The Australian's foreign editor (and Tony Abbott's childhood bestie), Greg Sheridan, knows what "most people" don't:
"Donald Trump's move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is right in principle and will contribute to the cause of peace in the Middle East, though not in the way that most people think." (Trump injects some realism into Middle East, The Australian, 17/5/18)
(Err... so "most people" think it "right in principle" and that it "will contribute to the cause of peace"? OH, REALLY?)
But moving right along, the answer is:
"... because it recognises reality and communicates an important message to the Palestinian leadership - that they do not have a veto over any aspect of the US relationship with Israel, or of international moves generally relating to Israel."
Damn! And we (like the Palestinians of course) have been labouring under the illusion that they did have such a veto! Who'd have thought?
But those revelations from the Sheridan bubble are not what I wanted to highlight today. It's this one:
"No one thinks they can reverse the population movements that took place between India and Pakistan 70 years ago." Ergo, the Palestinian right of return is simply unrealistic.
First, the clear differences between the two events. All Indian parties (Nehru's Congress Party most reluctantly and Jinnah's Muslim League enthusiastically) consented to partition. The Palestinians did not. It was imposed on them by a UNGA bullied by the US into voting for it. Moreover, in India at the time both Hindus and Muslims were indigenous to the country, while in Palestine the indigenous population were facing a takeover of their homeland by a settler-colonial minority.
But the big problem with Sheridan's assertion is that, unlike India, Israel encourages immigration. Of Jews only, of course. Ergo, if it can find room for more and more Jews from wherever (not to mention 'lost tribes' from India, no less!), it's got no excuse for excluding indigenous Palestinian refugees. Other than racism, that is.
Bubble popped.
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Friday, May 18, 2018
Monday, February 12, 2018
Off the Top of Greg Sheridan's Head
In case you were wondering at Greg Sheridan's lengthy absence from the pages of The Australian, that rag's foreign affairs editor has been on a junket to the Jaipur Literary Festival in Rajasthan. Here are some priceless thoughts by this notorious Israel luvvie on the subject of said event. Talk about off the top of his head!:
"The event is the brain child of that British lover of all things Indian, William Dalrymple, whose books about India are very good. When he strays beyond India, he's not so reliable." (The Forum, Weekend Australian Review, 10/2/218)
"The main festival site was overwhelming enough. There were nearly 20 000 people there on the day I participated in panels morning and night. I had run into the Indian politician, Shashi Tharoor, in Delhi a few days earlier. He is a kind of Indian Boris Johnson, immensely clever, flamboyant, probably too witty and humorous to be completely successful in mainstream politics, and he seems to write a new book every other month."
Truly, this goose isn't worthy to tie either Dalrymple's or Tharoor's bootstraps.
"The event is the brain child of that British lover of all things Indian, William Dalrymple, whose books about India are very good. When he strays beyond India, he's not so reliable." (The Forum, Weekend Australian Review, 10/2/218)
"The main festival site was overwhelming enough. There were nearly 20 000 people there on the day I participated in panels morning and night. I had run into the Indian politician, Shashi Tharoor, in Delhi a few days earlier. He is a kind of Indian Boris Johnson, immensely clever, flamboyant, probably too witty and humorous to be completely successful in mainstream politics, and he seems to write a new book every other month."
Truly, this goose isn't worthy to tie either Dalrymple's or Tharoor's bootstraps.
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
A British Education
Last Monday's Q&A dealt, in part, with the issue of Britain's colonial crimes, particularly in relation to India. Among other things, we learned that discussion of these is absent from Britain's history curriculum:
Tony Jones: I'm just wondering, have young Brits come to terms with their colonial past?
Laurie Penny: No, we haven't at all. Young Brits of every class have no idea about our colonial past. That is being deliberately done. We're deliberately denied or kept away from education about the graphic facts of what the British did around the world, including in this country, to the people of this country. The crimes of the British and the crimes that we've committed and were done in our names, over 400 years of pillage and conquest is something that we don't like to think about. And yet, it is everywhere in modern British history. When people talk about Brexit, it's stunning to me that if you ask British people who voted for Brexit what their major fear is, their fear is people will come to our country and take our things.
Shashi Tharoor: That's exactly right.
Laurie Penny: I just can't... It doesn't compute. We don't know this history. I took history in British schools up to the age of 18. And I got a pretty good grade. And...
Shashi Tharoor: You never learned a line of colonial history, did you?
Laurie Penny: Almost everything you have just said, I learned from your book.*
It should never be forgotten that it was 'Great' Britain's issue of the Balfour Declaration that created the Palestine's Israel problem.
[*Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (2017)]
Tony Jones: I'm just wondering, have young Brits come to terms with their colonial past?
Laurie Penny: No, we haven't at all. Young Brits of every class have no idea about our colonial past. That is being deliberately done. We're deliberately denied or kept away from education about the graphic facts of what the British did around the world, including in this country, to the people of this country. The crimes of the British and the crimes that we've committed and were done in our names, over 400 years of pillage and conquest is something that we don't like to think about. And yet, it is everywhere in modern British history. When people talk about Brexit, it's stunning to me that if you ask British people who voted for Brexit what their major fear is, their fear is people will come to our country and take our things.
Shashi Tharoor: That's exactly right.
Laurie Penny: I just can't... It doesn't compute. We don't know this history. I took history in British schools up to the age of 18. And I got a pretty good grade. And...
Shashi Tharoor: You never learned a line of colonial history, did you?
Laurie Penny: Almost everything you have just said, I learned from your book.*
It should never be forgotten that it was 'Great' Britain's issue of the Balfour Declaration that created the Palestine's Israel problem.
[*Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (2017)]
Friday, September 1, 2017
Sectarian Birds of a Feather
"It was in 1989, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that the Government of India turned in its membership in the Non-Aligned Movement and signed up for membership in the Completely Aligned, often referring to itself as the 'natural ally' of Israel and the United States.* (They have at least this one thing in common, all three are engaged in overt, neocolonial military occupations: India in Kashmir, Israel in Palestine, the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.) (Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy, Arundhati Roy, 2009, p 146)
1989, it seems, also saw the birth of India's 'Temple Mount' movement:
"Claims that the [17th century Muslim mausoleum known as the] Taj Mahal is a Hindu temple have surfaced periodically, either from lone Hindu mavericks, revisionists, or extremist Hindu groups ever since PN Oak, an Indian writer, published his 1989 book Taj Mahal: the True Story, in which he claimed it was built before Muslim invaders came to India. Proponents of this theory resent that its glory belongs to India's Muslim heritage and argue that since some of the Mughal invaders destroyed Hindu temples or converted them into mosques, it follows that the Taj Mahal must have originally been a Hindu structure." (Taj Mahal is Muslim tomb not Hindu temple, Indian court told, Amrit Dhillon, theguardian.com, 30/8/17)
In fact, a group of Hindu lawyers, who claim that the Taj Mahal "had originally been a temple called Tejo Mahalaya dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva," are currently petitioning the Agra court for the right to perform Hindu prayers at the Taj Mahal.
Sound depressingly familiar?
[*Israel is currently India's chief weapons supplier.]
1989, it seems, also saw the birth of India's 'Temple Mount' movement:
"Claims that the [17th century Muslim mausoleum known as the] Taj Mahal is a Hindu temple have surfaced periodically, either from lone Hindu mavericks, revisionists, or extremist Hindu groups ever since PN Oak, an Indian writer, published his 1989 book Taj Mahal: the True Story, in which he claimed it was built before Muslim invaders came to India. Proponents of this theory resent that its glory belongs to India's Muslim heritage and argue that since some of the Mughal invaders destroyed Hindu temples or converted them into mosques, it follows that the Taj Mahal must have originally been a Hindu structure." (Taj Mahal is Muslim tomb not Hindu temple, Indian court told, Amrit Dhillon, theguardian.com, 30/8/17)
In fact, a group of Hindu lawyers, who claim that the Taj Mahal "had originally been a temple called Tejo Mahalaya dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva," are currently petitioning the Agra court for the right to perform Hindu prayers at the Taj Mahal.
Sound depressingly familiar?
[*Israel is currently India's chief weapons supplier.]
Friday, December 9, 2016
Moral High Ground? What Moral High Ground?
American historian Fredrik Albritton Jonsson spruiks Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh's new book, The Great Derangement: Climate Change & the Unthinkable:
"The title captures his scathing diagnosis of the condition of literature and culture in the age of the Anthropocene. Why is it, he asks, that the literary world has responded to climate change with almost complete silence? How can we explain the fact that writers of fiction have overwhelmingly failed to grapple with the ongoing planetary crisis in their works? For Ghosh, this silence is part of a broader pattern of indifference and misrepresentation. Contemporary arts and literature are characterized by 'modes of concealment that [prevent] people from recognizing the realities of their plight'." (The Holocene hangover: it is time for humanity to make fundamental changes, theguardian.com, 8/12/16)
How true! After all, it doesn't get much more bleeding obvious than anthropocentric climate change, right? And what are all these scribblers scribbling about? Something else, damn it! Obviously, they need a bloody good whipping, and Ghosh's decided he's just the man to give it to them - hard:
Silent novelists? LASH!
Novelists who fail to grapple with the issue? LASH!
Indifferent novelists? LASH!
Reality-avoidant novelists. LASH!
But wait, what about something just as bleeding obvious? Like Israeli apartheid, for example?
Ah, but that's different.
Back in 2010, Ghosh was 'awarded' Israel's $US1m Dan David Prize, and when those who know apartheid when they see it asked him not to go there, he told them he was "disappointed" with them for running a "campaign of admonition," and declared, "We cannot let others decide for us and we cannot yield to such demands. If a reader from Israel wants to reach out to us, how can we not engage him?" (What Amitav Ghosh said at Dan David prize ceremony, rediff.com, 12/5/10)
"The title captures his scathing diagnosis of the condition of literature and culture in the age of the Anthropocene. Why is it, he asks, that the literary world has responded to climate change with almost complete silence? How can we explain the fact that writers of fiction have overwhelmingly failed to grapple with the ongoing planetary crisis in their works? For Ghosh, this silence is part of a broader pattern of indifference and misrepresentation. Contemporary arts and literature are characterized by 'modes of concealment that [prevent] people from recognizing the realities of their plight'." (The Holocene hangover: it is time for humanity to make fundamental changes, theguardian.com, 8/12/16)
How true! After all, it doesn't get much more bleeding obvious than anthropocentric climate change, right? And what are all these scribblers scribbling about? Something else, damn it! Obviously, they need a bloody good whipping, and Ghosh's decided he's just the man to give it to them - hard:
Silent novelists? LASH!
Novelists who fail to grapple with the issue? LASH!
Indifferent novelists? LASH!
Reality-avoidant novelists. LASH!
But wait, what about something just as bleeding obvious? Like Israeli apartheid, for example?
Ah, but that's different.
Back in 2010, Ghosh was 'awarded' Israel's $US1m Dan David Prize, and when those who know apartheid when they see it asked him not to go there, he told them he was "disappointed" with them for running a "campaign of admonition," and declared, "We cannot let others decide for us and we cannot yield to such demands. If a reader from Israel wants to reach out to us, how can we not engage him?" (What Amitav Ghosh said at Dan David prize ceremony, rediff.com, 12/5/10)
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
A Callow Youth
Zionists propagandists, of course, have a vested interest in misrepresenting the Palestinian struggle against Zionist colonisation and apartheid. However, ignoramuses with no vested interest whatever in misrepresenting it may also do their bit, albeit unconsciously, to peddle misrepresentations of the subject.
Ignoramuses such as BROOKLYN-based, prize-winning Indian novelist Karan Mahajan (32), for example, talking about his novel The Association of Small Bombs on Radio National's Books & Arts Program yesterday morning:
"I would use the word irrationality because when I researched terrorism and... got really deep into the history of terrorism, starting with Tsarist Russia all the way through the PLO and Palestine to the present day, you see that there's this battle ongoing between Western rationality and/in (?) science and between the kind of irrationality and religion, and I wanted to show the ways in which the irrational impulses of terrorism, and bombing in a way is a strange irrational event, it's a huge act of violence which seems kind of meaningless when it happens."
Where does one even begin to unpick such knotted, incoherent nonsense?
Is 'terrorism' a stand-alone subject which can be researched independently of its political and historical context? Who wrote the books and/or papers he read for his book? Could they perhaps have had an agenda? What then was their agenda? Did he have the wit to notice it anyway? What does he know, if anything, about the PLO and Palestine? (Rhetorical question.) Does he really think Israel vs Palestine reduces to science vs religion? And if, as I KNOW, he knows BUGGER ALL on the subject, what right has he got to utter such foolishness? Has he never heard of armed resistance to oppression, occupation and colonisation? Has he never heard of state terrorism? Does he know who pioneered terrorism in the Middle East? (Interesting how he has zip to say about Zionist terrorism and can only invoke the PLO.) And what is he on about with this 'Western rationality' shit? What's that all about? (Surely, he doesn't think that British colonialism was the best thing that ever happened to India?!) Etc, etc.
Sometimes, you find yourself wishing you'd never even turned on the bloody radio.
Ignoramuses such as BROOKLYN-based, prize-winning Indian novelist Karan Mahajan (32), for example, talking about his novel The Association of Small Bombs on Radio National's Books & Arts Program yesterday morning:
"I would use the word irrationality because when I researched terrorism and... got really deep into the history of terrorism, starting with Tsarist Russia all the way through the PLO and Palestine to the present day, you see that there's this battle ongoing between Western rationality and/in (?) science and between the kind of irrationality and religion, and I wanted to show the ways in which the irrational impulses of terrorism, and bombing in a way is a strange irrational event, it's a huge act of violence which seems kind of meaningless when it happens."
Where does one even begin to unpick such knotted, incoherent nonsense?
Is 'terrorism' a stand-alone subject which can be researched independently of its political and historical context? Who wrote the books and/or papers he read for his book? Could they perhaps have had an agenda? What then was their agenda? Did he have the wit to notice it anyway? What does he know, if anything, about the PLO and Palestine? (Rhetorical question.) Does he really think Israel vs Palestine reduces to science vs religion? And if, as I KNOW, he knows BUGGER ALL on the subject, what right has he got to utter such foolishness? Has he never heard of armed resistance to oppression, occupation and colonisation? Has he never heard of state terrorism? Does he know who pioneered terrorism in the Middle East? (Interesting how he has zip to say about Zionist terrorism and can only invoke the PLO.) And what is he on about with this 'Western rationality' shit? What's that all about? (Surely, he doesn't think that British colonialism was the best thing that ever happened to India?!) Etc, etc.
Sometimes, you find yourself wishing you'd never even turned on the bloody radio.
Monday, November 24, 2014
Birds of a Feather
"Representatives from the Jewish community were among the VIPS who welcomed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Sydney at a reception on Monday night... Sitting in the front row with NSW Premier Mike Baird and other dignitaries was NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president Jeremy Spinak, who congratulated Modi on the speech he delivered to 20,000 people at Sydney Olympic Park." (Jewish leaders meet Indian PM, The Australian Jewish News, 21/11/14)
"Mr Modi's links with hardline Hindu groups, especially the Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS, continue to worry many from religious minorities in India. There was a clear reminder of this when about 300 members of Sydney's Sikh community staged a protest outside Allphones Arena where Mr Modi spoke on Monday. Karandeep Singh Chadha, a spokesman for the protesters, says many people from religious minorities in India do not feel safe and that groups associating with Mr Modi have an 'agenda to make India a Hindu Nation' by wiping out other religions." (Protesters shadow the visits of Chinese and Indian leaders, Matt Wade & John Garnaut, Sydney Morning Herald, 19/11/14)
"Mr Modi's links with hardline Hindu groups, especially the Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS, continue to worry many from religious minorities in India. There was a clear reminder of this when about 300 members of Sydney's Sikh community staged a protest outside Allphones Arena where Mr Modi spoke on Monday. Karandeep Singh Chadha, a spokesman for the protesters, says many people from religious minorities in India do not feel safe and that groups associating with Mr Modi have an 'agenda to make India a Hindu Nation' by wiping out other religions." (Protesters shadow the visits of Chinese and Indian leaders, Matt Wade & John Garnaut, Sydney Morning Herald, 19/11/14)
Sunday, February 24, 2013
'Worse Than Amritsar'
In the Zionist lexicon, the word massacre can mean just about anything from a scratch on up - so long as we're talking about Israeli Jews. But when it comes to Palestinians, no matter how many are gunned down, shelled or bombed to smithereens by Israeli terrorists, the 'm' word simply does not apply.
You may, for example, remember the Israeli government swearing blind that the massacre of Palestinians by Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Jenin in April 2002 was nothing of the sort:
"Had the United Nations investigators who were standing by in Geneva, been allowed to enter Israel to carry out a proper investigation, perhaps the real truth would be a bit clearer. But, there was no independent investigation. Just as in Tiananmen Square, the power of the gun and the tank ensured there was no proper body count or accounting. Just as happened in Tiananmen Square, the uninformed and those with their own agenda, are now claiming there was no massacre. There was a massacre, a considerable number of human beings were indiscriminately and unnecessarily slaughtered. The truth was the other victim." (Correspondents Report - UN report on Jenin massacre flawed, Peter Cave, abc.net.au, 4/8/02)
So why raise the matter of Zionist semantics now?
You can blame serendipity in the form of an opinion piece in The Australian on the occasion of UK Prime Minister David Cameron's visit to the Indian city of Amritsar, and a reference to Amritsar in a near-forgotten set of diaries, both, as it happens, read within 24 hours of each other.
The first, originally published in The Times on the occasion of Cameron's recent visit to the city of Amritsar, part of a current 3-day trip to India, focused on an infamous massacre perpetrated in the city by British colonial troops in 1919. I reproduce it here in full:
"Indians have been waiting almost a century for the British to apologise for the massacre in Amritsar. All the signs are that they will have to be patient for some years yet. The Queen, visiting the Jallianwala Bagh memorial in 1997, spoke of regret and sadness; David Cameron has described it as shameful. But 'sorry' remains elusive because it would acknowledge the moral shortcomings of British efforts to keep its empire together by force.
"Nowhere was this force quite as naked as in Amritsar on an April afternoon in 1919. Revolt had been in the air for months and the British were on edge. When an Anglican woman missionary was attacked in an Amritsar lane, Brigadier General Reginald Dyer ordered Indians using that thoroughfare to crawl on all fours. News that there would be a meeting in the Jallianwala Park convinced him it could lead to insurrection. Dyer arrived with 90 soldiers, most of them Gurkhas, and positioned two armoured cars at the main entrance. About 15,000 people were gathered, tightly packed. He did not order them to disperse and waited barely 30 seconds before ordering the soldiers to fire. There was a howling as some bullets penetrated two people. The firing lasted 10 minutes. According to the British estimate, 379 died; Indians put the figure at close to a thousand. Dyer, asked in a subsequent inquiry why he had not arranged for the wounded to be treated in hospital, replied 'It was not my job'. Instead, the dead lay on the ground through the night, gnawed, reports said, by jackals. Dyer told another inquiry: 'I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing, but they would have come back again and laughed and I would have made, what I consider, a fool of myself.'
"The massacre sowed decades of resentment. Some 21 years later, an independence activist assassinated Lieutenant Governor Michael Dwyer, who had backed Dyer's order to shoot. The activist was hanged but hailed as a hero by the Nazis. 'Will the historians of the future have to record that it was not the Nazis but the British ruling class which destroyed the British Empire?' wrote the New Statesman in 1940." (Sorry seems to be the hardest word, Roger Boyes, 22/2/13)
So, I'm pretty sure you'd agree. If it's massacre you're talking about, Amritsar 1919 is as good an example as any, right?
The second reference to Amritsar and its massacre came in Baffy: The Diaries of Blanche Dugdale 1936-1947, edited by N.A. Rose, 1973. You may remember the gentile-Zionist ultra, Baffy, niece of Lord Balfour and one of the habitues of London's Zionist Office, featured in my 3 posts The Jeffries-Dugdale Exchange, 6-8/1/13) Here's the Amritsar reference in her diary entry for January 15, 1941 - London:
"Wet snow. Zionist Office. Heard about some progress in the Army negotiations, and most sickening and horrible reports sent by Moshe [Shertok], therefore reliable, about atrocities committed on the refugees who were torn away from Athlit camp and sent to Mauritius. I refused to read the evidence, but Lewis [Namier] said worse than 'Amritsar'." (p 181)
So there you go, according to Lewis Namier, a leading British Zionist official and influential historian, the push and shove entailed in the removal of illegal Jewish refugees in December 1940 from the British prison camp at Athlit, just south of Haifa, to the island of Mauritius, constituted a massacre 'worse than Amritsar'.
One of the key lessons to be learnt from a close study of the history of the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine (1917-?) is that you can believe almost nothing that a Zionist ideologue or propagandist says. Given the movement's propensity for bare-faced lies, endless spin and semantic quibbling - one always needs to penetrate the fog of propaganda and observe with clear eyes its actions on the ground.
"Had the United Nations investigators who were standing by in Geneva, been allowed to enter Israel to carry out a proper investigation, perhaps the real truth would be a bit clearer. But, there was no independent investigation. Just as in Tiananmen Square, the power of the gun and the tank ensured there was no proper body count or accounting. Just as happened in Tiananmen Square, the uninformed and those with their own agenda, are now claiming there was no massacre. There was a massacre, a considerable number of human beings were indiscriminately and unnecessarily slaughtered. The truth was the other victim." (Correspondents Report - UN report on Jenin massacre flawed, Peter Cave, abc.net.au, 4/8/02)
So why raise the matter of Zionist semantics now?
You can blame serendipity in the form of an opinion piece in The Australian on the occasion of UK Prime Minister David Cameron's visit to the Indian city of Amritsar, and a reference to Amritsar in a near-forgotten set of diaries, both, as it happens, read within 24 hours of each other.
The first, originally published in The Times on the occasion of Cameron's recent visit to the city of Amritsar, part of a current 3-day trip to India, focused on an infamous massacre perpetrated in the city by British colonial troops in 1919. I reproduce it here in full:
"Indians have been waiting almost a century for the British to apologise for the massacre in Amritsar. All the signs are that they will have to be patient for some years yet. The Queen, visiting the Jallianwala Bagh memorial in 1997, spoke of regret and sadness; David Cameron has described it as shameful. But 'sorry' remains elusive because it would acknowledge the moral shortcomings of British efforts to keep its empire together by force.
"Nowhere was this force quite as naked as in Amritsar on an April afternoon in 1919. Revolt had been in the air for months and the British were on edge. When an Anglican woman missionary was attacked in an Amritsar lane, Brigadier General Reginald Dyer ordered Indians using that thoroughfare to crawl on all fours. News that there would be a meeting in the Jallianwala Park convinced him it could lead to insurrection. Dyer arrived with 90 soldiers, most of them Gurkhas, and positioned two armoured cars at the main entrance. About 15,000 people were gathered, tightly packed. He did not order them to disperse and waited barely 30 seconds before ordering the soldiers to fire. There was a howling as some bullets penetrated two people. The firing lasted 10 minutes. According to the British estimate, 379 died; Indians put the figure at close to a thousand. Dyer, asked in a subsequent inquiry why he had not arranged for the wounded to be treated in hospital, replied 'It was not my job'. Instead, the dead lay on the ground through the night, gnawed, reports said, by jackals. Dyer told another inquiry: 'I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing, but they would have come back again and laughed and I would have made, what I consider, a fool of myself.'
"The massacre sowed decades of resentment. Some 21 years later, an independence activist assassinated Lieutenant Governor Michael Dwyer, who had backed Dyer's order to shoot. The activist was hanged but hailed as a hero by the Nazis. 'Will the historians of the future have to record that it was not the Nazis but the British ruling class which destroyed the British Empire?' wrote the New Statesman in 1940." (Sorry seems to be the hardest word, Roger Boyes, 22/2/13)
So, I'm pretty sure you'd agree. If it's massacre you're talking about, Amritsar 1919 is as good an example as any, right?
The second reference to Amritsar and its massacre came in Baffy: The Diaries of Blanche Dugdale 1936-1947, edited by N.A. Rose, 1973. You may remember the gentile-Zionist ultra, Baffy, niece of Lord Balfour and one of the habitues of London's Zionist Office, featured in my 3 posts The Jeffries-Dugdale Exchange, 6-8/1/13) Here's the Amritsar reference in her diary entry for January 15, 1941 - London:
"Wet snow. Zionist Office. Heard about some progress in the Army negotiations, and most sickening and horrible reports sent by Moshe [Shertok], therefore reliable, about atrocities committed on the refugees who were torn away from Athlit camp and sent to Mauritius. I refused to read the evidence, but Lewis [Namier] said worse than 'Amritsar'." (p 181)
So there you go, according to Lewis Namier, a leading British Zionist official and influential historian, the push and shove entailed in the removal of illegal Jewish refugees in December 1940 from the British prison camp at Athlit, just south of Haifa, to the island of Mauritius, constituted a massacre 'worse than Amritsar'.
One of the key lessons to be learnt from a close study of the history of the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine (1917-?) is that you can believe almost nothing that a Zionist ideologue or propagandist says. Given the movement's propensity for bare-faced lies, endless spin and semantic quibbling - one always needs to penetrate the fog of propaganda and observe with clear eyes its actions on the ground.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Of Course, This Couldn't Possibly Happen Here
To
The Chief Minister,
Shri Prithviraj Chavan,
Government of Maharashtra,
Mumbai,
India,
Sub: We condemn the Mumbai Police action & confiscation of our 'Boycott Israel-Save India, 15th May Nakba-Day' Banners from a private office premise.
Respected Sir,
Namaste!
We are extremely peturbed and angry at the fact that today, on the 18th of May 2012, at 3.00pm, the Agripada police raided the premises of the Jamat-i-Islami-i-Hind at Madanpura & confiscated the 'May 15 - Nakba Day' banners. The office staff were called over to the Agripada Police Station for further questioning. Soon after, on making calls to the police station, which had earlier refused to give us any information, but after sustained calls from various important quarters we were informed that it was on the behest & instructions of the Israeli consulate in Mumbai, that the police went into action. This is indeed a matter of great concern, whereby the local police is now acting as an agent of a foreign consulate against Indian citizens.
This is clearly an infringement of our sovereign & democratic rights & we thus lodge our protest & condemn the action of the police as strongly as possible. The banners were not put up in any public space without the due permission of the municipal authorities, as is the norm. The banners were strung outside the balcony on the first floor of the said private premises. Moreover the banners had the following messages in the context of the May 15th protests that are held globally.
i) Boycott Israel - Save India!!
ii) Free Palestine & Right of Return of the Refugees
iii) May 15th - Nakba Protests!!
These banners and protests are in keeping with our historical national tradition of supporting the anti-colonial freedom struggles* & the international political consensus in terms of the global day of protests against the creation of the Zionist Apartheid Racist Israel.
Thus we demand that action be taken against:
i) The Israeli consulate, wherein they are clearly told to operate within the limits of a foreign entity as a consulate & not step beyond the boundaries & the laws of our country. They need to be told that they are not the new viceroys of India, where they can directly call up the local police station & have them raid & arrest patriotic citizens.
Though this problem also stems from the fact that due to state policy a number of low level police officials are also travelling to Israel, for so-called anti-terror training whilst it is a well known fact that Israel is the fountainhead of terror in the world.
This flawed training of our police by certified Islamophobes has resulted in an increased wave of anti-Muslim xenophobia amongst our police & intelligence services, as has been evident in the persecution of Muslim youth in the course of the last two decades.
Meanwhile, a significant number of Mossad agents have been identified & expelled from India for indulging in espionage, drug peddling & weapons smuggling. Also the links of racist Israel with the extreme right-wing Manuwadi forces, namely the BJP-RSS-VHP-BD, all stand exposed.
Yet the secular Congress-led UPA turns a blind eye to the Mossad operations in our city & across the country.
Israel poses a grave security threat to the very sovereignty & unity of our country. Today, the dubious & perfidious role of the Zionist-Israeli Lobby in America & the Western world stands exposed & Israel stands at the bottom of public opinion across the world. Yet the ruling political elite in our country do not seem to understand the obvious. Also the corrupting role of Israeli weapons manufacturers has been exposed by none less than the Defence Ministry itself, whereby 4 Israeli companies have been banned for bribing politicians, military officials and bureaucrats. The links of the Mossad & the Abhinav Bharat & Sanatan Sanstha terror organizations are also being probed due to the charge-sheet filed by Shaheed ATS Chief Hemant Karkare.
Thus it is also due to the flawed policies of the government, where the likes of racist Israelis operate with impunity, even by-passing the official corridors of power & our intel-security apparatus.
ii) The DCP Mr Kishore Jadhav & the Sr Inspector Mr Suryavanshi (Agripada Police Station) all need to be taken to task for operating at the behest of the Israeli consulate as their agents.
All the police stations in our city of Mumbai, across Maharashtra & India, need to be warned that they cannot be acting at a telephone call from either the Israeli, the American, or any other foreign power.
The next time the people of this city will lay siege to the police station if our sovereign democratic rights as Indian citizens are again infringed upon.
We also demand that the Home Minister, Mr P R Patil, take the appropirate action against these errant officials so we do not see a repeat of these abominable acts ever again.
We represent the patriotic tradition of our Freedom Movement against the British colonial occupation of our Motherland & we will not stand by and see our nation be colonized once again by American & Israeli imperialists. We will not betray the sacrifices & the memories of our founding fathers & the thousands who laid down their lives for a free India.
Today there is a movement across the world where the masses are challenging the US-Israeli-European Neo-colonial project & the demise of the Western imperial powers is destined.
It is time for the Indian political class to understand these new political realities for the future of our nation & the world is at stake.
We walk in the path of Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Azad, Mahatma Phule, Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar, Subash Chandra Bhose & Bhagat Singh & it is their teachings that we will strive to carry on.
Jai Hind!! Jai Bharat!!
Feroze Mithiborwala, Kishore Jagtap, Aslam Ghazi, Jyoti Badekar & Arif Kapadia
(From Mumbai police confiscate Nakba Day banners, Bharat Bachao Andolan, countercurrents.org, 19/5/12)
[* "What was still more unpleasant for the Government, the Moslem world outside Palestine began to raise its voice. An all-India Moslem Conference for Palestine was held in Bombay [now Mumbai, in May 1922] and passed a resolution that the Holy Land of Palestine was the trust of the whole Moslem world and not of the Moslems of Palestine alone. It demanded the abolition of the Balfour Declaration, the termination of the Mandate and the establishment of self-government there. It decided to celebrate a 'Palestine Day' throughout India, Burma and Ceylon, on Friday the 16th [May], to begin after prayers at the mosques. This was held as arranged, and in Bombay particularly was on an impressive scale. Long processions paraded through the Moslem quarters, waving banners inscribed 'Down with the Balfour Declaration!' and Reuter cabled that a meeting in the evening was attended by 100,000 persons." (Palestine: The Reality (1939), JMN Jeffries, p 620)]
The Chief Minister,
Shri Prithviraj Chavan,
Government of Maharashtra,
Mumbai,
India,
Sub: We condemn the Mumbai Police action & confiscation of our 'Boycott Israel-Save India, 15th May Nakba-Day' Banners from a private office premise.
Respected Sir,
Namaste!
We are extremely peturbed and angry at the fact that today, on the 18th of May 2012, at 3.00pm, the Agripada police raided the premises of the Jamat-i-Islami-i-Hind at Madanpura & confiscated the 'May 15 - Nakba Day' banners. The office staff were called over to the Agripada Police Station for further questioning. Soon after, on making calls to the police station, which had earlier refused to give us any information, but after sustained calls from various important quarters we were informed that it was on the behest & instructions of the Israeli consulate in Mumbai, that the police went into action. This is indeed a matter of great concern, whereby the local police is now acting as an agent of a foreign consulate against Indian citizens.
This is clearly an infringement of our sovereign & democratic rights & we thus lodge our protest & condemn the action of the police as strongly as possible. The banners were not put up in any public space without the due permission of the municipal authorities, as is the norm. The banners were strung outside the balcony on the first floor of the said private premises. Moreover the banners had the following messages in the context of the May 15th protests that are held globally.
i) Boycott Israel - Save India!!
ii) Free Palestine & Right of Return of the Refugees
iii) May 15th - Nakba Protests!!
These banners and protests are in keeping with our historical national tradition of supporting the anti-colonial freedom struggles* & the international political consensus in terms of the global day of protests against the creation of the Zionist Apartheid Racist Israel.
Thus we demand that action be taken against:
i) The Israeli consulate, wherein they are clearly told to operate within the limits of a foreign entity as a consulate & not step beyond the boundaries & the laws of our country. They need to be told that they are not the new viceroys of India, where they can directly call up the local police station & have them raid & arrest patriotic citizens.
Though this problem also stems from the fact that due to state policy a number of low level police officials are also travelling to Israel, for so-called anti-terror training whilst it is a well known fact that Israel is the fountainhead of terror in the world.
This flawed training of our police by certified Islamophobes has resulted in an increased wave of anti-Muslim xenophobia amongst our police & intelligence services, as has been evident in the persecution of Muslim youth in the course of the last two decades.
Meanwhile, a significant number of Mossad agents have been identified & expelled from India for indulging in espionage, drug peddling & weapons smuggling. Also the links of racist Israel with the extreme right-wing Manuwadi forces, namely the BJP-RSS-VHP-BD, all stand exposed.
Yet the secular Congress-led UPA turns a blind eye to the Mossad operations in our city & across the country.
Israel poses a grave security threat to the very sovereignty & unity of our country. Today, the dubious & perfidious role of the Zionist-Israeli Lobby in America & the Western world stands exposed & Israel stands at the bottom of public opinion across the world. Yet the ruling political elite in our country do not seem to understand the obvious. Also the corrupting role of Israeli weapons manufacturers has been exposed by none less than the Defence Ministry itself, whereby 4 Israeli companies have been banned for bribing politicians, military officials and bureaucrats. The links of the Mossad & the Abhinav Bharat & Sanatan Sanstha terror organizations are also being probed due to the charge-sheet filed by Shaheed ATS Chief Hemant Karkare.
Thus it is also due to the flawed policies of the government, where the likes of racist Israelis operate with impunity, even by-passing the official corridors of power & our intel-security apparatus.
ii) The DCP Mr Kishore Jadhav & the Sr Inspector Mr Suryavanshi (Agripada Police Station) all need to be taken to task for operating at the behest of the Israeli consulate as their agents.
All the police stations in our city of Mumbai, across Maharashtra & India, need to be warned that they cannot be acting at a telephone call from either the Israeli, the American, or any other foreign power.
The next time the people of this city will lay siege to the police station if our sovereign democratic rights as Indian citizens are again infringed upon.
We also demand that the Home Minister, Mr P R Patil, take the appropirate action against these errant officials so we do not see a repeat of these abominable acts ever again.
We represent the patriotic tradition of our Freedom Movement against the British colonial occupation of our Motherland & we will not stand by and see our nation be colonized once again by American & Israeli imperialists. We will not betray the sacrifices & the memories of our founding fathers & the thousands who laid down their lives for a free India.
Today there is a movement across the world where the masses are challenging the US-Israeli-European Neo-colonial project & the demise of the Western imperial powers is destined.
It is time for the Indian political class to understand these new political realities for the future of our nation & the world is at stake.
We walk in the path of Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Azad, Mahatma Phule, Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar, Subash Chandra Bhose & Bhagat Singh & it is their teachings that we will strive to carry on.
Jai Hind!! Jai Bharat!!
Feroze Mithiborwala, Kishore Jagtap, Aslam Ghazi, Jyoti Badekar & Arif Kapadia
(From Mumbai police confiscate Nakba Day banners, Bharat Bachao Andolan, countercurrents.org, 19/5/12)
[* "What was still more unpleasant for the Government, the Moslem world outside Palestine began to raise its voice. An all-India Moslem Conference for Palestine was held in Bombay [now Mumbai, in May 1922] and passed a resolution that the Holy Land of Palestine was the trust of the whole Moslem world and not of the Moslems of Palestine alone. It demanded the abolition of the Balfour Declaration, the termination of the Mandate and the establishment of self-government there. It decided to celebrate a 'Palestine Day' throughout India, Burma and Ceylon, on Friday the 16th [May], to begin after prayers at the mosques. This was held as arranged, and in Bombay particularly was on an impressive scale. Long processions paraded through the Moslem quarters, waving banners inscribed 'Down with the Balfour Declaration!' and Reuter cabled that a meeting in the evening was attended by 100,000 persons." (Palestine: The Reality (1939), JMN Jeffries, p 620)]
Friday, November 27, 2009
Mosque Busters
Follow the thread:
"Yehuda Etzion was no less colorful. A student of the Elon Shvut Yeshiva, determined and zealous in his faith, he was among the 'professional settlers' during the first years of Gush Emunim, spending long periods on the hilltops, moving constantly from one to another. Etzion did his military service as a paramilitary yeshiva soldier in combat engineering, a unit that provided him with the training in explosives that he latter used in terror group activities. He was a partner to the first settlement attempt by the Elon Moreh nucleus in Samaria, in the spring of 1974, and was among those who were forcibly evacuated while Sharon was endeavoring to protect him with his own body and instructing the evacuating soldiers to refuse to obey orders. Afterward Etzion headed the work brigade out of which the settlement of Ofra grew. During the days of Camp David he took part in demonstrations all over the country and organized protest settlements. However, the failure of the settlement attempt at Rujaib near Nablus right after the signing of the Camp David agreements led him to cut himself off from Gush Emunim and to a period of isolation and thought. Settling the land no longer looked to him like the most important course of action. He set out to seek a 'personality of spiritual stature, who would put himself at the head of an initiative that would march the Jewish people toward the fulfillment of their destiny'. The books of his relative, Shabtai Ben-Dov, and the conversations he conducted with his friend Yeshua Ben Shushan gave him ideas about the ways of accelerating the process of the Redemption... When Etzion asked... Ben-Dov whether removing the Dome of the Rock from the Temple Mount would start a dynamic of Redemption, the latter replied..., 'If you want to do a deed that will solve all of the problems of the Jewish people - do that!' Etzion and Ben Shushan turned for advice to Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook, the spiritual leader of Gush Emunim, and the rabbi directed them to Ariel Sharon." (Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007, Idith Zertal & Akiva Eldar, 2007, pp 81-82)
"The destruction of a mosque by Hindu radicals that led to some of the bloodiest religious riots in India since Partition was 'meticulously planned' by politicians including a former prime minister, according to a leaked report of the official investigation. The razing of the 16th-century Babri Mosque - in the northern town of Ayodhya, on December 6, 1992, by an estimated 150,000 Hindus - led to national violence in which about 2000 people died, mostly Muslims. The demolition also cemented the power base of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which came to power 4 years later. BJP hardliners had long claimed the mosque stood on the birthplace of Lord Rama, the Hindu warrior god, and had campaigned for a Hindu temple to be built on the site... Those [politicians] allegedly involved included former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee..." (Hindu MPs behind razing of mosque, Rhys Blakely, The Australian, 25/11/09)
"Ariel Sharon [was] the first Israeli prime minister to visit India since independence in 1947... During a dinner organised in his honour by his Indian counterpart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, on September 9, Sharon reaffirmed his government's determination to 'act against terror'. Vajpayee said: 'Our defence cooperation rests on the foundation of mutual understanding of security concerns'. The spectacular blossoming of Israeli-Indian relations owes much to their joint perceptions of 'Islamic threats' in Kashmir and in Palestine. Long fascinated by Israel, the leaders of the nationalist Hindu Indian Peoples Party (BJP) decided in 1999, after a fresh wave of bloody clashes with Kashmiri guerillas... to call on Israeli expertise... The events of September 11, 2001, further boosted that cooperation, and the Indian prime minister's national security adviser... speaking earlier this year to the American Jewish Committee in Washington, argued in favour of a central axis consisting of the United States, Israel and India that would fight terrorism together. Israel is now India's second-largest arms supplier after Russia." (Sharon & Vajpayee see eye to eye on terror, Francoise Chipaux, Guardian Weekly, 18/9/03)
"Yehuda Etzion was no less colorful. A student of the Elon Shvut Yeshiva, determined and zealous in his faith, he was among the 'professional settlers' during the first years of Gush Emunim, spending long periods on the hilltops, moving constantly from one to another. Etzion did his military service as a paramilitary yeshiva soldier in combat engineering, a unit that provided him with the training in explosives that he latter used in terror group activities. He was a partner to the first settlement attempt by the Elon Moreh nucleus in Samaria, in the spring of 1974, and was among those who were forcibly evacuated while Sharon was endeavoring to protect him with his own body and instructing the evacuating soldiers to refuse to obey orders. Afterward Etzion headed the work brigade out of which the settlement of Ofra grew. During the days of Camp David he took part in demonstrations all over the country and organized protest settlements. However, the failure of the settlement attempt at Rujaib near Nablus right after the signing of the Camp David agreements led him to cut himself off from Gush Emunim and to a period of isolation and thought. Settling the land no longer looked to him like the most important course of action. He set out to seek a 'personality of spiritual stature, who would put himself at the head of an initiative that would march the Jewish people toward the fulfillment of their destiny'. The books of his relative, Shabtai Ben-Dov, and the conversations he conducted with his friend Yeshua Ben Shushan gave him ideas about the ways of accelerating the process of the Redemption... When Etzion asked... Ben-Dov whether removing the Dome of the Rock from the Temple Mount would start a dynamic of Redemption, the latter replied..., 'If you want to do a deed that will solve all of the problems of the Jewish people - do that!' Etzion and Ben Shushan turned for advice to Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook, the spiritual leader of Gush Emunim, and the rabbi directed them to Ariel Sharon." (Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007, Idith Zertal & Akiva Eldar, 2007, pp 81-82)
"The destruction of a mosque by Hindu radicals that led to some of the bloodiest religious riots in India since Partition was 'meticulously planned' by politicians including a former prime minister, according to a leaked report of the official investigation. The razing of the 16th-century Babri Mosque - in the northern town of Ayodhya, on December 6, 1992, by an estimated 150,000 Hindus - led to national violence in which about 2000 people died, mostly Muslims. The demolition also cemented the power base of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which came to power 4 years later. BJP hardliners had long claimed the mosque stood on the birthplace of Lord Rama, the Hindu warrior god, and had campaigned for a Hindu temple to be built on the site... Those [politicians] allegedly involved included former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee..." (Hindu MPs behind razing of mosque, Rhys Blakely, The Australian, 25/11/09)
"Ariel Sharon [was] the first Israeli prime minister to visit India since independence in 1947... During a dinner organised in his honour by his Indian counterpart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, on September 9, Sharon reaffirmed his government's determination to 'act against terror'. Vajpayee said: 'Our defence cooperation rests on the foundation of mutual understanding of security concerns'. The spectacular blossoming of Israeli-Indian relations owes much to their joint perceptions of 'Islamic threats' in Kashmir and in Palestine. Long fascinated by Israel, the leaders of the nationalist Hindu Indian Peoples Party (BJP) decided in 1999, after a fresh wave of bloody clashes with Kashmiri guerillas... to call on Israeli expertise... The events of September 11, 2001, further boosted that cooperation, and the Indian prime minister's national security adviser... speaking earlier this year to the American Jewish Committee in Washington, argued in favour of a central axis consisting of the United States, Israel and India that would fight terrorism together. Israel is now India's second-largest arms supplier after Russia." (Sharon & Vajpayee see eye to eye on terror, Francoise Chipaux, Guardian Weekly, 18/9/03)
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