The dumbing down of the United States is getting worse. Food for thought:
"George Orwell famously forewarned in 1984, 'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.' We shouldn't be surprised then by some recent, disturbing trends in the study of history. According to a new analysis by the American Historical Association, the number of students choosing to major in history at the nation's colleges has plummeted. Undergraduate history majors have fallen by more than a third in less than a decade, declining to their lowest levels since the '80s. The evidence indicates that the vanishing history major is not a short-term response to the Great Recession's lousy job market. If anything, the trend is accelerating. The undergraduate history major seems to be on the way out. [...]
"While understandable, the sharp national decline in studying the past should worry all of us, not just history professionals. Few history majors... become historians, but they do move on to become citizens. Knowledge of the past provides young people with a sense of place and a concept of temporal continuity, lessons to apply to the present and future, an interpretive framework and perspective for navigating the choppy global world. An epidemic of historical amnesia already plaques this country, which has often paid a terrible price and done grave harm to other foreign people and lands due to its ignorance of the past... " (History majors are becoming a thing of the past, except in the Ivy League, Marc Wortman, thedailybeast.com, 4/1/19
Showing posts with label George Orwell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Orwell. Show all posts
Sunday, January 13, 2019
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Orwell Turns in His Grave
We do indeed live in interesting times.
In 2011, an award for political journalism bearing the name of a Zionist, namely the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, went to anti-Zionist journalist Jonathan Cook. (You can see my series of posts on Gellhorn by clicking on the label below.)
Now, an award for political journalism bearing the name of an anti-Zionist, namely the Orwell Prize, has just gone to Zionist journalist Jonathan Freedland.
Stranger still, while Cook, one of the best journalists around on the subject of Palestine, was at least awarded his Gellhorn Prize for exposing "establishment propaganda" (in his case of the Zionist variety), Freedland's Orwell Prize was awarded, not for the content of his writing (which, as far as Palestine/Israel is concerned, invariably reduces to apologetics for the Zionist project) but for the "lucidity and elegance of his style." (Two Guardian journalists win Orwell prize for journalism, Martin Williams, theguardian.com, 22/5/14)
One can only imagine what Orwell himself would have thought about the awarding of an Orwell Prize for style alone. Still, it could have been worse. Imagine this Zionist apologist receiving an award for his content on the issue of Palestine/Israel.
To illustrate, take his July 18, 2012 article for the New Statesman, Yearning for the same land, essentially a defence of political Zionism:
Freedland here plays the game of Good Zionist vs Bad Zionist, contrasting what he calls "left-leaning Zionists who believe the original movement's goal was the liberation of people, not land," with "hawkish Zionists, heirs of Vladimir Jabotinsky, who are territorial maximalists, eager to fly the Israeli flag over the West Bank."
It's the former, he maintains, who are "the true Zionists," those who are "eager to see territory now occupied by Israel ceded [?] to become sovereign Palestinian land." Freedland, of course, places himself in the camp of the Zionist angels, if I may be allowed an oxymoron.
To assert, as he does, that the goal of the Zionist angels (LOL) was never really the acquisition of Palestinian land, when they, in collaboration with the followers of Jabotinsky, ethnically cleansed 78% of Palestine in 1948, regardless of the borders proposed by the 1947 UN partition plan, and stole all the Palestinian land they could lay their blood-stained hands on, is simply risible.
He defends the Zionist bulldozing of the cosmopolitan, multi-sectarian Palestine of old by trotting out the boilerplate dogma of his "socialist-Zionist youth": the Jews are a "people," and as such "have a right to self-determination in the historic land of their birth."
Freedland's Zionist sleight of hand is transparent: Jews are not what they so indubitably are - a diverse (because of a past history of conversion) faith community originating in the Middle East - but are imagined as an homogenous ethnic grouping, who, following a collective heave-ho by the Romans, ended up as a scattered diaspora, somehow managing, against all the odds, to preserve their ethnic purity.
It's as if, whenever Freedland sees himself in a mirror, he sees Moses or Joshua looking back. Read Shlomo Sand? Forget it!
Our self-designated left Zionist today, however, is trendier than his forbears, who swore blind for decades (with that famous shrug) that the Palestinians inexplicably just went walkies in 1948. He now concedes that the Palestinian Nakba (which he still can't spell, rendering it as Naqba) actually happened and even thinks Israelis should be commemorating it. But more than that... nah.
To bolster his case that Zionism is still kosher, Freedland draws on "left-leaning Zionist" author Amos Oz.
First the hard sell:
"[Oz] argues that, besides the legal right bestowed by the UN's 1947 resolution to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, Israel has a moral right - the right of the drowning man... entitled to grab hold of a piece of driftwood even if another man is already holding it. The drowning man can even make the other man share it, by force, if necessary. His moral right ends, however, the moment he pushes the other man into the sea. The Jewish people, scythed by the Holocaust and after centuries of persecution, were gasping for breath in 1948; their need for a home was as great as that of any other people in history."
All pedestrian Zionist propaganda of course:
1) The partition was essentially an exercise in the White Man twisting the arms of just enough brown men to get the desired result at the UN, not to mention a violation of the latter's charter;
2) Jews in displaced persons camps after the war were not drowning, though they were harassed and bullied by Zionist enforcers; and
3) Zionism, the militant settler-colonial movement which created Israel, was forced on the Palestinians by British bayonets long before the Holocaust, and busied itself not with the rescue of European Jewry from the perils of Nazism, but solely with accumulating the cannon fodder and the arms necessary to roll Palestine's weaker indigenous population and seize as much of its Palestinian homeland as possible.
Having cleverly diverted the reader's attention with the (alleged) drowning man, gasping for breath, Freedland then slips in the following, hoping you won't notice:
"They had the right to act, even though the cost for another people, the Palestinians, was immense."
Sorry about that, Palestinians. Nothing personal mind you!
So who awarded the Orwell Prize to Freedland? There were 3 judges: Robin Lustig (BBC Radio), Paul Anderson (Tribune/New Statesman), and Michael Parks (Professor of Journalism at USC). On the first, you might like to read BBC buries the bitter at mondoweiss.net (7/7/10), and on the second, his rationale for opposing an academic boycott of Israel, No to the Academic Boycott, Tribune, 29/4/05).
Orwell famously wrote that Journalism is printing what someone does not want printed: everything else is public relations. Poor man, a prize bearing his name has just gone to a peddler of Zionist PR.
In 2011, an award for political journalism bearing the name of a Zionist, namely the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, went to anti-Zionist journalist Jonathan Cook. (You can see my series of posts on Gellhorn by clicking on the label below.)
Now, an award for political journalism bearing the name of an anti-Zionist, namely the Orwell Prize, has just gone to Zionist journalist Jonathan Freedland.
Stranger still, while Cook, one of the best journalists around on the subject of Palestine, was at least awarded his Gellhorn Prize for exposing "establishment propaganda" (in his case of the Zionist variety), Freedland's Orwell Prize was awarded, not for the content of his writing (which, as far as Palestine/Israel is concerned, invariably reduces to apologetics for the Zionist project) but for the "lucidity and elegance of his style." (Two Guardian journalists win Orwell prize for journalism, Martin Williams, theguardian.com, 22/5/14)
One can only imagine what Orwell himself would have thought about the awarding of an Orwell Prize for style alone. Still, it could have been worse. Imagine this Zionist apologist receiving an award for his content on the issue of Palestine/Israel.
To illustrate, take his July 18, 2012 article for the New Statesman, Yearning for the same land, essentially a defence of political Zionism:
Freedland here plays the game of Good Zionist vs Bad Zionist, contrasting what he calls "left-leaning Zionists who believe the original movement's goal was the liberation of people, not land," with "hawkish Zionists, heirs of Vladimir Jabotinsky, who are territorial maximalists, eager to fly the Israeli flag over the West Bank."
It's the former, he maintains, who are "the true Zionists," those who are "eager to see territory now occupied by Israel ceded [?] to become sovereign Palestinian land." Freedland, of course, places himself in the camp of the Zionist angels, if I may be allowed an oxymoron.
To assert, as he does, that the goal of the Zionist angels (LOL) was never really the acquisition of Palestinian land, when they, in collaboration with the followers of Jabotinsky, ethnically cleansed 78% of Palestine in 1948, regardless of the borders proposed by the 1947 UN partition plan, and stole all the Palestinian land they could lay their blood-stained hands on, is simply risible.
He defends the Zionist bulldozing of the cosmopolitan, multi-sectarian Palestine of old by trotting out the boilerplate dogma of his "socialist-Zionist youth": the Jews are a "people," and as such "have a right to self-determination in the historic land of their birth."
Freedland's Zionist sleight of hand is transparent: Jews are not what they so indubitably are - a diverse (because of a past history of conversion) faith community originating in the Middle East - but are imagined as an homogenous ethnic grouping, who, following a collective heave-ho by the Romans, ended up as a scattered diaspora, somehow managing, against all the odds, to preserve their ethnic purity.
It's as if, whenever Freedland sees himself in a mirror, he sees Moses or Joshua looking back. Read Shlomo Sand? Forget it!
Our self-designated left Zionist today, however, is trendier than his forbears, who swore blind for decades (with that famous shrug) that the Palestinians inexplicably just went walkies in 1948. He now concedes that the Palestinian Nakba (which he still can't spell, rendering it as Naqba) actually happened and even thinks Israelis should be commemorating it. But more than that... nah.
To bolster his case that Zionism is still kosher, Freedland draws on "left-leaning Zionist" author Amos Oz.
First the hard sell:
"[Oz] argues that, besides the legal right bestowed by the UN's 1947 resolution to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, Israel has a moral right - the right of the drowning man... entitled to grab hold of a piece of driftwood even if another man is already holding it. The drowning man can even make the other man share it, by force, if necessary. His moral right ends, however, the moment he pushes the other man into the sea. The Jewish people, scythed by the Holocaust and after centuries of persecution, were gasping for breath in 1948; their need for a home was as great as that of any other people in history."
All pedestrian Zionist propaganda of course:
1) The partition was essentially an exercise in the White Man twisting the arms of just enough brown men to get the desired result at the UN, not to mention a violation of the latter's charter;
2) Jews in displaced persons camps after the war were not drowning, though they were harassed and bullied by Zionist enforcers; and
3) Zionism, the militant settler-colonial movement which created Israel, was forced on the Palestinians by British bayonets long before the Holocaust, and busied itself not with the rescue of European Jewry from the perils of Nazism, but solely with accumulating the cannon fodder and the arms necessary to roll Palestine's weaker indigenous population and seize as much of its Palestinian homeland as possible.
Having cleverly diverted the reader's attention with the (alleged) drowning man, gasping for breath, Freedland then slips in the following, hoping you won't notice:
"They had the right to act, even though the cost for another people, the Palestinians, was immense."
Sorry about that, Palestinians. Nothing personal mind you!
So who awarded the Orwell Prize to Freedland? There were 3 judges: Robin Lustig (BBC Radio), Paul Anderson (Tribune/New Statesman), and Michael Parks (Professor of Journalism at USC). On the first, you might like to read BBC buries the bitter at mondoweiss.net (7/7/10), and on the second, his rationale for opposing an academic boycott of Israel, No to the Academic Boycott, Tribune, 29/4/05).
Orwell famously wrote that Journalism is printing what someone does not want printed: everything else is public relations. Poor man, a prize bearing his name has just gone to a peddler of Zionist PR.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Walking in the Mufti's Shoes 2
Orwell may have been silent on the subject of Palestine but other, now virtually forgotten, voices were raised, not just in defence of the Palestinian people but in defence of the Mufti himself.
British missionary and pro-Palestine activist Frances E. Newton made no bones about the fact that it was Britain which propelled the Mufti into Hitler's arms:
"I am glad to claim the friendship of the much-maligned Hajj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. If ever Great Britain had a believer in our good faith it was he. It was only when he realised that the privileged position granted to the Zionists under the Mandate was inimical to Arab interests that he became the recognised leader of the patriotic Arab movement. The Royal Commission exonerated him from inciting the people to open revolt, but held him responsible for not being able to quench the unquenchable spirit of the Arab patriots. His words misinterpreted, his actions misconstrued, goaded into opposition to the policy we were pursuing, regarded as an enemy to be disposed of if found in any land under British influence, he was nowhere safe except among our former enemies, the Italians and the Germans, admittedly a most regrettable refuge - but where did the blame lie?" (Fifty Years in Palestine: The Case for the Arabs, 1948, p 293)
Newton's fellow activist, British journalist and historian JMN Jeffries, who was to Palestine what Orwell was to Spain, here brings his trademark moral clarity and eloquence to bear on the subject of the Mufti:
"There seems little doubt that the Mufti is a man of conspiratorial temperament, and that he may have come to have a hand in the propagation of armed resistance on the soil of Palestine is pretty likely. But the point to be put concerning the Mufti is this. What attitude exactly, and what action, was to be expected of him when it had grown absolutely plain that years upon years of pacific request and remonstration had not succeeded in winning discussion of the charges brought by him and other Arab leaders against the Mandate and its makers, much less the rebuttal of these charges. If he did take to intrigue after years of non-suited appeals and disallowed petitions, and if no reasoned arguments of his had obtained even consideration of the subject of appeal, then who is to judge him? Certainly not men in the high places of governments or Leagues with 20 solid years of intrigues with the Zionists behind them." (Palestine: The Reality, 1939, pp 674-675)
And here is Jeffries on allegations that the Palestinian rebels of 1936-1939 received German weapons:
"If any Arab leaders, or any sections of the people, have cultivated any kind of relations with Powers who are hostile to ourselves or are rivals to ourselves, it has not really been zealous cultivation, but enforced acceptance of the only relations they have been able to obtain. If any insurgents have turned to German gun-runners to obtain rifles, it is because since 1919 no Arab in Palestine has seen anything else (morally always and physically sometimes) but the barrels of our rifles and the immigrant ships coming up from the sea behind them." (ibid p 679)
British missionary and pro-Palestine activist Frances E. Newton made no bones about the fact that it was Britain which propelled the Mufti into Hitler's arms:
"I am glad to claim the friendship of the much-maligned Hajj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. If ever Great Britain had a believer in our good faith it was he. It was only when he realised that the privileged position granted to the Zionists under the Mandate was inimical to Arab interests that he became the recognised leader of the patriotic Arab movement. The Royal Commission exonerated him from inciting the people to open revolt, but held him responsible for not being able to quench the unquenchable spirit of the Arab patriots. His words misinterpreted, his actions misconstrued, goaded into opposition to the policy we were pursuing, regarded as an enemy to be disposed of if found in any land under British influence, he was nowhere safe except among our former enemies, the Italians and the Germans, admittedly a most regrettable refuge - but where did the blame lie?" (Fifty Years in Palestine: The Case for the Arabs, 1948, p 293)
Newton's fellow activist, British journalist and historian JMN Jeffries, who was to Palestine what Orwell was to Spain, here brings his trademark moral clarity and eloquence to bear on the subject of the Mufti:
"There seems little doubt that the Mufti is a man of conspiratorial temperament, and that he may have come to have a hand in the propagation of armed resistance on the soil of Palestine is pretty likely. But the point to be put concerning the Mufti is this. What attitude exactly, and what action, was to be expected of him when it had grown absolutely plain that years upon years of pacific request and remonstration had not succeeded in winning discussion of the charges brought by him and other Arab leaders against the Mandate and its makers, much less the rebuttal of these charges. If he did take to intrigue after years of non-suited appeals and disallowed petitions, and if no reasoned arguments of his had obtained even consideration of the subject of appeal, then who is to judge him? Certainly not men in the high places of governments or Leagues with 20 solid years of intrigues with the Zionists behind them." (Palestine: The Reality, 1939, pp 674-675)
And here is Jeffries on allegations that the Palestinian rebels of 1936-1939 received German weapons:
"If any Arab leaders, or any sections of the people, have cultivated any kind of relations with Powers who are hostile to ourselves or are rivals to ourselves, it has not really been zealous cultivation, but enforced acceptance of the only relations they have been able to obtain. If any insurgents have turned to German gun-runners to obtain rifles, it is because since 1919 no Arab in Palestine has seen anything else (morally always and physically sometimes) but the barrels of our rifles and the immigrant ships coming up from the sea behind them." (ibid p 679)
Walking in the Mufti's Shoes 1
In a moving 1943 essay, Looking Back on the Spanish War, George Orwell compiled the following list of fascists and fellow travellers:
"When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew! Think of a programme which at any rate for a while could bring Hitler, Petain, Montagu Norman, Pavelitch, William Randolph Hearst, Streicher, Buchman, Ezra Pound, Juan March, Cocteau, Thyssen, Father Coughlin, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Arnold Lunn, Antonescu, Spengler, Beverly Nichols, Lady Houston, and Marinetti all into the same boat! But the clue is really very simple. They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings. Behind all the ballyhoo that is talked about 'godless' Russia and the 'materialism' of the working class lies the simple intention of those with money or privileges to cling to them." (Homage to Catalonia, 1938/1962, p 244)
What a crew! indeed. Now ordinarily I'd defer to Orwell's judgement in these matters, but I do have a problem with the inclusion of one particular name at least in the above list, namely that of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.
Yes, he was a wartime collaborator, although his appeals to his fellow countrymen to side with the Germans against the British met with little response. His collaboration, however, cannot be accounted for by a simple desire to cling to money or privilege. And yes, he made anti-Semitic broadcasts for the Germans, but the question here is whether his anti-Semitism was more a reaction to the threat posed by Zionist settler-colonialism to his homeland than anything else. He did, however, have something to lose - his country.
Hindsight is all very well, but if your homeland is literally being pulled out from under you by a fanatical, unyielding colonizing movement, your rebellion against its unheeding, imperial sponsor and protector has been brutally crushed, and you're on the run, then your options begin to narrow somewhat and you might well begin clutching at straws.
The fact is that Hitler was not so much the Mufti's soul mate as the enemy of his enemy. Absent the plot hatched in London in 1917 by Lord Balfour and Chaim Weizmann against the Arabs of Palestine, and all that flowed from it - the British refusal to allow the Palestinians meaningful representative government; the waves of deluded European Jewish immigrants, both 'legal' and illegal, convinced that Palestine was really theirs; the Zionist movement's strategic acquisition of Palestinian land and the expulsion of its peasant cultivators; the covert Zionist arms smuggling and stockpiling; the British privileging of the concocted rights of the immigrant invaders over the natural right of the indigenous Palestinians to the land of their ancestors, their homeland - without all this, the Mufti would never have found himself in Berlin.
Astonishingly, such was the Eurocentrism of the time, that even someone as principled and perceptive as Orwell appears never to have really noticed the bitter struggle against imperial domination and settler-colonialism forced on the hapless indigenous inhabitants of Palestine by his own country. One of history's great mysteries, I'm afraid.
So how about, just for once, we walk for a bit in the Mufti's shoes? Here's a sympathetic portrait of the man and his travails just prior to the bloody but ultimately unsuccessful Palestinian uprising of 1936-1939, during which he ended up on the run from Palestine's British overlords:
"In the spring of this year (1935) he presided over a meeting of 400 ulama, during which he announced that anyone who sold land to the Jews would be excommunicated, a declaration which he endorsed by a fatwah. He has also bought land in large quantities which is saved for the Arab cultivator.
"The Mufti is very bitter against the British Government. 'I am not against the Jews,' he says. 'I am against the British Government, for without its permission not all the money in the world would have given the Zionists a footing here...
"One British adviser after another,' he will say, 'has pointed out that immigration must cease; but nothing is done. Until land transfer and immigration cease no good can come.'
"On one occasion, when certain improvements which were being carried out in land conditions were mentioned, he shook his head. 'What is the use? Imagine that I have a house. Some one richer than I offers to decorate it, to make it beautiful, to turn it into an earthly paradise; what is the use to me if I am not to live in it? The Arabs are being pushed out of the country so that others may enjoy the improvements.'
"At the root of the Mufti's pessimism is the prospect of a possible Jewish majority and of the effect that such a change would make in the status of the Arabs. Although it is a possibility that may never arise it is one that is constantly being held up as a goal by the Zionists, and is now much more openly talked of than it used to be.
"Besides being fearful of a Jewish majority the Mufti was extremely anxious about the Zionist designs on the Haram, beginning with the Wailing Wall, which was, of course, part of the outer wall of the Mosque of Aksa. This fear may seem far-fetched; but some of the letters he received from time to time confirmed him in his suspicions. The danger, indeed, appeared so great to him that some months back he had written a letter which he had sent to all the heads of the Moslem religion all over the world. As it contains some evidence which shows that his fears are not altogether chimerical I give it in full.
MOSLEM SUPREME COUNCIL, JERUSALEM
IN THE NAME OF GOD THE MERCIFUL
In obedience to the words of God and His Prophet, and in consideration of the grave situation of the Moslems in this Moslem Arab country (Palestine), which contains the first of the two Kublas and the third Holy Shrine, which is the Mosque of Aksa, the surroundings of which have been blessed by God when He said in the Koran, 'Glory to God, Who took this servant, by night, from the Mosque Haram to the Mosque Aksa, the surroundings of which We have blessed,' it has become necessary to appeal to you, exposing the situation, the bare facts, and the great danger which has befallen this sacred and blessed Moslem country, and to make the cries for help of the Moslems of Palestine reach your ears and those of your brethren Moslems under your rule.
"It is the fashion to say that the Zionists have no intention of trying to regain the site of their Temple; that the idea is a fiction of the Arab brain. The Zionists have officially denied that they have any such intention, but others of the party, bolder and more outspoken, have said just the contrary. The Jews [the Mufti wrote] covet the whole of Palestine, and wish to make it a Jewish State. They wish to take the Mosque of Aksa from Moslem hands and to destroy the Dome of the Rock in order to establish on the ruins thereof a new Temple to replace the old one which was destroyed, and not a stone left of it, two thousand years ago.
"The Jewish project to Judaize Palestine during a period of 5 years is mentioned - a consummation which the Zionist torrent sweeping over the country would seem to render possible. And a letter written by Sir Louis Bols is quoted in which he said that Chief Rabbi Kook and the Rabbinical Councils of Jerusalem claimed that the Wailing Wall was Jewish property, including all the Temple area. 'This place is known,' he wrote, 'as Al-Haram Ash-Sharif, and contains the Mosque of Aksa and the Dome of the Rock, which is revered by the Moslems because it is the third Holy Mosque in the world.'
"That was as far back as 1920, and it is evident that the idea persists. In the Encyclopaedia Brittanica (1926), under the heading of 'Zionism', these words occur: 'The Jews are looking forward to the redemption of Israel... to the restoration of the Jewish State, to the rebuilding of Solomon's Temple and the restoration of David's Throne.' The Jewish Encyclopaedia is even more explicit; it states that the Jews are looking forward to 'worship in the Temple that is the Mosque of Aksa and to make their Kingdom in Palestine.'
"The cream of the collection of evidence which the Mufti had accumulated in order to make his position plain to his fellow-Moslems is certainly to be found in the following missive which was sent to him by the Chief Rabbi of Rumania:
EXCELLENCY, IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE ETERNAL,
I, the undersigned, Ibrahim Rosenbakh, Chief Rabbi, residing at No. 20 Treimi Shartoni, Yukhnia, Rumania, beg to inform your Excellency the following: King David bought, by contract, Moria Hill, in Jerusalem, from Arnon-el-Yabousi, and donated this hill for the Eternal God. I supplied the proof of the foregoing to the Chief Secretary of the Palestine Government, under cover No. 26/487 Jerusalem. In the Name of God the Eternal I demand: 1. To make the Arabs permit the priests, the sons of Aaron, to perform their religious services, and to make the Arabs understand that such permission results in the required aid of all nations, so that the entire world can hear by radio the religious blessings which the priests will ask from God on this sacred spot. 2. After the Arabs, with good intention, permit that, they may remain as guardians, and in this matter the rights of possession of King David, as mentioned in Psalm 24, will not be violated by the lapse of time. Written at 13.30 hours on 20th November, 1930, 26th of the Jewish month, 5691.
Yours faithfully,
(Signed) ABRAHAM ROSENBAKH
"What reply, if any, the Mufti made to this strange suggestion is not recorded. Two quotations are made, proving the intentions of the Zionists, one of which was penned by the late Lord Melchett: 'The day in which the Temple will be rebuilt is nigh, and I shall work for the rest of my life to rebuild Solomon's Temple in the place of the Mosque of Aksa.'
"The photographs which the Zionists sent round the world furnish other proofs, if more are needed, to prove this point. They represent the Wailing Wall and the mosques of Aksa and Hebron surmounted by Jewish emblems. A contemptuous reference to the Arabs is one of the last of the quotations used by the Mufti in this letter; it is culled from the writings of Mr Zuikwell. 'The Arabs,' he writes, 'must pull down their tents and return to the desert whence they came.' Surely a case of those who live in glass houses abstaining from throwing stones! And, for the matter of that, we all crawled out of a tent or a wigwam in the remote past!
"The letter attracted a great deal of attention, and sympathetic replies were received from Egypt, and especially from India." (Palestine of the Arabs, Mrs Steuart Erskine, 1935, pp 163-168)
To be continued...
"When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew! Think of a programme which at any rate for a while could bring Hitler, Petain, Montagu Norman, Pavelitch, William Randolph Hearst, Streicher, Buchman, Ezra Pound, Juan March, Cocteau, Thyssen, Father Coughlin, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Arnold Lunn, Antonescu, Spengler, Beverly Nichols, Lady Houston, and Marinetti all into the same boat! But the clue is really very simple. They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings. Behind all the ballyhoo that is talked about 'godless' Russia and the 'materialism' of the working class lies the simple intention of those with money or privileges to cling to them." (Homage to Catalonia, 1938/1962, p 244)
What a crew! indeed. Now ordinarily I'd defer to Orwell's judgement in these matters, but I do have a problem with the inclusion of one particular name at least in the above list, namely that of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.
Yes, he was a wartime collaborator, although his appeals to his fellow countrymen to side with the Germans against the British met with little response. His collaboration, however, cannot be accounted for by a simple desire to cling to money or privilege. And yes, he made anti-Semitic broadcasts for the Germans, but the question here is whether his anti-Semitism was more a reaction to the threat posed by Zionist settler-colonialism to his homeland than anything else. He did, however, have something to lose - his country.
Hindsight is all very well, but if your homeland is literally being pulled out from under you by a fanatical, unyielding colonizing movement, your rebellion against its unheeding, imperial sponsor and protector has been brutally crushed, and you're on the run, then your options begin to narrow somewhat and you might well begin clutching at straws.
The fact is that Hitler was not so much the Mufti's soul mate as the enemy of his enemy. Absent the plot hatched in London in 1917 by Lord Balfour and Chaim Weizmann against the Arabs of Palestine, and all that flowed from it - the British refusal to allow the Palestinians meaningful representative government; the waves of deluded European Jewish immigrants, both 'legal' and illegal, convinced that Palestine was really theirs; the Zionist movement's strategic acquisition of Palestinian land and the expulsion of its peasant cultivators; the covert Zionist arms smuggling and stockpiling; the British privileging of the concocted rights of the immigrant invaders over the natural right of the indigenous Palestinians to the land of their ancestors, their homeland - without all this, the Mufti would never have found himself in Berlin.
Astonishingly, such was the Eurocentrism of the time, that even someone as principled and perceptive as Orwell appears never to have really noticed the bitter struggle against imperial domination and settler-colonialism forced on the hapless indigenous inhabitants of Palestine by his own country. One of history's great mysteries, I'm afraid.
So how about, just for once, we walk for a bit in the Mufti's shoes? Here's a sympathetic portrait of the man and his travails just prior to the bloody but ultimately unsuccessful Palestinian uprising of 1936-1939, during which he ended up on the run from Palestine's British overlords:
"In the spring of this year (1935) he presided over a meeting of 400 ulama, during which he announced that anyone who sold land to the Jews would be excommunicated, a declaration which he endorsed by a fatwah. He has also bought land in large quantities which is saved for the Arab cultivator.
"The Mufti is very bitter against the British Government. 'I am not against the Jews,' he says. 'I am against the British Government, for without its permission not all the money in the world would have given the Zionists a footing here...
"One British adviser after another,' he will say, 'has pointed out that immigration must cease; but nothing is done. Until land transfer and immigration cease no good can come.'
"On one occasion, when certain improvements which were being carried out in land conditions were mentioned, he shook his head. 'What is the use? Imagine that I have a house. Some one richer than I offers to decorate it, to make it beautiful, to turn it into an earthly paradise; what is the use to me if I am not to live in it? The Arabs are being pushed out of the country so that others may enjoy the improvements.'
"At the root of the Mufti's pessimism is the prospect of a possible Jewish majority and of the effect that such a change would make in the status of the Arabs. Although it is a possibility that may never arise it is one that is constantly being held up as a goal by the Zionists, and is now much more openly talked of than it used to be.
"Besides being fearful of a Jewish majority the Mufti was extremely anxious about the Zionist designs on the Haram, beginning with the Wailing Wall, which was, of course, part of the outer wall of the Mosque of Aksa. This fear may seem far-fetched; but some of the letters he received from time to time confirmed him in his suspicions. The danger, indeed, appeared so great to him that some months back he had written a letter which he had sent to all the heads of the Moslem religion all over the world. As it contains some evidence which shows that his fears are not altogether chimerical I give it in full.
MOSLEM SUPREME COUNCIL, JERUSALEM
IN THE NAME OF GOD THE MERCIFUL
In obedience to the words of God and His Prophet, and in consideration of the grave situation of the Moslems in this Moslem Arab country (Palestine), which contains the first of the two Kublas and the third Holy Shrine, which is the Mosque of Aksa, the surroundings of which have been blessed by God when He said in the Koran, 'Glory to God, Who took this servant, by night, from the Mosque Haram to the Mosque Aksa, the surroundings of which We have blessed,' it has become necessary to appeal to you, exposing the situation, the bare facts, and the great danger which has befallen this sacred and blessed Moslem country, and to make the cries for help of the Moslems of Palestine reach your ears and those of your brethren Moslems under your rule.
"It is the fashion to say that the Zionists have no intention of trying to regain the site of their Temple; that the idea is a fiction of the Arab brain. The Zionists have officially denied that they have any such intention, but others of the party, bolder and more outspoken, have said just the contrary. The Jews [the Mufti wrote] covet the whole of Palestine, and wish to make it a Jewish State. They wish to take the Mosque of Aksa from Moslem hands and to destroy the Dome of the Rock in order to establish on the ruins thereof a new Temple to replace the old one which was destroyed, and not a stone left of it, two thousand years ago.
"The Jewish project to Judaize Palestine during a period of 5 years is mentioned - a consummation which the Zionist torrent sweeping over the country would seem to render possible. And a letter written by Sir Louis Bols is quoted in which he said that Chief Rabbi Kook and the Rabbinical Councils of Jerusalem claimed that the Wailing Wall was Jewish property, including all the Temple area. 'This place is known,' he wrote, 'as Al-Haram Ash-Sharif, and contains the Mosque of Aksa and the Dome of the Rock, which is revered by the Moslems because it is the third Holy Mosque in the world.'
"That was as far back as 1920, and it is evident that the idea persists. In the Encyclopaedia Brittanica (1926), under the heading of 'Zionism', these words occur: 'The Jews are looking forward to the redemption of Israel... to the restoration of the Jewish State, to the rebuilding of Solomon's Temple and the restoration of David's Throne.' The Jewish Encyclopaedia is even more explicit; it states that the Jews are looking forward to 'worship in the Temple that is the Mosque of Aksa and to make their Kingdom in Palestine.'
"The cream of the collection of evidence which the Mufti had accumulated in order to make his position plain to his fellow-Moslems is certainly to be found in the following missive which was sent to him by the Chief Rabbi of Rumania:
EXCELLENCY, IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE ETERNAL,
I, the undersigned, Ibrahim Rosenbakh, Chief Rabbi, residing at No. 20 Treimi Shartoni, Yukhnia, Rumania, beg to inform your Excellency the following: King David bought, by contract, Moria Hill, in Jerusalem, from Arnon-el-Yabousi, and donated this hill for the Eternal God. I supplied the proof of the foregoing to the Chief Secretary of the Palestine Government, under cover No. 26/487 Jerusalem. In the Name of God the Eternal I demand: 1. To make the Arabs permit the priests, the sons of Aaron, to perform their religious services, and to make the Arabs understand that such permission results in the required aid of all nations, so that the entire world can hear by radio the religious blessings which the priests will ask from God on this sacred spot. 2. After the Arabs, with good intention, permit that, they may remain as guardians, and in this matter the rights of possession of King David, as mentioned in Psalm 24, will not be violated by the lapse of time. Written at 13.30 hours on 20th November, 1930, 26th of the Jewish month, 5691.
Yours faithfully,
(Signed) ABRAHAM ROSENBAKH
"What reply, if any, the Mufti made to this strange suggestion is not recorded. Two quotations are made, proving the intentions of the Zionists, one of which was penned by the late Lord Melchett: 'The day in which the Temple will be rebuilt is nigh, and I shall work for the rest of my life to rebuild Solomon's Temple in the place of the Mosque of Aksa.'
"The photographs which the Zionists sent round the world furnish other proofs, if more are needed, to prove this point. They represent the Wailing Wall and the mosques of Aksa and Hebron surmounted by Jewish emblems. A contemptuous reference to the Arabs is one of the last of the quotations used by the Mufti in this letter; it is culled from the writings of Mr Zuikwell. 'The Arabs,' he writes, 'must pull down their tents and return to the desert whence they came.' Surely a case of those who live in glass houses abstaining from throwing stones! And, for the matter of that, we all crawled out of a tent or a wigwam in the remote past!
"The letter attracted a great deal of attention, and sympathetic replies were received from Egypt, and especially from India." (Palestine of the Arabs, Mrs Steuart Erskine, 1935, pp 163-168)
To be continued...
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Gore Vidal , America's George Orwell
Courageous American intellectual, essayist, novelist, playwright and critic of American imperialism, Gore Vidal, died last week.
You wouldn't know though, from the obituaries in the Australian press (Man of letters last of his kind, AP/The Australian, 2/8/12; Insider author understood the world, Guardian News/Sydney Morning Herald, 3/8/12) that one of America's greatest minds had no trouble whatever understanding and deploring the bizarre and malign hold exercised by the Israel lobby over the United States' Middle East policy.
The only indication in the Australia press that Vidal had somehow escaped the 'Elephant? What elephant?' conditioning and cowardice that characterises most American (and Australian) intellectuals* came from a New York Times piece by Charles McGrath: "Some of his political positions were quarrelsome and provocative. Vidal was an outspoken critic of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians..."
There you have it, for The New York Times, anyone who criticises Israel, if not simply ignored or dismissed outright as an anti-Semite, may be accused of being "quarrelsome and provocative"!
That the US (and The New York Times) had a bit of an 'elephant' problem, was nothing new for Vidal. He was aware of it back in the 60s:
"As I left, I told [Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, editor of Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper and friend of its president, Gamal Abdul Nasser] that if I saw Nasser at the end of the week I was perfectly willing to present to the American public Egypt's case against Israel, just as Egypt would like it presented. Partly out of a sense of mischief (we hear altogether too much of the other side) and partly out of a sense of justice, I thought that the Arab case should be given attention in the American press. As of now it has been disregarded. In fact, a few years ago the Egyptians, despairing of ever seeing their cause presented impartially in the usual 'news' columns, tried to buy an advertisement in The New York Times. They were turned down. As a result, the Egyptians are somewhat cynical about our 'free press.' They are also quite aware that when Israel was founded in 1948 and the Arabs protested to Harry Truman, he told them with characteristic bluntness: 'I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.'** Heikal laughed when I told him that the Arab point of view might one day be given in the American national press. 'Your press would never let you,' he said with finality, as one journalist to another. 'Don't even try.'" (Passage to Egypt (1963), in The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal, Edited by Jay Parini, 2008, p 283)
And here's Vidal discussing the 'elephant' 30 years later, in his Foreword to the first printing (1994) of Israel Shahak's Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years:
"Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him 2 million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.' As neither Jack nor I was an antisemite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics.
"Unfortunately, the hurried recognition of Israel as a state has resulted in 45 years of murderous confusion, and the destruction of what Zionist fellow travellers thought would be a pluralistic state - home to its native population of Muslims, Christians and Jews, as well as a future home to peaceful European and American Jewish immigrants, even the ones who affected to believe that the great realtor in the sky had given them, in perpetuity, the lands of Judea and Samaria. Since many of the immigrants were good socialists in Europe, we assumed that they would not allow the new state to become a theocracy, and that the native Palestinians could live with them as equals. This was not meant to be. I shall not rehearse the wars and alarms of that unhappy region. But I will say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political and intellectual life of the USA, Israel's unlikely patron.
"Unlikely, because no other minority in American history has ever hijacked so much money from the American taxpayers in order to invest in a 'homeland'. It is as if the American taxpayer had been obliged to support the Pope in his reconquest of the Papal States simply because one third of our people are Roman Catholic. Had this been attempted, there would have been a great uproar and Congress would have said no. But a religious minority of less than 2% has bought or intimidated 70 senators (the necessary two thirds to overcome an unlikely presidential veto) while enjoying the support of the media."
These days the best indication of an individual's true worth as a man and an intellectual is to seek out the opinion of a leading Zionist shill on him and assume the opposite. As it happens, Israel's loudest voice in the Australian ms media, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, has called Vidal "no George Orwell" (Celebrity novelist insulted enemies with mocking style, The Australian, 2/8/12), so there you have it, folks; Vidal is America's George Orwell.
[*Characterised most recently by US geographer Jared Diamond's complete failure to mention the Palestinians and Israel's occupation when correcting Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney's misrepresentation of his Guns, Germs & Steel thesis, which Romney had cited to claim that Israel's 'success' vis-a-vis the Palestinians boiled down to cultural superiority. (See Romney hasn't done his homework, New York Times, 1/8/12); ** To correct Vidal, Truman was actually speaking to a group of America's diplomats in the Middle East (See my 21/4/10 post No George Marshall.).
You wouldn't know though, from the obituaries in the Australian press (Man of letters last of his kind, AP/The Australian, 2/8/12; Insider author understood the world, Guardian News/Sydney Morning Herald, 3/8/12) that one of America's greatest minds had no trouble whatever understanding and deploring the bizarre and malign hold exercised by the Israel lobby over the United States' Middle East policy.
The only indication in the Australia press that Vidal had somehow escaped the 'Elephant? What elephant?' conditioning and cowardice that characterises most American (and Australian) intellectuals* came from a New York Times piece by Charles McGrath: "Some of his political positions were quarrelsome and provocative. Vidal was an outspoken critic of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians..."
There you have it, for The New York Times, anyone who criticises Israel, if not simply ignored or dismissed outright as an anti-Semite, may be accused of being "quarrelsome and provocative"!
That the US (and The New York Times) had a bit of an 'elephant' problem, was nothing new for Vidal. He was aware of it back in the 60s:
"As I left, I told [Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, editor of Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper and friend of its president, Gamal Abdul Nasser] that if I saw Nasser at the end of the week I was perfectly willing to present to the American public Egypt's case against Israel, just as Egypt would like it presented. Partly out of a sense of mischief (we hear altogether too much of the other side) and partly out of a sense of justice, I thought that the Arab case should be given attention in the American press. As of now it has been disregarded. In fact, a few years ago the Egyptians, despairing of ever seeing their cause presented impartially in the usual 'news' columns, tried to buy an advertisement in The New York Times. They were turned down. As a result, the Egyptians are somewhat cynical about our 'free press.' They are also quite aware that when Israel was founded in 1948 and the Arabs protested to Harry Truman, he told them with characteristic bluntness: 'I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.'** Heikal laughed when I told him that the Arab point of view might one day be given in the American national press. 'Your press would never let you,' he said with finality, as one journalist to another. 'Don't even try.'" (Passage to Egypt (1963), in The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal, Edited by Jay Parini, 2008, p 283)
And here's Vidal discussing the 'elephant' 30 years later, in his Foreword to the first printing (1994) of Israel Shahak's Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years:
"Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him 2 million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.' As neither Jack nor I was an antisemite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics.
"Unfortunately, the hurried recognition of Israel as a state has resulted in 45 years of murderous confusion, and the destruction of what Zionist fellow travellers thought would be a pluralistic state - home to its native population of Muslims, Christians and Jews, as well as a future home to peaceful European and American Jewish immigrants, even the ones who affected to believe that the great realtor in the sky had given them, in perpetuity, the lands of Judea and Samaria. Since many of the immigrants were good socialists in Europe, we assumed that they would not allow the new state to become a theocracy, and that the native Palestinians could live with them as equals. This was not meant to be. I shall not rehearse the wars and alarms of that unhappy region. But I will say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political and intellectual life of the USA, Israel's unlikely patron.
"Unlikely, because no other minority in American history has ever hijacked so much money from the American taxpayers in order to invest in a 'homeland'. It is as if the American taxpayer had been obliged to support the Pope in his reconquest of the Papal States simply because one third of our people are Roman Catholic. Had this been attempted, there would have been a great uproar and Congress would have said no. But a religious minority of less than 2% has bought or intimidated 70 senators (the necessary two thirds to overcome an unlikely presidential veto) while enjoying the support of the media."
These days the best indication of an individual's true worth as a man and an intellectual is to seek out the opinion of a leading Zionist shill on him and assume the opposite. As it happens, Israel's loudest voice in the Australian ms media, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, has called Vidal "no George Orwell" (Celebrity novelist insulted enemies with mocking style, The Australian, 2/8/12), so there you have it, folks; Vidal is America's George Orwell.
[*Characterised most recently by US geographer Jared Diamond's complete failure to mention the Palestinians and Israel's occupation when correcting Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney's misrepresentation of his Guns, Germs & Steel thesis, which Romney had cited to claim that Israel's 'success' vis-a-vis the Palestinians boiled down to cultural superiority. (See Romney hasn't done his homework, New York Times, 1/8/12); ** To correct Vidal, Truman was actually speaking to a group of America's diplomats in the Middle East (See my 21/4/10 post No George Marshall.).
Monday, November 28, 2011
Fine & Danby
Federal Labor's Minister for Israel, Michael Danby MP, seems to be winning a few hearts lately:
1) "But the best speech on Afghanistan this week came from Labor's Michael Danby, the chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee. Danby is a true Australian cosmopolitan, with the widest range of foreign policy interests of anyone on the backbench on either side of parliament. He profoundly supports Australia's Afghanistan commitment and I think he is mistaken to do so. But Danby also has a George Orwell-like willingness to face difficult and unpleasant facts." (Denying a deadly dividend, Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 26/11/11)
A true Australian cosmopolitan, with the widest range of foreign policy interests of anyone on the backbench?
Oh, really? Why O why is Greg hiding Michael's Light Unto the Nations under a bushel? The plain fact of the matter is that there's really only one foreign policy interest that really gets Danby's juices going. The rest is just window-dressing:
"[Danby] corrals his parliamentary colleagues and forces them to think long, hard and seriously about matters that often conjure knee-jerk reactions. 'During a recent political controversy [MERC: Gaza?], we had 11 federal MPs get together on an Israel issue. Mike Kelly [MP] convened them and I organised with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), who had a delegation up there, to sit down with us and we strategised together', Danby said."*
As for that alleged George Orwell-like willingness to face difficult and unpleasant facts, here's Danby 'facing' the fact that his god has failed:
"The boycott [Israel] campaign... is a tactic designed by extremist organisations such as Hamas to mask the strategy of the 'one state solution', a single state between Jordan and the Mediterranean. This would lead to the destruction of the independent Jewish state of Israel. Any Israeli Jews who are not killed, who did not flee for their lives, would be left as a benighted minority (the Arab word for which is 'Dhimmis') in a Hamas-ruled theocratic state."**
Now what might the anti-Zionist George Orwell say about the above? Why, this of course:
"It is difficult if not impossible for any nationalist to conceal his allegiance. The smallest slur upon his own unit... fills him with uneasiness which he can relieve only by making some sharp retort." (Notes on Nationalism, 1945)
2) "Amid all the rancor of that final sitting week, Labor's Michael Danby introduced to the House of Representatives a motion that highlighted the best in public debate. He called on Parliament to recognise each July 11 as Srebrenica Remembrance Day, as a reminder of the evil that led to the genocide of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys at the hands of the rebel Serb forces of Ratko Mladic in Bosnia in 1995. It was, Danby said, 'what the Russians would call an act of pamyat - memory." (Rising from the mire, Paul Daley, The Sun-Herald, 27/11/11)
Srebrenica Remembrance Day? OK, I get it! Israeli massacres of Palestinians, Lebanese, and others, dating from the 1930s through to the present, become a bit of a blur after a while, so done and dusted Srebrenica it is. Brilliant move! As Orwell would have said (and did): "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." (Notes on Nationalism, 1945)
Ah, but is there more to Danby's 'cosmopolitanism' than meets the eye? I know I'm a cynical bastard at the best of times, but could it have something to do with this?:
"How does it come about that whether the Palestinian application for statehood will be put to a vote at all, or will simply be rejected, depends on Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the Security Council's non-permanent members? Nine out of 15 votes are needed to win full membership of the UN as a sovereign state, and Palestine has secured 8 so far: those of South Africa, India, Brazil, Lebanon, China, Russia, Nigeria and Gabon. The 9th vote should come from Portugal, Colombia or Bosnia. Portugal will most probably follow the advice of EU headquarters and vote against it. President Abbas personally went to Bogota to lobby for the Colombian vote, but was told that Colombia is too dependent on American aid. So only Sarajevo is left to receive Palestine's last efforts to secure a yes vote, as well as Israeli and American efforts to persuade Bosnia to join those SC members rejecting the proposal or abstaining from the vote." (The importance of Bosnia on Palestine's path to the UN, Hajrudin Somun, Today's Zaman, 29/11/11)
But could a Srebrenica Remembrance Day be taking the irony a little too far?:
"The 3 members of the Bosnian presidency act as 3 heads of state... Each... must support a decision in order for the country's representaive to the SC to vote for the Palestinian petition. Otherwise the Bosnian delegation must abstain... Bakir Izetbegovic, representinting Bosniaks in the presidency, expressed his unreserved support for the Palestinian's legitimate quest for UN membership... The Croat member of the presidency, Zeljko Comsic, generally supports Palestine... The Serb representative, Nebojsa Radmanovic, however, strongly opposes the Palestinian quest for statehood..." (ibid)
But there's more: "Radmanovic... denies that he is pro-Israeli, but how can the fact that he and Milorad Dodik, president of the Bosnian entity Republika Srpska, hosted Avigdor Lieberman when he spent a few days on vacation in Bosnia and Herzegovina last summer be interpreted otherwise? Israel has also promised to invest in the Serb entity." (ibid)
And more: "This attitude on the part of Bosnian Serb leaders has other roots as well: They... regard the whole 'Palestinian cause' as an Islamic one..." (ibid)
So, let's pull all this together: Australia's Minister for Israel is proposing a memorial to Bosnian Muslims massacred by Bosnian Serbs, who are lining up with Israel to block Palestinian statehood, which is supported by Bosnian Muslims.
Surely it's just a coincidence! There couldn't possibly be any connection between these two phenomena. To suggest otherwise would be way too cynical, even for me.
What do you reckon, George?
[*A decade of Danby, Peter Kohn & Naomi Levin, The Australian Jewish News, 27/2/09;**Knowing the truth will scare voters, The Australian, 2/4/11]
1) "But the best speech on Afghanistan this week came from Labor's Michael Danby, the chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee. Danby is a true Australian cosmopolitan, with the widest range of foreign policy interests of anyone on the backbench on either side of parliament. He profoundly supports Australia's Afghanistan commitment and I think he is mistaken to do so. But Danby also has a George Orwell-like willingness to face difficult and unpleasant facts." (Denying a deadly dividend, Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 26/11/11)
A true Australian cosmopolitan, with the widest range of foreign policy interests of anyone on the backbench?
Oh, really? Why O why is Greg hiding Michael's Light Unto the Nations under a bushel? The plain fact of the matter is that there's really only one foreign policy interest that really gets Danby's juices going. The rest is just window-dressing:
"[Danby] corrals his parliamentary colleagues and forces them to think long, hard and seriously about matters that often conjure knee-jerk reactions. 'During a recent political controversy [MERC: Gaza?], we had 11 federal MPs get together on an Israel issue. Mike Kelly [MP] convened them and I organised with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), who had a delegation up there, to sit down with us and we strategised together', Danby said."*
As for that alleged George Orwell-like willingness to face difficult and unpleasant facts, here's Danby 'facing' the fact that his god has failed:
"The boycott [Israel] campaign... is a tactic designed by extremist organisations such as Hamas to mask the strategy of the 'one state solution', a single state between Jordan and the Mediterranean. This would lead to the destruction of the independent Jewish state of Israel. Any Israeli Jews who are not killed, who did not flee for their lives, would be left as a benighted minority (the Arab word for which is 'Dhimmis') in a Hamas-ruled theocratic state."**
Now what might the anti-Zionist George Orwell say about the above? Why, this of course:
"It is difficult if not impossible for any nationalist to conceal his allegiance. The smallest slur upon his own unit... fills him with uneasiness which he can relieve only by making some sharp retort." (Notes on Nationalism, 1945)
2) "Amid all the rancor of that final sitting week, Labor's Michael Danby introduced to the House of Representatives a motion that highlighted the best in public debate. He called on Parliament to recognise each July 11 as Srebrenica Remembrance Day, as a reminder of the evil that led to the genocide of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys at the hands of the rebel Serb forces of Ratko Mladic in Bosnia in 1995. It was, Danby said, 'what the Russians would call an act of pamyat - memory." (Rising from the mire, Paul Daley, The Sun-Herald, 27/11/11)
Srebrenica Remembrance Day? OK, I get it! Israeli massacres of Palestinians, Lebanese, and others, dating from the 1930s through to the present, become a bit of a blur after a while, so done and dusted Srebrenica it is. Brilliant move! As Orwell would have said (and did): "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." (Notes on Nationalism, 1945)
Ah, but is there more to Danby's 'cosmopolitanism' than meets the eye? I know I'm a cynical bastard at the best of times, but could it have something to do with this?:
"How does it come about that whether the Palestinian application for statehood will be put to a vote at all, or will simply be rejected, depends on Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the Security Council's non-permanent members? Nine out of 15 votes are needed to win full membership of the UN as a sovereign state, and Palestine has secured 8 so far: those of South Africa, India, Brazil, Lebanon, China, Russia, Nigeria and Gabon. The 9th vote should come from Portugal, Colombia or Bosnia. Portugal will most probably follow the advice of EU headquarters and vote against it. President Abbas personally went to Bogota to lobby for the Colombian vote, but was told that Colombia is too dependent on American aid. So only Sarajevo is left to receive Palestine's last efforts to secure a yes vote, as well as Israeli and American efforts to persuade Bosnia to join those SC members rejecting the proposal or abstaining from the vote." (The importance of Bosnia on Palestine's path to the UN, Hajrudin Somun, Today's Zaman, 29/11/11)
But could a Srebrenica Remembrance Day be taking the irony a little too far?:
"The 3 members of the Bosnian presidency act as 3 heads of state... Each... must support a decision in order for the country's representaive to the SC to vote for the Palestinian petition. Otherwise the Bosnian delegation must abstain... Bakir Izetbegovic, representinting Bosniaks in the presidency, expressed his unreserved support for the Palestinian's legitimate quest for UN membership... The Croat member of the presidency, Zeljko Comsic, generally supports Palestine... The Serb representative, Nebojsa Radmanovic, however, strongly opposes the Palestinian quest for statehood..." (ibid)
But there's more: "Radmanovic... denies that he is pro-Israeli, but how can the fact that he and Milorad Dodik, president of the Bosnian entity Republika Srpska, hosted Avigdor Lieberman when he spent a few days on vacation in Bosnia and Herzegovina last summer be interpreted otherwise? Israel has also promised to invest in the Serb entity." (ibid)
And more: "This attitude on the part of Bosnian Serb leaders has other roots as well: They... regard the whole 'Palestinian cause' as an Islamic one..." (ibid)
So, let's pull all this together: Australia's Minister for Israel is proposing a memorial to Bosnian Muslims massacred by Bosnian Serbs, who are lining up with Israel to block Palestinian statehood, which is supported by Bosnian Muslims.
Surely it's just a coincidence! There couldn't possibly be any connection between these two phenomena. To suggest otherwise would be way too cynical, even for me.
What do you reckon, George?
[*A decade of Danby, Peter Kohn & Naomi Levin, The Australian Jewish News, 27/2/09;**Knowing the truth will scare voters, The Australian, 2/4/11]
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The Remarkable Mr Adams
Isn't it time the incurably Eurocentric Phillip Adams (of Radio National's Late Night Live) was put out to pasture?
On 6 September, Adams interviewed historian Ben Shephard, author of The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War. LNL's website sums up Shephard's work thus: "Ben Shephard argues that the Second World War's most important legacy was a refugee crisis. His book centres on the Allies' attempt to deal with hundreds of thousands of Displaced Persons (DPs), through the creation of a new international agency: the United Nations Relief & Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA)."
IOW, a subject of deep interest to Adams, at least with regard to its Jewish component. At one point, he remarks: "And in this context, of course, the creation of the state of Israel starts to gain ground."
"Yes," replies Shephard, "What is interesting about this is that the DPs who finally end up in Israel arrived there at the time of the first Israel/Palestine war [47-48], and they themselves occupied, many of them, places which have been abandoned [Just like that!] by Palestinian Arabs, and so you get this sort of strange cycle whereby, in finally finding homes themselves, they are part of a process which is creating more refugees."
At exactly which point, as though a red line has been crossed or profound boredom has set in, Adams' mind simply shuts down and Shephard is dragged back to Europe: "Ben, you're a fine researcher and one of the stories you tell is of a stolen generation from Europe...
Adams professed Judeophilia - he once averred that At the age of 16 I found myself wishing I'd been born Jewish* - could be written off as a harmless eccentricity were it not for the fact that he seems never to have cottoned on to the elementary distinction between Judaism, a confessional statement that, like all confessional statements, belongs strictly to the private realm, and political Zionism, a profoundly negative and destructive settler-colonial program. Given his profile as a prominent left-of-centre progressive intellectual with a perch in both the ABC (LNL) and the Murdoch press (The Weekend Australian Magazine), this is no small matter.
Adams' inability, or unwillingness, to make this crucial distinction, and thus to subject the Zionist project to the same degree of critical scrutiny he has commendably devoted to the US imperial project in Iraq, to cite but one example, marks him out, essentially, as a Zionist (albeit gentile). As such, he displays the fatal flaw described by George Orwell:
"All nationalists [Zionism being a particularly toxic variation on the theme] have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage - torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians - which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our sise'... The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
A remarkable capacity for not even hearing about Palestinian refugees...
Indeed.
[* See my 19/9/09 post He Just Doesn't Get It]
On 6 September, Adams interviewed historian Ben Shephard, author of The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War. LNL's website sums up Shephard's work thus: "Ben Shephard argues that the Second World War's most important legacy was a refugee crisis. His book centres on the Allies' attempt to deal with hundreds of thousands of Displaced Persons (DPs), through the creation of a new international agency: the United Nations Relief & Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA)."
IOW, a subject of deep interest to Adams, at least with regard to its Jewish component. At one point, he remarks: "And in this context, of course, the creation of the state of Israel starts to gain ground."
"Yes," replies Shephard, "What is interesting about this is that the DPs who finally end up in Israel arrived there at the time of the first Israel/Palestine war [47-48], and they themselves occupied, many of them, places which have been abandoned [Just like that!] by Palestinian Arabs, and so you get this sort of strange cycle whereby, in finally finding homes themselves, they are part of a process which is creating more refugees."
At exactly which point, as though a red line has been crossed or profound boredom has set in, Adams' mind simply shuts down and Shephard is dragged back to Europe: "Ben, you're a fine researcher and one of the stories you tell is of a stolen generation from Europe...
Adams professed Judeophilia - he once averred that At the age of 16 I found myself wishing I'd been born Jewish* - could be written off as a harmless eccentricity were it not for the fact that he seems never to have cottoned on to the elementary distinction between Judaism, a confessional statement that, like all confessional statements, belongs strictly to the private realm, and political Zionism, a profoundly negative and destructive settler-colonial program. Given his profile as a prominent left-of-centre progressive intellectual with a perch in both the ABC (LNL) and the Murdoch press (The Weekend Australian Magazine), this is no small matter.
Adams' inability, or unwillingness, to make this crucial distinction, and thus to subject the Zionist project to the same degree of critical scrutiny he has commendably devoted to the US imperial project in Iraq, to cite but one example, marks him out, essentially, as a Zionist (albeit gentile). As such, he displays the fatal flaw described by George Orwell:
"All nationalists [Zionism being a particularly toxic variation on the theme] have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage - torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians - which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our sise'... The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
A remarkable capacity for not even hearing about Palestinian refugees...
Indeed.
[* See my 19/9/09 post He Just Doesn't Get It]
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Giving Poetry a Bad Name
I first came across the following poem on Michael Danby's website. (Before you leap to the conclusion that Danby's a lover of verse, let me stress that it is the one & only poem on his website):-
Yusra
The Public Morals Unit of Hamas
Saw Yusra al-Azzuri, bold as brass,
In Gaza City, walk with her betrothed,
Her sister also present. Half unclothed.
All three behaved as if beyond the reach
Of justice. Laughing, dancing on the beach,
They almost touched. They thought to drive away.
The Unit followed them without delay.
Her young man drove. Beside him as they fled,
Yusra died quickly in a hail of lead.
The other two were hauled out of the car
And beaten senseless. With an iron bar,
The riddled corpse of Yusra, as the worst
Offender, was assaulted till it burst.
She would have prayed for death. It can be said,
Therefore, it was a blessing she was dead
Already. Thus we look for just one touch
Of grace in this catastrophe. Too much
To bear, the thought that those young men were glad
To be there. Won't the memory drive them mad?
Could they not see the laughter in her face
Was heaven on earth, the only holy place?
Perhaps they guessed, and acted from the fear
That Paradise is nowhere if not here.
Yusra, your name too lovely to forget
Shines like a sunrise joined to a sunset.
The day between went with you. Where you are,
That light around you is your life, Yusra.
It was written by expatriate Australian poet and UK TV wit Clive James and published in The Australian's literary supplement The Australian Literary Review of September 7 2007. To the best of my knowledge, apart from Danby's website, its only other airing has been in James' recently published collection Opal Sunset: Selected Poems 1958-2008. Thank God for small mercies.
At first blush, one might assume, as reviewer Benjamin Lytal of the Los Angeles Times did, that Yusra has some basis in fact: "Others, like Yusra, take a name out of the headlines in order to saddle current events with James' metered chivalry." But, like Lytal, you'd be wrong. Yusra al-Azzuri is pure fiction and Hamas has no 'Public Morals Unit'.
The closest I can find to a 'PMU' in the Palestinian territories is a 'morality police' unit set up by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah following Hamas' successful pre-emptive coup in Gaza in 2007. Its job is reportedly to "comb the streets of central Ramallah to maintain 'public order' and 'tradition' [and] bust anyone caught violating the fast during Ramadan..." (Fatah uses 'morality police' to burnish image, Joshua Mitnick, Christian Science Monitor, 11/10/07) And that's "bust," as in take offenders down to the station for a talk - not riddle them with bullets and beat their corpses to a pulp. While noting that the PA's establishment of a 'morality police' unit was designed to compete with Hamas' reputation among all Palestinians for piety and lack of corruption, Mitnick writes that "no such morality squad exists in Gaza," and adds that "local observers say that in a territory known as more traditional than the West Bank, Hamas has been careful not to give its critics a justification for allegations that it is a Taliban wannabe."
James' fabrication cannot simply be excused as poetic licence. Yusra is blatant black propaganda, pure and simple. It tells us nothing whatever about Hamas, Palestinians, or Gaza. Just look at those young lovers: taking the (sports?) car for a spin along the coast as though they were the Gazan equivalent of middle class Lebanese twentysomethings on a jaunt to Beirut's Corniche, for God's sake. The fact that blockaded, impoverished, fuel-starved Gaza has been virtually carless for years, is simply not on James' radar. No, what Yusra is really all about is James and his lurid, post 9/11 orientalist fantasies.
In the unlikely event that James ever chooses to write about the real thing, of course, he could always draw on the actual case of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish divorcee who was beaten to the point of requiring medical treatment in her Jerusalem home by thugs in the pay of an ultra-Orthodox 'modesty patrol' because she had allegedly "stopped maintaining an ultra-Orthodox lifestyle and had relationships with men." The mercenaries who carried out the attack had been, in the words of the Israeli judge who sentenced one of them to 4 years jail, "hired to beat and abuse, to curse and threaten, to humiliate and brutalize" the woman. (Modesty patrol 'mercenary' gets 4 years for assaulting woman, Yair Ettinger, Haaretz, 16/3/09) Fat chance!
But there's another twist to this story. George Orwell, who once opined that "during times of universal deceit, telling truth becomes a revolutionary act," would no doubt be turning in his grave if he knew that James had been awarded the 2008 Orwell Prize for political journalism. Here's Jean Seaton, chair of the Orwell Prize and professor of media history at the University of Westminster: "Clive James is a master, in the Orwell tradition, of the essay. Whether written or broadcast, his words are sharp but humane."(Hari & James take Orwell prizes, Stephen Brook, guardian.co.uk, 25/4/08)
Ever read a James essay? One such appeared in The Australian of 10 April 2004. Written in bad blood is James' take on the history of the Palestine -Israel conflict. Unsurprisingly, considering he's the author of Yusra, he manages to get just about everything wrong. For reasons of space, I will deal only with the slanders, distortions, and errors of just the first half of this appalling diatribe:-
According to James, the Palestinians are possessed of "the mad idea that the Jews have no right to exist... and the equally mad idea that the state of Israel can somehow be eliminated." That's "the Jews" anywhere and everywhere, folks, not just those who flooded into Palestine. A bit like asserting that indigenous Australians were not only opposed to those who invaded and colonized their homeland but also opposed the very existence of each and every European in the lands from which the invaders and settlers first issued. For James, the Palestinians weren't simply opposed to the handover of their homeland by a European colonial power to a bunch of European settlers who wanted to turn it into an ethnically exclusive state at their expense - no, they just hated Jews. Full stop. End of story.
This outrageous slander of the victims of the Zionist colonial-settler project in Palestine came about, according to James, because the "Arab nations never studied at the University of the Holocaust [and] saw nothing wrong with Hitler's determination that as many potential colonists as possible should be dealt with at source."
Studied at the 'University of the Holocaust'?! Presumably, "the Arabs" (but not necessarily the Europeans) should have been alive to the fact that another European colonial power, other than the one forcing the foreign settlers on them, had 'issues' with certain European 'tribes' to its east and was intent on rolling them. And not only should they have twigged to that - they should also have jumped for joy at the prospect of helping out the most persecuted of those European 'tribes' by a) prevailing upon their own colonial master to open the gates of Palestine to said 'tribe', and b) prevailing upon the Palestinians themselves to shower its members with rice and rose petals before promptly handing over their house and car keys and then decamping across the Jordan.
Apart from the odd reference to this or that Zionist primer, James appears simply to make things up as he goes along: "Ben-Gurion was ready to accept a partition of Palestine: even though his resulting portion would be tiny..." Oh, really?If 56% of Palestine is "tiny" for those who had bought up a mere 6% of it prior to 1947, how then would James describe the 44% alloted to the Palestinians? Teensy? How, moreover, would he describe a Palestinian state on a mere 22%? Teensy weensy? And how would he describe a Palestinian state on 22% minus Jewish settlement blocs, apartheid wall, Jews-only roads, army bases, etc? Microscopic?
James makes basic errors such as in "when the new state was attacked [by the Arab states] from all sides... the Irgun teamed up with the Stern Gang to massacre over 300 Arabs at Deir Yassin, and the exodus of the Palestinians ensued." The Deir Yassin massacre occurred over a month before the Arab armies entered Palestine, and just over 100 Palestinians were butchered. Moreover, the Palestinian "exodus" was well under way by the time the Arab armies intervened.
Crucially, he glosses over David Ben-Gurion's key role in planning and implementing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, using the Irgun and Stern Gang as fall guys: "Although [the Palestinians'] disappearance suited Ben-Gurion's purposes - already embattled on a half-dozen external fronts, he would probably have lost the war if he had been forced to fight on an internal front as well." As Zionist historian Benny Morris has pointed out, Ben-Gurion was a "transferist... He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst... Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here." To which I would add this from Israeli historian Ilan Pappe: "On 2 November, ie, almost a month before the UN General Assembly [partition] Resolution was adopted... the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion, spelled out for the first time in the clearest possible terms that ethnic cleansing formed the alternative, or complementary means of ensuring that the new state would be an exclusively Jewish one. The Palestinians inside the Jewish state, he told his audience, could become a fifth column, and if so 'they can either be mass arrested or expelled; it is better to expel them'." ( The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p 49)
And check out these bizarre sentences: "The Jews were suitably sorry at the time. But the Palestinians were sorry forever." Run that past me again. If "the Jews" were in fact "suitably sorry" at the time, all they had to do was facilitate the return of the refugees - as opposed to what they actually did (and have continued to do ever since) - block it and confiscate the refugees' homes and lands. And if the Palestinians, as a consequence of their dispossession in 1948, then became in James' ridiculous phraseology "sorry forever" would that not be sufficient to account for their rage without all that nonsense about anti-Semitism?
Nowhere does James' cluelessness come through better than in this outrageous statement: "There is enough oil money in the Arab nations to give every refugee a hotel suite with 24-hour room service. Instead they have been obliged to remain in camps that are display cases, so that they can testify with their desperation to Jewish inhumanity." If the goose had bothered to find out what the refugees themselves thought about their plight, he'd have discovered that nothing short of a return to what is rightfully theirs is acceptable to them. But face it, research or no research, if you've got a modicum of empathy for anyone who has been rudely shoved aside by those more powerful, you wouldn't even entertain such a callous and insensitive idea in the first place.
Poet? Orwell-Prize-winning journalist? You've got to be joking!
Yusra
The Public Morals Unit of Hamas
Saw Yusra al-Azzuri, bold as brass,
In Gaza City, walk with her betrothed,
Her sister also present. Half unclothed.
All three behaved as if beyond the reach
Of justice. Laughing, dancing on the beach,
They almost touched. They thought to drive away.
The Unit followed them without delay.
Her young man drove. Beside him as they fled,
Yusra died quickly in a hail of lead.
The other two were hauled out of the car
And beaten senseless. With an iron bar,
The riddled corpse of Yusra, as the worst
Offender, was assaulted till it burst.
She would have prayed for death. It can be said,
Therefore, it was a blessing she was dead
Already. Thus we look for just one touch
Of grace in this catastrophe. Too much
To bear, the thought that those young men were glad
To be there. Won't the memory drive them mad?
Could they not see the laughter in her face
Was heaven on earth, the only holy place?
Perhaps they guessed, and acted from the fear
That Paradise is nowhere if not here.
Yusra, your name too lovely to forget
Shines like a sunrise joined to a sunset.
The day between went with you. Where you are,
That light around you is your life, Yusra.
It was written by expatriate Australian poet and UK TV wit Clive James and published in The Australian's literary supplement The Australian Literary Review of September 7 2007. To the best of my knowledge, apart from Danby's website, its only other airing has been in James' recently published collection Opal Sunset: Selected Poems 1958-2008. Thank God for small mercies.
At first blush, one might assume, as reviewer Benjamin Lytal of the Los Angeles Times did, that Yusra has some basis in fact: "Others, like Yusra, take a name out of the headlines in order to saddle current events with James' metered chivalry." But, like Lytal, you'd be wrong. Yusra al-Azzuri is pure fiction and Hamas has no 'Public Morals Unit'.
The closest I can find to a 'PMU' in the Palestinian territories is a 'morality police' unit set up by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah following Hamas' successful pre-emptive coup in Gaza in 2007. Its job is reportedly to "comb the streets of central Ramallah to maintain 'public order' and 'tradition' [and] bust anyone caught violating the fast during Ramadan..." (Fatah uses 'morality police' to burnish image, Joshua Mitnick, Christian Science Monitor, 11/10/07) And that's "bust," as in take offenders down to the station for a talk - not riddle them with bullets and beat their corpses to a pulp. While noting that the PA's establishment of a 'morality police' unit was designed to compete with Hamas' reputation among all Palestinians for piety and lack of corruption, Mitnick writes that "no such morality squad exists in Gaza," and adds that "local observers say that in a territory known as more traditional than the West Bank, Hamas has been careful not to give its critics a justification for allegations that it is a Taliban wannabe."
James' fabrication cannot simply be excused as poetic licence. Yusra is blatant black propaganda, pure and simple. It tells us nothing whatever about Hamas, Palestinians, or Gaza. Just look at those young lovers: taking the (sports?) car for a spin along the coast as though they were the Gazan equivalent of middle class Lebanese twentysomethings on a jaunt to Beirut's Corniche, for God's sake. The fact that blockaded, impoverished, fuel-starved Gaza has been virtually carless for years, is simply not on James' radar. No, what Yusra is really all about is James and his lurid, post 9/11 orientalist fantasies.
In the unlikely event that James ever chooses to write about the real thing, of course, he could always draw on the actual case of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish divorcee who was beaten to the point of requiring medical treatment in her Jerusalem home by thugs in the pay of an ultra-Orthodox 'modesty patrol' because she had allegedly "stopped maintaining an ultra-Orthodox lifestyle and had relationships with men." The mercenaries who carried out the attack had been, in the words of the Israeli judge who sentenced one of them to 4 years jail, "hired to beat and abuse, to curse and threaten, to humiliate and brutalize" the woman. (Modesty patrol 'mercenary' gets 4 years for assaulting woman, Yair Ettinger, Haaretz, 16/3/09) Fat chance!
But there's another twist to this story. George Orwell, who once opined that "during times of universal deceit, telling truth becomes a revolutionary act," would no doubt be turning in his grave if he knew that James had been awarded the 2008 Orwell Prize for political journalism. Here's Jean Seaton, chair of the Orwell Prize and professor of media history at the University of Westminster: "Clive James is a master, in the Orwell tradition, of the essay. Whether written or broadcast, his words are sharp but humane."(Hari & James take Orwell prizes, Stephen Brook, guardian.co.uk, 25/4/08)
Ever read a James essay? One such appeared in The Australian of 10 April 2004. Written in bad blood is James' take on the history of the Palestine -Israel conflict. Unsurprisingly, considering he's the author of Yusra, he manages to get just about everything wrong. For reasons of space, I will deal only with the slanders, distortions, and errors of just the first half of this appalling diatribe:-
According to James, the Palestinians are possessed of "the mad idea that the Jews have no right to exist... and the equally mad idea that the state of Israel can somehow be eliminated." That's "the Jews" anywhere and everywhere, folks, not just those who flooded into Palestine. A bit like asserting that indigenous Australians were not only opposed to those who invaded and colonized their homeland but also opposed the very existence of each and every European in the lands from which the invaders and settlers first issued. For James, the Palestinians weren't simply opposed to the handover of their homeland by a European colonial power to a bunch of European settlers who wanted to turn it into an ethnically exclusive state at their expense - no, they just hated Jews. Full stop. End of story.
This outrageous slander of the victims of the Zionist colonial-settler project in Palestine came about, according to James, because the "Arab nations never studied at the University of the Holocaust [and] saw nothing wrong with Hitler's determination that as many potential colonists as possible should be dealt with at source."
Studied at the 'University of the Holocaust'?! Presumably, "the Arabs" (but not necessarily the Europeans) should have been alive to the fact that another European colonial power, other than the one forcing the foreign settlers on them, had 'issues' with certain European 'tribes' to its east and was intent on rolling them. And not only should they have twigged to that - they should also have jumped for joy at the prospect of helping out the most persecuted of those European 'tribes' by a) prevailing upon their own colonial master to open the gates of Palestine to said 'tribe', and b) prevailing upon the Palestinians themselves to shower its members with rice and rose petals before promptly handing over their house and car keys and then decamping across the Jordan.
Apart from the odd reference to this or that Zionist primer, James appears simply to make things up as he goes along: "Ben-Gurion was ready to accept a partition of Palestine: even though his resulting portion would be tiny..." Oh, really?If 56% of Palestine is "tiny" for those who had bought up a mere 6% of it prior to 1947, how then would James describe the 44% alloted to the Palestinians? Teensy? How, moreover, would he describe a Palestinian state on a mere 22%? Teensy weensy? And how would he describe a Palestinian state on 22% minus Jewish settlement blocs, apartheid wall, Jews-only roads, army bases, etc? Microscopic?
James makes basic errors such as in "when the new state was attacked [by the Arab states] from all sides... the Irgun teamed up with the Stern Gang to massacre over 300 Arabs at Deir Yassin, and the exodus of the Palestinians ensued." The Deir Yassin massacre occurred over a month before the Arab armies entered Palestine, and just over 100 Palestinians were butchered. Moreover, the Palestinian "exodus" was well under way by the time the Arab armies intervened.
Crucially, he glosses over David Ben-Gurion's key role in planning and implementing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, using the Irgun and Stern Gang as fall guys: "Although [the Palestinians'] disappearance suited Ben-Gurion's purposes - already embattled on a half-dozen external fronts, he would probably have lost the war if he had been forced to fight on an internal front as well." As Zionist historian Benny Morris has pointed out, Ben-Gurion was a "transferist... He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst... Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here." To which I would add this from Israeli historian Ilan Pappe: "On 2 November, ie, almost a month before the UN General Assembly [partition] Resolution was adopted... the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion, spelled out for the first time in the clearest possible terms that ethnic cleansing formed the alternative, or complementary means of ensuring that the new state would be an exclusively Jewish one. The Palestinians inside the Jewish state, he told his audience, could become a fifth column, and if so 'they can either be mass arrested or expelled; it is better to expel them'." ( The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p 49)
And check out these bizarre sentences: "The Jews were suitably sorry at the time. But the Palestinians were sorry forever." Run that past me again. If "the Jews" were in fact "suitably sorry" at the time, all they had to do was facilitate the return of the refugees - as opposed to what they actually did (and have continued to do ever since) - block it and confiscate the refugees' homes and lands. And if the Palestinians, as a consequence of their dispossession in 1948, then became in James' ridiculous phraseology "sorry forever" would that not be sufficient to account for their rage without all that nonsense about anti-Semitism?
Nowhere does James' cluelessness come through better than in this outrageous statement: "There is enough oil money in the Arab nations to give every refugee a hotel suite with 24-hour room service. Instead they have been obliged to remain in camps that are display cases, so that they can testify with their desperation to Jewish inhumanity." If the goose had bothered to find out what the refugees themselves thought about their plight, he'd have discovered that nothing short of a return to what is rightfully theirs is acceptable to them. But face it, research or no research, if you've got a modicum of empathy for anyone who has been rudely shoved aside by those more powerful, you wouldn't even entertain such a callous and insensitive idea in the first place.
Poet? Orwell-Prize-winning journalist? You've got to be joking!
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