Monday, August 27, 2018
Israeli War Criminals in the West Bank
"Most [Israelis] are not, like, evil and malevolent toward Palestinians": Yuval Noah Harari.
No, but there are enough who are to provide the subject matter of reports like this, from a Norwegian International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteer, Kristin Foss, who describes an Israeli army POGROM on the Palestinian village of Kafr Qaddum in the occupied/colonised West Bank. Note that I've reproduced here only the climactic part of Foss' testimony:
"The shooting had been going for about one and a half hours before it started to calm down. Apart from some tear gas inhalation there had been no injuries at this point. When things were calm, I was approached by a senior citizen, asking if we could help him. He had gone out to his driveway earlier. He was going to get into his car to pick up his wife. He hadn't noticed that his driveway was full of Israeli soldiers. The soldiers stole/confiscated his car and keys, and parked it in the middle of the road as a makeshift shield. As it was calm, we agreed to accompany him to speak to the soldiers and to ask for his car back. There was no shooting, nor stones being thrown at this point. The old man, Anna, and I started walking towards the soldiers with our hands in the air. I had my camera phone in one hand. The man walked surprisingly fast and was soon with the soldiers, whilst Anna and I stopped some 20 metres behind, still with our hands up. I am filming at this point.
"One of the soldiers shouts something at me in Hebrew, I don't understand, but I shout back that the man just wants his car back. Then he shouts that it is dangerous. I shout back that it is only dangerous because he is pointing a machine gun at me. One shot is fired as I am shouting, then another shot is directed at me, and hits me in the abdomen. I would say from approximately 20-30 metres. There is absolutely no doubt I was targeted and shot at deliberately." (A statement from the Norwegian ISM volunteer targeted and shot by an Israeli soldier in Kafr Qaddum, video included. palsolidarity.org, 21/8/18)
While the bullet penetrated her skin at an angle, Kristin lived to tell the tale. Incredibly, however, this appeared on her FB page mere days later: "Went back to Kafr Qaddum to show that solidarity is stronger than fear! Very nervous though, so kept right at the back, up against the wall. Thought I was safe-ish. But they shot me again!! The protest had been on for 2 minutes. Israeli activists at the front talking to the soldiers earlier... so yeah... I just got shot twice in a week." (24/8/18)
Israelis have no excuse. Their silence, referred to by Harari in my previous post, is tantamount to complicity in the war crimes committed by their offspring, most of whom willingly accept being drafted into the trigger-happy IDF at the age of 18.
No, but there are enough who are to provide the subject matter of reports like this, from a Norwegian International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteer, Kristin Foss, who describes an Israeli army POGROM on the Palestinian village of Kafr Qaddum in the occupied/colonised West Bank. Note that I've reproduced here only the climactic part of Foss' testimony:
"The shooting had been going for about one and a half hours before it started to calm down. Apart from some tear gas inhalation there had been no injuries at this point. When things were calm, I was approached by a senior citizen, asking if we could help him. He had gone out to his driveway earlier. He was going to get into his car to pick up his wife. He hadn't noticed that his driveway was full of Israeli soldiers. The soldiers stole/confiscated his car and keys, and parked it in the middle of the road as a makeshift shield. As it was calm, we agreed to accompany him to speak to the soldiers and to ask for his car back. There was no shooting, nor stones being thrown at this point. The old man, Anna, and I started walking towards the soldiers with our hands in the air. I had my camera phone in one hand. The man walked surprisingly fast and was soon with the soldiers, whilst Anna and I stopped some 20 metres behind, still with our hands up. I am filming at this point.
"One of the soldiers shouts something at me in Hebrew, I don't understand, but I shout back that the man just wants his car back. Then he shouts that it is dangerous. I shout back that it is only dangerous because he is pointing a machine gun at me. One shot is fired as I am shouting, then another shot is directed at me, and hits me in the abdomen. I would say from approximately 20-30 metres. There is absolutely no doubt I was targeted and shot at deliberately." (A statement from the Norwegian ISM volunteer targeted and shot by an Israeli soldier in Kafr Qaddum, video included. palsolidarity.org, 21/8/18)
While the bullet penetrated her skin at an angle, Kristin lived to tell the tale. Incredibly, however, this appeared on her FB page mere days later: "Went back to Kafr Qaddum to show that solidarity is stronger than fear! Very nervous though, so kept right at the back, up against the wall. Thought I was safe-ish. But they shot me again!! The protest had been on for 2 minutes. Israeli activists at the front talking to the soldiers earlier... so yeah... I just got shot twice in a week." (24/8/18)
Israelis have no excuse. Their silence, referred to by Harari in my previous post, is tantamount to complicity in the war crimes committed by their offspring, most of whom willingly accept being drafted into the trigger-happy IDF at the age of 18.
Sunday, August 26, 2018
More Blah for Your Bucks
Sound the shofers!
The latest BLAH from Israel's much-touted intellectual giant, Yuval Noah Harari, author of such ground-breaking tomes as Blah and Blah Blah. (Warning: there's now another such out and about - Blah Blah Blah).
Courtesy of the suitably worshipful (pro-Iraq War, pro-Blair, pro-Israel, anti-Corbyn) David Aaronovitch, in his puff piece, The BIG Thinker, in this weekend's Weekend Australian Magazine, here are some of Harari's undying utterances (commentary added), culled from same, to put you on your knees:
"My father... had a very big disbelief in any kind of authority... He fought in both the Six Day War of 1967 and the more existential Yom Kippur War of 1973."
Not bad for a guy who doesn't believe in authority, eh? Still, whenever things get down and existential in Israel, as they not infrequently do if you believe the hype, hey, you do what your Zionist masters tell you to, right?
"There are a lot of people today... who might actually look favourably on a scenario of creating a new race of superhumans and leaving ordinary Homo sapiens behind. And if you look at China, for example, today, it's out in the open. People speak of high-quality people and low-quality people."
So here's this bloke, YNH, in Israel, surrounded by folk who, while willingly 'serving' their country in the occupied West Bank and blockaded Gaza, regularly hammer Palestinians because they're inconveniently standing in the way of the 'Jewish' people's brutal quest for Arabrein lebensraum, and what does he do? He fingers... China!
Howzat for chutzpah?
"How optimistic is he about our dealing with this big stuff, when he lives in a country that can't deal with its own very local, very intimate problems? Isn't big-picture thinking also a distraction... from thinking about horribly complicated problems in the here and now? He admits that Israelis have become very good at the art of just not seeing. 'Most people, they are not, like evil and malevolent toward the Palestinians. They just don't care. They don't want to know what's happening there. The mental distance is immense'."
Israel's Palestine problem? Isn't it really Palestine's Israel problem?
Israelis are not evil and malevolent towards the Palestinians... So how does YNH explain the existence of watchdog groups such as B'Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and others? (He doesn't, and can't, of course.) And how does he explain the ongoing electoral success of Netanyahu and his Greater Israel cronies and allies, and Israel's inexorable march to the right? (He doesn't, and can't, of course.)
They just don't care, eh? Neither, we are often reminded, did the Germans of the Nazi era. If YNH were honest, he'd admit to not caring either. In an earlier post I documented a dinner he'd had with the Netanyahus. Aaronovitch's puff piece begins with him going, not an anti-occupation action, but to a gay rights rally in the Tel Aviv bubble.
The latest BLAH from Israel's much-touted intellectual giant, Yuval Noah Harari, author of such ground-breaking tomes as Blah and Blah Blah. (Warning: there's now another such out and about - Blah Blah Blah).
Courtesy of the suitably worshipful (pro-Iraq War, pro-Blair, pro-Israel, anti-Corbyn) David Aaronovitch, in his puff piece, The BIG Thinker, in this weekend's Weekend Australian Magazine, here are some of Harari's undying utterances (commentary added), culled from same, to put you on your knees:
"My father... had a very big disbelief in any kind of authority... He fought in both the Six Day War of 1967 and the more existential Yom Kippur War of 1973."
Not bad for a guy who doesn't believe in authority, eh? Still, whenever things get down and existential in Israel, as they not infrequently do if you believe the hype, hey, you do what your Zionist masters tell you to, right?
"There are a lot of people today... who might actually look favourably on a scenario of creating a new race of superhumans and leaving ordinary Homo sapiens behind. And if you look at China, for example, today, it's out in the open. People speak of high-quality people and low-quality people."
So here's this bloke, YNH, in Israel, surrounded by folk who, while willingly 'serving' their country in the occupied West Bank and blockaded Gaza, regularly hammer Palestinians because they're inconveniently standing in the way of the 'Jewish' people's brutal quest for Arabrein lebensraum, and what does he do? He fingers... China!
Howzat for chutzpah?
"How optimistic is he about our dealing with this big stuff, when he lives in a country that can't deal with its own very local, very intimate problems? Isn't big-picture thinking also a distraction... from thinking about horribly complicated problems in the here and now? He admits that Israelis have become very good at the art of just not seeing. 'Most people, they are not, like evil and malevolent toward the Palestinians. They just don't care. They don't want to know what's happening there. The mental distance is immense'."
Israel's Palestine problem? Isn't it really Palestine's Israel problem?
Israelis are not evil and malevolent towards the Palestinians... So how does YNH explain the existence of watchdog groups such as B'Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and others? (He doesn't, and can't, of course.) And how does he explain the ongoing electoral success of Netanyahu and his Greater Israel cronies and allies, and Israel's inexorable march to the right? (He doesn't, and can't, of course.)
They just don't care, eh? Neither, we are often reminded, did the Germans of the Nazi era. If YNH were honest, he'd admit to not caring either. In an earlier post I documented a dinner he'd had with the Netanyahus. Aaronovitch's puff piece begins with him going, not an anti-occupation action, but to a gay rights rally in the Tel Aviv bubble.
Saturday, August 25, 2018
Headline of the Week
Turnbull shows no mercy as warring Liberals tear out the party's heart and soul (Katharine Murphy, guardian.com.au, 23/8/18)
Come again...
What bloody heart?
What bloody soul?
Come again...
What bloody heart?
What bloody soul?
Foreign Interference?
In light of his tendency to downplay the role of the Israel lobby vis-a-vis corporate interests in US Middle East policy, the following recent statement of Noam Chomsky makes interesting reading:
"[I]f you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts... compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done. I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies - what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress... calling on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president?" (haaretz.com, 22/8/18)
"[I]f you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts... compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done. I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies - what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress... calling on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president?" (haaretz.com, 22/8/18)
Friday, August 24, 2018
Tony Abbott Nailed
Spot on:
"It has been a hallmark of Abbott's entire political career to view the world in Manichean terms. His own life has been defined and circumscribed by unquestioned beliefs that would admit no subtleties nor entertain doubts. From his Catholic seminarian days, through his anti-left crusades as a student politician, to the culture wars of the 1990s and the NSW Liberal Party's own potent brand of anti-Labor tribalism, Abbott has been captive of inflexible dogma... Intellectually, Abbott has never wavered from the conviction that his real political enemies are secular and progressive Australians... In 1997 I recorded a series of interviews with professed Abbott's political hero, the late Bob Santamaria*, the veteran political activist. I asked him how he saw Abbott, then beginning his political rise, and Santamaria smiled and shook his head. 'Tony, I'm afraid, has never left student politics behind. The world is not black and white; indeed, the older I get the more shades of grey I see. I'm not sure he will change'." (from Political consensus is dead, with Abbott the sectarian, Norman Abjorensen, Sydney Morning Herald, 22/8/18)
And the same goes for his little mate, Greggie Sheridan.
[*For Santamaria on Palestine/Israel see my 27/9/13 post What Would Santa Say? You'll be in for a surprise...]
"It has been a hallmark of Abbott's entire political career to view the world in Manichean terms. His own life has been defined and circumscribed by unquestioned beliefs that would admit no subtleties nor entertain doubts. From his Catholic seminarian days, through his anti-left crusades as a student politician, to the culture wars of the 1990s and the NSW Liberal Party's own potent brand of anti-Labor tribalism, Abbott has been captive of inflexible dogma... Intellectually, Abbott has never wavered from the conviction that his real political enemies are secular and progressive Australians... In 1997 I recorded a series of interviews with professed Abbott's political hero, the late Bob Santamaria*, the veteran political activist. I asked him how he saw Abbott, then beginning his political rise, and Santamaria smiled and shook his head. 'Tony, I'm afraid, has never left student politics behind. The world is not black and white; indeed, the older I get the more shades of grey I see. I'm not sure he will change'." (from Political consensus is dead, with Abbott the sectarian, Norman Abjorensen, Sydney Morning Herald, 22/8/18)
And the same goes for his little mate, Greggie Sheridan.
[*For Santamaria on Palestine/Israel see my 27/9/13 post What Would Santa Say? You'll be in for a surprise...]
Thursday, August 23, 2018
St Greg's Fartwa on Jeremy Corbyn.
Hark! Somewhere, deep within the bowels of News Corpse, something stirs, namely Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian, author of God is Good for You (2018), and knight errant for Israel.
And somewhere, deep within St Greg's bowels, something darker stirs, namely his latest fartwa, Corbyn's rise is a symptom of the West's infirmity (18/8/18).
Herewith, some only of its more mephitic odours:
"[L]et's be clear: Anning presents like a combination of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt compared with Corbyn."
And, while we're being clear - it has to be said! - Corbyn even makes Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Dracula, and Tony Abbott look good.
Gnashing his teeth over "the increasingly ubiquitous dynamic of celebrity," St Greg pronounces that "by contradicting every tenet of common sense and political decency [Corbyn] became a star. He certainly stood out from politicians who may have been dull, but whose very dullness was evidence of a connection with reality."
A star, yes, but a dark one:
"Corbyn's addiction to conspiracy was not born of digital media. He is an analogue conspiracy believer and hater from way, way back. Which brings us to the matter of Jews and anti-Semitism. For 2000 years, indeed longer, Jews have been the centre of the most lurid conspiracy theories. From the false conviction of Alfred Dreyfus to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and countless other cases, Jews have been at the centre of baseless and viciously malign conspiracy theories.
"Many Christian individuals and institutions played horrible roles in anti-Semitism, while many Christians also opposed it. The past 20 years have seen a dangerous upsurge in anti-Semitism in the West. It has two sources. One is Islamist - even nonviolent Islamists and indeed much Muslim opinion generally. The other is the conspiracy mindset of contemporary left activism, especially as it focuses on Israel."
St Greg's fartwa continues, but with the following piccolo-like proviso:
"It is of course perfectly OK, and not remotely anti-Semitic, to criticise Israel."
(Funny that, coming from one who has never in his life criticised Israel! And who once vehemently dismissed the well-documented - including from Zionist archives - fact of Zionist ethnic cleansing in Palestine in 1948 as "all rubbish." See my 9/5/09 post Sheridan: Nakba Denier.)
No sooner had the piccolo - if I may refer to it thus - faded away than suddenly there came a sound from St Greg's nether regions as of a rushing mighty wind which filled all the house where he was sitting:
"But to apply standards to Israel that would never be applied to other nations, to accuse Israel of blatantly untrue crimes, to equate Jews automatically with all the policies of Israel, to equate Israel with Nazism, to criticise Israel in terms of traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes, to accuse Jews of having greater loyalty to Israel than to the nations of their citizenship, to generate such exaggerated hatred of Israel that it spills over into hostility to Jews, all of that is anti-Semitism. And supporting terrorists who kill innocent Jews is also anti-Semitism."
Verily, not even the cockroaches which rule the roost in the bowels of News Corpse could withstand such a wind as this! Yea, smitten were they and utterly destroyed.
As for the rest of the fartwa it was these two cheeky, shofar-like blasts in particular that knocked me to my knees:
"There are Jews whom Corbyn likes. If a Jew routinely execrates Israel and adopts every other far-left conspiracy-tinged political cause, Corbyn will be his friend."
How dare Corbyn not like Netanyahu, Lieberman et al. I mean, really now, what's not to like? Top blokes!
"Corbyn has equated Israel's presence in the West Bank with the military occupations of World War II. Such language automatically invokes Nazi images."
Far out! How dare Corbyn compare a mere 51-year Israeli "presence" in the West Bank with a German military occupation of 4 years! (Parenthetically, there's been an Israeli army base and half a dozen Israeli settlements, whose inhabitants have been running around with firebombs and chainsaws in my backyard for, like, forever, but, hey, I'm not complaining. After all, it's just a "presence," innit?)
Listen, Corbyn, you can run on your cloven hooves, but you can't hide, OK?
And somewhere, deep within St Greg's bowels, something darker stirs, namely his latest fartwa, Corbyn's rise is a symptom of the West's infirmity (18/8/18).
Herewith, some only of its more mephitic odours:
"[L]et's be clear: Anning presents like a combination of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt compared with Corbyn."
And, while we're being clear - it has to be said! - Corbyn even makes Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Dracula, and Tony Abbott look good.
Gnashing his teeth over "the increasingly ubiquitous dynamic of celebrity," St Greg pronounces that "by contradicting every tenet of common sense and political decency [Corbyn] became a star. He certainly stood out from politicians who may have been dull, but whose very dullness was evidence of a connection with reality."
A star, yes, but a dark one:
"Corbyn's addiction to conspiracy was not born of digital media. He is an analogue conspiracy believer and hater from way, way back. Which brings us to the matter of Jews and anti-Semitism. For 2000 years, indeed longer, Jews have been the centre of the most lurid conspiracy theories. From the false conviction of Alfred Dreyfus to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and countless other cases, Jews have been at the centre of baseless and viciously malign conspiracy theories.
"Many Christian individuals and institutions played horrible roles in anti-Semitism, while many Christians also opposed it. The past 20 years have seen a dangerous upsurge in anti-Semitism in the West. It has two sources. One is Islamist - even nonviolent Islamists and indeed much Muslim opinion generally. The other is the conspiracy mindset of contemporary left activism, especially as it focuses on Israel."
St Greg's fartwa continues, but with the following piccolo-like proviso:
"It is of course perfectly OK, and not remotely anti-Semitic, to criticise Israel."
(Funny that, coming from one who has never in his life criticised Israel! And who once vehemently dismissed the well-documented - including from Zionist archives - fact of Zionist ethnic cleansing in Palestine in 1948 as "all rubbish." See my 9/5/09 post Sheridan: Nakba Denier.)
No sooner had the piccolo - if I may refer to it thus - faded away than suddenly there came a sound from St Greg's nether regions as of a rushing mighty wind which filled all the house where he was sitting:
"But to apply standards to Israel that would never be applied to other nations, to accuse Israel of blatantly untrue crimes, to equate Jews automatically with all the policies of Israel, to equate Israel with Nazism, to criticise Israel in terms of traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes, to accuse Jews of having greater loyalty to Israel than to the nations of their citizenship, to generate such exaggerated hatred of Israel that it spills over into hostility to Jews, all of that is anti-Semitism. And supporting terrorists who kill innocent Jews is also anti-Semitism."
Verily, not even the cockroaches which rule the roost in the bowels of News Corpse could withstand such a wind as this! Yea, smitten were they and utterly destroyed.
As for the rest of the fartwa it was these two cheeky, shofar-like blasts in particular that knocked me to my knees:
"There are Jews whom Corbyn likes. If a Jew routinely execrates Israel and adopts every other far-left conspiracy-tinged political cause, Corbyn will be his friend."
How dare Corbyn not like Netanyahu, Lieberman et al. I mean, really now, what's not to like? Top blokes!
"Corbyn has equated Israel's presence in the West Bank with the military occupations of World War II. Such language automatically invokes Nazi images."
Far out! How dare Corbyn compare a mere 51-year Israeli "presence" in the West Bank with a German military occupation of 4 years! (Parenthetically, there's been an Israeli army base and half a dozen Israeli settlements, whose inhabitants have been running around with firebombs and chainsaws in my backyard for, like, forever, but, hey, I'm not complaining. After all, it's just a "presence," innit?)
Listen, Corbyn, you can run on your cloven hooves, but you can't hide, OK?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)