes, the Ancient one. He is over a hundred years old, our Sheikh, the chief of our tribe', they said. Way was opened for him through the crowd at the door, and he hobbled in, leaning on a thick knobbly staff, but quite alert and vivacious. He greeted us, then managed with some difficulty to squat amongst the other men on the mud floor of the hut. Mr Samara (our guide) took up his tale again, and I followed, saying how I had read while in the Lebanon, in the Arabic newspapers, of their terrible plight, and had come to see and sympathise.

"'As I spoke I saw the old wizened face of the Sheikh begin to twitch, his mouth tremble, his eyes blink and blink; but he couldn't keep the tears back, and they trickled down his high cheek-bones, into his scrubbly grey beard, and on to his hairy chest. Everybody lowered their heads and stared at the floor. Mohammed Ali beside me blew his nose vigorously; Mr Samara had not got a handkerchief, so sniffed violently. I swallowed hard. 'What shall we do?' What can we do?' said the Ancient One. 'Such is the decree of the English Government', and the spell was broken.

"''With your permission, honoured Sheikh', I murmured, 'the women and children are my concern. Let me go to them', and I fled. It was a most moving incident, but never a word of complaint was uttered; sheer heroic endurance of the utmost misery.

"'The Bedouin, as you know, live always on the barest limit of primitive subsistence, and here were 2,000 souls with practically everything of their possessions swept away at one fell swoop by our own British police, who had to stand up to even the women fighting for tents and lands they had owned for generations. Bedding, clothing, cooking utensils, domestic stores of oil, semini, cheese, rice, etc, even their tents gone - 118 of them went for good, leaving that number of families homeless - 260 ploughs broken up and burnt by the Jews, their springs of water gone, for the Zionists now own the land where they are, and our British police guard the borders. What they mind most is that the caves where they sheltered their cattle are now in Jewish hands, and their 8,000 cattle are out in the open with the winter upon them. Babies were born and died under the open sky - 19 widows - 400 children - even when they got a tent its sides were lacking; and yet, not a murmur did I hear. 'The British police only did their duty. The English Governor is very good; he helps us all he can. We will die here on our own land', expressed their feelings.

"'They are squatting now on 5,000 dunums allowed to them, while 40,000 dunums have gone from them, and the Jews claim that last 5,000, too. The Arabs may occupy them till the question of ownership is finally decided. But what are they among so many?

"'Sad at heart and unable to do more than leave a small gift with the Sheikh, we drove away. Some time later, when I discussed the matter with a high official, he replied, 'Yes, I am afraid that was a bad mistake we made!' 'Can you not do something to put it right?' I asked. 'Oh no', he said, 'we must not interfere with the Judiciary, that would never do'.'

"It is clear that the policy laid down in the Mandate would not admit of intervention by the Government in this connection, even had it been possible for it to do so." (Fifty Years in Palestine, Frances E. Newton, 1948, pp 257-259)

Be it 1930 or 2011:

"About 20 Bedouin communities between Jerusalem and Jericho are to be forcibly relocated from the land on which they have lived for 60 years under an Israel plan to expand a Jewish settlement. The removal of about 2,300 members of the Bedouin Jahalin tribe, two-thirds of whom are children, is due to begin next month. The Israeli authorities plan to relocate the families from the West Bank to a site close to a municipal rubbish dump on the edge of Jerusalem." (Bedouin to be forced out by Israeli expansion, Harriet Sherwood, Guardian/Sydney Morning Herald, 7/12/11)

Pure Monty Python

2011-12-08T07:49:00.006+11:00

Amazing! An opinion piece - And now for something completely predictable: war with Iran - lifted from The Guardian and published in today's Fairfax papers, by ex-Monty Python, Terry Jones, which decries the "war drums... beating for an attack on Iran," but makes no reference whatever to the Israeli drummer.

Brainwashed

2011-12-07T19:30:00.010+11:00

"To me, Pesach is the greatest Jewish festival because the story is so good. We sit around the Seder table and relate, over and over, our escape from Egypt... As a boy I felt fraught during the Passover service because it seemed that even as we celebrated a narrow escape from one disaster, we were preparing for the next. A Jew has either to be ignorant of his history or mad to suppose that what has happened before won't happen again." - British novelist Howard Jacobson condemning UK miniseries The Promise in Ludicrous, brainwashed prejudice, The Australian Jewish News/The Independent, 2/12/11

Yes, great story, Howard. No doubt about it. However, there's just one little problem:

"There is no evidence for Israel in Egypt. There is no evidence for the Exodus. There is no evidence for the Conquest even." - Israeli archaeologist Amihai Mazar, winner of the 2009 Israel Prize for Israeli archaeology, on Radio National's Late Night Live, 12/9/11.

Go figure, Howard.

The Joke

2011-12-06T06:41:00.056+11:00

The first two episodes of The Promise (SBS1 on Sunday nights) have confirmed my hopes (Looks Promising! 25/11) for Peter Kosminsky's dramatised interweaving of the final years of British mandate rule over Palestine with the current situation in Israeli-occupied Palestine. The quality, sweep, intellectual courage and historical fidelity of this television drama makes it compulsory viewing for anyone interested in understanding why things are as they are in Palestine/Israel today.

In large part, episode 2 focused on the 1946 Zionist terrorist bombing of the British Mandate government's civil and military headquarters in Jerusalem's King David Hotel and the motivation of its Irgun perpetrators - which brings me to the real subject of this post.

Who could have predicted that, 63 years after the event, this particular outrage would become the subject of one of the most tasteless jokes ever made by any Australian politician, and one that, in fact, should figure prominently in any future assessment of the joker's character and fitness to retain office. But I'll come to that later. For some idea of the scale of the Irgun's operation, and hence its potential and actual human cost, against which the gravity of 'The Joke' might be measured, it is necessary to first revisit the massacre in some detail. The following account of the bombing comes from one who was there, a young British officer named Philip Brutton:

"In Tel Aviv [Menachem] Begin's Irgun gang began their operation early on Moday 22 July, while Jerusalem and the author slept. At 05.30 they stole a Jewish taxi and a Jewish truck. They then drove to Jerusalem where at 11.00 they stole a pick-up lorry and loaded it with 7 milk cans, a significant number in Jewish tradition. Then, dressed as Arabs, armed with Sten and Tommy guns, they drove to the King David Hotel at 11.45. They descended the slope to the unguarded entance, rounded up the stuff and unloaded the explosives packed into the milk cans... (p 44)

"[T]he first - diversionary, as it turned out - bomb exploded [at about 12.20]. The city siren sounded, then the all-clear at 12.31... Then at 12.37 there was a very loud explosion indeed... More than 90 people had just been killed, including 17 Jews, in the Hotel and one terrorist found by the police. The terrorists had, as noted, arrived at the basement of the King David Hotel at 11.45, placing the 7 milk cans containing the explosives along the corridor underneath the government Secretariat offices...

"Two orders had been ignored by the Irgun, the first being that the operation was to take place out of office hours to avoid, hopefully, any loss of life; also a warning must be telephoned in good time. It was, even so, a dangerous, uncertain, unprincipled and ungrateful act against the one country which had gone out of its way, however unfairly to the Arabs and disastrously for its administrators, to help the Zionist cause. It was, too, organized at the highest level of the Yishuv. The planting of the bombs, and consequent planned destruction of government offices, was an extension of the rebellion, undeclared and never admitted, against the Mandatory power. British intelligence, however, was well aware of the existence of X Command and the identity of its chairman, Ben-Gurion. The King David Hotel operation did not have the destruction of documents as a prime objective: they were not filed exclusively there and those removed from the Jewish Agency had been copied. It was a pointless counter-reaction of provocation which backfired. It was also cold-blooded premeditated murder by the Irgun gang. [British PM] Ernest Bevan and the British government were conversant with the Zionist strategy to obtain their state, both from public pronouncements and from decryptanalysis:

1. Calculated use of violence and, when the occasion demanded, denunciation of the violence initiated by X Command or its affiliates.
2. Condemnation of government response, provoked by violence, as being - to use Weizmann's words - a declaration of war against world Jewry.
3. The Arab position to be ignored.
4. American support to be rallied in both political and financial dimensions.

"The government's knowledge of facts, nevertheless, could not provide a solution. If a solution was acceptable to the Jews, it would not be to the Arabs, therefore not to the Mandatory power. Thus, the strategy and tactics of obtaining the end by the means outlined above continued: terrorism - condemnation of terrorism - government reaction - condemnation of this reaction - more terrorism. Neither the ambition to obtain the goal, nor the blood lust which went with it could be either controlled or assuaged.

"No one knew this better than Israel Levi who was in charge of the party which placed the bombs. He connected the timing devices, and also a booby trap, duly announced, to discourage defusing. He and his gang were disturbed by Captain A.D. Mackintosh, Royal Signals, whom they failed to overcome. They then shot him in the stomach. He stumbled towards the staircase and was found by a porter to whom he gave the facts. The porter informed the manager, Hamburger, who told security.

"Thus the Hotel security, alerted through the heroic efforts of the Royal Signals officer, knew at 12.10 that 'an officer had been attacked. Armed Arabs were in the basement'. A security officer then peered through a grill. He was fired at. Irgun withdrew at 12.15. The Hotel alarm bell alerted Jerusalem Police Heasquarters. Hotel security fired on the Irgun lorry. It was abandoned. The occupants fled on foot. Two were hit.

"Minutes later, between 12.20 and 12.25, the smaller bomb we heard in the Old City, intended to divert attention and block access to the Hotel, was exploded. At 12.37 the 7 milk cans blew up. The whole south-west corner of the Hotel collapsed; 6 floors and 28 rooms were reduced to rubble. Robert Newton was in his office when the ceiling fell and the wall behind him disappeared. Below was open space; beyond had been the lift shaft, the typists' room and an adjacent office in which a colleague had worked. Everything and everybody had disappeared. The girls in the typing room were buried under the rubble, dead.

"Superintendent K.P. Haddingham had just arrived from Police Headquarters. He was injured and placed on a stretcher. He then saw, with horror, on the wall of the YMCA opposite, the bodies of two middle-aged men, flung by the blast, like plaster, against the stone, their blood streaming in rivulets, their crucified remains splayed and contorted 16 feet above ground, resembling some sick mural, stuccoed and silhouetted in high relief. They were his friends, Postmaster General G. D. Kennedy and Assistant Secretary E.W. Keys, who had been standing at the Secretariat entrance.

"About 15 minutes earlier the first so-called diversionary bomb had been detonated outside a car showroom, owned by a Christian Arab, a few yards from the Hotel. It failed to set off the ancilliary devices which would have fired the whole street. The second diversionary bomb failed to explode and was dismantled by the police... It was some diversion. It had been placed north of the Hotel in a nearby street, outside a shop named Deen's Indian Taylor. It contained TNT and inflammable wadding. Four petrol cans were on top.

"Meanwhile, we made our way back to the New City through the deserted, winding ways of the Old and soon passed through a police cordon where the car containing the second so-called diversionary bomb was being searched and the bomb dismantled. We collected the jeep and went to the Hotel. The bar was a shambles of broken glass and blood. The barman told us no one had been killed there, so Rosemary Walsh was safe. Arthur Butler was cut about the knees. Had we been there we would not have been killed, but flying glass can damage more than knees.

"Rosemary's father was buried under the masonry and presumed dead. He was not among those missing who miraculously survived, one of whom was dug out 24 hours later. He shook hands with the High Commissioner and was taken to hospital where he died of shock.

"After lunch we returned to examine the damage, having no idea of the numbers buried, dead, and alive underneath. There was no noise as soldiers and police began the prolonged job of digging into the rubble. The police, in the meantime, had found the two terrorists hit by the Hotel security: one was dead, the other wounded. He was arrested, later tried and hanged. They were the soldati. The capi escaped.

"The warning ordered by X Command, with whom the ultimate responsibility for the outrage rested, was, in practice, ignored. The first warning was given two minutes before the main explosion, and repeated twice afterwards, by which time it was an epilogue...

"In sum: the terrorists fled from the Hotel at 12.15, after being there for half-an-hour, during which time they placed and primed the bombs. The diversionary explosion occurred between 12.20 and 12.25. The first of 3 warning calls was received at 12.35. The main explosion occurred at 12.37: 91 dead, including 41 Arabs, 28 British, 17 Jews and 5 others. Our rendezvous with Rosemary Walsh saved her life. She would otherwise have been in her father's office. Weizmann's cordite had come full circle."(A Captain's Mandate: Palestine 1946-1948, 1996, pp 46-49)

Got the picture? Now for the loose lips. Here, according to he Australian Jewish News of December 17, 2011, is how foreign minister Kevin Rudd began his "keynote address" to an Australia Israel Leadership Forum (AILF) audience in Jerusalem's King David Hotel on December 13, 2010:

"It is an honour to be among Israeli and Australian friends tonight here in Jerusalem, at the King David Hotel. Shimon Peres, Israel's President, who we met earlier today, said some years ago that when you come to the King David, you come not just as a guest, but you come also to a place which has seen almost the complete cast of players across the history of the modern State of Israel, often in this room in which we gather here tonight. From the 1930s, this hotel became the British field headquarters for what was then British Palestine, until Menachem Begin undertook some interior redesign."

That crack, in the context of Rudd's obscenely uncritical embrace of Israel, goes to the heart of the man's character, and, as I've suggested, raises the issue of whether he's fit to represent this country as foreign, or any other, minister.

Equally, it goes to the heart of our corporate media culture, which never really gave it the attention it deserved. None of the ms media's court reporters who accompanied Rudd, or any of its Middle East correspondents (Koutsoukis/Fairfax; Ben Knight/ABC; John Lyons/ News Ltd) queried it, as the Q&A following Rudd's press conference next day with PA foreign minister Riad Malki makes clear.

Rudd barracker and foreign editor of Murdoch's Australian, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, managed to simultaneously soft-soap Rudd and whitewash Israeli terrorism when he wrote that there are "times when he seemed to strain just that bit too much to connect with the audience. Rudd was referring to the incident in which Israeli independence activists [!] blew up the hotel. I accept that they were not the equivalent of modern terrorists. [!] But people died in that incident. I don't think such a joke was in good taste, although many in the audience appreciated it." (That's no way to treat a precious friend, Mr Rudd, 16/12/10)

That many in the audience appreciated [the joke] speaks volumes for the moral void inhabited by Rudd's camp followers.

At home, the Sydney Morning Herald editorialist came closest to cottoning on to its significance when he/she called it "a distasteful joke," and asked, "Has Rudd really got it as a diplomat?" (Mid-East peace: a time to speak, 21/12/10).

Further along (May 5, 2011), journalist Brian Toohey, writing at inside.org.au, commented relevantly: "Nor does... Kevin Rudd display a deep concern for human rights. Although Rudd professes to abhor terrorism, this belief wasn't apparent while he was seeking to impress an audience during a speech at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in March [sic] this year. Representing Australia, Rudd said that Menachem Begin 'undertook some interior redesign' at that same hotel. This sick attempt at humour was a reference to how Begin's terrorist group killed 91 people when it blew up the British-occupied hotel in 1946."

But that was it really. No doubt 'The Joke', which should have resulted in lead stories all over, is destined for Orwell's memory hole.

Finally, to round this one off, what about the Zionist response to 'The Joke'? In fact, there was none. The Australian Jewish News wisely kept mum. But, true to form, there's always one in this category who wants his tuppence worth. Someone called David Singer, who blogs at - wait for it - jordanispalestine.blogspot.com, just couldn't contain himself at the Herald's reference to Rudd's "distasteful joke" and its questioning of his diplomatic competence:

"(i) The King David Hotel was the headquarters of the British army - a legitimate target for an attack. (ii) Warnings were given to clear the hotel but were ignored by the British. (iii) The attack was not a 'terrorist bombing' since the civilian population was not deliberately targeted. I would suggest the Herald not worry about Rudd... the Herald needs to worry about its journalists who write such nonsense as this skewed and inaccurate editorial. Maybe in the spirit of openness and transparency being lately espoused by the Herald in its ongoing exclusive releases from WikiLeaks - the Herald might tell us (i) who wrote the editorial (ii) the qualifications of the person writing the editorial (iii) who checked the editorial for its accuracy before publication. At this festive time of goodwill and cheer the Herald has clearly displayed that this editorial is lacking in both." (Hark the Herald devil sings, analyst-network.com, 7/1/11)

Presumably, the Herald editorialist should have endorsed 'The Joke' with a hearty 'Ho, ho, ho, Kevin! What a blast! May you and yours have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

[For the background to Rudd's 'joke' see my posts The Kevin Rudd Road Show 1 (18/12/10) and TKRRS 2 (20/12/10).]

A Surreal Experience

2011-12-04T14:19:00.018+11:00

Judging by the account at jwire.com.au, Yachad-Unity-Israel, Australia & Education (29/10/11), the National Australia Bank Yachad Scholarship Fund Luncheon in Melbourne on November 25 was a surreal experience.

There was Mark Leibler, Deputy Chair of Yachad, who talked about his, the NAB's, and his community's "passion for redressing the disadvantageous circumstances faced by Indigenous Australians."

(In that case maybe he could put the hard word on the Chair of NAB, Michael Chaney, who doubles as Chair of Woodside, to drop its plan for a gas hub at James Price Point on the Kimberley coast which is the location of a song cycle sacred to the Goolarabooloo and other people of the Dampier Peninsula. (See Sacredsong-cycle site disturbed by gas hub plans, Paddy Manning, The Age, 5/12/11)

Needless to say, nothing was said of Israel's passion for creating and maintaining the disadvantageous circumstances faced by indigenous Palestinians.

There was PM Julia Gillard, who gushed:

"We do gather as friends today - friends of the great republic of Israel whose peace and security is so dear to Australian hearts and to mine. We are two countries separated by distance but united by values. Liberal democracies that seek freedom and peace. A just and secure Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people is an indispensible part of a just and secure world. In the Common Era there has never been a century when the Jewish people have known safety. May this century be the first. May this be the time when people of good will, Israelis and Palestinians alike sit together and find a lasting peace. A century when understanding overcomes hate."

Which, if you took her seriously, could only mean that Australia too is an apartheid state. Still, how can you think straight when you've got an election to fund in 2013, if not sooner, and the usual suspects are scrutinising your every word and then some? So on she went:

"On my visit to Israel I was struck repeatedly by the depth of commitment amongst Israel's people to solving problems, for innovation and ingenuity in the face of adversity. It is a quality that we can all benefit from. Strength in partnerships through education and social action is a vital part of any society."

The rest of us tend to be struck repeatedly by the hole Israel has been digging for itself ever since its creation in 1948, but no matter, for an Australian PM trailing in the polls, and for whom nothing matters more than hanging on to power, the show, as they say, must go on.

There was Dr Ron Weiser, Honorary Life President of the Zionist Council of NSW, who chimed in with: "Despite the certain sacrifices and risks that any negotiated peace would entail, Israel still relentlessly pursues that peace and mutual recognition."

Which makes for high comedy when paired with this little item from this week's Australian Jewish News on Netanyah's relentless pursuit of peace: "In light of regional unrest, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the Knesset on Wednesday last week that Israel must now move slowly and cautiously in peace moves with the Palestinians, and those who urged otherwise had their heads 'buried in the sand'... We can't know who will end up with any piece of territory we give up. Reality is changing all the time, and if you don't see it, your head is buried in the sand', Netanyahu said." (Netanyau warns against rushing into peace deal, Herb Keinin, The Jerusalem Post/AJN, 2/12/11)

Finally, there was Dr Jakelin Troy, "2011 NAB Australian Friends of Tel Aviv University Yachad," and "an indigenous academic" who researches "indigenous social and cultural well-being at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies based in Canberra."

This was surely the most surreal touch of all - an indigenous Australian set to sit at the feet of the mob who, in 1948, ethnically cleansed Palestine of most of its indigenous inhabitants, and who, since 1967, have occupied the rest.

On Aztec Sacrifices

2011-12-04T10:12:00.014+11:00

Former Age sports journalist turned "senior writer" and local rah-rah man for Israel's 'Peace Team', Martin Flanagan, is not at all happy with the British (or Australian) media, citing Murdoch's blessedly defunct News of the World's disgraceful treatment of the parents of abducted British child, Madelaine McCann.

The occasion for his piece was a line from a (UK) Daily Telegraph article on Britain's Leveson inquiry on the media, which he praised as the single best line of 2011: "'Is there a journalist's byline on that article?' thundered Lord Justice Leveson, who is starting to wear the aghast look of a missionary observing his first Aztec sacrifice."

Concluded Flanagan:

"Nowadays, nobody thinks Aztec sacrifices were just something that happened between the Aztec priests and the victims whose hearts they cut out. Our idea of Aztec sacrifices extends to the crowds who stood and stared, who drank it up as a spectacle, who either believed they couldn't stop it or didn't care and are thus remembered as being part of the barbaric practice." (The sad truth about the morality of our media, The Age, 3/12/11)

Funny, but with Palestinian hearts being ripped, torn, stilled and broken on a daily basis by Israel's current crop of state-of-the-art 'obsidian knives', all Flanagan can find to say is, "Personally, I don't want to get involved in the politics of the Middle East." (Without politics, Peace Team is peaceful, The Age, 24/9/11).

Ted Baillieu's Mr Unforgettable

2011-12-04T08:13:00.015+11:00

Meet Michael Kapel, the man who "runs" Victoria's (rrrabidly anti-BDS) Baillieu government:

"Now chief of staff to Premier Baillieu, Kapel has more than the Premier's ear. There are those who wonder whether this intense 48-year-old economic conservative and social moderate actually runs this government, or comes close to it. Others suggest that the Premier has simply found a perfect ally in Kapel, someone who shares his values and understands his quirks and leadership style. As one colleague put it: 'Michael just gets him'. Kapel prefers being the backroom player - he declined an interview for this story - but he has been embroiled in unusual controversy in the state government's first year, disliked by some, admired by others. No one denies that he is now one of the most influential people in Victoria. Officially, it is Kapel's job to manage the Premier's private office, hire and fire, oversee policy, devise strategy, offer Baillieu advice and watch the Premier's back. In reality, some Liberal MPs argue - none on the record - that the government is too centralised, with all roads leading to Kapel. They blame him for the fact it took months for the government to appoint ministerial staff - he was on the selection committee and vetted every appointment." (The man behind the man in charge, Farrah Tomazin & David Rood, The Age, 27/11/11)

But there's more. Much more:

"Few people in the Liberal Party say they really know Kapel; fewer claim to understand him. He's the son of French Holocaust survivors who grew up in a left-leaning home, which imbued in him a fierce sense of social justice and racial tolerance. A neo-conservative on foreign policy who in the 1990s edited the Australia/Israel Review*, he campaigned against the emergence of the far right in national politics. He's a man who is loyal to those he trusts, and receives loyalty in return. He's a staffer so close to the Premier that last year Baillieu serenaded the guests at Kapel's wedding with a version of Nat King Cole's Unforgettable... His work as editor of the Review in the 1990s was a defining period. The magazine - which covers Israeli and Jewish affairs - broke major stories: the inner workings of the American anti-semitic LaRouche organisation; suspected Nazi war criminals living in Australia; exposes about Holocaust denier David Irving; and the rise of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party." (ibid)

[*The magazine of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).]

For those interested in joining dots, please read my posts Criminalising BDS (9/8/11), and We Need to Talk About Ted (10/8/11). Just click on the Ted Baillieu label below.

Syrian Barbarism

2011-12-03T20:03:00.014+11:00

Typical Syrian barbarism:

"One military defector stated that he had decided to defect after witnessing the shooting of a 2-year-old girl in Al Ladhiqiyah on 13 August by an officer who affirmed that he did not want her to grow into a demonstrator', the report says." (Syrian death toll includes 250 kids, The Wall Street Journal/The Australian, 30/10/11)

There's just no way that could happen in civilised Israel, right?

Wrong:

"Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription, 'Better use Durex', next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, '1 shot, 2 kills'." (Dead Palestinian babies & bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009, Uri Blau, Haaretz, 20/3/09)

Ah, but that's now. Back in the good old days - 1953 - when Israel's 'soul' was intact, knocking off women and children was unheard of, right?

Wrong:

"Sharon's life-long war against the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular started immediately after that first successful operation against the Bedouin. His next major proposal to command headquarters was a limited raid against the al-Burg refugee camp, which was supposedly used by infiltrators as a base. When he described the details of the operation to his soldiers, one of them - according to Uri Benziman - observed that the obvious objective of the raid was to kill as many civilians as possible. The soldier complained that this was an improper objective, but Sharon ignored the remark. The result was that 15 Palestinians were killed, most of them women and children. Interrogated by superiors after the raid, he argued that the high casualty rate was necessitated by the need to defend the lives of his soldiers. He explained to his own soldiers that all the women of the camps were whores that served the murderers." (Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians, Baruch Kimmerling, 2003, pp 48-49)

Classic Zionist Effrontery

2011-12-02T17:59:00.027+11:00

Sometimes historical events leave us flabbergasted. The shadowy manoeuvrings which led to the issuance of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 are one such case. They leave us not just asking why, but screaming it. To my knowledge no one has ever registered their outrage over the matter quite like British journalist and historian J.M.N. Jeffries:

"Meanwhile, far from desert warfare and from the perils of the scaffold, another cause was making its progress. Bella gerant alii... Zionism wedded itself civilly first to this country and then to that. In the United States it was organizing itself with marked success, which meant a great deal, since of all the Jews in the world at least 3 million were in the United States. These were concentrated too in the large cities where their influence had greatest play. On the 2nd of October [1916] most of the chief Jewish organizations issued a joint manifesto... This manifesto demanded for the Jews full rights wherever they lived in the world, as well of course as the abrogation of all extant laws or regulations prejudicial to them. 'It being understood', explained the manifesto, 'that the phrase 'full rights' is deemed to include (1) Civil, religious and political rights; (2) The securing and protection of Jewish rights in Palestine'.

"The second item needed all the 'deeming' and the 'understanding' which its authors could give it, but they did not delay to argue their case. In or out of the United States they proclaimed it vociferously, and that on the whole was enough. But in England well co-ordinated action was taken by them.

"Matters had reached such a state [as an official Zionist Organization report was to explain later] that in October 1916 the Zionist Organization felt justified in putting forward a formal statement of its views as to the future government of Palestine in the event of its coming under the control of England or France.

"This was a big advance, co-related of course with the development in the United States. So far the Zionist Organization's views, even though incorporated in Foreign Office memoranda, had been laid unofficially before the British Government. Now these views were to be presented as a formal statement, officially, as though the Zionist Organization possessed an internationally established status which might be affected by the advance of England and of France into the Syrian territories. Whence this status was gained remains undiscoverable. But the document which presupposed it was adroitly accepted by the British Government and thereby the said status, though it did not exist, was recognized.

"The document was rather a long one, divisible roughly under 6 heads. One clause demanded that a Jewish Chartered Company should be established of which the purpose would be the resettlement of Palestine by Jewish settlers. This Chartered Company project was not a new one: the Sultan Abdul Hamid had been asked to consider something similar. It had British precedents of the most attractive character, and without doubt the Chartered Company was expected to dissolve in short course into a Government, more easily even than such Companies had dissolved into Governments in India and in South Africa.

"Meanwhile, it was to have power 'to exercise the right of pre-emption of Crown and other lands and to acquire for its own use all or any concessions which may at any time be granted by the suzerain Government or Governments'.

"Reading this, one is led to ask, 'Why have a suzerain Government at all?' The Jewish Chartered Company of Palestine was to have at its disposal any land anywhere at any time in that country. Any concessions which anyone else might obtain or might have obtained were to be taken away from him and were to be bestowed on the Chartered Company. Nothing was left for the 'suzerain' to do but the clerical work of surrendering everything and of expropriating everybody. (In fact, though it may not seem credible, the general scheme of this clause actually was enforced within about 5 years, in favour of the notorious Rutenberg concessions.)

"Another clause ran: 'Inasmuch as the Jewish population in Palestine forms a community with a distinct nationality and religion, it shall be officially recognized by the suzerain Government or Governments as a seperate national unit or nationality'.

"Upon which clause it might well be observed that inasmuch as the Jewish population in Palestine then did not form a distinct nationality but was divided amongst all the nationalities of eastern Europe and some of western Europe and some of Asia; that inasmuch as at least three-quarters of that population had no sympathy with political Zionism and continued to repudiate it after it had come to Palestine; inasmuch as the identification of the Jews as a religious body or the adherents of a creed was then and still is rejected by the political Zionists; therefore there does not appear to be cause for official recognition here of anything but of three separate units of fallacy.

"The most significant clause of all, though, was that in which the Arabs came in for mention. Astonishingly, they did come in for mention in a Zionist document of that date. But in what manner? 'The present population, being too small, too poor, and too little trained to make rapid progress, requires the introduction of a new and progressive element in the population, desirous of devoting all its energies and capital to the work of colonization on modern lines'.

"The Arabs, the 'present population' of the above paragraph, at the time numbered some 675,000, and Palestine is of merely county dimensions. These however were not facts to detain the Zionist Organization. It dismissed the Arabs without further consideration, after what seemed without doubt the conclusive remark that their population was 'small and poor'. To be small and poor is the supreme crime in a category of thought which, curiously, is itself small and poor.

"Therefore these Arabs, exiguous in their hundreds of thousands, required 'the introduction of a new and progressive element'. Sentences of such surpassing effrontery as this one are rare, and it would be hard to find anything matching in insolence the whole clause. What right had the Zionist Organization to talk of what the Arabs needed? None whatsoever.

"Still, whether the clause or the whole programme of which it was a part were insolent or not, the programme of the Chartered Company was accepted as a foundation-stone by the British Government. 'The Government', says the Zionist Report, 'seems to have regarded the Zionist claims embodied in the programme as forming a basis for discussion'. Negotiations thenceforth went on steadily. Talks with individual statesmen 'gave place to discussions of a more formal character. Zionism won recognition as one of the complex problems connected with the Middle East on the one hand and the question of small nationalities on the other'. (Zionist Official Report)

"There it is. A better example could not be supplied of the sophistries by which the hapless Arabs were to be supplanted. Zionism, political Zionism, not alone was confirmed in the status it had acquired out of the skies, but now was advanced a stage beyond. Political Zionism became one of the 'complex problems connected with the Middle East'. All in a flash it was enrolled amidst the problems which by and by the Allies must face.

"The role thus assumed by political Zionism was one unwarranted by any law, any deed, any political conditions which were then in existence, or previously had been for over a thousand years. Zionism as a political entity had owned no situation outside the brains of its own recent devisers. Political Zionism was not something engrained in the soil of the Near East, nor had it any place amidst the problems which the Ottoman Empire handed on so profusely to its successors.

"The Ottoman Empire had been approached and had refused to introduce this amidst its many complicated factors. It would not have a Jewish enclave. No statesman in the world had toiled for years over Zionism, no statesman in the world had inherited dossiers in hundreds filled with the negotiations of his predecessors-in-office concerning it. It simply was not a problem at all. There was a Jewish problem in Eastern Europe; there was none in Palestine. It was intended now to introduce the problem where it had never existed, but that was to create a problem - something vastly different. In fact, to say that political Zionism was a complex problem connected with the Middle East was a thumping lie. Its true situation in the realm of politics was that of a theory just beginning to be exploited in London and Paris and New York.

"The complexity attributed to it was wholly unreal. What was called complexity only meant the difficulty of finding a formula opaque enough to disguise the immediate or future annexation of Palestine.

"But sophistry did not confine itself to slipping political Zionism in this way in among the problems of the Middle East. With the same stroke Zionism also won 'recognition as a problem connected with the question of small nationalities'. Indeed it did. The operative word... is 'connected'. By more adroitness that which had been nothing, but had been transmogrified into a problem, was now again transmogrified from a problem into a small nation, by coupling it to various lesser lands.

"The scheme for this can be visualized. In 1916 the small nations were already forming up to put their pleas to the (it was hoped) conquering Allies. Together they made a political caravan, a train if you like. When the moment came they would all set off together, the train would depart for the terminus where the victorious Peace was being prepared. The political Zionists were ready for this. Rapidly and unostentatiously a van labelled 'Zionist Problem' would be connected to the last carriage. The train would puff away. Somewhere en route the label would disappear, and a van inscribed 'Jewish National Home' would draw eventually alongside the arrival platform, behind Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and all the others. The whole scheme is very simple. But the chance of watching the manoeuvre is not often given." (Palestine: The Reality, 1939, pp 127-130)

Granny Watch

2011-12-01T18:10:00.025+11:00

The following letter from dear old Mary Werther of "Armadale, Vic" in yesterday's Australian is polished and, on the surface, persuasive, just the kind you'd expect from a resident matron of that up-market, leafy Melbourne suburb. And it's sure to have worked a treat on readers who either haven't read the article referred to or are blissfully ignorant, by choice or no, of one simple inconvenient fact... but I'll come to that later. First to Mary's letter:

"Lavinia Moore's letter (29/11) and the article by John Lyons in The Weekend Australian Magazine (Stone cold justice, 26-27/11) both raise the difficult issue of how to treat Palestinian teenage combatants who attack Israeli civilians with rocks thrown at cars, aiming to cause severe injury and murder, such as the recent deaths of an Israeli father and his infant son.

"These children are effectively used as frontline soldiers and brainwashed to extreme hatred and violence by their parents to further their political agenda.

"Should they simply be allowed to kill Israeli civilians without any recourse in the courts?

"In practice, while no one likes arresting under-age youths, least of all the Israelis, they are usually held only briefly as a disincentive to others to emulate their actions.

"Unsubstantied allegations of any mistreatment are usually trumped-up propaganda for Western ears. They may indeed be frightened by their capture and courtroom trial, but is that worse than the pain they inflict?

"In Lyons's article, the mothers are so sympathetically portrayed, weeping in the court-room. Perhaps it is they, and the fathers, who should be held accountable for inciting their teenage sons to conduct murderous attacks."

Mmm... how smooth and plausible is that? Why, it almost comes with a cup of tea and a bagel on a silver platter!

It's as though Mary's writing about teenage toughs come from distant Kensington to rock the good folk of Armadale. You just wouldn't know from her account that, unlike my imagined gang from Kensington, these young Palestinian stonethrowers were born into, and educated by, a decades-long, brutal Israeli occupation which sets the scene for acts of resistance, however futile, by its victims. A comparable scenario might be one where the good folk of Armadale invade, occupy, colonise, patrol and shoot up the residents - or should that be denizens, Mary? - of Kensington and get all shirty when the Kensingtonians start reaching for the rocks. Ah, but pigs will fly before you'll get an acknowledment from Mary of an Israeli occupation engendering a Palestinian resistance. Certainly not when she's just put her hand up for the vice-presidency of the newly-formed Australian Voices for Israel, a fact that the old dear apparently forgot to append to her letter. (See Two new groups get behind Israel, jwire.com.au, 2/9/11).

Now I know she's a busy girl, but what, I wonder, would Mary have made of the opinion piece by Times' journalist Ben MacIntyre, Moral issues give rise to revolution, published in the exact same edition of The Australian that carried her letter? MacIntyre broaches the concept of resistance to oppression in the context of the so-called Arab Spring, beginning:

"You are a Syrian soldier watching, with mounting uncertainty, as the revolution builds. Do you slip away in the night to join the Free Syria Army? Do you follow your commanding officer if he defects to the rebels, or stay put? Do you wait and watch, or take the plunge?"

Now if MacIntyre had been writing instead about the Israeli occupation of Palestine, he could well have begun thus: 'You are a Palestinian teenager watching, with mounting anger, as the occupation takes its toll on your family, your community, your people. Do you pick up a stone and throw it at the Israeli settlers who relentlessly colonise your land or the marauding troops who aid and abett them? Or do you repress your feelings and tuck your tail between your legs. Do you wait and watch, or take the plunge?'

You just know Mary's response to that one, don't you?

MacIntyre goes on to remind his English readers: "In Britain, we are particularly susceptible to the myth that Britons never, never, never shall be slaves. We hear tales of collaboration in Nazi-occupied Europe and believe that the British would have held out, resisted, fought back if the Germans had invaded. But resisting a well-organised despotism, ruthlessly enforced, is astonishingly difficult, demanding a level of courage that few know they possess until tested. 'What would you do?' This remains the central conundrum of every war, revolution or resistance movement."

What would you do? I can just imagine Mary's response: 'About what?'

MacIntyre quotes Anthony Eden's words "when asked whether Britain would have behaved differently from France under Nazi dictatorship: 'It would be impertinent for any country that has not suffered occupation to pass judgment on one that did'."

Or, one might add, for an individual from an up-market, leafy Melbourne suburb to pass judgment on any Palestinians.

Now I indicated earlier that Mary's letter would have gone down well with those who hadn't read Australian Middle East correspondent John Lyons' revealing piece, Stone cold justice. Anyone who had, however, would have noticed just how wondefully artful the old dear's letter is:

While Lyons refers matter-of-factly to children, Mary has them pegged as "combatants" and "frontline soldiers," bent on bloody murder. And while it's clear from Lyon's expose that the targets of the stone throwers are largely marauding Israeli troops, Mary's exclusive focus is "Israeli civilians."

While Lyons writes of near 100% conviction rates, sentences ranging from 2 weeks to 10 months, confessions (in Hebrew!), handcuffing, blindfolding, manhandling, placing boots on necks, sleep deprivation, electric shocks, threats of rape, molestation by dogs, beatings, and solitary confinement, Mary reassures us that "while no one likes arresting under-age youths, least of all the Israelis, they are usually held only briefly as a disincentive to others to emulate their actions," and is adamant that "[u]nsubstantiated allegations of any mistreatment are usually trumped-up propaganda for Western ears."

Least of all the Israelis?!!!

Forget the kids from Kensington - it's the little old ladies from well-to-do, leafy suburbs you've got to watch out for.

Foreign Minister Lite

2011-11-30T07:16:00.029+11:00

Did you know that "[w]ith the exception of Clinton, [Kevin] Rudd is the chief diplomat every other one wants to meet"? Or that "[h]e has almost-hero status at the United Nations"?

Such 'revelations' come in a profile by Thom Woodrofe of our frequent flying foreign minister in The Sun-Herald of November 27. In At home on foreign ground, Woodrofe is credited with "gain[ing] some rare insights on the road with Kevin Rudd."

OK, this looks promising:

"Rudd is already the most travelled foreign minister in Australian history but he refuses to take sleeping pills or watch movies on planes..."

But then:

"Instead, he reads his portfolio briefs before launching into books on theology and philosophy."

Theology and philosophy? Just what you'd expect of a well-informed foreign minister, right?

But what about those occasions when he's not reading t & p?:

"At the moment he is, appropriately, reading a biography of Charles II and the restoration of the British monarchy."

Of course - the perfect book for someone responsible for formulating our policy on Libya or Syria, no?

But it gets worse.

Where does Rudd get his reading matter from? Is it recommended by scholars? Does it come from reputable booksellers, as distinct from those who flog sport and self-help? Not on your nellie! It's carefully selected by... a newsagent:

"Despite getting an electronic book reader from his children for his birthday, Rudd will often burden his staff by buying half a dozen books in an airport terminal..."

Jeeesus!

And Rudd has the hide to, among other things, hold "a press conference to take a swipe at the Greens controlling foreign policy..."

(For Gillard's reading habits, see my 14/8/10 post The Real Julia Gillard.)

Fine & Danby

2011-11-28T19:45:00.027+11:00

Federal Labor's Minister for Israel, Michael Danby MP, seems to be winning a few hearts lately:

1) "But the best speech on Afghanistan this week came from Labor's Michael Danby, the chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee. Danby is a true Australian cosmopolitan, with the widest range of foreign policy interests of anyone on the backbench on either side of parliament. He profoundly supports Australia's Afghanistan commitment and I think he is mistaken to do so. But Danby also has a George Orwell-like willingness to face difficult and unpleasant facts." (Denying a deadly dividend, Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 26/11/11)

A true Australian cosmopolitan, with the widest range of foreign policy interests of anyone on the backbench?

Oh, really? Why O why is Greg hiding Michael's Light Unto the Nations under a bushel? The plain fact of the matter is that there's really only one foreign policy interest that really gets Danby's juices going. The rest is just window-dressing:

"[Danby] corrals his parliamentary colleagues and forces them to think long, hard and seriously about matters that often conjure knee-jerk reactions. 'During a recent political controversy [MERC: Gaza?], we had 11 federal MPs get together on an Israel issue. Mike Kelly [MP] convened them and I organised with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), who had a delegation up there, to sit down with us and we strategised together', Danby said."*

As for that alleged George Orwell-like willingness to face difficult and unpleasant facts, here's Danby 'facing' the fact that his god has failed:

"The boycott [Israel] campaign... is a tactic designed by extremist organisations such as Hamas to mask the strategy of the 'one state solution', a single state between Jordan and the Mediterranean. This would lead to the destruction of the independent Jewish state of Israel. Any Israeli Jews who are not killed, who did not flee for their lives, would be left as a benighted minority (the Arab word for which is 'Dhimmis') in a Hamas-ruled theocratic state."**

Now what might the anti-Zionist George Orwell say about the above? Why, this of course:

"It is difficult if not impossible for any nationalist to conceal his allegiance. The smallest slur upon his own unit... fills him with uneasiness which he can relieve only by making some sharp retort." (Notes on Nationalism, 1945)

2) "Amid all the rancor of that final sitting week, Labor's Michael Danby introduced to the House of Representatives a motion that highlighted the best in public debate. He called on Parliament to recognise each July 11 as Srebrenica Remembrance Day, as a reminder of the evil that led to the genocide of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys at the hands of the rebel Serb forces of Ratko Mladic in Bosnia in 1995. It was, Danby said, 'what the Russians would call an act of pamyat - memory." (Rising from the mire, Paul Daley, The Sun-Herald, 27/11/11)

Srebrenica Remembrance Day? OK, I get it! Israeli massacres of Palestinians, Lebanese, and others, dating from the 1930s through to the present, become a bit of a blur after a while, so done and dusted Srebrenica it is. Brilliant move! As Orwell would have said (and did): "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." (Notes on Nationalism, 1945)

Ah, but is there more to Danby's 'cosmopolitanism' than meets the eye? I know I'm a cynical bastard at the best of times, but could it have something to do with this?:

"How does it come about that whether the Palestinian application for statehood will be put to a vote at all, or will simply be rejected, depends on Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the Security Council's non-permanent members? Nine out of 15 votes are needed to win full membership of the UN as a sovereign state, and Palestine has secured 8 so far: those of South Africa, India, Brazil, Lebanon, China, Russia, Nigeria and Gabon. The 9th vote should come from Portugal, Colombia or Bosnia. Portugal will most probably follow the advice of EU headquarters and vote against it. President Abbas personally went to Bogota to lobby for the Colombian vote, but was told that Colombia is too dependent on American aid. So only Sarajevo is left to receive Palestine's last efforts to secure a yes vote, as well as Israeli and American efforts to persuade Bosnia to join those SC members rejecting the proposal or abstaining from the vote." (The importance of Bosnia on Palestine's path to the UN, Hajrudin Somun, Today's Zaman, 29/11/11)

But could a Srebrenica Remembrance Day be taking the irony a little too far?:

"The 3 members of the Bosnian presidency act as 3 heads of state... Each... must support a decision in order for the country's representaive to the SC to vote for the Palestinian petition. Otherwise the Bosnian delegation must abstain... Bakir Izetbegovic, representinting Bosniaks in the presidency, expressed his unreserved support for the Palestinian's legitimate quest for UN membership... The Croat member of the presidency, Zeljko Comsic, generally supports Palestine... The Serb representative, Nebojsa Radmanovic, however, strongly opposes the Palestinian quest for statehood..." (ibid)

But there's more: "Radmanovic... denies that he is pro-Israeli, but how can the fact that he and Milorad Dodik, president of the Bosnian entity Republika Srpska, hosted Avigdor Lieberman when he spent a few days on vacation in Bosnia and Herzegovina last summer be interpreted otherwise? Israel has also promised to invest in the Serb entity." (ibid)

And more: "This attitude on the part of Bosnian Serb leaders has other roots as well: They... regard the whole 'Palestinian cause' as an Islamic one..." (ibid)

So, let's pull all this together: Australia's Minister for Israel is proposing a memorial to Bosnian Muslims massacred by Bosnian Serbs, who are lining up with Israel to block Palestinian statehood, which is supported by Bosnian Muslims.

Surely it's just a coincidence! There couldn't possibly be any connection between these two phenomena. To suggest otherwise would be way too cynical, even for me.

What do you reckon, George?

[*A decade of Danby, Peter Kohn & Naomi Levin, The Australian Jewish News, 27/2/09;**Knowing the truth will scare voters, The Australian, 2/4/11]

My Brush with Superman

2011-11-28T09:27:00.026+11:00

Oh dear, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council's Jeremy Jones is at it again with his 22nd report on anti-Semitism in Australia - whether real or alleged - and we anti-Zionists have been scooped up in his net, aka Report on Antisemitism in Australia, November 2011, along with the usual suspects.

Mild-mannered JJ, you see, is apparently the Superman of the Israel lobby, capable of detecting an anti-Zionist insult sealed in kryptonite a thousand meters away (to adapt Circus Israel's wonderful line) and construing it as anti-Semitism. And his baleful x-ray vision, in the service of Zionist Propaganda, Israeli Injustice and the Apartheid Way, has settled on yours truly:

"6.5 The anonymous writer of Middle East Reality Check (MERC) often [!] used or hosted extreme and offensive rhetoric [hereinafter EOR]..."

Jones cites the following examples of MERC EOR (omission of context, of course, is a given with JJ, and the accusations of EOR are characteristically asserted, never demonstrated):

1) Commenter Syd Walker's use of the term "God-approved people of the Chosen Land."

Well, if that's an instance of EOR, would JJ care to comment on David Ben-Gurion's famous statement that "the Bible is our mandate"? JJ?

2) My reference to "Israel's Nazi-style blockade of Gaza."

JJ finds the following question - "How, other than Nazi-style blockade of Gaza, would you describe a deliberate policy of ghettoisation and enforced malnutrition reminiscent of the Warsaw Ghetto?" - a case of EOR. Well, JJ might care to answer that question. JJ?

3) My post Holocaust Studies Make the Grade. God knows I've puzzled over this one, but I just don't get the EOR label here. JJ?

4) A comment by "brian" that SBS "has long been ziionist [sic] central," based on his observation that, while SBS has inundated us with docos on the Nazis, it has screened "not one on Palestine," followed by his not unreasonable question, "how does that sort of programming happen?"

Now seriously, if JJ really found brian's comment EOR, why not hazard a rebuttal? Perhaps he could detail his (and other Zionist organisations') interventions with SBS over the years but go on to explain that these haven't had the least impact on the broadcaster. JJ?

5) A reference by that most windy of commentators, anonymous, to Israel as "a revival of Medieval Talmudic ghettoism at the expense of [Palestine's] indigenous population."

Sure it's categorical, but JJ really should read Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky's Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (1999/2004) before mounting his high horse on "Medieval Talmudic ghettoism":

"This book pinpoints the political importance of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel... Jewish fundamentalism is here briefly defined as the belief that Jewish Orthodoxy, which is based on the Babylonian Talmud, the rest of talmudic literature and halachic literature, is still valid and will eternally remain valid..." (p 4)

"The religious influence upon the Israeli right-wing of Israel B [the right & religious parties] is attributable both to its militaristic character and its widely shared world outlook. Secular and militaristic right-wing, Israeli Jews hold political views and engage in rhetoric similar to that of religious Jews. For most Likud followers, 'Jewish blood' is the reason why Jews are in a different category than non-Jews, including, of course, even those non-Jews who are Israeli citizens and who serve in the Israeli army. For religious Jews, the blood of non-Jews has no intrinsic value; for Likud, it has limited value. Menachem Begin's masterful use of such rhetoric about Gentiles brought him votes and popularity and thus constitutes a case in point. The difference in this respect between Labor and Likud is rhetorical but is nevertheless important in that it reveals part of a world outlook. In 1982, for example, when the Israeli army occupied Beirut, Rabin representing Labor, although advocating the same policies as favored by Sharon and Likud, did not explain the Sabra and Shatila camp massacres by stating, as did Begin: 'Gentiles kill Gentiles and blame the Jews'. Even if Rabin had himself been capable of saying this, he knew that most of his secular supporters in Labor, who distinguish between Gentiles who hate Jews and those who do not, would not have tolerated such a statement." (p 11)

JJ, get back to me when you've read that one, OK?

An Open Letter to Bob Brown

2011-11-26T08:12:00.015+11:00

Dear Bob,

You'll recall that back in September you placed a series of questions on notice in the Senate. These were based on the premise that, with respect to the import into Australia of Israeli products, it was meaningful to distinguish between those originating in Israel's West Bank settlements (which could conceivably be boycotted) and the rest.

After becoming aware of these questions, I wrote a post - Does Bob Brown Believe in the Tooth Fairy? (15/10/11) - taking issue with that premise.

I draw your attention, therefore, to the following Haaretz news report, which simply confirms the point I made in that post, namely that there is no point whatever in such a distinction, and that all Israeli products should be the subject of a boycott campaign:

"An interesting document has recently found its way to several right-wing members of Knesset. Produced by the rightist NGO Mattot Arim, the survey rates MKs and cabinet ministers according to the aid they provided to the settlement movement and to the 'national camp' as a whole... Published every 6 months... the Mattot Arim report breaks down the legislative, lobbying, and media activity of the MKs - from bills preventing the boycott of products made in the settlements, to media interviews. In addition, ministers are lauded for harnessing their ministries for pro-settlement development, such as improving the internet and cellular networks in the West Bank... The latest survey... [listed] 100 parliamentary achievements attributed to the various MKs, and revealed the often unpublicized activities taking place on the ground to advance West Bank settlements and the rightist patina of the 18th Knesset. In one example, the report noted that the Knesset's Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee approved the transfer of NIS 10 million to emergency services in the West Bank. The Knesset's Finance Committee also approved NIS 2 million to improve cellphone reception. Moreover, gun laws were amended in a way that makes it easier to acquire weapons for self defense. In addition, the report cites the activity of government ministries to cancel out radio interference originating from the Palestinian Authority and the erection of permanent transmission sites for regional radio stations. Digital television transmission was also improved. More than half of the settlements were plugged into Bezeq's advanced internet networks, and the Israel Postal Company launched new gun-proof delivery vehicles which would allow for regular service to threatened settlements..." (Right-wing NGO exposes extent of Israel's support of West Bank settlements, Jonathan Lis, Haaretz, 24/11/11)

You'll be interested to note, Bob, that of the top 10 MKs who get ticks from Mattot Arim for their "activity of a national character," 7 come from the ruling Likud Party of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Interesting, eh?

Cheers,

MERC

Looks Promising!

2011-11-25T15:32:00.009+11:00

I'm making no predictions about the worth or otherwise of this series until I've seen it with my own eyes. However, this item in today's Australian Jewish News does make it look... well, promising:

"A new TV series set to begin airing on SBS1 this Sunday prompted outrage from the Jewish community when it was broadcast in the UK earlier this year. The Promise tells the story of Erin, a young London woman, heading to Israel for the summer, who discovers the diary of her sick grandfather, which relates his part in the post-World War II British peacekeeping [!!!] force in pre-state Palestine. According to the Israeli Embassy in the UK, it received more complaints about The Promise than any other program, with a spokesman saying it 'created a new category of hostility towards Israel'. President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Vivian Wineman, wrote a letter to the UK broadcaster Channel 4 slating it as 'a propagandist caricature'. He added: 'The Promise consistently demonised Jews, by using distasteful stereotypes and even comparing the actions of the Nazis during the Holocaust to those of Jews in mandate Palestine'. The board also expressed 'grave concerns at historic [sic] inaccuracies', while Man Booker prize-winning author Howard Jacobson slammed it as a 'ludicrous piece of brainwashed prejudice'." (Mandate drama isn't very promising)

Why do I have this feeling that, even as I write, someone at SBS could already be copping flak over The Promise?

Netanyahu's Little Helpers...

2011-11-23T21:40:00.022+11:00

... come in all shapes and sizes.

From the big:

"We've been through this before. As one of the most disastrous wars in our history is coming to an inglorious end, the same neoconservative hawks who dreamed it up are agitating for a new war that would make Iraq look like the invasion of Granada - and using the ultimate trump card in American politics to silence debate over it. When hawks begin beating the drums for war in the Middle East, Israel is usually a big reason why. That was true in the run-up to the war in Iraq, and it is doubly true with the current hysteria over Iran. Despite disingenuous claims to the contrary, the only reason the US is even talking about war with Iran is Israel. As the invaluable M. J. Rosenberg, who knows the working of the Israel lobby as only a former card-carrying member can, notes, 'It is impossible to find a single politician or journalist advocating war with Iran who is not a neocon or an AIPAC cutout. (They're often both.)' Ever since the International Atomic Energy Agency released its overhyped, old-news report on Iran's nuclear program, Israel's amen corner in the US has been loudly calling for war. If Americans did not contain an enormous blind spot, no one would pay any attention to what these discredited ideologues have to say. The Iraq war they championed turned out to be one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in US history. Their ignorant and Islamophobic view of the Middle East is as breathtaking as their bland willingness to commit America to yet another ruinous war against a Muslim country, this time one four times larger than Iraq and with more than twice as many people. They have a demonstrated track record of complete failure. Yet these incompetent militarists are still taken seriously. And the reason is simple. They purport to be supporters of Israel. In American politics, you can get away with even the most cracked war-mongering as long as you claim to be 'pro-Israel'. And the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for anything having to do with Israel is the Holocaust. To listen to the neocons and hawks, you'd think Hitler was about to send the tanks over the Polish border." (The boys who cry 'Holocaust', Gary Kamiya, salon.com, 22/11/11)

To the little:

"Australia will consider joining a US-led coalition set to impose additional sanctions on Iran, as new laws are fast-tracked to disrupt the supply chain for weapons of mass destruction... A spokesman for Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said yesterday Australia, as a member of the IAEA, was at the forefront of efforts to crack down on Iran over its nuclear ambitions. 'Australia implements tough measures enforcing UN Security Council sanctions against Iran, and imposes comprehensive autonomous sanctions that go beyond those required by the security Council', the spokeswoman said. 'Consistent with Australia's mounting concern about Iran's nuclear program, the government will continue to explore additional sanctions'. The comments came after the government fast-tracked new laws through the House to address weaknesses in trade security and give Defence Minister Stephen Smith, in particular, greater power to disrupt supply to terrorists and rogue states." (Canberra mulls further Iranian sanctions as loophole closes, Sean Parnell, The Australian, 23/11/11)

But big or little, it's Bibi who has them all in his thrall:

"Netanyahu is obsessed with the Second World War parallels, real or imagined, and even used them to justify his opposition to the peace process with the Palestinians in the nineties. Netanyahu is deeply influenced not only by his hundred-year-old father's right-wing revisionist ideology, but also by a profound sense of himself as Israel's post-Holocaust protector. Heroic imagery, like the F-15s flying over the rail tracks at Auschwitz, is no small part of what drives him. Five years ago, he said of the Iranian nuclear issue, 'The year is 1938 and Iran is Germany'." (Iran, Israel, & the bomb, David Remnick, newyorker.com, 6/11/11)

And as far as Bibi's concerned, he'll fight Adolf Ahmadinejad to the last American, British, or French soldier, global oil crisis or no:

"Iran would doubtless lash out at US forces and shipping in the Gulf, which would immediately precipitate an oil crisis... Against all that is the calculation, carefully unspoken but present nevertheless, that a unilateral Israeli strike would trigger massive American intervention against Iran's nuclear program. This could come in response to Iranian retaliation against American targets, or because Washington would have an overwhelming interest in 'finishing the job' that Israel began. In the post-Libya climate, France and Britain might well be moved to come in alongside the US." (World must believe Netanyahu on Iran, David Landau, Sydney Morning Herald, 24/11/11)

And why should little Australia stop at mere tightened sanctions? Why not join in the fun?

After all, when the Sydney Morning Herald thinks so highly of Netanyahu that it features a paean to him on its opinion page by former Haaretz editor-in-chief Landau, who are we to resist the siren call of the man Landau grandiloquently describes as having "3,000 years of Jewish history on his shoulders"?

Ah, if only we pissants could but see the man for what he is: one of history's classic poet-warriors, divinely sent to protect us all from the moustache-twirling, boddice-ripping, Islamofascist hordes, who, even as we speak, are brazenly sharpening their arsenal of world-slaying nuclear scimitars.

As Landau reminds us lesser mortals: "Netanyahu's drum-beating is tactically impeccable. But it's not just tactics. The bluffer isn't bluffing. Let's hope Obama, Sarkozy and the rest are hearing him loud and clear."

Are you listening, Gillard? Three thousand years of Jewish history! This is your John Howard moment. Are you ready? Follow your spirit, and upon this charge/ Cry 'God for Bibi, Israel, and Saint Herzl!' (with apologies to the Bard).

Witches Brew 9

2011-11-23T07:37:00.031+11:00

This post, the latest in my Witches Brew series on the anti-BDS 'debate' in the NSW Legislative Council on September 30, features the 'contribution' of one of the LC's 'Arab' contingent, namely the Liberal's John Ajaka. It makes for very sad reading indeed.

During the course of his speech, Ajaka confessed:

"My father was born in Lebanon and my mother was born in Palestine-Jerusalem. I say that because she has two birth certificates: one says that she was born in Palestine and the other says she was born in Jerusalem."

I find this statement quite puzzling. What's with this Palestine-Jerusalem business? Does the Australian-born (1956) Ajaka not know that Jerusalem is in Palestine? That it has always been in Palestine? Why this beating around the bush?

According to his 2007 Inaugural Speech (hereinafter IS), Ajaka's parents "travelled to Australia from Lebanon in the early 1950s." Could his mother then, have been a Palestinian refugee? In any case, didn't the woman whom he described as "the one who believed in me, who encouraged me, who pushed me," (IS) pass on something - anything - about the nakba which had overtaken her or her people? If so, there is nothing whatever in either Ajaka's IS or his September 15 LC speech to indicate this.

I find this a most curious matter. Certainly, I can't imagine the two beaming gents in the gallery, on whose behalf our motley crew of MLCs were strutting their stuff on that day (exclusive, I need hardly remind you, of the Greens' John Kaye and David Shoebridge), being at all backward in coming forward about some imaginery direct descent from the Kings David and Solomon, if not Abraham himself.

Anyhow, returning to our Lebanese-Palestinian-Australian's LC speech, just wrap your head around this load of old cobblers:

"This form of boycott as pushed by the boycott, disinvestment [sic] and sanctions is nothing more than prejudice and racism... directed at one part of our community... If this type of boycott were directed at an Islamic, Catholic or Jewish community or any other religious or cultural community it would not be acceptable... We in this country welcome people who want to do business here, because they provide jobs and resources. I must admit that I have had a few Brenner waffles - perhaps too many. It is unacceptable that such a business is being subjected to this dreadful boycott."

This is truly jaw-dropping stuff. There's a hint in sentence two that Ajaka doesn't even connect Max Brenner with Jews, let alone Israel, seeing it merely as a business, but I'll charitably assume that his words didn't quite come out as intended. That said, we seem to be dealing here with a guy who, though admitting to having a Palestinian mother, has so little awareness of the Palestine problem or BDS that he misconstrues it as attack on multiculturalism or a case of sectarianism. Clueless. Utterly, utterly clueless.

But it gets worse: "My office library contains the first book that I read, Mein Kampf. I read it as a year 11 student while studying advanced history."

OK... Deep breath... Read that again. Mein Kampf was the first book I read. The first book I read. The first. And that wasn't until he was in Year 11 at Marist Brothers in Kogarah (IS)! Ach mein Gott! Ajaka got all the way to senior high school without opening a book? And this is one of the blokes currently running the show in NSW?! Gott help us!

He continues, invoking the by now familiar anti-BDS Nazi slur:

"I still have it, but not because I respect it; in fact, I detest it and its message. I have kept it as a reminder of the potential outcome of a protest such as the one we are witnessing against one religious or ethnic community. It is a reminder that that should never happen in Australia. We cannot allow this type of prejudice and racism to fester and spread. It is not a protest; it is the dreadful beginning of a movement targeting one culture and one religion. I cannot accept that and I will not allow it to happen: I will do everything I can to prevent it... For those reasons, I reject the BDS movement and everything it represents."

What to make of this guy? In his IS he laments that in his youth he had "always been aware of my ethnic background; it was hard not to be, with the ever-present taunts and jeers thrown by other children," and that "still, even now, a latent prejudice runs through our community like an underground stream - a stream that bubbles to the surface in times and in places unexpected, as with the emergence of the stench and stain of One Nation."

And yet, he can laud former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, the man who pinched Pauline Hanson's policies and made them his own, as "a great leader of our country, whom I am proud to have always supported..."

Ajaka's rage against those who've messed up his childhood is palpable:

"When I was a child some of my peers sadly constructed my entire identity solely on my ethnic background. They isolated, separated and labelled me a wog. This was all I would ever be to them. Well, I do not want my children - any children - growing up with the feelings I had when I was growing up. We have come so far in the past 30 in tearing down the monolith of prejudice. I am here to add my own small contribution to the continuation of this important task. If the first reason for my presence in this place is to fight prejudice, the second is to fight injustice. I believe in the spirit of law."

And yet, Ajaka's seeming obliviousness to the almost century-old, bloody settler-colonial dynamic at play in Palestine/Israel - bizzarely, at no stage in his blessedly short 'contribution' does he even mention the word Israel - renders him blind to the fact that BDS is nothing more than a response to the Zionist project's ongoing isolation, separation, labelling (and worse) of his mother's people, a reaction to the massive monolith of (anti-Arab) prejudice and injustice which is the apartheid state of Israel.

Zionist Hypocrisy Alert

2011-11-22T16:37:00.014+11:00

Hypocrisy is a hallmark of Zionist advocacy.

Here, for example, is Michael Weiss, 'communications director' of the UK's Ziocon foreign policy 'think' tank, the Henry Jackson Society, labelling Syrian opposition leader, Burhan Ghalioun's reference to Syria's Arab identity as chauvinistic:

"On the eve of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic Festival of Sacrifice, Syria's de facto opposition leader Burhan Ghalioun delivered an address on international TV. Among the emotional appeals and platitudes befitting a future president, the leader of the Syrian National Council made at least one substantive remark: 'Syria's new constitution will protect minorities and their rights, including the Kurds, who have suffered discrimination'... But Kurds have been wary of joining the SNC's government-in-exile, some on account of the early chauvinist noises - including from Ghalioun - about retaining Syria's 'Arab' identity." (Fate of Syrian revolution rests on the treatment of Kurds, The New Republic/The Australian, 21/11/11)

Needless to say, the same individual had no such qualms in referring to Israel as the Jewish state, despite its 20% Palestinian Arab population, most recently in a 21 September piece in the UK's Daily Telegraph, Barack Obama's UN speech, goes from cutting to confused.

Laying Siege to German Jews

2011-11-21T07:35:00.015+11:00

The following paragraph, from a feature article in the Weekend Australian, conceals a much more nuanced story:

"Questioning the way history is presented is one of [Albrecht] Dumling's chief preoccupations. He was in Canberra to sift through the National Archives, looking into what really happened to [German] Jewish musicians whose flight from Nazi terror brought them to Australia. Today, it is tempting to imagine Australia as a safe haven, where the unjustly persecuted could begin again. The reality was different. Australia was not eager to accept Jewish immigrants. At the Evian Conference of 1938, Australia's trade and customs minister Thomas White, pleading against large-scale Jewish immigration, declared that 'as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one'." (Musicians who kept it quiet, Shirley Apthorp, 19/11/11)

The awful truth of the matter, however, is that it wasn't just the redneckery of hicks like Thomas White which helped seal the fate German Jewry, as the Wikipedia entry on the Evian Conference shows:

"The Evian Conference was convened at the initiative of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July 1938 to discuss the issue of increasing numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution... The Jews of Austria and Germany were very hopeful, believing that this international conference would provide a safe haven... With both the US and Britain refusing to take in substantial numbers of Jews, the conference was ultimately seen as a failure by Jews and their sympathizers... Zionist organisations did not take part in the conference. One hisorian describes their attitude as one of 'hostile indifference' since any positive outcome would reduce the numbers of people wishing to migrate to settle in Palestine."

Come again? Zionist organisations boycotted an international conference convened to rescue German Jewry from escalating Nazi brutality because channeling Jews into Palestine for the coming stoush with its indigenous inhabitants took priority? Who would have thought? Let's take a closer look:

Arising out of the Evian Conference, an Intergovernmental Committee for Political Refugees was set up to negotiate with the Nazis an exit strategy for besieged German Jewry. It was headed by Americans Myron Taylor, the Evian Conference chairman, and George Rublee, a friend of President Roosevelt. By January 1939, Rublee had managed to negotiate a plan which would have resulted in Jews under 45 being released from concentration camps on condition they emigrated, with the rest being allowed to remain undisturbed in Germany. This was not, however, to the liking of the Zionist movement, because emigration to Palestine was not an integral part of the deal, and their virulent opposition to the plan was sufficient to ensure that it remained largely on the drawing board until overtaken by the outbreak of World War II.

Israeli scholar S.B. Beit Zvi delivers this measured, but damning, assessment of political Zionism's attitude towards the plight of German Jews:

"In assessing what Zionism did to German Jewry at this stage, we will once more refrain from accusing the Zionists of abandoning the German Jews to a violent death. Even then, in the Spring and Summer of 1939, no one was thinking along the lines of total destruction. Nonetheless, it is no exaggeration to describe what was done as laying siege to a Jewish group which was in terrible distress. The situation of German Jews was thoroughly known from the accounts of visitors and of refugees who managed to get out of the country. The Jewish Agency Executive heard an updated report from Eliahu Dobkin who had just visited Germany and Austria. According to Dobkin, less than 1% of the wage earners were in fact earning a living, and over half of them were employed in community and Zionist institutions. Two-thirds of Austrian Jews and one-third of German Jews were living on charity. Many had been able to manage only by selling jewelry and other valuables... Every Jew in Germany and Austria was thinking about escape. The Nazi authorities were not talking about the liquidation of the Jews within 3 years - their intention was that the majority should leave within one year. Not even Dobkin's shocking account impelled the Jewish Agency leadership to budge from its position. The chairman of the session, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, thanked Dobkin 'for his excellent and exhaustive talk', and that was the end of the matter. Concurrent with its war on the Rublee Plan, the World Zionist Organization pursued the Haavarah deal. Its representatives also made useful deals with the Gestapo in Berlin and Vienna aimed at bringing about the immigration to Palestine of Zionist pioneers, the establishment of training facilities for the pioneers, and the liberation of potential Palestine settlers from concentration camps. When it came to aliyah, deals with the Nazis were not unconscionable and the Jews were not compelled to wait until the collapse of the regime." (Post-Ugandan Zionism On Trial: A Study of the Factors that Caused the Mistakes Made by the Zionist movement during the Holocaust, 1991, pp 198-199)

In sum, writes Beit Zvi:

"These events... exemplify a bitter and persistent truth which is deeply interwoven in the episode of the Rublee Plan. That fact - which cannot be expunged or obliterated from the annals of the Jewish people - is that for nearly a year a group of American non-Jews headed by Myron Taylor under the active auspices of President Roosevelt engaged in considerable efforts to extricate the Jews of Germany. The dedicated activity of the Americans had the vacillating aid of British representatives and, to a lesser degree, of other countries. Throughout this entire period the attitude of the Jewish organizations swung between total opposition on the part of the overwhelming majority and constrained and reluctant cooperation on the part of a few functionaries whose true motivation was opposition to rival Jewish organisations. And on the issue that is of primary concern to us: the Zionist movement vigorously opposed the Rublee Plan and did all it could to thwart its implementation." (p 206)

Israeli Apartheid: The Jury's In 2

2011-11-18T20:09:00.034+11:00

The jury's in again*: Israel is an apartheid state - no if's, but's, and maybe's. And yes, it's from the river to the sea:

"The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) is an international citizen-based Tribunal of conscience created in response to the demands of civil society (NGOs, charities, unions, faith-based organisations) to inform and mobilise public opinion and put pressure on decision makers. In view of the failure to implement the Advisory Opinion of 9 July 2004 of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concerning the construction by Israel of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the failure to implement resolution ES-10/15 confirming the ICJ Opinion, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 July 2004, and the Gaza events of December 2008-January 2009, committees were established in different countries to promote and sustain a citizen's initiative in support of the rights of the Palestinian people. The RToP is imbued with the same spirit and espouses the same rigorous rules as those inherited from the Tribunal on Vietnam (1966-1967), which was established by the eminent scholar and philosopher Bertrand Russell... The Tribunal has no legal status; it operates as a court of the people.

"The Israeli Government was invited to present its case before the Tribunal but chose not to exercise this right and provided no answer to correspondence from the RToP.

"Following the hearings and deliberations of the jury, the findings of the third session of Russell Tribunal on Palestine, held in Cape Town on 5-6 November 2011, are summarised as follows.

I. Apartheid

"The Tribunal finds that Israel subjects the Palestinian people to an institutionalised regime of domination amounting to apartheid as defined under international law. This discriminatory regime manifests in varying intensity and forms against different categories of Palestinians depending on their location. The Palestinians living under colonial military rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are subject to a particularly aggravated form of apartheid. Palestinian citizens of Israel, while entitled to vote, are not part of the Jewish nation as defined by Israeli law and are therefore excluded from the benefits of Jewish nationality and subject to systematic discrimination across the broad spectrum of recognised human rights. Irrespective of such differences, the Tribunal concludes that Israel's rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.

"The state of Israel is legally obliged to respect the prohibition of apartheid contained in international law. In addition to being a crime against humanity, the practice of apartheid is universally prohibited. The Tribunal has considered Israel's rule over the Palestinian people under its jurisdiction in the light of the legal definition of apartheid. Apartheid is prohibited by international law because of the experience of apartheid in southern Africa, which had its own unique attributes. The legal definition of apartheid, however, applies to any situation anywhere in the world where the following 3 core elements exist: (i) that two distinct racial groups can be identified; (ii) that 'inhuman acts' are committed against the subordinate group; and (iii) that such acts are committed systematically in the context of an institutionalised regime of domination by one group over the other.

Racial Groups

"... On the basis of expert evidence heard by the Tribunal, the jury concludes that international law gives a broad meaning to the term 'racial' as including elements of ethnic and national origin, and therefore that the definition of 'racial group' is a sociological rather than biological question... From the evidence received, it was clear to the jury that 2 distinct, identifiable groups exist in a very practical sense and that the legal definition of 'racial group' applies to all circumstances in which the Israeli authorities have jurisdiction over Palestinians.

Inhuman Acts of Apartheid

"Individual inhuman acts committed in the context of such a system are defined by international law as crimes of apartheid. The jury heard abundant evidence of practices that constitute 'inhuman acts' perpetrated against the Palestinian people by the Israeli authorities. These include:

"Widespead deprivation of Palestinian life through military operations and incursions, a formal policy of 'targeted killings', and the use of lethal force against demonstrations.

"Torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians in the context of widespread deprivation of liberty through policies of arbitrary arrest and administrative detention without charge. The jury finds that such measures frequently go beyond what is reasonably justified by security concerns and amount to a form of domination over the Palestinians as a group.

"Systematic human rights violations that preclude Palestinian development and prevent the Palestinians as a group from participating in political, economic, social and cultural life.

"Palestinian refugees who remain displaced are also victims of apartheid by virtue of the ongoing denial of their right to return to their homes, as well as by laws that remove their property and citizenship rights.

"Policies of forced population transfer remain widespread, particularly in the occupied Palestinian territory.

"Civil and political rights of Palestinians including rights to movement, residence, free opinion and association are severely curtailed.

"Palestinian socio-economic rights are also adversely affected by discriminatory Israeli policies in the spheres of education, health and housing.

"Since 1948 the Israeli authorities have pursued concerted policies of colonisation and appropriation of Palestinian land. Israel has through its laws and practices divided the Israeli Jewish and Palestinian populations and allocated them different physical spaces, with varying levels and quality of infrastructure, services and access to resources. The end result is wholesale territorial fragmentation and a series of separate reserves and enclaves, with the 2 groups largely segregated. The Tribunal heard evidence to the effect that such a policy is formally described in Israel as hafrada, Hebrew for 'separation'.

A Systematic & Institutionalised Regime

"The inhuman acts listed above do not occur in random or isolated instances. They are sufficiently widespread, integrated and complementary to be described as systematic. They are also sufficiently rooted in law, public policy and formal institutions to be described as institutionalised. In the Israeli legal system, preferential status is afforded to Jews over non-Jews through its laws on citizenship and Jewish nationality, the latter of which has created a group privileged in most spheres of public life, including residency rights, land ownership, urban planning, access to services and social, economic and cultural rights... The Tribunal heard expert evidence detailing the relationship between the State of Israel and the quasi-state Jewish national institutions (the Jewish Agency, World Zionist Organisation, and Jewish National Fund) that embed and formalise many of the material privileges granted exclusively to Israeli Jews.

"Regarding the West Bank, the Tribunal highlights the institutionalised separation and discrimination revealed by the existence of 2 entirely separate legal systems: Palestinians are subject to military law enforced by military courts that fall far short of international fair trial standards; Israeli Jews living in illegal settlements are subject to Israeli civil law and a civil court system. The result is a vastly different procedure and sentence for the same crime, committed in the same jurisdiction, by members of a different group. An apparatus of administrative control implemented through pervasive permit systems and bureaucratic restrictions adversely affects Palestinians throughout territories under Israeli control. In contrast to the explicit and readily available South African legislation, the Tribunal draws attention to the obscurity and inaccessibility of many laws, military orders and regulations that underpin Israel's institutionalised regime of domination.

"Much of the evidence heard by the Tribunal relating to the question of apartheid is also relevant to the separate crime against humanity of persecution, which can be considered in relation to Israeli practices under the principle of cumulative charges. Persecution involves the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights of the members of an identifiable group in the context of a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population. The Tribunal concludes that the evidence presented to it supports a finding of persecution in relation to the following acts:

"The siege and blockade of the Gaza Strip as a form of collective punishment of the civilian population; The targeting of civilians during large-scale military operations; The destruction of civilian homes not justified by military necessity; The adverse impact on the civilian population effected by the Wall and its associated regime in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; The concerted campaign of forcible evacuation and demolition of unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev region of southern Israel.

III. Legal Consequences

"Apartheid and persecution are acts attributable to Israel and entail its international legal responsibility. Israel must cease its apartheid acts and its policies of persecution and offer appropriate assurances and guarantees on non-repetition. In addition, Israel must make full reparation for the injuries caused by its internationally wrongful acts, with regard to any damage, whether material or moral. With regard to reparation, Israel must compensate the Palestinians for the damage it has caused, with compensation to cover any financially assessable damage for loss of life, property, and loss of profits insofar as this can be established.

"States and international organisations also have international responsibilities. They have a duty to cooperate to bring Israel's apartheid acts and policies of persecution to an end, including by not rendering aid or assistance to Israel and not recognising the illegal situation arising from its acts. They must bring to an end Israel's infringements of international criminal law through the prosecution of international crimes, including the crimes of apartheid and persecution.

IV. Recommendations

In view of the above findings, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine resolutely urges all relevant parties to act in accordance with their legal obligations.

Accordingly, the Tribunal urges:

"The state of Israel to immediately dismantle its system of apartheid over the Palestinian people, to rescind all discriminatory laws and practices, not to pass any further discriminatory legislation, and to cease forthwith acts of persecution against Palestinians;

"All states to cooperate to bring an end to the illegal situation arising from Israel's practices of apartheid and persecution. In light of the obligation not to render aid and assistance, all states must consider appropriate measures to exert sufficient pressure on Israel, including the imposition of sanctions, the severing of diplomatic relations collectively through international organisations, or in the absence of consensus, individually by breaking bilateral relations with Israel.

"The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to accept jurisdiction as requested by the Palestinian authorities in January 2009, and to initiate an investigation 'as expeditiously as possible' as called for by the 'Goldstone Report', into international crimes committed in Palestinian territory since 1 July 2002, including crimes of apartheid and persecution;

"Palestine to accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court;

"Global civil society... to replicate the spirit of solidarity that contributed to the end of apartheid in South Africa, including by making national parliaments aware of the findings of the Tribunal and supporting the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS);

"The UN General Assembly to reconstitute the UN Special Committee against Apartheid, and to convene a special session to consider the question of apartheid against the Palestinian people. In this connection the Committee should compile a list of individuals, organisations, banks, companies, corporations, charities, and any other private or public bodies which assist Israel's apartheid regime with a view to taking appropriate measures;

"The UN General Assembly to request an advisory opinion from the ICJ as called for by the current and former UN Special Rapporteurs for human rights to the occupied Palestinian territory, as well as by the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, to examine the nature of Israel's prolonged occupation and apartheid;

"The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to address the issue of apartheid in its forthcoming review of Israel in February 2012;

"The government of South Africa, as the host country for the third session of the RToP, to ensure that no reprisals of any sort are taken by the state of Israel against the witnesses that testified before the Tribunal..." (Dr. Hanan Chehata, middleeastmonitor.org.uk, 7/11/11)

It goes without saying that the the above finding was not reported by any Australian ms media outlets that I'm aware of.

[*See my 21/9/09 post Israeli Apartheid: The Jury's In.]

Witches Brew 8

2011-11-16T21:23:00.032+11:00

Yet another post in my series on the extraordinary anti-BDS rants in the NSW Legislative Council of September 30...

Today's focus will be on the 'contribution' of Greens MLC Cate Faehrmann, who, although having nothing of value to say on the subject, said it anyway, embarrassing in the process her two more informed colleagues, John Kaye and David Shoebridge, undermining the Greens' reputation for principled politics, and, needless to say, giving immense comfort to the enemy:

"The Greens have a strong and principled position on the question of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the Middle East. The Australian Greens resolution on the matter makes clear our support for the rights and aspirations of both the Palestinian and the Israeli people to live in peace and security in their own independent, sovereign states."

Strong and principled? Not!

For the Greens, an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the establishment of a Palestinian state therein, is effectively all that is needed to solve the Palestine problem.

The more fundamental issue of the right of return of the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967 (who constitute the majority of Palestinians) to their homes and lands in Israel (im)proper is fudged with talk of "a just and practical negotiated settlement of the claims of the Palestinian refugees that provides compensation for those who are unable to return to their country of origin, Israel or Palestine" (greens.org.au). This construction, of course, begs the question why they are unable to return, an issue that Greens policy studiously avoids because it leads ineluctably to a recognition that Israel's Jewish character, linked to its current, gerrymandered Jewish majority, rests on keeping millions of Palestinian refugees in a state of permanent exile.

And so, for the Greens, blather about practicability and inability to return trumps the adoption of the genuinely strong and principled position of unambiguous support for the Palestinian right of return and a clear repudiation of the Zionist concept of Israel as a Jewish state for all Jews vis-a-vis a state of its citizens - inclusive of those currently stateless Palestinian refugees - regardless of ethno-religious affiliation.

It is precisely the failure of the Greens to come to terms with the refugee issue and Israel's essential apartheid nature that leads to the inclusion in its platform of that risible nonsense about our support for the rights and aspirations of Israel - an occupying, colonising, deeply racist state.

"The ongoing injustices against the Palestinian people, including ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories and the expropriation of Palestinian land and resources for Israeli settlements, is unacceptable. The Greens are extremely critical of Israeli Government actions in this area."

Just unacceptable? Just extremely critical? In the Greens resolution on Tibet, China's "plundering of Tibet's natural resources and destruction of Tibetan cultures" is roundly (and rightly) "condemned." Typically, with Greens such as Faehrmann, China gets a firm rap over the knuckles for swamping Tibet, while Israel gets the very lightest of wrist-taps for doing the same in Palestine.

"The BDS urges various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law. I agree that this tactic has been extemely controversial and its success in Australia has been brought into question."

As I've indicated in other posts, Faehrmann seems blind to the fact that the controversy around BDS is solely the work of the Israel lobby and its Murdoch mouthpiece, The Australian, and therefore an entirely confected thing having no real resonance with the Australian public.

"While I do not agree with much of what other members have said in this debate, I share the concern of some members that the tone and public perception of these protests has been counterproductive and they are of concern to me."

Again, as I've indicated in earlier posts on Faehrmann, her NSW colleague Jeremy Buckingham, and federal Greens leader Bob Brown, so spooked are they by The Australian's confected anti-BDS crusade that they've even adopted its vocabulary, the word 'counterproductive' being the dead give-away here. It goes without saying that if the Greens are serious about becoming a real third party force in Australian politics, a genuine alternative to Labor and Liberal, they wouldn't be taking their cues from the Murdoch press.

"In my view certain chants used at the protest have descended into that domain [of anti-Semitism]. The Hon. Eric Roozendaal mentioned the 'From the river to the sea' chant. I echo his concern about it and do not support its use. It is unfortunate and should be condemned."

Nor should the Greens be in the business of echoing Zionist talking points as deployed by the likes of Eric Roozendaal. The plain fact of the matter here is that Faehrmann has absolutely no idea what the chant represents - essentially an echo of the need for a genuinely democratic, bi-national state covering all of Palestine. (See my discussion in Witches Brew 7 on this.)

"I have given this motion a great deal of considered thought and I have found it difficult to arrive at this decision, but I can only vote in support of it."

The problem with Faehrmann is that her considered thought has no foundation in knowledge of the issue. I guarantee she hasn't devoted a nanosecond of her time to the necessary research and reading required for an understanding of the Palestine problem. Why not defer then to those of her colleagues, especially John Kaye, who have obviously done their homework? But hey, that'd take an ounce or two of humility, wouldn't it?

The Muslim Brotherhood are Just Pussies!

2011-11-15T10:22:00.040+11:00

Meet the 'ladies' of the Zionist Sisterhood:

The smug, smirking, ball-busting Israeli settler woman, loitering with (genocidal) intent on a street somewhere in Israeli-occupied Hebron, simply cannot resist the guy with the microphone:

Here it's great. This is Hebron Heights. We've got King David's palace, fresh air, olive trees, fruit trees. The entire Hebron landscape. It's the best.
-Do the Arabs here make trouble?
If they do, then we... That's the challenge. This is not paradise. There's still a lot of work to do and... From two of my windows you can see that side of town, all of Hebron. My neighbour calls it 'motivational windows'. You open them in the morning and see what else has to be done. Until we can return to there... That's it.
-It's Jewish or Arab...?
(Pointing to house in a wire cage) This house is still Arab. Another one here (pointing to door daubed with Hebrew graffiti and stars of David) used to be Arab and today it houses Jews. It will become more and more Jewish.
-(Palestinian woman standing on her doorstep inside the wire cage calls out to interviewer) She wants to lock us in!
(Zionist Sister marches towards her, barking orders) Get in the house!
-I won't close the door.
Close it! Close the door!
-Stay out of this!
Close the door!
-Stay out of this! I'm not closing the door.
Sit here, in the cage.
-I'm not closing the door.
Sit here. Close the door!
-I don't want to go inside.
Close the... (Zionist Sister notices she's being filmed by the woman's daughter) Get the camera out of here!
-Call the police.
Turn the camera off!
-It's early in the morning, what do you want from us?
Shut up!
-(Calling to Israeli soldier) Don't you see what she's doing?
Sharmoota (Whore), sharmoota.
-You are.
Sharmoota.
-You are. Go away.
Sharmoota.
-Look what she's doing. Go away!
Sharmoota.
-Go away, you bitch!
Sharmoota.
-(To soldier) Did you see what she did?
(Dragging it out for effect) Sharmooota. Sharmooota. You are a sharmooota. Your daughter is too. Don't you dare open this door!
-Don't you dare come here!
Sharmooota.
-I'll leave as I please.

(The complete b'tselem.org video - Orthodox Jewish woman harasses Palestinian - may be viewed at angryarab.blogspot.com, 13/11/11)

Meanwhile, across the seas, somewhere in Israel's nurturing motherland, her Sister*, Rachel Abrams, a woman with (genocidal) attitude, the wife of neocon Bush official Elliot Abrams, and Board Member of Bill Kristol's Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), is so overcome by the news of Gilad Shalit's release that she just up and vomits it all into her blog, titled - but of course - Bad Rachel:

"He's free and he's home in the bosom of his family and his country. Celebrate, Israel, with all the joyous gratitude that fills your hearts, as we all do along with you. Then round up his captors, the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood and use women - those who aren't strapping bombs to their own devils' spawn and sending them out to meet their 72 virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others - and their offspring - those who haven't already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god - as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they're traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose." (GILAD!!!!!!!!!! badrachel.blogspot.com, 18/10/11)

[* "To the Jews of Judea and Samaria whose every stud hammered and floor tile laid in that magnificent, empty lunar landscape summoned the disapproving scrutiny of allies and the menacing outrage of foes, and who must contemplate the possibility of expulsion - or worse - every day for the sake of a 'peace' with a people whose declared war against them has never abated: May it be a sweet year." (May it be a sweet year, badrachel.blogspot.com, 28/9/10)]

Can't Quite Get My Head Around This One

2011-11-14T21:01:00.009+11:00

On the one hand:

"Female cadets at the Australian Defence Force Academy are subjected to widespread, low-level sexual harassment, a comprehensive investigation of attitudes towards women at the ADF's officer training establishment has found. Sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick said she also heard confidential testimony describing how some senior cadets held competitions to score a 'trifecta' - sex with a first-year cadet from each of the 3 services... The low-level sexual harassment consisted mainly of jokes and stories, unwelcome questioning and discussion among cadets about sexual activity... The survey found 74.1% of females and 30.3% of males reported unacceptable gender-related or sex-related harassment. That included whistling, sexist and offensive remarks, put-downs and unwanted attempts to establish a sexual relationship. And 2.1% of women and 0.2% of men reported being forced to have sex without consent while 4.3% of women and 1.9% of men reported being treated badly for refusing to have sex." (Defence academy women 'targeted', Brendan Nicholson & Mark Dodd, The Australian, 4/11/11)

On the other:

"Across our nation today [11/11/11] we will pause to commemorate a great war that began before most of us were alive and ended with the deaths of 60,000 Australian soldiers. Our leaders will make speeches echoing honour and sacrifice, school captains will lay wreaths, and trumpeted reveilles will puncture a minute's silence. But what is the point of all this national emotional investment in commemoration?

"Australians seem obsessed with commemorating world wars. We watch high-rating TV shows in which Australians trace the footsteps of their military ancestors. We've built thousands of war memorials and hundreds of RSL clubs. We swim in war memorial pools. We drive to our national capital on a Remembrance Driveway, where roadside toilets remember our Victoria cross winners. We can buy sand from Gallipoli over the counter at any Australia Post, and buy military histories by the metre in our bookstores. At fottball grand finals the names of fallen soldiers grace the big screen. Commemoration is almost inescapable - lest we forget.

"Commemoration sells and war memorials are a growth industry in Australia. This year, while the Australian Defence Force budget was cut, the Australian War Memorial budget increased 25%. Staff and seed funds from government are supporting a campign for a $3.5 million dollar Peacekeepers Memorial, and another group is soliciting for a $3 million edifice to the distant Boer War. Another $25 million is planned for two new world war memorials beside Lake Burley-Griffin. The Prime Minister has committed $8.1 million to building new war memorials in Wellington and Washington. At $39.6 million, the planned outlay on these memorials will be greater than the budget of Australia's peak intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments." (From On the 11th, remember the living, James Brown, Sydney Morning Herald, 11/11/11)

Witches Brew 7

2011-11-14T07:16:00.029+11:00

Continuing my analysis of the September 15 anti-BDS fest in the NSW Legislative Council...

Former NSW Labor treasurer Eric Roozendaal's 'contribution' to the 'debate' was a textbook case of throw as much mud as possible and hope some of it sticks:

The Nazi slur, of course, is de rigeur:

"Why do people feel uncomfortable about this BDS campaign? I feel uncomfortable to see Jewish shops, Israeli shops, being targeted because that brings back images very similar to those seen pre-war in Nazi Germany, Austria and other places."

Not to mention the Zio-blur, whereby Jewish shops mesh seamlessly with Israeli shops. Should your opponent make a perfectly valid point about an Israeli firm aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes, simply call it a Jewish shop, and hey presto, he's an anti-Semite.

There's cheap as chips debating points:

"I do not see the BDS campaigning outside a Syrian kebab shop. I do not see people targeting Syrian stores in this country - or stores that have an association with the Syrian Government or have businesses in Syria." (To which Greens MLC Dr John Kaye shot back deliciously: "Name one!")

Where do I begin? a) I'm not aware of any Syrian organisation that calls for BDS; b) Syrian kebab shops (or more properly, kebab shops owned by Australian citizens of Syrian origin) are not links in a Syrian kebab shop chain that feeds the Syrian army and boasts about it on its website; c) The crimes of the Syrian regime are directed solely against its own people and do not extend to dispossessing and occupying another.

Ready for slur number 2?:

"The Greens need to understand that there is a distinct discomfort in watching particular civilian stores being targeted in in a way that is very similar to what happened in pre-war Nazi Germany. I think that is a legitimate concern for people to have."

Chuck in a red herring:

"The BDS tries to equate Israel as an apartheid state in order to delegitimise it."

Appalling syntax aside, which of the three BDS demands - an end to the occupation and colonization of Arab lands; the recognition of the right of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and the promotion of the right of return to their homes and properties of Palestinian refugees - mention apartheid? (Not, of course, that Israel has any legitimacy to lose in the first place or is not an apartheid state.)

At bottom, it's all about Eric and tribe:

"What was the chant at the Max Brenner store in Victoria? It was 'From the river to the sea'. What does that mean? It means they want to see one state running from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean - one state. The basic theory of the BDS is that removing the only Jewish state in the Middle East and turning it into an Arab state will somehow contribute to peace."

Keeping in mind that the second line of the chant is 'Palestine will be free', is it then a crime to want freedom for Palestine?

Returning to the 3 key BDS demands, is it a crime to want the end of an illegal occupation, illegal settlements and illegal wall? Is it a crime to want complete equality for all citizens within Israel, regardless of their ethno-religious background? Is it a crime to want the return of ethnically-cleansed Palestinian refugees to their homes and lands? Is it a crime to want a secular, democratic state in Palestine vis a vis the existing sectarian, ethnographic, occupying, war-mongering entity known as Israel?

Seems Eric's all for freedom, equal rights, refugee rights and unfettered democracy - just not in Palestine. And why not? Simple: As a Jew, a Jewish state in Palestine grants Eric the unbelievable privilege of choosing whether to live in Australia or Israel or both. Palestinians, of course, get no such choice. Depending where it is they're hanging on by their fingernails, they're either born into an occupation (West Bank/Gaza), into second-class citizenship (Israel) or into stateless exile (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan etc).

Blatant misrepresentation never goes astray when all that matters is being on the top of the pile. First, make your straw man:

"Under the second major platform of the BDS we are led to believe that the resolution of all the problems in the Middle East will come from the abolition of the state of Israel - from the river to the sea." (The second platform of BDS, you'll remember, is actually equality for Arab Palestinian citizens in Israel.

Then rip into him:

"Take away this little Jewish state stuck in the centre [sic] of the Middle East and all of the problems in the Middle East will be resolved. The problems in Libya will disappear. The problems in Egypt will disappear. The problems in Syria will disappear. The problems in Lebanon will disappear."

Stuck!? Well, who's responsible for that, Eric? And Eric, you've conveniently forgotten the biggest Middle Eastern problem of them all, that of the Palestinian people. A transition from a Jewish to a secular, democratic Palestinian state - from the river to the sea - would surely go a bloody long way to solving their near 100-year old problem of exile, statelessness, occupation and oppression.

Play the pseudo-scholar? Why not?:

"Members might ask: Where does the slogan 'From the river to the sea' come from? It is not an original slogan of the BDS; it is, of course, the slogan of Hamas - that democracy-loving organisation which is prohibited in many Western countries around the world."

I hate to have to break it to you, Eric, but geographic Palestine has always been from the river to the sea. And when you describe Hamas sarcastically as a democracy-loving organisation, you are, of course, speaking largely to an audience for whom the fact that Hamas won the eminently democratic Palestinian elections of 2006 fair and square would be about as well-known as the fact that Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC.

Trivialise and mock the issue:

"I do not understand or see the connection between a white chocolate frappe and Max Brenner and resolving the problems of the Middle East."

But two can play that game: I, for example, simply do not understand or see the connection between Eric Roozendaal, a quite comfortable, thankyou, Australian citizen, who doesn't have to think twice before spending his grossly inflated salary on white chocolatte frappes, and the fortunes of the apartheid state which currently occupies all of Palestine - from the river to the sea.

Posture as the voice of sweet reason vis-a-vis those Green "extremists," Kaye and Shoebridge:

"I support a two-state solution in Palestine and Israel, as do most reasonably-minded people."

Finally, how about another slip, slop, slap of slur-n-blur?:

"I always support the right of people to protest. I have protested many times... but when Jewish chocolate shops are targeted on the slimmest of reasons I know something is going wrong... I have seen those images before somewhere and I am uncomfortable with that. This BDS campaign is sinister..."

OK, so Eric's a two-stater and Jewish chocolate shops are out of bounds, right? But hands up all those who've ever seen/heard him protest Israel's occupation, its settlements, or its wall. Come on, I'm patient.

In the Dead of Night 2

2011-11-13T06:58:00.018+11:00

The NSW Greens' nocturnal nemesis, Dr John Nemesh, appears to have miraculously escaped being clapped in irons (see my 29/9/11 post In the Dead of Night):

"John Nemesh pleaded guilty yesterday in Newtown Local Court of distributing electoral material 'without particulars' after admitting his anti-Greens posters did not include the name and address of the printer. Magistrate Margaret Quinn, who described Dr Nemesh as 'a very well-regarded person', ordered the dismissal of the charges without proceeding to a conviction. Ms Quinn said she regarded the charge against Dr Nemesh as being of 'very low' importance. She said she had been aware of the Marrickville BDS campaign 'from the papers'. 'I make no comment on the matter, but I did think it was fairly disgraceful at the time', she said." (Greens' boycott a disgrace, says judge, Imre Sulusinszky, The Australian, 11/11/11)

This is a puzzling account indeed. Questions abound. Nemesh is well-regarded, but by whom? If the charge is of such low importance, why is it even on the books? What have the magistrate's views on BDS got to do with the case? And would they be relevant anyway if her information on the subject comes solely from the papers? Or should that be paper? And what to make of a magistrate who prefaces a comment that the Greens' boycott is a disgrace with I make no comment?

Then there's the contradiction between her gratuitous commentary on The Greens and the BDS campaign, but, we have to assume from Salusinszky's report, complete silence on the disgraceful nonsense emblazoned on Nemesh's posters: The Greens are anti-gay, anti-women, support terrorism and oppose democracy.

On the other hand, one can appreciate just how high the stakes were for the good doctor:

"His barrister, Stephen Russell, told the court Dr Nemesh was concerned that under a BDS scheme, his young daughter who attends school in Marrickville would be banned from participating in any exchange program with Israel." (ibid)

A father's worst nightmare!

Guilty as Hell

2011-11-11T18:00:00.027+11:00

Screwing Arab Palestine is a proud, near century-old British tradition. And Foreign Secretary William Hague's decision to abstain from voting on the Palestinian Authority's bid for recognition in the UN Security Council is merely the latest footnote in the sordid history of this perversion:

"Britain will abstain from the United Nations vote on the Palestinian bid for statehood, Foreign Secretary William Hague told Parliament Wednesday. For the quest for full recognition to be adopted by the Security Council, the Palestinians need at least 9 'yes' votes and must avoid a veto by any of the permanent council members: United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. The US already has announced it will veto the resolution." (Hague: UK to abstain on UN Palestinian vote, Gregory Katz, AP, 9/11/11)

The unspeakable practice, of course, began with Foreign Secretary (1916-19) Arthur James Balfour who lent his name to the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain proclaimed its plan to throw Palestine to the Zionist wolves. In fact, Hague's predecessor made absolutely no bones about it, as we know from the following memorandum addressed to his cabinet colleague Lord Curzon on 11 August 1919:

"The contradiction between the letters of the [League of Nations] Covenant and the policy of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the 'independent nation' of Palestine than in that of the 'independent nation' of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right. What I have never been able to understand is how it can be harmonised with the declaration [Anglo-French of November 1918], the Covenant, or the instructions to the [America's King-Crane] Commission of Enquiry. I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arabs, but they will never say they want it. Whatever be the future of Palestine it is not now an 'independent nation', nor is it yet on the way to become one. Whatever deference should be paid to the views of those living there, the Powers in their selection of a mandatory do not propose, as I understand the matter, to consult them. In short, so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate." (Quoted in Palestine Papers: 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict, Doreen Ingrams, 1972/2009, p 73)

That Hague and his forbears are collectively responsible for one of today's longest-running Crimes Against Humanity will be obvious to all but the most inveterate historical amnesiacs. If anything, the following 1968 indictment of Britain's paramount role in this crime, by British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), is way too restrained:

"The story [of the Palestinian people] is a tragedy, and the essence of this tragedy is that about 1,500,000 Palestinian Arabs have now become refugees as a result of the intervention of foreign powers in their country's affairs. The might of these foreign powers has been irresistable, and the evicted Palestinian Arabs have been forcibly deprived of their country, their homes, and their property without having been allowed to have a voice in the determination of their own destiny.

"Though the facts are public, there is widespead ignorance of them in the Western World and, above all, in the United States, the Western country which has had, and is still having, the greatest say in deciding Palestine's fate. The United States has the greatest say, but the United Kingdom bears the heaviest load of responsibility. The Balfour Declaration of 2nd November 1917 was the winning card in a sordid contest between the two sets of belligerents in the First World War for winning the support of the Jews in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and - most important of all - in the United States.

"In promising to give the Jews 'a national home' in Palestine, the British Government was, I believe, using deliberately ambiguous language. As a citizen of the United Kingdom, I declare this belief of mine with feelings of shame and contrition, but I do believe that this is the truth. Throughout the First World War and after it, the Government of the United Kingdom was playing a double game. Perhaps a lawyer might be able to plead plausibly that there was no inconsistency between the respective pledges that Britain gave to the Arabs and to the Zionists, or between the inclusion of the Balfour Declaration in the text of the mandate taken by Britain for the administration of Palestine and the classification of this mandate in the 'A' class - a class in which the mandatory power was committed to giving the people of the mandated territory their independence at the earliest date at which they would be capable of standing on their own feet. Whatever the casuists might say, laymen - Arabs or Jews - would, I think, naturally infer, bona fide, from the British Government's various statements and acts that it had made two committments that were incompatible with each other.

"At the same time when the mandate was drafted, offered, and accepted, the Arab Palestinians amounted to more than 90% of the population of the country. The mandate for Palestine was an 'A' mandate, and, as I interpret the Hussein-McMahon correspondence, Palestine had not been excepted by the British Government from the area in which they had pledged themselves to King Hussein to recognize and support Arab independence. The Palestinian Arabs could therefore reasonably assume that Britain was pledged to prepare Palestine for becoming an independent Arab state. On the other side, the Zionists naturally saw, in the British promise of a 'national home' in Palestine, the entering wedge for the insertion into Palestine of the Jewish state of Israel which was in fact inserted there in 1948.

"To my mind, the most damaging point in the charge-sheet against my country is that Britain was in control of Palestine for 30 years - 1918-1948 - and that during those fateful 3 decades she never made up her mind, or at any rate never declared, what her policy about the future of Palestine was. All through those 30 years, Britain lived from hand to mouth, admitting into Palestine, year by year, a quota of Jewish immigrants that varied according to the strength of the respective pressures of the Arabs and Jews at the time. These immigrants could not have come in if they had not been shielded by a British chevaux-de-frise. If Palestine had remained under Ottoman Turkish rule, or if it had become an independent Arab state in 1918, Jewish immigrants would never have been admitted into Palestine in large enough numbers to enable them to overwhelm the Palestinian Arabs in this Arab people's own country. The reason why the state of Israel exists today and why today 1,500,000 Palestinian Arabs are refugees is that, for 30 years, Jewish immigration was imposed on the Palestinian Arabs by British military power until the immigrants were sufficiently numerous and sufficiently well-armed to be able to fend for themselves with tanks and planes of their own. The tragedy in Palestine is not just a local one; it is a tragedy for the World, because it is an injustice that is a menace to the World's peace. Britain's guilt is not diminished by the humiliating fact that she is now impotent to redress the wrong that she has done." (From Toynbee's Foreward to The Palestine Diary (1970) by Robert John & Sami Hadawi)

My God, if ever a nation needed to get down on its knees and beg forgiveness from the Palestinian people - both past and present - it's surely Little Britain. Hague's latest manoeuvre in the Security Council shows just how far Little Britain is from this most necessary act of repentance.

(See also my 19/1/10 post It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.)

Lest We Forget Indeed!

2011-11-11T15:25:00.009+11:00

"At 11am tomorrow (Friday), the nation will pause to remember all those who have fought gallantly for Australia on the battlefield... As Jews, we recall the gallant deeds of the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade in the Battle of of Be'er Sheva [sic: Beersheba], which fought to liberate lands from the Ottoman Empire that would one day become part of Israel." (Editorial: Lest we forget, The Australian Jewish News, 11/11/11)

"... which fought to liberate lands from the Ottoman Empire that would one day become part of Israel." Which fought and died.

But what if those deaths could have been prevented?

What if Chaim Weizmann, Zionist supremo and architect of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which gave the Zionist movement its initial, British-backed foothold in Palestine, hadn't deliberately scuppered a peace deal with the Turks that would have seen them out of the war well before the Battle of Beersheba, and so saved the lives of who knows how many Australian, British and Turkish troops?

Those who, for propaganda purposes, would spin Sir Edmund Allenby's campaign against the Turks in Palestine (October-December, 1917), and especially its Australian involvement, as some kind of pre-ordained clearing of the way for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, wouldn't, of course, be interested in such questions. They might find a skeleton in the closet.

Those unafraid to explore the real history of the time, however, will take the trouble to read my 13/11/10 post Diggers Who Died for Israel? Just click on the Chaim Weizmann label below.

Life Imitates Art

2011-11-09T21:03:00.034+11:00

(Or Marquez imitates Diaz.)

Comic genius Tracey Ullman was born to send up the rest of us, in particular the Americans who walk among us.

From her State of the Union series, Tracey does ditzy/effervescent (take your pick) actress Cameron Diaz:
Voiceover: At an independent film festival in Portland, Oregan, Cameron Diaz talks about her latest movie.
Compere: We're talking to Cameron Diaz who stars in a new movie, That Terrible Time of the Month, a film about female genital mutilation.
Diaz (skolling coke and repeatedly burping): I'm sorry... I can just do that!
-Cameron, welcome.
Diaz (burps again, laughing hysterically)
- Cameron, welcome. Thankyou for talking to us.
Diaz: Hello, thankyou, thankyou.
-So what got you interested in female genital mutilation?
Diaz: Well, I was buying these amazing jeans from Fred Segal and it got me thinking that, like, African girls they can't even wear jeans because of their painfully mutilated geni-als, and that's just so sad and amazing because this is really like... the... golden age of American blue jeans so...
-So is it true that rock star Bono made you into more of an activist [Diaz burps] on this cause?
Diaz (laughs hysterically, crushing coke can): Who told you this? [Throws crushed can on floor] Um, yeah. We were on Larry David's plane and Bono took me into the bathroom, which is like amazing, like surrounded by, like Tibetan prayer flags and stuff, and he showed me where they do the actual circumcision. [Opening legs wide] It's like in here and they just -tshh- take it all out and then it was really sad and amazing [laughs].
-Let's see a clip from That Terrible Time of the Month which is creating Oscar buzz.
Diaz: Oh no, just stop! Just stop.

Diaz, brandishing rifle, bursts into African mud hut, screaming at off camera clitorodectimist: Just stop right now! Drop that clitoris! OK, Togo, c'mon [African girl runs to her as Diaz backs out still training her rifle on off camera clitorodectimist] You are really sad [burps] and... not amazing [farts].

OK, that's the 'art', now here's 'life'. Tracey'd love it:

"While [US] Department of Defense... policies still restrict women from serving in combat units, the soldiers selected from this group [of female trainees] will serve alongside the Army's most elite units on the battlefield. The Army has never selected women to do a mission because of their sex, until now. It is recruiting female soldiers to work closely with Special Forces teams and Ranger units during raids. Because women and children are often held in a separate room while soldiers search the compound, these teams go into villages in Afghanistan to build rapport with women, as it is culturally inappropriate for male soldiers to talk with them... The teams are trained to have a deeper understanding of Afghan culture and to connect with women in the villages to gather information on enemy activities. The teams aim to create a dialogue between US forces and Afghan women, which can help in medical clinics or building governance...

"The Soldier Urban Reaction Facility (SURF) was created to focus on building rapport in a foreign culture. Using cameras, the instructors can watch how the soldiers might handle different worst-case scenarios, staged in each of the 4 rooms. Built out of wood with faux arches and a crescent hanging over the opening, it looked like a cheap, rundown amusement park, but it is intended to resemble the Middle East. Rugs covered the floors. Pillows lined the walls of one room. In the center of the third room was a low table covered by a maroon cloth.

"When the test started, [Sgt Janiece] Marquez knocked softly on the door and was greeted by 7 female soldiers posing as 'villagers'. 'How is everyone?' Marquez asked, taking a seat on the floor and laying her rifle nearby. The 'villagers' started speaking at once. Their husbands beat them. One said she didn't want to be a sex slave around only to make babies. The 'villagers' demanded education. Freedom. Equality. The pleas were lost in a shrill wall of sound. 'Ladies, I can only speak to one of you at a time', Marquez said calmly. But before the meeting could get going, two soldiers acting as husbands burst into the room. Screaming and waving an AK-47 rifle, the men chased their wives into a back room. Marquez, startled, jumped up and snatched her rifle. Holding it in both hands, she backed away from the men, who were huge, compared with her. 'Why are you in my house?' demanded Spc David Atkinson. 'Who let you in here? Which one?' As Atkinson yelled, his partner, Staff Sgt. Mike Ward, started hauling the women out. Holding the women by the hair and 'slapping' them, Ward screamed at Marquez. She raised her rifle and ordered the men to get on their knees. 'Are you here to execute us?' Atkinson screamed. 'Lay down', Marquez said, grabbing Atkinson's AK-47, which had been dropped in the commotion. The men acted stunned, but they complied. After kneeling and stretching their arms out across the table, they began to yell at Marquez. 'Why are you in my house?' 'I am here to listen to your concerns', Marquez said, her rifle still trained on them. 'This is how you help people?' Atkinson screamed. 'By coming into my house and making me get on the floor? You want to keep disrespecting us?' Her training as an interrogator kicked in. 'Right now, you're under an insurgency', she told them. 'We fear for not only you but your wives. I am here to help people'." (In a new elite army unit, women serve alongside Special Forces, but first they must make the cut, Kevin Maurer, The Washington Post, 28/10/11)

Oh, and 'saving' brown (Afghan) women from brown (Afghan) men doesn't come cheap: $444 billion in the past decade to be exact.