Einstein's Other Discovery

Einstein scores:

"Scientists have for the first time observed elusive gravitational waves - tiny ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by violent astronomical events. The discovery, announced overnight in Washington DC, confirms the last outstanding prediction made by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity." (Einstein was proven right, 100 years on, Marcus Strom, Sydney Morning Herald, 12/2/16)

Now you don't have to be an Einstein to reach the following conclusion, but here it is from the horse's mouth anyway:

"We had great hopes for Israel at first. We thought it might be better than other nations, but it is no better." (Einstein's Last Media Statement, New York Post, 12/3/55)

That was in 1955.

You can imagine Einstein's 'Last Media Statement' today:

'We once had great hopes for Israel. Then we used to console ourselves with the thought that at least it was better than apartheid South Africa. But not anymore. It is no better - in fact, it's worse, far worse.'

Ignorance is Bliss

Here's the spin on the website:

"The exchange of ideas and research together with collaborative efforts are central to the development of breakthroughs in every scientific and technological endeavour. Recognising this, the Technion Society of Australia encourages and facilitates academic and scientific exchanges between Australian universities and the Technion... We encourage academics and researchers from Australian universities to explore collaborative initiatives with the Technion. The TSA has established an Academic Committee under the leadership of Professor Michael Wallach which facilitates exchanges and oversees the selection and awarding of academic and research scholarships." (Information for academics, austechnion.com)

And here's the hidden agenda:

"Sending Australian academics to Israel helps to combat the delegitimisation of the Jewish State on campuses, the executive director of the Technion Society of Australia (TSA), Ken Lander, said last week. The TSA has just announced its 2012 Theeman Scholars, a program that fosters the exchange of Australian and Technion academics to enhance collaboration... 'Part of the BDS movement around the world is to delegitimise Israel on campus, and these types of scientific exchanges, academic exchanges are the strongest weapon that Israel has to delegitimise BDS', he said." (Academic exchange 'a weapon against BDS', The Australian Jewish News, 13/4/12)

Now according to the AJN, our 2012 Theeman Scholars are:

Professor Neal Ashkanasy of the Queensland Business School. He's a "world-leading researcher on organisational behaviour," and will be off to the dark side for 3 months, "working on several research projects and delivering a number of research seminars."

Could one of them perhaps be Making QBS a BDS-Free Zone: The Organisational Requirements?

Professor of Psychology Michael Smithson of the Australian National University. He's apparently "a leading researcher in the study of ignorance, uncertainty and decision-making," and will be off to the dark side for 3 weeks, "giving seminars and being a lead speaker in an international workshop on the subject of 'decisions under severe uncertainty'".

Michael's first seminar could perhaps be titled Ignorance is Bliss: How I Had Absolutely No Idea What I Was Getting Myself Into When the Smoothie from TSA First Approached Me. Another could be Palestine? Never Heard of It. Or maybe BDS? What's That? Or how about this for the "international workshop": Decisions! Decisions!: Academic Integrity and the Freebie.

But there's more:

"Last year's Theeman Scholars, Professor Farid Christo from the University of South Australia and Professor Graeme Murch from the University of Newcastle, will report on their research at the TSA's Einstein Supper on May 22." (ibid)

Einstein Supper?

Could I suggest that Farid and Graeme kindly refrain from quoting from Einstein's last media statement, in which he said, "We had great hopes for Israel at first. We thought it might be better than other nations, but it is no better."*

Wouldn't want the movers and shakers of the TSA to choke on their chickens now, would we?

[*Excerpt from Einstein's Last Media Statement, published in the 'Dear Reader' column of the New York Post, March 13, 1955 - quoted in Einstein on Israel & Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East, Fred Jerome, 2009, p 223.]

SMH Letters Editor No Einstein

Ali Kazak, former ambassador of Palestine to these shores, submitted the following letter to the Sydney Morning Herald. Although it was published on 18 May, the words in bold were omitted by the letters editor:

"Your Middle East correspondent's article Israel points finger over coordinated incursions (SMH 17/5) contains a number of inaccuracies which need to be corrected. Palestinian refugees are not Syrians of Palestinian descent. They are Palestinians who were ethnically-cleansed [replaced by thrown out] from Palestine by Jewish terrorist organisations such as the Stern Gang who created Israel [replaced by when Israel was created] in its place in 1948. They maintain their Palestinian nationality and refuse to replace it with any other as Israel wishes them to do. Furthermore, it is not correct to describe them as penetrating or infiltrating the border since one does not infiltrate or penetrate into one's own country regardless of its occupation by other people who deny them their right to live in their own homeland. Finally, the Palestinians were not marking the 53rd anniversary of the creation of Israel but the 63rd anniversary of Al-Nakba (the Palestinian Day of Catastrophe) of their dispossession of their homeland. Israel's cold-blooded killing of 3 of the refugees is murder and should be strongly condemned by the Australian government."

This blatant display of censorship/self-censorship warrants several points:

1) By replacing ethnic cleansing with thrown out the Herald is deliberately obfuscating the plain fact that the Palestinian refugees were thrown out for no other reason than that they were non-Jews whose mere existence in Palestine stood in the way of the creation of a majority Jewish Israeli state. Zionist historian and 1948 specialist Benny Morris certainly doesn't baulk at using the term: "There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing... A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians." (See my 11/5/08 post Benny Unhinged)

2) By omitting the reference to Jewish terrorist organisations such as the Stern Gang, the Herald's letter editor reveals himself to be no Einstein. After all, it was Einstein who wrote the following terse letter, dated 10 April 1948 (a day after the notorious act of ethnic cleansing known as the Deir Yassin massacre, perpetrated by the Irgun and the Stern Gang) in response to an invitation to attend a fundraiser for the American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, aka the Stern Gang: "When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsibility for it would be the British and the second responsibility for it the Terrorist organizations built up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people."

3) After reading the Human Rights Watch report on Israel's latest massacre, Israel: Investigate Killings During Border Protests (20/5/11), the expression cold-blooded murder seems nowhere near wide of the mark. As the report says, "Using intentional lethal force where not strictly necessary to protect life is likely to violate the right to life in a non-armed-conflict policing situation such as crowd control, even when carried out by soldiers... Unjustified killings should be prosecuted as crimes." The situation Kazak describes in his letter relates to the protest at the Lebanese border. In relation to this, HRW finds that there was "no imminent threat to the lives of Israeli forces that necessitated use of lethal force," and points out that the Israeli murderers were separated from the unarmed protesters by 2 rows of fencing, one electrified, and a thick row of trees.

The following questions therefore arise: Just what was the letters editor afraid of? What pressures was he/she operating under? Was this a matter of censorship from someone higher up in the Fairfax food chain or an act of self-censorship by the letters editor? Does the Herald have in its possession a list of red line words in relation to Palestine/Israel? If so, what was its origin and what are they? Oh yes, and what ever happened to freedom of speech?

For those interested, see my post on the report by Herald Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis, to which Ali Kazak's letter was a response: Palestinians Dying to Celebrate Israel's 63rd Birthday (17/5/11)

The ABC of Zionist Propaganda

When was the last time you saw a decent documentary on the contemporary Middle East on the ABC? The last I recall was screened as long ago as 2003 (Israel's Secret Weapon)! All we ever seem to get these days are wildlife, ancient history, or World War II.

But the government broadcaster hasn't just been playing it safe. This year saw it engage in a bizarre process of literally fending off a push to have an Australian doco on Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories screened. (See my 11/11/10 post Words Behind Words)

It's not as if the absence of documentary meat is the only evidence we have for what seems to be the adoption of a deliberate policy of not frightening the horses. How's this for an admission?

"The ABC managing director, Mark Scott, has told an audience of film and television producers that the way he had been able to secure additional funding was by convincing the government the national broadcaster was working in its interests." (ABC chief tells how to win funds & influence people, Karl Quinn, Sydney Morning Herald, 18/11/10)

And if we have a government that seems constitutionally incapable of sensibly distinguishing between the national and the USraeli interest, is it any wonder that the 'B' in ABC can only stand for 'bland'?

I wish I could say though that that's as bad as it gets, but I can't. The ABC has reached the sad point where it is now deliberately promoting Israeli propaganda:

We got our first inkling of what's afoot when we learned, in October, that the ABC's political editor (and co-anchor of the coming post-Kerry O'Brien 7.30 Report), Chris Uhlmann, was to join a 17-member politico-media caravan to Israel led by Zionist lobbyist Albert Dadon and set to depart this month.

The climactic moment of this mass rambamming was reported to be a ceremony at Yad Vashem to honour Aboriginal activist William Cooper, promoted by Dadon as the "only man in the world who had the courage to protest and stand up against Kristallnacht." (See my 25/10/10 post Record Rambam).

Dadon's attempt to co-opt Cooper's memory should, of course, be viewed in the context of the Israel lobby's strategy of courting indigenous Australian spokespersons in an effort to mask Zionism's assault on indigenous Palestinians. (See my 11/2/10 post Zionism Goes Native)

In a sign of things to come (?), The 7.30 Report ran an item on Cooper on December 1, featuring Dadon and insinuating familiar Zionist propaganda tropes:

"You look at the de-legitimization that Jews were subject to at the time and perhaps it took someone else else that was himself de-legitimized to recognise the humanity of those people." (Dadon)

"We, the Jewish people were people without land and the Indigenous people were able or could have their own land, but others prevented it." (Shmuel Rosenkranz)

Cooper, we were told, "will be honoured by an academic chair [in Studies of Resistance] established in his name [at Yad Vashem]."

To entertain the idea that this might include indigenous Palestinian resistance to Zionist dispossession, colonisation and apartheid would, of course, be to invite derision.

So far, however, the ABC's deliberate peddling of Zionist propaganda has been most evident on Radio National - on, of all things, The Science Show.

A headline in The Australian Jewish News of 26/11/10 said it all: The science of promoting Israel.

The AJN went on to report: "A series of ABC Radio programs is highlighting Israel's scientific credentials and achievements. Host of Radio National's The Science Show, Robyn Williams, recently visited Israel as a guest of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he interviewed more than 20 top scientists from both the university and elsewhere in Israel. The interviews are now being featured on the weekly program. 'I was delighted to be invited', Williams said, while praising the state of Israeli science. 'Innovation is going brilliantly... and much to my surprise, an awful lot of the research being done is not necessarilly that which relates to the country's own immediate need'. Scientists in Israel are working on diverse projects including diabetes and HIV research, nanotechnology and fish farming in Uganda. Williams is the first ABC Radio journalist in what businessman Leon Fink, who has instigated and financed several initiatives to promote Israel's scientific achievements, hopes will be a continuing program. Fink said he established the program in response to negative press the Jewish State had received recently."

So far, in this series on what Williams calls "Israeli science," we've been treated to a nanotechnologist who talks of seeing "nano Stars of David" under his electron microscope, a Palestinian scientist "working in Israel" who gives the thumbs down to BDS, a scientist who is "helping the starving children of Uganda to eat," and an item on the Einstein archive at the Hebrew University in which we were informed of exhibitions in "Jewish museums in Sydney and Melbourne" which focussed on the great atheist's "Jewish identity**."

[*See my 16/11/10 post Oh Puh-lease! ;** Just how tiresome Einstein took the business of identity politics emerges in a review of the 7th volume of his collected papers: "One of his first attempts to sum up relativity for the layperson appeared in an article for The Times on November 28, 1919. An earlier issue of the paper referred to Einstein as a 'Swiss Jew', prompting a witty analogy: 'By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, today in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bete noire, the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!" ('With fame I become more stupid', PD Smith, The Guardian, 31/8/02)]

I'll leave you with some "Israeli science" I very much doubt will be getting a look-in on The Science Show. How about the Hebrew University's Talpiot program, for example:

"[T]he program... operates mostly out of view. During a rare recent visit to the classified program, housed on the Hebrew University campus... officials would not disclose the work done during the military phase of the program and identified cadets only by their first initials... Each year, the program selects the most prominent high school graduates in science and submits them to 3 years of grueling study, paid by the government, followed by 6 years of paid service in the military... [But] instead of serving in combat units, Talpiot graduates are charged with improving the armed services through technological innovation. Some of the cadets delivered. Avi Loeb, who entered Talpiot in the early 1980s, developed a way to make projectiles travel at more than 10 times existing speeds... Another Talpiot innovation came from Amir Beker... During his military service under Talpiot in the late 1980s, Mr Beker learned that Israeli helicopter pilots were suffering from severe back pain from vibrations during flight. To build a better seat, he first had to determine how to measure the effect of vibrations on the human vertebrae. Together with a Talpiot classmate, Mr Beker led a team that installed a custom seat in a helicopter simulator, cutting a hole in its backrest. Training a pen on a pilot's back, the team used a high-speed camera to photograph the marks caused by a range of vibrations. The researchers analyzed the computerized data to come up with a way to redesign the seats." (How an elite military school feeds Israel's tech industry, Christopher Rhoads, The Wall Street Journal, 6/7/07)

Just imagine the sparkling repartee if ever Robyn Williams were to get within cooee of these blokes:

Robyn Williams: Jeez, Avi, enabling the IDF to take out Palestinian civilians 10 times faster must have been an enormously satisfying achievement?
Avi Loeb: Yes, Robyn, but one can't rest on one's laurels. I'm now working on making our projectiles 1,000 times faster!
Robyn Williams: Amaaazing!
Avi Loeb: Yeah, ain't it though.

Robyn Williams: Strewth, Amir, imagine how much more comfortable it must be now for those helicopter pilots firing their 10-times faster Hellfire missiles at Palestinian civilians.
Amir Beker: And don't forget the collateral benefits, Robyn - a surefire cure for Palestinian back pain too.
Robyn Williams: Pure genius, Amir!
Amir Beker: High fives, Robyn!

Oh, yeah... and I'd like an interview with the Israeli scientists who invented the 'skunk bomb'.

Einstein, He Ain't

Did you know that if you stand close enough to Tony Bliar you can actually hear the ocean?

"Let me tell you why I am a passionate believer in Israel. This is a democracy. Its parliament is vibrant. Its politics are, well, not notably restrained, let's say. Its press is free. Its people have rights and they are enforced." (The case against delegitimisation: Tony Blair's Herzliya Speech, The Australian Jewish News, 3/9/10)

Did you know that he's out of his depth - in a puddle?

"Look around the world at what we admire about the Jewish people: their contribution to art, culture, literature, music, business and philanthropy. It's a spirit that is identifiable, open and rather wonderful. Whatever bigotry is, it is the opposite of it. It is a free spirit. On holiday I read the new biography of Albert Einstein. Having in early life taken not much interest in the issue, he became an ardent supporter of Israel. But look at the character of the Israel he supported: like Einstein himself - a free thinker, a rebellious thinker even, but one supremely attuned to the future. That is the Israel people like me support." (ibid)

Two matters arising: a) What Bliar (& consort) really get up to on their hols; and b) Einstein's alleged ardent support for Israel.

a) "The ceremony took place at dusk. Mr Blair and his wife, wearing bathing costumes, were led to the Temazcal, a brick-coloured pyramid on the south end of the beach... Mr Aguilar told the Blairs to bow and pray to the 4 winds as Mayan prayers were read out. Each side of the building is decorated with Mayan religious symbols: the sun and baby lizards representing spring and childhood; a bird to signify adolescence, summer and freedom; a crab to represent maturity and autumn; and a serpent - the most sacred in the Mayan Indian culture - to symbolise winter and transformation... Within the Temazcal, a type of ancient Mayan steam bath, herb-infused water was thrown over heated lava rocks, to create a cleansing sweat and balance the Blairs' 'energy flow'. Mr Aguilar chanted Mayan songs, told the Blairs to imagine that they could see animals in the steam and explained what such visions meant. They were told the Temazcal was like the womb and those participating in the ritual must confront their hopes and fears before 'rebirth' and venturing outside. The Blairs were offered watermelon and papaya, then told to smear what they did not eat over each other's bodies along with mud from the Mayan jungle outside. The prime minister, on holiday just a month before the September 11 attacks, is understood to have made a wish for world peace. Before leaving, the Blairs were told to scream out loud to signify the pain of rebirth. They then walked hand in hand down the beach to swim in the sea." (From New Age Cherie stops Blair being a stick in the mud, Tom Baldwin, The Times, 15/9/01 - quoted in How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short history of Modern Delusions, Francis Wheen, 2004, pp 130-131)

b) Einstein's testimony before Judge 'Texas Joe' Hutcheson, chairman of the 1946 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into Jewish immigration into Palestine:

JH: It has been told to our committee by the Zionists that the passionate heart of every Jew will never be satisfied until they have a Jewish state in Palestine. It is contended... that they must have a majority over the Arabs. It has been told to us by the Arab representatives that the Arabs are not going to permit such condition as that, [that] they will not permit having themselves converted from a majority to a minority.

Dr Einstein: Yes.

JH: I have asked these various persons if it is essential to the right or the privilege of the Jews to go to Palestine, if it is essential to real Zionism that a setup be fixed so that the Jews have a Jewish state and a Jewish majority without regard to the Arab view. Do you share that point of view, or do you think the matter can be handled on any other basis?

Dr Einstein: Yes, absolutely. The state idea is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with many difficulties and narrow-mindedness. I believe it is bad.

Ardent supporter of Israel, he wasn't.