The US Love Affair with Arabophobic Hate Speech

We hear a lot these days about 'hate speech', that is, to borrow from at least one definition, "speech capable of instilling or inciting hatred of, or prejudice towards, a person or group of people on a specified ground [such as] race, nationality, ethnicity, country of origin, ethno-religious identity, religion or sexuality."*

Correct me if I'm wrong but the term seems to have been largely monopolised by supporters of apartheid Israel to malign and marginalise anyone who questions not just the criminal behaviour of that entity, but the legitimacy of the Zionist project in Palestine and the ideology of political Zionism which underpins it.** The implication is that this latter group in particular - anti-Zionists - are borderline, if not actual, anti-Semites, and, ipso facto, engaged in hate speech.

By contrast, the blatant Arabophobia, which set in in the US following the creation of Israel in 1948, is generally overlooked, and rarely recognised for what it is: hate speech

By way of illustration, read this passage from Leon Uris' best-selling Zionist propaganda novel, Exodus (1958):

"[The final disaster in Arab history] was brought about by fellow Moslems as the mighty Ottomans gobbled up their lands. Five centuries of corruption and feudalism followed. A drop of water became more precious than gold or spices in the unfertile land. The merest, most meager existence was a series of tortured, heartbreaking struggles from birth to death. Without water the Arab world disintegrated into filth; unspeakable disease, illiteracy, and poverty were universal. There was little song or laughter or joy in Arab life. It was a constant struggle to survive. In this atmosphere cunning, treachery, murder, feuds, and jealousies became away of life. The cruel realities that had gone into forming the Arab character puzzled outsiders. Cruelty from brother to brother was common. In parts of the Arab world thousands of slaves were kept, and punishment for a thief was amputation of a hand, for a prostitute, amputation of ears and nose. There was little compassion from Arab to Arab. The fellaheen who lived in abysmal filth and the Bedouin whose survival was a day-to-day miracle turned to the one means of alleviating misery. They became Muslim fanatics..." (p 228)

Now read these words from the trailer of thriller/horror story director Brad Anderson's latest film, Beirut***:

"Two thousands years of revenge, vendetta, murder. Welcome to Beirut."

Nothing has changed in 60 years! Strange place, the US where trenchant criticism of Israel is deemed hate speech, but few, it seems, bat an eyelid at rampant Arabophobic hate speech.

*This definition comes from the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) website. It differs, however, in one respect from other definitions of hate speech on the web (legaldictionary.net, merriam-webster.com, and dictionary.cambridge.org) in its inclusion of the term 'ethno-religious identity'. Try as I might I can only think of one group that conflates religion and ethnicity. Guess who;

**It is worth keeping in mind here Israeli anti-Zionist activist Uri Davis' distinction between Judaism as a confessional preference and Zionism as a political programme: "Judaism is not Zionism. Judaism, as a confessional preference, should be strictly an individual matter, and, generally speaking... should not be the concern of the law. Zionism, as a political programme, is a matter of public debate. As noted already... the political Zionist school of thought and practice is committed to the normative statement that it is a good idea to establish and consolidate in the country of Palestine a sovereign state, a Jewish state, that attempts to guarantee in law and in practice a demographic majority of the Jewish tribes in the territories under its control. Such individuals and bodies as are, for instance, committed to the values of open society, democracy and the separation of religion from the state; who, therefore, disagree with the political aims of this particular political programme, and who regard this programme to be a negative political programme, are anti-Zionist in the same sense that those who for many decades opposed the political programme of apartheid South Africa (which ended in 1994) were, and it is to be hoped remain, anti-apartheid." (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (2003), pp 11-12)

***Also on this film, see my 1/8/18 post One Movie Hollywood Will Never Make.

Israel's Latest Apartheid Law

Still not convinced that Israel is an apartheid state?

No, I'm not talking about Israeli apartheid in the occupied West Bank, for details of which you can scan my 21/9/09 post Israeli Apartheid: The Jury's In. I'm talking about Israeli apartheid west of the Green Line, in Israel itself.

As the Israeli scholar and activist Uri Davis points out in his seminal/must-read book Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (2003) (claims to being 'the only democracy in the Middle East' notwithstanding), Israel is "probably the last remaining apartheid state member of the UN." This, he asserts, arises from "the regulation of racism in law through Acts of the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset), resulting in 93% of all the territory of pre-1967 Israel being designated in law through Acts of the Knesset for cultivation, development and settlement by, of and for Jews only." Davis goes on to explain, in contrast to South African apartheid, that "the key legal distinction in Zionist apartheid legislation in Israel is between 'Jew' and 'non-Jew'." This distinction, "as institutionalized in the Constitutions and Articles of Association of all the bodies affiliated to the World Zionist Organization, is incorporated into the body of the laws of the State of Israel, notably the body of strategic legislation governing land tenure." (pp 39-42)

Davis lists this apartheid legislation as follows:

*1950: Absentees' Property Law; Law of Return; Development Authority Law;
*1952: World Zionist Organization - Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel (Status) Law;
*1953: Keren Kayemeth Leisrael (Jewish National Fund) Law; Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law;
*1954: Covenant between the Government of Israel and the Zionist Executive, also known as the Executive of the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel;
*1958: Prescription Law;
*1960: Basic Law: Israel Lands; Israel Lands Law; Israel Lands Administration Law;
*1961: Covenant between the Government of Israel and the Jewish National Fund.

To this "mainstay of Israeli apartheid," as Davis calls it, can now be added Israel's newest apartheid law, The Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People, which "describes Israel as 'the national home of the Jewish people' and says the right to exercise national self-determination there is 'unique to the Jewish people'." (Jewish nation state: Israel approves controversial bill, bbc.co.uk, 20/7/18)

But don't expect Australia's corporate media to call a spade a spade and invoke the A word. There was nothing whatever on the matter in today's Sydney Morning Herald, and the Associated Press report in The Australian could do no better than cite critics to the effect that the new law was "racist" and would "marginalise the country's Arab minority." (Knesset votes for Jewish nation state)

The Grooming of Gareth Evans & Pat Moynihan

"It took the UN far too long to realize that Zionism is a form of racism, representing a blatant violation of the norms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the standards of international law. It was only in the wake of the 1967 war and the consequent war crimes perpetrated by the Israeli occupation forces, challenged by the renewed resistance of the Palestinian Arab people led by the PLO, that the UN corrected its record and passed General Assembly Resolution 3379 of November 1975 determining that 'Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination'. And it is, indeed, most regrettable that in the wake of the Middle East Peace Conference convened in Madrid in October 1991, co-sponsored by the USA and the former USSR, the General Assembly muddied its record again by passing Resolution 46/86 of December 1991, revoking Resolution 3379." (Uri Davis, Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 3)

Gareth Evans, Australia's foreign minister (ALP) from 1988 to 1996, was a recruit/dupe in the Zionist campaign to have UNGA Resolution 3379 revoked, and is today President of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. An ally of Bob Carr's in the revelatory events of November 2012, chronicled in Carr's Diary of a Foreign Minister, Evans launched the book earlier this month. The following report on that occasion intriguingly harks back to Evans' participation in the 18-year Zionist assault on Resolution 3379:

"Mr Evans, an informal sounding board for Mr Carr during his stint as foreign minister... said lobbyists from the Victorian Jewish community had influenced him to campaign against the 'Zionism as Racism' resolution when he was foreign minister - and he was proud to do so because the cause was just. 'But it also lost me... when it lost its way, as it continues to do to this day, on the larger Palestinian issue'." (Gillard cloth-eared on Israel, says Evans, Brad Norington, The Australian, 15/4/14)

Isn't it amazing, the almost mesmeric sway these Zionist lobbyists seem to exercise over our politicians? Here's the even more opaque Zionist version of Evan's falling under the influence:

"Australia will back an attempt to seek support among Asian-Pacific nations to have the iniquitous United Nations Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism rescinded. Foreign Minister Gareth Evans gave this undertaking to a joint delegation from the Zionist Federation of Australia and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry in Canberra last week." (Australia will back move to rescind 'Zionism - racism', Australian Jewish News, 13/4/90)

You will not, of course, be surprised to know that Mark Leibler (now of AIJAC, then of the ZFA) was as integral to the process of grooming (or influencing if you prefer) Evans in 1990 as he was of grooming Gillard in 2012. Now while we know that Evans' was groomed by Leibler and Co, neither Evans' reference, nor the Zionist report of 1990, sheds any real light on the details.

We do though have details of the grooming of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003), the US Ambassador to the United Nations (1975-76) and the spearhead of USrael's opposition to Resolution 3379 in the UN, by Ziocon Godfather and editor of the influential US magazine Commentary, Norman Podhoretz (1930-).

It is tempting to see in Leibler's grooming of Evans in 1990 a parallel with Podhoretz's grooming of Moynihan in 1975. The following account of the latter comes from Norman Podhoretz: A Biography by Thomas L. Jeffers (2010)

"On July 9, 1975, Barbara M. White cabled the American Mission a euphoric report on the UN-sponsored International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City. Moynihan's initial reaction was happy: the United States could at last get on the side of the LDCs and, under the banner of feminism, pull some of them away from the Soviet lodestone. There were poisoned dregs at the bottom of the cup, however. With Israel and America voting no, the Conference had also called for the 'elimination of... Zionism, apartheid, [and] racial discrimination.' It was what Garment later named 'the thing from 20,000 Leagues Below the Sea.' He and Weaver told Moynihan that 'this is trouble, Zionism as a form of racism.' And Pat, leaning in, said, 'Well, isn't it?' Knowing next to nothing about the origins of Zionism or the subtler permutations of anti-Semitism, Moynihan didn't, Garment remembered, think it 'unreasonable for an ethicist to say that this is a Jewish people just taking the land from Palestinian people and declaring 'you're not going to come here, we're here'.'

"Bringing Moynihan up to speed, Garment and Weaver called on their 'biggest gun,' Podhoretz, more knowledgeable and more intimate with Moynihan than they were, to conduct dinner-table seminars. Podhoretz himself had learned a great deal about the history of the Zionism-as-racism calumny from the English-born Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis and got Moynihan to read him, too. Garment, 'though Jewish, was only just getting interested' in Israel, Podhoretz recalled: 'What Pat and Len together didn't know could, as the cliche goes, fill an encyclopedia.' But they soon caught on, Moynihan being 'a quick study, as intelligent a person as you could ever meet in higher walks of life, and he rigorously cross-examined me.' He also invited Podhoretz to compose most of the speech, especially the first paragraph, that he would give in the General Assembly when a UN resolution defining and denouncing Zionism as 'a form of racism and racial discrimination' came up for a vote - and passed." (p 182)

How utterly grotesque that a man like Moynihan, who started out with a perfectly accurate understanding of the dynamics of the Zionist project, should go on to became a mere mouthpiece for Podhoretz.

Here, BTW, is the opening paragraph of his aforementioned speech, assumed in his Wikipedia entry to be all his own work. It's Zionist hysteria and bombast at its best? worst?

"The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act. Not three weeks ago, the United States representative in the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee pleaded in measured and fully considered terms for the United Nations not to do this thing. It was, he said, 'obscene.' It is something more today, for the furtiveness with which this obscenity first appeared among us has been replaced by a shameless openness. There will be time enough to contemplate the harm this act will have done the United Nations. Historians will do that for us, and it is sufficient for the moment only to note the foreboding fact. A great evil has been loosed upon the world. The abomination of anti-semitism - as this year's Nobel Peace Laureate Andrei Sakharov observed in Moscow just a few days ago - the abomination of anti-semitism has been given the appearance of international sanction.. The General Assembly today grants symbolic amnesty - and more to the murderers of the six million European Jews. Evil enough in itself, but more ominous by far is the realization that now presses upon us - the realization that if there were no General Assembly, this could never have happened."

It'd be interesting to know whether Gareth Evans' promise to "back an attempt to seek support among Asian-Pacific nations," as the AJN put it, involved him in Australian taxpayer-funded travel to the region on Israel's behalf, and if it did, what exactly his talking points were. Did he too play the anti-Semitism and Holocaust cards I wonder?

The Undisturbed Sleep of Michael Gawenda

"Sandomierz is a beautiful little town in south-eastern Poland... Once, before the war, many of its inhabitants were Jews. As we walked along the streets that were once Jewish streets, this group of American and Australian Jews, there were no signs, nothing at all, to suggest that the Jews of Sandomierz had a history going back hundreds of years... The past sat in my heart like a stone. On the once Jewish streets of Sandomierz... lived Poles. I wondered whether they knew what had happened to the people who once lived here and if they did know, did the ghosts of the dead Jews ever come to disturb their sleep?"

So begins the soulful essay by former editor of The Age Michael Gawenda, in the January 18 edition of Fairfax's GoodWeekend magazine.

While it's perfectly natural for Gawenda to ruminate thus on his Polish-Jewish parents' homeland and the terrible fate of Poland's Jews under the Nazis, nagging questions arise.

Is it possible for a Jew, any Jew, who lives in an era when the lives of Jews are seemingly dominated by the fact of a powerful Jewish state, one moreover, which loudly proclaims that all Jews constitute one people and that it, Israel, represents them, to carry on as though Israel and its manifold crimes are in no way his or her concern?

Is it possible for a Jew to be alive to the fate of his father's forbears in Europe but dead to the fate of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs who were driven out of Palestine by the founders of the Jewish state, and whose homes are now inhabited by the descendents of Eastern European, including Polish, Jews?

Apparently, for Gawenda, it is.

Mind you, as the son of a Bundist father, Gawenda is by no means overtly Zionist. And yet, in his memoir, American Notebook: A Personal and Political Journey (2007), he can blithely invoke the Nazi genocide to marginalise and dismiss the 63 years of Palestinian suffering done in his name as a Jew as well as the next Zionist apologist:

"Is it really necessary to say that there is no comparison in reality, no analogous situation between the Nazi treatment of the Jews and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians? It seems that it is. The attempted genocide by the Nazis of European Jewry was almost successful. Whole communities were wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were executed by the Nazi killing squads that followed the German army into the Soviet Union. Of Poland's estimated 3 million Jews, 200,000 survived. At least a million people were killed in Auschwitz, among them hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women and children who were gassed shortly after their arrival. The characterisation of Israel as a Nazi state by some of its critics is based either on ignorance or on something much more malevolent." (p 157)

Gawenda here provides a perfect example of the following phenomenon so well described by Israeli activist and scholar Uri Davis:

"It is to Hisham Sharabi that I owe the insight that though the Israeli ethnic cleansing of 1948-49 and the Israeli occupation of 1967 are no less cruel than, for instance, the mass ethnic cleansing that had taken place in India and Pakistan at about the same time, or the French occupation of Algeria, the tragedy of the Palestinian Arab people is that their persecutor and occupier is identified in Western narrative not as a 'Zionist', nor as an 'Israeli', but as a 'Jew'. This, Sharabi pointed out further, unfortunately means that so long as the Israeli occupation does not mass transport the Palestinian people into death camps, annihilate them in gas chambers and dispose of their bodies in crematoria with columns of smoke curling out of the chimneys, the cruelty of the Israeli occupation and the truly horrific suffering of the Palestinian people remain invisible to enlightened public opinion." (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 18)

It seems that, safely inoculated by Holocaust memory, the ghosts of dead and dispossessed Palestinians will never disturb Gawenda's sleep.

The Pre-State Origins of Zionist Apartheid

So what makes Zionists, both within and outside Israel, the adorable creatures we know them to be?

Herewith are further musings on the substance of my previous post...

Uri Davis, author of the classic 2003 text, Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, explains the difference between racism and apartheid:

"Racism is not apartheid and apartheid is not racism. Apartheid is a political system where racism is regulated in law through acts of parliament. Racism is prevalent in all states, including liberal democratic states such as the current western liberal democracies. But in liberal democratic states, those victimized by racism have legal recourse to seek the protection of the law under a democratic constitution, namely a constitution that embodies the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In an apartheid state, on the other hand, the state enforces racism through the legal system, criminalizes expressions of humanitarian concern and obligates the citizenry through acts of parliament to make racist choices and conform to racist behaviour." (p 37)

Israel emerged as a fully-fledged apartheid state, underpinned by a cluster of laws enshrining a division between Jews and non-Jews*, in the years immediately following its creation in 1948. Its apartheid legislation, however, didn't come from nowhere. It was preceded in the pre-state era by the Zionist movement's use of pressure tactics aimed at preventing the development of any kind of inclusive, non-Zionist initiative or enterprise involving Arabs and Jews. These tactics were indicative of the kind of racist, Jews-only mindset which eventually found expression in Israel's post-48 apartheid legislation.

The following two stories show how the Zionist movement, once unleashed on Palestine by the British, immediately set about forcing decent and independent-thinking members of the Jewish community there to make essentially racist choices, and punishing those who failed to toe the Zionist line.

The first comes from Lt.-Col. Walter Francis Stirling, the British Governor of the Jaffa district from 1919-1923:

"In the early days there were many Jews in Palestine who were not Zionists, but the pressure applied by the Jewish Agency became so great, and its Gestapo methods so severe, that few Jews dared openly express any other faith. Just before I left Jaffa a very important Jewish farmer from Richon-le-Zion sent a message asking if he could come and see me. I accordingly invited him to come to my office the following morning, but he refused to do that and asked for an appointment at my house after dark. When he arrived he told me he had come to ask for any advice on a personal problem. He explained how, as a small boy, he had been brought to Palestine by his father, one of the biggest landowners of his village. Growing up there, he had made numerous friends among the little Arab boys of his own age. On his father's death he had taken over the property and naturally continued to employ his boyhood friends as herdsmen, ploughmen and teamsters. That morning, however, the Jewish Agency had ordered him to dismiss all his Arab employees and to engage some newly arrived Jewish immigrants at a wage-rate far in excess of the pay of his Arab workmen. What should he do? If he dismissed the Arabs in the summary manner suggested, such bad feeling would be created that, being a vindictive people, they might well burn his crops. Apart from this consideration, they also happened to be his friends. The Jews who had been proposed to him as labourers knew nothing about farming, and certainly nothing about the local conditions. The Arabs would work to all hours of the night if it were a question of getting a crop in before the rain; the Jews would down tools precisely at 6 o'clock, no matter what the weather. He now saw no possibility of working his land on economic lines, and he would inevitably go bankrupt. I was put in a difficult position, for any advice I gave him would certainly be quoted and I should be denounced by the all-powerful Jewish Agency." (Quoted in From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism & the Palestine Problem Until 1948, edited by Walid Khalidi, 1971, pp 233-234)

The second comes from Sir Ronald Storrs, the British Governor of Jerusalem from 1918 to 1926:

"When, early in 1918, a lady, unlike the stage Woman of Destiny in that she was neither tall, dark nor thin, was ushered, with an expression of equal good humour and resolution, into my office I immediately realized that a new planet had swum into my ken. Miss Annie Landau had been throughout the War exiled in Alexandria from her beloved Evelina de Rothschild Girls' School, and demanded to return to it immediately. To my miserable pleading that her school was in use as a Military Hospital she opposed a steely insistence: and very few minutes had elapsed before I had leased her the vast empty building known as the Abyssinian Palace. Miss Landau rapidly became very much more than the Headmistress of the best Jewish Girls' School in Palestine. She was more British than the English, flying the Union Jack continually as well as exclusively so soon as that was permitted. She was more Jewish than the Zionists - no answer from her telephone on the Sabbath, even by the servants. She had been friendly with Turks and Arabs before the War; so that her generous hospitality was for many years almost the only neutral ground upon which British officials, ardent Zionists, Moslem Beys and Christian Effendis could meet on terms of mutual conviviality. Only once was her social ascendency challenged, and then by her own community. The occasion arose from a concert I arranged late in 1918 to provide funds for the Jerusalem School of Music. I had impressed upon its director, the accomplished violinist Tchaikov, that as neither the School nor the audience were exclusively Jewish he should at the conclusion confine himself to the first 6 bars of God Save the King; a condition he promised to observe. As he advanced to the front of the platform, we rose, when what was my consternation to hear not that confident, basic melody but the Smetanaesque melancholy of the Zionist National Anthem. After a bar or so (Tchaikov casting upon me the agonized glance of one succumbing to force majeure) the Chief Administrator asked me hoarsely 'What's that?' and when I answered 'Ha Tiqvah', asked again 'What's that?' 'Zionist National Anthem'. He sat down sharply, and was of course followed by all his officers and, with reckless British courage (but in an evil hour for herself), by Miss Annie Landau. She was forthwith pilloried as a traitress to the Cause, though there was no immediately apparent means of punishing her. The Zealots' opportunity came with her first Ball, which they announced that no self-respecting Jew could possibly attend. All my sympathies were with Miss Landau, as a friend, as a hostess, as public benefactress number one; but I was powerless to lighten her natural despair at being boycotted by her own people. On the evening of the dance 3 Jewish fathers waited upon me in the Governorate. They had called to enquire whether I wished them to attend the dance, and seemed disappointed at my refusal to give them a direct injunction. The unhappy men had been undermined by treachery in their own homes: their wives and daughters had bought new frocks, and had every intention of using them. When 4 hours later I contemplated the line of patriots, some resentful, some defiant, all duly following up the staircase in the triumph of the daughters of Israel, my satisfaction was tinged with sympathy for men and brothers, as I realized that in one relation of life there is indeed neither Jew nor Gentile." (Orientations, 1939, pp 434-435)

[*See my 24/5/10 post Second-Class Citizen Khaled.]

A Well-Rounded Indoctrination

NSW's Department of Education & Training (DET) has a policy statement on "the management of controversial issues in schools, whether by the use of teaching-learning material or views expressed by teachers or visiting speakers." (Controversial Issues in Schools, det.nsw.edu.au)

The first objective of the statement reads as follows: "Schools are neutral grounds for rational discourse and objective study. They are not arenas for opposing political views or ideologies." According to the statement this applies to "all schools."

I take it that that includes our Jewish schools. But just how Jewish are our Jewish schools?

Now by way of clarification, since Zionists have this terrible habit of conflating Judaism and Zionism, it's perhaps useful at this point to remind ourselves of the elementary distinction between the two before proceeding further.

As Israeli activist and scholar Uri Davis puts it, "Judaism is not Zionism. Judaism, as a confessional preference, should be strictly an individual matter, and, generally speaking, like other individual preferences (such as musical, culinary or sexual preferences) should not be the concern of the law. Zionism as a political programme [however] is a matter of public debate... The political Zionist school of thought and practice is committed to the normative statement that it is a good idea to establish and consolidate in the country of Palestine a sovereign state, a Jewish state, that attempts to guarantee in law and in practice a demographic majority of the Jewish tribes in the territories under its control. Such individuals and bodies as are, for instance, committed to the values of open society, democracy and the separation of religion from the state; who, therefore, disagree with the political aims of this particular political programme; and who regard this programme to be a negative political programme, are anti-Zionist in the same sense that those who for many decades opposed the political programme of apartheid in South Africa (which ended in 1994) were, and it is to be hoped remain, anti-apartheid." (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, pp 11-12)

So, in light of NSW DET policy, and the clear distinction between Judaism, the religion, and Zionism, the political ideology/programme, what is one to make of the following?:

"Zionist youth movement Netzer [the youth arm of the progressive Jewish movement] has launched a petition against Moriah College claiming the school is 'discriminating' against the group, by barring them from canvassing on campus and participating in school events... But Moriah president Roger Kaye defended the school's position. 'Moriah College has always operated within its modern-Orthodox Zionist ethos. It is the longstanding policy of Moriah College not to allow Netzer... to promote its activities on our campus because their religious platform is in conflict with Moriah's ethos', he told the AJN. 'This is not the case with the other 4 Zionist youth movements [Habonim Dror, Betar, Bnei Akiva and Hashomer Hatzair]... which do not have a religious platform or have a religious platform that is aligned with Moriah's." (Discrimination accusation levelled at Moriah College, The Australian Jewish News, 20/5/11)

Or the fact that, in the same issue there's an entire page given over to photographs of primary school children at a "combined schools assembly", all decked out in blue and white, and waving Israeli flags in celebration of Israel's so-called Independence Day?

Back in 2008, in a satirical post, Zionist Indoctrination Exposed! (11/10/08), I dealt with this very same subject. That post was, as it happens, inspired by the following quote from a former Moriah College graduate: "Despite [sic] having Israeli history rammed down our throats for most of our adolescent lives, our basic understanding of the Middle Eastern conflict essentially boils down to this: Israel - good, Arabs - bad."

If last month's AJN is anything to go by, nothing seems to have changed.

And that departmental policy statement? What policy statement?

Sheridan's Damning Admission

Welcome to my 99th Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan post, occasioned by the following damning admission.

"I buy most of my books at second-hand stores because the best books are invariably out of print, but occasionally a new book is exciting. Tony Blair's memoir was one recent case." (The Forum, The Australian, 28/5/11)

There you have it, straight from the horse's mouth: despite the veritable flood of new books on all facets of the Middle East conflict, many of which, you may have noticed, inform my posts, Israel's loudest megaphone in the Australian corporate press remains ignorant of the latest research, testimonies, or perspectives. No surprises here, of course. Sheridan's preferred reading matter on Palestine/Israel is, as he admitted in an earlier 2009 emission, a 'wild eastern' such as the 1968 Morris West novel, The Tower of Babel (See my August 2009 series West's Wild East, 1-5).

Sheridan's admission further confirms him as a mere transmission belt for dated (and current) Israeli propaganda. Recall, for example, the reference in the previous post to his peremptory dismissal of evidence of ethnic cleansing by Zionist forces in 1948, culled from the Zionist archives by Israeli historian Benny Morris, as "just rubbish."

Consistent with such Nakba denial, the books of Israeli revisionist historians, such as Morris (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited 2004) and Ilan Pappe (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006), on what really transpired in Palestine in 1948, are bound to be missing from Sheridan's shelves. Apart from musty and profoundly orientalist wild easterns such as Leon Uris' Exodus and West's The Tower of Babel, you're more likely to find musty and profoundly orientalist propaganda tomes such as Encounter With Israel: A Challenge to Conscience (1970) by Ziophilic Protestant theologians Alice & Roy Eckardt, where the Nakba is preposterously portrayed as the human version of whale beaching:

"Why should so many Arabs (some 560,000) have fled from homes and land in areas heavily populated by their own people? No one planned or anticipated such an extensive flight... Certainly the Jews had no reason to expect this outcome. Initially, the Jewish leaders tried to stop the flight. To them, it meant a denial of the ideals of harmonious coexistence they were determined to demonstrate. With respect to the Arab refugees themselves, the major promptings were fear, and the traditional Arab way of responding to approaching trouble... centuries of cumulative experience with invading desert tribes and rapacious armies of Mongols, Turks, and others had taught Arabs of different regions the wisdom of flight.* After the invaders retired with their booty, as usually happened, or order was restored, the people normally returned." (p 173)

"Fear of Jewish reprisals, based on an awareness of Arab atrocities against Jews, was intensified by knowledge of Jewish extremists' actions against the British forces, and a few instances of apparently wanton killing of some Arab villagers. Arab propagandists sought to rouse the populace to a frenzy of hatred and vengeance by spreading stories of Jewish atrocities (some of which were believed by Jews also). The attempts backfired. The stridency of these stories and their exaggerated character, aided and abetted by rumor (the most common news medium of the Arab masses), failed to incite them to violence. Instead, the people were simply terrorized, and there was a panic-stricken rout. The flight tended to create its own momentum. After Israel's forces were able to assume the offensive, Arab multitudes fled before them. The Jewish authorities ceased trying to stop them. Although unanticipated, the flight was perceived, in Weingrod's words as, 'a quick way to 'solve the Arab question'.' Some Israeli troops and commanders changed their behavior at this stage, making more deliberate efforts to get Arabs to leave. Some used purely psychological scare tactics, some resorted to physical eviction. The extent of such harrassment is impossible to determine. Yet there was never an overall plan of any kind to expel the Arabs." (p 174)

Nakba? What Nakba? Who? Us? Now steady on!

[* Isn't it amazing - Israeli Jews too seem to have acquired the exact same wisdom of flight as the Eckardts' Arabs!: "When Iraqi scuds hit Tel Aviv and its environs during the Gulf war in 1991, thousands of Jewish families fled to take their families and children to safety. They went to Jerusalem, assuming that Iraq would refrain from targeting the third holiest city of Islam, and to Elat, assuming that the city is beyond the range of the Iraqi missiles. They were accused by the mayor of Tel Aviv, General (Reserve) Shlomo Lahat, of desertion." (Crossing the Border: An Autobiography of an Anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew, Uri Davis, 1995, p 26)

However, as Davis reminds us, "[N]obody suggested that their properties should be confiscated and distributed among those who remained in the city throughout the war, or that they should be prohibited from return to their homes in Tel Aviv and condemned to remain as refugees in the localities where they had sought shelter. After all, they were Jews - not Arabs."]

Second-Class Citizen Khaled

The Australian's opinion editor, Rebecca Weisser, just cannot comprehend why Palestinians don't raise their champagne glasses and toast the birth of the Jewish state on May 15:

"The Palestinian diaspora in Australia is facing an unexpected catastrophe. Normally, May 15, Israel's Independence Day, is the most important day of the year for celebrating their victimhood: the catastrophe, as they see it, of the founding of Israel." (Journalist says only truth will set Palestine free, 15/5/10)

One 'brave' Israeli Arab soul, however, refuses to celebrate his 'Palestinian' victimhood on May 15:

"But, this year, visiting fresh from the streets of Gaza, Ramallah and Jerusalem is Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab Muslim journalist, who declares: 'I'd rather be a second-class citizen in Israel than a first-class citizen in any Arab country'. And some in the diaspora are not happy about his visit." (ibid)

Mind you, it's not that Abu T's exactly over the moon about being a second-class Israeli: "If I were a Jew living in Israel, I would be very worried about the deterioration of relations between Jews and Arabs inside the country. We, the Israeli Arabs, have been extremely loyal to the State of Israel ever since its establishment. We are the Arabs who in 1948 did not challenge Israel's right to exist.* We accepted Israel. We welcomed Israel. We helped build Israel. Israel gave us passports, citizenship, okay. But... sadly, the State of Israel or the Israeli establishment were not equally loyal towards its Arab minority... I'm talking about employment, services, infrastructure. We continue to suffer from what [former prime minister] Ehud Olmert called a policy of systematic discrimination against the Arab minority. Now the good news is that Israel is not an apartheid state. But the bad news is that there is discrimination inside Israel. It's not just against Arabs - it's against Russians. It's against Ethiopians. It's against the elderly. It's against the disabled. If this policy continues and the Israeli establishment does not wake up and embark on an emergency plan to improve its relations with its Arab minority, the third intifada will be on the streets of Haifa and Akko, and the Negev and Galilee." (Citizen Khaled, The Australian Jewish News, 21/5/10)

Whence this mysterious, free-floating discrimination, sufficient to have Israeli Arabs (but not Russians, Ethiopians and the elderly) take to the streets in protest, but not sufficient to be called apartheid? Abu T doesn't say, but he's emphatic that, whatever its origin and nature, because Arabs can live in Jewish neighborhoods and go to Jewish schools, it's therefore not apartheid.

Leaving aside the question of just how many Arabs actually live in Jewish neighborhoods or go to Jewish schools, Abu T's PR line is that, because the obvious segregation of South African apartheid isn't replicated in Israel, it's therefore not an apartheid state. His other is to point the finger at alleged apartheid in the Arab/Muslim world: "I passed some Lebanese girls who were organising Israel Apartheid Week in Canada. I stopped at their information table and I asked them, 'Excuse me, which apartheid are you talking about?' They said, 'Of course, the Jewish state, and apartheid against the Palestinians'. And I asked them if they were from Lebanon. 'What about apartheid in Lebanon against the Palestinians, where in Lebanon there is a law that prevents Palestinians from working in more than 60 professions? By law, it's written in the law'. Can you imagine if the Knesset met tonight and passed a law banning Arabs from working in one profession?"

Put to one side the capital F fact that the only reason the Palestinians are in Lebanon is because Israel refuses to allow them to return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled by Zionist forces in 1948, an issue Abu T shows not the least interest in, and consider the implication of his final question - that Israel's Knesset has never actually passed anti-Arab/pro-Jewish legislation when in fact such legislation is fundamental to Israel's status as a Jewish state.

Our most reliable guide to Israel's apartheid legislation is Israeli scholar and activist, Uri Davis. In his invaluable treatise, Apartheid Israel (2003), Davis points out that apartheid is a political system where racism is regulated through acts of parliament, and shows that, in Israel's case, the main body of Israeli law, via its incorporation of the exclusivist constitutional stipulations of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), the Jewish Agency (JA) and the Jewish National Fund (JNF), incorporates a distinction between Jew and non-Jew. Although the Israeli Knesset is formally accountable to all its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, in the key areas of immigration, settlement and land development, the Knesset has passed laws ceding state sovereignty to, and vesting its responsibilities with, the WZO, the JA and the JNF, which are constitutionally committed to serving and promoting the interests of Jews and Jews only. In Davis' analysis, this legal deception has given rise to a veiled, but no less real, apartheid, which ensures, for example, that 93% of pre-67 Israel is retained for cultivation, development and settlement by, and for, Jews only.

Obviously though, when your trip to Australia is paid for by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), the United Israel Appeal (UIA), and the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, you're not going to go there.

[*We threw every flower we had at the Zionist forces!]

The 'R' Word

Words of wisdom from Uri Davis:

"There is no collective guilt. Children are not guilty of the crimes of their parents; Germans in general are not guilty of the crimes of the Nazi occupation of Europe; western Christians in general are not guilty of the genocide of the holocaust; and Europe in general is not guilty of crimes against humanity perpetrated against Jews. Only anti-Jewish racists are guilty of what they did and continue to do to Jews. And, by the same token, children of Zionist settlers in geographical Palestine are also not guilty of the crimes perpetrated by their parents. Responsibility is, however, a different matter. While children of Zionist settlers in geographical Palestine are not collectively guilty of the crimes perpetrated by their parents against the native indigenous Palestinian Arab people, citizens of the State of Israel have a responsibility, a duty, which citizens of other states do not have in the same way, to raise their voices against these crimes, act in defence of the victims of these crimes and work for due reparation, compensation and return of the dispossessed and expelled Palestinian Arabs. This is the case not because children of Zionist settlers are collectively guilty of these crimes, but because these crimes were committed and continue to be committed in their name.' (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 12)

Unfortunately, Tal Jabotinsky, great-granddaughter of Zionist revisionist leader, fascist and Likud godfather Vladimir [Ze'ev] Jabotinsky* [1880-1940], just doesn't get the responsibility thing:

"I am very proud of the family I come from, I carry the heritage proudly. I am proud of all my family, including my great-grandfather [Zionist forefather Ze'ev Jabotinsky] and grandfather [Ze'ev's only son], my mother, my father and my siblings. I am here with everything I carry from the Jabotinsky legacy to add to that... Every year there is a special remembrance ceremony. Shimon Peres [and other politicians] are there every year. Politicians and my family are intertwined, it is not a rare thing to pick up the phone and hear one of them - there are a lot of funny stories in my family about that." (A chat with Tal Jabotinsky, new Betar shlicha [Israel representative] in Melbourne, The Australian Jewish News, 7/8/07)

Avindav Begin, grandson of Jabotinsky disciple, Irgun leader and first Likud prime minister of Israel Menachem Begin [1913-1992]**, does:

"'Murderous blood flows in Israeli arteries', says the grandson of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Avindav Begin, who is also the son of the current Likud Knesset member Benny Begin, refuses to stand during the Israeli national anthem 'Hatikva' and participates in protests against the Apartheid Wall. He does not see himself as a Jew or a Zionist and believes that his grandfather did not make real peace with Egypt. He is also not worried about being the target for rotten eggs after his inflammatory interview with Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. The newspaper said in a lengthy report: (Avindav) Begin examines the psychological roots of the Jewish-Arab conflict in his new book End of the Conflict, which was published recently in both Hebrew and Arabic. He suggests a radical solution to spare all religious, national and ideological sectors, encouraging everyone to live together as human beings. Despite being brought up in a very nationalistic family, and perhaps for this reason, he did not agree with the theories of his father and grandfather." (Begin's grandson: 'murderous blood flows in Israeli arteries', paltelegraph.com, 13/2/10)

[*See my 12/6/08 post Pemulwuy in Palestine. **As Irgun leader, Begin was responsible for the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre. As Likud PM (1977-1983), he was responsible for Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the Sabra/Shatila massacre.]

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.

Goose & Gander

Chinese diplomatic pressure was front page news in yesterday's Australian: "The Chinese government tried to pressure the National Press Club (NPC) into cancelling a nationally televised speech by Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, scheduled to take place today. Political counsellor at the embassy Liu Jing met press club officials last week and requested the club withdraw the invitation to Ms Kadeer... The chief executive of the press club, Maurice Reilly, yesterday declined to comment on the half-hour meeting with Mr Liu, but club directors made it clear to the Chinese embassy that they were entitled to hear the views of Ms Kadeer. The Australian understands that press club officials... told Mr Liu that the club's policy on nationally televised speeches remained consistent with past practice." (Chinese pressure media, Patrick Walters)

Foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan waxed indignant, urging the Australian government to intervene in the matter: "The Chinese embassy... must surely realise they cannot operate in Australia in the same way that their government does in China. And it is long since time past that the Rudd government should tell the Chinese this." (Diplomats must pull their heads in)

The paper's editorial went even further, demanding that the Chinese ambassador be carpetted: "Foreign Minister Stephen Smith should call in Chinese ambassador Zhang Junsai and ask him to convey an equally plain reply to Beijing: butt out. Mr Zhang must be told heavy-handed attempts to stop a woman who has broken no laws in Australia and who Canberra considers no threat to either this country or the peace of the world are unacceptable. And when he conveys that message, the ambassador could explain to his superiors that even if the Australian government wanted to stop Ms Kadeer from addressing the Press Club, it is not its decision to make, that in Australia freedom of speech is a fundamental right, not a privilege conferred and withdrawn by the state. Mr Zhang could also add that the Australian people will never accept a foreign power seeking to censor information and suppress criticism here." (China has no right to censor in Australia)

I couldn't have agreed more with that final, stirring sentiment: "[T]he Australian people will never accept a foreign power seeking to censor information and suppress criticism here."

But oh, the hypocrisy! the hypocrisy! Check this out from The Australian Jewish News of 3/6/05: "Controversial Israeli academic Dr Uri Davis' scheduled address to the NPC in Canberra next week is unlikely to go ahead... Davis' scheduled address - 'The Jewish National Fund of Australia: a critical assessment' - had provoked some concerns within the Jewish community, with Jewish National Fund (JNF) CEO Rob Schneider warning officials of possible legal action. 'The club could do themselves irreparable harm and damage and we would hold them jointly responsible for what Davis may say that could be defamatory towards the JNF', Schneider told the AJN." (Controversial Israeli speaker's Canberra address in doubt)

Well, well, well. So Uri Davis' appearance at the NPC went ahead regardless, yes? Err, no: according to The Canberra Times, "The NPC cancelled yesterday's scheduled address by a controversial academic because of lack of interest, not because of pressure from the Jewish lobby. The club said it had already rebuffed pressure to call off the speech by Uri Davis, a critic of the JNF of Australia, before the cancellation was made on economic grounds." (Club denies bowing to Jewish lobby, Ross Peake, 8/6/05) Well, that's the official line. But here's the rub. This blatant attempt to censor Uri Davis elicited not a peep from The Australian .

Nor did The Australian' s editorialist/foreign editor choose to crow about this: "The Israeli Government will lobby the ABC to abandon plans to screen a BBC documentary [Israel's Secret Weapon] that claims Israel has used nerve gas against Palestinians, and has an arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons... Israel's ambassador to Australia, Gaby Levy, said he would ask the ABC to reconsider airing the program... An ABC publicist said the ABC was committed to airing the program and would not be censored." (Israeli bid to block documentary, Patricia Karvelas, The Australian, 2/7/03) You'll be pleased to know that in this case the ABC stood by its guns and the documentary went to air in August of 2003.

As far as The Australian is concerned, it seems, what's good for the Chinese goose isn't good for the Israeli gander.

It's the State Terrorism, Stupid

The following statement by veteran anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew Uri Davis enshrines a fundamental truth:

"A fundamental asymmetery obtains between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots', between the colonizer and the colonized. No armed action targeting civilians can be condoned. All 'acts of terrorism' ought to be condemned. But 'suicide bombing' by Palestinians is not 'just like' the strafing of Palestinian civilian residential quarters by Israeli Apache and Cobra helicopters with missiles, just as stealing food to feed the hungry is not 'just like' stealing money to feed a drug habit. Many of those at the forefront of the 'war against terror', notably the Government of the State of Israel, seem to be unwilling to embrace an inclusive view of the phenomenon of 'terrorism' they so forcefully condemn. The first party victimized by 'acts of terrorism' is the Palestinian party - not the Israeli party. The majority of the victims of 'acts of terrorism' are Palestinian civilians - not Israeli citizens. The primary perpetrators of 'acts of terrorism' are the governments of the State of Israel sending death squads on assassination missions in the post-1967 occupied territories; strafing civilian residential areas with helicopter gun-ships; destroying clinics and medical infrastructure; devastating centuries of learning, education and cultural heritage; subjecting the civilian population to protracted curfews; and denying the civilian population access to medical care. The primary 'terrorist' in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the Government of the State of Israel - not the Palestinian suicide bomber." (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 74)

Of course, we expect Zionist dead-enders and their mouthpieces in the mainstream media to be blind to such a fundamental truth. But it never ceases to amaze when it eludes even spokespeople for human rights organisations. Take Human Rights Watch for example:-

First this, courtesy of The Angry Arab News Service: "'Human Rights Watch provided the international community with evidence of Israel using white phosphorus and launching systematic destructive attacks on civilian targets. Pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union and the United Nations have strongly resisted the report and tried to discredit it', said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW's Middle East & North Africa Division'. But Sarah, you forgot to mention that HRW also equates the suffering of the colonized with that of the colonizers. But Sarah, you forgot to mention that HRW is obsessed with its 'pro-Israel donors' - as your director calls them - and that this obsession affects its coverage. But Sarah, you refused to mention that Israeli lives are always treated as more precious than Arab lives. But Sarah, you forgot to say that Hamas' homemade fireworks (aka rockets) are treated as more lethal than bombs from Israeli fighter jets. But Sarah, you forgot to mention that you never produce a report critical of Israel without matching it with a report critical of its victims." (26/5/09)

Then this, from Radio National's Breakfast program: "The conversation has to start with the Tamil Tigers because they were a totalitarian organisation that ran part of the country for many years where there were no basic freedoms, where people who criticised them were sometimes killed, sometimes tortured, sometimes imprisoned, where any moderate Tamil voices in Sri Lanka that spoke up were silenced by them. There have been hundreds of unexplained killings over the years that appear to have been the work of the Tamil Tigers, but the government has basically said they're so bad they engaged in terror tactics, therefore we can do whatever we need to do to end this conflict and that's where the problem started because they used indiscriminate force." (Brad Adams, Asia Director, Human Rights Watch, 27/5/09)

Israelolatry

There seems to be a lot of it going around lately, but what exactly happens at an 'interfaith dialogue'? In theory, it sounds just fine/halal/kosher - members of the 3 Abrahamic faiths exploring issues of faith together in the interests of mutual harmony and tolerance. But there's more to it than that, as this extract from an article on the subject by Deborah Stone, research director of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission and a former editor of The Australian Jewish News, indicates:-

"Heba Ibrahim is a bright young woman. A masters student in public policy, she could one day be running a government department. She is also a committed young Muslim who recently joined the board of the Islamic Council of Victoria. In years to come, she may influence the Australian Muslim community's choice of imam, their statement on the 'next Gaza' and what is said about Jewish people in Islamic schools. Her attitude to the issues that concern us as Australian Jews will be influenced by her Jewish friends - people she met at the recent Multifaith Future Leaders Program run by the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC). I'm not starry-eyed about this program. I know interfaith dialogue has been disappointing for the Jewish community. The attitude to Israel displayed by our Muslim and Christian dialogue partners, as well as the Arab community, has been deeply discouraging... Recently, Jewish community leaders met to discuss the future of interfaith dialogue. Many indicated surprise and disappointment at the uniformity of opinion expressed in public by the Muslim community on Israel, especially the refusal, of those they know to be more moderate, to speak out." (Our community will suffer if we give up on dialogue, AJN, 3/4/09)

What exactly is expected of Heba Ibrahim here? Reading between the lines, it seems she's expected to tone down her wholly justifiable outrage over Israel's war crimes in Gaza, and to accept Israel as it is, apartheid, occupation, periodic rampages and all. By doing so, she'll earn the approval of her Jewish interlocutors and be badged a 'moderate', which, of course, will oblige her to speak out against expressions of outrage by her fellow Muslims when Israel next has a turn.

In other words, it's not so much Judaism as Israel that's at the heart of so-called 'interfaith dialogue'. That being the case, Heba Ibrahim should understand that, by engaging in same, she's rubbing shoulders with Zionists whose primary concern is blunting any criticisms she may have of Israel and its behaviour.

As Israeli scholar/activist Uri Davis reminds us, Zionism (the idea that it is a good idea to establish and consolidate in the country of Palestine a sovereign, Jewish state) is not Judaism. Judaism is a religion, a confessional statement that belongs, like all confessional statements, to the private realm of the individual. Zionism, on the other hand, is a political programme that, like all such, ought to be judged by the extent that it is compatible with the universal values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the standards of international law. And when that yardstick is applied, Israel fails miserably.

Heba Ibrahim should be aware that her interlocutors will do everything in their power to obscure this vital distinction because for them the Jewish state has essentially become their new civic religion. American historian Steven T Rosenthal has described the genesis and elements of what has been termed Israelolatry among American Jews thus: "In this devotion the role of prophet was filled not by the remote and forbidding Theodore Herzl but by the charismatic and sensationally photogenic David Ben Gurion. The role of high priest was played by United Nations representative (and sometimes foreign minister) Abba Eban, loved by American Jews for his urbane sophistication, for his beautifully crafted speeches defending Israel, and for his Cambridge-accented bon mots. The romantic warrior figure of General Moshe Dayan, who more than any Israeli captured the imagination of American Jewry as the exemplar of the 'new Jew', provided an avenging angel. These larger-than-life personalities, collectively embodying Israel virtues of vision, intelligence, and courageous action did battle against the forces of darkness symbolized by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser whose threats may not always be credible but could invariably be counted on to be suitably apocalyptic. In such circumstances a body of dogma arose that was accepted by both Israeli and American Jews. The first was expressed by the Hebrew phrase Ein Breira (There is no alternative). Given the eternal vow of the Arab 'confrontation states' to destroy the 'Zionist entity', Israel had no option but to pursue the hardest line of political and military policies. The other was expressed by Ma Yomru ha Goyim? (What will the Gentiles say?). Because of the pervasiveness of world anti-Semitism and Israel's political and military vulnerability, any public criticism of Israel by the Diaspora, it was feared, would play into the hands of those who wished to destroy her. Even private criticism was discouraged, since American Jews generally felt that only Israelis could assess their own situation and that it was immoral for those who lived in peace and security to discuss policies that might put Israeli lives at risk. At the local level, enforcement of this orthodoxy often fell to the federations, which did their job so effectively that by the late 1960s criticizing Israel was seen as a worse sin than marrying out of the faith." (Irreconcilable Differences? The Waning of the American Jewish Love Affair with Israel, 2001, xvi-xvii)

Even though their idol has long since crumbled, as idols will, and their pantheon is seen as all too mortal, our current crop of Zionist dead-enders still expect the rest of us, especially the Heba Ibrahims of Australia, to be suitably reverential.

Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheehan has predictably weighed in on the Gaza genocide (It's too easy just to blame Jews, 12/1/09), telling his readers that he "just happened to be in Israel" last November. He's being disingenuous. There was of course nothing happenstance about his trip - it was sponsored by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBOD) and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (see my 17/11/08 post Rambam Alert!) , part of a process I call rambamming - defined elsewhere in this blog as "being sponsored by smooth-talking Israel lobbyists in Australia on a grooming session by tough-talking PR people in Israel with a view to the sponsored adopting the missionary position for Israel when required in Australia." To my knowledge, no disclosure that a rambamming has taken place has ever accompanied an article on Israel and the Palestinians by a rambammed Herald journalist. Just click on the rambamming tag at the end of this post for a fuller picture of this below-the-radar activity.

Sheehan's November 2008 rambamming didn't take long to bear fruit (See my 27/11/08 post His Master's Voice), and now that the Israel's army is cutting a bloody swathe through Gaza, and Israel's PR machine is working overtime defending the indefensible, Sheehan's putting pen to paper in defence of Israel's actions should come as no surprise.

There are, of course, the usual factual stuff-ups (a sure give-away that the generalist pundit has only the shakiest grasp of the subject at hand), and I shall deal with these first: 1) Sheehan refers to the group of Israeli settler fanatics illegally occupying a Palestinian house in the Palestinian West Bank city of Hebron as occupying a "settlement." 2) In a reference to Jordan's administration of the West Bank from 1948-1967, he hilariously describes the West Bank Palestinians as an "ethnic majority" and their Jordanian Hashemite rulers as an "ethnic minority." Sheehan is labouring under the illusion that the Hashemites are an ethnic grouping rather than a dynasty. To add to the hilarity, he even has these 'ethnic' Hashemites simultaneously ruling the Gaza Palestinians! 3) Finally, his figure of "6,000 Hamas rocket attacks" on Israel from Gaza (repeated twice) is the same nonsense I've refuted elsewhere (See my 5/1/09 post Go Figure 1). Moreover, assigning all such rockets to Hamas alone is simply incorrect.

Then there's Sheehan's retailing of the contemptible Israeli propaganda line about the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) 'warehousing' "displaced Palestinians for decades because it has been in the interests of the Arab world for this problem not to be solved." He would have us believe that the issue of the Palestinian refugees arises not from Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1948 (glossed over with the neutral-sounding "displaced"), but from a deliberate failure of the UN to disperse them around the Arab world!* Sheehan thus attempts to shift responsibility for the Palestine refugee problem from the Israelis, who created it, to the UN, which set up UNRWA to manage it.

[* Nor was this for want of trying. Consider the following story from the time of the Egyptian military administration of Gaza: "Nasser feared the consequences of provoking the Israelis... He understood that the situation in Gaza was potentially explosive; thousands of refugees crowded into a tiny area with nothing to occupy their minds except the memory of what they'd left behind and how they were going to return. Already some Palestinians were crossing the Armistice lines, usually to collect possessions from the villages which hadn't yet been destroyed by the Israelis, but sometimes also to raid Israeli settlements bordering the Strip. As it was, Israeli reprisals for these incidents were becoming increasingly severe and in Nasser's mind they could easily provide the Israelis with the excuse to launch a full-scale war, which he knew Egypt was unprepared to fight. Nasser's way of defusing the situation, or so he thought, was to draw up a plan in 1954, in conjunction with the United States and UNRWA, to resettle the refugees in the Sinai. By any standards the conditions in the refugee camps were bad but the refugees vehemently opposed any move which either suggested their stay was permanent or that if they were to leave it would be anywhere but back to Palestine. For example when UNRWA had attempted to plant trees in Gaza's camps they were immediately uprooted by enraged residents who berated the Agency for wasting money on something which no one would be around long enough to see grow. Gaza's response to the leaking of the plan was therefore quite predictable. For two days, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, besieging Egyptian personnel in government buildings and burning vehicles and installations." (Stateless in Gaza, Cossali & Robson, 1986, pp 13-14)]

Sheehan also reflects the routine tendency of Zionist propagandists to blur the fundamental distinction between Jews/Judaism, on the one hand, and Zionists/Zionism, on the other. The result is that Melbourne demonstrators, whom he alleges were waving placards which read "Clean the Earth from the dirty Zionists" (photographs anyone?) and "Stop the sub-human Zionist landgrabbing barbarian mass murderers in occupied Palestine," are described as "anti-Jewish." Hyperbole aside (and assuming of course that such placards actually existed), these slogans, prima facie, are clearly directed against the ideology of political Zionism (ie the idea - following the definition of Israeli scholar Uri Davis - that it is a good idea to establish and consolidate in the country of Palestine a sovereign, Jewish state that attempts to guarantee in law and in practice a demographic majority of the Jewish tribes in the territories under its control) and its followers, not Jews or the faith of Judaism as such. In essence, for example, the first is little different to say 'Cleanse the Earth of Communists'. As for the second, I would really only quibble with the inclusion of "sub-human," on the grounds that ideological blindness, whether of the Zionist or any other variety, is, alas, all too human. Moreover, Sheehan might like to take a look at the photograph of the baseball-hatted Zionist at San Francisco's 10/1/09 promassacre rally holding a placard which reads, "Until all of Gaza is destroyed, the job is not done" (indyby.org), or maybe check out some of the racist anti-Arab filth currently flooding cyberspace from Zionist blogs and websites.

Did I say racist anti-Arab filth? Forget cyberspace/blogosphere. Look no further than Sheehan's own opinion piece: "Gaza has become a giant warehouse of misery. It has no economic growth, no prospects, almost no civil order, yet about half the population is under the age of 17. The population has exploded amid economic privation. Women, living under sharia law, are used primarily as breeding stock. When Nizar Rayan, the most senior member of Hamas, was killed in the latest Israeli attacks, he had 4 wives and 14 children." This surely has to be a new low for the Herald: the Palestinian family, currently being hammered mercilessly by Israel's "iron fist," is caricatured by Sheehan, from the comfort of his air-conditioned Fairfax office, as a fanatical, Jew-hating, jihadi husband wielding the sword of sharia law over a supine, bovine wife, who has little option but to keep on flooding the grim and grimy streets of Gaza with babies. And how terribly, terribly inconvenient for the poor Israelis who have to listen to the constant ticking of this demographic time-bomb! Why, it must surely drive them mad, mad enough to...

If Sheehan is seriously concerned about the plight of women, I'd suggest he first look in his own backyard - say in the troubled Sydney suburb of Rosemeadow where almost one quarter of all families are headed by single mothers "totally dependent on welfare," and where "most teenage girls are either pregnant or carrying a child on their hip." (Violence begins where hope ends on Rosemeadow housing estate, John Stapleton, The Australian, 10/1/09)

In addition to its standout racism, Sheehan's paragraph is riddled with falsehoods. If Gazans live in misery and economic deprivation, one need look no further than the decades of de-development the Strip was subjected to under Israeli occupation and the crippling effects of the post 2005 Israeli blockade. And that nonsense about "no civil order" (I assume Sheehan means prior to Israel's bombardment and invasion) has been flatly contradicted by courageous Haaretz journalist Amira Hass who, unlike Sheehan, was actually in Gaza not long after his rambamming. In This is Gaza (27/11/08) she wrote," Gaza is the ability to tell jokes in any situation, and the burning insult of having no running water for 3 or 4 days. And yet, the children go clean and neat to school... Gaza is also parents leaving their children alone at home, without fear, or letting them go to a playground far from home, or go by themselves to their grandmother in the Jabaliya refugee camp... Gaza is people's constant attempt to cling to a normal life, although Israel foists on them abnormal terms of imprisonment, isolation from the rest of the world and deterioration to a state of humiliating dependence on international charity programs."

In melding the febrile Islamophobic fantasies of the late Oriana Fallaci* with the current requirements of Israeli PR, Sheehan's latest propaganda piece plumbs new depths.

[* Sheehan actually reviewed the demented Fallaci's The Force of Reason on 15/5/06. There is not a hint of criticism throughout. His final sentence can only be described as admiring: "The history Oriana Fallaci has felt and seen has filled her final years with a lucid, fearless rage."]

Quack Cure

The anti-Semitic prejudices of a group of halfwits from two Sydney private schools were recently exposed when their Facebook doodlings came under media scrutiny (Facebook scandal shames students, Sydney Morning Herald, 9/12/08). Predictably, the jerks responsible invoked the 'We were only joking/Some of my best friends are Jews' excuse: "'There was no intention of causing conflict or racial hatred', the student, who did not want his name published, said. 'It is a big in-joke among the private schools and young people in the eastern suburbs. 'We have Jewish friends and girlfriends'." Predictably too, they revealed themselves as equal opportunity racists: "The site contains what appears to be Arabic writing, giving it the appearance of a mock Islamic site." The Herald published a photo from the site showing a student (?) wearing a Sikh - Sikh! - turban with flanking Kalashnikovs - offensive anti-Muslim stereotyping that, again predictably, has gone unremarked by corporate media outlets.

The Zionist response, of course, was to invoke the Holocaust. "The Holocaust did not begin with the bricks and mortar of Auschwitz, but with words that dehumanised the Jews and other minorities and enabled their annihilation," commented Dvir Abramovich (described in a footnote as "director of Jewish Studies at the University of Melbourne and an anti-racism educator") in an opinion piece in The Age (The Holocaust began because words of hate went unchallanged, 11/12/08). And Abramovich's prescription, at least in part? National Holocaust education.

I say 'Zionist response' because nowhere in Abramovich's piece is there any mention of the author's allegiance to the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. Why so shy? As a columnist in The Australian Jewish News (something else omitted from his Age job description), Abramovich regularly comes out swinging in defence of Zionism. To cite but one example, he has attacked anti-Zionism as "clear-cut antisemitism" (Anti-Zionism is clear-cut antisemitism, 30/3/07). Leaving to one side the issue of his wholly illegitimate conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism (see my 9/3/08 post Working Out the Mechanics of Our Relationship 2), the core of Abramovich's argument is that "Anti-Zionism is underlined by a denial of Jewish national self-determination* and of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East."

[*Lengthy digression notwithstanding, it is essential to deal with this nonsense before proceding further with any discussion of Dr Abramovich's remedy for eruptions of anti-Semitism in Australian schools. Prominent anti-Zionist Israeli Uri Davis has observed that "Decent people would want to have nothing to do with a 'national liberation movement' that attempts to justify war crimes and crimes against humanity such as ethnic cleansing." (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 8) The "crime against humanity" referred to by Davis is, of course, the Palestinian Nakba - the mass expulsion of the indigenous Arab population of Palestine by Zionist forces under cover of war in 1948. The Nakba gives the lie to all Zionist propaganda of the 'Israel is simply Jewish national self-determination in operation' variety. To quote Davis at length: "The second truth relevant to Israeli-Palestinian dialogue is that an Israeli-Hebrew people has been created in the process of the Zionist colonization of Palestine. This people, like all other peoples, must be guaranteed their full rights under international law and in conformity with all UN resolutions relevant to the question of Palestine. It is in order to point out again in this connection that it is not the case that the United Nations Organization legitimized through the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) of November 1947 the establishment of a 'Jewish State' in the political Zionist sense of the term. Legally speaking, the UN did not intend the adoption of the said Resolution 181(II) as a licence for the armed forces of the Zionist organisations and subsequently the armed forces of the new State of Israel to perpetrate war crimes and crimes against humanity including the mass expulsion of the native indigenous Palestinian Arab people from their homeland. In other words, it was and remains impossible for the General Assembly, conducting its business under the stipulation of the UN Charter, to have legally endorsed the political Zionist idea of the 'Jewish State', namely, a state that attempts to guarantee in law and practice a demographic majority of the Jewish tribes in the territories under its control. The constitutional notion underpinning the idea of the 'Jewish State' in the said UN Resolution 181(II), as well as its sister 'Arab State', envisioned the partion of British Mandate Palestine into two essentially democratic states, one with 'Jewish' trappings and one with 'Arab' trappings, joined together in the framework of an economic union, with Jersusalem as corpus separatum under a special international regime to be administered by the United Nations, neither the capital of the 'Arab State' nor the capital of the 'Jewish State'. One can only speculate as to what representations of 'Jewish', 'Arab' or 'international' trappings would be consistant with essentially democratic constitutions. One could imagine, for instance, that in the 'Jewish State' the first line on official road signs would be Hebrew, the second Arabic and the third English; in the 'Arab State' the first line Arabic, the second, Hebrew and the third English; and in the international city of Jerusalem road signs would be only in English to skirt the stupid thorny issue of whether the second line on official road signs should be Hebrew or Arabic. In terms of the said UN General Assembly Resolution 181(II) all Arab inhabitants who were ordinarily resident in the territories designated by the UN for the 'Jewish State' were and remain entitled to 'Jewish State' citizenship; all Jews ordinarily in the territories by the said Resolution for the 'Arab State' were and remain entitled to 'Arab State' citizenship; and all Arabs and Jews resident in Jerusalem were and remain entitled to an international Jerusalem citizenship. It thus follows that for Israeli-Palestinian dialogue to succeed it must take as a point of departure a critical examination of the right of self-determination for the Hebrew people constructed in the process of the Zionist colonization of Palestine. Such critical examination would aim to dismantle illegal institutional representations of this right as were put in place by the Parliament of the State of Israel in violation of the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the standards of international law (for example, the Absentees' Property Law of 1950), and replace them with alternative legal and other institutional representations such as are consistent with the same, notably with UN General Assembly Resolution 194(III) of December 1948 stipulating the right of return of all Palestinian Arab refugees." (ibid, pp 75-76)]

I return now to the matter of Dr Abramovich's proposed cure for outbreaks of anti-Semitism in the Australian student body - "national Holocaust education." It is necessary here to remind oneself that some cures are worse than their disease. As American academic Norman Finkelstein reminds us, Zionist alchemists such as Abramovich are adept at transmuting the historical Holocaust into ideological gold: "... 'The Holocaust' is an ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust. Like most ideologies, it bears a connection, if tenuous, with reality. Its central dogmas sustain significant political and class interests. Indeed, The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensible ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a 'victim' state, and the most successful ethnic group in the United States has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable dividends accrue from this specious victimhood - in particular immunity to criticism, however justified." (The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, 2000, p 3)

A more recent, Israeli perspective on 'The Holocaust' as ideological weapon comes in a new book, The Holocaust is Over, by former pillar of the Israeli political establishment and now ex/post-Zionist Avraham Burg. "Jews and Israelis," laments Burg, "have become thugs... All is compared to the Shoah, dwarfed by the Shoah, and therefore all is allowed - be it fences, sieges, closures, curfews, food and water deprivation, or unexplained killings. All is permitted because we have been through the Shoah and you will not tell us how to behave." (Quoted in John Mearsheimer's review, Invoking the Holocaust to defend the occupation)

While a shot of Dr Abramovitch's Zionist snake-oil may go some way towards curing our screenagers of anti-Semitic rashes, its main side effect, total blindness to Palestinian suffering, is a real concern.

Betraying the UDHR

"For 60 years, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR] has been treated with contempt by tyrants from Pyongyang to Darfur... [T]he anniversary of its adoption by the United Nations on December 10, 1948, is an occasion to mourn the organization's many failures as much as a licence to celebrate... Sadly... the UN has been an irresponsible and careless steward of those fine ideals." (An ideal betrayed: The UN has failed to protect universal human rights, Editorial, The Australian, 10/12/08)

So, according to The Australian, the UN has betrayed the fine ideals of the UDHR. How? Read on: "In April, the UN Human Rights Council [which "has been hijacked by some of the world's most notorious human rights abusers"] will hold Durban II, its second World Conference against Racism in Geneva. Durban I, held in South Africa 7 years ago, was a festival of anti-Semitism... Durban II* promises more of the same with a draft declaration condemning Israel's Palestinian policy as 'a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide and a serious threat to international peace and security'." (ibid)

[*See my 18/1/08 post Working Out the Mechanics of Our Relationship.]

References to the UDHR and all points east and west notwithstanding, for The Australian it's always about Israel. Were it not for the UN Human Rights Council's true and accurate characterisation of the Jewish state, quoted above (and misconstrued as anti-Semitism), the 60th anniversary of the UDHR would most likely have gone unremarked in the paper's editorial column. In fact, the UDHR anniversary constitutes just another opportunity for the editorialist to smear the UN as it goes about its perfectly legitimate and necessary business of calling a spade a spade in preparation for Durban II. Zionist chutzpah at The Australian being what it is, the editorialist would have the reader believe, absent the knowledge that Zionist Israel "is an abomination in terms of the UDHR and a crime under the standards of international law" (Apartheid Israel, Uri Davis, 2003, p5), that the UDHR and Israel, like love and marriage, go together like the proverbial horse and carriage. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, as any objective analysis of the role of the UDHR in informing Palestinian rights will tell us:-

"The displaced [Palestinian Arab refugees of 1948] and their descendants claim a right to return to their home areas [in Israel]... Israel denies that a state in its situation is obliged to repatriate. In its view the displaced left voluntarily and thereby forfeited their rights. Moreover, Israel disputes that any right of repatriation for wartime displaced persons can be found in customary international law, in particular when a new state comes into being in the territory. Palestine argues for a right of repatriation for the wartime displaced, a right it finds in customary international law, applicable to the displaced Palestinians regardless of their reason for departing, although the voluntariness of their departure is denied. Israel's appearance as a new state does not in the Palestinian view negate a right of repatriation...

"The Palestinian view starts from the generally accepted proposition that a state may not exclude nationals who are, for whatever reason, resident abroad but who seek to return. Other states are under no obligation to accept a non-national permanently... Additionally, the displaced person has a claim for repatriation, as a matter of personal rights. 'Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own', proclaims the UDHR, 'and to return to his country'. When a treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, was drafted to implement the UDHR, comparable language was used: 'no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country'.

"Israel defined Israeli nationality in a way that excluded the Palestinians displaced in 1948. An Israeli lawyer has argued that since Israel doesn't recognize the nationality of these persons, they have no right to return; 'the right [of repatriation] probably belongs only to nationals of the State, and at most to permanent residents. The Palestinian Arab refugees have never been nationals or permanent residents of Israel'. The UDHR and International Covenant, however, both use the term 'country' rather than 'state of nationality' to make clear that the right of entry does not depend on whether the state holding the territory recognises the person as a national. Anyone who was a national or habitually resident before a change in sovereignty is entitled to the nationality of the successor state. A country's 'population follows the change of sovereignty in matters of nationality'." (The Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective, John Quigley, 1990, pp 230-231)

The editorialist's gripe is really that Palestinian rights have not yet completely dropped off the UN's agenda.

Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur...

"Today (9/10/08), Yom Kippur, the holiest date in our calendar, most of the world's 13.3 million Jews will be seeking repentance for their - and indeed all of humanity's - sins. And our list is wildly longer than yours. It runs to more than 50 sins. And we say them 10 times during the course of Yom Kippur. As we reel off the list, we ask God to 'pardon us, forgive us, atone for us'."

So writes Dan Goldberg, "a writer and former national editor of the Australian Jewish News," in an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald (Fifty sins to get off your chest: the guilt trip with a happy ending). He goes on, "The apology in Parliament was Australia's Yom Kippur - our collective day of repentance, when we asked foregiveness for our sins against Australia's indigenous people*... Our actions were, and are, responsible for terrible sins, and our inaction is often worse... silence, according to the legal maxim, implies consent. Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur... and more than a few cases closer to home. We've been guilty of the sin of silence in the past, and in the present. As for the future? To paraphrase the philosopher George Santayana: those who don't learn from their sins are doomed to repeat them."

And to paraphrase the novelist Joseph Conrad: "The hypocrisy! The hypocrisy!"

[*And another thing. Goldberg may not have thought this through, but it's clear he subscribes to the false notion of collective guilt. It's worth quoting Israeli activist and author Uri Davis, always a reliable guide: "There is no collective guilt. Children are not guilty of the crimes of their parents; Germans in general are not guilty of the crimes of the Nazi occupation of Europe; western Christians in general are not guilty of the genocide of the holocaust; and Europe in general is not guilty of crimes against humanity perpetrated against Jews. Only anti-Jewish racists are guilty of what they did and continue to do to Jews. And, by the same token, children of Zionist settlers in geographical Palestine are also not guilty of the crimes perpetrated by their parents. Responsibility is, however, a different matter. While children of Zionist settlers in geographical Palestine are not collectively guilty of the crimes perpetrated by their parents against the native indigenous Palestinian Arab people, citizens of the the State of Israel have a responsibility, a duty, which citizens of other states do not have in the same way, to raise their voices against these crimes, act in defence of the victims of these crimes and work for due reparations, compensation and return of the dispossessed and expelled Palestinian Arabs. This is the case not because children of Zionist settlers are collectively guilty of these crimes, but because these crimes were committed and continue to be committed by the successive governments of the State of Israel in their names." (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 12)

Ditto for those (both Jewish and non-Jewish) engaged in the task of selling Israel and the Zionist project to the rest of us. Goldberg might like to consider adding the sin of wiping Palestine off the map to his list.]