Netanyahu to a group of Israeli settlers in 2001: "I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction."
***
Yet another Israeli-monkey-on-America's-back story:
How four US presidents, including Obama and Trump, helped protect Israel's nuclear arsenal, Adam Entous, The New Yorker, 18/6/18)
"When a delegation of senior Israeli officials visited the Trump White House on February 13, 2017, they wanted to discuss several issues with their new American counterparts. Topping the list was a secret letter concerning a subject the Israelis had promised the Americans never to discuss publicly - Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal. In a recent piece for The New Yorker, I described a tense scene in the West Wing as the Israeli delegation - which included Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer - tried to get the letter signed by President Donald Trump. By all accounts, the American Administration was eager to please the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Trump had promised to lavish with unprecedented support. But, at that chaotic moment, Trump's aides felt blindsided by the Israeli request. They knew nothing about the existence of any letters and were confused by the sense of urgency coming from the Israelis. The Americans had other pressing concerns - later that day, Michael Flynn, the national security adviser, would hand in his resignation letter - and they didn't appreciate feeling as though the Israelis were telling them what to do. 'This is our fuckin' house,' one of the Americans snapped.
"The White House's reaction was understandable. There had been a similar moment of surprise eight years earlier, when Barack Obama became President and received a similar request. The very existence of the letters had been a closely held secret. Only a select group of senior American officials, in three previous Administrations, knew of the letters and how Israeli leaders interpreted them as effectively an American pledge not to press the Jewish state to give up its nuclear weapons so long as it continued to face existential threats in the region. (American officials say the letters weren't that explicit and fell short of constituting a binding commitment.) When Trump's aides moved into the White House, they didn't find any copies of the previous letters left behind by their predecessors. The documents had been sent to the archives. The Israelis, however, had copies.
"Israel crossed the nuclear threshold on the eve of the Six-Day War, in 1967. At that time, it had three nuclear devices, according to Avner Cohen, a nuclear historian... Israeli efforts to build a bomb at the nuclear complex in Dimona had been a source of tension with Washington for nearly a decade, But, by the fall of 1969, when Golda Meir, Israel's Prime Minister, met with Richard Nixon at the White House, Israel's possession of nuclear weapons was a fait accompli and the two sides reached an unwritten understanding: the Israelis would not declare, test, or threaten to use their nuclear weapons, and the Americans would not pressure the Israelis to sign a landmark international nuclear-nonproliferation treaty known as the NPT. (Israel never became a signatory, and US efforts to inspect Dimona stopped.)
"Successive Israeli governments abided by the arrangement... often referred to as Israel's 'policy of ambiguity.' A joint document describing the agreement was never prepared. Instead, each side relied on its own notes, a former official said. President Gerald Ford abided by Nixon's deal... The Israelis first started to feel as though the unwritten Meir-Nixon arrangement was no longer sufficient during the Presisidency of George H.W. Bush, when, after the first Gulf War, in 1991, world powers talked about the possibility of creating a zone in the Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms.
"The first iteration of the secret letter was drafted during the Clinton Administration, as part of an agreement for Israel's participation in the 1998 Wye River negotiations with the Palestinians. In the letter, according to former officials, President Bill Clinton assured the Jewish state that no future American arms-control initiative would 'detract' from Israel's 'deterrent' capabilities, an oblique but clear reference to its nuclear arsenal. Later, Israeli officials inserted language to make clear to Washington that Israel would 'defend itself, by itself,' and that it would, therefore, not consider the American nuclear arsenal to be a substitute for Israeli nuclear arms. George W. Bush, when he became president, followed Clinton's lead, signing a similar letter, former officials told me.
"Then, in 2009, a new President, Barack Obama, took office. Almost from the start, Netanyahu was distrustful of Obama, and vice versa. 'With Obama, we were all crazy,' an Israeli official told me. That April, Obama delivered an aspirational speech in Prague, setting out 'America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.' Obama's advisers subsequently learned 'how paranoid Bibi was that Obama was going to try to take away Israel's nuclear weapons,' a former US official told me, adding, 'Of course, that was never our intent.' Obama signed an updated version of the letter in May, 2009.
"While Israeli officials interpreted the letters as an effective commitment by successive American Presidents not to pressure Israel regarding its nuclear arsenal, US officials told me that they viewed the letters as less categorical. 'It was not a blanket 'We'll never ask Israel to give up its nuclear weapons.' It was more 'We accepted the Israeli argument that they're not going to disarm under current conditions in the Middle East,' a former US official told me...
"Ahead of a nonproliferation conference in 2010, Netanyahu became concerned, once again, that Israel would come under international pressure to disarm. In response, Obama made a public statement that echoed the contents of the secret letters, without revealing their existence. 'We discussed issues that arose out of the nuclear nonproliferation conference,' Obama said, after meeting with Netanyahu on July 6, 2010. 'And I reiterated to the Prime Minister that there is no change in US policy when it comes to these issues. We strongly believe that, given its size, its history, the region that it's in, and the threats that are levelled against... it, that Israel has unique security requirements. It's got to be able to respond to threats or any combination of threats in the region. And that's why we remain unwavering in our commitment to Israel's security. And the United States will never ask Israel to take any steps that would undermine their security interests'."
Showing posts with label Golda Meir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Golda Meir. Show all posts
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Bob Hawke's Crazy Love
In an Australian Financial Review op-ed published yesterday, former Labor PM and die-hard "friend of Israel," Bob Hawke, confesses to being worried about "the danger of Israel being blinded to the threat to its very soul and the vision of its future."
In Time to recognise the state of Palestine, he describes a meeting he had with former Israeli PM Golda Meir, at the end of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973:
"I listened with admiration and in total agreement as this wonderful woman, still traumatised with grief, looked into my eyes and said there could be no peace for Israel until there was an honourable settlement of the aspirations of the Palestinian people."
"Soul"? "Vision"? We're dealing here with a-worse-than-apartheid-state for God's sake, with no other "vision" than to cram in as many Jews as possible, and knock off as many Palestinians as circumstances allow. As for that "wonderful woman," Golda Meir, wasn't she the one who said, "There is no such thing as Palestinians"? (See my 17/8/08 post The Zionist La Passionara.)
Unfortunately, despite all his free time and a taxpayer-funded retirement package an aged pensioner could only dream of, he still hasn't taken the time or trouble to revisit, research, revise and apologise for his youthful infatuation and where it led him.
Clearly, the old codger's still not over it.
The only thing, it seems, which perturbs his rosy vision of an imagined Israeli golden age, is the current "sentiment of Israeli political leadership" as exemplified in "the inexorable expansion of Jewish settlement in the West Bank," where "some 580,000 Israelis live in 123 government-authorised settlements and about 100 unauthorised outposts on the West Bank and 12 major neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem." Not to mention those recently announced.
"The least we can do," he concludes, "in these most challenging of times, is to do what 137 other nations have already done - grant diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine."
The appalling thought arises: Will this be it? Will Hawke's be the one and only opinion piece in the lead-up to Netanyahu's visit in the Australian press that deviates from the usual, bipartisan kowtowing to Israel?
Perish the the thought.
But there's more to Hawke's piece than meets the eye. Something quite astonishing in fact. This:
"It was our great foreign minister Dr H.V. Evatt who chaired the UN Special Committee on Palestine and it was the resolution of that committee that authorised the partition of Palestine into two states. It was on the basis of this resolution that the state of Israel was established in 1948. The resolution gave the already settled and the newly arriving European Jewish settlers - who by then constituted a third of the population and owned less than 6% of the land - exactly 56.47% of the Palestinians' best cultivated land and cities. The two-thirds population of indigenous Palestinians who owned more than 94% of the land were given 47% of their own country."
Think about it...
If:
a) Evatt had a hand in proposing that the indigenous Palestinians be divested of 56.47% of their patrimony, to be handed over, lock, stock, and barrel, to a minority of recently-arrived European settlers who had purchased only 6% of it (and he did);
b) and if the partition proposal enshrined in the UNGA's resolution of 29 November, 1947, was as draconian as has been described (and it was);
c) and if said partition resolution was, at least in part, Evatt's legacy in Palestine (and it was), then how the hell can Hawke describe Evatt as "our great foreign minister"?
In fact, it was the partition resolution of 1947 that gave Zionist fanatics such as David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir all the excuse they needed to embark on the military offensive they'd been preparing for for decades, drive out the indigenous Palestinian population, occupy 78% of their ancestral homeland, destroy hundreds of their villages, steal their land, and strew it with settlements (called at the time kibbutzes).
If Hawke really wanted to make a statement at this time, the very least he could have done would be to repudiate Evatt's legacy in Palestine, demand Israel withdraw to its 1947 partition borders, and call on it to implement all relevant UN resolutions, particularly UNGA resolution 194, enshrining the right of Palestinians ethnically cleansed in 1948 to return home.
In Time to recognise the state of Palestine, he describes a meeting he had with former Israeli PM Golda Meir, at the end of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973:
"I listened with admiration and in total agreement as this wonderful woman, still traumatised with grief, looked into my eyes and said there could be no peace for Israel until there was an honourable settlement of the aspirations of the Palestinian people."
"Soul"? "Vision"? We're dealing here with a-worse-than-apartheid-state for God's sake, with no other "vision" than to cram in as many Jews as possible, and knock off as many Palestinians as circumstances allow. As for that "wonderful woman," Golda Meir, wasn't she the one who said, "There is no such thing as Palestinians"? (See my 17/8/08 post The Zionist La Passionara.)
Unfortunately, despite all his free time and a taxpayer-funded retirement package an aged pensioner could only dream of, he still hasn't taken the time or trouble to revisit, research, revise and apologise for his youthful infatuation and where it led him.
Clearly, the old codger's still not over it.
The only thing, it seems, which perturbs his rosy vision of an imagined Israeli golden age, is the current "sentiment of Israeli political leadership" as exemplified in "the inexorable expansion of Jewish settlement in the West Bank," where "some 580,000 Israelis live in 123 government-authorised settlements and about 100 unauthorised outposts on the West Bank and 12 major neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem." Not to mention those recently announced.
"The least we can do," he concludes, "in these most challenging of times, is to do what 137 other nations have already done - grant diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine."
The appalling thought arises: Will this be it? Will Hawke's be the one and only opinion piece in the lead-up to Netanyahu's visit in the Australian press that deviates from the usual, bipartisan kowtowing to Israel?
Perish the the thought.
But there's more to Hawke's piece than meets the eye. Something quite astonishing in fact. This:
"It was our great foreign minister Dr H.V. Evatt who chaired the UN Special Committee on Palestine and it was the resolution of that committee that authorised the partition of Palestine into two states. It was on the basis of this resolution that the state of Israel was established in 1948. The resolution gave the already settled and the newly arriving European Jewish settlers - who by then constituted a third of the population and owned less than 6% of the land - exactly 56.47% of the Palestinians' best cultivated land and cities. The two-thirds population of indigenous Palestinians who owned more than 94% of the land were given 47% of their own country."
Think about it...
If:
a) Evatt had a hand in proposing that the indigenous Palestinians be divested of 56.47% of their patrimony, to be handed over, lock, stock, and barrel, to a minority of recently-arrived European settlers who had purchased only 6% of it (and he did);
b) and if the partition proposal enshrined in the UNGA's resolution of 29 November, 1947, was as draconian as has been described (and it was);
c) and if said partition resolution was, at least in part, Evatt's legacy in Palestine (and it was), then how the hell can Hawke describe Evatt as "our great foreign minister"?
In fact, it was the partition resolution of 1947 that gave Zionist fanatics such as David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir all the excuse they needed to embark on the military offensive they'd been preparing for for decades, drive out the indigenous Palestinian population, occupy 78% of their ancestral homeland, destroy hundreds of their villages, steal their land, and strew it with settlements (called at the time kibbutzes).
If Hawke really wanted to make a statement at this time, the very least he could have done would be to repudiate Evatt's legacy in Palestine, demand Israel withdraw to its 1947 partition borders, and call on it to implement all relevant UN resolutions, particularly UNGA resolution 194, enshrining the right of Palestinians ethnically cleansed in 1948 to return home.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Ziobile in Australia, Ziobullets in Palestine
What the letters editor of The Australian deemed fit to print in yesterday's defecation:
"What is happening to the Middle East is a microcosm of what militant Muslims have in store for the entire world if they get their way. That is a caliphate devoted to the laws of Islam and the Koran. It rings true that when the Arab nations learn to love their children more than they hate so-called disbelievers, then the guns will be silent and peace will reign. Until then we had better perfect the art of warfare against these terrorists and their affiliates whose global tentacles are increasingly conspicuous everywhere." Aviva Rothschild, Caulfield, Vic
Note the twist on Golda Meir's old propaganda line:
"We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."
BTW, here's the latest example of Arabs forcing Israelis to kill their children:
"Israeli soldiers murdered a Palestinian schoolgirl, unarmed, threatening no one. Israel called her a knife-wielding terrorist, the Big lie it repeats ad nauseam. Eyewitnesses called her a 'terrified' young girl. One said she was surrounded by 7 or 8 soldiers. They 'checked her belongings in a schoolbag,' he said. 'She looked like she was around 14 years old. She went through a metal detector. In the school bag they found nothing and asked her, 'Where's the knife?' She said, 'I don't have a knife.' Then they fired between her legs. She was terrified and moved back half a meter. She raised her arms in the air (again) saying 'I don't have a knife.' Then they shot 8 to 10 bullets, but I don't know exactly who was shooting. Then she fell on the ground.' Other eyewitnesses said soldiers prevented medical help from arriving to try saving her." (Netanyahu's latest ethnic cleansing scheme: forcibly displacing East Jerusalem Arab residents, Stephen Lendman, sjlendman.blogspot.com, 26/10/15)
"What is happening to the Middle East is a microcosm of what militant Muslims have in store for the entire world if they get their way. That is a caliphate devoted to the laws of Islam and the Koran. It rings true that when the Arab nations learn to love their children more than they hate so-called disbelievers, then the guns will be silent and peace will reign. Until then we had better perfect the art of warfare against these terrorists and their affiliates whose global tentacles are increasingly conspicuous everywhere." Aviva Rothschild, Caulfield, Vic
Note the twist on Golda Meir's old propaganda line:
"We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."
BTW, here's the latest example of Arabs forcing Israelis to kill their children:
"Israeli soldiers murdered a Palestinian schoolgirl, unarmed, threatening no one. Israel called her a knife-wielding terrorist, the Big lie it repeats ad nauseam. Eyewitnesses called her a 'terrified' young girl. One said she was surrounded by 7 or 8 soldiers. They 'checked her belongings in a schoolbag,' he said. 'She looked like she was around 14 years old. She went through a metal detector. In the school bag they found nothing and asked her, 'Where's the knife?' She said, 'I don't have a knife.' Then they fired between her legs. She was terrified and moved back half a meter. She raised her arms in the air (again) saying 'I don't have a knife.' Then they shot 8 to 10 bullets, but I don't know exactly who was shooting. Then she fell on the ground.' Other eyewitnesses said soldiers prevented medical help from arriving to try saving her." (Netanyahu's latest ethnic cleansing scheme: forcibly displacing East Jerusalem Arab residents, Stephen Lendman, sjlendman.blogspot.com, 26/10/15)
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
The Taming of Tanya 2
Operation Taming Tanya seems to be coming along nicely:
"Some in Labor are predicting a big future for deputy leader Tanya Plibersek. Perhaps prophetically, this year she read Charles Dickens' Great Expectations and the autobiography of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir." (There's nothing like a good read: As they relax over summer, politicians plan to catch up with their reading, Troy Bramston, The Australian, 23/12/13)
Is this not a sign? Could the Labor Zionist operatives behind OTT - see my 30/10/13 post The Taming of Tanya - be grooming her for the top job once One-Term Tony's but a bad memory? And is it time maybe to start speaking of 'Short-Term Shorten'?
If so, Plibersek's highly embarrassing 'rogue Israel' outburst of 2002 (My Goodness, I don't quite know what came over me!) will have to be atoned for big time. Which is perhaps, if I'm reading the tea leaves correctly, where Israel's first female PM (1969-1974) Golda Meir comes in.
Is Labor's Golden Girl about to become the Golda Meir of Australian politics?
It's a hard ask!
For starters she's got to be able to say with a straight face when the time comes: Palestinians? What Palestinians?
Then there's Golda's legendary will of iron and heart of stone? Could that be a bridge too far for Plibersek?
It's not a pretty picture I'm afraid:
"My moment of eye-opening disillusion with Golda Meir came early on in Elinor Burkett's new biography of the female premier, titled simply Golda. The year was 1950, and Golda Meyerson, as she was then known, was nearing 60 and had just returned from her stint as Israel's first ambassador to the Soviet Union. Her son, Menachem, off studying the cello in Yugoslavia, was having marital problems with his new wife. She was pregnant and insisted the couple return to Jerusalem to have the baby. Meir assumed her daughter-in-law was trying to sabotage her son's promising music career, so she decided that, as punishment, she would ignore her first grandchild. The baby girl that was born that year, Meira Meyerson, had a mild case of Down syndrome. Meir refused to see her. The child, she demanded, should be institutionalized. 'Golda was like a stone,' an old friend confessed to Burkett.
"That Israel's fourth prime minister was a stone is not news. Any of the half-dozen biographies already published, or even her own ghostwritten 1976 memoir, My Life, attest to what could generously be described as an iron will. And for a woman who shoved her way into the innermost circle of Labor Zionist leadership, a notoriously egomaniacal group of fiery political men, one can almost forgive her some spitefulness and coldness along the way. Certainly, one wouldn't want to judge Meir any more or less harshly than her male cohorts. What Burkett tries (and succeeds in) doing is taking a sympathetic but unapologetic look in order to discover what happened when her life intersected with power. It's not pretty. Anyone expecting the 'part Superwoman, a dash of Emma Goldman, a smidgen of Nelson Mandela, all wrapped up in the warmth of our grandmothers,' as Burkett describes the popular image of Meir, won't find her here. In her place is a tragic, lonely, sickly figure, a terrible mother who cuckolded and neglected her husband, alienated her loved ones and often terrorized her closest friends." (From Gal Beckerman's review of Elinor Burkett's Golda, Will of iron, heart of stone: book shines light on Golda Meir's harder side, forward.com, 29/8/08)
"Some in Labor are predicting a big future for deputy leader Tanya Plibersek. Perhaps prophetically, this year she read Charles Dickens' Great Expectations and the autobiography of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir." (There's nothing like a good read: As they relax over summer, politicians plan to catch up with their reading, Troy Bramston, The Australian, 23/12/13)
Is this not a sign? Could the Labor Zionist operatives behind OTT - see my 30/10/13 post The Taming of Tanya - be grooming her for the top job once One-Term Tony's but a bad memory? And is it time maybe to start speaking of 'Short-Term Shorten'?
If so, Plibersek's highly embarrassing 'rogue Israel' outburst of 2002 (My Goodness, I don't quite know what came over me!) will have to be atoned for big time. Which is perhaps, if I'm reading the tea leaves correctly, where Israel's first female PM (1969-1974) Golda Meir comes in.
Is Labor's Golden Girl about to become the Golda Meir of Australian politics?
It's a hard ask!
For starters she's got to be able to say with a straight face when the time comes: Palestinians? What Palestinians?
Then there's Golda's legendary will of iron and heart of stone? Could that be a bridge too far for Plibersek?
It's not a pretty picture I'm afraid:
"My moment of eye-opening disillusion with Golda Meir came early on in Elinor Burkett's new biography of the female premier, titled simply Golda. The year was 1950, and Golda Meyerson, as she was then known, was nearing 60 and had just returned from her stint as Israel's first ambassador to the Soviet Union. Her son, Menachem, off studying the cello in Yugoslavia, was having marital problems with his new wife. She was pregnant and insisted the couple return to Jerusalem to have the baby. Meir assumed her daughter-in-law was trying to sabotage her son's promising music career, so she decided that, as punishment, she would ignore her first grandchild. The baby girl that was born that year, Meira Meyerson, had a mild case of Down syndrome. Meir refused to see her. The child, she demanded, should be institutionalized. 'Golda was like a stone,' an old friend confessed to Burkett.
"That Israel's fourth prime minister was a stone is not news. Any of the half-dozen biographies already published, or even her own ghostwritten 1976 memoir, My Life, attest to what could generously be described as an iron will. And for a woman who shoved her way into the innermost circle of Labor Zionist leadership, a notoriously egomaniacal group of fiery political men, one can almost forgive her some spitefulness and coldness along the way. Certainly, one wouldn't want to judge Meir any more or less harshly than her male cohorts. What Burkett tries (and succeeds in) doing is taking a sympathetic but unapologetic look in order to discover what happened when her life intersected with power. It's not pretty. Anyone expecting the 'part Superwoman, a dash of Emma Goldman, a smidgen of Nelson Mandela, all wrapped up in the warmth of our grandmothers,' as Burkett describes the popular image of Meir, won't find her here. In her place is a tragic, lonely, sickly figure, a terrible mother who cuckolded and neglected her husband, alienated her loved ones and often terrorized her closest friends." (From Gal Beckerman's review of Elinor Burkett's Golda, Will of iron, heart of stone: book shines light on Golda Meir's harder side, forward.com, 29/8/08)
Sunday, November 17, 2013
The Jewish Paradox
"Jewish leaders are preparing to fight the [Federal] government's plans to weaken race hate laws, saying they could encourage persecution and racially-motivated violence." (Jewish concern at plan to change hate laws, Jonathan Swan, Sydney Morning Herald, 15/11/13)
Hm... persecution and racially-motivated violence.
Presumably, these guys are concerned about anti-Semitism, right? Jews coming under attack because they're Jews.
But read on and you find it's not that simple:
"Mr Wertheim [the executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ)]* has warned that the 'wholesale repeal' of sections of the [Racial Discrimination] act would not only prevent vilified groups from defending their reputations legally, but would also encourage more sinister forms of hate speech. 'It would... open the door to importation into Australia of the hatreds and violence of overseas conflicts'..." (ibid)
So that's it: what they're really worried about is the spillover effect of overseas conflicts, specifically, the spillover effect of the Middle East conflict on the community they purport to lead.
The trouble is, and the average reader is unlikely to pick this up from such a report, Wertheim and other Jewish leaders also act as lobbyists/apologists for Israel. In that capacity, they emerge as partisans in the very conflict they fear could affect the well-being of Jews here in Australia.
As political Zionists, of course, they routinely conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, which is to say anti-Israelism. For them, criticism of Israel, its ideology and practice, is either anti-Semitism pure and simple, or verging on anti-Semitism, or crossing the line into anti-Semitism, the circumlocutions for smearing a critic of Israel as an anti-Semite being many and varied.
Unfortunately, this is where the matter becomes problematic for the community they supposedly represent - as veteran British journalist and author Alan Hart so lucidly points out:
"In my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the answer to the question of what Zionism would do in the event of mission failure was given to me by Golda Meir in one of my interviews with her for the BBC's flagship Panorama programme. She said that in the event of a doomsday situation, Israel 'would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it.'
"The Jewish paradox comes down to this. Israel was created by Zionism to guarantee the well-being and existence of the Jews, but that well-being and perhaps even existence is most seriously threatened by Zionism's policies and actions.
"How can that possibly be true?
"What we are witnessing today is a rising, global tide of anti-Israelism. It is NOT a manifestation of anti-Semitism, meaning that it's not being driven by prejudice against or loathing and even hatred of Jews just because they are Jews. Anti-Israelism is being provoked by Israel's arrogance of power, its sickening self-righteousness and its contempt for international law in general and the rights of Palestinians in particular.
"The danger for Jews everywhere is that anti-Israelism could be transformed into rampant and rabid anti-Semitism. The most explicit warning that this could happen was given by Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel's longest serving Director of Military Intelligence. In his book Israel's Fateful Hour, published in English in 1988, he wrote this (my emphasis added):
'Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world'." (The Jewish paradox arising from the curse of Zionism, Alan Hart, sabbah.biz, 11/5/13)
(The Attorney-General, Senator George Brandis, who is behind the push to remove those sections of the RDA that make it an offence to offend another person on grounds of race or ethnicity, has the interests of the right-wing commentariat, particularly Andrew Bolt, very much at heart. At the same time, however, Brandis has been rambammed (2009 & 2010) and has form in raising the concerns of the Israel lobby in the Senate. (See my 29/5/09 post Her Brilliant Career.) The question arises: can he please both interest groups with his new legislation? Watch this space...)
[*For a critique of the role of ECAJ and other Zionist lobby groups from within the Jewish community, see my 20/6/13 post Join the Dots...]
Hm... persecution and racially-motivated violence.
Presumably, these guys are concerned about anti-Semitism, right? Jews coming under attack because they're Jews.
But read on and you find it's not that simple:
"Mr Wertheim [the executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ)]* has warned that the 'wholesale repeal' of sections of the [Racial Discrimination] act would not only prevent vilified groups from defending their reputations legally, but would also encourage more sinister forms of hate speech. 'It would... open the door to importation into Australia of the hatreds and violence of overseas conflicts'..." (ibid)
So that's it: what they're really worried about is the spillover effect of overseas conflicts, specifically, the spillover effect of the Middle East conflict on the community they purport to lead.
The trouble is, and the average reader is unlikely to pick this up from such a report, Wertheim and other Jewish leaders also act as lobbyists/apologists for Israel. In that capacity, they emerge as partisans in the very conflict they fear could affect the well-being of Jews here in Australia.
As political Zionists, of course, they routinely conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, which is to say anti-Israelism. For them, criticism of Israel, its ideology and practice, is either anti-Semitism pure and simple, or verging on anti-Semitism, or crossing the line into anti-Semitism, the circumlocutions for smearing a critic of Israel as an anti-Semite being many and varied.
Unfortunately, this is where the matter becomes problematic for the community they supposedly represent - as veteran British journalist and author Alan Hart so lucidly points out:
"In my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the answer to the question of what Zionism would do in the event of mission failure was given to me by Golda Meir in one of my interviews with her for the BBC's flagship Panorama programme. She said that in the event of a doomsday situation, Israel 'would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it.'
"The Jewish paradox comes down to this. Israel was created by Zionism to guarantee the well-being and existence of the Jews, but that well-being and perhaps even existence is most seriously threatened by Zionism's policies and actions.
"How can that possibly be true?
"What we are witnessing today is a rising, global tide of anti-Israelism. It is NOT a manifestation of anti-Semitism, meaning that it's not being driven by prejudice against or loathing and even hatred of Jews just because they are Jews. Anti-Israelism is being provoked by Israel's arrogance of power, its sickening self-righteousness and its contempt for international law in general and the rights of Palestinians in particular.
"The danger for Jews everywhere is that anti-Israelism could be transformed into rampant and rabid anti-Semitism. The most explicit warning that this could happen was given by Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel's longest serving Director of Military Intelligence. In his book Israel's Fateful Hour, published in English in 1988, he wrote this (my emphasis added):
'Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world'." (The Jewish paradox arising from the curse of Zionism, Alan Hart, sabbah.biz, 11/5/13)
(The Attorney-General, Senator George Brandis, who is behind the push to remove those sections of the RDA that make it an offence to offend another person on grounds of race or ethnicity, has the interests of the right-wing commentariat, particularly Andrew Bolt, very much at heart. At the same time, however, Brandis has been rambammed (2009 & 2010) and has form in raising the concerns of the Israel lobby in the Senate. (See my 29/5/09 post Her Brilliant Career.) The question arises: can he please both interest groups with his new legislation? Watch this space...)
[*For a critique of the role of ECAJ and other Zionist lobby groups from within the Jewish community, see my 20/6/13 post Join the Dots...]
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Games Israelis Play
As part of its crusade against Professor Jake Lynch, Murdoch's Australia has lately gone out of its way to sell its readers on the virtues of Jerusalem's Hebrew University. (Lynch, you'll remember, had the nerve to decline an academic overture from a certain Dan Avnon of the Hebrew University because of his principled opposition to institutional ties between that university and his own, Sydney University.
Needless to say, like 20th century Palestine, the university has an 'interesting' history. Opened in 1925, its main campus, on Mount Scopus, a ridge which dominates Arab East Jerusalem from the north-east, was out of action academically from 1948 to 1967, isolated behind armistice lines in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank, and garrisoned by Israeli troops masquerading as a police force.
But Israel being Israel, as we shall see, it was not out of action militarily at the time.
Israeli propagandists, speaking through their Murdoch mouthpieces, have been at pains lately to pronounce the university kosher:
"Another spokesman, Amir Barkol, denied the campus had expanded on to occupied land. 'I can tell you 100% the campus is all on Israeli territory,' he said. Asked about the claim the university had extensive connections with Israeli weapons manufacturing companies, Mr Barkol said: 'I don't know anything about that. Which companies?'" (Anti-Israeli BDS campaign facing court test, Ean Higgins, The Australian, 31/10/13)
"Late last year, Professor Avnon was seeking Professor Lynch's nomination for a Zelman Cowan fellowship to study curriculums in Australia. Professor Lynch turned him down, citing his centre's pro-BDS policy and claims Hebrew University had links to the occupation of the West Bank." (Inside Jerusalem's university of freedom, John Lyons, The Australian, 1/11/13)
However, when one moves from the Israeli spin to an examination of the historical record, it becomes abundantly clear that, where Israeli officials is concerned, it's always what is done, rather than what is said, that counts.
Here, for example, is the testimony of the British commander of Jordan's Arab Legion, Glubb Pasha. (The Arab Legion was the most effective of the Arab forces which intervened in May, 1948, to prevent Zionist forces from overrunning East Jerusalem and the West Bank.) It comes from Glubb's memoir, A Soldier with the Arabs (1957):
"One agreement was, however, concluded which was to result in a considerable problem for Jordan. The massive Jewish building on Mount Scopus. They consisted of the Hadassa Hospital and the Hebrew University, both great mountains of stone, situated on high ground dominating the Arab side of the city and cut off from the Jewish city by the suburb of Shaikh Jarrah. As soon as the Arab Legion had intervened in Jerusalem, Mount Scopus had been isolated. The Jews, however, had left a military garrison in the Hadassa and the University, which continued to fire into the backs of the Arab Legion who were defending Jerusalem. When we retaliated with mortars or, on one occasion, with the 25-pounders, there was an outcry about Arabs shelling hospitals. The Jordan government was informed that both the Hospital and the University had been built with funds voluntarily subscribed in the United States. Any attempt by us to destroy or capture these buildings would, we were told, produce intense indignation in America.
"When, therefore, [UN mediator] Count Bernadotte suggested that the buildings be demilitarised and handed over to the United Nations, the solution seemed to be a reasonable one. The Israeli government agreed to the proposal, but requested permission to leave some Jewish civil service in the buildings to prevent pilfering of the valuable medical equipment and the literary treasures of the University. Count Bernadotte was very explicit in his statement that Mount Scopus would henceforward be solely under the control of the United Nations. He said that it was his intention little by little to replace the Jewish by United Nations police. How this agreement was ultimately carried out after the death of the Count will appear later on in this narrative." (pp 145-146)
(If you know your Palestinian history, you'll know that Bernadotte, for his pains, was gunned down in September of the same year by the Zionist terrorist Stern Gang.)
Glubb returns to the issue of Mount Scopus, later in the book:
"A constant source of irritation throughout the years from 1948-1956 was the Israeli position in in the Hadassa Hospital and the Hebrew University. It will be recollected that the massive buildings which housed these institutions were built on Mount Scopus, a low ridge overlooking the Arab city of Jerusalem from the north-east...
"We soon discovered, from intelligence sources, that the men in Hadassa were not police at all, but a company of infantry. An Israeli prisoner of war, captured in a frontier incident, gave a detailed statement. He told how the infantry company to which he belonged had been brought to police headquarters in Jerusalem, where they had been dressed in police uniforms. They had then been sent as 'civil police' to relieve the garrison of Hadassa. (Reliefs took place once a fortnight on a convoy which passed through our lines.) The 'police' in Hadassah, the prisoner admitted, were always a company of regular infantry. Then one night a platoon of Israeli infantry endeavoured to infiltrate through our lines to the Hadassa. Ten men of this platoon were acting as armed escort, while the remaining 20 were carrying 3-inch and 2-inch mortar ammunition in packs on their backs. The party ran into an Arab Legion patrol, an engagement took place in the dark, and the Israelis retired hurriedly back to their front line, having dropped most of the mortar ammunition. Next day, the United Nations observers were taken to see it.
"The Hadassa was supposed to have been demilitarized - that is, stripped of weapons, except those of the 'police'. If there were no mortars in the buildings, why did the Israeli army want to smuggle in the ammunition? The garrison were alleged to be constructing defences, although they were supposed to be civilian police, whose sole duty was to prevent pilfering. We asked the United Nations Chief of Staff to make a personal inspection of the area, but when he arrived to do so, he was refused admittance. 'This is Israeli territory,' said the commander of the police, 'I cannot admit you without an order from the Israeli government.'
"We and the United Nations held copies of the agreement, signed by the Israeli commander in 1948, admitting that the Hadassa area would be under the sole jurisdiction of the United Nations. This result produced considerable bitterness in Jordan and in the Arab Legion. It would have been comparatively easy to capture the place in 1948. We were tricked into not doing so by the plan to demilitarize the area and hand it over to the sole jurisdiction of UNO. As a result of the weakness of the latter, the position remained a military fortress behind our lines, garrisoned by Israeli infantry, who made little or no attempt at concealment. They frequently fired rifle shots, or bursts of Bren gun, into the Arab city, and were still doing so at intervals when I left Jordan in 1956." (pp 342-343)
Things did not, however, improve following Glubb's departure. Here, for example, is the testimony of the head of the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) from 1958-1963, General Carl von Horn.* It comes from his memoir, Soldiering for Peace (1966):
"It blew up around Mount Scopus this time, where the activities of the Jewish 'Police' garrison operating from behind a wire fence around the grounds of buildings of the Old Haddassah Hospital and the Hebrew University were arousing grave concern. Although the whole of the disputed area on these pine-covered slopes was officially under the supervision of the United Nations, the Israelis had always prevented us from carrying out our task. Now the garrison had taken to sending out armed patrols to harry their Arab neighbours in the dusty little village of Issawiya, insulting them and virtually sealing them off behind road blocks as soon as darkness fell. They were penetrating, too, into another area known as Solomon's Gardens, which they claimed was Israeli territory.
"At the root of the problem was the old problem of conflicting maps. But it could only be a matter of time before the Jordanian troops who were forced to watch their brother villagers being harried, would take vigorous counter-action. When I pointed this out to the Israelis they showed not the slightest interest. Some time before [UN Secretary-General] Dag [Hammarskjold]'s special representative, Dr Urrutia, had come out especially to try and settle the Scopus issue, but had been turned back by Israeli troops whilst visiting the area in full view of hundreds of watching Arabs. It struck me as unlikely I was going to be able to do much better.
"However, the daily reports of worsening tension from Colonel Flint (the Chairman of our Jordan-Israel M.A.C.) made it imperative I should try." (pp 83-84)
And he did - only to be blocked by those Israeli 'police'.
"Clearly the discomfiture which Dr Urrutia had suffered had been re-enacted for my especial benefit. I have no doubt it was staged deliberately, since the sight of the UN Chief of Staff being turned back in an area where he had every right to be was hardly likely to raise the prestige of the UN with the Arabs. But when I protested officially to Mrs Meir [Israeli PM], her only explanation was the rather inappropriate rejoinder: 'We Jews do not like to be pushed around'."
"Consequently, I had to leave investigations to Colonel Flint and his team of observers... He reported increasingly strong patrol activity, and I had every reason to rely on his considered opinion that unless steps were taken to check the Israeli patrols immediately, there was bound to be fighting." (pp 84-85)
General Horn paid another visit to Mrs Meir who "pooh-poohed the whole issue. Three days later, an Israeli patrol in Solomon's Gardens was heavily fired on. Two of its soldiers were killed immediately, and the subsequent exchange of fire was both fierce and prolonged. Colonel Flint rushed up in an effort to intervene and rescue the survivors who had gone to ground. In the confused shooting which ensued, two more Israelis were killed, and Colonel Flint was shot dead. It was a senseless, stupid, unnecessary skirmish which could so easily have been prevented.
"The investigation which followed was little more than a farce. Our observers (at long last allowed inside the wire fence) soon discovered, whilst cross-examining the Israeli 'Police' Commandant, that every inconvenient question was followed by his withdrawal to another room to receive guidance and instruction over his radio. Feelings in Israel ran high. There was great bitterness about their dead and, as we might have anticipated, it was now the United Nations who were painted in the blackest colours. Our warnings, all our efforts, were conveniently forgotten, and we were now accused of having precipitated the incident. Mourning poor Flint... we were amazed at the ingenuity of the falsehoods which distorted the true picture. The highly skilled Israeli Information Service and the entire press combined to manufacture a warped, distorted version which was disseminated with professional expertise through every available channel to their own people and their sympathizers and supporters in America and the rest of the world. Never in all my life had I believed the truth could be so cynically, expertly bent." (p 85)
So the next time you come across the claims of Israeli PR people with regard to the Hebrew University, take them with more than a few grains of salt, and remember that whatever is said about the university not expanding onto occupied Palestinian land, every single access road to the place runs through occupied Arab East Jerusalem.
And maybe spare a thought for those martyred soldiers for peace, Count Bernadotte and Colonel Flint back in the days when the UN still stood for something.
[*See my 30/6/12 post Unlovable Rogues.]
Needless to say, like 20th century Palestine, the university has an 'interesting' history. Opened in 1925, its main campus, on Mount Scopus, a ridge which dominates Arab East Jerusalem from the north-east, was out of action academically from 1948 to 1967, isolated behind armistice lines in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank, and garrisoned by Israeli troops masquerading as a police force.
But Israel being Israel, as we shall see, it was not out of action militarily at the time.
Israeli propagandists, speaking through their Murdoch mouthpieces, have been at pains lately to pronounce the university kosher:
"Another spokesman, Amir Barkol, denied the campus had expanded on to occupied land. 'I can tell you 100% the campus is all on Israeli territory,' he said. Asked about the claim the university had extensive connections with Israeli weapons manufacturing companies, Mr Barkol said: 'I don't know anything about that. Which companies?'" (Anti-Israeli BDS campaign facing court test, Ean Higgins, The Australian, 31/10/13)
"Late last year, Professor Avnon was seeking Professor Lynch's nomination for a Zelman Cowan fellowship to study curriculums in Australia. Professor Lynch turned him down, citing his centre's pro-BDS policy and claims Hebrew University had links to the occupation of the West Bank." (Inside Jerusalem's university of freedom, John Lyons, The Australian, 1/11/13)
However, when one moves from the Israeli spin to an examination of the historical record, it becomes abundantly clear that, where Israeli officials is concerned, it's always what is done, rather than what is said, that counts.
Here, for example, is the testimony of the British commander of Jordan's Arab Legion, Glubb Pasha. (The Arab Legion was the most effective of the Arab forces which intervened in May, 1948, to prevent Zionist forces from overrunning East Jerusalem and the West Bank.) It comes from Glubb's memoir, A Soldier with the Arabs (1957):
"One agreement was, however, concluded which was to result in a considerable problem for Jordan. The massive Jewish building on Mount Scopus. They consisted of the Hadassa Hospital and the Hebrew University, both great mountains of stone, situated on high ground dominating the Arab side of the city and cut off from the Jewish city by the suburb of Shaikh Jarrah. As soon as the Arab Legion had intervened in Jerusalem, Mount Scopus had been isolated. The Jews, however, had left a military garrison in the Hadassa and the University, which continued to fire into the backs of the Arab Legion who were defending Jerusalem. When we retaliated with mortars or, on one occasion, with the 25-pounders, there was an outcry about Arabs shelling hospitals. The Jordan government was informed that both the Hospital and the University had been built with funds voluntarily subscribed in the United States. Any attempt by us to destroy or capture these buildings would, we were told, produce intense indignation in America.
"When, therefore, [UN mediator] Count Bernadotte suggested that the buildings be demilitarised and handed over to the United Nations, the solution seemed to be a reasonable one. The Israeli government agreed to the proposal, but requested permission to leave some Jewish civil service in the buildings to prevent pilfering of the valuable medical equipment and the literary treasures of the University. Count Bernadotte was very explicit in his statement that Mount Scopus would henceforward be solely under the control of the United Nations. He said that it was his intention little by little to replace the Jewish by United Nations police. How this agreement was ultimately carried out after the death of the Count will appear later on in this narrative." (pp 145-146)
(If you know your Palestinian history, you'll know that Bernadotte, for his pains, was gunned down in September of the same year by the Zionist terrorist Stern Gang.)
Glubb returns to the issue of Mount Scopus, later in the book:
"A constant source of irritation throughout the years from 1948-1956 was the Israeli position in in the Hadassa Hospital and the Hebrew University. It will be recollected that the massive buildings which housed these institutions were built on Mount Scopus, a low ridge overlooking the Arab city of Jerusalem from the north-east...
"We soon discovered, from intelligence sources, that the men in Hadassa were not police at all, but a company of infantry. An Israeli prisoner of war, captured in a frontier incident, gave a detailed statement. He told how the infantry company to which he belonged had been brought to police headquarters in Jerusalem, where they had been dressed in police uniforms. They had then been sent as 'civil police' to relieve the garrison of Hadassa. (Reliefs took place once a fortnight on a convoy which passed through our lines.) The 'police' in Hadassah, the prisoner admitted, were always a company of regular infantry. Then one night a platoon of Israeli infantry endeavoured to infiltrate through our lines to the Hadassa. Ten men of this platoon were acting as armed escort, while the remaining 20 were carrying 3-inch and 2-inch mortar ammunition in packs on their backs. The party ran into an Arab Legion patrol, an engagement took place in the dark, and the Israelis retired hurriedly back to their front line, having dropped most of the mortar ammunition. Next day, the United Nations observers were taken to see it.
"The Hadassa was supposed to have been demilitarized - that is, stripped of weapons, except those of the 'police'. If there were no mortars in the buildings, why did the Israeli army want to smuggle in the ammunition? The garrison were alleged to be constructing defences, although they were supposed to be civilian police, whose sole duty was to prevent pilfering. We asked the United Nations Chief of Staff to make a personal inspection of the area, but when he arrived to do so, he was refused admittance. 'This is Israeli territory,' said the commander of the police, 'I cannot admit you without an order from the Israeli government.'
"We and the United Nations held copies of the agreement, signed by the Israeli commander in 1948, admitting that the Hadassa area would be under the sole jurisdiction of the United Nations. This result produced considerable bitterness in Jordan and in the Arab Legion. It would have been comparatively easy to capture the place in 1948. We were tricked into not doing so by the plan to demilitarize the area and hand it over to the sole jurisdiction of UNO. As a result of the weakness of the latter, the position remained a military fortress behind our lines, garrisoned by Israeli infantry, who made little or no attempt at concealment. They frequently fired rifle shots, or bursts of Bren gun, into the Arab city, and were still doing so at intervals when I left Jordan in 1956." (pp 342-343)
Things did not, however, improve following Glubb's departure. Here, for example, is the testimony of the head of the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) from 1958-1963, General Carl von Horn.* It comes from his memoir, Soldiering for Peace (1966):
"It blew up around Mount Scopus this time, where the activities of the Jewish 'Police' garrison operating from behind a wire fence around the grounds of buildings of the Old Haddassah Hospital and the Hebrew University were arousing grave concern. Although the whole of the disputed area on these pine-covered slopes was officially under the supervision of the United Nations, the Israelis had always prevented us from carrying out our task. Now the garrison had taken to sending out armed patrols to harry their Arab neighbours in the dusty little village of Issawiya, insulting them and virtually sealing them off behind road blocks as soon as darkness fell. They were penetrating, too, into another area known as Solomon's Gardens, which they claimed was Israeli territory.
"At the root of the problem was the old problem of conflicting maps. But it could only be a matter of time before the Jordanian troops who were forced to watch their brother villagers being harried, would take vigorous counter-action. When I pointed this out to the Israelis they showed not the slightest interest. Some time before [UN Secretary-General] Dag [Hammarskjold]'s special representative, Dr Urrutia, had come out especially to try and settle the Scopus issue, but had been turned back by Israeli troops whilst visiting the area in full view of hundreds of watching Arabs. It struck me as unlikely I was going to be able to do much better.
"However, the daily reports of worsening tension from Colonel Flint (the Chairman of our Jordan-Israel M.A.C.) made it imperative I should try." (pp 83-84)
And he did - only to be blocked by those Israeli 'police'.
"Clearly the discomfiture which Dr Urrutia had suffered had been re-enacted for my especial benefit. I have no doubt it was staged deliberately, since the sight of the UN Chief of Staff being turned back in an area where he had every right to be was hardly likely to raise the prestige of the UN with the Arabs. But when I protested officially to Mrs Meir [Israeli PM], her only explanation was the rather inappropriate rejoinder: 'We Jews do not like to be pushed around'."
"Consequently, I had to leave investigations to Colonel Flint and his team of observers... He reported increasingly strong patrol activity, and I had every reason to rely on his considered opinion that unless steps were taken to check the Israeli patrols immediately, there was bound to be fighting." (pp 84-85)
General Horn paid another visit to Mrs Meir who "pooh-poohed the whole issue. Three days later, an Israeli patrol in Solomon's Gardens was heavily fired on. Two of its soldiers were killed immediately, and the subsequent exchange of fire was both fierce and prolonged. Colonel Flint rushed up in an effort to intervene and rescue the survivors who had gone to ground. In the confused shooting which ensued, two more Israelis were killed, and Colonel Flint was shot dead. It was a senseless, stupid, unnecessary skirmish which could so easily have been prevented.
"The investigation which followed was little more than a farce. Our observers (at long last allowed inside the wire fence) soon discovered, whilst cross-examining the Israeli 'Police' Commandant, that every inconvenient question was followed by his withdrawal to another room to receive guidance and instruction over his radio. Feelings in Israel ran high. There was great bitterness about their dead and, as we might have anticipated, it was now the United Nations who were painted in the blackest colours. Our warnings, all our efforts, were conveniently forgotten, and we were now accused of having precipitated the incident. Mourning poor Flint... we were amazed at the ingenuity of the falsehoods which distorted the true picture. The highly skilled Israeli Information Service and the entire press combined to manufacture a warped, distorted version which was disseminated with professional expertise through every available channel to their own people and their sympathizers and supporters in America and the rest of the world. Never in all my life had I believed the truth could be so cynically, expertly bent." (p 85)
So the next time you come across the claims of Israeli PR people with regard to the Hebrew University, take them with more than a few grains of salt, and remember that whatever is said about the university not expanding onto occupied Palestinian land, every single access road to the place runs through occupied Arab East Jerusalem.
And maybe spare a thought for those martyred soldiers for peace, Count Bernadotte and Colonel Flint back in the days when the UN still stood for something.
[*See my 30/6/12 post Unlovable Rogues.]
Friday, December 7, 2012
Bob Carr & His Imaginary Friend
"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."
Bertrand Russell
Welcome though the leadership and common sense shown by Foreign Minister Bob Carr in saving the Prime Minister from herself and heading off a foreign policy disaster in the UN General Assembly is, it should in no way blind us to the frankly risible simple-mindedness of his position on the Middle East conflict:
"'No, it doesn't change things,' an insouciant Foreign Minister Bob Carr told the Weekend Financial Review after he led a successful revolt against Prime Minister Julia Gillard's insistence that Australia vote against upgrading the status of Palestinians at the UN. 'Australia is, and always will be, a friend of Israel. They have their own democracy. They have a system that enables them to throw out prime ministers and ruling parties. They have the rule of law and their Supreme Court can overrule the government of the day on difficult issues.' However, 'good friends speak the truth to one another and, as a friend of Israel, we have a duty to highlight our concern about the settlement activity which is illegal under international law.'" (A loss for the Jewish lobby, Andrew Clark, 1/12/12)
Where to begin with this pollyanna-ish guff?
Israel is not a democracy. Only when the 5 million Palestinian refugees, who were disenfranchised (and so much more) in 1948, return to their homeland and get to vote in Palestine's first post-apartheid election will 'Israel' be a genuine democracy.
Now apart from that little caveat, the other slight problem I have with Carr's position is that, while he's now speaking out about Israeli settlements, he's never once mentioned, so far as I'm aware, the occupation itself - the trigger-happy troops, the land-grabbing Wall, the checkpoints and roadblocks, the closures and curfews, the arrests, imprisonments and torture, and the home invasions and demolitions; or Israel's Gaza blockade or killing sprees; or its apartheid laws; or its history of ethnic cleansing, wholesale theft and dispossession; or its serial aggressions and invasions of neighbouring lands (annexation optional). Presumably, all that's just water under the bridge for Carr.
As for Carr's delusional nonsense about Australia being a 'good friend' of Israel, don't even get me started.
The origin of his Israel fantasy - and this probably applies to many others in the Labor party - is of interest here. In establishing his credentials as a long-time Israel luvvie during an interview with Richard Glover on the latter's Drive program yesterday afternoon, Carr mentioned he'd read some pro-Israel pamphlet or other written by former Prime Minister and Labor elder Bob Hawke back in the 70s, and that, as they say, was that. Sort of, 'If it was good enough for Hawkie, it was good enough for me.'
Talk about the blind leading the blind. Here's where the credulous Hawke was coming from back then:
"[Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir] showed [Hawke, soon after the Arab-Israeli war of 1973] photographs of 18-year-old Israeli kids whose hands had been tied behind their backs and who had been shot in the back of the head. Mrs Meir wept with Hawke over the pictures. 'She said she felt guilty about it because if she had taken a pre-emptive strike [presumably on Damascus] those kids would not have been dead.' Hawke took the pictures back to Australia and showed them on television. He told the story about Golda Meir's agony again and again, and every time he did it, he wept. 'I came away from that,' he said four years later, his voice breaking, 'in an intellectual position which was incapable of change.'" (Bob Hawke: A Portrait, Robert Pullan, 1980, p 158)
If Carr has read a serious book on the subject of Palestine/Israel since then, I'd like to know about it.
Bertrand Russell
Welcome though the leadership and common sense shown by Foreign Minister Bob Carr in saving the Prime Minister from herself and heading off a foreign policy disaster in the UN General Assembly is, it should in no way blind us to the frankly risible simple-mindedness of his position on the Middle East conflict:
"'No, it doesn't change things,' an insouciant Foreign Minister Bob Carr told the Weekend Financial Review after he led a successful revolt against Prime Minister Julia Gillard's insistence that Australia vote against upgrading the status of Palestinians at the UN. 'Australia is, and always will be, a friend of Israel. They have their own democracy. They have a system that enables them to throw out prime ministers and ruling parties. They have the rule of law and their Supreme Court can overrule the government of the day on difficult issues.' However, 'good friends speak the truth to one another and, as a friend of Israel, we have a duty to highlight our concern about the settlement activity which is illegal under international law.'" (A loss for the Jewish lobby, Andrew Clark, 1/12/12)
Where to begin with this pollyanna-ish guff?
Israel is not a democracy. Only when the 5 million Palestinian refugees, who were disenfranchised (and so much more) in 1948, return to their homeland and get to vote in Palestine's first post-apartheid election will 'Israel' be a genuine democracy.
Now apart from that little caveat, the other slight problem I have with Carr's position is that, while he's now speaking out about Israeli settlements, he's never once mentioned, so far as I'm aware, the occupation itself - the trigger-happy troops, the land-grabbing Wall, the checkpoints and roadblocks, the closures and curfews, the arrests, imprisonments and torture, and the home invasions and demolitions; or Israel's Gaza blockade or killing sprees; or its apartheid laws; or its history of ethnic cleansing, wholesale theft and dispossession; or its serial aggressions and invasions of neighbouring lands (annexation optional). Presumably, all that's just water under the bridge for Carr.
As for Carr's delusional nonsense about Australia being a 'good friend' of Israel, don't even get me started.
The origin of his Israel fantasy - and this probably applies to many others in the Labor party - is of interest here. In establishing his credentials as a long-time Israel luvvie during an interview with Richard Glover on the latter's Drive program yesterday afternoon, Carr mentioned he'd read some pro-Israel pamphlet or other written by former Prime Minister and Labor elder Bob Hawke back in the 70s, and that, as they say, was that. Sort of, 'If it was good enough for Hawkie, it was good enough for me.'
Talk about the blind leading the blind. Here's where the credulous Hawke was coming from back then:
"[Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir] showed [Hawke, soon after the Arab-Israeli war of 1973] photographs of 18-year-old Israeli kids whose hands had been tied behind their backs and who had been shot in the back of the head. Mrs Meir wept with Hawke over the pictures. 'She said she felt guilty about it because if she had taken a pre-emptive strike [presumably on Damascus] those kids would not have been dead.' Hawke took the pictures back to Australia and showed them on television. He told the story about Golda Meir's agony again and again, and every time he did it, he wept. 'I came away from that,' he said four years later, his voice breaking, 'in an intellectual position which was incapable of change.'" (Bob Hawke: A Portrait, Robert Pullan, 1980, p 158)
If Carr has read a serious book on the subject of Palestine/Israel since then, I'd like to know about it.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Storms Forecast
The Sydney Morning Herald's editorials on the subject of Palestine-Israel invariably plumb the depths of cliche-ridden, Israel-centric cluelessness.
Today's, on "Israel's rising political star" Tzipi Livni, was for the most part true to form: "For all its problems, Israel's turbulent democracy knows a good woman when it sees one. Golda Meir, who served as prime minister in the 1960's and '70s, used to be called 'the best man in the government'. Ms Livni will require some of that spirit if she is to prevail over her ambitious rivals, engage or defeat her nation's sworn enemies, and achieve what none of her predecessors have done by finding a durable peace that secures Israel's borders and future." (Tough tests for Israel's new PM)
There's the usual glib assumption that Israel is a democracy, the grotesque misrepresentation of the brutalised, occupied Palestinian people as some kind of existential threat, and the truly bizarre notion that Israel has been/is seeking anything other than the peace of the grave. Then there's the invocation of Golda Meir's "spirit" as some kind of example for Livni to follow. That's right, the same Golda Meir who was of the opinion that Israel's "sworn enemies" didn't even exist (See my 17/8/08 post, The Zionist La Passionara).
As I said - abysmal cluelessness. Which is why the following sentence, or part thereof, shook me to the core: "Palestinian leaders have responded positively to her ascent, and while her party remains wedded to the problematic idea that the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel, they are at least willing to concede land to the Palestinians in order to secure a Jewish state."
Let me run that bit past you again: "... the problematic idea that the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel... " Could it be any clearer? The core concept of political Zionism - that Israel should be a Jewish state, which is to say a state with a Jewish majority - is PROBLEMATIC! You bet it's problematic. As problematic as Israel's expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs so as to ensure an absolute Jewish majority in that part of Palestine (78%) overrun by Zionist forces in 1948. As the Palestinian Jewish community's then leader, David Ben-Gurion, had said in the immediate wake of the UN partition resolution of 29 November 1947, "Only a state with at least 80% Jews is a viable and stable state." (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe, p 48) As problematic as any nation obsessed with cleansing its indigenous inhabitants to achieve the 'right' kind of demographic balance.
A slip of the pen? A dim but real awareness that the Zionist project in Palestine is fundamentally flawed? Can the Herald really be unaware of what it has unleashed here? Hell hath few furies like the Zionist lobby scorned. Furl the sails. Batten down the hatches. The Herald's surely in for stormy weather.
Today's, on "Israel's rising political star" Tzipi Livni, was for the most part true to form: "For all its problems, Israel's turbulent democracy knows a good woman when it sees one. Golda Meir, who served as prime minister in the 1960's and '70s, used to be called 'the best man in the government'. Ms Livni will require some of that spirit if she is to prevail over her ambitious rivals, engage or defeat her nation's sworn enemies, and achieve what none of her predecessors have done by finding a durable peace that secures Israel's borders and future." (Tough tests for Israel's new PM)
There's the usual glib assumption that Israel is a democracy, the grotesque misrepresentation of the brutalised, occupied Palestinian people as some kind of existential threat, and the truly bizarre notion that Israel has been/is seeking anything other than the peace of the grave. Then there's the invocation of Golda Meir's "spirit" as some kind of example for Livni to follow. That's right, the same Golda Meir who was of the opinion that Israel's "sworn enemies" didn't even exist (See my 17/8/08 post, The Zionist La Passionara).
As I said - abysmal cluelessness. Which is why the following sentence, or part thereof, shook me to the core: "Palestinian leaders have responded positively to her ascent, and while her party remains wedded to the problematic idea that the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel, they are at least willing to concede land to the Palestinians in order to secure a Jewish state."
Let me run that bit past you again: "... the problematic idea that the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel... " Could it be any clearer? The core concept of political Zionism - that Israel should be a Jewish state, which is to say a state with a Jewish majority - is PROBLEMATIC! You bet it's problematic. As problematic as Israel's expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs so as to ensure an absolute Jewish majority in that part of Palestine (78%) overrun by Zionist forces in 1948. As the Palestinian Jewish community's then leader, David Ben-Gurion, had said in the immediate wake of the UN partition resolution of 29 November 1947, "Only a state with at least 80% Jews is a viable and stable state." (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe, p 48) As problematic as any nation obsessed with cleansing its indigenous inhabitants to achieve the 'right' kind of demographic balance.
A slip of the pen? A dim but real awareness that the Zionist project in Palestine is fundamentally flawed? Can the Herald really be unaware of what it has unleashed here? Hell hath few furies like the Zionist lobby scorned. Furl the sails. Batten down the hatches. The Herald's surely in for stormy weather.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
The Zionist La Passionara
In Activist has a gender for peace, and it's all in the talk (9/8/08), the Sydney Morning Herald's Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis introduces us to "Israeli-American author, playwright and women's rights activist Naomi Ragen*," who is about to darken our doorstep for the 3rd time - for which you can thank the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA).
[*He forgot to throw in card-carrying Likudnik.]
Koutsoukis tells us that Naomi "has many passions, some contradictory." So sit back, relax, and enjoy some Zionist plain-speaking from Ragin' Ragen:
After "lamenting the end of women's dialogue that for one brief moment Oslo allowed," Naomi opines, "'If we women [Israeli and Palestinian] could just keep sitting together and talking, we'd get a lot done'." Exactly what 'they' got done during that "one brief moment" she doesn't say, but you'll be pleased to know that Naomi, "an Orthodox Jew... receives Christmas cards from a member of the Jordanian royal family, a Muslim"! Now if only the anonymous Jordanian blueblood, prime ministerial wannabe Tzipi Livni, and Naomi, of course, could sit down over a cuppa, a new era of peace and harmony would dawn in the Holy Land. Yeah, right!
"[Naomi] is convinced the controversial wall separating Israel and the West Bank is essential for security." [Not illegal, you'll note, merely "controversial." Note also Katsoukis' description (clueless/deliberate?) of the wall "separating Israel from the West Bank," when much of it is built inside the West Bank.] Yet this "passion" for the wall is contradicted, according to Koutsoukis, by Naomi's refusal, against the wishes of her fellow Jews in the Ramot neighbourhood of Jerusalem, to countenance the building of "a fence that would have prevented her neighbours from the Arab village Beit Iksa coming to their construction jobs. 'These were honourable men coming in to do their jobs and we never, ever had any trouble with any of them. Why would I cut them off from their livelihoods? If anything had ever happened, of course, I'd have been the first to have insisted on the fence'." Hm, what a friend to the good folk of Beit Iksa! Only trouble is, as the headline has it, it really is "all in the talk."
To begin with, Naomi's home of Ramot [Allon] is an illegal Israeli settlement built on occupied land (1347 dunums) stolen from Beit Iksa in 1973. What's more, Ramot snaffled a further 112 dunums of Beit Iksa's land between 2002 and 2004. With the completion of Israel's Apartheid Wall, Beit Iksa will lose 60% of its land to the Israeli side (See Beit Iksa loses its lands to the Israeli Segregation Wall, poica.org).
Then there's the slight matter of Naomi's revisionism. As a novelist (she's also here for the Melbourne Writers' Festival), you may be sure she knows that a first draft can always benefit from a good re-write. And so the second draft (above) of Naomi Stands Alone Against the Wall, in which she portrays herself as a lone defender of the "honourable men" of Beit Iksa, is way better than the first, which appeared in the March 2006 edition of Mideast Outpost (http://mideastoutpost.com/archives/2006_03.html) under the heading Handing Jerusalem to Hamas. Back then Naomi wrote as follows: "During the intifada, [Beit Iksa] villagers regularly walked across the wadi and up the steps past my home to work in construction jobs in Ramot and elsewhere. This, even after terrorists were found with suicide belts in Ramot... The police never checked these workers, despite repeated phone calls and warnings." And remember how, in her second draft, she said she opposed the building of the wall because it would have prevented the villagers of Beit Iksa from "coming to their construction jobs?" That was mucho better than the first draft, which had her opposing the wall because it'd leave Beit Iksa on the Palestinian side of the wall where it would become a hotbed of Hamasian terror on Ramot's very "doorstep." And how does she know this? Because those bloody villagers "voted 100% for Hamas" in the election!
Although Naomi knows how to spin a tale or two, she's apparently somewhat reluctant to turn her hand to politics. But if she did, "the number one item on her agenda would be 'to introduce the death penalty for terrorists. We need to kill these people, not let them sit in our jails and then trade them to freedom in return for the bodies of Israeli soldiers who lost their lives protecting their country'." Jeez, Louise, this lady's got balls! Maybe Her Highness could double as Lord High Executioner. Or is hangin' too good for 'em?
In reference to her coming ZFA appearance(s), Koutsoukis asks Naomi why she'll be addressing "only a Jewish audience." She responds, "Because we are living through the most ignorant time in Jewish history. They don't realise that there was never a Palestinian state here - never a real state between the Babylonian destruction and the reborn state of Israel." Told you she's got balls! She's singing from the same hymn book as that other Zionist iron maiden, the late PM Golda Meir. As Golda once laid it on the line: "There was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." Seems Naomi's a throwback to the Good Old Days of Golda, and it's been all down hill ever since.
Now Koutsoukis describes Naomi as "warming to her theme over gnocci and a peppery Judean Hills* cabernet in Jerusalem's German Colony neighbourhood." How very civilized. But no sooner has he asked if she'll be debating Antony Loewenstein in Australia, than she's come unstuck, choking on the gnocci and spraying cabernet all over him: "'Bring it on'," she splutters. "'Those kind of people are easy. They say one lie after another. He's a typical self-hating, ignorant Jew'."
[*A "Judean Hills cabernet"? Is that the brand, I wonder, or can we expect Jason to begin referring to the Israeli-occupied West Bank in his reports as Judea and Samaria?]
Finally, after wiping Jason down, Naomi's onto another of her "many passions," this time fulminating against the two-state solution: "'A complete disaster... Look what happened in Gaza. A total betrayal. As soon as we withdrew from Gaza, they started attacking us... I liked Sharon up until the Gaza withdrawal, but then he sold out his country', she says. Which is perhaps why the notion held by some right-wing religious Jews - that Sharon, still in a coma after a stroke in January 2006, is being punished by God for the Gaza withdrawal - does not strike Ragen as offensive. 'I think there might be something to it'."
Spruiking the wall, spruiking the death penalty, unable to see the Palestinians for the suicide bombers, unable to see the Palestinians before there were any suicide bombers, unable to see the Palestinians full stop, more right-wing than Sharon himself, indulged over gnocci and peppery Judean Hills cabernet by a handsome young Greek-Australian reporter, poised to fly off to the Antipodes to stiffen the spine of Australian Zionists - what a woman!
But there's more. What about the bit about Naomi being a "women's rights activist"? Koutsoukis didn't go there, but The Australian Jewish News did: "It is not just external threats that Ragen sees as a challenge. She has recently spoken out against the introduction of segregated buses in Jerusalem, in which women are forced to sit at the back, so they don't offend ultra-Orthodox sensibilities. 'If you have a situation where all of a sudden the private realm of religion starts dictating where you can sit on a bus, that's a challenge for the whole country, and that is something that needs to be dealt with no less than the military problems and the secular problems that we have', said Ragen, who labels herself modern-Orthodox." (Ragen: We're between hope and a hard place, 1/8/08)
Talk about straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel! What about where "the private realm of religion starts dictating" whether Palestinian refugees can return to their homes and lands? But that's Zionism for you: still crazy after all these years.
[*He forgot to throw in card-carrying Likudnik.]
Koutsoukis tells us that Naomi "has many passions, some contradictory." So sit back, relax, and enjoy some Zionist plain-speaking from Ragin' Ragen:
After "lamenting the end of women's dialogue that for one brief moment Oslo allowed," Naomi opines, "'If we women [Israeli and Palestinian] could just keep sitting together and talking, we'd get a lot done'." Exactly what 'they' got done during that "one brief moment" she doesn't say, but you'll be pleased to know that Naomi, "an Orthodox Jew... receives Christmas cards from a member of the Jordanian royal family, a Muslim"! Now if only the anonymous Jordanian blueblood, prime ministerial wannabe Tzipi Livni, and Naomi, of course, could sit down over a cuppa, a new era of peace and harmony would dawn in the Holy Land. Yeah, right!
"[Naomi] is convinced the controversial wall separating Israel and the West Bank is essential for security." [Not illegal, you'll note, merely "controversial." Note also Katsoukis' description (clueless/deliberate?) of the wall "separating Israel from the West Bank," when much of it is built inside the West Bank.] Yet this "passion" for the wall is contradicted, according to Koutsoukis, by Naomi's refusal, against the wishes of her fellow Jews in the Ramot neighbourhood of Jerusalem, to countenance the building of "a fence that would have prevented her neighbours from the Arab village Beit Iksa coming to their construction jobs. 'These were honourable men coming in to do their jobs and we never, ever had any trouble with any of them. Why would I cut them off from their livelihoods? If anything had ever happened, of course, I'd have been the first to have insisted on the fence'." Hm, what a friend to the good folk of Beit Iksa! Only trouble is, as the headline has it, it really is "all in the talk."
To begin with, Naomi's home of Ramot [Allon] is an illegal Israeli settlement built on occupied land (1347 dunums) stolen from Beit Iksa in 1973. What's more, Ramot snaffled a further 112 dunums of Beit Iksa's land between 2002 and 2004. With the completion of Israel's Apartheid Wall, Beit Iksa will lose 60% of its land to the Israeli side (See Beit Iksa loses its lands to the Israeli Segregation Wall, poica.org).
Then there's the slight matter of Naomi's revisionism. As a novelist (she's also here for the Melbourne Writers' Festival), you may be sure she knows that a first draft can always benefit from a good re-write. And so the second draft (above) of Naomi Stands Alone Against the Wall, in which she portrays herself as a lone defender of the "honourable men" of Beit Iksa, is way better than the first, which appeared in the March 2006 edition of Mideast Outpost (http://mideastoutpost.com/archives/2006_03.html) under the heading Handing Jerusalem to Hamas. Back then Naomi wrote as follows: "During the intifada, [Beit Iksa] villagers regularly walked across the wadi and up the steps past my home to work in construction jobs in Ramot and elsewhere. This, even after terrorists were found with suicide belts in Ramot... The police never checked these workers, despite repeated phone calls and warnings." And remember how, in her second draft, she said she opposed the building of the wall because it would have prevented the villagers of Beit Iksa from "coming to their construction jobs?" That was mucho better than the first draft, which had her opposing the wall because it'd leave Beit Iksa on the Palestinian side of the wall where it would become a hotbed of Hamasian terror on Ramot's very "doorstep." And how does she know this? Because those bloody villagers "voted 100% for Hamas" in the election!
Although Naomi knows how to spin a tale or two, she's apparently somewhat reluctant to turn her hand to politics. But if she did, "the number one item on her agenda would be 'to introduce the death penalty for terrorists. We need to kill these people, not let them sit in our jails and then trade them to freedom in return for the bodies of Israeli soldiers who lost their lives protecting their country'." Jeez, Louise, this lady's got balls! Maybe Her Highness could double as Lord High Executioner. Or is hangin' too good for 'em?
In reference to her coming ZFA appearance(s), Koutsoukis asks Naomi why she'll be addressing "only a Jewish audience." She responds, "Because we are living through the most ignorant time in Jewish history. They don't realise that there was never a Palestinian state here - never a real state between the Babylonian destruction and the reborn state of Israel." Told you she's got balls! She's singing from the same hymn book as that other Zionist iron maiden, the late PM Golda Meir. As Golda once laid it on the line: "There was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." Seems Naomi's a throwback to the Good Old Days of Golda, and it's been all down hill ever since.
Now Koutsoukis describes Naomi as "warming to her theme over gnocci and a peppery Judean Hills* cabernet in Jerusalem's German Colony neighbourhood." How very civilized. But no sooner has he asked if she'll be debating Antony Loewenstein in Australia, than she's come unstuck, choking on the gnocci and spraying cabernet all over him: "'Bring it on'," she splutters. "'Those kind of people are easy. They say one lie after another. He's a typical self-hating, ignorant Jew'."
[*A "Judean Hills cabernet"? Is that the brand, I wonder, or can we expect Jason to begin referring to the Israeli-occupied West Bank in his reports as Judea and Samaria?]
Finally, after wiping Jason down, Naomi's onto another of her "many passions," this time fulminating against the two-state solution: "'A complete disaster... Look what happened in Gaza. A total betrayal. As soon as we withdrew from Gaza, they started attacking us... I liked Sharon up until the Gaza withdrawal, but then he sold out his country', she says. Which is perhaps why the notion held by some right-wing religious Jews - that Sharon, still in a coma after a stroke in January 2006, is being punished by God for the Gaza withdrawal - does not strike Ragen as offensive. 'I think there might be something to it'."
Spruiking the wall, spruiking the death penalty, unable to see the Palestinians for the suicide bombers, unable to see the Palestinians before there were any suicide bombers, unable to see the Palestinians full stop, more right-wing than Sharon himself, indulged over gnocci and peppery Judean Hills cabernet by a handsome young Greek-Australian reporter, poised to fly off to the Antipodes to stiffen the spine of Australian Zionists - what a woman!
But there's more. What about the bit about Naomi being a "women's rights activist"? Koutsoukis didn't go there, but The Australian Jewish News did: "It is not just external threats that Ragen sees as a challenge. She has recently spoken out against the introduction of segregated buses in Jerusalem, in which women are forced to sit at the back, so they don't offend ultra-Orthodox sensibilities. 'If you have a situation where all of a sudden the private realm of religion starts dictating where you can sit on a bus, that's a challenge for the whole country, and that is something that needs to be dealt with no less than the military problems and the secular problems that we have', said Ragen, who labels herself modern-Orthodox." (Ragen: We're between hope and a hard place, 1/8/08)
Talk about straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel! What about where "the private realm of religion starts dictating" whether Palestinian refugees can return to their homes and lands? But that's Zionism for you: still crazy after all these years.
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