The 50-Year Rape

Today is the 50th anniversary of the fourth day of the June/Six-Day war of 1967, which of course led directly to the now 50-year old OCCUPATION of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and Syria's Golan Heights.

Today, 50 years ago, Israel completed what it had failed to do in 1948 - seize control of, and OCCUPY, the remaining 22% of historic Palestine, namely the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Today, 50 years ago, Israel RAPED the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Is 'raped' too harsh a word for you? Don't blame me, I'm just echoing the words of then Israeli 'defence' minister, Moshe Dayan:

"The situation between us is like the complex relationship between a Bedouin man and the young girl he has taken against her wishes,' Dayan told the Palestinian poet Fadwa Tukan. 'But when their children are born, they will see the man as their father and the woman as their mother. The initial act will mean nothing to them. You, the Palestinians, as a nation, do not want us today, but we will change your attitude by imposing our presence upon you'." (Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, The War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, 2007, p 478)

Typically, this Israeli rapist cannot be honest about his crime. See how he projects it onto his victim?

If truth be told, the rape of the West Bank has been going on for the past 50 years.

43rd Anniversary of the October War

On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria, launched the October War (6-26 October) against Israel over its continued refusal to end the occupation of Egyptian (Sinai) and Syrian territory (Golan Heights), seized in 1967. Although the attack took Israel completely by surprise, and trashed its carefully constructed myth of military invincibility, it was ultimately unsuccessful in reclaiming these territories at the time. (The Sinai was later returned to Egypt, but only in stages (1974-1982), with restrictions, and, in full, only after the conclusion of a US-engineered peace treaty (1979) which gave Israel a free hand to invade and occupy Lebanon in 1982. (See my 15/2/09 post A Likud Peace.) The Golan Heights, annexed by Israel in 1981, remain under Israeli occupation.)

So what was it in particular that goaded the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat (1918-1981), to chance all on a war with Israel?

The influential editor of the Egyptian daily, Al Ahram, Mohamed Heikal, records a confidential conversation he had with the president on September 10, 1973. Here's the key extract:

"We turned to the likely Israeli response, and the President stressed his anger at what he called Israel's 'intolerable arrogance.' He picked up the second black file. 'This.' he said, 'is a dossier on Israeli intentions.' He pulled from it a report of a television interview given a month or so earlier by [Israeli] General Dayan, in which Dayan had made it quite clear that Israel was determined to build a new port and town at Yamit, on Egyptian territory bordering the Gaza Strip. Dayan had talked of this as a 'primary military defence line'. Egypt, his remarks showed beyond doubt, was to be presented with a fait accompli. 'Look at that,' said the President. 'If it was only for that one statement of Dayan's I think we should go to war'." (The Road to Ramadan: The Inside Story of How the Arabs Prepared for and Almost Won the October War of 1973, 1975, pp 21-22)

In a word, Sadat had little choice. The sober truth is that but for his decision to go to war, and the diplomatic moves which it set in train, the Egyptian Sinai would be as riddled with Israeli settlements as the occupied Palestinian West Bank is today.

Malcolm Turnbull's Moshe Dayan Moment

The truth, as they say, will out:

"Campaigning in Perth, [PM Malcolm] Turnbull agreed with the description of invasion for the first arrival of the First Fleet in 1788... 'Well, I think it can be fairly described as that and I've got no doubt... our first Aboriginal Australians describe it as an invasion... But, you know, you are talking about an historical argument about a word. The facts are very well-known. This country was Aboriginal land. It was occupied by Aboriginal people for tens of thousands of years - 40,000 years'." (PM faces renewed push for a treaty, Tom McIlroy, Sydney Morning Herald, 15/6/16)

And even, on the odd occasion, from a Zionist leader - in this case, the late Moshe Dayan:

"We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country [the total area was about 6%] we bought the lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built on the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal [Dayan's own village] arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat - in the place of Jibta, [Kibbutz] Said - in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua - in the place of Tell Shaman. There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population. [Ha-Aretz, April 4, 1969]"

Edward Said used that quote of Dayan's in his seminal work, The Question of Palestine (1979), but added, by way of explanation: "Even Dayan's terminology, frank as it is, is euphemistic. For what he means by 'the Arab villages are not there either' is that they were destroyed systematically." (p 14)

Memo to Bob Carr: Israel is Occupied Palestine

In an opinion piece in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, former Labor foreign ministers, Bob Carr and Gareth Evans, slammed "Australia's new policy of refusing to describe East Jerusalem as 'occupied'":

"If East Jerusalem is not to be referred to as 'occupied', why not Nablus or Bethlehem? If the Australian government can say 'occupied East Jerusalem' is fraught with 'pejorative implications' what is to stop Ms Bishop applying this to the occupied West Bank as a whole?" (East Jerusalem stance will not aid peace process)

Point well taken, but perhaps it's time to broaden the discussion:

If East Jerusalem is to be referred to as occupied (which, if course, it certainly is), why not West Jerusalem?

If Nablus and Bethlehem are to be referred to as occupied (which, of course, they certainly are), why not Jaffa and Haifa?

The simple fact of the matter is that today's 'Israel' - taken by brute force force and ethnic cleansing in 1948 - is just as much occupied Palestine as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - taken by brute force and ethnic cleansing in 1967.

Do Carr and Evans need to consult the shades of the Zionist architects of Israeli-occupied Palestine - from the River to the Sea - to understand the bleeding obvious? Namely, that every inch of Palestine is stolen land? That just about every Jewish Israeli is either a settler or the son and daughter of a settler or the grandson or granddaughter of a settler? That yesterday's kibbutzim and moshavim are today's West Bank settlements? That Israel is because Palestine isn't?

So be it then:

David Ben-Gurion: "If I was an Arab leader, I should never make terms with Israel. That is natural; we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but that was two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"

Vladimir Jabotinsky: "Any native people... views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs... They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervour that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon the prairie..."

Moshe Dayan: "Let us not today fling accusations at the murderers. Who are we that we should argue against their hatred? For eight years now they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their very eyes, we turn into our homestead the land and the villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the cannon we cannot plant a tree and build a home... Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You don't even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahlul, Gvat in the place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Haneifa, and Kfar-Yehoshua in the place of Tel-Shaman. There is not one single place in this country that did not have a former Arab population."

Carr and Evans also wrote:

"Israeli realists know indefinite occupation of the West Bank will degrade their own country, maintaining its Jewish identity only at the price of compromising its democracy."

Can they tell us how maintaining the "Jewish identity" of Israel - at the expense of the non-Jewish Palestinians - is not as racist a project as that of White South Africans maintaining the White identity of South Africa - at the expense of non-White South Africans?

Maybe they need to sit down and listen, really listen, to the unashamedly Zionist, and hence unashamedly racist, Israeli mayor of Upper Nazareth, Shimon Gapso:

"I'm not afraid to say it out loud... Upper Nazareth is a Jewish city and it's important that it remain so. If that makes me a racist, then I'm a proud offshoot of a glorious dynasty of 'racists' that started with the 'Covenant of the Pieces' [that God made with Abraham, recounted in Genesis 15:1-15] and the explicitly racist promise: 'To your seed have I given this land' [Genesis 15:38]...

"The racist Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, not The State of All Its Citizens). Lord Balfour recommended the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Arlosoroff, Moshe Sharett and other racists established the Jewish Agency, and the racist UN decided to establish a Jewish state - in other words, a state for Jews. The racist Ben-Gurion announced the establishment of the Jewish State in the Land of Israel, and during the War of Independence even made sure to bring in hundreds of thousands of Jews and drive out hundreds of thousands of Arabs who had been living here - all to enable it to be founded with the desired racist character.

"Since then, racially pure kibbutzim without a single Arab member and an army that protects a certain racial strain have been established, as have political parties that proudly bear racist names such as Habayit Hayehudi - 'The Jewish Home'. Even our racist national anthem ignores the existence of the Arab minority - in other words, the people Ben-Gurion did not manage to expel in the 1948 war. If not for all that 'racism' it's doubtful we could live here, and doubtful we could live at all.

"In these times of hypocrisy and bleeding-heart sanctimoniousness, of the proliferation of flaky types who are disconnected from reality, in the relative security that causes us to forget the dangers we face, we can sit in north Tel Aviv and cry 'racism' to seem enlightened and good-hearted in our own eyes. We can be shocked at a mayor who prefers that his city, which is right next to the largest Arab city in Israel, retain a Jewish majority and not be swallowed up in the Arab area that surrounds it. There will not be a single Jew in the future Palestinian state, but that's all right. That isn't racism." ('If you think I'm a racist, then Israel is a racist state', Haaretz, 7/8/13)

Viva Australian Student Activism 3

Continued from my previous post:

"THE DEBATE AGAIN

"Although the criticism of AUS increased in the 1975 debate, the arguments changed on the substance of the questions. Most of the debate rested on whether or not a democratic secular state was viable and whether or not the PLO was sincere in calling for one.

"The outcry over AUS involvement in this issue a second time was best expressed by the extraordinary Mungo MacCallum in Nation Review, in a virtual reprint of his 1974 article. The article was reprinted in an AUJS leaflet...: 'Last year the AUS Council sought ratification of motions designed to align Australia with the PLO and against Israel. In spite of the scandalous abuse of AUS resources in almost exclusively promoting the 'yes' case, student meetings around the country overwhelmingly rejected the council position... But... the AUS heavies have refused to accept the democratic verdict of the people they claim to represent and it's all on again.' (AUS's unofficial anti-Israel line, Nation Review, April 4-10, 1975) MacCallum went on to make startling allegations about the appointment of [Victorian left ALP activist] Bill Hartley as Education Research Officer on 'an unprecedented salary', and questioned whether AUS ought to meddle in affairs in which it has no influence. MacCallum was enthusiastically quoted and embroidered upon in a number of places. In every new leaflet and article, Bill Hartley's salary and conditions improved. By the time he reached the pages of Arena in May 1975, Hartley's salary had jumped $2,000 and he had a car and expenses as well.

"Two unauthorised leaflets distributed on Melbourne campuses attempted to win support by characterising the 1975 motions as a deliberate affront to the 'stupid' AUS membership. The leaflets posed the threat that support for the PLO '... means the Executive of AUS would have the right to give part of your membership money to the PLO to finance such activities as the murder of civilians...' Graffiti at [Sydney's] Macquarie [University] put it more simply: 'YOU WASTE HALF A MILLION STUDENT DOLLARS ON YOUR FILTH AND LIES.' (The leaflets were titled: 'At it Again!' and 'You Are Stupid (Says AUS)'. [A photograph of] the graffiti [can be seen] in Arena 23/4/75.)

"The crux of the debate, however, lay in the issue of the democratic secular state [of Palestine] raised in the first motion. As Simon Marginson points out, it was difficult for AUJS to oppose the concept of a democratic secular state or support for the UN resolution since they had used the UN to legitimise their own claims to occupied Palestine the year before. The main aim of their opposition was to discredit the notion of the democratic secular state by pointing to the Arab regimes and places such as Cyprus and Northern Ireland. Attempts were also made to discredit the UN itself, a move which placed AUJS members on the same par with the establishment which claims the UN has never really been useful since it became dominated by third world countries.

"The motions were defeated again but by a greatly decreased majority. Motion 1 [the democratic secular state of Palestine] was supported by 19% of campuses and by 25% of students voting. [Motion 2, AUS recognition of PLO] was supported by 16% of campuses and 20% of students. (Alternate News Service No 43 August 4, 1975) The fourfold increase in student support was due to several factors.

"AUS BASH CONTINUES UNABATED

"1976 was a good year for Zionist students and their allies, the Liberals and the Murdoch press. It was just like having the Middle East debate in 1974 and 1975 without the hoary questions of Israel and the Palestinians intruding. Most delegates will be aware of the scope of the attacks specifically from Zionist quarters in 1976 and we may be sure they will come up again during Council. They included:

1. The hounding of employees, former officers and... employees of AUS and its subsidiary service companies.
2. Ludicrous attacks on any officer if any bias was shown towards the Palestinian people. Of course, since most of the incoming officers had supported the gag motion it might be argued they could not have their cake and eat it too. However, AUS's only policy on the Middle East supported the right of the Palestinians to be heard in Australia so it could also be argued that as officers and individuals they had the right to attend demonstrations against Moshe Dayan and to generally be critical of Israel. However, at the anti-Dayan demonstration in Sydney, an Arab woman, unknown to any of the students present, was carrying a sign reading 'AUS for Palestine'. Outraged Zionists demanded that Macquarie [University's] AUS secretary or the NSW RO Sarah Sheehan remove the sign from the woman. Anonymous letters were printed in student papers accusing Sheehan of standing near the sign. One such letter, in Cautisone, even criticised Rodd Webb, former FCC and no longer even a member of the Union, for standing near the sign.
3. An unauthorised leaflet alleging close contacts between present AUS officers and Henri Fischer.
4. Continual attacks in the daily press from such people as [Frank] Knopfelmacher alleging AUS supports terrorism.
5. Most important [were Michael] Danby's proposals for wiping out left-wing influence in AUS.

"Ironically, 1976, of all years, was the year during which Israel's international image was severely tarnished. The West Bank riots and their brutal suppression; the closer connections with South Africa; the growing right-wing within Israel; the public service report attempting to further disadvantage Arabs in Israeli society; and the plight of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon expressed in the massacre of Tel-az-Zaatar are just a few of the ways in which Israel and the Palestinians were talking points. The only high point for the West in this dismal year for Israel was the raid at Entebbe, complete in paperback and 70mm. It says something about the nature of a country that it regards as its public relations high point the invasion of another country.

"The reaction of the Zionists and the repercussions for AUS made the Middle East debate one with wider implications. Obviously, as a students' union, AUS must involve itself in concerns related to education and students, but even policies in those areas may be compromised by the refusal of AUS leaders to debate Palestine in 1976. What use is our policy on Southern Africa; our policy against Fraser and cuts in spending; our policy for the repeal of all abortion laws if, as soon as a well-organised, noisy and unprincipled opposition emerges, we immediately back down? The policy AUS passed relating to the rights of the Palestinian people to put their case to the Australian people is just so much humbug when we consider that the leaders of AUS would not even allow their own membership to debate the question of Israel. To claim, as right-wingers and Zionists do, that the vote in both [1974 and 1975] just showed how unrepresentative the leadership of AUS misses the point. As Rodd Webb put it in an analysis of the 1974 debate in Arena: 'None of their sponsors really expected [the 1974 motions] to receive majority support [but]... it was a heartening demonstration of the operation of a wider democracy (in AUS) than had been practised before'."

Points of interest arising:

1) Journalist David Marr's observation on Julia Gillard as a student politician: "She wanted to take Palestine out of the AUS." (See my 14/8/10 post The Real Julia Gillard.)

2) For Tony Abbott, the AUS, and Palestine, I refer you to my 13/9/12 post Greg & Tony Do Monash.

3) Someone really ought to research the AUS's 1970s Palestine campaign thoroughly and examine its impact on our current crop of political suckholes for USrael.

4) And also for what light it sheds on the evolution of Zionist propaganda. You'll notice, for example, that one of the most common of contemporary Zionist talking points, the deflective, 'Why single out Israel? What about X, Y, and Z? ', had yet to be spun in the 70s.

Maybe I'll return to the subject of this campaign later on.

How to Read Israeli Politicians

"Mr Bennett told supporters the party had returned to the centre stage of Israeli politics and that it had become a new home for those wanting 'a proud, non-servile Zionism." (Coalition key to Bibi holding on, John Lyons, The Australian, 24/1/12)

A proud, non-servile Zionism? The adjectives here are, of course, redundant. There's no such thing as a cringing, servile Zionism. When it comes to the colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine it's only ever been a matter of pace tempered these days maybe by the presence or absence of Western journalists and cameramen.

"'You don't come to negotiations only with an olive branch, the way the Left does, or only with a gun, the way the Right does,' [Yair Lapid] said in a speech in the Ariel settlement deep in the West Bank. 'You come to find a solution. We're not looking for a happy marriage with the Palestinians, but for a divorce agreement we can live with.'" (No coalition figleaf role: Lapid, AFP, The Australian, 24/1/13)

The only time a Zionist has an olive branch in his hand is when he's vandalising a Palestinian olive orchard. And if he's not actually holding a gun, he's got a soldier holding one for him.

Note that the preferred platform for an Israeli 'centrist' politician these days is an illegal Israeli colony deep in the occupied West Bank.

Rapists don't marry their victims, so what's this nonsense about "a divorce we can live with"? Moshe Dayan at least had the rape bit right when he told the Palestinian poet, Fadwa Tuqan in 1967:

"The situation between us is like the complex relationship between a Bedouin man and the young girl he has taken against her wishes. But when their children are born, they will see the man as their father and the woman as their mother. The initial act will mean nothing to them. You, the Palestinians, as a nation, do not want us today, but we will change your attitude by imposing our presence upon you."

Only 'Sort Of'?

"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." Moshe Dayan, Address to the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), Haifa (as quoted in Ha'aretz, 4 April 1969)

In this week's copy of The Australian Jewish News, there's a glossy magazine - Every Woman - a production of the Womens International Zionist Organisation NSW. It contains an interesting feature, Holiday in the past, on Israel's 9 "leading boutique hotels." Says the front cover blurb: "Israel reveals its unique history through its hotels." But dip into this feature and you find that 5 out of the 9 are Palestinian to their foundations:

The American Colony Hotel, Jerusalem: Originally belonged to "the Turkish Pasha and his 4 wives." PALESTINIAN

The Shirat Hayam Hotel, Tiberius: A renovated "1850 building." The hotel was renamed Star of the East in 1946 in honour of the great Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. PALESTINIAN

The Cinema Hotel, Tel Aviv: "The old Esther Cinema, one of the first movie theatres built in 1939." 

The Alegra Hotel, Jerusalem: "Alegra was the daughter of a Rabbi who lived in Ein Kerem at the beginning of last century. Jabara was the neighbouring son of a wealthy Christian merchant. The two fell in love, eloped and had 3 children." PALESTINIAN 

The Varsano Hotel, Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv

The Colony Hotel, Haifa: Originally the Appinger Hotel, it belonged to the German Appinger family which fled to Germany in WW 2.

The Efendi Hotel, Acre: One of the "glorious palaces that served the Ottoman rulers in the 19th century." PALESTINIAN 

The Fauzi Azar Inn, Nazareth: A former "200-year-old Arab mansion." PALESTINIAN

And should you consider asking for Israeli cuisine in any of these establishments, keep in mind this little exchange:

Stefan Gates: But is humous originally Jewish or Arabic?

Gil Hovav, Israeli food writer: Of course it's Arabic. Humous is Arabic. Falafel, our national Israeli dish, is completely Arabic and this salad that we call an Israeli Salad, actually it's an Arab salad, Palestinian salad. So, we sort of robbed them of everything.

(From the BBC's Cooking in the Danger Zone: Israel & Palestinian Territories, 13/3/08)

The Essence of Israel

"Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." Moshe Dayan

Although Australia plays host to hundreds of foreign ambassadors, you'll usually only ever see one hogging the opinion pages of our newspapers - Yuval Rotem, the Israeli ambassador.

Today, for example, he's popped up on the The Australian's opinion page with Cause for Israel stronger after boycott attempts, an edited extract of a speech given to the NSW Parliamentary Israeli Friendship Group on Tuesday.

Yuval's wonderful speech contains heaps of highlights and piles of pearls.

Did you know, for example that:

1) "John Howard... stood firm for freedom across the world at every opportunity"?

2) "Doc Evatt...helped to negotiate the re-foundation [!] of the state of Israel"?

3) "Common sense does not comply with vigilante local councils wreaking self-imposed economic sanction on one nation that is locked in a struggle for peace"?

4) "BDS in Australia has... become a media byline, like the S11 and G20 protests before it, for another failed movement of radical activists, which, shamefully, attached itself to a municipal council for a few months?"

5) "When we hear about BDS now, it's not coming from the mouths of prominent politicians and mayors or respected journals of record. It's being shouted from poorly attended protests, or from the back of police cars, or from the former communists who stayed with Stalin even after the Wall fell"?

6) "[Israel is] a tiny, miraculous country in the Middle East, awash with the principles of democracy, values of freedom and the colours of culture not enjoyed by the subjects of autocratic and theocratic regimes that surround [it]"?

But the following is my all-time favourite because something quite extraordinary occurs in it. Despite the bombast, Yuval manages to capture and communicate the very essence of Israel in just one word:

7) "It was another example of the way we defeat Israel's detractors in the West: using our minds, appealing to common sense and exhibiting that of which we are truly proud: our culture, our innovation, our way of life, our language, our technology, our teachings, our art - unleashing our contribution to the world."

Savage dogs are unleashed.

Thanks, Yuval, for that invaluable Dayanesque insight into exactly what it is that makes Israel Israel.

The Parallel World of Benjamin Netanyahu

"In 1984 when I was appointed Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, I visited the great rabbi of Lubavich. He said to me... you'll be serving in a house of many lies. And then he said, remember that even in the darkest place, the light of a single candle can be seen far and wide." (Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking in the UN General Assembly on September 23)

So the UN, which devised the legal instrument by which the Palestinian people's homeland could be literally pulled out from under their feet, and one which Zionist propagandists never tire of referring to as their colonial project's stamp of approval (I speak, of course, of the partition resolution of 1947), is now apparently a palace of lies and a dark place which only ever sees the light of truth when an Israeli representative opens his mouth. Right.

Beware - you are now entering a parallel universe where everything you know to be right is actually wrong and everything you know to be wrong is actually right. Welcome to the parallel world of Benjamin Netanyahu:

"Ladies and gentlemen, Israel has extended its hand in peace from the moment it was established 63 years ago."

Cough! Splutter! Shit, I've spilt my coffee!

"The truth is that Israel wants peace with a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians want a state without peace."

Nice? Well, what would you expect from the folk who gave us such clever bon mots as The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. (Abba Eban) Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us. (Golda Meir) If the Arabs put down their weapons today there would be no more violence. If the Israelis put down their weapons today there'd be no more Israel. (Shira Sorko-Ram)

"Without Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, Israel is all of 9 miles wide... Israel needs greater strategic depth... And to defend itself, Israel must therefore maintain a long-term military presence in critical strategic areas in the West Bank."

Hm... somewhat reminiscent of what an obscure German politician, who went on to bigger but hardly better things, wrote in 1926:

"In an era when the earth is gradually being divided up among states, some of which embrace almost entire continents, we cannot speak of a world power in connection with a formation whose political mother country is limited to the absurd area of 500,000 square kilometers." (Mein Kampf, ed 1971, p 644)

"The Jewish state of Israel will always protect the rights of all its minorities, including the more than 1 million Arab citizens of Israel. I wish I could say the same thing about a future Palestinian state, for as Palestinian officials made clear the other day - in fact, I think they made it right here in New York - they said the Palestinian state won't allow any Jews in it. They'll be Jew free - Judenrein. That's ethnic cleansing. There are laws today in Ramallah that make the selling of land to Jews punishable by death. That's racism."

After over 100 years of Zionist colonisation, resulting in Palestine getting progressively smaller and smaller, and Israel correspondingly bigger and bigger, and with most Palestinians living as stateless refugees outside Palestine, not to mention armed Israeli settlers running amok in the West Bank, cutting and burning their way through Palestinian orchards, the Palestinians have the gall to wish to protect what little they have left from marauding, land-grabbing Zionist settlers? The nerve of these people!

On the other hand (and in the very next paragraph as it happens), what's hilariously described as ethnic cleansing and racism in the case of the Palestinian Authority is simply routine when it comes to Israel, an entity which created its 'Jewish character' by violently dispossessing the majority of Palestinians from the territories overrun and occupied by its terror gangs in 1948, and maintains it today by adamantly refusing them their right of return and enacting apartheid legislation to keep the land forever in 'Jewish' hands:-

"Israel has no intention whatsoever to change the democratic character of our state. We just don't want the Palestinians to try to change the Jewish character of our state. We want them to give up the fantasy of flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians."

Fantasy? You want a flood fantasy, Fibi? Try this one on for size. Here's Chaim Weizmann, your great Zionist mover and shaker between Herzl and Ben-Gurion, speaking to British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour on December 4 1918:

"If we can say to the Jewish people that we shall be given the possibility of creating conditions in Palestine under which the development of a strong Jewish community may take place, we know that the mere existence of such a community would already raise the status of Jews in the world. Moreover a community of 4 to 5 million Jews in Palestine could radiate out into the Near East and so contribute mightily to the reconstruction of countries which were once flourishing... But all this presupposes free and unfettered development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, not mere facilities for colonisation, but opportunities for carrying out colonising activities, public works, etc., on a large scale so that we should be able to settle in Palestine about 4 to 5 million Jews within a generation, and so make Palestine a Jewish country." (Quoted in Palestine Papers: 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict, Doreen Ingrams, 1972/2009, p 46)

But that was just to his none-too-bright British mate. What he had to say to the Palestinians wasn't quite so frank:

"... It is not our aim to get hold of the supreme power and administration in Palestine, nor to deprive any native of his possession. For Palestine is rich to the extent that it can contain many times the number of its present inhabitants, who will be comfortably accommodated... We all like to live under the rule of some just Government, and all other rumours and sayings contrary to this are false and unfounded... And although the Jews here number but a few, yet the 14 million extant in all parts of the world, agree with us and confirm our sayings." (Weizmann to a meeting of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa, May 1918, ibid, p 30)

Yes, the movement of lies and deception.

"President Abbas just stood here, and said that the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the settlements. Well, that's odd. Our conflict has been raging for nearly half a century before there was a single Israeli settlement in the West Bank. So if what President Abbas is saying was true, then I guess that the settlements he's talking about are Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Be'er Sheva. Maybe that's what he meant the other day when he said that Israel has been occupying Palestinian land for 63 years. He didn't say from 1967; he said from 1948. I hope somebody will bother to ask him this question because it illustrates a simple truth: The core of the conflict is not the settlements. The settlements are a result of the conflict."

Blimey, Fibi's a whizz when it comes to who exactly was roaming the hills of Palestine 4,000 years ago,* but his memory grows hazy the closer he gets to the present: Tel Aviv? Built on the lands and ruins of Palestinian villages such as Abu Kabir, Manshiyya, Summayl, Shaykh Muwannis and Salama. Haifa? An ancient Palestinian city, ethnically cleansed from December 1947 to April 1948. Jaffa? An ancient Palestinian city, ethnically cleansed from January to May 1948. Be'er Sheva? An ancient Palestinian town, ethnically cleansed in October 1948. So yes, maybe that's what Abbas meant. Oh, and also the kibbutzim and moshavim aka the settlements of pre-1967 Israel. As Moshe Dayan reminded the students at the Israel Institute of Technology (Techniyon) in 1969:

"We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs, and we are building here a Hebrew, Jewish state. In a considerable proportion of localities we purchased the land from the Arabs. Instead of the Arab villages Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of these villages and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only the books, but also the villages no longer exist. Nahalal was established in the place of Mahalul, Gevat in the place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Hanifas and Kefar Yehoshu'a in the place of Tel Shamam. There is not a single settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab village." (Quoted in Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, Uri Davis, 2003, p 36)

[* See my previous post.]

Straight for the Jugular

They may come from different stages in the history of Zionist genocide and theft in Palestine, but the following vignettes serve as an eternal warning that while the lips may be whispering sweet nothings, the hand is invariably reaching for the knife:

1933:

"His Excellency opens the Egyptian Medical congress and we give a tea party for them in afternoon. Hardly any of the Palestinian Arabs invited turn up. Weizmann and Arlosoroff to dinner in the evening. I sit next to Mrs Weizmann and have a long talk to Weizmann himself. Most interesting. He is very charming, a magnetic personality, tho' I don't feel it as much as some: intensely clever, seemingly very reasonable. But it is his charm, and his reasonableness that make him so dangerous, for at heart he is as uncompromising as any of them. He says that as Arabs must realize that they can't drive the Jews into the sea, so the Jews must realize they can't drive the Arabs into the desert. The onus is on the Jews to prove that they do not want to do this. That is what he says and it sounds very well. But does he mean it? I am sure not." (CG Eastwood, Private Secretary to General Sir Arthur Wauchope, Diary entry, 4/4/33, quoted in Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine 1918-1948, AJ Sherman, 1997, p 88)

1967:

"That same evening (June 3) [1967] Moshe Dayan's first press conference statement as newly appointed Israeli Minister of Defense came over the ticker at the newspaper office. When the night editor had read and subheaded the copy, he turned it over to me for reading. Dayan's words were remarkably mild; he talked about waiting for international diplomatic efforts and admitted to an Israeli loss of military initiative. 'The government - before I became a member of it - embarked on diplomacy; we must give it a chance', Dayan said.

"The Israeli Defense Minister had also sent several thousand Israeli soldiers on 'leave'; they were photographed for the press as they relaxed on the beaches of Tel Aviv during the weekend. These final touches by Dayan reinforced the overall feeling among foreign correspondents (already aware of throbbing diplomatic lines of contact between Cairo and Washington and the paper 'blockade' at Tiran) that the crisis was about to ebb.

"But in Arab Jerusalem that Saturday evening Dayan sounded too much like Ben-Gurion offering to go to Cairo for direct peace talks with Abdul Nasser at the very moment that Israeli troops were moving out to begin the 1956 Suez War.

"We laughed at the idea of running the Dayan story under the headline: 'Israelis About to Attack'. It was part of a running, bitter private joke of ours: how the Arab nationalist always threatened blood, thunder, and ruin and then did nothing while the Israelis talked softly, spoke of peace and reconciliation, and struck straight for the jugular. That evening the night editor put to bed the last issue of The Palestine News." (The Fall of Jerusalem, Abdullah Schleifer, 1972, pp 154-155)

2004:

"'We shouldn't believe anything that is said. We should just monitor what happens on the ground', said Dror Etkes, an expert on settlement construction who works for the Israeli pressure group Peace Now. 'There is no connection between what is said by the Government and what happens on the ground'." (Israel ploughs on with huge settlement, Ed O'Loughlin, Sydney Morning Herald, 14/8/04)

Robert Fisk vs Jason Koutsoukis

"I know how at least 80% of the clashes [on the Golan Heights] started. In my opinion, more than 80%, but let's talk about 80%. It went this way. We would send a tractor to plough someplace where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was." Moshe Dayan quoted in The Iron Wall, Avi Shlaim, 2001, pp 236-237)

On the subject of the latest flare up on the Israeli-Lebanese border, who are you going to believe, the UK Independent's Beirut-based veteran reporter, Robert Fisk, OR the Sydney Morning Herald's Jerusalem-based babe-in-the-woods, Jason Koutsoukis, channeling an anonymous, but obviously Israeli, senior diplomatic source?

I've taken the liberty below of punctuating Koutsoukis' report with relevant snippets of two (4 & 5/8/10) of Fisk's reports (plus my own comments) in square-bracketed bold.

To begin with, however, here's Fisk on the subject of that elusive Israeli-Lebanese border:

"No one is exactly sure where the Israeli-Lebanese border is. In 2000, the UN drew a 'Blue Line' along what was... the frontier between the French mandate of Lebanon and the British mandate of Palestine. Behind it, from the Lebanese point of view, stands the Israeli 'technical fence', a mass of barbed wire, electrified wires and sandy roads (to look for footprints)." (Israel-Lebanon tensions flare after skirmish leaves 4 dead, 4/8/10) "The 'Blue Line' was inadvisedly drawn on the orders of an ambitious UN civil servant who would one day like to be UN Secretary General. In his haste to draw an 'accurate' border, for example, he put the entire area of Shebaa farms - which was Lebanese during the post-First World War French mandate - south and east of the line, effectively putting it under Israeli occupation (which had in military terms been the case since the 1967 Middle East war. But political errors of this kind sapped the belief of Lebanese authorities in the UN's maps." (UN: Israel was on its own side before border clash, 5/8/10)

Now for Koutsoukis/Fisk:

"A senior diplomatic source, who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity, said preliminary investigations by UN personnel monitoring the border... indicated the Lebanese army planned the attack. ["Now for the Lebanese army to take on the Israelis, with their 264 nuclear missiles, was a tall order. But for the Israeli army to take on the army of one of the smallest countries in the world was surely preposterous, not least because Army Day had been attended by the president of Lebanon, Michel Sleiman, in Beirut only 2 days earlier - when he ordered his soldiers to defend their frontier." 4/8] The source said the UN Interim Force in Lebanon advised Lebanese army commanders early on Tuesday morning that the Israelis would be removing a tree on their side of the border early in the afternoon. ["Israel had apparently not co-ordinated its gardening expedition with the Lebanese via the UN." 5/8] Several hours before the Israelis moved in to begin that work, a senior Lebanese army unit arrived at the Lebanese village of al-Adeisa, which overlooks the site where the tree was to be removed, and took control of the area. They were accompanied by several journalists linked to media outlets controlled by the radical Shiite movement Hezbollah ["At about this time, Al-Akhbar newspaper's local correspondent Assaf Abu Rahal turned up in Addaiseh to cover the story." 4/8. MERC: Al-Akhbar has nothing to do with Hezbollah & Assaf Abu Rahal was a Christian - as, btw, was one of the slain Lebanese soldiers.]... Shortly after 12:15pm, when the Israelis moved a crane close to the border fence to begin removing the tree, a Lebanese army sniper took aim at the the commanders who were supervising the operation from a hill on the Israeli side of the border. 'The sniper was aiming for the most senior IDF officers present, not the person operating the crane where the alleged border infringement took place', the source told the Herald. 'These were not warning shots fired towards the area of the crane. ["The moment the crane's arm crossed the 'technical fence'... Lebanese soldiers opened fire into the air. The Israelis, according to the Lebanese... shot at the Lebanese soldiers." 4/8] Someone took careful aim at the Israeli commanders who were standing several hundred metres away'. One shot hit Colonel Dov Harari in the head, killing him instantly. Another shot caused shrapnel wounds to the chest of a captain, who is in hospital in a serious condition ["And a little time later, an Israeli helicopter - apparently firing from the Israeli side of the border (though that has yet to be confirmed) - fired a rocket at a Lebanese armoured vehicle, killing 3 soldiers and the journalist. Lebanese troops, on orders from Beirut, fired back and killed an Israeli lieutenant." 4/8]... In the clash that followed the sniper's shots, two Lebanese soldiers were killed, and a journalist from the Hezbollah-owned Al Manar television network [MERC: ???] ... Guy Bechor, a senior analyst of Israeli-Arab affairs at the Interdisciplinary Centre at Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, said the entire affair appeared to have been fully planned by the Lebanese army... 'The immediate purpose was to create deterrence with Israel. The Lebanese army has become fed up standing idly by while the IDF operates almost as freely in Lebanese territory as it does in its own territory'." (Lebanese commander ordered sniper attack, 6/8/10) [MERC: Well exactly! Let's here it again: "The Lebanese army has become fed up standing idly by while the IDF operates almost as freely in Lebanese territory as it does in its own territory." ]

PS: "Israeli warplanes have been executing mock intensive air raids in Nabatieh, Iqlim al-Toufah, Marjayoun and Khiam airspace since Friday morning', the [Lebanese] National News Agency said. In addition, the southern towns of Tyre, Hasbya and Bint Jbeil are also experiencing flyovers and dummy attacks." (Israel rattles sabre in south Lebanon, Patrick Galey, Daily Star, 7/8/10)

More Sewage from Hitchens

"[Edward Said] never lost the capacity to be wounded by the treachery and opportunism of supposed friends. A few weeks ago he called to ask whether I had read a particularly stupid attack on him by his very old friend Christopher Hitchens in The Atlantic Monthly. He described with pained sarcasm a phone call in which Hitchens had presumably tried to square his own conscience by advertising to Edward the impending assault. I asked Edward why he was surprised, and indeed why he cared. But he was surprised and he did care. His skin was so, so thin, I think because he knew that as long as he lived, as long as he marched forward as a proud, unapologetic and vociferous Palestinian, there would be some enemy on the next housetop down the street eager to pour sewage on his head." (Edward Said, Dead at 66, Alex Cockburn, 25/9/03)

Christopher Hitchens once co-edited a book with Edward Said called Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship & the Palestinian Question (1988). Now, in a recent book review in The Atlantic Monthly (Idealism of an earlier age), recycled in Murdoch's Australian Financial Review (16/4/10), Hitchens is blaming the (Palestinian) victims and putting the spew into spurious scholarship:

"Almost no concession made by either side was ever sincere, or would not have been withdrawn or amended if the other party had accepted it."

There are no Palestinian victims here, no colonised, no occupied - just one of two presumably evenly-matched sides, slugging it out, and, most importantly, refusing to concede an inch to the other.

Yet, in 1996, in his introduction to Said's essays on the bankrupt Oslo 'peace process', Peace & Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Processs, Hitchens couldn't have been clearer on the subject of who was wielding the hammer:

"Consider merely the question of Gaza. If the Belgians or the Dutch or the British had ever dared run a conquered territory in this way, in the period after 1945, it can be hoped (and it may even be believed) that a torrent of international condemnation would have descended. Nobody has ever visited this part of the projected 'Greater Israel' and come away with anything but the most decided revulsion. Having shamed themselves beyond description in this little strip of former Palestine, the Israeli authorties smilingly decided to make a present of it to their former subjects. I should here like to quote from an interview I conducted, in the week of the White House handshake, with Ilan Halevi of the PLO delegation. (Mr Halevi is a Palestinian Jew and was at the time the ambassador of the PLO to the Socialist International, as well as a strong supporter of the Arafat-Rabin accord.) 'When they offered us Gaza as a beginning', he told me, 'I suggested that we say, 'Sure. But what will you give us in exchange?' It may or may not be significant that the only decent Jewish joke to come out of the whole affair was told by a member of the PLO. The offer was, in other words, always understood at some level as a sordid trap. On the day of the White House accords, I also dined with a senior American diplomat who had once had charge of Israel-Palestine negotiations. He told me of a previous occasion, when the late Gen. Moshe Dayan had suggested a 'Gaza first' ploy. Instructed to wait upon Dayan and tell him that such an offer was too transparent by half, my vis-a-vis had found him no whit abashed. 'Never mind', said the hero of 1967, 'We'll still double-cross that bridge when we come to it'." (p xvi-xvii)

But it gets worse. According to the Hitchens of 2010, not only does he entertain the notion that the victims of Zionist aggression should have been in the business of making concessions to their aggressors, but that they should also have been owning up to their hand in... the Nazi Holocaust no less:

"There was perhaps a moment when an unambivalent Israeli admission of responsibility for the original expulsion of the Palestinians could have had a healing and even cathartic effect. There may even have been a time when a sincere Arab denunciation of the role of the grand mufti of Jerusalem in the Holocaust* might have softened a heart or two. But that time is well in the past... The parties of God have the ordering of things now, and we must wait meekly upon their awful pleasure."

If only the Palestinian victims had damned one of their own for daring to sup with the devil of the day in defence of his people and homeland (conveniently overlooking, of course, the fact that Zionist ultras were actively seeking the same devil's blessing in their war with the British), a heart or two might have softened!?

Here's the spew in Hitchen's spurious scholarship: 1) The mufti's doings in Nazi Germany and the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 are on a par and a mutual apology is therefore in order; 2) Ben-Gurion and his successors had a heart.

At two points in Said's introduction to Blaming the Victims, it's almost as though, in relation to this particular bucket of Hitchens', he had his co-editor in mind:

"Almost from the moment that the state of Israel came into being in 1948 - and although the preparations were made well before that time - the West was deluged with a whole series of narratives and images that acquired the solidity and the legitimacy of 'truth'. In spite of the presence of a comfortable 67% majority of Palestinian Arabs who owned over 90% of the land in 1948 (this was after decades of Jewish immigration and settlement) the world heard of an 'empty' territory whose inhabitants brutishly opposed Jewish settlement in Zion even after the Holocaust had occurred. Thereafter the myths proliferated and formed a system which, in the West at least, it became inordinately difficult to deny. The 'Arabs' left Palestine because their leaders told them to; the Arabs were out to destroy the Jewish state, and since they were already in league with Hitler, their opposition to Israel was essentially racist and fascist..." (pp 3-4) And, further on: "Most of all the Palestinian has suffered because he or she has been unknown, an unacknowledged victim, and worse, a victim blamed not only for his or her disasters, but for those of others as well." (p 6)

Said had expanded on this idea in an earlier work, After the Last Sky (1986):

"There has been no misfortune worse for us than that we are ineluctably viewed as the enemies of the Jews. No moral and political fate worse, none at all, I think: no worse, there is none. With so much discussion recently of the Holocaust, I am centrally aware of the fact of the destruction of European Jews, an abomination which nevertheless I find hard to consider separately; there is always the connection made between Israel and the Holocaust, how one makes restitution for the other. I find myself saying that a generation later the Holocaust has victimized us too, but without the terrifying grandeur and sacriligeous horror of what it did to the Jews. Seen from the perspective provided by the Holocaust, we are as inconsequential as children on a playground; and yet - one more twist in the reductive spiral - even at play we cannot be enjoyed or looked at simply as that, as children playing games that signify little. Just by virtue of where we stand, every playground is seen as a 'breeding ground for terrorists', every pastime a 'secret plan for the destruction of Israel', as if our own destruction was not a great deal more probable. Something either pernicious or negligible can be attributed to us, no matter what we do, wherever we are, however we think or act." (p 134)

Hitchens' obscene suggestion that the victims of the Zionist project in Palestine should be apologising for their alleged part in the Hitlerian Holocaust would have Said turning in his grave.

[* See my 22/3/08 post The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament 6]

Janet's Dream

Janet, this is the Spirit of Investigative Journalism, come to you in a dream. Truly, this latest column of yours (Hostages to fear & systematic loathing in Israel, The Australian, 26/11/08) is a truly woeful effort, a mere conduit for propaganda fed to you during the course of your recent Jewish Board of Deputies/Israeli Foreign Ministry rambamming (the definition of this term may be found in this site's 17/11/08 post Rambam Alert!) in Israel. How many times have I reminded you of the importance of doing your homework, reading widely, and thinking critically before putting pen to paper? Perhaps I'm being naive here. After all, the whole point of the rambamming process is to recruit journalists such as yourself, and others, to act as uncritical diseminators of Israeli propaganda. Then, of course, there's your job. We all know that Rupert wouldn't have it any other way. Still, I'm disturbed at the tendency of so many of you in the media these days to succumb so easily to the blandishments of Israel lobbyists whenever a rambamming junket is dangled before you. Sadly, it seems that journalistic ethics are now a thing of the past. And please don't think it's enough to append a disclaimer as you've done (although it's certainly more than that dreadful Paul Sheehan did in his paean to Israeli "warrior-scholars" - see the previous post, His Master's Voice) or to gesture half-heartedly to "the Israeli settlements that poison relations and stymie solutions, the Israeli blockade of Gaza" and so on to provide a veneer of objectivity. The reader is not fooled, Janet. He knows where you're coming from. Your column fairly oozes Israel advocacy.

You refer in your introduction to the Clayton's ceasefire entered into by Israel and Hamas in June, and hint darkly about "yet another culprit killing the prospect of peace." I'm sure you didn't have the Israeli military in mind when you wrote this. But were you not aware that UN records show that of the 8 violations in its first week alone, 7 were by the IDF? (UN: Israel violated truce 7 times in one week, ynetnews.com, 27/6/08).

Predictably, you were taken to the Israeli pilgrimage site of Sderot. But did it ever enter your mind to ask why you (and your fellower Australian rambammers), and David Miliband before you, and every other man and his dog undergoing a rambamming, have for years now been whisked off to rocket-ravaged Sderot? Did it ever occur to you that Sderot and its rockets are simply too precious a propaganda tool for the Israeli government to warrant the hammering out of a genuine ceasefire and a real peace with the Gazans, that the inhabitants of Sderot might be simply hostage to the requirements of Israeli power politics? While you were told that Sderot had "endured thousands of rocket attacks in recent years," you were, of course, kept completely in the dark as to the number of rockets, missiles, shells, and bullets rained down on the length and breadth of Gaza for as long as I can remember. Did you ask about that? Did you ask to visit Gaza?

As for that unfortunate "young Ethiopian woman, who has lost relatives to the rocket attacks from Gaza?" Did it not seem odd to you that she hadn't been relocated out of harm's way? Further, did you wonder what an Ethiopian was doing there, in Israel, in the first place, considering how successive Israeli governments have kept millions of Palestinian refugees in political limbo now for over 60 years, denying their right to return to their homes and lands in what, until 1948, had been Palestine? A stark illustration of this bizarre species of discrimination practised routinely by the Jewish State came with the news in August that a group of 1948 Palestinian refugees, "stranded for the last 2 years in a makeshift camp in the desert on the Iraq-Syria border," part of the refugee exodus of your vaunted Operation Iraqi Freedom, had been taken in by - wait for it - Iceland! (Resettlement to Iceland rescues Palestinians from border camp limbo, unhcr.org, 4/8/08)

You mention that "40% of all Palestinians" live in the Gaza Strip. Given this territory's rather arid nature, did you not ask yourself why almost half of all Palestinians not exiled in surrounding Arab countries are cooped up in the Strip in squalid and sprawling refugee camps? The answer's simple, Janet. They're the descendents of Palestinians ethnically cleansed from southern Palestine by Israeli forces under cover of war in 1948 and denied the right of return to their homes and lands in what is today Israel.

On a more prosaic level, who told you that "if elections were held in the West Bank today, predictions are that Hamas would win there, putting an end to the cooperation that has stopped the terrorism emanating from that enclave." In fact, according to the latest poll on Palestinians' voting intentions by An-Najah University, Fatah would take 31.4% of the vote in parliamentary elections against 14.4% for Hamas (Fatah would win Palestinian elections: opinion poll, news.yahoo.com, 26/11/08).

Now we come to your argument: that peace between Israelis and Palestinians is generations away because "an entire generation of Palestinian children is being raised on a full diet of hate education, on jihad and anti-Semitism." Your one and only source is "Palestinian Media Watch... where analysts have long tracked what the Palestinian leadership under Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is doing." What do you really know about this organization? Just how objective do you think it is? I assume you met its director, Itamar Marcus? What do you know about him? Would the fact that he was a Netanyahu appointee in the 90s give you pause for thought? The fact that he is "an Israeli political activist of the West Bank settlement of Efrat who previously lobbied to keep West Bank aquifers under Israeli control?" (Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine, Nathan J Brown, 2003, p 296). For Marcus' earlier 'work', motivated by allegations of 'incitement' in Palestinian textbooks, I refer you to Professor Brown's critique, The Incitement Charge (pp 235-243), in the above book. It does not leave Mr Marcus looking terribly good. Consider it homework, Janet. Ditto for studies by Dr Ruth Firer, Matti Steinberg, the European Union, and Jennifer Miller. A useful point of departure for you might be the 2005 Council for the National Interest study by Reema Hijazi: Unwarranted Controversy: American Politicians, Israeli Critics, & Palestinian Textbooks, cnionline.org.

You write of Palestinian geography books "that encourage children to see no Israel, books that feature maps of Israel in the colours of the Palestinian flag, and described as Palestine." Have you ever asked yourself where exactly are Israel's borders? After all, as Israeli scholar Idith Zertal has pointed out: "At no stage has the State of Israel defined its own borders - optimal, official, secured - nor acted to constitute these borders and win international recognition for them." (Israel's Holocaust & the Politics of Nationhood, 2005, p 184) Should they be the borders of 1947? That is, 54% of historical Palestine? 1949? 78% of historical Palestine? The West Bank minus land alienated from Palestinian ownership by Israel's West Bank Wall? The West Bank minus Israel's settlement blocs? An assortment of non-contiguous bits and pieces which Israeli settlers and/or the Israeli army haven't yet got around to snapping up?

Did you ask to be taken to the occupied West Bank? If you had spent any time there, you would surely have seen evidence of the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements, roads, security zones etc. You would have seen the little that is left of Arab Palestine being wiped off the map with no regard whatever for the 1949-67 Green Line, now a quaint relic of history, which used to demarcate the Israeli border. Even if, as you claim, Palestinian textbooks contain maps of Israel in the colours of the Palestinian flag, it is Israelis, backed by a succession of complicit governments and protected by the IDF, who are busily engaged in painting the actual land, if you like (& I've little doubt you do), in the colors of the Israeli flag. Oh, and did you check out any Israeli textbooks when you were there? Or some of the critical studies on them by the likes of Professor Eli Podeh, or Professor Daniel Bar-Tal? More homework, Janet.

As for soccer matches and summer camps for Palestinian youth "in honour of terrorists," did it ever occur to you to ask about, say, the Menachem Begin Heritage Centre, or the Memorial to David Ben Gurion, or the Ariel Sharon Memorial Park, or the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial, all of whom have presided either directly or indirectly over the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, not to mention guided the ongoing Zionist project of wiping Palestine off the map. And those quizzes "identifying Israeli landmarks, towns and ports such as Haifa, Ashdod and Eilat as Palestinian." Are you aware that these were once Palestinian "landmarks, towns and ports," stolen from the refugees of 1948? Allow me to draw your attention to some Israeli straight talk, for a change - Moshe Dayan's famous speech before students at the Israel Institute of Technology (Techniyon) in 1969: "We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs, and we are building here a Hebrew, Jewish state. In a considerable portion of localities we purchased the land from the Arabs. Instead of the Arab villages Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of these villages and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only the books, but also the villages no longer exist. Nahalal was established in the place of Mahalul, Gevat in the place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Hanifas and Kefar Yehoshu'a in the place of Tel Shamam. There is not a single settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab village." (Quoted in Haaretz, 4/4/69) If you care to read about Palestinian Haifa, Janet, see the 7/5/08 post on this site, Bend It like Benny. Many of the families of the children you describe as receiving "hate education" were actually driven out of such places in 1948. This is history, not "hate education."

You ask whether the Australian foreign minister knows how your 'aid' dollar and mine is being used by the Palestinian Authority, whether perhaps it's paying for books showing maps of Israel/Palestine in red, green, white and black. Rest assured, Janet, our hard-earned money is being put to a use I'm sure you'd approve of - "enabling a Vichy-style PA to police Israeli-occupied West Bank Palestinians on behalf of their occupier" - as has been described in this site's 4/11/08 post The Bigger Picture.

And speaking of the bigger picture, Janet, if you want to know what is really shaping the minds of Palestinian children, you need look no further than the Israeli occupation. Here's how the individual is taught to hate by the teachers of the IDF: "I was shocked at the destruction and devastation. I was hysterical and began to cry and scream. I ran all around, but nobody was in the area. I went to where my wife and children were to make sure they were all right, but nobody was in the house. I returned to the ruins of my house and sat on a pile of stones and dirt and started to cry again. People came to comfort me. My neighbors were also in shock. The women screamed and tried in vain to remove possessions from under the piles of stone. The sun was coming up. Thousands of residents, and also journalists, came to the site. My wife and children came home and saw that the house had turned into a pile of stones. My wife fainted, and the neighbours took her to the hospital. The children started to cry. I was still in shock and couldn't do anything, not even go to the hospital to be with my wife. My wife was treated and returned to the site about 3 hours later. My children, who had been wandering around among the thousands of people, came to sit with us on the pile of stones, and we all cried until one o'clock in the afternoon. Some neighbours felt bad about what had happened to us and brought us food. We ate while sitting on the pile of stones. We slept at a relative's house. We all stayed in one room and spent the whole night there. The next day, we returned to the ruins of our house and stayed there all day. For two days, the children did not go to school because all their books and notebooks were buried among the ruins. On Thursday afternoon [12 April], the Red Cross began to distribute tents and blankets to the residents. We received a tent and ten blankets. We put the tent on the stone pile. We sat in the tent throughout the day and at night went to sleep with my relative because we were afraid that the army would fire at the tent to prevent us from returning to live on the site. The next day, some good people came and gave every schoolchild a small bag with notebooks, coloured pens, and a game. On Sunday, the Palestinian Ministry of Education gave all the children whose houses were destroyed a bag and fifty dollars. My children went to school, but their behavior changed. They wet the beds at the relative's house, and screamed in their sleep because of their nightmares." (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Saree Makdisi, 2008, pp 108-109)

And if you really want to know about Palestinian education, check out this appalling set of numbers:

Number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli army, 2000-2007: 854

Percentage of Palestinian children living in fear, according to 2003 USAID study: 93

Percentage who have personally experienced violence: 48

Percentage displaced from home due to violence: 21

Percentage who feel their parents can't protect them: 52

Percentage who value their education as a means of improvement: 96

Number of Palestinian schools closed due to Israeli curfews and closures, 2002: 580

Number of Palestinian schoolchildren affected: 226, 000

Number of Israeli assaults on Palestinian schools, 2003-5: 180

Number of students and teachers killed as a result: 181

Schooldays lost due to Israeli closures in West Bank and Gaza, 2003-5: 1,525

Number of university-age people in Gaza: 400,000

Capacity of Gaza's university system: 70,000

Percentage of university-age Gazans denied the right to an education: 75

Number of Gazan students attending Birzeit University in West Bank, 2000: 350

Number in 2005: 35

Number in 2007: 15

Number of those who are there with permits from Israel: 0

Number who can visit their families and then return to university: 0

Number who can freely move around the West Bank: 0

Number of registered physically disabled people in Gaza: 24,000

Number of educational courses addressing physical rehabilitation in Gaza: 0

Percentage of disabled Gazans barred by Israel from studying in West Bank: 100

Length of closure imposed on Hebron universities by Israeli army, 2002-3: 8 months

(ibid, pp 196-197)

It's really quite simple, Janet: if hate there be, it's the occupation that incites it.

Our News & Theirs

This is how The Sydney Morning Herald's Jason Koutsoukis reported (in part) the recent ramming of a group of Israeli soldiers by a 19-year old Palestinian man in occupied Arab East Jerusalem: "The Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, wants the homes of terrorists demolished shortly after they commit an attack as part of a plan to deter further terrorism-related incidents."

Palestinians who attack Israeli civilians are terrorists. So too are those who attack Israeli soldiers. And presumably, Palestinians who look sideways at Israelis are all terrorist sympathisers/apprentice terrorists/guilty bystanders.

"Jonathan Spyer, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the Tel Aviv-based Global Research in International Affairs Project, said... Israel needed 'better intelligence from Palestinian sources identifying what exactly is motivating the attacks...' "

Always go for the Israeli expert. Never, repeat never, ask a Palestinian what might motivate such attacks - you'll never shut him up.

"An 800-kilometre security barrier enclosing the Palestinian West Bank... is credited with ending the wave of suicide bomb attacks in Jerusalem and other Israeli cities."

It couldn't possibly be credited with causing the current spate of attacks, now could it? I mean, how can a mere "security barrier," as opposed to an 8 metre high concrete wall which takes away your land and livelihood, drive anyone to murder? A "security barrier," moreover, which merely "encloses," not snakes its way through, the "Palestinian West Bank." Which, BTW, should never be described as the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank. Readers should always be shielded from the harsh reality of the 'O' word.

"Joshua Teitelbaum, a senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Centre for Middle Eastern & African Studies, advocated similar restrictions on movement between East and West Jerusalem. 'That's the stick. The carrot is that Israel has to start investing in East Jerusalem'." (Barak urges swift retaliation on terrorists' homes, 24/9/08)

The Israeli expert again. Always the Israeli expert - or politician. From the Moshe Dayan Centre, no less. Moshe Dayan, loveable hero of the 'Six Day' War, who likened the 1967 Israeli occupations of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to rape. "'The situation between us [he told the Palestinian poet Fadwa Tukan] is like the complex relationship between a Bedouin man and the young girl he has taken against her wishes. But when their children are born, they will see the man as their father and the woman as their mother. The initial act will mean nothing to them. You, the Palestinians, as a nation, do not want us today, but we will change your attitude by imposing our presence upon you'." (1967, Tom Segev, p 478) Such a sensitive soul. And Israel's rape has worked a treat, hasn't it? Of course, Mr Israeli Expert talks of stick and carrot, the latter being Israeli investment in East Jerusalem (never Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem). What kind of Israeli investment? Why, more Israeli settlements of course: "The number of tenders in East Jerusalem has increased by a factor of 38 (1,761 housing units compared to 46 in 2007). (See Eliminating the Green Line - August 2008 at http://www.peacenow.org.il/) But you wouldn't expect Jason to be onto that, would you?

This is how The Australian's "Correspondents in Jerusalem" reported (in part) the same: "The earlier incidents... have prompted calls in Israel for restrictions on Palestinians living on the Israeli side of the barrier that Israel is building around the West Bank."

Ah, unanimity! The "barrier" is being built "around the West Bank," not deep inside the Israeli-occupied West Bank. And don't you just love that bit about "the Israeli side" of the "barrier," which "Palestinians" just happen to be "living on"? Now how did they get there?

"Earlier yesterday, an Israeli soldier lost an eye and three Palestinians were hurt when a woman sprayed acid at the soldier at a checkpoint near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, the army said." (Driver killed after Jerusalem car attack, 24/9/08)

Strike a light! Another Palestinian gone bezerk and, presumably, Israel continues to have no idea why (Where are the experts when you need them?). Nor do we, because, according to The Australian, the Israeli soldier and 3 Palestinians were hurt "when the woman sprayed acid at the soldier." Presumably, her aim was so lousy her fellow Palestinians copped the acid too. Wrong. What really happened was that the Israeli soldiers decided to do some spraying of their own - with bullets, wounding 3 Palestinians. But that's not terrorism. Only Palestinians do terrorism.

Oh, BTW, when you've got an accompanying pic, as The Australian has, and it shows a Palestinian kid in handcuffs, one uniformed thug grasping one arm while another applies a headlock, make sure, as The Australian does, your caption reads "Israeli police escort a Palestinian youth near the scene of yesterday's attack near the walls of Old Jerusalem." Presumably, every Palestinian within cooee of the car attack was implicated in the dastardly act. Ditto for those Palestinians within cooee of the woman who threw the acid. Breathing the same air I guess.

Now imagine this in an Australian newspaper. The particular Israeli act of bastardry (at the same checkpoint - Hawara) described wasn't of course reported here, the victims were only Palestinians after all: "Nothing helped. Not the pleas, not the cries of the woman in labor, not the father's explanations in excellent Hebrew, nor the blood that flowed in the car. The commander of the checkpoint, a fine Israeli who had completed an officers' course, heard the cries, saw the woman writhing in pain in the back seat of the car, listened to the father's heartrending pleas and was unmoved. The heart of the Israeli officer was indifferent and cruel. For over an hour, he would not let the car with the young woman in labor pass through the Hawara checkpoint on the way to the hospital in Nablus. Not to Tel Aviv; but to Nablus; not for shopping, not for work; but to get to the hospital in an emergency. Nothing helped. Nahil Abu-Rada is not the first woman to lose her baby this way because of the occupation, and she won't be the last. At least a half-dozen checkpoint births that ended in death have been documented here over the years, and nothing has changed. No punishments, no lessons, not even a request for forgiveness from parents who lose their children because of the coldheartedness of soldiers. The occupation kills - never has this slogan sounded so true as on that night, two weeks ago, at the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus. No convoluted excuse or explanation from the Israel Defense Forces spokesman (military sources were quoted the day after the incident, making this outrageous comment: 'This baby would have died anyway') can erase the simple, chilling fact that for officers and soldiers in the occupation army we have established, human feeling has become alien, at least when it comes to Palestinians. Or the fact that there are still officers and soldiers in the IDF who behave with such lack of feeling toward a woman in labor who is about to lose her child."

You couldn't imagine the above in an Australian newspaper in a million years, could you? Shit, it even uses the 'O' word - twice! No, you'd have to go to the Israeli daily Haaretz and the honest and morally engaged journalism of Gideon Levy (Twilight Zone/Dead on arrival, 19/9/08) for that. What unbelievable hackery we have to put up with here.

Bulls in Rut

"The generals were in their 40s, family men, but they clung to the Israeli culture of youth; they were like adolescent boys or bulls in rut. They believed in force and they wanted war. War was their destiny. Almost 20 years had passed since the army had won glory in the War of Independence, and 10 years since the victory in the Sinai. They had a limited range of vision and they believed war was what Israel needed at that moment, not necessarily because they felt the country's existence was in danger, as they wailed in an almost 'Diaspora' tone, but because they believed it was an opportunity to break the Egyptian army." (1967, Tom Segev, p 296)

"Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." (Moshe Dayan)

Israel never, repeat never, starts wars. It is the most peace-loving country on the planet. Its bulging arsenal is basically for show, wheeled out only when the Arabs force their hand. Which they're always doing, of course. It's always warmongering Arabs, never peaceloving Israelis, who start wars. Those who read Murdoch fishwrapper, such as The Australian, know this. This is because the hordes of Zionist propagandists that pullulate on its pages have said it, over and over again, of every Israeli blitzkreig from 1948 to 2006. And they're still at it. Here's their Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov (No price too high for Israel to bring home its soldiers, 19/7/08) laying it on with the proverbial trowel over who was responsible for the 33-Day War against Lebanon in 2006:-

"Kuntar... has been recast as a resistance hero; a man in whose name Hezbollah was prepared to go to war... "

"Those who embraced Kuntar... would find it difficult to criticise the decision to force war on Lebanon... "

"Even before the war he sparked with Israel in 2006, Nasrallah... "

Let's see if this particular talking point agrees with the latest (2008) account of the war by Israeli journalists (Haaretz) Amos Harel and Ami Issacharoff - 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah & the War in Lebanon? The excerpts below come from Chapter 5 - Going to War.

"At 10:15 AM on Wednesday, July 12, 2006, Hezbollah television station Al-Manar reported a successful 'kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers... We've kept our promise to free our prisoners'. In interviews on Arab satellite TV stations, Hezbollah spokesmen stated that the organization did its natural duty to free Lebanese prisoners and was interested in completing a new comprehensive prisoner exchange... At 12:50 that afternoon [Israeli PM Ehud] Olmert held a joint press conference with his [visiting] Japanese guest [PM Koizumi]. Koizumi asked that Israel respond with restraint to Hezbollah's latest provocation and weigh the consequences. Olmert, however, took an entirely different approach: 'The events of this morning cannot be considered a terrorist strike; they are the acts of a sovereign state that has attacked Israel without cause. The Lebanese government, which Hezbollah is part of, is trying to upset regional stability... We will not give in to blackmail or negotiate with terrorists on any aspect of the lives of IDF soldiers'. Olmert also stated... the Israeli response would be 'thundering'.

"[He] wanted to move quickly, on the assumption that the Hezbollah attack offered him a 'window of opportunity' to receive international support for a tough Israeli response. When Sharon was prime minister, senior IDF officers on more than one occasion tried to curb his anger and postpone impulsive decisions. This time, however, the chief of staff was no less bullish than the prime minister. Olmert's advisors claim that no one broached the question of whether to respond. 'It was clear to all of us that we had to respond', they say. The nature of the response was rooted in the decisions that had been made in March 2006, when a basket of targets had been approved. In previous discussions, all the security agencies had recommended a major military operation in the event of another kidnapping attempt..'."

"As at the government meeting... several of the senior [security] officers [at a meeting with defence minister Amir Peretz] seemed to be competing to see who could come up with the most far-reaching proposals and gutsy declarations, while the chief of staff orchestrated the proceedings. Dan Halutz insisted that the incident had to be seen 'as a watershed in the Israeli-Lebanese dialogue' and that targets linked to the Lebanese government had to be hit hard... 'They are to blame', he asserted... At the end of the meeting... IDF spokeswoman Brigadier General Miri Regev briefed reporters that the chief of staff had stated that Israel 'had to put Lebanon back 20 years'... Halutz came up with the idea of attacking the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon as Israel's main response to the kidnapping... 'We have to put out all the lights in Lebanon. We can shut off their electricity for a year, damage at a cost of billions'...

"At 5:00 pm, [Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah held a press conference... 'The only way of returning [the 2 Israeli soldiers] is through indirect negotiations for a prisoner exchange', he said, adding that the operation had been 5 months in the planning. 'We surprised no one. We've been saying for a year that we'd kidnap Israeli soldiers... in order to bring about the release of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners... The prisoners will be returned and we are prepared for a period of quiet, but we are also ready for confrontation. If [you] want confrontation, get ready for some surprises', he threatened.

"In hindsight, Nasrallah's goading words sound like a warning that Israel's leaders should have paid closer attention to. But they also illustrate a missed opportunity on the part of Hezbollah's leadership. Ironically, the person who boasted that he knew how to read the Israelis like the palm of his hand did not dream that their response to the kidnapping would be so devastating. According to Professor Eyal Susser of Tel Aviv University, Nasrallah saw the abduction as a logical move. 'He gambled. Israel was the side that changed the game rules. Nasrallah would have been happy to relinquish the pleasure, but he went to war with his head held high'.

"A Western diplomat posted to Beirut in this period claims that Nasrallah did not forsee war. 'Not even in his worst nightmare. Hezbollah's leaders envisioned a medium-intensity confrontation: heavy shelling for a week immediately followed by negotiations. They believed that the abduction would strengthen their position in Lebanon's political arena... Another Western diplomat holds that Nasrallah's mistake was understandable: 'I know of no state other than Israel that would go to war because of 2 kidnapped soldiers'." (pp 75-84)

Clearly, starting wars is Israel's prerogative.

The Elephant in the Room

"Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." Moshe Dayan
"Israel is preparing for a war, nuclear if need be, for the sake of averting domestic change not to its liking, if it occurs in some or any Middle Eastern states." Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear & Foreign Policies, pp 43-44

Here's a conversation between two people. Mark knows there's an elephant in the room. Patti's* in denial:-

[*"... all of her colleagues call her Patti..." http://law.wlu.edu/magazine/negotiator.asp]

Mark: The other really big non-proliferation hotspot, of course, is the Middle East. Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist has a piece in the latest New Yorker, which suggests that the Bush administration has just diverted quite a large sum of money to intelligence on Iran's nuclear program and to operations inside Iran. Do you have any comment on that?
Patti: Yeah, you know, I've never seen a writer get it wrong so many times and still get credence every time he writes something. Our ambassador in Iraq was very clear in his statements and he called them completely incorrect and not accurate. So let our ambassador speak for the United States on that.
Mark: So what is the US position at the moment on Iran's nuclear program?
Patti: The US is working through the so-called P5+1 process, working together to push the Iranians to reassess their decision to pursue a nuclear program through the UN Security Council. We have outlined a number of sanctions, measures, that are binding in all states. And we've also said that we're going to stop those sanctions if Iran ceases its enrichment reprocessing activities. And additionally we've created a package of incentives that, were Iran to cease its enrichment and reprocessing activities, we are prepared to negotiate a number of benefits that flow from that package, including even development of civil and nuclear energy cooperation in a way that is obviously not proliferation sensitive.
Mark: Meantime, though, there's a constant drumbeat, particularly from Israel, saying you've got very little time to do anything about this and that Iran may be a year, 2 years, 3 years away from a nuclear weapon, and the suggestion is that the Israelis may do something about it.
Patti: Obviously, Israel sees Iran as the existential threat, [and] will obviously look at its own strategic interest. Our national intelligence estimate says the worst case scenario is 2009, but more likely the development of the fissile material needed for a nuclear weapon would occur into the next decade. So there is some time to make diplomacy work, not a lot of time, and we are committed to work through the diplomatic path. A mix of sanctions, of pressure, a collaboration with our partners. Not only in the P5+1, but also in the Gulf region, as well as working closely here in Asia. Many of the supplies and the (inaudible) items that are getting to Iran for these programs have a source here.
Mark: Whenever we look at this subject on this program, I get emails and letters from people saying, 'Well, Israel's got the nuclear bomb. Why is there not similar outrage about that? Because they're outside the non-proliferation treaty too'.
Patti: Well, Iran is a member of the non-proliferation treaty. They ratified it, they committed to implement it, and we believe they are acting in contravention to that binding legal committment that they took. And so, this process...
Mark: That really doesn't answer the question about Israel though, does it?
Patti: You know, I think in terms of the Israel question we certainly have not seen any indication that Israel is ready to introduce nuclear weapons as a weapon into the region.
Mark: What do you mean?
Patti: And they have always indicated as a better policy that is not... that they will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the region.
Mark: You mean no first strike? I mean that doesn't say they haven't got them.
Patti: You know, I sort of don't want to articulate their policy, that's something that they've done.
Mark: So the US doesn't believe Israel has a nuclear weapon?
Patti: I really wouldn't want to characterise what the US calculations, our assessments are on that point. My major point would be that Iran is pursuing its nuclear weapons in contravention to its legal commitments. Iran is also a deep, destabiliseding force in the region.
Mark: What I'm asking you [is] that people write in and they say, 'Why get so worried about Iran's nuclear weapons, when everybody knows that Israel has nuclear weapons?'
Patti: I think we all need to be worried about Iran. It's a destabilising influence in the region. It's supplying arms, not only to Iraqi insurgents, but even to its sworn enemy, the Taliban. It's supplying support to Hezbollah, it's supporting actions on the part of Syria. So it is having a large destabilising influence in the region. It also has the potential for the nuclear cascade. If you look at countries in the Gulf states, they look to Iran, and were Iran to acquire nuclear weapons capability, the potential for further acquisition of nuclear weapons capabilities in that region would certainly augment in the view of many who have assessed that region.
Mark: Patricia McNerney, Acting Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-Proliferation with the US State Department.

That was part of an interview (US State Department representative speaks on nuclear weapons, 1/7/08) with Patricia McNerney, Acting Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-Proliferation with the US State Department by Mark Colvin on ABC Radio National's PM program. The interview began with a discussion of North Korea's recent demolition of the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear power plant. To his credit (and this is unusual for the mainstream media) Mark had his eyes open.

Here's a paragraph from an article by a man who literally worships the ground the elephant in the room walks on (formerly known as Palestine in case you're interested). He knows that most of us are not as enamoured of the beast as he, and so would rather not draw too much attention to the object of his love. However, given the monstrous proportions of the creature, its swaggering, aggressive movements and loud trumpetings, he finds he has little choice but to acknowledge its presence in some way. And so, blinded by love, he tries his best to convince his readers that the elephant is really a gazelle:-

"Iran possessing nuclear weapons would be the final crack in the global non-proliferation regime. Despite parallels drawn to Israel's alleged nuclear capability, Israel is not violating international commitments (it didn't sign the NPT); it hasn't threatened to use nuclear weapons against its neighbours (it doesn't even confirm it has them); and its neighbours haven't sought a similar hedge against it."

That paragraph was part of an opinion piece (Diplomacy with Iran must be backed by a threat of force, 7/7/08) published in The Age. It was written by Dr Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).

Here's a letter from a man who loves the beast as ardently as the former, but can see no reason not to shout it from the rooftops. In fact, he believes that the entire Middle East should be rezoned as an off-leash area for the impetuous pachyderm, and being a lawyer, he has the legal gobbledegook at hand to justify any murderous rampage it may choose to undertake:-

"As a matter of policy, any first use of nuclear weapons is an extremely momentous decision and can be justified only in the most dire of circumstances. Any first use of nuclear weapons by Israel would be an even more momentous decision, given the unfortunate 'double standard' which the international community applies to judging all of Israel's military actions. However, given Ahmadinejad's declaratory policy of seeking to obliterate Israel, an Israeli decision to launch a preemptive strike against an entire array of Iran's nuclear targets would be justifiable in certain circumstances. (I assume that given the number of Iranian nuclear targets, their dispersal and 'hardness', Israel would not have high confidence in conventional strike options.) These circumstances would basically have to entail an imminent deployment of nuclear weapons by Iran, coupled with the realisation that there are no other viable options left for blocking Iran from such a deployment. While an Israeli first nuclear use against Iran would be certainly justifiable in such circumstances, you should be under no illusion as to what kind of reaction it would elicit; Israel would encounter a howl of international condemnations, boycotts, and diplomatic isolation the likes of which it has never seen. Its nuclear strike against Iran is also likely to trigger a regional arms race and precipitate many other dangerous and unpredictable consequences.

"As far as the law is concerned, despite the existing ICJ advisory opinion concerning nuclear weapons, I don't believe that there is any binding norm of international law that governs their utilization or prohibits nuclear use. Thus, the normal principles of jus ad bellum - governing the circumstances where the resort to force is legitimate - and jus in bello - governing the ways in which force can be used - would apply to any nuclear use by Israel. It would have to take exceptional care to ensure that it attacks only military targets and keeps collateral damage to the minimum levels possible. I have no doubt that IDF planners will endeavor to comply fully with all of the relevant jus in bello norms."

That was David Rivkin of Baker Hostetler LLP, a Visiting Fellow at the Nixon Center etc, etc. His letter appeared in the Israeli English language daily Haaretz on 23/6/08.

Finally, here's guy who not only knows there's an elephant in the room but loudly warns that it's a rogue:-

"The conflict currently underway between the US and Iran is, first and foremost, a conflict born in Israel. It is based upon an Israeli contention that Iran poses a threat to Israel, and defined by Israeli assertions that Iran possesses a nuclear weapons program. None of this has been shown to be true, and indeed much of the allegations made by Israel against Iran have been clearly demonstrated as being false. And yet the US continues to trumpet the Israeli claims, and no individual more loudly so than the US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton*."

[*Surprise, surprise, Patti's former boss.]

That's Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, from his 2006 book Target Iran (p 208)

Be afraid, be very afraid.