Fania Makes Amends

Tzipi Livni flicked back her golden locks, eyeballed her fellow ministers, and spake thus: 'Listen up, you lot. The plan's ready and we're hot to trot. Ahem... for G-d's sake, contain yourself, Ehud... No, not you Olmert, the other one, Barak. Boys! They can't sit still for a minute. Now before we roll, we've got to get our lines straight. We simply cannot afford any running off at the mouth at this time, OK? Yeah, that's right, I'm talking about you, Matan - that shit about doing a Shoah on Gaza earlier this year was simply unforgivable! So consider yourself warned. And that goes for the rest of you.

'Now, to sell the hanging, drawing & quartering of Gaza to all those bleeding hearts out there, we've got to hit the right note, know what I mean? We can't just say, hey, it's election time and we need to show the punters, who look like they're getting the hots for Netanyahu, that we've got the balls to indulge in a bit of good old boots-n-all, Irgun-style ethnic cleansing; we can't just say, well, if Abbas, Dahlan and the Yanks - useless bastards, the lot of 'em - can't clean up the Strip for us, then we'll just have to do it ourselves; we can't just say, well, we got our ass kicked in Lebanon in 2006, it's now time to regain our street cred in Gaza; and we sure as hell can't just say we're doing it because it's fun - which it is, know what I mean? - and we want to see flies walking across their eyeballs. I mean, OK, we've gotten away so far with keeping these Spawn of Amalek on starvation rations and wading in every so often with a big stick, but how's the world going to react when we unleash our planned Shock-&-Awe? What? Some of you have a problem with my language? Spawn of Amalek? Listen, we're going to need every single vote - and that includes the settler vote - so from now on it's Spawn of Satan, sorry, Amalek, in Hebrew, and Palestinians in English, OK?

'Now we need a pretext, something that our legions of faithful propagandists out there can trot out to divert the world long enough for our objectives to be realised. In a word, it's Sderot, our very own, made-to-measure, pilgrimage site, our Alamo, our Stalingrad! And here are the talking points: Hamas terrorists, direct descendents of the Nazi hordes, have been laying into poor, battered Sderot with the most ferocious arsenal of WMDs ever concocted since Saddam's. These WMDs are found in every nook and cranny of every house in Gaza. In schools, in hospitals, in mosques. In the pockets of children. In women's purses and handbags. Nooks, crannies, houses, schools, hospitals, mosques, pockets, purses, and handbags have all been stuffed to the brim with WMDs by Hamas terrorists! They are all now terrorist infrastructure! Get the picture? And the poor, battered citizens of Sderot just can't take it any more. What's that Ehud? No, not you, Barak, the other one, Olmert. The never-ending conga-line of foreign journalists and politicians? Very funny! Now settle down all of you and focus, this is serious. Where was I? Right, the poor, battered folk of Sderot are crying out to their government for protection. Their walls and rooves are rent. Their patience spent. Their nerves - er - what rhymes with rent and spent? What? They live in tents? Very funny. Anyway, they just can't take it anymore, and neither can we! No government anywhere could possibly tolerate such an assault on its people, OK? We have a duty to defend our citizens against the WMD swarms coming our way from the fortified bastions of Amalek in Gaza. We've been patient enough. We've agonised over their women and kids, even though every one of them has ticking bombs - sorry, rockets - coming out of his ears, but, ever so reluctantly, with the heaviest of hearts, with dragging feet, we are forced to defend ourselves. Got it? Good! Now go forth and spin!'

Meanwhile, as the latest variant of the government's talking points hit the in-boxes of the faithful, one particular zealot in far off Australia felt under greater pressure than most to get it right - this time. You see, Fania Oz-Salzberger, "the Leon Liberman Chair in Modern Israel Studies at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilization, Monash University" no less, had made a dreadful faux pas back in January in The Age no less. This is what she'd let slip: "The truth must be said, and in the Israeli public sphere it is said loud and clear: Gaza is immensely worse off than Sderot. Israeli children in the western Negev face a daily routine of sirens and near-miss explosions. Yet Sderot's kids have food, medical care and holidays away from it all. Their parents can choose to leave, and most of them proudly opt to stay. Children in the Gaza Strip get none of those benefits." (No easy solution while Hamas keeps warring, 27/1/08*)

[See my 11/2/08 post Rotem's Revenge]

Dear, oh dear! Anyway, Fania felt that now was a golden opportunity to make amends and do her bit for the war effort. And you know what, she succeeded admirably. Check this out: "Imagine your next-door neighbour - with whom you have had a long and bloody feud - pulling out a gun and shooting into your windows from his own lounge room, which is densely packed with women and children. In fact, he's holding his daughter on his lap as he claims he will not stop till your family is dead. Police are unavailable. What should you do? One option is to do nothing, or little. You try this for a while. After all, your neighbour is poor and traumatised, and you must bear some of the blame. Finally, as one shot hits your bedroom, you decide that enough is enough. You pull out your far superior gun. You attempt a surgical strike: aim at the shooter's head, try to spare the innocents. In an abstract sense, this is what Israel is doing. But there is nothing surgical about the blood and agony that has engulfed Gaza since Saturday. Try as it might to target militants alone, Israel cannot achieve this. Civilian bodies are being pulled out of the rubble of military bases - because, like our metaphorical gunman's home, militants and civilians inhabit the same urban space in the Gaza Strip. Gaza City and Rafah are towns doubling as army camps. Fighters train next to schools and rockets are stored in the basements of multi-story family homes." (The tragedy when a regime uses its citizens as tools of war, 31/12/08)

Not bad, eh?

On Taking Begging Bowls to Repressive Regimes

"Griffith University vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor has admitted lifting information straight from online encyclopedia Wikipedia and confusing strands of Islam as he struggled to defend his institution's decision to ask the repressive Saudi Arabian Government for funding." (Uni chief lifted Islam text from Wikipedia)

That was front page news in The Australian of 26/4/08. Murdoch's self-styled Heart of the Nation was waging another of its journalistic jihads "after it was revealed [last week] that Griffith had asked the Saudi embassy in Australia for a $1.37 million grant for its Islamic Research Unit."

The Australian's bloodhound, dedicated to sniffing out Muslims under the bed, Richard Kerbaj, had reported accusations, emanating from Clive Wall, a Queensland District Court judge and deputy judge advocate-general in the Australian Defence Forces, that Griffith University was akin to Pakistani "madrassas" [sic: madrasas] and an "agent" of the Saudi regime engaged in "propagating Wahabbism [sic: wahhabism], a hardline brand of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia and followed by al-Qa'ida." (Uni defends Saudi grant, 24/4/08) It was Professor O'Connor's "response to The Australian's revelations... published as an opinion article in the newspaper on Thursday [which] contained whole passages of text 'cut and pasted' from Wikipedia." To top it off, The Australian couldn't resist editorialising about how Professor O'Connor "has yet to justify his taking the begging bowl to a repressive regime that punishes by stoning, beheading and amputation, and bars women from driving and most forms of normal life." But more of that later.

Cutting and pasting Wikipedia, eh? If The Australian really wanted to run with a Wikipedia story, how about this one: "A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged." The "pro-Israel pressure group" referred to is CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) and the full report, from The Electronic Intifada, 21/4/08, can be accessed at http://www.electronicintifada.net/.

And if The Australian really wanted to chase up a story on universities receiving external funding for the propagation of extremist Middle-Eastern ideologies, it could perhaps investigate the phenomenon of Israel studies - what some may well perceive as an attempt to propagate political Zionism, a hardline brand of nationalism/tribalism practised in Israel and promoted by Israel lobbies in western countries.

Maybe this Jerusalem Post story would be a good place for Mr Kerbaj to start: "A coalition of 31 American Jewish organizations want to bring Israel studies to US campuses... Such a[n Israel studies] program, it is hoped, will help tell Israel's story on American college campuses." (Jewish organizations want to bring Israel studies to US campuses, 2/5/07)

Or maybe he could follow up on Mearsheimer & Walt: "To further counter perceived anti-Israel bias in academia, a number of philanthropists have established Israel studies programs at US universities (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish studies programs that already exist), so as to increase the number of 'Israel-friendly' scholars on campus. NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies on May 1, 2003, and similar programs have been established at other schools, including Berkely, Brandeis, and Emory. Academic administrators emphasize the pedagogical value of these programs, but they are also intended to promote Israel's image on campus. Fred Lafer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes clear that his foundation funded the NYU center to help counter the 'Arabic [sic] point of view' that he thinks is prevalent in NYU's Middle East programs." (The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, 2007 p 181)

Israel studies has in fact already made it to these shores, without the Murdoch press showing a flicker of interest: "Monash University's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Richard Larkins, today announced the appointment of Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger to the Leon Liberman Chair of Modern Israel Studies in the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilization... Mr Liberman said: 'The Chair... will provide an opportunity to advance a rounded and multi-dimensional discourse with the Modern State of Israel... The Acting Director of the Centre for Jewish Civilization, Professor David Copolov, said that the appointment of Professor Oz-Salzberger would help strengthen Monash's reputation as a trusted source of expert, dispassionate commentary on key issues of contemporary international relevance." (Monash appoints Chair of Modern Israel Studies, 18/4/07, http://www.monash.edu.au/.) For Oz-Salzberger see my February 12 post Rotem's Revenge.

However, to fully appreciate the consummate HYPOCRISY of the Murdoch press taking Professor Ian O'Connor to task for "taking his begging bowl to a repressive regime," one had the happy option of turning to Murdoch's rival, Fairfax's Sydney Morning Herald of 25/4/08, and reading George Monbiot's wonderful essay, Strange case of Murdoch's lost empire.

Monbiot told the story of how, after buying up Hong Kong's satellite broadcaster Star TV and making a speech in 1993 about how satellite broadcasting constituted a threat to "totalitarian regimes" because it allowed "information-hungry residents of many closed societies to bypass state-controlled television channels," which provoked the Chinese to ban satellite dishes from China, "Murdoch spent the next 10 years grovelling. Within 6 months of [the] ban, Murdoch dropped the BBC from Star's China signal. His publishing company, HarperCollins, paid a fortune for a tedious biography of Deng Xiaoping, written by Deng's daughter. He built a website for the regime's propaganda sheet, the People's Daily. In 1997 he made another speech in which he tried to undo the damage he had caused 4 years before. 'China', he said, 'is a distinctive market with distinctive social and moral values that Western companies must learn to abide by'. His minions, Dover [Murdoch's former vice-president in China & author of Rupert's Adventures in China] reveals, ensured 'every relevant Chinese government official received a copy'. He described the Dalai Lama as a 'very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes'. His son James said that the Western media 'were painting a falsely negative portrayal of China through their focus on controversial issues such as human rights'. Rupert employed his unsalaried gofer, Tony Blair, to give him special access: in 1999 Blair placed him next to the then Chinese president...at a Downing Street lunch. To secure limited cable rights in southern China, News Corporation agreed to carry a Chinese government channel... on Fox and Sky. Murdoch promised to 'further strengthen co-operative ties with the Chinese media, and explore new areas with an even more positive attitude'. Most notoriously, he instructed HarperCollins not to publish the book it had bought from the former governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten."

Rotem's Revenge

"Diplomacy, n The art and business of lying for one's country." Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

There was no way the Sydney Morning Herald was going to get away with it. Bambi's daring ( inexperience?) in printing 5 letters likening the Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto (See my posts, We Remember Warsaw & WRW: The Sequel), was an inexcusable lapse. The Protocols of the Propagandists of Zion require that such lapses shall not pass. And, of course, this one was no exception.

And so, none other than the Israeli ambassador himself, Yuval Rotem, was wheeled out on the Herald's opinion page to dispel the publics' persistent perception that Israel is to Gaza as Nazi Germany was to the Warsaw Ghetto. Rotem's propaganda line had already been laid down by Israel's ubiquitous Foreign Media Adviser, Mark Regev: "Hamas is the problem; there's no doubt about that. Hamas is holding the whole region hostage. It's holding the Israeli population in the south hostage to the daily missile barrages...and it's holding the civilian population of Gaza hostage, who are suffering because of the extremist and hateful agenda of this regime." [Foreign Ministry response to events at Rafah crossing, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 23/1/08]

In Voices missing from Gaza debate (4/2/08), the ambassador claimed that neither the voices of the people of Gaza nor those of Israel were "being heard."

This is certainly true for Palestinian voices, particularly in our craven, Israel-friendly media. But that, of course, was not what the ambassador meant. Regev had decreed that Hamas hostage-takers were the problem, and Rotem was dutifully parroting his talking point: "Hamas is holding the people of Gaza hostage to its belief that Israel should be destroyed and in doing so it is destroying its own people's hope of survival." Asserted, of course, with a well-practised shrug of the shoulders and a pained look.

Israel's representative would have us believe that the Palestinian people, who only two years ago elected Hamas to government in the occupied Palestinian territories, are the dupes of a band of genocidal thugs. The real dupes, of course, are those Israelis who (with the honorable exception of Israeli refuseniks) fill the ranks of the Israeli occupation forces and obediently carry on the grand tradition, pioneered by their fathers and grandfathers, of ethnically cleansing Palestine of its indigenous people. And that alleged "belief that Israel should be detroyed" is merely a rhetorical ploy to divert us from the awful reality that it is Palestine that is systematically being destroyed, by Israel.

And what of the Israeli voice in Rotem's phony balancing act? He would have us believe that Israel is "being denied a voice by the world media, which are choosing to focus on the situation facing Gazans while ignoring the terrifying plight of the people of Sderot, a town in southern Israel...In Gaza the terrorist organization Hamas focuses its weaponry on civilians; on children in their schools and kindergartens, on families' homes and in the streets of Sderot."
But before spinning Sderot, shouldn't Rotem have first consulted that other Israeli voice recently heard in the ms Australian media? Wasn't Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger (chair of Modern Israel Studies at Monash University) telling us mere days before (28/1/08) in The Age that "The truth must be said, and in the Israeli public sphere it is said loud and clear: Gaza is immensely worse off than Sderot. Israeli children in the western Negev face a daily routine of sirens and near-miss explosions. Yet Sderot's kids have food, medical care and holidays away from it all. Their parents can choose to leave, and most of them proudly opt to stay. Children in the Gaza Strip get none of those benefits." Oh dear! Still, he did manage to mimic his compatriot's crocodile tears, "We are not blind to the plight of innocent Palestinian civilians..," with his 'own' "To see the people of Gaza suffer is not pleasurable for Israelis."[See my post, Doppelganger]

A given in this kind of propaganda, of course, is that Israel only ever acts in "self-defence," and Rotem does not disappoint. His example: "[Israel]blocked fuel supplies only after Palestinian snipers killed an Ecuadorian volunteer..." But if we wanted to know the context in which that killing took place, we'd have to turn to the Israeli daily, Haaretz: "Parts of southern Israel were subjected to a barrage of 25 Qassam rockets and dozens of mortars Tuesday, the IDF said, in the wake of IDF raids in Gaza that killed 19 Palestinians...Also Tuesday, an Ecuadorian volunteer working in the fields of a kibbutz near Gaza was shot dead by a sniper from Hamas' armed wing." [25 Qassams fired at Israel after deadly IDF Gaza raid, 16/1/08] That's right, clobber a guy, and if he fights back, clobber him some more and scream self-defence. Works well, every time, especially in our barely functional ms media.

Surprisingly, however, there are compensations in wading through Rotem's propagandist sludge. Take this platitudinous gem for example: "Unlike other forces in the region, Israel does not have the luxury of not being an island of optimism that radiates hope and future for all the people in our neighbourhood." Well done, Yuval! All your own work? This little confection is almost as good as my favourite (from our very own Mark Leibler) : "For Hamas and Hezbollah, every dead Israeli child is a victory and a cause for celebration. For Israel, every dead Palestinian child is a tragedy and a mistake."

"At what point," ambassador Rotem concludes, remembering his theme of unheard voices, "will Israelis be given a voice in this debate?" Well, here's one Israeli voice regrettably denied a hearing in Australia's ms media, that of Interior Minister, Meir Sheetrit. The Jerusalem Post reports him as having "called on the IDF to 'take off its gloves', head into Gaza with armored tractors and raze an entire neighborhood from which rockets have been launched..." [IDF should wipe out parts of Gaza, 11/2/08] Very Warsaw Ghetto, no? And speaking of voices unheard...

The voice of Palestine's democratically elected Hamas government is unlikely ever to surface in our gutless ms media, although Israel's liberal daily, Haaretz, has no qualms in giving it a platform. Just imagine, if you will, the following on the same page as Rotem's rot:-

"Last week's bombing in Dimona was the first martyrdom operation committed by Hamas in more than 5 years. For some time, we have been warning the world that the relentless pressure on our people would eventually tell. In the last 2 months, more than a hundred people have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces in the Gaza Strip, including many civilians, women and children.

"Thirty people have died in the last month for lack of medical care brought on by the embargo. Only 2 weeks ago we saw the appalling sight of over 40 women and children seriously injured when an Israeli F-16 dropped an enormous bomb in the middle of the densely populated Gaza City, a few meters from a wedding party. This kind of atrocity, piled onto the daily death toll, has finally tested the patience of Palestinians, and after lengthy restraint, revenge was inevitable.

"To many in Israel and the West, this act of resistance will be judged in isolation. They will no doubt say that it justifies the inhumane embargo on the people of Gaza and the arrests of more than 500 people and the daily torture of innocents in the West Bank by both Israelis and the puppet government imposed on us by the US.

"What they seem to forget is that just in the last 2 years, 2,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military action and thousands more injured. The cold-blooded fact is that the ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israelis is now over 40 to 1.

"The Hamas-led government has consistently called for a long-term cease-fire. For 9 months before the election that brought us to power we observed a unilateral cease-fire, ensuring that no rockets were fired from Gaza by our movement. We observed this policy during the first 6 months in government, despite the fact that our words and actions were summarily dismissed by the Israelis and their US allies.

"If the people of Sderot want to know why rockets continue to land around them, they should ask their own government why it has continually rejected our calls for a cease-fire and continued its policy of daily incursions and reckless targeting that put the whole population at risk." [Excerpt from Palestinian revenge was inevitable, by Ahmed Yousef (senior political advisor to the foreign minister in the Hamas government), Haaretz, 12/2/08]