Born in Gaza

I recently watched - on Netflix btw! - an hour-long documentary film by Spanish documentary maker Hernan Zin, Born in Gaza (Nacido En Gaza).

This searing, unforgettable film focuses on the impact of Israel's 2014 serial massacres, aka Operation Protective Edge, on the child victims of the massacres.

(It could be considered as the filmic counterpart of Norman Finkelstein's magnum opus, Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom. Finkelstein's figure is 550 child deaths.)

Please watch and spread the word as widely as possible.

The Balancing Act 3

"Finally, the UN Report indicted Hamas for its 'extrajudicial executions' of suspected collaborators during Protective Edge. 'The fact that the majority of the victims had been arrested and detained before the conflict,' it observed, 'prompts concerns that they were executed in order to increase pressure on Gaza's population, with a view to preventing others from spying.' Most executions 'occurred a day after three [Hamas] commanders were killed by the IDF.' The Report also noted that because of the 'stigma' attached to collaboration, these executions had 'devastating' effects on family members, who had to cope with 'indelible stains' on their 'reputation and honor.' Inasmuch as the Report expressed sympathy for an alleged Israeli quandary (on releasing information), it might have paused to contemplate Hamas's quandary of resisting a brutal invasion while plagued by internal collaborators directly or indirectly on the payroll of the enemy. The Russian revolutionist Leon Trotsky cogently argued that in the midst of a foreign invasion, the threat of incarceration will not deter potential collaborators, because the very premise of aligning with the enemy is that its victory impends: '[T]hey cannot be terrorized by the threat of imprisonment, as [they do] not believe in its duration. It is just this simple but decisive fact that explains the widespread recourse to shooting.' It is in no way to extenuate Hamas executions to pose the inescapable question, How else was Hamas supposed to deter collaborators? The prohibition on executing collaborators would appear to fall into the same category as the prohibition on indiscriminate weapons: an insoluble dilemma. It might be recalled that a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising expressed as 'our great guilt' that 'immediately from the first day, we didn't kill' the Jewish collaborators. 'If a few of them had been killed, others would have been afraid to join the police. They should have been hanged on lamp poles, to threaten them... I'm sure that whenever there is internal treason, war must begin by destroying it.' The Report determined that these Hamas executions, not 'may' but unquestionably did 'amount to a war crime,' and it exhorted, 'whoever is responsible for the killings... must be brought to justice.' Nowhere in its indictment of Israel did the Report use such unequivocal and emphatic language. It also called upon Hamas to 'combat the stigma faced by families of alleged collaborators.' Although it acknowledged that Hamas had already undertaken to 'support the families of persons accused of collaboration,' the Report concluded that 'the far-reaching effects of stigma call for a stronger response.' Was Hamas legally required to organize a Collaborator Pride parade? " (Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom, Norman Finkelstein, 2018, pp 322-323)

Finish.

The Balancing Act 2

"The UN Report [officially, Report of the Detailed Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry Established Pursuant to to Human Rights Council Resolution S21/1 (22 June 2015)] set the stage for its indictment of Hamas by citing directly or indirectly official Israeli sources depicting a formidable Hamas weapons arsenal. But the battlefield performance of these weapons strongly suggested that the bulk of them consisted of little more than enhanced fireworks. The Report also dutifully regurgitated Israeli claims regarding the dazzling performance of the Iron Dome antimissile defense system, even though recognized experts and the facts on the ground refuted them. In an unusual acknowledgment, the Report did observe that  according to 'security experts,' Hamas's 'declared official policy' during [Operation] Protective Edge [in 2014] was 'to focus on military or semi-military targets and to avoid other targets, especially civilians.' It went on to document instances in which Hamas appeared to be targeting Israeli combatants and military objectives, while Israel itself acknowledged that Hamas mortar shells killed ten IDF combatants positioned on the Israeli side of the border. The report also observed that Hamas attempted 'in a few instances' to warn Israeli civilians of impending attacks and, in fact, these Hamas alerts were more effective than those issued by Israel 'because - unlike in Gaza - residents could flee to other areas of Israel less exposed to threats.' However, the Report found that the 'vast majority' of Hamas projectiles targeted 'population centers in Israel.' It devoted fully 15 paragraphs in graphic detail the effects of these Hamas attacks, even though only six civilians in Israel were killed and property damage was negligible. It is often suggested (although not by the Report) that if so few civilians died it was only on account of Iron Dome... The argument is factually false - Iron Dome probably didn't save many and perhaps not any lives - and even if it were true, irrelevant: if additional civilians would have been killed absent Israel's civil defense/shelter system and structurally sound edifices, should the casualty account then tally how many Israelis would have died if they lived in sub-standard, Gaza-like conditions? If calculation were to be based on 'all things being equal,' it abstracts from the root injustice that Israel and Palestine are not equal.

"The UN Report found that Hamas's projectile attacks 'may' have constituted 'war crimes':

*Hamas rocket attacks - 'rockets cannot be directed at a specific military objective and therefore strikes employing these weapons constitute indiscriminate attacks'; 'statements... indicate intent to direct those attacks against civilians';
*Hamas mortar attacks - 'statements... indicate in some cases... intent to target civilian communities... if they were used to target civilians or civilian objects, this would be a violation of the principle of distinction'; '[in] the cases in which attacks were directed at military objectives located amidst or in close vicinity to civilians or civilian objects, mortars are not the most appropriate weapons. The imprecise nature of mortars makes it difficult for an attacking party using this weapon in an area in which there is a concentration of civilians to distinguish between civilians and civilian objects and and the military objective of the attack.'

"In its defense, Hamas pleaded that 'Palestinian rockets are 'primitive' and not very technologically advanced but nevertheless the factions attempted to direct their rockets at military targets in Israel.' The Report curtly and coldly rejoined: 'The military capacity of the parties to a conflict is irrelevant to their obligation to respect the prohibition against indiscriminate attacks.' The humanitarian rationale behind prohibiting use of indiscriminate weapons is self-evident. But (in)discriminateness is a relative notion. It varies according to the most sophisticated guidance system currently available for a particular line of weaponry. So it is equally self-evident that the prohibition against indiscriminate weapons discriminates against poor states or nonstate actors that cannot afford cutting-edge technology. In the instant case, the Report effectively criminalized nearly the whole of Hamas's primitive arsenal.. And thereby it denied Gaza the 'inherent' right (anchored in the UN Charter) of armed self-defense, and the right (effectively sanctioned by international law) of armed resistance in its self-determination struggle. Even if it is admitted that notwithstanding its discriminatory effects, cogent reasons might be adduced to preserve intact the prohibition, still it hardly befits a human rights document to peremptorily dismiss as 'irrelevant' a wholly reasonable (if debatable) objection. It also warrants attention how much more sensitive the Report was to Israeli concerns. For example, the Report 'recognizes the dilemma that Israel faces in releasing information that would disclose in detail the targets of military strikes, given that such information may be classified and jeopardize intelligence sources.' Although it still placed 'the onus... on Israel to provide sufficient details on its targeting decisions to allow an independent assessment of the legality of the attacks,' the Report not only evinced a sensitivity absent in its high-handed dismissal of Hamas, but it also credited the Israeli alibi that information was withheld out of security concerns, and not because its release may undercut official lies. The Report proceeded to infer a sinister motive lurking behind Hamas rocket attacks. If these projectiles couldn't accurately target military objectives, then the Report 'cannot exclude the possibility that the indiscriminate rocket attacks may may constitute acts of violence whose primary purpose is to spread terror amongst the civilian population.' Spreading terror might have been Hamas's motive, but other possible motives also leap to mind. The rocket attacks could have been 'belligerent reprisals' (which international law does not forbid) to compel Israel to cease and desist from its terroristic assault on Gazan society. The Report itself noted that Hamas 'issued a statement confirming [its] intention to target Israeli civilians in response to Israel's 'targeting of Palestinian civilians in their homes and shelters.' Or consider the motive professed by Hamas leader Khalid Mishal during Operation Cast Lead (2008-9): 'Our modest, home-made rockets are our cry of protest to the world.' One wonders why the Report did not entertain these more benign possibilities.

"International law requires all parties to a conflict to 'take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack with a view to avoiding... injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.' The UN Report alleged that despite substantial impediments to its investigation, it was able to divine 'patterns of behavior' by Hamas that breached this legal obligation. It cited a quartet of incidents where Hamas fired rockets in close proximity to civilians. As it happens, Amnesty pointed to the identical four incidents in its indictment of Hamas. The duplication suggests a paucity of corroborative evidence. The Report also cited a handful of instances where Hamas 'conducted 'military operations within or in close proximity to sites benefiting from special protection under international law' - in particular, the environs of two to three schools and a church. These incidents were also cited in earlier investigations. The Report further noted that 'official Israeli' sources repeatedly accused Hamas of violating the 'feasible precautions' obligation, but it 'was not able to independently verify' these allegations. The Report acknowledged that the 'feasible precautions' obligation 'is not absolute'; that 'even if there are areas that are not residential, Gaza's small size and its population density make it particularly difficult for armed groups always to comply' with the obligation; and that several signatories to the relevant international instrument stipulated that 'for densely populated countries, the requirement to avoid locating military objectives within densely populated areas would be difficult to apply.' Still, the Report concluded that in light of 'the number of cases' in which Hamas 'carried out military operations within or in the immediate vicinity of civilian objects and specifically protected objects, it does not appear that this behavior was simply a consequence of the normal course of military operations,' and, 'therefore,' the law 'was not always complied with.' Although this was a cautious and qualified finding, the question must nonetheless be posed, Did the Report substantiate it? It would have to show that the instances it documented gave proof of a deliberate Hamas choice not to avoid civilian and protected objects, and were not just random events consequent on 'the normal course of military operations' in a densely populated civilian terrain. But the handful of incidents recycled by the Report, during a 51-day armed conflict in which Hamas fired seven thousand projectiles and engaged an invading army with unprecedented combat losses on both sides, does not appear to reach the evidentiary threshold of a 'pattern.' The Report not only failed to substantiate its qualified assertion but also indulged in groundless speculation. For example, it stated that 'if it is confirmed that in using... locations to conduct military operations, armed groups did so with the intent to use the presence of civilians or persons hors de combat... to prevent their military assets from being attacked, this would constitute a violation of the customary law prohibition to use human shields' and 'would amount to a war crime.' But the Report didn't provide a scintilla of evidence demonstrating such 'intent.' What was the point of such baseless conjecture, of which this is just one example, except to plant a false image in the reader's mind, or to appease Israel, which repeatedly accused Hamas of human shielding, or both? In its most audacious - or outrageous - speculation, the report verged on criminalizing nonviolent civil resistance as it posited that Hamas might wrongly exploit it:

'In one case of the bombing of a residential building examined by the commission, information gathered indicates that following a specific warning by the IDF that the house was to be targeted, several people went to the roof of the house in order to 'protect' the house. Should they have been directed to do so by members of Palestinian armed groups, this would amount to the use of of the presence of civilians in an attempt to shield a military objective from attack, in violation of the customary law prohibition to use human shields. With regard to this incident, the commission is disturbed by the reported call by the spokesperson of Hamas to the people of Gaza to adopt the practice of of shielding their homes from attack by going up on their roofs. Although the call is directed to the residents of Gaza, it can be seen and understood as an encouragement to Palestinian groups to use human shields.'

"Instead of showing compassion for Gazans as they risked life and limb to protect their, and their neighbors', family homes, the Report zeroed in on Hamas in order to deny it, on purely conjectural grounds, one of the few means of nonviolent resistance available to it in the midst of an annihilative attack - even going so far as to brand the Islamic movement's encouragement of such self-willed, heartrending acts, whose spiritual lineage traces back to Gandhi, an embryonic war crime It is also cause for sheer bewilderment why the Report designated an unambiguously civilian dwelling as a 'military objective' - did it automatically lose its protective status once Israel decided to target it, or did the Report start from the premise that everyone and everything in Gaza was, if not aligned, than alloyed with terrorism?" (Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, Norman Finkelstein, 2018, pp 315-22)

To be continued...

The Balancing Act 1

The British government has just issued an official report called the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Annual Human Rights & Democracy Report, which "provides an assessment of global human rights development in 2018 and reports on the human rights situation in the 30 human rights priority countries." Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Hamas are included in the document. According to the Times of Israel, it:

"[S]aw continued violations by the Israeli government of international human rights and international humanitarian law in the context of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, including an increase in settler violence. While Israel's 'robust democracy' is acknowledged, the report expressed concern over 'pressure' exerted on members of civil society who criticize Israeli policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians. The document also expressed worries that last year's Jewish nation-state law could 'undermine' the rights of non-Jewish minorities. At the same time, the report accused both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas of 'continued human rights abuses'." (New UK human rights report accuses Israel of 'continued violations', Raphael Ahren, 7/6/19)

Note the document's spurious balancing act as reflected in the above news report. These days, sadly, whether such a report on Israeli massacres of Palestinians emanates from the United Nations itself, or from such human rights NGOs as Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, it will invariably, and more to the point, criminally, be contaminated by the said spurious balancing act, and hence act as a cover for Israel's serial crimes against the Palestinians.*

It is only the meticulous scholarship of Norman Finkelstein, in his 2018 book Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, with its laser-like analysis of reports by Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Council in particular - listed on the book's contents pages as Betrayal 1 and Betrayal 2 - which alerts us to the depth of this pernicious practice.

To show you what I mean, I intend, in my next two posts, to quote substantially from Betrayal 2, specifically under the (as will be seen ironic) heading, "Hamas War Crimes" (pp 315-324). I hope, in light of this new British government report, you'll bear with me and stay along for the ride. I can assure you that if you have any regard for the facts of the matter, it'll be well worth it.

Finally, do not hesitate to buy, order or steal a copy of Finkelstein's book!

[*As Finkelstein warns us on p 310 of his book: "In general, balance is an admirable quality: it connotes nonpartisanship and objectivity. But balancing out a wildly imbalanced balance sheet amounts to a partisan act of misrepresentation. The findings of UN-appointed commissions in other situations do take note of grossly lopsided balance sheets."]

How Good is US/European Imperialism

Jeff Widener is "the American photographer who shot the iconic image of a man standing in front of tanks at the 1989 Tiananmen protests says it's time for the Chinese government to come clean about the bloody events of 30 years ago." ('Tell the truth about Tiananmen', AP/Sydney Morning Herald, 3/6/19)

Who could disagree? But it's the following commentary of Mr Widener's that's prompted this particular post:

"'The United States and European countries have made mistakes throughout history and they've reconciled those problems,' Widener says." (ibid)

Let us deal first with the obvious issue of German reparations to Jewish victims of the Nazi holocaust, shall we?

According to US scholar Norman Finkelstein, in his groundbreaking work The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000), "The postwar German government provided compensation to Jews who had been in ghettos or camps," (p 81). He went on to clarify as follows: "The German government sought to compensate Jewish victims with three different agreements signed in 1952. Individual claimants received payments according to the terms of the Law on Indemnification... A separate agreement with Israel subsidized the absorption and rehabilitation of several hundred thousand Jewish refugees. The German government also negotiated at the same time a financial settlement with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, an umbrella of all major Jewish organizations including the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Bnai Brith, the Joint Distribution Committee, and so forth." (pp 84-85)

Finkelstein then points out that, despite "the final accord [calling] on the Conference to use the monies 'for the relief, rehabilitation on resettlement of Jewish victims' (p 86), "The Claims Conference promptly annulled the agreement. In a flagrant breach of its letter and spirit, the Conference earmarked the monies not for the rehabilitation of Jewish victims but rather for the rehabilitation of Jewish communities... Large sums were circuitously channeled to Jewish communities in the Arab world and facilitated Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe. They also subsidized cultural undertakings such as Holocaust museums and university chairs in Holocaust studies, as well as Yad Vashem showboat pensioning 'righteous Gentiles." (pp 86-87)

Now, back to Widener's assertion. If he could please provide us with details of all of the other US and European "mistakes throughout history," which have been "reconciled," I'll eat my proverbial hat.

Add to the stench of hypocrisy, the abysmal ignorance of these times, ironically referred to as 'received wisdom', and you've just about summed up where we are today.

(I note that, unlike Murdoch's Australian, the non/less-ideological account (Silencing the history of Tiananmen, Kirsty Needham) of the Tiananmen massacre featured in the Sydney Morning Herald of 1/6/19, cites China's Red Cross casualty figures as "likely around 2,600" killed.)

Offensive vs Defensive Wars...

... your msm guide:

OFFENSIVE WAR

"Syrian government and allied Russian warplanes have intensified a week-long bombardment of Syria's Idlib province, targeting hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure as tens of thousands of residents fled toward the border with Turkey, activists and monitors in the rebel-held region said. The serial campaign has killed about 100 civilians and put at least 10 hospitals out of service." (Air strikes shatter Idlib truce, Zakaria Zakaria, Washington Post/Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald, 8/5/19)

"Waves of Russian and regime jets and helicopters have poured missiles and barrel bombs onto the enclave in the past week, destroying hospitals and killing scores of civilians." (Civilians, hospitals target of new Assad blitz, Richard Spencer, The Times/The Australian, 8/5/19)

defensive war

"In the course of [Operation] Cast Lead [2008-09], Israel had damaged or destroyed 'everything in its way,' and not in its way, including 58,000 homes, 1,500 factories and workshops, 280 schools and kindergartens, electrical, water, and sewage installations, 190 greenhouse complexes, 80% of agricultural crops, and nearly one-fifth of cultivated land. Whole neighborhoods were laid waste. It also damaged and destroyed 29 ambulances, almost half of Gaza's 122 health facilities (including 15 hospitals), and 45 mosques. By the time it withdrew, the IDF had left behind fully 600,000 tons of rubble and 1,400 corpses, 350 of them children." (Gaza: An Inquest into It's Martyrdom, Norman Finkelstein, 2018, p 127)

More Zionist Hypnosis in Australian MS Press

Whether it's the Nine Entertainment Co press, or the Murdoch, both rags are adamant that Israel and Hamas have fought THREE WARS since 2008:

"... the two sides, we have fought three wars... over the last decade." (Toll rises as Gaza violence flares, Nidal al-Mughrabi, AP, Reuters, Sydney Morning Herald, 6/5/19)

"Israel and Hamas... have fought three wars... since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007." (Rockets, missiles shatter Gaza truce, Fares Akram, AP/The Australian, 6/5/19)

"Israel says its blockade is necessary to stop weapons reaching Hamas, with which it has fought three wars since the group seized control of Gaza in 2007... " (Ceasefire claimed as attacks ebb, Nidal al-Mughrabi/Jeffrey Heller, Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald, 7/5/19)

"Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008 and the escalation brought them to the brink of another." (Israel, Palestinians pull back from brink, AFP/The Australian, 7/5/19)

But were they really WARS, or more akin to just shooting fish in a barrel?

Here is the incomparable Norman Finkelstein once again on the first of these alleged 'wars', Israel's Operation Cast Lead (2008-09), in which he irrefutably testifies to the latter characterisation:

"To justify the magnitude of the devastation it wreaked, Israel endeavored to depict the Gaza invasion as a genuine military contest. [US analyst Anthony] Cordesman* delineated in ominous detail, enhanced by tables, graphs, and figures, the vast arsenal of rockets, mortars, and other weapons that Hamas allegedly manufactured and smuggled in through tunnels (including 'Iranian-made rockets' that could 'strike at much of Southern Israel' and 'hit key infrastructure'), as well as the 'spider web of prepared strong points, underground and hidden shelters, and ambush points' Hamas allegedly constructed. He reported that according to 'Israeli senior officials,' Hamas mustered 6,000-10,000 'core fighters.' He juxtaposed the 'Gaza war' with the 1967 war, the 1973 war, and the 2006 war, as if they belonged on the same plane. He expatiated on Israel's complex war plans and preparations, and he purported that Israel's victory was partly owing to its 'high levels of secrecy,' as if the outcome would have been different had Israel not benefited from the element of surprise. The Israeli brief alleged that Hamas 'amassed an extensive armed force of more than 20,000 armed operatives in Gaza,' 'obtained military supplies through a vast network of tunnels and clandestine arms shipments from Iran and Syria,' and 'acquired advanced weaponry, developed weapons of their own, and increased the range and lethality of their rockets.'

"Nonetheless, even Cordesman was forced to acknowledge, if obliquely, that what Israel fought was scarcely a war. He conceded that Hamas was a 'weak, non-state actor,' whereas Israel possessed a massive armory of state-of-the-art weaponry; that the Israeli air force 'faced limited threats from Hamas's primitive land-based air defense'; that 'sustained ground fighting was limited'; that the Israeli army avoided engagements where it 'would be likely to suffer' significant casualties; and that 'the IDF used night warfare for most combat operations because Hamas did not have the technology or training to fight at night.' However, overwhelmingly, Cordesman persisted in his dubious depiction of Cast Lead. Israel had demonstrated that it could fight 'an air campaign successfully in crowded urban areas,' according to him, as well as 'an extended land battle against a non-state actor.' In fact, the air campaign was not a 'fight' any more than shooting fish in a barrel is a fight. As if (however unwittingly) to bring home this analogy, Cordesman quoted a senior Israeli air force officer who boasted, 'The IAF had flown some 3,000 successful sorties over a small dense area during three weeks of fighting without a single accident or loss.' But how could it be otherwise if 'the planes operated in an environment free of air defenses, enjoying complete aerial superiority'? Depicting Cast Lead as a protracted ground war was no less detached from reality Hamas was barely equipped, barely present in the conflict zones, and barely engaged by Israeli forces except when it could not fight back." (Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, 2018, pp 63-64)

[*"Shortly after Operation Cast Lead ended on 18 January 2009, Anthony Cordesman published a report titled The 'Gaza War': A strategic analysis. It warrants close scrutiny both because Cordesman has been an influential military analyst, and because the report neatly synthesized and systematized Israel's makeshift rebuttals as criticism of the invasion mounted." (ibid, p 39) And how often have we heard this Israeli apologist on Radio National over the years?]

Shoot at Anything that Moves

Whenever you read about Israeli war crimes in Gaza in the msm, the latter's stenographers will faithfully parrot Israeli army spin about every effort being taken to ensure that Palestinian civilians come to as little harm as possible during the course of military operations. In fact, the opposite is true. For Israel, all Palestinians are the enemy. Hence, Palestinian civilians will always bear the brunt of any such Israeli attack.

Here is more from Norman Finkelstein on the original Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009):

"Parrying the censorious thrust of these human rights reports, Israel's brief declared that it 'took extensive measures to comply with its obligations under international law,' and that... the IDF directed attacks 'solely against military objectives,' and endeavored to ensure that 'civilians and civilian objects would not be harmed...

"Based on what journalists and human rights organizations found, and what Israeli soldiers in the field testified, however, a radically different picture of Cast Lead comes into relief. 'We're going to war,' a company commander told his soldiers before the attack. 'I want aggressiveness - if there's someone suspicious on the upper floor of a house, we'll shell it. If we have suspicions about a house, we'll take it down... There will be no hesitation.' A combatant remembered a meeting with his brigade commander and others where the 'rules of engagement' were 'essentially' conveyed as, 'if you see any signs of movement at all you shoot.' Other soldiers recalled, 'If the deputy battalion commander thought a house looked suspect, we'd blow it away. If the infantryman didn't like the looks of that house - we'd shoot' (unidentified soldier); 'If you face an area that is hidden by a building - you take down the building. Questions such as 'who lives in that building[?]' are not asked' (soldier recalling his brigade commander's order); 'As for rules of engagement, the army's working assumption was that the whole area would be devoid of civilians... Anyone there, as far as the army was concerned, was to be killed' (unidentified soldier); 'We were told: 'any sign of danger, open up with massive fire' (member of a reconnaissance company); 'We shot at anything that moved' (Golani Brigade fighter); 'Despite the fact that no one fired on us, the firing and demolitions continued incessantly' (gunner in a tank crew). 'Essentially, a person only need[ed] to be in a 'problematic' location,' a Haaretz reporter found, 'in circumstances that can broadly be seen as suspicious, for him to be 'incriminated' and in effect sentence to death'." (Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, pp 44-45)

Israel Provokes, Palestinians Retaliate

Whenever you read lying msm accounts of Israel's most recent brutal hammering of Gaza, of the 'Palestinians attack/Israel responds' variety, keep in mind that Israel is essentially a one-trick pony. Its modus operandi of the past few days in Gaza is just a re-run of all those other brutal hammerings, stretching back to Operation Cast Lead of 27 December 2008-18 January 2009.

And just to remind you of that prototypical Israeli military rampage, here is Norman Finkelstein's meticulous account of same, taken from his latest must-read book, Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom (2018):

"In June 2008, Hamas and Israel entered into a cease-fire brokered by Egypt, but in November of that year Israel violated the cease-fire. It carried out a lethal border raid on Gaza... Then and now, the objective was to provoke retaliation and thus provide the pretext for a massive assault.

"Indeed the border raid proved to be the preamble to a bloody invasion. On 27 December 2008, Israel launched 'Operation Cast Lead.' It began with an aerial and ground assault. Piloting the most advanced combat aircraft in the world, the Israeli air force flew nearly three thousand sorties over Gaza and dropped one thousand tons of explosives, while the Israeli army deployed several brigades equipped with sophisticated intelligence-gathering systems, and weaponry such as robotic and TV-aided remote-controlled guns. On the other side, Hamas launched several hundred rudimentary rockets and mortar shells into Israel. On 18 January 2009, Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire, 'apparently at the behest of Barack Obama, whose presidential investiture was to take place two days later.' However, the siege of Gaza persisted. The Bush administration and the US Congress lent Israel unqualified support during the attack... But overwhelmingly, international public opinion (including wide swaths of Jewish public opinion) recoiled at Israel's assault on a defenseless civilian population. In 2009, a United Nations Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission, chaired by the respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone, released a voluminous report documenting Israel's commission of massive war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. The report accused Hamas of committing cognate crimes but on a scale that paled by comparison. It was clear that, in the words of Israeli columnist Gideon Levy, 'this time we have gone too far.'

"Israel officially justified Operation Cast Lead on the grounds of self-defense against Hamas rocket attacks. Such a rationale did not, however, withstand even superficial scrutiny. If Israel wanted to avert Hamas rocket attacks, it would not have triggered them by breaching the 2008 cease-fire. It could also have opted for renewing - and for a change, honoring - the cease-fire. In fact, as a former Israeli intelligence officer told the Crisis Group, 'The cease-fire options on the table after the war were in place there before it.' If the goal of Cast Lead was to destroy the infrastructure of terrorism,' then Israel's alibi of self-defense appeared even less credible after the invasion. Overwhelmingly, Israel targeted not Hamas strongholds but 'decidedly 'non-terrorist,' non-Hamas' sites.

"The human rights context further undermined Israel's claim of self-defense. The 2008 annual report of B'Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) documented that between 1 January and 26 December 2008, Israeli security forces killed 455 Palestinians, of whom at least 175 were civilians, while Palestinians killed 31 Israelis, of whom 21 were civilians. Hence, on the eve of Israel's so-called war of self-defense, the ratio of total Palestinians to Israelis killed stood at almost 15:1... In Gaza alone, Israel killed at least 158 noncombatants in 2008, while Hamas rocket attacks killed 7 Israeli civilians, a ratio of more than 22:1. Israel deplored the detention of one Israeli combatant captured in 2006, yet Israel detained some 8,000 Palestinian 'political prisoners,' including 60 women and 390 children, of whom 548 were held in administrative detention without charge or trial... It's ever-tightening noose around Gaza compounded Israel's disproportionate breach of Palestinian human rights. The blockade amounted to 'collective punishment, a serious violation of international humanitarian law.' In September 2008, the World Bank described Gaza as 'starkly transform[ed] from a potential trade route to a walled hub of humanitarian donations.' In mid-December, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that Israel's '18-month-long blockade has created a profound human dignity crisis, leading to a widespread erosion of livelihoods and a significant deterioration in infrastructure and essential services.' If Gazans lacked electricity for as many as 16 hours each day; if Gazans received water only once a week for a few hours, and 80 percent of the water was unfit for human consumption; if one of every two Gazans were unemployed and 'food insecure'; if 20 percent of 'essential drugs' in Gaza were 'at zero level' and more than 20 percent of patients suffering from cancer, heart disease, and other severe conditions were unable to get permits for medical care abroad - if Gazans clung to life by the thinnest of threads, it traced back, ultimately, to the Israeli siege. The people of Gaza, OCHA concluded, felt 'a growing sense of being trapped, physically, intellectually and emotionally.' To judge by the human rights balance sheet at the end of 2008, and setting aside that the cease-fire was broken by Israel, didn't Palestinians have a much stronger case than Israel for resorting to armed self-defense?" (pp 13-16)

The Zionist Occupation of the American Mind

I've quoted Norman Finkelstein's groundbreaking work The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000) several times before in this blog, but his words bear repeating as a preface to that which follows:

"'The Holocaust' is an ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust. Like most ideologies, it bears a connection, if tenuous, with reality. The Holocaust is not an arbitrary but rather an internally coherent construct. Its central dogmas sustain significant political and class interests. Indeed, The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a 'victim' state, and the most successful ethnic group in the United States has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable dividends accrue from this specious victimhood - in particular, immunity to criticism, however justified." (p 3)

Later in his book, Finkelstein demolishes the dogma that The Holocaust "marks a categorically unique historical event." (pp 41-6)

He then asserts that "the claims of Holocaust uniqueness have come to constitute a form of 'intellectual terrorism' (Chaumont)," adding, "Those practicing the normal comparative procedures of scholarly inquiry must first enter a thousand and one caveats to ward off the accusation of 'trivializing The Holocaust'." (p 47)

I can think of no better example of this kind of intellectual terrorism than the following mea maxima culpa recounted in former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer's book, Briefing: Politics, the Press, and the President (2018). Smell the fear, feel the terror:

"I've had many roles as a communication director or press secretary in my career, and I have helped countless candidates, party officials, and elected officials undergo media training. Media training [is] basically teaching people how to prepare for an interview, especially on camera... And there are some basic rules. If you're preparing for an in-studio interview, you look at the interviewer, not the camera; if your interview is in a remote studio, you look directly at the camera. Don't move your hands too much. Don't repeat a question. Don't validate a premise with which you disagree. And the number one rule I gave every Republican was don't ever, ever... compare anything or anyone to Hitler or the Holocaust. Ever.

"I can't tell you how many times I've repeated these rules to everyone from candidates to state party chairmen. But on April 11, 2017, I violated my number one rule, setting off another controversy from the White House podium.

"Earlier, I had been part of a small, impromptu briefing in the dining room off the Oval Office where Secretary Mattis had explained to the president the degree of the current atrocities committed by Syria's leader, Bashar al-Assad. He noted that not even Adolf Hitler had dared to use chemical weapons on the battlefield (note the word 'battlefield'). I left the meeting wanting to make sure that the horror of Assad's actions was fully communicated. I wanted everyone to understand just how evil Assad is and why the president had acted so swiftly.

"When I went into the briefing room to begin the daily briefing, echoes of Mattis's words were still with me... I opened up the briefing for questions. Eleven of the first fifteen questions focused on Syria. The video showing the pain and suffering of the Syrian people that had gone viral was clearly on the minds of the reporters. I was doing well, talking about the president's reaction and concern. But then came the sixteenth question. 'The alliance between Russia and Syria is a strong one; it goes back decades. President Putin has supplied personnel. He's supplied military equipment to the Assad government. What makes you think that at this point he's going to pull back in his support for President Assad and for the Syrian government right now?'

"I thought to myself, 'I got this.' I had been in a groove expressing the president's concern and Assad's horrific actions. But instead of staying on the messages that had been working just fine, I tried to turn it up a notch: 'I think a couple of things. You look - we didn't use chemical weapons in World War II. You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn't even sink to using chemical weapons. So, you have to, if you're Russia, ask yourself is this a country that you and a regime you want to align yourself with? You have previously signed on to international agreements rightfully acknowledging that the use of chemical weapons should be out of bounds by every country. To not stand up to not only Assad, but your own word, should be troubling. Russia put their name on the line. So, it's not a question of how long that alliance has lasted, but at what point do they recognize that they are now getting on the wrong side of history in a really bad way really quickly. And again, look at the countries that are standing with them: Iran, Syria, North Korea. This is not a team you want to be on. And I think that Russia has to recognize that while they may have had an alliance with them, that the lines that have been crossed are one that no country should ever want to see another country cross.

"That was it - like the previous eleven questions on the subject, I thought I had sufficiently described the outrage we had toward both Assad and Russia. The questions in the briefing room are asked at the speed of light. I would answer one question while anticipating the next one. In my mind, I thought I had answered the question, but clearly what had come out of my mouth was not the full explanation that I had envisioned saying. I kept going, oblivious to the damage I had done.

"The next question was about the president's tax returns. Then came a question about the Easter Egg Roll. My corny response about it being 'egg-cellent' evoked laughter from the briefing room. That was followed by a question on the White House visitor logs. After that, more questions focused on Syria and North Korea, and a question was asked about taxes and infrastructure. At this point, I thought, I was doing great. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary because of the pace and intensity of the briefings.

"Then I called on ABC News's Cecilia Vega. 'Sean, thanks, I just want to give you an opportunity to clarify something you said that seems to be gaining some traction right now.' What now? Then she started reading from her phone. 'Hitler didn't even sink to the level of using chemical weapons.' What did you mean by that?' What? Frantically, I'm thinking, 'What did I do?' I responded, 'I think you come to sarin gas, there was no - he was not using the gas on his own people the same way Assad is doing, I mean, there was clearly - I understand your point, thank you.' She said, 'I'm just getting - ' but I cut her off and stepped in deeper and deeper. 'Thank you, I appreciate that,' I said. 'There was not - he brought them into the Holocaust center, I understand that. But I'm saying in the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent - into the middle of towns. It was brought - so the use of it - I appreciate the clarification there. That was not the intent.' What had I done. Holocaust centers? And I didn't realize until later that I had inadvertently omitted Mattis's important phrase 'on the battlefield.' Hitler, of course, had used chemical weapons to murder Jews and other victims during the Holocaust.

"I read the body language of not only the reporters but also my own staffers along the side of the room. I was beginning to realize I had misspoken badly... In the heat of the moment, I still hadn't realized what I had said wrong. I was so fully focused on condemning Assad that I failed to see how badly I had stumbled by omitting that phrase, 'on the battlefield.' By this point, I was feeling flustered, still not fully understanding what had just happened. My remarks were not quite right, I had the alarming sense that I was digging myself into a deeper hole with each word. This may have been the lowest moment I had in the White House. I alone had fumbled; no one else had made me do it. The irony is that this was a question that I had been waiting for, that I had been prepared to answer. And I had been given two chances to clarify the record.

"After the briefing, I went to my staff. I knew it was bad, but I still asked, how deep am I? Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Natalie Strom, and Raj Shah give me a look that said, 'Deeper than the Titanic.' Then I noticed the calendar on my computer. It read, 'First day of Passover.'

"Reince came into my office. 'Remember the first thing you taught me in media training?' he asked. 'Yes,' I said sheepishly. Never compare anyone to Hitler. I made a mistake, a big one, and I needed to say so.

"I went to the Oval Office to see the president. 'Mr President, I need you to know that I just stepped in it really badly, and I screwed up.' 'I saw it. But I know what you meant, Sean. It's going to be okay.' 'Thank you, sir, but I think I've embarrassed you and the administration and insulted the Jewish people. I need to make it right.' 'Look, Sean, you screwed up, but I know what you meant. You clearly didn't mean... ' He trailed off. When he spoke again, his tone was gentle. At a moment when I felt my worst, he tried to reassure me and was gracious, caring, and forgiving. Finally, he said, 'Do what you think is right.' I felt like I had a fever that was going to get worse before it broke. And despite the president's support, I was again wondering if this was my last day at the White House.

"I asked Natalie, who is Jewish, how the story was playing. Natalie is as loyal as they come, but she had to confess it was getting much worse. Many people echoed the president, telling me they knew what I meant,' but millions of other people did not and were deeply offended. In this moment, I knew I had three choices: one, do nothing and hope that it blew over; two, look for a friendly interviewer or reporter and try to put my spin on the story; or three, find the most challenging interviewer I could, own the mistake, and ask for forgiveness. I chose number three.

"I asked my team to check which news shows I could get on ASAP. They came back with several options, including appearing on CNN with Wolf Blitzer... I knew from the outset that it wouldn't be an easy interview. Wolf always asks tough questions. And he is the son of two Holocaust survivors. 'I was absolutely trying to make a point about the heinous acts that Assad had made against his own people last week, using chemical weapons and gas,' I told Wolf. 'Frankly, I mistakenly used an inappropriate and insensitive reference to the Holocaust, for which, frankly, there is no comparison. And for that I apologize.'... Wolf kept boring down on me. Wasn't I aware that in addition to the Jews, others had been victims of Hitler's poison-gas chambers? Of course, I told him. 'Have you spoken to President Trump about your blunder today?' Wolf asked. 'Obviously, it was my blunder,' I said. To think that I had offended people - especially those whose families had been victims of the Holocaust - twisted my stomach in a way I had never felt before and hope to never feel again. I had created this mess. I had embarrassed myself, my team, and the president.

"House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, other Democrats, and even a Republican congressman from Colorado were soon calling for my resignation.

"That evening, I was as down as I ever was. Some people can shrug off bad moments, but I have a hard time forgiving myself when I make a mistake, especially when I hurt others. It grates on me. Fortunately, Rebecca and the kids were waiting for me at home, and that made all the difference." (pp 195-200)

Michael Posner: Just Another Progressive Except for Palestine

Phillip Adams' recent interview with visiting* US human rights lawyer and former Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor under Obama, Michael Posner (The business of human rights, LNL, 23/5/16), managed to expose yet another example of the PEP (Progressive Except for Palestine) phenomenon.

"In your affirmation speech to the Obama administration in 2009," asked Adams, "you said your vocation as a human rights lawyer had been shaped by the lessons of the Holocaust. What were those lessons?

Posner replied, "Well, my family... came from Europe, and on my mother's side, in Hungary, a number of my grandmother's siblings had been killed, and on my father's side, French Jews, had been involved in the Maquis, the underground... so I saw the horror of the human capacity for cruelty but also the resilience of the human spirit, the resistance, and that really influenced my decision."

OK, so Posner failed to answer the question, but, hey, who couldn't warm to a guy whose life's work was inspired by the French Resistance? So far, so good.

As the interview progressed, such egregious abusers of human rights such as China, Russia, Egypt, apartheid South Africa and Saudi Arabia came up for mention. But not Israel. Interestingly, it was Adams who raised the subject:

"We talked earlier about your work in Uganda and about the efficacy of economic sanctions, and yet you're not in favour of movements like Boycott Divestment Sanctions, BDS, which has been proposed against Israel over the occupation of Palestine."

"Yeah," responded Posner, "I don't believe that's the most effective way to make change there. I am absolutely committed to the notion of a negotiated settlement, a two-state solution. I believe very strongly, and I believe I was the first assistant secretary of the US to go to Israel. I went 5 times after the Gaza war, the Cast Lead war of 2009, to raise human rights issues. You've got to raise the issues. The need is real. Palestinian rights need to be respected, but I think these issues need to be negotiated by the Israelis and the Palestinians. They're obviously not doing it now but I think we need to keep reinforcing that rather than isolating Israel using boycotts."

Sound familiar? That's right, the stock standard Netanyahu line. In fact, the Israeli prime minister reiterated it only days ago:

"In a bid to head off the latest international initiative aimed at pressuring the parties to reach a Mideast peace deal, Israeli Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has offered to clear his calendar and sit down immediately for one-on-one negotiations with Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas." (Netanyahu: Peace comes from direct negotiations, not from 'international conferences, UN-style', Patrick Goodenough, cnsnews.com, 25/5/16)

But apart from that, Posner's talk about his 2009 visits to Israel "to raise human rights issues" was less than honest.

Remember the UN's September 2009 Goldstone Report, which found that Israel's 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead against Gaza constituted "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population," and which accused Israel of war crimes?

In his definitive study of Operation Cast Lead, 'This Time We Went Too Far': Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion (2010), Norman Finkelstein records that Netanyahu condemned the Report as "a kangaroo court against Israel," that the US Israel lobby called it "rigged" and "deeply flawed," and that the Obama administration "quickly fell into line with the Israel lobby," with Assistant US Secretary of State for Democracy Michael Posner condemning it as - ahem - "deeply flawed." (p 136)

But there's more. We now have access to some of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails, which reveal that:

"The State department devoted itself to, in its own words, 'deferring' UN action on Israeli war crimes, 'reframing the debate' about the atrocities, and 'moving away from the UN'... The messages, some of which are written by high-level State Department officials, expose the role of the US government in undermining the international response to the 2009 United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict, also known as the Goldstone Report... Publicly released Clinton emails reveal that the UNHRC, under heavy US pressure, postponed consideration of the Goldstone Report from October 2 until March 2010. While the UNHRC ultimately endorsed the report's findings on October 16, it took nearly 6 months for the body to urge the UN General Assembly and Security Council to refer the Gaza massacre to the ICC pursuant to 13(b) of the Rome Statute, which the US then blocked." (Deferring justice: Clinton emails show how State Department undermined UN action on Israeli war crimes, Jared Flanery & Ben Norton, salon.com, 20/11/15)

Integral to this process of neutering the Goldstone Report was our Assistant Secretary of State for HUMAN RIGHTS, Michael Posner:

"The State Department's attempts to 'defer' UN action on Israeli war crimes in Gaza are further evinced in a message from Michael Posner - a former assistant secretary of state who served as founding Executive Director of Human Rights First and is now a business professor at NYU. In a November 10, 2010 note, Posner discussed multiple trips he and US government officials took to Israel in order to discuss the Goldstone Report with the Israeli government. Posner revealed the US and Israeli governments worked together in order to 'reframe the public debate' around Israel's attack. He wrote: 'Our approach has been to offer our support and willingness to work with the Government of Israel to 'reframe the public debate' from defensive (responding to Goldstone or Flotilla reports and resolutions at the UN, etc) to a more productive narrative focused on the challenges of fighting an urban or asymetrical war. We are having productive, and generally positive preliminary conversations about a possible GOI white paper that would: 1) set the context, outlining the challenges in fighting an asymetrical conflict; 2) spell out the steps the IDF and other agencies have taken to address these challenges; and 3) identify ongoing challenges that Israel and other professional armies will need to address in the future'." (ibid)

[*To deliver the UNSW's Australian Human Rights Centre's annual lecture.]

Zionism in a Nutshell

"If I came with a bible in one hand and a rifle in the other, knocked on your door, and said: according to my bible, my family lived in your home 2,000 years ago, would you pack up your bags and leave?"  

Norman Finkelstein

Massacre & Incident

Another book review* by Paul Monk in The Australian. Here's how it begins:

"'Barely in modern times has so short and localised a conflict had such prolonged, global consequences,' Michael B. Oren wrote in the opening paragraph of Six Days of War (2002),** his compelling history of the June 1967 conflict in which Israel crushed its Arab neighbours and seized control of Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. He listed some of those consequences: the Black September incident in Jordan (1970), the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes (1972)..." (Partial gaps in revisionist critique of Israel, 4/10/14)

So when 11 Israelis are killed it's a massacre, but when nearly 3,500 Palestinians are killed it's merely an incident.***

Why would you bother reading on?

[*Cursed Victory: A History of Israel & the Occupied Territories, by Ahron Bregman; **From Norman Finkelstein's 2002 review of Oren, Abba Eban with footnotes: "Whenever Israel faces a public relations crisis in the US - ie, a jot of the reality of its brutal policies manages to break free of ideological controls - a new propaganda initiative is launched to lift the spirits and close the ranks of the Zionist faithful. After Israel's bloody invasion of Lebanon in June 1982, the Zionist book of the month was Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial. Soon after the Palestinians entered into revolt in September 2000 and Israel unleashed a new round of violent repression, From Time Immemorial - although definitively shown to have been a hoax - was reissued and soared to the top of the Amazon list, soon followed by Oren's book (Amazon frequently featured them together). While certainly a much more sophisticated enterprise, Six Days of War serves the same political agenda as From Time Immemorial. In the introduction Oren states as his goal that the June war 'never be seen the same way again.' In fact he simply repeats the same old, tired apologetics. Like From Time Immemorial, its real purpose is to reclaim the lost world of Zionist heroism and innocence. With so much water under the bridge, however, except among true believers (admittedly not a small number) it's unlikely to succeed."; ***See my 14/8/12 post Bob Carr Rewrites Jordanian History.]

Speechless

The shit dished out to Palestinians never ceases to appal:

"The United Nations has launched a new plan to teach the Holocaust in Gaza schools,drawing fierce condemnation from Gaza's militant Hamas rulers, school teachers - and even the body tasked with peace negotiations with Israel... The uproar erupted after a UN official told a Jordanian daily in February that UNRWA, the main UN agency serving Palestinian refugees, would introduce a short case study about the Holocaust to Gaza students as part of its human rights curriculum." (Hamas protests UN plans to teach Gazans about the Holocaust, The Associated Press, Haaretz, 22/3/11)

Think about this one:

Here we have the world's supposed international peacekeeping body, still largely a White Man's club in 1947, cynically manipulated at the time by the Truman administration at the urging of Zionist lobbyists* to provide a legal cover for the dismemberment and conquest of Palestine by fanatical colonist bands bent on the establishment of an exclusively Jewish state, a goal which led inexorably to the ethnic cleansing of most of Arab Palestine in 1948 and the dispersal of its indigenous population into refugee camps in surrounding areas, including the Gaza Strip.

And the best the UN could do for these refugees, who only ever wanted to exercise their inalienable right of return to their homes and lands, is pass over 60-year's worth of General Assembly resolutions affirming that right, but to no avail. And this hopelessly emasculated organisation, mere putty in the hands of Israel's US bitch, which shamelessly uses its veto in the Security Council whenever Israel and its US lobby give the thumbs down, now proposes to tell the sniped at, shell-shocked children of the Gaza Ghetto that they have to study the Holocaust, an entirely European matter for which neither they nor their parents were in any way responsible, but which is shamelessly exploited by Israel and its agents overseas as a licence to keep them as brutalised, stateless refugees while the rest of the world turns a blind eye.

As the incomparable Norman Finkelstein put it so succinctly: Goebbels to teach Jews in Warsaw Ghetto history of German persecution by Mongols.

[* See my 25/6/09 post Now Honestly...]

Zionist Chutzpah Hits the Hustings

The deservedly doomed and deservedly damned NSW Labor misgovernment of Kristina (Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth) Keneally, in a desperate clutch at any straw within reach prior to its coming electoral wipeout in March, has finally discovered graffiti vandalism. No, not the visual plague which degrades every conceivable urban space across the state, and renders blindness a positively desirable disability, but 15-20 specimens of alleged anti-Semitic graffiti:

"Premier Kristina Keneally announced on Saturday that she will give judges more power against offenders and new measures will make racist, offensive or pornographic graffiti an aggravated offence, carrying tougher penalties, if Labor is re-elected. She said a database maintained by the Australian Jewish community reported there are between 15 to 20 serious anti-Semitic graffiti incidents in NSW each year." (NSW Libs want harsher graffiti punishment, au.news.yahoo.com, 19/2/11)

Now it goes without saying that, as much as I abhor and detest anti-Semitism and all other manifestation of racist filth, given the chronic refusal of Zionist lobbyists to differentiate between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, I'm afraid I can't get too excited.*

In general, however, and on this matter alone, I'm more inclined to agree with the NSW Liberal opposition: "The opposition argues however that all graffiti is offensive and all of it should be eligible for tougher penalties." (ibid)

One thing's for sure though - you can bet your bottom dollar that, whatever anti-racist/anti-graffiti legislation may arise from whichever mob takes control of the government following the coming NSW election, Newtown's anti-burka 'mural' and its perpetrator will have little to worry about. (See my 21/1/11 post Just Asking)

PS (23/2/11): Speaking of Newtown's anti-Burka graffiti, its perpetrator, Sergio Redegalli, has just outed himself as a Zionist, altering his eyesore to include an attack on Fiona Byrne, the mayor of Marrickville and Greens candidate in the state election, for her pro-BDS stance. (See Mural targets mayor over decision to boycott Israel, Josephine Tovey, Sydney Morning Herald, 23/2/11)

PS 2: To more adequately report the above developments, I've decided to alter the title of this post to Zionist Chutzpah Hits the Hustings.

[* For a discussion of anti-Semitism and the so-called new anti-Semitism, see the analysis of Norman Finkelstein in my 30/1/09 post Backman & the New Anti-Semitism.]

Holocaust Studies Make the Grade

A campaign by elements of the Israel lobby to have the Jewish component of the Nazi genocide, aka 'The Holocaust'*, included in Australia's national history curriculum (see my 12/4/10 post Sam Lipski's National Curriculum) has finally borne fruit.

[* In his invaluable book, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000), Norman Finkelstein calls 'The Holocaust' "an ideological representation of the Nazi genocide."]

According to the Australian Jewish News: "The official inclusion of Holocaust studies in the new national curriculum has received a cautious welcome from community leaders and educators. The curriculum was approved by a Ministerial Council meeting in Canberra and endorsed by state and territory education ministers last week... Holocaust studies have been included in two areas of the history curriculum - as part of the Australian immigration story to be taught in year 6 and as part of World War II studies in year 10. Sydney Jewish Museum education director Avril Alba described the inclusion of Shoah studies in the new curriculum as 'a positive step forward... [I]t provides teachers and students with an excellent opportunity to study both the context within which the Holocaust took place and the radicalising effect of the war." (Green light for Shoah studies, 17/12/10)

A cautious welcome?

Ah, "[b]ut [Alba] voiced concern over the limited time the subject is given in the curriculum, saying 'the challenge for teachers will be to both contextualise the unfolding of the Holocaust within the broader context of World War II but also to point out its distinctive features'." (ibid)

OK, Avril, to accomodate your concern, we'll omit the bit in the WWII depth study which goes: "An overview of the causes and course of WWII."

Ah, but "[t]he Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) also expressed reservations. 'The revised content description appears to be an improvement on the original draft', said ECAJ executive director Peter Wertheim. 'One difficulty is that study of the Holocaust is limited to the years 1942-1945. This is inaccurate and omits the Nazi program of mass shootings and other atrocities between 1939 and 1941 in which 1.5 million Jews were systematically put to death'." (ibid)

OK, Peter, 1939 through to 1945 it is. We'll just drop the bit about the "use of the atomic bomb."

Ah, but "Pratt Foundation chief executive and AJN columnist Sam Lipski earlier this year cited concerns about how the syllabus might be delivered if the Shoah wasn't contextualised. 'Without also studying who the Jews were, how they began, and what they've had to say about themselves and to the world over 3 millennia, a generation of Australians will gain a misleading picture', Lipski wrote in an AJN column." (ibid)

OK, Sam, we fully understand your concern, and you'll be pleased to hear that we're seriously considering dropping the history syllabus altogether and replacing it with Jewish/Israel studies.

Seriously though, if dunum by dunum, goat by goat is your mantra and modus operandi, can enough ever really be enough?

Not that I'm the only one ever to have had reservations about The Holocaust being used to promote Israel. Even acclaimed Nazi hunter and Zionist Simon Wiesenthal, in Jerusalem for the 1961 trial of Eichmann, had initial misgivings: "Wiesenthal did not object to the tendency to present the extermination of the Jews as a vindication of Zionist ideology and as justification for the existence of the State of Israel. But Israel's goal of gaining a monopoly over the legacy of the Holocaust aroused a sense of discomfort in him." (Simon Wiesenthal: The Life & Legends, Tom Segev, 2010, p 153)

This discomfort, of course, didn't last long. When, in the wake of Israel's conquest of the West Bank in 1967, it was suggested to Wiesenthal that it was "tragic" that an attempt to redress the injustice to the Jews by creating Israel had given rise to a fresh injustice to the Palestinians, he was adamant: "No, it is not tragic. The creation of Israel was the only possible and the only correct reaction to Auschwitz. There had to be a country in the world where the Jews were the landlords instead of tolerated guests." (ibid, p 219)

If the Wiesenthal line on The Holocaust is the one advanced in our year 10 classrooms, Zionist propagandists will have achieved a significant victory. One can but wonder at the contents of any curriculum support material that might be sent by ECAJ to our schools. On the other hand, if classroom discussion of one terrible injustice turns to discussion of another... watch this space.

Anyway, for teachers of year 10 history out there who are serious about their subject and who may have been wondering just what the real significance of the Nazi genocide is, here's our big picture man, James Petras: "The Nazi genocide against the Jews is an example of the ruling elite victimizing a minority population to create cross-class cohesion, diverting the masses from internal labor-capital conflicts and the real or potential costs of imperialist policies. To deflect their focus on capitalist exploitation, the ruling elite directed worker and middle class discontent to Jewish bankers and capitalists. This propaganda was especially effective in professions like medicine and the retail trade in which competition for positions and market shares between Jews and non-Jews was especially intense. The transition from intensified exclusion and ethnic discrimination to the practice of genocide coincided with Germany's massive military, economic and political expansion and conquest of the late 1930s and early 1940s. As the costs of empire-building increased, so did the need to deflect the increasing anger and anxiety of the population by giving their ills a perpetrator's face (the Jews), and giving them lower ranking populations to despise (the Slavs). Parallel to the Jewish-Nazi Holocaust, the German imperial conquest of great swaths of Eastern Europe and especially Russia led to an even greater holocaust, the killing of some 9-10 million Slavs and the enslavement of many millions more to the imperial-capital war machine." (Genocides, Cohesion & Imperialism, in Rulers & Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants, James Petras, 2007, p 77)

Chew on that, Peter, Sam.

Massacre? What Massacre?

Here's what a massacre - just a wee one - looks like. It occurred sometime between 1920 and 1925, during Spain's Rif War in Morocco:

"I am sitting on a stone, polished by millions of raindrops, smooth like a bare skull. It is a whitish stone, full of pores. It burns in the sun and sweats in the dampness. Thirty yards from me stands the old fig tree, its roots twisted like the veins of a robust old man, its contorted branches hung with the trefoil of its fleshy leaves. On the other bank of the stream, beyond the ravine, the remains of the kabila straggle up the hillside.

"A few months ago a group of huts stood there, built of straw and twigs. Inside, mats of plaited straw. One mat in the doorway, where you left your heelless slippers, the babouches, on entering; another inside, on which you squatted down round the tea cups. A few bigger ones lined up against the wall for sleeping. The kabila was nothing but straw huts and straw mats. Its bread was a kind of cake baked on hot stones and made of grain pounded between stones, a blackish cake bristling with bits of singed straw. The sharp hairs of the dry wheat ears stuck in your throat and bit you there with their hundreds of teeth.

"The kabila would wake up in the morning and its men would come out of the huts, each beating his pitiful little donkey. Then he would mount it and his babouches would flap on the ground, so small was the donkey. Behind him came his wife, burdened, everlastingly burdened. The three would go to the flatter part of the hillside and the man would dismount. The woman would unstrap the wooden plow from her shoulders and harness it to the donkey. Then she would meekly yoke herself to the plow and the man would inspect the knots in the harness of donkey and woman. He would take hold of the plow, and the woman and the donkey would begin to walk, slowly, in step, the donkey pulling the ropes with his collar, the woman pulling the rope crossed over her flaccid breasts, both working slowly, planting their feet deep in the soil and sinking into their knees at each stop.

"The lords of the kabila would begin their morning on horseback, on nervous little horses with thick manes. Their rifles slung on a bandolier, they would disappear into the hills. Nothing remained in the kabila but the chickens, the sheep, and the children, all playing about between the huts, pecking, browsing, tumbling in the dust; all smeared with dirt and slime, all toasted and bleached by the sun.

"A few months ago the kabila was razed to the ground. It was done from so short a distance that the artillery had no need of range finders. The captain of the battery had said: 'What for? You simply fire, just as you throw a stone at a dog'.

"At the first shell, everything had come tumbling down. The straw of the huts burst into blazing chips. The children fled uphill among the rocks. The chickens and the sheep scattered as their instinct drove them. The women gave piercing shrieks which resounded throughout the valley. The lords of the kabila made their horses caracole, brandishing their rifles in the air. When a few shells had been fired, the infantry marched up the hill and occupied the hamlet. The soldiers rounded up the scattered chickens and sheep which returned to their homestead at sunset. They lit their campfires and ate their evening meal. The air was full of the breast feathers of chickens, which drifted slowly around, sometimes settling gently in a bowl. The operation had gone according to plan. At nightfall there was nothing but some heaps of smoking straw and two or three children mangled by the first shell, chicken feathers drifting in the air, and sheepskins, a banquet for flies, stuck on crossed poles. The place where the kabila had been smelled of jute from the thousand sandbags which formed the parapet; it smelled of roast meat, of horses, and of soldiers, of sweaty soldiers with lice in every fold of their uniforms." (The Forging of a Rebel, Arturo Barea, 1943/1972, pp 237-238)

OK? Got the picture? Fast forward to this weekend.

I was skimming the book reviews in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald when I happened on a review of Raimond Gaita's Gaza: Morality, Law & Politics by Bruce Elder. The opening sentence had me coughing and spluttering: "Do you remember the Middle East conflict in Gaza between December 27, 2008, and January 18, 2009, known variously as the Gaza Operation Cast Lead (the Israeli description) or the Gaza Massacre (the Hamas description)?"

So what happened in those 22 days wasn't really a massacre? That's just Hamas' description?

Well, no it isn't. Others, who weren't asleep at the time, knew a massacre when they saw it unfolding before their eyes:

"The casualty figures* attested not to a war but to a massacre - or, as Duncan Kennedy put it, they were 'typical of a particular kind of 'police action' that Western colonial powers... have historically undertaken to convince resisting native populations that unless they stopped resisting they will suffer unbearable death and deprivation'. Indeed, an Israeli soldier posted in the Gaza Strip later recollected how Operation Cast Lead was largely conducted by remote control. 'It feels like hunting season has begun', he mused. 'Sometimes it reminds me of a Play-Station [computer] game'. 'You feel like a child playing around with a magnifying glass', another remembered, 'burning up ants'." (This time we went too far: Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion, Norman Finkelstein, 2010, p 77) [*1,387-1,444: Goldstone report]

"The fighting in Gaza is 'war deluxe'. Compared with previous wars, it is child's play - pilots bombing unimpeded as if on practice runs, tank and artillery soldiers shelling houses and civilians from their armored vehicles, combat engineering troops destroying entire streets in their ominous protected vehicles without facing serious opposition. A large, broad army is fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organisation that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a fight. All this must be said openly, before we begin exulting in our heroism and victory. This war is also child's play because of its victims. About a third of those killed in Gaza have been children - 311, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry; 270 according to B'Tselem human rights group - out of the 1,000 total killed as of January 14. Around 1,550 of the 4, 500 wounded have also been children, according to figures from the UN, which says the number of children killed has tripled since the ground operation began. This is too large a proportion by any humanitarian or ethical standard." ( Child's Play, 15/1/09, from The Punishment of Gaza, Gideon Levy, 2010, p 103)

Isn't it fascinating that there are so many out there in ms media land who can recognise a massacre everywhere but in Palestine?

And it's not as if Herald reviewer Bruce Elder doesn't know one when he sees it. After all, he is the author of the 1988 book, Blood on the Wattle: Massacres & Maltreatment of Australian Aborigines Since 1788.

Work that one out!

Mike, About that Last Column...

In The Ferocious Beast (12/6/10), I posted Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton's bold exposure of the winning ways of Australia's Israel lobby. Needless to say, the following week's letters pages witnessed the inevitable stoush between the usual suspects and their foot soldiers (4) and Carlton's defenders (8), an exchange which prompted him to have a second bite of the cherry in his latest column, Rudd fumbles ball & couldn't even save Sharnee & Skye, 19/6/10:

"With bottomless irony, the Jewish lobby spent much of last week assuring anybody who would listen that there is no such thing as the Jewish lobby. The most powerful contribution came from one Mike Phillips of Wollstonecraft, who wrote to the Herald on Tuesday to explain that the Jewish people were put on this earth to teach the rest of us how to behave. That clap-trap was briskly dealt with by readers' letters the next day.

"As I said when I opened this can of worms a few weeks ago, a common technique of the lobby cheerleaders is to label any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism or, worse, Holocaust denial. Sometimes in as many words, at other times more subtly. And away they duly went. Robin Margo, president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, wrote that my column last week had 'disturbing overtones' for those who know their history. Robert Goot, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, fired off a hilariously pompous email accusing me of falsehoods, stupidity, intemperance, irresponsibility and of invoking an 'old and insidious racist sterotype'. I thought at first some witty satirist had pinched his letterhead.

"Time for a cold shower all around. The American Jewish academic Norman Finkelstein has campaigned against what he calls the Holocaust Industry, which he describes as the offensive use of the death of 6 million Jews as a lever to obtain political or diplomatic advantage. For this he is usually excoriated as a self-hating Jew, another traditional insult, but he can hardly be ignored: his mother was in Majdanek and his father survived Auschwitz.

"Or, as another distinguished American writer, Peter Beinart, wrote recently in The New York Review of Books, 'the Holocaust analogies never stop, and their message is always the same: Jews are licensed by their victimhood to worry only about themselves'. Jewish lobby groups have every right to put their views. But when their first, inevitable reaction is to hurl the charge of anti-Semitism they merely devalue the currency.

"I replied to Robert Goot that I am perfectly content with the existence of Israel as an independent Jewish homeland, and that I have no more regard for Hamas than I had for the psychopaths of my own ethnic background, the IRA. But nor, I said, would I be silenced about Israel's cruel and unconscionable oppression of the people of Gaza. Enough. Shalom."

It goes without saying that I agree with everything Carlton has written above - except for that final paragraph, which detracts terribly from his otherwise astute and courageous stance.

No one aware of its implications could possibly be perfectly content with the existence of Israel as an independent Jewish homeland because to be so is to be perfectly content with the existence of some 5 million Palestinian refugees as an exiled, stateless and disenfranchised population - in perpetuity. The logic of such a statement is that what is now generally recognised as Israel (pre-1967) should be the sole preserve of Jews the world over, including Margo, Goot and the rest, and forever denied to the descendants of the non-Jewish Palestinian Arab majority ethnically cleansed from their homes (and homeland) there in 1948. Such an assertion also suggests that Carlton is cosy with the idea of a sectarian state, a position I'm sure he'd be the first to oppose. Consistency surely demands that any sectarian state, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu, be rejected as inherently discriminatory.

As for Hamas, after some real study (try Khaled Hroub's Hamas: A Beginner's Guide, 2006 or Azzam Tamimi's Hamas: Unwritten Chapters, 2007) and a little honest reflection, I doubt whether Carlton would stand by his facile dismissal of Hamas as nothing more than psychopathic.

Whilst I appreciate Carlton's refusal to be silenced by Israel's cruel and unconscionable oppression of the people of Gaza, the rest of his paragraph smacks too much of tossing a bone to the ferocious - dare I say psychopathic?* - beast.

[*Hear Finkelstein describe Israel as a "lunatic state" at mrzine.monthlyreview.org or read his latest book, 'This Time We Went Too Far' (2010), in which he quotes former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni talking of Israel as "going wild" and "demonstrating real hooliganism" in Gaza in January 2009.]

Creative Destruction

"War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing."

Edwin Starr's 1969 antiwar song is... well, sooo 1969!

If NSW Jewish Board of Deputies' CEO Vic Alhadaff had his way those lyrics would read: War! What is it good for? Absolutely everything.

In a review of Dan Senor & Saul Singer's Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracles, Vic boasts that Israel had "63 companies listed on the NASDAQ in 2009, second only to the US..." and explains, after imbibing deeply from Senor & Singer, that it "all boils down to one word - army." (Military secrets behind Israel's economic miracle, The Australian Jewish News, 19/3/10)

If Senor & Singer are right, far from being a breeding ground for war criminals, the IDF is really a training ground for entrepreneurs.

Vic "elaborates":

"1) The military - and battlefield - experiences which shape the Israeli character demand that young adults take initiative, demonstrate leadership and handle life-threatening situations in real time, thereby engendering personality attributes and imparting IT knowledge that give them a leading edge when they enter the workforce. 2) The Israeli military has an egalitarian ethos that encourages soldiers to challenge authority. This culture, translated to civic life, lends itself to challenging the status quo and being creative, innovative and self-reliant. 3) By the time Israelis enter university, they have served in the army and tend to be more responsible and focused, with a clearer career direction, than their peers. 4) The nation's military and defence industries generate successful spin-offs in the IT and commercial sectors."

If this is so, there can be no doubt that the IDF's Epic Existential Struggle with the Islamofascist Hordes of Hamastan last year will produce such a bumper crop of budding innovators that the US will inevitably be bumped down to second place on the NASDAQ.

For a tantalising glimpse of the IDF's current crop of Einsteins, Freuds, Bubers and Weizmanns* in action, taking the initiative, demonstrating leadership and handling life-threatening situations in real time, you might like to read the following three selections from Norman Finkelstein's latest (2010) book, 'This Time We Went Too Far': Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion:

"In postinvasion testimonies IDF soldiers recalled the macabre scenes of destruction in Gaza: 'We didn't see a single house that remained intact... Nothing much was left in our designated area. It looked awful, like in those World War II films where nothing remained. A totally destroyed city'; 'We demolished a lot. There were people who had been in Gaza for two days constantly demolishing one house after the other, and we're talking about a whole battalion'; 'One night they saw a terrorist and he disappeared so they decided he'd gone into a tunnel, so they brought a D-9 [bulldozer] and razed the whole orchard'; 'There was a point where D-9s were razing areas. It was amazing. At first you go in and see lots of houses. A week later, after the razing, you see the horizon further away, almost to the sea'; 'The amount of destruction there was incredible. You drive around those neighborhoods, and can't identify a thing. Not one stone left standing over another. You see plenty of fields, hothouses, orchards, everything devastated. Totally ruined. It's terrible. It's surreal'. One veteran of the invasion designed a T-shirt depicting a King Kong-like soldier clenching a mosque while glowering over a city under attack, and bearing the slogan 'If you believe it can be fixed, then believe it can be destroyed!' 'I was in Gaza', he elaborated, 'and they kept emphasizing that the object of the operation was to wreak destruction on the infrastructure'." (pp 61-62)

"The Goldstone Report concluded that 'the Israeli armed forces repeatedly opened fire on civilians who were not taking part in the hostilities and who posed no threat to them', and that 'Israeli armed forces had carried out direct intentional strikes against civilians' in the absence of 'any grounds which could have reasonably induced the Israeli armed forces to assume that the civilians attacked were in fact taking a direct part in the hostilities'. The postinvasion testimonies of IDF soldiers corroborated this wanton killing of Palestinian civilians in an "atmosphere" where "the lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers': 'You see people more or less running their life routine, taking a walk, stuff like that. Definitely not terrorists. I hear from other crews that they fired at people there. Tried to kill them'; 'People didn't seem to be too upset about taking human lives'; 'Everyone there is considered a terrorist'; 'We were allowed to do anything we wanted. Who's to tell us not to?'; 'I understood that conduct there had been somewhat savage. 'If you sight it, shoot it''; 'You are allowed to do anything you want... for no reason other than it's cool' - even firing white phosphorus 'because it's fun. Cool'." (p 88)

"No doubt some IDF soldiers exploited the occasion of the massacre to give free rein to their sadistic impulses while others were brutalized by the environment. Thus, IDF testimonies recalled 'the hatred and the joy', and 'fun' and 'delight' of killing Palestinians, the wreaking of destruction 'for kicks' and to 'make [oneself] happy'. And thus soldiers bantered, 'I killed a terrorist, whoa... We blew his head off'; 'Fortunately the hospitals are full to capacity already, so people are dying more quickly'; and 'He just couldn't finish this operation without killing someone'." (p 92)

Please Vic, whatever you do, don't pass Up-Start - sorry, Shoot-Up, sorry, Start-Up Nation on to Tony Abbott.

[* Vic alludes in the introduction to his review to the fact that Einstein, Freud, Buber and Weizmann, "each of whom pushed the frontiers of humankind's intellectual capacity in his own unique way, all served on the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's first board of governors," and claims that this "underscores the premium which Israel placed on intellectual prowess, even before the State had been established, and which continues to this day." Einstein, Freud and Buber (if not Weizmann), of course, may have a different take on this, not to mention their being forcibly conscripted into the IDF by Vic.]

See also the Tony Clifton quote which heads my 1/2/09 post The Banality of Evil.

Sam Lipski's National Curriculum

"The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensible ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a 'victim' state, and the most successful ethnic group in the United States has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable dividends accrue from this specious victimhood - in particular immunity to criticism, however justified." (Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, 2000, p 3)

Efforts by elements of the Israel lobby to have what they term 'Shoah studies/Holocaust education' included in Australia's new national history curriculum for year 10 have had a measure of success with the appearance in the draft curriculum, of the following unit:

"12. Depth Study 1. The Great War & its aftermath: The significance of WW II, including the Holocaust and use of the atomic bomb. Content elaboration: (1) understanding the social & scientific impact of the war including the nature and effects of the Holocaust; what total war meant for civilians in Asia, Europe & Russia; developments in science & technology (2) examining reasons for the defeat of Germany; discussing the dropping of the A-bombs & the Japanese surrender (3) debating the significance of WW II (eg assessing the 'Good War'); looking at the impact of propaganda; analysing the contribution & change in status of women; study migration away from Europe; comparing the 1945 post war settlement (eg the Marshall Plan with Versailles Peace arrangements; discussing consequences of the Holocaust)"

That Israel lobbyists are more concerned with making pro-Israel hay out of the Holocaust than with its place in history soon becomes apparent, however:

"The inclusion of Holocaust education within the proposed history curriculum was not strictly satisfactory though, with [Robert] Goot [of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ)] criticising the decision to incorporate the Shoah as part of a wider unit looking at the aftermath of WW II. 'The conflation of themes, and the attempt to assimilate other large and complex areas of study into the curriculum for teaching the Holocaust, invites confusion and will make what is already a challenging teaching and teacher-training task virtually impossible', he said. 'The formulation of the curriculum concerning the Holocaust needs to be refined'." (Holocaust studies welcomed into new national curriculum, The Australian Jewish News, 5/3/10)

Now, leading Australian Zionist, Pratt Foundation CEO and former AJN editor Sam Lipski has weighed in with his concerns that, even should ECAJ get the kind of refinement they want, this would still not ensure, from the Zionist perspective, the right result:

"While welcoming its inclusion as 'an important step forward', the ECAJ said it was 'disappointing' that the Holocaust was listed within the wider topic of WWII, and 'regrettable' that the draft's focus was on discussing the Holocaust's 'consequences', rather than on what actually happened. Together with Jewish educators and other community stakeholders, the ECAJ will be expressing these concerns during the public consultations. I wish them well... But nobody should have any great expectations. Even if the government planners accept every one of the Jewish community's suggestions - and that's unlikely - there's no way of ensuring that's how the curriculum will be taught in the classroom... given the track record of many Australian teachers on allied subjects such as Israel and the Middle East..." (Shoah studies are not enough, AJN, 9/4/10)

ECAJ's concern about discussing the Holocaust's 'consequences', would, I imagine, relate to any suggestion that Europe somehow sought to assuage its guilt over the Holocaust by acquiescing in Zionism's takeover of Palestine, or, to put it in terms that a year 10 student would surely understand, because the Germans perpetrated the Holocaust against European Jewry, the Palestinians had to pay with the loss of their homeland. You can just see the hands going up: 'Miss, that's not fair!' No, unless the Holocaust is made a stand-alone unit, any such discussion could prove counter-productive from a Zionist perspective. And then you've got Lipski's Zio-centric concern about ensuring how the curriculum will be taught in the classroom... given the track record of many Australian teachers on allied subjects such as Israel and the Middle East.

So what does he propose? Why, the further (even preferred) inclusion in the national curriculum of Zionist foundational mythology no less: "The Passover haggadah* in the history section... and the biblical text from Exodus, Chapters 1-20, in the English section."

Lipski avers that "the Jewish interest, and the wider Australian interest, would be better served if the coming generation of Australian students learnt about Jews and Judaism from 'the exodus master story' rather than from 'the Holocaust master story'." As he explains: "Studying the Holocaust in a Jewish historical vacuum... inevitably means that it will present Jews as uniquely victimised in human history - and only as that. Without also studying who the Jews were, how they began, and what they've had to say about themselves and to the world over 3 millenia, a generation of Australians will gain a misleading picture. Of no benefit to them, and certainly none to the Jews."

[*The Haggadah is a Jewish religious text that sets out the order of the Passover Seder. Reading the Haggadah is a fulfillment of the scriptural commandment to each Jew to 'tell your son' about the Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt as described in the Book of Exodus in the Torah. (wikipedia)]

Lipski's plaint offers a fascinating insight into the Zionist mindset. On the one hand, while he wouldn't balk at any pro-Israel propaganda dividends accruing from pushing what Finkelstein calls the "specious victimhood" of the Holocaust master story in the national curriculum (the best possible ECAJ refinement), he believes that only the addition of the exodus master narrative would ensure the maximisation of such dividends.

And what exactly is this exodus master narrative alluded to by Lipski? Well, it just so happens that it's the first installment of Zionism's national mythology. The proverbial thin end of the Zionist wedge, so to speak. To quote from the puckish Shlomo Sand, who is to Zionist mythology what Richard Dawkins is to religious mythologies in general:

"For Israelis, specifically those of Jewish origin, such [modern European national] mythologies are far-fetched, whereas their own history rests on firm and precise truths. They know for a certainty that a Jewish nation has been in existence since Moses received the tablets of the law on Mount Sinai, and that they are its direct and exclusive descendants (except for the 10 tribes, who are yet to be located). They are convinced that this nation 'came out' of Egypt; conquered and settled 'the Land of Israel', which had famously been promised it by the deity; created the magnificent kingdom of David and Solomon, which then split into the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. They are also convinced that this nation was exiled, not once but twice, after its periods of glory - after the fall of the First Temple in the 6th century BCE, and again after the fall of the Second Temple, in 70 CE. Yet even before that second exile, this unique nation had created the Hebrew Hasmonean kingdom, which revolted against the wicked influence of Hellenization. They believe that these people - their 'nation', which must be the most ancient - wandered in exile for nearly 2,000 years and yet, despite this prolonged stay among the gentiles, managed to avoid integration with, or assimilation into, them. The nation scattered widely, its bitter wanderings taking it to Yemen, Morocco, Spain, Germany, Poland, and distant Russia, but it always managed to maintain close blood relations among the far-flung communities and to preseve its distinctiveness. Then, at the end of the 19th century, they contend, rare circumstances combined to wake the ancient people from its long slumber and to prepare it for rejuvenation and for the return to its ancient homeland. And so the nation began to return, joyfully, in vast numbers. Many Israelis still believe that, but for Hitler's horrible massacre, 'Eretz Israel' would soon have been filled with millions of Jews making 'aliyah' by their own free will, because they had dreamed of it for thousands of years. And while the wandering people needed a territory of its own, the empty, virgin land longed for a nation to come and make it bloom. Some uninvited guests had, it is true, settled in this homeland, but since 'the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion' for 2 millenia, the land belonged only to that people, and not to that handful without history who had merely stumbled upon it. Therefore the wars waged by the wandering nation in its conquest of the country were justified; the violent resistance of the local population was criminal; and it was only the (highly unbiblical) charity of the Jews that permitted these strangers to remain and dwell among and beside the nation, which had returned to its biblical language and its wondrous land." (The Invention of the Jewish People, 2009, pp 16-17)

The only thing I can't understand is Lipski's recommendation that Exodus, Chapters 1-20, be included in the English section of the national curriculum. Isn't it supposed to be history?