Phillip Adams' Filibustering

Phillip Adams' interviewed the visiting former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Richard Falk, broadcasting it on ABC Radio National program Late Night Live (LNL) on 3/7/19 under the heading of Richard Falk on Israel, Palestine, Iran and the USA. To begin with, here is my transcription. Note that I cannot beat the idea that Adams is filibustering, even unconsciously, and I will indicate where I think this to be the case in square brackets containing italics. See what you think:

PA: My next guest... is guaranteed to generate a huge amount of correspondence even before he opens his mouth. There have been calls for him to have his visa entry to Australia revoked, and his talk at the NSW Parliament and the University of Sydney to be cancelled. Given that he's here these calls have not been heeded and he has been let into the country, and here at LNL we'd like to hear a range of views. But there's no doubt that any story we do that mentions Israel or Palestine will generate complaints from all sides. [MERC: Note that on the LNL website there are so far 4 comments. Adams' prediction of complaints from all sides has proved erroneous, except for one Zionist who wrote as follows: "As a long time listener to the program, let me say that tax payers money should not be used to give Falk a platform, unless he is going to be properly cross-examined (as opposed to being encouraged) for his rabid irrational hatred of Israel. Not one of Phillip's finer moments."] My guest is Richard Falk, the Albert B. Milbank professor of international law, emeritus, from Princeton University. He was the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Palestine from 2008-2014, and despite his retirement from that lofty position he's back in Australia talking about his hopes for peace between Israel and Palestine. Welcome back, Richard.
RF: Thank you so much.
PA: I should make the point that you're one of the very few guests I have that's older than I am.
RF: Well, I wish that was not my only qualification for being your guest but...
PA: OK, you've visited Australia regularly for some time but have you ever had a chillier reception?
RF: I suppose not. The last time I was here, I also spoke about several issues, but one of them was Israel/Palestine and I think there was some protest at the time also, but rather minimal and not carried on through the media as this was the result of an article in the Australian Jewish News (AJN).
PA: I want to raise that article with you in a minute, but let me ask you this. Have you had similar receptions in other parts of the world?
RF:  Except for Israel itself where I was detained whilst I was serving as the UN Rapporteur. There is a very pro-Zionist NGO called UN Watch that has tried to harass me in various ways over time, including trying to have me denied entry to the UK. So that's my only other experience.
PA: OK, I'm going to restate some of the issues raised by the AJN in their article The furore of Falk visit. First, they claim you support conspiracy theories about 9/11. [MERC: Does anyone really give a damn what the AJN said back when? Falk is here to talk about Palestinian rights in international law.]
RF: Yes, that's always sort of used as a way of showing my supposed extreme and reckless views. My actual position is that the official version of 9/11 has some unanswered questions that the American people, and indeed the world, deserve to know, and for whatever reason those questions that arouse scepticism have never been satisfactorily addressed...
PA: Are you suggesting it might be a false-flag operation? [MERC: And again.]
RF: Well, there are a lot of alternative versions of what actually happened, including that the idea the American establishment at the time knew something was going on and let it happen. What actually happened is something obscure so I don't subscribe to the accusation of any alternate conspiracy theory. All I do subscribe to is a scepticism about the official version, and I wrote the foreword to one of the early books that raised 17 questions about the official version, and it was written by a very distinguished philosopher of religion actually, who happened also to be a friend of mine and a very scrupulous scholar so his questions I think justify an attitude of suspicion, but they don't vindicate an alternative version of what actually happened.
PA: The furore on the Falk visit also said that you blamed the US and Israel for the Boston bombings. [MERC: And again.]
RF: Oh, that again. A lot of people are saying that, but they picked this out of context from my blog. What I actually said was that when you have a foreign policy in an area that is subject to so much turmoil and extremism as the Middle East is, and you intervene in that process, you're bound to have some reverberations from sociopathic individuals living abroad - and the policy toward Israel is very provocative among certain extremist groups - and therefore this kind of negative reverberation is something you have to expect to follow from such a foreign policy.
PA: Note, dear listeners, that we will put up a link to both the article by the Jewish News and Richard's rebuttal on the website. [MERC: And again.] So when we last spoke you were not permitted into Israel. Have you been back in the last 5 years? [MERC: And again. Adams is clearly not interested in what Falk has to say on Palestinian rights and international law.]
RF: I've been invited back several times, but partly for logistical reasons, and partly because I didn't want to repeat the experience of being put in what amounts to a prison by the Israelis, I decided not to go. I've given video clips of my presentations that were the reason I would have gone, but I haven't gone.
PA: OK, what do you make of Gerard [sic] Kushner's Prosperity for Peace Plan? [MERC: And again.]
RF: I don't feel it has much political traction. It's not looking towards an agreement. It's looking towards Palestinian surrender politically, followed by some kind of economic plan that will improve the daily lives of people in the region, or at least that is its promise. But the Palestinians have not struggled for their national rights for almost a century now to surrender for some kind of economic package.
PA: Even if Jared described it as some kind of opportunity of the century, it's interesting there were no Israelis or Palestinians at the launch in Bahrain, and of course, the Palestinians boycotted the event.
RF: Yes, I mean it has very little appeal to people who understand the history and the nature of the tensions and the conflict, and the whole Trump approach since he became president, first appointing three extremists as the representatives of his presidency in the region, not only to Israel, but Kushner, Greenblatt and Friedman are all extremists within the Zionist camp itself.
PA: To which could now be added Bolton. [MERC: Adams diverts Falk again with Bolton who is focused solely on Iran.]
RF: Yes, what they did before this recent Bahrain meeting on the economic dimension of the Kushner Plan was a series of one-sided steps; the movement of the American embassy to Jerusalem in violation of an international UN consensus; the withdrawal of humanitarian assistance to UNRWA that was taking care of the refugees throughout the region; and the recognition of the annexation of the Golan Heights. All of these steps moved away from what prior American presidents had done, which was to lean toward the Israeli side, to be partisan. But what Trump is trying to do is force this Palestinian political surrender, and so it's a shift from partisanship to belligerency as far as the Palestinians are concerned...
PA: You must be watching the tensions between the US and Iran with great concern, as do we all. How do you see this playing out? [MERC: More Adams' diverting onto Iran.]
RF: Well, I think everything in this Trump era is unpredictable and anyone who tries to be too dogmatic about what's going to happen shouldn't be trusted, shouldn't be relied upon. I think it's a very dangerous confrontational policy. I think that the bargain that underlies it is that the Gulf Arab states were so eager to confront Iran that they were willing to make peace with Israel and sacrifice the Palestinian struggle. So from the Palestinian point of view, this is a very adverse development because their support from Arab neighbors has considerably diminished and they're faced with an American administration that's pushing hard the Netanyahu line in Israel, plus a basically unsympathetic regional atmosphere with very few friends of the Palestinian people left in positions of authority.
PA: And of course Trump has this very strong connection to Saudi Arabia as part of his decision- making. [MERC: Now Adams has diverted Falk onto Saudi Arabia.]
RF: Yes, one of the things I think is very harmful to American foreign policy is these two special relationships, one with Israel, one with Saudi Arabia, and when they say special relationships, what they really mean is unconditional support, and so whatever Israel does, whatever Saudi Arabia does, is not seen as wrong, and violations of international law and human rights just fall below the radar. But if Egypt or Turkey did things that becomes a human rights outrage, particularly Turkey these days because it's seen as a kind of friend of the Islamic movement.
PA: My guest is Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law, emeritus from Princeton and former UN Special Rappoteur for Human Rights in Palestine from 2008-2014. Now, the USA is still seen as absolutely crucial in any peace deal to be brokered.
RF: Yes, my own view is that the intergovernmental framework is not capable of producing a sustainable peace. If you are really interested in peace between Palestinians and Israelis it has to be based on the spirit of equality, not on a structure of hierarchy, and all the efforts at producing a peace over the past couple of decades have been based on finding security for Israel but not treating Palestinian needs in any equivalent manner, and my view is that leads to a ceasefire, not a peace.
PA: To take us back to the USA and Iran, might the North Korea playbook apply here? [MERC: North Korea? Here Adams goes again. As issues Palestine and North Korea are chalk and cheese.]
RF: Well, as I say, anything in the Trump era is unpredictable, in terms of both what happens on the Korean peninsula but what broader effects that might have. It is true that if he has success in Korea, he might try the same thing with Iran, and that would make him a very strong presidential candidate in 2020. I don't think the American people, as confused and contradictory as they seem to be at the moment, want a real war with either North Korea or Iran. So from a pragmatic, political point of view, he's much better off being a peacekeeper or peacemaker than being a warmonger, but he has advisers like Bolton and Pompeo who are definitely inclined towards military confrontation.
PA: I think we all agree that giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was a bit premature, but of course from time to time Trump tweets that he is a recipient. What are the main reasons behind the USA's obsession with Iran? Does it go back to the hostage crisis, way back to '79? [MERC: Back to Iran!]
RF: I think that's a very insightful way of putting the question. I do think the humiliation that the US suffered at the hostage crisis left an unhealed wound. And in part the successive hostility towards Iran, which poses no threat whatsoever to either the US or Israel for that matter, is a lingering sense of frustration that the American government was unable to release the hostages, except when Tehran decided it was time to let them go, which was after the Carter presidency, the first day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration, which made people suspicious that there must have been some kind of arrangement between the Reagan people and the Iranian government.*
PA: Since you left your UN post, what has the new rapporteur, Michael Link, been saying about human rights in Israel [sic]?
RF: More or less the same thing I was saying. It is hard to confront the reality of the occupation without coming to the same conclusions if you respect the evidence. I used to say, if you were only 10% objective, you would come to the same conclusions I did. You didn't have to be balanced because Israel itself admits to the expansion of the settlements which are unlawful, it admits to the annexation of parts of the Occupied Territories which contradicts the authority of the UN and international consensus. It has claimed permanent sovereignty over unified Jerusalem which again is contrary to the international consensus. So Israel's own policies, which were in some ways embedded in this basic law they adopted in 2018, which said only Jews have the right of self-determination within Israel, I mean, it more or less accepts the critique that Israel has become an apartheid state, which Israeli leaders themselves have said internally in Israel. They get very angry when it's said outside the confines of Israel.
PA: So do you believe, despite all the problems, all the difficulties, that the two-state solution is still the best option for peace? [MERC: Adams' final diversion - the trusty, long-outmoded two-state solution mantra which has tripped off the tongue of every hack politician and establishment pundit for decades.]
RF: Well, I think in these situations that people who are co-existing have to make the final judgment as to what is acceptable, how they can co-exist together in a sustainable way of mutual respect, and that spirit of equality is what's been missing in the whole diplomatic process because it has been geopolitically tilted towards Israel and that means you are trying to negotiate peace based on inequality and that won't work in my view. So, it requires a real readjustment in the whole Israel/US relationship and the sense of how you achieve peace in a situation of sustained conflict of this sort.

The take-away message here is that Adams is all over the shop with Falk, consistent with his 'don't mention Palestine' practice spanning decades. Could this be any more obvious?

[*Curious here that Falk thinks the 1979 Tehran hostage crisis is the big problem between the US and Iran. Seems like the 1953 CIA coup against the democratically-elected Mosaddegh government and the installation of the repressive pro-US and pro-Israel Shah of Iran are simply not on his radar.]

Don't Mention the (Palestinian) Refugees

Late Night Live presenter, Phillip Adams, never ceases to amaze. The occasion for my flabbergasting this time around came during his interview (Rethinking Foreign Occupation) with the UN's Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Professor Richard Falk, on September 17.

In discussing the Murdoch press-facilitated Israel lobby attack on him, covered in my 12/9/13 post Anatomy of a Beat-Up, the following exchange took place:

Falk: Israel has tried to discredit the UN auspices and those that are charged with trying to report on what's going on in the occupied Palestinian territories, and it's part of what I call a politics of deflection, getting people to think about the messenger rather than the message. They don't attack my substantive analysis, they attack me as the presenter of that.
Adams: And yet you're a fine young Jewish gent, aren't you?
Falk (embarrassed laugh): I wish.

I cannot help but wonder whether Falk actually squirmed with embarrassment at this point. Be that as it may, the "Jewish gent" quip was as nothing compared to what was to come. Falk is speaking:

"[Israel has] pursued this fragmentation of the Palestinian identity. So when you ask who are the Palestinian people, it's not just those living under occupation, it's the minority in Israel, it's the people in Gaza living under Hamas, it's the refugees..."

Then Adams interrupted, quick as a flash, drowning out the word "refugees" with this most bizarre tangent:

"It's the one and a half million Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Turkey and Jordan."

Syrian refugees!!!

Falk must've thought he was talking with a lunatic. He valiantly tried steering Adams back on course:

"Well, in Turkey, they're Syrian refugees, but in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan there are between 2 and 3 million Palestinian refugees who've been living there generation after generation. It's a horrible reality."

Adams was having none of it, however, and retained his grip on the Syrian straw in a desperate bid to avoid being swept onto those dreaded PALESTINIAN REFUGEE rocks:

"In... in... parentheses, Richard, let's look at the broader Middle East for a moment. You've said there's no good endgame to the conflict in Syria. Where's it heading?"

Falk could hardly believe his ears:

"Oh, I didn't hear the last words."

"Where is the conflict in Syria heading?" replied Adams, white as a sheet by the sound of it.

The cognitive dissonance here was positively crackling, capping a sad pattern of same which I've documented on this blog over the years. Adams can grit his teeth and tolerate discussion of Israel's colonization of the West Bank, but any reference to Israel's original sin - the ethnic cleansing of 1948 - elicits a lightning quick change of subject. Clearly, Palestinian refugees are to Adams what garlic is to Dracula.

I can only speculate that, as an old leftie raised on dreams of kibbutz 'socialism', or baloney about making the desert bloom, or some other such zio-colonial fantasy, he finds the fact of Zionist genocide and expulsion in 1948 simply too awful to contemplate.

Feel free to browse my other posts on Adams, and you'll see what I mean. If you've only got time for two, try The Remarkable Mr Adams (9/9/10) and He Just Doesn't Get It (19/9/09).

Anatomy of a Beat-Up

*Sigh* - yet another Christian Kerr EXCLUSIVE in the Australian:

The headline: ANU faces rage over conference

Really? It must be a pretty outrageous conference then:

"Australian National University officials have gone to ground in the face of Jewish community outrage for hosting Middle East hardliners at a Human Rights in Palestine conference this week."

Right.

So a conference on Palestinian rights is ipso facto "outrageous," and anyone speaking at it is ipso facto a "hardliner." (Definitions courtesy of the "Jewish community," aka the Executive Council of Australian Jewry's Peter Wertheim, and the Australian Union of Jewish Students' Dean Sherr.)

Now if the conference were about human rights in Burma or Tibet, say, it would no doubt be seen as being to the university's credit, but the very fact that the ANU is hosting a conference on Palestinian human rights apparently constitutes a damning indictment of the institution:

"The ANU was included in the international top 30 institutions in the QS World University Rankings released yesterday, but the conference has led to questions being asked about the university's credibility."

And who is asking the questions?

Now for those "hardliners" and their 'crimes'. (Beware, you are about to enter a Zionist twilight zone of false allegations, smear tactics and innuendo.):

There's Richard Falk, professor of international law at Princeton University and the UN's special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, "who was publicly rebuked by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon in 2011 for 'preposterous' remarks questioning whether the September 11 terror attacks were orchestrated by the US government."

Falk, of course, has made no such claim. His crime  - apart from standing up for Palestinian rights - seems to consist of being sufficiently open-minded to have once raised the idea of an independent investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

(Incidentally, if it's "preposterous" you want, look no further than Ban - Is anyone home? - Ki-moon: "United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with students at the UN headquarters in Jerusalem on Friday afternoon, and admitted that his organisation was biased against Israel. Responding to a student who said Israelis felt their country was discriminated against in the international organisation, Ban confirmed that there was a biased attitude towards the Israeli people and Israeli government, stressing that it was 'an unfortunate situation'." (UN chief admits bias against Israel, Omri Efraim, ynetnews.com, 16/8/13))

There's Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi of Sydney Peace Prize (2003) fame, "who was among a few PLO members who in 1996 voted not to remove clauses in the PLO charter calling for Israel's destruction." (That, BTW, is a Zionist distortion of the reference, in Article 15 of the now defunct 1968 Palestinian National Charter, to the need to "eliminate Zionism in Palestine." Eliminating Zionism means no more and no less than dismantling Israel's system of apartheid legislation, which condemns Israeli Palestinians to second class citizenship and Palestinian refugees to eternal exile.)

The simple fact of the matter here is that not one Israeli government has ever lifted a finger to amend any of Israel's discriminatory and exclusionary (that is, anti-Palestinian) laws and practices.

Finally, there's Israeli activist Jeff Halper, who allegedly "claimed in 2011 that Israel has developed 'spectral dust' it could spray over wide areas of land, every grain of which was a sensor programmed with a person's DNA to track, locate and kill that individual."

I'm sorry, I've given up on this one. Trying to track it down to any credible source is about as fruitful as the search for Saddam Hussein's mythical people-shredder.

Having marshaled the suspects and their alleged crimes, judge and jury in the form of Zionist apologist Wertheim and footie fanatic* Sherr (aka 'the Jewish community') are duly wheeled in to deliver the guilty verdict:

Wertheim: "A conference that features fringe conspiracy theorists and ideologues and omits recognised scholars in the field has no academic credibility. It is appalling that one of our top universities, the ANU, seems no longer to understand the difference between genuine scholarship and political advocacy."

Sherr: "It is highly concerning to see someone with such a history of anti-Semitic slurs invited on to [sic] Australian university campuses. We repeatedly come up against extreme anti-Israel groups on campus that blur the line between attacking Israel and attacking Jews. Our fear is Falk will only inflame this."

"Sigh" - only in Murdoch's Australian...

[*Check out his tweets.]