Jared Kushner's Jobs & Growth Plan

On November 2, 1917, the British wartime cabinet issued the infamous Balfour Declaration. I quote it here in full:

"Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of his Majesty's Government the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the cabinet.

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation,

Yours sincerely, Arthur James Balfour."

J.M.N Jeffries analysis of this document in Chapter XI of his book Palestine: The Reality (1939) is, of course, the definitive account of the document's deceptions and can be accessed on this blog in its entirety under the label JMN Jeffries.

I note only here the following words of Jeffries with respect to the above clause:

"That their religious rights should not be prejudiced, indeed, was satisfactory, though there was not very much in that. Happily, it could be taken for granted. Wherever Britain rules religious rights are preserved.

"The crux arrives with 'civil rights.' What are 'civil rights'? all turns on this point. If civil rights remain undefined it is only a mockery to guarantee them. To guarantee anything, and at the same time not to let anyone know what it is, that is Alice in Wonderland legislation. 'I guarantee your civil rights,' said the White Queen to Alice in Palestine-land. 'Oh, thank you!' said Alice, 'what are they, please?' 'I'm sure I can't tell you, my dear,' said the White Queen, 'but I'll guarantee very hard.'

"If only the Declaration had been as innocent as the text of Alice in Wonderland. Its nonsense is deceptive nonsense, written with vicious intention. The Arabs were guaranteed civil rights, again because to the unalert ear it sounded as though they were being assured a man's normal rights, the freedom to choose the government of his country which every decent man should enjoy, the common political rights of a democratic regime.

"But in fact the Arabs were not assured these at all. The effect, and the aim, of the clause actually was to withdraw from the Arabs (fighting or suffering for us at the time under promise of independence) those very rights of independence for which they had contracted; to say nothing of their natural title to them. By sleight of tongue civil rights were substituted for political rights... As practice went, 'civil rights' was an expression which was left without any interpretation, and so had no existence as a surety or guarantee at all." (p 179)

Now if we turn to the Foreword of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner's slick Peace to Prosperity: The Economic Plan: A New Vision for the Palestinian People document, issued by the Trump White House, we see that the entire panoply of international law upon which the Palestinian case has hitherto rested since the Nakba of 1948 would be swept willy-nilly into the proverbial dustbin of history, and be replaced with the flakiest load of neoliberal economic jargon ever seen since the advent of that malign and soul-destroying ideology (the upper case bolds, btw, are Kushner's):

Kushner's Economic Plan touts three initiatives:

"The first... will UNLEASH THE ECONOMIC POTENTIAL of the Palestinians... The second... will EMPOWER THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE to realize their ambitions.... The third... will ENHANCE PALESTINIAN GOVERNANCE, improving the public sector's ability to serve its citizens and enable private-sector growth."

"These three initiatives," declares Kushner, "are more than just a vision of a promising future for the Palestinian people - they are also the foundation for an implementable plan. Capital raised through this international effort will be placed into a new fund administered by an established multilateral development bank. Accountability, transparency, anti-corruption, and conditionality safeguards will protect investments and ensure that capital is allocated efficiently and effectively. The fund's leadership will work with beneficiary countries to outline annual investment guidelines, development goals, and governance reforms that will support project implementation on the areas identified within Peace to Prosperity. Grants, occasional loans, and other support will be distributed to projects that meet the defined criteria through a streamlined process that will enable both flexibility and accountability."

Note that at no point in the above is Israel itself expected to foot the bill for its decades-long crimes against the Palestinian people. This 'thinking' is the equivalent of Israel wanting Iran crushed, and wanting the Americans to do it for them, mentioned in my previous post Morrison Itching to Attack Iran.

Now the following may seem like something of an historical detour - however, the long history of Palestine matters if we are to understand its present history.

One of the first British intellectuals to be persuaded to visit Palestine in 1919 by the Zionist movement was G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), the prominent writer, philosopher, novelist, essayist, and convert from High Church Anglicanism to Catholicism.

But, unlike so many who have been on propaganda tours to the Holy Land since they were first organised by Britain's political Zionists in 1918, Chesterton was a remarkably independent observer and one not at all afraid to voice his reservations about the contradictions he found between the goals of political Zionism, as represented in the person of Dr Chaim Weizmann (Balfour's interlocutor), and the legitimate fear of the Palestinian Arabs with respect to those goals. The following extract echoes both Chesterton's partiality towards political Zionism as well as his capacity to see things through Palestinian Arab eyes. It comes from his book The New Jerusalem (1920):

"If the Zionists wish to quiet the fears of the Arabs, surely the first thing to do is discover what the Arabs are afraid of. And very little investigation will reveal the simple truth that they are very much afraid of sharks; and that in their book of symbolic or heraldic zoology it is the Jew who is adorned with the dorsal fin and the crescent of cruel teeth... But the case is yet more curious than that. These simple tribes are afraid, not only of the dorsal fin and dental arrangements which Dr. Weizmann may say (with some justice) that he has not got; they are also afraid of the other things which he says he has got. They maybe in error, at the first superficial glance, in mistaking a respectable professor for a shark. But they can hardly be mistaken in attributing to the respectable professor what he himself considers as his claims to respect. And as the imagery about the shark may be too metaphorical... there is not the smallest difficulty in stating in plain words what the Arabs fear in the Jews. They fear, in exact terms, their knowledge and their experience and their money. The Arabs fear exactly the three things which he says they need. Only the Arabs would call it financial trickery and an experience of political intrigue, and the power given by hoards of money not only of their own but of other peoples. About Dr. Weizmann and the true Zionists this is self-evidently unjust; but about Jewish influence of the more visible and vulgar kind it has to be proved to be unjust." (pp 200-01)

IOW, there was never a point in the history of modern Palestine when Palestinians had nothing to fear from the Zionist settler-colonial entity planted in their midst first by the British, and, since the time of US president Truman, maintained, vastly expanded and made infinitely more violent towards the indigenous Palestinians by the United States.

So, in sum, what we have here with Kushner's Plan is a new Balfour Declaration, but one without even the spurious "civil and religious rights" exposed by Jeffries in Palestine: The Reality.

In fact, Kushner's Plan resembles nothing so much as a variation on the Australian Coalition government's oft-repeated mantra, 'jobs and growth'.

Jonathan Freedland's Dream Zionists

Here's the liberal Zionist editor of The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland, pretending that Netanyahu's victory at the polls will be equally bad for Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, and omitting the fact that it was the former who enabled it:

"So Palestinians will have to brace themselves for a Trump 'peace plan' that is likely to deny them the territory they need to build a state of their own. Meanwhile, Netanyahu's victory promises a further assault on democratic norms and the rule of law inside Israel. It surely spells gloom for the long-term prospects of both peoples, but they are used to that by now. It's been this way on and off for most of the last quarter century. For truly this is the age of Netanyahu." (Netanyahu's victory means life is about to get worse for Palestinians, theguardian.com, 10/4/19)

George Orwell would be turning in his grave if he knew Freedland had been awarded a special Orwell Prize in May 2014 for his 'journalism'. Certainly, at least on the subject of Palestine/Israel, he seems incapable of producing anything other than pro-Israel PR.

In a 2012 New Statesman essay, Yearning for the same land, Freedland reveals why.

In it, he argues unconvincingly that, alongside the Zionism we're all familiar with, "the expansionist desire to control the entire biblical land of Israel," there's another "true" Zionism, consisting of "the more modest claim that there should be a Jewish national home within historic Palestine," and that that is the Zionism he, Freedland, professes. IOW, it's two states for two peoples, with the Palestinians getting a mere 22% of their historic homeland at most, contingent on the unlikely event of every soldier and settler pulling up stakes and getting out.

Whatever their imagined difference, both Zionisms, of course, subscribe to the same dogma, namely that Jews constitute not a faith community, but a "people" who, "like every other people, have a right to self-determination in the historic land of their birth." Although the concept of Jewish peoplehood has no basis in fact (and has been exploded most recently by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand in his 2009 book The Invention of the Jewish People), Freedland accepts it uncritically. Nor does he acknowledge the absurdity of this fictional people's achieving its fictional right of self-determination at the expense of another.

Sensing he's on shaky ground here, he attempts to bolster his case by shamelessly playing the Holocaust card: "The Jewish people, scythed by the Holocaust and after centuries of persecution, were gasping for breath in 1948; their need for a home was as great as that of any people in history. They had the right to act, even though the cost for another people, the Palestinians, was immense." Overlooked, of course, is the bleeding obvious that it was Germany, not the Palestinians, who perpetrated the Holocaust, not to mention the fact that the majority of Jews displaced by the war would have preferred to migrate to the United States and elsewhere than to Palestine.

Freedland goes on to claim that there was no "logical" connection between the pre-1967 Zionist colonisation of Palestine and the post-1967 Zionist colonisation of its West Bank and Gaza remnants. The Israeli settlement of the occupied territories was not, he asserts, "the ineluctable consequence of Zionism - as the Israeli right argued then and now." Presumably, for Freedland, those responsible for settling pre-1967 Palestine, his "true," Labor, Zionists, were more than content with their "national home" in 78% of historic Palestine. How strange then that their behaviour after 1967 belies this:

"The authorized, 'legal' settlements began in the era of the Labor-led governments, from 1967 to 1977. They flourished in the days of the Likud governments that followed and during the subsequent period of the Labor, Likud, and unity governments. In the course of the negotiations that engendered the September 1993 Oslo agreement, and in the period following it, the settlements saw an unprecedented building boom. All the the subsequent governments have made a point of approving new construction, ostensibly only within the boundaries of the existing settlements, but they have always supported - by political and budgetary deed and by failing to enforce the law and deter violations - the establishment of new settlements in the guise of new neighborhoods and 'illegal' outposts." (Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007, Idith Zertal & Akiva Eldar, 2007, pp xvii - xviii)

Freedland, of course, overlooks entirely the colonial-settler roots of the Zionist project and the trampling of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs' right to national self-determination following World War I; the fact that political Zionism, from its inception, was focused exclusively, as one of its early slogans put it, on 'a land without a people'; and that Zionist colonisation, like every other form of colonisation, has only ever trampled underfoot the rights of those it has dispossessed.

Freedland may try to fool us with his airy talk of Zionist "dreamers" and "two peoples, fated to seek their dreams in the same land," but in truth he's only fooling himself.

Australia Day BBQ Stopper

"One afternoon in 1964 I was drinking coffee in the University of New England cafeteria with a bunch of young men from well-to-do grazing properties. They were rowdy and effortlessly good-natured. In those days Australia still rode on the sheep's back; they took for granted that they were the natural aristocrats of the campus and of the nation. We were laughing a lot that day. The conversation had turned to old family eccentrics; we'd been vying to cap each other's wacky stories.

"Then, a wealthy landowner's son took a turn. Sunday afternoons had been the fun time for his family, he announced. Presumably after church, and a good heavy Sunday dinner, his grandfather would go hunting on horseback with dogs and a posse of mates. Whooping. All armed with whips and guns. The quarry was Aborigines. They would be chased through the bush, cornered, then shot. Or driven over a mighty precipice to their death.

"Stunned silence fell around the table. The brutal declaration, so breezy and lighthearted, so shockingly new to my ears, threw us completely. I stared down into my coffee. Someone guffawed uneasily. I've often wondered why the young man blurted out those words. I remember he laughed as he spoke. Was it bravado to cover shame?

"The chilling thing was that, despite our shock, in the end the social niceties prevailed. We would ignore the faux pas. Besides, how many others among those young grandsons of squatters sitting around the table had similar secrets walled up behind their homestead facades?" (Who are we, really? Time to face the truth of the massacres of Aborigines, Frances Letters, Sydney Morning Herald, 7/7/17)

***

"Concerning Frances Letters' commentary, in the 1960s a family member born in the 1890s told me a similar story. I was about 14 at the time and I think the discussion touched on the Aboriginal referendum. He mentioned matter of factly that when he was a boy it was not uncommon for landowners to go on Aborigine shoots. I thought I had distorted my recollection, but after reading Frances's comments I now know it was true." (Letter to the SMH, 8/7/17)

School DaZe 2

In a 20/8/18 post, School DaZe, I drew your attention to a Sydney Morning Herald ad for a teaching position at Sydney's Moriah College. Among the criteria for the position was "an empathy with the Zionist ethos of our Modern Orthodox Jewish Day School is essential."

On 15 September, another such Moriah College ad appeared, but this time the word "Zionist" was conspicuous by its absence.

This could, of course, have been an oversight. Or could it perhaps be a sign of the times, namely that the term 'Zionist' has finally become something of a liability these days? First, there's the evidence of the eyes: the brutal treatment meted out on a daily basis to the Palestinians, with one Israeli outrage after another caught on camera.

But there's another aspect too. If we cut through the spin of Israel's defenders, who assert that Zionism is all about 'national self-determination for the Jewish people', or 'a national liberation movement' like any other, to the historical roots of the Zionist movement, we can see clearly that this is really a case of mutton dressed as lamb.

The fatal flaw in Zionist ideology can be seen in Theodor Herzl's The Jewish State (1896): The notion that the Jews are a 'people' or 'nation', as opposed to a faith community.

European nationalism was on the march back in the 19th century and, in many ways, it is understandable that the national idea was taken up by a segment of secular Jewish intellectuals as Zionism at the time. At the same time, too, the vast non-European world was the subject of a wave of European expansion, colonialism and settlement, with no regard whatever for the natural rights of existing non-European populations. The words of the Basel program, issued at the first ever Zionist conference in 1897, for example, tell us that "Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel [The Land of Israel], and urges the "settlement" there of Jewish farmers, artisans, and manufacturers."

The simple truth of the matter is that Zionism is a form of European settler-colonialism and, like all forms of settler-colonialism, could only proceed by riding roughshod over the rights of the "existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine," as the Balfour Declaration of 1917 dismissively referred to the 90% Arab majority population there.

So, no matter how much today's Zionists try to distance themselves from that fact, and dress up the term Zionism (as in, for example, the following Wikipedia entry on the subject: "Zionism is the national movement of the Jewish people that supports the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel...the Holy Land or the region of Palestine," or as a national movement simply exercising its right of national self-determination), Zionism is really nothing more than a European colonial implant and impost on the indigenous Arab population of Palestine. This colonial-settler dynamic, with its complete disregard for the natural rights of the indigenous inhabitants of the land, is what lies behind the wanton cruelty of Israeli apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing. Is it any wonder that, in a post-colonial world, the term Zionist has become a dirty word?

A Class of Their Own

"Israel is to build hundreds of new homes in a settlement in the occupied West Bank where a Palestinian stabbed three Israelis, one fatally, Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said yesterday." (Israel to build 400 units to avenge knife attack, AFP/The Australian, 28/7/18)

So Israel wouldn't have expanded its settlement otherwise? Was there ever a more cruel and casuistical colonisation in the annals of settler-colonialism than the Israeli?

From the Horse's Mouth

Well, I'll be damned if Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation chief executive Simon Haines isn't conceding that our much-vaunted Western civilisation is "wicked, colonial, imperialist and racist":

"But normal academic processes will be followed, and the centre will have no power of veto. If the centre doesn't like the direction in which the university takes the course, it will withdraw. 'If we felt, three or four years into the degree, that this is not working out, the stories we are getting from the students [are] that most of the courses are pointing out that the West is a wicked, colonial, imperialist, racist... civilisation, we would say, 'look, we didn't give you the money to do that, we want something balanced'." (It may be academic, but it's talk of the town, Jordan Baker, Sydney Morning Herald, 23/6/18)

He just wants some balance, that's all...

Facepalm

"For a handful of settlers to take their laws, values, language, technology, medicine and civic institutions out of Europe and transplant them to largely underdeveloped lands across the other side of the planet in an age of no internet, no smartphones and no air travel is a miracle; a miracle that not only continues to benefit those whose ancestors set it in motion but those who joined the team later." (We should rescue these people from a failing system bent on revenge, Sherry Sufi*, The Australian, 20/3/18)

[*Chairman of the West Australian Liberal Party's policy committee.]

Jaws

The Murdoch press is currently on a Captain Cook binge, with a 5-part series by journalist Trent Dalton, Cook Rediscovered. Today's essay, An Endeavour for the age, contains these words from Cook's journal: "... the natives... did not offer to touch any of our Casks that had been left ashore and in the after noon 16 or 18 of them came boldly up to within 100 yards of our people at the watering place and there made a stand - Mr Hicks who was the officer ashore did all in his power to entice them to him by offering them presents but it was to no purpose all they seem'd to want was for us to be gone... "

Quite. Cook read the Australians' body language correctly.

For these representatives of the original owners of this land, Cook and his men represented only one thing - trouble. They felt it first in their bones, before they felt it, as buckshot, on their bodies.

While they could not, of course, have known at the time of their coming dispossession at the hands of wave after wave of European settlers, their gut instinct told them that no good could possibly come of these invaders, and that only one response was required, namely, BUGGER OFF!

Another, far wordier Briton, the writer G.K. Chesterton, detected, in his fashion, a similar reaction on the part of the indigenous Arab inhabitants of Palestine to invading European Zionists in 1920:

"The Syrians and Arabs and all the agricultural and pastoral populations of Palestine are, rightly or wrongly, alarmed and angered at the advent of Jews to power... I will give one curious example from one of the best and most brilliant of the Zionists. Dr. Weizmann is a man of large mind and human sympathies; and it is difficult to believe that any one with so fine a sense of humanity can be entirely empty of anything like a sense of humour. Yet, in the middle of a very temperate and magnanimous address on 'Zionist Policy,' he can actually say a thing like this: 'The Arabs need us with our knowledge, and our experience and our money. If they do not have us they will fall among sharks.' One is tempted for the moment to doubt whether any one else in the world could have said that, except the Jew with his strange mixture of brilliancy and blindness, of subtlety and simplicity. It is much as if President Wilson were to say, 'Unless America deals with Mexico, it will be dealt with by some modern commercial power, that has trust-magnates and hustling millionaires.' But would President Wilson say it? It is as if the German Chancellor had said, 'We must rush to the rescue of the poor Belgians, or they may be put under some system with militarism and a bullying bureaucracy.' But would even a German Chancellor put it exactly that? Would anybody put it in the the exact order of words and structure of sentence in which Dr. Weizmann has put it?.. If the Zionists wish to quiet the fears of the Arabs, surely the first thing to do is to discover what the Arabs are afraid of. And very little investigation will reveal the simple truth that they are very much afraid of sharks; and that in their book of symbolic or heraldic zoology it is the Jew who is adorned with the dorsal fin and the crescent of cruel teeth... But the case is yet more curious than that. These simple tribes are afraid, not only of the dorsal fin and dental arrangements which Dr. Weizmann may say (with some justice) that he has not got; they are also afraid of the other things which he says he has got. They may be in error, at the first superficial glance, in mistaking a respectable professor for a shark. But they can hardly be mistaken in attributing to the respectable professor what he himself considers as his claims to respect. And as the imagery about the shark may be too metaphorical or almost mythological, there is not the smallest difficulty in stating in plain words what the Arabs fear in the Jews. They fear, in exact terms, their knowledge and their experience and their money. The Arabs fear exactly the three things which he says they need... " (The New Jerusalem (1920), pp 289-291)

Magic Happens

Remember how the proposed UC Berkeley course on Zionist settler-colonialism was dropped after Zionists pressured the university administration?* Well, the students who'd enrolled pushed back, and... magic happened:

"After an abrupt suspension last Tuesday, a college course about the decolonization of Palestine has earned a reprieve from the University of California on Monday. After reviewing the course material, the Berkely campus officials decided the class promoted open discussion and didn't push a political agenda." (UC Berkeley reinstates Palestine class, rejecting pressure from pro-Israel group, Wilson Dizard, mondoweiss.net, 20/9/16)

Free speech 1, Zionist bullying 0

[*See my 16/9/16 post Let's Have a Course on Startup Nation Instead.]

Let's Have a Course on Startup Nation Instead

Zionists simply cannot tolerate dissent from the party line, whether in politics, the media... or on campus.

Academics have been smeared, and some have even lost their jobs as a result of Zionist pressure tactics. Pro-Palestine students too have been smeared and suspended merely for exercising the rights of assembly, protest and free speech. But I'm not sure if anything quite like this has happened before: 

A proposed University of California Berkeley course Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis has been dropped because of Zionist pressure, on the grounds that it is an example of "the misuse of the classroom for political indoctrination."

Here is a description of the course:

"This 1-unit lecture and discussion-based course will examine key historical developments that have taken place in in Palestine, from the 1880s to the present, through the lens of settler colonialism. First, by utilizing a comparative approach and engaging with existing scholarship, we will gain a broad understanding of settler colonialism. Second, we will explore the connection between Zionism and settler colonialism, and the ways in which it has manifested, and continues to manifest, in Palestine. Lastly, drawing upon the literature on decolonization, we will explore the possibilities of a decolonized Palestine, one in which justice is realized for all its peoples and equality is not only espoused, but practiced."

In fact, it is those raised on the false historical narrative of Zionism, with its myths of a golden age of Jewish political sovereignty in Palestine, a forced expulsion, a dark, centuries-long exile, and an eventual, triumphant return to the 'Land of Israel', who have been politically indoctrinated. And it is they who resist tooth and nail any subjection of their narrative to critical scrutiny by historians.

Mind you, the early Zionists had no problems with the 'c' or 's' words. A few examples suffice:

There was Baron de Hirsch's Jewish Colonization Association and its successor, Baron de Rothschild's Palestine Jewish Colonization Association.

There was the call in the first Zionist Congress's Basel Program (1897) for "the settlement of Jewish farmers, artisans and manufacturers" in "Eretz Israel."

The were early descriptions such as this of Zionist settlers in Ottoman Palestine: "We found the graves of the great Talmudist Rabbi Meir and two of his pupils in a school of the Ashkenazim, which, for the nonce, was serving a very useful purpose as hospice for a number of German Jews travelling to a new colony farther south." (In a Syrian Saddle, A. Goodrich-Freer, 1905, p 305)

There was the July 1917 first draft of the Balfour Declaration, which called on the British government to establish "a Jewish National Colonizing Corporation."

And there was Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann with his "plans for immigration, irrigation [and] colonization." (Trial & Error, p 316)

The Unexamined Life

Bugger STEM, if you don't know and own your (colonial) history, you don't know yourself:

"Algeria experienced an 'Arab Fall' in 1988, which led to a war between armed Islamic groups and the Algerian army and state. Many journalists, intellectuals, artists were among about 200,000 Algerians who died under the blades and bullets of these fanatic murderers. Almost overnight, the face of Algerian society changed and entered one of the darkest times of its history. During the paroxysm of the war in the mid-90s, my parents decided that it was safer to temporarily move to France, as my mother had received death threats. It was a return 'home' for her as she was born and raised in France by immigrant Algerian parents. I remember feeling grateful that I could finally walk down the street without being scared. But yet, I often felt out of place. I encountered racism for the first time and discovered what it was like to be an outsider. I was surprised to discover that Algerians were not exactly well received and welcome. I did not know then, considering my age, the complicated intricacies inherited from colonial times." (America accepted me - an Algerian Muslim - in a way France never did, Melyssa Haffaf, The Guardian, 30/8/16)

Indigenous Terminology (Australia & Palestine)

AUSTRALIA - from the document Indigenous Terminology issued recently by the University of NSW (teaching.unsw.edu.au)

More appropriate

Invasion
Colonisation
Occupation

Australia was not settled peacefully, it was invaded, occupied and colonised. Describing the arrival of the Europeans as a 'settlement' attempts to view Australian history from the shores of England rather than the shores of Australia.

Less appropriate

Settlement

The use of the word 'settlement' ignores the reality of Indigenous Australian peoples' lands being stolen from them on the basis of the legal fiction of terra nullius and negates the resistance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The fact that most settlers did not see themselves as invading the country, and that convicts were transported against their will is beside the point. The effects were the same for Indigenous Australian peoples.

PALESTINE - suggested draft for the University of NSW's next Indigenous Terminology guideline

Appropriate

Invasion
Ethnic-cleansing
Colonisation
Occupation

Palestine was not settled peacefully. It was invaded, occupied, colonised, and ethnically-cleansed from 1918 to 1948 by Zionist immigrants under the protection of British bayonets and with the aim of carving out a Jewish state. Those remnants not ethnically cleansed in 1948 - the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - were invaded, ethnically-cleansed, occupied, and colonised from 1967 on.

Not at all appropriate

Return
Redemption
Land of Israel (Eretz Israel)
Terrorism (unless applied to the ethnic-cleansing operations of Zionist forces)

Describing the invasion of Zionist immigrants as a 'return' to, and 'redemption' of, the 'Land of Israel' (Eretz Israel) panders to political Zionist mythology and ignores the settler-colonial reality of the Zionist project in Palestine. Palestine was never, in Zionist terminology, 'a country without a people.' In 1918, 90% of its population were Arabs (Muslims and Christians), and, up to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist terrorists in 1948, they were still a two-thirds majority in their own land. The use of the terms 'return' and 'redemption' ignores the massive Zionist theft of Palestinian homes and lands which followed the ethnic cleansing of 1948, and the Zionist label 'terrorism,' used against the Palestinian Arab people, negates their resistance to Zionist colonisation, a resistance which began in earnest in 1920 and continues to this day. The fact that some Zionist immigrants left their European homes and invaded Palestine in response to anti-Semitic persecution in Europe is beside the point. The effects were the same for the Indigenous Palestinian Arab people.

Now Even the Basel Program is Anti-Semitic!

"It's time we acknowledged that Oxford's student left is institutionally antisemitic," declares Aaron Simons in The Guardian (It's time we acknowledged that Oxford's student left is institutionally antisemitic, 17/2/16).

So anti-Semitic, in fact, that the "co-chair" of the Oxford University Labour Club, Alex Chalmers, has resigned!

Apparently, wails Aaron, "the radical left interprets Israeli politics through the 'settler-colonial' paradigm," which makes Israel look more like "a skull-capped Cecil Rhodes" than "a Jewish holocaust refugee," which is sooo anti-Semitic!

Well, Aaron, if applying the settler-colonial paradigm to Israel is now anti-Semitism, I guess that makes the daddy of all Zionist programs, the 1897 Basel Program, anti-Semitic.

Since you obviously weren't paying attention back in Zionism 101, here's the text of the Basel Program, issued by the First Zionist Congress, chaired by none other than the daddy of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl:

"Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel secured under public law. The Congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of this end:
1. The promotion by appropriate means of the settlement in Eretz Israel of Jewish farmers, artisans, and manufacturers.
2. The organization and uniting of the whole of Jewry by means of appropriate institutions, both local and international, in accordance with the laws of each country.
3. The strengthening and fostering of Jewish national sentiment and national consciousness.
4. Preparatory steps toward obtaining the consent of governments, where necessary, in order to reach the goals of Zionism."

Don't even get me started on Herzl's 1901 Jewish-Ottoman Land Company for the "for the settlement of Palestine and Syria."

That Food on the Stove

"I do completely agree that to turn falafel to something that is considered Israeli food is just totally wrong." - Yotam Ottolenghi, quoted in Yotam Ottolenghi & the authors of 'The Gaza Kitchen' discuss food, conflict, culture, bonappetit.com, 27/3/13)

Damn right, Yotam. Just like turning Palestine into something called Israel.

But I digress:

"When Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their villages and homes in 1948, many left with little more than the clothes on their back. Food was left on the stove. Crops were left unharvested. But the land emptied of its inhabitants was soon occupied by new residents.

"From 1948 to 1953, almost all new Jewish settlements were established on refugees' property... During these early years, many Palestinian refugees attempted to return to their lands. By 1956, as many as 5,000 so-called 'infiltrators' had been killed by Israeli armed forces...

"The Nakba in 1948 was the settler colonial conquest of land and the displacement of its owners, a dual act of erasure and appropriation. Citing 'reasons of state', Israel's first prime minister David Ben-Gurion appointed a Negev Names Committee to remove Arabic names from the map...

"But it did not stop with dynamite and new maps. The Zionist colonisation of Palestine has also included culture, notably cuisine. This is the context for the so-called 'hummus wars': it is not about petty claims and counterclaims, rather, the story is one of colonial, cultural appropration and resistance to those attempts.

"In the decades since the establishment of the State of Israel on the ruins and ethnically cleansed lands of Palestine, various elements of the indigenous cuisine have been targeted for appropriation: falafel, knafeh, sahlab and, of course, hummus. Though these dishes are common to a number of communities across the Mediterranean and Middle East, Israel claims them as its own: falafel is the 'national snack', while hummus, according to Israeli food writer Janna Gur, is 'a religion'." (Israel's obsession with hummus is about more than stealing Palestine's food, Ben White, thenational.ae, 23/5/15)

Israeli appropriation of Palestinian cuisine, of course, is only the most recent manifestation of Zionist theft in Palestine, and one designed to facilitate the fictional claim to somehow being native (give or take 2 millennia) to the area.

It should never be forgotten that back when the Zionist movement was still establishing itself in Palestine under the protection of British guns (1918-48), Zionists settlers wouldn't be seen dead eating falafel, hummus and the rest. Check out this little propaganda gem from 1935: 

"Four years ago, there were no cafes in Palestine except for a few Arab cafes or restaurants in the older sections of the town, where, in their picturesque garb, they squatted on the floors smoking narghillas. These older places have been replaced by more up-to-date Jewish cafes where modernly dressed Orientals and Christians patronize these places amid light and cleanliness, unknown in the old regime, where orchestras entertain the guests, with high class foods and drinks.

"The most popular cafe in Jerusalem is known as The Vienna, where the elite of the community and other well-known personages are to be found among the guests. The Europa is a much larger and much gayer place than the Vienna. There, the audiences are more cosmopolitan and there is dancing and other amusements for the guests. Many Arabs go to the Europa. There are many other smaller places, among them the Machnes Yehudah which caters specially to the Oriental Jews." (Palestine's night life goes modern! High class, modern cafes and restaurants now offer good food, drinks, music!, M.L. Avner, The American Jewish Outlook, 13/9/35)

The Last 'Australian Environmental Charity' Left Standing?

One to watch:

"Any move by the Coalition to narrow the definition of what constitutes an 'environmental organisation' - and strip them of their charitable status as a result - would represent an 'attack on Australian democracy', legal experts have warned. Donors to 600 Australian environment groups, including Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), face losing the right to deduct donations from their tax as a parliamentary committee investigates the register of organisations administered by the federal environment department. Campaigners believe the inquiry is being driven by the mining industry." (Environmental groups find there's no charity in politics, Heath Aston, Sydney Morning Herald, 19/5/15)

That'd be right.

But whichever environmental organisations lose their place on the Register of Environmental Organisations, and hence their tax-deductability status, you can be sure that one particular 'environmental' organisation will remain unscathed, namely, the Jewish National Fund Environmental Association of Australia Inc.

A most interesting outfit this one. The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was created at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1901, long before environmentalism appeared on the scene.

Back then, it was simply an integral component of the British-backed Zionist settler-colonial invasion, occupation, and colonisation of Arab Palestine, which began in earnest with the Balfour Declaration of November, 1917 and continues to this day with Palestine almost wiped off the map, and the Palestinian people living either in exile or under occupation.

The JNF's founding details clearly mark it out as a tool of Zionist settlement:

"(1) Ownership of the 'Jewish National Fund' was to be vested in 'the Jewish people'. (2) Administration of the Fund was to be by the Small Actions Committee (executive of the World Zionist Organization). (3) Proceeds of the Fund were to 'be used only for the purchase of land in Palestine and Syria'. (4) No expenditures were to be effected until 'a total to be determined by the Congress had been achieved'; 200,000 pounds was suggested. (5) Of this suggested total, one-half could be used for the purchase of land, the remainder to be held to accumulate interest; 'until colonization on a large scale is possible', annual collections could... be dispersed similarly." (The Jewish National Fund, Walter Lehn, 1988, p 21)

These days, however, with green-washing all the go, the JNF defines itself, in its mission statement, as the 'Environmental arm of the Jewish people. Promoting an improved environment in Israel through support from Jews throughout the world.'

Exactly what this arm of Zionist colonisation and apartheid is doing on a register of Australian environmental organisations is just another of life's little mysteries.

That any parliamentary/bureaucratic tinkering with definitions might prove uncomfortable to the JNFEAA may be gleaned from the following submission, dated 7/12/11, sent by Robert P. Schneider, CEO of JNF & JNFEA to Treasury's Philanthropy and Exemptions Unit. In Re: Proposed introduction of a statutory definition of 'Charity', we find the following cute attempt to internationalise this most national of organisations:

"The JNF is the Australian arm of the Jewish National Fund, an international environmental agency headquartered in Israel but with supporting offices in some 40 countries around the world... The organisation... is entrusted with the conservation of land and natural resources in Israel but through the expertise it has gained over the years - in particular in afforestation and water conservation - this expertise is shared internationally through the organisation's affiliation to world conservation bodies as well as through its various offices around the world including Australia."

The submission goes on to plead that "a body whose dominant purpose is charitable... not be precluded from being considered 'charitable' by reason only of the fact that it provides benefits in accordance with that purpose in an overseas country or countries." (PDF, treasury.gov.au)

Or countries? Pull the other!

And just in case you're wondering what those benefits might entail, here's the hard-sell from the latest full-page JNF add in the Australian Jewish News (20/3/15):

2015 JNF BLUE BOX PESACH CAMPAIGN: HELP KIDS LEARN FOR A BETTER FUTURE

"Every child deserves the right to live, learn and play without fear. So please help us create new Garden Classrooms for children in Israel's South. These children endure financial hardship and have been traumatised by years of rocket fire from Gaza. The Garden Classroom will become a haven for learning and activity and will give these vulnerable children an opportunity for educational and emotional development."

It's all in the labeling, you see: classrooms are classrooms are classrooms, but call them 'garden classrooms', and they somehow become 'environmental' and can be paid for by untaxed Australian dollars.

[FYI: Read my JNF backgrounder, A Certain Jewish Tree Planting Group (14/6/08).]

My Problem with Amira Hass

I thought I'd tune in to Phillip Adams' Late Night Live program on 22/4/15 to hear visiting Israeli journalist Amira Hass, "the only Jewish journalist who has lived among the Palestinians, both in Gaza and now full-time in the West Bank." (Amira Hass: An Israeli journalist living in Palestine)

Adams was, of course, his usual blunt self - 'blunt', that is, in the sense that his interviewing style, particularly with Jewish Zionists, totally contradicts the program's claim to be about "razor-sharp analysis of current events [which] puts you firmly in the big picture."

But it's mainly Hass (unexpectedly I might add) that I have the bigger problem with this time around. While sound on the occupation of 1967, I found the following words more than a little problematic:

"In my lectures here in Australia, I'm speaking to you as one settler to another. This institutionalisation of colonial times I see it everywhere here in Australia. Everywhere. And I also say different things to different audiences. So for people who tell me the solution is to dissolve Israel, I say 'Why don't you dissolve Australia?' And just because you got away with most of the indigenous people... and luckily and happily Israel and Zionism did not decimate the Palestinians. So... it's an extension of London. So I see the whites here and your colonialism is still fresh and the thing is how we look at the future and not the past. We cannot undo the past, but the future has to be worked on..."

Now, to take up my razor...

What does she mean by 'dissolve Israel/dissolve Australia'? Typically Adams didn't ask her.

Was this in response to a questioner who had suggested that Israel's apartheid structure be dismantled? That Israel be de-Zionised? That it become a state of its citizens, with equal rights for all, regardless of ethno-religious affiliation, rather than continue to be reserved as the exclusive domain of those Jews who see themselves as belonging to that entity, 'the Jewish people'? That Israel's outrageous, biology-based, apartheid Law of Return be scrapped? That the indigenous people of Palestine, ethnically cleansed in 1948 and 1967, be allowed to return to their homes and land?

 Was she seriously suggesting that there are no differences between Israel and Australia? Typically, Adams didn't ask her whether she saw Australia as an apartheid state (that is, a state based, like former apartheid South Africa and today's Israel, on a raft of discriminatory legislation), and if so, which discriminatory laws made it so. Nor did he ask her whether indigenous Australians were languishing in exile in refugee camps in neighbouring countries, denied the right of return to Australia.

Why was she using the old Zionist whataboutery: You dare criticise Israel? What about Australia?

And when she said, Israel and Zionism (that is, almost 100 years of Zionist colonisation, dispossession, expulsion and occupation of Palestinians) did not decimate the Palestinians, what the hell was she on about? Typically, there was no response, razor-sharp or otherwise, from Adams.

Finally, in saying that we cannot undo the past, was she implying that Israel was set in concrete in 1948 and must forever remain a Jewish state, and that the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967 must therefore remain in exile?

Remember the Algerian War?

Consider the following Australian ms press snippets arising from recent reportage on the Charlie Hebdo massacre:

"Cherif [Kouachi], 32, and Said [Kouachi], 34, were born in the northern 10th arrondissement of Paris, a downbeat district of railway terminals and multi-ethnic neighbourhoods... The boys' Algerian immigrant parents died when the children were small." (Journey from 'delinquent' rapper to killer, Dominic Kennedy/Sean O'Neill, The Australian, 10/1/15)

"Their parents are thought to have been among the waves of immigration in the decades after Algeria's independence in 1962." (Civilisation under siege, Matthew Campbell, The Australian, 12/1/15)

 "'We are engaged in a new kind of war,' said Alain Juppe, a former French prime minister. 'It spreads from the chaos in the Middle East... Unspoken by Mr Juppe, but understood by all, was the conclusion that the beneficiary in cold political terms from the outrage is Marine Le Pen. The leader of the National Front has turned the party into France's most popular, thanks in part to her anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant discourse." (Jihad born in neglected ghettos on city edges, Charles Bremner, The Australian, 9/1/15)

"... the thousands of demonstrators who gathered at the Place de la Republique on Wednesday night chanted: 'Je suis Charlie' - I am Charlie. We are Charlie. At the centre of the Place de la Republique are three statues entitled [sic] Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The massacre at the Bastille, where Charlie Hebdo had its offices, is redolent with symbolism, as the Bastille was the flashpoint for the revolution whose rallying cry became liberty, equality and fraternity. This attack... was an attack on liberty, equality and fraternity." (Editorial: Better to die standing than live on our knees, Sydney Morning Herald, 9/1/15)

The connection is never made clear, but each of the above, in its own way, references an earlier episode in French history: the French occupation and colonisation of Algeria (1848-1962) and the bloody war of independence (1954-62) which ended it. In the plethora of reports on the Charlie Hebdo massacre in the Australian press, however, not one - in the spirit of Faulkner's "The past is never dead. It's not even past"  - bothered to join the dots.

While the slogan of the French Revolution (1787-1799), Liberty, Equality & Fraternity, would have come easily to the Herald's editor, I doubt the fact of its non-application to the peoples of France's colonial empire would ever have entered his Eurocentric mind.

For example, when the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) issued its November 1954 call for French recognition of Algerian nationhood, with "equal rights and duties" for all French colons choosing Algerian citizenship, and ties between France and Algeria "defined by agreement between the two powers on the basis of equality and mutual respect," far from living up to its revolutionary motto, France opted instead to repress the Algerian independence movement, triggering a brutal struggle "bringing death to an estimated one million Muslim Algerians and the expulsion from their homes of approximately the same number of European settlers."*

As for Algerian Muslim immigration to France, I found myself wondering whether or not the long-deceased parents of the Kouachi brothers may have been among the ranks of the Algerian Muslim harki forces, who had fought with the French against their nationalist countrymen, and fled to France after the Algerian War:

"According to Ait Ahmed, these convulsions of the summer of 1962 cost the lives of a further 15,000 Algerians. But the worst fratricidal horrors were reserved for those Muslims who, like the harkis, had continued to fight for France. De Gaulle had never shown much sympathy for them; to a Muslim deputy, ten of whose family had already been killed by the FLN and who had protested that on 'self determination' 'we shall suffer', de Gaulle had replied coldly, 'Eh bien! vous suffrirez.' As General de Gaulle had feared... the peace agreements contained no guarantee sufficient to save these Algerians now from the wrath of their countrymen, in whose eyes they were nothing but traitors. Out of the quarter of a million who had worked for the French less than 15,000 had managed to escape from Algeria... In France they were, for the most part, to live lives of poverty, unappreciated and unassimilated. Of the fate of those that remained, however, harrowing stories came out of Algeria. Hundreds died when put to work clearing the minefields along the Morice Line, or were shot out of hand. Others were tortured atrociously; army veterans were made to dig their own tombs, then swallow their decorations before being killed; they were burned alive, or castrated, or dragged behind trucks, or cut to pieces and their flesh fed to dogs. Many were put to death with their entire families, including young children. Compelled by the terms of the Evian Agreements to stand by and witness this massacre of their former allies, the agony of the French army was extreme. In some cases, acting under orders, units had been forced to disarm the wretched harkis on the promise of replacing them with better weapons - then sneaked away in the middle of the night, abandoning them to their fate."

As for the reference to the Islamophobic far-right National Front of Marine Le Pen, would it surprise you to know that its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, had been a French intelligence officer during the Algerian War?

[*A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, Alistair Horne, 1977, p 14;** 537-38]

Zionism: The Devil in the Detail

"Under pressure to restart negotiations with the Palestinians, the Israeli government continues to expand settlements deeper into occupied territory, today announcing 380 new settlement units in occupied East Jerusalem." (Israel approves 380 new settlement homes in East Jerusalem, Jason Ditz, antiwar.com, 24/12/14)

 "It was dark when we drove out to Shari Zwi, a communal settlement for orthodox Jews, fifteen minutes out in the wilds, right down by the Jordan. The road was a track, and after some miles we bumped and stuck in the mud... We were rescued by a police truck, which bumped us for three-quarters of an hour and then dumped us outside a stockade. Suddenly strange men with beards crowded round us. It was the orthodox Jews greeting us in Hebrew, and I soon realized this was to be the sole language. Through thick mud and past simple shacks we were taken to the dining-room where a delicious meal stood ready. But immediately we had to listen to a two-hour explanation in Hebrew of the graphs and charts all round the wall, showing ten years' progress of Shari Zwi. The fields are interlaced with Arab fields, and land acquisition is the great aim. I was assured that the Arabs were delighted to sell their land, and that the only way to stop Arab nationalism was to abolish restriction on the sale of land.

"These were very good religious people, mostly from Germany, but also from Poland, Rumania, and eleven other countries; a community of some 300 living by the Talmud, and very critical of the secular Zionists who run the Agency. But as far as I could see this made absolutely no difference to their politics.

"After supper I proposed a discussion on Arab-Jewish relations, and the whole community crowded into the dining-hall and stood round while the executive and I debated, sitting at the table. They stood motionless and tense for three hours' discussion. I described to them the Arab village I had seen that morning a hundred yards from a superb Jewish settlement, and said that I thought that illustrated the central problem. Then they were off. And what they gave me was the simple propaganda line about the Jewish right to every foot of Palestine, and how the Arabs had benefited. They seemed to assume that the Jews had the right to the country and that the Arabs were inferior people whom the Jews, when they got their state, would tolerate and permit to exist as a minority. I think they enjoyed the discussion a lot, and when it ended the bearded mukhtar shook my hand and said: 'We deeply appreciate it that a member of the Committee* thought us important enough to come and teach us about Arabs and Jews'!" (Palestine Mission, Richard Crossman, 1946, pp 159-60)

"[T]he success of Zionism did not derive exclusively from its bold outlining of a future state, or from its ability to see the natives for the negligible quantities they were or might become. Rather, I think, Zionism's effectiveness in making its way against Arab Palestinian resistance lay in its being a policy of detail, not simply a general colonial vision. Thus Palestine was not only the Promised Land, a concept as elusive and as abstract as any that one could encounter. It was a specific territory with specific characteristics, that was surveyed down to the last millimeter, settled on, planned for, built on, and so forth, in detail. From the beginning of the Zionist colonization this was something the Arabs had no answer to, no equally detailed counterproposal. They assumed, perhaps rightly, that since they lived on the land and legally owned it, it was therefore theirs. They did not understand that what they were encountering was a discipline of detail - indeed a very culture of disciple by detail - by which a hitherto imaginary realm could be constructed on Palestine, inch by inch and step by step, 'another acre, another goat,' so Weizmann once said. The Palestinian Arabs always opposed a general policy on general principles: Zionism, they said, was foreign colonialism (which strictly speaking it was, as the early Zionists admitted), it was unfair to the natives (as some early Zionists, like Ahad Ha'am, also admitted), and it was doomed to die of its various theoretical weaknesses. Even to this day the Palestinian political position generally clusters around these negatives, and still does not sufficiently try to meet the detail of Zionist enterprise; today [1978] there are, for example, 77 'illegal' Zionist colonies on the West Bank and Israel has confiscated about 27% of the West Bank's Arab-owned land, yet the Palestinians seem virtually powerless physically to stop the growth or 'thickening' of this new Israeli colonization. The Palestinians have not understood that Zionism has been much more than an unfair colonialist master against whom one could appeal to all sorts of higher courts, without any avail. They have not understood the Zionist challenge as a policy of detail, of institutions, of organization, by which people (to this day) enter territory illegally, build houses on it, settle there, and call the land their own - with the whole world condemning them." (The Question of Palestine, Edward Said, 1978 pp 94-5)

[*See my 8/12/14 post Children of a Lesser God 1.]

Crazy As...

A salutary 'I told you so' from an extremely ex-Israeli:

Israel has always been crazy by Avigail Abarbanel*

"It's not a big claim to fame, but I've been saying for years that Israeli society is crazy. I escaped from Israel for that reason.Phil Weiss's analysis (Psst! Is Israel going crazy?) is correct except for one point, and that is that the sentiments he describes have always been there. It's not something new that emerged only recently.

"I grew up with this craziness all around me. I recognise the language. I was brought up (I was born in 1964) to believe that the 'Arabs' (the word 'Palestinian' was generally not used in my childhood) could not be trusted, that 'they' are not like 'us', and that they are treacherous and would stab me in the back if I relaxed and trusted them. We were always kept apart from the Palestinian citizens of Israel, let alone the Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza. Gaza in fact was a symbol for a cursed place. When someone annoyed you said, 'Go to Gaza', the equivalent of 'Go to Hell'. That was normal, day-to-day Hebrew in my youth. The first time I met a Palestinian as an equal was in Australia in my early thirties.

"Without knowing it, I grew up with classical colonial rhetoric. Colonisers motivated by fear, and possibly guilt, have always demonised the people they have hurt. For some people it is easier to inflict suffering if if they don't see the other as a fellow human being. Dehumanisation helps to reduce empathy and shut down the conscience. It happens everywhere there is injustice and abuse.

"The difference now is that these generally informal but widespread social attitudes to the colonised are now in power. Drunk with their new-found freedom, out of the shadows with no need to hide themselves any longer, free from worry about 'world public opinion', they're now celebrating and feasting. Politicians are outdoing one another, acting out and giving life to their most depraved and murderous fantasies. And they are out of control. But please don't make the mistake of thinking that these feelings and urges are confined to a lunatic fringe. They are not. They are supported by the majority of Israeli Jews, and, as Phil says, they are led from the front by top politicians who are changing the legal system in order to create an environment that better caters to these attitudes so that they can be unleashed legally and thrive.

"Israel has always been mad and bad. How can it not be when it is based on a fearful, traumatised, paranoid, settler-colonialist culture with a sense of eternal entitlement, and built on the ruins of an indigenous culture it has worked so hard to eliminate? Israel has always done bad things, terrible things. Ask the Palestinians, the asylum seekers, the poor, women. But previously things were done in secret. When Israel was young and poor and needed the world, it was keen to project an image of legality, reason, refinement, intellect and democracy to fit in with the Western world it so wanted to be part of. What was always just underneath that thin veneer, but which every Israeli Jew knew and supported, is now out in the open. Israel and its culture is simply heading toward its logical conclusion. What is happening now was inevitable, the logical next step. It is impossible to sustain the split reality of a civilised, law-abiding, educated, cultured, refined, enlightened society while colonialism, with its injustices and atrocities, continues to rage. Enlightenment can only truly exist on a foundation of justice and freedom. Anything else is self-serving and short-lived nonsense. Most Israeli academics not only support their regime, they benefit from it. Watch as the majority of them say nothing about these new developments.

"As ugly and as dangerous as these developments are, it is a good thing that the truth is finally out. Israel should never have been supported in the first place, but it'll be increasingly hard for anyone to continue to support a country that is following the path Israel is on. Like all sick societies Israel is its own worst enemy. It feels invincible and justified and simply doesn't care what others think about it. This is a lethal cocktail.

"I never trusted that country. I was always terrified of it becoming truly and openly fascist. As a woman I never liked the way religion played a central role in Israeli society, and was always worried that it would eventually take over. I always felt oppressed by the atmosphere of suspicion and harshness and the obsession with 'security' and control, which has tragically infected the entire Western world. I was afraid of it 23 years ago when I left, and thought it'd come sooner than it has, but it is finally happening. Fascism cannot take hold unless the sentiments that feed it are widespread. Watch how many secular Jews with dual citizenship will start leaving, and then it's time to really start worrying about the Palestinians. It's quite possible that we'll begin to see a trickle of Jewish refugees from Israel, members of more enlightened groups who've begun to be persecuted and hunted. It would be a chilling irony for Jews to be seeking asylum from a 'Jewish' state.

"And to think that once upon a time I was worried that I was too extreme or unreasonable with some of my predictions about Israel. It's all in its psychology and it has always been there. I told you so." (mondoweiss.net, 2/12/14)

*Avigail Abarbanel was born and raised in Israel. She moved to Australia in 1991 and now lives in Scotland. She works as a psychotherapist in private practice and is an activist for Palestinian rights. She is the editor of Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists (2012).

The Natives Are Restless

Face it, it's a thankless task being a Zionist. No matter what you do to... sorry, for... the natives, the buggers are never happy:

 2014: "John Lyons quite rightly points out the rise of the Israeli right wing under Benjamin Netanyahu (Settlers fuel cycle of bloodshed, 22/11*) but seems to suggest this is Netanyahu's doing. The opposite is true: the growing right wing keeps him in power. And the right wing has grown because of the evidence presented by Palestinians about their intentions. In the 1990s Israelis still hoped for peace, resulting in the Oslo accord and the withdrawal from south Lebanon. Hamas bus bombings, Hezbollah missiles and Yasser Arafat's suicide bombing campaign soured that faith and brought the pro-settler Ariel Sharon to power. Hamas's use of Gaza to pour thousands of missiles into Israel confirmed what withdrawal from the West Bank would bring. New incitement by Mahmoud Abbas and recent lone-wolf terrorism only push Israelis further to the right. Relentless Palestinian aggression is the cause of Israel's move to the right; Netanyahu and the settlers are only its beneficiaries." (Letter to The Australian by Dov Midalia,** Bondi Junction, NSW, 24/11/14)

1986: "On 4 December 1986, two young Palestinian students were shot dead by Israeli soldiers after a sit-down protest at a blockade set up near Birzeit University in the West Bank. In the week that followed, several more violent confrontations took place between the military and Palestinian inhabitants, in the course of which two more Palestinians were killed and several wounded. During December, a large number of articles appeared in the Israeli press, reporting or reflecting on what had taken place.

"In those articles appearing in the Jerusalem Post, the following expressions were used to refer to the response of the Palestinians all over the occupied territories to the first two shootings: 'wave of disturbances', 'unrest', 'wave of demonstrations', 'eruption', 'outbreaks', 'turmoil', 'disorder', 'riots', disturbances swept the West Bank', 'widespread disturbances continued to rock the Gaza Strip'.

"The actions of the IDF officers, however, were represented by the following expressions: 'self-defence', 'preventing further violence', 'breaking up a demonstration', quelling the disturbances', 'maintaining law and order', 'troops used 'maximal restraint'...

"Israeli settlement was referred to both as the solution to, and justification for, the confrontations: 'The disturbances should prompt the government to set up more settlements in the territories. Settlements are an assurance of security'. An IDF soldier who admitted to shooting one of the two Birzeit students argued, 'We were caught in an impossible situation. Had we retreated, no Israeli from the nearby settlements would be able to travel on the main road leading west'.

"Another common assertion in the articles surveyed explicitly or implicitly blamed the PLO for the occurrences: 'The disturbances at Birzeit University... are part of an attempt of the PLO to murder prospects for peace by inciting to riot'; 'there may be some guiding hand behind the eruption of simultaneous demonstrations throughout the West Bank and Gaza'..." (Colonial Law & Ideology - Israel & the Occupied Territories, Ben Cashdan, pp 72-3, in Palestine: Profile of an Occupation, Khamsin, 1989)

1936: "The facts are extracted from the official Communiques: To destroy properties and crops! Do you call it STRIKE?*** To destroy schools by fire! Do you call it STRIKE? To murder man, to desecrate graveyards, to destroy water resources! Do you call it STRIKE? To stab and shoot innocent animals ie cows, horses, and donkeys! Do you call it STRIKE? To enter under pretext of friendship or pity and ask for water to drink and to pay the donor with a bullet in his back! Do you call it STRIKE? To throw bombs and put fire to the factories, hospitals, sanatoria, and Children & Invalid Homes! Do you call it STRIKE? To destroy bridges and derail trains and to cause the death of innocent people inside! Do you call it STRIKE? In conclusion: A land and fields which were full of stones and thorns, and have been converted into a true garden of Eden with a strenuous and ambitious work of twenty-five years, to put it back into its old wild and desert aspect in twenty-five minutes by uprooting, cutting, burning the several thousands of fine trees of oranges, lemons, citrus, olives, winegrapes, and other trees to combat malaria! Do you call it STRIKE? or Barbarism, Savagery and Cruelty?" (Letter to The Spectator by Benjamin Levy, 17/7/36)

[*See my 23/11/14 Dross & Gold in The Weekend Australian; **For more of Dov Midalia see my 30/7/11 post Leave Our Islamophobes Alone, OK?; ***In response to mass Zionist immigration under British auspices, the Palestinian Arabs staged a general strike (19/4/36 - 11/10/36), the opening round in a revolt that raged until 1939.]