I read in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald mag Good Weekend the feature - Toughen up, snowflake - on professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, Jordan Peterson.
Peterson, apparently, is the latest, trending intellectual guru with all the answers - 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos - for the perplexed (and who isn't these days?), so before rushing out to buy his tome, I thought I'd subject him to the infallible guide for sorting the sheep from the goats, the Palestine/Israel litmus test.
It's really quite simple to administer. Just Google the guru's name + 'Palestine' or 'Israel' or both and check out the result.
So I did, and OMFGx10!
Google took me to a YouTube video, beneath which these words appeared:
"Professor of Psychology Jordan Peterson, Professor Salim Mansur, Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and Ezra Levant, co-founder of The Rebel Media give a spirited talk on the historical significance of the Balfour Declaration (May 18, 2017). The event was hosted by Canadians for Balfour 100, a project of the Speakers Action Group in cooperation with The Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow and the Mozuud Freedom Foundation."
The Gatestone Institute? Chaired by John Bolton? That's right! As to the rest... well, life's too damn short.
I proceeded straight to JP's 16-minute contribution, but could barely manage 10. Here's why:
"Maybe even the enemies [ie Arabs] of the Jews [ie Israelis] respect them because they've done so well and it's just annoying."
"Israel's a shining beacon on the hill [in] a God-forsaken part of the world."
"You think about the common complaint that the Western colonialists, say, were responsible for the divisions of the Middle East. I mean, that's one way of looking at it. If you start history at 1917 after the allies won the First World War and took down the Ottoman Empire... you could say, well, England and France had the upper hand and they arbitrarily divided up the Middle East, but you could just as easily say that the Ottoman Empire collapsed and they had to do something with it. It wasn't obvious, and they gave some of it to the Arabs who really didn't have any land to begin with, or not any independent land that's for sure, because they were dominated by the Ottoman Empire, and they decided to give some of it to the Jews. Well, maybe that wasn't the world's best solution either way but they were maybe making the best of a bad lot."
According to our intellectual guru, empires (and presumably, countries too) just collapse - no push, no shove necessary. In the case of the Ottoman Empire, no foreign interference over decades, no foreign interventions, no final British push in Palestine. One minute it's standing, the next it's in a bloody great heap, just begging to be cleared away.
And guess which innocent bystanders just happen to be around at that precise point: 'Blimey, chaps, just look at that! How frightfully messy. OK, duty calls, roll up your sleeves and pitch in! And when we're done, we can give some of it to those Arab blighters, and some to the Jews.' To which latter suggestion said innocent bystanders exclaim as one: 'What a jolly good idea!'
Hey, Jordan, here's a 13th Rule for Life. Put it in your second edition: If you don't know anything about a subject, don't talk about it.
Showing posts with label Ottoman Palestine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ottoman Palestine. Show all posts
Monday, April 23, 2018
Friday, March 30, 2018
Fixated Persons
"A Fixated Persons Unit set up in the wake of Sydney's deadly Lindt Cafe siege has lead [sic] to charges against 17 people, some of whom 'were on the cusp of some pretty terrible things', NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said yesterday." ('We won't wait', Fuller vows on terror tactics, Deborah Snow, Sydney Morning Herald, 29/3/18)
I think Police Commissioner Fuller is onto something here. After all, just look at what happened in the absence of such a unit in 19th century Palestine:
"My dictionary defines a 'fixed idea' as follows: 'A Fixed Idea is a preconceived belief or idea, a prepossession, hence psychologically, an idea, usually delusive, which dominates the whole mental life during a prolonged period, as in certain forms of insanity.' This definition has fitted political Zionism or 'Jewish' nationalism to perfection. Ever since that Sunday, August 29, 1897, when Dr. Theodor Herzl, at the First Zionist World Conference in Basel, Switzerland, sold his bill of fare, his Judenstaat [Jewish State], to the leaders of East European persecuted ghetto Jewry, right up to the post-June 1967, 'Jewish' military victory over their 'enemies,' the Arabs.
"I know whereof I am speaking. I was a first graduate (Class 1913) of the Gymnasia Herzlia of Jaffa-Tel Aviv - the Nursery where 'Jewish' political nationalism had its rebirth after the demise of its Founding Father, Dr. Herzl. I attended the Gymnasia Herzlia from 1909 through 1913. Day and night, inside the classes and outside, I was inoculated with the 'fixed idea' of 'Jewish' nationalism. In all of Arab Palestine, in those days, there were only about 50 000 Jews, practically all living on alms - charity collections made in the Diaspora. Very few Jews, in those days, were farmers of artisans. Very few looked healthy and strong. The manly men I knew during the five years I attended the Gymnasia Herzlia were the Arab seamen who unloaded and reloaded the many steamers that had to stop miles beyond the high cliffs. Every Jew who lived in Palestine was first brought to land when he arrived from Russia, Poland or Hungary by those brave oarsmen, who got them through the narrow passage through the cliffs. Every worker on my uncle's large vineyard in Rehovot, was an Arab. Work was done by Arabs only, with few exceptions.
"Yet, the spiritual education we constantly received consisted of amanooh, artzanooh, moladtanooh - our nation, our country, our fatherland. My benchmate during my five years at the Gymnasia was Moshe Shertok, who was later to become, what it was hoped that both of us would become, a leader in the coming Jewish State. Moshe Shertok was Foreign Minister, and, for a short while, Prime Minister, of the young State of Israel. Religion was nonexistent. 'Jewish' nationalism was our new religion. We were made to understand, and feel, that the Jews of the world are sui generis, a 'Chosen People,' who must eventually all emigrate to their 'Jewish Fatherland.' There were hardly any synagogues in Jaffa-Tel Aviv. I never heard of any of my Hebrew teachers going to pray in a synagogue.
"We lived in an enchanted world of myths, dreams, and aspirations. It was a hotbed of pumped and inflated excitement and synthetic idealism. To me, who was brought up in Jerusalem, before I came to the Gymnasia, in the home of my saintly and revered grandfather who believed in, and practiced, ethical and universal Judaism (Orthodox but sincere), believed and practiced social justice in all his contacts with Jews and gentiles (he was a rich retired merchant who came 'to die in the Holy Land,'). this preaching of hatred towards the Arabs conflicted with the Prophetic Judaism of my grandfather. On his death, I left Jerusalem to prepare myself to study at the Gymnasia, at the age of 15-16. But at the age of 20, unlike my fellow-graduates, I refused to accept the scholarships offered me by the Gymnasia to study in Europe under their supervision, and decided to go America and support myself and be independent." (The Culmination & Full Manifestation of the Chronic, Pathological, Seventy-Year-Old 'Fixed Idea' of Fanatical 'Jewish' Nationalism, Moshe Menuhin*, The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time**, 1969, pp 502-03)
[*Father of the famous violinist, Yehudi Menuhin; **An absolute classic, recently republished by Forbidden Bookshelf in the US as 'Not By Might, Nor By Power': The Zionist Betrayal of Judaism.]
I think Police Commissioner Fuller is onto something here. After all, just look at what happened in the absence of such a unit in 19th century Palestine:
"My dictionary defines a 'fixed idea' as follows: 'A Fixed Idea is a preconceived belief or idea, a prepossession, hence psychologically, an idea, usually delusive, which dominates the whole mental life during a prolonged period, as in certain forms of insanity.' This definition has fitted political Zionism or 'Jewish' nationalism to perfection. Ever since that Sunday, August 29, 1897, when Dr. Theodor Herzl, at the First Zionist World Conference in Basel, Switzerland, sold his bill of fare, his Judenstaat [Jewish State], to the leaders of East European persecuted ghetto Jewry, right up to the post-June 1967, 'Jewish' military victory over their 'enemies,' the Arabs.
"I know whereof I am speaking. I was a first graduate (Class 1913) of the Gymnasia Herzlia of Jaffa-Tel Aviv - the Nursery where 'Jewish' political nationalism had its rebirth after the demise of its Founding Father, Dr. Herzl. I attended the Gymnasia Herzlia from 1909 through 1913. Day and night, inside the classes and outside, I was inoculated with the 'fixed idea' of 'Jewish' nationalism. In all of Arab Palestine, in those days, there were only about 50 000 Jews, practically all living on alms - charity collections made in the Diaspora. Very few Jews, in those days, were farmers of artisans. Very few looked healthy and strong. The manly men I knew during the five years I attended the Gymnasia Herzlia were the Arab seamen who unloaded and reloaded the many steamers that had to stop miles beyond the high cliffs. Every Jew who lived in Palestine was first brought to land when he arrived from Russia, Poland or Hungary by those brave oarsmen, who got them through the narrow passage through the cliffs. Every worker on my uncle's large vineyard in Rehovot, was an Arab. Work was done by Arabs only, with few exceptions.
"Yet, the spiritual education we constantly received consisted of amanooh, artzanooh, moladtanooh - our nation, our country, our fatherland. My benchmate during my five years at the Gymnasia was Moshe Shertok, who was later to become, what it was hoped that both of us would become, a leader in the coming Jewish State. Moshe Shertok was Foreign Minister, and, for a short while, Prime Minister, of the young State of Israel. Religion was nonexistent. 'Jewish' nationalism was our new religion. We were made to understand, and feel, that the Jews of the world are sui generis, a 'Chosen People,' who must eventually all emigrate to their 'Jewish Fatherland.' There were hardly any synagogues in Jaffa-Tel Aviv. I never heard of any of my Hebrew teachers going to pray in a synagogue.
"We lived in an enchanted world of myths, dreams, and aspirations. It was a hotbed of pumped and inflated excitement and synthetic idealism. To me, who was brought up in Jerusalem, before I came to the Gymnasia, in the home of my saintly and revered grandfather who believed in, and practiced, ethical and universal Judaism (Orthodox but sincere), believed and practiced social justice in all his contacts with Jews and gentiles (he was a rich retired merchant who came 'to die in the Holy Land,'). this preaching of hatred towards the Arabs conflicted with the Prophetic Judaism of my grandfather. On his death, I left Jerusalem to prepare myself to study at the Gymnasia, at the age of 15-16. But at the age of 20, unlike my fellow-graduates, I refused to accept the scholarships offered me by the Gymnasia to study in Europe under their supervision, and decided to go America and support myself and be independent." (The Culmination & Full Manifestation of the Chronic, Pathological, Seventy-Year-Old 'Fixed Idea' of Fanatical 'Jewish' Nationalism, Moshe Menuhin*, The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time**, 1969, pp 502-03)
[*Father of the famous violinist, Yehudi Menuhin; **An absolute classic, recently republished by Forbidden Bookshelf in the US as 'Not By Might, Nor By Power': The Zionist Betrayal of Judaism.]
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
The Indigenous Pilgrims' Progress
October 31, 2017, of course, is the centenary of the much hyped charge of the Australian Light Horse at Turkish trenches defending the Palestinian town of Beersheba. The hype is largely due to the event's appropriation by Australia's Israel lobby, part of its ongoing effort to manufacture alleged historical links between Australia and Israel as part of the fiction that a 'unique relationship' exists between the two countries.
Although but one part of an Anglo-Arab thrust aimed at dislodging the Turks from the Levant in World War I, the victory of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba has been opportunistically appropriated by our Israel lobbyists and hyped as an integral component of the Zionist project in Palestine, on a par, almost, with the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917.
Of course, no such explicit linkage was ever made by Zionist spokesmen in the immediate post war years. Burnishing Israel's image in contemporary Australian domestic politics is what this blatant propaganda exercise is all about.
Here, for example, are some of the latest Zionist iterations of the linkage:
"On 31 October 1917 two events happened which shaped future world history. The first was the capture of Beersheba by British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers... The second was the decision by the British war cabinet to endorse the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home - the legal foundation of the future state of Israel." (The History, beersheba2017.com)
"The date of the Beersheba charge generally coincided with the Declaration by the British Government that led to the establishment of the modern State of Israel." (Connections to Indigenous Diggers of World War I, jwire.com.au, 23/2/17)
If we look back at earlier Zionist statements, part of the hype surrounding the construction at Beersheba of a 'Park of the Australian Soldier' by the Pratt Foundation in 2008,* the linkage rhetoric was far more explicit: the park was described as "a memorial to those who died in battle for the Jewish state"; "the result of the victory was the emergence of a thriving democratic and vibrant nation"; "the Australian victory... set in train... the establishment of the state of Israel"; and "the gallant 800 changed Jewish history, and the history of the Middle East." (See my 1/5/08 post Zionist Myth In-Formation by clicking on the AIF label below.)
Need I remind the informed reader that Allenby's Anglo-Arab campaign against the Turks, let alone its Beersheba component, was a purely military affair related to the stalemate on the Western Front, and not in any way a paving of the way for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, and that the British war cabinet decision to issue a declaration of support for the Zionist movement was made on the same day as the charge at Beersheba which could not, therefore, have influenced the decision one way or the other. (British attempts to enter Palestine had actually been underway since February 1917.) The Balfour Declaration, that is Balfour's infamous letter to Lord Rothschild, which gave voice to the decision, not unnaturally emerged soon after - as it happens, on November 2.
IOW, the timing was pure coincidence. If we bear in mind the Anglo-Zionist machinations which led up to the Balfour Declaration, the British decision to support Zionist aims could have been made as early as July 1917, long before Allenby's campaign. And as for the Ottoman Empire as a whole, the British had had designs on that stretching back at least to the De Bunsen Committee Report of June 1915, which made no mention whatever of Zionist aims.
Having clarified that, I will now move on to the latest, grotesque stage in this cheap Zionist production, already hinted at in the title of the jwire report, the appropriation of descendants of a claimed 100 Aboriginal Lighthorse soldiers, not merely for use as props in the coming centenary celebration in Israel, but to underscore Israel's bogus claim to indigeneity in Arab Palestine.
This was featured recently in Murdoch's Australian, in a front-page article headed, Remembering Beersheba's heroes, the Aborigines willing to die for their country. The article was accompanied by a photograph of Indigenous Australians, Ray Minniecon and Elsie Amamoo, kitted out as Light Horse troopers. Here's the propagandist core of the piece:
"The pilgrimage to Israel [by the descendants of Aboriginal Lighthorse soldiers next week] has been organised by the Rona Tranby Trust, with the support of the Pratt Foundation. Thomas and Eva Rona were Holocaust survivors who found sanctuary in Australia, and their trust specifically supports and preserves indigenous oral history. 'There are so many parallels between the Jewish people and indigenous Australians,' [Trust administrator Jennifer] Symonds says. 'They both understand dispossession from their lands, and the importance of oral histories - This project [the Rona Tranby Australian Light Horse Project] will enable descendants to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors, and when they return, they will record the stories, so the experience of those soldiers is not forgotten'." (Caroline Overington, 7/10/17)
The cynicism of this "pilgrimage to Israel" emerges only if we bear in mind the wider historical context.
Ostensibly, 'The Rona Tranby Australian Light Horse Project' is merely 'enabling' these descendants of Aboriginal victims of British settler-colonialism in Australia to "walk in the footsteps of their ancestors." The reality, however, is that they are being involved in a propaganda exercise designed to cement White Australia's connection with another settler-colonial state, one, moreover, which eschews any genuine reconciliation with its indigenous Palestinian Arab victims, having deluded itself into believing that its European Jewish colons, not the native Palestinians, are in fact the indigenous population of the land they now occupy, their 2,000-year spell in Europe notwithstanding.
Those post pilgrimage stories should indeed make interesting reading. As should the product outlined in the notice appended to Overington's article: "The Weekend Australian will publish a special magazine on October 28 commemorating the centenary of Beersheba."
[*The late Dick Pratt, in addition to being a cardboard tycoon (Visy), was a generous donor to both Israeli 'charities' and Australian mainstream political parties, a convicted price-fixer, and a key supporter of Bill Shorten.]
Although but one part of an Anglo-Arab thrust aimed at dislodging the Turks from the Levant in World War I, the victory of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba has been opportunistically appropriated by our Israel lobbyists and hyped as an integral component of the Zionist project in Palestine, on a par, almost, with the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917.
Of course, no such explicit linkage was ever made by Zionist spokesmen in the immediate post war years. Burnishing Israel's image in contemporary Australian domestic politics is what this blatant propaganda exercise is all about.
Here, for example, are some of the latest Zionist iterations of the linkage:
"On 31 October 1917 two events happened which shaped future world history. The first was the capture of Beersheba by British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers... The second was the decision by the British war cabinet to endorse the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home - the legal foundation of the future state of Israel." (The History, beersheba2017.com)
"The date of the Beersheba charge generally coincided with the Declaration by the British Government that led to the establishment of the modern State of Israel." (Connections to Indigenous Diggers of World War I, jwire.com.au, 23/2/17)
If we look back at earlier Zionist statements, part of the hype surrounding the construction at Beersheba of a 'Park of the Australian Soldier' by the Pratt Foundation in 2008,* the linkage rhetoric was far more explicit: the park was described as "a memorial to those who died in battle for the Jewish state"; "the result of the victory was the emergence of a thriving democratic and vibrant nation"; "the Australian victory... set in train... the establishment of the state of Israel"; and "the gallant 800 changed Jewish history, and the history of the Middle East." (See my 1/5/08 post Zionist Myth In-Formation by clicking on the AIF label below.)
Need I remind the informed reader that Allenby's Anglo-Arab campaign against the Turks, let alone its Beersheba component, was a purely military affair related to the stalemate on the Western Front, and not in any way a paving of the way for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, and that the British war cabinet decision to issue a declaration of support for the Zionist movement was made on the same day as the charge at Beersheba which could not, therefore, have influenced the decision one way or the other. (British attempts to enter Palestine had actually been underway since February 1917.) The Balfour Declaration, that is Balfour's infamous letter to Lord Rothschild, which gave voice to the decision, not unnaturally emerged soon after - as it happens, on November 2.
IOW, the timing was pure coincidence. If we bear in mind the Anglo-Zionist machinations which led up to the Balfour Declaration, the British decision to support Zionist aims could have been made as early as July 1917, long before Allenby's campaign. And as for the Ottoman Empire as a whole, the British had had designs on that stretching back at least to the De Bunsen Committee Report of June 1915, which made no mention whatever of Zionist aims.
Having clarified that, I will now move on to the latest, grotesque stage in this cheap Zionist production, already hinted at in the title of the jwire report, the appropriation of descendants of a claimed 100 Aboriginal Lighthorse soldiers, not merely for use as props in the coming centenary celebration in Israel, but to underscore Israel's bogus claim to indigeneity in Arab Palestine.
This was featured recently in Murdoch's Australian, in a front-page article headed, Remembering Beersheba's heroes, the Aborigines willing to die for their country. The article was accompanied by a photograph of Indigenous Australians, Ray Minniecon and Elsie Amamoo, kitted out as Light Horse troopers. Here's the propagandist core of the piece:
"The pilgrimage to Israel [by the descendants of Aboriginal Lighthorse soldiers next week] has been organised by the Rona Tranby Trust, with the support of the Pratt Foundation. Thomas and Eva Rona were Holocaust survivors who found sanctuary in Australia, and their trust specifically supports and preserves indigenous oral history. 'There are so many parallels between the Jewish people and indigenous Australians,' [Trust administrator Jennifer] Symonds says. 'They both understand dispossession from their lands, and the importance of oral histories - This project [the Rona Tranby Australian Light Horse Project] will enable descendants to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors, and when they return, they will record the stories, so the experience of those soldiers is not forgotten'." (Caroline Overington, 7/10/17)
The cynicism of this "pilgrimage to Israel" emerges only if we bear in mind the wider historical context.
Ostensibly, 'The Rona Tranby Australian Light Horse Project' is merely 'enabling' these descendants of Aboriginal victims of British settler-colonialism in Australia to "walk in the footsteps of their ancestors." The reality, however, is that they are being involved in a propaganda exercise designed to cement White Australia's connection with another settler-colonial state, one, moreover, which eschews any genuine reconciliation with its indigenous Palestinian Arab victims, having deluded itself into believing that its European Jewish colons, not the native Palestinians, are in fact the indigenous population of the land they now occupy, their 2,000-year spell in Europe notwithstanding.
Those post pilgrimage stories should indeed make interesting reading. As should the product outlined in the notice appended to Overington's article: "The Weekend Australian will publish a special magazine on October 28 commemorating the centenary of Beersheba."
[*The late Dick Pratt, in addition to being a cardboard tycoon (Visy), was a generous donor to both Israeli 'charities' and Australian mainstream political parties, a convicted price-fixer, and a key supporter of Bill Shorten.]
Saturday, September 23, 2017
The Joy of British Imperialism
What a damning indictment of little britain this finding is:
"The British public are generally proud of their country's role in colonialism and the British Empire, according to a new poll. At its height in 1922 the British Empire governed a fifth of the world's population and a quarter of the world's total land area... YouGov found 44% were proud of Britain's history of colonialism while only 21% regretted that it happened. 23% held neither view... The British Empire is not widely taught in detail in British schools, with history lessons tending to focus on other areas." (British people are generally proud of their country's role in colonialism and the British Empire, poll finds, Jon Stone, independent.co.uk, 19/1/16)
Trawling through the 320 comments which follow the report, it is safe to assume that the vast majority of little brits wouldn't even know the Balfour Declaration if it hit them in the face. Staggeringly, only one mentioned Palestine, Britain's worst ever colonial crime, and even then referred to it as 'Israel'.
Some examples of the abysmal ignorance of little brits on the subject of British colonialism in general, and the Middle East in particular, are as follows. The first borders on Trumpian parody:
"British Empire. Fantastic. Winners. Changed the world for the better. And made a fortune while doing it. No sitting idle on benefits for them. Technology, the law, exploration - the Brits were at the forefront. But nice to see so many comments from the heirs of so many losers. Obviously not exterminated. Clearly no genocide. To cap it all, the British were thoroughly nice too, freely handing back countries when the natives had gained some modicum of civility. Best Empire ever." (ScottishDanno)
As for the Middle East:
"The Middle East, to it's (sic) benefit would be seeing the rule of secular law right now rather than the vicious rule of religion." (PGwood)
Simple-minded PGwood is obviously blissfully unaware that his country was single-handedly responsible for transforming unsuspecting multi-sectarian Ottoman Palestine into the viciously mono-sectarian Jewish state of Israel.
The only response to PGwood, from NK, missed the opportunity to point this out, asking merely "Why would you want Britain to meddle in how people run their own countries? If reform is to take place there then let it happen from within. Look at the mess in Iraq and Syria right now because of British and US meddling."
PGwood, clearly oblivious to the fact that the Middle East isn't 'next door' to Britain, replied, apropos of nothing: "If your neighbour is throwing rocks at his wife, do you say something about it. or not?"
Coming closer to Britain's meddling in the Middle East, but nonetheless maddeningly vague, is this effort:
"Those getting all misty-eyed about colonialism would to well to reflect on its enduring legacy. No, not cricket and railway networks but the mess that is now the Middle East and North Africa and the human wave that is only starting to rebound on Europe. Empire is (sic) a very long embrace indeed." (lastflightout)
To which came this blame-it-all-on-the-French, blatantly racist reply:
"It didn't endure. It has no legacy. And actually, the Middle Eastern and African countries with most problems seem to have been French, not British. Regardless, when the civilised Europeans left, the natives returned to their brutal, savage and backward ways." (Brad_Humberside)
Which in turn elicited the following rejoinders: "Saudi Arabia? Israel? Yes? Would you like to have another go at defending British barbarism?" (Kay Parlay); "'civilised Europeans' - yes, so civilised they didn't know to wash their behinds after defecating, or wash their hands after that before eating." (adamcrossphoto)
But back to the "problems" of the Middle East. We've already had Brad_Humberside pointing the finger at the French, now we've got this genius blaming the Ottoman Empire:
"The middle east problems were as much caused by the collapse of Ottoman power (only partially nudged over the line by the British and French) and the ungainly carve up afterwards. Not the Empires finest moment maybe but you can only ever deal with the problems in front of you at the time." (RevCr)
Only partially NUDGED over the line!!!??? But let's focus on "the problems in front of you," shall we?
There was, in fact, no problem for the British and French to deal with in the Middle East during World War I or immediately thereafter. Rather, these two imperialist bovver boys created problems for the people of the Middle East:
Britain, for example, who had promised her Arab allies independence in the 1915 McMahon Treaty, betrayed them by agreeing to divide the Arab world between themselves and the French in the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. It then went on to compound that treachery by supporting, in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, thus creating the Palestine problem where before there had been no such problem.
"The British public are generally proud of their country's role in colonialism and the British Empire, according to a new poll. At its height in 1922 the British Empire governed a fifth of the world's population and a quarter of the world's total land area... YouGov found 44% were proud of Britain's history of colonialism while only 21% regretted that it happened. 23% held neither view... The British Empire is not widely taught in detail in British schools, with history lessons tending to focus on other areas." (British people are generally proud of their country's role in colonialism and the British Empire, poll finds, Jon Stone, independent.co.uk, 19/1/16)
Trawling through the 320 comments which follow the report, it is safe to assume that the vast majority of little brits wouldn't even know the Balfour Declaration if it hit them in the face. Staggeringly, only one mentioned Palestine, Britain's worst ever colonial crime, and even then referred to it as 'Israel'.
Some examples of the abysmal ignorance of little brits on the subject of British colonialism in general, and the Middle East in particular, are as follows. The first borders on Trumpian parody:
"British Empire. Fantastic. Winners. Changed the world for the better. And made a fortune while doing it. No sitting idle on benefits for them. Technology, the law, exploration - the Brits were at the forefront. But nice to see so many comments from the heirs of so many losers. Obviously not exterminated. Clearly no genocide. To cap it all, the British were thoroughly nice too, freely handing back countries when the natives had gained some modicum of civility. Best Empire ever." (ScottishDanno)
As for the Middle East:
"The Middle East, to it's (sic) benefit would be seeing the rule of secular law right now rather than the vicious rule of religion." (PGwood)
Simple-minded PGwood is obviously blissfully unaware that his country was single-handedly responsible for transforming unsuspecting multi-sectarian Ottoman Palestine into the viciously mono-sectarian Jewish state of Israel.
The only response to PGwood, from NK, missed the opportunity to point this out, asking merely "Why would you want Britain to meddle in how people run their own countries? If reform is to take place there then let it happen from within. Look at the mess in Iraq and Syria right now because of British and US meddling."
PGwood, clearly oblivious to the fact that the Middle East isn't 'next door' to Britain, replied, apropos of nothing: "If your neighbour is throwing rocks at his wife, do you say something about it. or not?"
Coming closer to Britain's meddling in the Middle East, but nonetheless maddeningly vague, is this effort:
"Those getting all misty-eyed about colonialism would to well to reflect on its enduring legacy. No, not cricket and railway networks but the mess that is now the Middle East and North Africa and the human wave that is only starting to rebound on Europe. Empire is (sic) a very long embrace indeed." (lastflightout)
To which came this blame-it-all-on-the-French, blatantly racist reply:
"It didn't endure. It has no legacy. And actually, the Middle Eastern and African countries with most problems seem to have been French, not British. Regardless, when the civilised Europeans left, the natives returned to their brutal, savage and backward ways." (Brad_Humberside)
Which in turn elicited the following rejoinders: "Saudi Arabia? Israel? Yes? Would you like to have another go at defending British barbarism?" (Kay Parlay); "'civilised Europeans' - yes, so civilised they didn't know to wash their behinds after defecating, or wash their hands after that before eating." (adamcrossphoto)
But back to the "problems" of the Middle East. We've already had Brad_Humberside pointing the finger at the French, now we've got this genius blaming the Ottoman Empire:
"The middle east problems were as much caused by the collapse of Ottoman power (only partially nudged over the line by the British and French) and the ungainly carve up afterwards. Not the Empires finest moment maybe but you can only ever deal with the problems in front of you at the time." (RevCr)
Only partially NUDGED over the line!!!??? But let's focus on "the problems in front of you," shall we?
There was, in fact, no problem for the British and French to deal with in the Middle East during World War I or immediately thereafter. Rather, these two imperialist bovver boys created problems for the people of the Middle East:
Britain, for example, who had promised her Arab allies independence in the 1915 McMahon Treaty, betrayed them by agreeing to divide the Arab world between themselves and the French in the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. It then went on to compound that treachery by supporting, in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, thus creating the Palestine problem where before there had been no such problem.
Sunday, May 7, 2017
A Book of Revelations
I've just been reading Deborah Rechter's review of Mark Dapin's new book, Jewish Anzacs: Jews in the Australian Military. (Lest we forget the Australian Jews who served too, The Australian, 6/5/17)
And lo, I learnt therein that which I did not know before!
Did you know, for example, that according to Rechter, "the assault on Beersheva [sic: Beersheba]," "lead [sic: led] to the Balfour Declaration supporting the establishment of the State of Israel"?
Whether this astonishing revelation is Rechter's, or Dapin's, or both, I do not know, but there you go: the taking of Beersheba from the Turks by the Australian Light Horse on October 31, 1917, directly sparked the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917!
One pictures Britain's foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, eyes aglow, turning to his War Cabinet colleagues on November 1, and saying:
'I say, chaps, I hear the colonials have just stormed some God-forsaken Turkish rathole in Palestine called... err... Beirut... no, no, not Beirut... B... B... B... that's it, Beersheba - so, hey, let's give Palestine to the Jews, shall we?'
And they, replying as one:
'Brilliant, Arthur! Your logic is impeccable!'
'Isn't it always, gentlemen. Now let's see.' Balfour scribbles away. 'How's this? Dear Lord Rothschild, the British army has just captured Beersheba. Let the State of Israel begin! Now! And seeing this matter is so frightfully urgent, gentlemen, let's drop everything, war and all, and issue it tomorrow, which is, if I'm not mistaken, and I never am (chuckles), is November 2, 1917. Let it be known as the Beirut... no... the Beersheba... no... the Balfour Declaration!
Cabinet, as one:
Way to go, Arthur...
Rechter then quotes a short extract from Dapin's book, in which we discover that which is entirely new to archaeology: "... the pyramids of Gaza..."
***
While on the subject of WWI history, I really can't let this priceless editorial letter (The Australian, 4/5/17) by Howard Dewhirst of Burleigh Heads, Qld, go without a mention:
"One thing Yassmin Abdel-Megied forgot is that World War I ended several hundred years of Ottoman colonialism. Why is it good to recall the disappearance of the British Empire and not good to note the same feelings about Ottoman colonialism? The Gallipoli campaign was a failure but helped to win the war, thereby contributing to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire."
Maybe, Howard, that's because "Ottoman colonialism," as you choose to call it, in the Levant was relatively benign compared to the Anglo-French dispensation which followed the eviction of the Turks there, and involved parliamentary representation, open borders, and, of course, nothing even remotely resembling the colonial-settler, apartheid state of Israel. Lest we forget, indeed!
And lo, I learnt therein that which I did not know before!
Did you know, for example, that according to Rechter, "the assault on Beersheva [sic: Beersheba]," "lead [sic: led] to the Balfour Declaration supporting the establishment of the State of Israel"?
Whether this astonishing revelation is Rechter's, or Dapin's, or both, I do not know, but there you go: the taking of Beersheba from the Turks by the Australian Light Horse on October 31, 1917, directly sparked the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917!
One pictures Britain's foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, eyes aglow, turning to his War Cabinet colleagues on November 1, and saying:
'I say, chaps, I hear the colonials have just stormed some God-forsaken Turkish rathole in Palestine called... err... Beirut... no, no, not Beirut... B... B... B... that's it, Beersheba - so, hey, let's give Palestine to the Jews, shall we?'
And they, replying as one:
'Brilliant, Arthur! Your logic is impeccable!'
'Isn't it always, gentlemen. Now let's see.' Balfour scribbles away. 'How's this? Dear Lord Rothschild, the British army has just captured Beersheba. Let the State of Israel begin! Now! And seeing this matter is so frightfully urgent, gentlemen, let's drop everything, war and all, and issue it tomorrow, which is, if I'm not mistaken, and I never am (chuckles), is November 2, 1917. Let it be known as the Beirut... no... the Beersheba... no... the Balfour Declaration!
Cabinet, as one:
Way to go, Arthur...
Rechter then quotes a short extract from Dapin's book, in which we discover that which is entirely new to archaeology: "... the pyramids of Gaza..."
***
While on the subject of WWI history, I really can't let this priceless editorial letter (The Australian, 4/5/17) by Howard Dewhirst of Burleigh Heads, Qld, go without a mention:
"One thing Yassmin Abdel-Megied forgot is that World War I ended several hundred years of Ottoman colonialism. Why is it good to recall the disappearance of the British Empire and not good to note the same feelings about Ottoman colonialism? The Gallipoli campaign was a failure but helped to win the war, thereby contributing to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire."
Maybe, Howard, that's because "Ottoman colonialism," as you choose to call it, in the Levant was relatively benign compared to the Anglo-French dispensation which followed the eviction of the Turks there, and involved parliamentary representation, open borders, and, of course, nothing even remotely resembling the colonial-settler, apartheid state of Israel. Lest we forget, indeed!
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
The Real Boycotters
"Senior writer" at the Australian, Sharri Markson, reported yesterday that "A director of activist group GetUp! supports a boycott of Israeli products and wants to 'force Israel into a perennial state of existential anxiety'." (GetUp! director fighting Israel)
My first impulse on reading this, of course, was to proceed forthwith to a public place, mount a soapbox, and proclaim to all and sundry: 'How dare GetUp! force poor Israel into a perennial state of existential anxiety! Perennial FFS, isn't that, like, forever?'
Then I remembered the words of the great Palestinian historian (1910-1981) A.L. Tibawi on the period leading up to WWI, when control over Palestine was still just a steely gleam in Zionist eyes. If Ms Markson really wants to know what boycotting people and plunging them into a perennial state of existential anxiety is all about, she should read Tibawi:
"The Zionist objectives, both immediate and distant, were... well-known to the Arabs in Palestine and the neighbouring countries. In the spring of 1914 a Russian member of the Zionist Executive, Nahum Sokolow, complained in an interview with the Palestine correspondent of the Cairo newspaper al-Muqattam that the Palestinian and Syrian Arab hostility to Zionism was unjustified. The Arabs and the Jews were two branches of the Semitic tree; they co-operated in the fields of science and learning especially in Spain and contributed together to the European renaissance; the Jews were returning to their ancient homeland from which they were expelled by the Romans and the Crusaders; they bring with them the means of developing the country; they wish to come close to Arab civilisation and cooperate with the Arabs for the creation of a new Palestinian civilisation; they wish to revive their Hebrew language and establish their own schools in which the Arabic language and history would be taught.
"Sokolow was tackled by Rafiq al-Azm, the well-known Syrian historical writer and member of the Decentralisation Party. He agreed that as two Semitic cousins the Arabs and Jews ought to cooperate in reviving the glory of the Semitic civilisation, that Palestine with the rest of Syria required development, and that Jewish immigrants, coming from a more civilised environment, possessed skills that could be employed for the benefit of the country. But he regretted to see no evidence in Palestine that Jewish immigrants wished to unite with the Arabs in an effort to raise the standards of all its inhabitants, or that they wished to come close to the Arabs in any way. In fact they lived in complete isolation: they speak only their own languages; their children attend only their own schools; all their business is with Jewish firms; they organise a separate economy and they ignore local government and its laws; and above all they stubbornly refuse to abandon their foreign nationality and adopt the Ottoman.
"They must not be surprised if for these reasons the Arabs regard them as an alien people, and a foreign element interjected into their society. And this is the root cause of Arab apprehension regarding their economic and political future. For the present they feared and suffered from the competition of immigrants coming from more civilised environments. For the future they saw the political implications and feared for the eventual loss of their homeland.
"Sokolow's words were belied by these facts. If the Jews continued to lead a separate life in Palestine and to labour only for their own benefit, they must expect Arab hostility. 'To-day', the writer warns, 'the Syrian public opinion is unanimous in opposing Zionism.' The opposition in Palestine itself was led by young and educated men. News had just been received in Cairo that they sent telegrams of protest to Constantinople pointing out the dangers of Zionism and criticising the conduct of the Zionists in Palestine.
"It is clear that the writer had contact with unnamed Zionist leaders. 'We advised them', he writes, 'to cooperate with the Arabs for the benefit of a common homeland as native Syrians, not as foreigners waiting for an opportunity to take it for themselves...' He states that among the measures he recommended was not only the teaching of Arabic in Jewish schools but their opening to Arab children so that Arab and Jew could learn to live together. He also recommended that the Jews should share with the Arabs their business and mix with them socially. They should help the less experienced Arabs to learn modern methods. Above all he recommended the adoption of Ottoman nationality. But, he concludes, all that advice fell on deaf ears." (Anglo-Arab Relations & the Question of Palestine 1914-1921, 1978, pp 21-22)
And is still falling on deaf ears.
My first impulse on reading this, of course, was to proceed forthwith to a public place, mount a soapbox, and proclaim to all and sundry: 'How dare GetUp! force poor Israel into a perennial state of existential anxiety! Perennial FFS, isn't that, like, forever?'
Then I remembered the words of the great Palestinian historian (1910-1981) A.L. Tibawi on the period leading up to WWI, when control over Palestine was still just a steely gleam in Zionist eyes. If Ms Markson really wants to know what boycotting people and plunging them into a perennial state of existential anxiety is all about, she should read Tibawi:
"The Zionist objectives, both immediate and distant, were... well-known to the Arabs in Palestine and the neighbouring countries. In the spring of 1914 a Russian member of the Zionist Executive, Nahum Sokolow, complained in an interview with the Palestine correspondent of the Cairo newspaper al-Muqattam that the Palestinian and Syrian Arab hostility to Zionism was unjustified. The Arabs and the Jews were two branches of the Semitic tree; they co-operated in the fields of science and learning especially in Spain and contributed together to the European renaissance; the Jews were returning to their ancient homeland from which they were expelled by the Romans and the Crusaders; they bring with them the means of developing the country; they wish to come close to Arab civilisation and cooperate with the Arabs for the creation of a new Palestinian civilisation; they wish to revive their Hebrew language and establish their own schools in which the Arabic language and history would be taught.
"Sokolow was tackled by Rafiq al-Azm, the well-known Syrian historical writer and member of the Decentralisation Party. He agreed that as two Semitic cousins the Arabs and Jews ought to cooperate in reviving the glory of the Semitic civilisation, that Palestine with the rest of Syria required development, and that Jewish immigrants, coming from a more civilised environment, possessed skills that could be employed for the benefit of the country. But he regretted to see no evidence in Palestine that Jewish immigrants wished to unite with the Arabs in an effort to raise the standards of all its inhabitants, or that they wished to come close to the Arabs in any way. In fact they lived in complete isolation: they speak only their own languages; their children attend only their own schools; all their business is with Jewish firms; they organise a separate economy and they ignore local government and its laws; and above all they stubbornly refuse to abandon their foreign nationality and adopt the Ottoman.
"They must not be surprised if for these reasons the Arabs regard them as an alien people, and a foreign element interjected into their society. And this is the root cause of Arab apprehension regarding their economic and political future. For the present they feared and suffered from the competition of immigrants coming from more civilised environments. For the future they saw the political implications and feared for the eventual loss of their homeland.
"Sokolow's words were belied by these facts. If the Jews continued to lead a separate life in Palestine and to labour only for their own benefit, they must expect Arab hostility. 'To-day', the writer warns, 'the Syrian public opinion is unanimous in opposing Zionism.' The opposition in Palestine itself was led by young and educated men. News had just been received in Cairo that they sent telegrams of protest to Constantinople pointing out the dangers of Zionism and criticising the conduct of the Zionists in Palestine.
"It is clear that the writer had contact with unnamed Zionist leaders. 'We advised them', he writes, 'to cooperate with the Arabs for the benefit of a common homeland as native Syrians, not as foreigners waiting for an opportunity to take it for themselves...' He states that among the measures he recommended was not only the teaching of Arabic in Jewish schools but their opening to Arab children so that Arab and Jew could learn to live together. He also recommended that the Jews should share with the Arabs their business and mix with them socially. They should help the less experienced Arabs to learn modern methods. Above all he recommended the adoption of Ottoman nationality. But, he concludes, all that advice fell on deaf ears." (Anglo-Arab Relations & the Question of Palestine 1914-1921, 1978, pp 21-22)
And is still falling on deaf ears.
Friday, September 26, 2014
Awake, England! 2
"I've seen the vultures, filthy, stealthily approaching a dead donkey. They need not feed on donkey flesh today.
"How you love those humble folk, native Christians and native Moslems! How you love persecuted Jews! You and other nations proved that at Evian les Bains*, didn't you? You say 'all the nations did.' Yes, but under your sole control is the sovereign remedy proposed at Evian, to wit, that the victims of European meanness be sent to Palestine. In other words that the Holy Land of Christians, Moslems and Jews be liquidated to make a graveyard of all three.
"What of the world's pious pilgrims who would fain go annually to the one country of peace and sacred memories. Do you remember the stream? Why did you launch the devastating 'experiment'? Why do you continue it? Are you mystified by the changes in Palestine since 1916-17? Can you not detect each step that has led to the present ruin? Would you dare ask your neighbors? Will you ever find a more dependable friend or ally than the Arab, any Arab? Remember your vast Arabic learning, memories, scholarly works, statesmen, many highly trained Christian orientalists to this very hour? Do you remember and will you use?
"As the season of 'grapes' returns to Palestine, August and later, season of gladness, will you be treading the wine-press over there or what representatives of yours will be treading? Who will be under your feet? What color will your feet be?
"Have you assayed the necessity for all this? Have you reckoned with the end? Will you be proud of the result? Who as effectively as yourself has chastised the Holy Land and its rightful people? If you import another people there by any specious title will you chastise them the same way in the interests of PEACE: YOU, CAESAR: WHAT OF THE PAX BRITTANICA, LATELY, NOW? PEACE!
"Is it Palestine you dearly love, or Mosul, or India, or Suez, and even they, why do you love them so? Are you truly loving and loyal to England? You emancipator of the blacks! And your pride, the not-nice manner in which you bandy the word 'native'. Was that the reason for championing wholesale immigration of aliens with shreds of title 2000 years old!
"Are Palestinians bad people? Do you really think that these despoiled peasants are terrorists? Do you remember any terrors visited upon them since 1914? Do you remember the exultation with which they welcomed you and your message of fairness, of peace, of reverence in 1917? Some of your dead would remember and do. Are there not sufficient living living who remember, who worship, who understand?
"Besides the Palestine of place, there is the Palestine of dream with which all mortals may rightfully be concerned. When outsiders come to grips with the Palestine of place then strange iniquities ensue. Test this as you will at any time in the experiences of the past.
"What of the incongruity of the Foreign Office meddling with the Palestine of place, or the Colonial Office, or any bureau and I except none: then begins misery and mockery. The heart of the meddler becomes dry and hard; the very health of the native custodian of that soil goes glimmering to a sickness worse than the enterics of which we have knowledge.
"Where else in this troubled world are the faiths of mankind so inextricably bound? Where else is there so providential an opportunity for non-aggression? for noblesse oblige? Let the chaffering in Palestine real estate cease. Let the western bribery of the impecunious farmer of that country stop forthwith! Decency commands it.
"Holy cities, material shrines, are notoriously offensive when venal considerations obtain. Outsiders beware! When your patient dreams go on to the registry of real estate titles and you seek to close your fist over a parcel of ground for selfish gratification you have seared your soul beyond hope of sweetness or idealism.
"The sword may be offensive but the pen of the realist has been even more terrible a horror in Palestine, the Holy Land. Look at it today! Let those who know tell you how it was in the yesterday before the World War! What human would say that today could compare with yesterday? The Turk was a dreamer, a poet, a philosopher, a saint compared with certain so-called statesmen, certain political meddlers of the past twenty years. Read the travel literature of fifty or a hundred years preceding 1917, and con the reiteration of peccadilloes, amusing contretemps, despised chicaneries along the tourist routes, guides, shrines, pretense and crass materialism and then compare the atrocities of the last few years in European mal-administration in Palestine. The pre-war trivialities are as the errant ways of sparrows compared with the work of tigers, hyenas, and vultures." (Palestine Today, pp 14-22)
[*See my 2/8/13 post Misrepresenting the Evian Conference of 1938.]
"How you love those humble folk, native Christians and native Moslems! How you love persecuted Jews! You and other nations proved that at Evian les Bains*, didn't you? You say 'all the nations did.' Yes, but under your sole control is the sovereign remedy proposed at Evian, to wit, that the victims of European meanness be sent to Palestine. In other words that the Holy Land of Christians, Moslems and Jews be liquidated to make a graveyard of all three.
"What of the world's pious pilgrims who would fain go annually to the one country of peace and sacred memories. Do you remember the stream? Why did you launch the devastating 'experiment'? Why do you continue it? Are you mystified by the changes in Palestine since 1916-17? Can you not detect each step that has led to the present ruin? Would you dare ask your neighbors? Will you ever find a more dependable friend or ally than the Arab, any Arab? Remember your vast Arabic learning, memories, scholarly works, statesmen, many highly trained Christian orientalists to this very hour? Do you remember and will you use?
"As the season of 'grapes' returns to Palestine, August and later, season of gladness, will you be treading the wine-press over there or what representatives of yours will be treading? Who will be under your feet? What color will your feet be?
"Have you assayed the necessity for all this? Have you reckoned with the end? Will you be proud of the result? Who as effectively as yourself has chastised the Holy Land and its rightful people? If you import another people there by any specious title will you chastise them the same way in the interests of PEACE: YOU, CAESAR: WHAT OF THE PAX BRITTANICA, LATELY, NOW? PEACE!
"Is it Palestine you dearly love, or Mosul, or India, or Suez, and even they, why do you love them so? Are you truly loving and loyal to England? You emancipator of the blacks! And your pride, the not-nice manner in which you bandy the word 'native'. Was that the reason for championing wholesale immigration of aliens with shreds of title 2000 years old!
"Are Palestinians bad people? Do you really think that these despoiled peasants are terrorists? Do you remember any terrors visited upon them since 1914? Do you remember the exultation with which they welcomed you and your message of fairness, of peace, of reverence in 1917? Some of your dead would remember and do. Are there not sufficient living living who remember, who worship, who understand?
"Besides the Palestine of place, there is the Palestine of dream with which all mortals may rightfully be concerned. When outsiders come to grips with the Palestine of place then strange iniquities ensue. Test this as you will at any time in the experiences of the past.
"What of the incongruity of the Foreign Office meddling with the Palestine of place, or the Colonial Office, or any bureau and I except none: then begins misery and mockery. The heart of the meddler becomes dry and hard; the very health of the native custodian of that soil goes glimmering to a sickness worse than the enterics of which we have knowledge.
"Where else in this troubled world are the faiths of mankind so inextricably bound? Where else is there so providential an opportunity for non-aggression? for noblesse oblige? Let the chaffering in Palestine real estate cease. Let the western bribery of the impecunious farmer of that country stop forthwith! Decency commands it.
"Holy cities, material shrines, are notoriously offensive when venal considerations obtain. Outsiders beware! When your patient dreams go on to the registry of real estate titles and you seek to close your fist over a parcel of ground for selfish gratification you have seared your soul beyond hope of sweetness or idealism.
"The sword may be offensive but the pen of the realist has been even more terrible a horror in Palestine, the Holy Land. Look at it today! Let those who know tell you how it was in the yesterday before the World War! What human would say that today could compare with yesterday? The Turk was a dreamer, a poet, a philosopher, a saint compared with certain so-called statesmen, certain political meddlers of the past twenty years. Read the travel literature of fifty or a hundred years preceding 1917, and con the reiteration of peccadilloes, amusing contretemps, despised chicaneries along the tourist routes, guides, shrines, pretense and crass materialism and then compare the atrocities of the last few years in European mal-administration in Palestine. The pre-war trivialities are as the errant ways of sparrows compared with the work of tigers, hyenas, and vultures." (Palestine Today, pp 14-22)
[*See my 2/8/13 post Misrepresenting the Evian Conference of 1938.]
Friday, February 28, 2014
Palestine... Before Israel 2
Tired of mutton dressed up as lamb? Weary of pretenders? Sick of fakes like Israel's insufferable Trade Minister Naftali Bennett, whose parents came to Palestine from Poland via the US, touting his mob as the real Semitic thing?
"Israel has been our home for roughly 3,800 years. Archaeology shows that. The Bible says it... I just yesterday gave a coin that's 2,200 years old to Martin Shultz as a gift and it's got Hebrew on it."* (HARDtalk, BBC, 24/2/14)
You want the real thing? Here it is:
"The Semitic peasant has always been a conservative. In many ways he is to-day much like what the Canaanite occupier of the land must have been. Each wave of conquest or shower of civilization has left its effect, but underneath the Palestine peasant is a primitive Semite. Until within a few score years religion of one sort or another has usually come to him at the point of the sword. He has often adopted the veneer of a new faith in order to escape death. So it was when Joshua and the Hebrew host swept into the land, Bedawy fashion; so when Maccabean, Roman, Moslem, Crusader, and Moslem again took control. The Palestine peasant has worshiped the Baalim, Yahweh, Moloch, the God of Israel, the Son of God, the God of Islam. All the time he has kept a certain core of Semitic custom and superstition, a sort of basic religion that has been much the same all through these changes. But it is ofttimes impossible to distinguish between a survival of the old and a reversion or degeneration." (The Peasantry of Palestine, Elihu Grant, 1907, p 45)
[*Netanyahu likes to play the same game. See my 24/9/11 post Benzion, My Father.]
"Israel has been our home for roughly 3,800 years. Archaeology shows that. The Bible says it... I just yesterday gave a coin that's 2,200 years old to Martin Shultz as a gift and it's got Hebrew on it."* (HARDtalk, BBC, 24/2/14)
You want the real thing? Here it is:
"The Semitic peasant has always been a conservative. In many ways he is to-day much like what the Canaanite occupier of the land must have been. Each wave of conquest or shower of civilization has left its effect, but underneath the Palestine peasant is a primitive Semite. Until within a few score years religion of one sort or another has usually come to him at the point of the sword. He has often adopted the veneer of a new faith in order to escape death. So it was when Joshua and the Hebrew host swept into the land, Bedawy fashion; so when Maccabean, Roman, Moslem, Crusader, and Moslem again took control. The Palestine peasant has worshiped the Baalim, Yahweh, Moloch, the God of Israel, the Son of God, the God of Islam. All the time he has kept a certain core of Semitic custom and superstition, a sort of basic religion that has been much the same all through these changes. But it is ofttimes impossible to distinguish between a survival of the old and a reversion or degeneration." (The Peasantry of Palestine, Elihu Grant, 1907, p 45)
[*Netanyahu likes to play the same game. See my 24/9/11 post Benzion, My Father.]
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Palestine... Before Israel 1
The opening paragraphs of The Peasantry of Palestine (1907) by Elihu Grant*:
"This little book will make no attempt to tell all that could be said of its subject, but we hope that its selection of things to tell will be gratifying to you. Our wish is that not many of its pages will be condemned as dry, but that most of them have interest and refreshment. If sometimes when you are tired you can sit down and be pleased with some of these pages, here or there, you will know a little of how the trudging peasant of the village feels as, going over hill after hill, from each top he gazes off towards the west and sees the evening mists thickening and looking like good, cool mountains in the sea. It is pleasant to see the face of the native light up as he catches sight of the clouds heavy with blessings of moisture. Perhaps fierce sirocco days have followed one another for some time, longer than usual. Such days are actually looked for in trios at least, but often they hold for a longer time. Their peculiarly enervating heat is very trying, and when they have passed one welcomes eagerly an evening that brings the heavy mist. This announces that the succession of hot days is broken and that some days of respite are coming. The welcome moisture blesses the vineyards, the fig orchards, the tomatoes, squashes and melons, and it is sure to bring out ejaculations of blessing from the fervent peasant, praising the Father of all, whose favoring mercy he feels.
"Look out on a morning early and you will see the mists scudding, drifting, veiling and dissevering like masses of gauze, like streamers of truant air. Perhaps some near mountain may be cut off from the little hill half-way down by a moat filled with billowing fog. Soon the sun cuts it and scatters it away and the hot, dry day sets in. The roads and rocks are powdered with lime dust, the somber morning tones on the hills are touched with whitening brightness. Here and there is the dusty grey of an olive-orchard or the bright green of vineyards. Overhead, the brightest blue is set with one yellow gem of fire that creeps up and up until noon, and then the toiling peasantry, who have watched this timepiece of the heavens, sit down in the nearest shade to eat their food and chat. That done, they roll over for the luxury of a nap and forget a hot, dry hour in a healthy doze. The click of the chisel in the quarry ceases, the hoe is cast aside, the driver is lying on his face, fast asleep, while the donkey nibbles and rolls his load-sore back deliciously in the dust. The camel sits like a salamander, apparently minding no change of weather. Little birds pant for breath. All is very still and hot.
"But work-time comes again before the heat goes, and the workmen half sit up, looking around, perhaps playfully tossing a stick or clod on the head of a lazier comrade. The work-saddles are roped on the backs of the animals. The camel, long habituated to complaining, whether made to kneel or rise again, utters grating gutturals from his long throat. He is the Oriental striker, objecting, vocally, at least, to every new demand upon him. Well walked, the countryside begins to be busy again and work goes on until sundown. As the afternoon slips into the evening you will see traveling peasants hastening to make their villages. The hills are touched with pinks and purples that shade into dark blue. The grey owl calls, the foxes reconnoiter the fields, the village dogs bark, lights straggle out from the settlements. One may hear the song of a watcher in a vineyard or the bang of his musket as he shoots at a dog or fox meddling with the vines. As we hastened one evening through a village two hours distance from our own, the people, sitting about the doors and in the alleys, seemed astonished and urged us to stop overnight, not understanding our preference to travel on in the growing dark. But we went on, passing possible sites for Ai, then Bethel and Beeroth, and so to our own Ram Allah. The way was precarious and stony, with only the starlight to help us, and the evening was chilly."
[*Grant (1873-1942) was an archaeologist and Professor of Biblical Literature at Haverford College, Pennsylvania. Expect more such extracts from this wonderful book about Palestine's indigenous people.]
"This little book will make no attempt to tell all that could be said of its subject, but we hope that its selection of things to tell will be gratifying to you. Our wish is that not many of its pages will be condemned as dry, but that most of them have interest and refreshment. If sometimes when you are tired you can sit down and be pleased with some of these pages, here or there, you will know a little of how the trudging peasant of the village feels as, going over hill after hill, from each top he gazes off towards the west and sees the evening mists thickening and looking like good, cool mountains in the sea. It is pleasant to see the face of the native light up as he catches sight of the clouds heavy with blessings of moisture. Perhaps fierce sirocco days have followed one another for some time, longer than usual. Such days are actually looked for in trios at least, but often they hold for a longer time. Their peculiarly enervating heat is very trying, and when they have passed one welcomes eagerly an evening that brings the heavy mist. This announces that the succession of hot days is broken and that some days of respite are coming. The welcome moisture blesses the vineyards, the fig orchards, the tomatoes, squashes and melons, and it is sure to bring out ejaculations of blessing from the fervent peasant, praising the Father of all, whose favoring mercy he feels.
"Look out on a morning early and you will see the mists scudding, drifting, veiling and dissevering like masses of gauze, like streamers of truant air. Perhaps some near mountain may be cut off from the little hill half-way down by a moat filled with billowing fog. Soon the sun cuts it and scatters it away and the hot, dry day sets in. The roads and rocks are powdered with lime dust, the somber morning tones on the hills are touched with whitening brightness. Here and there is the dusty grey of an olive-orchard or the bright green of vineyards. Overhead, the brightest blue is set with one yellow gem of fire that creeps up and up until noon, and then the toiling peasantry, who have watched this timepiece of the heavens, sit down in the nearest shade to eat their food and chat. That done, they roll over for the luxury of a nap and forget a hot, dry hour in a healthy doze. The click of the chisel in the quarry ceases, the hoe is cast aside, the driver is lying on his face, fast asleep, while the donkey nibbles and rolls his load-sore back deliciously in the dust. The camel sits like a salamander, apparently minding no change of weather. Little birds pant for breath. All is very still and hot.
"But work-time comes again before the heat goes, and the workmen half sit up, looking around, perhaps playfully tossing a stick or clod on the head of a lazier comrade. The work-saddles are roped on the backs of the animals. The camel, long habituated to complaining, whether made to kneel or rise again, utters grating gutturals from his long throat. He is the Oriental striker, objecting, vocally, at least, to every new demand upon him. Well walked, the countryside begins to be busy again and work goes on until sundown. As the afternoon slips into the evening you will see traveling peasants hastening to make their villages. The hills are touched with pinks and purples that shade into dark blue. The grey owl calls, the foxes reconnoiter the fields, the village dogs bark, lights straggle out from the settlements. One may hear the song of a watcher in a vineyard or the bang of his musket as he shoots at a dog or fox meddling with the vines. As we hastened one evening through a village two hours distance from our own, the people, sitting about the doors and in the alleys, seemed astonished and urged us to stop overnight, not understanding our preference to travel on in the growing dark. But we went on, passing possible sites for Ai, then Bethel and Beeroth, and so to our own Ram Allah. The way was precarious and stony, with only the starlight to help us, and the evening was chilly."
[*Grant (1873-1942) was an archaeologist and Professor of Biblical Literature at Haverford College, Pennsylvania. Expect more such extracts from this wonderful book about Palestine's indigenous people.]
Monday, July 1, 2013
How Green Was Their Valley 1
The following superb, Ziomyth-shattering essay, by Australian academic Jeremy Salt*, The Painted Frog of Palestine, deserves the widest possible circulation. It first appeared on June 14 at palestinechronicle.com. I'll be serialising it in 3 parts. Here's the first:
"The good news from Palestine is that the 'painted frog' of the Huleh valley is not extinct after all. Recently it turned up again after not having been seen for the past half century. Behind the disappearance of the painted frog stands a much bigger story, the fate of the Huleh valley after the conquest of Palestine by the Zionists and behind that story is the reality behind one of the foundation myths of the Zionists, that of a barren, stagnant and empty land awaiting redemption in the hands of the Jewish people.
"In the 19th century the Huleh wetlands were one of Palestine's prize natural assets. They were formed over millenia by 3 rivers flowing south into the Huleh valley from their headwaters in Syria, the Hasbani, the Banias and the Liddan. The valley stretched for a distance of about 25 kilometers in length and 6 in width. Its centrepiece was Lake Huleh and its adjoining wetlands, covering an area of about 60 square kilometers, expanding and contracting in tune with the seasons. The lake itself was more than 5 kilometers long and more than 4 wide at its broadest point. The river flow continued southwards into Lake Tiberius and then the Jordan River. The fertile land around the lake provided the surrounding villages and bedouin cultivators with a good living from cereal crops, maize, rice and honey. The lake and wetlands were a nesting and feeding spot for masses of migratory birds. The life beneath the water was just as rich as on the outside.
"Here are descriptions of the Huleh wetlands by the Rev. W.M. Thomson**, an American missionary who visited Palestine in the 1850s to follow in the footsteps of the master but still took detailed notes of everything he saw, the food people ate, the clothes they wore, the crops they cultivated, the glassware and soap they produced in their workshops as well as the flora, the fauna, the valleys, hills, plains and rivers:
'There lies the Huleh like a vast carpet with patterns of every shade and shape and size, thrown down in Nature's most bewitching negligence and laced all over with countless streams of liquid light... The plain is clothed with flocks and herds of black buffalo which bathe in the pools. The lake is alive with fowls, the trees with birds and the air with bees.' ('Unrivalled beauty of the Huleh', p 225)
'The soil of this plain is a water deposit like that of the Mississipi Valley about New Orleans and extremely fertile. The whole country around it depends mainly upon the harvests of the Huleh for wheat and barley. Large crops of Indian corn, rice and sesamun (simsum) are also grown by the Arabs of the Huleh, who are all of the Ghawareneh tribe. They are permanent residents although dwelling in tents. All the cultivation is done by them. They also make large quantities of butter from their herds of buffalo and gather honey and abundance from their bees, The Huleh is, in fact, a perpetual pasture field for cattle and flowery paradise for bees. At Mansura and Sheikh Hazeib I saw hundreds of cylindrical hives of basket work, pitched, inside and outside, with a composition of mud and cow dung. They are piled tier above tier, pyramid fashion, and roofed over with thatch or covered with a mat. The bees were very busy and the whole region rang as though a score of hives were swarming at once. Thus this plain still flows with milk and honey and well deserves the report which the Danite spies carried back to their brethren: 'A place where there is no lack of anything that is in the earth.' ('Produce of the land of Huleh', p 253)
'This Huleh - plain, marsh, lake and surrounding mountains - is the finest hunting ground in Syria and mainly so because it is very rarely visited. Panthers and leopards, bears and wolves, jackals and hyenas and foxes and many other animals are found, great and small, while it is the very paradise of the wild boar and the fleet gazelle. As to waterfowl, it is scarcely an exaggeration to affirm that the lower end of the lake is absolutely covered with them in the winter and the spring.' ('Wild animals of the Huleh', p 260)
"Dr Thomson does not mention the painted frogs of Huleh but they must have been there in abundance, breeding in the protection of the rushes, hunted by the pelicans and storks that stopped at the at the lake on their flights from the north. He noted the presence of 'the lilies of the valley' growing amongst the rushes, which in places were so densely entangled with bamboo as to make approaches to the water impenetrable. The Huleh valley was one part of a rich environmental and agricultural mosaic stretching across Palestine. Of course part of it was barren. It still is but one would not say Australia is a barren land because of the Simpson desert or the United States because of the Mojave desert in California. It was not just the fertility of the Huleh valley that took Dr Thomson's attention. He was equally fulsome in his praise of the groves of citrus fruits, the extensive fields of wheat and barley grown along the seaboard right down to Gaza and the grapes and olives of the interior. His descriptions are corroborated in numerous other contemporary accounts, which stand as the most effective rebuttal of the central myth of the barren land.
To be continued...
[*Salt is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and the author of one of the best accounts of the history of Western intervention and meddling in the Middle East: The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Disorder in Arab Lands (2008); **The Land & the Book, 1879]
"The good news from Palestine is that the 'painted frog' of the Huleh valley is not extinct after all. Recently it turned up again after not having been seen for the past half century. Behind the disappearance of the painted frog stands a much bigger story, the fate of the Huleh valley after the conquest of Palestine by the Zionists and behind that story is the reality behind one of the foundation myths of the Zionists, that of a barren, stagnant and empty land awaiting redemption in the hands of the Jewish people.
"In the 19th century the Huleh wetlands were one of Palestine's prize natural assets. They were formed over millenia by 3 rivers flowing south into the Huleh valley from their headwaters in Syria, the Hasbani, the Banias and the Liddan. The valley stretched for a distance of about 25 kilometers in length and 6 in width. Its centrepiece was Lake Huleh and its adjoining wetlands, covering an area of about 60 square kilometers, expanding and contracting in tune with the seasons. The lake itself was more than 5 kilometers long and more than 4 wide at its broadest point. The river flow continued southwards into Lake Tiberius and then the Jordan River. The fertile land around the lake provided the surrounding villages and bedouin cultivators with a good living from cereal crops, maize, rice and honey. The lake and wetlands were a nesting and feeding spot for masses of migratory birds. The life beneath the water was just as rich as on the outside.
"Here are descriptions of the Huleh wetlands by the Rev. W.M. Thomson**, an American missionary who visited Palestine in the 1850s to follow in the footsteps of the master but still took detailed notes of everything he saw, the food people ate, the clothes they wore, the crops they cultivated, the glassware and soap they produced in their workshops as well as the flora, the fauna, the valleys, hills, plains and rivers:
'There lies the Huleh like a vast carpet with patterns of every shade and shape and size, thrown down in Nature's most bewitching negligence and laced all over with countless streams of liquid light... The plain is clothed with flocks and herds of black buffalo which bathe in the pools. The lake is alive with fowls, the trees with birds and the air with bees.' ('Unrivalled beauty of the Huleh', p 225)
'The soil of this plain is a water deposit like that of the Mississipi Valley about New Orleans and extremely fertile. The whole country around it depends mainly upon the harvests of the Huleh for wheat and barley. Large crops of Indian corn, rice and sesamun (simsum) are also grown by the Arabs of the Huleh, who are all of the Ghawareneh tribe. They are permanent residents although dwelling in tents. All the cultivation is done by them. They also make large quantities of butter from their herds of buffalo and gather honey and abundance from their bees, The Huleh is, in fact, a perpetual pasture field for cattle and flowery paradise for bees. At Mansura and Sheikh Hazeib I saw hundreds of cylindrical hives of basket work, pitched, inside and outside, with a composition of mud and cow dung. They are piled tier above tier, pyramid fashion, and roofed over with thatch or covered with a mat. The bees were very busy and the whole region rang as though a score of hives were swarming at once. Thus this plain still flows with milk and honey and well deserves the report which the Danite spies carried back to their brethren: 'A place where there is no lack of anything that is in the earth.' ('Produce of the land of Huleh', p 253)
'This Huleh - plain, marsh, lake and surrounding mountains - is the finest hunting ground in Syria and mainly so because it is very rarely visited. Panthers and leopards, bears and wolves, jackals and hyenas and foxes and many other animals are found, great and small, while it is the very paradise of the wild boar and the fleet gazelle. As to waterfowl, it is scarcely an exaggeration to affirm that the lower end of the lake is absolutely covered with them in the winter and the spring.' ('Wild animals of the Huleh', p 260)
"Dr Thomson does not mention the painted frogs of Huleh but they must have been there in abundance, breeding in the protection of the rushes, hunted by the pelicans and storks that stopped at the at the lake on their flights from the north. He noted the presence of 'the lilies of the valley' growing amongst the rushes, which in places were so densely entangled with bamboo as to make approaches to the water impenetrable. The Huleh valley was one part of a rich environmental and agricultural mosaic stretching across Palestine. Of course part of it was barren. It still is but one would not say Australia is a barren land because of the Simpson desert or the United States because of the Mojave desert in California. It was not just the fertility of the Huleh valley that took Dr Thomson's attention. He was equally fulsome in his praise of the groves of citrus fruits, the extensive fields of wheat and barley grown along the seaboard right down to Gaza and the grapes and olives of the interior. His descriptions are corroborated in numerous other contemporary accounts, which stand as the most effective rebuttal of the central myth of the barren land.
To be continued...
[*Salt is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and the author of one of the best accounts of the history of Western intervention and meddling in the Middle East: The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Disorder in Arab Lands (2008); **The Land & the Book, 1879]
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Cassandra Wilkinson & Herstory
The Australian's holy war against the demonic forces of the pro-Palestinian BDS movement in Australia took a most unusual turn today with an opinion(ated) piece by columnist Cassandra Wilkinson, Boycott continues centuries-old hatred.
Described at the Australian as a "strategy consultant," an adviser to ex-NSW Labor politicians, Michael Costa and Christina Keneally, and a "regular SkyNews commentator on political issues," Wilkinson has never before, so far as I'm aware, broken into print on the subject of Palestine/Israel. Nor, it appears, has she ever been rambammed. And as for Exodus - that'd be the second book of the Bible, right?
Still, there exists at least one sign that the lady's for turning. Here she is, for example, discoursing on "20th century security":
"The history of 20th century security shows that when the West turns a blind eye to trouble around the world, things get worst [sic]. When the French and British ran out of Suez, the Middle East got less safe..." (Sky News, The Nation with Helen Dalley, Kerry Chikarovski, Cassandra Wilkinson & Ed Husic, scottryan.com.au, 8/11/12)
Wowee, break out the pith helmets and the puttees NOW!
Apparently, back in '56, the Britz and the Frogz should've told Eisenhower to go get stuffed, shocked and awed Cairo, pursued Nasser all the way to his spiderhole in the sticks, put him on trial for stealing the Suez Canal, pronounced him guilty and strung him up. The fact that they didn't means the Middle East's been all down hill since then.
A recent (23/5) twitter exchange yields another insight. Make of it what you will:
Glenn Barling: great article this morning in the australian.
Cassandra Wilkinson: thanks - small gesture of solidarity from a Bondi girl to her neighbours.
And so to Wilkinson's column:
She's deeply troubled about something she calls "the bonds of convenience growing between elements of the Left and anti-Semitism."
Her beloved UNSW, in particular, is a real worry:
"The student activists who tried to prevent the University of NSW from allowing Mr Brenner [!] to open on campus, claimed the BDS campaign was initiated in 2005. Such sloppy referencing and fact-checking wouldn't pass muster on their exams, I hope. As it happens, I studied history at UNSW - something the protesters could profit from before they graduate. A basic grasp of history shows us the boycotting of businesses is a longstanding tactic in the campaign of hate against the Jewish people."
Let me get this straight, Wilkinson's study of history at UNSW taught her that boycotts of Jewish businesses have always been, are now, and will always be nakedly anti-Semitic. Right...
Maybe, if that's what is being dished out as history at UNSW, our 'offending' student activists would do well to ignore her advice.
It's painfully obvious here that however much 'history' Wilkinson actually studied at UNSW she still does not have the wherewithal to distinguish between Jews as Jews and Jews as Zionists.
Never mind, she still has the wherewithal (UMURDOCH?) to con her readers into thinking of the Israeli corporation which owns the Max Brenner brand as just a sweet little man standing behind a counter against a backdrop of yummy chocolate allsorts.
The only alternative explanation is that she really does believe that to be the case. Hell, maybe she's the kind of person - poor thing! - who walks into, say, a Dick Smith outlet expecting to see the guy in person.
That Ms Wilkinson has a 'way' with history becomes appallingly apparent at the start of her next paragraph:
"Boycotts of Jewish merchants were practised in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire and later across eastern Europe..."
Let's focus, shall we, just on the Ottoman Empire? Unless she's prepared to cite a source or two for the assertion that boycotting Jewish shops was a feature of life under the Ottomans, I think we can safely dismiss it as garbage.
For my part, however, having read the fascinating study Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (2011) by Michelle U. Campos, Assistant Professor of the Modern Middle East at the University of Florida, the only reference to a boycott I could find was a joint Muslim/Christian/Jewish Ottoman citizen boycott of Austro-Hungarian products following the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. Just one quote should suffice: "Importantly, Muslims were not the only participants in the imperial boycott, and in many locations Christians and Jews were also active as organizers, mobilisers, and participants. When the mass demonstrations spread inland to Jerusalem, they were led by the Mufti Taher al-Husayni, but he was joined by Jewish, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian representatives who were elected to serve alongside him on a boycott committee." (p 104)
On the general status of Ottoman Jews, Campos writes as follows:
"For the Ottoman state... population diversity was a product of, and a powerful testament to, successful empire building. The eponymous founder of the dynasty, Osman, had consolidated his power in Asia Minor in the late 13th century through alliance with local Turkic tribes and Christian principalities. As the empire spread throughout Asia, Europe, and Africa, later sultans continued to integrate their diverse subjects into the state... After the conquest of Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium, Sultan 'Fatih' Mehmet ('the Conqueror') retained the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church and strategically moved Jews into the city to replace the fleeing Byzantines. Decades later, in 1492, when the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella expelled Jews and Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula, Sultan Beyazit II famously welcomed the exiles to Ottoman shores.
"The point of this recounting is not to argue that the Ottoman Empire was a multicultural paradise, for it surely was not. As an Islamic empire it maintained an 'institutionalized difference' between Muslims and non-Muslim subjects which was accentuated - or indeed erupted - in times of crisis. Non-Muslim populations were organized, counted, taxed, legislated, and otherwise 'marked' according to their confessional or ethno-confessional communities. At the same time, however, non-Muslim communities were allowed a tremendous degree of self-governance and autonomy in the realms of communal institutions and religious law, and comparatively speaking, the status of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire was far better than that of non-Christians in Europe." (pp 8-9)
To say that Wilkinson's grasp of history is shaky is to indulge in understatement:
"In 1922, the Fifth Palestine Arab Congress called for a boycott of all Jewish businesses."
An Arab Congress meeting in Nablus in 1922 resolved to boycott the elections for a proposed gerrymandered Legislative Council. This had nothing whatever to do with 'Jewish businesses'.
"In 1943, the Arab League banned the purchase of 'products of Jewish industry'."
The Arab League was not founded until 1945.
"Note I have passed over here the not insignificant events of 1933-45 lest I fall foul of politicians such as Greens MP David Shoebridge..."*
When it comes to the subject of boycotts, I certainly won't be passing over the Nazi era. The fact is that when American Jews called for a boycott of German goods in 1933, the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) opposed the idea: "It not only bought German wares; it sold them, and even sought out new customers for Hitler and his industrialist backers." (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, Lenni Brenner, 1983, p 59)
Now let me draw Wilkinson's attention to the Zionist anti-Arab boycott: "But this [Zionist] craze for the possession of [Palestinian] land did not prevent the [British] Government from attempting to protect [Palestinian Arab] cultivators against displacement through the sale of land over their heads. It was no secret that no Arab could be employed on land purchased by the Jewish National Fund. In fact clause 23 of the lease agreement [Jewish] settlers are required to sign, makes it incumbent on the lessee 'to execute all works connected with cultivation of the holding, only with Jewish labour." (Palestine Through the Fog of Propaganda, M.F. Abcarius, 1946, p 131)
Ah, but why bother with the real facts or the actual dynamics of the colonial struggle still underway in Palestine, when you're just a cog in the machinery of the Australian's holy war against defenders of Palestinian rights? Just get on with it and smear to your heart's content:
"In reality [the BDS] is the most recent name for a centuries-old economic persecution of Jews for having the temerity to become educated and entrepreneurial despite their exclusion from many occupations, geographies and institutions."
Wilkinson's grasp on the present is equally shaky.
She is shocked that NSW Labor MLC Shaoquett Moselmane** "disgraced the house by accusing Israel of running torture camps..."
Moselmane was, of course, referring to the notorious Khiam Prison in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon (1982-2000), and his disgraceful accusation just happens to be supported by Human Rights Watch. (See Torture in Khiam Prison: Responsibility & Accountability, 27/10/99.)
Wilkinson is also shocked by Moselmane's claim that "Israel is driven by a 'craving to take over other people's lands'," seemingly oblivious to Israel's 65 years of territorial expansion, aka wiping Palestine (and chunks of Syria and Lebanon) off the map. She then has the gall to accuse him of being "particularly guileless in his views"!
Finally, Wilkinson spruiks the thoroughly bogus London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism*** as though it's the only thing capable of preventing the seemingly "trivial or childish" BDS protest at UNSW from morphing into something - Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean? - more "potent."
"The Left," she cries, must "stand with those who educate women, stand with those who let gays serve openly in the military, stand with those who allow free speech and political activism. Stand, in short, with the Jewish people and their state of Israel."
It's hard to believe she's even read the declaration, which calls on its signatories to legislate against hate crime, essentially Zio-speak for criticism of the Zionist project and its manifold crimes against the Palestinian and other Arab peoples.
Doesn't it say somewhere in the Old Testament that 'It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt'?
[*Yet another indication of Wilkinson's shoddy journalism. This 'Correction' appeared in The Australian on 24/5: "Cassandra Wilkinson's opinion article in The Australian yesterday... incorrectly attributed a quote, which accused supporters of Israel of 'using the Holocaust for political purposes', to NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge. In fact, the statement was made by fellow Greens MLC John Kaye. The Australian apologises to Mr Shoebridge for the error."; **See my 3/4/13 post Doing the Donkey in the NSW Knesset 10; ***See my 17/5/13 post The Tel Aviv Declaration on Combating Criticism of Israel.]
Described at the Australian as a "strategy consultant," an adviser to ex-NSW Labor politicians, Michael Costa and Christina Keneally, and a "regular SkyNews commentator on political issues," Wilkinson has never before, so far as I'm aware, broken into print on the subject of Palestine/Israel. Nor, it appears, has she ever been rambammed. And as for Exodus - that'd be the second book of the Bible, right?
Still, there exists at least one sign that the lady's for turning. Here she is, for example, discoursing on "20th century security":
"The history of 20th century security shows that when the West turns a blind eye to trouble around the world, things get worst [sic]. When the French and British ran out of Suez, the Middle East got less safe..." (Sky News, The Nation with Helen Dalley, Kerry Chikarovski, Cassandra Wilkinson & Ed Husic, scottryan.com.au, 8/11/12)
Wowee, break out the pith helmets and the puttees NOW!
Apparently, back in '56, the Britz and the Frogz should've told Eisenhower to go get stuffed, shocked and awed Cairo, pursued Nasser all the way to his spiderhole in the sticks, put him on trial for stealing the Suez Canal, pronounced him guilty and strung him up. The fact that they didn't means the Middle East's been all down hill since then.
A recent (23/5) twitter exchange yields another insight. Make of it what you will:
Glenn Barling: great article this morning in the australian.
Cassandra Wilkinson: thanks - small gesture of solidarity from a Bondi girl to her neighbours.
And so to Wilkinson's column:
She's deeply troubled about something she calls "the bonds of convenience growing between elements of the Left and anti-Semitism."
Her beloved UNSW, in particular, is a real worry:
"The student activists who tried to prevent the University of NSW from allowing Mr Brenner [!] to open on campus, claimed the BDS campaign was initiated in 2005. Such sloppy referencing and fact-checking wouldn't pass muster on their exams, I hope. As it happens, I studied history at UNSW - something the protesters could profit from before they graduate. A basic grasp of history shows us the boycotting of businesses is a longstanding tactic in the campaign of hate against the Jewish people."
Let me get this straight, Wilkinson's study of history at UNSW taught her that boycotts of Jewish businesses have always been, are now, and will always be nakedly anti-Semitic. Right...
Maybe, if that's what is being dished out as history at UNSW, our 'offending' student activists would do well to ignore her advice.
It's painfully obvious here that however much 'history' Wilkinson actually studied at UNSW she still does not have the wherewithal to distinguish between Jews as Jews and Jews as Zionists.
Never mind, she still has the wherewithal (UMURDOCH?) to con her readers into thinking of the Israeli corporation which owns the Max Brenner brand as just a sweet little man standing behind a counter against a backdrop of yummy chocolate allsorts.
The only alternative explanation is that she really does believe that to be the case. Hell, maybe she's the kind of person - poor thing! - who walks into, say, a Dick Smith outlet expecting to see the guy in person.
That Ms Wilkinson has a 'way' with history becomes appallingly apparent at the start of her next paragraph:
"Boycotts of Jewish merchants were practised in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire and later across eastern Europe..."
Let's focus, shall we, just on the Ottoman Empire? Unless she's prepared to cite a source or two for the assertion that boycotting Jewish shops was a feature of life under the Ottomans, I think we can safely dismiss it as garbage.
For my part, however, having read the fascinating study Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (2011) by Michelle U. Campos, Assistant Professor of the Modern Middle East at the University of Florida, the only reference to a boycott I could find was a joint Muslim/Christian/Jewish Ottoman citizen boycott of Austro-Hungarian products following the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. Just one quote should suffice: "Importantly, Muslims were not the only participants in the imperial boycott, and in many locations Christians and Jews were also active as organizers, mobilisers, and participants. When the mass demonstrations spread inland to Jerusalem, they were led by the Mufti Taher al-Husayni, but he was joined by Jewish, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian representatives who were elected to serve alongside him on a boycott committee." (p 104)
On the general status of Ottoman Jews, Campos writes as follows:
"For the Ottoman state... population diversity was a product of, and a powerful testament to, successful empire building. The eponymous founder of the dynasty, Osman, had consolidated his power in Asia Minor in the late 13th century through alliance with local Turkic tribes and Christian principalities. As the empire spread throughout Asia, Europe, and Africa, later sultans continued to integrate their diverse subjects into the state... After the conquest of Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium, Sultan 'Fatih' Mehmet ('the Conqueror') retained the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church and strategically moved Jews into the city to replace the fleeing Byzantines. Decades later, in 1492, when the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella expelled Jews and Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula, Sultan Beyazit II famously welcomed the exiles to Ottoman shores.
"The point of this recounting is not to argue that the Ottoman Empire was a multicultural paradise, for it surely was not. As an Islamic empire it maintained an 'institutionalized difference' between Muslims and non-Muslim subjects which was accentuated - or indeed erupted - in times of crisis. Non-Muslim populations were organized, counted, taxed, legislated, and otherwise 'marked' according to their confessional or ethno-confessional communities. At the same time, however, non-Muslim communities were allowed a tremendous degree of self-governance and autonomy in the realms of communal institutions and religious law, and comparatively speaking, the status of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire was far better than that of non-Christians in Europe." (pp 8-9)
To say that Wilkinson's grasp of history is shaky is to indulge in understatement:
"In 1922, the Fifth Palestine Arab Congress called for a boycott of all Jewish businesses."
An Arab Congress meeting in Nablus in 1922 resolved to boycott the elections for a proposed gerrymandered Legislative Council. This had nothing whatever to do with 'Jewish businesses'.
"In 1943, the Arab League banned the purchase of 'products of Jewish industry'."
The Arab League was not founded until 1945.
"Note I have passed over here the not insignificant events of 1933-45 lest I fall foul of politicians such as Greens MP David Shoebridge..."*
When it comes to the subject of boycotts, I certainly won't be passing over the Nazi era. The fact is that when American Jews called for a boycott of German goods in 1933, the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) opposed the idea: "It not only bought German wares; it sold them, and even sought out new customers for Hitler and his industrialist backers." (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, Lenni Brenner, 1983, p 59)
Now let me draw Wilkinson's attention to the Zionist anti-Arab boycott: "But this [Zionist] craze for the possession of [Palestinian] land did not prevent the [British] Government from attempting to protect [Palestinian Arab] cultivators against displacement through the sale of land over their heads. It was no secret that no Arab could be employed on land purchased by the Jewish National Fund. In fact clause 23 of the lease agreement [Jewish] settlers are required to sign, makes it incumbent on the lessee 'to execute all works connected with cultivation of the holding, only with Jewish labour." (Palestine Through the Fog of Propaganda, M.F. Abcarius, 1946, p 131)
Ah, but why bother with the real facts or the actual dynamics of the colonial struggle still underway in Palestine, when you're just a cog in the machinery of the Australian's holy war against defenders of Palestinian rights? Just get on with it and smear to your heart's content:
"In reality [the BDS] is the most recent name for a centuries-old economic persecution of Jews for having the temerity to become educated and entrepreneurial despite their exclusion from many occupations, geographies and institutions."
Wilkinson's grasp on the present is equally shaky.
She is shocked that NSW Labor MLC Shaoquett Moselmane** "disgraced the house by accusing Israel of running torture camps..."
Moselmane was, of course, referring to the notorious Khiam Prison in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon (1982-2000), and his disgraceful accusation just happens to be supported by Human Rights Watch. (See Torture in Khiam Prison: Responsibility & Accountability, 27/10/99.)
Wilkinson is also shocked by Moselmane's claim that "Israel is driven by a 'craving to take over other people's lands'," seemingly oblivious to Israel's 65 years of territorial expansion, aka wiping Palestine (and chunks of Syria and Lebanon) off the map. She then has the gall to accuse him of being "particularly guileless in his views"!
Finally, Wilkinson spruiks the thoroughly bogus London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism*** as though it's the only thing capable of preventing the seemingly "trivial or childish" BDS protest at UNSW from morphing into something - Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean? - more "potent."
"The Left," she cries, must "stand with those who educate women, stand with those who let gays serve openly in the military, stand with those who allow free speech and political activism. Stand, in short, with the Jewish people and their state of Israel."
It's hard to believe she's even read the declaration, which calls on its signatories to legislate against hate crime, essentially Zio-speak for criticism of the Zionist project and its manifold crimes against the Palestinian and other Arab peoples.
Doesn't it say somewhere in the Old Testament that 'It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt'?
[*Yet another indication of Wilkinson's shoddy journalism. This 'Correction' appeared in The Australian on 24/5: "Cassandra Wilkinson's opinion article in The Australian yesterday... incorrectly attributed a quote, which accused supporters of Israel of 'using the Holocaust for political purposes', to NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge. In fact, the statement was made by fellow Greens MLC John Kaye. The Australian apologises to Mr Shoebridge for the error."; **See my 3/4/13 post Doing the Donkey in the NSW Knesset 10; ***See my 17/5/13 post The Tel Aviv Declaration on Combating Criticism of Israel.]
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
The Blooming 'Desert'
Here's a wonderful and revealing pre-World War I portrait of Palestine from Estelle Blyth's 1927 memoir, When We Lived in Jerusalem. Blyth was the daughter of G.F.P. Blyth, Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem from 1887 to 1914.
You can see what a scruffy, neglected little desert Palestine was, how in need of the redeeming Zionist touch to bring it back to life, to make it bloom*:
"The fertility of Palestine is amazing. Everything grows out in the open and, as it seems to us under conditions that ought to prevent any self-respecting vegetable life from attaining to maturity. The land, after yielding one crop, will be scratched over by the primitive native plough, which does little but disturb the surface, and another crop put in. Even the little patches of soil amongst the rocks on the hillsides are ploughed and sown, and with good result. Palestinian vegetables would demoralise Covent Garden. We had cauliflowers that measure one foot across, and water melons which a man's arms could hardly span: the grapes of Eschol still grow in clusters from 3 to 4 feet in length.
"In their season, grapes formed a part of everybody's meal, however poor; a rotl (6 ounds) of grapes cost about tenpence, and for a trifling present we could go into a vineyard and eat as much fruit as we could manage. Amongst the trees I can remember only a few; the olive, fig, mulberry, pomegranate, almond, karob, palm, fir, terebinth, willow, myrtle, hawthorn, white and pink acacia, white and pink oleander, tamarisk, juniper and Persian lilac...
"And what of the flowers of Palestine? From the semitropical vegetation of the Jordan Valley to the English flowers so dearly cherished in gardens, practically everything seems to flourish. The wild flowers in spring are lovely beyond telling, especially perhaps in Galilee. We have anemones, scarlet, white, mauve and pink, which many believe to be the lilies of the field before whose glory that of Solomon paled; hyacinths, ranunculus, cyclamen, irises, black arum lilies, narcissus, honeysuckle, daisies, cistus, broom, mandrake, thrift, hyssop, orchids, asphodel, speedwell, acanthus, vetches of many kinds (during a short walk we picked more than 20 different kinds); the list becomes unduly long, but is not nearly complete. In my mother's garden many English flowers grew with a luxuriance I have never seen equalled elsewhere. Living in Palestine, and marking its lavish beauty and fertility... we realized that such expressions as 'the excellency of Carmel and Sharon', and 'the desert shall blossom as the rose', are no lovely fancy of the poet, no delusion of the over-fervid patriot, but the sober, literal truth.
"Palestine remains a land of corn and wine and honey. We see the surface richness of her; but what of the treasures hidden in her breast, 'the chief things of the ancient mountains and the precious things of the everlasting hills'?... The natural resources of Palestine are practically unknown; but one day the world will awake to find out how literally true are the words of Moses: 'It is a good land, a land in which thou shalt lack nothing'.
"Beauty, as well as richness, surrounds you in Palestine. The colouring of the sky at dawn and sunset, so brilliant yet so delicate; the warm tints of the rich red earth; the green and silver of the olive trees, with their berries of emerald and amethyst; the deep deep blue of the sky paling towards the horizon;... by all these things sight and sound and feeling alike are touched and charmed and quickened. There is magic in the very air as it sweeps across the many-coloured hills, and beauty everywhere, and with it all an elusive and mysterious charm that has never been captured by any one, though some of those magnificent passages in Isaiah bring it closer to us than anything else."
[*On the Zionist myth of 'making the desert bloom', see my posts Sir Bob Wows JNFaithful at Galah Dinner (25/11/08) and Making Deserts Bloom (11/5/11).]
You can see what a scruffy, neglected little desert Palestine was, how in need of the redeeming Zionist touch to bring it back to life, to make it bloom*:
"The fertility of Palestine is amazing. Everything grows out in the open and, as it seems to us under conditions that ought to prevent any self-respecting vegetable life from attaining to maturity. The land, after yielding one crop, will be scratched over by the primitive native plough, which does little but disturb the surface, and another crop put in. Even the little patches of soil amongst the rocks on the hillsides are ploughed and sown, and with good result. Palestinian vegetables would demoralise Covent Garden. We had cauliflowers that measure one foot across, and water melons which a man's arms could hardly span: the grapes of Eschol still grow in clusters from 3 to 4 feet in length.
"In their season, grapes formed a part of everybody's meal, however poor; a rotl (6 ounds) of grapes cost about tenpence, and for a trifling present we could go into a vineyard and eat as much fruit as we could manage. Amongst the trees I can remember only a few; the olive, fig, mulberry, pomegranate, almond, karob, palm, fir, terebinth, willow, myrtle, hawthorn, white and pink acacia, white and pink oleander, tamarisk, juniper and Persian lilac...
"And what of the flowers of Palestine? From the semitropical vegetation of the Jordan Valley to the English flowers so dearly cherished in gardens, practically everything seems to flourish. The wild flowers in spring are lovely beyond telling, especially perhaps in Galilee. We have anemones, scarlet, white, mauve and pink, which many believe to be the lilies of the field before whose glory that of Solomon paled; hyacinths, ranunculus, cyclamen, irises, black arum lilies, narcissus, honeysuckle, daisies, cistus, broom, mandrake, thrift, hyssop, orchids, asphodel, speedwell, acanthus, vetches of many kinds (during a short walk we picked more than 20 different kinds); the list becomes unduly long, but is not nearly complete. In my mother's garden many English flowers grew with a luxuriance I have never seen equalled elsewhere. Living in Palestine, and marking its lavish beauty and fertility... we realized that such expressions as 'the excellency of Carmel and Sharon', and 'the desert shall blossom as the rose', are no lovely fancy of the poet, no delusion of the over-fervid patriot, but the sober, literal truth.
"Palestine remains a land of corn and wine and honey. We see the surface richness of her; but what of the treasures hidden in her breast, 'the chief things of the ancient mountains and the precious things of the everlasting hills'?... The natural resources of Palestine are practically unknown; but one day the world will awake to find out how literally true are the words of Moses: 'It is a good land, a land in which thou shalt lack nothing'.
"Beauty, as well as richness, surrounds you in Palestine. The colouring of the sky at dawn and sunset, so brilliant yet so delicate; the warm tints of the rich red earth; the green and silver of the olive trees, with their berries of emerald and amethyst; the deep deep blue of the sky paling towards the horizon;... by all these things sight and sound and feeling alike are touched and charmed and quickened. There is magic in the very air as it sweeps across the many-coloured hills, and beauty everywhere, and with it all an elusive and mysterious charm that has never been captured by any one, though some of those magnificent passages in Isaiah bring it closer to us than anything else."
[*On the Zionist myth of 'making the desert bloom', see my posts Sir Bob Wows JNFaithful at Galah Dinner (25/11/08) and Making Deserts Bloom (11/5/11).]
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Perennial Terrorism
There's no such thing as the good old days if you're an Israeli settler. It was terrorism then, it's terrorism now, and... you guessed it, it'll be terrorism tomorrow. If you think about it, it's a wonder there's a settler left standing:
"Mr Netanyahu used his Memorial Day address to warn that terrorism presented the new threat to Israel. 'Terrorism is not a new phenomenon. It has been accompanying us since the first days of Zionism, since the Jewish settlement in the land of Israel was resumed in the late 19th century. Today, terrorism is supported by radical Islamist regimes, led by Iran, which have turned the call to destroy Israel into their daily bread'." (Netanyahu insists building to go on, John Lyons, The Australian, 21/4/10)
And Bibi's right, of course, the Palestinians have been doing 'terrorism' from Day 1:
"The 1901-2 attempt of the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) to 'remove the peasants who cultivated the land so far' from a tract of about seventy-thousand dunums in the Tiberias district (the largest single piece of land thus far purchased for Jewish settlement in Lower Galilee) met with stiff resistance from the Arab inhabitants of the villages of al-Shajara, Misha and Melhamiyya, who were to be dispossed by this purchase. Of this land, over sixty-thousand dunums had been purchased from the big Beirut merchant family of the Sursuqs, and their business partners, the Tuenis and Mudawwars. Some seven hundred had been bought from local landlords, and three thousand from some of the fellahin [peasants] themselves. According to the account of the incident by H M Kalvariski, an official of the JCA, the peasants not only refused to be removed from their lands; the JCA agent who had engineered the land deal, a Mr Ossovetsky, 'was shot at; troops were brought and many tenants were arrested and taken to prison'. Through the forceable intervention of the [Ottoman Turkish] authorities, lands cultivated by the inhabitants of the three villages were seized and they were prevented from tilling them. Over the next three years, the Jewish agricultural settlements of Sejara, Kafr Tavor, Yavniel, Menehamia and Bet Gan were set up on these lands." (Peasant Resistance to Zionism, Rashid Khalidi, in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship & the Palestinian Question, 1988, Edited by Edward Said & Christopher Hitchens, 1988, p 217)
Must be in the blood.
"Mr Netanyahu used his Memorial Day address to warn that terrorism presented the new threat to Israel. 'Terrorism is not a new phenomenon. It has been accompanying us since the first days of Zionism, since the Jewish settlement in the land of Israel was resumed in the late 19th century. Today, terrorism is supported by radical Islamist regimes, led by Iran, which have turned the call to destroy Israel into their daily bread'." (Netanyahu insists building to go on, John Lyons, The Australian, 21/4/10)
And Bibi's right, of course, the Palestinians have been doing 'terrorism' from Day 1:
"The 1901-2 attempt of the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) to 'remove the peasants who cultivated the land so far' from a tract of about seventy-thousand dunums in the Tiberias district (the largest single piece of land thus far purchased for Jewish settlement in Lower Galilee) met with stiff resistance from the Arab inhabitants of the villages of al-Shajara, Misha and Melhamiyya, who were to be dispossed by this purchase. Of this land, over sixty-thousand dunums had been purchased from the big Beirut merchant family of the Sursuqs, and their business partners, the Tuenis and Mudawwars. Some seven hundred had been bought from local landlords, and three thousand from some of the fellahin [peasants] themselves. According to the account of the incident by H M Kalvariski, an official of the JCA, the peasants not only refused to be removed from their lands; the JCA agent who had engineered the land deal, a Mr Ossovetsky, 'was shot at; troops were brought and many tenants were arrested and taken to prison'. Through the forceable intervention of the [Ottoman Turkish] authorities, lands cultivated by the inhabitants of the three villages were seized and they were prevented from tilling them. Over the next three years, the Jewish agricultural settlements of Sejara, Kafr Tavor, Yavniel, Menehamia and Bet Gan were set up on these lands." (Peasant Resistance to Zionism, Rashid Khalidi, in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship & the Palestinian Question, 1988, Edited by Edward Said & Christopher Hitchens, 1988, p 217)
Must be in the blood.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)