Same Old, Same Old...

Let's ring in May with a laugh courtesy of this letter by Frank Bonaccorso of Perth in today's The Australian: "I didn't know if I was reading The Australian or The Australia-Israel Review yesterday morning. Everywhere I looked, gushing tributes to a man who admitted to collusion in a cartel that added to the cost of everyday staples for each man, woman and child in Australia. Unlike your editorial writers (Vale Richard Pratt, 29/4), not everyone believes 'he died an honoured figure'. Remember, charges against Pratt were dropped because of his failing health. He was right to surmise, as he told Cameron Stewart (The great enabler, 29/4), that the general public would see him 'as a rich person who made his money doing something that is wrong in the eyes of the law'."

Frank, maaate. You mean you've only just noticed that The Australian and The Australia-Israel Review are one and the same publication?

Bloodless Journalism

Remember Gaza?

Fairfax's Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis, reports from the killing fields, but it's a compromised and anodyne effort. (Gaza shifts from a state of war to a state of despair, Sydney Morning Herald, 27/4/09) There's virtually no sense of agency in his report: Israel is shielded by the passive voice, and its monstrous brutality toned down: "The borders between [sic: with] Israel and Egypt remain closed to everything but food and medical supplies [more on that in a minute!] and humanitarian aid. And with things like concrete, steel or any other materials needed to rebuild Gaza prohibited from entering, the thousands of homes, offices and public buildings destroyed in Israel's intense bombing campaign remain just piles of rubble."

And of course there's the obligatory 'balancing' act: "A report released last week by the Israel Defence Forces high command said that 1,166 Palestinians were killed during the 3-week campaign. Of those killed, the report said, 709 were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, and 295 were confirmed as innocent civilians. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, however, said the 22-day offensive resulted in the deaths of 1,417 Palestinians of whom 236 were members of Hamas or other militias, and a further 255 were police officers. Thirteen Israelis were killed."

But there's worse: "An obvious question that springs to mind about Gaza is, 3 months after the end of the Israeli offensive, is life measurably worse for Gaza's 1.5 million citizens? 'A little bit, but not by much', said Hamdan Nimat, a 38-year old father of 4 who was born in the Jabaliya refugee camp, but whose parents were born in Ashkelon, a coastal centre several kilometres north of Gaza now a part of Israel. 'The real truth about life in Gaza is that no one is dying because there is no food', Mr Nimat said. 'Nor is anyone dying because of lack of medicine'." Is this Nimat character for real? I mean really for real? Mr Koutsoukis?

Compare that cosy little assessment to this from Inter Press Service's Mohammed Omer: "Mohammed al-Sheikh Yousef could save his eyesight if only he could cross the border out of Gaza. He was denied a permit by Israel; he got one from Egypt, but not for someone to accompany him. And he can't go on his own, because he cannot see very well. 'If Mohammed does not get out of Gaza for medical treatment within the next 14 days, he may totally lose his eyesight and be blind for life', Dr Mawia Hasaneen, head of the ambulance and emergency service for Gaza hospitals, told IPS in a telephone interview. 'In the past few weeks we have received 150 appeals from people in Gaza who are in need of urgent medical care', says Ron Yaron from Physicians for Human Rights, a human rights group in Israel that campaigns on behalf of Palestinian patients to obtain exit permits for healthcare. 'We submitted 99 applications to the Israeli army on behalf of the patients, but only 15 were approved', Yaron told IPS. 'Israel as the occupying power has primary responsibility for the health of the civilians of Gaza, because it controls the crossings. It should not use the patients as a political tool'. The emergency staff often stand by, helpless spectators to suffering. 'I just received a call from the mother of a 4-year-old child from Jabaliya refugee camp in the north; her son has congestive heart failure and respiratory distress', said Dr Hasaneen. 'As an official I can't stand to watch her child dying simply because medical treatment is not available in Gaza and the borders are closed'. But he has no option but to do just that. The al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, based in Gaza, says that at least 41 Gazans died last year of causes that can be attributed to the collapse of the medical referral process. Currently, it says the condition of hundreds of Gazans is deteriorating rapidly. For Gazans, what happens at the border crossings can make the difference between life and death. Medicines for many easily treated diseases sit across the Rafah crossing with Egypt or the Erez crossing into Israel. Patients cannot get across, and most medicines are not allowed in." (Gazans desperate for medical care denied, 28/4/09)

Compare it too with Israeli journalist Gideon Levy's empathy, passion, plain-speaking and eye for detail: "Alyan Abu-Aun is lying in his tent, his crutches beside him. He smokes cigarettes and stares into the tiny tent's empty space. His young son sits on his lap. Ten people are crammed into the tent, about the size of a small room. It has been their home for 3 months. Nothing remains of their previous home, which the Israel Defense forces shelled during Operation Cast Lead. They are refugees for a second time; Abu-Aun's mother still remembers her home in Sumsum, a town that once stood near Ashkelon. Abu-Aun, 53, was wounded while trying to flee when his home in the Gaza town of Beit Lahia was bombed. He has been on crutches ever since. His wife gave birth during the height of the war, and now the baby is with them in the cold tent. The tent was sent flying during the storm that devoured the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, so the family had to put it back up. They received water only occasionally in a container, and a tiny tin shack serves as a bathroom for the 100 families in this new refugee camp, 'Camp Gaza', in Beit Lahia's Al-Atatra neighbourhood. Abu-Aun sounded particularly bitter this past weekend; the Red Cross refused his family a bigger tent. He has also had enough of eating beans."

"For three months, the Abu-Aun family and thousands of other have been living in five tent encampments built after the war. They have not begun clearing away the ruins of their homes, let alone building new ones. Thousands live in the shadow of the ruins of their homes, thousands in tents, thousands crowded together with their relatives, tens of thousands who are newly homeless and whom the world has lost interest in. After the conference of donor countries, which convened to great fanfare in Sharm el-Sheikh a month and a half ago, which included 75 countries and agreed to transfer $1 billion to rebuild Gaza, nothing happened. Gaza is besieged. There are no building materials. Israel and the world are setting conditions, the Palestinians are incapable of forming a unity government, as is needed, the money and concrete are nowehere to be seen and the Abu-Aun family continue to live in a tent. Even the $900 million promised by the United States is stuck in the cash register. It's doubtful whether it will ever be taken out. America's word.

"It's exactly three months since the much-talked-about war, and Gaza is once again forgotten. Israel has never taken an interest in the welfare of its victims. Now the world has forgotten, too. Two weeks with hardly a Qassam rocket has taken Gaza completely off the agenda. If the Gazans don't hurry up and resume firing, nobody will take an interest in their welfare again. Although not new, this is an especially grievous and saddening message liable to spark the next cycle of violence. And then it will be certain they won't get aid because they will be shooting.

"Somebody must assume responsibility for the fate of the Abu-Aun family and other victims of like them. If they had been injured in an earthquake, the world probably would have helped them recover long ago. Even Israel would have quickly dispatched aid convoys from ZAKA, Magen David Adom, even the IDF. But the Abu-Aun family was not injured by a natural disaster, but by hands and flesh and blood, made in Israel, and not for the first time. The response: no compensation, no aid, no rehabilitation. Israel and the world are too preoccupied to rebuild Gaza. They have become speechless. Gaza, remember?" (Gaza, remember? Haaretz, 19/4/09)

Join the Dots

"A surge in Israeli high-tech investment and the transfer of world-leading military technology is set to be unleashed next year with the expected sealing of a free trade agreement* between Australia and Israel. The signing of the FTA... will signal an even closer defence relationship between the two countries involving high-end robotic technology, smart missiles and unmanned aerial drones - military areas in which Israel is a world leader... Training exchanges involving Australian Defence Force personnel and its Israeli counterpart are likely to be finalised soon, [Yuval Rotem, Israel's ambassador] told The Australian yesterday. Confidential imports from Israel last year consisting of classified defence technology totalled $14 million - a figure projected for fast future growth." (Israel deal to boost defence, Mark Dodd, The Australian, 26/9/07)

[*On this subject, see my 11/4/09 post The Ambassador Reflects... : "There has been less progress than I expected [on a free-trade agreement]. It's still on the table. I know from the Australian point of view there is a desire to see a comprehensive deal..."]

"Kevin Rudd is set to announce Australia's biggest military build-up since World War II, led by a multi-billion-dollar investment in maritime defence, including 100 new F-35 fighters, a doubling of the submarine fleet and powerful new surface warships. The new defence white paper will outline plans for a fundamental shake-up of Australia's defence organisation to ensure that the nation can meet what the Prime Minister sees as a far more challenging and uncertain security outlook in Asia over the next two decades... Mr Rudd said yesterday the delivery of the white paper was proving 'acutely challenging as we work to defend ourselves from the global economic storm'... he told the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce." (Revealed: Rudd's defence plans, Patrick Walters, The Australian, 25/4/09)

Rudd also said: "I further acknowledge the great work of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce in hosting today's [24/4] function and in supporting the relationship between Australia and Israel and enabling me to confirm again publicly before you all what I have said throughout my political career that I am a lifelong friend of the State of Israel... Australia cannot support and will not support a document which reaffirms the 2001 Durban Declaration and Program of Action. That 2001 declaration singled out Israel*. The inflammatory remarks of President Ahmadinejad of Iran at the conference are unacceptable and underlined the Australian Government's decision not to attend that conference. The Australian Government condemns the continued campaign of anti-Semitism on behalf of the government of Iran."

[* See my 26/4/09 post Controlling the Terminology. So "singling out Israel" is the reason we dumped on Durban II?!!!]

"New data released today [27/4/09] by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reveal a significant rise in arms transfers to the Middle East... The United States remains the world's largest exporter of military equipment, accounting for 31% of global arms exports for the period 2004-2008. During this period, 37% of US deliveries went to the Middle East... There were increasing volumes of transfers... to states involved in armed conflict in 2008, such as Afghanistan, Georgia, Israel, Pakistan, Sri Lanka." (Significant rise in arms deliveries to the Middle East, says SIPRI, defense-aerospace.com, 27/4/09)

File Under Disinformation

Such is the grip of his obsession with Israel, that Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, foreign editor extraordinaire of The Australian, felt compelled to embed the following sentence in an 'opinion piece' otherwise devoted to North Korean missile testing: "Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded [to Obama's outstretched hand] with a speech that contemptuously said the Jews control US foreign policy." (Kim's nuclear reaction, 25/4/09) Presumably he meant Ahmadinejad's Durban II speech. (See my 23/4/09 post Australia Dumps on Durban 2) And presumably he meant this particular sentence in that speech: "Was not the military action against Iraq planned by the Zionists and their allies in the then US administration in complicity with the arms manufacturing countries and the possessors of wealth?" File under disinformation.

Controlling the Terminology

"If you can control the terminology of the debate, you can win the debate." Mark Regev, Israeli prime minister's spokesman for international media, in PM spokesman: Naming Gaza op 'Cast Lead' was a PR mistake, Cnaan Lipshiz, Haaretz, 24/4/09.

To understand the virulent Zionist campaign directed against the just-concluded Anti-Racism Review Conference (Durban II), it is first necessary to acquaint oneself with the language used in the 'debate' over Palestine/Israel at The World Conference Against Racism (Durban I) of 2001.

The initial text contained 6 paragraphs dealing with "Zionist racist practices," including an appeal for Israel "to revise its legislation based on racial or religious discrimination such as the law of return and all the policies of an occupying power which prevents the Palestinian refugees and displaced persons from returning to their homes and properties," and a suggestion for the need "to bring the foreign occupation of Jerusalem by Israel, together with all its racist practices to an end." Draft documents had referred to the "increase of racist practices of Zionism and anti-Semitism" and "movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas, in particular the Zionist movement, which is based on racial superiority." To sum up, Israel was correctly fingered as a state which practices racism.

However, after an American and Israeli walkout - and the possiblity of same by Canada and EU countries - the final text was rewritten by conference officials to remove the 'offending' language. (A parallel, but separate, NGO Forum, to its credit, did in fact produce a document describing Israel as a "racist, apartheid state.")

This final text (the Durban Declaration & Program of Action (DDPA), with its bland references to the "plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupation" and their right to "an independent state," became the focal point for the campaign to boycott Durban II because, despite all references to the Palestine/Israel conflict eventually being dropped from the Durban II draft text, it still reaffirmed the earlier DDPA of Durban I. And so, for no other reason than that of eliminating the DDPA's tokenism, an attempt was made to scuttle the Durban II conference, with Israel (and its overseas lobby groups) orchestrating a boycott by fellow colonial-settler states, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, aided and abetted by former colonial states such as Italy, the Netherlands and Germany. The phony nature of this campaign to control the terminology of the 'debate' was highlighted by Navi Pillay, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, in her final address to the conference:

"I had to face a widespread and highly organized campaign of disinformation. Many people, including Ministers with whom I spoke, told me that the Durban Declaration & Programme of Action (DDPA), which... was agreed by 189 states at the original World Conference Against Racism in 2001, was anti-Semitic, and it was clear that they had either not bothered to read what it actually said, or they were putting a cast on it that was, to say the least, decidedly exaggerated. Many others have labelled the entire Durban process a 'hate fest'... [T]his is hyperbole... a gross exaggeration. But it is everywhere on the Internet. And, I'm sorry to say, in many mainline newspapers, who, incidentally, declined many op-eds that I sent to them... If people actually read the DDPA, they would have realised that it includes a paragraph which says that 'the Holocaust should never be forgotten'. It includes two paragraphs that denounce 'anti-Semitism and Islamophobia', one paragraph which mentions the suffering of the Palestinians, their right of self-determination and the security of all states, including Israel, and two paragraphs calling for peace. That's all there is on the Middle East. And I could not get these corrections published in some important newspapers, particularly in the US, who used the word 'hate fest' without checking these paragraphs... Because of this campaign that was so determined to kill the conference, some countries decided to boycott it, although a few days earlier they had actually agreed on what is now the final text. I consider this bizarre. You agree on the text on Friday evening, and walk out on Sunday..."

The repeal, in 1991, of General Assembly Resolution 3379 (1975) equating Zionism with racism ("Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination"), following a successful number-crunching campaign by the Bush I and Israeli governments, was an important, initial step in Israel's efforts to gain control over the terminology of the 'debate'. Thirty-four years later, it seems that for the UN to so much as hint that Palestinians are living under "foreign occupation" is enough to trigger the kind of "bizarre" spectacle referred to by Navi Pillay.

Selling Lieberman 2

How The Australian's foreign editor spins Israel's foreign minister:-

"Over the next year or two, probably for as long as it stays in office, there will be a sustained effort to demonise the Israeli Government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The speech last week by Netanyahu's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, in which he explicitly supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute [!] but was reported as if he had said the opposite, is a case in point." (Israeli leaders mislabelled by foes*, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, 9/4/09)

And what Lieberman actually says:-

"The international community has to 'stop speaking in slogans' if it really wants to help the new Israeli government work toward a solution to the Palestinian conflict... Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday... 'Over the last two weeks I've had many conversations with my colleagues around the world', he said... 'And everybody, you know, speaks with you like you're in a campaign: Occupation, settlements, settlers...' Slogans like these, and others Lieberman cited, such as 'land for peace' and 'two-state solution', were both overly simplistic and ignored the root causes of the ongoing conflict, he said... The path forward, he said, lay in ensuring security for Israel, an improved economy for the Palestinians, and stability for both. 'Economy, security, stability', he repeated. 'It's impossible to artificially impose any political solution. It will fail, for sure. You cannot start any peace process from nothing. You must create the right situation, the right focus, the right conditions'." ('World leaders must drop their slogans', David Horovitz, 24/4/09)

[*See my earlier post on the Sheridan/Lieberman love-in: Selling Lieberman, 15/4/09]

The Cunning Little Devil!

The absolute all-time favourite pastime of Zionist propagandists is finger-pointing. It's a variation on the obnoxious little bugger in the classroom who, when caught out for some misdemeanour by his teacher, invariably accuses the teacher of picking on him, denies he was doing anything, and alleges, contradicting himself, that so-and-so elsewhere was doing it too. A beautiful example of same appeared - where else? - on the opinion page of The Australian of 22/4/09. The heading read:

Outrage reserved for Israel: Why do Muslim countries care so much more about Palestine than Chechnya, asks Brett Stephens The Wall Street Journal

And, without even reading it, you knew exactly where Stephens was coming from: "I have a hypothesis. Maybe the world attends to Palestinian grievances [or "alleged mistreatment of Palestinians," as Sheridan has it] but not to Chechen ones for the sole reason that Palestinians are, uniquely, the perceived [!] victims of the Jewish state." You can see it in your mind's eye, can't you? That obnoxious little Stephens brat screaming at his teacher: You're always picking on me! And that finger, that bloody little, snot-covered finger, pointing straight at a group of his classmates sniggering away down the back of the room.

But, credit where credit's due. Young Stephens has grown up (well, sort of) and provided us, in the above sentence, with the key to the liberation of Tibet, no less! Now, if only we could get the Chinese to contract out their occupation of Tibet to the experts of the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF), then "maybe the world would attend to Tibetan grievances."

But hang on! There's more to that title than meets the eye. Why do Muslim countries care so much more about Palestine... ? As in, why does Uzbekistan (or Kosovo or even Chechnya) care so much more about Palestine... ? Stephens is pulling a swiftie here. Because if we substituted Arab for Muslim, then the answer would be obvious: Arab countries care more about Palestine than Chechnya because Palestinians are fellow Arabs. But that simple answer wouldn't lend itself to Stephens' enduring proclivity to finger-point, now would it? Some things never change. The cunning little devil!