The Australian's Israeli correspondent, Abraham Rabinovich, recently put together a little promo for MEMRI, those industrious Israeli cherry-pickers of the Arabic-language media, who craftily translate, package and deliver to the Western media anything they think might paint the Arabs in a negative light. (For the full monty on MEMRI, see my 27/7/08 post The Beat-Up Goes On)
Rabinovich opens with a caricature of an Arab media as awash in jihadi jibber-jabber as central Queensland is today in floodwaters, albeit with the odd island of 'moderate', pro-Western discourse bravely holding out against the jihadi tide:
"Amid calls for jihad emanating from websites and television channels in the Muslim world, a counterpoint has emerged: fierce Arab self-criticism and openness to the West. Although small in number compared with fundamentalists in the media, Muslim liberals have been able to expose the Arab world to a totally different, often shocking, way of seeing itself." (Reforming voices in the Middle East, 1/1/11)
The standout performer in this joint Rabinovich-MEMRI production is undoubtedly Qatar's Sheik Abd al-Hamid al-Ansari:
"Sheik Abd al-Hamid al-Ansari, former dean of Islamic law at Qatar University, attributes the backwardness of the modern Arab world to the disappearance of critical thinking and the resultant absence of accountability. 'Despite the defeats we have suffered for half a century [an apparent reference to to the wars with Israel] we have not learned a thing' he said on Abu-Dhabi TV. 'We say that Israel is the enemy and that we hate it, but let's ask ourselves why Israel is always victorious. It is because it has a tradition of accountability'. Although Israel was the victor in its war with Hezbollah in 2006, said al-Ansari, most Arabs chose to believe otherwise. 'Would you believe that after the war, Israel, despite all it had achieved, established a committee to examine the accountability of the government because it hadn't achieved a total victory; just 80% instead of 100%?* We, on the other hand, are still proclaiming from the rooftops that we won'. Although Israel is a target of vilification in the Arab media, it is not infrequently portrayed, as by al-Ansari, in a positive context as an example of a modern society from which Arabs could learn."
Of course, this particular, MEMRI-treated, account of al-Ansari's views may or may not be entirely accurate. That's MEMRI for you. What intriqued me, however, was Rabinovich's conceit that the Arabs have something positive to learn from Israel, which he touts as a paragon of 'modernity' - the latest weasel word doing the rounds.
Let's put this to the test then. What do the experts have to say about the nature of the society that Rabinovich would have the Arabs emulate? And just how 'modern' is Israel?
"A pioneering research study dealing with Israeli Jews' memory of the conflict with the Arabs, from its inception to the present, came into the world together with the war in Gaza. The sweeping support for Operation Cast Lead confirmed the main diagnosis that arises from the study, conducted by Daniel Bar-Tal, one of the world's leading political psychologists, and Rafi Nets-Zehngut, a doctoral student: Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering... Bar-Tal, who has won international awards for his scientific work, immigrated to Israel from Poland** as a child in the 1950s. 'I grew up in a [Polish] society that for the most part did not accept the reality that the authorities tried to portray, and fought for a different future', he says. 'I have melancholy thoughts about nations where there is an almost total identity between the agents of a conflict, on the one hand, who nurture the siege mentality and the existential fear, and various parts of society, on the other. Nations that respond so easily to battle cries and hesitate to enlist in favor of peace do not leave room for building a better future'. Bar-Tal emphasizes that the Israeli awareness of reality was also forged in the context of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens, but relies primarily on prolonged indoctrination that is based on ignorance and even nurtures it. In his opinion... the general public has not been interested in knowing what Israel did in Gaza for many years; how the disengagement was carried out and why, or what its outcome was for the Palestinians; why Hamas came to power in democratic elections; how many people were killed in Gaza from the disengagement until the start of the recent war; and whether it was possible to extend the recent ceasefire or even who violated it first. 'Although there are accessible sources, where it is possible to find the answers to those questions, the public practices self-censorship and accepts the establishment version, out of an unwillingness to open up to alternative information - they don't want to be confused with the facts. We are a nation that lives in the past, suffused with anxiety and suffering from chronic closed-mindedness', charges Bar-Tal."
Chronic closed-mindedness, eh? Now what was that that the Sheik was saying about the disappearance of critical thinking in the Arab world? Living in the past? Now what was that Rabinovich was saying about Israel being an example of a modern society?
I rest my case.
[*When the Sheik talks of Israel achieving an 80% victory in Lebanon in 2006, but nevertheless setting up a committee to examine the government's accountability for the remaining 20% failure, he is, of course, talking (through his turban) about the Winograd Commission. In their partisan account of the war, 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah & the War in Lebanon (2008), Haaretz journalists Harel and Issacharoff write: "The word 'failure' appeared in the report dozens of times. 'The primary responsibility for these serious failings rests with the Prime Minister, the minister of defense and the (outgoing) Chief of Staff'." (p 246) But did such a finding cost Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz their heads? No. So much for accountability. And so much for the sheik's imagined 80% victory. Moreover, his reference to all Israel had achieved has me wondering. Does this include the near 5 thousand Lebanese dead and wounded, or the 10,000 Lebanese homes destroyed, as cited by Harel & Issacharoff? (p 249)
** The Economist's 2010 Democracy Index, incidentally, categorises both Israel and Poland as "flawed democracies." Interestingly, however, in the crucial area of civil liberties, Poland rates 9.12; Israel 5.29.]
Showing posts with label Abraham Rabinovich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abraham Rabinovich. Show all posts
Monday, January 3, 2011
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Ripping Yarn
Cool:
"During [Meir] Dagan's term as Mossad chief, the Middle East became littered with the bodies of assassination victims." (Killing of scientists may be Mossad boss's last hurrah, Abe Rabinovich, The Australian, 4/12/10)
"During [Meir] Dagan's term as Mossad chief, the Middle East became littered with the bodies of assassination victims." (Killing of scientists may be Mossad boss's last hurrah, Abe Rabinovich, The Australian, 4/12/10)
Friday, May 8, 2009
Whopper Alert!
When you read the news reports of The Australian's Jerusalem correspondent Abraham Rabinovich, watch out for whoppers. Today's report begins thus:
"A call by a US official for Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has raised fears in Jerusalem that the Obama administration may be seeking to block the Iranian nuclear threat by sacrificing Israel's reported nuclear arsenal. US Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller said this week: 'Universal adherence to the NPT, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea, remains a fundamental objective of the United States'." (Israeli nuclear ambiguity under threat, Abraham Rabinovich, 8/5/09)
He goes on to tell 2 whoppers:
Whopper 1: "The only non-signatories in the world are the 4 countries cited by Ms Gottemoeller. India, Pakistan and North Korea have tested nuclear devices. Israel has not but is reported to have up to 200 nuclear warheads." (ibid)
Israel has tested nuclear devices: "Just before dawn on the stormy morning of September 22, 1979, the clouds over the Southern Indian Ocean suddenly broke and an American satellite was able to record two distinctive bright flashes of light within a fraction of a second - probable evidence of a nuclear explosion. The nuclear detection satellite, known as VELA, had seen similar flashes of light on forty-one previous occasions, and in each case it was subsequently determined that a nuclear explosion had taken place. Most of the sightings were over Lop Nor, where the Chinese atmospheric nuclear tests took place, or in the South Pacific, site of the French tests. There were a few intelligence officials and non-proliferation experts in the Carter administration who immediately concluded that Israel had conducted a nuclear test, a test that they had tried, and failed, to accomplish two years earlier. They were right." (The Samson Option: Israel, America & the Bomb, Seymour M Hersh, p 271)
Whopper 2: "This formula ['Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East' - Shimon Peres] was put to the test in the 1973 Yom Kippur War when the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a successful surprise attack and for a few days Israel's survival appeared at stake. Whatever thoughts may have gone through the minds of the leadership, Israel did not threaten to use nuclear weapons. Eventually, its ground forces succeeded in turning the tide." (ibid)
Israel has threatened to use nuclear weapons: "Over the next hours, the Israeli leadership - faced with its greatest crisis - resolved to implement 3 critical decisions: it would rally its collapsing forces for a major counterattack; it would arm and target its nuclear arsenal in the event of total collapse and subsequent need for the Samson Option; and, finally, it would inform Washington of its unprecedented nuclear action - and unprecedented peril - and demand that the United States begin an emergency airlift of replacement arms and ammunition needed to sustain an extended all-out war effort." (Hersh, p 225)
"A call by a US official for Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has raised fears in Jerusalem that the Obama administration may be seeking to block the Iranian nuclear threat by sacrificing Israel's reported nuclear arsenal. US Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller said this week: 'Universal adherence to the NPT, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea, remains a fundamental objective of the United States'." (Israeli nuclear ambiguity under threat, Abraham Rabinovich, 8/5/09)
He goes on to tell 2 whoppers:
Whopper 1: "The only non-signatories in the world are the 4 countries cited by Ms Gottemoeller. India, Pakistan and North Korea have tested nuclear devices. Israel has not but is reported to have up to 200 nuclear warheads." (ibid)
Israel has tested nuclear devices: "Just before dawn on the stormy morning of September 22, 1979, the clouds over the Southern Indian Ocean suddenly broke and an American satellite was able to record two distinctive bright flashes of light within a fraction of a second - probable evidence of a nuclear explosion. The nuclear detection satellite, known as VELA, had seen similar flashes of light on forty-one previous occasions, and in each case it was subsequently determined that a nuclear explosion had taken place. Most of the sightings were over Lop Nor, where the Chinese atmospheric nuclear tests took place, or in the South Pacific, site of the French tests. There were a few intelligence officials and non-proliferation experts in the Carter administration who immediately concluded that Israel had conducted a nuclear test, a test that they had tried, and failed, to accomplish two years earlier. They were right." (The Samson Option: Israel, America & the Bomb, Seymour M Hersh, p 271)
Whopper 2: "This formula ['Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East' - Shimon Peres] was put to the test in the 1973 Yom Kippur War when the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a successful surprise attack and for a few days Israel's survival appeared at stake. Whatever thoughts may have gone through the minds of the leadership, Israel did not threaten to use nuclear weapons. Eventually, its ground forces succeeded in turning the tide." (ibid)
Israel has threatened to use nuclear weapons: "Over the next hours, the Israeli leadership - faced with its greatest crisis - resolved to implement 3 critical decisions: it would rally its collapsing forces for a major counterattack; it would arm and target its nuclear arsenal in the event of total collapse and subsequent need for the Samson Option; and, finally, it would inform Washington of its unprecedented nuclear action - and unprecedented peril - and demand that the United States begin an emergency airlift of replacement arms and ammunition needed to sustain an extended all-out war effort." (Hersh, p 225)
Sunday, February 8, 2009
On Planet Sheridan...
My, it's been a refreshingly long time since we've heard from Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian, on the subject of Palestine/Israel. All good things must come to an end though, and the bugger's back on the opinion pages with the usual Zio-centric tripe: There may be the will but not necessarily the way: Peace in the Middle East is not possible whatever Obama does so long as Palestinians oppose it (5/2/09).
On Planet Sheridan, of course, it's always the Palestinians who want war, and it's always the Israelis who strive for peace, including Likud leader and probable next prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "Netanyahu will be demonised by the usual suspects but he will be no barrier to peace."
No barrier to peace? Does The Australian's foreign editor bother reading his own foreign correspondents? Apparently not. Here's what The Australian's Jerusalem correspondent Abraham Rabinovich wrote about Netanyahu on 30/1/09: "Of the 3 candidates for prime minister, Mr Netanyahu is the only one who does not endorse a two-state solution as advocated by the US - a Palestinian state and a Jewish state alongside each other." (Right-wing, one-state party leads Israeli polls)
Did he bother reading The Australian's Middle East correspondent John Lyons' report about Netanyahu vowing to "'completely uproot' Hamas in the Gaza Strip" and "defeat 'the Iranian threat at all levels'"? (We must drive out enemies, says Bibi, 6/2/09) It seems not.
Even if Netanyahu found peace in the way that some people find Jesus, there'd be the slight matter of the Likud charter (aka the Likud Party platform), unheard of in the pages of The Heart of The Nation: "The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River. The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as independent and sovereign state."/"The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel... The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting." (Likud Charter does not recognise Palestine, Frank Barat, palestinechronicle.com, 31/1/09)
He's going to tear up that little barrier to peace, is he?
On Planet Sheridan, an entity he calls "Palestine" is going to get "all the land of the West Bank and Gaza except for the large Jewish settlement blocks [sic] that are effectively suburbs of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. These house 80% of the Jewish settlers on 5% of the disputed land. The new Palestinian state would get land from Israel proper to make up for this 5%."
This, of course, is an exercise in prestidigitation: 1) "Disputed land" is Zionist jargon for occupied land; 2) The large Israeli settlement blocs are not "effectively suburbs of Tel Aviv"; and 3) When Sheridan talks about "Palestine" getting "all of the land of the West Bank," he either fails to let on, or is ignorant of the fact, that 30% of the West Bank, namely the Jordan Valley, will be retained by Israel, and that another 10% has been hived off by Israel's apartheid/annexation wall. All of the West Bank, itself only 22% of historic Palestine, thus reduces by 40%.
On Planet Sheridan, poor old Israel, despite its itching to get rid of "all" (or even 55%) of the West Bank, is unfortunately unable to find a "credible Palestinian leadership [which] can put an end to serious terrorism especially cross-border rocket launches," or which "will accept that such a settlement is the end of Palestinian territorial claims."
Shucks! Apparently, neither Abbas nor Hamas are credible. Nor Arafat before them. Nor... In fact, never being able to find a Palestinian peace partner is actually something of a Zionist tradition. As Middle East scholar Gabriel Piterberg has pointed out, back in 1924, when the British proposed to establish a legislative council for all of Palestine's inhabitants on the basis of the existing demographic configuration (Jewish minority/Arab majority), the leader of Palestine's Jewish community, David Ben-Gurion, found himself in a lather as to how to avoid dealing with the (then) leadership of the Palestinian national movement: "Ben-Gurion employed every trick in the book to avoid doing so, from a spurious white man's burden ('we' cannot reach a true understanding with the Arabs until 'we' help them become civilized and progressive, and until 'we' help transform their national movement so that it is led by workers rather than effendis and clerics), through settler-colonial superciliousness to outright cynicism and procrastination. This he did by means of what [Shabtai] Teveth [his biographer] calls the 'class formula'... Only when the Arab national movement is led by workers, proclaimed Ben-Gurion, will such an understanding be possible. Why the need to stall? Ben-Gurion's vision of how the Zionist project would come to fruition was in essence no different from Jabotinsky's 'Iron Wall' metaphor in his 1923 article of the same name, which recognized the genuine resistance of indigenous people to the threat of external dispossession and the corresponding solution of erecting an iron wall - 'the strengthening in Palestine of a government without any kind of Arab influence'. Where Ben-Gurion differed from Jabotinsky was in his view that it was unwise openly to define the reality in Palestine as a conflict between a settler-national movement versus an indigenous one until the Yishuv became ineradicably solid. The class formula was an expedient rationale for stalling, crafted as it was in a language perfectly appropriate to Ben-Gurion's institutional position as secretary general of the Histadrut. For Ben-Gurion such language was expedient; he dropped it like a hot potato as soon as he could." (The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics & Scholarship in Israel, 2008, pp 73-74) Eighty-five years on, Zionist leaders are still stalling.
On Planet Sheridan, it should come as no great surprise to find that the Gaza massacres are all Hamas' fault: "The cost in innocent Palestinian lives was heavy and tragic, and the fault... rests entirely with Hamas, the terrorist death-cult that rules Gaza. I do not believe a single story of Israeli war crimes or atrocities in Gaza. There is no evidence of any such story beyond Palestinian eye-witness accounts and on countless* previous occasions these accounts have been fabricated... The Israelis are among the most disciplined troops in the world and go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties." No mention of the international media being kept out of Gaza, of course.
All Palestinians, it seems, are liars on Planet Sheridan, and the IOF is completely above reproach. But what would Sheridan make of this: "'Fire on anything that moves in Zeitoun' - that was the order handed down to Israeli troops in the Givati Shaked battalion, who reduced the eastern Gaza City suburb to little more than rubble in a matter of days... 'We pounded Zeitoun into the ground', an Israeli soldier who was deployed in the area, told The Times... We pounded them with fire; they never had a chance'." (Israeli soldiers recall Gaza attack orders, Sheera Frenkel, The Times, 28/1/09)
A self-hating Jew perhaps? Or this: "Having interviewed dozens of victims and witnesses and, having examined the ballistic evidence from north to south, we are convinced that Israel did not do everything possible to minimise civilians' harm and death', said Fred Abrahams of Human Rights Watch. The rules of engagement were exceedingly loose, and they dropped the bar on the laws of war. This allowed civilian casualties to rise." (ibid) Bleeding heart definitely, probably self-hating Jew to boot. Or this: "Doctors operating the only brain-scanning machine at an Egyptian hospital near Gaza have been almost overwhelmed by the number of Palestinian children arriving with bullet wounds to the head." (Children found with bullets lodged in their head, Topaz Amoore, gulfnews.com, 18/1/09) Gypos, get real!
On Planet Sheridan, remember, Hamas is not an Islamic resistance movement, but merely a "terrorist death-cult." And why, Sheridan asks, did this terrorist outfit goad easy-going, mild-mannered Israel to respond to its constant acts of naked aggression? That's easy: Hamas wanted to "have Israel painted again as the international villain." Pretty fiendish, eh?
You see, on Planet Sheridan, it's always Israel that responds and Hamas that attacks. Here on Planet Earth, however, it's not quite that simple, as Khalid Meshaal of Hamas' political bureau explains: "For 6 months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire. Israel broke it repeatedly from the start. Israel was required to open crossings to Gaza, and extend the truce to the West Bank. It proceeded to tighten its deadly siege of Gaza, repeatedly cutting electricity and water supplies. The collective punishment accelerated, as did the assassinations and killings. Thirty Gazans were killed by Israeli fire and hundreds of patients died as a direct effect of the siege during the so-called ceasefire. Israel enjoyed a period of calm. Our people did not... The logic of those who demand that we stop our resistance is absurd. They absolve the aggressor and occupier, armed with the deadliest weapons of death and destruction, of responsibility, while blaming the victim, prisoner and occupied. Our modest, home-made rockets are our cry of protest to the world. Israel and its American and European sponsors want us to be killed in silence. But die in silence we will not." (Gaza: the great divide -1, The Age, 7/1/09)
But no, Sheridan wouldn't be found dead reading The Age. And anyway, seeing Meshaal's not only a lying Palestinian, but also one of the leaders of the "terrorist death cult" which is Hamas, what he has to say can hardly be "credible" now, can it? All this talk about blockades and extra-judicial murders - baloney - Sheridan knows better: "Hamas's goals and motivation are theological and filled with sectarian hatred and anti-Semitism," and he wheels out the Hamas charter to prove it (See my 30/3/08 post Jerusalem Prize Syndrome). From this hoary document we are supposed to understand that Hamas, in addition to being a "terrorist death cult," is also just another of your generic, Jew-killing jihadi organisations. Which doesn't quite explain why, as Sheridan asserts, "Hamas has engaged in countless* atrocities against Palestinians it doesn't like. It has murdered many Fateh men, but the media subjects this behaviour to very little scrutiny." Much like his own paper, I guess, which has kept schtum about USrael's Palestinian collaborators dishing it out to alleged Hamas supporters in the West Bank*. Nor, for that matter, would you read in The Australian that the Israeli Occupation Forces were instructed by the chief military rabbinate not "to 'be enticed by the folly of the Gentiles who have mercy for the cruel'." (Israeli MP: military rabbi turned Gaza into holy war, antiwar.com, 8/2/09). That Israeli MP, Avshalom Vilan, just has to be a self-hating Jew!
[*"The horrific torture of hundreds of people by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is being funded by British taxpayers... The victims - some left maimed - are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it." (Financed by the British taxpayer, brutal torturers of the West Bank, David Rose, dailymail.co.uk, 31/1/09)]
On Planet Sheridan, Palestinians are a perennial worry. Sheridan informs us that not only do the buggers carry the dreaded jihad virus ("the wider ideology of Islamist jihad... has currency in the Palestinian population..."), but that they're multiplying like rabbits - and it's not because they're randy as, mind you - but because "they... have a long-term demographic strategy." No, not along the lines of your civilized Peter Costello demographic strategy ("one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country") but popping 'em out like there's no tomorrow (which, come to think of it, there probably isn't in the Gaza Strip): "In 1950, there were about 240,000 Gazans. Now there are about 1.5 million. By 2040 there will be 3 million. Eventually, they believe, they will swamp Israel with sheer numbers."
Here we find Sheridan climbing into bed (gross thought I know) with the SMH's Islamophobe-in-residence, Paul Sheehan, who only last month wrote of the Gaza Palestinians: "Women, living under sharia law, are used primarily as breeding stock." (See my 13/1/09 post Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH) Makes me wonder - Sheridan's a Catholic, right? He's contra condoms, right? But would he consider, I wonder, heading up a 'Condoms for Gaza' campaign if it were necessary to save his "plucky" little Israel from this biological ticking bomb? Now there's a thought!
On Planet Sheridan, "instead of a solution, we should look for Israel to manage the situation at the lowest level of violence possible, while encouraging any normalisation that can take place." IOW, recruit collaborators, and beat the crap out of the rest. Or better, what obtains now: recruit collaborators to beat the crap out of the rest.
[*Countless: I should explain that Sheridan has this way with numbers, as a general rule preferring 'thousands' to 'hundreds' if it helps bolster his 'case' (See my 4 & 10/2/08 posts When Even the Retraction is Dodgy 1 & 2). It seems now that "countless" (X2) is preferred over 'thousands'.]
On Planet Sheridan, of course, it's always the Palestinians who want war, and it's always the Israelis who strive for peace, including Likud leader and probable next prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "Netanyahu will be demonised by the usual suspects but he will be no barrier to peace."
No barrier to peace? Does The Australian's foreign editor bother reading his own foreign correspondents? Apparently not. Here's what The Australian's Jerusalem correspondent Abraham Rabinovich wrote about Netanyahu on 30/1/09: "Of the 3 candidates for prime minister, Mr Netanyahu is the only one who does not endorse a two-state solution as advocated by the US - a Palestinian state and a Jewish state alongside each other." (Right-wing, one-state party leads Israeli polls)
Did he bother reading The Australian's Middle East correspondent John Lyons' report about Netanyahu vowing to "'completely uproot' Hamas in the Gaza Strip" and "defeat 'the Iranian threat at all levels'"? (We must drive out enemies, says Bibi, 6/2/09) It seems not.
Even if Netanyahu found peace in the way that some people find Jesus, there'd be the slight matter of the Likud charter (aka the Likud Party platform), unheard of in the pages of The Heart of The Nation: "The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River. The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as independent and sovereign state."/"The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel... The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting." (Likud Charter does not recognise Palestine, Frank Barat, palestinechronicle.com, 31/1/09)
He's going to tear up that little barrier to peace, is he?
On Planet Sheridan, an entity he calls "Palestine" is going to get "all the land of the West Bank and Gaza except for the large Jewish settlement blocks [sic] that are effectively suburbs of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. These house 80% of the Jewish settlers on 5% of the disputed land. The new Palestinian state would get land from Israel proper to make up for this 5%."
This, of course, is an exercise in prestidigitation: 1) "Disputed land" is Zionist jargon for occupied land; 2) The large Israeli settlement blocs are not "effectively suburbs of Tel Aviv"; and 3) When Sheridan talks about "Palestine" getting "all of the land of the West Bank," he either fails to let on, or is ignorant of the fact, that 30% of the West Bank, namely the Jordan Valley, will be retained by Israel, and that another 10% has been hived off by Israel's apartheid/annexation wall. All of the West Bank, itself only 22% of historic Palestine, thus reduces by 40%.
On Planet Sheridan, poor old Israel, despite its itching to get rid of "all" (or even 55%) of the West Bank, is unfortunately unable to find a "credible Palestinian leadership [which] can put an end to serious terrorism especially cross-border rocket launches," or which "will accept that such a settlement is the end of Palestinian territorial claims."
Shucks! Apparently, neither Abbas nor Hamas are credible. Nor Arafat before them. Nor... In fact, never being able to find a Palestinian peace partner is actually something of a Zionist tradition. As Middle East scholar Gabriel Piterberg has pointed out, back in 1924, when the British proposed to establish a legislative council for all of Palestine's inhabitants on the basis of the existing demographic configuration (Jewish minority/Arab majority), the leader of Palestine's Jewish community, David Ben-Gurion, found himself in a lather as to how to avoid dealing with the (then) leadership of the Palestinian national movement: "Ben-Gurion employed every trick in the book to avoid doing so, from a spurious white man's burden ('we' cannot reach a true understanding with the Arabs until 'we' help them become civilized and progressive, and until 'we' help transform their national movement so that it is led by workers rather than effendis and clerics), through settler-colonial superciliousness to outright cynicism and procrastination. This he did by means of what [Shabtai] Teveth [his biographer] calls the 'class formula'... Only when the Arab national movement is led by workers, proclaimed Ben-Gurion, will such an understanding be possible. Why the need to stall? Ben-Gurion's vision of how the Zionist project would come to fruition was in essence no different from Jabotinsky's 'Iron Wall' metaphor in his 1923 article of the same name, which recognized the genuine resistance of indigenous people to the threat of external dispossession and the corresponding solution of erecting an iron wall - 'the strengthening in Palestine of a government without any kind of Arab influence'. Where Ben-Gurion differed from Jabotinsky was in his view that it was unwise openly to define the reality in Palestine as a conflict between a settler-national movement versus an indigenous one until the Yishuv became ineradicably solid. The class formula was an expedient rationale for stalling, crafted as it was in a language perfectly appropriate to Ben-Gurion's institutional position as secretary general of the Histadrut. For Ben-Gurion such language was expedient; he dropped it like a hot potato as soon as he could." (The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics & Scholarship in Israel, 2008, pp 73-74) Eighty-five years on, Zionist leaders are still stalling.
On Planet Sheridan, it should come as no great surprise to find that the Gaza massacres are all Hamas' fault: "The cost in innocent Palestinian lives was heavy and tragic, and the fault... rests entirely with Hamas, the terrorist death-cult that rules Gaza. I do not believe a single story of Israeli war crimes or atrocities in Gaza. There is no evidence of any such story beyond Palestinian eye-witness accounts and on countless* previous occasions these accounts have been fabricated... The Israelis are among the most disciplined troops in the world and go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties." No mention of the international media being kept out of Gaza, of course.
All Palestinians, it seems, are liars on Planet Sheridan, and the IOF is completely above reproach. But what would Sheridan make of this: "'Fire on anything that moves in Zeitoun' - that was the order handed down to Israeli troops in the Givati Shaked battalion, who reduced the eastern Gaza City suburb to little more than rubble in a matter of days... 'We pounded Zeitoun into the ground', an Israeli soldier who was deployed in the area, told The Times... We pounded them with fire; they never had a chance'." (Israeli soldiers recall Gaza attack orders, Sheera Frenkel, The Times, 28/1/09)
A self-hating Jew perhaps? Or this: "Having interviewed dozens of victims and witnesses and, having examined the ballistic evidence from north to south, we are convinced that Israel did not do everything possible to minimise civilians' harm and death', said Fred Abrahams of Human Rights Watch. The rules of engagement were exceedingly loose, and they dropped the bar on the laws of war. This allowed civilian casualties to rise." (ibid) Bleeding heart definitely, probably self-hating Jew to boot. Or this: "Doctors operating the only brain-scanning machine at an Egyptian hospital near Gaza have been almost overwhelmed by the number of Palestinian children arriving with bullet wounds to the head." (Children found with bullets lodged in their head, Topaz Amoore, gulfnews.com, 18/1/09) Gypos, get real!
On Planet Sheridan, remember, Hamas is not an Islamic resistance movement, but merely a "terrorist death-cult." And why, Sheridan asks, did this terrorist outfit goad easy-going, mild-mannered Israel to respond to its constant acts of naked aggression? That's easy: Hamas wanted to "have Israel painted again as the international villain." Pretty fiendish, eh?
You see, on Planet Sheridan, it's always Israel that responds and Hamas that attacks. Here on Planet Earth, however, it's not quite that simple, as Khalid Meshaal of Hamas' political bureau explains: "For 6 months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire. Israel broke it repeatedly from the start. Israel was required to open crossings to Gaza, and extend the truce to the West Bank. It proceeded to tighten its deadly siege of Gaza, repeatedly cutting electricity and water supplies. The collective punishment accelerated, as did the assassinations and killings. Thirty Gazans were killed by Israeli fire and hundreds of patients died as a direct effect of the siege during the so-called ceasefire. Israel enjoyed a period of calm. Our people did not... The logic of those who demand that we stop our resistance is absurd. They absolve the aggressor and occupier, armed with the deadliest weapons of death and destruction, of responsibility, while blaming the victim, prisoner and occupied. Our modest, home-made rockets are our cry of protest to the world. Israel and its American and European sponsors want us to be killed in silence. But die in silence we will not." (Gaza: the great divide -1, The Age, 7/1/09)
But no, Sheridan wouldn't be found dead reading The Age. And anyway, seeing Meshaal's not only a lying Palestinian, but also one of the leaders of the "terrorist death cult" which is Hamas, what he has to say can hardly be "credible" now, can it? All this talk about blockades and extra-judicial murders - baloney - Sheridan knows better: "Hamas's goals and motivation are theological and filled with sectarian hatred and anti-Semitism," and he wheels out the Hamas charter to prove it (See my 30/3/08 post Jerusalem Prize Syndrome). From this hoary document we are supposed to understand that Hamas, in addition to being a "terrorist death cult," is also just another of your generic, Jew-killing jihadi organisations. Which doesn't quite explain why, as Sheridan asserts, "Hamas has engaged in countless* atrocities against Palestinians it doesn't like. It has murdered many Fateh men, but the media subjects this behaviour to very little scrutiny." Much like his own paper, I guess, which has kept schtum about USrael's Palestinian collaborators dishing it out to alleged Hamas supporters in the West Bank*. Nor, for that matter, would you read in The Australian that the Israeli Occupation Forces were instructed by the chief military rabbinate not "to 'be enticed by the folly of the Gentiles who have mercy for the cruel'." (Israeli MP: military rabbi turned Gaza into holy war, antiwar.com, 8/2/09). That Israeli MP, Avshalom Vilan, just has to be a self-hating Jew!
[*"The horrific torture of hundreds of people by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is being funded by British taxpayers... The victims - some left maimed - are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it." (Financed by the British taxpayer, brutal torturers of the West Bank, David Rose, dailymail.co.uk, 31/1/09)]
On Planet Sheridan, Palestinians are a perennial worry. Sheridan informs us that not only do the buggers carry the dreaded jihad virus ("the wider ideology of Islamist jihad... has currency in the Palestinian population..."), but that they're multiplying like rabbits - and it's not because they're randy as, mind you - but because "they... have a long-term demographic strategy." No, not along the lines of your civilized Peter Costello demographic strategy ("one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country") but popping 'em out like there's no tomorrow (which, come to think of it, there probably isn't in the Gaza Strip): "In 1950, there were about 240,000 Gazans. Now there are about 1.5 million. By 2040 there will be 3 million. Eventually, they believe, they will swamp Israel with sheer numbers."
Here we find Sheridan climbing into bed (gross thought I know) with the SMH's Islamophobe-in-residence, Paul Sheehan, who only last month wrote of the Gaza Palestinians: "Women, living under sharia law, are used primarily as breeding stock." (See my 13/1/09 post Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH) Makes me wonder - Sheridan's a Catholic, right? He's contra condoms, right? But would he consider, I wonder, heading up a 'Condoms for Gaza' campaign if it were necessary to save his "plucky" little Israel from this biological ticking bomb? Now there's a thought!
On Planet Sheridan, "instead of a solution, we should look for Israel to manage the situation at the lowest level of violence possible, while encouraging any normalisation that can take place." IOW, recruit collaborators, and beat the crap out of the rest. Or better, what obtains now: recruit collaborators to beat the crap out of the rest.
[*Countless: I should explain that Sheridan has this way with numbers, as a general rule preferring 'thousands' to 'hundreds' if it helps bolster his 'case' (See my 4 & 10/2/08 posts When Even the Retraction is Dodgy 1 & 2). It seems now that "countless" (X2) is preferred over 'thousands'.]
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Benny Revisited
"The Jews have four or five thousand Palmach troops and a paper army of fifty thousand in the Haganah, but they have only ten thousand rifles... The Jews are outnumbered in soldiers forty to one, in population a hundred to one, and in area five thousand to one." Leon Uris in Exodus
I have written several posts this month about Israeli historian Benny Morris. In my last (Benny Diagnosed, 14/5/08), I referred to his forthcoming book 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, and suggested that "it would no doubt be lauded in the Murdoch press here." 1948 was duly reviewed in The Australian on 24/5/08 with the expected hyperbole ("a significant work that is likely to become the standard account of the first Israeli-Arab war") by Abraham Rabinovich whose reports on Israeli affairs routinely rub shoulders in The Australian with those of its Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov.
Although I haven't read the book, Rabinovich's review suggests that Morris' transition from historian to propagandist, alluded to in my earlier posts, is now all but complete.
Take these two sentences, for example, from the opening paragraph: "...Benny Morris spells out the Arab dysfunction and Jewish cohesiveness that permitted 650,000 Jews to forge a state 60 years ago in the face of a hostile Arab world that outnumbered it 40 to one. In doing so, they belied the confident predictions of the CIA and the British military command that the Jewish state would be stillborn."
Confident predictions of an Arab victory? Pull the other, Benny/Abraham.
What follows is taken from Stephen Green's invaluable 1984 book, Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel 1948/1967. Green's data is based "almost entirely on documents available [via FOIA requests] in the Modern Military, General, and Diplomatic branches of the National Archives in Washington":
"The idea that the victory of the Jews in the battle for Palestine was a miracle victory against overwhelming odds is arrant nonsense. More precisely, that idea is unsupported by the documentation. US military and intelligence professionals followed quite closely the preparations for war in the Middle East, as the British Mandate drew to a close... Fortunately, the vast majority of persons engaged in strategic planning for the US at the time were thorough professionals who had little use for legends or myths. They were more concerned with numbers of soldiers, arms and equipment, training, sources of resupply, financial resources, and the like. And in these hard terms, the prospects for the new Jewish state looked bright indeed, before, during, and after the declaration of Israeli independence in May of 1948..."
"The Chiefs of the British Middle East and Palestine commands estimated the Haganah had 'a reasonably well-trained and equipped force of about 65,000 persons with a reserve of perhaps up to 40,000'... The Haganah had 'transport and all the machine guns, rifles, mortars together with ammunition that it needs'..."
"Already in 1945, the composition of the Jewish immigrants into Palestine - legal and illegal - was changing: people of military age, many of whom had already had military training and/or experience in Europe, predominated... And alongside the Haganah, the Jewish settlements had the extremist Irgun ('3000-5000') and Stern group ('several hundred'), which were also very well armed. The British Chiefs thought that the Jews would win a war with the Arabs in the short run, but in the longer run, economic and supply factors would favour the Arabs unless the Jews were resupplied from outside the Middle East..."
"A year and a half later, in November, 1947, the US Army Intelligence Division was asked by the CIA to do the military section for an estimate that the agency was preparing on the 'Consequences of the Partition of Palestine'. The total strength of the Arab forces in Palestine, the Army said, was 33,000, most of whom were members of poorly equipped 'quasi-military organizations'. The largest number of Arabs that would ever be mobilized against the Zionists was between 100,000 and 200,000, including soldiers from all the surrounding Arab states. In an all-out war, however, Army Intelligence estimated that the Jews could mobilize and arm with modern weapons some 200,000 men and women 'who have had some combat and supply experience at one time or another'..."
Although Palestinians outnumbered Jews by over 2 to 1, "Another Army ID document... showed Arab males only outnumber Jewish males in the 20-39 'military' age group by 149,000 to 121,000..."
"On May 13, the day before the end of the mandate, Secretary of State Marshall predicted in his 'Daily Report Palestine' that the combined Arab armies would be no match for the Haganah... the US Consul General reported:'Considerable doubt exists that Arab armies other than [Jordan's] Arab Legion will do more than cross Palestine frontiers and await developments'. And later: 'Jewish Agency would regard invasion of Palestine by Arab armies as releasing Agency from obligations of 29 November [Partition] resolution, replied that Ben Gurion had always said that main aim of Jews was to get all of Palestine'." [So much for Rabinovich's concluding paragraph: "In retrospect, the worst thing that could have happened to the Jewish state would have been Arab acceptance. Partition as envisioned by the UN would have left Israel with only a 50,000-person Jewish majority within its boundaries, a disparity that would have been reversed within a few years by the high Arab birthrate."]
"On May 18, four days after the [Arab] invasion, the Army Intelligence Division... summarized [the fighting thus]: 'Upon the termination of the British Mandate, the proclamation of the Jewish State was countered by the entry into Palestine of the regular armed forces of the Arab League States of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. These forces... total some 20,000 men. The organized Arab guerillas already operating within Palestine number some 13,000. Opposing these forces are over 40,000 full-time Jewish troops, supported by some 50,000 militia.' The Jews had outnumbered the Arab forces, regular and irregular, by nearly 3 to 1."
Green concluded: "In books, movies, and TV shows in the 50s and 60s, the Jewish state was depicted as having defeated the Arabs against overwhelming odds, contrary to virtually every professional strength estimate of the opposing forces that was made at the time of the war itself."(pp 66-73)
If Rabinovich is correct, Morris' 1948 looks more like a throwback to Leon Uris' propaganda novel Exodus than the touted "significant work that is likely to become the standard account of the first Arab-Israeli war."
I have written several posts this month about Israeli historian Benny Morris. In my last (Benny Diagnosed, 14/5/08), I referred to his forthcoming book 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, and suggested that "it would no doubt be lauded in the Murdoch press here." 1948 was duly reviewed in The Australian on 24/5/08 with the expected hyperbole ("a significant work that is likely to become the standard account of the first Israeli-Arab war") by Abraham Rabinovich whose reports on Israeli affairs routinely rub shoulders in The Australian with those of its Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov.
Although I haven't read the book, Rabinovich's review suggests that Morris' transition from historian to propagandist, alluded to in my earlier posts, is now all but complete.
Take these two sentences, for example, from the opening paragraph: "...Benny Morris spells out the Arab dysfunction and Jewish cohesiveness that permitted 650,000 Jews to forge a state 60 years ago in the face of a hostile Arab world that outnumbered it 40 to one. In doing so, they belied the confident predictions of the CIA and the British military command that the Jewish state would be stillborn."
Confident predictions of an Arab victory? Pull the other, Benny/Abraham.
What follows is taken from Stephen Green's invaluable 1984 book, Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel 1948/1967. Green's data is based "almost entirely on documents available [via FOIA requests] in the Modern Military, General, and Diplomatic branches of the National Archives in Washington":
"The idea that the victory of the Jews in the battle for Palestine was a miracle victory against overwhelming odds is arrant nonsense. More precisely, that idea is unsupported by the documentation. US military and intelligence professionals followed quite closely the preparations for war in the Middle East, as the British Mandate drew to a close... Fortunately, the vast majority of persons engaged in strategic planning for the US at the time were thorough professionals who had little use for legends or myths. They were more concerned with numbers of soldiers, arms and equipment, training, sources of resupply, financial resources, and the like. And in these hard terms, the prospects for the new Jewish state looked bright indeed, before, during, and after the declaration of Israeli independence in May of 1948..."
"The Chiefs of the British Middle East and Palestine commands estimated the Haganah had 'a reasonably well-trained and equipped force of about 65,000 persons with a reserve of perhaps up to 40,000'... The Haganah had 'transport and all the machine guns, rifles, mortars together with ammunition that it needs'..."
"Already in 1945, the composition of the Jewish immigrants into Palestine - legal and illegal - was changing: people of military age, many of whom had already had military training and/or experience in Europe, predominated... And alongside the Haganah, the Jewish settlements had the extremist Irgun ('3000-5000') and Stern group ('several hundred'), which were also very well armed. The British Chiefs thought that the Jews would win a war with the Arabs in the short run, but in the longer run, economic and supply factors would favour the Arabs unless the Jews were resupplied from outside the Middle East..."
"A year and a half later, in November, 1947, the US Army Intelligence Division was asked by the CIA to do the military section for an estimate that the agency was preparing on the 'Consequences of the Partition of Palestine'. The total strength of the Arab forces in Palestine, the Army said, was 33,000, most of whom were members of poorly equipped 'quasi-military organizations'. The largest number of Arabs that would ever be mobilized against the Zionists was between 100,000 and 200,000, including soldiers from all the surrounding Arab states. In an all-out war, however, Army Intelligence estimated that the Jews could mobilize and arm with modern weapons some 200,000 men and women 'who have had some combat and supply experience at one time or another'..."
Although Palestinians outnumbered Jews by over 2 to 1, "Another Army ID document... showed Arab males only outnumber Jewish males in the 20-39 'military' age group by 149,000 to 121,000..."
"On May 13, the day before the end of the mandate, Secretary of State Marshall predicted in his 'Daily Report Palestine' that the combined Arab armies would be no match for the Haganah... the US Consul General reported:'Considerable doubt exists that Arab armies other than [Jordan's] Arab Legion will do more than cross Palestine frontiers and await developments'. And later: 'Jewish Agency would regard invasion of Palestine by Arab armies as releasing Agency from obligations of 29 November [Partition] resolution, replied that Ben Gurion had always said that main aim of Jews was to get all of Palestine'." [So much for Rabinovich's concluding paragraph: "In retrospect, the worst thing that could have happened to the Jewish state would have been Arab acceptance. Partition as envisioned by the UN would have left Israel with only a 50,000-person Jewish majority within its boundaries, a disparity that would have been reversed within a few years by the high Arab birthrate."]
"On May 18, four days after the [Arab] invasion, the Army Intelligence Division... summarized [the fighting thus]: 'Upon the termination of the British Mandate, the proclamation of the Jewish State was countered by the entry into Palestine of the regular armed forces of the Arab League States of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. These forces... total some 20,000 men. The organized Arab guerillas already operating within Palestine number some 13,000. Opposing these forces are over 40,000 full-time Jewish troops, supported by some 50,000 militia.' The Jews had outnumbered the Arab forces, regular and irregular, by nearly 3 to 1."
Green concluded: "In books, movies, and TV shows in the 50s and 60s, the Jewish state was depicted as having defeated the Arabs against overwhelming odds, contrary to virtually every professional strength estimate of the opposing forces that was made at the time of the war itself."(pp 66-73)
If Rabinovich is correct, Morris' 1948 looks more like a throwback to Leon Uris' propaganda novel Exodus than the touted "significant work that is likely to become the standard account of the first Arab-Israeli war."
Monday, February 11, 2008
Scoop! Gaza Goes Global!
Sinister forces are on the march and threatening Israel's very existence! How do I know? you ask. It's all here in The Australian!
In Suicide bombing returns to Israeli soil after a year (5/2/08), Jerusalem correspondent, Abraham Rabinovich, says, "Mr Diskin [head of Israel's internal intelligence agency, Shin Bet] told Israel's cabinet that since Hamas breached the border with Egypt almost two weeks ago, advanced weaponry and dozens of trained militants from Iran, Syria and Egypt have poured into the Gaza Strip. He said the weapons included long-range rockets capable of hitting Israeli towns that were previously beyond Hamas's reach..." Whoa! "Advanced weaponry and dozens of trained militants"? Crikey!
Then he says, "Israel Radio yesterday quoted a security official as saying Hamas was building a substantial military potential in Gaza and sought to reach mutual deterrence with Israel. The official said it was necessary to launch a ground offensive to smash this capability before it advanced much further."
Hm, "mutual deterrence with Israel"? Scary, eh! What was that you said? Probably the lads in Israeli PR concocted it as a pretext for the Israeli Defence Forces to waltz in and re-arrange the furniture? My God, you're cynical, my friend. This is The Australian, not The Syrian Morning Herald! Now listen to this:-
It's headlined, Breach 'let jihadis flood into Gaza' (9/2/08), and it's by their Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov. Chulov says, "The Palestinian Authority claims the two-week breach of the border between Israel and Egypt last month allowed up to 2,000 global jihadi militants to infiltrate the strip to take up the fight against Israel."
Great Scott! Before you can say, 'Greg Sheridan', the "global jihadi militant" count's up from "dozens" to "2,000!" Sorry? What's that you're asking? Questions, questions, you're full of 'em. Had they been hanging about in the Sinai just waiting to pounce? If they wanted to "fight against Israel," why didn't they "infiltrate" Israel and not Gaza? Wouldn't they have gotten in the way of all those "would-be suicide bombers who crossed into the Sinai desert from Gaza...plotting to strike Israeli cities" (The Australian, 6/2/08)? Blimey! I wish you'd treat this with the seriousness it deserves. Anyway, Chulov says it's a PA, not a PR source, you ignoramus.
Listen to this. He goes on to say that "Security sources in the West Bank say the men, many of whom battled coalition forces in Iraq, brought with them weapons and explosives to add to an already formidable arsenal controlled by Hamas. The men have begun tours of Hamas training camps throughout Gaza and have vowed to step up attacks on the Israeli side of the security barrier, say key figures among Fatah forces loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas..."
Thank God we don't live in Israel! What's that? More carping questions? Why didn't they just go directly into Israel? You're incorrigible, you know that?
Chulov also says, "'Hamas has turned the Gaza Strip into an international centre for global jihad', one official said. Another told Israeli media: 'Most of the men who entered the Gaza Strip through the breached border are now being trained in Hamas's camps and schools'."
Strewth, now I'm getting confused. I thought Rabinovich said Diskin said they were already trained! And Chulov's already had the PA saying they'd fought in Iraq against the cowboys! So why do they need to be "trained" by Hamas? And what's this about going to school?
Deep breath. I must have faith. Greg, Martin, Abraham, Rupert - they've never let me down before. And anyways, surely the PA guys'd know a battle-scarred global jihadi if they saw one? After all, weren't they all "global jihadi militants" themselves only a short time ago before they saw the light and teamed up with the Israelis and the Americans?
Oh no, I should've stopped there. Now Chulov's saying, "Palestinian Authority officials have in the past falsely claimed Iranian academics and regime figures had infiltrated Gaza using a tunnel network, which runs under the southern border."
What the hell are you laughing at? Shut your mouth! I swear, if you crack any bloody jokes about Iranians wearing black gowns and mortar boards, and clutching PhDs in their hands, popping up out of holes in the ground to teach ex-Iraqi global jihadi militants Shi'ism 101 in Hamas schools -or say anything about Ayatollahs covered in mud - I'll do what Chulov reckons the Egyptians are going to do to anyone who infiltrates into Egypt again: I'll break your bloody legs!
In Suicide bombing returns to Israeli soil after a year (5/2/08), Jerusalem correspondent, Abraham Rabinovich, says, "Mr Diskin [head of Israel's internal intelligence agency, Shin Bet] told Israel's cabinet that since Hamas breached the border with Egypt almost two weeks ago, advanced weaponry and dozens of trained militants from Iran, Syria and Egypt have poured into the Gaza Strip. He said the weapons included long-range rockets capable of hitting Israeli towns that were previously beyond Hamas's reach..." Whoa! "Advanced weaponry and dozens of trained militants"? Crikey!
Then he says, "Israel Radio yesterday quoted a security official as saying Hamas was building a substantial military potential in Gaza and sought to reach mutual deterrence with Israel. The official said it was necessary to launch a ground offensive to smash this capability before it advanced much further."
Hm, "mutual deterrence with Israel"? Scary, eh! What was that you said? Probably the lads in Israeli PR concocted it as a pretext for the Israeli Defence Forces to waltz in and re-arrange the furniture? My God, you're cynical, my friend. This is The Australian, not The Syrian Morning Herald! Now listen to this:-
It's headlined, Breach 'let jihadis flood into Gaza' (9/2/08), and it's by their Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov. Chulov says, "The Palestinian Authority claims the two-week breach of the border between Israel and Egypt last month allowed up to 2,000 global jihadi militants to infiltrate the strip to take up the fight against Israel."
Great Scott! Before you can say, 'Greg Sheridan', the "global jihadi militant" count's up from "dozens" to "2,000!" Sorry? What's that you're asking? Questions, questions, you're full of 'em. Had they been hanging about in the Sinai just waiting to pounce? If they wanted to "fight against Israel," why didn't they "infiltrate" Israel and not Gaza? Wouldn't they have gotten in the way of all those "would-be suicide bombers who crossed into the Sinai desert from Gaza...plotting to strike Israeli cities" (The Australian, 6/2/08)? Blimey! I wish you'd treat this with the seriousness it deserves. Anyway, Chulov says it's a PA, not a PR source, you ignoramus.
Listen to this. He goes on to say that "Security sources in the West Bank say the men, many of whom battled coalition forces in Iraq, brought with them weapons and explosives to add to an already formidable arsenal controlled by Hamas. The men have begun tours of Hamas training camps throughout Gaza and have vowed to step up attacks on the Israeli side of the security barrier, say key figures among Fatah forces loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas..."
Thank God we don't live in Israel! What's that? More carping questions? Why didn't they just go directly into Israel? You're incorrigible, you know that?
Chulov also says, "'Hamas has turned the Gaza Strip into an international centre for global jihad', one official said. Another told Israeli media: 'Most of the men who entered the Gaza Strip through the breached border are now being trained in Hamas's camps and schools'."
Strewth, now I'm getting confused. I thought Rabinovich said Diskin said they were already trained! And Chulov's already had the PA saying they'd fought in Iraq against the cowboys! So why do they need to be "trained" by Hamas? And what's this about going to school?
Deep breath. I must have faith. Greg, Martin, Abraham, Rupert - they've never let me down before. And anyways, surely the PA guys'd know a battle-scarred global jihadi if they saw one? After all, weren't they all "global jihadi militants" themselves only a short time ago before they saw the light and teamed up with the Israelis and the Americans?
Oh no, I should've stopped there. Now Chulov's saying, "Palestinian Authority officials have in the past falsely claimed Iranian academics and regime figures had infiltrated Gaza using a tunnel network, which runs under the southern border."
What the hell are you laughing at? Shut your mouth! I swear, if you crack any bloody jokes about Iranians wearing black gowns and mortar boards, and clutching PhDs in their hands, popping up out of holes in the ground to teach ex-Iraqi global jihadi militants Shi'ism 101 in Hamas schools -or say anything about Ayatollahs covered in mud - I'll do what Chulov reckons the Egyptians are going to do to anyone who infiltrates into Egypt again: I'll break your bloody legs!
Friday, February 1, 2008
They Wouldn't Shoot...Would They?
Just occasionally, out of the spin and bias that clogs the pages of the Murdoch press' coverage of the Middle East conflict, will emerge, even if inadvertently, a smidgeon of context or a revealing insight into its root cause. Take the following, for example, from 'Breakout into Israel' ahead, by The Australian's hack* in Jerusalem, Abraham Rabinovich. (26/1/08)
"A senior Hamas official warned yesterday that the next breakout from the Gaza Strip could be into Israel, with 500,000 Palestinians attempting to march towards the towns and villages from which they or their parents fled or were expelled 60 years ago. 'This is not an imaginary scenario and many Palestinians would be prepared to sacrifice their lives', said Ahmed Youssef, political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya. Israeli minister Ze'ev Boim said the threat must be taken seriously in light of the successful Hamas breakout into Egyptian territory on Wednesday, adding we must learn from what has just happened there'. "
Rabinovich's report contains one of those all too rare references in the ms media to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, which paved the way for the creation of a Jewish-majority state there. The ethnically cleansed of Palestine (some 85% of the indigenous population residing in the areas of Palestine overrun by Zionist forces in 1948) and their descendents make up the bulk of the Gaza Strip's population, and the 1949 UNGA Resolution 194 calling for the return of these refugees has been ignored by Israel to this day.
The "threat" of an eruption into Israel of Gazan refugees, spoken of by Ze'ev Boim, is not to the lives of Israelis as such, but to Israel's status as a state with a Jewish majority were the the Palestinian refugees, from Gaza and elsewhere, be allowed to return to their ancestral homes and lands in Israel proper. Appearing in Israeli public discourse as 'the demographic threat', the word takes us to the very heart of the Palestine-Israel conflict, the inconvenient truth of which is that the indigenous non-Jewish Palestinian Arab majority were driven from their homes and lands, so that the Zionist movement could establish a sovereign state with an overwhelming Jewish majority and lay claim to be a democracy. In other words, Israel, as a sovereign, Jewish state, was gerrymandered into existence by a monstrous act of ethnic cleansing. Lest we forget. Boim and his ilk haven't, but that's another story...
But why does Ahmed Youssef talk of these refugees being "prepared to sacrifice their lives?" Surely, if the Palestinian refugees simply broke through another wall in their Gaza ghetto and marched into Israel to exercise their fundamental human rights to return to and reclaim their property (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 13 & 17), the Israelis wouldn't just shoot them, would they? It wouldn't even cross their minds, would it? Well, yes it has:
"[Israeli Prime Minister, Levi] Eshkol had already had reason to be worried about the Gaza refugees roughly 2 years before the Six-Day War [of 1967]. The refugees were multiplying, and when their numbers reached 1/2 a million, he feared the situation would become explosive. Once, he asked the chief of staff what would happen if the Egyptians simply marched the refugees - women and children in the vanguard - toward the border with Israel. Rabin said they would not do that, and if they did, as soon as the IDF had killed the first 100, the rest would go back to Gaza." [1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev, p 524]
* Abraham Rabinovich: "Cairo, concerned over its own fundamentalists, has long taken exception to Tehran's support of militant Shia groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestine territories and militias in Iraq." (Iran and Egypt to restore relations, The Australian, 1/2/08) Hamas is Sunni, not "Shia."
"A senior Hamas official warned yesterday that the next breakout from the Gaza Strip could be into Israel, with 500,000 Palestinians attempting to march towards the towns and villages from which they or their parents fled or were expelled 60 years ago. 'This is not an imaginary scenario and many Palestinians would be prepared to sacrifice their lives', said Ahmed Youssef, political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya. Israeli minister Ze'ev Boim said the threat must be taken seriously in light of the successful Hamas breakout into Egyptian territory on Wednesday, adding we must learn from what has just happened there'. "
Rabinovich's report contains one of those all too rare references in the ms media to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, which paved the way for the creation of a Jewish-majority state there. The ethnically cleansed of Palestine (some 85% of the indigenous population residing in the areas of Palestine overrun by Zionist forces in 1948) and their descendents make up the bulk of the Gaza Strip's population, and the 1949 UNGA Resolution 194 calling for the return of these refugees has been ignored by Israel to this day.
The "threat" of an eruption into Israel of Gazan refugees, spoken of by Ze'ev Boim, is not to the lives of Israelis as such, but to Israel's status as a state with a Jewish majority were the the Palestinian refugees, from Gaza and elsewhere, be allowed to return to their ancestral homes and lands in Israel proper. Appearing in Israeli public discourse as 'the demographic threat', the word takes us to the very heart of the Palestine-Israel conflict, the inconvenient truth of which is that the indigenous non-Jewish Palestinian Arab majority were driven from their homes and lands, so that the Zionist movement could establish a sovereign state with an overwhelming Jewish majority and lay claim to be a democracy. In other words, Israel, as a sovereign, Jewish state, was gerrymandered into existence by a monstrous act of ethnic cleansing. Lest we forget. Boim and his ilk haven't, but that's another story...
But why does Ahmed Youssef talk of these refugees being "prepared to sacrifice their lives?" Surely, if the Palestinian refugees simply broke through another wall in their Gaza ghetto and marched into Israel to exercise their fundamental human rights to return to and reclaim their property (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 13 & 17), the Israelis wouldn't just shoot them, would they? It wouldn't even cross their minds, would it? Well, yes it has:
"[Israeli Prime Minister, Levi] Eshkol had already had reason to be worried about the Gaza refugees roughly 2 years before the Six-Day War [of 1967]. The refugees were multiplying, and when their numbers reached 1/2 a million, he feared the situation would become explosive. Once, he asked the chief of staff what would happen if the Egyptians simply marched the refugees - women and children in the vanguard - toward the border with Israel. Rabin said they would not do that, and if they did, as soon as the IDF had killed the first 100, the rest would go back to Gaza." [1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev, p 524]
* Abraham Rabinovich: "Cairo, concerned over its own fundamentalists, has long taken exception to Tehran's support of militant Shia groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestine territories and militias in Iraq." (Iran and Egypt to restore relations, The Australian, 1/2/08) Hamas is Sunni, not "Shia."
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Believe Nothing
January 08: The Strait of Hormuz. Innocent American warships just minding their own business buzzed by provocative Iranian speedboats from which emanates sinister voice warning of impending doom?
Nah! Just the Pentagon getting creative. You can read all about it in How the Pentagon Planted a False Story by Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service 16/1/08.
But what about this little scenario?:
September 07: Dayr az-Zawr, Syria. Daring Israeli commandos snatch nuclear material dripping with North Korean fingerprints from under noses of (presumably somnolent) Syrian/North Korean guards at Syrian/North Korean nuclear installation?
Nah! Just the same (?) US officials getting creative.
This little fable first appeared in Murdoch 's UK The Sunday Times and was immediately taken up by The Australian's man in Jerusalem, Abraham Rabinovich in 'N Korea samples' at Syrian nuke site, 24/9/07. You can read all about it in Shooting Blanks by John Dagge at http://www.syria-today.com/
PS: I can't resist tacking on the final paragraph of Rabinovich's fable, sorry, story: "In another incident on Thursday, Israeli fighter jets were dispatched to the northern Golan Heights, along the border with Syria, when 'suspicious activity' was reported in the area. It was discovered later that the objects in the air were migrating birds."
Nah! Just the Pentagon getting creative. You can read all about it in How the Pentagon Planted a False Story by Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service 16/1/08.
But what about this little scenario?:
September 07: Dayr az-Zawr, Syria. Daring Israeli commandos snatch nuclear material dripping with North Korean fingerprints from under noses of (presumably somnolent) Syrian/North Korean guards at Syrian/North Korean nuclear installation?
Nah! Just the same (?) US officials getting creative.
This little fable first appeared in Murdoch 's UK The Sunday Times and was immediately taken up by The Australian's man in Jerusalem, Abraham Rabinovich in 'N Korea samples' at Syrian nuke site, 24/9/07. You can read all about it in Shooting Blanks by John Dagge at http://www.syria-today.com/
PS: I can't resist tacking on the final paragraph of Rabinovich's fable, sorry, story: "In another incident on Thursday, Israeli fighter jets were dispatched to the northern Golan Heights, along the border with Syria, when 'suspicious activity' was reported in the area. It was discovered later that the objects in the air were migrating birds."
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Ed v Abraham
While mainstream news reports on Palestine/Israel are not as amenable to pro-Israel propaganda as mainstream opinion pieces, the inclusion or omission of vital contextual information can certainly be used to reveal or conceal the true nature of this settler- colonial conflict.
It's worth contrasting how the Fairfax and Murdoch press report the same events.
In Bush to land in Israel as Annapolis hopes fade, 8/1/08, the Sydney Morning Herald's (and Melbourne's The Age) correspondent in Jerusalem, Ed O'Loughlin, opens with, "The US President, George Bush, is due to land in Tel Aviv tomorrow for his first presidential visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories..." The key contextualising word here is "occupied." If we didn't already know it, the 'o' word informs the reader that the Palestinian territories are under Israeli military occupation, with all that that implies in terms of international law (occupations are illegal), the balance of opposing forces in the Palestinian territories (grossly assymetrical), and the nature of those forces (occupiers v resistance fighters).
In Israel lacking proof on nukes, 8/1/08, The Australian's Abraham Rabinovich merely has Bush visiting "Israel and the Palestinian Authority..." No contextualising 'o' word, just two sides, falsely implying a symmetrical balance of forces.
O'Loughlin describes the Palestinian Authority as a "rump Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank." This tells us that the PA is a lesser entity than we might otherwise assume from Rabinovich's failure to use such a qualifier.
O'Loughlin explains the PA's beef thus: "The Palestinians are angered by Israel's announcement in the immediate aftermath of Annapolis of plans to extend several big Jewish settlements in the West Bank, contrary to international law, rather than honouring its committments to curb settlement growth..." And so we learn that Israel, the occupying power, is further violating international law by building settlements on occupied Palestinian land. O'Loughlin even refers in his report to "West Bank colonies."
Rabinovich explains the fly in the ointment as "The escalating confrontation between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip [which] has soured the atmosphere" and reports that "Mr Olmert said Israel would step up its attacks in response to the rocket salvos from Gaza." No illegal Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, just Israeli armed forces understandably retaliating against a prior Palestinian aggression emanating from the Gaza Strip. No hint that the Hamas Government there had proposed a cease-fire in December which would have ended the "rocket salvos" in return for an end to Israel's military incursions into the Strip and its 'targeted' assassinations of Palestinian leaders. And no hint that this was rejected out of hand by Israel. Seemingly as an afterthought, Rabinovich eventually gets around to mentioning Bush's expectation that "Israel live up to its pledge to dismantle illegal settlement outposts in the west Bank..." Oh, so only "settlement outposts" are illegal, not settlements as such?
And that's all from Rabinovich, except to point out that his first 6 paragraphs are on Israel's current bogey, Iran, and the last 2 on that old standby, al-Qa'ida. Poor little Israel - as if those nasty Palestinian "rocket salvos" weren't bad enough. Sheesh, what a neighbourhood!
But there's more from O'Loughlin: there's the "scores" of Palestinians "arrested or wounded" by "last week's Israeli security operation in the West Bank city of Nablus..."; and there's Israel's peculiar idea of a Palestinian state- "no military forces," "limited independence," Israeli "control of its borders, air space and the Jordan Valley," and "Israeli security forces continuing to enjoy a free hand to operate in Palestinian areas."
Clearly, where O'Loughlin reveals, Rabinovich conceals. Sadly, the former may not be with us much longer.
Federal Labor's 'Minister for Israel', Michael Danby, has written in The Australian Jewish News [14/9/07] that "Like many people, I have given up subscribing to The Age because of its primitive coverage of the Middle East. Getting angry over breakfast spoils my day. Fortunately, other people make it their business to monitor O'Loughlin's writing and expose his errors of fact and interpretation."
According to the same edition of The Australian Jewish News, O'Loughlin was going to be replaced as Middle East correspondent at the end of 2007 by Jason Koutsoukis, The Sunday Age's Canberra correspondent. The grooming of Koutsoukis had, it seemed, already begun, with a "briefing" by the Israeli ambassador, and a "meeting" with "various Jewish communal groups." "There are two sides to every story," Koutsoukis was quoted as saying, "and I think we've got to tell both sides. Perhaps we've only been telling one side. That's been some of the concerns expressed to me by Jewish community leaders so far."
Sounds ominous. Still, as I write, Ed remains with us. We live in hope.
It's worth contrasting how the Fairfax and Murdoch press report the same events.
In Bush to land in Israel as Annapolis hopes fade, 8/1/08, the Sydney Morning Herald's (and Melbourne's The Age) correspondent in Jerusalem, Ed O'Loughlin, opens with, "The US President, George Bush, is due to land in Tel Aviv tomorrow for his first presidential visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories..." The key contextualising word here is "occupied." If we didn't already know it, the 'o' word informs the reader that the Palestinian territories are under Israeli military occupation, with all that that implies in terms of international law (occupations are illegal), the balance of opposing forces in the Palestinian territories (grossly assymetrical), and the nature of those forces (occupiers v resistance fighters).
In Israel lacking proof on nukes, 8/1/08, The Australian's Abraham Rabinovich merely has Bush visiting "Israel and the Palestinian Authority..." No contextualising 'o' word, just two sides, falsely implying a symmetrical balance of forces.
O'Loughlin describes the Palestinian Authority as a "rump Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank." This tells us that the PA is a lesser entity than we might otherwise assume from Rabinovich's failure to use such a qualifier.
O'Loughlin explains the PA's beef thus: "The Palestinians are angered by Israel's announcement in the immediate aftermath of Annapolis of plans to extend several big Jewish settlements in the West Bank, contrary to international law, rather than honouring its committments to curb settlement growth..." And so we learn that Israel, the occupying power, is further violating international law by building settlements on occupied Palestinian land. O'Loughlin even refers in his report to "West Bank colonies."
Rabinovich explains the fly in the ointment as "The escalating confrontation between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip [which] has soured the atmosphere" and reports that "Mr Olmert said Israel would step up its attacks in response to the rocket salvos from Gaza." No illegal Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, just Israeli armed forces understandably retaliating against a prior Palestinian aggression emanating from the Gaza Strip. No hint that the Hamas Government there had proposed a cease-fire in December which would have ended the "rocket salvos" in return for an end to Israel's military incursions into the Strip and its 'targeted' assassinations of Palestinian leaders. And no hint that this was rejected out of hand by Israel. Seemingly as an afterthought, Rabinovich eventually gets around to mentioning Bush's expectation that "Israel live up to its pledge to dismantle illegal settlement outposts in the west Bank..." Oh, so only "settlement outposts" are illegal, not settlements as such?
And that's all from Rabinovich, except to point out that his first 6 paragraphs are on Israel's current bogey, Iran, and the last 2 on that old standby, al-Qa'ida. Poor little Israel - as if those nasty Palestinian "rocket salvos" weren't bad enough. Sheesh, what a neighbourhood!
But there's more from O'Loughlin: there's the "scores" of Palestinians "arrested or wounded" by "last week's Israeli security operation in the West Bank city of Nablus..."; and there's Israel's peculiar idea of a Palestinian state- "no military forces," "limited independence," Israeli "control of its borders, air space and the Jordan Valley," and "Israeli security forces continuing to enjoy a free hand to operate in Palestinian areas."
Clearly, where O'Loughlin reveals, Rabinovich conceals. Sadly, the former may not be with us much longer.
Federal Labor's 'Minister for Israel', Michael Danby, has written in The Australian Jewish News [14/9/07] that "Like many people, I have given up subscribing to The Age because of its primitive coverage of the Middle East. Getting angry over breakfast spoils my day. Fortunately, other people make it their business to monitor O'Loughlin's writing and expose his errors of fact and interpretation."
According to the same edition of The Australian Jewish News, O'Loughlin was going to be replaced as Middle East correspondent at the end of 2007 by Jason Koutsoukis, The Sunday Age's Canberra correspondent. The grooming of Koutsoukis had, it seemed, already begun, with a "briefing" by the Israeli ambassador, and a "meeting" with "various Jewish communal groups." "There are two sides to every story," Koutsoukis was quoted as saying, "and I think we've got to tell both sides. Perhaps we've only been telling one side. That's been some of the concerns expressed to me by Jewish community leaders so far."
Sounds ominous. Still, as I write, Ed remains with us. We live in hope.
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