A Blight Unto the Nations

Seldom does the abyss between fact and fiction yawn more widely than in The Economist:

"Little Israel commands attention because it has a big history: biblical romance and technological talent; the slaughter of the Holocaust and military prowess, energetic democracy and the long occupation of land claimed and inhabited by Palestinians." (King Bibi: a parable of modern populism, The Economist/ The Australian, 30/3/19)

"Israel offers an important test of the resilience of democracy. On April 9 voters face a fateful choice. Re-elect Netanyahu and reward him for subverting the independence of Israel's institutions. Or turf him out in the hope of rebuilding trust in democracy - and aspiring to be 'a light unto the nations'." (ibid)

Lest we forget, April 9 will be the 71st anniversary of the massacre of the Palestinian villagers of Deir Yassin, carried out by Irgun terrorists on orders from their leader, Menachem Begin, in 1948.

Begin, of course, went on to found Israel's ruling Likud party in 1973, becoming its prime minister from 1977-83, and presiding over the brutal invasion (1982) and occupation (1982-2000) of Lebanon.

Netanyahu is his ideological heir, presiding in turn over one massacre after another - operations Returning Echo (2012), Pillar of Defence (2012) and Protective Edge (2014) - against the largely defenceless inhabitants of the blockaded Gaza ghetto, not to mention the ongoing bloodletting along the Gaza border.

And how does The Economist spin this butcher's bloody record?

"With deft use of diplomacy and the mostly cautious use of military force he has boosted security without being sucked into disastrous wars." (ibid)

Daniel Pipes: Jabotinsky Lite

Foaming Islamophobe Daniel Pipes, grand mufti of the US Zionist website, Middle East Forum, recently visited Australia as the guest of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).

So what did he tell the AIJAC crowd?

Well, here's the gist, taken from his near full-page screed in Murdoch's Weekend Australian:

"The moment is right for fresh thinking to dispatch the old and stale Palestinian-Israeli conflict... I shall propose an entirely different approach to resolve the conflict, a reversion to the strategy of deterrence and victory associated with Zionism's great strategist, Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880 - 1940): Israel should aim not to please its enemies but to defeat them." (All-out Israeli victory vital for peace, 24/3/18)

The obvious point to make at the outset, of course, is to ask: since when has Israel's aim EVER been to please the Palestinians, their fellow Arabs or anyone else for that matter?

But it's Pipes' embrace of Jabotinsky, the father of Zionist Revisionism, that I wish to explore here. (Just to contextualise him, remember that Jabotinsky begat Menachem Begin's terrorist Irgun, which begat, post Nakba, Begin's Herut Party, which, with the election of Begin as Israel's 6th PM (1977-83), begat the Likud Party, led today by Benjamin Netanyahu, whose father was Jabotinsky's secretary.)

Pipes, of course, presents what he euphemistically terms Jabotinsky's "strategy of deterrence and victory" (which terminology I shall return to later) as though it were some great break in Zionist strategy, but as Jabotinsky himself wrote in 1923: "There are no meaningful differences between our 'militarists' and our 'vegetarians'. One [Jabotinsky] prefers an iron wall of Jewish bayonets, the other [Weizmann] proposes an iron wall of British bayonets... but we all applaud, day and night, the iron wall."*

Got it? Zionism is Zionism is Zionism, and we waste our time differentiating between its different strains as though one is somehow more palatable than the other, because, whatever the strain, it is simply incompatible with the idea of Israeli Jews living alongside Palestinian Arabs as full and equal citizens in the same land.

To move on. Here's how Pipes packages Jabotinsky for AIJAC and the readers of The Australian: "To gain Palestinian acceptance [of Israel], Israel must return to its old policy of deterrence, of punishing Palestinians severely when they aggress... That's deterrence. It's more than tough tactics, which Israeli governments already pursue: it means developing consistent policies to break rejectionism and encourage Palestinian acceptance of Israel. It implies a strategy to crush irredentist Palestinian ambitions, to finally end the demonising of Jews and Israel, recognise historic Jewish ties to Jerusalem, normalise relations with Israelis, close the suicide factories and shutter the entire machinery of warfare... it requires Palestinians to suffer the bitter crucible of defeat, with its attendant deprivation, destruction and despair."

Putting to one side Pipes' demonising constructions - Palestinian resistance to occupation, colonisation, and apartheid (aggression); Palestinian refusal to accept Israel's bulldozing of their homes and rights (rejectionism); Palestinian international law-backed critiques of Israel's illegal occupation and behaviour (demonisation) etc  - what Pipes is really saying here is that Palestinians must, in effect, become Zionists - but without, of course,the benefits!

And if his appalling genocidal reference to the Palestinians' need to suffer "deprivation, destruction and despair," as if this is something new for them, weren't bad enough, he actually has the gall to state that "If Palestinian defeat is good for Israel, it is ironically even better for Palestinians, who will finally be liberated from ugly irredentist ambitions, revolutionary rhetoric, and genocidal fantasies," and so free to build their "polity, economy, society and culture."

But it gets worse with this demonisation of the Palestinians as the heirs of the Nazis: "Think of a miniature version of post-1945 Germany." And don't you just love the implications of that word "miniature"!

Jabotinsky, of course, was far more honest than Pipes about Zionism's SETTLER-COLONIAL status than Pipes, and never tried to dress up the fate of the Palestinian Arabs at the hands of the Zionist project: "Zionist colonization... must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue... only under the protection of a force independent of the local population - an iron wall which the native population cannot break through."

You can see why Jabotinsky's actual words are nowhere to be found in Pipes' rendering of Jabotinsky: "Zionist colonization"; "iron wall"; "native population."

And again: "We can talk as much as we want  about our good intentions; but they understand as well as we what is not good for them. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie."

And again: "Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers..."

And again: "Colonization can have only one goal. For the Palestinian Arabs this goal is inadmissible. This is in the nature of things. To change that nature is impossible."

And Pipes, the son of Polish Jews, expects the Palestinians to "recognise historic Jewish ties to Jerusalem"!

But there's more. Integral to Jabotinsky's thinking is that Jordan is also Palestine/ Eretz Israel. Not, of course, that Pipes lets his readers in on that thorny aspect of the master's thought.

[*All Jabotinsky quotes from his essay The Iron Wall (We & the Arabs).]

The Myth of the Israeli Moderate

Ever noticed how political transitions in Israel are reported in the corporate press? As though the change constitutes some kind of clear break with the past?

Take the replacement of defence minister Moshe Ya'alon by Avigdor Lieberman, for example:

"Israel's departing defence minister has denounced the 'extremist and dangerous elements' that 'have overrun Israel and the Likud party' as he left office." (Minister's parting shot at 'extremists', Telegraph/UK/The Sun-Herald, 22/5/16)

"Yaalon was one of the last moderate voices in Netanyahu's Likud party." (Israeli defence minister steps down, clearing way for hardliner, Associated Press, theguardian.com, 23/5/16)

You'd never guess that the 'anti-extremist/moderate' Ya'alon had once said that the goal of the Israeli occupation was "to sear deep into the consciousness of the Palestinians that they are a defeated people," and that "we have to consider killing [former Iranian president] Ahmadinejad."

Ain't She Sweet...

See her swagger down the street (finger on trigger)
Now I ask you very confidentially,
Ain't she sweet?

Ain't she ice?
Look her over once or twice.
Now I ask you very confidentially,
Ain't she ice?

Cast an eye in her direction.
Me oh my, ain't she perfection?

- with apologies to Ager and Yellen

"Ms [Sharren] Haskell, 31, was last month sworn in as a representative for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party, fulfilling a political ambition that had flourished since her return to Israel three years ago. Ms Haskell spent almost 7 years living in Sydney, which she proudly calls her 'second home'. For a time she was even an Australian citizen, but Israel demands foreign citizenships be forfeited upon entering the Knesset... Ms Haskell said she had been impressed by Australian values. 'Respect the environment, respect other people, tolerance - you know, it gave me a different perspective about cultural things'... She has vowed not to be an invisible backbencher, and to use her international experience through her position on the Knesset's influential foreign affairs committee. She also wants to help broaden Israel's relations with Australia, which will be strengthened in the next month or so as the finishing touches are put on the first working holiday visa scheme." (From Bondi vet to Israel's 'snake pit', Jacob Atkins, The Australian, 5/10/15)

"As to peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, Haskell said she trusted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to act according to political dynamics in the Middle East as well as Israel's security needs.'We have nothing to talk about now with the Palestinians,' she added. When they stop the violence, the stone-throwing, stop encouraging terrorism and calling terrorists 'martyrs', then maybe we can sit down and discuss." (Meet Likud's newest MK Sharren Haskell, israelnationalnews.com, 7/9/15)

"When she was inducted into the Israel Defense Forces, she decided to join a combat unit... Haskell says her years in the IDF at the height of the second intifada - including the terrorist acts, Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank and the fragile truce, were all instrumental in shaping her worldview. 'You stand at checkpoints, detain people, catch suspects, attend demolitions of terrorist houses, police demonstrations, and you just keep getting beat up. All the time." (How Likud's youngest MK went from the Peace Camp to the Right, Hilo Glazer, haaretz.com, 29/9/15)

"When it comes to political positions, she now speaks fluent 'Netanyahu-ese' ('How can you negotiate with someone who doesn't recognize you?': 'Here we condemn and there they name city squares after muderers.') She talks of feeling a special affinity with the West Bank, which began with her military service and is now only deepening." (ibid)

Great! So here's the lovely Ms Haskell, who has/had at least two homes (Australia and Israel), who is a card-carrying member of the Netanyahu Gang, and who has told the OCCUPIED Palestinians (who have only one home - providing it's not demolished or stolen by Israeli settlers), to STFU! and accept their lot, now planning to flood Australia with radicalised backpacking thugs* who've just completed their military 'service', including some who have been involved in the smoting of Palestinians hip, thigh**, and anywhere else they can put in a bullet or a boot.

Sweet indeed...

[*See my 19/5/15 post Fugly Israelis; **See my last post.]

A Nugget of Truth in The Australian

Here are excerpts from a timely and trenchant opinion piece, It's high time that Australia told Israel a few home truths, by Peter Rodgers, a former Australian ambassador to Israel, published in yesterday's Australian:

"In September 2000, Israel's opposition leader at the time, Ariel Sharon, visited the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem, a site of intense religious significance for Muslims and Jews (as the Temple Mount).

"Sharon's purpose was entirely political - a statement that a Likud government would never cede control of the area to the Palestinians. The visit helped trigger the second Palestinian uprising. When it ended, about 6,000 people lay dead, more than 80% of them Palestinian.

"Fast forward to 2015. As Israelis celebrated the Jewish New Year in September, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel led a group of the Likud Young Guard up the Haram al-Sharif, their self-proclaimed goal to 'assert Jewish sovereignty' over the area. Palestinians, not surprisingly, reacted with suspicion, hostility and, in some cases, violence. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened a 'harsh offensive' in return, demonstrating once more that there is no greater double standard in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict than the issue of violence. Israel uses violence against Palestinians as a matter of course. It expects Palestinian quiescence and acts indignantly when this is not forthcoming [...]

"Late last month, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas told the UN General Assembly that the Palestinians would no longer abide by the 1993 Oslo Accords. These provided the flimsy scaffold for negotiation of Palestinian statehood. What was remarkable about Abbas's speech was that it took so many years for him to make it. Oslo's corpse had long lain in the morgue. All Abbas did was to invite a viewing.

"With depressingly familiar hype, Netanyahu slammed Abbas's UN speech for its alleged deceit and incitement. He urged Abbas to accept the offer 'to hold direct negotiations with Israel without preconditions'. That was a good one coming from a prime minister whose own preconditions include no Palestinian state ever, who plays godfather to the settlement movement, and who has now deemed it reasonable to use live ammunition against rock-throwing Palestinians.

"Australia has long been susceptible to the line that the Palestinians are not ready for statehood. The Turnbull government, with 7 others (including tiny island states such as the Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu), opposed the raising of the Palestinian flag at the UN. The opposition is not much better. The ALP conference last July decided at last to discuss possible recognition of a Palestinian state if there were 'no progress in the next round of the peace process'. As if there were a peace process or the faintest prospect of one.

"Australian governments have often spoken proudly of their friendship with Israel.

"It's high time that friendship was put in the service of peace by telling Israel a few home truths about the Gordion knot that is occupation and violence."

Now here's an excerpt from a letter in reply in today's Australian by Mike Tsykin, Elsternwick, Victoria:

"We remember that Israel is manning the front line in the war against Islamic terrorism. It is our war as well; we did not wish it, but it is fought in our streets. The best we can do is to continue supporting Israel. We are in this together."

What rubbish! Israel is not "manning the front line in the war against Islamic terrorism," it is manning the front line in Zionism's near 100-year war for Jewish supremacy and hegemony in historic Palestine.

Notice Tsykin's shameless conflation of the young heroes and heroines of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and oppression with the murderous behaviour of our own politically illiterate, disaffected dupes of Islamic State propaganda. Just as Israeli Zionists have no qualms whatever in murdering any number of Palestinians - men, women or children - in their unrelenting push to control and dominate every square inch of Palestine, their cheer squads in Australia and elsewhere have no qualms whatever in stooping to any monstrous lie in order to shield them from justified criticism.

Herald: Propaganda In, Truth Out

At the Sydney Morning Herald (dubbed hilariously: 'Independent. Always.'), the door to the letters page is always open to brazen Zionist propaganda:

"The past 6 Israeli prime ministers, including the incumbent, declared themselves in favour of two states for two peoples. A Palestinian state will happen when the Palestinian leadership makes the same declaration." Vic Alhadeff CEO NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (3/1/15)

In the face of the facts, however, it is slammed shut - as the following letter, written by UNSW academic Peter Slezak in response to Alhadeff's, but refused publication, shows:

"Vic Alhadeff (Jan 3-4) makes two statements that he must know to be false. First, he says that past Israeli prime ministers 'including the incumbent, declared themselves in favour of two states.' However, The Times of Israel (13/7/14) reported that in early July 'The prime minister ruled out full Palestinian sovereignty... This was not a new, dramatic change of stance by the prime minister. It was a new, dramatic exposition of his long-held stance.' As Alhadeff must know, Netanyahu's Likud Party has never accepted a Palestinian State. Its electoral partner, Yisrael Beitenu, likewise categorically rejects an independent Palestinian State. The Likud Charter includes the following explicit statements: (a) 'The Jordan River will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel.' (b) 'Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel.' (c) 'The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.'

"Second, Alhadeff says 'a Palestinian state will happen when the Palestinian leadership declares itself in favour of two states for two peoples. As Alhadeff must also know, in 1988 on behalf of the PLO Arafat made exactly such a declaration: 'We accept two states, the Palestine state and the Jewish state of Israel' reported in the New York Times December 8.

"Alhadeff's misrepresentations reveal a great deal about obstacles facing a just solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict." 

Publishing Israel lobbyist Alhadeff's transparent propaganda is one thing. Refusing to publish Slezak's devastating rebuttal is quite another. Yet another example of the Israel lobby's hold over the Herald, so dramatically illustrated last year by the events surrounding the departure of columnist Mike Carlton from its staff.

PS (7/1/15): Peter Slezak's letter has belatedly appeared in the SMH. There's a story here somewhere.  

Playing With Fire in Jerusalem: 2014 & 1929

Yesterday's attack by two Palestinians on a West Jerusalem synagogue is a stark reminder that those Israelis who would mess with the status quo on occupied Arab East Jerusalem's Haram ash-Sharif are playing with fire. This has been acknowledged by no less than the head of Israel's Shin Bet, Yoram Cohen:

"While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly points an accusing finger at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Israel's top secret security service said Tuesday he did not believe Abbas was responsible for the current round of terror and violence... According to the Shin Bet head, the central factors behind the current violence were the murder of Palestinian teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir... and attempts by Israeli legislators to change the status-quo on the Temple Mount. According to Cohen, visits by right-wing MKs and attempts to introduce legislation which would change the status quo on the flashpoint holy site were the main factors for rising tensions in East Jerusalem... 'The religious aspect which latches onto the (Israeli-Palestinian) conflict is very dangerous and volatile because it has implications on the Palestinians and Muslims around the world. We must do everything we can to defuse the current tensions,' Cohen said." (Shin Bet chief: Abbas is not inciting terror, Attila Somfalvi, ynetnews.com, 18/11/14)

Those possessing more than a nodding acquaintance with modern Palestinian history may recall the events in Jerusalem and Hebron of August 1929 and see a parallel with the situation today. The following vivid account of those events is by American journalist Vincent Sheean:

"The disorders of Friday resulted in many deaths among both Jews and Arabs (the Arabs including Christians as well as Moslems), and the impulse of murder continued for a week. At the end of the terror the official roll for Jerusalem was: 29 Jews and 38 Arabs killed, 43 Jews and 51 Arabs wounded...

"The horrors of Friday in Jerusalem were followed by something much worse: the ghastly outbreak at Hebron, where 64 Jews of the old-fashioned religious community were slaughtered and 54 of them wounded. Hebron was one of the four holy cities of Judaism, and had a small, constant Jewish population since medieval days. These were not Zionists at all; a more innocent and harmless group of people could not have been found in Palestine; many of them were Oriental Jews, and all were religious. They had had nothing to do with the Zionist excesses [in Jerusalem], and had lived in amity with their Arab neighbours up to that day. But when the Arabs of Hebron - an unruly lot, at best - heard that Arabs were being killed by Jews in Jerusalem, and that the Mosque of Omar was in danger, they went mad... the Jewish houses were rushed by the mob, and there was an hour of slashing, killing, stabbing, burning and looting...

"I cannot, at this late date, go through all the story of that week; it has been told over and over again... At the end of the disturbances the official British casualty lists showed 207 dead and 379 wounded among the population of Palestine, of which the dead included 87 Arabs (Christian and Moslem) and 120 Jews, the wounded 181 Arabs and 198 Jews...

"The effort to be an efficient, unemotional newspaper correspondent was difficult to the point of impossibility. Living as I did without sleep and without rest, eating little, and that at the weirdest hours, I should probably have collapsed in time simply from physical exhaustion. But there was a great deal more in it than that. I was bitterly indignant with the Zionists for having, as I believed, brought on this disaster*; I was shocked into hysteria by the ferocity of the Arab anger; and I was aghast at the inadequacy of the British government. I knew that the Moslem authorities were trying to quell the storm, and that the British officials were doing their best against appalling difficulties; I also assumed that the responsible Zionist leaders (none of whom were in Palestine then) had done what they could. But all around me were the visible evidences of their failure. Although I had spent a good part of my life amid scenes of violence and was no stranger to the sight of blood and dying men, I had never overcome my loathing for the spectacle even when it seemed, as in some of the conflicts I had witnessed, compelled by historical necessity. But here, in this miserable little country, no bigger, in relation to the rest of the world, than the tip of your finger in relation to your body, I could see no historical necessity whatever. The country was tiny and already inhabited: why couldn't the Zionists leave it alone? It would never hold enough Jews to make even a beginning towards the solution of the Jewish problem; it would always be a prey to such ghastly horrors as those I saw every day and every night: religion, the eternal intransigence of religion, ensured that the problem could never be solved. The Holy Land seemed as near an approximation of hell on earth as I had ever seen." (Personal History, 1935; quoted in From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism & the Palestine Problem Until 1948, Edited by Walid Khalidi, 1971, pp 298-300)

Britain's 1930 Shaw Commission, charged with the task of investigating these events, concluded that their immediate cause was: "The long series of incidents connected with the Wailing Wall... but the incident among them which in our view contributed most to the outbreak was the Jewish demonstration at the Wailing Wall on 15 August 1929."

"The fundamental cause, without which in our opinion disturbances either would not have occurred or would not have been little more than a local riot," the Commission concluded, "is the Arab feeling of animosity and hostility towards the Jews consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future... The feeling as it exists today is based on the twofold fear of the Arabs that by Jewish immigration and land purchases they may be deprived of their livelihood and in time pass under the political domination of the Jews."

If, for Sheehan, Palestine in 1929 was "as near an approximation of hell on earth as I had ever seen," one can only wonder what he'd make of it today.

[*These were the 'Maccabees', armed followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky, godfather of Revisionist Zionism, the movement which, in its current Likud incarnation, now governs Israel. Netanyahu's fire-eating father, Benzion, was Jabotinsky's secretary. See my 24/9/11 post Benzion, My Father.]

'Moses' Mandela

How sweetly they're singing now:

"Nelson Mandela was one of the most prominent role models of our time. He was the father of his nation, a man of vision, a fighter for freedom who denounced violence. He gave a personal example to his people during the long years he was imprisoned." Benjamin Netanyahu, israelhayom.com, 6/12/13

But back in the 70s and 8os they were singing a very different tune:

"The Israeli-South African relationship was not only about profit and battlefield bravado... After Menachem Begin's Likud Party came to power in 1977, these economic interests converged with ideological affinities to make the alliance even stronger. Many members of the Likud Party shared with South Africa's leaders an ideology of minority survivalism that presented the two countries as threatened outposts of European civilization defending their existence against barbarians at the gates.

"Indeed, much of Israel's top brass and Likud Party leadership felt am affinity with South Africa's white government, and unlike Peres and Rabin they did not feel a need to publicly denounce apartheid while secretly supporting Pretoria. Powerful military figures, such as Ariel Sharon and Rafael (Raful) Eitan, drew inspiration from the political tradition of Revisionist Zionism - a school of thought that favoured the use of military force to defend Jewish sovereignty and encouraged settlement of the biblical lands of Greater Israel, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sharon, Eitan, and many of their contemporaries were convinced that both nations faced a fundamentally similar predicament as embattled minorities under siege, fighting for their survival against what they saw as a common terrorist enemy epitomized by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) and Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)." (The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, 2010, p 8)

***

"The end of the Cold War dramatically altered the political and strategic landscape of Southern Africa. Cuban troops were already withdrawing from Angola when F.W. de Klerk replaced P.W. Botha as president in August 1989. The Berlin Wall fell 3 months later and de Klerk soon embarked on a radically different course that led to the release of Nelson Mandela in early 1990. With the Soviet and Cuban threat gone, South Africa could no longer appeal for Western support by invoking anticommunist arguments, nor could it rationalize repression of the democratic opposition by cloaking apartheid in Cold War rhetoric.

"... In Pretoria, the Israeli government went to great lengths to improve its image after Mandela's release. Veteran left-wing critics of apartheid were appointed to key posts, including Alon Liel, who became ambassador in 1992 and worked hard to redefine Israeli-South African relations for the postapartheid era. Even so, the legacy of the 1970s and 1980s left Mandela with a sour taste.

"A year before South Africa's first democratic elections, Elazar Granot of Israel's far-left Mapam Party addressed the delegates of the Socialist International - a global gathering of Social Democratic leaders attended by many European heads of state. Granot lavished praise on Mandela, comparing him to Moses and arguing that South Africa's president-in-waiting was even greater than Moses for he had actually reached the Promised Land. But Mandela did not succumb to his flattery. As Granot recalls it, the first words from South Africa's icon of foregiveness and reconciliation were: 'The people of South Africa will never forget the support of the state of Israel to the apartheid regime'." (ibid, pp 218-219)

That was in 1993. Today, neither the people of South Africa nor its government have forgotten worse-than-apartheid Israel's alliance with apartheid South Africa:

"As reported by South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper, Times LIVE, [and] Israel's Haaretz newspaper... South Africa's Minister for International Relations, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, has confirmed a long-standing South African government position of not engaging with Israel.  Speaking on Friday... Minister Nkoana-Mashabane said: 'Ministers of South Africa do not visit Israel currently... our Palestinian friends have asked us in formal meetings to not engage with the [Israeli] regime. We have agreed to slow down and curtail senior leadership contact with that regime until things begin to look better.' [She] also criticised the Israeli regime's recent announcement to build new, illegal, Jewish-only settler units on confiscated Palestinian lands: 'That arrangement there in Palestine keeps us awake... the last time I looked at the map of Palestine, I could not go to sleep. Its 'dots', smaller than those of the [former South African] homelands.'... Finally, [she] expressed her solidarity with the Palestinian people, saying: 'The struggle of the people of Palestine is our struggle'." (South Africa to 'curtail' relations with Israel, OptionsBDS South Africa, 2/12/13)

Another Triumph for 'Quality Journalism'

Is covering the Middle East conflict correctly really that hard? It would seem so.

Fairfax's Middle East correspondent, Ruth Pollard, seriously stuffed up in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald with this:

"He [Naftali Bennett of the far-right Habayit Hayehudi Party] opposes the creation of a Palestinian state, a key platform of most of the major parties, including Mr Netanyahu's Likud, and instead pushes a plan of annexing much of the West Bank." (Far right spells danger for Netanyahu)

Where does Likud stand with regard to a Palestinian state? Its 2008 platform was unequivocal:

"Israel will not allow the establishment of an Arab Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. The Palestinians will be able to manage their lives freely in the framework of an autonomous regime, but not as a sovereign, independent state." (Likud, ynetnews.com, 1/2/08)

Apparently, a puff or two of smoke and the odd mirror have been deployed since then, yet how anyone can claim so categorically, after reading the following Haaretz report on the subject, that the creation of a Palestinian state is "a key platform" of the Likud is a mystery to me:

"Senior Likud officials called Monday for the omission of a reference to the establishment of a Palestinian state from the party's platform. This was meant to be included after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recognized the principle of the two-state solution in his 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech.

"With less than a month to go before the election, Likud and Yisrael-Beiteinu have yet to present the platform of their joint slate, and according to sources in the parties it is not clear when and if a platform will be issued. 'Dividing the land will bring about Israel's destruction,' one senior Likud official said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'We've said that in the past and we say it today. How does this sit with recognizing a Palestinian state,' he said Monday, cautioning against adding such a clause to the platform. Another senior party official said, 'Likud's platform to date has not recognized the establishment of a Palestinian state, and Yisrael-Beiteinu rejects outright the possibility that a Palestinian state could be established alongside Israel' Another Likud source said, 'It's not clear how [Likud stalwarts such as] Reuven Rivlin, Moshe Ya'alon or Zeev Elkin could reconcile with a platform that includes acceptance of a Palestinian state.'

"The lack of an official joint platform was very noticeable during an interview Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar, number-three on the joint slate, gave Monday to the Ynet news site. He stated his opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state, reminding the interviewer that the 'two-state' principle has never been part of Likud's platform and hinting that this will not change during the election campaign... According to Yisrael-Beiteinu's platform, the demand to establish a Palestinian state and the 'right of return' are designed to camouflage the real intention, which is to erase the State of Israel as a Jewish and Zionist state.

"Likud sources said Monday the plan is to keep the party's position on the Palestinian issue as vague as possible in the pre-election period." (Likud officials call to omit Netanyahu's two-state declaration from party platform, Barak Ravid & Jonathan Lis, 25/12/12)

A purely rhetorical question: When are ms correspondents and pundits ever going to wake up? What Israeli leaders say or don't say matters not a whit, all that matters is what's going on ON THE GROUND AS WE SPEAK.

Now I wish that that was my only problem with Pollard's report, but it isn't. Sadly, it also contains the following sentence:

"In recent months, Israel has pushed forward with its plan to expand settlement construction in disputed territory beyond the 1967 borders."

I'm sorry, but resorting to Israeli spin - disputed - to describe the ongoing OCCUPATION and colonisation of the West Bank is to connive in that process.

What Would Herzl Do?

Meanwhile, back in Israel, the question on every mover and shaker's (pun intended) mind is: What's "a mature, pluralist democracy" (to draw on Tony Abbott's quaint description of the place) to do about those pesky natives? ('Pesky'? As in drawing breath. Just being there.)

Move them on, of course, as the founding father said in his diary in 1895:

"We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying employment for it in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. Let the owners of the immoveable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth."

Many are the ways, but only one of the following really captures the spirit of the master. Guess:

"Prominent members of Israel's ruling Likud party have proposed annexing part of the West Bank as the battle for right-wing votes intensifies before the general election in less than 3 weeks. A government minister, Yuli Edelstein, told a conference in Jerusalem that the lack of Israel sovereignty over Area C - the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli military control in which all settlements are situated - 'strengthen the international community's demand for a withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.' The chairman of the governing coalition, Ze'ev Elkin, said Israel should adopt a 'salami' approach to annexation. 'We will try to apply sovereignty over as much as we can at any given moment,' he said. A third Likud member, the extreme right-wing settler Moshe Feiglin, proposed that Israel should pay Palestinian families to leave the West Bank, using funds earmarked for security measures. 'We can give every family in Judea and Samaria [the biblical term for the West Bank] $500,000 to encourage to emigrate... This is the perfect solution for us,' he said." (Israeli right eyes annexing parts of the West Bank, Harriet Sherwood, Guardian/The Age, 4/1/13)

A Match Made in Hell

It seems only yesterday that The Australian's foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan was adamant that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was no more right-wing than Malcolm Fraser:

"[Benjamin] Netanyahu, not least in the Australian media, is almost always called 'hardline right-wing'. This would be the equivalent of calling the government of John Howard or Malcolm Fraser hardline right-wing... Netanyahu leads the Likud Party, which has been Israel's centre-right party for decades... It would be much more honest to label Netanyahu's Government centre-right. This question of language is of the first order of importance. The ancient Chinese sage Confucius, when asked what would be the main political reform he would carry out if he achieved state power, replied: 'It would certainly be to rectify the names.' Israel's enemies, heirs to ancient anti-Semitism, are on a relentless quest to delegitimise and demonise it at every point. Mislabelling a democratic government of mainstream, democratic politicians as hardline right-wing is an important part of that quest." (Israeli leaders mislabelled by foes, 9/4/09) [See my 15/4/09 post Selling Lieberman.]

And that was despite Netanyahu's Likud being in coalition with Moldovan bouncer Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu Party, which advocates loyalty oaths and army service for Palestinian Israelis and transferring some of their towns to the Palestinian Authority. At the time Sheridan had gone on to assure us that: "It is fair to say [Lieberman] is to the right of Netanyahu but not fair to say he is an extremist." (ibid)

Now that Netanyahu and Lieberman have tired of living in sin and decided to tie the knot, however, the Netanyahu government has taken on a whole new complexion, much as Dr Jekyll took on a whole new complexion when he turned unambiguously into Mr Hyde before embarking on a nocturnal killing spree:

"Whatever pretense the Likud Party still had as the 'moderate right,' at least by Israel's standards, vanished in a flash yesterday with the announcement of the joint Likud-Beiteinu list in the upcoming election. Hawkish Netanyahu at number one, and super-hawk Avigdor Lieberman at number two, the party is well and truly Israel's War Party... Lieberman's political career has centered around the twin goals of making people swear loyalty oaths and attacking Iran. Netanyahu's last few months in office have been defined almost entirely by a single-minded determination to start a war with Iran at any cost." (Israel's super-hawk merger makes Iran war the election's central issue, Jason Ditz, antiwar.com, 26/10/12)

A Likud Peace

"[Benjamin Netanyahu] is a hardliner on security. However, when he was prime minister a decade ago, he showed himself, like his Likud predecessor, Menachem Begin, willing to make peace deals involving trading land for peace." (Future unclear as voters go Right, Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 12/2/09)

This is what is known as received wisdom - that only hardline Israeli politicians can sell 'peace' deals to security-conscious Israelis. Hardliners like Menachem Begin, for instance, who traded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula (captured along with the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967) for 'peace' with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat at Camp David in 1979. The Camp David 'peace', it should be remembered, came only after a near successful Egyptian-Syrian attempt to win back their respective territories by force of arms in October 1973. But what sort of peacemaker was Likud hardliner Begin, and what was the nature of the 'peace' hammered out under the auspices of US president Jimmy Carter at Camp David? The following snippets from William B Quandt's Camp David: Peacemaking & Politics (1986) give us a pretty good idea:

Carter set out to achieve a comprehensive peace involving Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). He had declared that "the third ultimate requirement for peace is to deal with the Palestine problem... there has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years." (p 48 )

Sadat, however, was not quite as forthcoming as Carter on that score: "His views on the Palestine question were the most puzzling, and the Americans were never quite sure how strongly committed to the Palestinians Sadat was. At this stage, however, he had said nothing to indicate that he was prepared for a separate agreement with Israel that offered nothing to the Palestinians." (p 53)

But even if Sadat and Carter had been on the same wavelength regarding the Palestinians, Israel had the Americans by the short & curlies: "[Foreign minister Moshe] Dayan... replied that it was possible to reach an agreement. Israel could go along with the procedures that Carter and [Secretary of State Cyrus] Vance had outlined. In return, Carter should say that all previous agreements with Israel remained in force and that there would be no imposed settlement and no pressure in the form of cuts in economic or military aid. Israel should be free to object to a Palestinian state, and the US should say that Israel did not have to withdraw to the 1967 lines... Dayan could then tell the American Jews that there was an agreement and they would be happy. But if he was obliged to say that Israel would have to deal with the PLO or a Palestinian state, then there would be screaming in the US and in Israel. Carter saw the thrust of Dayan's remarks and said a confrontation would not be good for Israel either." (p 129)

Carter had got the message: "[National Security advisor Zbigniew] Brzezinski at the time worried about the impression left with the Israelis that the president was susceptible to pressure." (p 131)

"Increasingly, Carter and Sadat seemed to be thinking of an Egyptian-Israeli accord, one only loosely connected to an attempt to negotiate an agreement on the Palestinian question. Sadat focused his comments almost entirely on Sinai, where he insisted on a full withdrawal by Israeli forces. He rarely talked in detail about the West Bank or Gaza, preferring to stress general principles such as nonacquisition of territory by force and the right of the Palestinians to self-determination. He did not strongly support the American attempt to mobilise opinion behind a freeze on settlements and the applicability of UN Resolution 242 [which called for 'Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict'] to all fronts. Carter was therefore left in the awkward position of appearing to be more pro-Arab than Sadat, a politically vulnerable position to say the least. Hence the effort was made to get Sadat to put forward a clear proposal on the West Bank and Gaza. When he proved reluctant to do so, Carter apparently began to conclude that Sadat's real interest was a bilateral Egyptian-Israeli deal. This appraisal was probably accurate... " (p 177)

"Turning to the Israeli position, Carter said that even if Israel was not required to withdraw completely from the West Bank, and even if there was no Palestinian state, Begin would still not show flexibility. He would not stop settlement activity; he would not give up the settlements in Sinai; he would not allow the Sinai settlements to remain under UN or Egyptian protection; he would not agree to withdraw politically from the West Bank even if Israel could retain military outposts; he would not recognise that 242 applied to all fronts; and he would not give the Palestinians the right to choose, at the end of the interim period, whether they wanted to be affiliated with Jordan or Israel or to continue the self-rule arrangements." (p 186)

"... Carter had repeatedly pledged never to cut economic or military aid to Israel as a form of pressure, and he had vowed not to impose an American peace plan. So Begin could anticipate that little more than a verbal disagreement would result if the Camp David talks failed.' (p 208)

"The obvious trade... was to drop reference to withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza in exchange for Israeli willingness to leave the Sinai completely.' (p 236)

"Sadat's foreign minister was later to write: 'In my opinion, Dayan's discussions with Sadat, which lasted less than an hour, was the straw that broke the camel's back and a turning point towards Sadat's involvement in a series of concessions, arriving at the point of total surrender and, in the end, his signing something beyond Israel's most optimistic dreams'." (p 238)

"Dayan suggested that 242 be referred to only with regard to future Jordanian-Israeli peace negotiations. Since in Begin's view King Hussein [of Jordan] had no valid claim to the West Bank... the issue of withdrawal should not arise. For those areas, Begin would agree to only one of 2 possible outcomes: perpetual autonomy or the imposition of Israeli sovereignty at the end of the 5-year transitional period." (p 244)

"[Attorney General Professor] Barak had little support for [Vance's] desire to continue the Camp David talks until the crucial West Bank and Gaza issues could be fully resolved. So his alternative of finding ambiguous language was implicitly accepted. The central idea, worked out between Barak and Vance was to have 2 synchronised sets of negotiations, one involving Jordan and Israel and one involving Israel and the elected representatives of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, joined by Egypt and Jordan. The draft would say that the principles of 242 applied to 'the negotiations' without spelling out what that meant in reality. Egypt and the US could claim that it meant that 242 did apply to the West Bank and Gaza, but Israel would maintain that it applied only to the peace treaty negotiated between Jordan and Israel, where the question of the future of the West Bank and Gaza would not be raised. Few outside observers would have been able to follow the logic of this arcane discussion, but if they had, they would have seen that a basis for future arguments was being laid." (p 244-245)

"In the end, events outside the immediate scope of the Egyptian-Israeli negotiations broke the stalemate. The shah of Iran fell from power in early 1979, and then everyone flinched, Carter most of all. For political and strategic reasons he concluded that he could not let the chance of peace between Egypt and Israel slip away while Iran was caught up in revolution. Even at some risk to his own reputation, he was prepared to once again make a major gamble to reach an agreement. And if Begin could not be moved, then Sadat would have to be." (p 290) And the rest, as they say, is history.

It is worth dwelling on the significance for the Middle East conflict of Sadat's sell-out at Camp David. Egypt's best known journalist Mohamed Heikal reflected: "The October War [of 1973] was a strategic victory for the Arabs. It was almost a tactical victory for the Arab armies, Egyptian and Syrian, which fought the war, but this in the end eluded them owing to miscalculations in the field and America's determination to rescue Israel, whatever the cost. Yet it is a fact that, as 1973 ended, the world was waiting with bated breath to see what this new political and economic giant, the Arab world, would make of its opportunity. Now, as I write, 9 years later, with the war in Lebanon recently ended, the contrast between original hopes and present reality is almost too bitter to contemplate. If it can be said that in 1967 Arab policies were betrayed by Arab arms, it is no less true that in 1973 Arab arms were betrayed by Arab policies. Israel's invasion of Lebanon [1982] revealed to all the Arabs' total impotence - political, military, economic. It was the moment of their greatest humiliation and shame. How Sadat would have reacted to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon is impossible to say [Sadat was assassinated in October 1981]. But what is certain is that, by stating categorically in Jerusalem that there would never be another war between Egypt and Israel, he had given a one-sided pledge of non-belligerence of which Israel was to take full advantage. If there had been no such pledge, if Egypt had still been an active element in the Middle East military equation, the Israelis would never have dreamed of committing a hundred thousand troops to the invasion of their northern neighbour. The fact that Sadat's policies had ensured the total and inevitable isolation of Egypt from the rest of the Arab world did more than anything else to give a clear passage for Sharon's tanks on the road to Beirut. Looked at dispassionately, it can be seen that the siege of Beirut was the logical outcome of the Camp David agreements. From the outset it was perfectly clear that Begin knew exactly what he intended these agreements to mean - no Palestinian state, no independent Palestinian entity, and if the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza insisted on claiming to be represented by the PLO, then the PLO would have to be destroyed. The first stage of destruction involved the arrest and expulsion of prominent PLO supporters living under Israeli occupation, seizing land, cutting off water and various other forms of harassment. The second stage took the form of outright war. The Arabs could do nothing to stop Israel because by making a separate peace the state which was the Arab world's natural leader had effectively disarmed all the others as well as itself. The free hand which Sadat gratuitously presented to the Israelis was not exploited by them at the expense of the Palestinians alone; all Arabs east of the Suez Canal thereby became immediately exposed. Lebanon is the most obvious victim, but Syria too has felt the full weight of Israeli weaponry, and even Iraq became the target for the Israeli airforce. Egypt's opting out had a centrifugal effect on all other Arab countries, diverting their attention from what had for long been the dream of unity - however imperfectly understood or pursued, yet a noble and stimulating dream - into barren territorial rivalries, religious conflicts and social strife. The Arab world had become well and truly balkanized." (Autumn of Fury, 1983, pp 284-285)

On Planet Sheridan...

My, it's been a refreshingly long time since we've heard from Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian, on the subject of Palestine/Israel. All good things must come to an end though, and the bugger's back on the opinion pages with the usual Zio-centric tripe: There may be the will but not necessarily the way: Peace in the Middle East is not possible whatever Obama does so long as Palestinians oppose it (5/2/09).

On Planet Sheridan, of course, it's always the Palestinians who want war, and it's always the Israelis who strive for peace, including Likud leader and probable next prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "Netanyahu will be demonised by the usual suspects but he will be no barrier to peace."

No barrier to peace? Does The Australian's foreign editor bother reading his own foreign correspondents? Apparently not. Here's what The Australian's Jerusalem correspondent Abraham Rabinovich wrote about Netanyahu on 30/1/09: "Of the 3 candidates for prime minister, Mr Netanyahu is the only one who does not endorse a two-state solution as advocated by the US - a Palestinian state and a Jewish state alongside each other." (Right-wing, one-state party leads Israeli polls)

Did he bother reading The Australian's Middle East correspondent John Lyons' report about Netanyahu vowing to "'completely uproot' Hamas in the Gaza Strip" and "defeat 'the Iranian threat at all levels'"? (We must drive out enemies, says Bibi, 6/2/09) It seems not.

Even if Netanyahu found peace in the way that some people find Jesus, there'd be the slight matter of the Likud charter (aka the Likud Party platform), unheard of in the pages of The Heart of The Nation: "The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River. The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as independent and sovereign state."/"The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel... The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting." (Likud Charter does not recognise Palestine, Frank Barat, palestinechronicle.com, 31/1/09)

He's going to tear up that little barrier to peace, is he?

On Planet Sheridan, an entity he calls "Palestine" is going to get "all the land of the West Bank and Gaza except for the large Jewish settlement blocks [sic] that are effectively suburbs of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. These house 80% of the Jewish settlers on 5% of the disputed land. The new Palestinian state would get land from Israel proper to make up for this 5%."

This, of course, is an exercise in prestidigitation: 1) "Disputed land" is Zionist jargon for occupied land; 2) The large Israeli settlement blocs are not "effectively suburbs of Tel Aviv"; and 3) When Sheridan talks about "Palestine" getting "all of the land of the West Bank," he either fails to let on, or is ignorant of the fact, that 30% of the West Bank, namely the Jordan Valley, will be retained by Israel, and that another 10% has been hived off by Israel's apartheid/annexation wall. All of the West Bank, itself only 22% of historic Palestine, thus reduces by 40%.

On Planet Sheridan, poor old Israel, despite its itching to get rid of "all" (or even 55%) of the West Bank, is unfortunately unable to find a "credible Palestinian leadership [which] can put an end to serious terrorism especially cross-border rocket launches," or which "will accept that such a settlement is the end of Palestinian territorial claims."

Shucks! Apparently, neither Abbas nor Hamas are credible. Nor Arafat before them. Nor... In fact, never being able to find a Palestinian peace partner is actually something of a Zionist tradition. As Middle East scholar Gabriel Piterberg has pointed out, back in 1924, when the British proposed to establish a legislative council for all of Palestine's inhabitants on the basis of the existing demographic configuration (Jewish minority/Arab majority), the leader of Palestine's Jewish community, David Ben-Gurion, found himself in a lather as to how to avoid dealing with the (then) leadership of the Palestinian national movement: "Ben-Gurion employed every trick in the book to avoid doing so, from a spurious white man's burden ('we' cannot reach a true understanding with the Arabs until 'we' help them become civilized and progressive, and until 'we' help transform their national movement so that it is led by workers rather than effendis and clerics), through settler-colonial superciliousness to outright cynicism and procrastination. This he did by means of what [Shabtai] Teveth [his biographer] calls the 'class formula'... Only when the Arab national movement is led by workers, proclaimed Ben-Gurion, will such an understanding be possible. Why the need to stall? Ben-Gurion's vision of how the Zionist project would come to fruition was in essence no different from Jabotinsky's 'Iron Wall' metaphor in his 1923 article of the same name, which recognized the genuine resistance of indigenous people to the threat of external dispossession and the corresponding solution of erecting an iron wall - 'the strengthening in Palestine of a government without any kind of Arab influence'. Where Ben-Gurion differed from Jabotinsky was in his view that it was unwise openly to define the reality in Palestine as a conflict between a settler-national movement versus an indigenous one until the Yishuv became ineradicably solid. The class formula was an expedient rationale for stalling, crafted as it was in a language perfectly appropriate to Ben-Gurion's institutional position as secretary general of the Histadrut. For Ben-Gurion such language was expedient; he dropped it like a hot potato as soon as he could." (The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics & Scholarship in Israel, 2008, pp 73-74) Eighty-five years on, Zionist leaders are still stalling.

On Planet Sheridan, it should come as no great surprise to find that the Gaza massacres are all Hamas' fault: "The cost in innocent Palestinian lives was heavy and tragic, and the fault... rests entirely with Hamas, the terrorist death-cult that rules Gaza. I do not believe a single story of Israeli war crimes or atrocities in Gaza. There is no evidence of any such story beyond Palestinian eye-witness accounts and on countless* previous occasions these accounts have been fabricated... The Israelis are among the most disciplined troops in the world and go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties." No mention of the international media being kept out of Gaza, of course.

All Palestinians, it seems, are liars on Planet Sheridan, and the IOF is completely above reproach. But what would Sheridan make of this: "'Fire on anything that moves in Zeitoun' - that was the order handed down to Israeli troops in the Givati Shaked battalion, who reduced the eastern Gaza City suburb to little more than rubble in a matter of days... 'We pounded Zeitoun into the ground', an Israeli soldier who was deployed in the area, told The Times... We pounded them with fire; they never had a chance'." (Israeli soldiers recall Gaza attack orders, Sheera Frenkel, The Times, 28/1/09)

A self-hating Jew perhaps? Or this: "Having interviewed dozens of victims and witnesses and, having examined the ballistic evidence from north to south, we are convinced that Israel did not do everything possible to minimise civilians' harm and death', said Fred Abrahams of Human Rights Watch. The rules of engagement were exceedingly loose, and they dropped the bar on the laws of war. This allowed civilian casualties to rise." (ibid) Bleeding heart definitely, probably self-hating Jew to boot. Or this: "Doctors operating the only brain-scanning machine at an Egyptian hospital near Gaza have been almost overwhelmed by the number of Palestinian children arriving with bullet wounds to the head." (Children found with bullets lodged in their head, Topaz Amoore, gulfnews.com, 18/1/09) Gypos, get real!

On Planet Sheridan, remember, Hamas is not an Islamic resistance movement, but merely a "terrorist death-cult." And why, Sheridan asks, did this terrorist outfit goad easy-going, mild-mannered Israel to respond to its constant acts of naked aggression? That's easy: Hamas wanted to "have Israel painted again as the international villain." Pretty fiendish, eh?

You see, on Planet Sheridan, it's always Israel that responds and Hamas that attacks. Here on Planet Earth, however, it's not quite that simple, as Khalid Meshaal of Hamas' political bureau explains: "For 6 months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire. Israel broke it repeatedly from the start. Israel was required to open crossings to Gaza, and extend the truce to the West Bank. It proceeded to tighten its deadly siege of Gaza, repeatedly cutting electricity and water supplies. The collective punishment accelerated, as did the assassinations and killings. Thirty Gazans were killed by Israeli fire and hundreds of patients died as a direct effect of the siege during the so-called ceasefire. Israel enjoyed a period of calm. Our people did not... The logic of those who demand that we stop our resistance is absurd. They absolve the aggressor and occupier, armed with the deadliest weapons of death and destruction, of responsibility, while blaming the victim, prisoner and occupied. Our modest, home-made rockets are our cry of protest to the world. Israel and its American and European sponsors want us to be killed in silence. But die in silence we will not." (Gaza: the great divide -1, The Age, 7/1/09)

But no, Sheridan wouldn't be found dead reading The Age. And anyway, seeing Meshaal's not only a lying Palestinian, but also one of the leaders of the "terrorist death cult" which is Hamas, what he has to say can hardly be "credible" now, can it? All this talk about blockades and extra-judicial murders - baloney - Sheridan knows better: "Hamas's goals and motivation are theological and filled with sectarian hatred and anti-Semitism," and he wheels out the Hamas charter to prove it (See my 30/3/08 post Jerusalem Prize Syndrome). From this hoary document we are supposed to understand that Hamas, in addition to being a "terrorist death cult," is also just another of your generic, Jew-killing jihadi organisations. Which doesn't quite explain why, as Sheridan asserts, "Hamas has engaged in countless* atrocities against Palestinians it doesn't like. It has murdered many Fateh men, but the media subjects this behaviour to very little scrutiny." Much like his own paper, I guess, which has kept schtum about USrael's Palestinian collaborators dishing it out to alleged Hamas supporters in the West Bank*. Nor, for that matter, would you read in The Australian that the Israeli Occupation Forces were instructed by the chief military rabbinate not "to 'be enticed by the folly of the Gentiles who have mercy for the cruel'." (Israeli MP: military rabbi turned Gaza into holy war, antiwar.com, 8/2/09). That Israeli MP, Avshalom Vilan, just has to be a self-hating Jew!

[*"The horrific torture of hundreds of people by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is being funded by British taxpayers... The victims - some left maimed - are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it." (Financed by the British taxpayer, brutal torturers of the West Bank, David Rose, dailymail.co.uk, 31/1/09)]

On Planet Sheridan, Palestinians are a perennial worry. Sheridan informs us that not only do the buggers carry the dreaded jihad virus ("the wider ideology of Islamist jihad... has currency in the Palestinian population..."), but that they're multiplying like rabbits - and it's not because they're randy as, mind you - but because "they... have a long-term demographic strategy." No, not along the lines of your civilized Peter Costello demographic strategy ("one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country") but popping 'em out like there's no tomorrow (which, come to think of it, there probably isn't in the Gaza Strip): "In 1950, there were about 240,000 Gazans. Now there are about 1.5 million. By 2040 there will be 3 million. Eventually, they believe, they will swamp Israel with sheer numbers."

Here we find Sheridan climbing into bed (gross thought I know) with the SMH's Islamophobe-in-residence, Paul Sheehan, who only last month wrote of the Gaza Palestinians: "Women, living under sharia law, are used primarily as breeding stock." (See my 13/1/09 post Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH) Makes me wonder - Sheridan's a Catholic, right? He's contra condoms, right? But would he consider, I wonder, heading up a 'Condoms for Gaza' campaign if it were necessary to save his "plucky" little Israel from this biological ticking bomb? Now there's a thought!

On Planet Sheridan, "instead of a solution, we should look for Israel to manage the situation at the lowest level of violence possible, while encouraging any normalisation that can take place." IOW, recruit collaborators, and beat the crap out of the rest. Or better, what obtains now: recruit collaborators to beat the crap out of the rest.

[*Countless: I should explain that Sheridan has this way with numbers, as a general rule preferring 'thousands' to 'hundreds' if it helps bolster his 'case' (See my 4 & 10/2/08 posts When Even the Retraction is Dodgy 1 & 2). It seems now that "countless" (X2) is preferred over 'thousands'.]