A British Education

Last Monday's Q&A dealt, in part, with the issue of Britain's colonial crimes, particularly in relation to India. Among other things, we learned that discussion of these is absent from Britain's history curriculum:

Tony Jones: I'm just wondering, have young Brits come to terms with their colonial past?
Laurie Penny: No, we haven't at all. Young Brits of every class have no idea about our colonial past. That is being deliberately done. We're deliberately denied or kept away from education about the graphic facts of what the British did around the world, including in this country, to the people of this country. The crimes of the British and the crimes that we've committed and were done in our names, over 400 years of pillage and conquest is something that we don't like to think about. And yet, it is everywhere in modern British history. When people talk about Brexit, it's stunning to me that if you ask British people who voted for Brexit what their major fear is, their fear is people will come to our country and take our things.
Shashi Tharoor: That's exactly right.
Laurie Penny: I just can't... It doesn't compute. We don't know this history. I took history in British schools up to the age of 18. And I got a pretty good grade. And...
Shashi Tharoor: You never learned a line of colonial history, did you?
Laurie Penny: Almost everything you have just said, I learned from your book.*

It should never be forgotten that it was 'Great' Britain's issue of the Balfour Declaration that created the Palestine's Israel problem.

[*Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (2017)]

Inside Baird's School Chaplaincy Program

The investigative journalist, David Marr, has described NSW premier Mike Baird as a "Bible-basher."*

What we do not know, however, is whether his particular brand of Christianity embraces the kooky heresy known as Christian Zionism, the belief that the modern day state of Israel is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and should be supported as such. Certainly, Australia has never had a more Israel-focused premier. In fact, Baird spent a week there last month, the first day of which he devoted to visiting religious sites. Whatever the exact nature of the premier's theological beliefs, however, or the degree to which they inform his politics, the buck surely stops with Baird when it comes to the following, quite disturbing state of affairs:

"Evangelical Christian groups continue to dominate funding granted in the National School Chaplaincy Program,** earning millions of dollars... Generate Ministries has been given $4 million to provide chaplains to 202 of the 438 NSW schools participating in the scheme in 2016... Generate Ministries has historically dominated the NSCP in NSW, earning $3 million last year, and had hoped to double its funding with aggressive marketing to 2,000 schools... Although funding of $20,000 per school comes from the federal government, it has been allocated by the NSW government since 2015." (Evangelicals lead chaplains scheme, Kirsty Needham, Sun-Herald, 24/4/16)

So what are Generate Ministries - to name but the most prominent of these evangelical groups - foisting on our kids?

We can get some idea from their "SRE Curriculum Teacher's Outline," titled "Our SRE."

Among its "expected outcomes" for Year 7 students we find that students "will... comprehend God's character, purpose and action from before recorded time until the present and into the future," "appreciate the historical context of the Bible, its purpose, construction and claims," and "recognise that God and his message (in the Bible) are relevant to current society."  Take note of those highlighted words.

IOW, critically, the content of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is viewed and presented, contrary to all available archaeological evidence and contemporary scholarship, as history.

In Year 8, for example, students are taught the following fictions as fact:

"Abraham obeys God and moves his whole clan to a promised land where God will give him many descendants and land."

"Moses is chosen by God to lead His people out of Egypt to the land God promised to Abraham."

"On the death of Moses, Joshua leads the people across the Jordan River into the Promised Land and after many battles takes hold of the land."

"The nation of Israel grows..."

Fertile soil, indeed, for a false understanding of today's settler-colonial, ethnographic, apartheid Israel.

Then there's this on the Crusades:

"From the 6th Century, Islam spread rapidly..."  Islam, in fact, arose in the 7th century.

"Subsequent crusades were needed to retake Jerusalem from other Muslim invaders."  Muslim, not European Christian, invaders?!

Would that this were merely a case of snouts in the trough. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state?

[*The Mike Baird Story, theguardian.com, 23/3/15; **See my 5/11/10 post Gillard's Education Revolution.] 

The Origins of the Judeo-Christian Meme

Whence the 'Judeo-Christian' meme?

Food for thought from:

Curriculum review: where did 'Judeo-Christian' come from? (Chloe Patton, theconversation.com, 12/1/14)

"Education minister Christopher Pyne has copped it from the Left with both barrels for demanding that the Australian education curriculum teach students 'the significance of Judeo-Christian values to our institutions and way of life.' He did this in announcing his review into the national curriculum late last week...

"By simply typing 'Judeo-Christian' into [the Australian parliamentary website's] search tool, Australia's youngsters will be no doubt regaled with stirring accounts of Australians founding a modern democracy on a shared commitment to a Judeo-Christian heritage, or valiantly fighting to defend Judeo-Christian values on the battlefield at Gallipoli.

"The only problem is that they won't. The term doesn't even appear until 1974. Throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s it is used in only a handful of contexts without any apparent consistency in its meaning. In fact, the vast majority of the 855 results the search generates are dated from late 2001 onwards. Until September 11, it appears Australians didn't give a fig about Judeo-Christian values.

"The notion of a Judeo-Christian tradition is, in fact, borrowed from American public discourse. But even in the US, it is still a relatively recent idea. According to US researchers, the term only began to regularly appear during and after World War 2, when progressives sought an inclusive term that naturalised the incorporation of Jews into mainstream US society. The political intent driving its use changed from one of inclusion to one of exclusion in the post-September 11 era, however, when it most often signified the perceived challenges of Islam and Muslims.

"Even now, the term Judeo-Christian is used more commonly in the US. As Monash academic Sue Collins has found, the term appeared 6,418 times in North American newspapers between 2006 and 2013. By contrast, it was used only 765 times in all European newspapers, including the British print media, and 304 times in major Australian newspapers:

"On close analysis of Australian use of the term, Collins finds that the 'Judeo' element is merely tacked on for political expedience: 'The term has become a kind of shield for undeclared conservative interests which really want to privilege, and actually mean, the Christian tradition, but are conscious this would be politically counter-productive'...

"Christopher Pyne can dress it up in any way he likes, but the only historical significance Judeo-Christian values have in Australian public discourse is in post-9/11 conservative rhetoric."

See also my posts Onward Judeo-Christian Soldiers 1 (9/8/10) and 2 (27/4/11), and The Push for a Judeo-Christian Curriculum (12/3/14)

Inside Our Jewish Schools

The Australian Jewish News reported recently (4/4/14) on the publication of "a groundbreaking study," Intergenerational Challenges in Australian Jewish School Education," authored by Professor Zehavit Gross of Bar-Ilan University's School of Education and Professor Suzanne Rutland of Sydney University's Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies Department.

The AJN titled its report Is the 'Jewish' in Jewish Schools working? Given that these schools are overwhelmingly Zionist in orientation, a more accurate title would have been: Are 'Jewish' schools churning out uncritical Zionists?

Happily, the answer would appear to be no. Here are some revealing excerpts from the AJN's coverage:

"The picture [the authors] paint of contemporary Jewish adolescence is complex. The students are an empowered, tech-savvy, analytical and broad-minded bunch... [However] they want to discuss questions of 'why be Jewish' rather than being 'told how to be Jewish'; they want to explore the broader lessons of the Holocaust..."

Hm... broader than the following?

"So when you have difficulty understanding us (Israelis), think about the Holocaust. When you find yourselves searching for our motives, remember the Holocaust. When you try to understand the steps we take, consider the Holocaust."

I should bloody well hope so!

"[A] prevailing insistence on the dogmatic teachings of religion, perpetuating an archaic Hebrew pedagogy, and employing Israeli teachers with little understanding of Australian culture are all areas the academics flag as requiring urgent attention from the school leadership."

Israeli teachers?!  Hello?

"[T]he students are losing patience. 'We have learnt so much about Judaism that I actually hate it now,' one student protested. 'Jewish studies is a class that can be seen as a bludge... we do the same things every year,' another offered. One student reflected: 'We learnt about Amalekites. Our teacher said: 'It's the Jews' job to wipe out, if we could find the Amalekites, it is our job to wipe them out.' So I said: 'Hypothetically, if a Jew became Australia's prime minister and they were able to trace down Amalekites you would say it is okay to put them into gas chambers and do exactly what Hitler did? He said that he would personally do it. That is not okay with me'."

Amalekites?! Are they serious? Is it any wonder these kids are losing patience?

OK, now here's the biggie:

"Changing trends extend to the value attributed to Israel (students are increasingly critical of the Jewish homeland), and the perceived importance of learning the Hebrew language."

There's hope yet!

[*The Holocaust is the 'key' to Israel, Yosef Lapid, Jerusalem Post/Australian Jewish News, 28/4/06. See also my 12/4/10 post Sam Lipski's National Curriculum.]

The Push for a Judeo-Christian Curriculum

Beware the J-C word:

"The inclusion of an additional cross-curriculum priority that ensures the continued recognition of the 'Western/Judeo-Christian influences on our society may help to address these concerns'." Christian Schools Australia submission to the national curriculum review, quoted in Christian schools eye 'rebalance', Justine Ferrari, The Australian, 10/3/14)

Here's why:

"First used by early 20th century biblical scholars to describe the scope of Old and New Testament studies... The concept [of Judeo-Christian heritage/values] all but disappeared until the 1980s when it was revived by Ronald Reagan... After a 1990s hiatus, the Judeo-Christian tradition was more recently given the kiss of life by the US religious right as anti-Islamist sloganeering. Borrowed willy-nilly from these US sources, where it is code for Christians against Islam, the phrase has now become a constant theme in Australian neoconservative rhetoric..." (Australia's 'Judeo-Christian heritage' doesn't exist, Tony Taylor, theguardian.com, 13/1/14)

The Politics of Partition 2

As anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, one of the worst crimes in my book is lying about, misrepresenting, or otherwise distorting the historical record.

This habit, of course, is second nature to those with a vested interest in propping up the false historical narrative of political Zionism, and explains the need for, and motivation behind, blogs and websites such as this, which seek to combat Zionist (and Islamophobic) spin as it arises - alas, far too frequently - in the MS media.

Unfortunately, and I find this particularly troubling, such spin, though not necessarily Zionist in motivation, can also crop up in government-endorsed online resources for Higher School Certificate Modern History.

Take, for example, the following highly dubious treatment of the November, 1947 partition of Palestine in a document called Arab-Israeli conflict 1948-1996: 1948: A Year of myth or miracle? by Stephen Dixon of Kirrawee High:

"The United Nations (UN) vote for the partition of Palestine... illustrates well the public and private faces of Israeli policy during the period 1947-49. As the relieved and joyous crowds danced in the streets of Tel Aviv, there was talk of the hand of God miraculously delivering his people."  (HSC Online, hsc.csu.edu.au)

One wonders why, in 2013, Dixon is invoking such a musty Eurocentric metaphysical concept as "the hand of God delivering his people" when the Zionist movement of the time was wholly secular in outlook, and in fact, just another European settler-colonial implant in the non-European world.

And where, one wonders, is there mention of the Palestinian Arabs, still the overwhelming majority of Palestine's population at the time? Doesn't it matter what they were thinking, and why?

To continue:

"On a more terrestrial level, the success of the Zionist enterprise can be attributed to the work of seasoned political in-fighters such as Golda Meir, Abba Eban and, above all, David Ben Gurion. Two examples serve to show how the establishment of the Jewish state was not left to chance or divine whim. As the date for the UN vote neared, the Arabs showed their naivety by eschewing the back-room deals and corridor meetings that are part and parcel of Western diplomacy. Not so the Zionists. Sustained and encouraged by the personal sympathy of President Truman of the USA and the powerful Jewish lobby of the eastern American seaboard, they began a process of intense behind-the-scenes lobbying to maximise the vote in favour of partition. Pressure was placed on the ambassadors of less committed small countries, such as Cuba, Haiti and Liberia, whose votes would help determine the decision. In the case of Liberia, the owner of the American Firestone Rubber Company, which held huge economic interests in the African country, was enlisted to pressure the Liberians to vote for partition." (ibid)

Now I suppose, one should be grateful that the student reading this is at least apprised, however sketchily, of the pressure tactics employed by the usual suspects to get their way. Be that as it may, Dixon's framing of the issue here is hugely problematic.

First, there is no hint here that our "in-fighters" were actually the ruthless Indian fighters who would go on to ethnically cleanse as much of Palestine as they could lay their hands on, leaving the partition resolution far behind in their wake. Nor is there a hint that Truman was motivated at the time largely by the desire to secure Jewish votes in a hard-fought election campaign.

But that's really the least of it.

The Arabs, in Dixon's construction, are simply assumed to have the same clout in the matter as the US Zionists whose dupes, in particular Clark Clifford and David Niles, were strategically positioned in the White House to ensure compliance with Zionist demands. If only these lackadaisical Arab klutzes had hopped off their camels long enough to get down and dirty in true Western style seems to be the gist here.

It appears that Dixon didn't pause long enough to consider whether the Arabs even had such useful things as a direct line to Firestone Rubber. No, they were just plain, bloody clueless!

Finally, the student who consults this text can surely be forgiven, in light of Dixon's presentation of the issue, for taking home the message that any low tactic is permissible in the world of statescraft. To hell with international law, ethical standards, and public probity.

Good one, Mr Dixon!

'Straightening Out' the National History Curriculum

They can't get the story straight today:

"When Khaled Meshal arrived in Gaza a couple of weeks ago and made a speech to that effect, he insisted: 'We do not fight the Jews because they are Jews. We fight the Zionist occupiers and aggressors. And we will fight anyone who tries to occupy our lands or attacks us.' The British Observer mistranslated his speech as: 'We don't kill Jews because they are Jews. We kill the Zionists because they are conquerors and we will continue to kill anyone who takes our land and our holy places.' While the Observer would later run a correction after the tireless Ali Abunimah exposed the doctored quotes, its mistranslation was in line with Zionist propaganda." (Zionism, anti-Semitism & colonialism, Joseph Massad, aljazeera.com, 24/12/12)

And they couldn't get it straight back in 1919:

"President Wilson was absent from the [Paris Peace] Conference and in the United States during February 14-March 14, 1919. Following a meeting with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Louis Marshall, on March 3, he was quoted as having declared that 'the Allied Nations with the fullest concurrence of our own Government and people are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth'... The statement was cited in a number of papers in the Near East and, on April 13, at the suggestion of Professor Westermann, Secretary of State Lansing inquired of the President whether he had been correctly quoted. President Wilson replied on April 16 saying that he had not used any of the words quoted, although he had used their substance. He remarked, however, that the expression 'foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth' went 'a little further' than his idea at the time. All he had meant to do was 'to corroborate our expressed acquiescence in the position of the British Government with regard to the future of Palestine' - ie to reindorse the Balfour Declaration." (The King-Crane Commission: An American Inquiry into the Middle East, Harry N. Howard, 1963, p 31)

But their help in straightening out our draft national history curriculum is most welcome:

"The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has cautiously welcomed the final versions of the federal government's National Education Curriculum for ancient and modern history in years 11 & 12. ECAJ executive director Peter Wertheim said the final versions were a 'significant improvement' on draft versions released earlier this year... Wertheim also commented that the final document for the modern history elective, The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East, was a 'much better quality document' than its draft, following ECAJ submissions to correct 'factual errors and tendentious language'.* A spokesman for ACARA said: 'ACARA consulted extensively with the Australian Jewish community. We welcome the input of the ECAJ as well as all stakeholders in the development of the National Curriculum.' Implementation of the history curricula by the states and territories will begin next year." (Curriculum changes welcomed, The Australian Jewish News, 21/12/12)

I've checked ACARA's website but we, the people, unlike Mr Wertheim, are not yet able to view the final version of the senior modern history curriculum.

[*For my analysis of Wertheim's submission, see my series Zionising the Draft Modern History Curriculum (2/8/12-26/8/12)]

Talking of Holocausts...

"The study of the Holocaust will become compulsory for all NSW school students in years 9 and 10 after a lobbying campaign by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies prompted the state government to include it in the syllabus. The chief executive of the board, Vic Alhadeff, confirmed he lobbied the Board of Studies and Department of Education for the change up until a month ago and commended them for the decision... Greens NSW MP John Kaye said the Holocaust is rightly an essential part of the state syllabus but should be taught in the context of the other 20th-century genocides." (Study of Holocaust mandated for schools, Anna Patty, Sydney Morning Herald, 8/12/12)

John Kaye is correct, of course.

But, while Zionist lobbyists like Vic Alhadeff may prattle on about the Holocaust being "a warning to every generation about the potential for evil, especially as a consequence of racial hatred, and about the inherent evil of totalitarian regimes," you can be sure that a stand-alone treatment, hopefully with an 'If only there'd been an Israel back then' spin, is the desired outcome. Certainly, any curriculum support material devised by the NSW Board of Deputies is bound to be problematic, as my 28/10/11 post Israel 101 for Cops indicates.

I wonder too if Alhadeff (and those politicians and bureaucrats who've finally* succumbed to his charms) fully appreciates the me-too logic inherent in pushing the (Jewish) Holocaust on the great unwashed. Will his learning curve, I wonder, be as steep as that of Maurice Messer's?

Maurice Messer? In case you've never met him, Maurice is the fictional chairman of the board of Holocaust Connections, Inc. in Tova Reich's wonderful 2007 satire My Holocaust:

"Unfazed , Pushkin Jones exposed his glistening teeth in a grin. 'Brother Maurice,' he declared, 'we of the United Holocausts rainbow coalition of all Holocausts, personal and global, have come here today to offer ourselves as your allies in your noble battle... against the travesty and disgrace of Holocaust denial. I am referring now to the denial of all Holocausts other than the Jewish Holocaust. We shall combat this kind of Holocaust denial unto death. I am speaking of the denial of the African-American Holocaust, for example, which I have the distinct honor and privilege of representing today, claiming our forty-acres-and-a-mule just reparations for the depredations of slavery. I am speaking, to cite yet other examples, of the denial of the Holocausts of my two chiefs of staff - Sister Honey's Women's Holocaust reflecting the confluence of fascism and misogyny, both dead-ending in violence, and the Native American Holocaust of Brother Foggy Bottom here, and, by extension, the Holocausts of all aboriginal and indigenous peoples everywhere, brutally uprooted by conquerors and colonialists and imperialists from their native soils since time immemorial, with special recognition due to the Palestinian Holocaust, a direct side effect of the monopoly by the marketers of memory of your Jewish Holocaust... This of course does not mean we exclude other Holocausts,' Jones elaborated. 'The Children's Holocaust, the Gay and Lesbian Holocaust, the Christian Holocaust, the Muslim Holocaust, the Tibetan Holocaust, and so on and so forth, all are gathered up equally under our great Holocaust tent... Nor should we neglect to make mention of the other Holocausts... past, present, and future, of nations too numerous to list, from Cambodia to Chechnya, from Russia to Rwanda, from Kosovo to Kurdistan, from Armenia to East Timor, plus Ecological and Environmental Holocausts, the impending Nuclear Holocaust, the Herbal Holocaust targeting marijuana and other fruits and vegetables, the Endangered Species Holocausts of plants and animals from bluegrass to baby seals, from bladderpods to lesser long-nosed bats, plus the personal and private Holocausts of our brothers and sisters everywhere on this earth, from Brother Kwame in the Oppenheimer diamond mines of South Africa to Sister Katya in the brothels of Tel Aviv, from Brother Unborn Fetus tossed in a Dumpster in Los Angeles County to Sister Granny set adrift on an iceberg to starve to death in the Eskimo sea, and on and on in an ancient and endless cycle of sorrow and woe. We are all survivors - cancer survivors, AIDS survivors, sexual abuse survivors, alcoholism survivors, mental illness survivors, circumcision survivors, menstruation survivors, propaganda survivors, et cetera et cetera. Move over, Brother Maurice, the neighborhood is changing, you are not alone, and you are not unique. No longer can you sit there on the ground like a tribe of Jeremiahs girded in sackcloth, covered in ashes, crying out in lamentation, Behold and see, if there be any pain like unto my pain! Your monopoly has been busted, Brother Maurice, your Holy-cause is history. We reject the hierarchy and caste system of Holocausts. All Holocausts are equal in the eye of God. No one Holocaust is superior to another, no one Holocaust is deserving of special treatment or recognition. All Holocausts are unique." (pp 243-245)

And I can just hear Vic down the track a bit:

"'Brother Pusher,' Maurice began, attempting to inject a diplomatic polish into his voice, 'I hear you, I feel your pain, I know where you're coming from, believe me. I myself started a very successful business from mine own, Holocaust Connections, Inc., mit a similar idea - sharing the moral capital from the Holocaust. But between you and me, you're barking up the wrong fire hydrant this time. The Jewish Holocaust is bigger from both of us. It's the super Holocaust, the state-sponsored systematic extermination from the Jewish people for the 'crime' of existing by the most advanced and civilized nation on earth - that's the scientific definition. There was nothing like it before or after and there never will be. Nothing can compete. You should quit while you're still ahead, you got a lost cause. Believe me, I understand how you feel. Everybody likes to think their Holocaust is the best, everybody likes to think their Holocaust is unique, but face it, the Jewish Holocaust is the most unique. So let me give you a little piece of advice from an old man who has seen a thing or two in his time, okay? Give up this crazy, childish narishkeit what you're doing, and come express yourself constructively by joining me in mine business. I'll make you a senior vice president mit complete control from the African-American Holocaust portfolio. What do you say, Pushka? Is it a deal?'" (pp 246-247)

Stay tuned.

[*See my earlier posts on this matter: Sam Lipski's National Curriculum (12/4/10) and Holocaust Studies Make the Grade (28/12/10).]

Touche!

"John Howard has re-entered the culture wars, describing the Gillard government's national [F-10] school history curriculum as 'unbalanced, lacking in priorities and quite bizarre,' and accusing it of marginalising the Judeo-Christian ethic and purging British history." (Howard revives history wars, Dennis Shanahan, The Australian, 28/9/12)

 "This so-called Judeo-Christian ethic is bunkum. The West owes its greatness to the Greeks and Romans, with some help from the Arabs and Chinese. John Howard gets an F for history." (Michael Wong, Norman Park, QLD, The Australian, 29/9/12)

PS 1/10/12: This came in today's Australian. It's extraordinary the way the reappearance of John Howard can generate such hard-ons:

"The proposed national history curriculum is typical of the hidden horrors that an elite, clinging to the coat-tails of a naive Labor government, can inflict on us. John Howard has ensured that the proposal will not fly under the radar to carpet-bomb our educational institutions with leftist theories... One giveaway is the proposal that Australia be studied as a new-world settler society. Settler is a term to be uttered through gritted teeth. If the curriculum is adopted, all those Australians who have worked for generations in war and peace to build a nation reflecting man's highest ideals will have been snookered. The effrontery of the devisers is breathtaking but they won't get away with it." (Peter Edgar, Garran, ACT)

Zionising the Draft Modern History Curriculum 7

ACARA's final dot points, nine and ten, provide excellent scope for students to acquire a critical overview of the Middle East conflict.

The ninth reads as follows:

"The consequences of the involvement of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union in the Middle East over the period, on both the continuing conflict and the peace process."

As far as Britain is concerned, the key lesson for students is that, without Britain and its seriously dumb and immoral Balfour Declaration of 1917, there would be no conflict because no Jewish state. As that incomparable moral compass, JMN Jeffries, solemnly reminded his countrymen back in the thirties: 

"All we can do, and must do, is to see that any settlement is in accordance with the Arabs' rights. Justice, and not expediency of any kind, must guide us. We must avoid particularly false solutions based on forgiving all round in Palestine, based on Arabs and Zionists and Britons being deemed as involved in a common misfortune and upon their all starting afresh, under some scheme which will be the old scheme disguised. Forgiveness all round is, as a doctrine, only a label for forgiving ourselves. We are no victims of circumstances in Palestine along with the Arabs and the Jews. We made the circumstances: we, by the acts of our rulers, and we alone, are primarily responsible for the state of that country, and there must be no self-absolution proposed by us." (Palestine: The Reality, 1939, p 711)

With the United States, an excellent opportunity exists for students to compare the US's first intervention in Levantine politics, President Wilson's admirable King-Crane Commission of 1919, with the escalating rise in US support for Israel beginning with President Truman in 1948 and the hijacking of US Middle East policy today by the Israel lobby (AIPAC and Zionists embedded in government administrations, with GW Bush's neocons being only the most egregious examples).

By contrast with Britain and the US, the Soviets were only ever bit players in the Middle East conflict.

And here's the tenth and final dot point:

"Interpretations and representations of conflict in the Middle East, including those of participants, observers, international agencies and foreign governments."

There is scope here for exposing Israel's dominant Zionist narrative as a false historical narrative by placing the Zionist project in Palestine squarely in the context of the rise of European nationalisms and settler-colonial movements, and for viewing the Middle East conflict correctly as an ongoing, unresolved colonial conflict.

ECAJ's Peter Wertheim has chosen not to comment on either of these two dot points, adding only the following remark: 

"We would also suggest that an item be added about the core issues of the Israel-Palestinian conflict (Israel's right to exist, Palestinian statehood and borders, settlements, Jerusalem, refugees, water rights, security arrangements) and polling and other evidence of public attitudes to those issues on each side (eg Tel Aviv University's 'Peace Index' and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research)." 

This suggestion, if taken up, would conveniently focus students' attention on Israel's current wet dream: Palestinians abandoning their inalienable right to 78% of their historic homeland, with an apology for ever having bothered its 'real' owners in the first place; as much of the occupied Palestinian territories as Israel can squeeze out of the current bunch of Palestinian quislings known as the Palestinian Authority, allowing, if that, for a Swiss cheese statelet hemmed in on all sides by Israeli forces and settlements; an undivided Jerusalem; Palestinian refugees remaining in situ in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan or farmed out further afield; Israeli control of West Bank aquifers; and Palestinians forswearing forever the right to bear arms.

Except that that isn't really Israel's wet-dream. Israel's real wet dream is still that of Theodor Herzl's: the spiriting of a penniless [Palestinian Arab] population across the border. 

That concludes this 7-part series. I will of course be running a critical eye over this part of the final senior history curriculum when it finally emerges to see whether any of Wertheim's wish list has been incorporated. Watch this space.

Zionising the Draft Modern History Curriculum 6

ACARA's 8th dot point reads as follows:

"The impact of significant individuals and groups both in working for and in opposing peace, with particular reference to David Ben-Gurion, Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Hezbollah, Hamas, and 'Peace Now'."

Peace? What kind of peace? Tacitus' famous words in Agricola, quoting the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus, come to mind here. (For Rome, think today's imperial Israel.):

"These [Roman] plunderers of the world, after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

So what kind of peace are we talking about?

A mere absence of organised violence? The 'peace' of a nominally independent Palestinian bantustan? A peace predicated on millions of Palestinians remaining in exile while the likes of Wertheim can settle in any part of their former homeland, rebadged 'Israel', as they see fit? All, I'm afraid, deserts.

Recognising that peace without justice is no peace at all, I'd amend the above point by incorporating the term 'a just peace' or 'peace with justice', and let the apples fall where they may:

David Ben-Gurion's responsibility for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and his outright refusal to implement UNGA resolution 194, allowing the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands, would be factored in.

Menachem Begin's role in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and his 1982 invasion and occupation of Lebanon, which merely created new injustices and new enemies, leading to the creation of a Lebanese version of the Palestinian resistance, likewise.

Ditto for Ariel Sharon, whose 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip can in no way be legitimately spun as a milestone on the road to peace, given the memorable words of his adviser, Dov Weisglass:

"The disengagement is actually formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians... After all, what have I been shouting for the past year? That I found a device, in cooperation with the management of the world, to ensure that there will be no stopwatch here. That there will be no timetable to implement the [West Bank] settlers' nightmare. I have postponed that nightmare indefinitely... That is the significance of what we did. The significance is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze the process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress." (Quoted in The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003, Tanya Reinhart, 2006 p 43)

On the Palestinian side, consideration would have to be given to the transition from Article 6 of the Palestinian National Charter of 1968 ("The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians."), a position premised on the restoration of the demographic status quo which obtained in Palestine prior to the issuance of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and therefore a demand for absolute justice, to the emergence of the concept of the secular democratic state in Palestine, accommodating the post-Balfour Declaration Jewish colons and their descendants on a one-man, one-vote basis, regardless of creed, through to the adoption of a two-state solution by the Palestine National Congress in 1988.

On the other side, consideration would have to be given to the Israeli colonisation drive in the West Bank (1967-2012) which has, absent a full withdrawal of all Israeli troops and settlers, effectively rendered the two state solution impossible and brought about the de facto bi-national (but still apartheid) state which is today's Israel, characterised by occupied Palestinians with no rights, Israeli Palestinians with only second/third class citizenship rights, and a stateless, exiled Palestinian diaspora kept on ice so that the Wertheim's of this world can add a second home to their existing one should they choose to do so. 

Israel's adamant rejection of a just peace would also need to incorporate its rejection of every relevant UN resolution under the sun.

Finally, as a "significant individual" working for peace with justice, I'd include the UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, the author of  the UNGA's 'right of return' resolution 194, who strove for justice for Palestinian refugees only to be cruelly cut down by that penultimate form of Israeli rejectionism, the hail of bullets, in 1948.

ECAJ's Peter Wertheim seeks to pad the 8th dot point with Israeli leaders in order to take advantage of the Zionist-generated image of them as peacemakers:

"The eighth dot point concerning the impact of significant individuals and groups both in working for and in opposing peace should also include 'Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert' and should refer also to 'grass roots efforts to build cross-cultural co-operation and relationships.'"

Note that Wertheim doesn't feel the need to argue the case for the inclusion of Rabin, Peres and Olmert in this section. Maybe because any mileage to be had from Rabin's division of the West Bank into Areas A, B and C, leaving Israel still in occupation of around 60% of the territory, is more than negated by the fact that between 1993 and 1996 the settler population increased by 48% in the West Bank and by 62% in the Gaza Strip, and Peres' fleeting tenure of 7 months as PM saw no particular advance in peace with justice for the Palestinians. As for Olmert... but I grow weary, as I know you do too. Those interested in this particular 'peace-maker' can look up my 30/11/09 post No Bull.

Finally, if Wertheim's "grass roots efforts to build cross-cultural co-operation and relationships," whatever those may be, is to be incorporated in 'The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East' unit, I'd suggest it go under a separate dot point to do with Israel propaganda and smokescreens. Colonisers have never, repeat never, been in the business of "building cross-cultural co-operation and relationships" with colonised people.

Zionising the Draft Modern History Curriculum 5

ACARA's 7th dot point reads as follows:

 "The attempts to settle conflicts between Arabs and Israelis, including: the 1949 Armistace, Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), Egypt/Israeli Peace Accords (1973), Camp David Accords (1978/9) and Camp David Summit (2000), and the role of the United Nations."

ECAJ's Peter Wertheim suggests the following corrections...

"The seventh dot point refers to the 'Egyptian/Israeli Peace Accords (1973), Camp David Accords (1978/9)'. There were no 'Egypt/Israeli Peace Accords' in 1973. In fact, Egypt and Israel fought a war against each other in 1973 and eventually signed a Peace Treaty in 1979. The Camp David Accords were signed in 1978 (not 1978/9). We suggest that the necessary corrections be made."

... and adds:

"Further, in this item, which is dedicated to 'the attempts to settle conflicts between Arabs and Israelis', the entire post-1993 Oslo process has been omitted, as has the Israel-Jordan peace treaty of 1994, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority under the Interim Agreement in 1995; Palestinian elections in 1996 and 2006; the Camp David Summit in 2000, the Taba Summit in January 2001, the Road Map of 2003 and the Olmert Peace offer of 2008. We suggest that these items be added."

Since Wertheim's referencing of the various highly mythologised milestones of the so-called peace (or Oslo) process (1991/1993-?) gives scope for students to be exposed to the false idea, peddled by the Zionist propaganda mill and uncritically broadcast in the ms media a thousand times since, that the process amounts essentially to a chronicle of missed opportunities by obdurate Palestinians unwilling to compromise, students need to be reminded of the following basics:

a) The Palestinian leadership's starting point was an acceptance of a Palestinian state on just 22% of their historic homeland, ie in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a quite unbelievable concession (Edward Said saw it as a Palestinian Versailles);

b) The Israelis, on the other hand, have spent the past 20 or so years of the process arguing that the Palestinians should accept less than this 22% in order to accommodate their illegally-built settlements.

(To take but the best known and most mythologised 'peace process' milestone, the Camp David II Summit of July 2000 (often spun as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's 'generous offer') amounted to offering the  Palestinians a capital in the village of Abu Dis (not in East Jerusalem); an Israeli insistence on an 'end of conflict' declaration, neutralising UN resolutions 194 and 242; the Israeli retention of its main settlement blocs in the West Bank;  allowing other Israeli settlements to remain in the Palestinian state with the option of living under Palestinian rule until further notice; ditto for Israeli assets in the Jordan Valley. With Israeli settlements, their lands, roads and defensive areas remaining in situ, the Palestinian mini-state would have become a mere parody of itself with only around 40-50% of the West Bank under its control. (See Israeli Rejectionism: A Hidden Agenda in the Middle East Peace Process,  Zalman Amit & Daphna Levit, 2011, pp 132-135))  

c) During this period, Israel's colonization of the West Bank with thousands upon thousands of settlers has proceeded apace, giving the lie to its international posturing as an earnest seeker after peace.

d) The US, which, under one Zionised administration after another, has facilitated the process, can in no way be described as an honest broker.

e) In short, what we are dealing with here is what Henry Siegman has correctly labelled "the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history."

I'd suggest, therefore, that ACARA's dot point be amended as follows: 'The attempts to settle conflicts between Arabs and Israelis, including: UN resolutions 194 (1948) [conveniently omitted by Wertheim] and 242 (1967), the 1949 Armistace, the Egypt/Israeli Peace Accords (1978), and the US-brokered (UN-sidelined) 'peace process' (1991/1993-?).'

Further, given that the process' oft-stated goal of a viable and contiguous Palestinian mini-state has been rendered  increasingly unattainable by Israel's escalating colonization of the occupied Palestinian territories, there should be included room for discussion of a one-state solution to the 'conflict' with all that that entails for the dismantling of Israel's apartheid legislation and the transition from a 'Jewish' supremacist to a genuinely democratic state embracing both its Jewish and non-Jewish populations, including the returned Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967.

Zionising the Draft Modern History Curriculum 4

ACARA's 4th and 5th dot points have been spared Wertheim's criticism:

*The significance of the Iranian Revolution for relations within the Middle East and with the West. 

*Reasons for, and consequences of, other conflicts in the Middle East, with particular reference to the Lebanese Civil War, the Iran/Iraq War, and the Gulf Wars I (1990-1991) and II (2003)

But not the 6th:

*The role of the Arab League in establishing peaceful cooperation among the nations of the Middle East.

I would amend this as follows: The role of the Arab League in establishing peaceful cooperation among the nations of the Middle East and seeking a measure of justice for the dispossessed Palestinian people.

Wertheim, of course, will have none of this, seeing the Arab League as merely another impediment on the road to Israel's normalization in the region:

"The sixth dot point refers to 'The role of the Arab League in establishing peaceful cooperation among the nations of the Middle East'. This suggests that the role of the Arab League has always been a positive one. In fact, for many decades the Arab League led a primary and secondary boycott campaign against Israel (which technically remains extant) and committed its members to maintaining a state of war with Israel. We would suggest that the dot point be amended to read: An assessment of the role played by the League of Arab States as a regional organisation in the Middle East."

A key feature of Zionist propaganda, of course, is its hypocrisy, the Zionist movement happily deploying the boycott tactic to further its interests when required. For example, the Zionist leadership of Palestine's colons advocated and enforced the boycott of non-Jewish labour during the period of the British mandate. And more recently, we have the ongoing spectacle of Israel's crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip.

As for the Arab League's primary and secondary boycott of Israel, correctly imposed in response to the Palestinian Nakba over 60 years ago, this was indeed a positive strategy, as was the League's adoption of the famous 3 No's (no peace, no recognition, no negotiation with Israel) of the Khartoum summit in the wake of Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and the Golan Heights.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, the boycott is now a shadow of its former itself, as is the Khartoum Resolution, dealt a catastrophic blow by Egypt's President Sadat in 1979 when he broke Arab ranks and made peace with Israel.*

As Egypt's most famous journalist, Mohamed Heikal wrote in 1983:

"Egypt's opting out had a centrifugal effect on all other Arab countries, diverting their attention from what had for long been the dream of unity - however imperfectly understood or pursued, yet a noble and stimulating dream - into barren territorial rivalries, religious conflicts and social strife. The Arab world had become well and truly balkanized. No contrast could be greater than the increased practical support by all Arab governments for the Palestinians in general, and for the PLO in particular, during the 1960s and 1970s, and the reluctant agreement by these same governments in the summer of 1982, under American pressure, to receive some of these same Palestinians, after they had fought the Israeli army for nearly 3 months without support, as permanent and unwanted exiles. On foreign insistence the Arabs were dismantling all they had tried for the past generation to achieve. Nor is the Palestinian cause the only one to suffer by Egypt's defection. The Arab League, removed from Cairo to the periphery of the Arab world in Tunis, has lost most of its former authority; the Organization of African States and the non-aligned movement are shadows of what they once were. Under Nasser the 3 circles of which he saw Egypt as the centre - Arab, Islamic and African - had a reality; Sadat made Egypt the centre of nowhere." (Autumn of Fury: The Assassination of Sadat, Mohamed Heikal, 1983, p 285) 

[*See my 15/2/09 post A Likud Peace.]

To be continued...

Zionising the Draft Modern History Curriculum 3

Here is the Australian Curriculum, Assessment & Reporting Authority's third dot point:

*The nature and consequences of Palestinian reactions to Israel, including the Intifada (1987-94) and the 2nd Intifada (2000-2006).

And here's the response of ECAJ's Peter Wertheim:

"The third dot point refers to 'the nature and consequences of Palestinian reactions to Israel, including the Intifada 1987-94 and the 2nd Intifada 2000-2006'. This implies, incorrectly, that the predominant Palestinian reactions to Israel have been the two intifada's [sic]. We would suggest that the dot point be amended to read: 'the nature and consequences of Palestinian reactions to Israel from 1947, including rejectionism, pan-Arabism and armed conflict, the PLO and its Charter, terrorism, the phases strategy, Intifada 1 (1987-93), the PLO-Hamas split, boycotts and political campaigns against Israel's legitimacy.'"

My critique of Wertheim is as follows:

1) 1947? The implication being that the Palestinian leadership and people, who, at the time, constituted the majority of Palestine's population, should have thrown their kuffiyehs into the air, danced in the streets and otherwise joyfully welcomed the decision of the White Man's club, as the UN then was, to partition their homeland, without in any way consulting them or even referring the matter the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and hand over 56% of it to a recently arrived colon community which had purchased only around 6% of the land. And that's construed by Wertheim and friends as 'rejectionism'.

2) Pan-Arabism? How typically narcissistic! As if pan-Arabist ideas were a mere consequence of Zionist colonization.

3) Armed conflict? The historically correct term here should be 'armed struggle'. Armed conflict is what the British-backed Zionist project in Palestine was bound to lead to, indigenes, including our own, never having been known for taking kindly to being steamrolled by blow-ins. (Funny that!) Furthermore, armed conflict is what Israel routinely engages in to achieve the Zionist movement's historic goal of Eretz Israel, lock, stock and barrel (plus any additional bits of land it can get away with such as Syria's Golan Heights). Armed struggle, on the other hand, is a means sanctioned by international law by which colonized peoples may regain their trampled rights. For example, UNGA Resolution 33/44 of 23 November 1979 reads in part: "[The General Assembly] Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and alien domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle" (para 2), and "Strongly condemns all Governments which do not recognize the right of self-determination and independence of all peoples still under colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation, notably the peoples of Africa and the Palestinian people." (para 12)

4) Terrorism? The movement which gave us the Irgun, the Stern Gang, Plan Dalet, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, countless massacres, aggressions, invasions, occupations, and the quaintly-named Israel Defence Force dares to throw around the 't' word?

5) The phases strategy? You mean those dweadful people (who don't exist according to Golda Meir and Newt Gingrich) have plotted to regain their homeland bit by bit? OMG, such wickedness! They must've taken a leaf out of Ben-Gurion's book when he said in 1938: "[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state we will abolish the partition of the country and expand to the whole Land of Israel." (One Palestine Complete, Tom Segev, p 403)

6) PLO-Hamas split? Hello? Hamas was never a part of the PLO.

7) BDS? Absolutely - the more our students learn about BDS the better. Bring it on. Well done, Peter.

To be continued...

Zionising the Draft Modern History Curriculum 2

Here is the Australian Curriculum, Assessment & Reporting Authority's second dot point: 

*The continuing story of conflict between Arabs and Israelis, with particular reference to the Suez War (1956), the Six-Day War (1967), the Munich Olympics (1972), the Yom Kippur War (1973), Israeli invasions of Lebanon (1978, 1982, 2006), and Israel's decision to disengage with Gaza in 2005.

My back-of-an-envelope critique of the above is as follows:

Inexplicably, one of the two key actors in this vicious colonial drama, the Palestinian refugees (comprising around 85% of the entire Palestinian population of the 78% of Palestine overrun by Zionist forces in 1948), stateless and struggling to survive in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza, fail to make an appearance here. Ditto for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Palestinian resistance movement led by Arafat, Habash, etc. The focus is entirely on state actors. Why? Can't ACARA handle the concept that resistance follows ethnic cleansing and apartheid as surely as night follows day? Note too the adoption of blatantly Zionist terminolgy - Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War. Is this ignorance or design? Is it really too much to ask for more neutral terminology such as the 'June 1967 War' or the 'October War' (a mean between 'Yom Kippur' and 'Ramadan' War)? Surely, if it's good enough for the vicious, unprovoked British, French, Israeli aggression against Egypt in 1956 to be construed as a 'war', then I'm hardly asking for too much. Alternatively, why not simply call them the Second, Third and Fourth Arab-Israeli Wars? And as for Munich 1972, why should a hostage drama gone wrong, involving the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes, take precedence over the plethora of far more deadly Israeli massacres of Palestinian and other Arab civilians throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, to go no further?

Now here's Peter Wertheim's responses to ACARA's second dot point, followed by my own comments:

"A fundamental difficulty with the second dot point is that it fails to distinguish between (i) conflicts between Israel and the Arab States and (ii) conflicts between Israel and terrorist organizations, and omits entirely (iii) conflicts between the Palestinians and the Arab States ('Black September' in Jordan 1970, Lebanon 1975-1982, Syria 1982) and (iv) internal Palestinian conflicts (Gaza 2007). These shortcomings should be corrected."

The fundamental difficulty here, of course, is Wertheim's deployment of the loaded term "terrorist organisations" when describing armed Palestinian resistance to Zionist colonization. Note too, the too-clever-by-half inclusion of "conflicts between the Palestinians and the Arab States," and "internal Palestinian conflicts," designed to paint the Palestinians as merely incorrigible troublemakers  and misfits, incapable of living peacefully either with other Arabs or even themselves. That the Palestinian resistance movement had to operate from neighbouring Arab countries, each with their own interests and agendas (or, more to the point, stand up to USraeli glove-puppets such as the Jordanian monarchy or Lebanon's Phalangists) is apparently neither here nor there for Wertheim. Likewise, the portrayal of the Hamas government's pre-emptive coup against the USraeli-backed Fateh in 2007 as a purely "internal conflict" is risible. Oh, and that bit about 'Palestinian-Syrian war of 1982', I couldn't for the life of me find any record of it. Plenty of action in 1982, mind you, all to do with Israel laying waste to West Beirut, but, sadly, nothing on Palestinians mixing it with Syrians.

"The second dot point also refers to 'Israeli invasions of Lebanon (1978, 1982, 2006)'. For context and completeness this should be amended to read: 'terrorist incursions into Israel from Lebanon after 1970; the Israeli military intervention in Lebanon in 1978 (Operation Litani) and the invasion of 1982; Operation Accountability (1993) and Operation Grapes of Wrath (1996); the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon (1985-2000) and the final withdrawal in May 2000; the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006'."

Oh I see, Palestinian refugees should've just sat around on their hands in Lebanon, content in the knowledge that the Israelis who evicted them were doing an infinitely better job of running Palestine - sorry, Israel - than they, and realized just how damn lucky they were to have new, wonderful, Lebanese neighbours. But no, these chronic malcontents just couldn't help themselves, could they? Instead of celebrating the good turn Israel had done them and disappearing quietly into the Lebanese woodwork, they just had to periodically gatecrash the party south of the border and make thorough nuisances of themselves, leaving the long-suffering Israelis with no choice - none! - but to periodically invade - sorry, stage operations in - Lebanon. And if any Lebanese happened to get in the way, well, they should've taken comfort in the fact that those invasions - sorry, operations - were undertaken for a very good reason, so no hard feelings, Messrs Begin, Sharon and Olmert, keep up the good work and God bless.

"Also in the second dot point, the words 'disengage with Gaza' should be amended to read 'withdrawal from Gaza'. Israel is still 'engaged' with Gaza in that it supplies most of the electricity used in Gaza and the humanitarian supply of goods to Gaza by the UN is via Israeli territory with the co-operation of the Israeli government."

I'm sorry, I simply cannot dignify the above with a response - except to say: don't ever let anyone tell you that the Israel lobby in general and ECAJ's Peter Wertheim in particular doesn't have a sense of humour.

To be continued...

Zionising the Draft Modern History Curriculum 1

Not content with warping our Middle East policy, interfering with our right to peaceful protest, and intimidating our mass media, the Zionist lobby also seeks to fiddle with our national draft Modern History curriculum:

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just one area of the new national draft Modern History curriculum that the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) says needs to be changed. Earlier this month, ECAJ executive director Peter Wertheim wrote to the Australian Assessment & Reporting Authority [ACARA] to suggest a number of changes and clarifications to the draft national curricula for both Modern and Ancient History. They include correcting an implication that the establishment of the State of Israel was the main determinant of the deterioration in relations between Jews and Arabs; disputing the phrase 'dispossession of Arab lands'; and questioning why the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty plus all post-Oslo peace attempts with the Palestinians have been ommitted." (Changes required in new history syllabus, The Australian Jewish News, 27/7/12)

To see what's at stake here, nothing less than an attempt at the Zionist brainwashing of our senior history students, I thought it'd be useful to quote in full each of the draft curriculum's dot points objected to by Wertheim (to be found in the unit 'The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East'), reproduce his responses to these, and then critique both. (Please note that, for reasons of space, my critiques will perforce appear non-consecutively over the course of this month under the title above.

Here's the draft curriculum's first dot point: *The British mandate in Palestine and the significance of the establishment of the state of Israel, including the immediate consequences for relations between Jews and Arabs, the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-49, and the nature of the dispossession of Palestinian lands.

And here's Wertheim's complaint: "The first dot point allows for no historical background, conflates several distinct but important matters and draws tendentious links between different events. For example it mixes together 'the British mandate in Palestine' and 'the establishment of the state of Israel' and implies that the latter was the main determinant of the deterioration in 'relations between Jews and Arabs'. In fact, organised Arab attacks against Jews in Palestine began in 1920 and a full-scale civil war against the Jewish population was declared by the Arab Higher Committee (Palestinian leadership) and Arab League following the endorsement of partition by the UN General Assembly in November 1947, a critical event that the draft has omitted. The expression 'dispossession of Arab [sic] lands' carries with it an assumption about rightful ownership which is heavily contested and is a core issue of the conflict..."

My critique of Wertheim is as follows:

1) Mixing together 'the British mandate in Palestine' and 'the establishment of the state of Israel'? What's the problem? The British mandate was the womb from which the state of Israel emerged. Without Britain's facilitation of mass Jewish immigration and land sales to the Jews, its role in supporting the growth of a powerful Jewish militia, its refusal to grant meaningful political representation to Palestine's majority Arab community, and its vicious repression of indigenous Palestinian Arab resistance to Zionist colonization, Israel would never have come into being.

2) Of course indigenous Palestinian Arab opposition to the Zionist project didn't begin with the creation of Israel in 1948. It developed gradually as news of British support for the creation of a 'national home for the Jewish people' (in the form of the Balfour Declaration of 1917) spread among the Palestinian Arabs, and escalated in tandem with increases in Jewish immigration and land acquisition and the incorporation of the 'national home' policy into the text of the League of Nations mandate for Palestine. The indigenous Palestinian Arab population correctly saw their homeland passing into Jewish hands under the protection of British bayonets. Decrying (or expressing surprise at) Palestinian attacks on Jewish colons in such a context is akin to decrying American Indian or Australian Aboriginal attacks on the white settlers who flooded into their lands.

3) Full-scale war against the Jewish population by the Palestinian Arabs following the partition of Palestine in November 1947? This is a monstrous misrepresentation. After 1939, Zionist forces and terror gangs first turned their guns on the British mandate government, forcing the British to hand the problem they had so foolishly created with their 'national home' policy to the UN for deliberation. Then, following that body's outrageous decision to partition Palestine without consulting its people in November 1947, the Zionists turned their guns on the majority Palestinian Arab population in an attempt to secure a Jewish Palestine with as few Arabs as possible. Between December 1947 and May 1948, before the intervention of Arab armies, Zionist forces implemented their notorious Plan Dalet, systematically driving the Palestinians out of their villages, towns and cities, and creating the Palestinian refugee problem that continues to be the nub of the conflict today. The critical event omitted in the draft is the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the Palestinian Nakba, which continued despite the post-May Arab military intervention. (Happily, at least the latter managed to prevent Zionist forces from overrunning all of mandate Palestine in 1948.)

 4) For Wertheim to suggest that the fact of Palestinian dispossession (you'll note that he can't even bring himself to use the word Palestinian, substituting 'Arab' instead) is contestable is a measure of his ideological zealotry and embrace of a long discredited historical narrative. Taking his submission seriously would be the equivalent of the Curriculum Assessment Authority taking seriously that of a flat earther with respect to the science curriculum.

 Finally, here are Wertheim's suggested changes:

"We therefore suggest that the dot point be amended and broken down into two dot points so as to read: *'Ancient historical background to the conflict; the terms of the British mandate in Palestine; the UN General Assembly resolution to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab States (1947); Jewish and Arab responses, political and military. *The end of the Mandate and establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948; the military invasion by neighbouring Arab states of Israel and the territories proposed for the Palestinian Arab State; the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem; the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries and their resettlement."

My critique follows:

1) Ancient historical background? As in God promised Palestine to the Jews? Oh, puh-lease! The 1915 Hussein-McMahon correspondence, in which Britain recognised Arab independence within frontiers which included Palestine, would be more the point.

2) Terms of the British mandate? No problem there, as long as students learn how, by incorporating the 'national home' policy, the Palestine mandate violated Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant.

3) The partition resolution of November 1947? No problem there either, so long as students get to learn about the UN's refusal to refer the matter of partition to the International Court of Justice (ICJ); the sheer chutzpah of handing 56% of Palestine to a recently arrived minority colon community in defiance of the wishes of the indigenous majority population whose right to self-determination under Article 1(2) of the UN Charter was thus violated; and the Zionist-initiated pressure tactics used by the US to swing the vote.

4) Jewish and Arab responses, both political and military? Absolutely, including the Zionist forces' campaign of ethnic cleansing (which, as I've already said, was well under way before the creation of Israel in May 1948, and which continued through to at least 1950); Zionist violations of the terms of the partition resolution, including the overrruning of 22% of the area allotted to the proposed Arab state and the takeover of west Jerusalem, which was supposed to have been administered by the UN; and the overwhelming superiority of Zionist forces vis a vis both those of the Palestinian Arab community and those of the Arab states.

5) The expulsion of Arab Jews? Isn't it amazing? On the one hand Wertheim baulks at the fact of Palestinian dispossession in 1948, but construes the later Zionist campaigns of the 50s to uproot Arab Jews in Iraq and elsewhere as expulsions by Arabs. No, what would be more relevant to the unit would be a) the highlighting of Israel's adamant refusal to implement UN resolution 194, calling for the return of the Palestinian refugees, and b) the large-scale destruction of the refugees' villages by Zionist forces and the later parcelling out of their land, dubbed 'absentee property', to Jews.

This is not to say that ACARA's dot point is perfect. Far from it. Unbelievably, there is no mention of the Balfour Declaration and the circumstances in which it was issued. There is no attempt to contextualise the British mandate and the growth of the Zionist colon community in Palestine as yet another colonial-settler state in the making. Nor is there any reference to indigenous Palestinian resistance to this, in particular the Palestinian revolt of 1936-39. And how curious is the wording 'the nature of the dispossession of Palestinian lands'? The enormity of what befell the Palestinian people in 1948 cannot be swept under the carpet in this fashion: they were dispossessed of their patrimony, their homeland, their homes, lands, bank accounts, businesses - everything - and, virtually overnight, reduced to the status of impoverished, stateless refugees. ACARA's dot point gives this very short shrift indeed. To be continued...

Holocaust Studies Make the Grade

A campaign by elements of the Israel lobby to have the Jewish component of the Nazi genocide, aka 'The Holocaust'*, included in Australia's national history curriculum (see my 12/4/10 post Sam Lipski's National Curriculum) has finally borne fruit.

[* In his invaluable book, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000), Norman Finkelstein calls 'The Holocaust' "an ideological representation of the Nazi genocide."]

According to the Australian Jewish News: "The official inclusion of Holocaust studies in the new national curriculum has received a cautious welcome from community leaders and educators. The curriculum was approved by a Ministerial Council meeting in Canberra and endorsed by state and territory education ministers last week... Holocaust studies have been included in two areas of the history curriculum - as part of the Australian immigration story to be taught in year 6 and as part of World War II studies in year 10. Sydney Jewish Museum education director Avril Alba described the inclusion of Shoah studies in the new curriculum as 'a positive step forward... [I]t provides teachers and students with an excellent opportunity to study both the context within which the Holocaust took place and the radicalising effect of the war." (Green light for Shoah studies, 17/12/10)

A cautious welcome?

Ah, "[b]ut [Alba] voiced concern over the limited time the subject is given in the curriculum, saying 'the challenge for teachers will be to both contextualise the unfolding of the Holocaust within the broader context of World War II but also to point out its distinctive features'." (ibid)

OK, Avril, to accomodate your concern, we'll omit the bit in the WWII depth study which goes: "An overview of the causes and course of WWII."

Ah, but "[t]he Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) also expressed reservations. 'The revised content description appears to be an improvement on the original draft', said ECAJ executive director Peter Wertheim. 'One difficulty is that study of the Holocaust is limited to the years 1942-1945. This is inaccurate and omits the Nazi program of mass shootings and other atrocities between 1939 and 1941 in which 1.5 million Jews were systematically put to death'." (ibid)

OK, Peter, 1939 through to 1945 it is. We'll just drop the bit about the "use of the atomic bomb."

Ah, but "Pratt Foundation chief executive and AJN columnist Sam Lipski earlier this year cited concerns about how the syllabus might be delivered if the Shoah wasn't contextualised. 'Without also studying who the Jews were, how they began, and what they've had to say about themselves and to the world over 3 millennia, a generation of Australians will gain a misleading picture', Lipski wrote in an AJN column." (ibid)

OK, Sam, we fully understand your concern, and you'll be pleased to hear that we're seriously considering dropping the history syllabus altogether and replacing it with Jewish/Israel studies.

Seriously though, if dunum by dunum, goat by goat is your mantra and modus operandi, can enough ever really be enough?

Not that I'm the only one ever to have had reservations about The Holocaust being used to promote Israel. Even acclaimed Nazi hunter and Zionist Simon Wiesenthal, in Jerusalem for the 1961 trial of Eichmann, had initial misgivings: "Wiesenthal did not object to the tendency to present the extermination of the Jews as a vindication of Zionist ideology and as justification for the existence of the State of Israel. But Israel's goal of gaining a monopoly over the legacy of the Holocaust aroused a sense of discomfort in him." (Simon Wiesenthal: The Life & Legends, Tom Segev, 2010, p 153)

This discomfort, of course, didn't last long. When, in the wake of Israel's conquest of the West Bank in 1967, it was suggested to Wiesenthal that it was "tragic" that an attempt to redress the injustice to the Jews by creating Israel had given rise to a fresh injustice to the Palestinians, he was adamant: "No, it is not tragic. The creation of Israel was the only possible and the only correct reaction to Auschwitz. There had to be a country in the world where the Jews were the landlords instead of tolerated guests." (ibid, p 219)

If the Wiesenthal line on The Holocaust is the one advanced in our year 10 classrooms, Zionist propagandists will have achieved a significant victory. One can but wonder at the contents of any curriculum support material that might be sent by ECAJ to our schools. On the other hand, if classroom discussion of one terrible injustice turns to discussion of another... watch this space.

Anyway, for teachers of year 10 history out there who are serious about their subject and who may have been wondering just what the real significance of the Nazi genocide is, here's our big picture man, James Petras: "The Nazi genocide against the Jews is an example of the ruling elite victimizing a minority population to create cross-class cohesion, diverting the masses from internal labor-capital conflicts and the real or potential costs of imperialist policies. To deflect their focus on capitalist exploitation, the ruling elite directed worker and middle class discontent to Jewish bankers and capitalists. This propaganda was especially effective in professions like medicine and the retail trade in which competition for positions and market shares between Jews and non-Jews was especially intense. The transition from intensified exclusion and ethnic discrimination to the practice of genocide coincided with Germany's massive military, economic and political expansion and conquest of the late 1930s and early 1940s. As the costs of empire-building increased, so did the need to deflect the increasing anger and anxiety of the population by giving their ills a perpetrator's face (the Jews), and giving them lower ranking populations to despise (the Slavs). Parallel to the Jewish-Nazi Holocaust, the German imperial conquest of great swaths of Eastern Europe and especially Russia led to an even greater holocaust, the killing of some 9-10 million Slavs and the enslavement of many millions more to the imperial-capital war machine." (Genocides, Cohesion & Imperialism, in Rulers & Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants, James Petras, 2007, p 77)

Chew on that, Peter, Sam.

Sam Lipski's National Curriculum

"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." (Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, 2000, p 3)

Efforts by elements of the Israel lobby to have what they term 'Shoah studies/Holocaust education' included in Australia's new national history curriculum for year 10 have had a measure of success with the appearance in the draft curriculum, of the following unit:

"12. Depth Study 1. The Great War & its aftermath: The significance of WW II, including the Holocaust and use of the atomic bomb. Content elaboration: (1) understanding the social & scientific impact of the war including the nature and effects of the Holocaust; what total war meant for civilians in Asia, Europe & Russia; developments in science & technology (2) examining reasons for the defeat of Germany; discussing the dropping of the A-bombs & the Japanese surrender (3) debating the significance of WW II (eg assessing the 'Good War'); looking at the impact of propaganda; analysing the contribution & change in status of women; study migration away from Europe; comparing the 1945 post war settlement (eg the Marshall Plan with Versailles Peace arrangements; discussing consequences of the Holocaust)"

That Israel lobbyists are more concerned with making pro-Israel hay out of the Holocaust than with its place in history soon becomes apparent, however:

"The inclusion of Holocaust education within the proposed history curriculum was not strictly satisfactory though, with [Robert] Goot [of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ)] criticising the decision to incorporate the Shoah as part of a wider unit looking at the aftermath of WW II. 'The conflation of themes, and the attempt to assimilate other large and complex areas of study into the curriculum for teaching the Holocaust, invites confusion and will make what is already a challenging teaching and teacher-training task virtually impossible', he said. 'The formulation of the curriculum concerning the Holocaust needs to be refined'." (Holocaust studies welcomed into new national curriculum, The Australian Jewish News, 5/3/10)

Now, leading Australian Zionist, Pratt Foundation CEO and former AJN editor Sam Lipski has weighed in with his concerns that, even should ECAJ get the kind of refinement they want, this would still not ensure, from the Zionist perspective, the right result:

"While welcoming its inclusion as 'an important step forward', the ECAJ said it was 'disappointing' that the Holocaust was listed within the wider topic of WWII, and 'regrettable' that the draft's focus was on discussing the Holocaust's 'consequences', rather than on what actually happened. Together with Jewish educators and other community stakeholders, the ECAJ will be expressing these concerns during the public consultations. I wish them well... But nobody should have any great expectations. Even if the government planners accept every one of the Jewish community's suggestions - and that's unlikely - there's no way of ensuring that's how the curriculum will be taught in the classroom... given the track record of many Australian teachers on allied subjects such as Israel and the Middle East..." (Shoah studies are not enough, AJN, 9/4/10)

ECAJ's concern about discussing the Holocaust's 'consequences', would, I imagine, relate to any suggestion that Europe somehow sought to assuage its guilt over the Holocaust by acquiescing in Zionism's takeover of Palestine, or, to put it in terms that a year 10 student would surely understand, because the Germans perpetrated the Holocaust against European Jewry, the Palestinians had to pay with the loss of their homeland. You can just see the hands going up: 'Miss, that's not fair!' No, unless the Holocaust is made a stand-alone unit, any such discussion could prove counter-productive from a Zionist perspective. And then you've got Lipski's Zio-centric concern about ensuring how the curriculum will be taught in the classroom... given the track record of many Australian teachers on allied subjects such as Israel and the Middle East.

So what does he propose? Why, the further (even preferred) inclusion in the national curriculum of Zionist foundational mythology no less: "The Passover haggadah* in the history section... and the biblical text from Exodus, Chapters 1-20, in the English section."

Lipski avers that "the Jewish interest, and the wider Australian interest, would be better served if the coming generation of Australian students learnt about Jews and Judaism from 'the exodus master story' rather than from 'the Holocaust master story'." As he explains: "Studying the Holocaust in a Jewish historical vacuum... inevitably means that it will present Jews as uniquely victimised in human history - and only as that. Without also studying who the Jews were, how they began, and what they've had to say about themselves and to the world over 3 millenia, a generation of Australians will gain a misleading picture. Of no benefit to them, and certainly none to the Jews."

[*The Haggadah is a Jewish religious text that sets out the order of the Passover Seder. Reading the Haggadah is a fulfillment of the scriptural commandment to each Jew to 'tell your son' about the Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt as described in the Book of Exodus in the Torah. (wikipedia)]

Lipski's plaint offers a fascinating insight into the Zionist mindset. On the one hand, while he wouldn't balk at any pro-Israel propaganda dividends accruing from pushing what Finkelstein calls the "specious victimhood" of the Holocaust master story in the national curriculum (the best possible ECAJ refinement), he believes that only the addition of the exodus master narrative would ensure the maximisation of such dividends.

And what exactly is this exodus master narrative alluded to by Lipski? Well, it just so happens that it's the first installment of Zionism's national mythology. The proverbial thin end of the Zionist wedge, so to speak. To quote from the puckish Shlomo Sand, who is to Zionist mythology what Richard Dawkins is to religious mythologies in general:

"For Israelis, specifically those of Jewish origin, such [modern European national] mythologies are far-fetched, whereas their own history rests on firm and precise truths. They know for a certainty that a Jewish nation has been in existence since Moses received the tablets of the law on Mount Sinai, and that they are its direct and exclusive descendants (except for the 10 tribes, who are yet to be located). They are convinced that this nation 'came out' of Egypt; conquered and settled 'the Land of Israel', which had famously been promised it by the deity; created the magnificent kingdom of David and Solomon, which then split into the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. They are also convinced that this nation was exiled, not once but twice, after its periods of glory - after the fall of the First Temple in the 6th century BCE, and again after the fall of the Second Temple, in 70 CE. Yet even before that second exile, this unique nation had created the Hebrew Hasmonean kingdom, which revolted against the wicked influence of Hellenization. They believe that these people - their 'nation', which must be the most ancient - wandered in exile for nearly 2,000 years and yet, despite this prolonged stay among the gentiles, managed to avoid integration with, or assimilation into, them. The nation scattered widely, its bitter wanderings taking it to Yemen, Morocco, Spain, Germany, Poland, and distant Russia, but it always managed to maintain close blood relations among the far-flung communities and to preseve its distinctiveness. Then, at the end of the 19th century, they contend, rare circumstances combined to wake the ancient people from its long slumber and to prepare it for rejuvenation and for the return to its ancient homeland. And so the nation began to return, joyfully, in vast numbers. Many Israelis still believe that, but for Hitler's horrible massacre, 'Eretz Israel' would soon have been filled with millions of Jews making 'aliyah' by their own free will, because they had dreamed of it for thousands of years. And while the wandering people needed a territory of its own, the empty, virgin land longed for a nation to come and make it bloom. Some uninvited guests had, it is true, settled in this homeland, but since 'the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion' for 2 millenia, the land belonged only to that people, and not to that handful without history who had merely stumbled upon it. Therefore the wars waged by the wandering nation in its conquest of the country were justified; the violent resistance of the local population was criminal; and it was only the (highly unbiblical) charity of the Jews that permitted these strangers to remain and dwell among and beside the nation, which had returned to its biblical language and its wondrous land." (The Invention of the Jewish People, 2009, pp 16-17)

The only thing I can't understand is Lipski's recommendation that Exodus, Chapters 1-20, be included in the English section of the national curriculum. Isn't it supposed to be history?