This is a Revelation?

"As a reporter in Israel, I have interviewed hundreds of people in its intelligence and defense establishments and studied thousands of classified documents that revealed a hidden history, surprising even in the context of Israel's already fierce reputation. Many of the people I spoke to, in explaining why they did what they did, would simply cite the Babylonian Talmud: 'If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.' In my reporting, I found that since World War II, Israel has used assassination and targeted-killing more than any other country in the West, in many cases endangering the lives of civilians." (How Arafat eluded Israel's assassination machine, Ronen Bergman, nytimes.com, 23/1/18)

Gideon Levy: 'Habash Was Right'

One of Gideon Levy's best essays: This biography makes it clear: The founder f the Palestinian Popular Front was right (Haaretz, 15/4/18):

"George Habash was Israel's absolute enemy for decades, the embodiment of evil, the devil incarnate. Even the title 'Dr.' before his name - he was a pediatrician - was considered blasphemous. Habash was plane hijackings, Habash was terror and terror alone. In a country that doesn't recognize the existence of Palestinian political parties (have you ever heard of a Palestinian political party? - there are only terror groups) knowledge about the man who headed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was close to zero. What's there to know about him? A terrorist. Subhuman. Should be killed. Enemy. The fact that he was an ideologue and a revolutionary, that his life was shaped by the expulsion from Lod, changed nothing. He remains the plane hijacker from Damascus, the man from the Rejectionist front who was no different from all the rest of the 'terrorists' from Yasser Arafat to Wadi Haddad to Nayef Hawatmeh.

"Now along comes Eli Galia's Hebrew-language book 'George Habash: A Political Biography.' It outlines the reality, far from the noise of propaganda, ignorance and brainwashing, for the Israeli reader who agrees to read a biography of the enemy. Presumably only a few will read it, but this work by Galia, a Middle East affairs expert, is very deserving of praise. It's a political biography, as noted in its subtitle, so it almost entirely lacks the personal, spiritual and psychological dimension; there's not even any gossip. So reading it requires a lot of stamina and specialized tastes. Still, it's fascinating.

"Galia has written a nonjudgmental and certainly non-propagandistic biography. Taking into consideration the Israeli mind today, this isn't to be taken for granted. Galia presents a wealth of information, with nearly a thousand footnotes, about the political path of Habash, a man who was considered dogmatic even though he underwent a number of ideological reversals in his life. If that's dogmatism, what's pragmatism? The dogmatic Habash went through more ideological changes than any Israeli who sticks to the Zionist narrative and doesn't budge an inch - and who of course isn't considered dogmatic.

"In the book, Habash is revealed as a person of many contradictions: a member of the Christian minority who was active in the midst of a large Muslim majority, a bourgeois who became a Marxist, a tough and inflexible leader who was once seen weeping in his room as he wrote an article about Israel's crimes against his people. He had to wander and flee for his life from place to place, sometimes more for fear of Arab regimes than of Israel. He was imprisoned in Syria and fled Jordan, he devoted his life to a revolution that never happened. It's impossible not to admire a person who devoted his life to his ideas, just as you have to admire the scholar who has devoted so much research for so few readers who will take an interest in the dead Habash, in an Israel that has lost any interest in the occupation and the Palestinian struggle.

"The book gives rise to the bleak conclusion that Habash was right. For most of his life he was a bitter enemy of compromises, and Arafat, the man of compromise, won the fascinating historical struggle between the two. They had a love-hate relationship, alternately admiring and scorning each other, and never completely breaking off their connection until Arafat won his Pyrrhic victory. What good have all of Arafat's compromises done for the Palestinian people? What came out of the recognition of Israel, of the settling for a Palestinian state on 22% of the territory, of the negotiations with Zionism and the United States? Nothing but the entrenchment of the Israeli occupation and the strengthening and massive development of the settlement project.

"In retrospect, it makes sense to think that if that's how things were, maybe it would have been better to follow the uncompromising path taken by Habash, who for most of his life didn't agree to any negotiations with Israel, who believed that with Israel it was only possible to negotiate by force, who thought Israel would only change its position if it paid a price, who dreamed of a single, democratic and secular state of equal rights and refused to discuss anything but that. Unfortunately, Habash was right. It's hard to know what would have happened had the Palestinians followed his path, but it's impossible not to admit that the alternative has been a resounding failure.

"Habash, who was born in 1926, wrote about his childhood: 'Our enemies are not the Jews but rather the British... The Jews' relations with the Palestinians were natural and sometimes even good' (p 16). He went to study medicine at the American University in Beirut; his worried mother and father wrote him that he should stay there; a war was on. But Habash returned to volunteer at a clinic in Lod; he returned and he saw. The sight of the Israeli soldiers who invaded the clinic in 1948 ignited in him the flame of violent resistance: 'I was gripped by an urge to shoot them with a pistol and kill them, and in the situation of having no weapons I used mute words. I watched them from the sidelines and said to myself: This is our land, you dogs, this is our land and not your land. We will stay here to kill you. You will not win this battle.' (p 22) On July 14 he was expelled from his home with the rest of his family. He never returned to the city he loved. He never forgot the scenes of Lod in 1948, nor did he forget the idea of violent resistance. Can the Israeli leader understand how he felt?

"Now based in Beirut, he took part in terror operations against Jewish and Western targets in Beirut, Amman and Damascus: 'I personally lobbed grenades and I participated in assassination attempts. I had endless enthusiasm when I was doing that. At the time, I considered my life worthless relative to what was happening in Palestine.' 'The Palestinian Che Guevara' - both of them were doctors - made up his mind to wreak vengeance for the Nakba upon the West and the leaders of the Arab regimes that had abandoned his people, even before taking vengeance on the Jews. He even planned to assassinate King Abdullah of Jordan. He founded a new student organization in Beirut called the Commune, completed his specialization in pediatrics and wrote: 'I took the diploma and said: Congratulations, Mother, your son is a doctor, so now let me do what I really want to do. And indeed, that's what happened.' (p 41)

"Habash was once asked whether he was the Che Guevara of the middle East and replied that he would prefer to be the Mao Zedong of the Arab masses. He was the first to raise the banner of return and and in the meantime he opened clinics for Palestinian refugees in Amman. For him, the road back to Lod passed through Amman, Beirut and Damascus. The idea of Pan-Arabism stayed with him for many years, until he despaired of that as well. He also had to leave medicine: 'I am a pediatrician, I have enjoyed this greatly. I believed that I had the best job in the world but I had to make the decision I have taken and I don't regret it... A person cannot split his emotions in that way: to heal on the one hand and kill on the other. This is the time when he must say to himself: one or the other.'

"This book isn't arrogant and it isn't Orientalist; it is respectful of the Palestinian national ideology and those who articulated and lived it, even if the author doesn't necessarily agree with that ideology or identify with it. This is something quite rare in the Israeli landscape when it comes to Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. Nor does the author venerate what's not worthy of veneration, and he doesn't have any erroneous romantic or other illusions. Galia presents a bitter, tough, uncompromising, very much failed and sometimes exceedingly cruel struggle for freedom, self-respect and liberation. And this is what is said in the founding document of the PFLP, which Habash established in December 1967 after having despaired of Palestinian unity: 'The only weapon left to the masses in order to restore history and progress and truly defeat enemies and potential enemies in the long run is revolutionary violence... The only language that the enemy understands is the language of revolutionary violence.' (p 125)

"But this path too met with failure. 'The essential aim of hijacking airplanes,' wrote Habash, 'was to bring the Palestinian question out of anonymity and expose it to Western public opinion, because at that time it was unknown in Europe and in the United States. We wanted to undertake actions that would make an impression on the senses of the entire world... There was international ignorance regarding our suffering, in part due to the Zionist movement's monopoly on the mass media in the West.' (p 151) The PFLP plane hijackings in the early 1970s indeed achieved international recognition of the existence of the Palestinian problem, but so far this recognition hasn't led anywhere. The only practical outcome has been the security screenings at airports everywhere around the world - and thank you, George Habash. I read Galia's book on a number of flights, even though this isn't an airplane book, and I kept thinking that were it not for Habash my wanderings at airports would have been a lot shorter. In my heart I forgave him for that, for what other path was open to him and his defeated, humiliated and bleeding people?

"Not much is left of his ideas. What has come of the scientific idealism and the politicization of the masses, the class struggle and the anti-imperialism, the Maoism and of course the transformation of the struggle against Israel into an armed struggle, which according to the plans was supposed to develop from guerrilla warfare into a national war of liberation? Fifty years after the founding of the PFLP and 10 years after the death of its founder, what remains? Habash's successor, Abu Ali Mustafa, was assassinated by Israel in 2001; his successor's successor, Ahmad Saadat, has been in an Israeli prison since 2006 and very little remains of the PFLP.

"During all my decades covering the Israeli occupation, the most impressive figures I met belonged to the PFLP, but now not much remains except fragments of dreams. The PFLP is a negligible minority in intra-Palestinian politics, a movement that once thought to demand equal power with Fatah and its leader, Arafat. And the occupation? It's strong and thriving and its end looks further off than ever. If that isn't failure, what is?

"Yet Habash always knew how to draw lessons from failure after failure. How resonant today is his conclusion following the Naksa, the defeat in 1967 that broke his spirit, to the effect that 'the enemy of the Palestinians is colonialism, capitalism and the global monopolies... This is the enemy that gave rise to the Zionist movement, made a covenant with it, nurtured it, protected it and accompanied it until it brought about the establishment of the aggressive and fascistic State of Israel.' (p 179) From the Palestinian perspective, not much has changed. It used to be that this was read in Israel as hostile and shallow propaganda. Today it could be read otherwise.

"After the failure of 1967, Habash redefined the goal: the establishment of a democratic state in Palestine in which Arabs and Jews would live as citizens with equal rights. Today this idea, too, sounds a bit less strange and threatening than it did when Habash articulated it.

"On the 40th anniversary of Israel's founding, Habash wrote that Israel was galloping toward the Greater Land of Israel and that the differences between the right and the left in the country were becoming meaningless. How right he was about that, too. At the same time, he acknowledged Israel's success and the failure of the Palestinian national movement. And he was right about that, too.

"And one last correct prophecy, though a bitter one, that he made in 1981: 'The combination of loss of lives and economic damage has considerable influence on Israeli society, and when that happens there will be a political, social and ideological schism on the Israeli street and in the Zionist establishment between the moderate side that demands withdrawal from the occupied territories and the extremist side that continues to cling to Talmudic ideas and dreams. Given the hostility between these two sides, the Zionist entity will experience a real internal split.' (p 329)

"This has yet to happen.

"Imad Saba, a dear friend who was active in the PFLP and is in exile in Europe, urged me for years to try to meet with Habash and interview him for Haaretz. As far as is known, Habash never met with Israelis, except during the days of the Nakba. Many years ago in Amman I interviewed Hawatmeh, Habash's partner at the start and the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which split off from the PFLP in 1969. At the time of the interview, Habash was also living in Amman and was old and sick. I kept postponing my approach - until he died. When reading the book, I felt very sorry that I had not met this man."

Israel is a Democracy & Other Fairy Tales

In reacting against the hypocrisy of Americans (and Australia's little Americans) over Fidel Castro's death, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Ruby Hamad argues, with the best of intentions, that:

"Israel is both a democracy (flawed but a democracy nonetheless) and an oppressive occupier that gets away with shocking human rights abuse. Yasser Arafat was indeed resisting this Israeli oppression and occupation, and in doing so he turned a blind eye to terrorism and the victimisation of innocent Israelis." (All heroes have their dark side, no matter what side they're on, 30/11/16)

However, these two sentences are more fairy tale than fact:

1) Israel is a democracy. Palestine had an indigenous majority and a non-indigenous settler minority up to 1948. The settler minority then drove out the indigenous majority and has refused to allow them back in ever since. Only when those driven out (and therefore disenfranchised) in 1948 are allowed back and given the vote, will Palestine/Israel be a democracy. All it is now is an ethnocracy, just like white South Africa before apartheid was consigned to the dustbin of history.

2) Arafat is a terrorist. You simply cannot place the reactive, retail violence of an occupied, oppressed, and colonised people on the same level as the wholesale violence of those who occupy, oppress, and colonise them. International law rightly recognises the right of an occupied, oppressed, and colonised people to resist occupation and colonisation by any means. It does not, however, recognise anyone's right to occupy or colonise another people's land. Arafat was not a terrorist. He was a freedom fighter. The settler-colonial apartheid state of Israel is the only terrorist here.

Mandela: 'Arafat is a Comrade-in-Arms'

If you search the Internet for evidence of Nelson Mandela's support for the Palestinian struggle, you'll generally come across this particular statement: "We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

Given that too little is known of his principled and unequivocal support for the Palestinians (never of course referenced in the mainstream media), I'm posting the relevant sections of an interview he did with the presenter of the US Nightline program, Ted Koppel in 1990. The interview took place at a public meeting in the City College of New York. At the time, Mandela, not long out of prison, was in the US on a tour, advocating for the continuation of international sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Needless to say, Koppel being Koppel, New York being New York, and the US being the US, the question of Mandela's links with Yasser Arafat and the PLO loomed large at the meeting.

Note that I've selected only Mandela's statements on this issue, simplified Koppel's rambling questions, and, in only one case, abridged Mandela's answer. The entire interview, along with Mandela's trademark dignity, gravitas and humour, can be enjoyed at youtube.com/watch?v=mMT36t (My tribute to vintage Nelson Mandela of South Africa part 2)

Mandela: We identify with the PLO because, just like ourselves, they are fighting for the right of self-determination.

Koppel: You met over 3 times with Yasser Arafat.

Mandela: Yasser Arafat, Colonel Gaddafi and Fidel Castro support our struggle to the hilt.

Koppel: You've said some controversial things which might alienate some people in this country. That could cause them to contact their congressman and say, 'Go ahead, lift the sanctions on the South African government.'

Mandela: One of the problems we are facing in the world today are people who do not look at problems objectively but from the point of view of their own interests. That makes things difficult because once a person is not objective, it is extremely difficult to reach an agreement. One of the best examples of this is to think that because Arafat is conducting a struggle against the state of Israel we must therefore condemn him. We can't do that. It is just not possible for any organisation or individual of integrity to do anything of the sort... It would be a grave mistake for us to consider our attitude towards Yasser Arafat on the basis of the interests of the Jewish community. We sympathise with the struggles of the Jewish people and their persecution right down the years... but that does not mean to say that the enemies of Israel are our enemies. We refuse to take that position. You can call it 'impolitical' [Koppel had been suggesting that Mandela needed to be more political/flexible to win American Jewish support] or a moral question [a Jewish leader had earlier accused Mandela of being amoral] but a man who changes his principles depending on who he's dealing with - that is not a man who can lead a nation... They must know what our stand is: Arafat is a comrade-in-arms and we treat him as such.

Why Arafat Went Berserk

Instead of getting solidly behind the implementation of UN resolutions on the Middle East conflict without fear or favour, Western politicians have allowed themselves to be led up the garden path by the US-initiated, so-called peace process, which climaxed during the presidency of Israel luvvie, Bill Clinton. Embraced in one form or another by every subsequent incumbent of the White House, it goes without saying that the only beneficiary of the PP charade has been Israel, which has essentially used it to divert a gullible West while ramping up its colonization of the occupied Palestinian territories.

I was moved to reflect thus on the whole sorry PP business while flicking through The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President (2009) by Taylor Branch. One passage in particular struck me. But let me first set the scene. The year is 2000. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat are shacked up with Clinton at Camp David and the matter of who gets what in Jerusalem is up for discussion:

"In hard negotiation, said Clinton, the Palestinians were willing to internationalize the walled Old City, but Barak baulked out of distrust of the United Nations. Israelis felt outnumbered and consistently mistreated in most world bodies, especially that one, and Barak floated his own proposal instead. Israel, while retaining formal sovereignty over the Old City, would concede a zone of Palestinian control through its Muslim quarter to the high stone plaza at the heart, known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif ('Noble Sanctuary') and to Jews as the Temple Mount. In return Barak proposed a gesture to compensate religious Israelis. On specified occasions, Jews would be permitted to offer prayers on the Temple Mount for the first time in nearly 2,000 years, since Rome had destroyed Herod's Temple after a first-century Jewish rebellion. 'Arafat went berserk,' said the president, and his fellow Palestinians cried that Jews never before had dared such blasphemy. Even during the military occupation since 1967, Israeli police had prevented Jews from congregating to pray on the Temple Mount, where Muslims had managed continuous religious observance since the year 1187." (p 612)

Of course Arafat went berserk. He could see the thin end of a wedge making rapidly for his jugular. Anyhow, so Branch's story goes, Clinton decided to deploy what he thought would be a killer argument with the Palestinian president:

"To Arafat, alone, he pleaded for counterintuitive understanding of a vulnerability that coexisted with Israel's military dominance. Clinton and Arafat belonged to religious cultures fortunate to preserve many ancient shrines. Christians had the Vatican, Bethlehem and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, among others. Muslims revered the Kaaba in Mecca and the Tomb of the Prophet in Medina, plus the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque there on Jerusalem's Haram. Jews, lacking such treasures, centered their faith memories upon a fragment of the Western Wall beneath the destroyed temples of Solomon and Herod. Devout Israelis hoped one day to find their biblical Ark of the Covenant underneath by excavation. Such ruins and relics were all Jews had, but they meant no less than did two of the glorious places sacred to Muslims on that same central spot in the Old City. Surely, the negotiators could figure a way to honor differences born of the same yearning." (ibid p 613)

Now there's no mention in Branch's book of Arafat's response to Clinton. However, my guess is he went berserk - again. After all, he wasn't only hearing a reiteration of Barak's talking point, but as a Palestinian who'd heard it all before, was he perhaps also hearing an echo of one of Zionism's oldest and most enraging talking points. This is from 1946:

"Another line of argument that maddened the Palestine Arabs was what may be called the 'you have so much and I want so little' line. The Arabs had all the Arab world and the Jews only wanted Palestine, a small corner of that world. Was it so much to ask for? Could not the Arabs be generous and let them have it? Could not the Palestine Arabs find a home in Syria or Iraq? To understand how the Palestinian Arabs felt about this argument, it is only necessary to imagine how the people of Devon or Cornwall would greet a suggestion that they should surrender their part of England to the Jews and find a new home in Scotland." (An Arab Tells His Story: A Study in Loyalties, Edward Atiyah, p 202)

Evading Palestine

I'm always intensely irritated by those who pose as progressives but are invariably missing in action when it comes to Palestine/Israel.

One such is the presenter of Radio National's Late Night Live, Phillip Adams. While reliably warm and fuzzy with his legions of Zionist guests, should any of his interlocutors display pro-Palestinian sympathies, a chill seems to enter the studio, a mocking tone may intrude, and evasive tactics become the order of the day. Adams must surely be the quintessential closet Zionist.*

His interview with progressive Australian journalist Alex Mitchell last Thursday, on the occasion of the latter's new memoir, Come the Revolution, is a case in point. (For others simply click on the PA tab below.):

Adams broached the subject of Palestine with the following question about the late Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat: "You held and still hold Arafat in high regard, and in fact you say he's the most impressive figure you've met throughout your career in journalism."

I should acknowledge at this point that at least the above was a distinct improvement on his mocking introduction to a 24/8/05 interview on Arafat which began with the words: "Yasser - that's my baby, no sir, I don't mean maybe. We're doing Yasser Arafat tonight - the good, the bad and the ugly." Given that the interview itself, with Atlantic Monthly 'journalist' David Samuels, was outrageously titled How Arafat destroyed Palestine**, it goes without saying that one would listen in vain for any discussion of the forces actually involved in wiping Palestine off the map.

Mitchell responded thus:

"Yes, I think of all the people, and I've met lots of heads of state, princes, and chancellors and presidents and prime ministers, the thing about Arafat, and I think most foreign correspondents who have met him would attest to this, [is that] he was so engaging because he knew so much and he shared it with you. The others are playing some [diplomatic games]. I'm not saying Arafat didn't play diplomatic games - he played diplomatic games par excellence, but what he would do is educate you. While you were sitting with him talking you'd say 'Well what about Hafiz al-Asad in Damascus?' and he'd give you anecdotes, stories, raw information, and I know personally of diplomats, foreign editors and correspondents who owe all their knowledge of that time in the Middle East, and even world politics, to Arafat. I mean Arafat would sit there and they'd say 'What's happening in Russia?' and he'd give blow-by-blow accounts of what was happening in the bureaucracy in Moscow. Now how did he do that? He had an absolute fascination with world politics and he understood it intimately and he shared it with people and I find that impressive.
Adams: And you feel he's never been given the accolades he was due?
Mitchell: Well he got a Nobel Peace Prize. I...
Adams: But very odd people get Nobel Peace Prizes..."

True. Obomber or Shimon Peres, for instance. But no prizes for guessing who Adams is referring to here. Mitchell, however, pushed on:

"I meant from the journalists who used to bleed him white of information and he would say 'Trust us. Give us the honour of writing about us respectfully when you get back to your country'. They'd leave and immediately forget the Palestinians and write the garbage that most of them have been employed to write, and so I felt quite sad about the way... serious journalists who understood what he was doing and trying to never sort of said, you know, 'This bloke's not the warmonger, the madman he's painted as', and that's how he was caricatured in most of the Western media. They knew it and when you'd had a drink with them afterwards you'd say 'But you just wrote this', and they'd say 'I know but you've got to do it, mate', and I said 'You don't have to do it'. When are we going to start being honest about the Palestinian question and talk about it rationally so that Israelis will understand it as well? They don't want to read all this bloodthirsty nonsense. They want to read some serious journalism about a serious international problem that we all want to see solved."

Predictably, instead of exploring Mitchell's pregnant anecdote about journalists working under some kind of mysterious pressure, and broaching the role of the Israel lobby in manufacturing consent for Israel, Adams characteristically changes the subject:

"Who are your heroes in mainstream journalism?"

[*For those who wonder why see my 19/9/09 post He Just Doesn't Get It; **Adams' appalling ignorance of the basics is on particular display in this interview. In it he talks about "the Arab defeat and the flight of the Palestinian refugees in 1967," and Arafat "going to Lebanon in 1967 and setting up a Palestinian state in exile."]

Propaganda v Self-censorship

The Australian's editorials on Palestine-Israel are a bottomless pit of Zionist mythology and propaganda. In Two-state solution is worth the effort: Palestinian allies must not stymie the peace process (14/1/08), the editorialist spins the proverbial sow's ear of Bush's recent gigs in Jerusalem and Ramallah into the silk purse of a serious attempt to create a "viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent" Palestinian state. Amid his pigs-will-fly persiflage, he embeds the following Zionist myths, lies, misrepresentations and errors: "In 2000, after the Clinton administration brokered an agreement in which then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak offered a deal that would have set up an independent state in all of Gaza and 90% of the West Bank, PLO leader Yasser Arafat rejected the offer and Palestinians responded by launching a 4-year suicide-bombing campaign, targeting Israeli civilians. When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas launched a bombing campaign on Israel and a brutal takeover of the territory, with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah later attacking Israel from Lebanon in 2005."

Myths

The myth of Barak's 'generous offer' is staple fare for The Australian (and the mainstream media in general), recycled ad nauseam over the years on the basis of Goebbel's formula: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

Mearsheimer & Walt's indispensable The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy (2007), offers just one of the many scholarly refutations of this nonsense. Under the heading, Camp David Myths (pp103-107), they write: "According to this story [ie the portrayal of Israel as primed for peace and the Palestinians as bent on war], Prime Minister Barak offered the Palestinians 'almost everything' they wanted at Camp David...But Arafat, still determined to derail the peace process and eventually destroy Israel, rejected this generous offer and instead launched the Second Intifada...There is only one problem with this widely held version of events: it is not correct...the terms [Barak] offered them at Camp David were far from generous."

Mearsheimer & Walt point out that: a) The Palestinians were offered immediate control of Gaza b) Eventual control of 91% of the West Bank c) Minus 10% of the West Bank in the form of the Jordan Valley, which Israel would hang on to for 6-21 years, leaving the Palestinians with immediate control over only 81% of the West Bank d) Minus a further 5%, owing to Israel's more reductive definition of what actually constituted the West Bank. That is, the Palestinians were effectively offered only 76% of the West Bank, and this despite "the fact that they had already agreed in the 1993 Oslo Accords to recognize Israeli sovereignty over 78% of the original British Mandate [of Palestine]. From their perspective, they were now being asked to make another concession and accept at best 86% of the remaining 22%."

Nor were the Palestinians to get a) a contiguous state b) sovereignty over occupied Arab East Jerusalem c) control over borders, airspace or water resources. In addition, they would be denied the right to form an army.

"Given all this," Mearsheimer & Walt conclude, "it is not surprising that Barak's former foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was a key participant at Camp David, later told an interviewer, 'If I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David as well'."[Mearsheimer & Walt's account unfortunately omits to mention Israel's refusal to repatriate or compensate Palestine's 1948 and 1967 refugees.]

As for the origins of the Second Intifada, Mearsheimer & Walt write that "The common claim that Arafat launched the Second Intifada in...2000...does not stand up to evidence either...The former head of Shin Bet, Ami Ayalon, has stated that 'Arafat neither prepared nor triggered the Intifada'...[Shlomo] Ben-Ami is exactly right that the Second Intifada 'did not start merely as a tactical move. It erupted out of the accumulated rage and frustration of the Palestinian masses at the colossal failure of the peace process since the early days of Oslo to offer them a life of dignity and well-being, and at the incompetence and corruption of their own leaders in the Palestinian Authority'."

Lies & Misrepresentations

"When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas launched a bombing campaign on Israel..." asserts the editorialist.

In fact Hamas observed a unilateral 'temporary hudnah' or tahdi'ah (calming) from March 2005 until an Israeli shell pulped a Palestinian family enjoying a picnic on a Gaza beach in June 2006. While the Palestinians both offered, and unilaterally observed, truces/ceasefires on a number of occasions since the outbreak of the Intifada, for the Israeli killing machine it was always just business as usual.

Then there's the assertion that "Iranian-backed Hezbollah attacked Israel from Lebanon in 2005." Zionist propaganda typically misrepresents both Hamas and Hezbollah as mere puppets of Iran/Syria, because to acknowledge them as indigenous, essentially nationalist reactions to Israeli aggression and occupation would be to shift the focus of responsibility for their existence and behaviour onto Israel. Notice too how Israel, which is funded by the US to the tune of $3 billion in direct foreign assistance per year, is never routinely described as 'American-backed'. Then there's the characterization of Hezbollah's limited hostage taking raid, which provided Israel with the pretext to launch its own premeditated aggression on Lebanon, as a general 'attack' on Israel. And finally, there's the straight factual inaccuracy of claiming that this took place in 2005, instead of 2006.

The Sydney Morning Herald's editorial of the same day, Ambushed in the Levant, thankfully manages to avoid the above, and even contains some meat: "Israel refuses to return to its pre-1967 borders, as required by United Nations resolutions, insists it will hold onto all of Jerusalem, and is determined to deny the right of return to Palestinians uprooted from their lands when Israel was created in 1948."

Those words, however, are prefaced (and compromised) by the following inanity: "[Olmert and Abbas] have not budged from their entrenched positions."

While Israel's intransigence is clearly referenced, the editorialist cites no such intransigence on the Palestinian side. The nonsensical notion that there is some kind of balance of intransigence here is sadly typical of the Fairfax press, and suggests a reflexive deference, honed by pressure from the Israel lobby, to the empirically false idea that, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, both sides are somehow equivalent. Forthrightly acknowledging that Israel to Palestine is as hammer to anvil is to invite flak from lobby hacks, so Fairfax invariably takes the line of least resistance, indefensible assertions notwithstanding.

The Herald editorial is further marred by the following unbelievably coy reference: "It is to be hoped that future US leaders put a premium on trying to resolve regional conflicts earlier in their terms, and are braver in staring down powerful domestic lobby groups that erode their ability to act as credible honest brokers." Which "regional conflicts"? What "lobby groups"? The Herald editorialist simply cannot name names. He's loud in urging future US presidents to 'stare down' the lobby whose name he dares not speak, but can barely emit a squeak when it comes to naming the bugger himself.

It takes a Mearsheimer & Walt to spell it out: "Once again, as the presidential campaign season gets underway, the leading candidates are going to enormous lengths to demonstrate their devotion to the state of Israel and their steadfast commitment to its 'special relationship' with the United States.

"Each of the main contenders emphatically favors giving Israel extraordinary material and diplomatic support - continuing the more than $3 billion in foreign aid each year to a country whose per capita income is now 29th in the world. They also believe that this aid should be given unconditionally. None of them criticizes Israel's conduct, even when its actions threaten US interests, are at odds with American values or even when they are harmful to Israel itself. In short, the candidates believe that the US should support Israel no matter what it does.

"Such pandering is hardly surprising, because contenders for high office routinely court special interest groups, and Israel's staunchest supporters - the Israel lobby, as we have termed it - expect it. Politicians do not want to offend Jewish Americans or 'Christian Zionists', two groups that are deeply engaged in the political process. Candidates fear, with some justification, that even well-intentioned criticism of Israel's policies may lead these groups to turn against them and back their opponents instead...

"...they fear that speaking the truth would incur the wrath of the hard-liners who dominate the main organizations in the Israel lobby. So Israel will end up controlling Gaza and the West Bank for the forseeable future, turning itself into an apartheid state in the process." [Israel's false friends, Los Angeles Times, 6/1/08]