Meet the new chairman of the NSW Community Relations Commission, the state's promoter of multiculturalism:
"Mr [Vic] Alhadeff said he felt he had 'graduated' to the chairmanship after spending his formative years in Africa. 'I would have swastikas painted on my locker as a Jewish kid at school in Zimbabwe," he said. Mr Alhadeff said schoolyard racism, the death of his grandparents in the Holocaust and his work as a newspaperman in apartheid-era South Africa helped shape his view of multiculturalism. 'To this day I have this passion to promote respect for every person irrespective of the colour of their skin, the accent they may have, the language they speak, the faith they belong to, the culture which they represent,' he said." (Multicultural body gets new chairman, The Australian, 18/12/13)
On the face of it, no one could possibly quarrel with such an appointment. Judging from the above, Alhadeff appears eminently qualified to step into the shoes of his predecessor, Stepan Kerkyasharian.
The problem is that we're not getting the full story here. And that's because Alhadeff has neglected to mention that he's also a political Zionist, indeed arguably Australia's most active Israel lobbyist.
As such he's a vigorous defender of an exclusive, Jews-only ethnocracy predicated on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's indigenous Arab majority in 1948 - the very antithesis of an inclusive, non-discriminatory multiculturalism where neither ethnicity nor creed are allowed to stand in the way of citizenship.
Putting it even more simply, Alhadeff supports the reservation of Israel for Jews the world over, including himself, while millions of Palestinian refugees are prohibited from returning to their homes and lands there, forever condemned to statelessness and exile in squalid refugee camps scattered about the Middle East - for no other reason than that they are not Jewish.
Just to demonstrate how alien this concept of a Jewish ethnocracy is to multicultural societies such as the United States and Australia, consider the following revealing extract from Max Blumenthal's absolutely must-read book on contemporary Israel Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel* (2013):
"In a 2008 meeting with then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, [Tzipi] Livni emphasized Israel's rejection of the Palestinian refugees' right to return to their confiscated land and property inside Israel on the grounds that the refugees threatened Israel's Jewish character. Rice, an African-American raised in the Jim Crow American South by a pro-civil rights Baptist preacher, shuddered at the implications of Livni's statement. 'I must admit that though I understood her argument intellectually,' Rice reflected, 'it struck me as a harsh defense of the ethnic purity of the Israeli state when Tzipi said it. It was one of those conversations that shocked my sensibilities as an American. After all, the very concept of 'American' rejects ethnic or religious definitions of citizenship." (pp 25-26)
It's hard to believe, I know, but even as rabid a Zionist as our own Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan once recoiled, even if only momentarily, when faced with the stark racism of another Israeli leader:
"What makes [Avigdor] Lieberman controversial, and unacceptable to many, is his view that as well as territory, Israel should give away people, too, in particular its Muslim Arab citizens. He doesn't want to expel them exactly, just redraw some borders so that some Arab towns and villages move into a new Palestinian state nextdoor, thus making Israel a more Jewish state. The idea of excluding people on the basis of their ethnicity or religion is anathema to every liberal principle... Yet it conforms to the reality of the Middle East." (Israeli right-winger redraws the battle lines**, The Australian, 17/12/07)
The bottom line is that Alhadeff's Zionism and the mission of the CRC to promote multiculturalism in NSW are clearly incompatible. NSW Premier Baruch O'Farrell has a case to answer here.
[*Go and buy Blumenthal's new book. In fact, why not buy several copies? It'd make a great Xmas present for anyone with a brain; **How interesting that a simple Google search for this particular column of Sheridan's yields only the reference in this blog. Has it been pulled, I wonder?]
Showing posts with label Tzipi Livni. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tzipi Livni. Show all posts
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Saturday, December 26, 2009
A Murky Legacy
Bear with me while I marshal the expert evidence:
1) "For Zionists to succeed you need to have a Jewish state, with a Jewish flag and a Jewish language. The person who really understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky." (Mussolini on Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the Revisionist Zionist* movement, quoted in The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, Lenni Brenner, 1984, p 98)
2) "It is a sign of the bitter hostility of Labour Zionism* to the memory of the man [Jabotinsky] that David Ben-Gurion routinely referred to as 'Vladimir Hitler' that the Israeli government did not issue an order [to transfer his remains** to Israel] until July 1964, 16 years after the establishment of the Israeli state." (ibid p 108) [** Jabotinsky died in New York in 1940 but wanted his remains transferred to a future Jewish state in Palestine.]
3) "To some British officials... the atrocity at Deir Yassin [perpetrated by the Revisionist Zionist terror organisations, the Irgun and the Stern Gang] came as a revelation about the nature of the new Jewish state. Sir John Troutbeck, the head of the British Middle East Office in Cairo, wrote that 'Deir Yassin is a warning of what a Jew will do to gain his purpose'. On the eve of the Arab-Israeli war the British were apprehensive about its outcome, but virtually no one anticipated the extent of the Arab collapse and the Israeli victory. The British associated themselves with the Arab cause as one that was ultimately compatible with their own sense of mission in the Middle East, and during the course of the war they became convinced that a grave injustice was being perpetrated because of American support of the Israelis. The resentment towards the US still smoulders in the files at the Public Record Office. It existed as the main sentiment underlying official policy, and it was perhaps most indignantly expressed by Troutbeck, who held that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by 'an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders'." (The Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez & Decolonisation, William Roger Louis, 2006, pp 445-446)
4) "When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organisations built up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people." Albert Einstein's written response to an American Stern Gang (LEHI) fundraiser on 10/4/09, the day after the Deir Yassin massacre. [Einstein's letter can be viewed at Deir Yassin Remembered, deir.yassin.org]
5) "In September 1948 Churchill was in the South of France... Among those who visited him there was a Conservative Member of Parliament, Robert Boothby, a strong supporter of Zionism, who had written to The Times protesting against the Arab Legion shelling of Jerusalem. Boothby later recalled that when the conversation turned to the future of the Jews then fighting for their survival on the battlefield, 'I said that they were going to win hands down in Palestine, and get more than they ever expected'. To Boothby's remark, Churchill replied: 'Of course. The Arabs are no match for them. The Irgun people are the vilest gangsters. But, in backing the Zionists these Labour people backed the winners; and then ran out on them'. Churchill also told Boothby he was 'quite right' to send his letter to The Times." (Churchill & The Jews, Martin Gilbert, 2007, p 270)
[*Although the difference between the Revisionist and Labour Zionism is more a matter of style than substance, Uri Davis has pointed out that: "Labour Zionism is an attempt to reconcile the basic tenets of political Zionist and colonial practice with the tenets of the Enlightenment. Since these two sets of values are mutually exclusive, Labour Zionist literature has been largely predicated upon obfuscation of Zionist colonial practice, and upon mystification, ignorance and cultivated deception. Revisionist Zionism has largely escaped the Labour Zionist predicament of attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. In contra-distinction to Labour Zionism, it has attempted, with considerable success, to locate Zionism ideologically and practically inside the tradition of modern secular racism and imperial colonialism." (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 19)]
Hm... gangsters, terrorists, criminals, fascists and Nazis. Well the progeny of this lot, via the mechanism of Irgun leader Menachem Begin's Likud Party, are now in power in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu's father was a senior Jabotinsky aide. Ex-Likud, now Kadima leader (reportedly being 'wooed' by Netanyahu) Tzipi Livni is the daughter of Eitan Livni, the Irgun's Chief of Operations. And they're so proud of their legacy of gangsterism, terrorism, criminality, fascism and Nazism that they want Israeli kids to share it:
"The Education Ministry is introducing a study unit on the 12 underground fighters who were hanged or committed suicide in prison during the British Mandate in Palestine. The 12, known as 'Olei Hagardom' ('those hanged on the gallows'), belonged to the pre-state militias Etzel [Irgun] and Lehi [Stern Gang]. The program, intended for eighth and ninth grades, will include lessons plus a national competition for essays, poems and drawings on subjects such as 'an imaginary conversation I had with one of Olei Hagardom in his last moments in prison' or 'the last letter of a condemned man to his family'. The new unit is already proving controversial. 'Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar is advancing ideological matters close to his heart in the education system', a ministry official charged. 'His ideology is entering the curriculum'. 'It's worrying that the education Ministry is conveying a message sanctifying death and portraying it as sublime', added a senior university historian. Until now, details of the 12 Olei Hagardom - 9 Etzel combatants and 3 Lehi fighters - were taught as part of history lessons, ministry sources said. In a letter announcing the new program, Sa'ar wrote, 'I hope the program, recounting Olei Hagardom's devotion to the struggle for Israel's independence, will bolster the students' ties with their people and heritage... and that their devotion will serve as an ideological model for our youth'... The education system intends to mark Jabotinsky Day next week as required by a law enacted in 2005, the Education Ministry said Monday. Schools were instructed earlier this month to prepare ceremonies and special activities, including lessons about Jabotinsky's character and work. Sa'ar himself will give a civics lesson on Jabotinsky in a high school in the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim." (New study unit on pre-state fighters proves controversial, Or Kashti, Haaretz, 22/12/09)
Way to go! Except that Zionist propagandists of whatever stripe are nothing if not hypocritical. Here's David Feith* in the Wall Street Journal on August 21 pondering (in the words of The Australian where I found it) "the murky legacy of Fateh leader Yasser Arafat": "What's Arabic for plus ca change? Because that was the message last week from the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, where the 'moderate' Fateh party held its first general congress since 1989. Fateh - founded by Yasser Arafat in the 1960s and led since 2004 by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - demonstrated that Palestinian national politics remain mired as ever in conspiracy, duplicity and the glorification of terrorists... Fatah's leaders continue to walk in their founder's footsteps... Fatah's demonstration last week that it remains ideologically stuck in the terrorist pleasantries of the 70s ought to be a stark reminder that when it comes to Palestinian 'moderates', moderation remains a highly relative term." (Fatah's 'moderates' still rejoice in their founder's terrorism, 26/8/09) [* That's correct, son of neocon Douglas]
It doesn't get much more pot & kettle than that.
1) "For Zionists to succeed you need to have a Jewish state, with a Jewish flag and a Jewish language. The person who really understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky." (Mussolini on Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the Revisionist Zionist* movement, quoted in The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, Lenni Brenner, 1984, p 98)
2) "It is a sign of the bitter hostility of Labour Zionism* to the memory of the man [Jabotinsky] that David Ben-Gurion routinely referred to as 'Vladimir Hitler' that the Israeli government did not issue an order [to transfer his remains** to Israel] until July 1964, 16 years after the establishment of the Israeli state." (ibid p 108) [** Jabotinsky died in New York in 1940 but wanted his remains transferred to a future Jewish state in Palestine.]
3) "To some British officials... the atrocity at Deir Yassin [perpetrated by the Revisionist Zionist terror organisations, the Irgun and the Stern Gang] came as a revelation about the nature of the new Jewish state. Sir John Troutbeck, the head of the British Middle East Office in Cairo, wrote that 'Deir Yassin is a warning of what a Jew will do to gain his purpose'. On the eve of the Arab-Israeli war the British were apprehensive about its outcome, but virtually no one anticipated the extent of the Arab collapse and the Israeli victory. The British associated themselves with the Arab cause as one that was ultimately compatible with their own sense of mission in the Middle East, and during the course of the war they became convinced that a grave injustice was being perpetrated because of American support of the Israelis. The resentment towards the US still smoulders in the files at the Public Record Office. It existed as the main sentiment underlying official policy, and it was perhaps most indignantly expressed by Troutbeck, who held that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by 'an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders'." (The Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez & Decolonisation, William Roger Louis, 2006, pp 445-446)
4) "When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organisations built up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people." Albert Einstein's written response to an American Stern Gang (LEHI) fundraiser on 10/4/09, the day after the Deir Yassin massacre. [Einstein's letter can be viewed at Deir Yassin Remembered, deir.yassin.org]
5) "In September 1948 Churchill was in the South of France... Among those who visited him there was a Conservative Member of Parliament, Robert Boothby, a strong supporter of Zionism, who had written to The Times protesting against the Arab Legion shelling of Jerusalem. Boothby later recalled that when the conversation turned to the future of the Jews then fighting for their survival on the battlefield, 'I said that they were going to win hands down in Palestine, and get more than they ever expected'. To Boothby's remark, Churchill replied: 'Of course. The Arabs are no match for them. The Irgun people are the vilest gangsters. But, in backing the Zionists these Labour people backed the winners; and then ran out on them'. Churchill also told Boothby he was 'quite right' to send his letter to The Times." (Churchill & The Jews, Martin Gilbert, 2007, p 270)
[*Although the difference between the Revisionist and Labour Zionism is more a matter of style than substance, Uri Davis has pointed out that: "Labour Zionism is an attempt to reconcile the basic tenets of political Zionist and colonial practice with the tenets of the Enlightenment. Since these two sets of values are mutually exclusive, Labour Zionist literature has been largely predicated upon obfuscation of Zionist colonial practice, and upon mystification, ignorance and cultivated deception. Revisionist Zionism has largely escaped the Labour Zionist predicament of attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. In contra-distinction to Labour Zionism, it has attempted, with considerable success, to locate Zionism ideologically and practically inside the tradition of modern secular racism and imperial colonialism." (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 19)]
Hm... gangsters, terrorists, criminals, fascists and Nazis. Well the progeny of this lot, via the mechanism of Irgun leader Menachem Begin's Likud Party, are now in power in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu's father was a senior Jabotinsky aide. Ex-Likud, now Kadima leader (reportedly being 'wooed' by Netanyahu) Tzipi Livni is the daughter of Eitan Livni, the Irgun's Chief of Operations. And they're so proud of their legacy of gangsterism, terrorism, criminality, fascism and Nazism that they want Israeli kids to share it:
"The Education Ministry is introducing a study unit on the 12 underground fighters who were hanged or committed suicide in prison during the British Mandate in Palestine. The 12, known as 'Olei Hagardom' ('those hanged on the gallows'), belonged to the pre-state militias Etzel [Irgun] and Lehi [Stern Gang]. The program, intended for eighth and ninth grades, will include lessons plus a national competition for essays, poems and drawings on subjects such as 'an imaginary conversation I had with one of Olei Hagardom in his last moments in prison' or 'the last letter of a condemned man to his family'. The new unit is already proving controversial. 'Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar is advancing ideological matters close to his heart in the education system', a ministry official charged. 'His ideology is entering the curriculum'. 'It's worrying that the education Ministry is conveying a message sanctifying death and portraying it as sublime', added a senior university historian. Until now, details of the 12 Olei Hagardom - 9 Etzel combatants and 3 Lehi fighters - were taught as part of history lessons, ministry sources said. In a letter announcing the new program, Sa'ar wrote, 'I hope the program, recounting Olei Hagardom's devotion to the struggle for Israel's independence, will bolster the students' ties with their people and heritage... and that their devotion will serve as an ideological model for our youth'... The education system intends to mark Jabotinsky Day next week as required by a law enacted in 2005, the Education Ministry said Monday. Schools were instructed earlier this month to prepare ceremonies and special activities, including lessons about Jabotinsky's character and work. Sa'ar himself will give a civics lesson on Jabotinsky in a high school in the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim." (New study unit on pre-state fighters proves controversial, Or Kashti, Haaretz, 22/12/09)
Way to go! Except that Zionist propagandists of whatever stripe are nothing if not hypocritical. Here's David Feith* in the Wall Street Journal on August 21 pondering (in the words of The Australian where I found it) "the murky legacy of Fateh leader Yasser Arafat": "What's Arabic for plus ca change? Because that was the message last week from the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, where the 'moderate' Fateh party held its first general congress since 1989. Fateh - founded by Yasser Arafat in the 1960s and led since 2004 by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - demonstrated that Palestinian national politics remain mired as ever in conspiracy, duplicity and the glorification of terrorists... Fatah's leaders continue to walk in their founder's footsteps... Fatah's demonstration last week that it remains ideologically stuck in the terrorist pleasantries of the 70s ought to be a stark reminder that when it comes to Palestinian 'moderates', moderation remains a highly relative term." (Fatah's 'moderates' still rejoice in their founder's terrorism, 26/8/09) [* That's correct, son of neocon Douglas]
It doesn't get much more pot & kettle than that.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Analogising
"You know, I have always argued strongly, in Arabic and English, against analogies between Israel and Nazism, and I have always argued against Arab invocations of the holocaust in describing Israeli terrorist murder of Palestinian civilians. I have been thinking all that through this week." (The Angry Arab News Service, 12/1/09)
Dealing with Polish Terrorism or Regime Change? You decide:-
"On 22 August [1939], as Ribbentrop flew to Moscow to sign the non-aggression pact, Hitler was at his mountain fastness in Berchtesgaden, giving a speech to his senior military commanders. Notes taken at the time indicate exactly what kind of war he foresaw: 'A life and death struggle... The destruction of Poland has priority. The aim is to eliminate active forces, not to reach a definite line... I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, no matter whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterwards whether he told the truth or not. When starting or waging a war, it is not right that matters, but victory. Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally. Eighty million people must obtain what is their right. Their existence must be made secure. The stronger man is right. The greatest harshness'. On 1 September, with nearly 2 million German troops pouring across the frontier into Poland from the west, north and south, the Fuhrer issued the following proclamation: 'To the Wehrmacht! The Polish state has rejected the peaceful regulation of neighbourly relations I have striven for and has appealed to arms. The Germans in Poland are being persecuted by bloody terror and are being driven from their homesteads. A series of frontier violations, of a nature not tolerable for a great power, proves that the Poles are no longer willing to respect the German Reich's frontiers. To put an end to this lunacy, there remains no other course for me but to meet force with force'. Inside the Reich, Goebbels had been whipping up anti-Polish feeling, running scare stories on the suffering of ethnic Germans." (Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, Mark Mazower, 2008, pp 64-65)
Dealing with Palestinian Terrorism or Regime Change? You decide:-
"The Interior Minister, Meir Sheetrit, "called on the IDF to 'take off its gloves', head into Gaza with armored tractors and raze an entire neighborhood from which rockets have been launched." (IDF should wipe out parts of Gaza, Jerusalem Post, 11/2/08)
The Deputy Defence Minister, Matan Vilnai, said that the Palestinians are "bringing upon themselves a greater Shoah because we will use all our strength in every way we deem appropriate, whether in airstrikes or on the ground." ('Shoah' an admission, Arabs say, SMH, 3/3/08)
"As tit-for-tat attacks across the Gaza border intensified after the collapse of the end of a 6-month truce, the 2 main rivals in the Israeli elections in February vowed to remove Hamas from power, using military means if necessary... Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister who will lead... Kadima in the election, said, 'The state of Israel, and a government under me, will make it a strategic objective to topple* the Hamas regime in Gaza. The means for doing this should be military, economic and diplomatic'. Later Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads the right-wing Likud party... said, 'In the long term we will have to topple the Hamas regime'..." (Israel's leading parties vow to wipe out Hamas, Guardian/SMH, 23/12/08)
[*We did not seek out war, but the circumstances became impossible. Even when it all began, we were very restrained. We didn't say that we want to topple Hamas. I don't know if we can make Hamas disappear, but we didn't say 'topple'." (Olmert: Rice shame-faced by Bush over UN Gaza vote, ynetnews.com, 12/1/09)]
"In attacking Hamas' regime in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces will try to 'send Gaza decades into the past' in terms of weapon capabilities while achieving 'the maximum number of enemy casualties and keeping Israel Defense Forces casualties at a minimum', GOC Southern Command Yoav Galant said." (GOC Southern Command: IDF will send Gaza back decades, Uri Blau, Haaretz, 28/12/08)
"Tel Aviv's early insistance 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.
Measure it by the number of rockets - 8000 - plus [sic: see my 5/1/09 post Go Figure 1] over eight years - and indeed it sounds like a genuine existential threat. Consider the toll - 20 Israeli deaths spread over eight years, which is about half the number of deaths in just a month of Israeli traffic accidents - and it all loses its oomph as a casus belli. Israel does not want to deal with Hamas - it wants to annihilate the Islamist movement. The Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, said as much when she dashed to Paris last week to head off a French push for a 48-hour ceasefire. 'There is no doubt that as long as Hamas controls Gaza, it is a problem for Israel, a problem for the Palestinians and a problem for the entire region', she said. If there was any doubt after Livni spoke, it evaporated on Friday when the Deputy Prime Minister, Haim Ramon, told Israeli TV: 'What I think we need to do is reach a situation in which we do not allow Hamas to govern. That's the most important thing'. And at the United Nations in New York, the Israeli ambassador, Gabriella Shalev, also seemed to depart the approved script. '[It will continue for] as long as it takes to dismantle Hamas completely', she said." (Mission revealed: destroy Hamas, Paul McGeough, SMH, 5/1/09)
"'We must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II, [Israel Beiteinu chairman Avigdor] Lieberman added." (Lieberman: Do to Hamas what the US did to Japan, Jerusalem Post, 13/1/09)
"Israeli analysts say a ground war in Gaza City would make the conflict to date seem tame. 'The Israeli Defence [sic] Forces will enter, with great force, with tens of thousands of soldiers, into the heart of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip', the respected commentator Alex Fishman wrote in yesterday's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. 'There will no longer be strikes at the margins from the ground and destruction from the air. Now we are talking about armoured divisions that will not leave a single stone standing on their way into the refugee camps and into the heart of one of the most crowded cities on Earth'." (Israel divided over its next move, John Lyons, The Australian, 14/1/09)
Dealing with Polish Terrorism or Regime Change? You decide:-
"On 22 August [1939], as Ribbentrop flew to Moscow to sign the non-aggression pact, Hitler was at his mountain fastness in Berchtesgaden, giving a speech to his senior military commanders. Notes taken at the time indicate exactly what kind of war he foresaw: 'A life and death struggle... The destruction of Poland has priority. The aim is to eliminate active forces, not to reach a definite line... I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, no matter whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterwards whether he told the truth or not. When starting or waging a war, it is not right that matters, but victory. Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally. Eighty million people must obtain what is their right. Their existence must be made secure. The stronger man is right. The greatest harshness'. On 1 September, with nearly 2 million German troops pouring across the frontier into Poland from the west, north and south, the Fuhrer issued the following proclamation: 'To the Wehrmacht! The Polish state has rejected the peaceful regulation of neighbourly relations I have striven for and has appealed to arms. The Germans in Poland are being persecuted by bloody terror and are being driven from their homesteads. A series of frontier violations, of a nature not tolerable for a great power, proves that the Poles are no longer willing to respect the German Reich's frontiers. To put an end to this lunacy, there remains no other course for me but to meet force with force'. Inside the Reich, Goebbels had been whipping up anti-Polish feeling, running scare stories on the suffering of ethnic Germans." (Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, Mark Mazower, 2008, pp 64-65)
Dealing with Palestinian Terrorism or Regime Change? You decide:-
"The Interior Minister, Meir Sheetrit, "called on the IDF to 'take off its gloves', head into Gaza with armored tractors and raze an entire neighborhood from which rockets have been launched." (IDF should wipe out parts of Gaza, Jerusalem Post, 11/2/08)
The Deputy Defence Minister, Matan Vilnai, said that the Palestinians are "bringing upon themselves a greater Shoah because we will use all our strength in every way we deem appropriate, whether in airstrikes or on the ground." ('Shoah' an admission, Arabs say, SMH, 3/3/08)
"As tit-for-tat attacks across the Gaza border intensified after the collapse of the end of a 6-month truce, the 2 main rivals in the Israeli elections in February vowed to remove Hamas from power, using military means if necessary... Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister who will lead... Kadima in the election, said, 'The state of Israel, and a government under me, will make it a strategic objective to topple* the Hamas regime in Gaza. The means for doing this should be military, economic and diplomatic'. Later Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads the right-wing Likud party... said, 'In the long term we will have to topple the Hamas regime'..." (Israel's leading parties vow to wipe out Hamas, Guardian/SMH, 23/12/08)
[*We did not seek out war, but the circumstances became impossible. Even when it all began, we were very restrained. We didn't say that we want to topple Hamas. I don't know if we can make Hamas disappear, but we didn't say 'topple'." (Olmert: Rice shame-faced by Bush over UN Gaza vote, ynetnews.com, 12/1/09)]
"In attacking Hamas' regime in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces will try to 'send Gaza decades into the past' in terms of weapon capabilities while achieving 'the maximum number of enemy casualties and keeping Israel Defense Forces casualties at a minimum', GOC Southern Command Yoav Galant said." (GOC Southern Command: IDF will send Gaza back decades, Uri Blau, Haaretz, 28/12/08)
"Tel Aviv's early insistance 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.
Measure it by the number of rockets - 8000 - plus [sic: see my 5/1/09 post Go Figure 1] over eight years - and indeed it sounds like a genuine existential threat. Consider the toll - 20 Israeli deaths spread over eight years, which is about half the number of deaths in just a month of Israeli traffic accidents - and it all loses its oomph as a casus belli. Israel does not want to deal with Hamas - it wants to annihilate the Islamist movement. The Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, said as much when she dashed to Paris last week to head off a French push for a 48-hour ceasefire. 'There is no doubt that as long as Hamas controls Gaza, it is a problem for Israel, a problem for the Palestinians and a problem for the entire region', she said. If there was any doubt after Livni spoke, it evaporated on Friday when the Deputy Prime Minister, Haim Ramon, told Israeli TV: 'What I think we need to do is reach a situation in which we do not allow Hamas to govern. That's the most important thing'. And at the United Nations in New York, the Israeli ambassador, Gabriella Shalev, also seemed to depart the approved script. '[It will continue for] as long as it takes to dismantle Hamas completely', she said." (Mission revealed: destroy Hamas, Paul McGeough, SMH, 5/1/09)
"'We must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II, [Israel Beiteinu chairman Avigdor] Lieberman added." (Lieberman: Do to Hamas what the US did to Japan, Jerusalem Post, 13/1/09)
"Israeli analysts say a ground war in Gaza City would make the conflict to date seem tame. 'The Israeli Defence [sic] Forces will enter, with great force, with tens of thousands of soldiers, into the heart of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip', the respected commentator Alex Fishman wrote in yesterday's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. 'There will no longer be strikes at the margins from the ground and destruction from the air. Now we are talking about armoured divisions that will not leave a single stone standing on their way into the refugee camps and into the heart of one of the most crowded cities on Earth'." (Israel divided over its next move, John Lyons, The Australian, 14/1/09)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Stop It or You'll Go Blind!
And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry speak of dreams & leaves,
And the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come & see the blood in the streets.
Come & see
The blood in the streets.
Come & see the blood
In the streets.
Pablo Neruda
The consummate cluelessness of yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald editorial, Israel, Gaza & Huntington, was truly beyond belief.
Over 300 Palestinian inmates of the Gaza Ghetto slaughtered, over 1,000 maimed, and the Herald editorialist can't resist an intellectual wank: "It is perhaps an appropriate epitaph for the American scholar Samuel Huntington that news of his death coincided with renewed hostilities along one of the fault lines he identified in the post-Cold war era. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict preceded Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' theory, and has outlived its author." What has Huntington, or his* 'clash of civilizations', to do with the Gaza massacres? In a word, nothing. [*The first use of this term rightly belongs to neocon 'scholar' Bernard Lewis.]
After relieving himself with this monumental irrelevance, the editorialist follows with this monumental nonsense: "Violence has scarred the region for more than six decades, long enough to make arguments about who started the troubles redundant." There you are. It's like the schoolmaster who comes across the schoolyard bully beating the shit, yet again, out of the scrawny little wog, but who can only respond with, 'I don't know which of you started this, and I don't care!' So Huntington's relevant, but history isn't?
But it gets worse: "In the current bloodletting Hamas fired first, wrecking a ceasefire whose restoration must be the first priority of international peacemaking efforts. " But of course, it's always the Palestinians that begin these dust-ups, isn't it? Remember the party line laid down in an earlier editorial? - "Of course the militant Islamist movement Hamas... provoked the Israeli strikes by firing its rockets into nearby Israeli settlements." (Time for bolder diplomacy in Gaza*, 5/3/08). So just ignore your own paper's report, Militants declare early end to truce agreement (19-20/12/08), which reported that "The truce has been unravelling since Israel crossed into Gaza, killed 6 Hamas fighters and destroyed a tunnel on November 4," and lapse into 'rocket/militant' mantra mode. Saves heaps on thought and research. [*See my 6/3/08 post Mainsewer Media Clueless in Gaza.]
And that business of "the first priority of international peacemaking efforts" being the "restoration" of the ceasefire - how does the Herald get around Tzipi Livni's flat rejection of all "initiatives calling on both sides to hold their fire," and her demand that the international community "support things that are not easy to support"? (See Livni to foreign envoys: pressure Hamas, ynetnews.com, 28/12/08)
Then there's this outright rubber-stamping of a familiar Israeli talking point: "Israel's response - that civilians are being used as human shields for Hamas's terrorist infrastructure - has merit." Would the editorialist still see "merit" in Israel's talking point if he knew that Israel used Israeli Arabs as human shields during its 2006 rampage in Lebanon? According to a 2006 Arab Association for Human Rights report, "[d]uring the war on Lebanon, the Israeli army installed rocket launching bases near [Israeli] Arab towns and villages in the north [of Israel], in some cases only a few metres away," and "the IDF has also transformed areas of certain Arab towns and villages into training camps." (Israeli rocket launching bases and army training camps deliberately constructed near Arab towns and villages, electronicintifada.net, 17/8/06) Or if he'd bothered to acquaint himself with the documentation that shows that the IDF uses Palestinians as human shields in the West Bank? Probably.
Like The Australian editorial analysed in my last post, Israel's wanton spilling of Palestinian blood is really the last thing on the editorialist's mind, the only reference to it being that "[t]he deaths of almost 300 people and wounding of some 600 so far have drawn understandable criticism that the military response is disproportionate." All that matters is its "potential to further radicalise Palestinian youth," which could lead to "retaliation... including a possible new wave of suicide bombings in Israel's cities." So touching, this concern for the serial perpetrator of crimes against humanity.
The sheer inanity of the Herald's editorial wank on the Gaza massacres is capped by a further reference to Huntington in its concluding sentence: "The world is looking to the Obama administration for policies that will discourage all Middle East players from so regularly resorting to violence along one of the cultural and religious fault lines highlighted by Huntington."
Well, well, well. So the world is looking to an American president (-elect) to discourage Israel's resort to violence? Please, spare us the naivete! Is this the same America that's supplied Israel with the GBU-39 smart bombs they're now dropping all over Gaza? (See Israel using new US-supplied smart bombs in Gaza, antiwar.com, 28/12/08) Whoever the world is looking to in this matter, readers seeking an informed analysis of the issue will be well-advised to give Herald editorials a wide berth.
And the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come & see the blood in the streets.
Come & see
The blood in the streets.
Come & see the blood
In the streets.
Pablo Neruda
The consummate cluelessness of yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald editorial, Israel, Gaza & Huntington, was truly beyond belief.
Over 300 Palestinian inmates of the Gaza Ghetto slaughtered, over 1,000 maimed, and the Herald editorialist can't resist an intellectual wank: "It is perhaps an appropriate epitaph for the American scholar Samuel Huntington that news of his death coincided with renewed hostilities along one of the fault lines he identified in the post-Cold war era. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict preceded Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' theory, and has outlived its author." What has Huntington, or his* 'clash of civilizations', to do with the Gaza massacres? In a word, nothing. [*The first use of this term rightly belongs to neocon 'scholar' Bernard Lewis.]
After relieving himself with this monumental irrelevance, the editorialist follows with this monumental nonsense: "Violence has scarred the region for more than six decades, long enough to make arguments about who started the troubles redundant." There you are. It's like the schoolmaster who comes across the schoolyard bully beating the shit, yet again, out of the scrawny little wog, but who can only respond with, 'I don't know which of you started this, and I don't care!' So Huntington's relevant, but history isn't?
But it gets worse: "In the current bloodletting Hamas fired first, wrecking a ceasefire whose restoration must be the first priority of international peacemaking efforts. " But of course, it's always the Palestinians that begin these dust-ups, isn't it? Remember the party line laid down in an earlier editorial? - "Of course the militant Islamist movement Hamas... provoked the Israeli strikes by firing its rockets into nearby Israeli settlements." (Time for bolder diplomacy in Gaza*, 5/3/08). So just ignore your own paper's report, Militants declare early end to truce agreement (19-20/12/08), which reported that "The truce has been unravelling since Israel crossed into Gaza, killed 6 Hamas fighters and destroyed a tunnel on November 4," and lapse into 'rocket/militant' mantra mode. Saves heaps on thought and research. [*See my 6/3/08 post Mainsewer Media Clueless in Gaza.]
And that business of "the first priority of international peacemaking efforts" being the "restoration" of the ceasefire - how does the Herald get around Tzipi Livni's flat rejection of all "initiatives calling on both sides to hold their fire," and her demand that the international community "support things that are not easy to support"? (See Livni to foreign envoys: pressure Hamas, ynetnews.com, 28/12/08)
Then there's this outright rubber-stamping of a familiar Israeli talking point: "Israel's response - that civilians are being used as human shields for Hamas's terrorist infrastructure - has merit." Would the editorialist still see "merit" in Israel's talking point if he knew that Israel used Israeli Arabs as human shields during its 2006 rampage in Lebanon? According to a 2006 Arab Association for Human Rights report, "[d]uring the war on Lebanon, the Israeli army installed rocket launching bases near [Israeli] Arab towns and villages in the north [of Israel], in some cases only a few metres away," and "the IDF has also transformed areas of certain Arab towns and villages into training camps." (Israeli rocket launching bases and army training camps deliberately constructed near Arab towns and villages, electronicintifada.net, 17/8/06) Or if he'd bothered to acquaint himself with the documentation that shows that the IDF uses Palestinians as human shields in the West Bank? Probably.
Like The Australian editorial analysed in my last post, Israel's wanton spilling of Palestinian blood is really the last thing on the editorialist's mind, the only reference to it being that "[t]he deaths of almost 300 people and wounding of some 600 so far have drawn understandable criticism that the military response is disproportionate." All that matters is its "potential to further radicalise Palestinian youth," which could lead to "retaliation... including a possible new wave of suicide bombings in Israel's cities." So touching, this concern for the serial perpetrator of crimes against humanity.
The sheer inanity of the Herald's editorial wank on the Gaza massacres is capped by a further reference to Huntington in its concluding sentence: "The world is looking to the Obama administration for policies that will discourage all Middle East players from so regularly resorting to violence along one of the cultural and religious fault lines highlighted by Huntington."
Well, well, well. So the world is looking to an American president (-elect) to discourage Israel's resort to violence? Please, spare us the naivete! Is this the same America that's supplied Israel with the GBU-39 smart bombs they're now dropping all over Gaza? (See Israel using new US-supplied smart bombs in Gaza, antiwar.com, 28/12/08) Whoever the world is looking to in this matter, readers seeking an informed analysis of the issue will be well-advised to give Herald editorials a wide berth.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Hurricane Herzl
As predicted in my last post, the Sydney Morning Herald has borne the brunt of a Storm of Outrage by Zionist lobbyists following the mysterious appearance in yesterday's 'Yippee, It's Tzipi' editorial of the heretical suggestion that Israel's 'democracy' is not quite as 'vibrant' as the party line dictates.
God only knows what transpired since yesterday's editorialist unwittingly threw caution to the winds and blurted out the bleeding obvious. Did The Lobby send Juval the Avenger (see my 3/9/08 post The Israeli Mystique) around to rub him out? I'll leave it to your imagination. Whatever happened, it was certainly bloodcurdling enough to force today's editorialist to grovel big time: a whole new 'Yippee, It's Tzipi' editorial (Time for Israel to decide) on "Israel's extraordinarily vibrant democracy."
And this extraordinarily vibrant mea culpa: "[T]he point is that Israel is the Middle East's only democracy, and it abides by the rule of law. In our editorial yesterday, the Herald did not intend to imply that Israel's Jewish majority is in any way 'problematic' in itself. Indeed, it is the raison d'etre for the foundation and existence of the state itself. Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state is beyond question. [Diversion Alert!] It is those who refuse to recognise Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, who are problematic by dealing themselves out of a constructive peace process. [Platitude Alert!] The issue, as ever, is whether Israelis and Palestinians will find the ways and means to live side-by-side in peace and security, each with their own homelands, each forging their own destiny. [Fawning Alert!] How to get to this goal, and how forthcoming Israel can be on issues like the settlements in the West Bank, are at the heart of political debate inside Israel - a debate which Israel is to be commended for holding."
An act of journalistic contrition like no other! But there's more! There, to the right, among the letters to the editor, nestled this little number from "Vic Alhadeff chief executive, NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Darlinghurst (See editorial, left.)": "Your editorial attributes to Israel's ruling Kadima party 'the problematic idea that the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel'... This reflects a fundamental minunderstanding of the political realities. Israel is the state of the Jewish people and was established with international endorsement on that basis. While there are 22 Arab-majority states, Israel is the only state in which the Jewish people exercise their right to national self-determination [at the expense of the right to national self-determination of the Palestinian people]. Neither Kadima nor any other major party in Israel believes 'the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel'*. All those parties have long accepted that, as in any democracy, the majority rules, and that non-Jewish minorities, which have been present in Israel since it was established, have the right to live there as free and equal citizens. The tyranny of the majority is no more acceptable in Israel than in any other democracy." [*Well then, why not allow the Palestinian refugees of 1948 to return?]
It would seem that here we have a textbook case of a foreign lobby with the clout to reach into the editorial rooms of the nation's newspapers and, by means to which we are not privy, enforce compliance with its agenda. What an unseemly and disturbing spectacle.
The Lobby - 1, Press freedom - 0
God only knows what transpired since yesterday's editorialist unwittingly threw caution to the winds and blurted out the bleeding obvious. Did The Lobby send Juval the Avenger (see my 3/9/08 post The Israeli Mystique) around to rub him out? I'll leave it to your imagination. Whatever happened, it was certainly bloodcurdling enough to force today's editorialist to grovel big time: a whole new 'Yippee, It's Tzipi' editorial (Time for Israel to decide) on "Israel's extraordinarily vibrant democracy."
And this extraordinarily vibrant mea culpa: "[T]he point is that Israel is the Middle East's only democracy, and it abides by the rule of law. In our editorial yesterday, the Herald did not intend to imply that Israel's Jewish majority is in any way 'problematic' in itself. Indeed, it is the raison d'etre for the foundation and existence of the state itself. Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state is beyond question. [Diversion Alert!] It is those who refuse to recognise Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, who are problematic by dealing themselves out of a constructive peace process. [Platitude Alert!] The issue, as ever, is whether Israelis and Palestinians will find the ways and means to live side-by-side in peace and security, each with their own homelands, each forging their own destiny. [Fawning Alert!] How to get to this goal, and how forthcoming Israel can be on issues like the settlements in the West Bank, are at the heart of political debate inside Israel - a debate which Israel is to be commended for holding."
An act of journalistic contrition like no other! But there's more! There, to the right, among the letters to the editor, nestled this little number from "Vic Alhadeff chief executive, NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Darlinghurst (See editorial, left.)": "Your editorial attributes to Israel's ruling Kadima party 'the problematic idea that the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel'... This reflects a fundamental minunderstanding of the political realities. Israel is the state of the Jewish people and was established with international endorsement on that basis. While there are 22 Arab-majority states, Israel is the only state in which the Jewish people exercise their right to national self-determination [at the expense of the right to national self-determination of the Palestinian people]. Neither Kadima nor any other major party in Israel believes 'the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel'*. All those parties have long accepted that, as in any democracy, the majority rules, and that non-Jewish minorities, which have been present in Israel since it was established, have the right to live there as free and equal citizens. The tyranny of the majority is no more acceptable in Israel than in any other democracy." [*Well then, why not allow the Palestinian refugees of 1948 to return?]
It would seem that here we have a textbook case of a foreign lobby with the clout to reach into the editorial rooms of the nation's newspapers and, by means to which we are not privy, enforce compliance with its agenda. What an unseemly and disturbing spectacle.
The Lobby - 1, Press freedom - 0
Monday, September 22, 2008
Storms Forecast
The Sydney Morning Herald's editorials on the subject of Palestine-Israel invariably plumb the depths of cliche-ridden, Israel-centric cluelessness.
Today's, on "Israel's rising political star" Tzipi Livni, was for the most part true to form: "For all its problems, Israel's turbulent democracy knows a good woman when it sees one. Golda Meir, who served as prime minister in the 1960's and '70s, used to be called 'the best man in the government'. Ms Livni will require some of that spirit if she is to prevail over her ambitious rivals, engage or defeat her nation's sworn enemies, and achieve what none of her predecessors have done by finding a durable peace that secures Israel's borders and future." (Tough tests for Israel's new PM)
There's the usual glib assumption that Israel is a democracy, the grotesque misrepresentation of the brutalised, occupied Palestinian people as some kind of existential threat, and the truly bizarre notion that Israel has been/is seeking anything other than the peace of the grave. Then there's the invocation of Golda Meir's "spirit" as some kind of example for Livni to follow. That's right, the same Golda Meir who was of the opinion that Israel's "sworn enemies" didn't even exist (See my 17/8/08 post, The Zionist La Passionara).
As I said - abysmal cluelessness. Which is why the following sentence, or part thereof, shook me to the core: "Palestinian leaders have responded positively to her ascent, and while her party remains wedded to the problematic idea that the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel, they are at least willing to concede land to the Palestinians in order to secure a Jewish state."
Let me run that bit past you again: "... the problematic idea that the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel... " Could it be any clearer? The core concept of political Zionism - that Israel should be a Jewish state, which is to say a state with a Jewish majority - is PROBLEMATIC! You bet it's problematic. As problematic as Israel's expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs so as to ensure an absolute Jewish majority in that part of Palestine (78%) overrun by Zionist forces in 1948. As the Palestinian Jewish community's then leader, David Ben-Gurion, had said in the immediate wake of the UN partition resolution of 29 November 1947, "Only a state with at least 80% Jews is a viable and stable state." (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe, p 48) As problematic as any nation obsessed with cleansing its indigenous inhabitants to achieve the 'right' kind of demographic balance.
A slip of the pen? A dim but real awareness that the Zionist project in Palestine is fundamentally flawed? Can the Herald really be unaware of what it has unleashed here? Hell hath few furies like the Zionist lobby scorned. Furl the sails. Batten down the hatches. The Herald's surely in for stormy weather.
Today's, on "Israel's rising political star" Tzipi Livni, was for the most part true to form: "For all its problems, Israel's turbulent democracy knows a good woman when it sees one. Golda Meir, who served as prime minister in the 1960's and '70s, used to be called 'the best man in the government'. Ms Livni will require some of that spirit if she is to prevail over her ambitious rivals, engage or defeat her nation's sworn enemies, and achieve what none of her predecessors have done by finding a durable peace that secures Israel's borders and future." (Tough tests for Israel's new PM)
There's the usual glib assumption that Israel is a democracy, the grotesque misrepresentation of the brutalised, occupied Palestinian people as some kind of existential threat, and the truly bizarre notion that Israel has been/is seeking anything other than the peace of the grave. Then there's the invocation of Golda Meir's "spirit" as some kind of example for Livni to follow. That's right, the same Golda Meir who was of the opinion that Israel's "sworn enemies" didn't even exist (See my 17/8/08 post, The Zionist La Passionara).
As I said - abysmal cluelessness. Which is why the following sentence, or part thereof, shook me to the core: "Palestinian leaders have responded positively to her ascent, and while her party remains wedded to the problematic idea that the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel, they are at least willing to concede land to the Palestinians in order to secure a Jewish state."
Let me run that bit past you again: "... the problematic idea that the Jewish majority must always dominate Israel... " Could it be any clearer? The core concept of political Zionism - that Israel should be a Jewish state, which is to say a state with a Jewish majority - is PROBLEMATIC! You bet it's problematic. As problematic as Israel's expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs so as to ensure an absolute Jewish majority in that part of Palestine (78%) overrun by Zionist forces in 1948. As the Palestinian Jewish community's then leader, David Ben-Gurion, had said in the immediate wake of the UN partition resolution of 29 November 1947, "Only a state with at least 80% Jews is a viable and stable state." (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe, p 48) As problematic as any nation obsessed with cleansing its indigenous inhabitants to achieve the 'right' kind of demographic balance.
A slip of the pen? A dim but real awareness that the Zionist project in Palestine is fundamentally flawed? Can the Herald really be unaware of what it has unleashed here? Hell hath few furies like the Zionist lobby scorned. Furl the sails. Batten down the hatches. The Herald's surely in for stormy weather.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Don't Mention the 'T' Word!
Writing about the parents of the new Israeli prime minister, Tzipi Livni, the Fairfax press simply called a spade a spade:
"Livni's parents were senior members of the British Mandate-era Jewish terrorist group, the Irgun, which was responsible for the 1946 bombing of the Mandate headquarters in the King David Hotel that killed 91 people. Born into such a large pro-Zionist family, Livni was long opposed to the idea of an independent state for Palestinians and was a firm believer in the dream of a so-called Greater Israel." (Livni the favourite to become Israeli PM, Jason Koutsoukis, Sydney Morning Herald 13/9/08)
The Murdoch press, on the other hand, reserves the 'T' word for Palestinians, Arabs, and more generally Muslims. Other, pre-9/11 terms, seldom heard in the ms media these days, and never before in Murdoch fish-wrapper*, were trotted out to describe Eitan Livni and Sara Rosenberg:
"Daughter of Eitan Livni and Sara Rosenberg, leaders of the Irgun guerilla movement, which fought to establish Israel in the 1940s." (Golda moment, The Australian, 19/9/08)
"However, the young politician initially stood out largely because of her revolutionary parents, both of whom had held key positions in the Jewish resistance, which had fought British rule before Israel's creation in 1948. Her parents... played key militant roles in the hardline nationalist group, Irgun, which had attacked the mandated British troops for 3** decades in a campaign that was labelled terrorism." (Child of revolutionaries secures real power, Martin Chulov, The Australian, 19/9/08)
Cute!
[*With one (1) exception: See my 6/8/08 post The 'R' Word. **Chulov and/or his editor is here playing fast and loose with the facts to fit with the myth of a heroic Zionist struggle for independence from the Zionist movement's colonial backer, rebadged as oppressor. For the Irgun terrorists to have been fighting British Mandate troops for "3 decades," the organization would have to have been around in 1918, 4 years before the British Mandate even began (1922), and 13 years before it actually came into existence (1931)! In fact, Irgun terrorists didn't begin knocking off British troops until 1944. Palestinian Arab civilians, however, were a different matter - See my 27/6/08 post, Breathtaking Zionist Hypocrisy.]
"Livni's parents were senior members of the British Mandate-era Jewish terrorist group, the Irgun, which was responsible for the 1946 bombing of the Mandate headquarters in the King David Hotel that killed 91 people. Born into such a large pro-Zionist family, Livni was long opposed to the idea of an independent state for Palestinians and was a firm believer in the dream of a so-called Greater Israel." (Livni the favourite to become Israeli PM, Jason Koutsoukis, Sydney Morning Herald 13/9/08)
The Murdoch press, on the other hand, reserves the 'T' word for Palestinians, Arabs, and more generally Muslims. Other, pre-9/11 terms, seldom heard in the ms media these days, and never before in Murdoch fish-wrapper*, were trotted out to describe Eitan Livni and Sara Rosenberg:
"Daughter of Eitan Livni and Sara Rosenberg, leaders of the Irgun guerilla movement, which fought to establish Israel in the 1940s." (Golda moment, The Australian, 19/9/08)
"However, the young politician initially stood out largely because of her revolutionary parents, both of whom had held key positions in the Jewish resistance, which had fought British rule before Israel's creation in 1948. Her parents... played key militant roles in the hardline nationalist group, Irgun, which had attacked the mandated British troops for 3** decades in a campaign that was labelled terrorism." (Child of revolutionaries secures real power, Martin Chulov, The Australian, 19/9/08)
Cute!
[*With one (1) exception: See my 6/8/08 post The 'R' Word. **Chulov and/or his editor is here playing fast and loose with the facts to fit with the myth of a heroic Zionist struggle for independence from the Zionist movement's colonial backer, rebadged as oppressor. For the Irgun terrorists to have been fighting British Mandate troops for "3 decades," the organization would have to have been around in 1918, 4 years before the British Mandate even began (1922), and 13 years before it actually came into existence (1931)! In fact, Irgun terrorists didn't begin knocking off British troops until 1944. Palestinian Arab civilians, however, were a different matter - See my 27/6/08 post, Breathtaking Zionist Hypocrisy.]
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