The Other Bob Hawke

The figure of the recently deceased (16/5/19) former Australian Labor Party PM Bob Hawke, has, of course, been weaponised by the new neoliberal Liberal Party government led by Evangelical/Christian Zionist PM Scott Morrison for use against the Labor Party opposition led by Anthony Albanese.

But the former PLO ambassador to Australia, Ali Kazak, portrays a very different former Labor PM.

Written for the Pearls & Irritations website (johnmenadue.com), Kazak introduces himself as "an expert on Australian-Arab relations and affairs, and author of Australia and the Arabs (in Arabic), and editor of the book Jerusalem Reader: From Occupation to City of Peace (2019) (in English).

Hawke's prime ministership lasted from 1983-1991, and Kazak describes a very different Bob Hawke to the one appropriated by the present government and its supporters, one who'd transcended his blind support for Israel while president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) from 1969-1980:

"Bob Hawke was long known as a great friend of Israel, but in his years after retiring from Parliament, I came to know him as a person increasingly concerned about Palestinian rights and getting a fair peace deal for Palestinians and Israelis. Then, as Palestinian ambassador and head of delegation, we developed over the last 25 years a decent friendship; we would share a cigar on the balcony of his Northbridge house overlooking the harbour, where most of our meetings took place, discussing and working on specific issues of concern. Bob used to express immense frustration and disappointment not only with the Israeli government's persistent human rights violations but of Palestinians but also with the United States' blind eye and lack of commitment to a just peace.

"Building on Gough Whitlam's implementation of an even-handed policy towards the Israeli-Arab conflict in 1972, Bob Hawke's government reviewed Australia's Middle East policy. The review announced by Foreign Minister Bill Hayden on 30 September 1983 recognised the central importance of the Palestinian issue for any settlement, a role for the Palestine Liberation Organisation in any peace process and acknowledged the the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. It also called on Israel to freeze its settlement program in the 1967-occupied territories, because the settlements are 'contrary to international law and a significant and a significant obstacle to peace efforts'. At the time this was a more advanced position than many European countries.

"Following the Palestinian uprising (Intifada) in 1987 and the PLO initiative in November 1988, Hawke's government recognised the PLO in March 1989.

"In a speech celebrating former Soviet refuseniks in Melbourne on 17 May 1988, Bob compared the struggle of the Palestinian people with the Jews in the Soviet Union and the blacks in South Africa, saying 'The Palestinian in the occupied territories, as the Jew in the Soviet Union and the black in South Africa has his aspirations to be fully free.' A point he stressed again, decades later, in an article he wrote for the Australian Financial Review, titled Time to recognise the state of Palestine, on 14 February 2017.

"From the early days of Benjamin Netanyahu's prime ministership of Israel, Bob realised that Netanyahu was not part of the solution, telling me in 1996 that 'This f...ing Netanyahu does not want peace'.

"The Guardian reported Hawke as saying, 'I think that President Obama has been inadequate in terms of using his influence and that of the United States in trying to bring together the Israelis and Palestinians'.

"When all Arab governments agreed to a peace initiative at the Beirut Summit of the Arab League in March 2002, Israel not only responded by refusing the Arab peace initiative, but its prime minister General Ariel Sharon's response to the Arabs' outstretched hand for peace was to order his army to reoccupy Palestinian cities and surround and bombard President Arafat's headquarters.

"Bob was furious; he expressed to me his wish to break the siege and go and meet with Arafat and asked me to arrange that; and despite the wrath and rejection of of the Israeli government he met with Arafat on 24 September 2003.

"From then onwards, Bob worked hard and travelled around the world to gain Australian, American, European and Asian support for an economic plan to help build the palestinian economy, similar to the Marshall Plan. He spoke with John Howard, Alexander Downer, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schrodor of Germany, and many others.

"He also tried to build a technical school in Gaza as a gift from the Australian people to the Palestinians to help them rebuild their economy, in which the ACTU would organise volunteer technicians and teachers. The project was supported by the Palestinian Authority which allocated land that was inspected by deputy prime minister Tim Fischer during a visit to Palestine in March 1997, but the Howard government would not provide the $5m needed for the school.

"Ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu's 2017 visit to Australia, Bob called on the Australian government to recognise the state of Palestine in an article published in the Australian Financial Review. He wrote: 'Australia was there at the very beginning. The least we can do now, in these most challenging of times, is to do what 137 other nations have already done - grant diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine'."

One Movie Hollywood Will Never Make

Following on from my last post about a fictional US diplomat in Lebanon, and moving to the real thing - John Gunther Dean, US ambassador to Lebanon from 1978 to 1981...

Hollywood would NEVER in a million make a movie with Dean as its protagonist. Read this excerpt from a 2002 essay on Dean by Andrew I. Killgore, a retired foreign service officer and former US ambassador to Qatar, and you'll see why:

"Just before John Gunther Dean was to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his confirmation hearing as American ambassador to Lebanon in 1978 he received an urgent telephone call from the office of the secretary of state. 'John,' the caller said, 'we have just noticed that your mother's [maiden] name is Ashkenacsi. Does this make a serious problem for you?' 'Absolutely not,' the near legendary Dean replied, 'my father was Jewish, too. I represent a secular America, so that's all there is to it.'

"In a Sept. 6 talk in Washington, DC before an audience made up of mainly retired American diplomats, Ambassador Dean, as related to the Washington Report by one of those in attendance, described his 3 turbulent years in Beirut. There he did his courageous best to implement stated American policy goals in Lebanon, maintaining its territorial integrity, unity and sovereignty. For his pains, Israel tried but failed to assassinate him and his family. In a period of brutal civil war amid more than a dozen political/religious factions Dean, who already had held ambassadorships in Cambodia and Denmark, traveled from one end of the country to the other, calling personally on the leaders of every group. Israel, meanwhile, maintained a rump state in southern Lebanon under Lebanese mercenary Maj. Saad Haddad while encouraging unrealistic dreams of a small Christian 'Maronistan' state. As US ambassador, John Gunther Dean, renowned for his physical and moral courage, opposed Israeli machinations, arguing that close ties with Israel would harm Christian interests in the long run.

"Ambassador Dean, who does not speak Arabic, conducted his relations with Lebanese officials in French, then the second language of educated Lebanese. He believed, moreover, that he could not properly operate in the country without maintaining close relations with France and the French Embassy. In a perhaps uniquely rare role for any US ambassador, while serving in Lebanon Dean had co-signing authority with President Elias Sarkis on Lebanon's hundreds of millions of dollars deposited in Swiss banks. John Gunther Dean sought and obtained authorization to deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) if it was deemed to be in America's security interests. When an 'interlocutor' in Washington wondered if the Palestinians could help release American diplomatic hostages being held in Tehran, Dean sought - and received - Palestinian help. PLO leader Yasser Arafat and his aide Abu Jihad themselves went to Tehran in 1978 and secured the release of 13 Americans. Never, Dean noted, did the two receive any thanks from Washington for their efforts. Ambassador Dean's diligence in knowing everybody paid off in an astonishing incident when the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to Lebanon was shot. As the intermediary in transferring the ambassador to the American University of Beirut (AUB) Hospital for treatment, John Dean reached the secretary to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, as well as Yasser Arafat, who was able to stop the firing on the hospital occasioned by the Saudi ambassador's presence there.

"In a prescient reference to his role in Lebanon, Dean reportedly remarked that anyone who gets between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel 'finds himself in trouble.' An amusing anecdote: Riding in his armored limousine in Beirut with ardently pro-Israel Congressman Steve Solarz, a bullet hit the car. 'What's that? Solarz asked. 'Just a bullet,' Dean replied, 'but don't worry. We are armored.' Solarz insisted on returning to the American Embassy, where he cabled home, 'Arafat shot at me!'

"To stress his support for the sovereignty of Lebanon Dean always cabled protests to Tel Aviv and the State Department in Washington whenever Israeli planes intruded - as they frequently did - into Lebanese airspace. These reminders irritated US Ambassador to Israel Sam Lewis, with whom Dean preserved cordial relations but who suffered to a notable degree from what the US Foreign Service calls 'localitis' (not Ambassador Dean's term). Other irritants flowed from Dean's urging Lebanese Christian leader Bashir Gemayel to stop seeing Israel Mossad officers.

"Dean's staunchly courageous defense of Lebanese (and American) interests came to a head in the early evening of Aug. 27, 1980, when, according to all the evidence, Mossad tried but failed to assassinate Dean, his wife (whose French family had old business connections in Lebanon) and their daughter. The long-rumored attempted murder of Dean by Mossad, infamously more noted for its prowess at assassinations than for its abilities as an intelligence agency, was publicly confirmed for the first time in Dean's Washington talk. En route from his residence in Lebanon's hills to the Beirut residence of the AUB president, Dean's limousine and convoy took 21 rifle bullets. The automobile bearing the ambassador and Mrs Dean was also struck by two light anti-tank weapons. The shot-out tires of the Deans' bulletproof car automatically reinflated. The second car, however, carrying their daughter and her fiance, did not have bulletproof tires and was momentarily stranded. The security guards in the convoy's third car pushed the daughter and her fiance into the Deans' vehicle, and they sped away. Incredibly, none of the ambassador's party or security guards were seriously wounded. Some shots struck where Dean was sitting, but bulletproof plastic windows saved his life.

"Picked up by Lebanese security, the anti-tank canisters had made-in-America markings. After unanswered telegrams to the State Department and all but silent responses to his telephone inquiries, Dean eventually learned that the anti-tank weapons were sold and shipped to Israel in 1974. Dean apparently mused to himself on the irony of an American ambassador being subjected to an Israeli assassination attempt with American weapons supplied to Israel for defense. The ambassador did not explicitly accuse Israel of trying to assassinate him, but let the facts as he related them speak for themselves. But Washington's acute unease in responding to his inquiries testifies to the deadening influence of the Israel lobby on American diplomacy... " (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2002)

Gideon Levy: 'Habash Was Right'

One of Gideon Levy's best essays: This biography makes it clear: The founder f the Palestinian Popular Front was right (Haaretz, 15/4/18):

"George Habash was Israel's absolute enemy for decades, the embodiment of evil, the devil incarnate. Even the title 'Dr.' before his name - he was a pediatrician - was considered blasphemous. Habash was plane hijackings, Habash was terror and terror alone. In a country that doesn't recognize the existence of Palestinian political parties (have you ever heard of a Palestinian political party? - there are only terror groups) knowledge about the man who headed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was close to zero. What's there to know about him? A terrorist. Subhuman. Should be killed. Enemy. The fact that he was an ideologue and a revolutionary, that his life was shaped by the expulsion from Lod, changed nothing. He remains the plane hijacker from Damascus, the man from the Rejectionist front who was no different from all the rest of the 'terrorists' from Yasser Arafat to Wadi Haddad to Nayef Hawatmeh.

"Now along comes Eli Galia's Hebrew-language book 'George Habash: A Political Biography.' It outlines the reality, far from the noise of propaganda, ignorance and brainwashing, for the Israeli reader who agrees to read a biography of the enemy. Presumably only a few will read it, but this work by Galia, a Middle East affairs expert, is very deserving of praise. It's a political biography, as noted in its subtitle, so it almost entirely lacks the personal, spiritual and psychological dimension; there's not even any gossip. So reading it requires a lot of stamina and specialized tastes. Still, it's fascinating.

"Galia has written a nonjudgmental and certainly non-propagandistic biography. Taking into consideration the Israeli mind today, this isn't to be taken for granted. Galia presents a wealth of information, with nearly a thousand footnotes, about the political path of Habash, a man who was considered dogmatic even though he underwent a number of ideological reversals in his life. If that's dogmatism, what's pragmatism? The dogmatic Habash went through more ideological changes than any Israeli who sticks to the Zionist narrative and doesn't budge an inch - and who of course isn't considered dogmatic.

"In the book, Habash is revealed as a person of many contradictions: a member of the Christian minority who was active in the midst of a large Muslim majority, a bourgeois who became a Marxist, a tough and inflexible leader who was once seen weeping in his room as he wrote an article about Israel's crimes against his people. He had to wander and flee for his life from place to place, sometimes more for fear of Arab regimes than of Israel. He was imprisoned in Syria and fled Jordan, he devoted his life to a revolution that never happened. It's impossible not to admire a person who devoted his life to his ideas, just as you have to admire the scholar who has devoted so much research for so few readers who will take an interest in the dead Habash, in an Israel that has lost any interest in the occupation and the Palestinian struggle.

"The book gives rise to the bleak conclusion that Habash was right. For most of his life he was a bitter enemy of compromises, and Arafat, the man of compromise, won the fascinating historical struggle between the two. They had a love-hate relationship, alternately admiring and scorning each other, and never completely breaking off their connection until Arafat won his Pyrrhic victory. What good have all of Arafat's compromises done for the Palestinian people? What came out of the recognition of Israel, of the settling for a Palestinian state on 22% of the territory, of the negotiations with Zionism and the United States? Nothing but the entrenchment of the Israeli occupation and the strengthening and massive development of the settlement project.

"In retrospect, it makes sense to think that if that's how things were, maybe it would have been better to follow the uncompromising path taken by Habash, who for most of his life didn't agree to any negotiations with Israel, who believed that with Israel it was only possible to negotiate by force, who thought Israel would only change its position if it paid a price, who dreamed of a single, democratic and secular state of equal rights and refused to discuss anything but that. Unfortunately, Habash was right. It's hard to know what would have happened had the Palestinians followed his path, but it's impossible not to admit that the alternative has been a resounding failure.

"Habash, who was born in 1926, wrote about his childhood: 'Our enemies are not the Jews but rather the British... The Jews' relations with the Palestinians were natural and sometimes even good' (p 16). He went to study medicine at the American University in Beirut; his worried mother and father wrote him that he should stay there; a war was on. But Habash returned to volunteer at a clinic in Lod; he returned and he saw. The sight of the Israeli soldiers who invaded the clinic in 1948 ignited in him the flame of violent resistance: 'I was gripped by an urge to shoot them with a pistol and kill them, and in the situation of having no weapons I used mute words. I watched them from the sidelines and said to myself: This is our land, you dogs, this is our land and not your land. We will stay here to kill you. You will not win this battle.' (p 22) On July 14 he was expelled from his home with the rest of his family. He never returned to the city he loved. He never forgot the scenes of Lod in 1948, nor did he forget the idea of violent resistance. Can the Israeli leader understand how he felt?

"Now based in Beirut, he took part in terror operations against Jewish and Western targets in Beirut, Amman and Damascus: 'I personally lobbed grenades and I participated in assassination attempts. I had endless enthusiasm when I was doing that. At the time, I considered my life worthless relative to what was happening in Palestine.' 'The Palestinian Che Guevara' - both of them were doctors - made up his mind to wreak vengeance for the Nakba upon the West and the leaders of the Arab regimes that had abandoned his people, even before taking vengeance on the Jews. He even planned to assassinate King Abdullah of Jordan. He founded a new student organization in Beirut called the Commune, completed his specialization in pediatrics and wrote: 'I took the diploma and said: Congratulations, Mother, your son is a doctor, so now let me do what I really want to do. And indeed, that's what happened.' (p 41)

"Habash was once asked whether he was the Che Guevara of the middle East and replied that he would prefer to be the Mao Zedong of the Arab masses. He was the first to raise the banner of return and and in the meantime he opened clinics for Palestinian refugees in Amman. For him, the road back to Lod passed through Amman, Beirut and Damascus. The idea of Pan-Arabism stayed with him for many years, until he despaired of that as well. He also had to leave medicine: 'I am a pediatrician, I have enjoyed this greatly. I believed that I had the best job in the world but I had to make the decision I have taken and I don't regret it... A person cannot split his emotions in that way: to heal on the one hand and kill on the other. This is the time when he must say to himself: one or the other.'

"This book isn't arrogant and it isn't Orientalist; it is respectful of the Palestinian national ideology and those who articulated and lived it, even if the author doesn't necessarily agree with that ideology or identify with it. This is something quite rare in the Israeli landscape when it comes to Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. Nor does the author venerate what's not worthy of veneration, and he doesn't have any erroneous romantic or other illusions. Galia presents a bitter, tough, uncompromising, very much failed and sometimes exceedingly cruel struggle for freedom, self-respect and liberation. And this is what is said in the founding document of the PFLP, which Habash established in December 1967 after having despaired of Palestinian unity: 'The only weapon left to the masses in order to restore history and progress and truly defeat enemies and potential enemies in the long run is revolutionary violence... The only language that the enemy understands is the language of revolutionary violence.' (p 125)

"But this path too met with failure. 'The essential aim of hijacking airplanes,' wrote Habash, 'was to bring the Palestinian question out of anonymity and expose it to Western public opinion, because at that time it was unknown in Europe and in the United States. We wanted to undertake actions that would make an impression on the senses of the entire world... There was international ignorance regarding our suffering, in part due to the Zionist movement's monopoly on the mass media in the West.' (p 151) The PFLP plane hijackings in the early 1970s indeed achieved international recognition of the existence of the Palestinian problem, but so far this recognition hasn't led anywhere. The only practical outcome has been the security screenings at airports everywhere around the world - and thank you, George Habash. I read Galia's book on a number of flights, even though this isn't an airplane book, and I kept thinking that were it not for Habash my wanderings at airports would have been a lot shorter. In my heart I forgave him for that, for what other path was open to him and his defeated, humiliated and bleeding people?

"Not much is left of his ideas. What has come of the scientific idealism and the politicization of the masses, the class struggle and the anti-imperialism, the Maoism and of course the transformation of the struggle against Israel into an armed struggle, which according to the plans was supposed to develop from guerrilla warfare into a national war of liberation? Fifty years after the founding of the PFLP and 10 years after the death of its founder, what remains? Habash's successor, Abu Ali Mustafa, was assassinated by Israel in 2001; his successor's successor, Ahmad Saadat, has been in an Israeli prison since 2006 and very little remains of the PFLP.

"During all my decades covering the Israeli occupation, the most impressive figures I met belonged to the PFLP, but now not much remains except fragments of dreams. The PFLP is a negligible minority in intra-Palestinian politics, a movement that once thought to demand equal power with Fatah and its leader, Arafat. And the occupation? It's strong and thriving and its end looks further off than ever. If that isn't failure, what is?

"Yet Habash always knew how to draw lessons from failure after failure. How resonant today is his conclusion following the Naksa, the defeat in 1967 that broke his spirit, to the effect that 'the enemy of the Palestinians is colonialism, capitalism and the global monopolies... This is the enemy that gave rise to the Zionist movement, made a covenant with it, nurtured it, protected it and accompanied it until it brought about the establishment of the aggressive and fascistic State of Israel.' (p 179) From the Palestinian perspective, not much has changed. It used to be that this was read in Israel as hostile and shallow propaganda. Today it could be read otherwise.

"After the failure of 1967, Habash redefined the goal: the establishment of a democratic state in Palestine in which Arabs and Jews would live as citizens with equal rights. Today this idea, too, sounds a bit less strange and threatening than it did when Habash articulated it.

"On the 40th anniversary of Israel's founding, Habash wrote that Israel was galloping toward the Greater Land of Israel and that the differences between the right and the left in the country were becoming meaningless. How right he was about that, too. At the same time, he acknowledged Israel's success and the failure of the Palestinian national movement. And he was right about that, too.

"And one last correct prophecy, though a bitter one, that he made in 1981: 'The combination of loss of lives and economic damage has considerable influence on Israeli society, and when that happens there will be a political, social and ideological schism on the Israeli street and in the Zionist establishment between the moderate side that demands withdrawal from the occupied territories and the extremist side that continues to cling to Talmudic ideas and dreams. Given the hostility between these two sides, the Zionist entity will experience a real internal split.' (p 329)

"This has yet to happen.

"Imad Saba, a dear friend who was active in the PFLP and is in exile in Europe, urged me for years to try to meet with Habash and interview him for Haaretz. As far as is known, Habash never met with Israelis, except during the days of the Nakba. Many years ago in Amman I interviewed Hawatmeh, Habash's partner at the start and the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which split off from the PFLP in 1969. At the time of the interview, Habash was also living in Amman and was old and sick. I kept postponing my approach - until he died. When reading the book, I felt very sorry that I had not met this man."

The Balfour Declaration Centenary: 2 Months to Go

November 2, 1917- November 2, 2017

Article 20 of the Palestinian National Charter (1968):

"The Balfour Declaration, the mandate for Palestine and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong."

Fact Checking Zionist Trolls

Comment threads following items on Palestine/Israel posted on the Internet invariably contain contributions originating from cogs in one or another part of Israel's vast propaganda mill. These contributions, of course, are designed merely to sow confusion and muddy the waters.

Here, for example, are 3 examples taken from the comment thread following the article Canadian 'crusader' sparks outrage with Bethlehem anti-Muslim video (middleeasteye.net, 13/3/17). They are consecutive and the orchestration is clear:

Fasdunkle:

PLO isn't secular. Read the Constitution of Palestine

Lloyd Kennedy/ Fasdunkle:

Article 4 of the constitution states that
1: Islam is the official religion in Palestine. Respect and sanctity of all other heavenly religions shall be maintained.
2: The principles of Islamic Shari'a shall be the main source of legislation.
3: Arabic shall be the official language.
It doesn't state that the ruling authorities are not secular.

Nan/ Lloyd Kennedy:

Sharia is Islamic religious law, so yes, it does say the authorities are not secular. They must follow Islamic religious law.

***

Total bullshit, of course.

Here is Article 4 of the Palestinian National Charter (1968)*:

"The Palestinian identity is a genuine, essential and inherent characteristic; it is transmitted from parents to children. The Zionist occupation and the dispersal of the Palestinian Arab people, through the disasters which befell them, do not make them lose their Palestinian identity and their membership of the Palestinian community, nor do they negate them."

Article 16, the only one that refers to religion, reads as follows:

"The liberation of Palestine, from a spiritual point of view, will provide the Holy Land with an atmosphere of safety and tranquility, which in turn will safeguard the country's religious sanctuaries and guarantee freedom of worship and of visit to all, without discrimination of race, color, language, or religion. Accordingly, the people of Palestine look to all spiritual forces in the world for support."

[*Basic Political Documents of the Armed Palestinian Resistance Movement, Leila S. Kadi, PLO Research Center, 1969, pp 137 & 139]

Bill Clinton's Handshake Charade

However appalling, Trump is really only the tip of the iceberg of American ignorance and narcissism. Take our latest US visitor, for example, Clinton/Obama diplomat Dennis Ross, currently wowing them at Murdoch's Australian:

"Ross grew up in a non-religious Californian household, the son of a Catholic father and Jewish mother. At 19, inspired by the Six-Day War, he became religiously Jewish." (Long road to Israeli-Palestinian peace littered with broken deals and lost will, Brad Norington, 15/7/17)

Note that Ross was radicalised at 19. It seems that, in the US, such radicalisation, from all American boy to Zionist fanatic, is the perfect qualification and starting point for a career in US-style Middle East diplomacy. Sort of puts Jared Kushner in perspective, doesn't it?

And here's the pinnacle of that career, according to Norington:

"During an impressive career, Ross... helped facilitate the historic White House handshake between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin."

Leaving aside discussion of the endless peace-process charade, and the preposterous, childish idea of Clinton's that this then (1993) 76-year-old colonial running sore could be solved by a cheap theatrical handshake, rather than by the hard yards of a decolonisation process and the rendering of justice to Palestine's dispossessed and occupied, let's just look at the minutiae of this supposedly "impressive" achievement, as described elsewhere by Ross himself.  Here he is interviewed by Jason M. Breslow of PBS's Frontline program (6/1/16):

Were you in the Rose Garden when [President Clinton] forged the handshake between [Yasser] Arafat and Rabin?

-Yes.

Tell me about that.

-There is an interesting back story to this... So we [Ross and Secretary of State Warren Christopher] get a call from Rabin... and he says, 'Look there's been a breakthrough with the PLO'... still... he's skeptical. He wants to know what our reaction to this is going to be. Well, our reaction is, this is a historic breakthrough between Israel and the PLO, two national movements competing for the same space, and for the first time they're prepared to recognize each other."

[Note here the false framing. The reality is otherwise. These are not two, long-resident communities living in one patch, in some kind of parity, but struggling to get along. This is the old story of a foreign, usurping settler-colonial movement vs an indigenous resistance movement trying to hold on to or reclaim its ancestral homeland.]

- Now [Israeli foreign minister Shimon] Peres tells us... that there should be a meeting at the White House to sign a Declaration of Principles, but it's too much for the Israeli public to see Arafat there. It's just too much to take.

[Yes, it's simply too much for the colons to stomach their PM meeting with the leader of the people they've been slicing and dicing for the past 76 years - eeeuw! What to do?]

- So it should be Peres and Abu Mazen [Arafat adviser, Mahmoud Abbas] who would come. We actually don't question this...

[Of course you don't, you've been a card-carrying Zionist since 1967 for Christ's sake! Those sniffy colons are your volk! Notice how, even in 1993, the Israelis had their eye on Abbas as a stooge?]

- ... but when we raise it with Clinton... he simply dismisses what we've told him, and immediately leaves the impression that if Arafat wants to come, he's welcome. And he's right... because his instinct is, the only way to bind the two leaders to this is to have this colossal event where they're kind of obligated before the world... We're telling him how uneasy Rabin is, first to even be there and secondly the idea that he's going to shake hands with this guy who, in Rabin's mind, is responsible for  all sorts of acts of terror that, for him, are just very hard to swallow. It's difficult for Rabin to overcome this.

[Notice the fact that Rabin's hands are covered in 76 years of Palestinian blood nowhere occurs to Ross as a possible difficulty for Arafat or the Palestinians? This is America's idea of honest brokerage.]

- Now Clinton kind of raises this in private with the two of them before they go out.

[Bill doesn't want anyone spoiling his show!]

So they both agree to kind of come, and they're hanging around the Oval Office?

- Well, you come in advance, before we go out.

OK

- To the last minute, Rabin is insisting that Arafat can't come in anything that looks like a uniform.

[And of course Ross cannot help but oblige. His Master's Voice after all:]

- We're telling Arafat, 'You can't come with a -- you don't bring a weapon.' You know, he always had a pistol. 'You don't bring a weapon to the White House.' So they come in, and the president talks to both leaders. He is already encouraging them...

[We wouldn't dare tell Rabin...]

Have they met before?

- No.

How are they with each other?

- Rabin is very uneasy. The idea of personally shaking hands with with this guy is physically difficult for him.

[With this guy...?!]

- He couldn't hide his feelings... So here is Clinton, who sees this guy give this remarkable speech on the one hand, and physically, it's hard for him to shake hands with this guy. So the iconic photograph - he literally envelops them with his arms. But he knows he has to create that image... to make peace, and how can you do that if you're not prepared to shake hands? (pbs.org)

A Fairfax Mystery: The PLO Uprising That Wasn't

WTF is going on at Fairfax?

Here's a two-sentence extract from a piece that appeared on the websites of both Fairfax papers (Age & SMH), Life in the shadows for Palestinians caught in Syria's conflict, by Marika Sosnowski:

"After accepting thousands of Palestinians who fled or were displaced by Israel in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967, in 1970 the PLO under Yasser Arafat clashed with Jordan's Hashemite monarchy. The conflict, which came to be known as Black September, ended with thousands of Palestinians killed and the PLO leadership and militants expelled to Lebanon." (26/3/17)

Now here's how it appeared, in a less coherent form, and containing a marked anti-Palestinian tweak, in the print edition of the SMH on March 27 - I've boldened the changes:

"After accepting thousands of Palestinians who fled or were displaced by its Western neighbour Israel in wars in 1948 and 1967, in 1970 the PLO under Yasser Arafat staged an uprising against their Jordanian hosts, the Hashemite monarchy. The conflict, which came to be known as Black September, was violently quashed by the Jordanian Armed Forces. Thousands of Palestinians were killed and the PLO leadership and fighters were expelled to Lebanon."

Needless to say, anyone with a comprehensive knowledge of modern Palestinian history would know that there was no Palestinian "uprising" in Jordan in 1970. What there was was a bloody crackdown by King Hussein on the armed Palestinian resistance movement based there, and a heroic, but ultimately doomed, defence by the latter against the Jordanian army's vastly superior numbers and firepower.

So how do we account for the two versions? And which is Sosnowski's, who, according to her twitter account, is a Melbourne University-trained lawyer and "regular Middle East commentator"?

Tom Hayden, A Cautionary Tale

Tom Hayden (1939-2016) died on October 23. He was one of the leaders of the new Left Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organisation in the United States in the 1960s. Despite the strength of pro-civil rights and anti-Vietnam War activism of the 60s and 70s, this did not translate into an understanding of, let alone an engagement with, the oppressed Palestinians, except to some extent by Black Panther radicals.

While SDS activists such as Hayden identified with (and even met with) the Viet Cong, there is only one reference in Kirkpatrick Sale's massive 700+ page book on SDS to the Middle East. This refers to a certain Sue Eanet visiting "leaders of Al Fatah in the spring of [1969]," and writing "an adulatory three-part account of the 'Palestinian liberation struggle' in [SDS's paper] New Left Notes." Sale records in a footnote that "This last position received a great deal of flak from Jewish SDSers, several of whom wrote to the paper with strangulating outrage. But as near as one can figure out, 'Jewish consciousness' was not high among SDSers or student activists generally, who were more likely simply to ignore their Jewish heritage or, if committed revolutionaries, discard it as 'bourgeois' baggage." (SDS, 1974, p 517)

Hayden, of course, would move on from 60s/70s Left radicalism to marry the actress Jane Fonda and carve out a career as a liberal Democrat politician in California. What interests us here, however, is that, in 1982, the pair turned up in Israel, in the immediate wake of Israel's invasion of Lebanon. The mainstream US press reported their appearance at the time as follows:

"Jane Fonda and her husband, Tom Hayden, arrived today for a weeklong visit here and said that the Palestine Liberation Organization's terrorist acts and refusal to recognize Israel had made the invasion of Lebanon inevitable. The visit was arranged by the Israeli Association for the Welfare of Soldiers, which has invited several American entertainers to Israel to improve morale." (Jane Fonda criticizes PLO, UPI, 3/7/82)

"Today Jane Fonda and her husband, Tom Hayden, briefly visited the Israeli position at St. Anthony's School and watched the shelling [of West Beirut]. The movie star and her husband have been visiting Israeli soldiers and Lebanese wounded in in the invasion. Israeli soldiers crowded around Miss Fonda to be photographed with her, but she looked distant and uncomfortable. Mr Swersky, the Israeli command spokesman, gave Miss Fonda and her husband a private briefing on the military situation. Mr Hayden, who was a leader of the opposition to the Vietnam War, has said that the Israeli invasion is justified because the PLO refused to recognize Israel." (Israelis keep reminding Beirut that siege is on, James M Markham, New York Times, 5/7/82)

So what possessed this doyen of 60s Leftist radicalism to become a running dog of the Israelis, to revive the old phrase, or, to put it in more Zionist terms, one of Israel's useful fools? Needless to say, it's a very American story, only prised out of him by another, much later Israeli onslaught on Lebanon, this time in 2006, in the form of a mea culpa with the title, I was Israel?s dupe (counterpunch.org, 20/7/06). Here is a slimmed-down version:

"Twenty-five years ago (in 1981) I stared into the eyes of Michael Berman, chief operative for his congressman-brother, Howard Berman. I was a neophyte running for the California Assembly in a district that the Bermans claimed belonged to them. 'I represent the Israeli defense forces,' Michael said. I thought he was joking. He wasn't. Michael seemed to imagine himself the gatekeeper protecting Los Angeles' Westside for Israel's political interests, and those of the famous Berman-Waxman machine. Since Jews represented one-third of the Democratic district's primary voters, Berman held a balance of power...

"I had traveled to Israel in a generally supportive capacity, meeting officials from all parties... befriending peace advocates like the writer Amos Oz. I also met with Palestinians and commented favorably on the works of Edward Said. As a result, a Berman ally prepared an anti-Hayden dossier in an attempt to discredit my candidacy with the Democratic leadership in the California state capital. This led to the deli lunch with Michael Berman. He and his brother were privately leaning toward an upcoming young prosecutor named Adam Schiff... But they calculated that Schiff couldn't win without name recognition, so they were considering 'renting' me the Assembly seat, Berman said. But there was one condition: that I always be a 'good friend of Israel.'

"That wasn't a particular problem at the time. Since the 1970s I had favored some sort of two-state solution. I felt close to the local Jewish activists who descended from the labor movement and participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements... While I believed the Palestinians had a right to self-determination, I didn't share the animus of some on the American left who questioned Israel's very legitimacy...

"I can offer my real-life experience to the present discussion about the existence and power of an 'Israel lobby.' It is not as monolithic as some argue, but it is far more than just another interest group in a pluralist political world... During my ultimate 18 years in office, I received most of my Jewish support from the ranks of the liberal and less observant voters. But I also received support from conservative Jews who saw themselves as excluded by a Jewish (and democratic) establishment. However, all these rank-and-file constituencies were attuned to the question of Israel, even in local and state elections, and would never vote for a candidate perceived as anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian. I had to be certified 'kosher', not once but over and over again.

"The certifiers were the elites, beginning with rabbis and heads of the multiple mainstream Jewish organizations... An important vetting role was held as well by the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), a group closely associated with official parties in Israel. When necessary, Israeli ambassadors, counsels-general and other officials would intervene with statements declaring someone a 'friend of Israel.'...

"I won the hard-fought primary by 51% to 45%. The Bermans stayed neutral... But that summer I made the mistake of my political career. The Israel Defense Forces invaded Lebanon, and [Israeli counsel-general in Los Angeles] Benny Navon wanted Jane and me to be supportive... Ever curious, and aware of my district's politics, I decided we should go to the Middle East. But only as long as the Israeli 'incursion,' as it was delicately called, was limited to the 10-kilometer space near the Lebanese border, as a cushion against rocket fire. Benny Navon assured me that the 'incursion' was limited... I also made clear our opposition to the use of any fragmentation bombs in the area, and my ultimate political identification with what Israel's Peace Now would say.

"There followed a descent into moral ambiguity and realpolitik that still haunts me today. When we arrived at the Israel-Lebanon border, the game plan promised by Benny Navon had changed utterly. Instead of a localized border conflict, Israel was invading and occupying all of Lebanon - with us in tow. Its purpose was to destroy militarily the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) haven in Lebanon. This had been Gen. Ariel Sharon's secret plan all along."

You can access the full text at Counterpunch. Suffice it to say that copies of it should be compulsory reading for all Young Labor activists aspiring to climb the greasy pole, because sure enough, sooner or later, in one form or another, they will find themselves being approached by a Michael Berman figure, proposing that they become 'a friend of Israel,' and advising them that an all-expenses-paid 'study tour' of Israel would be the-mother-of-all career-enhancing moves.

Learn from Tom Hayden...

The Awakening of Dr Swee

One of the best personal accounts I have ever read of the journey from (Palestine) ignorance to (Palestine) awareness may be found in the memoir From Beirut to Jerusalem: A Woman Surgeon with the Palestinians (1989) by the remarkable and saintly British-Singaporean doctor, Swee Chai Ang.*

Her awakening came in 1982, in the context of Israel's brutal invasion and occupation of Lebanon. Here she is at the beginning of her journey:

"Lebanon and Beirut were were unfamiliar names to me, but Israel was not: my church had taught me that the children of Israel had were the chosen people of God. Many of my Christian friends held that the gathering of the Jews from all over the world into the State of Israel was the fulfilment of scriptural prophecies.

"Israel had my support for other reasons. In London, I had spent hours watching television programmes which showed how appallingly the Jewish people had suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Both of my parents had suffered at the hands of the Nazis' allies, the Japanese Imperial Army. As a refugee in a foreign country, I understood what it meant to be stateless. The creation of the State of Israel, giving the Jews a home free from persecution, seemed to me to be an act of justice - even one of divine justice.

"The newspapers said that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon had made a hundred thousand people homeless and had killed fourteen thousand, and this upset me terribly. I could not understand why Israel had done this. There had to be a good reason for it. Most of the news stories in Britain depicted the invasion as an attempt by Israel to flush out the Palestine Liberation Organisation - or PLO - from its bases in Lebanon. All I knew about the PLO was that it was an Arab group which hijacked passenger jets, planted bombs and hated Jews.

"Some of my Christian elders told me that the Palestinians were the descendants of the Philistines of the Old Testament, and everyone knew that the giant Goliath was a conquering Philistine who terrorised his opponents. The tale of David and Goliath had been one of my favourites when I was a Sunday school teacher: I loved telling my kids how little David brought down the mighty Goliath. (I am a couple of inches under five foot tall myself.)

"From the news coverage, however, it looked as though Israel had turned into Goliath: a swaggering giant bringing destruction, terror and death to neighbouring Lebanon. An Israeli leader told the press that much as he regretted the casualties, to make an omelette one first had to crack eggs.

"Crack eggs? That remark shocked me. What kind of 'omelette' was Israel trying to make, and were the people of Lebanon eggs to be cracked? It was clear from the news reports that nearly all of the people who had been killed, wounded or made homeless were civilians, many of them women or children. Bombing civilians is a disgraceful way to make war. The bombs fell for days: on playgrounds, cemeteries, houses, hospitals, schools and factories. Even International Red Cross ships bringing food and medical supplies to Beirut were targets." (pp 1-3)

Now here she is at the end of her journey of discovery:

"The Palestinian-Israeli conflict exists because Israel could only be created over the destruction of Palestine and the expulsion of its people. In 1988, the State of Israel celebrated forty years of existence; while the Palestinian exiles remembered the loss of their homeland. For Israel to flourish, all traces of Palestine had to be obliterated. The wounds inflicted by Israel go on festering; Israeli bombs cause death and destruction; torture and mutilation in Israeli detention camps, such as the Ansar camps, will take more than a lifetime to fade from the memory. And Israelis complain that the Palestinians refuse to 'recognise' the State of Israel. After being forced to give up their country, their homes - even their lives - the Palestinians are being asked to surrender their souls to the victors." (p 246)

[*See Dr Swee in action in one of the most moving talks I have ever heard: Making a Small Difference: TEDxUCLWoman, https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9oH7HoxmLk]

Remembering Beirut's Sabra & Shatila Massacre, 34-Years On

The Israeli army invaded Lebanon in June 1982, laying siege to a resistant West Beirut.

A US-negotiated ceasefire led to an agreement allowing for the evacuation of PLO forces from West Beirut to Tunis. The agreement also guaranteed the protection of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians in West Beirut once the evacuation had been completed. Following the further withdrawal of a US-French-Italian multinational peacekeeping force from the area, and in violation of the ceasefire, Israeli forces entered West Beirut, blockaded the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra & Shatila, and, from 16-18 September, unleashed their ally, the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia on the defenceless, war-weary residents of the camps. Up to 3,500 were massacred.

A Singaporean orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Swee Chai Ang, working for the Palestinian Red Crescent in Sabra's Gaza Hospital, graphically recorded her dawning horror at the sheer scale and brutality of the massacre in a memoir, From Beirut to Jerusalem: A Woman Surgeon With the Palestinians (1989):

"The Israelis dropped us at the compound of the American Embassy in West Beirut. I did not want to go into the embassy: I wanted to go back to the camps. But I knew that I could not. While the rest of the team went into the embassy, I decided I would walk to the Commodore Hotel to talk to the journalists there, to see if I could find out more about what had happened. Paul Morris came with me.

"It was early in the afternoon when we got to the Commodore Hotel. We went to the press room, where TV crews had just returned from the camps and were reviewing what they had just videoed in Sabra and Shatila.

"First there were shots of the main road of the camp, the road we had been marched down earlier that morning. Heaps of corpses on both sides of the road. The people rounded up by the gunmen had been shot after we left. Then close-ups of the bodies filmed in the side allies of the camps. Bodies piled on top of each other - mutilated bodies, with arms chopped off - bloated decaying bodies that had obviously died a day or two before. Bodies whose limbs were still tied to bits of wires and bodies which bore marks of having been beaten up before their murder. Bodies of children - little girls and boys - and women and old men. Some bodies lay in blood that was still red, others in pools of brownish black fluid. Bodies of women with clothes removed but too mutilated to tell whether they were sexually assaulted or just tortured to death.

"I started to cry. For the first time I grasped the scale of what had happened. The truth hit me painfully. I had been so busy that I had no time to think. But now, I knew that while we had been trying to save a handful of people in the operating theatres of Gaza Hospital, the camp folks had been dying by the thousands outside. Besides being shot dead, people were tortured before being killed. They were beaten brutally, electric wires were tied round limbs, eyes were dug out, women were raped, often more than once, children were dynamited alive. Looking at all the broken bodies, I began to think that those who had died quickly were the lucky ones.

"The machine-gun rattle that we had heard from the hospital was not fighting between PLO terrorists and Israelis as I had vaguely assumed, but had been the sound of whole families being shot dead in cold blood. The heavy explosive noises we had heard had been the shelling of camp homes. The camps were completely sealed in by Israeli tanks and not even a child could sneak out past them. When we asked the two thousand people hiding in the Gaza Hospital to run away, they had nowhere to go. So they were all captured when they left the hospital, and indeed, many of them were murdered later that morning. People full of hope and life were now just mutilated corpses. These were the folks who after months of bombardment had come back from the bomb shelters to live in the camps. They had been so optimistic just a few days ago. They had believed the promises of the USA and other powerful nations that they would be left in peace, if the PLO left. They all thought they were being promised a chance of life.

"I had watched them rebuilding their shattered lives and homes just a few days before. I had spoken to women who had watched their sons, brothers and husbands being evacuated with the PLO under the peace agreement and then had taken the guns left behind to surrender them to the Lebanese Army or throw them away on the rubbish dump. I had eaten in their homes and had drunk Arabic coffee with them. My surgical skills had enabled me to treat a few people, to save them so that they could be sent out into the streets, unarmed, to be shot down again, this time successfully. I hated my own ignorance which had deceived me into believing that we all had a real hope of peace in Sabra and Shatila, a real chance of a new life. Like everyone else from the West, I thought things would be alright once the PLO left. I thought they were the ones whose presence caused all the attacks on the camps.

"I had thought the old people could retire when the PLO went, and the children could grow up - instead of having bullets put through their heads, and having their throats slit. I was a fool, a real fool. It had never occurred to me that this would happen. It was a grim moment. I felt forsaken by God, by men, by a world without conscience. How could little children suffer the agony and the terror of watching scenes of torture, of their loved ones being killed, of their homes being blown up and bulldozed over. For these children, the mental scars, the psychological wounds would probably never heal. It was one thing to die suddenly. It was entirely different to watch loved ones being tortured and killed while awaiting ones own turn." (pp 66-68)

Gough Whitlam: To PLO or Not to PLO 3

"The next speaker was Lionel Murphy. He opposed the final position put by Gough and reminded Cabinet of the decision taken to force the Australian Wheat Board to honour its contract to supply wheat to Egypt on credit. He said that had we not stood by correct principles then, we would not have escaped the consequences of the energy crisis as we did. It never pays in the long run, he said, to forsake principles, and in this case, we had people who, so far as we knew, were law-abiding citizens merely wanting to come to our country to put the case for the Palestinians. It didn't matter, he argued, whether we were for or against that case, justice demanded that they be given a chance to put their case to the Australian people. He said it didn't matter how Whitlam's final decision was dressed up, it was discrimination based on political expediency and would not stand the test of history. He concluded by saying he supported my case without qualification.

"It was a splendid defence of our position and had a vote been taken straight after Murphy's speech we would have won! I was now quite confident of winning, but I was not to know that Willesee would follow Whitlam and ask Cabinet to reject his own proposition. I half suspected that something was amiss because Willesee had leaned over to whisper something to Whitlam which caused him to nod approvingly to whatever it was he had said.

"Opposition then came from Minister for the ACT Gordon Bryant who charged that the PLO was not only at war with Israel but also at war with anyone who got in their way. He supported Beazley's argument that a visit by the PLO would stir up local tensions. He was not concerned about the electoral consequences, but although normally we would accept visits from both parties to a dispute, we had to remember that the PLO was at war with mankind.

"It was at this point that Don Willesee was brought into the debate for the second time. He had spoken only briefly when introducing his proposal. It was obvious now that he had changed his mind; and to me equally obvious that this is what he had whispered to Gough because he called Willesee even though he had already spoken once, and even though he had not asked for the call. He began by saying that he wanted the discussion kept within Ministerial circles until the dispute relating to Hartley and the PLO was known. He was not keen, he said, on the delegation coming to Australia. A report had been received through Peking suggesting that it might be preferable to defer the visit. He said it was a very difficult situation and he 'now' believed that we should tell them not to come at this time.'

"It was indeed a very difficult situation for Willesee! There were elements within his own Department who had counselled against the visit. His own Prime Minister had switched sides after hearing Wheeldon and Beazley. But Willesee came from the same state as the chief Ministerial protagonists for the Jewish cause. Don liked all three, and had a very deep personal respect for them and an admiration for their intellect. By an intelligent count of heads he could tell that the voting would be extremely close and he just didn't want his vote to result in a one vote win for all the things that Beazley and Wheeldon had warned against. If Cabinet was going to split down the centre he was not prepared to take any risks!

"Faced with what seemed the certain defeat of the original proposal to accept all the delegates, everyone accepted the view that the one vetoed by West Germany should be excluded. I sought to salvage something from the wreck by proposing an amendment that would admit the two who had been accepted by the United Nations General Assembly. There seemed to be no reason why anyone could object to them, and our acceptance would show that we were not taking sides. But the vote showed I had badly misjudged the mood of Cabinet, for it was only Whitlam's vote that saved Beazley's amendment from being lost, and the votes of Whitlam and Willesee that prevented my amendment from being carried.

"Gough had insisted on treating Beazley's opposition as an amendment to the motion to admit the four delegates. It probably didn't matter much because the die had been cast; but it was, of course, contrary to all the rules of debate to accept an amendment that was a direct negative of the motion. He apparently believed there was some technical advantage in doing this whereas, in fact, it was a disadvantage; because an even vote would have meant its defeat and the same rule would have applied if a vote were taken on the motion. In fact, it was this that forced Gough to vote in the show of hands I demanded. He frequently abstained from voting on issues whenever his own vote would make no difference to the outcome. So, when he declared the so-called amendment carried on the voices, I immediately called for a show of hands. Gough correctly guessed my motive but when only 9 of the 18 Ministers put up their hands in support of Beazley's amendment he was forced to show his own or see it defeated. So the amendment was declared carried by 10 votes to 8. Bowen had voted against the amendment and Morrison for it, but as the meeting was almost finished, and before my motion could be put, Morrison and Bowen tacitly paired by leaving the Cabinet meeting together. My motion was then put and declared lost on the voices which was confirmed on a show of hands, 7 for and 9 against, with Gough voting against giving entry visas even to the two delegates who had been given credentials to UNGA."

Gough Whitlam: To PLO or Not to PLO 2

"Lionel Bowen appeared to sense that Gough was about to somersault and that Willesee and I were going to be left high and dry, so he took the point that the matter should never have been brought to Cabinet and ought to be left to the Minister for Labor and Immigration. He said, 'Clyde has already said that he is willing to let them in. We should do that if he wants to.' But Gough, no doubt realising that the issue had already gone too far and that it was therefore too late to sweep it under my carpet, reminded Cabinet that both Willesee and I had sought Cabinet's guidance because we feared the consequences of a decision taken either way. There were enough 'hear, hears' around the room to convince Bowen that a decision could not be avoided so he did not persist with his point.

"Bill Hayden took the line I had expected. He said that he would be disappointed if Cabinet decided not to issue the visas. Israel, he said, had been successful in getting its story across in Australia and other countries and the Arabs had been equally unsuccessful. To talk about the PLO threatening the boundaries of Israel, he said, was sheer nonsense because there were no internationally acceptable boundaries of Israel. He argued that the Arabs had been treated quite badly, but as they were accepted into society they would become more responsible. But responsibility, he said, could not be expected from them while the world treated them as terrorists and outlaws. 'We shouldn't play for teams; and so to deny the delegation the right to even put their case would be establishing an unhappy principle.' The Government, he declared, shouldn't allow emotions to overshadow the real issue.

"I had been waiting for Beazley to come into the debate because I wanted to reply to him as I knew his contribution would be a telling one. I had expected him to speak earlier, but apparently he was well satisfied with Wheeldon's contribution. However, Hayden's argument was too persuasive to ignore and Beazley immediately followed. He agreed with Hayden about the emotional issues involved, but took another view. It was not opportune for the PLO to come to Australia now, he argued; neither would he accept a delegation from the IRA while they were responsible for bombings in the UK. 'I mean,' he said, 'that I wouldn't accept IRA supporters as representatives of the IRA while they are planting bombs in London.' For these reasons he was against any of the delegation members being permitted to enter Australia.

"Beazley's speeches were always good, but coming after Wheeldon's, this was something of an anticlimax. It fell far short of what I had expected. But I could tell from Gough's affirmative 'head-nodding' that he had already decided to switch. He was beginning to see the political consequences of his original stance. Joe Riordan was heavily dependent upon Jewish support in his elctorate of Phillip. Joe Berinson was an influential backbencher and shared with Riordan the distinction of being the most powerful backbench debater in Caucus. And there were other reasons: not the least of which of which was the financial backing given to the Leader's fund by Jewish sources. And, in any event, if the decision went against the Arabs, Cabinet anonymity would guarantee that no one would question the reasonable assumption that Gough had been over-ruled.

"I followed Beazley and told Cabinet we would be doing ourselves less than justice if we debated the question in a climate of heat. We ought to look at the question calmly and make an objective assessment of the real issues and reach a rational conclusion. I said that it was not history that was important, but whether we adopted a correct national approach to the principles involved. This called for a sensible and rational understanding of what was being proposed. 'I will clear the visas,' I declared, 'unless Willesee says 'No', and providing they are cleared of any suspicions of being involved in terrorist activities.' I reminded Cabinet of the decision taken on 15 October 1973 in response to a motion put on the notice paper by DLP Senator Kane concerning the Middle East war when it was agreed by the Government that there should be no departure from its neutral and even-handed policy in the Middle East. The government, I said, should not be taking sides in the Middle East dispute and should not be seen to be taking sides either. 'The PLO is fighting a war! War itself is terrorism,' I argued. However, I said I would be prepared to support a deferment of the matter if that would solve anything. 'But deferment would not solve this issue,' I went on, 'we must take it head-on and face the political consequences whatever they may be. If the PLO comes here, the Government will lose votes and we ought to recognise this, but we must not submit to blackmail from any group.'

"For the third time Gough came into the debate. This time, he began ambivalently. He said that he had been put in a non-partisan stance. Freedom of entry and the right of the PLO to be heard were something we ought to support, he said, but lamented the fact that the granting of visas would not get the government any votes. He said he was worried! 'The PLO,' he confided, 'had approached us through diplomatic channels and we put them off.' They are aware that Hartley is not supported by the Government. This was a clever tactic because he knew that most of his Ministers shared his dislike for Hartley. However, only two or three were swayed by their hostility to Hartley. Gough said he recognised that the Palestinians were entitled to have a country of their own 'but if we take Beazley's point, it will exacerbate feelings within the Australian community to allow entry to a delegation from the PLO. However, if we refuse them entry we would also have to deny entry to Zionist groups.' He argued that all PLO members were not terrorists and that Israel was just as intransigent as the PLO. He concluded: 'Although it may be against our principles, I feel we ought to advise the Ministers not to issue visas. These representatives can't tell us anything we don't already know.'

"Once again, Gough had caved in under pressure. He was afraid of the political, rather than the electoral, consequences of standing by proper principles. I was the one who would have been forced to accept the odium for the decision and it made me angry that after leading us to believe he supported our line, he should leave us holding the bag. Even so, I still thought there was a good chance we could win, but I was determined that if we were defeated on the voices I would call for a show of hands and thus force Gough to register a recorded vote."

To be continued...

Gough Whitlam: To PLO or Not to PLO 1

Vale Gough Whitlam (1916-2014). With respect to the Middle East conflict, we've all heard about his Labor government's (1972-75) so-called 'even-handed' Palestine/Israel policy. But what did it look like in practice, and just who in the Whitlam government was doing what (and why) for Israel at the time?

What follows is an edited extract, over three consecutive posts, from then Labour & Immigration Minister Clyde Cameron's The Cameron Diaries (1990), pages 35-40:

 "The matter came before Cabinet on 29 January 1975... via Senator Willesee, who proposed that four members of the [Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)] delegation be granted entry visas...

"Gough opened the debate in support of visas being issued to all members with the exception of one who was suspected by the West German Government of being involved in the massacre of Israeli athletes attending the Olympic Games in Munich... He referred to the Party's platform and to the need to maintain an even-handed policy in the Middle East. In fact, Gough had made such a powerful and persuasive case that I felt it was unnecessary to speak. Willesee, who had already been assured of Gough's support, shared my belief that the proposal would be endorsed notwithstanding the opposition we knew would come from Kim Beazley. So, he contented himself with a brief, almost casual, outline of his proposition.

"But then Senator John Wheeldon charged into the debate with a spirited and at times bitter denunciation of Gough's argument. He accused Gough of inconsistency in that he had issued instructions against granting even transit visas to South African sporting teams en route to New Zealand and on the grounds that South Africa was practising apartheid. The PLO, he taunted, were not prepared to even recognise the right of Israel to exist. In no circumstances, declared Wheeldon, should the Australian Government issue visas to PLO representatives as such. To do so, he argued, would lead to the inescapable fact that that we were granting official recognition to Arab terrorist organisations. The PLO, he said, had openly boasted of their terrorist activities and had publicly and specifically refused to disclaim that their goal was the destruction of the state of Israel.

"Wheeldon asserted that if the PLO were allowed entry to Australia they would most certainly engage in pressure tactics here. Indeed, he continued, they are already doing this from the PLO office in Melbourne which operates under the spiritual guidance and camouflage provided by Bill Hartley [of the Victorian Socialist Left]. No other government, he claimed, had received PLO delegates; and we would be guilty of splitting principles and of gross hypocrisy if we granted entry visas to a delegation representing the PLO. Moreover, it would be highly damaging electorally to the Party and to the Government.

"Wheeldon's outburst caught me by surprise. It caught Gough too! We knew that Kim Beazley had often expressed his opposition to the PLO and to Hartley's involvement in their cause. But hardly anyone had been prepared for Wheeldon's emotive blast. And yet, upon reflection, I should not have been surprised because he had often echoed Beazley's sentiments about Hartley. Moreover, it was well known that he was very close to Joe Berinson, the highly respected and very talented Jewish Labor Member for the Division of Perth.

"Berinson, a qualified pharmacist who had later won a law degree, was dedicated to the cause of Israel. Beazley had been influenced by his brilliant intellect, and it had now become evident Wheeldon had come under his spell as well.

"As soon as Wheeldon finished, I knew that one or two Ministers might have doubts about the advisability of granting the request, but with Whitlam, Willesee and me supporting the proposal I had little doubt it would be carried. Lionel Murphy, Rex Connor and Bill Hayden too, had on previous occasions indicated their support for an even-handed policy for the Middle East. However, to my surprise, Gough began to back and fill, and as soon as Wheeldon finished, he again entered the debate to say that he had received a note from Al Grassby, Special Consultant to Murphy on Community Relations, to the effect that the delegation may not come even if it were approved. I began to wonder whether under the ferocity of Wheeldon's attack Gough was going to water."

To be continued...

Mandela: 'Arafat is a Comrade-in-Arms'

If you search the Internet for evidence of Nelson Mandela's support for the Palestinian struggle, you'll generally come across this particular statement: "We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

Given that too little is known of his principled and unequivocal support for the Palestinians (never of course referenced in the mainstream media), I'm posting the relevant sections of an interview he did with the presenter of the US Nightline program, Ted Koppel in 1990. The interview took place at a public meeting in the City College of New York. At the time, Mandela, not long out of prison, was in the US on a tour, advocating for the continuation of international sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Needless to say, Koppel being Koppel, New York being New York, and the US being the US, the question of Mandela's links with Yasser Arafat and the PLO loomed large at the meeting.

Note that I've selected only Mandela's statements on this issue, simplified Koppel's rambling questions, and, in only one case, abridged Mandela's answer. The entire interview, along with Mandela's trademark dignity, gravitas and humour, can be enjoyed at youtube.com/watch?v=mMT36t (My tribute to vintage Nelson Mandela of South Africa part 2)

Mandela: We identify with the PLO because, just like ourselves, they are fighting for the right of self-determination.

Koppel: You met over 3 times with Yasser Arafat.

Mandela: Yasser Arafat, Colonel Gaddafi and Fidel Castro support our struggle to the hilt.

Koppel: You've said some controversial things which might alienate some people in this country. That could cause them to contact their congressman and say, 'Go ahead, lift the sanctions on the South African government.'

Mandela: One of the problems we are facing in the world today are people who do not look at problems objectively but from the point of view of their own interests. That makes things difficult because once a person is not objective, it is extremely difficult to reach an agreement. One of the best examples of this is to think that because Arafat is conducting a struggle against the state of Israel we must therefore condemn him. We can't do that. It is just not possible for any organisation or individual of integrity to do anything of the sort... It would be a grave mistake for us to consider our attitude towards Yasser Arafat on the basis of the interests of the Jewish community. We sympathise with the struggles of the Jewish people and their persecution right down the years... but that does not mean to say that the enemies of Israel are our enemies. We refuse to take that position. You can call it 'impolitical' [Koppel had been suggesting that Mandela needed to be more political/flexible to win American Jewish support] or a moral question [a Jewish leader had earlier accused Mandela of being amoral] but a man who changes his principles depending on who he's dealing with - that is not a man who can lead a nation... They must know what our stand is: Arafat is a comrade-in-arms and we treat him as such.

West's Wild East 2

Continued from the previous post.

Meet the 'Palestinians':-

Nuri Chakry: The best thing that ever happened to Nuri was the Israeli 'takeover' of Palestine. The guy was made for Beirut...

"In his lighter moments... Nuri Chakry was wont to deliver a little speech describing himself. '... There's no such thing as luck. Character is destiny. We do what we are. We get what we deserve. I, for instance, am a Phoenician. I love money. I love trade. The haggle is a game to me; the risk is as heady as hashish. If I'd been here in the old days, I'd have sat in a little booth down by the mole, changing gold for silver, trading camel hides for axe-heads and oil for the lentils of the pharaohs. I am - what do you call it? - a huckster. For me there is only one rule: never do business with a huckster smarter than myself... ' Chakry was a Phoenician, in the sense that he was an adopted citizen of what had once been a Phoenician city. However, the record showed - for those who could dig deep enough to find it - that he was a Palestinian Arab, born in Acre, who had fled the country in 1948 when the Israelis took over." (p 17)
"[Chakry's] Mecca was in the West... In the East he saw no dawn, only a twilight of past glories and a gaggle of jealous princelings enthroned over a bottomless sump of black oil. He would shout any creed you pleased, provided you left your purse in his safe. He would bend to every wind like a reed rooted in a festering swamp. Open the highway from Tyre to Haifa and he would be the first to ride along it, his pockets stuffed with bonds, bursting to do business with the Jews who had cast him out of his homeland. If the Americans played money music, he would dance to the happy tune. If the Russians beat the drum he would march, submissive to the martial beat, a happy camp-follower ready to bolt at the first boom of the guns." (pp 205-205)

Chakry's best mate, Heinrich Muller. An ex-Nazi? But of course!

"[Chakry's] alliance with Heinrich Muller had lasted for 17 years and had produced a handsome profit for both... Heinrich Muller was not Heinrich Muller at all. He was a Swabian, born and babtized Willi Reiman, and he had been one of the most expert forgers in the Third Reich... "(p 66)

Idris Jarrah: PLO terror master; an ex-informer, he's in on the fantasy of liberation merely to line his own pockets...

"Idris Jarrah, the mild-eyed terrorist, was a man who understood the why of things. He understood the personal why, the political why and the public why. And he understood that they were all different and mutually contradictory. The personal why was the simplest of all. Idris Jarrah was a stateless Arab. A stateless Arab had no identity and no future. If he wanted a home, he could have it among the refugees on the Gaza Strip or in the hovel towns west of the Jordan. If he wanted work, he could have that too - as a street sweeper or a day labourer or a pedlar of dates or a carver of trifles for the tourists. But if he wanted an identity - an official assurance that he was a person and not a nameless piece of flotsam - then he had to find a market in which he could buy one, at a price which he could pay. Idris Jarrah had found such a market in the Palestine Liberation Organization - that family of dispossessed zealots which had vowed to drive the Jews into the sea*, re-establish the old borders of Palestine and build an Arab hegemony across the whole of the Fertile Crescent**. As for the price, Jarrah was able to offer solid coinage. He had worked first as an informer and later as a junior detective for the old Palestine police force. He knew the tricks of espionage and the usages of terror. He had learnt from the British the value of system and method. Because he had no illusions and no hopes beyond the Organization, he worked with a nerveless efficiency. Because he never promised more than he could perform, his work always gave satisfaction; and because he believed in neither God nor politicians but only in Idris Jarrah, he was beyond seduction - if not insensible to his self-interest. He spoke his mind, took his orders, delivered a night raid or a bomb explosion, collected his pay and slept happily with any available woman, while greater men tossed in nightmares of frustration or dreamed wild fantasies of empire.

"The political why was equally clear to him. So far as the Arab world was concerned the State of Israel was God. If you did not have it, you would have to invent it as a focus of discontent and as a rallying-point for the sorely divided Muslim world. Without the Jew, what other scapegoat could you find for the slum-dwellers in Alexandria and the beggars who scratched their sores in the courtyard of the Noble Sanctuary and the workless men in Damascus and the hundred and ten thousand lost people camped between the desert and the sea near the city of Samson? Without the Jew, how could you find a common cause for the wealthy Lebanese, the Kuwaitis and the Bedouin tribesmen and the Hashemite King and the Marxist Syrian and the Egyptian Fellah fighting a meaningless war in the Yemen? Arab unity could only express itself in the negative: destroy the Jews! But without the Jews it could hardly express itself at all! As for the restoration of Palestine, Jarrah knew better than most that even if it were restored it would be dismembered overnight by its jealous neighbours. So the Organization was dedicated to a fantasy, but fantasy was the stock-in-trade of politicians and they paid large sums of money to preserve it and to keep men like Idris Jarrah working for their rival causes.

"And this was the public why. The Egyptians wanted Israel destroyed, but they lacked the money and the resources to do it. The Syrian socialists wanted to get rid of the little king of Jordan, who was a friend of the British and a symbol of outdated tribal monarchy. The Jordanians wanted a highway to the sea and a port on the Mediterranean. The Lebanese wanted money and trade and the Russians wanted a socialist arc from Baghdad to the Pillars of hercules. For each of them, the Palestine Liberation Organization had a peculiar value. They could praise it publicly or damn it in secret and pay generously to keep it alive." (pp 24-25) And the Americans, Morris?

Although West's 'Palestinians' might rivet the likes of Sheridan, and provide grist for his Zionist mill, they are little more than cardboard cut-outs. Nor has West done his history homework. Remember that he's writing about the period leading up to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The PLO was created in 1964, with Arab League backing, but did not embrace the concept of armed struggle against Israel at the time. This was espoused by the Palestinian nationalist organization Fatah, which operated independently of the PLO and took up armed struggle against Israel clandestinely in 1965 because all Arab states except Syria opposed such a course. So West's characterization of the pre-67 PLO as a military tool of the Arab states is sheer baloney. The PLO did, however, come under the control of Fatah after the war, in 1968. As for West's nonsense about the Palestinian resistance aiming to "drive the Jews into the sea," the stock standard Zionist talking point of all time, Fatah's position was clear: "All the Jews, Moslems and Christians living in Palestine or forcibly exiled from it will have the right of Palestinian citizenship... This means that all Jewish Palestinians - at the present, Israelis - have the same right, provided, of course, that they reject Zionist racist chauvinism and fully agree to live in the new Palestine as Palestinians. The revolution therefore rejects the supposition that only Jews who lived in Palestine prior to 1948... and their descendants are acceptable." (Palestine: The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Ramparts Press Reader, ed Russell Stetler, 1972, p 208)

West's blindness on the issue of Palestinian refugees is curious. While registering the fact of Palestinian dispossession ("cast him out of his homeland," "refugees on the Gaza Strip or in the hovel towns west of the Jordan," "dispossessed zealots") he shows no interest in going further: Why were they cast out? What were the circumstances of their dispossession? Nor can he appreciate the obvious connection between dispossession and resistance, dismissing the latter as zealotry and fantasy. Dispossession and statelessness fail to elicit from him the most elementary empathy. (Sheridan, of course, goes one step further, dismissing even the fact of Palestinian dispossession as "rubbish... just rubbish." See my 9/5/09 post Sheridan: Nakba Denier). The best West can do is reflect, typically through his Israeli protagonist, that "it was impossible to render an absolute justice to every single human being who, by the act of birth, was made a victim of the human paradox. Six million Jewish dead were commemorated in the sombre crypt of Yad Vashem; but 310, 000 living Arabs were camped in the hovels of the Gaza Strip and they would not renounce one jot of their claim to a place in their original homeland." (p 149) And why the bloody hell should they, then or now?

I'll leave you with a genuine Palestinian voice from that era, that of the wonderful Leila Khaled: "I come from the city of Haifa*, but I remember little of my birthplace. I can see the area where I played as a small child, but of our house, I only remember the staircase. I was taken away when I was 4, not to see Haifa again for many years. Finally I saw my city 21 years later, on August 29 1969, when Comrade Salim Issawi and I expropriated an imperialist plane and returned to palestine to pay homage to our occupied country and to show that we had not abandoned our homeland. Ironically, the Israeli enemy, powerless, escorted us with his French and American planes. What I knew about Haifa had come from my parents and friends and from books. Now I saw Haifa from the air and formed my own cherished image of my home. Haifa is caressed by the sea, hugged by the mountain, inspired by the open plain. Haifa is a safe anchor for the wayfarer, a beach in the sun. Yet, I, as a citizen of Haifa, am not allowed to bask in its sun, breathe its clear air, live there with my people. European Zionists and their followers are living in Palestine by right of arms and they have expelled us from our homeland. They live where we should be living while we float about, exiled. They live in my city because they are Jews and they have power. My people and I live outside because we are Palestinian Arabs without power. But we, the graduates of desert inns, we shall have power and we shall recover Palestine and make it a human paradise for Arabs and Jews and all lovers of freedom." (My People Shall Live: The Autobiography of a Revolutionary, 1973, pp 21-22)

[*See my 7/5/08 post Bend It Like Benny]

To be continued...