'Quality journalism' is a term that both wings of the corporate press love to trot out to describe just what it is that they are supposedly giving the reading public.
On July 27, it was Fairfax's turn to boast:
"The Herald believes Australians will always value quality journalism and keep supporting a business that has a long record in delivering it." (A proudly Australian voice will go on)
Then, the very next day, we're fed this undergraduate hahaha:
"The best minds in the past two centuries have worked their fingers to the bone to understand why the Middle East is such a hotbed of tensions. Master negotiators and highly respected diplomats have been unable to bring all the sides involved in the Middle East together at the peace table. The parties are like cats on hot tin roofs. Even President Obama and his high hat full of eloquence and white rabbits could not bring the sides together. Hostilities are at an all-time high. Earlier this year social scientists stumbled upon what could be the answer to the Middle East peace problem. The British Journal of Urology International published a research report that showed that circumcised men report less sexual sensitivity than their uncut counterparts... Suddenly, political and social scientists saw the underlying reasons for unrest and endless fighting in the Middle East. A solution was at hand to this unmade hotbed. Judaism and Islam use circumcision as part of their religious practices... Arabs and Jews are at each others' throats because, as the report revealed, uncircumcised men reported 'an average sensitivity score of 3.72 when they or their partner stroked the head of their manhood, compared to 3.31 among circumcised men'. Uncircumcised men reported more intense orgasms. It was little wonder why tempers flared so easily in the Middle East..." (Peace such a sensitive issue, Charles Waterstreet, The Sun-Herald)
Charles Waterstreet, Paul Sheehan, Gerard Henderson - quality journalism?
Hahaha
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Living in a Zionist Bubble
"We lived in a bubble. We didn't know what exists outside the kibbutz."
So commented one of the group of Melbourne Jews, recalling their kibbutz 'experience' back in the 70s, on the ABC's Compass program, Whatever Happened to... The Kibbutzim (28/7). It set the tone for the entire program.
Not one of our former kibbutzniks - all long since returned to their comfortable Australian middle class existence - at any stage ventured any kind of comment or reflection that went beyond Zionism's ideological bubble. On the contrary, they were having the time of their lives, convinced they were 'creating a new society' and 'making the desert bloom' - until, that is, the Egyptian and Syrian armies rudely intervened in October 1973, "shattering our dreams."
At one point, we heard the testimony of a South African Jew who said he'd become involved in anti-apartheid protests there but left for Israel because he couldn't bear to be part of a racist South Africa. Presumably, Israel's expulsion of the bulk of the Arab Palestinians in 1948 and the Zionist groupthink of the kibbutz combined to ensure that he was not disturbed by a sense of deja vu.
Nor did Compass presenter, Geraldine Doogue's simple-minded narration help, with the kibbutz characterised simply as "a radical social experiment" with no mention of its discriminatory, Jews-only nature, or its central role in the Zionist colonisation and takeover of Palestine. There was, need I say, no mention whatever of dispossessed Palestinians. At one point Doogue referred to "disputed land," but said nothing of the parties to this so-called 'dispute'. Absent any political context, she could have been talking about hippie communes in Nimbin.
In short, viewing Whatever Happened to... The Kibbutzim merely confirmed my original suspicion that it was going to be yet another example of the ABC uncritically dishing out Zionist propaganda. See my 28/7/13 post Zionist Propaganda Alert.
By way of a corrective, here is some useful data on the genealogy of the kibbutz from Gabriel Piterberg's fine study, The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics & Scholarship in Israel (2008). (Given the length of Piterberg's account, I've had to leave out much that is of considerable interest, so please consider the following excerpts merely an appetizer and an incentive to purchase this invaluable, eye-opening book):
"Common knowledge has it that the kibbutz originated from an astonishing socialist experimentation with an ideology the settlers (pioneers, or chalutzim) had acquired in Europe. Even someone as astutely prophetic as and sober as Arendt thought that the kibbutzim were marvellous. That this rendering accords the settlers not only a central role but also hyper-agency is hardly surprising, for these settlers were members of the Second and Third Aliyas, that is, the ruling political elite of the Yishuv (from the 1920s onward), the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) and Jewish Agency (from the 1930s on) and the state of Israel (1948-1977). However, there is solid scholarship that seriously questions this story and offers a threefold correction: it tempers the settlers' hyper-agency by underscoring the pivotal role played by German Jewish settlement experts; it shows that the decisive factors were the conditions and desire of colonization; and that, even in terms of ideational flow from Europe to Palestine, what we have is ideas of colonization and race rather than socialism.
"In the mid 1980s two geographers of the Hebrew University, Shalom Reichman and Shlomo Hasson, published a revealing article on the formative influence of the pre-First World War colonization project of the German Reich in the Posen (Poznan in Polish) province of the east Prussian marches, upon the early phase of the Zionist colonization effort in Palestine. A sizeable chunk of the east Prussian marches, the Ostmark, had been appropriated when Poland was partitioned in the late eighteenth century. In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, three of the Ostmark provinces - Eastern and Western Prussia, and Silesia - had a German majority; only the fourth, Posen, had a Polish majority of roughly 60%. Posen was identified by the Germans as a centre of Polish nationalism. The purpose of the state project - the wider background of which was the crisis of German agriculture and the attendant Landflucht (land flight) - was to effect a demographic transformation in Posen first and foremost, and in the Ostmark more generally, by dispossessing the Polish majority of its hold on the land and settling Germans in their stead...
"The German project... had a formative impact upon the Zionist project in four related ways: the impact of the German project resulted in the decisive rejection of the French model that had been introduced by the Rothschild experts; it accorded primacy to national colonization over economic profitability; it accorded primacy to (an equivalent of) the state and its bureaucracy over the market and private capitalists; and it implanted in the WZO what [Gershon] Shafir perceptively calls the pure settlement frame of mind. The agents of this formative impact were two German Jewish settlement experts, Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943) and perhaps the single most important individual for the Zionist settlement in Palestine, Arthur Ruppin (1876-1943)...
"Ruppin's role in the colonization of Palestine was so pivotal that he is known in Zionist Israeli lore as 'the father of Jewish settlement in the land of Israel'. In addition to settlement... he was also responsible for the historical alliance within Zionism between the nationalist bourgeoisie and the labour movement, and for the agreement with the Nazis on the transfer of German Jews and their capital to Mandate Palestine... [His] Weltanschauung was social Darwinism and its formation occurred in the 1890s and 1900s, within a budding interdisciplinary paradigm that became known as Eugenics or Racial Hygiene (Rassen-hygiene). One of Ruppin's mentors was a central promulgator of the new paradigm in Germany, the blond, blue-eyed biologist Ernst Haeckel, whom Ruppin described in his diary as 'the marvellous German type'. Haeckel's mission was to disseminate 'Darwinism as a Weltanschauung'. From Ruppin's early work in the early 1900s, it is clear that he adhered to a rigid biological determinism of race, whereby 'we are connected to our predecessors not through the spiritual tradition but through the continuity of the primordial substance that exists in our body.' His reflections on the superhuman (Ubermensch) resulted in his conclusion that such a man should develop only among his physical type, from which view the shift to the idea of racial purity needed just a nudge. What made Ruppin concern himself for the rest of his life with the correction and betterment of 'the Jewish race' was the anti-Semitic rejection by his beloved German nation and homeland...
"Evidence for the extent to which the German colonization project in Posen and East Prussia in general informed Ruppin consists both of explicit statements by him that this was the case, and structural similarities between the Prussian and Zionist colonization projects. On several occasions Ruppin stated his indebtedness to the German venture... Two principles evinced the pure settlement vision that underpinned Ruppin's colonizing approach; these in turn were congruous with the spatial concept of the German Colonization Commission. 'One', Reichman and Hasson elaborate, 'was to avoid penetration into areas densely inhabited by another national group, and the other was to form contiguous blocks of settlements'...
"Shafir confirms the argument that the kibbutz was first and foremost a colonizing tool for the formation of a settler project, and that it was based to a considerable degree on social and ethnic exclusion. He observes: '[T]he national character of the kibbutz was its foundation and raison d'etre and determined its composition, and in part its structure. The kibbutz became the most homogenous body of Israeli society: it included almost exclusively East European Jews, since it was unwilling to embrace Middle Eastern and North African Jews, and was constructed on the exclusion of Palestinian Arabs'." (pp 78-87)
So commented one of the group of Melbourne Jews, recalling their kibbutz 'experience' back in the 70s, on the ABC's Compass program, Whatever Happened to... The Kibbutzim (28/7). It set the tone for the entire program.
Not one of our former kibbutzniks - all long since returned to their comfortable Australian middle class existence - at any stage ventured any kind of comment or reflection that went beyond Zionism's ideological bubble. On the contrary, they were having the time of their lives, convinced they were 'creating a new society' and 'making the desert bloom' - until, that is, the Egyptian and Syrian armies rudely intervened in October 1973, "shattering our dreams."
At one point, we heard the testimony of a South African Jew who said he'd become involved in anti-apartheid protests there but left for Israel because he couldn't bear to be part of a racist South Africa. Presumably, Israel's expulsion of the bulk of the Arab Palestinians in 1948 and the Zionist groupthink of the kibbutz combined to ensure that he was not disturbed by a sense of deja vu.
Nor did Compass presenter, Geraldine Doogue's simple-minded narration help, with the kibbutz characterised simply as "a radical social experiment" with no mention of its discriminatory, Jews-only nature, or its central role in the Zionist colonisation and takeover of Palestine. There was, need I say, no mention whatever of dispossessed Palestinians. At one point Doogue referred to "disputed land," but said nothing of the parties to this so-called 'dispute'. Absent any political context, she could have been talking about hippie communes in Nimbin.
In short, viewing Whatever Happened to... The Kibbutzim merely confirmed my original suspicion that it was going to be yet another example of the ABC uncritically dishing out Zionist propaganda. See my 28/7/13 post Zionist Propaganda Alert.
By way of a corrective, here is some useful data on the genealogy of the kibbutz from Gabriel Piterberg's fine study, The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics & Scholarship in Israel (2008). (Given the length of Piterberg's account, I've had to leave out much that is of considerable interest, so please consider the following excerpts merely an appetizer and an incentive to purchase this invaluable, eye-opening book):
"Common knowledge has it that the kibbutz originated from an astonishing socialist experimentation with an ideology the settlers (pioneers, or chalutzim) had acquired in Europe. Even someone as astutely prophetic as and sober as Arendt thought that the kibbutzim were marvellous. That this rendering accords the settlers not only a central role but also hyper-agency is hardly surprising, for these settlers were members of the Second and Third Aliyas, that is, the ruling political elite of the Yishuv (from the 1920s onward), the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) and Jewish Agency (from the 1930s on) and the state of Israel (1948-1977). However, there is solid scholarship that seriously questions this story and offers a threefold correction: it tempers the settlers' hyper-agency by underscoring the pivotal role played by German Jewish settlement experts; it shows that the decisive factors were the conditions and desire of colonization; and that, even in terms of ideational flow from Europe to Palestine, what we have is ideas of colonization and race rather than socialism.
"In the mid 1980s two geographers of the Hebrew University, Shalom Reichman and Shlomo Hasson, published a revealing article on the formative influence of the pre-First World War colonization project of the German Reich in the Posen (Poznan in Polish) province of the east Prussian marches, upon the early phase of the Zionist colonization effort in Palestine. A sizeable chunk of the east Prussian marches, the Ostmark, had been appropriated when Poland was partitioned in the late eighteenth century. In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, three of the Ostmark provinces - Eastern and Western Prussia, and Silesia - had a German majority; only the fourth, Posen, had a Polish majority of roughly 60%. Posen was identified by the Germans as a centre of Polish nationalism. The purpose of the state project - the wider background of which was the crisis of German agriculture and the attendant Landflucht (land flight) - was to effect a demographic transformation in Posen first and foremost, and in the Ostmark more generally, by dispossessing the Polish majority of its hold on the land and settling Germans in their stead...
"The German project... had a formative impact upon the Zionist project in four related ways: the impact of the German project resulted in the decisive rejection of the French model that had been introduced by the Rothschild experts; it accorded primacy to national colonization over economic profitability; it accorded primacy to (an equivalent of) the state and its bureaucracy over the market and private capitalists; and it implanted in the WZO what [Gershon] Shafir perceptively calls the pure settlement frame of mind. The agents of this formative impact were two German Jewish settlement experts, Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943) and perhaps the single most important individual for the Zionist settlement in Palestine, Arthur Ruppin (1876-1943)...
"Ruppin's role in the colonization of Palestine was so pivotal that he is known in Zionist Israeli lore as 'the father of Jewish settlement in the land of Israel'. In addition to settlement... he was also responsible for the historical alliance within Zionism between the nationalist bourgeoisie and the labour movement, and for the agreement with the Nazis on the transfer of German Jews and their capital to Mandate Palestine... [His] Weltanschauung was social Darwinism and its formation occurred in the 1890s and 1900s, within a budding interdisciplinary paradigm that became known as Eugenics or Racial Hygiene (Rassen-hygiene). One of Ruppin's mentors was a central promulgator of the new paradigm in Germany, the blond, blue-eyed biologist Ernst Haeckel, whom Ruppin described in his diary as 'the marvellous German type'. Haeckel's mission was to disseminate 'Darwinism as a Weltanschauung'. From Ruppin's early work in the early 1900s, it is clear that he adhered to a rigid biological determinism of race, whereby 'we are connected to our predecessors not through the spiritual tradition but through the continuity of the primordial substance that exists in our body.' His reflections on the superhuman (Ubermensch) resulted in his conclusion that such a man should develop only among his physical type, from which view the shift to the idea of racial purity needed just a nudge. What made Ruppin concern himself for the rest of his life with the correction and betterment of 'the Jewish race' was the anti-Semitic rejection by his beloved German nation and homeland...
"Evidence for the extent to which the German colonization project in Posen and East Prussia in general informed Ruppin consists both of explicit statements by him that this was the case, and structural similarities between the Prussian and Zionist colonization projects. On several occasions Ruppin stated his indebtedness to the German venture... Two principles evinced the pure settlement vision that underpinned Ruppin's colonizing approach; these in turn were congruous with the spatial concept of the German Colonization Commission. 'One', Reichman and Hasson elaborate, 'was to avoid penetration into areas densely inhabited by another national group, and the other was to form contiguous blocks of settlements'...
"Shafir confirms the argument that the kibbutz was first and foremost a colonizing tool for the formation of a settler project, and that it was based to a considerable degree on social and ethnic exclusion. He observes: '[T]he national character of the kibbutz was its foundation and raison d'etre and determined its composition, and in part its structure. The kibbutz became the most homogenous body of Israeli society: it included almost exclusively East European Jews, since it was unwilling to embrace Middle Eastern and North African Jews, and was constructed on the exclusion of Palestinian Arabs'." (pp 78-87)
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Behind the Iranian Refugee Exodus 2
A media miracle of sorts has happened. The following opinion piece, by Sara Haghdoosti, executive director and founder of Berim* (pronounced in Farsi 'beh-rim', meaning 'let's go'), actually appeared in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald!
It places a large part of the blame for the current spike in the number of Iranian asylum seekers attempting to reach these unwelcoming shores squarely where it belongs - on the shoulders of the Gillard/Rudd government which has happily joined forces with the US and its other western client regimes to impose economy-busting sanctions on their country over its nuclear program. The only issue I have with Haghdoosti's piece is its failure to spell out the only real beneficiary of these sanctions: Israel. Could this have been a condition of its publication, I wonder? (See also my 20/7/13 post Behind the Iranian Refugee Exodus.):
"What do the Australian Labor Party and Bart Simpson have in common? They use the same tactics when it comes to crisis management. Namely wreaking havoc, then turning around and crying: 'I didn't do it.' It's not the same sort of cry we heard last week from an Iranian refugee when she was captured on camera after hearing that she would be settled in Papua New Guinea and not Australia.
"You have to admit the Australian government gets full marks for chutzpah when it comes to dealing with asylum seekers. It takes some gall for Foreign Minister Bob Carr to be able to say: 'They're leaving their country because of the economic pressures - much of it produced, I guess, by the sanctions.' Really? Because there's no other reason why anyone would want to leave Iran? Because there aren't hundreds of political prisoners in jail? Because a young man didn't just die under interrogation for comments he wrote on a blog? Because Baha'i and the gay community aren't actively persecuted? Because the country doesn't have the second highest rate of incarceration in the world?
"Even if we put the Iranian government's human rights record aside - Bob Carr 'guesses' the reason is the sanctions? As though sanctions miraculously fell from the sky and are wholly unrelated to to him and anyone in government? When people try to escape famine do we call them 'economic refugees'? Of course not. In the case of Iran, our foreign policies are designed to cripple the economy and for the most part they are working. Inflation is sky high, unemployment is growing and the cost of food is rising daily. The Australian government is helping create poverty and then it is turning around and labelling people as politically oportunistic when they try to feed their families.
"Let us be clear: sanctions aren't benign - they're economic cluster bombs. They don't discriminate but often have a disproportionate effect on the most vulnerable. Want to stop Iranians getting on boats? We could start by not taking food off their tables and medicine off their shelves. Australia could use its new seat on the United Nations Security Council to highlight the fact that international sanctions are creating a medicine shortage in Iran. International sanctions don't apply to medicines directly but because they do apply to Iranian banks it has become virtually impossible to perform transactions that are legal because Western companies aren't willing to take the risk of dealing with Iranian banks. In Iran there are patients for whom a medicine is the difference between life and death. If parents put a child on a boat to Australia because they can't find medicine to keep their child alive are they considered economic refugees? Remember, these are ordinary Iranians who have no say in the country's nuclear policies. Their only crime is that they were born in Iran and their lives are at risk because of it. It's time we looked in the mirror. The Iranian government isn't the only one who who is persecuting the Iranian people - our government's sanctions are also doing it.
"In addition to the humanitarian argument, there is a geopolitical one to be made here. Iran is a country where more than half the people are under 30, well-educated, media-savvy and hungry for change. Instead of backing these young people, we are supporting policies that make it harder for them to campaign for change within Iran. Most of us have seen the power of technology - particularly smartphones and the internet in terms of political organising. For all politicians' claims that the sanctions don't impact people's ability to organise for reform, who can afford a smartphone when the price of food and medicine quadruples? Perhaps before abandoning our international obligations under the Refugee Convention, we could examine how we are contributing to the suffering that makes people flee in the first place. We can continue trying to shirk our international responsibilities with a bipartisan smile or we could recognise the power we have internationally and use it proactively. We could use our seat on the Security Council to highlight and help prevent the adverse humanitarian impact sanctions are having on Iran. We could set an example to the world by reassessing those policies ourselves.
"There is a generation that through the green movement has already proved that they have the potential to deliver change in Iran. If we can't help at least let's ensure that we're not doing active harm." (How can trying to feed a family be opportunistic?)
[*One of Berim's principles is that "any state-sponsored violence, be that economic or military, that punishes ordinary Iranians for the actions of their government is ethically and morally unacceptable." About Berim, berim.org)]
It places a large part of the blame for the current spike in the number of Iranian asylum seekers attempting to reach these unwelcoming shores squarely where it belongs - on the shoulders of the Gillard/Rudd government which has happily joined forces with the US and its other western client regimes to impose economy-busting sanctions on their country over its nuclear program. The only issue I have with Haghdoosti's piece is its failure to spell out the only real beneficiary of these sanctions: Israel. Could this have been a condition of its publication, I wonder? (See also my 20/7/13 post Behind the Iranian Refugee Exodus.):
"What do the Australian Labor Party and Bart Simpson have in common? They use the same tactics when it comes to crisis management. Namely wreaking havoc, then turning around and crying: 'I didn't do it.' It's not the same sort of cry we heard last week from an Iranian refugee when she was captured on camera after hearing that she would be settled in Papua New Guinea and not Australia.
"You have to admit the Australian government gets full marks for chutzpah when it comes to dealing with asylum seekers. It takes some gall for Foreign Minister Bob Carr to be able to say: 'They're leaving their country because of the economic pressures - much of it produced, I guess, by the sanctions.' Really? Because there's no other reason why anyone would want to leave Iran? Because there aren't hundreds of political prisoners in jail? Because a young man didn't just die under interrogation for comments he wrote on a blog? Because Baha'i and the gay community aren't actively persecuted? Because the country doesn't have the second highest rate of incarceration in the world?
"Even if we put the Iranian government's human rights record aside - Bob Carr 'guesses' the reason is the sanctions? As though sanctions miraculously fell from the sky and are wholly unrelated to to him and anyone in government? When people try to escape famine do we call them 'economic refugees'? Of course not. In the case of Iran, our foreign policies are designed to cripple the economy and for the most part they are working. Inflation is sky high, unemployment is growing and the cost of food is rising daily. The Australian government is helping create poverty and then it is turning around and labelling people as politically oportunistic when they try to feed their families.
"Let us be clear: sanctions aren't benign - they're economic cluster bombs. They don't discriminate but often have a disproportionate effect on the most vulnerable. Want to stop Iranians getting on boats? We could start by not taking food off their tables and medicine off their shelves. Australia could use its new seat on the United Nations Security Council to highlight the fact that international sanctions are creating a medicine shortage in Iran. International sanctions don't apply to medicines directly but because they do apply to Iranian banks it has become virtually impossible to perform transactions that are legal because Western companies aren't willing to take the risk of dealing with Iranian banks. In Iran there are patients for whom a medicine is the difference between life and death. If parents put a child on a boat to Australia because they can't find medicine to keep their child alive are they considered economic refugees? Remember, these are ordinary Iranians who have no say in the country's nuclear policies. Their only crime is that they were born in Iran and their lives are at risk because of it. It's time we looked in the mirror. The Iranian government isn't the only one who who is persecuting the Iranian people - our government's sanctions are also doing it.
"In addition to the humanitarian argument, there is a geopolitical one to be made here. Iran is a country where more than half the people are under 30, well-educated, media-savvy and hungry for change. Instead of backing these young people, we are supporting policies that make it harder for them to campaign for change within Iran. Most of us have seen the power of technology - particularly smartphones and the internet in terms of political organising. For all politicians' claims that the sanctions don't impact people's ability to organise for reform, who can afford a smartphone when the price of food and medicine quadruples? Perhaps before abandoning our international obligations under the Refugee Convention, we could examine how we are contributing to the suffering that makes people flee in the first place. We can continue trying to shirk our international responsibilities with a bipartisan smile or we could recognise the power we have internationally and use it proactively. We could use our seat on the Security Council to highlight and help prevent the adverse humanitarian impact sanctions are having on Iran. We could set an example to the world by reassessing those policies ourselves.
"There is a generation that through the green movement has already proved that they have the potential to deliver change in Iran. If we can't help at least let's ensure that we're not doing active harm." (How can trying to feed a family be opportunistic?)
[*One of Berim's principles is that "any state-sponsored violence, be that economic or military, that punishes ordinary Iranians for the actions of their government is ethically and morally unacceptable." About Berim, berim.org)]
Joe Hockey: My Palestinianity is Firmly Under Control
Seriously head-shaking stuff:
"The Hockey* life story is one of the more textured of an Australian public figure and bears re-telling for what it reveals about a more complex individual than might seem to be the case on an affable surface. Of Palestinian-Armenian origin (his paternal grandmother was Palestinian); grandfather, who deserted the family, was Armenian) Hockey is the product of a marriage between Richard Hokeidonian and Beverly Little... Richard had dropped the 'donian' part of his name when he migrated to Australia in 1948 to get away from turmoil in the Middle East. He named his youngest child Joseph Benedict out of gratitude to former Labor Prime Minister Joseph Benedict Chifley. Hockey's Palestinian connection has been tricky for him over the years, given his own party's tilt towards Israel. He does not deny his heritage. He has Palestinian and Armenian friends, but Hockey's Sydney and Canberra milieu is far removed from a conflict on the other side of the world. 'It's my culture. It's my heritage. It helps to define me. But it doesn't control me,' he says. He describes, nevertheless, an emotional reaction after visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza in 1998 with his father. 'We walked through the refugee camp where you'd had 3 generations living in a room 2 metres by 2 metres. It was very emotional because there I was with my father, and there but for the grace of God I could've been.' Could it be the Palestinian loss of patrimony has something to do with Hockey's desire to own a piece of Australian countryside? He describes his 200-hectare cattle property in the Atherton Tablelands behind Cairns... as his reality check." (No more Mr Sunrise, Tony Walker, Financial Review Magazine, August 2013)
Don't you just love the sentence: "Richard... migrated to Australia in 1948 to get away from the turmoil in the Middle East."
Shhh... don't mention the NAKBA!
And don't you just love how, while your Danbys and Frydenbergs have no qualms about flaunting their Zionism, Joe Hockey keeps his Palestinianity firmly under control?
[*For my readers overseas, Joe Hockey is Australia's shadow treasurer.]
"The Hockey* life story is one of the more textured of an Australian public figure and bears re-telling for what it reveals about a more complex individual than might seem to be the case on an affable surface. Of Palestinian-Armenian origin (his paternal grandmother was Palestinian); grandfather, who deserted the family, was Armenian) Hockey is the product of a marriage between Richard Hokeidonian and Beverly Little... Richard had dropped the 'donian' part of his name when he migrated to Australia in 1948 to get away from turmoil in the Middle East. He named his youngest child Joseph Benedict out of gratitude to former Labor Prime Minister Joseph Benedict Chifley. Hockey's Palestinian connection has been tricky for him over the years, given his own party's tilt towards Israel. He does not deny his heritage. He has Palestinian and Armenian friends, but Hockey's Sydney and Canberra milieu is far removed from a conflict on the other side of the world. 'It's my culture. It's my heritage. It helps to define me. But it doesn't control me,' he says. He describes, nevertheless, an emotional reaction after visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza in 1998 with his father. 'We walked through the refugee camp where you'd had 3 generations living in a room 2 metres by 2 metres. It was very emotional because there I was with my father, and there but for the grace of God I could've been.' Could it be the Palestinian loss of patrimony has something to do with Hockey's desire to own a piece of Australian countryside? He describes his 200-hectare cattle property in the Atherton Tablelands behind Cairns... as his reality check." (No more Mr Sunrise, Tony Walker, Financial Review Magazine, August 2013)
Don't you just love the sentence: "Richard... migrated to Australia in 1948 to get away from the turmoil in the Middle East."
Shhh... don't mention the NAKBA!
And don't you just love how, while your Danbys and Frydenbergs have no qualms about flaunting their Zionism, Joe Hockey keeps his Palestinianity firmly under control?
[*For my readers overseas, Joe Hockey is Australia's shadow treasurer.]
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Zionist Propaganda Alert
ABC television's religious affairs program Compass is currently screening a series of documentaries under the heading Whatever Happened to...?
As the Compass website explains: "In this series Compass revisits radical religious and social movements in Australia's recent past, exploring their impact and legacy."
To date, they've covered the Hare Krishnas and the Charismatics. Tonight's episode, screened at 6:30 pm, is Whatever Happened to... The Kibbutzim. Here's the blurb:
"Episode 3 - The first Kibbutz was founded in Israel just over 100 years ago. A radical socialist experiment, it combined communal living and Zionist philosophy with the aim of 'making the desert bloom'. Soon there were dozens, and training farms were set up in countries like Australia to prepare young people for the physical hardship of kibbutz life where - in exchange for manual labour - volunteers were provided with food, shelter, education and medical care. In the late 60s and 70s many young Australians, Jewish and non-Jewish, went to Israel to join a kibbutz. Why did they go? How has the experience shaped their lives? And do kibbutzim still operate? Compass finds out."
With a Zionist sales pitch like that - making the desert bloom indeed! - I'm afraid it doesn't bode well. Needless to say, I'll be returning with a corrective after the screening if necessary.
But just in case you find yourself asking whether the kibbutz phenomenon isn't perhaps a tad too marginal to be part of a series on Australian religious and social movements, let me remind you that there is still at least one old bugger around who once came under the influence and has never fully recovered from the experience:
"Two weeks pass [following a hip replacement]. And I've been demoted from the Zimmer to crutches to walking stick. And while I become very attached to my tormentors (a variation on the Stockholm Syndrome), it's time to leave [Mater Hospital]. For Wolper, a Jewish hospital nearer home. If you think the Catholics are tough, you haven't been in Wolper. It's like a kibbutz during the Six-Day War. With a hint of Mississippi slave era (Tote that barge, lift that bale.) And I'm going in for 3 days a week for months." (I'm in the hip crowd, Phillip Adams, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 20/7/13)
As the Compass website explains: "In this series Compass revisits radical religious and social movements in Australia's recent past, exploring their impact and legacy."
To date, they've covered the Hare Krishnas and the Charismatics. Tonight's episode, screened at 6:30 pm, is Whatever Happened to... The Kibbutzim. Here's the blurb:
"Episode 3 - The first Kibbutz was founded in Israel just over 100 years ago. A radical socialist experiment, it combined communal living and Zionist philosophy with the aim of 'making the desert bloom'. Soon there were dozens, and training farms were set up in countries like Australia to prepare young people for the physical hardship of kibbutz life where - in exchange for manual labour - volunteers were provided with food, shelter, education and medical care. In the late 60s and 70s many young Australians, Jewish and non-Jewish, went to Israel to join a kibbutz. Why did they go? How has the experience shaped their lives? And do kibbutzim still operate? Compass finds out."
With a Zionist sales pitch like that - making the desert bloom indeed! - I'm afraid it doesn't bode well. Needless to say, I'll be returning with a corrective after the screening if necessary.
But just in case you find yourself asking whether the kibbutz phenomenon isn't perhaps a tad too marginal to be part of a series on Australian religious and social movements, let me remind you that there is still at least one old bugger around who once came under the influence and has never fully recovered from the experience:
"Two weeks pass [following a hip replacement]. And I've been demoted from the Zimmer to crutches to walking stick. And while I become very attached to my tormentors (a variation on the Stockholm Syndrome), it's time to leave [Mater Hospital]. For Wolper, a Jewish hospital nearer home. If you think the Catholics are tough, you haven't been in Wolper. It's like a kibbutz during the Six-Day War. With a hint of Mississippi slave era (Tote that barge, lift that bale.) And I'm going in for 3 days a week for months." (I'm in the hip crowd, Phillip Adams, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 20/7/13)
Sunday's Sermon
Seriously now, Anne Speckhard PhD and her phony mates in the 'counter-terrorism' business wouldn't know terrorism if it hit them in the face.
One American who does is my all-time favourite preacher, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright delivered the following sermon on Sunday, September 16, 2001, just 5 days after the terror bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11. Imagine how much longer it'd be if he were delivering it today:
"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism.
"A white man said that y'all, not a black militant - Ambassador to Iraq, Edward Peck. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised.
"He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true - America's chickens are coming home to roost.
"We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism!
"We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism!
"We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.
"We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard-working fathers.
"We bombed Qaddafi's home and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children's head against the rock.*
"We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard-working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing they'd never get back home.
"We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.
"Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.
"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost.
"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism."
[*Psalm 137,9]
One American who does is my all-time favourite preacher, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright delivered the following sermon on Sunday, September 16, 2001, just 5 days after the terror bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11. Imagine how much longer it'd be if he were delivering it today:
"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism.
"A white man said that y'all, not a black militant - Ambassador to Iraq, Edward Peck. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised.
"He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true - America's chickens are coming home to roost.
"We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism!
"We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism!
"We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.
"We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard-working fathers.
"We bombed Qaddafi's home and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children's head against the rock.*
"We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard-working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing they'd never get back home.
"We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.
"Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.
"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost.
"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism."
[*Psalm 137,9]
Saturday, July 27, 2013
The Terrorist Whisperer
Thank God for the Sydney Morning Herald's opinion editor I say. He/she knows exactly what the Herald's (dwindling) readership really wants. Namely, stirring tales of derring-do, with catchy titles such as Fanging out with vipers, or I put my head in the croc's mouth and survived... the halitosis!, or Care for a swim in shark-infested waters? Why not?
Which is why, I guess, Anne Speckhard's opinion piece, Inside the homes, heads and hearts of terrorists is both frightening and fascinating, was selected for inclusion in the opinion pages of yesterday's Herald:
"Have you wondered what it would be like to talk to a terrorist? It's hard to imagine just being in the same vicinity of one, let alone staying at their houses, eating with them and having hour-long discussions. Over the past decade, I have been researching the psychology of terrorists and extremists, their supporters, close family members and associates... One of the most common questions people are intrigued to know is: what is it like to talk to a terrorist? It's both frightening and fascinating... The truth is they started out as ordinary people just like you and me... I wanted to understand what takes normal people to put themselves on the terrorist trajectory... I overcame my fear via my fascination with their descriptions of the experiences that drove them into terrorism. In conflict zones such as Chechnya, Palestine and Iraq, many of the traumatic experiences they described were heartbreaking and I could understand (but never endorse) how they were drawn to groups that promised them the possibility of revenge and empowered them after they felt totally overwhelmed by the violence of another... When talking to the terrorists... it was always really useful to go as far as possible into the actual context of their lives... I understood that terrorists view themselves as part of a movement and as soldiers for their cause. They don't see their actions as any more wrong than our soldiers judge their killing in combat was wrong. Of course, there is a huge difference and there is never any justification for terrorism of any type; there is no cause anywhere in the world that justifies targeting and terrorising innocent civilians on its behalf."
Well, I don't know about you, but after reading that I was impressed. What a brave woman is this Anne Speckhard - sorry, Dr Anne Speckhard. I mean, it's a miracle she wasn't eaten alive!
So just who is this Wonder Woman?
According to the Herald bio, she's a professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University. But not just any old professor - she's an "adjunct associate" professor. Not just a pretty face, eh?
In fact, so impressed was I that I checked out her website and now I'm just itching to get my hands on her latest book: Talking to Terrorists: Understanding the Psycho-Social Motivations of Militants, Jihadi Terrorists, Mass Hostage Takers, Suicide Bombers & 'Martyrs'.
I swear, not since Aaron Klein's Schmoozing with Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadis Reveal their Global Plans - to a Jew! have I been this excited! And when I'm through with that, the very next on my to-read list will have to be Dr Speckhard's Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy Seal's Journey to Coming Out Transgender.
But back to Talking to Terrorists. Just look at the reviews assembled on her website. All 5-star and all by the right people.
A mere sample:
"The embarrassing truth about Terrorism Studies is that most writers on the subject have never met a terrorist. Dr Anne Speckhard is an exception... Nobody has gotten closer to the 'heart of darkness'." - Alex P. Schmid, Director, Terrorism Research Initiative
"She has succeeded in delving into the terrorist mind." - Joe Charlaff, Journalist, Israel
"Anne goes alone and without security into the lion's den to interview her subjects who most often have blood on their hands." - Peter S. Probst, Former Assistant for Terrorism Intelligence, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations & Low Intensity Conflict (OASD/SO/LIC), Former Special Assistant for Concept Development - Office of Special Planning - Office of the Secretary of Defense and Former CIA Officer (Directorate of Operations and Directorate of Intelligence)
"Invaluable to those in the field of terrorism studies, as well as to the general public." - Yoram Schweitzer, Director of the Low Intensity Warfare & Terrorism Project and Senior Research Fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies
"As advisor to Detainee Task Force 134, I watched Anne in action at Camp Cropper, the world's largest detention center. Her empathy, smile, Belgian chocolates, and paper tissues for the occasional tears worked to enlist the cooperation of even the most hard-hearted and unrepentant killers." - Rohan Gunaratna, Author, Inside al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror
Be still, my beating heart. I think I'm in love...
Which is why, I guess, Anne Speckhard's opinion piece, Inside the homes, heads and hearts of terrorists is both frightening and fascinating, was selected for inclusion in the opinion pages of yesterday's Herald:
"Have you wondered what it would be like to talk to a terrorist? It's hard to imagine just being in the same vicinity of one, let alone staying at their houses, eating with them and having hour-long discussions. Over the past decade, I have been researching the psychology of terrorists and extremists, their supporters, close family members and associates... One of the most common questions people are intrigued to know is: what is it like to talk to a terrorist? It's both frightening and fascinating... The truth is they started out as ordinary people just like you and me... I wanted to understand what takes normal people to put themselves on the terrorist trajectory... I overcame my fear via my fascination with their descriptions of the experiences that drove them into terrorism. In conflict zones such as Chechnya, Palestine and Iraq, many of the traumatic experiences they described were heartbreaking and I could understand (but never endorse) how they were drawn to groups that promised them the possibility of revenge and empowered them after they felt totally overwhelmed by the violence of another... When talking to the terrorists... it was always really useful to go as far as possible into the actual context of their lives... I understood that terrorists view themselves as part of a movement and as soldiers for their cause. They don't see their actions as any more wrong than our soldiers judge their killing in combat was wrong. Of course, there is a huge difference and there is never any justification for terrorism of any type; there is no cause anywhere in the world that justifies targeting and terrorising innocent civilians on its behalf."
Well, I don't know about you, but after reading that I was impressed. What a brave woman is this Anne Speckhard - sorry, Dr Anne Speckhard. I mean, it's a miracle she wasn't eaten alive!
So just who is this Wonder Woman?
According to the Herald bio, she's a professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University. But not just any old professor - she's an "adjunct associate" professor. Not just a pretty face, eh?
In fact, so impressed was I that I checked out her website and now I'm just itching to get my hands on her latest book: Talking to Terrorists: Understanding the Psycho-Social Motivations of Militants, Jihadi Terrorists, Mass Hostage Takers, Suicide Bombers & 'Martyrs'.
I swear, not since Aaron Klein's Schmoozing with Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadis Reveal their Global Plans - to a Jew! have I been this excited! And when I'm through with that, the very next on my to-read list will have to be Dr Speckhard's Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy Seal's Journey to Coming Out Transgender.
But back to Talking to Terrorists. Just look at the reviews assembled on her website. All 5-star and all by the right people.
A mere sample:
"The embarrassing truth about Terrorism Studies is that most writers on the subject have never met a terrorist. Dr Anne Speckhard is an exception... Nobody has gotten closer to the 'heart of darkness'." - Alex P. Schmid, Director, Terrorism Research Initiative
"She has succeeded in delving into the terrorist mind." - Joe Charlaff, Journalist, Israel
"Anne goes alone and without security into the lion's den to interview her subjects who most often have blood on their hands." - Peter S. Probst, Former Assistant for Terrorism Intelligence, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations & Low Intensity Conflict (OASD/SO/LIC), Former Special Assistant for Concept Development - Office of Special Planning - Office of the Secretary of Defense and Former CIA Officer (Directorate of Operations and Directorate of Intelligence)
"Invaluable to those in the field of terrorism studies, as well as to the general public." - Yoram Schweitzer, Director of the Low Intensity Warfare & Terrorism Project and Senior Research Fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies
"As advisor to Detainee Task Force 134, I watched Anne in action at Camp Cropper, the world's largest detention center. Her empathy, smile, Belgian chocolates, and paper tissues for the occasional tears worked to enlist the cooperation of even the most hard-hearted and unrepentant killers." - Rohan Gunaratna, Author, Inside al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror
Be still, my beating heart. I think I'm in love...
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