Ten Years is an Eternity in Politics

"Australia's Jewish leaders have praised Scott Morrison's attack on the UN's 'anti-Semitic agenda' as the nation celebrates 70 years of diplomatic relations with Israel." (PM praised for UN swipe over Israel, Richard Ferguson, The Australian, 20/2/19)

Did you know that "the nation" (aka Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten) has been singing Happy Birthday to You/Israel in federal parliament?

Think about it! There are 193 nations in the world - but only one that I'm aware of gets a bipartisan birthday bash every 10 years in federal parliament. And that's an apartheid state! Now how crazy is that?

Morrison used the opportunity, predictably, to berate the UNGA, "the place where Israel is bullied and where anti-Semitism is cloaked in language about human rights," while Shorten intoned the usual Labor mantra about Doc Evert being in the delivery room at the birth.

The aforementioned "Jewish leaders," by the way, constitute a veritable roll call of Israel lobbyists in Australia:

AIJAC's Colin Rubenstein - "Prime Minister Morrison was entirely correct in his reflections on the lopsided 'bias and unfair targeting' of Israel at the UN. Israel, a thriving 'beacon of democracy in the Middle East' with an independent judiciary, has been subject to overwhelmingly more criticism than any other country." (ibid)

Anti-Defamation Commission's Dvir Abramovich - "The PM... should be saluted for naming and calling out the UN's institutional anti-Israel bias, and for his iron-clad assurance Australia will always stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel against those hostile forces who wish to demonise and defame her."

Executive Council of Australian Jewry's Alex Ryvchin - "We commend the Prime Minister for vowing to stand with Israel at the UN, and for condemning the hypocrisy and double standards in its obsessive and disproportionate focus on criticising Israel."

Zionist Association of Australia's Jeremy Liebler - "Western countries who lay sole blame on Israel for the ongoing conflict in the Middle East bear real responsibility for the continuation of Hamas' terror activities."

Still, Israel's 70th was a pretty low key affair when compared with the lavish party thrown by former Labor PM Kevin Rudd back in March, 2008, for Israel's 60th. (See my 6 posts on the subject, all titled The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament.) Suffice it to recall Rudd's magnificent, gem-encrusted gift to Israel at the time, namely the following parliamentary motion:

"That the House: (1) celebrate and commend the achievements of the State of Israel in the 60 years since its inception; (2) remember with pride and honour the important role which Australia played in the establishment of the State of Israel as both a member state of the UN and as an influential voice in the introduction of Resolution 181 which facilitated Israel's statehood, and as the country which proudly became the first to cast a vote in support of Israel's creation; (3) acknowledge the unique relationship which exists between Australia and Israel; a bond highlighted by our commitment to the rights and liberty of our citizens and encouragement of cultural diversity; (4) commend the State of Israel's commitment to democracy, the Rule of Law and pluralism; (5) reiterates Australia's commitment to Israel's right to exist and our ongoing support to the peaceful establishment of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue; (6) reiterates Australia's commitment to the pursuit of peace and stability throughout the Middle East; (7) on this, the 60th Anniversary of Independence of the State of Israel, pledge our friendship, commitment and enduring support to the people of Israel as we celebrate this important occasion together."

Simply stunning, eh?

Strange to tell, Rudd neglects any mention of Israel's 60th in his recent memoir, Kevin Rudd: The PM Years. Ditto for his grand tour of Israel in December 2010, during which the late Shimon Peres described Israel as being in love with Australia, and Rudd, speaking in Jerusalem's King David Hotel, joked about Menachem Begin's Irgun terrorists back in 1946 "undertaking some interior redesign" of the hotel. (See my 1-4 posts titled The Kevin Rudd Road Show for the details.)

Truly, ten years is practically an eternity in politics.

The Ultimate Zionist Whinge

O dear! O dearie, dearie me!

"A song broadcast on ABC Classic FM has drawn the ire of the B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) for content it says endorses genocide and the destruction of the State of Israel. Hosted by Margaret Throsby, Midday offers guests the opportunity to share their stories and request musical pieces that are significant to them. On Monday, February 25, Egyptian writer and political and cultural commentator Ahdaf Soueif was Midday's guest, and selected Jerusalem, Flower of Cities by Lebanese singer Fairuz as the final song to be played. The Arabic lyrics, in part, go as follows: 'The striking fury is on its way, and I am full of faith! The striking fury is on its way, and I will overcome the sadness.' ADC chairman Dr Dvir Abramovich told The Australian Jewish News that the song 'denies the Jewish relationship with Jerusalem... [and] speaks of 'striking' the Jews, which is a poetic synonym for killing them.' Abramovich has since written to Throsby stating that Jerusalem, Flower of Cities 'anticipates and prays for the destruction of the State of Israel.' 'It gives credibility to all those who deny any Jewish right to the land of Israel,' he said. 'While I understand that the ABC seeks to respect the choices made by its guests for musical items, I must assume that it has guidelines in this regard. I am sure, for example, that it would not play a song calling for the destruction of Australia's indigenous people.'" (The ADC vs the ABC, The AJN, 8/3/13)

*Sigh* Where to begin?

In the scholarly tradition of 'context is everything', let's start with the complete lyrics of Fairuz' beautiful song of loss and resistance, written in the wake of the Israeli seizure and occupation of Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967.

The translation is my own:

For you, city of prayer,
I pray.

For you, beautiful city, flower of cities,
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, city of prayer,
I pray.

Our eyes travel to you every day,
Roaming the porticoes of the temples,
Embracing the old churches,
Sweeping away the sadness from the mosques.

Night of the Isra',
Path of he who ascended to the heavens,
Our eyes travel to you every day.
I pray.

The child and his mother Mary in the grotto,
Two crying faces,
Crying for the refugees,
For the children without homes,
For those who defended you, martyred at your gates.

Peace itself was martyred in the nation of peace,
And justice too died at your gates.
When Jerusalem fell,
Love retreated,
And war took root in the hearts of the world.

The child in the grotto and his mother Mary,
Two crying faces.
I pray.

That's the first, more lyrical part of the song. The lyricism then gives way to martial strains, heralding the theme of resistance to the occupiers and usurpers, and it is here that Abramovich's translation above comes unstuck. In true MEMRI fashion, he mistranslates the Arabic adjective saati' (which qualifies the noun 'anger') as 'striking' when it in fact means 'radiant, brilliant, shining'. It is perhaps best translated here as 'blinding':

A blinding anger is coming  -
This I believe.
A blinding anger is coming,
Transcending the sadness.
On every road it is coming.
The steeds of fear and terror are coming,
Like the overpowering face of God.
Coming, coming, coming.

The door to our city shall not be closed.
For I am coming to pray.
I'll be knocking on all the doors,
Opening all the doors.

O River Jordan cleanse my face with your sacred waters,
Wipe out all traces of barbarian footprints.
A blinding anger is coming,
Riding on steeds of fear and terror,
Overcoming the occupying power.
Jerusalem is ours, it belongs to us.
We will celebrate its splendor.
We will bring it peace.

The wholly natural and completely legitimate tendency of dispossessed Palestinians to remember and yearn for what has been lost, and to strive to recover, by force if necessary, that which has been taken from them by force, is reduced by Abramovich to nothing more than an expression of genocidal intent.

That he lives in an ideological fantasy world where colonizers and colonized have swapped places is all too evident in his absurd assertion that the song is akin to "a song calling for the destruction of Australia's indigenous people."

Clearly, neither Fairuz, Soueif, Throsby, nor the ABC's Classic FM have a case to answer here.

But there's more! Back on April 3, Throsby aired another song about Jerusalem, chosen by her then guest, Professor Jack Rakove, a professor of history at Stanford University. The song was Jerusalem of Gold by Israeli singer Naomi Shemer. I ignored it at the time - one does have a life - but if Abramovich insists on doing a song and dance over Fairuz's song now, why not put on a show over Shemer's?

Jerusalem of Gold is mostly just padding, but the following lyrics are a real worry:

(Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs translation):
The wells ran dry of all their water,
Forlorn the market square,
The Temple Mount dark and deserted,
In the Old City there...
And in the caverns in the mountain,
The winds howl to and fro,
And no one takes the Dead Sea highway,
That leads through Jericho...
The wells are filled again with water,
The square with joyous crowds,
On the Temple Mount within the City,
The shofar rings out loud...

Now if that little comprehensive erasure of Palestine's indigenous Arab population doesn't smack of the genocidal (Aboriginal? What aboriginal?) colonial doctrine of terra nullius (empty land), I don't know what does. Can't have Ms Throsby getting away with that now, can we?

Zionist Hypocrisy Alert

Hypocrisy is a hallmark of Zionist scribblers, and Dvir Abramovich, director of the Centre for Jewish History & Culture at the University of Melbourne, Australian Jewish News columnist and occasional Fairfax blogger, is no exception.

Writing in the AJN on why Israel should not share Jerusalem with the Palestinians, he claims: "If the city was divided, there would be Palestinian army bases stationed at the edges of Jewish neighbourhoods." (Jerusalem on the block, 15/7/11)

Is that so? Then it'd merely mirror what Israel already does in the Galilee, wouldn't it?:

"During the [2006] War on Lebanon, the Israeli army installed rocket-launching bases near Arab towns and villages in the north, in some cases only a few metres away. The Arab towns of Fassuta, Tarsheeha, and Arab al-'Aramshe were all subject to this deliberate military policy. These rocket-launching bases are a serious threat to the residents of nearby towns and villages for a number of reasons. First, launching the rockets and firing is ongoing throughout the day and continues into the night. Second, there exists the possibility of misfiring which puts the lives of residents in danger. Finally, there is also the real danger of Hezbollah firing on these bases, exposing the residents of nearby towns and villages to a life-threatening reality. Indeed, it is not surprising that residents of these villages were killed by Hezbollah rockets. For example, 3 residents were killed by Hezbollah rockets near an Israeli rocket-launching base. In addition, the IDF has also transformed areas of certain Arab towns and villages into training camps in preparation for their ground incursion into Lebanon, which to date has been partially implemented. The training camps are located in the Arab towns of al-Jish, al-Shaghour, Fassuta, Kufr Manda and Lid. The army validated this decision by saying, 'The landscape of Arab towns [in Israel] is similar to Arab towns in Lebanon'." (Israeli rocket-launching bases & army training camps deliberately constructed near Arab towns & villages, Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA), electronicintifada.net, 17/8/06)

In the unlikely event that the Palestinians ever manage to convert East Jerusalem into the stuff of Abramovich's nightmares, perhaps they could validate their efforts by claiming that 'The landscape of our East Jerusalem is similar to Israeli West Jerusalem'. And why not? After all, it worked for Israel in 2006.

Fairfax's Israel Blog

What the... ?

The Fairfax website has recently added Zionist propagandist, Jewish Studies academic and scribbler for The Australian Jewish News Dvir Abramovich to its list of bloggers, with the job of "cover[ing] the Jewish world and Israel from a local and global perspective." Abramovich's blog is called Chutzpah. A more appropriate name might be Israel Rocks! or Israel Rulz, OK?

Abramovich's latest post, Israel's survival a huge achievement (26/4/10), is a veritable checklist of Zionist cliches and talking points:

There's the Israeli dream: "Born in the shadow of the Holocaust, Israel was carried in the hearts and minds of Jews for thousands of years and became a reality against all odds. Israel's founding fathers took one of history's greatest gambles and won."

But not the Palestinian nightmare.

There's a hyped Arab blitzkrieg: "On May 14 1948, as David Ben Gurion declared the new state's independence, warplanes rumbled overhead, attacking within 5 hours."

But no ethnic cleansing of Palestine's indigenous non-Jewish inhabitants from December 1947 to January 1949.

There's alleged applause from Nelson Mandela: "It's no surprise that Nelson Mandela was so moved by Israel's leaders that he required all African National Congress leaders read the writings of Israel's past prime ministers."

But no word on apartheid, Israeli-style. [See my 21/9/09 post Israeli Apartheid: The Jury's In ] Or Israel's defacto alliance with the apartheid regime in South Africa. Or Mandela's speech on The International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People (4/12/10) when he said: "When in 1977, the UN passed the resolution inaugurating The International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People, it was asserting the recognition that injustice and gross human rights violations were being perpetrated in Palestine. In the same period, the UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

There's the miraculous transformation of once "militarily inexperienced" and "persecuted" European Jews into state-of-the-art, go-anywhere-anytime arse-kickers.

But no passport fraud.

There's Israel's Law of Return, trumpeted as "the first universal immigration law in history [which] grants every Jew who needs and wants automatic citizenship."

But no 62-year refusal to implement the Palestinian refugees' Universal Declaration of Human Rights-backed right of return to their stolen homeland.

There's the miracle of "despite having to devote enormous resources to defence in 7 wars, [Israel] has managed to build a robust democracy."

But nothing about squillions in American aid and ordnance.

There's the - wait for it - "only democracy in the Middle East."

But no reference to the Great Gerrymander of 1948 which produced hundreds of thousands (now millions) of de-nationalised and disenfranchised Palestinian exiles.

There's a "flourishing oasis in the desert."

But no uprooted Palestinian orchards.

There's "extremists that constantly seek to torpedo any attempt at peace [and who] want to deny the simple pleasure of co-existence to Jews and Arabs who simply want quiet, normal lives for their children."

But no names. No Ben Gurion, Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, Olmert etc.

There's an imaginary siege: "At 62, Israel is still surrounded by external threats."

But no siege of Gaza.

There's a "tragic [- tragic! -] deadlock with the Palestinians."

But no Israeli refusal to allow Palestinian refugees to return or to end the occupation.

There's "Israel's [alleged] desire for a just peace [which] has never diminished."

But not its actual desire for maximum Palestinian land with minimum Palestinian people.

Now I wouldn't like you leaving this post thinking Abramovich isn't capable of criticism where criticism's due. He is. And criticism doesn't get much more swingeing than this: "The Israeli people have never claimed perfection. Mistakes are inevitable in a democracy."

The Three of Us

"In early winter [2002], an incident occurred that was seared into my memory. A coworker and I were suddenly directed to go down to the Mall entrance [of the Pentagon] to pick up some Israeli generals. Post-9/11 rules required one escort for every 3 visitors, and there were 6 or 7 of them waiting. The Navy lieutenant commander and I hustled down. Before we could apologize for the delay, the leader of the pack surged ahead, his colleagues in close formation, leaving us to double-time behind the group as they sped to Undersecretary [Douglas] Feith's office on the 4th floor. Two thoughts crossed our minds: are we following close enough to get credit for escorting them, and do they really know where they are going? We did get credit, and they did know. Once in Feith's waiting room, the leader continued to speed to Feith's closed door. An alert secretary saw this coming and had leapt from her desk to block the door. 'Mr Feith has a visitor. It will only be a few more minutes'. The leader craned his neck to look around the secretary's head as he demanded, 'Who is in there with him?' This minor crisis of curiosity past, I noticed the security sign-in roster. Our habit, up until a few weeks before this incident, was not to sign in senior vistors like ambassadors. But about once a year, the security inspectors send out a warning letter that they are coming to inspect records. As a result, sign-in rosters were laid out, visible and used. I knew this because in the previous 2 weeks I watched this explanation being awkwardly presented to several North African ambassadors as they signed in for the first time and wondered why and why now. Given all this and seeing the sign-in roster, I asked the secretary, 'Do you want these guys to sign in?' She raised her hands, both palms toward me, and waved frantically as she shook her head. 'No, no, no, it is not necessary at all'. Her body language told me that I had committed a faux pas for even asking the question. My fellow escort and I chatted on the way back to our office about how the generals knew where they were going (most foreign visitors to the 5-sided asylum don't) and how the generals didn't have to sign in. I felt a bit dirtied by the whole thing and couldn't stop comparing that experience to the grace and gentility of the Moroccan, Tunisian, and Algerian ambassadors with whom I worked." (Open door policy, Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, amconmag.com, 19/1/04)

Speaking of nameless, faceless Israelis with seemingly unfettered access to the highest levels of US decision-making, check out the following news report, which to my knowledge, typically, did not make it into the ms Australian media:

"In his recent testimony to the UK Committee investigating the Iraq war, British Prime minister Tony Blair admitted that Israeli officials influenced and participated in the decision by the US and UK governments to attack Iraq in 2003. During testimony regarding his meetings in Texas with then-US President George W Bush in 2002, Blair stated, 'As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this'." (British PM: Israeli officials were part of decision to invade Iraq, Saeed Bannoura, IMEMC News, 20/2/10)

Blair's shifty and tantalising mention of Israeli officials at his meetings with Bush prompted Professor Stephen Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, to cite his words as further proof of one of the book's key findings - that "[p]ressure from Israel and the lobby" was "a critical element" in the Bush administration's decision to attack Iraq in March 2003. (Israel Lobby, p 230) This, of course, was like a red rag to a bull for Israel's hasbara peddlers, hence the pre-emptive publication in the February 18 Age of The Israel lobby myth revived again, by Dvir Abramovich, director of the Centre for Jewish History & Culture at the University of Melbourne.

Predictably, while Abramovich finds some wriggle room in Blair's testimony - "[A] close reading of what Blair actually said ('the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time') reveals that he was referring to Israel's actions in the West Bank during Operation Defensive Shield, not to the decision to invade Iraq" - he conveniently omits Blair's 2nd (conversations between Bush, Blair and the Israelis) and 3rd sentences (those conversations being a major part of all this), with their suggestion that these conversations had more to do with Operation Iraqi Freedom than Israel's mugging of the West Bank, Operation Defensive Shield.

The full story of Israeli involvement in the war on Iraq is still to be told, with missing pieces like Blair's (and Janis Karpinski's recent reiteration of Israeli agents in Abu Ghraib) popping up from time to time. I've already posted some of Mearsheimer & Walt's citations of Israeli cheerleading in the lead up to the war (Greg Sheridan: Conjuror Extraordinaire, 1/4/08). And I've also posted on Stephen J Sniegoski's superb study The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, & the National Interest of Israel (Absent-Minded Professors Inadvertently Set Iraq Ablaze, 22/12/08). Sniegoski's discussion of active Israeli involvement in the decision-making process that led to the Bush/Blair war on Iraq helps place Blair's (and Kwiatkowski's) comments in context:

"Returning to the role of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) [created by Wolfowitz and Feith in August 2002]: as a result of a FBI probe of Israeli spying in the US (ongoing since 1999), which was leaked to the public in... 2004, it came out that Israeli agents had direct contact with members of the OSP. In essence, it was not simply that individuals in the OSP were pro-Israel, but that some of them might be conspirators in a clandestine operation launched by Sharon's Likud Party; they were, as Robert Dreyfuss called them, 'agents of influence' for a foreign government. The spotlight shifted to the OSP because the FBI, in its probe of Israeli spying, observed OSP analyst Larry Franklin meeting with an Israeli official in the presence of two officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In October 2005, Franklin plead guilty to the charge of having turned over highly classified intelligence documents to an Israeli government official and to members of AIPAC, who in turn handed them to the Israeli Embassy... However, the FBI investigation implied much more than the spying of Franklin and some AIPAC officials, illustrating the Israeli connection to the office that had played such a monumental role in providing the propaganda to justify the US attack on Iraq. For Franklin was intimately involved in secretive activities for the OSP. Without notifying the State Department or the CIA, the OSP had been involved in back channel operations that included a series of secret meetings in Washington, Rome and Paris to discuss regime change in Iraq, Iran, and Syria. These meetings brought together OSP staff and consultants (Franklin, Harold Rhode and Michael Ledeen), expatriate Iranian arms dealer Manichur Ghorbanifar, AIPAC lobbyists, Ahmed Chalabi, and Italian and Israeli intelligence officers. In short, it appears that various neoconservatives connected with the Department of Defense were consciously working with Israel in shaping American Middle East policy.

"Israel was also involved in promoting the US attack on Iraq apart from these covert dealings. Some of the spurious intelligence provided to the US came directly from Israel, as shown in a study by Shlomo Brom, a senior researcher at one of Israel's leading think tanks, the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. A special panel of the Israeli Knesset investigated and confirmed the charge that Israeli intelligence services had greatly exaggerated the Iraqi WMD threat. Yossi Sarid, a member of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee, charged that Israeli intelligence had deliberately misled the US. According to James Risen in State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, Israeli intelligence officials frequently traveled to Washington to brief top government officials. The CIA was skeptical of the Israeli intelligence and after the Israeli briefings would circulate reports throughout the government discounting the Israeli information. Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives who had met with the Israeli officials, were enraged by the CIA's negative response, with Wolfowitz complaining vehemently to CIA Director Tenet.

"It has been alleged that the OSP was provided with information by a special unit created in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office. Israel had a history of providing questionable intelligence in regard to Iraq to make that country appear threatening. As pointed out earlier, shortly after the September 11 terrorism, Aman, Israel's military intelligence service, reportedly claimed that Iraq had been involved in the attacks. In June 2002, Efraim Halevy, the director of the Mossad, informed a closed meeting of the NATO Alliance Council in Brussels that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was renewing its efforts to develop nuclear weapons...

"It has been argued that Israel, in its support for war on Iraq, was simply going along with the US government. Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson maintains that the Israelis initially wanted the US to focus on Iran not Iraq, and only shifted to supporting the war on Iraq in early 2002 upon realizing that a war on Iraq had become definite American policy. As mentioned earlier, the report that the IDF's supreme intelligence agency, Aman, at the time of 9/11, promoted the disinformation that Saddam was behind the terrorist attacks militates against the idea that the Israeli government as a unified entity was opposed to the war during this early period. However, even if there had not been complete Israeli support for a US attack on Iraq prior to the early spring, the director of the Mossad's public backing of the major WMD justification for the war in June 2002, before an influential NATO audience, would belie any argument that Israel was simply a reluctant follower of US policy. The fact of the matter is that the Israeli government was pressing the US to attack Iraq and actively abetting the war propaganda process. Ranaan Gissin, a senior Sharon adviser, told the AP in August 2002, 'It will only give Saddam Hussein more of an opportunity to accelerate his programme of WMD'. Gissin said Sharon sent the US government Israeli intelligence estimates that Saddam had boosted production of chemical and biological weapons in anticipation of war with the US. Gissin also claimed that Saddam had recently ordered Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission to speed up work on developing nuclear weapons. 'Saddam's going to be able to reach a point where these weapons will be operational', Gissin direly warned. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was also trumpeting the necessity of war. In September, 2002, the Wall Street Journal published a piece by Netanyahu entitled 'The Case for Toppling Saddam', in which he held that 'This is a dictator who is rapidly expanding his arsenal of biological and chemical weapons, who has used these WMD against his subjects and his neighbors, and who is feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons'. Netanyahu waved the red flag of Saddam's purported nuclear threat. 'Two decades ago it was possible to thwart Saddam's nuclear ambitions by bombing a single installation', Netanyahu exclaimed... Netanyahu's focus was Iraq's alleged nuclear threat. '[T]he imperative is to defang the Iraqi regime by preventing its acquisition of atomic weapons', Netanyahu solemnly declared in October 2002. 'No inspectors will be able to do that job'. In fact, as early as April 2002, Netanyahu was briefing US senators as to the nuclear danger of Saddam Hussein. According to columnist Robert Novak, Netanyahu warned that Saddam 'not only is acquiring nuclear weapons but may have the means of delivering them against the US' via 'satchels carried by terrorists'.

"It is noteworthy that the pro-war position in Israel transcended the Likudnik right, being taken up by Labor leader Shimon Peres, who was serving as Sharon's Foreign Minister. Peres stated in September 2002 that 'the campaign against Saddam is a must. Inspections and inspectors are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome easily inspections and inspectors'.* Former Labor Party Prime Minister Ehud Barak also stressed the need for military action... In late December 2002, Robert Novak maintained that Prime Minister Sharon was privately urging American lawmakers to support an attack on Iraq for the benefit of Israel... In February 2003, as the American attack approached, Prime Minister Sharon told a visiting delegation of American congressmen in Israel that the war against Iraq would provide a model for how the US should also deal with Syria, Libya, and Iran. 'These are irresponsible states, which must be disarmed of WMD, and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve'. While Sharon said that Israel will not be directly involved in the attack on Iraq, he emphasized that 'the American action is of vital importance'. In short, Sharon was advising the US how it should deal with Israel's enemies." (pp 168-172)

[*LOL: Read my 7/4/09 post By Way of Deception.]

Zionism's Bedside Manner

Dvir Abramovich begins his grizzle, Hollywood should stop exploiting the Holocaust (The Age, 2/11/09), with this little gem: "In a 2005 guest appearance on the sitcom Extras Kate Winslet, playing herself as a nun on a Holocaust film is asked, 'You doing this, it's so commendable, using your profile to keep the message alive about the Holocaust'. Winslet responds, 'God, I'm not doing it for that. We definitely don't need another film about the Holocaust, do we? It's like, how many have there been? You know, we get it. It was grim. Move on. I'm doing it because I noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust, you're guaranteed an Oscar. I've been nominated 4 times. Never won. The whole world is going, 'Why hasn't Winslet won one?'... That's why I'm doing it. Schindler's bloody List. The Pianist. Oscars coming outta their ass...' Winslet was right, winning the Oscar for best actress this year for The Reader."

He laments, "The commodification of the Holocaust into a profitable, Oscar-reaping enterprise has reached such a nadir that commentators are saying, There's no business like Shoah Business'. Though I find this epigram distasteful, it does reflect a disturbing trend in which the Holocaust is being packaged and sold by fimmakers who are using this dark chapter as a ticket for advancing their own fame and artistic agenda. These films conveniently skip over the mass shootings, the gas chambers, the ovens, the mounds of naked bodies - filling up the screens with harmful falsifications. The damage Hollywood, with its huge marketing machine is doing the memory of the Holocaust is enormous. Think of Hollywood's cowboy and Indian movies and how they shaped our understanding of that episode."

Abramovich goes on to detail the ways in which he feels the current crop of Holocaust-themed films (The Reader, Inglourious Basterds, and The Boy in Striped Pyjamas) misrepresent the Holocaust. Typically, though, as a Zionist spruiker, he completely ignores the subjects of Zionism's shameless exploitation of the Holocaust as a cover for its crimes against the Palestinians* and Hollywood's considerable services to Zionist propaganda **.

[*See my 14/12/08 post Quack Cure (in response to an earlier Abramovich grizzle in The Age), **and my 1/10/08 post Paul Newman: Zionist Dupe.]

Thanks to Norman Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, and Jack Shaheen's Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, much light has been shed on those two issues. What is less well-known, however, is the cruelly instrumental attitude of the pre-state Zionist movement in Palestine (led by David Ben-Gurion) towards Holocaust survivors and Jewish displaced persons. Some revealing snippets from Israeli historian Idith Zertal's From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel (1998):

"The Jewish tragedy, which was revealed fully only after the war, and the unprecedented suffering of those who survived the destruction not only failed to budge Ben-Gurion from his views, but even entrenched them. After visiting the Displaced Persons (DP) camps in late 1945, Ben-Gurion remarked to a soldier from the Jewish Brigade, who demanded more extensive Zionist work in the camps, that 'the Zionist mission is not to save the remnant of Jews in Europe, but to save Palestine for the Jewish people'. The efforts of various Jewish philanthropies to provide immediate succour to the Jewish refugees, especially children - to extricate them from the camps and transfer them to foster families or institutions in Britain, France, and Switzerland - were halted at once by Ben-Gurion. When he reached Heidelberg at the end of his tour of the camps in Bavaria, he transmitted telephone instructions to the Jewish Agency representative in London 'against removing people from the American zone [of occupation] - not to France, England or Switzerland... I demanded that the removal of children and adults be stopped... unless for purposes of 'aliya', under instruction of the Jewish Agency'." (p 186)

"The encounter [between Palestinian Zionists and Holocaust survivors] was imbued with deep fear and a sense of guilt, incorporated by the Zionist discourse that placed a wall between 'us' and 'them', transforming the other side, the 'diasporic', into an object, a faceless mass of people waiting to be redeemed while performing the historic Zionist role assigned to them. 'It will be hell if all the [DP] camps come [to Palestine]', Ben-Gurion was told by rescue operatives in Europe in early 1946, in response to his question about what would happen if the Jewish Agency got the 100,000 entry permits it demanded. 'All this filth, just as it is, you [the Jewish Agency/Ben-Gurion] plan to move to Palestine?' protested the Zionist agents sent to Europe to deal with the needs of the refugees and bring them to Palestine. Ben-Gurion responded that it would be better for them ('the filth') to be in Palestine than elsewhere, implying that only in Palestine could the survivors be of any benefit and fulfill their historical function. 'When these Jews come to Palestine, we'll have trouble', said Ben-Gurion, 'but it will be Jewish trouble'. reporting the conversation to the Jewish Agency Executive, he never commented on the use of the term 'filth' by rescue agents, and he repeated it without elaboration." (p 216)

Yet, even back then you could glimpse a Holocaust industry of sorts:

"The importance of the Holocaust survivors in [Ben-Gurion's] formula derived from his belief in the crucial role of international public opinion. With the international media fed and orchestrated by a well-run Zionist propaganda machine, no power in the enlightened Western world would have the strength to prevent the Holocaust survivors from reaching their only refuge - the 'home of their lives' - in Palestine." (p 231)

Now wouldn't a Holocaust movie about Zionism's bedside manner really give Abramovich something to whinge about?

Quack Cure

The anti-Semitic prejudices of a group of halfwits from two Sydney private schools were recently exposed when their Facebook doodlings came under media scrutiny (Facebook scandal shames students, Sydney Morning Herald, 9/12/08). Predictably, the jerks responsible invoked the 'We were only joking/Some of my best friends are Jews' excuse: "'There was no intention of causing conflict or racial hatred', the student, who did not want his name published, said. 'It is a big in-joke among the private schools and young people in the eastern suburbs. 'We have Jewish friends and girlfriends'." Predictably too, they revealed themselves as equal opportunity racists: "The site contains what appears to be Arabic writing, giving it the appearance of a mock Islamic site." The Herald published a photo from the site showing a student (?) wearing a Sikh - Sikh! - turban with flanking Kalashnikovs - offensive anti-Muslim stereotyping that, again predictably, has gone unremarked by corporate media outlets.

The Zionist response, of course, was to invoke the Holocaust. "The Holocaust did not begin with the bricks and mortar of Auschwitz, but with words that dehumanised the Jews and other minorities and enabled their annihilation," commented Dvir Abramovich (described in a footnote as "director of Jewish Studies at the University of Melbourne and an anti-racism educator") in an opinion piece in The Age (The Holocaust began because words of hate went unchallanged, 11/12/08). And Abramovich's prescription, at least in part? National Holocaust education.

I say 'Zionist response' because nowhere in Abramovich's piece is there any mention of the author's allegiance to the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. Why so shy? As a columnist in The Australian Jewish News (something else omitted from his Age job description), Abramovich regularly comes out swinging in defence of Zionism. To cite but one example, he has attacked anti-Zionism as "clear-cut antisemitism" (Anti-Zionism is clear-cut antisemitism, 30/3/07). Leaving to one side the issue of his wholly illegitimate conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism (see my 9/3/08 post Working Out the Mechanics of Our Relationship 2), the core of Abramovich's argument is that "Anti-Zionism is underlined by a denial of Jewish national self-determination* and of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East."

[*Lengthy digression notwithstanding, it is essential to deal with this nonsense before proceding further with any discussion of Dr Abramovich's remedy for eruptions of anti-Semitism in Australian schools. Prominent anti-Zionist Israeli Uri Davis has observed that "Decent people would want to have nothing to do with a 'national liberation movement' that attempts to justify war crimes and crimes against humanity such as ethnic cleansing." (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 8) The "crime against humanity" referred to by Davis is, of course, the Palestinian Nakba - the mass expulsion of the indigenous Arab population of Palestine by Zionist forces under cover of war in 1948. The Nakba gives the lie to all Zionist propaganda of the 'Israel is simply Jewish national self-determination in operation' variety. To quote Davis at length: "The second truth relevant to Israeli-Palestinian dialogue is that an Israeli-Hebrew people has been created in the process of the Zionist colonization of Palestine. This people, like all other peoples, must be guaranteed their full rights under international law and in conformity with all UN resolutions relevant to the question of Palestine. It is in order to point out again in this connection that it is not the case that the United Nations Organization legitimized through the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) of November 1947 the establishment of a 'Jewish State' in the political Zionist sense of the term. Legally speaking, the UN did not intend the adoption of the said Resolution 181(II) as a licence for the armed forces of the Zionist organisations and subsequently the armed forces of the new State of Israel to perpetrate war crimes and crimes against humanity including the mass expulsion of the native indigenous Palestinian Arab people from their homeland. In other words, it was and remains impossible for the General Assembly, conducting its business under the stipulation of the UN Charter, to have legally endorsed the political Zionist idea of the 'Jewish State', namely, a state that attempts to guarantee in law and practice a demographic majority of the Jewish tribes in the territories under its control. The constitutional notion underpinning the idea of the 'Jewish State' in the said UN Resolution 181(II), as well as its sister 'Arab State', envisioned the partion of British Mandate Palestine into two essentially democratic states, one with 'Jewish' trappings and one with 'Arab' trappings, joined together in the framework of an economic union, with Jersusalem as corpus separatum under a special international regime to be administered by the United Nations, neither the capital of the 'Arab State' nor the capital of the 'Jewish State'. One can only speculate as to what representations of 'Jewish', 'Arab' or 'international' trappings would be consistant with essentially democratic constitutions. One could imagine, for instance, that in the 'Jewish State' the first line on official road signs would be Hebrew, the second Arabic and the third English; in the 'Arab State' the first line Arabic, the second, Hebrew and the third English; and in the international city of Jerusalem road signs would be only in English to skirt the stupid thorny issue of whether the second line on official road signs should be Hebrew or Arabic. In terms of the said UN General Assembly Resolution 181(II) all Arab inhabitants who were ordinarily resident in the territories designated by the UN for the 'Jewish State' were and remain entitled to 'Jewish State' citizenship; all Jews ordinarily in the territories by the said Resolution for the 'Arab State' were and remain entitled to 'Arab State' citizenship; and all Arabs and Jews resident in Jerusalem were and remain entitled to an international Jerusalem citizenship. It thus follows that for Israeli-Palestinian dialogue to succeed it must take as a point of departure a critical examination of the right of self-determination for the Hebrew people constructed in the process of the Zionist colonization of Palestine. Such critical examination would aim to dismantle illegal institutional representations of this right as were put in place by the Parliament of the State of Israel in violation of the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the standards of international law (for example, the Absentees' Property Law of 1950), and replace them with alternative legal and other institutional representations such as are consistent with the same, notably with UN General Assembly Resolution 194(III) of December 1948 stipulating the right of return of all Palestinian Arab refugees." (ibid, pp 75-76)]

I return now to the matter of Dr Abramovich's proposed cure for outbreaks of anti-Semitism in the Australian student body - "national Holocaust education." It is necessary here to remind oneself that some cures are worse than their disease. As American academic Norman Finkelstein reminds us, Zionist alchemists such as Abramovich are adept at transmuting the historical Holocaust into ideological gold: "... 'The Holocaust' is an ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust. Like most ideologies, it bears a connection, if tenuous, with reality. Its central dogmas sustain significant political and class interests. Indeed, The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensible ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a 'victim' state, and the most successful ethnic group in the United States has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable dividends accrue from this specious victimhood - in particular immunity to criticism, however justified." (The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, 2000, p 3)

A more recent, Israeli perspective on 'The Holocaust' as ideological weapon comes in a new book, The Holocaust is Over, by former pillar of the Israeli political establishment and now ex/post-Zionist Avraham Burg. "Jews and Israelis," laments Burg, "have become thugs... All is compared to the Shoah, dwarfed by the Shoah, and therefore all is allowed - be it fences, sieges, closures, curfews, food and water deprivation, or unexplained killings. All is permitted because we have been through the Shoah and you will not tell us how to behave." (Quoted in John Mearsheimer's review, Invoking the Holocaust to defend the occupation)

While a shot of Dr Abramovitch's Zionist snake-oil may go some way towards curing our screenagers of anti-Semitic rashes, its main side effect, total blindness to Palestinian suffering, is a real concern.