"In spite then of non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews, [with the Balfour Declaration] world Jewry was at last within sight of home... No longer would the Jews remain a people without a land, in exile everywhere... Civilisation had at last acknowledged the great wrong, had proclaimed the word of salvation. It was for the Jews to approve themselves by action worthy of that confidence: to exercise practically and materially their historic 'right'. The soil tilled by their fathers had lain for long ages neglected: now, with the modern processes available to Jewish brains, Jewish capital and Jewish enterprise, the wilderness would rejoice and blossom like the rose. Even though the land could not yet absorb sixteen millions, nor even eight, enough could return, if not to form The Jewish State (which a few extremists publicly demanded), at least to prove that the enterprise was one that blessed him that gave as well as him that took by forming for England 'a little loyal Jewish Ulster' in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism." (Orientations, Ronald Storrs, 1937, pp 357-58. Storrs was Jerusalem's first British governor.)
***
Following in the footsteps of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO), the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), the Cork City Council, the Dublin City Council, Galway City Council has declared its solidarity with the people of Palestine and support for the BDS movement.
Here is Galway's most excellent motion:
1. Since its violent establishment in 1948 through the ethnic cleansing of more than half of the indigenous people of Palestine, the state of Israel has denied Palestinians their fundamental rights and has refused to comply with international law; noting also that Israel continues to illegally occupy and colonise Palestinian land, discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel, imposes an inhumane blockade and siege of Gaza and denies Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes, Galway City Council fully supports and endorses the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for freedom, equality and justice and commits itself to discontinue all business contracts it has with Hewlett-Packard, both HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise for business and government services, as well as the HP spin-off DXC Technology as HP and DXC provide and operate much of the technology infrastructure that Israel uses to maintain its system of apartheid and settler colonialism over the Palestinian people. (Galway City Council adopts motion to boycott Israel, Micheal O Maoileoin, galwaydaily.com, 12/6/18)
Meanwhile, in the settler-colonial backwater known as Australia...
Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts
Thursday, June 14, 2018
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Breaking News: Greg Sheridan Has Recovered
Praise Jesus, Mary & Joseph, I see Greg Sheridan's finally recovered from his near catatonic state, triggered by Jeremy Corbyn's electoral surge in the recent UK general election.
I can report that his very first post-recovery word was: "Yikes!" (Populism wins in this volatile new world, The Australian, 10/6/17)
Seemingly, back to his former self, he's spluttering in today's Australian over the sheer yuckiness of UK PM Theresa May's new-found political allies, Ulster's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
Calling them "the gargoyle party of Northern Island," he writes that "Few people have any idea just how bad the DUP have been and are." (May has bound her future to the gargoyles of Ulster)
The DUP serves, he declares, "as a kind of exotic museum piece in British politics," and "has rightly been described as the political wing of the 18th century."
And then, in darker tones:
"The party's true heritage is of shocking sectarian bigotry, violence, connivance in extra-judicial killing and official discrimination."
Frankly, I can't see what his problem is with the DUP. After all, isn't he the greatest fan in Australian journalism of Israel, the closest thing to Ulster in the Middle East?
If the DUP are 18th century, surely they're positively modern compared to Israel, which has a leader who believes he's the direct descendant of Binyamin, the son of Jacob, who roamed the 'Judean' hills with his daddy 4,000 years ago.
And if "shocking sectarian bigotry," "violence," "extra-judicial killing," "official discrimination," and much, much more, aren't the defining characteristics of the apartheid state Israel, I don't know what are.
And come to think of it, didn't at least one British colonial official once muse, back in the 1920s, that the anti-Palestinian Arab, British-backed project of a 'Jewish national home in Palestine' (as it was coyly described in the Balfour Declaration of 1917) would "form for England a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism"?
I can report that his very first post-recovery word was: "Yikes!" (Populism wins in this volatile new world, The Australian, 10/6/17)
Seemingly, back to his former self, he's spluttering in today's Australian over the sheer yuckiness of UK PM Theresa May's new-found political allies, Ulster's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
Calling them "the gargoyle party of Northern Island," he writes that "Few people have any idea just how bad the DUP have been and are." (May has bound her future to the gargoyles of Ulster)
The DUP serves, he declares, "as a kind of exotic museum piece in British politics," and "has rightly been described as the political wing of the 18th century."
And then, in darker tones:
"The party's true heritage is of shocking sectarian bigotry, violence, connivance in extra-judicial killing and official discrimination."
Frankly, I can't see what his problem is with the DUP. After all, isn't he the greatest fan in Australian journalism of Israel, the closest thing to Ulster in the Middle East?
If the DUP are 18th century, surely they're positively modern compared to Israel, which has a leader who believes he's the direct descendant of Binyamin, the son of Jacob, who roamed the 'Judean' hills with his daddy 4,000 years ago.
And if "shocking sectarian bigotry," "violence," "extra-judicial killing," "official discrimination," and much, much more, aren't the defining characteristics of the apartheid state Israel, I don't know what are.
And come to think of it, didn't at least one British colonial official once muse, back in the 1920s, that the anti-Palestinian Arab, British-backed project of a 'Jewish national home in Palestine' (as it was coyly described in the Balfour Declaration of 1917) would "form for England a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism"?
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Just Lie Back & Think of Britain
Times' columnist Ben Macintyre's Britain's Middle East carve-up is no cause for shame (published in The Australian on July 30) is, as the title suggests, an apologia for British imperialism.* Here are the opening paragraphs:
"Boris Johnson is more a historian than a diplomat... The new British foreign secretary has written books on Churchill and London... He is undoubtedly comfortable in the past. This is just as well because one of the first challenges will be to negotiate his way through exceptionally controversial anniversaries of events in Britain's history that have a continuing impact on the present: the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, which promised a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, falls in November next year; 100 years ago this year, British and French diplomats signed the Sykes-Picot agreement that secretly divided up the Middle East between them; October sees the 60th anniversary of the Suez Crisis, the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in collusion with Israel.
[**The wording of the declaration is actually "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."]
"These events may have lost much of their relevance in western memory but in the Middle East they remain freighted with significance, resentment and pain. The centenary of the First World War has been comparatively plain sailing in commemorative terms but Britain's Middle East diplomacy surrounding that conflict, which paved the way for the foundation of Israel and Arab nation states, is a diplomatic minefield. The letter written by foreign secretary Arthur Balfour in November 1917 pledged British support for a 'national home' for the Jewish people, leading to the Mandate, mass Jewish immigration and the creation of Israel after World War II."
Notice what's missing?
All mention of the 1915 Anglo-Arab treaty negotiated between Britain's high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi, which preceded both the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) and the Balfour Declaration (1917), and without knowledge of which the treachery of those two astonishing manoeuvres cannot be fully appreciated.
Whether this is a deliberate omission or a case of ignorance is anyone's guess. In either case, Macintyre's subsequent thesis - partly unveiled in the title of his piece - which I will discuss shortly, is massively flawed. The simple fact is that, in 1915, the British promised the leader of the Arab nationalist movement, Sharif Hussein, an independent Arab state comprising most of today's Arab world (reserving only the northern coastline of Greater Syria) in exchange for an alliance against the Turks, a pact which the Arabs entered into in good faith, and on the basis of which they launched the Arab Revolt against the Turks, but which the British betrayed twice over, first with the French, then with the nascent Zionist movement.**
It should further be noted that, with respect to the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, as it became known, the British even went so far as to suppress all knowledge of its existence, and, when this did not succeed, blatantly attempted to misrepresent its terms. It is therefore only when the British promise of Arab independence is factored into any analysis of these matters that Britain's treachery becomes fully apparent. In any case, with or without the McMahon treaty, Britain had no right to gift Arab lands to others.
Macintyre continues:
"This week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas raised the prospect of legal action against Britain over the declaration. His spokesman insisted that as a result of Britain's 'ill-omened promise, hundreds of thousands of Jews were moved from Europe and elsewhere to Palestine at the expense of our Palestinian people whose parents and grandparents had lived for thousands of years on the soil of their homeland.' Although Israel is gearing up for a Balfour party, the Foreign Office has spoken merely of 'marking' the centenary, rather than lauding it, a cautious position that will displease both sides..."
Which brings us to Macintyre's thesis, which is essentially that the declaration was born of wartime desperation, and hence "no cause for shame."
The centenary of the declaration, he contends, should be "neither eulogised nor bemoaned but dispassionately explored, analysed and understood, a fraught moment in history whose consequences could not have been foreseen at the time. The declaration was prompted by various factors including a genuine desire on the part of the British government to create a Jewish homeland as well as geopolitical interests. Britain was locked in a desperate war with no certainty of victory, Jews had been prominent in the Bolshevik Revolution and it was hoped the statement might encourage Russia to maintain the battle on the Eastern Front. Britain's support for a Jewish homeland might undermine German-Jewish support for the war, it was thought, while encouraging increased financial contributions to the war effort from the American-Jewish community. At a war cabinet meeting in October 1917, Balfour bluntly observed a statement supporting Zionism would be 'extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America'."
The first matter of note here is Macintyre's bald assertion that the "consequences" of flooding an Arab land with European Jews, "could not have been foreseen at the time." It's as though he's never heard of Ireland, let alone the plantation of Ulster.
The second is that an uninformed reader might conclude from Macintyre's piece that the declaration was an all-British cabinet affair. There is no sign in his account of the Russian-Jewish leaders of the Zionist movement in Britain - Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolov - having been involved in the urging and drafting of the declaration. This is another huge omission. The fact is that without constant Zionist pressure, influence-peddling and propaganda such a declaration would never have eventuated. One need only ask where Balfour and Prime Minister Lloyd George got the patently false idea that a declaration in support of the Zionists would have Jewish communities in Russia, Germany and the United States working their supposed influence on the Allies' behalf, and hence making a real, material difference to the war's outcome.
The third is that nowhere in the declaration is there any indication of support for a Jewish state as such.
Macintyre continues:
"Crucially the declaration also states that 'nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine' - which then made up 90% of the population. Any 'marking' of the centenary needs to acknowledge that while the Jewish homeland envisaged in 1917 has been realised, the promise to protect the rights of the Palestinian people has not been honoured."
While Macintyre correctly highlights the fact that Palestine's population at the time was overwhelmingly non-Jewish, he neglects to mention that that this overwhelming majority was deliberately written off as "existing non-Jewish communities," with no political rights whatever. Colonialism doesn't get much more outrageous than that, Yet here he is warning against using the centenary as "an excuse for political grandstanding," which "will only inflame the situation in the Middle East."
IOW, everyone just lie back and think of what poor old Britain was going through at the time! And Palestinians, whatever you do (and, more importantly, wherever you are) NO GRANDSTANDING next year, OK?
[**Ironically, Macintyre is the author of A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby & the Great Betrayal (2014).]
"Boris Johnson is more a historian than a diplomat... The new British foreign secretary has written books on Churchill and London... He is undoubtedly comfortable in the past. This is just as well because one of the first challenges will be to negotiate his way through exceptionally controversial anniversaries of events in Britain's history that have a continuing impact on the present: the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, which promised a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, falls in November next year; 100 years ago this year, British and French diplomats signed the Sykes-Picot agreement that secretly divided up the Middle East between them; October sees the 60th anniversary of the Suez Crisis, the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in collusion with Israel.
[**The wording of the declaration is actually "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."]
"These events may have lost much of their relevance in western memory but in the Middle East they remain freighted with significance, resentment and pain. The centenary of the First World War has been comparatively plain sailing in commemorative terms but Britain's Middle East diplomacy surrounding that conflict, which paved the way for the foundation of Israel and Arab nation states, is a diplomatic minefield. The letter written by foreign secretary Arthur Balfour in November 1917 pledged British support for a 'national home' for the Jewish people, leading to the Mandate, mass Jewish immigration and the creation of Israel after World War II."
Notice what's missing?
All mention of the 1915 Anglo-Arab treaty negotiated between Britain's high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi, which preceded both the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) and the Balfour Declaration (1917), and without knowledge of which the treachery of those two astonishing manoeuvres cannot be fully appreciated.
Whether this is a deliberate omission or a case of ignorance is anyone's guess. In either case, Macintyre's subsequent thesis - partly unveiled in the title of his piece - which I will discuss shortly, is massively flawed. The simple fact is that, in 1915, the British promised the leader of the Arab nationalist movement, Sharif Hussein, an independent Arab state comprising most of today's Arab world (reserving only the northern coastline of Greater Syria) in exchange for an alliance against the Turks, a pact which the Arabs entered into in good faith, and on the basis of which they launched the Arab Revolt against the Turks, but which the British betrayed twice over, first with the French, then with the nascent Zionist movement.**
It should further be noted that, with respect to the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, as it became known, the British even went so far as to suppress all knowledge of its existence, and, when this did not succeed, blatantly attempted to misrepresent its terms. It is therefore only when the British promise of Arab independence is factored into any analysis of these matters that Britain's treachery becomes fully apparent. In any case, with or without the McMahon treaty, Britain had no right to gift Arab lands to others.
Macintyre continues:
"This week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas raised the prospect of legal action against Britain over the declaration. His spokesman insisted that as a result of Britain's 'ill-omened promise, hundreds of thousands of Jews were moved from Europe and elsewhere to Palestine at the expense of our Palestinian people whose parents and grandparents had lived for thousands of years on the soil of their homeland.' Although Israel is gearing up for a Balfour party, the Foreign Office has spoken merely of 'marking' the centenary, rather than lauding it, a cautious position that will displease both sides..."
Which brings us to Macintyre's thesis, which is essentially that the declaration was born of wartime desperation, and hence "no cause for shame."
The centenary of the declaration, he contends, should be "neither eulogised nor bemoaned but dispassionately explored, analysed and understood, a fraught moment in history whose consequences could not have been foreseen at the time. The declaration was prompted by various factors including a genuine desire on the part of the British government to create a Jewish homeland as well as geopolitical interests. Britain was locked in a desperate war with no certainty of victory, Jews had been prominent in the Bolshevik Revolution and it was hoped the statement might encourage Russia to maintain the battle on the Eastern Front. Britain's support for a Jewish homeland might undermine German-Jewish support for the war, it was thought, while encouraging increased financial contributions to the war effort from the American-Jewish community. At a war cabinet meeting in October 1917, Balfour bluntly observed a statement supporting Zionism would be 'extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America'."
The first matter of note here is Macintyre's bald assertion that the "consequences" of flooding an Arab land with European Jews, "could not have been foreseen at the time." It's as though he's never heard of Ireland, let alone the plantation of Ulster.
The second is that an uninformed reader might conclude from Macintyre's piece that the declaration was an all-British cabinet affair. There is no sign in his account of the Russian-Jewish leaders of the Zionist movement in Britain - Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolov - having been involved in the urging and drafting of the declaration. This is another huge omission. The fact is that without constant Zionist pressure, influence-peddling and propaganda such a declaration would never have eventuated. One need only ask where Balfour and Prime Minister Lloyd George got the patently false idea that a declaration in support of the Zionists would have Jewish communities in Russia, Germany and the United States working their supposed influence on the Allies' behalf, and hence making a real, material difference to the war's outcome.
The third is that nowhere in the declaration is there any indication of support for a Jewish state as such.
Macintyre continues:
"Crucially the declaration also states that 'nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine' - which then made up 90% of the population. Any 'marking' of the centenary needs to acknowledge that while the Jewish homeland envisaged in 1917 has been realised, the promise to protect the rights of the Palestinian people has not been honoured."
While Macintyre correctly highlights the fact that Palestine's population at the time was overwhelmingly non-Jewish, he neglects to mention that that this overwhelming majority was deliberately written off as "existing non-Jewish communities," with no political rights whatever. Colonialism doesn't get much more outrageous than that, Yet here he is warning against using the centenary as "an excuse for political grandstanding," which "will only inflame the situation in the Middle East."
IOW, everyone just lie back and think of what poor old Britain was going through at the time! And Palestinians, whatever you do (and, more importantly, wherever you are) NO GRANDSTANDING next year, OK?
[**Ironically, Macintyre is the author of A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby & the Great Betrayal (2014).]
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Most Definitely a Shaw Thing
Further to my July 11 discussion of George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and his attitude toward Islam, it's interesting to recall just what the renowned, left-leaning, Irish playwright and essayist had to say about Zionism.
Zionism, it should be said, was hardly uppermost in Shaw's mind, and insofar as he touched on it, it is reasonable to assume that he shared the British Left's purblind tendency to see British imperialism rather than the ruthless, manipulative, ethno-nationalism of the Zionist movement as the main player in Palestine.* Nevertheless, as an Irishman, he knew a colonial clusterfuck when he saw one coming.
Shaw's take on the Zionist project in Palestine emerges most strongly in a short, untitled, satirical sketch he wrote on the origins of Britain's fateful 1917 Balfour Declaration, which infamously promised to "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
It came in the context of a correspondence with British socialist and Independent Labour Party MP Fenner Brockway, most probably, although this is not specified, in the late thirties. As Brockway explains in his memoir Outside the Right:
"I had a startling reply to a request for an opinion on a policy statement on Palestine which I had written for the I.L.P. 'This is all nonsense, the historical part,' he rebuked, adding he could only comment adequately in the form of a 3-act play. He enclosed it and granted me the right to publish. The theme was that Arthur Balfour gave Dr Weitzmann Palestine in return for a chemical device for killing Germans. I reproduce the play at the end of this chapter." (1963, p 87)
Referred to by Brockway as Shaw's "lost play," the playwright's skewering of the insufferable Lord Arthur James Balfour is deliciously Yes Minister:
ACT I
1917. Scene: The Foreign Secretary's room at the Foreign Office. Arthur is contemplating with dismay a document which has been handed to him by an attache.
Arthur: Boy, this is awful. Are you sure your figures are correct?
Attache: They have been checked 3 times over, sir.
Arthur: This is really what the war is costing us?
Attache: Under the mark, if anything, sir.
Arthur: Young man, do you realize - but no. Only a Scot can feel as I feel about it. Look at this one item alone. Five thousand and thirty-eight pounds, 15 shillings and 9 & 7/8 pence for cordite enough to kill a single German. How can any country stand such a strain?
Attache: It's not the cordite, sir. It's the acetone [**] that is so expensive. Cordite cannot be made without acetone.
Arthur: I don't know what acetone is; and I don't care. All I know is that if we go on like this we shall have to give an order to cease killing Germans. Dead Germans cost too much... Are our chemists trying how to find something cheaper?
Attache: They are doing their best; but nothing has come of it so far. There's a chemist in Manchester who has a microbe that makes acetone for next to nothing.
Arthur: Send him here instantly. Why hasn't he been sent here before?
Attache: Impossible, sir, unfortunately.
Arthur: Nothing is impossible when we are at war. Why is it impossible?
Attache: He is a Jew, sir.
Arthur: Is his microbe a Jew?
Attache: I suppose not, sir.
Arthur: Is Sir Herbert Samuel a Jew or is he not? Is he in the Cabinet or is he not?
Attache: But it is a coalition Government, sir. All sorts of people are let in.
Arthur: Any other objection?
Attache: Well, Manchester, you know, sir. Provincial. And Owens College! If it were Cambridge, now, we might stretch a point.
Arthur: If this Jewish gentleman is not in this room in 3 hours, you go to the trenches.
Attache: Oh, if you make a point of it, of course. But we shall lose tone.
Arthur (roaring): Get out!
(The attache shrugs his shoulders and goes out.)
Arthur (clutching his temples as he again pores over the sheet of figures): Five thousand and thirty-eight golden pounds to put one Boche out of action! And we have to exterminate the lot of them!
ACT II
(As before, 3 hours later, but with Dr Chaim Weizmann instead of the attache.)
Arthur: Doctor Weizmann, we must have that microbe at your own price. Name it. We shall not hesitate at 6 figures.
Dr Weizmann: I do not ask for money.
Arthur: There must be some misunderstanding. I was informed that you are a Jew.
Weizmann: You were informed correctly. I am a Jew.
Arthur: But - pardon me - you said you did not ask for money.
Wiezmann: Precisely, I do not want money.
Arthur: A title, perhaps? Baron? Viscount? Do not hesitate.
Wiezmann: Nothing would induce me to accept a title. I should have to pay more for everything.
Arthur: Then may I ask, without offence, since you want none of the things that everybody wants, what the devil do you want?
Weizmann: I want Jerusalem.
Arthur: It's yours. I only regret that we cannot throw in Madagascar as well. Unfortunately it belongs to the French Government. The Holy Land belongs naturally to the Church of England and to it you are most welcome. And now will you be so good as to hand over the microbe.
ACT III
Mr Bernard Shaw in his sumptuously furnished study reading the announcement of the Balfour Declaration.
MR B. S.: Another Ulster! As if one were not enough.
CURTAIN
[*For the full story here, see my April 2012 serialisation of J.M.N. Jeffries's Palestine: The Reality, Chapter 11: The Balfour Deception 1-7; **For this particular strand of the story, see my 11/11/12 post Palestine on a Platter.]
Zionism, it should be said, was hardly uppermost in Shaw's mind, and insofar as he touched on it, it is reasonable to assume that he shared the British Left's purblind tendency to see British imperialism rather than the ruthless, manipulative, ethno-nationalism of the Zionist movement as the main player in Palestine.* Nevertheless, as an Irishman, he knew a colonial clusterfuck when he saw one coming.
Shaw's take on the Zionist project in Palestine emerges most strongly in a short, untitled, satirical sketch he wrote on the origins of Britain's fateful 1917 Balfour Declaration, which infamously promised to "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
It came in the context of a correspondence with British socialist and Independent Labour Party MP Fenner Brockway, most probably, although this is not specified, in the late thirties. As Brockway explains in his memoir Outside the Right:
"I had a startling reply to a request for an opinion on a policy statement on Palestine which I had written for the I.L.P. 'This is all nonsense, the historical part,' he rebuked, adding he could only comment adequately in the form of a 3-act play. He enclosed it and granted me the right to publish. The theme was that Arthur Balfour gave Dr Weitzmann Palestine in return for a chemical device for killing Germans. I reproduce the play at the end of this chapter." (1963, p 87)
Referred to by Brockway as Shaw's "lost play," the playwright's skewering of the insufferable Lord Arthur James Balfour is deliciously Yes Minister:
ACT I
1917. Scene: The Foreign Secretary's room at the Foreign Office. Arthur is contemplating with dismay a document which has been handed to him by an attache.
Arthur: Boy, this is awful. Are you sure your figures are correct?
Attache: They have been checked 3 times over, sir.
Arthur: This is really what the war is costing us?
Attache: Under the mark, if anything, sir.
Arthur: Young man, do you realize - but no. Only a Scot can feel as I feel about it. Look at this one item alone. Five thousand and thirty-eight pounds, 15 shillings and 9 & 7/8 pence for cordite enough to kill a single German. How can any country stand such a strain?
Attache: It's not the cordite, sir. It's the acetone [**] that is so expensive. Cordite cannot be made without acetone.
Arthur: I don't know what acetone is; and I don't care. All I know is that if we go on like this we shall have to give an order to cease killing Germans. Dead Germans cost too much... Are our chemists trying how to find something cheaper?
Attache: They are doing their best; but nothing has come of it so far. There's a chemist in Manchester who has a microbe that makes acetone for next to nothing.
Arthur: Send him here instantly. Why hasn't he been sent here before?
Attache: Impossible, sir, unfortunately.
Arthur: Nothing is impossible when we are at war. Why is it impossible?
Attache: He is a Jew, sir.
Arthur: Is his microbe a Jew?
Attache: I suppose not, sir.
Arthur: Is Sir Herbert Samuel a Jew or is he not? Is he in the Cabinet or is he not?
Attache: But it is a coalition Government, sir. All sorts of people are let in.
Arthur: Any other objection?
Attache: Well, Manchester, you know, sir. Provincial. And Owens College! If it were Cambridge, now, we might stretch a point.
Arthur: If this Jewish gentleman is not in this room in 3 hours, you go to the trenches.
Attache: Oh, if you make a point of it, of course. But we shall lose tone.
Arthur (roaring): Get out!
(The attache shrugs his shoulders and goes out.)
Arthur (clutching his temples as he again pores over the sheet of figures): Five thousand and thirty-eight golden pounds to put one Boche out of action! And we have to exterminate the lot of them!
ACT II
(As before, 3 hours later, but with Dr Chaim Weizmann instead of the attache.)
Arthur: Doctor Weizmann, we must have that microbe at your own price. Name it. We shall not hesitate at 6 figures.
Dr Weizmann: I do not ask for money.
Arthur: There must be some misunderstanding. I was informed that you are a Jew.
Weizmann: You were informed correctly. I am a Jew.
Arthur: But - pardon me - you said you did not ask for money.
Wiezmann: Precisely, I do not want money.
Arthur: A title, perhaps? Baron? Viscount? Do not hesitate.
Wiezmann: Nothing would induce me to accept a title. I should have to pay more for everything.
Arthur: Then may I ask, without offence, since you want none of the things that everybody wants, what the devil do you want?
Weizmann: I want Jerusalem.
Arthur: It's yours. I only regret that we cannot throw in Madagascar as well. Unfortunately it belongs to the French Government. The Holy Land belongs naturally to the Church of England and to it you are most welcome. And now will you be so good as to hand over the microbe.
ACT III
Mr Bernard Shaw in his sumptuously furnished study reading the announcement of the Balfour Declaration.
MR B. S.: Another Ulster! As if one were not enough.
CURTAIN
[*For the full story here, see my April 2012 serialisation of J.M.N. Jeffries's Palestine: The Reality, Chapter 11: The Balfour Deception 1-7; **For this particular strand of the story, see my 11/11/12 post Palestine on a Platter.]
Friday, March 22, 2013
The Spirit of One
"They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn't want to be broken." Bobby Sands
The following statement from Samer Issawi*, who has spent 240 days on hunger strike, was posted on his Facebook page by his lawyer Fawwaz Shloudy. (NB: I've taken the liberty of polishing the initial English translation by Shahd Abusalama):
"With regard to Israel's offer to deport me to Gaza, let me say this: While Gaza is undeniably part of my Palestinian homeland, I alone will decide whether and when I go there, just as I alone will decide whether and when I will go to any other part of Palestine, from the river to the sea, as is my right.
"I emphatically refuse to be deported to Gaza as this will simply bring back bitter memories of the expulsions of 1948 and 1967. We are fighting to liberate our occupied homeland, and for the right of return of our refugees, whether they be in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip or in exile, not to add to their numbers with deportees. Israel's systematic emptying of Palestine of its people and replacing them with strangers is a crime. Therefore, I refuse to be deported, and will only agree to being released in Jerusalem since I know that Israel wants to empty Jerusalem of its Arab people and turn us into a minority there. My decision is not a personal one but is based on a national principle: If every detainee succumbs to pressure to agree to be deported outside Jerusalem, Jerusalem will eventually be emptied of its people.
"I'd rather die in my hospital bed than be deported from Jerusalem. It is my life and my soul. Uprooting me from there would be like tearing my soul from my body. Away from Jerusalem, my life has no meaning. I am locked in its embrace. I say to my fellow Palestinians: embrace your cities, towns and villages, and never give in to Israel's wishes under any circumstances. This is not about Samer Issawi. It is a national issue, a principle, a conviction that every Palestinian who truly loves his homeland should hold. Finally, and for the thousandth time, I will continue my hunger strike until I am either a free man in Jerusalem or I die a martyr." (palsolidarity.org, 19/3/13)
[*See my earlier posts on Samer Issawi: Another First for Israel's Cutting Edge Thuggery (12/1/13); Prisoner X: The Really Big Picture (19/2/13).]
The following statement from Samer Issawi*, who has spent 240 days on hunger strike, was posted on his Facebook page by his lawyer Fawwaz Shloudy. (NB: I've taken the liberty of polishing the initial English translation by Shahd Abusalama):
"With regard to Israel's offer to deport me to Gaza, let me say this: While Gaza is undeniably part of my Palestinian homeland, I alone will decide whether and when I go there, just as I alone will decide whether and when I will go to any other part of Palestine, from the river to the sea, as is my right.
"I emphatically refuse to be deported to Gaza as this will simply bring back bitter memories of the expulsions of 1948 and 1967. We are fighting to liberate our occupied homeland, and for the right of return of our refugees, whether they be in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip or in exile, not to add to their numbers with deportees. Israel's systematic emptying of Palestine of its people and replacing them with strangers is a crime. Therefore, I refuse to be deported, and will only agree to being released in Jerusalem since I know that Israel wants to empty Jerusalem of its Arab people and turn us into a minority there. My decision is not a personal one but is based on a national principle: If every detainee succumbs to pressure to agree to be deported outside Jerusalem, Jerusalem will eventually be emptied of its people.
"I'd rather die in my hospital bed than be deported from Jerusalem. It is my life and my soul. Uprooting me from there would be like tearing my soul from my body. Away from Jerusalem, my life has no meaning. I am locked in its embrace. I say to my fellow Palestinians: embrace your cities, towns and villages, and never give in to Israel's wishes under any circumstances. This is not about Samer Issawi. It is a national issue, a principle, a conviction that every Palestinian who truly loves his homeland should hold. Finally, and for the thousandth time, I will continue my hunger strike until I am either a free man in Jerusalem or I die a martyr." (palsolidarity.org, 19/3/13)
[*See my earlier posts on Samer Issawi: Another First for Israel's Cutting Edge Thuggery (12/1/13); Prisoner X: The Really Big Picture (19/2/13).]
Friday, August 3, 2012
Palestine's Patriot Dead
Remember our Dorset farmer (By George, He Gets It!, 1/7/12)?
"I was glad to get away, especially after my tour [of Acre prison] was ended by my being shown the execution chamber, and the gallows on which so many men have died. One piece of probably unwitting savagery jarred upon me. The condemned cells are cages in the vestibule to the execution-chamber. There are two of them, and if, as often happens, there is more than one execution to be carried out on a certain morning, the second or subsequent victim, must suffer the agonies of the damned - for he can see his comrade in evil fortune taken out, hear all that takes place on the farther side of the black door - and then die himself a hundred times before the bolts of his cage are shot back, and it is his turn to suffer.
"The British Inspector who took me round told me that there had been as many as 3 executions on one morning, one of them being the time when 3 men were hanged for their parts in the 1929 rebellion. 'It's not fair,' he said. 'In an English prison the governor and deputy-governor have a far easier time than Jock and I have here with these continued executions.
"'What do you mean?' I asked.
"'In England,' he replied, 'it is bad enough. Like us, a prison governor there gets to know the man who is going to be hanged. You see him every day. You know his motives and his own feelings - often a murderer is not nearly so bad a criminal as a professional thief or blackmailer, let alone a dope-dealer or a white-slaver. He's often some poor devil who has killed in a sudden fit of overmastering passion, jealousy or rage - I often feel like saying 'there but for the grace of Allah goes little me.'
"'As I say, you get to know the man, his relatives, and his own worries and family-troubles, and then you've got to kill him with your own hands, for we British officers have to act as executioners, not just stand by and watch like our opposite numbers do in England. It's a rotten job, believe me. I'm pretty tough, but I'd give anything to be really sick on an execution morning, so that I could beg off the spectacle.
"'Surely you don't get much chance to weep over the troubles of the fellows who are tried by the Military Courts?' I said.
"His face set grimly. 'No, and there'd be no tears in any case for that bunch of crooks. I want no excuse to miss their hangings, believe me.'
"'But why?' I asked. 'Aren't they quite sincere in believing that they are fighting for their rights?'
"The burly Inspector snorted. 'Don't make me sick,' he grunted. 'They're just a gang of toughs looting and killing for what they can make out of it. They're not patriots, they're criminals.'
"'I suppose that you served in the Royal Irish Constabulary, didn't you?' I asked. 'Most of the officers of the Palestine Police seem to have done so.'
"'I did,' he said, 'and it was a far better and safer job than this one.'
"'Some of the men who were hanged during the Troubles of 1919, '20 and '21, were also condemned as criminals,' I said gently. 'Kevin Barry and the rest.'
"'That was different, they were white men,' the Inspector snorted.
"'You mean that they are heroes nowadays, noble patriots, held as martyrs by their fellows, because they were white men - and, conversely, that the Arabs, whom you are hanging, are ruffianly murderers because their skins are brown?' I inquired.
"'Go to Hell!' he said, and turned upon his heel.
"I passed out of Hell, instead, by recrossing the narrow bridge, and, as I emerged on to the rampart walk, felt a dirty, greasy cloud lifting off my spirit." (Palestine Unveiled, Douglas V. Duff, 1938, pp 72-74)
"I was glad to get away, especially after my tour [of Acre prison] was ended by my being shown the execution chamber, and the gallows on which so many men have died. One piece of probably unwitting savagery jarred upon me. The condemned cells are cages in the vestibule to the execution-chamber. There are two of them, and if, as often happens, there is more than one execution to be carried out on a certain morning, the second or subsequent victim, must suffer the agonies of the damned - for he can see his comrade in evil fortune taken out, hear all that takes place on the farther side of the black door - and then die himself a hundred times before the bolts of his cage are shot back, and it is his turn to suffer.
"The British Inspector who took me round told me that there had been as many as 3 executions on one morning, one of them being the time when 3 men were hanged for their parts in the 1929 rebellion. 'It's not fair,' he said. 'In an English prison the governor and deputy-governor have a far easier time than Jock and I have here with these continued executions.
"'What do you mean?' I asked.
"'In England,' he replied, 'it is bad enough. Like us, a prison governor there gets to know the man who is going to be hanged. You see him every day. You know his motives and his own feelings - often a murderer is not nearly so bad a criminal as a professional thief or blackmailer, let alone a dope-dealer or a white-slaver. He's often some poor devil who has killed in a sudden fit of overmastering passion, jealousy or rage - I often feel like saying 'there but for the grace of Allah goes little me.'
"'As I say, you get to know the man, his relatives, and his own worries and family-troubles, and then you've got to kill him with your own hands, for we British officers have to act as executioners, not just stand by and watch like our opposite numbers do in England. It's a rotten job, believe me. I'm pretty tough, but I'd give anything to be really sick on an execution morning, so that I could beg off the spectacle.
"'Surely you don't get much chance to weep over the troubles of the fellows who are tried by the Military Courts?' I said.
"His face set grimly. 'No, and there'd be no tears in any case for that bunch of crooks. I want no excuse to miss their hangings, believe me.'
"'But why?' I asked. 'Aren't they quite sincere in believing that they are fighting for their rights?'
"The burly Inspector snorted. 'Don't make me sick,' he grunted. 'They're just a gang of toughs looting and killing for what they can make out of it. They're not patriots, they're criminals.'
"'I suppose that you served in the Royal Irish Constabulary, didn't you?' I asked. 'Most of the officers of the Palestine Police seem to have done so.'
"'I did,' he said, 'and it was a far better and safer job than this one.'
"'Some of the men who were hanged during the Troubles of 1919, '20 and '21, were also condemned as criminals,' I said gently. 'Kevin Barry and the rest.'
"'That was different, they were white men,' the Inspector snorted.
"'You mean that they are heroes nowadays, noble patriots, held as martyrs by their fellows, because they were white men - and, conversely, that the Arabs, whom you are hanging, are ruffianly murderers because their skins are brown?' I inquired.
"'Go to Hell!' he said, and turned upon his heel.
"I passed out of Hell, instead, by recrossing the narrow bridge, and, as I emerged on to the rampart walk, felt a dirty, greasy cloud lifting off my spirit." (Palestine Unveiled, Douglas V. Duff, 1938, pp 72-74)
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Greg Sheridan's Worst Nightmare
Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan is a troubled man these days. The Australian's foreign editor is wracked by this terrible thought:
"Ireland is the land of my ancestors. I still have close family connections there. Without any qualification, I love Ireland deeply. It has, sadly, again fallen on tough economic times, but it is facing up to them resolutely. And it remains an astonishing source of culture. But if it elects [Martin] McGuiness, a former IRA terrorist, as president, for the first time in my life I will be thoroughly ashamed of the Irish... If they elect a wretched terrorist like McGuiness, the Irish will have demonstrated a loss of faith in themselves, their own inherent decency and moderation." (A figurehead should not be elected, The Australian, 27/10/11)
Needless to say, as far as I'm aware, Sheridan's never had a problem with Israeli terrorists, such as Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, becoming prime ministers of his even more beloved Israel (1977-83 & 1986-92 respectively), so there you go.
That aside, if I were Sheridan, I'd be consoling myself with the thought that things could be worse - much worse. How about an anti-Zionist for governor-general of Australia? Or worse still, how about a governor-general who actually was an anti-Zionist?
And why raise what for Sheridan must be the ultimate in nightmare scenarios?
Well, in the same column, having noted that the Irish presidency is largely ceremonial, he blithely alludes to "the solid steady people who have been our governors general - Quentin Bryce, Mike Jeffery, Bill Hayden, Zelman Cowan, going all the way back to Isaac Isaacs," seemingly unaware that the first of these native-born G-Gs, Isaac Isaacs (G-G: 1931-36), who was a Jew, was also an anti-Zionist!
The following quotes, which may be found at isaacisaacs.blogspot.com reveal that not only was Isaac Isaacs solid and steady, but remarkably clear-thinking and utterly principled as well:
"[T]here is no warrant, legal or moral, for making Palestine a Jewish State, any more than an Arab State, but there is every reason for making it what the Mandate terms it, a Palestinian nationality, that is bi-national..." (The Nationality of the Australian Jew, 9/9/47)
"[Political Zionism] has run the entire gamut of racial nationalism from the... very modest hope of restoration of Palestine as the centre of a new, positive, and intensive Jewish cultural life to the extreme theory of Jewish nationalism practically identical with Nazist and Fascist theory, which holds that the bonds of Jewish racial nationalism are eternally indissoluble, that there can only be ever one Jewish homeland, only one land in which the Jew can ever feel himself completely at home, that eternally he is a member of the Jewish racial nation, however that term may be defined, that he resides among the nations, as at present, only a temporary sojourner, that he is in Diaspora, in 'Galut', in exile, and that Israel's redemption from the sad fate of the last 1500 years or even the last 2500 years will be only when it will be restored to the role of completely and predominately Jewish independent statehood in Palestine, in whatever form and however achieved this Statehood may take, Commonwealth, Republic, or Dominion." (Palestine: Peace & Prosperity or War & Destruction? Political Zionism: Undemocratic, Unjust, Dangerous, p 23-4, 14/1/46)
"A most serious responsibility... for affording a just and acceptable basis for a peaceful and harmonious solution rests primarily on the shoulders of Political Zionism because it is actively pressing for political measures intended to swamp the Arab population [of Palestine]..." (ibid, p 5)
"[The demands of political Zionism are] inconsistent in demanding on one hand, on a basis of a separate Jewish nationality everywhere Jews are found, Jewish domination in Palestine, and at the same time claiming complete Jewish equality elsewhere than in Palestine, on the basis of a nationality common to the citizens of every faith." (ibid, p 11)
"Ireland is the land of my ancestors. I still have close family connections there. Without any qualification, I love Ireland deeply. It has, sadly, again fallen on tough economic times, but it is facing up to them resolutely. And it remains an astonishing source of culture. But if it elects [Martin] McGuiness, a former IRA terrorist, as president, for the first time in my life I will be thoroughly ashamed of the Irish... If they elect a wretched terrorist like McGuiness, the Irish will have demonstrated a loss of faith in themselves, their own inherent decency and moderation." (A figurehead should not be elected, The Australian, 27/10/11)
Needless to say, as far as I'm aware, Sheridan's never had a problem with Israeli terrorists, such as Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, becoming prime ministers of his even more beloved Israel (1977-83 & 1986-92 respectively), so there you go.
That aside, if I were Sheridan, I'd be consoling myself with the thought that things could be worse - much worse. How about an anti-Zionist for governor-general of Australia? Or worse still, how about a governor-general who actually was an anti-Zionist?
And why raise what for Sheridan must be the ultimate in nightmare scenarios?
Well, in the same column, having noted that the Irish presidency is largely ceremonial, he blithely alludes to "the solid steady people who have been our governors general - Quentin Bryce, Mike Jeffery, Bill Hayden, Zelman Cowan, going all the way back to Isaac Isaacs," seemingly unaware that the first of these native-born G-Gs, Isaac Isaacs (G-G: 1931-36), who was a Jew, was also an anti-Zionist!
The following quotes, which may be found at isaacisaacs.blogspot.com reveal that not only was Isaac Isaacs solid and steady, but remarkably clear-thinking and utterly principled as well:
"[T]here is no warrant, legal or moral, for making Palestine a Jewish State, any more than an Arab State, but there is every reason for making it what the Mandate terms it, a Palestinian nationality, that is bi-national..." (The Nationality of the Australian Jew, 9/9/47)
"[Political Zionism] has run the entire gamut of racial nationalism from the... very modest hope of restoration of Palestine as the centre of a new, positive, and intensive Jewish cultural life to the extreme theory of Jewish nationalism practically identical with Nazist and Fascist theory, which holds that the bonds of Jewish racial nationalism are eternally indissoluble, that there can only be ever one Jewish homeland, only one land in which the Jew can ever feel himself completely at home, that eternally he is a member of the Jewish racial nation, however that term may be defined, that he resides among the nations, as at present, only a temporary sojourner, that he is in Diaspora, in 'Galut', in exile, and that Israel's redemption from the sad fate of the last 1500 years or even the last 2500 years will be only when it will be restored to the role of completely and predominately Jewish independent statehood in Palestine, in whatever form and however achieved this Statehood may take, Commonwealth, Republic, or Dominion." (Palestine: Peace & Prosperity or War & Destruction? Political Zionism: Undemocratic, Unjust, Dangerous, p 23-4, 14/1/46)
"A most serious responsibility... for affording a just and acceptable basis for a peaceful and harmonious solution rests primarily on the shoulders of Political Zionism because it is actively pressing for political measures intended to swamp the Arab population [of Palestine]..." (ibid, p 5)
"[The demands of political Zionism are] inconsistent in demanding on one hand, on a basis of a separate Jewish nationality everywhere Jews are found, Jewish domination in Palestine, and at the same time claiming complete Jewish equality elsewhere than in Palestine, on the basis of a nationality common to the citizens of every faith." (ibid, p 11)
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Israel's Useful Fool
"Responding to international demands, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday appointed a commission to investigate the naval interdiction of a Gaza-bound humanitarian convoy two weeks ago that left 9 dead. In addition to three Israeli members, the commission will include two foreigners as official observers - David Trimble, a Northern Island Unionist leader who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1998, and retired general Ken Watkin of Canada, a former judge advocate-general. It is the first time Israel has given foreign experts a place in an official probe, reflecting the political sensitivity of the issue, which has stirred anti-Israel sentiment worldwide." (Israel appoints flotilla inquiry, Abraham Rabinovich, The Australian, 15/6/10)
So why Trimble? Well, he's just crazy about Israel:
"Initiated and led by Spain's former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, a group of international leaders is to meet in Paris on Monday night to launch the 'Friends of Israel Initiative', a new project in defense of Israel's right to exist. The leaders - who include the Nobel Peace Prize laureate David Trimble, Peru's former president Alejandro Toledo, Italian philosopher Marcelo Pear, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and British historian Andrew Roberts - say they seek to counter the attempts to deligitimize the State of Israel and its right to live in peace within safe and defensible borders." (Anzar, Trimble to launch new pro-Israel project 'Friends of Israel', Jerusalem Post, 31/5/10)
And Trimble's got form. You know in advance he's not that big on justice and he's not going to do a Goldstone on you:
"The long-awaited report into the Bloody Sunday massacre [Derry, January 1972] will conclude that a number of the fatal shootings of civilians by British soldiers were unlawful killings, the Guardian has learned. Lord Saville's 12-year inquiry into the deaths, the longest public inquiry in British legal history, will conclude with a report published next Tuesday, putting severe pressure on the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland to prosecute soldiers. Lord Trimble, the former leader of the Ulster Unionists and one of the architects of the Good Friday agreement, revealed to the Guardian that when Tony Blair agreed to the inquiry in 1998, he warned the then prime minister that any conclusion that departed 'one millimetre' from the earlier 1972 Widgery report into the killings would lead to 'soldiers in the dock'." (Bloody Sunday killings to be ruled unlawful, guardian.co.uk, 10/6/10)
So why Trimble? Well, he's just crazy about Israel:
"Initiated and led by Spain's former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, a group of international leaders is to meet in Paris on Monday night to launch the 'Friends of Israel Initiative', a new project in defense of Israel's right to exist. The leaders - who include the Nobel Peace Prize laureate David Trimble, Peru's former president Alejandro Toledo, Italian philosopher Marcelo Pear, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and British historian Andrew Roberts - say they seek to counter the attempts to deligitimize the State of Israel and its right to live in peace within safe and defensible borders." (Anzar, Trimble to launch new pro-Israel project 'Friends of Israel', Jerusalem Post, 31/5/10)
And Trimble's got form. You know in advance he's not that big on justice and he's not going to do a Goldstone on you:
"The long-awaited report into the Bloody Sunday massacre [Derry, January 1972] will conclude that a number of the fatal shootings of civilians by British soldiers were unlawful killings, the Guardian has learned. Lord Saville's 12-year inquiry into the deaths, the longest public inquiry in British legal history, will conclude with a report published next Tuesday, putting severe pressure on the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland to prosecute soldiers. Lord Trimble, the former leader of the Ulster Unionists and one of the architects of the Good Friday agreement, revealed to the Guardian that when Tony Blair agreed to the inquiry in 1998, he warned the then prime minister that any conclusion that departed 'one millimetre' from the earlier 1972 Widgery report into the killings would lead to 'soldiers in the dock'." (Bloody Sunday killings to be ruled unlawful, guardian.co.uk, 10/6/10)
Friday, February 5, 2010
Hell-Disaster
Sir Ronald Storrs, the British Governor of Jerusalem from 1918-1926, relates the following anecdote in his memoirs: "Early in the afternoon the Chief Administrator [Sir Louis J Bols] formally handed over the Administration to the High Commissioner. He had humorously prepared for Sir Herbert [Samuel] a typewritten receipt for 'one Palestine taken over in good condition', which Sir Herbert duly signed, adding 'E. and O.E.'. The Staff lined up for his departure and cheered him farewell as he drove past the gate-house and down the hill for the last time; and O.E.T.E. [Occupied Enemy Territory Administration], as O.E.T.E, ceased to exist. Though mostly the same men sat, still in uniform, performing the same tasks at the same desks, we became from 1 July 1920 a Civil Government, which it was my privilege to assist in establishing upon a firm and, we hoped, lasting basis." (Orientations, 1939, p 405)
Palestine may have been taken over in good condition by its new civilian government in 1920, but twenty-eight years later, in 1948, it experienced another kind of takeover entirely. While Palestine's transition from British military to British civilian government in 1920 was obviously a jolly occasion for Storrs, for another Briton, wartime leader Winston Churchill, Palestine's transition from British Mandate to Jewish State in 1948 (while he was opposition leader) was anything but.
Churchill's views on the matter emerge in the correspondence of Zionist supremo Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) from 1920-31/1935-46, and first president of Israel:
In a 9/7/48 letter to his personal assistant, Meyer Weisgal, a peeved Weizmann wrote: "Incidentally, I would like to ask you whether there is much in the book concerning Mr Churchill, his relations with us and particularly me personally. I am asking this question because Mr Churchill's book has just appeared and there is not a single word in it either about Zionism or about Palestine or about his various negotiations with me throughout these years. It is no doubt a studied omission; possibly something may appear in his other volumes, but I doubt it. Should my supposition be true, I think I ought to say something about it in the epilogue. It will no doubt produce an outburst on the part of Winston, but I really do not care. Please advise me on the matter."
That Churchill, a confirmed Zionist, was not exactly over the moon about the manner and/or circumstances of the Zionist takeover of Palestine in 1948 is evident in a 29/7/48 letter to Weizmann from Walter Elliot, a member of Churchill's shadow cabinet: "I was recently talking to Winston, and mentioned the fact, which I had heard from Miss Solomon, that he had sent no message to you. 'Send him', said Winston, 'my warmest personal regards'. 'But', he said, 'the Palestine position now, as concerns Great Britain, is simply such a hell-disaster that I cannot take it up again or renew my efforts of 20 years. It is a situation which I myself cannot help in, and must, as far as I can, put out of my mind. But send Weizmann himself my warm regards'. I thought you would wish to know his personal feelings. He regards the mishandling of Palestine by the present Government as simply appalling. But he is conscious of possessing only a limited amount of energy now, and feels the necessity of concentrating it where it can have effect. His phrase 'a hell-disaster' was very expressive - it is his view of a position where only injury, and fruitless laceration of spirit, will result from an attempt to retrieve what has been done."
Weizmann, smooth operator that he was, put out a feeler to Churchill in the following letter, dated 6/8/48: "I was more than delighted to receive Mr Walter Elliot's message from you. This emboldens me to address these few lines to you. I meant to write before but I somehow felt instinctively that you do not wish to enter into a discussion of Palestine affairs. I understand and respect this sentiment and have no desire of raising these problems in this letter. I would like however to say that I wholeheartedly agree with your definition of the situation as a 'hell-disaster'.
"My mind goes back to the time when British statesmen like Mr Lloyd George, Mr Balfour and yourself had laid the foundation of the Jewish National Home, and in spite of many vicissitudes and very serious difficulties it has progressed and can enjoy the privilege of statehood. It is a small country surrounded by many enemies and will have to ward off deadly perils, but the major part of the Jewish population of Palestine are men of courage, vision and integrity, and they face an enemy who may be numerically far superior but possesses no stamina or courage. The headlong flight of hundreds of thousands of Arabs from Palestine at the mere approach of the Jewish army and the very poor military performance of Egypt in spite of its wealth and equipment testifies to the quality and the spirit of the Arab world; this is the spirit we have been hearing so much about for the last 25 years.
"It is a matter of deep distress to me, who laboured for a quarter of a century for cooperation between the Jewish and the British peoples, to see this work at any rate temporarily jeopardized. Instead of making the new state a friendly outpost of Great Britain in the East, the present Government prefers to build on the quicksands of Arab loyalty.
"I shall not weary you with an examination of the causes which have produced such a tragic situation. I pray that it may prove merely a temporary aberration, and that the tradition of friendship which began with Cromwell and continued for so many years will revive under the pressure of realities.
"Permit me to say, that you as practically the only survivor of this great group of architects in the British Isles might find it possible some day to overcome your present understandable reluctance, and speak to us as only you can do, about the ways we have to tread.
"I have very little to say for myself. A heavy burden not of my seeking has fallen on my shoulders and I intend to do my best in guiding the first steps of the young State on the path of peace, integrity and good intelligence with the world at large.
"I have little hope at present that our Arab neighbours will change their attitude. Only when they see that their fellow Arabs in the Jewish State are treated on equality with the Jewish citizens may they possibly change their minds...
"I have always believed that Providence selects the small countries to dispense its most precious gifts to humanity. Athens was merely one small city and Palestine was always a poor country subjected to pressure from North and South; yet what they gave to the world is still the bedrock of human civilization. It is thrilling to think, that after a desert in time of two thousand years, the ancient glories of Jewish culture may be revived again in a modern form."
There is no evidence of a response to Weizmann's sweet talk. Palestine, it seems, had stuck in Churchill's craw. From 'one Palestine... in good condition' to 'hell-disaster' perfectly sums up the legacy of imperial Britain's love affair with Zionism, an affair in which he played no small part.
To return to Ronald Storrs. I wonder if that colonial official's oft-quoted remark about the Zionist "enterprise" in Palestine "forming for England 'a little loyal Jewish Ulster' in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism"* ever crossed Churchill's mind at this time. If so, it must have sounded more like: a little disloyal Jewish ulcer in a sea of understandably hostile Arabism. [*Orientations, p 358]
[See also my 29/1/10 post Churchill: No Quarter for Zionists]
Palestine may have been taken over in good condition by its new civilian government in 1920, but twenty-eight years later, in 1948, it experienced another kind of takeover entirely. While Palestine's transition from British military to British civilian government in 1920 was obviously a jolly occasion for Storrs, for another Briton, wartime leader Winston Churchill, Palestine's transition from British Mandate to Jewish State in 1948 (while he was opposition leader) was anything but.
Churchill's views on the matter emerge in the correspondence of Zionist supremo Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) from 1920-31/1935-46, and first president of Israel:
In a 9/7/48 letter to his personal assistant, Meyer Weisgal, a peeved Weizmann wrote: "Incidentally, I would like to ask you whether there is much in the book concerning Mr Churchill, his relations with us and particularly me personally. I am asking this question because Mr Churchill's book has just appeared and there is not a single word in it either about Zionism or about Palestine or about his various negotiations with me throughout these years. It is no doubt a studied omission; possibly something may appear in his other volumes, but I doubt it. Should my supposition be true, I think I ought to say something about it in the epilogue. It will no doubt produce an outburst on the part of Winston, but I really do not care. Please advise me on the matter."
That Churchill, a confirmed Zionist, was not exactly over the moon about the manner and/or circumstances of the Zionist takeover of Palestine in 1948 is evident in a 29/7/48 letter to Weizmann from Walter Elliot, a member of Churchill's shadow cabinet: "I was recently talking to Winston, and mentioned the fact, which I had heard from Miss Solomon, that he had sent no message to you. 'Send him', said Winston, 'my warmest personal regards'. 'But', he said, 'the Palestine position now, as concerns Great Britain, is simply such a hell-disaster that I cannot take it up again or renew my efforts of 20 years. It is a situation which I myself cannot help in, and must, as far as I can, put out of my mind. But send Weizmann himself my warm regards'. I thought you would wish to know his personal feelings. He regards the mishandling of Palestine by the present Government as simply appalling. But he is conscious of possessing only a limited amount of energy now, and feels the necessity of concentrating it where it can have effect. His phrase 'a hell-disaster' was very expressive - it is his view of a position where only injury, and fruitless laceration of spirit, will result from an attempt to retrieve what has been done."
Weizmann, smooth operator that he was, put out a feeler to Churchill in the following letter, dated 6/8/48: "I was more than delighted to receive Mr Walter Elliot's message from you. This emboldens me to address these few lines to you. I meant to write before but I somehow felt instinctively that you do not wish to enter into a discussion of Palestine affairs. I understand and respect this sentiment and have no desire of raising these problems in this letter. I would like however to say that I wholeheartedly agree with your definition of the situation as a 'hell-disaster'.
"My mind goes back to the time when British statesmen like Mr Lloyd George, Mr Balfour and yourself had laid the foundation of the Jewish National Home, and in spite of many vicissitudes and very serious difficulties it has progressed and can enjoy the privilege of statehood. It is a small country surrounded by many enemies and will have to ward off deadly perils, but the major part of the Jewish population of Palestine are men of courage, vision and integrity, and they face an enemy who may be numerically far superior but possesses no stamina or courage. The headlong flight of hundreds of thousands of Arabs from Palestine at the mere approach of the Jewish army and the very poor military performance of Egypt in spite of its wealth and equipment testifies to the quality and the spirit of the Arab world; this is the spirit we have been hearing so much about for the last 25 years.
"It is a matter of deep distress to me, who laboured for a quarter of a century for cooperation between the Jewish and the British peoples, to see this work at any rate temporarily jeopardized. Instead of making the new state a friendly outpost of Great Britain in the East, the present Government prefers to build on the quicksands of Arab loyalty.
"I shall not weary you with an examination of the causes which have produced such a tragic situation. I pray that it may prove merely a temporary aberration, and that the tradition of friendship which began with Cromwell and continued for so many years will revive under the pressure of realities.
"Permit me to say, that you as practically the only survivor of this great group of architects in the British Isles might find it possible some day to overcome your present understandable reluctance, and speak to us as only you can do, about the ways we have to tread.
"I have very little to say for myself. A heavy burden not of my seeking has fallen on my shoulders and I intend to do my best in guiding the first steps of the young State on the path of peace, integrity and good intelligence with the world at large.
"I have little hope at present that our Arab neighbours will change their attitude. Only when they see that their fellow Arabs in the Jewish State are treated on equality with the Jewish citizens may they possibly change their minds...
"I have always believed that Providence selects the small countries to dispense its most precious gifts to humanity. Athens was merely one small city and Palestine was always a poor country subjected to pressure from North and South; yet what they gave to the world is still the bedrock of human civilization. It is thrilling to think, that after a desert in time of two thousand years, the ancient glories of Jewish culture may be revived again in a modern form."
There is no evidence of a response to Weizmann's sweet talk. Palestine, it seems, had stuck in Churchill's craw. From 'one Palestine... in good condition' to 'hell-disaster' perfectly sums up the legacy of imperial Britain's love affair with Zionism, an affair in which he played no small part.
To return to Ronald Storrs. I wonder if that colonial official's oft-quoted remark about the Zionist "enterprise" in Palestine "forming for England 'a little loyal Jewish Ulster' in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism"* ever crossed Churchill's mind at this time. If so, it must have sounded more like: a little disloyal Jewish ulcer in a sea of understandably hostile Arabism. [*Orientations, p 358]
[See also my 29/1/10 post Churchill: No Quarter for Zionists]
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Sheridan in Love 3
"Israel is also the only Western nation in the Middle East (with the exception of substantial but minority parts of Lebanon). Israel is the only national expression of Western values, and indeed Western power, in today's Middle East. These terms can be confusing. The West aspires to universal values of democracy and human rights..." (Israel still looks good, warts & all, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, The Australian Literary Review, 6/5/09)
Yes, as a colonial-settler offshoot of Europe, Israel may be the only "Western nation in the Middle East," but how the hell "substantial parts of Lebanon" make it into the same category is beyond me. That aside, as soon as Sheridan trots out ideological constructs such as 'the West', and so-called "Western values," you know you're in clash-of-civilizations territory, where, in the words of Edward Said, "the personification of enormous entities called 'the West' and 'Islam' is recklessly affirmed, as if hugely complicated matters like identity and culture existed in a cartoonlike world where Popeye and Bluto bash each other mercilessly, with one always more virtuous pugilist getting the upper hand over his adversary." (The Clash of Ignorance, The Nation, 22/10/01) In the reductive, us-and-them world of The Australian's foreign editor and neocon magician, over two centuries of bloody European/US meddling, invasion, domination, and control in the Middle East are spirited away as he conjures up a seductive vision of democracy and human rights, to which an entity dubbed 'the West' is supposed to eternally aspire.
Integral to this fantastic vision is the absurd suggestion that Israel, a settler-colonial ethnocracy, which has been dispossessing and oppressing the indigenous Palestinian Arab people for over 60 years, is acting as some sort of vector for democracy and human rights in the Middle East. It is perhaps useful, at this point, to recall Israel's job description, courtesy of Sir Ronald Storrs, the first British Governor of Jerusalem : "It will form for England a little Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism."
As US academic Con Hallinan explains: "Storrs' analogy was no accident. Ireland was where the English invented the tactic of divide and rule, and where the devastating effectiveness of using foreign settlers to drive a wedge between the colonial rulers and the colonized made it a template for worldwide imperial rule. Ariel Sharon and former Prime Minister Menachem Begin normally take credit for creating the 'facts on the ground' policies that have poured more than 420,000 settlers into the Occupied Territories. But they were simply copying Charles I, the English king, who in 1609 forcibly removed the O'Neill and O'Donnell clans from the north of Ireland, moved in 20,000 English and Scottish protestants, and founded the Plantation of Ulster. Protestants were awarded the 'Ulster privilege' which gave them special access to land and lower rents, and also served to divide them from the native Catholics. The 'Ulster privilege' is not dissimilar to the kind of 'privileges' Israeli settlers enjoy in the Territories today, where their mortgages are cheap, their taxes lower and their education subsidized. Prior to the Ulster experiment, the English had tried any number of schemes to tame the restive Irish and build a wall between conqueror and conquered. All of them failed. Then the English hit on the idea of using ethnicity, religion and privilege to construct a society with built-in divisions. It worked like a charm. Once the English hit on the tactic of using ethnic and religious differences to divide a population, the conquest of Ireland became a reality. Within 250 years, that formula would be transported to India, Africa, and the Middle East. It was 'divide and conquer' that made it possible for an insignificant island in the north of Europe to rule the world. Division and chaos, tribal, religious and ethnic hatred, were the secret to empire. It would appear the Israelis have paid close attention to English colonial policy because their policies in the Occupied Territories bear a distressing resemblance to British policies in Ireland." (Divide & conquer: common imperial rules for the 21st century, onlineopinion.com.au, 29/7/04)
Yes, as a colonial-settler offshoot of Europe, Israel may be the only "Western nation in the Middle East," but how the hell "substantial parts of Lebanon" make it into the same category is beyond me. That aside, as soon as Sheridan trots out ideological constructs such as 'the West', and so-called "Western values," you know you're in clash-of-civilizations territory, where, in the words of Edward Said, "the personification of enormous entities called 'the West' and 'Islam' is recklessly affirmed, as if hugely complicated matters like identity and culture existed in a cartoonlike world where Popeye and Bluto bash each other mercilessly, with one always more virtuous pugilist getting the upper hand over his adversary." (The Clash of Ignorance, The Nation, 22/10/01) In the reductive, us-and-them world of The Australian's foreign editor and neocon magician, over two centuries of bloody European/US meddling, invasion, domination, and control in the Middle East are spirited away as he conjures up a seductive vision of democracy and human rights, to which an entity dubbed 'the West' is supposed to eternally aspire.
Integral to this fantastic vision is the absurd suggestion that Israel, a settler-colonial ethnocracy, which has been dispossessing and oppressing the indigenous Palestinian Arab people for over 60 years, is acting as some sort of vector for democracy and human rights in the Middle East. It is perhaps useful, at this point, to recall Israel's job description, courtesy of Sir Ronald Storrs, the first British Governor of Jerusalem : "It will form for England a little Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism."
As US academic Con Hallinan explains: "Storrs' analogy was no accident. Ireland was where the English invented the tactic of divide and rule, and where the devastating effectiveness of using foreign settlers to drive a wedge between the colonial rulers and the colonized made it a template for worldwide imperial rule. Ariel Sharon and former Prime Minister Menachem Begin normally take credit for creating the 'facts on the ground' policies that have poured more than 420,000 settlers into the Occupied Territories. But they were simply copying Charles I, the English king, who in 1609 forcibly removed the O'Neill and O'Donnell clans from the north of Ireland, moved in 20,000 English and Scottish protestants, and founded the Plantation of Ulster. Protestants were awarded the 'Ulster privilege' which gave them special access to land and lower rents, and also served to divide them from the native Catholics. The 'Ulster privilege' is not dissimilar to the kind of 'privileges' Israeli settlers enjoy in the Territories today, where their mortgages are cheap, their taxes lower and their education subsidized. Prior to the Ulster experiment, the English had tried any number of schemes to tame the restive Irish and build a wall between conqueror and conquered. All of them failed. Then the English hit on the idea of using ethnicity, religion and privilege to construct a society with built-in divisions. It worked like a charm. Once the English hit on the tactic of using ethnic and religious differences to divide a population, the conquest of Ireland became a reality. Within 250 years, that formula would be transported to India, Africa, and the Middle East. It was 'divide and conquer' that made it possible for an insignificant island in the north of Europe to rule the world. Division and chaos, tribal, religious and ethnic hatred, were the secret to empire. It would appear the Israelis have paid close attention to English colonial policy because their policies in the Occupied Territories bear a distressing resemblance to British policies in Ireland." (Divide & conquer: common imperial rules for the 21st century, onlineopinion.com.au, 29/7/04)
Monday, January 26, 2009
The Luck of the Palestinians
Since Obama became prez, things are looking up for the Palestinians:-
Obama has just made former senator George Mitchell his Middle East envoy. Media accounts here suggest he's eminently qualified for (as one journalist put it) "the hardest job on the planet" because a) he headed peace negotiations between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Island that led to the 1998 Good Friday accord; and b) he wrote a report, which dared to name names, on illegal steroid use in baseball. Impressive, no?
The 'Yes we can' Mitchell is very much evident in the following sound-byte. Here's how it was reported in The Sydney Morning Herald: "[Mitchell] also noted by way of a joke, that the 800 years of fighting in Northern Ireland made it a relatively young dispute compared with the Middle East. 'Eight hundred years may be recent, but from my experience there, I formed a conviction that there is no such thing as a conflict that can't be ended'." (Envoy, 75, says 'yes we can' end conflict, Ann Davies, 24/1/09) And here is The Australian's version: "A story told by Mitchell yesterday puts his new challenge into perspective. On a recent trip to Israel, he gave a speech about Northern Ireland and what it was like trying to resolve the enmities that had been passed from generation to generation. After the speech, an Israeli man came up to him. How long had that dispute been going on, he asked. Mitchell replied: 800 years. The Israeli man said: such a short time." (Best chance for Mid-East peace, John Lyons, 24/1/09) Bonza story, George, Did the typically witty Israeli shrug his shoulders too?
Now as much as I hate to spoil a party, in my capacity as MERC I'm obliged to pick Mitchell up on this particular sound-byte. If Santayana is correct in his assertion that Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, then I'm afraid that, if for no other reason (and that's another story), his inability to remember the past could mean that, like all who have gone before him, his efforts will be in vain.
There are two aspects to Mitchell's ignorance of history here. The obvious one relates to Palestinian history, where he is quoted as saying that the problem of Northern Ireland, at 800 years (and I'll get to that in a minute), is younger than the Palestine problem, the implication being that the conflict in Palestine is one whose origins are somehow swathed in the proverbial mists of time. If Mitchell really believes this rubbish, then he is clearly not qualified to be Middle East peace envoy.
So just how old is the Palestine problem, or Middle East conflict, or Arab-Israeli dispute - call it what you will? Only 92 years old if we reckon from Britain's idiotic Balfour Declaration of 1917, promising the nascent Zionist movement a Jewish 'homeland' in Palestine, or, if we take it from the Zionist takeover of 78% of Palestine in 1948, a mere 60 years old. Has Mitchell ever read one reputable study of the issue? Just one for Christ's sake? It appears not. If that sound-byte is anything to go by, Obama's 'We can do peace' man hasn't got a clue as to how Palestine became a problem in the first place. How reassuring.
But that's not all. Remember the bit about the Northern Ireland problem being 800 years old? Really? There was an Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th Century, but as Irish historian Liam de Paor has pointed out "Late medieval Ulster was for the most part Gaelic... and beyond English law." (Divided Ulster, 1970, p 3) In fact, to move forward, "Ulster at the beginning of the 17th century was... the last Gaelic area to come under the control of the English administration. Its economy was pastoral.. It had no towns. For a thousand years its people had lived under Irish law... For a thousand years they had, in their own fashion... been Christian - Catholic. There were ancient churches, there were medieval friaries and abbeys. There were some, a few, stone castles, but lake dwellings and raths were still inhabited and had been defended in the war [of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, against Queen Elizabeth]. The Reformation had made as little headway as other innovations among the Ulster forests. The long war had brought hunger, disease, and... despair. England now had a king who was king of Scotland, and early in the century lowland Scots from King James's northern kingdom began to change the whole character of Ulster. This came about partly through... the policy of plantation... By means which were, as often as not, unscrupulous, a great deal of land in the 2 counties [of Antrim and Down] was acquired from its Irish proprietors and a determined immigration and energetic colonization by lowland [Presbyterian] Scots followed... The situation thus established in early 17th-century Ulster was an easy one... those who settled the confiscated lands lived among a hostile people who harboured a deep sense of wrong. The situation has often been compared to the early colonists of North America, whose little settlements lived under threat of Indian attack." (ibid, pp 4-8) It could as easily have been compared with the pre-state Zionist colonization of Palestine in the 20s, 30s and 40s. The point I wish to make, however, is that the Northern Ireland problem had its roots in the 17th century. Which made it around 370 years old when the 'Troubles' erupted there in 1968.
But hey, what the hell, he sorted out Northern Ireland anyway, didn't he?
How fortunate then are the Palestinians to have a peace envoy for whom a grasp of history is neither here (Palestine) nor there (Ireland)? But there's more, because, according to The Australian, "[t]he appointment of... George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East has raised the possibility that he will team up with former British prime minister Tony Blair in a peace initiative drawing on their experience of ending the Troubles in Northern Ireland." (Blair's Mid-East peace bid helped by Mitchell posting, Sarah Baxter, 26/1/09) Not to mention Blair's experience as Middle East representative of the so-called quartet (US, EU, Russia & the UN)!
With Blair as his sidekick, Mitchell will have the benefit of the latter's clarity of thought and unique perspective on the Palestine problem, which comes through loud and clear in this interview with the ABC's Geraldine Doogue: "Probably for me the key lesson which I understand better now... with my new role out in the Middle East peace process is just the deep roots of the problem, of the struggle that's going on within Islam, the relationship between Islam and the West, and therefore I think September 11 was an extraordinary and tragic and terrible event and for the first time we got to know about this extremism and its nature. But I think I didn't understand sufficiently at the time, I think other people didn't, the depth of it, and how long it had been building. I think it's very clear to me now that this is something that has been building up over decades, that it's got a multiplicity of different roots, round not just the Middle East region, but the wider world, that it is very much a struggle to do with how we come to terms with peaceful coexistence in the world, and that it has a strong religious dimension to it. I know in one sense that's obvious, but sometimes people say, 'Well, it's not really religious, it's to do with politics or deprivation or a sense of injustice', and all of those things are facets, but I think at heart it is indeed, a religious phenomenon." (Radio National, 20/9/08)
But it gets even better: "[Mitchell] is regarded as an honest broker in the Middle East - as the son of an American janitor and a Christian Lebanese-American mother, he has a nuanced understanding of the region's problems." (Baxter, ibid)
Alas, all is not as it seems. Just when you're thinking the Palestinians couldn't get any luckier, what with Mitchell being half Arab, comes that right pooper of Middle East parties, The Angry Arab, with this anecdote from 2006: "Back to the daily From Lebanon segment on LBC-TV, which features 'rich and famous' Lebanese, even if they are not Lebanese. Today it featured former Senator George J Mitchell from Maine. Here is a story about Sen. Mitchell (whose mother emigrated from Lebanon). A former student of mine in Washington DC was working part-time in the US Senate. He was half-Lebanese. He once found himself in the same elevator with Sen. Mitchell, and he greeted him warmly and asked him: 'Do you speak Arabic? I heard that you are Lebanese'. Very rudely, Sen. Mitchell told him: 'I am Irish. I am not Lebanese'." (The Angry Arab News Service, 11/4/06) Irish, begosh, begorrah!
So let's pull all this together: Obama, who has sworn to love, honour & obey Israel, appoints Mitchell, an Irishman, who knows nothing about Ireland or Palestine (and is most emphatically not Lebanese) to solve the Palestine problem. And in this noble endeavour, he will be ably assisted by Blair of Basra, failed prime minister and co-destroyer of Iraq, who also knows nothing about Palestine and sounds like a suitable case for treatment.
The Palestinians should be so lucky.
Obama has just made former senator George Mitchell his Middle East envoy. Media accounts here suggest he's eminently qualified for (as one journalist put it) "the hardest job on the planet" because a) he headed peace negotiations between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Island that led to the 1998 Good Friday accord; and b) he wrote a report, which dared to name names, on illegal steroid use in baseball. Impressive, no?
The 'Yes we can' Mitchell is very much evident in the following sound-byte. Here's how it was reported in The Sydney Morning Herald: "[Mitchell] also noted by way of a joke, that the 800 years of fighting in Northern Ireland made it a relatively young dispute compared with the Middle East. 'Eight hundred years may be recent, but from my experience there, I formed a conviction that there is no such thing as a conflict that can't be ended'." (Envoy, 75, says 'yes we can' end conflict, Ann Davies, 24/1/09) And here is The Australian's version: "A story told by Mitchell yesterday puts his new challenge into perspective. On a recent trip to Israel, he gave a speech about Northern Ireland and what it was like trying to resolve the enmities that had been passed from generation to generation. After the speech, an Israeli man came up to him. How long had that dispute been going on, he asked. Mitchell replied: 800 years. The Israeli man said: such a short time." (Best chance for Mid-East peace, John Lyons, 24/1/09) Bonza story, George, Did the typically witty Israeli shrug his shoulders too?
Now as much as I hate to spoil a party, in my capacity as MERC I'm obliged to pick Mitchell up on this particular sound-byte. If Santayana is correct in his assertion that Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, then I'm afraid that, if for no other reason (and that's another story), his inability to remember the past could mean that, like all who have gone before him, his efforts will be in vain.
There are two aspects to Mitchell's ignorance of history here. The obvious one relates to Palestinian history, where he is quoted as saying that the problem of Northern Ireland, at 800 years (and I'll get to that in a minute), is younger than the Palestine problem, the implication being that the conflict in Palestine is one whose origins are somehow swathed in the proverbial mists of time. If Mitchell really believes this rubbish, then he is clearly not qualified to be Middle East peace envoy.
So just how old is the Palestine problem, or Middle East conflict, or Arab-Israeli dispute - call it what you will? Only 92 years old if we reckon from Britain's idiotic Balfour Declaration of 1917, promising the nascent Zionist movement a Jewish 'homeland' in Palestine, or, if we take it from the Zionist takeover of 78% of Palestine in 1948, a mere 60 years old. Has Mitchell ever read one reputable study of the issue? Just one for Christ's sake? It appears not. If that sound-byte is anything to go by, Obama's 'We can do peace' man hasn't got a clue as to how Palestine became a problem in the first place. How reassuring.
But that's not all. Remember the bit about the Northern Ireland problem being 800 years old? Really? There was an Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th Century, but as Irish historian Liam de Paor has pointed out "Late medieval Ulster was for the most part Gaelic... and beyond English law." (Divided Ulster, 1970, p 3) In fact, to move forward, "Ulster at the beginning of the 17th century was... the last Gaelic area to come under the control of the English administration. Its economy was pastoral.. It had no towns. For a thousand years its people had lived under Irish law... For a thousand years they had, in their own fashion... been Christian - Catholic. There were ancient churches, there were medieval friaries and abbeys. There were some, a few, stone castles, but lake dwellings and raths were still inhabited and had been defended in the war [of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, against Queen Elizabeth]. The Reformation had made as little headway as other innovations among the Ulster forests. The long war had brought hunger, disease, and... despair. England now had a king who was king of Scotland, and early in the century lowland Scots from King James's northern kingdom began to change the whole character of Ulster. This came about partly through... the policy of plantation... By means which were, as often as not, unscrupulous, a great deal of land in the 2 counties [of Antrim and Down] was acquired from its Irish proprietors and a determined immigration and energetic colonization by lowland [Presbyterian] Scots followed... The situation thus established in early 17th-century Ulster was an easy one... those who settled the confiscated lands lived among a hostile people who harboured a deep sense of wrong. The situation has often been compared to the early colonists of North America, whose little settlements lived under threat of Indian attack." (ibid, pp 4-8) It could as easily have been compared with the pre-state Zionist colonization of Palestine in the 20s, 30s and 40s. The point I wish to make, however, is that the Northern Ireland problem had its roots in the 17th century. Which made it around 370 years old when the 'Troubles' erupted there in 1968.
But hey, what the hell, he sorted out Northern Ireland anyway, didn't he?
How fortunate then are the Palestinians to have a peace envoy for whom a grasp of history is neither here (Palestine) nor there (Ireland)? But there's more, because, according to The Australian, "[t]he appointment of... George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East has raised the possibility that he will team up with former British prime minister Tony Blair in a peace initiative drawing on their experience of ending the Troubles in Northern Ireland." (Blair's Mid-East peace bid helped by Mitchell posting, Sarah Baxter, 26/1/09) Not to mention Blair's experience as Middle East representative of the so-called quartet (US, EU, Russia & the UN)!
With Blair as his sidekick, Mitchell will have the benefit of the latter's clarity of thought and unique perspective on the Palestine problem, which comes through loud and clear in this interview with the ABC's Geraldine Doogue: "Probably for me the key lesson which I understand better now... with my new role out in the Middle East peace process is just the deep roots of the problem, of the struggle that's going on within Islam, the relationship between Islam and the West, and therefore I think September 11 was an extraordinary and tragic and terrible event and for the first time we got to know about this extremism and its nature. But I think I didn't understand sufficiently at the time, I think other people didn't, the depth of it, and how long it had been building. I think it's very clear to me now that this is something that has been building up over decades, that it's got a multiplicity of different roots, round not just the Middle East region, but the wider world, that it is very much a struggle to do with how we come to terms with peaceful coexistence in the world, and that it has a strong religious dimension to it. I know in one sense that's obvious, but sometimes people say, 'Well, it's not really religious, it's to do with politics or deprivation or a sense of injustice', and all of those things are facets, but I think at heart it is indeed, a religious phenomenon." (Radio National, 20/9/08)
But it gets even better: "[Mitchell] is regarded as an honest broker in the Middle East - as the son of an American janitor and a Christian Lebanese-American mother, he has a nuanced understanding of the region's problems." (Baxter, ibid)
Alas, all is not as it seems. Just when you're thinking the Palestinians couldn't get any luckier, what with Mitchell being half Arab, comes that right pooper of Middle East parties, The Angry Arab, with this anecdote from 2006: "Back to the daily From Lebanon segment on LBC-TV, which features 'rich and famous' Lebanese, even if they are not Lebanese. Today it featured former Senator George J Mitchell from Maine. Here is a story about Sen. Mitchell (whose mother emigrated from Lebanon). A former student of mine in Washington DC was working part-time in the US Senate. He was half-Lebanese. He once found himself in the same elevator with Sen. Mitchell, and he greeted him warmly and asked him: 'Do you speak Arabic? I heard that you are Lebanese'. Very rudely, Sen. Mitchell told him: 'I am Irish. I am not Lebanese'." (The Angry Arab News Service, 11/4/06) Irish, begosh, begorrah!
So let's pull all this together: Obama, who has sworn to love, honour & obey Israel, appoints Mitchell, an Irishman, who knows nothing about Ireland or Palestine (and is most emphatically not Lebanese) to solve the Palestine problem. And in this noble endeavour, he will be ably assisted by Blair of Basra, failed prime minister and co-destroyer of Iraq, who also knows nothing about Palestine and sounds like a suitable case for treatment.
The Palestinians should be so lucky.
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