While Peter Singer parades as an ethicist, he apparently sees no problem in placing Hamas, the Palestinian resistance movement, on the same level as the colonising, apartheid state of Israel - or in flaunting his profound (and inexcusable) ignorance on the Palestine/Israel issue on Monday night's Q & A:
Tony Jones: Now Peter Singer, you've been critical of both Hamas and Israel. So let's hear your...
Peter Singer: Exactly. I am critical of both... and I think the situation is a tragic one and it has resulted in the tragedy that we're talking about this time.
Tragic? It's a massacre, stupid.
But clearly there are extremists on both sides. And, you know, there was hope some years ago, when Rabin was prime minister... But, sadly, he was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli [1995] and hopes for peace went down.
Rabin? An Israeli war criminal:
As a Palmach commander in 1948, Rabin was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian towns of Ramle and Lydda.
As Israel's chief of staff in 1967, Rabin was asked by Israeli PM Levi Eshkol "what would happen if the Egyptians [then in control of the Gaza Strip] simply marched the [Palestinian] refugees [who had been there since 1948] - women and children in the vanguard - toward the border with Israel. Rabin said they would not do that, and if they did, as soon as the IDF had killed the first 100, the rest would go back to Gaza." (1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev, p 524)
As defence minister in the Shamir government he oversaw Israel's ruthless suppression of the first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1991), with his infamous 'break their bones' policy.
As Israeli prime minister in 1994, following the massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers in Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque, Rabin had the opportunity to evacuate Hebron's particularly vile Israeli settler community from the city. Instead, in the words of Haaretz journalist Amira Hass, he "decided to continue with the traditional policy of pampering the settlers, and instructed the army to punish the Palestinians for the massacre with a prolonged curfew, restrictions on movement, the closing of shops and marketplaces, and criminal forgiveness for the violence of the settlers." (See my 28/2/15 post An Anti-Semite's Dream Jews.)
It is telling that Singer seems more concerned about the assassination of one Israeli war criminal than he is about the 114 innocent Palestinian civilians murdered on the Gaza border so far.
And since then... both sides have gone to extremes. Certainly, the Israeli government has gone to extremes and has not shown and has not shown signs of really being interested in negotiating peace or stopping settlements.
Negotiating peace or stopping settlements? Since when has any Israeli government been serious about either?
But on the other hand, you have to say, as far as Hamas is concerned... Greg [Sheridan] is right...
Sheridan is right? I can guarantee that Singer has never picked up a copy of the Australian and read any of Sheridan's sermons in praise of what he once called "the plucky country." Not once.
... - they are a terrorist organisation, they are firing rockets into Israel, they are openly trying to kill Israelis where they can, and they did reject offers of cooperation back when Israel left Gaza. So that's tragedy for the people of Gaza. And it's very hard to see a way out.
Terrorist organisation? Offers of cooperation? This is just the kind of stuff you'd expect to hear from your average brainwashed supporter of Israel.
Tony Jones: Let's go to the original question, which was asking about Australia's vote to reject the investigation into an incident which killed a large number of people and wounded thousands. What's your view on that?
Peter Singer: I would have liked to see an investigation, both into why Israel used live fire...
Why Israel used live fire? Seriously, has Israel ever stopped using live fire?
... and could not find a less lethal way of preventing people from attacking and cutting through the fence, but also why Hamas was inviting people to go to the fence when Israel had made it clear that it was going to use force to prevent people, that there clearly was a risk of live ammunition, of people being killed.
More regurgitated Israeli propaganda! Then this:
And why people would go there with their children and babies actually, you know, is mind-boggling to me. What kind of a person would you have to be to say, 'I'm gonna take my baby to this area where there's likely to be firing.'
A little research is apparently beyond Singer: "Leila [al-Ghandour's] family told media that the baby's mother had left the child at home to join the demonstrations. When the infant began crying her uncle took her towards the protest area in order to locate his sister. Reports on Palestinian social media said Leila had been in a tent away from the security fence when a tear gas canister was dropped by a drone." (Gaza protests: Eight-month-old baby 'dies from tear gas inhalation' after 'massacre' at border, Bethan McKernan, independent.co.uk, 15/5/18)
(APPLAUSE)
Bloody idiots...
Showing posts with label Yitzhak Rabin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yitzhak Rabin. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Give Us a Break, Guardian!
Another Israeli bloodletting in Gaza. Another lame Guardian editorial:
"The soldiers use of live ammunition against unarmed demonstrators is an affront; but it is in line with the brutal attitudes towards Palestinians that have been normalised by Israeli politicians." (The Guardian view on the Gaza protests: a new challenge to Israel's blockade, 23/4/18)
It's not an "affront," it's a fucking war crime!
That aside, if the Guardian's editor, Jonathan Freedland, is so bloody ignorant that he seriously thinks that Israeli brutality towards Palestinians is something new, then he doesn't deserve editorial space on a news website, let alone the job of boss cocky.
I mean, how far back do we have to go to understand that anti-Palestinian brutality is in the Zionist DNA?
1967?
"[Israeli Prime Minister Levi] Eshkol had already had reason to be worried about the Gaza refugees roughly two years before the Six-Day War [of 1967]. The refugees were multiplying, and when their numbers reached half a million, he feared the situation would become explosive. Once, he asked the chief of staff what would happen if the Egyptians [who then controlled the Gaza Strip] simply marched the refugees - women and children in the vanguard - towards the border with Israel. [Yitzhak] Rabin said they would not do that, and if they did, as soon as the IDF had killed the first 100, the rest would go back to Gaza." (1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev, 2007, p 524)
1949?
"Altogether between 2,700 and 5,000 infiltrators were killed in the period 1949-1956, the great majority of whom were unarmed." (Avi Shlaim, reviewing Benny Morris' Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation & the Countdown to the Suez War, 1993)
"The soldiers use of live ammunition against unarmed demonstrators is an affront; but it is in line with the brutal attitudes towards Palestinians that have been normalised by Israeli politicians." (The Guardian view on the Gaza protests: a new challenge to Israel's blockade, 23/4/18)
It's not an "affront," it's a fucking war crime!
That aside, if the Guardian's editor, Jonathan Freedland, is so bloody ignorant that he seriously thinks that Israeli brutality towards Palestinians is something new, then he doesn't deserve editorial space on a news website, let alone the job of boss cocky.
I mean, how far back do we have to go to understand that anti-Palestinian brutality is in the Zionist DNA?
1967?
"[Israeli Prime Minister Levi] Eshkol had already had reason to be worried about the Gaza refugees roughly two years before the Six-Day War [of 1967]. The refugees were multiplying, and when their numbers reached half a million, he feared the situation would become explosive. Once, he asked the chief of staff what would happen if the Egyptians [who then controlled the Gaza Strip] simply marched the refugees - women and children in the vanguard - towards the border with Israel. [Yitzhak] Rabin said they would not do that, and if they did, as soon as the IDF had killed the first 100, the rest would go back to Gaza." (1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev, 2007, p 524)
1949?
"Altogether between 2,700 and 5,000 infiltrators were killed in the period 1949-1956, the great majority of whom were unarmed." (Avi Shlaim, reviewing Benny Morris' Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation & the Countdown to the Suez War, 1993)
Sunday, July 16, 2017
Bill Clinton's Handshake Charade
However appalling, Trump is really only the tip of the iceberg of American ignorance and narcissism. Take our latest US visitor, for example, Clinton/Obama diplomat Dennis Ross, currently wowing them at Murdoch's Australian:
"Ross grew up in a non-religious Californian household, the son of a Catholic father and Jewish mother. At 19, inspired by the Six-Day War, he became religiously Jewish." (Long road to Israeli-Palestinian peace littered with broken deals and lost will, Brad Norington, 15/7/17)
Note that Ross was radicalised at 19. It seems that, in the US, such radicalisation, from all American boy to Zionist fanatic, is the perfect qualification and starting point for a career in US-style Middle East diplomacy. Sort of puts Jared Kushner in perspective, doesn't it?
And here's the pinnacle of that career, according to Norington:
"During an impressive career, Ross... helped facilitate the historic White House handshake between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin."
Leaving aside discussion of the endless peace-process charade, and the preposterous, childish idea of Clinton's that this then (1993) 76-year-old colonial running sore could be solved by a cheap theatrical handshake, rather than by the hard yards of a decolonisation process and the rendering of justice to Palestine's dispossessed and occupied, let's just look at the minutiae of this supposedly "impressive" achievement, as described elsewhere by Ross himself. Here he is interviewed by Jason M. Breslow of PBS's Frontline program (6/1/16):
Were you in the Rose Garden when [President Clinton] forged the handshake between [Yasser] Arafat and Rabin?
-Yes.
Tell me about that.
-There is an interesting back story to this... So we [Ross and Secretary of State Warren Christopher] get a call from Rabin... and he says, 'Look there's been a breakthrough with the PLO'... still... he's skeptical. He wants to know what our reaction to this is going to be. Well, our reaction is, this is a historic breakthrough between Israel and the PLO, two national movements competing for the same space, and for the first time they're prepared to recognize each other."
[Note here the false framing. The reality is otherwise. These are not two, long-resident communities living in one patch, in some kind of parity, but struggling to get along. This is the old story of a foreign, usurping settler-colonial movement vs an indigenous resistance movement trying to hold on to or reclaim its ancestral homeland.]
- Now [Israeli foreign minister Shimon] Peres tells us... that there should be a meeting at the White House to sign a Declaration of Principles, but it's too much for the Israeli public to see Arafat there. It's just too much to take.
[Yes, it's simply too much for the colons to stomach their PM meeting with the leader of the people they've been slicing and dicing for the past 76 years - eeeuw! What to do?]
- So it should be Peres and Abu Mazen [Arafat adviser, Mahmoud Abbas] who would come. We actually don't question this...
[Of course you don't, you've been a card-carrying Zionist since 1967 for Christ's sake! Those sniffy colons are your volk! Notice how, even in 1993, the Israelis had their eye on Abbas as a stooge?]
- ... but when we raise it with Clinton... he simply dismisses what we've told him, and immediately leaves the impression that if Arafat wants to come, he's welcome. And he's right... because his instinct is, the only way to bind the two leaders to this is to have this colossal event where they're kind of obligated before the world... We're telling him how uneasy Rabin is, first to even be there and secondly the idea that he's going to shake hands with this guy who, in Rabin's mind, is responsible for all sorts of acts of terror that, for him, are just very hard to swallow. It's difficult for Rabin to overcome this.
[Notice the fact that Rabin's hands are covered in 76 years of Palestinian blood nowhere occurs to Ross as a possible difficulty for Arafat or the Palestinians? This is America's idea of honest brokerage.]
- Now Clinton kind of raises this in private with the two of them before they go out.
[Bill doesn't want anyone spoiling his show!]
So they both agree to kind of come, and they're hanging around the Oval Office?
- Well, you come in advance, before we go out.
OK
- To the last minute, Rabin is insisting that Arafat can't come in anything that looks like a uniform.
[And of course Ross cannot help but oblige. His Master's Voice after all:]
- We're telling Arafat, 'You can't come with a -- you don't bring a weapon.' You know, he always had a pistol. 'You don't bring a weapon to the White House.' So they come in, and the president talks to both leaders. He is already encouraging them...
[We wouldn't dare tell Rabin...]
Have they met before?
- No.
How are they with each other?
- Rabin is very uneasy. The idea of personally shaking hands with with this guy is physically difficult for him.
[With this guy...?!]
- He couldn't hide his feelings... So here is Clinton, who sees this guy give this remarkable speech on the one hand, and physically, it's hard for him to shake hands with this guy. So the iconic photograph - he literally envelops them with his arms. But he knows he has to create that image... to make peace, and how can you do that if you're not prepared to shake hands? (pbs.org)
"Ross grew up in a non-religious Californian household, the son of a Catholic father and Jewish mother. At 19, inspired by the Six-Day War, he became religiously Jewish." (Long road to Israeli-Palestinian peace littered with broken deals and lost will, Brad Norington, 15/7/17)
Note that Ross was radicalised at 19. It seems that, in the US, such radicalisation, from all American boy to Zionist fanatic, is the perfect qualification and starting point for a career in US-style Middle East diplomacy. Sort of puts Jared Kushner in perspective, doesn't it?
And here's the pinnacle of that career, according to Norington:
"During an impressive career, Ross... helped facilitate the historic White House handshake between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin."
Leaving aside discussion of the endless peace-process charade, and the preposterous, childish idea of Clinton's that this then (1993) 76-year-old colonial running sore could be solved by a cheap theatrical handshake, rather than by the hard yards of a decolonisation process and the rendering of justice to Palestine's dispossessed and occupied, let's just look at the minutiae of this supposedly "impressive" achievement, as described elsewhere by Ross himself. Here he is interviewed by Jason M. Breslow of PBS's Frontline program (6/1/16):
Were you in the Rose Garden when [President Clinton] forged the handshake between [Yasser] Arafat and Rabin?
-Yes.
Tell me about that.
-There is an interesting back story to this... So we [Ross and Secretary of State Warren Christopher] get a call from Rabin... and he says, 'Look there's been a breakthrough with the PLO'... still... he's skeptical. He wants to know what our reaction to this is going to be. Well, our reaction is, this is a historic breakthrough between Israel and the PLO, two national movements competing for the same space, and for the first time they're prepared to recognize each other."
[Note here the false framing. The reality is otherwise. These are not two, long-resident communities living in one patch, in some kind of parity, but struggling to get along. This is the old story of a foreign, usurping settler-colonial movement vs an indigenous resistance movement trying to hold on to or reclaim its ancestral homeland.]
- Now [Israeli foreign minister Shimon] Peres tells us... that there should be a meeting at the White House to sign a Declaration of Principles, but it's too much for the Israeli public to see Arafat there. It's just too much to take.
[Yes, it's simply too much for the colons to stomach their PM meeting with the leader of the people they've been slicing and dicing for the past 76 years - eeeuw! What to do?]
- So it should be Peres and Abu Mazen [Arafat adviser, Mahmoud Abbas] who would come. We actually don't question this...
[Of course you don't, you've been a card-carrying Zionist since 1967 for Christ's sake! Those sniffy colons are your volk! Notice how, even in 1993, the Israelis had their eye on Abbas as a stooge?]
- ... but when we raise it with Clinton... he simply dismisses what we've told him, and immediately leaves the impression that if Arafat wants to come, he's welcome. And he's right... because his instinct is, the only way to bind the two leaders to this is to have this colossal event where they're kind of obligated before the world... We're telling him how uneasy Rabin is, first to even be there and secondly the idea that he's going to shake hands with this guy who, in Rabin's mind, is responsible for all sorts of acts of terror that, for him, are just very hard to swallow. It's difficult for Rabin to overcome this.
[Notice the fact that Rabin's hands are covered in 76 years of Palestinian blood nowhere occurs to Ross as a possible difficulty for Arafat or the Palestinians? This is America's idea of honest brokerage.]
- Now Clinton kind of raises this in private with the two of them before they go out.
[Bill doesn't want anyone spoiling his show!]
So they both agree to kind of come, and they're hanging around the Oval Office?
- Well, you come in advance, before we go out.
OK
- To the last minute, Rabin is insisting that Arafat can't come in anything that looks like a uniform.
[And of course Ross cannot help but oblige. His Master's Voice after all:]
- We're telling Arafat, 'You can't come with a -- you don't bring a weapon.' You know, he always had a pistol. 'You don't bring a weapon to the White House.' So they come in, and the president talks to both leaders. He is already encouraging them...
[We wouldn't dare tell Rabin...]
Have they met before?
- No.
How are they with each other?
- Rabin is very uneasy. The idea of personally shaking hands with with this guy is physically difficult for him.
[With this guy...?!]
- He couldn't hide his feelings... So here is Clinton, who sees this guy give this remarkable speech on the one hand, and physically, it's hard for him to shake hands with this guy. So the iconic photograph - he literally envelops them with his arms. But he knows he has to create that image... to make peace, and how can you do that if you're not prepared to shake hands? (pbs.org)
Monday, January 11, 2016
A Tissue of Lies
When the whole of your politics is based on a lie - that Palestine is 'Israel' and belongs to every single Jew on the planet, but not its indigenous Palestinian Arab owners, and that 'truth' is a matter of saying whatever it takes to advance your goal of Jews IN, Palestinians OUT - then spats like the following take on their proper proportion:
"Former US Middle East envoy Martin Indyk lied twice about a supposed conversation he had with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the funeral of assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, a Prime minister's Office official said this week. The spat involving Indyk began following the airing of a PBS 'Frontline' program about Netanyahu on Jan. 5. In an interview for the program, Indyk referred to a conversation he claimed he had with Netanyahu at Rabin's funeral... At the time, Indyk was the US ambassador to Israel and Netanyahu was the Likud party leader as well as head of the Israeli opposition. Indyk told PBS... I remember Netanyahu saying to me: 'Look, look at this. He's a hero now, but if he had not been assassinated, I would have beaten him in the elections, and then he would have gone into history as a failed politician.' In response to that comment, the Prime Minister's Office issued a blanket denial on Wednesday, saying the conversation described by Indyk 'never happened'." (Prime Minister's office: Martin Indyk fabricated conversation with Netanyahu, jwire.com.au, 8/1/16
"Former US Middle East envoy Martin Indyk lied twice about a supposed conversation he had with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the funeral of assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, a Prime minister's Office official said this week. The spat involving Indyk began following the airing of a PBS 'Frontline' program about Netanyahu on Jan. 5. In an interview for the program, Indyk referred to a conversation he claimed he had with Netanyahu at Rabin's funeral... At the time, Indyk was the US ambassador to Israel and Netanyahu was the Likud party leader as well as head of the Israeli opposition. Indyk told PBS... I remember Netanyahu saying to me: 'Look, look at this. He's a hero now, but if he had not been assassinated, I would have beaten him in the elections, and then he would have gone into history as a failed politician.' In response to that comment, the Prime Minister's Office issued a blanket denial on Wednesday, saying the conversation described by Indyk 'never happened'." (Prime Minister's office: Martin Indyk fabricated conversation with Netanyahu, jwire.com.au, 8/1/16
Saturday, February 28, 2015
An Anti-Semite's Dream Jews
Israeli journalist Amira Hass reports on the progress of the Israeli master plan for the ethnic cleansing of Hebron:
"The sickest imagination of present-day anti-Semites cannot compete with the handiwork of Israel and its emissaries the settlers in Hebron for the past 20 years. The demand for the Jewish return is broken down here into all its raw components: the expulsion of the Palestinians, the destruction of their homes and cultural legacy, destruction of the economy, extreme ethnic-spatial separation and deranged prohibitions regarding movement and housing, attacks in the name of the Torah, harassment and denial of the other. If gentile foes were to say that's how Jews behave, the institutes for the study of anti-Semitism would sound the alarm.
"Today, February 25, is the 21st anniversary of the massacre perpetrated by Dr Baruch Goldstein against worshipers in the Ibrahimi Mosque (the Cave of the Patriarchs). The prime minister and defence minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, could have dismantled the nuclear bombs stored by his colleagues from Mapai (the forerunner of Labor) in the late 1960s - Yigal Alon and Moshe Dayan - when they allowed groups of messianic Jews to settle there and encouraged them by providing military protection and weapons. The evacuation of the settlers from Hebron would have been received with great understanding in 1994. But Rabin decided to continue with the traditional policy, which was natural for Mapai, of pampering the settlers, and instructed the army to punish the Palestinians for the massacre committed against them by a Jewish doctor - an immigrant from the United States - with a prolonged curfew, restrictions on movement, the closing of shops and marketplaces, and criminal forgiveness for the violence of the settlers. Since then Israel has continued with its policy of punishing those who are attacked.
"Twenty-one years after the massacre, the settlers in Hebron have many reasons for celebration. President Reuven Rivlin visited them and gave his approval for the evaporation of the Palestinian community from the center of Hebron. Last week a second representative of the Hebron settlers entered the Knesset, instead of the late Uri Orbach: Rabbi Hillel Horowitz of Habayit Hayehudi, who is joining his colleague and neighbour Orit Strock. And even if it's only symbolic and for a month or two, there's a chance that another of their neighbors, Baruch Mazel, who lives in the settlement of Tel Rumeida, will preserve the handsome quota in the next Knesset: two elected officials from a community of several hundred people who have orchestrated one of the most violent and racist realities.
"The Hebron settlers can be credited with several more accomplishments achieved in the past 3 years: another new promenade connecting Kiryat Arba and the Cave of the Patriarchs, an expanded Beit Romano, an archaeological park under construction, the Cave of the Patriarchs as a national heritage site, tours by school students, and the main thing - a first settlement site in Hebron in 30 years in 'Beit Hameriva' (the house of contention) in the heart of the ar-Ras neighborhood, after the Supreme Court confirmed that it was purchased legally.
"And among the achievements and festivities, the center of the city is deserted and in ruins. You have to visit there, repeatedly, in order to begin to understand not only how it looks when 120 blockades and checkpoints cut off abandoned streets in the middle, and how it is when young soldiers enforce the prohibition against visiting the family that insists on continuing to live in its home or walk in the street that's for Jews only, and how the elderly climb up the incline short of breath, because Palestinian cars are not allowed there. The visit is necessary in order to understand this all-Israeli creation: Active and conscious assistance of Labor governments, and conscious support, indifference and the emotional and intellectual laziness of elites and ordinary people, have implemented the most extremist settlement-oriented-messianic-right-wing master plan since 1948." (Israel's Hebron handiwork: Its most heinous endeavor since 1948, Haaretz, 25/2/15)
"The sickest imagination of present-day anti-Semites cannot compete with the handiwork of Israel and its emissaries the settlers in Hebron for the past 20 years. The demand for the Jewish return is broken down here into all its raw components: the expulsion of the Palestinians, the destruction of their homes and cultural legacy, destruction of the economy, extreme ethnic-spatial separation and deranged prohibitions regarding movement and housing, attacks in the name of the Torah, harassment and denial of the other. If gentile foes were to say that's how Jews behave, the institutes for the study of anti-Semitism would sound the alarm.
"Today, February 25, is the 21st anniversary of the massacre perpetrated by Dr Baruch Goldstein against worshipers in the Ibrahimi Mosque (the Cave of the Patriarchs). The prime minister and defence minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, could have dismantled the nuclear bombs stored by his colleagues from Mapai (the forerunner of Labor) in the late 1960s - Yigal Alon and Moshe Dayan - when they allowed groups of messianic Jews to settle there and encouraged them by providing military protection and weapons. The evacuation of the settlers from Hebron would have been received with great understanding in 1994. But Rabin decided to continue with the traditional policy, which was natural for Mapai, of pampering the settlers, and instructed the army to punish the Palestinians for the massacre committed against them by a Jewish doctor - an immigrant from the United States - with a prolonged curfew, restrictions on movement, the closing of shops and marketplaces, and criminal forgiveness for the violence of the settlers. Since then Israel has continued with its policy of punishing those who are attacked.
"Twenty-one years after the massacre, the settlers in Hebron have many reasons for celebration. President Reuven Rivlin visited them and gave his approval for the evaporation of the Palestinian community from the center of Hebron. Last week a second representative of the Hebron settlers entered the Knesset, instead of the late Uri Orbach: Rabbi Hillel Horowitz of Habayit Hayehudi, who is joining his colleague and neighbour Orit Strock. And even if it's only symbolic and for a month or two, there's a chance that another of their neighbors, Baruch Mazel, who lives in the settlement of Tel Rumeida, will preserve the handsome quota in the next Knesset: two elected officials from a community of several hundred people who have orchestrated one of the most violent and racist realities.
"The Hebron settlers can be credited with several more accomplishments achieved in the past 3 years: another new promenade connecting Kiryat Arba and the Cave of the Patriarchs, an expanded Beit Romano, an archaeological park under construction, the Cave of the Patriarchs as a national heritage site, tours by school students, and the main thing - a first settlement site in Hebron in 30 years in 'Beit Hameriva' (the house of contention) in the heart of the ar-Ras neighborhood, after the Supreme Court confirmed that it was purchased legally.
"And among the achievements and festivities, the center of the city is deserted and in ruins. You have to visit there, repeatedly, in order to begin to understand not only how it looks when 120 blockades and checkpoints cut off abandoned streets in the middle, and how it is when young soldiers enforce the prohibition against visiting the family that insists on continuing to live in its home or walk in the street that's for Jews only, and how the elderly climb up the incline short of breath, because Palestinian cars are not allowed there. The visit is necessary in order to understand this all-Israeli creation: Active and conscious assistance of Labor governments, and conscious support, indifference and the emotional and intellectual laziness of elites and ordinary people, have implemented the most extremist settlement-oriented-messianic-right-wing master plan since 1948." (Israel's Hebron handiwork: Its most heinous endeavor since 1948, Haaretz, 25/2/15)
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Phillip Adams Hails Israeli 'Martyrs'
The Middle East conflict invariably brings out the worst, which is to say the inner Zionist, in Phillip Adams, a phenomenon I've documented many times on this blog.
Mind you, the Zionism of Murdoch's token 'leftie' is far from the blatant, in-your-face variety of a Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan. (No branch of the lobby is ever going to offer Adams an equivalent gold star.)
No, Adams' Zionism is more understated, manifesting usually as a fleeting comment, an evasive manoeuvre, or a studied (?) omission. To the untrained ear, you might even miss it. Trawl through my Adams file by clicking on the label below and you'll see what I mean. If you only have time for one example, make it He Just Doesn't Get It (19/9/09).
Here's an example from his column in Saturday's Weekend Australian Magazine. Adams' theme is the often uncertain, or worse, fate of political leaders:
"From Caesar to Gandhi, beware the ides of March. The political reward for Lincoln, JFK and brother Bobby, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King was a bullet. But it's not only the US where the good and the great are cut down. Israel, India and Pakistan have had many martyrs." (The perils of power, 6-7/7/13)
Israel's "good and great... cut down"? Israel's "martyrs"?
With these lines, we enter 'Did he just say what I thought he said?' territory. In Israel we have a nation every one of whose leaders has perpetrated, either directly or indirectly, just about every war crime in the book. But for Adams, despite his bibliophilia, his pretension to worldly wisdom, and his decades of radio interviews with all and sundry, including many critics of Israel and Zionism, the criminality of Israeli colonialism and apartheid never quite seems to register.
By "martyr," I can only assume he's referring to former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated by a settler extremist in 1995, and that he fondly imagines Rabin as Israel's answer to Mandela's peace partner, Frederik de Klerk.*
The reality, of course, is that Rabin was just another Israeli war criminal. As a Palmach commander, he was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian towns of Ramle and Lydda** in 1948, and as defence minister in the Shamir government, he was responsible for the ruthless suppression of the first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1991) with his infamous 'break their bones' policy.
Here's an example of the kind of thuggery meted out to defenceless Palestinian kids by order of Adams' "good and great" Israeli "martyr" during the first intifada:
"On the following day [22 December, 1987] Defence Minister Rabin returned to Israel from an extended trip to the USA, and immediately took a tough line. He made his attitude with regard to the Palestinians clear: 'Their suffering will increase and instead of allowing them to live peacefully, as long as the political situation has not been achieved, they will suffer more and more.' He vowed: 'Every legal means - legal from an Israeli point of view - is justified to put an end to it'... Under Rabin's direction there was massive repression of the demonstrations in the occupied territories, in which hundreds of Palestinians, including many children, would be killed. Some of these Israeli atrocities were witnessed by foreign observers.
"On the evening of Friday 29 January 1988 Karen White, an American journalist, was walking alone in Gaza City. After 7 weeks of unrest the situation was tense, but Karen was not prepared for what she saw. Right before her eyes, an Israeli soldier pulled a boy of 9 or 10 by his hair from a parked car. The youngster was dragged to the ground and kicked in his face and chest. Other soldiers joined in, after which the youngster was ordered to pick up pieces of orange peel from the street. A few hours later Karen noticed a group of Israeli soldiers laughing as they kicked a feeble old man in the genitals for no apparent reason. Such sights were common in the occupied territories, especially since Defence Minister Rabin had announced on 19 January that Palestinians would be confronted with 'force, power and blows' in an attempt to crush the uprising.
"The next day Karen White and her friend, a British lawyer named Catriona Drew, decided to visit the office of the Gaza Bar Association which did valuable work in collecting information on human rights abuses during the intifada. The two women were recognised experts on Israeli human rights violations, since they had previously written an expose on the condition of children in Israeli prisons which was included in the 1987 US State Department Human Rights Report on Israel. There were usually less violent clashes on Saturday than Friday, the Moslem Sabbath, but the women were still apprehensive as they walked along an alley which ran parallel to Omar al-Muktar Street in Gaza City. As the two women reached an intersection faced by the Al-Omari mosque, they saw a large number of Israeli soldiers as well as a group of schoolgirls standing on the street. Two small stones were thrown which harmed no one. At the other end of the block a youth of 17 or 18 stood alone, facing away from the soldiers, who ran towards him from behind. When the soldiers reached the boy, they all began to club, kick, slap and punch him. In her affidavit Karen White stated: 'I did not see this boy throw any stones; the stones that landed on the intersection had been thrown from the other end of the block.' The American journalist feared for the safety of the girls as well as the teenage boy.
"Soon afterwards two more jeeps arrived full of soldiers, four of whom appeared to be sharpshooters. Karen was alarmed because: 'The soldiers placed themselves in front of the schoolgirls and took aim at the group at chest and head level.' Catriona Drew notes in her statement: 'I swear that the stones that were thrown came from the opposite direction and were not thrown by any of the girls or indeed anyone on the street.' The two women put themselves in the line of fire, which forced the soldiers to back off.
"As the two women were about to leave they heard screaming and shouting. The soldiers were dragging the teenage boy along the ground on his back, kicking him over his entire body, including his abdomen and genitals, punching him with their fists and pounding him with their wooden truncheons. The boy's head, face and neck were covered with blood and his nose was obviously broken.
"At this point Karen saw four other soldiers aim their rifles at an 11- or 12-year-old-girl. She followed the soldiers into an alley as they pursued the child. The American journalist found 'all four soldiers with their truncheons raised as the girl cowered against the alley wall'. A soldier grasped the girl's upper arm, causing her to whimper with pain. Karen White pulled the soldier off the girl. Another soldier appeared to be in a frenzy. Shaking violently, he began screaming, then turned and smashed the headlights and windshield of a car parked in the alley. Karen noted: 'I believe that, had I not intervened, the girl would have been seriously injured.'
"When Karen got back to al-Muktar Street, the teenage boy was handcuffed to a shop door. He identified himself as Muhammed al-Jamallah. His little sister was standing next to him, screaming. Karen asked one of the soldiers for the name of his commanding officer and wrote the name down. When she told the soldier she wanted the name to use in a report to a member of the US Congress, he grabbed the paper from her and tore it to pieces with his teeth. Catriona notes that afterwards she saw the soldier 'punch Karen in the stomach and hit her with his rifle'." (Imperial Israel: The History of the Occupation of the West Bank & Gaza, Michael Palumbo, 1990, pp 233-236)
Frankly, Adams' words are an insult to generations of martyred Palestinians.
[*How Rabin's position of a strictly limited Palestinian autonomy could ever be compared to de Klerk's agreement to the principle of one man, one vote in South Africa is beyond me; **For an account of the Lydda death march by George Habash, see my 2/2/08 post Fabricating George Habash.]
No, Adams' Zionism is more understated, manifesting usually as a fleeting comment, an evasive manoeuvre, or a studied (?) omission. To the untrained ear, you might even miss it. Trawl through my Adams file by clicking on the label below and you'll see what I mean. If you only have time for one example, make it He Just Doesn't Get It (19/9/09).
Here's an example from his column in Saturday's Weekend Australian Magazine. Adams' theme is the often uncertain, or worse, fate of political leaders:
"From Caesar to Gandhi, beware the ides of March. The political reward for Lincoln, JFK and brother Bobby, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King was a bullet. But it's not only the US where the good and the great are cut down. Israel, India and Pakistan have had many martyrs." (The perils of power, 6-7/7/13)
Israel's "good and great... cut down"? Israel's "martyrs"?
With these lines, we enter 'Did he just say what I thought he said?' territory. In Israel we have a nation every one of whose leaders has perpetrated, either directly or indirectly, just about every war crime in the book. But for Adams, despite his bibliophilia, his pretension to worldly wisdom, and his decades of radio interviews with all and sundry, including many critics of Israel and Zionism, the criminality of Israeli colonialism and apartheid never quite seems to register.
By "martyr," I can only assume he's referring to former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated by a settler extremist in 1995, and that he fondly imagines Rabin as Israel's answer to Mandela's peace partner, Frederik de Klerk.*
The reality, of course, is that Rabin was just another Israeli war criminal. As a Palmach commander, he was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian towns of Ramle and Lydda** in 1948, and as defence minister in the Shamir government, he was responsible for the ruthless suppression of the first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1991) with his infamous 'break their bones' policy.
Here's an example of the kind of thuggery meted out to defenceless Palestinian kids by order of Adams' "good and great" Israeli "martyr" during the first intifada:
"On the following day [22 December, 1987] Defence Minister Rabin returned to Israel from an extended trip to the USA, and immediately took a tough line. He made his attitude with regard to the Palestinians clear: 'Their suffering will increase and instead of allowing them to live peacefully, as long as the political situation has not been achieved, they will suffer more and more.' He vowed: 'Every legal means - legal from an Israeli point of view - is justified to put an end to it'... Under Rabin's direction there was massive repression of the demonstrations in the occupied territories, in which hundreds of Palestinians, including many children, would be killed. Some of these Israeli atrocities were witnessed by foreign observers.
"On the evening of Friday 29 January 1988 Karen White, an American journalist, was walking alone in Gaza City. After 7 weeks of unrest the situation was tense, but Karen was not prepared for what she saw. Right before her eyes, an Israeli soldier pulled a boy of 9 or 10 by his hair from a parked car. The youngster was dragged to the ground and kicked in his face and chest. Other soldiers joined in, after which the youngster was ordered to pick up pieces of orange peel from the street. A few hours later Karen noticed a group of Israeli soldiers laughing as they kicked a feeble old man in the genitals for no apparent reason. Such sights were common in the occupied territories, especially since Defence Minister Rabin had announced on 19 January that Palestinians would be confronted with 'force, power and blows' in an attempt to crush the uprising.
"The next day Karen White and her friend, a British lawyer named Catriona Drew, decided to visit the office of the Gaza Bar Association which did valuable work in collecting information on human rights abuses during the intifada. The two women were recognised experts on Israeli human rights violations, since they had previously written an expose on the condition of children in Israeli prisons which was included in the 1987 US State Department Human Rights Report on Israel. There were usually less violent clashes on Saturday than Friday, the Moslem Sabbath, but the women were still apprehensive as they walked along an alley which ran parallel to Omar al-Muktar Street in Gaza City. As the two women reached an intersection faced by the Al-Omari mosque, they saw a large number of Israeli soldiers as well as a group of schoolgirls standing on the street. Two small stones were thrown which harmed no one. At the other end of the block a youth of 17 or 18 stood alone, facing away from the soldiers, who ran towards him from behind. When the soldiers reached the boy, they all began to club, kick, slap and punch him. In her affidavit Karen White stated: 'I did not see this boy throw any stones; the stones that landed on the intersection had been thrown from the other end of the block.' The American journalist feared for the safety of the girls as well as the teenage boy.
"Soon afterwards two more jeeps arrived full of soldiers, four of whom appeared to be sharpshooters. Karen was alarmed because: 'The soldiers placed themselves in front of the schoolgirls and took aim at the group at chest and head level.' Catriona Drew notes in her statement: 'I swear that the stones that were thrown came from the opposite direction and were not thrown by any of the girls or indeed anyone on the street.' The two women put themselves in the line of fire, which forced the soldiers to back off.
"As the two women were about to leave they heard screaming and shouting. The soldiers were dragging the teenage boy along the ground on his back, kicking him over his entire body, including his abdomen and genitals, punching him with their fists and pounding him with their wooden truncheons. The boy's head, face and neck were covered with blood and his nose was obviously broken.
"At this point Karen saw four other soldiers aim their rifles at an 11- or 12-year-old-girl. She followed the soldiers into an alley as they pursued the child. The American journalist found 'all four soldiers with their truncheons raised as the girl cowered against the alley wall'. A soldier grasped the girl's upper arm, causing her to whimper with pain. Karen White pulled the soldier off the girl. Another soldier appeared to be in a frenzy. Shaking violently, he began screaming, then turned and smashed the headlights and windshield of a car parked in the alley. Karen noted: 'I believe that, had I not intervened, the girl would have been seriously injured.'
"When Karen got back to al-Muktar Street, the teenage boy was handcuffed to a shop door. He identified himself as Muhammed al-Jamallah. His little sister was standing next to him, screaming. Karen asked one of the soldiers for the name of his commanding officer and wrote the name down. When she told the soldier she wanted the name to use in a report to a member of the US Congress, he grabbed the paper from her and tore it to pieces with his teeth. Catriona notes that afterwards she saw the soldier 'punch Karen in the stomach and hit her with his rifle'." (Imperial Israel: The History of the Occupation of the West Bank & Gaza, Michael Palumbo, 1990, pp 233-236)
Frankly, Adams' words are an insult to generations of martyred Palestinians.
[*How Rabin's position of a strictly limited Palestinian autonomy could ever be compared to de Klerk's agreement to the principle of one man, one vote in South Africa is beyond me; **For an account of the Lydda death march by George Habash, see my 2/2/08 post Fabricating George Habash.]
Saturday, July 7, 2012
In Bed With Argentina's Generals
I see that one of Argentina's imprisoned 'Dirty War' (1976-84) generals, Jorge Videla, has just been sentenced to a further 50 years in prison for stealing the babies of female prisoners who were then tortured and executed. A charming gent, the old Jorge.
And quite talented too. Did you know, for example, that he speaks fluent Israeli?
No?
Well here's the proof:
"The women giving birth, who I respect as mothers, were militants who were active in the machinery of terror,' the former dictator said in his closing remarks. 'Many used their unborn children as human shields.'" (Robbery of infants: Videla sentenced to 50 years in prison, Buenos Aires Herald, 5/7/12)
So where did Videla learn to throw around such quintessentially Israeli words as terrorists and human shields?
Why, from the masters of course:
"President Isabel Peron was overthrown by the Argentine military in March 1976. Thus began 8 years of military rule, during which the relations between Israel and Argentina were cordial and intimate. The first junta, in control to 1981, was headed by General Jorge Rafael Videla, and included also Admiral Emilio Massera and Brigadier General Orlando Agosti. Lieutenant General Roberto Eduardo Viola succeeded Videla in April 1981 as Argentina's president, and ruled with the help of Admiral Armando Lambruschini and General Omar Graffigna. The third and last junta was made up of General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, Admiral Jorge Isaac Anaya, and Brigadier General Basilio Lami Dozo. The last junta had to relinquish power after a long series of economic and military fiascos, and Argentina was returned to civilian rule.
"Generals Viola, Videla, Valin, and Galtieri became gracious hosts to Israeli military and civilian leaders, and their names grew familiar to their Israeli counterparts during the years of military rule. Israeli generals Peled and Lahav and Reshef and Rahav, names as interchangeable and forgettable as their Latin American colleagues', had many good meetings with the Argentines. They were liked and admired; they enjoyed the friendly times. There were 'three countries that enjoyed a special sympathy in Argentine military circles: the United States, South Africa, and Israel' (Yediot Aharanot, 1983a, p. 7).
"Argentina has been one of Israel's major arms customers, especially since President Carter suspended US military aid in 1977 (a move partly reversed by by President Reagan in July 1981). The script is familiar to us from Nicaragua, Guatemala, and other places: Israel filled the demand. It sold Argentina nearly a hundred jet fighters - mostly improved versions of the French Mirage, plus 24 US A-4 Skyhawks - and Shafir missiles to arm them. The navy received 4 Dabur-class patrol boats and 50 Gabriel missiles. Spare parts, ammunition, and small arms were also sold in large quantities.
"Israel's supplying arms to Argentina during the Falklands-Malvinas War of 1982 brought much comment and understandable British concern, but it merely reflected a long-standing relationship (Taubman, 1982). Judging by reports of arms delivered, Israel played a role in helping the Argentine armed forces to replace armaments and aircraft lost during the war, with Nesher planes, Mirage planes, Gabriel missiles, spare parts, and ammunition (Schumacher, 1982). Supplies also came from South Africa (Dabat & Lorenzano, 1984) and numerous other countries, including Libya.
"Although many Israeli leaders visited Argentina during the years of the generals, former military leaders drew the most attention. General Mordecai Gur followed up his visit to Chile in 1978 with one to Argentina, and was warmly received by General Alfredo Ciola, Argentine chief-of-staff, and other generals. The former chief-of-staff (1964-1968) and prime minister (1974-1977) Yitzhak Rabin visited Argentina in August 1980, and lectured at the Argentine Armed Forces National College. Lately it has come out that after the Malvinas War of 1982, when the military regime was on its last legs, its Israeli friends came up with a grand rescue plan, designed to make Argentina into a 'South Atlantic power,' and to save the generals' future (Shipler, 1986)." (The Israeli Connection: Whom Israel Arms & Why, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, 1987, pp 101-103)
And quite talented too. Did you know, for example, that he speaks fluent Israeli?
No?
Well here's the proof:
"The women giving birth, who I respect as mothers, were militants who were active in the machinery of terror,' the former dictator said in his closing remarks. 'Many used their unborn children as human shields.'" (Robbery of infants: Videla sentenced to 50 years in prison, Buenos Aires Herald, 5/7/12)
So where did Videla learn to throw around such quintessentially Israeli words as terrorists and human shields?
Why, from the masters of course:
"President Isabel Peron was overthrown by the Argentine military in March 1976. Thus began 8 years of military rule, during which the relations between Israel and Argentina were cordial and intimate. The first junta, in control to 1981, was headed by General Jorge Rafael Videla, and included also Admiral Emilio Massera and Brigadier General Orlando Agosti. Lieutenant General Roberto Eduardo Viola succeeded Videla in April 1981 as Argentina's president, and ruled with the help of Admiral Armando Lambruschini and General Omar Graffigna. The third and last junta was made up of General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, Admiral Jorge Isaac Anaya, and Brigadier General Basilio Lami Dozo. The last junta had to relinquish power after a long series of economic and military fiascos, and Argentina was returned to civilian rule.
"Generals Viola, Videla, Valin, and Galtieri became gracious hosts to Israeli military and civilian leaders, and their names grew familiar to their Israeli counterparts during the years of military rule. Israeli generals Peled and Lahav and Reshef and Rahav, names as interchangeable and forgettable as their Latin American colleagues', had many good meetings with the Argentines. They were liked and admired; they enjoyed the friendly times. There were 'three countries that enjoyed a special sympathy in Argentine military circles: the United States, South Africa, and Israel' (Yediot Aharanot, 1983a, p. 7).
"Argentina has been one of Israel's major arms customers, especially since President Carter suspended US military aid in 1977 (a move partly reversed by by President Reagan in July 1981). The script is familiar to us from Nicaragua, Guatemala, and other places: Israel filled the demand. It sold Argentina nearly a hundred jet fighters - mostly improved versions of the French Mirage, plus 24 US A-4 Skyhawks - and Shafir missiles to arm them. The navy received 4 Dabur-class patrol boats and 50 Gabriel missiles. Spare parts, ammunition, and small arms were also sold in large quantities.
"Israel's supplying arms to Argentina during the Falklands-Malvinas War of 1982 brought much comment and understandable British concern, but it merely reflected a long-standing relationship (Taubman, 1982). Judging by reports of arms delivered, Israel played a role in helping the Argentine armed forces to replace armaments and aircraft lost during the war, with Nesher planes, Mirage planes, Gabriel missiles, spare parts, and ammunition (Schumacher, 1982). Supplies also came from South Africa (Dabat & Lorenzano, 1984) and numerous other countries, including Libya.
"Although many Israeli leaders visited Argentina during the years of the generals, former military leaders drew the most attention. General Mordecai Gur followed up his visit to Chile in 1978 with one to Argentina, and was warmly received by General Alfredo Ciola, Argentine chief-of-staff, and other generals. The former chief-of-staff (1964-1968) and prime minister (1974-1977) Yitzhak Rabin visited Argentina in August 1980, and lectured at the Argentine Armed Forces National College. Lately it has come out that after the Malvinas War of 1982, when the military regime was on its last legs, its Israeli friends came up with a grand rescue plan, designed to make Argentina into a 'South Atlantic power,' and to save the generals' future (Shipler, 1986)." (The Israeli Connection: Whom Israel Arms & Why, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, 1987, pp 101-103)
Sunday, January 2, 2011
It's Always the Occupation, Stupid
The trouble with corporate news reporting on violent incidents in occupied Palestine is that it so often fails to contextualise those incidents, chiefly by omitting use of the words 'Israeli occupation/Israeli-occupied', or any reference to the legality or length of the occupation. I find myself wondering at times whether reporters and/or editors are even aware that we are dealing here with an illegal, 43-year old occupation. I also wonder at times, and this is scary, whether they have any idea at all what it means to live under a military occupation.
I was reminded of this matter yet again when ABC Radio's Background Briefing program replayed an interview with US foreign correspondent Megan Stack by the 7.30 Report's Kerry O'Brien, recorded at last year's Byron Bay Writers Festival:
KO: You flash back at this point to the first intifada and you talk about the stories of breaking bones. The [then Israeli] Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was supposed to have told Israeli soldiers, 'Break their bones, but don't kill them; beat them, but don't shoot them'. And there was talk of systematically working through a place, breaking chidren's arms.
MS: Well I have a friend who saw that. I have a friend who was a reporter at The New York Times who had been -
KO: Child after child, after child.
MS: Well, he said this. I was a kid at the first intifada. I read about that, because it's one of these famous ambiguities in Jerusalem, that Rabin said, 'Break their bones'. And there's two interpretations of that statement... Did he mean, 'Don't shoot them, just break their bones, just beat them'? Or did he mean, you know, 'Crush them'? And so there are two ways of looking at that, which is often the case in Jerusalem."
Which nonsense prompted this reaction on my part: For God's sake, stop pussyfooting around, Ms Stack. Isn't it bleedingly obvious that, whatever Rabin's exact words*, we're dealing here with the Suppression of Acts of Resistance by an Occuping Power, and whichever way you slice the cake, it's going to be a very dirty business indeed? And all that rot about famous ambiguities in Jerusalem and two interpretation and two ways of looking at things which is often the case in Jerusalem, isn't that just typical of how this particular Occupying Power deals with revelations of its crimes: deny, deny, deny, or fog us all up with mystifying, obfuscating weasel words, words, words?
What if Stack had simply said, I thought, 'Yes, Kerry, this is typical of the brutal reality that always characterises miltary occupations, and Israel is no different in that respect. Of course, I don't need to tell you they try bloody hard to spin it away there - Israel's propaganda efforts are second to none - but an occupation is always and inevitably about broken bones... and worse, much worse.'
I know, fat chance!
Chris Floyd's haunting meditation, The Obscure Ruination of a Single Human Life (chris-floyd.com, 16/11/10), about one tiny drop in the sea of suffering which is Israel's criminal occupation of the Palestinian territories, one whose name and experience never, of course, surfaced in the Australian or (I imagine) any other foreign media, goes directly to the dark heart of our subject, and is, I'll wager, worth every word ever spoken or written by the Megan Stacks of this world. (Her book, incidentally, is titled, Every Man in the Village is a Liar. When a ME correspondent writes a book called Every Israeli Official is a Liar, maybe then I'll sit up and take notice!):
"Decades before you were born, an invading army occupied your native land. The army of occupation has blighted and repressed your people for generations. You have heard your parents and your grandparents talk of all that they have lost, all that was taken from them, the friends and relatives they have seen killed, how the brutal, stifling occupation has bred extremism (often funded and promoted by the occupiers) that has riven your society, and how all hope of an ordinary peaceful life has been taken from your family, and from you.
"You are 13 years old. One day, you see some soldiers of the occupation army. They are bristling with weapons and body armor, they are protected by watchtowers, helicopters, they are equipped with radios that can call down a missile or an airplane to destroy your home in a matter of minutes. Their very presence is a harsh, mocking, inescapable emblem of your family's pain and degradation. And so, on this day, you pick up a stone - a stone - and throw it, in a weak and futile gesture, at these impregnable figures.
"And for throwing this stone - a stone, a small, hand-sized fragment of stone - this is what happens to you. From Israel's ynetnews:
Karim, a 13-year old boy from Hebron, was arrested in late September on suspicion of hurling stones at Israel Defense Forces soldiers. After spending 6 days in the Ofer Prison, he was placed under house arrest for 5 months in his uncle's home and can't even go to school. The boy's relatives say he is in a serious emotional state and is finding it difficult to recover from his days in prison. All he told his family members was that he was handcuffed and chained, and was sometimes left alone in a room or in solitary... The boy himself refuses to talk. Asked what he went through during the interrogation and in jail, he responds, 'I don't know, I don't know'. Karim's grandmother says his mental state has influenced his health. 'You can tell that he is afraid and frightened from his days in jail. He has fungus on his body and his skin has peeled from all the pressure, fear and nerves. He barely talks. Today we looked for him and found him hiding in the chicken coop because he didn't want to talk to anyone'.
"It's just a small story; what does it matter? It's just a tiny incident, far from the worst, in a vast, world-roiling conflict; what does it matter? I't's just the scarcely noticed ruination of one obscure child's life; what does it matter? Only losers and lamesters, only those on the margins, only those who aren't serious, who aren't savvy - only those who are struggling to keep hold of their humanity in the face of implacable systems of power, systems which seek at every turn to degrade and destroy what Arthur Silber calls 'the sacred value of a single human life' - would care about such discarded wretches. But it doesn't matter at all to anyone who 'matters' in the small, gilded circles of domination and sycophancy that oversway our lives and our discourse. And so these little stories will keep on playing out, everywhere, all the time, in the monstrous waste we make of our common humanity - and its brief, beautiful, absolutely unique individual expressions."
[*FYI: "Israel's Parliament decided today not to investigate charges that former Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered soldiers to break the bones of Arab militants [!] at the beginning of the Palestinian uprising... The proposal was prompted by testimony in recent courts-martial of several soldiers charged with beating Palestinians and breaking their bones. The soldiers have testified that they were simply following orders..." (Israel declines to study Rabin tie to beatings, New York Times, 12/7/90)
"Israeli forces are carrying out a policy of shooting at the legs of peaceful demonstrators who protest the separation wall each Friday in towns across the West Bank, demonstrators are reporting. The accounts of the Palestinian demonstrators who have been wounded by Israeli fire in recent weeks are raising the legacy of the first Palestinian Intifada, when Israeli then-defense minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered his soldiers to 'break the bones' of young protestors." (Rabin's legacy: Protestors' accounts show Israel 'breaking the bones' of peaceful demonstrators, maannews.net, 10/2/09)]
I was reminded of this matter yet again when ABC Radio's Background Briefing program replayed an interview with US foreign correspondent Megan Stack by the 7.30 Report's Kerry O'Brien, recorded at last year's Byron Bay Writers Festival:
KO: You flash back at this point to the first intifada and you talk about the stories of breaking bones. The [then Israeli] Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was supposed to have told Israeli soldiers, 'Break their bones, but don't kill them; beat them, but don't shoot them'. And there was talk of systematically working through a place, breaking chidren's arms.
MS: Well I have a friend who saw that. I have a friend who was a reporter at The New York Times who had been -
KO: Child after child, after child.
MS: Well, he said this. I was a kid at the first intifada. I read about that, because it's one of these famous ambiguities in Jerusalem, that Rabin said, 'Break their bones'. And there's two interpretations of that statement... Did he mean, 'Don't shoot them, just break their bones, just beat them'? Or did he mean, you know, 'Crush them'? And so there are two ways of looking at that, which is often the case in Jerusalem."
Which nonsense prompted this reaction on my part: For God's sake, stop pussyfooting around, Ms Stack. Isn't it bleedingly obvious that, whatever Rabin's exact words*, we're dealing here with the Suppression of Acts of Resistance by an Occuping Power, and whichever way you slice the cake, it's going to be a very dirty business indeed? And all that rot about famous ambiguities in Jerusalem and two interpretation and two ways of looking at things which is often the case in Jerusalem, isn't that just typical of how this particular Occupying Power deals with revelations of its crimes: deny, deny, deny, or fog us all up with mystifying, obfuscating weasel words, words, words?
What if Stack had simply said, I thought, 'Yes, Kerry, this is typical of the brutal reality that always characterises miltary occupations, and Israel is no different in that respect. Of course, I don't need to tell you they try bloody hard to spin it away there - Israel's propaganda efforts are second to none - but an occupation is always and inevitably about broken bones... and worse, much worse.'
I know, fat chance!
Chris Floyd's haunting meditation, The Obscure Ruination of a Single Human Life (chris-floyd.com, 16/11/10), about one tiny drop in the sea of suffering which is Israel's criminal occupation of the Palestinian territories, one whose name and experience never, of course, surfaced in the Australian or (I imagine) any other foreign media, goes directly to the dark heart of our subject, and is, I'll wager, worth every word ever spoken or written by the Megan Stacks of this world. (Her book, incidentally, is titled, Every Man in the Village is a Liar. When a ME correspondent writes a book called Every Israeli Official is a Liar, maybe then I'll sit up and take notice!):
"Decades before you were born, an invading army occupied your native land. The army of occupation has blighted and repressed your people for generations. You have heard your parents and your grandparents talk of all that they have lost, all that was taken from them, the friends and relatives they have seen killed, how the brutal, stifling occupation has bred extremism (often funded and promoted by the occupiers) that has riven your society, and how all hope of an ordinary peaceful life has been taken from your family, and from you.
"You are 13 years old. One day, you see some soldiers of the occupation army. They are bristling with weapons and body armor, they are protected by watchtowers, helicopters, they are equipped with radios that can call down a missile or an airplane to destroy your home in a matter of minutes. Their very presence is a harsh, mocking, inescapable emblem of your family's pain and degradation. And so, on this day, you pick up a stone - a stone - and throw it, in a weak and futile gesture, at these impregnable figures.
"And for throwing this stone - a stone, a small, hand-sized fragment of stone - this is what happens to you. From Israel's ynetnews:
Karim, a 13-year old boy from Hebron, was arrested in late September on suspicion of hurling stones at Israel Defense Forces soldiers. After spending 6 days in the Ofer Prison, he was placed under house arrest for 5 months in his uncle's home and can't even go to school. The boy's relatives say he is in a serious emotional state and is finding it difficult to recover from his days in prison. All he told his family members was that he was handcuffed and chained, and was sometimes left alone in a room or in solitary... The boy himself refuses to talk. Asked what he went through during the interrogation and in jail, he responds, 'I don't know, I don't know'. Karim's grandmother says his mental state has influenced his health. 'You can tell that he is afraid and frightened from his days in jail. He has fungus on his body and his skin has peeled from all the pressure, fear and nerves. He barely talks. Today we looked for him and found him hiding in the chicken coop because he didn't want to talk to anyone'.
"It's just a small story; what does it matter? It's just a tiny incident, far from the worst, in a vast, world-roiling conflict; what does it matter? I't's just the scarcely noticed ruination of one obscure child's life; what does it matter? Only losers and lamesters, only those on the margins, only those who aren't serious, who aren't savvy - only those who are struggling to keep hold of their humanity in the face of implacable systems of power, systems which seek at every turn to degrade and destroy what Arthur Silber calls 'the sacred value of a single human life' - would care about such discarded wretches. But it doesn't matter at all to anyone who 'matters' in the small, gilded circles of domination and sycophancy that oversway our lives and our discourse. And so these little stories will keep on playing out, everywhere, all the time, in the monstrous waste we make of our common humanity - and its brief, beautiful, absolutely unique individual expressions."
[*FYI: "Israel's Parliament decided today not to investigate charges that former Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered soldiers to break the bones of Arab militants [!] at the beginning of the Palestinian uprising... The proposal was prompted by testimony in recent courts-martial of several soldiers charged with beating Palestinians and breaking their bones. The soldiers have testified that they were simply following orders..." (Israel declines to study Rabin tie to beatings, New York Times, 12/7/90)
"Israeli forces are carrying out a policy of shooting at the legs of peaceful demonstrators who protest the separation wall each Friday in towns across the West Bank, demonstrators are reporting. The accounts of the Palestinian demonstrators who have been wounded by Israeli fire in recent weeks are raising the legacy of the first Palestinian Intifada, when Israeli then-defense minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered his soldiers to 'break the bones' of young protestors." (Rabin's legacy: Protestors' accounts show Israel 'breaking the bones' of peaceful demonstrators, maannews.net, 10/2/09)]
Friday, June 4, 2010
Lethal Force
"Those who contend that force is the answer to every problem live by the hour and ignore the future. For them, the fleeting success of force is the last word in history... They are characterized by an egotism that prevents them from understanding the mind of their antagonists, or paying heed to what goes on in their hearts... For extreme nationalism is saturated with profound contempt for other peoples, its disciples are persuaded that force will solve every problem, and they have signed an eternal treaty with the Almighty, designed to ensure them invincible and everlasting might." Yaacov Talmon
"The Israeli attack was timed for dawn prayers - when a good number of the men aboard the Mavi Marmara were praying on the aft deck of the big Turkish passenger ferry, as she motored steadily through international waters in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The call to prayer could be heard across the water - haunting chords made tinny by the ship's PA system, yet haunting enough amid tensions sparked several hours earlier, when the six ships' captains in the Free Gaza Flotilla rejected a demand radioed by the Israeli navy - change course away from the Gaza Strip or be confronted with lethal force." (Prayers, tear gas & terror, Paul McGeough, Sydney Morning Herald, 4/6/10)
That Israel used lethal force against those on the Mavi Marmara should surprise no one. The application of lethal force to expel Palestinians or deter them from ever returning to their usurped homeland is a sine qua non of Zionist practise. Ditto for those who go to their aid:
"It will be recollected that the 1947 [UN] partition [of Palestine] left within the proposed Jewish State as many Arabs as Jews. People wondered how the Jewish State would be able to exist. As matters turned out, the Jews had succeeded in driving out nearly all the Arabs, except for a small number, chiefly in Galilee. One thing on which the Jews were determined was that they were not going to let those Arabs back. At the beginning, many refugees went back innocently and unarmed. None, I believe, in those days crossed the armistace lines in order to fight or injure the Jews. The majority went to try to rescue some of their belongings, or to look for missing relatives. The Israelis were ruthless. Many of these unfortunate people were shot on sight by Israeli posts or patrols, without even the formality of arrest or questioning. Cases occurred of farmers going out to plough their land, and being shot dead by Israeli patrols as they drove their ploughs across their own fields. The farmers had not realized that, owing to a line drawn on a map somewhere, half of their fields were no longer their own. The ruthless manner in which the Israelis dealt with any Arabs they found soon disposed of the innocent returning refugees. The great majority of them gave it up, and made no further attempt to return home. But a small number of the more desperate decided to go. This time they armed themselves and went by stealth at night. They were still, however, principally intent on seeking the property which they had left behind. Probably at this stage, none had any aggressive intentions, but if they met an Israeli patrol they fired."* (A Soldier With the Arabs, John Bagot Glubb, 1957, pp 245-246)
"[Israeli Prime Minister Levi] Eshkol had already had reason to be worried about the Gaza refugees roughly two years before the Six-Day War [of 1967]. The refugees were multiplying, and when their numbers reached half a million, he feared the situation would become explosive. Once, he asked the chief of staff what would happen if the Egyptians [who then controlled the Gaza Strip] simply marched the refugees - women and children in the vanguard - toward the border with Israel. [Yitzhak] Rabin said they would not do that, and if they did, as soon as the IDF had killed the first 100, the rest would go back to Gaza." (1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev, 2007, p 524)
[*"Altogether between 2,700 and 5,000 infiltrators were killed in the period 1949-1956, the great majority of whom were unarmed." Avi Shlaim, reviewing Benny Morris' Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation & the Countdown to the Suez War, 1993]
"The Israeli attack was timed for dawn prayers - when a good number of the men aboard the Mavi Marmara were praying on the aft deck of the big Turkish passenger ferry, as she motored steadily through international waters in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The call to prayer could be heard across the water - haunting chords made tinny by the ship's PA system, yet haunting enough amid tensions sparked several hours earlier, when the six ships' captains in the Free Gaza Flotilla rejected a demand radioed by the Israeli navy - change course away from the Gaza Strip or be confronted with lethal force." (Prayers, tear gas & terror, Paul McGeough, Sydney Morning Herald, 4/6/10)
That Israel used lethal force against those on the Mavi Marmara should surprise no one. The application of lethal force to expel Palestinians or deter them from ever returning to their usurped homeland is a sine qua non of Zionist practise. Ditto for those who go to their aid:
"It will be recollected that the 1947 [UN] partition [of Palestine] left within the proposed Jewish State as many Arabs as Jews. People wondered how the Jewish State would be able to exist. As matters turned out, the Jews had succeeded in driving out nearly all the Arabs, except for a small number, chiefly in Galilee. One thing on which the Jews were determined was that they were not going to let those Arabs back. At the beginning, many refugees went back innocently and unarmed. None, I believe, in those days crossed the armistace lines in order to fight or injure the Jews. The majority went to try to rescue some of their belongings, or to look for missing relatives. The Israelis were ruthless. Many of these unfortunate people were shot on sight by Israeli posts or patrols, without even the formality of arrest or questioning. Cases occurred of farmers going out to plough their land, and being shot dead by Israeli patrols as they drove their ploughs across their own fields. The farmers had not realized that, owing to a line drawn on a map somewhere, half of their fields were no longer their own. The ruthless manner in which the Israelis dealt with any Arabs they found soon disposed of the innocent returning refugees. The great majority of them gave it up, and made no further attempt to return home. But a small number of the more desperate decided to go. This time they armed themselves and went by stealth at night. They were still, however, principally intent on seeking the property which they had left behind. Probably at this stage, none had any aggressive intentions, but if they met an Israeli patrol they fired."* (A Soldier With the Arabs, John Bagot Glubb, 1957, pp 245-246)
"[Israeli Prime Minister Levi] Eshkol had already had reason to be worried about the Gaza refugees roughly two years before the Six-Day War [of 1967]. The refugees were multiplying, and when their numbers reached half a million, he feared the situation would become explosive. Once, he asked the chief of staff what would happen if the Egyptians [who then controlled the Gaza Strip] simply marched the refugees - women and children in the vanguard - toward the border with Israel. [Yitzhak] Rabin said they would not do that, and if they did, as soon as the IDF had killed the first 100, the rest would go back to Gaza." (1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev, 2007, p 524)
[*"Altogether between 2,700 and 5,000 infiltrators were killed in the period 1949-1956, the great majority of whom were unarmed." Avi Shlaim, reviewing Benny Morris' Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation & the Countdown to the Suez War, 1993]
Friday, February 1, 2008
They Wouldn't Shoot...Would They?
Just occasionally, out of the spin and bias that clogs the pages of the Murdoch press' coverage of the Middle East conflict, will emerge, even if inadvertently, a smidgeon of context or a revealing insight into its root cause. Take the following, for example, from 'Breakout into Israel' ahead, by The Australian's hack* in Jerusalem, Abraham Rabinovich. (26/1/08)
"A senior Hamas official warned yesterday that the next breakout from the Gaza Strip could be into Israel, with 500,000 Palestinians attempting to march towards the towns and villages from which they or their parents fled or were expelled 60 years ago. 'This is not an imaginary scenario and many Palestinians would be prepared to sacrifice their lives', said Ahmed Youssef, political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya. Israeli minister Ze'ev Boim said the threat must be taken seriously in light of the successful Hamas breakout into Egyptian territory on Wednesday, adding we must learn from what has just happened there'. "
Rabinovich's report contains one of those all too rare references in the ms media to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, which paved the way for the creation of a Jewish-majority state there. The ethnically cleansed of Palestine (some 85% of the indigenous population residing in the areas of Palestine overrun by Zionist forces in 1948) and their descendents make up the bulk of the Gaza Strip's population, and the 1949 UNGA Resolution 194 calling for the return of these refugees has been ignored by Israel to this day.
The "threat" of an eruption into Israel of Gazan refugees, spoken of by Ze'ev Boim, is not to the lives of Israelis as such, but to Israel's status as a state with a Jewish majority were the the Palestinian refugees, from Gaza and elsewhere, be allowed to return to their ancestral homes and lands in Israel proper. Appearing in Israeli public discourse as 'the demographic threat', the word takes us to the very heart of the Palestine-Israel conflict, the inconvenient truth of which is that the indigenous non-Jewish Palestinian Arab majority were driven from their homes and lands, so that the Zionist movement could establish a sovereign state with an overwhelming Jewish majority and lay claim to be a democracy. In other words, Israel, as a sovereign, Jewish state, was gerrymandered into existence by a monstrous act of ethnic cleansing. Lest we forget. Boim and his ilk haven't, but that's another story...
But why does Ahmed Youssef talk of these refugees being "prepared to sacrifice their lives?" Surely, if the Palestinian refugees simply broke through another wall in their Gaza ghetto and marched into Israel to exercise their fundamental human rights to return to and reclaim their property (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 13 & 17), the Israelis wouldn't just shoot them, would they? It wouldn't even cross their minds, would it? Well, yes it has:
"[Israeli Prime Minister, Levi] Eshkol had already had reason to be worried about the Gaza refugees roughly 2 years before the Six-Day War [of 1967]. The refugees were multiplying, and when their numbers reached 1/2 a million, he feared the situation would become explosive. Once, he asked the chief of staff what would happen if the Egyptians simply marched the refugees - women and children in the vanguard - toward the border with Israel. Rabin said they would not do that, and if they did, as soon as the IDF had killed the first 100, the rest would go back to Gaza." [1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev, p 524]
* Abraham Rabinovich: "Cairo, concerned over its own fundamentalists, has long taken exception to Tehran's support of militant Shia groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestine territories and militias in Iraq." (Iran and Egypt to restore relations, The Australian, 1/2/08) Hamas is Sunni, not "Shia."
"A senior Hamas official warned yesterday that the next breakout from the Gaza Strip could be into Israel, with 500,000 Palestinians attempting to march towards the towns and villages from which they or their parents fled or were expelled 60 years ago. 'This is not an imaginary scenario and many Palestinians would be prepared to sacrifice their lives', said Ahmed Youssef, political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya. Israeli minister Ze'ev Boim said the threat must be taken seriously in light of the successful Hamas breakout into Egyptian territory on Wednesday, adding we must learn from what has just happened there'. "
Rabinovich's report contains one of those all too rare references in the ms media to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, which paved the way for the creation of a Jewish-majority state there. The ethnically cleansed of Palestine (some 85% of the indigenous population residing in the areas of Palestine overrun by Zionist forces in 1948) and their descendents make up the bulk of the Gaza Strip's population, and the 1949 UNGA Resolution 194 calling for the return of these refugees has been ignored by Israel to this day.
The "threat" of an eruption into Israel of Gazan refugees, spoken of by Ze'ev Boim, is not to the lives of Israelis as such, but to Israel's status as a state with a Jewish majority were the the Palestinian refugees, from Gaza and elsewhere, be allowed to return to their ancestral homes and lands in Israel proper. Appearing in Israeli public discourse as 'the demographic threat', the word takes us to the very heart of the Palestine-Israel conflict, the inconvenient truth of which is that the indigenous non-Jewish Palestinian Arab majority were driven from their homes and lands, so that the Zionist movement could establish a sovereign state with an overwhelming Jewish majority and lay claim to be a democracy. In other words, Israel, as a sovereign, Jewish state, was gerrymandered into existence by a monstrous act of ethnic cleansing. Lest we forget. Boim and his ilk haven't, but that's another story...
But why does Ahmed Youssef talk of these refugees being "prepared to sacrifice their lives?" Surely, if the Palestinian refugees simply broke through another wall in their Gaza ghetto and marched into Israel to exercise their fundamental human rights to return to and reclaim their property (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 13 & 17), the Israelis wouldn't just shoot them, would they? It wouldn't even cross their minds, would it? Well, yes it has:
"[Israeli Prime Minister, Levi] Eshkol had already had reason to be worried about the Gaza refugees roughly 2 years before the Six-Day War [of 1967]. The refugees were multiplying, and when their numbers reached 1/2 a million, he feared the situation would become explosive. Once, he asked the chief of staff what would happen if the Egyptians simply marched the refugees - women and children in the vanguard - toward the border with Israel. Rabin said they would not do that, and if they did, as soon as the IDF had killed the first 100, the rest would go back to Gaza." [1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev, p 524]
* Abraham Rabinovich: "Cairo, concerned over its own fundamentalists, has long taken exception to Tehran's support of militant Shia groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestine territories and militias in Iraq." (Iran and Egypt to restore relations, The Australian, 1/2/08) Hamas is Sunni, not "Shia."
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