Paul McGeough's "analysis" in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald is a perfect example of the appalling history overboard school of journalism so lucidly described by Peter Hitchens in my last post.
Here's McGeough's opener:
"If there was a selfish, inward-looking core to Donald Trump's election-winning 'America First' philosophy, it took a backseat to human decency on Thursday, when the President ordered a swift and stunning missile assault on a Syrian air base as punishment for a poisonous gas attack that killed more than 80 civilians this week." (Syria's complex fight is now more complex)
Not only is Syria's guilt assumed, but the hitherto reviled Trump is deemed to have finally done the decent thing by unleashing his missiles! Next thing you know, McGeough will be hailing Trump as 'presidential'."
Some more McGeough gems from the same piece:
"But what happens next - how do Russia and Iran, patrons of the beleaguered Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad respond?"
McGeough's takfiri head-choppers are everywhere on the defensive in Syria, yet it's Asad who's "beleaguered"?
"Compared with 2013, when President Barack Obama failed to act on his 'red-line' to the Damascus regime that Washington would launch military strikes against the regime if it used chemical weapons - but didn't... "
No mention, of course, that Obama "failed to act" for the very best of reasons - Asad hadn't, in fact, crossed his red-line. (See my 8/4/17 post Why Obama Didn't Do What Trump Has Just Done.)
"[Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson, cold-heartedly, insisted that it was up to the war-ravaged Syrians, not the US, to decide Assad's fate."
Unbelievable! If only George W Bush's Secretary of State, Colin Powell, had "cold-heartedly" declared that it was up to the Iraqis, not the US, to decide Saddam Hussein's fate!
Showing posts with label Paul McGeough. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul McGeough. Show all posts
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Some Questions for Paul McGeough
Fairfax's Paul McGeough on the fall of Aleppo:
"Leaflets recently dropped to the 250,000 to 300,000 residents still in Aleppo's eastern quarter read: 'If you don't leave these areas quickly, you will be annihilated. Save yourselves - everyone has left you alone to face your doom.' True words in that last phrase, and the emphasis is mine." ('Save yourselves': Aleppo residents await dark end game, 14/12/16)
Sorry to spoil your story, Paul, but that Human Rights Watch translation of the Syrian army leaflet is quite misleading (for reasons best known to HRW). The Angry Arab has posted a copy of the original leaflet in Arabic as well as his own translation (30/11/16). Here's mine:
"Read this very carefully. It's your last hope. Save yourselves. If you don't evacuate these areas now, your fate will be sealed. We have provided a safe passage for you to leave. Decide now. Save yourselves. You must understand that you have been abandoned and left to face your fate alone, and that no one will come to your aid. General Command of the Army & Armed Forces."
So where's the annihilation and where's the doom? Who's behind these embroideries? And why?
In an age of spin and disinformation, shouldn't you be a bit more cautious before running with this kind of stuff?
I notice Asad gets most of your stick. You variously describe him as "mimicking Moscow's utter destruction of the city of Grozny," displaying "dictatorial inflexibility," and allegedly being unable to "cope with a bunch of kids daubing anti-regime slogans on a wall in 2011."
Is it really all as as simple as that?
What about your "mishmash of rebel groups, whose levels of radicalisation range from zero to friends of al-Qaeda"?
Who are they? Where do they come from? And are they your idea of an alternative to Asad?
And what about your "Gulf States and others who'll happily fund and arm the rebels, if only for the pleasure of putting a burr beneath the saddle of Damascus, Moscow and Tehran"?
Putting burrs beneath saddles?
Seriously, now, Paul, please tell us just what compelling reason this lot have for feeding the flames in Syria? It better be good!
"Leaflets recently dropped to the 250,000 to 300,000 residents still in Aleppo's eastern quarter read: 'If you don't leave these areas quickly, you will be annihilated. Save yourselves - everyone has left you alone to face your doom.' True words in that last phrase, and the emphasis is mine." ('Save yourselves': Aleppo residents await dark end game, 14/12/16)
Sorry to spoil your story, Paul, but that Human Rights Watch translation of the Syrian army leaflet is quite misleading (for reasons best known to HRW). The Angry Arab has posted a copy of the original leaflet in Arabic as well as his own translation (30/11/16). Here's mine:
"Read this very carefully. It's your last hope. Save yourselves. If you don't evacuate these areas now, your fate will be sealed. We have provided a safe passage for you to leave. Decide now. Save yourselves. You must understand that you have been abandoned and left to face your fate alone, and that no one will come to your aid. General Command of the Army & Armed Forces."
So where's the annihilation and where's the doom? Who's behind these embroideries? And why?
In an age of spin and disinformation, shouldn't you be a bit more cautious before running with this kind of stuff?
I notice Asad gets most of your stick. You variously describe him as "mimicking Moscow's utter destruction of the city of Grozny," displaying "dictatorial inflexibility," and allegedly being unable to "cope with a bunch of kids daubing anti-regime slogans on a wall in 2011."
Is it really all as as simple as that?
What about your "mishmash of rebel groups, whose levels of radicalisation range from zero to friends of al-Qaeda"?
Who are they? Where do they come from? And are they your idea of an alternative to Asad?
And what about your "Gulf States and others who'll happily fund and arm the rebels, if only for the pleasure of putting a burr beneath the saddle of Damascus, Moscow and Tehran"?
Putting burrs beneath saddles?
Seriously, now, Paul, please tell us just what compelling reason this lot have for feeding the flames in Syria? It better be good!
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Trump on Iraq
"Some of Trump's off-the-top-of-the-head suggestions for challenging terrorism... include... confiscating Iraq's energy resources to pay for Washington's defence spending in the region." (How much power will President Trump have? Paul McGeough, Sydney Morning Herald, 11/11/16)
So the US, under a former village idiot who managed to find his way into the White House, invaded Iraq in 2003, slamming it against the wall and unleashing the progenitors of the sectarian crazies now calling themselves Islamic State, and Iraq, not Bush and his neocon crazies who were responsible for creating the mess in the first place, will be forced by Trump to pay the bill for Washington's - wait for it - DEFENCE spending in the region...
So the US, under a former village idiot who managed to find his way into the White House, invaded Iraq in 2003, slamming it against the wall and unleashing the progenitors of the sectarian crazies now calling themselves Islamic State, and Iraq, not Bush and his neocon crazies who were responsible for creating the mess in the first place, will be forced by Trump to pay the bill for Washington's - wait for it - DEFENCE spending in the region...
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Trump This
Hmm...
"Stepping up for a job he's toyed with since the 1980's, New York developer and reality TV star Donald Trump has accepted the Republican Party's presidential nomination with a dark speech that parsed the US and the world as mean, chaotic and dangerous for Americans - whose governments had failed to defend and protect them... He promised to 'defeat the barbarians of ISIS' and to knock into line countries that didn't respect the US - including Iran, China and any country that figured the US would protect it without being paid." (Trump whips up frenzy built on fear, Paul McGeough, Sydney Morning Herald, 23/7/16)
Let me get this straight: the United States routinely rampages around the world, intervening in the affairs of others, both overtly and covertly, and showers arms and treasure on assorted authoritarian and apartheid regimes, and those once felicitously described as 'our sons-of-bitches', Trump sums up the resultant mess as 'mean, chaotic and dangerous for Americans', and then promises to continue rampaging around the planet, etc.
Right...
"Stepping up for a job he's toyed with since the 1980's, New York developer and reality TV star Donald Trump has accepted the Republican Party's presidential nomination with a dark speech that parsed the US and the world as mean, chaotic and dangerous for Americans - whose governments had failed to defend and protect them... He promised to 'defeat the barbarians of ISIS' and to knock into line countries that didn't respect the US - including Iran, China and any country that figured the US would protect it without being paid." (Trump whips up frenzy built on fear, Paul McGeough, Sydney Morning Herald, 23/7/16)
Let me get this straight: the United States routinely rampages around the world, intervening in the affairs of others, both overtly and covertly, and showers arms and treasure on assorted authoritarian and apartheid regimes, and those once felicitously described as 'our sons-of-bitches', Trump sums up the resultant mess as 'mean, chaotic and dangerous for Americans', and then promises to continue rampaging around the planet, etc.
Right...
Monday, January 26, 2015
Australia Day Awards 2015
If you were thrilled by the award of a knighthood to Phil the Greek (aka Prince Philip), you'll be over the moon at the award of a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) to Sam the Zionist (aka Sam Salcman):
"For service to the community through a range of organisations:
"Senior Vice-president, Zionist Council of Victoria (ZCV) (formerly the State Zionist Council of Victoria) 15 years; Executive Member 1972-2010. ZCV Delegate to the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (formerly the Jewish Board of Deputies) since 1973.
"Member of the Executive of the Jewish Board of Deputies as Chair of the Overseas Jewry Committee, 4 years.
"National Secretary, Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA), 6 years; Executive 1974-2012 and since 2014.
"Honorary Treasurer, Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) 1992-1995 and 2000-2007; Honorary Life Member of ECAJ since 2008; Chairman, Overseas Jewry Committee, now known as the Australian Committee for Soviet Jewry (part of ECAJ) 1982-1990.
"Treasurer, Lamm Jewish Library of Australia Board (formerly Makor library) 1994-2003.
"Honorary Treasurer, Australian Reform Zionist Association (ARZA) 2003-2007.
"Vice-Chair, Australia Arava Partnership Committee since 2013 and Committee Member since 1998.
"Founding Member, Australian Friends of Labour Israel (Victoria), 1974; Vice-Chair, 1976-1997.
"Member, Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce Victoria since 1985.
"Secretary, Victorian ALF Foreign Affairs Committee 1976-1980; Member 1975-1982.
"Member, CPA Australia since 1984.
"Foundation Member, Institute of Certified Management Accountants since 1980; Chartered Tax Advisor, Taxation Institute of Australia since 2012.
"Member, Governance Institute of Australia since 1989.
"Recipient, Community Recognition Award, Jewish Community Council of Victoria, 2009.
"Recipient, Jerusalem Prize, Zionist Council of Victoria and Zionist Federation of Australia and World Zionist Organisation, 2003." (Australia Day Awards 2015, jwire.com.au, 26/1/15)
Reading through the above, I found myself wondering whether the Zionist Federation of Australia had nominated Sam for the above award. Wondering thus, I recalled the ZFA's recent (5/12/14) gripe about the 2014 Walkley Awards for journalists.
Railing against awards going to Middle East correspondents Paul McGeough and Ruth Pollard (Fairfax), and John Lyons (News Corpse), the ZFA griped that "Perhaps the only sure-fire way to win a Walkley these days is by spouting Palestinian propaganda and making sure you only tell half the story." (zfa.com.au)
The ZFA's gripe was titled:
How to win a Walkley Award - Step 1: Become Middle East Correspondent, Step 2: Write incessantly against Israel.
But would I be so churlish as to detract from Sam's considerable achievements by titling this particular post:
How to win an Australia Day Award - Step 1: Become a Zionist lobbyist, Step 2: Campaign incessantly against Palestine?
No way!
Still looking for an Australia Day 2015 award to a Palestinian lobbyist...
"For service to the community through a range of organisations:
"Senior Vice-president, Zionist Council of Victoria (ZCV) (formerly the State Zionist Council of Victoria) 15 years; Executive Member 1972-2010. ZCV Delegate to the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (formerly the Jewish Board of Deputies) since 1973.
"Member of the Executive of the Jewish Board of Deputies as Chair of the Overseas Jewry Committee, 4 years.
"National Secretary, Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA), 6 years; Executive 1974-2012 and since 2014.
"Honorary Treasurer, Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) 1992-1995 and 2000-2007; Honorary Life Member of ECAJ since 2008; Chairman, Overseas Jewry Committee, now known as the Australian Committee for Soviet Jewry (part of ECAJ) 1982-1990.
"Treasurer, Lamm Jewish Library of Australia Board (formerly Makor library) 1994-2003.
"Honorary Treasurer, Australian Reform Zionist Association (ARZA) 2003-2007.
"Vice-Chair, Australia Arava Partnership Committee since 2013 and Committee Member since 1998.
"Founding Member, Australian Friends of Labour Israel (Victoria), 1974; Vice-Chair, 1976-1997.
"Member, Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce Victoria since 1985.
"Secretary, Victorian ALF Foreign Affairs Committee 1976-1980; Member 1975-1982.
"Member, CPA Australia since 1984.
"Foundation Member, Institute of Certified Management Accountants since 1980; Chartered Tax Advisor, Taxation Institute of Australia since 2012.
"Member, Governance Institute of Australia since 1989.
"Recipient, Community Recognition Award, Jewish Community Council of Victoria, 2009.
"Recipient, Jerusalem Prize, Zionist Council of Victoria and Zionist Federation of Australia and World Zionist Organisation, 2003." (Australia Day Awards 2015, jwire.com.au, 26/1/15)
Reading through the above, I found myself wondering whether the Zionist Federation of Australia had nominated Sam for the above award. Wondering thus, I recalled the ZFA's recent (5/12/14) gripe about the 2014 Walkley Awards for journalists.
Railing against awards going to Middle East correspondents Paul McGeough and Ruth Pollard (Fairfax), and John Lyons (News Corpse), the ZFA griped that "Perhaps the only sure-fire way to win a Walkley these days is by spouting Palestinian propaganda and making sure you only tell half the story." (zfa.com.au)
The ZFA's gripe was titled:
How to win a Walkley Award - Step 1: Become Middle East Correspondent, Step 2: Write incessantly against Israel.
But would I be so churlish as to detract from Sam's considerable achievements by titling this particular post:
How to win an Australia Day Award - Step 1: Become a Zionist lobbyist, Step 2: Campaign incessantly against Palestine?
No way!
Still looking for an Australia Day 2015 award to a Palestinian lobbyist...
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Mission Accomplished
"Driving down Saadoun Street, we swing past Firdos Square. There, the stump of the plinth from which a bronze of Saddam Hussein was famously toppled - the dictator's right foot remains - prompted a local to observe: 'Everyone talks of how safe it was, if not good under Saddam - you were safe if you didn't discuss politics.' Now, it seems, everyone is talking about politics - and no one is safe." (The city of burnt trees and bravado, Paul McGeough, Sydney Morning Herald, 18/10/14)
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
The Real Mandela
At last, the real Nelson Mandela appears in the pages of the Fairfax press thanks to journalist Paul McGeough:
"History's airbrush was in overdrive as world leaders and the media farewelled a truly great leader of his people - South Africa's Nelson Mandela. There would be no talk here that might be read as legitimising armed struggle by whole populations who are denied their rights. It was just too mucky, wasn't it, to go into the violence of armed struggle. But in sanitising Mandela's story, it seemed we were being asked to deny an essential element of the fight for freedom in South Africa.
"It was lost on dignitaries, from US President Barack Obama down, that the real Mandela story is greater than the arc of his leadership, as traced in their speech-making. This is because when the bit about violence is included, an audience has a better sense of the frustration experienced by black South Africans and hence can more appreciate the challenges in Mandela's long and brutal walk to freedom.
"And that becomes a teachable moment for us all - that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter; and when the fighting has stopped, yes, it would be great to have him for dinner and hear a retelling of his account, on being released from prison, of his rebirth as a man of peace: 'As I walked out the door, towards the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in [a] prison.'
"Searching the Factiva global news archive in the 6 days after his death, there were more than 35,000 mentions of Mandela. But narrow the search by adding 'violence' or 'terror' and indeed it seemed history was being cleansed. Put 'violence' beside 'Mandela' and slightly less than 1,000 reports use the word; add 'terror' and the count shrinks to slightly more than 100, and a good number of those refer to the violence of others.
"Obama's blurring of the story was intriguing. Instead of remaining silent on Mandela and the African National Congress' resort to violence in the wake of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, in which forces of the white regime gunned down 69 peaceful demonstrators, Obama made the oblique suggestion that the whole struggle had been peaceful: 'Emerging from prison, without the force of arms, he would - like Abraham Lincoln - hold his country together...' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose predecessors were staunch allies of white South Africa through apartheid, didn't make the journey. But he, too, gilded the lily, describing Mandela as 'a man of vision, a fighter for freedom who rejected violence'.
"Now, go back in the archives, to Mandela's 1964 trial on charges of sabotage and treason. 'We were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the government,' he told the court. 'We chose to defy the government. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and when the government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.' Mandela went into greater detail on the rationale for the ANC's armed wing, of which he was the founder. 'I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love for violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after... years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the whites.'
"And notwithstanding pressure from Western capitals, Mandela refused to renounce violence or to disarm until the time of his choosing, i.e., when the deal was done with the white regime. And he could do the deal because of the man he was, including being a warrior for his people.
"Many Palestinians see their circumstances as apartheid-era South Africa replicated.* And while many went lightly on the role of violence in the African struggle, Netanyahu did get a shellacking at home. In Haaretz, Roy Isacowitz wrote: 'It's a pity that Netanyahu, vulgar and transparent as usual, tried to manipulate Mandela for his own purposes. It might be comforting to contrast the supposedly peaceful anti-apartheid legend with the obviously non-peaceful Palestinians - but that's not the way it was or is. Both sides wield violence in an armed conflict and state violence is no less lethal than the irregular kind.'
"The challenge for Obama and the rest then, is to back their rhetoric in the stadium with the kind of action their predecessors were reluctant to take when Mandela really needed help. They could speak up for political prisoners around the world, from China to Saudi Arabia; and instead of helping to manage the occupation, they might seek to have real effect in the Middle East peace talks, to honour Mandela's assertion: 'Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians'." (Sanitising Nelson Mandela's legend no help to today's fighters, The Sun-Herald, 15/12/13)
[*Not to mention many South Africans.]
"History's airbrush was in overdrive as world leaders and the media farewelled a truly great leader of his people - South Africa's Nelson Mandela. There would be no talk here that might be read as legitimising armed struggle by whole populations who are denied their rights. It was just too mucky, wasn't it, to go into the violence of armed struggle. But in sanitising Mandela's story, it seemed we were being asked to deny an essential element of the fight for freedom in South Africa.
"It was lost on dignitaries, from US President Barack Obama down, that the real Mandela story is greater than the arc of his leadership, as traced in their speech-making. This is because when the bit about violence is included, an audience has a better sense of the frustration experienced by black South Africans and hence can more appreciate the challenges in Mandela's long and brutal walk to freedom.
"And that becomes a teachable moment for us all - that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter; and when the fighting has stopped, yes, it would be great to have him for dinner and hear a retelling of his account, on being released from prison, of his rebirth as a man of peace: 'As I walked out the door, towards the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in [a] prison.'
"Searching the Factiva global news archive in the 6 days after his death, there were more than 35,000 mentions of Mandela. But narrow the search by adding 'violence' or 'terror' and indeed it seemed history was being cleansed. Put 'violence' beside 'Mandela' and slightly less than 1,000 reports use the word; add 'terror' and the count shrinks to slightly more than 100, and a good number of those refer to the violence of others.
"Obama's blurring of the story was intriguing. Instead of remaining silent on Mandela and the African National Congress' resort to violence in the wake of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, in which forces of the white regime gunned down 69 peaceful demonstrators, Obama made the oblique suggestion that the whole struggle had been peaceful: 'Emerging from prison, without the force of arms, he would - like Abraham Lincoln - hold his country together...' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose predecessors were staunch allies of white South Africa through apartheid, didn't make the journey. But he, too, gilded the lily, describing Mandela as 'a man of vision, a fighter for freedom who rejected violence'.
"Now, go back in the archives, to Mandela's 1964 trial on charges of sabotage and treason. 'We were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the government,' he told the court. 'We chose to defy the government. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and when the government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.' Mandela went into greater detail on the rationale for the ANC's armed wing, of which he was the founder. 'I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love for violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after... years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the whites.'
"And notwithstanding pressure from Western capitals, Mandela refused to renounce violence or to disarm until the time of his choosing, i.e., when the deal was done with the white regime. And he could do the deal because of the man he was, including being a warrior for his people.
"Many Palestinians see their circumstances as apartheid-era South Africa replicated.* And while many went lightly on the role of violence in the African struggle, Netanyahu did get a shellacking at home. In Haaretz, Roy Isacowitz wrote: 'It's a pity that Netanyahu, vulgar and transparent as usual, tried to manipulate Mandela for his own purposes. It might be comforting to contrast the supposedly peaceful anti-apartheid legend with the obviously non-peaceful Palestinians - but that's not the way it was or is. Both sides wield violence in an armed conflict and state violence is no less lethal than the irregular kind.'
"The challenge for Obama and the rest then, is to back their rhetoric in the stadium with the kind of action their predecessors were reluctant to take when Mandela really needed help. They could speak up for political prisoners around the world, from China to Saudi Arabia; and instead of helping to manage the occupation, they might seek to have real effect in the Middle East peace talks, to honour Mandela's assertion: 'Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians'." (Sanitising Nelson Mandela's legend no help to today's fighters, The Sun-Herald, 15/12/13)
[*Not to mention many South Africans.]
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Netanyahu & the Cauldronization of Iraq & Iran
"One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster please. If ever there was a region that deserved to be cauldronized, it is the Middle East today." Michael Ledeen, 2002
Paul McGeough's reporting in the Fairfax press is nothing short of exemplary. Writing on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the cauldronization of Iraq, he refers to the latest study of the cost in lives and treaure of the Iraq war:
"'Great powers rarely make national decisions that explode so quickly and [so] completely in their faces,' says US Navel Academy professor John Nagl in an anniversary opinion piece. The cost of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld response to the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington has been enormous - 300,000 lives and $4 trillion, according to a new study by Brown University in Rhode Island." (Ten years on, war a part of daily life, Paul McGeogh, Sydney Morning Herald, 23/3/13)
Why is this so?
Because the US decision to cauldronize Iraq was far from being a "national decision," by which I mean a war fought in the US national interest. The following lines in McGeough's analysis go part way to explaining what I mean:
"Marking the Iraq war anniversary, The New York Times editorialised: 'None of the Bush administration's war architects have been called to account for their mistakes and even now, many are invited to speak on policy issues as if they were not responsible for one of the worst strategic blunders in American foreign policy.'"
So who were these "architects"?
They were the 'neoconservatives', more correctly called Zioconservatives, who promoted, both inside and outside the Bush administration, a "war agenda conceived in Israel to advance Israeli interests."* The leading architects of the Iraq war - the 'fucking crazies' as Secretary of State Collin Powell memorably called them - were men such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith.
"One of their fellow travellers," writes McGeogh pointedly, "deserves greater attention today, because of his eagerness for another war - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On the eve of this week's visit to Israel by Obama, the Israeli daily Haaretz thoughtfully ran screeds from Netanyahu's September 2002 testimony to a Congressional committee. Substitute '2013/Iran/Tehran/Ahmadinejad' for '2003/Iraq/Baghdad/Saddam' in the following. 'There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons - no question whatsoever. And there is no question that once he acquires it, history shifts immediately... Every indication we have is that he is pursuing, pursuing with abandon, pursuing with every ounce of effort, the establishment of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. If anyone makes an opposite assumption or cannot draw the line connecting the dots, that is simply not an objective assessment... '"
Netanyahu, it should be remembered, was the recipient of the infamous 1996 neocon policy paper A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, which called upon Israel to adopt a strategy of destabilising the Middle East, including Iraq.
Another memorable appearance by Netanyahu in the lead up to the 2003 cauldronization of Iraq came not long after 9/11: "The September 11 atrocities created the white-hot climate in which Israel could undertake harsh measures unacceptable under normal conditions. When asked what the terrorist attack would do for US-Israeli relations, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blurted out: 'It's very good.' Then he edited himself: 'Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.' Netanyahu correctly predicted that the attack would 'strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.'" (The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, Stephen J. Sniegoski, 2008, p 139)
Like the Zionist agenda of 1948, the Ziocon agenda of a cauldronized Middle East has yet to reach a final conclusion - as McGeough pithily reminds us in his final sentence:
"Tomorrow, Tehran."
Finally, just recalling Netanyahu's near 3-year late 'apology' to Turkey for the deaths of its nationals on the Mavi Marmara and Obama's stopover in Jordan for talks with King Abdullah regarding Syria, how resonant is this advice from the Clean Break document: "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria." That sentence, it should be noted, immediately preceded this: "This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right - as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."
[*These are the words of Stephen J. Sniegoski. For a fuller presentation of his thesis, see my 22/12/08 post Absent-minded Professors Inadvertently Set Iraq Ablaze.]
Paul McGeough's reporting in the Fairfax press is nothing short of exemplary. Writing on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the cauldronization of Iraq, he refers to the latest study of the cost in lives and treaure of the Iraq war:
"'Great powers rarely make national decisions that explode so quickly and [so] completely in their faces,' says US Navel Academy professor John Nagl in an anniversary opinion piece. The cost of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld response to the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington has been enormous - 300,000 lives and $4 trillion, according to a new study by Brown University in Rhode Island." (Ten years on, war a part of daily life, Paul McGeogh, Sydney Morning Herald, 23/3/13)
Why is this so?
Because the US decision to cauldronize Iraq was far from being a "national decision," by which I mean a war fought in the US national interest. The following lines in McGeough's analysis go part way to explaining what I mean:
"Marking the Iraq war anniversary, The New York Times editorialised: 'None of the Bush administration's war architects have been called to account for their mistakes and even now, many are invited to speak on policy issues as if they were not responsible for one of the worst strategic blunders in American foreign policy.'"
So who were these "architects"?
They were the 'neoconservatives', more correctly called Zioconservatives, who promoted, both inside and outside the Bush administration, a "war agenda conceived in Israel to advance Israeli interests."* The leading architects of the Iraq war - the 'fucking crazies' as Secretary of State Collin Powell memorably called them - were men such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith.
"One of their fellow travellers," writes McGeogh pointedly, "deserves greater attention today, because of his eagerness for another war - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On the eve of this week's visit to Israel by Obama, the Israeli daily Haaretz thoughtfully ran screeds from Netanyahu's September 2002 testimony to a Congressional committee. Substitute '2013/Iran/Tehran/Ahmadinejad' for '2003/Iraq/Baghdad/Saddam' in the following. 'There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons - no question whatsoever. And there is no question that once he acquires it, history shifts immediately... Every indication we have is that he is pursuing, pursuing with abandon, pursuing with every ounce of effort, the establishment of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. If anyone makes an opposite assumption or cannot draw the line connecting the dots, that is simply not an objective assessment... '"
Netanyahu, it should be remembered, was the recipient of the infamous 1996 neocon policy paper A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, which called upon Israel to adopt a strategy of destabilising the Middle East, including Iraq.
Another memorable appearance by Netanyahu in the lead up to the 2003 cauldronization of Iraq came not long after 9/11: "The September 11 atrocities created the white-hot climate in which Israel could undertake harsh measures unacceptable under normal conditions. When asked what the terrorist attack would do for US-Israeli relations, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blurted out: 'It's very good.' Then he edited himself: 'Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.' Netanyahu correctly predicted that the attack would 'strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.'" (The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, Stephen J. Sniegoski, 2008, p 139)
Like the Zionist agenda of 1948, the Ziocon agenda of a cauldronized Middle East has yet to reach a final conclusion - as McGeough pithily reminds us in his final sentence:
"Tomorrow, Tehran."
Finally, just recalling Netanyahu's near 3-year late 'apology' to Turkey for the deaths of its nationals on the Mavi Marmara and Obama's stopover in Jordan for talks with King Abdullah regarding Syria, how resonant is this advice from the Clean Break document: "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria." That sentence, it should be noted, immediately preceded this: "This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right - as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."
[*These are the words of Stephen J. Sniegoski. For a fuller presentation of his thesis, see my 22/12/08 post Absent-minded Professors Inadvertently Set Iraq Ablaze.]
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Zionist Talking Point of the Day
Fairfax journalist Paul McGeough is undoubtedly the best ms media journalist on Middle Eastern affairs in this country. The following commentary, on the blatant hypocrisy that pervades US policy on the Middle East, appeared last Monday in the Sydney Morning Herald:
"While upheaval continues in the Middle East, the idea that the Obama administration was more concerned about its strategic interests than the human rights of more than 300 million Arabs was confirmed when Washington torpedoed a United Nations Security Council resolution against Israeli settlement-building in occupied Palestinian territory. Last week Barack Obama urged leaders facing unrest to reform, warning: 'you can't be behind the curve'. But as Britain, France and Germany backed condemnation of settlement building on annexed Palestinian land, the US alone refused. At a time when, to varying degrees, US-trained troops are being used against protesters challenging autocratic regimes that Washington has propped up for decades, the message telegraphed by Obama's first use of the US veto power at the UN was that his administration was still running to catch up with the new Middle East." (Lip service is all US pays in the drive for democracy, 21/2/11)
This, of course, was like a red rag to a bull for the The Australian, which, on the very next day in its Cut & Paste column, cited McGeough's opening sentence under this headline smear: United Nations Security Council fiddles while the Middle East keeps going up in flames: Somehow it always come [sic] down to the Jews.
This header is of interest in two respects. Firstly, it introduces us to the latest Zionist talking point - Hasn't the UN got more important things to focus on than Israeli settlements? - specifically designed to distract readers from the United State's grovelling subservience to Israeli colonialism. Secondly, its second half invokes the standard Zionist dogma that Israel= all Jews, with the sneaky implication that anti-Israel=anti-Semitism. Ergo, McGeough is an anti-Semite.
Charming!
Now would it surprise you greatly if The Australian's Mini-Me, The Australian Jewish News, was echoing the exact same point, even down to the same wording:
"All over the Middle East, reports of Arab governments responding to anti-government protests with live gunfire have been flowing in for days, and what did the United Nations Security Council tackle first on the agenda last Friday? Why, naturally: Jewish construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank... To witness the international body fiddling over the Palestinian agenda while the Arab street burns raises profound questions about the core values of the organisation" (UN-believable, 25/2/11)
PS: 'Libya burns while UN fiddles' - The title of The Australian's 28/2/11 editorial.
"While upheaval continues in the Middle East, the idea that the Obama administration was more concerned about its strategic interests than the human rights of more than 300 million Arabs was confirmed when Washington torpedoed a United Nations Security Council resolution against Israeli settlement-building in occupied Palestinian territory. Last week Barack Obama urged leaders facing unrest to reform, warning: 'you can't be behind the curve'. But as Britain, France and Germany backed condemnation of settlement building on annexed Palestinian land, the US alone refused. At a time when, to varying degrees, US-trained troops are being used against protesters challenging autocratic regimes that Washington has propped up for decades, the message telegraphed by Obama's first use of the US veto power at the UN was that his administration was still running to catch up with the new Middle East." (Lip service is all US pays in the drive for democracy, 21/2/11)
This, of course, was like a red rag to a bull for the The Australian, which, on the very next day in its Cut & Paste column, cited McGeough's opening sentence under this headline smear: United Nations Security Council fiddles while the Middle East keeps going up in flames: Somehow it always come [sic] down to the Jews.
This header is of interest in two respects. Firstly, it introduces us to the latest Zionist talking point - Hasn't the UN got more important things to focus on than Israeli settlements? - specifically designed to distract readers from the United State's grovelling subservience to Israeli colonialism. Secondly, its second half invokes the standard Zionist dogma that Israel= all Jews, with the sneaky implication that anti-Israel=anti-Semitism. Ergo, McGeough is an anti-Semite.
Charming!
Now would it surprise you greatly if The Australian's Mini-Me, The Australian Jewish News, was echoing the exact same point, even down to the same wording:
"All over the Middle East, reports of Arab governments responding to anti-government protests with live gunfire have been flowing in for days, and what did the United Nations Security Council tackle first on the agenda last Friday? Why, naturally: Jewish construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank... To witness the international body fiddling over the Palestinian agenda while the Arab street burns raises profound questions about the core values of the organisation" (UN-believable, 25/2/11)
PS: 'Libya burns while UN fiddles' - The title of The Australian's 28/2/11 editorial.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
'We came in naive...'
"Stability is an unworthy American mission, and a misleading concept to boot. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize." Michael Ledeen (The Wall Street Journal, 9/4/02)
In his report on the "American drawdown" in Iraq, the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeough has cited some truly gob-smacking stuff:
"In a pre-departure interview with The New York Times, the commander of US forces in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, tapped into these [gloomy] assessments [by Iraqi civilians (quoted earlier in McGeough's report)]. 'We came in naive about what the problems were in Iraq. I don't think we understood what I call the societal devastation', he said, alluding to the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War and international sanctions which, from 1990-2003, decimated the middle classes. 'And then we attacked to overthrow the government'."
We came in naive, did we? No we didn't. We knew exactly what we were doing: we invaded Iraq not for any of the specious reasons given at the time (WMDs etc), and not even for regime change as such, but to destroy it root and branch, both as a nation and a society. (See my 3/12/09 post Revolted)
We didn't understand the societal devastation resulting from the Iran-Iraq War? Yet without our propping up of Saddam in that war, including providing the ingredients for his chemical and biological weapons arsenal, the Iranians would have finished him off in the 80s.
We didn't understand the societal devastation resulting from the Gulf War? Really? Didn't our ambassador tell Saddam in April 1990 that "we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your disagreement with Kuwait," giving him a virtual green light to invade? Didn't we allow Israel to attack and occupy its neighbours and get away with it, thus suggesting to Saddam that he could do the same? And didn't we subject Iraq's civilian infrastructure to saturation bombing?
We didn't understand the societal devastation of international sanctions? Yet we were responsible for using the UN to starve and degrade Iraqi society from 1990 to 2003, resulting in the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children.
And we came in naive after all that?
"Acknowledging America's failure to understand Iraq's ethnic and sectarian divisions, the commander was surprisingly frank when asked if the invasion and its aftermath had exacerbated them: 'I don't know... all these issues that we didn't understand and that we had to work our way through. And did that cause it to get worse? Maybe'."
Maybe?!
"These Iraqi and American sentiments and their implications for the future were reflected in the judgment of a Western diplomat. 'There are a lot of really good people here', he said in the air-conditioned comfort of his blast wall-protected office. 'But a lot have left and won't come back. You think they have all this resource wealth and a history of education and expertise, and you wonder, how could they get it wrong. But looking at their history, sometimes it's Iraqis who are most pessimistic. They see 1,000 years of violence and they say it won't change'." (Seven years, 100,000 lives, $700b, 31/8/10)
How could they - the Iraqis - get it wrong?!
And last, but by no means least, here's the ultimate in stomach-churning sentences from Bushama's stomach-churning Address on Iraq: "[Those Americans who died/served in Iraq] stared into the darkest of human creations - war - and helped the Iraqi people seek the light of peace." (nytimes.com)
In his report on the "American drawdown" in Iraq, the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeough has cited some truly gob-smacking stuff:
"In a pre-departure interview with The New York Times, the commander of US forces in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, tapped into these [gloomy] assessments [by Iraqi civilians (quoted earlier in McGeough's report)]. 'We came in naive about what the problems were in Iraq. I don't think we understood what I call the societal devastation', he said, alluding to the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War and international sanctions which, from 1990-2003, decimated the middle classes. 'And then we attacked to overthrow the government'."
We came in naive, did we? No we didn't. We knew exactly what we were doing: we invaded Iraq not for any of the specious reasons given at the time (WMDs etc), and not even for regime change as such, but to destroy it root and branch, both as a nation and a society. (See my 3/12/09 post Revolted)
We didn't understand the societal devastation resulting from the Iran-Iraq War? Yet without our propping up of Saddam in that war, including providing the ingredients for his chemical and biological weapons arsenal, the Iranians would have finished him off in the 80s.
We didn't understand the societal devastation resulting from the Gulf War? Really? Didn't our ambassador tell Saddam in April 1990 that "we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your disagreement with Kuwait," giving him a virtual green light to invade? Didn't we allow Israel to attack and occupy its neighbours and get away with it, thus suggesting to Saddam that he could do the same? And didn't we subject Iraq's civilian infrastructure to saturation bombing?
We didn't understand the societal devastation of international sanctions? Yet we were responsible for using the UN to starve and degrade Iraqi society from 1990 to 2003, resulting in the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children.
And we came in naive after all that?
"Acknowledging America's failure to understand Iraq's ethnic and sectarian divisions, the commander was surprisingly frank when asked if the invasion and its aftermath had exacerbated them: 'I don't know... all these issues that we didn't understand and that we had to work our way through. And did that cause it to get worse? Maybe'."
Maybe?!
"These Iraqi and American sentiments and their implications for the future were reflected in the judgment of a Western diplomat. 'There are a lot of really good people here', he said in the air-conditioned comfort of his blast wall-protected office. 'But a lot have left and won't come back. You think they have all this resource wealth and a history of education and expertise, and you wonder, how could they get it wrong. But looking at their history, sometimes it's Iraqis who are most pessimistic. They see 1,000 years of violence and they say it won't change'." (Seven years, 100,000 lives, $700b, 31/8/10)
How could they - the Iraqis - get it wrong?!
And last, but by no means least, here's the ultimate in stomach-churning sentences from Bushama's stomach-churning Address on Iraq: "[Those Americans who died/served in Iraq] stared into the darkest of human creations - war - and helped the Iraqi people seek the light of peace." (nytimes.com)
Friday, April 2, 2010
McGeough's Good, But...
Paul McGeough, one of Fairfax's Middle East correspondents and author of Kill Khalid: Mossad's Failed Hit... & the Rise of Hamas, is no hack, let alone a Zionist propagandist in journalist's clothing - which accounts for his relative absence in this blog, largely devoted to exposing the latter.
In a recent newmatilda.com interview, for example, McGeough neatly revealed his awareness of just how dodgy the Zionist narrative is:
7.When was the first time you changed your mind on something important? 1978: On a flight in North Africa I sat next to the first Palestinian I had met to be advised that Leon Uris left some significant elements of the Middle East Crisis out of Exodus. (Storm chaser: 20 questions)
However, I must say that a few things in his feature, Israel's nightmare scenario in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, irritated me profoundly.
In particular, the title. To put it in context, here's the relevant paragraph: "Palestinian minds have already turned to a calculatedly provocative alternative - collapsing the entire institutional facade of the Palestinian Authority and instead, to campaign for Israel's demographic nightmare of a bi-national state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. In such a state the fast-growing Palestinian population would become the majority - ending Israel's right to claim itself as a Jewish state and, in the absence of citizenship rights for all, smashing its claim to be a democracy."
Why is it a nightmare for Israel to become a normal country, that is, a state for all its people, indigenous and non-indigenous, Muslim, Christian and Jew? Would McGeough have described the prospect of black majority rule in South Africa as a nightmare in the days when South Africa was still a state ruled by a white minority regime? Surely, if anyone in Palestine/Israel today (or for the past 62 years) can be described as suffering from nightmares or a nightmare scenario, it is the Palestinians.
And that expression calculatedly provocative. Are Palestinians being provocative in imagining that what had, until 1948, been theirs will once again be theirs? Is their acknowledging the reality of demographic projections being calculatedly provocative? Should they adopt a one-child policy to avoid being seen as provocative? Should their children perhaps be seen not as children but as calculated provocations?
And why does McGeough lapse into Zionist terminology and false equivalence when he writes that "Extremists on both sides - Hamas among the Palestinians and the fundamentalist settler movement in Israel - have laid claim to the land from 'the river to the sea', but each claiming that it be controlled by their side"?
Is it extreme for a dispossessed and occupied people to want to return to the homeland from which they were expelled, and to take up arms in an attempt to do so, but somehow moderate for a colonial-settler movement - and here I'm referring to the Zionist project in all its manifestations, not just its latest fundamentalist settler incarnation - to engage in 'redeeming' a land from its original owners? Far from being extreme, I would have thought that indigenous resistance to such an extremist movement was not only rational but necessary.
And as for fundamentalist Israeli settlers wanting it all, isn't McGeough aware that the ruling Likud Party itself rejects the idea of a Palestinian state, by way of claiming all of Palestine from the river to the sea?
NB: For those interested, an excellent critique of McGeough on Iraq is Alex Miller's Paul McGeough: sustaining the big lie, greenleft.org.au, 17/11/03
In a recent newmatilda.com interview, for example, McGeough neatly revealed his awareness of just how dodgy the Zionist narrative is:
7.When was the first time you changed your mind on something important? 1978: On a flight in North Africa I sat next to the first Palestinian I had met to be advised that Leon Uris left some significant elements of the Middle East Crisis out of Exodus. (Storm chaser: 20 questions)
However, I must say that a few things in his feature, Israel's nightmare scenario in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, irritated me profoundly.
In particular, the title. To put it in context, here's the relevant paragraph: "Palestinian minds have already turned to a calculatedly provocative alternative - collapsing the entire institutional facade of the Palestinian Authority and instead, to campaign for Israel's demographic nightmare of a bi-national state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. In such a state the fast-growing Palestinian population would become the majority - ending Israel's right to claim itself as a Jewish state and, in the absence of citizenship rights for all, smashing its claim to be a democracy."
Why is it a nightmare for Israel to become a normal country, that is, a state for all its people, indigenous and non-indigenous, Muslim, Christian and Jew? Would McGeough have described the prospect of black majority rule in South Africa as a nightmare in the days when South Africa was still a state ruled by a white minority regime? Surely, if anyone in Palestine/Israel today (or for the past 62 years) can be described as suffering from nightmares or a nightmare scenario, it is the Palestinians.
And that expression calculatedly provocative. Are Palestinians being provocative in imagining that what had, until 1948, been theirs will once again be theirs? Is their acknowledging the reality of demographic projections being calculatedly provocative? Should they adopt a one-child policy to avoid being seen as provocative? Should their children perhaps be seen not as children but as calculated provocations?
And why does McGeough lapse into Zionist terminology and false equivalence when he writes that "Extremists on both sides - Hamas among the Palestinians and the fundamentalist settler movement in Israel - have laid claim to the land from 'the river to the sea', but each claiming that it be controlled by their side"?
Is it extreme for a dispossessed and occupied people to want to return to the homeland from which they were expelled, and to take up arms in an attempt to do so, but somehow moderate for a colonial-settler movement - and here I'm referring to the Zionist project in all its manifestations, not just its latest fundamentalist settler incarnation - to engage in 'redeeming' a land from its original owners? Far from being extreme, I would have thought that indigenous resistance to such an extremist movement was not only rational but necessary.
And as for fundamentalist Israeli settlers wanting it all, isn't McGeough aware that the ruling Likud Party itself rejects the idea of a Palestinian state, by way of claiming all of Palestine from the river to the sea?
NB: For those interested, an excellent critique of McGeough on Iraq is Alex Miller's Paul McGeough: sustaining the big lie, greenleft.org.au, 17/11/03
Monday, March 2, 2009
Stringing Us Along
How refreshing to hear the Fairfax press' senior journalist and author Paul McGeough on Radio National this morning talking with Fran Kelly about his new book Kill Khalid: Mossad's failed hit... and the rise of Hamas.
On the subject of the so-called peace process, McGeough made the point, virtually unheard in the corporate media, that Israel has never been seriously interested in making peace with the Palestinians. He said in effect that in 1967 Israel could have made peace with Jordan's King Hussein, but didn't, ending up with Arafat; that it could then have made peace with Arafat, but didn't, ending up with Hamas; and that it could today make peace with Hamas, but won't, ending up with...?
It's worth going back to that pivotal year, 1967, the year in which Israel invaded and occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Syria's Golan Heights.
Here's what Tom Segev, Israeli historian of the 1967 war and its aftermath, has to say about Israel's 'peace talks' with Jordan: "The effort invested in talks with Hussein was intended largely to convince the US that it was genuinely trying to achieve peace. The fear in Jerusalem was that the Americans might force Israel to withdraw [from the West Bank]. In October, Johnson met with Eban, and made his view of the war very clear. He regretted that Israel had acted alone rather than heed his advice. He thought at the time that Israel had acted unwisely, and he still thought so. Besides Skyhawk aircraft and other military equipment, the Israelis were hoping the US would also sell them Phantom fighters, which were at the top of their shopping list. They therefore had to be extremely cautious. Washington was making angry noises, but as the months went by, the US turned out not to be putting any real pressure on Israel.' (1967, p 568)
On the subject of the so-called peace process, McGeough made the point, virtually unheard in the corporate media, that Israel has never been seriously interested in making peace with the Palestinians. He said in effect that in 1967 Israel could have made peace with Jordan's King Hussein, but didn't, ending up with Arafat; that it could then have made peace with Arafat, but didn't, ending up with Hamas; and that it could today make peace with Hamas, but won't, ending up with...?
It's worth going back to that pivotal year, 1967, the year in which Israel invaded and occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Syria's Golan Heights.
Here's what Tom Segev, Israeli historian of the 1967 war and its aftermath, has to say about Israel's 'peace talks' with Jordan: "The effort invested in talks with Hussein was intended largely to convince the US that it was genuinely trying to achieve peace. The fear in Jerusalem was that the Americans might force Israel to withdraw [from the West Bank]. In October, Johnson met with Eban, and made his view of the war very clear. He regretted that Israel had acted alone rather than heed his advice. He thought at the time that Israel had acted unwisely, and he still thought so. Besides Skyhawk aircraft and other military equipment, the Israelis were hoping the US would also sell them Phantom fighters, which were at the top of their shopping list. They therefore had to be extremely cautious. Washington was making angry noises, but as the months went by, the US turned out not to be putting any real pressure on Israel.' (1967, p 568)
Monday, January 5, 2009
Go Figure 1
Back on the propaganda front:-
In my 3/1/09 post Junk Journalism, I quoted the December 2007 document Rocket threat from the Gaza Strip 2000-2007 issued by the Intelligence & Information Center at the Israel Intelligence, Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC) and posted on Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website (mfa.gov.il) to the effect that between 2001 and (end of November) 2007 "there has been a total of 2,383 identified rocket hits in and around the western Negev settlements, with the southern city of Sderot as a priority..." And I drew your attention to this sentence by the Sydney Morning Herald's Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis: "Israel's other key concern was to put an end to the use of Qassam rockets, more than 10,000 of which have landed in the farmlands and cities that surround Gaza over the past 6 years, killing about 20 people." (All bets are off, 3/1/09)
Then The Australian's foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan* weighed in with a new figure: "In the past few years, the terrorist group Hamas has fired more than 6,000 rockets and mortars from Gaza at Israeli civilian targets" (Israel has right to defend citizens, The Sunday Telegraph, 4/1/09). And, in the same issue, his illustrious Daily Telegraph colleague Piers Akerman wrote "Since 2001, Hamas and its allies launched more than 6,400 rockets, mortar bombs and other missiles [stones?] at Israel." (Prodding at lions will bring Hamas undone) Now, if we combine the 2001-2007 figures for rocket and mortar attacks in the IICC document with the estimate for 2008 given in the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs document The Hamas terror war against Israel (mfa.gov.il, 1/1/09), we get a grand total of 7,985 rocket and mortar strikes. If -if - this figure is correct, Sheridan and Akerman are actually understating their case - a bizarre phenomenon indeed!
[*Sheridan, of course, has a way with numbers - see my 4/2/08 post When Even the Retraction is Dodgy.]
Today, it was Chief [Sydney Morning] Herald Correspondent Paul McGeough's turn to get creative: "Tel Aviv's early insistence that this massive military exercise was about putting a halt to Palestinian rockets being fired into or near communities in the south of Israel never rang true." So far, so good. "Measure it by the number of rockets - 8,000 plus over 8 [sic: 7]years - and indeed it sounds like a genuine existential threat." (Mission revealed: destroy Hamas) Oh dear, if only he'd roped in the mortars.
But there's more. Good old Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), the pointy end of the Israel Lobby, also thought he'd have a stab - and where else but in his home away from home, The Australian: "About 6300 rockets and mortars have been indiscriminately launched at Israeli population centres since August 2005, including more than 600 in the past few weeks." (Sorry history behind today's violent images, 5/1/09) Using the data in the mfa.gov.il sources for the period 8/2005-12/2008, we get a total of 6,024 rocket and mortar strikes.
Postscript: "The head of the NSW Jewish Board of deputies, Vic Alhadeff... blamed the crisis in Gaza on Hamas, saying it had fired more than 8,000 rockets and mortars into Israel since 2001." (Australian Jews protest against Israel's action, West & Pearlman, SMH, 6/1/09)
In my 3/1/09 post Junk Journalism, I quoted the December 2007 document Rocket threat from the Gaza Strip 2000-2007 issued by the Intelligence & Information Center at the Israel Intelligence, Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC) and posted on Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website (mfa.gov.il) to the effect that between 2001 and (end of November) 2007 "there has been a total of 2,383 identified rocket hits in and around the western Negev settlements, with the southern city of Sderot as a priority..." And I drew your attention to this sentence by the Sydney Morning Herald's Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis: "Israel's other key concern was to put an end to the use of Qassam rockets, more than 10,000 of which have landed in the farmlands and cities that surround Gaza over the past 6 years, killing about 20 people." (All bets are off, 3/1/09)
Then The Australian's foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan* weighed in with a new figure: "In the past few years, the terrorist group Hamas has fired more than 6,000 rockets and mortars from Gaza at Israeli civilian targets" (Israel has right to defend citizens, The Sunday Telegraph, 4/1/09). And, in the same issue, his illustrious Daily Telegraph colleague Piers Akerman wrote "Since 2001, Hamas and its allies launched more than 6,400 rockets, mortar bombs and other missiles [stones?] at Israel." (Prodding at lions will bring Hamas undone) Now, if we combine the 2001-2007 figures for rocket and mortar attacks in the IICC document with the estimate for 2008 given in the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs document The Hamas terror war against Israel (mfa.gov.il, 1/1/09), we get a grand total of 7,985 rocket and mortar strikes. If -if - this figure is correct, Sheridan and Akerman are actually understating their case - a bizarre phenomenon indeed!
[*Sheridan, of course, has a way with numbers - see my 4/2/08 post When Even the Retraction is Dodgy.]
Today, it was Chief [Sydney Morning] Herald Correspondent Paul McGeough's turn to get creative: "Tel Aviv's early insistence that this massive military exercise was about putting a halt to Palestinian rockets being fired into or near communities in the south of Israel never rang true." So far, so good. "Measure it by the number of rockets - 8,000 plus over 8 [sic: 7]years - and indeed it sounds like a genuine existential threat." (Mission revealed: destroy Hamas) Oh dear, if only he'd roped in the mortars.
But there's more. Good old Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), the pointy end of the Israel Lobby, also thought he'd have a stab - and where else but in his home away from home, The Australian: "About 6300 rockets and mortars have been indiscriminately launched at Israeli population centres since August 2005, including more than 600 in the past few weeks." (Sorry history behind today's violent images, 5/1/09) Using the data in the mfa.gov.il sources for the period 8/2005-12/2008, we get a total of 6,024 rocket and mortar strikes.
Postscript: "The head of the NSW Jewish Board of deputies, Vic Alhadeff... blamed the crisis in Gaza on Hamas, saying it had fired more than 8,000 rockets and mortars into Israel since 2001." (Australian Jews protest against Israel's action, West & Pearlman, SMH, 6/1/09)
Friday, August 15, 2008
The Georgian Conflict: Made in Israel?
"Mention any trouble spot in the Third World over the past 10 years, and, inevitably, you will find smiling Israeli officers and shiny Israeli weapons on the news pages. The images have become familiar: the Uzi submachine gun or the Galil assault rifle, with Israeli officers named Uzi and Galil, or Golan, for good measure. We have seen them in South Africa, Iran, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Namibia, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Chile, Bolivia, and many other places from Seoul to Tegucigalpa, from Walvis Bay to Guatemala City, from Taipei to Port-au-Prince, Israeli civilians and military men have been helping, in their words, in 'the defence of the West'." That's a quote from Israeli scholar Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi's 1988 book, The Israeli Connection: Whom Israel Arms & Why. Twenty years later, Uzi, Galil, Golan & Co are still at it - in Georgia:
"Georgian tanks and infantry, aided by Israeli military advisers, captured the capital of breakaway South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, early Friday, August 8, bringing the Georgian-Russian conflict over the province to a military climax... The Russians may just bear with the pro-US Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili's ambition to bring his country into NATO. But they draw a heavy line against his plans and those of Western oil companies, including Israeli firms, to route the oil routes from Azerbaijan and the gas lines from Turkmenistan, which transit Georgia, through Turkey instead of hooking them up to Russian pipelines carrying oil and gas out of the Caspian region... DEBKAfile discloses Israel's interest in the conflict from its exclusive military sources: Jerusalem owns a strong interest in Caspian oil and gas reaching the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel, Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel's oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the far east through the Indian Ocean... Last year, the Georgian president commissioned from private Israeli security firms several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat tactics. They also offer instruction on military intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems from Israel. These advisers were undoubtedly deeply involved in the Georgian army's preparations to conquer the South Ossetian capital Friday. In recent weeks, Moscow has repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia... Israel responded by saying that the only assistance rendered Tbilsi was 'defensive'." (Israel backs Georgia in Caspian oil pipeline battle with Russia, http://www.debka.com/, 8/8/08)
"The military cooperation between the countries developed swiftly. The fact that Georgia's defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli... contributed to this cooperation. His door was always open to the Israelis who came and offered his country arms systems made in Israel... Among the Israelis who took advantage of the opportunity... were former Minister Roni Milo and his brother Shlomo, former director-general of the Military Industries, Brigadier-General (Res) Gal Hirsch and Major-General (Res) Yisrael Ziv... Dov Pikulin, one of the owners of the Authentico company specializing in trips and journeys to the area, says... that 'the Israeli is the main investor in the Georgian economy. Everyone is there, directly or indirectly'. 'The Israelis should be proud of themselves for the Israeli training and education received by the Georgian soldiers', Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili said Saturday. Yakobashvili is a Jew and is fluent in Hebrew. 'We are now in a fight against the great Russia', he said, 'and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House, because Georgia cannot survive on its own... One of the Georgian parliament members did not settle Saturday for the call for American aid, urging Israel to help stop the Russian offensive as well..." (War in Georgia: the Israeli connection, http://www.ynetnews.com/, 10/8/08)
"To a reporter's question about Jews who have fled the fighting and come to Israel, [President Saakashvili] said: 'We have 2 Israeli cabinet ministers, one deals with war... and the other with negotiations.., and that is the Israeli involvement here: Both war and peace are in the hands of Israeli Jews'." (Georgia president denies Israel halted military aid due to war, http://www.haaretz.com/, 14/8/08)
And not a word anywhere in the Australian mainstream media about Uzi, Galil, Golan & Co.
Postscript, 16/8/08: Let me qualify that last sentence. The Australian's Cut & Paste (14/8/08) published an extract from The Electronic Intifada's Ali Abunimah on the "Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis" under the heading: "Don't blame Russia, blame the Jews, says Ali Abunimah of The Electronic Intifada." I have a number of observations to make about this disgusting little diversion. For starters, Abunimah is not blaming "the Jews." The Australian here promotes the erroneous Zionist party line that Israel is the state of all Jews, everywhere, and that therefore any criticism of Israel, its policies and behaviour can be construed as anti-Semitism. (Imagine The Australian, for example, publishing the above extract from Israel's ynetnews on the "Israeli connection" under the heading "Don't blame Russia, blame the Jews, says Arie Egozi of ynetnews.com.") Secondly, isn't it fascinating that, while open discussion of the Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis can be found in the Israeli media, as per the above examples, it appears out of bounds in the Australian media.
Postscript 2, 16/8/08: Qualification 2. The Sydney Morning Herald's chief correspondent Paul McGeough, in a feature article, Trigger happy and oil mad (16/8/08), has touched on the Israeli connection ever so gingerly: "Armed and trained militarily by the US and, intriguingly, by Israel, Georgia sent thousands of troops to help out in Iraq. So when he lit the fire at home, Saakashvili believed Washington and NATO would send firefighters as a favour returned." Intriguing, yes, but not, it seems, intriguing enough for McGeough to pursue the matter further. Later in his article, he referred to the Georgian president's "hairy-chested behaviour," despite Condi's insistence that he "not provoke Moscow with military action." We need to know just who cultivated the hair on Saakashvili's chest and taught him to play with matches, and how the Yanks really feel about their role in the conflagration.
Postscript 3, 18/8/08: Qualification 3. The Australian's Peter Wilson, in a feature article, Beginning of a Soviet reunion (16/8/08), made this fleeting reference: "Firefights and occasional attacks across the border had been building in recent weeks but Saakashvili was not merely responding to provocation from South Ossetia. Before his re-election in January he vowed to break the impasse and reclaim the disputed territory, and his confidence was lifted by the retraining and rearming of his military in recent years by the US and Israel."
For the paper's foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan that's a bridge too far. The closest he gets is this: "Finally, when Washington gets as close to a government as it did to Saakashvili's in Georgia, and embraces it as a de facto ally, it assumes some responsibility for its military behaviour. At the very least Saakashvili exhibited very poor judgment in providing Putin with a pretext for invasion." (Strongman Putin on the blitz, 16/8/08)
Still looking.
"Georgian tanks and infantry, aided by Israeli military advisers, captured the capital of breakaway South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, early Friday, August 8, bringing the Georgian-Russian conflict over the province to a military climax... The Russians may just bear with the pro-US Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili's ambition to bring his country into NATO. But they draw a heavy line against his plans and those of Western oil companies, including Israeli firms, to route the oil routes from Azerbaijan and the gas lines from Turkmenistan, which transit Georgia, through Turkey instead of hooking them up to Russian pipelines carrying oil and gas out of the Caspian region... DEBKAfile discloses Israel's interest in the conflict from its exclusive military sources: Jerusalem owns a strong interest in Caspian oil and gas reaching the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel, Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel's oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the far east through the Indian Ocean... Last year, the Georgian president commissioned from private Israeli security firms several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat tactics. They also offer instruction on military intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems from Israel. These advisers were undoubtedly deeply involved in the Georgian army's preparations to conquer the South Ossetian capital Friday. In recent weeks, Moscow has repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia... Israel responded by saying that the only assistance rendered Tbilsi was 'defensive'." (Israel backs Georgia in Caspian oil pipeline battle with Russia, http://www.debka.com/, 8/8/08)
"The military cooperation between the countries developed swiftly. The fact that Georgia's defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli... contributed to this cooperation. His door was always open to the Israelis who came and offered his country arms systems made in Israel... Among the Israelis who took advantage of the opportunity... were former Minister Roni Milo and his brother Shlomo, former director-general of the Military Industries, Brigadier-General (Res) Gal Hirsch and Major-General (Res) Yisrael Ziv... Dov Pikulin, one of the owners of the Authentico company specializing in trips and journeys to the area, says... that 'the Israeli is the main investor in the Georgian economy. Everyone is there, directly or indirectly'. 'The Israelis should be proud of themselves for the Israeli training and education received by the Georgian soldiers', Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili said Saturday. Yakobashvili is a Jew and is fluent in Hebrew. 'We are now in a fight against the great Russia', he said, 'and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House, because Georgia cannot survive on its own... One of the Georgian parliament members did not settle Saturday for the call for American aid, urging Israel to help stop the Russian offensive as well..." (War in Georgia: the Israeli connection, http://www.ynetnews.com/, 10/8/08)
"To a reporter's question about Jews who have fled the fighting and come to Israel, [President Saakashvili] said: 'We have 2 Israeli cabinet ministers, one deals with war... and the other with negotiations.., and that is the Israeli involvement here: Both war and peace are in the hands of Israeli Jews'." (Georgia president denies Israel halted military aid due to war, http://www.haaretz.com/, 14/8/08)
And not a word anywhere in the Australian mainstream media about Uzi, Galil, Golan & Co.
Postscript, 16/8/08: Let me qualify that last sentence. The Australian's Cut & Paste (14/8/08) published an extract from The Electronic Intifada's Ali Abunimah on the "Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis" under the heading: "Don't blame Russia, blame the Jews, says Ali Abunimah of The Electronic Intifada." I have a number of observations to make about this disgusting little diversion. For starters, Abunimah is not blaming "the Jews." The Australian here promotes the erroneous Zionist party line that Israel is the state of all Jews, everywhere, and that therefore any criticism of Israel, its policies and behaviour can be construed as anti-Semitism. (Imagine The Australian, for example, publishing the above extract from Israel's ynetnews on the "Israeli connection" under the heading "Don't blame Russia, blame the Jews, says Arie Egozi of ynetnews.com.") Secondly, isn't it fascinating that, while open discussion of the Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis can be found in the Israeli media, as per the above examples, it appears out of bounds in the Australian media.
Postscript 2, 16/8/08: Qualification 2. The Sydney Morning Herald's chief correspondent Paul McGeough, in a feature article, Trigger happy and oil mad (16/8/08), has touched on the Israeli connection ever so gingerly: "Armed and trained militarily by the US and, intriguingly, by Israel, Georgia sent thousands of troops to help out in Iraq. So when he lit the fire at home, Saakashvili believed Washington and NATO would send firefighters as a favour returned." Intriguing, yes, but not, it seems, intriguing enough for McGeough to pursue the matter further. Later in his article, he referred to the Georgian president's "hairy-chested behaviour," despite Condi's insistence that he "not provoke Moscow with military action." We need to know just who cultivated the hair on Saakashvili's chest and taught him to play with matches, and how the Yanks really feel about their role in the conflagration.
Postscript 3, 18/8/08: Qualification 3. The Australian's Peter Wilson, in a feature article, Beginning of a Soviet reunion (16/8/08), made this fleeting reference: "Firefights and occasional attacks across the border had been building in recent weeks but Saakashvili was not merely responding to provocation from South Ossetia. Before his re-election in January he vowed to break the impasse and reclaim the disputed territory, and his confidence was lifted by the retraining and rearming of his military in recent years by the US and Israel."
For the paper's foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan that's a bridge too far. The closest he gets is this: "Finally, when Washington gets as close to a government as it did to Saakashvili's in Georgia, and embraces it as a de facto ally, it assumes some responsibility for its military behaviour. At the very least Saakashvili exhibited very poor judgment in providing Putin with a pretext for invasion." (Strongman Putin on the blitz, 16/8/08)
Still looking.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Cut & Paste Pasted
The Zionist propagandists who preside over the 'opinion' pages of The Australian just love to indulge in schadenfreude. The buggers were cock-a-hoop over two recent cases of Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence in the Gaza Strip and made the most of the opportunity they presented to divert attention away from Israel's routine acts of bastardry, such as shooting up funerals of Palestinians shot at funerals of Palestinians shot defending their land*, or giving Palestinians in urgent need of medical attention the choice of death or turning informer*.
[*Rubber bullets fired at Naalin funeral-goers, ynetnews.com, 5/8/08]
[* 'Tell us who the terrorists are if you want the doctor', independent.co.uk, 4/8/08]
The Australian's Cut & Paste (6/8/08) section led off with the murder in Gaza of deported asylum-seeker Akram al-Masri under the facetious headline The refugee with a well-founded fear of a mango feud. The claim of an Australian refugee advocate that al-Masri had had "problems with Israel and the Palestinian Authority," and that the Howard government had therefore knowingly sent him to his death was juxtaposed with an extract from a Sydney Morning Herald report by Paul McGeough to the effect that al-Masri was really the hapless victim of a feud between two Gazan clans which had its origin in a dispute over the sale of a mango (Refugee was abandoned to Gaza clan warfare, 5/8/08). The implication, of course, was that the Howard government had clean hands. Maybe, but who really knows? But what about Israel? Should it too escape blame? Before deciding, think about this very Zionist experiment:
Flood the Gaza Strip with thousands of refugees expelled from other parts of Palestine (1948), turning it into one of the most overcrowded places on earth; occupy it, not once (1956-7), but twice (1967); steal a third of its land to build fortified playpens for bored American Jews; ruthlessly crush all dissent; sow death and destruction at every turn, decade after decade; strangle its economy; throw into the mix a period of Palestinian Authority misrule (1994-2006); cultivate the PA's collaborationist security services*; level the inmates' homes, schools, factories, workshops, hospitals and greenhouses; tear up their roads; raze their fields and uproot their fruit trees; get out when it becomes too hot to handle (2005); shriek in horror as the inmates dare to elect their own non-collaborationist government (2006); seal the Strip off from the rest of the world with a ring of steel; shoot, shell and strafe its inmates for voting as they saw fit; smirk and feel superior as they seek solace in religion or protection/advantage in the clan. Above all, perform high fives whenever they turn on each other and pat yourself on the head for imagining you're so much more civilized than they.
[*"While the political branches of the Fateh-led PA may have been just passive in the Palestinian struggle for freedom, some of the security forces have been active collaborators with the Israeli occupation, most notably the Preventive Security apparatus, headed by Mohammed Dahlan in the Gaza Strip and Jibril Rajoub in the West Bank. These forces, trained by the CIA, have worked during all years of the Oslo Agreements in tight collaboration with the Israeli security forces, including collaborations in assassinations of Hamas militants." (The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003, Tanya Reinhart pp 148-149)]
The McGeough extract was followed by one from a rant by the Basil Fawlty of Australian journalism, The Daily Telegraph's Piers Akerman. Piers variously describes the Palestinian refugees, Israel's victims, as a "cancer", a "festering [sore]" and a "canker," Israel, however, the creator and sustainer of the Palestinian refugee wound, is described as a state that has "maintained a non-discrimination policy toward Arabs and people of all faiths within its borders." Piers is as mad as hell (on Israel's behalf) and he's not gonna take it anymore! You see, Israel had gone to considerable time and trouble to expel Palestine's untermenschen back in 1948, but - you wouldn't read about it (except maybe in The Daily Telegraph) - those bloody Arab states "have refused to permit them to settle and integrate into their populations, preferring to see a United Nations-supported permanent 'refugee' state of Palestine festering on the Israeli border and and remaining a canker in international relations." And that, folks, is all anyone expelled from his homeland would want, right? Just to forget and move on - as far away from his alleged homeland as possible, right? Content that it's gone to more deserving folk, right?
But what really gets Piers going is the obverse of this Arab knavery - Israel's merciful provision of "sanctuary for Palestinians fleeing home-grown terror directed against each other." You see, "the bloody infighting between rival terrorist gangs" is just typical and proves, if proof were needed, that Israel is "the only island of security in the middle of the carnage..." Do I really need to elaborate on the irony of Israel letting 181 Palestinian collaborators and/or criminals in, while keeping 4-5 million Palestinian refugees out?
Then came this extract from UK Israel apologist Melanie Phillips of the The Spectator on "the crowning absurdity of the situation... So let's get our head around this: Palestinians committed to the destruction of Israel fled from other Palestinians committed to the destruction of Israel into Israel, which is providing them with sanctuary and medical treatment, while the President of their putative state, who bases his claim against Israel on its alleged [!!!] refusal to admit Palestinian refugees, refused to allow actual Palestinian refugees fleeing Palestinian violence access to that same putative state, while Israel agonises over whether to grant them permanent asylum. Surreal, or what?" Yes, Mel, I reckon you're off with the Salvador Dali-s there.
Time for some old-fashioned realism from Israeli observer Meron Benvenisti: "Members of the [openly collaborationist] Dahlan* clans, who fled under similar circumstances a year ago [in the wake of the Hamas preemptive strike of 2007*] did not want members of the Hilles clan, and they convinced Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad that the whole business would prove too costly. After all, according to the precedent that they themselves set, every person who escaped from Gaza would receive a grant of $350 a month, in addition to a salary and a rent allowance. PA officials tried to paper over this stinginess on the part of people who are unabashedly embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars of humanitarian aid by bandying such false slogans as 'should we leave Gaza to Hamas?' " (They were not wanted in Ramallah, Haaretz 7/8/08)
[*On Muhammad Dahlan (Abbas' national-security adviser and the CIA's ex-man in Gaza) and Hamas' preemptive strike see my 6/3/08 post Mainsewer Media Clueless in Gaza]
And here's more realism from Paul McGeough: "First under Arafat and then in a power vacuum created by Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the 20-odd leading clans reached the peak of their power - economic and military, social and political... But when the clans came up against an elected Hamas government, something had to give. Last weekend it did. In the first year or so of Islamist control of the occupied territories, the clans bided their time, playing Hamas against Fatah. But when Hamas defeated the Fatah-controlled forces of the President, Mahmoud Abbas, in Gaza last year, the clans began to buckle... In the absence of organised Fatah forces in Gaza, some of the bigger clans have become militia proxies for Abbas' unelected and US-sponsored regime, which operates from the West Bank city of Ramallah... In the absence of the greater Israeli force and left to their own devices by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority, blood feuds and other clan clashes exploded, from 'a handful' in the 1980s to hundreds in 2006 - when at least 90 deaths and hundreds of injuries were recorded... Despite resorting to strong-arm tactics that have provoked negative criticism from human rights watch groups, Hamas is celebrated locally for restoring law and order." (Clans fight to keep it all in the family, Sydney Morning Herald 8/8/08)
Phillips' outrageous propaganda about Israel "agonising over whether to grant them permanent asylum" should be contrasted with this report: "Since human rights groups have recently reported on torture in Gaza, alarms were raised [over Israel's decision to send about 3 dozen Hilles clan members back to Gaza]. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) sent an urgent appeal to the Supreme Court demanding that Israel stop returning the men to Gaza. On Monday morning, the Israeli military announced that it would not send them all to Gaza and that it had persuaded Mr Abbas to allow many of them into the West Bank. So [ACRI] backed off, replaced by two right-wing activists who petitioned the court to stop the transfer of dangerous men across Israel. By day's end, the army had moved 88 of the men on military buses to Jericho. Several dozen others were sent to Gaza, while 16 were still in the hospital. And the rest? Israeli security forces were interrogating them..." (In Gaza, a blurry line between enemies & friends, The New York Times, 5/8/08)
Finally, Cut & Paste readers were offered this little pearl from visiting neocon recruit Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the SMH of 4/8/08: "In a tribal society, life is cruel and terrible." Well, you can be pretty sure that the ex-Somali, ex-Muslim Ali didn't have the land of the 12 tribes in mind when she dropped her pearl of wisdom, but some Israeli scholars sure have. Consider the following: "[Israeli historian Zeev] Sternhell argues that Zionism as a whole was a tribal form of nationalism of 'blood and soil' emphasising religion and ethnicity..." (The Bible & Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology & Post-Colonialism in Israel-Palestine, Nur Masalha, 2007 p 23)
And has the Zionist tribe ever indulged in any Zionist-on-Zionist violence? Read on: "Barnea and Rubenstein state that 'the Hagana archives contain the names of 40 Jews who were killed by Irgun and LEHI (Stern Group) men in the course of their underground work or in the context of settling internal accounts', reviewing the record. This does not include Jews killed by terrorist attacks aimed at others, as in the King David Hotel bombing. The official history of Begin's Irgun described how they drowned a member who they thought might give information to the police, if captured; see Shahak, Begin And Co. The Haganah Special Actions Squad undertook 'punitive actions against informers within the Jewish community' as one of its tasks (Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion, p 99). A Haganah prison in Haifa contained a torture chamber for interrogation of Jews suspected of collaboration with the British, the Haifa weekly Hashavua Bair revealed in its 35th anniversary issue (April 1983), in an interview with a high military officer of the Haganah." (The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians, Noam Chomsky, 1983 pp 164-165)
[*Rubber bullets fired at Naalin funeral-goers, ynetnews.com, 5/8/08]
[* 'Tell us who the terrorists are if you want the doctor', independent.co.uk, 4/8/08]
The Australian's Cut & Paste (6/8/08) section led off with the murder in Gaza of deported asylum-seeker Akram al-Masri under the facetious headline The refugee with a well-founded fear of a mango feud. The claim of an Australian refugee advocate that al-Masri had had "problems with Israel and the Palestinian Authority," and that the Howard government had therefore knowingly sent him to his death was juxtaposed with an extract from a Sydney Morning Herald report by Paul McGeough to the effect that al-Masri was really the hapless victim of a feud between two Gazan clans which had its origin in a dispute over the sale of a mango (Refugee was abandoned to Gaza clan warfare, 5/8/08). The implication, of course, was that the Howard government had clean hands. Maybe, but who really knows? But what about Israel? Should it too escape blame? Before deciding, think about this very Zionist experiment:
Flood the Gaza Strip with thousands of refugees expelled from other parts of Palestine (1948), turning it into one of the most overcrowded places on earth; occupy it, not once (1956-7), but twice (1967); steal a third of its land to build fortified playpens for bored American Jews; ruthlessly crush all dissent; sow death and destruction at every turn, decade after decade; strangle its economy; throw into the mix a period of Palestinian Authority misrule (1994-2006); cultivate the PA's collaborationist security services*; level the inmates' homes, schools, factories, workshops, hospitals and greenhouses; tear up their roads; raze their fields and uproot their fruit trees; get out when it becomes too hot to handle (2005); shriek in horror as the inmates dare to elect their own non-collaborationist government (2006); seal the Strip off from the rest of the world with a ring of steel; shoot, shell and strafe its inmates for voting as they saw fit; smirk and feel superior as they seek solace in religion or protection/advantage in the clan. Above all, perform high fives whenever they turn on each other and pat yourself on the head for imagining you're so much more civilized than they.
[*"While the political branches of the Fateh-led PA may have been just passive in the Palestinian struggle for freedom, some of the security forces have been active collaborators with the Israeli occupation, most notably the Preventive Security apparatus, headed by Mohammed Dahlan in the Gaza Strip and Jibril Rajoub in the West Bank. These forces, trained by the CIA, have worked during all years of the Oslo Agreements in tight collaboration with the Israeli security forces, including collaborations in assassinations of Hamas militants." (The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003, Tanya Reinhart pp 148-149)]
The McGeough extract was followed by one from a rant by the Basil Fawlty of Australian journalism, The Daily Telegraph's Piers Akerman. Piers variously describes the Palestinian refugees, Israel's victims, as a "cancer", a "festering [sore]" and a "canker," Israel, however, the creator and sustainer of the Palestinian refugee wound, is described as a state that has "maintained a non-discrimination policy toward Arabs and people of all faiths within its borders." Piers is as mad as hell (on Israel's behalf) and he's not gonna take it anymore! You see, Israel had gone to considerable time and trouble to expel Palestine's untermenschen back in 1948, but - you wouldn't read about it (except maybe in The Daily Telegraph) - those bloody Arab states "have refused to permit them to settle and integrate into their populations, preferring to see a United Nations-supported permanent 'refugee' state of Palestine festering on the Israeli border and and remaining a canker in international relations." And that, folks, is all anyone expelled from his homeland would want, right? Just to forget and move on - as far away from his alleged homeland as possible, right? Content that it's gone to more deserving folk, right?
But what really gets Piers going is the obverse of this Arab knavery - Israel's merciful provision of "sanctuary for Palestinians fleeing home-grown terror directed against each other." You see, "the bloody infighting between rival terrorist gangs" is just typical and proves, if proof were needed, that Israel is "the only island of security in the middle of the carnage..." Do I really need to elaborate on the irony of Israel letting 181 Palestinian collaborators and/or criminals in, while keeping 4-5 million Palestinian refugees out?
Then came this extract from UK Israel apologist Melanie Phillips of the The Spectator on "the crowning absurdity of the situation... So let's get our head around this: Palestinians committed to the destruction of Israel fled from other Palestinians committed to the destruction of Israel into Israel, which is providing them with sanctuary and medical treatment, while the President of their putative state, who bases his claim against Israel on its alleged [!!!] refusal to admit Palestinian refugees, refused to allow actual Palestinian refugees fleeing Palestinian violence access to that same putative state, while Israel agonises over whether to grant them permanent asylum. Surreal, or what?" Yes, Mel, I reckon you're off with the Salvador Dali-s there.
Time for some old-fashioned realism from Israeli observer Meron Benvenisti: "Members of the [openly collaborationist] Dahlan* clans, who fled under similar circumstances a year ago [in the wake of the Hamas preemptive strike of 2007*] did not want members of the Hilles clan, and they convinced Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad that the whole business would prove too costly. After all, according to the precedent that they themselves set, every person who escaped from Gaza would receive a grant of $350 a month, in addition to a salary and a rent allowance. PA officials tried to paper over this stinginess on the part of people who are unabashedly embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars of humanitarian aid by bandying such false slogans as 'should we leave Gaza to Hamas?' " (They were not wanted in Ramallah, Haaretz 7/8/08)
[*On Muhammad Dahlan (Abbas' national-security adviser and the CIA's ex-man in Gaza) and Hamas' preemptive strike see my 6/3/08 post Mainsewer Media Clueless in Gaza]
And here's more realism from Paul McGeough: "First under Arafat and then in a power vacuum created by Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the 20-odd leading clans reached the peak of their power - economic and military, social and political... But when the clans came up against an elected Hamas government, something had to give. Last weekend it did. In the first year or so of Islamist control of the occupied territories, the clans bided their time, playing Hamas against Fatah. But when Hamas defeated the Fatah-controlled forces of the President, Mahmoud Abbas, in Gaza last year, the clans began to buckle... In the absence of organised Fatah forces in Gaza, some of the bigger clans have become militia proxies for Abbas' unelected and US-sponsored regime, which operates from the West Bank city of Ramallah... In the absence of the greater Israeli force and left to their own devices by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority, blood feuds and other clan clashes exploded, from 'a handful' in the 1980s to hundreds in 2006 - when at least 90 deaths and hundreds of injuries were recorded... Despite resorting to strong-arm tactics that have provoked negative criticism from human rights watch groups, Hamas is celebrated locally for restoring law and order." (Clans fight to keep it all in the family, Sydney Morning Herald 8/8/08)
Phillips' outrageous propaganda about Israel "agonising over whether to grant them permanent asylum" should be contrasted with this report: "Since human rights groups have recently reported on torture in Gaza, alarms were raised [over Israel's decision to send about 3 dozen Hilles clan members back to Gaza]. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) sent an urgent appeal to the Supreme Court demanding that Israel stop returning the men to Gaza. On Monday morning, the Israeli military announced that it would not send them all to Gaza and that it had persuaded Mr Abbas to allow many of them into the West Bank. So [ACRI] backed off, replaced by two right-wing activists who petitioned the court to stop the transfer of dangerous men across Israel. By day's end, the army had moved 88 of the men on military buses to Jericho. Several dozen others were sent to Gaza, while 16 were still in the hospital. And the rest? Israeli security forces were interrogating them..." (In Gaza, a blurry line between enemies & friends, The New York Times, 5/8/08)
Finally, Cut & Paste readers were offered this little pearl from visiting neocon recruit Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the SMH of 4/8/08: "In a tribal society, life is cruel and terrible." Well, you can be pretty sure that the ex-Somali, ex-Muslim Ali didn't have the land of the 12 tribes in mind when she dropped her pearl of wisdom, but some Israeli scholars sure have. Consider the following: "[Israeli historian Zeev] Sternhell argues that Zionism as a whole was a tribal form of nationalism of 'blood and soil' emphasising religion and ethnicity..." (The Bible & Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology & Post-Colonialism in Israel-Palestine, Nur Masalha, 2007 p 23)
And has the Zionist tribe ever indulged in any Zionist-on-Zionist violence? Read on: "Barnea and Rubenstein state that 'the Hagana archives contain the names of 40 Jews who were killed by Irgun and LEHI (Stern Group) men in the course of their underground work or in the context of settling internal accounts', reviewing the record. This does not include Jews killed by terrorist attacks aimed at others, as in the King David Hotel bombing. The official history of Begin's Irgun described how they drowned a member who they thought might give information to the police, if captured; see Shahak, Begin And Co. The Haganah Special Actions Squad undertook 'punitive actions against informers within the Jewish community' as one of its tasks (Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion, p 99). A Haganah prison in Haifa contained a torture chamber for interrogation of Jews suspected of collaboration with the British, the Haifa weekly Hashavua Bair revealed in its 35th anniversary issue (April 1983), in an interview with a high military officer of the Haganah." (The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians, Noam Chomsky, 1983 pp 164-165)
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