Woe:
"'I am proud', said Saeb Erekat, a senior aide of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and Fatah's leader. 'Are we fighting? You bet! Are we screaming at each other? You bet!' "
He paused, then added: Are we planning to assassinate Muhammad Dahlan's* critics? You bet! Are we stealing the Palestinian people's money? You bet! Are we collaborating with Israel in its occupation of Palestine? You bet! Are we covering up the assassination of Arafat? You bet! Am I the biggest buffoon on the Palestinian stage since Ahmad Shuqayri? You bet! Do we lie to the Palestinian people? You bet! Do I offer to shine the shoes of Israeli leaders? You bet! Were we proud of Dahlan's gangs when they fled in their underwear from Gaza? You bet! Is Abu Mazen USrael 's chief puppet? You bet! Do the Palestinian people make fun of me when I speak and yell? You bet! Is the Fatah conference the mother of all jokes? You bet!" (angryarab.blogspot.com, 7/8/09)
[*See my 6/3/08 post Mainsewer Media Clueless in Gaza]
Go:
"I could see in 1991... not only that the gains of the [first] intifada were about to be squandered but that Arafat and a few of his closest advisers had already decided on their own to accept anything that the United States and Israel might throw their way, just in order to survive as part of the 'peace process'. The major losses incurred by the misguided policies of the PLO leadership during the Gulf crisis, and by the constant mismanagement of funds and assets that were never accounted for, caused the PLO leadership in panic to concede every single national aim and legal principle to the so-called interim solution proposed by Yitzhak Shamir and seconded by George Bush [senior] and James Baker. We received no acknowledgment of self-determination, no certainty of future sovereignty, no right of representation, no mention of reparations (and this from a state which received billions of dollars from Germany for the Nazi Holocaust). And if that were not bad enough, the Oslo Declaration of Principles celebrated on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, was actually a good deal worse. For the first time in our history, our leadership had simply given up on self-determination, Jerusalem, and the refugees, allowing them to become part of an undetermined set of 'final status negotiations'. For the first time in our recent past, we accepted the division of our people - whose unity we had fought for as a national movement since 1948 - into residents of the Occupied Territories and all the others, who happen today to constitute over 55% of the Palestinian population; they exist in another, lesser category not covered by the peace process. For the first time in the 20thC, an anti-colonial liberation movement had not only discarded its own considerable achievements but made an agreement to cooperate with a military occupation before that occupation had ended, and before even the government of Israel had admitted that it was in effect a government of military occupation. (To this day Israel has refused to concede that it is an occupying power.)" (Peace & Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process, Edward Said, 1996, pp xxviii-xxix)
[See also my posts The Bigger Picture (4/11/08) & USrael's Palestinian Recruits (12/12/08)]
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
A Tale of Two Interviews
Last night, Phillip Adams spoke to anti-Zionist blogger, journalist and author (My Israel Question) Antony Loewenstein on Late Night Live (LNL). No sooner had he mentioned, in his introduction, that Loewenstein had just been to Gaza in the wake of Israel's December/January "attack," than he was trotting out the standard Zionist talking point: "The reason for the attack, Israel said, was to stop Hamas rockets... on southern Israel and to stop the smuggling of arms into Gaza." Throughout the interview, Adams was noticeably detached, essentially allowing his interviewee free rein. Only at one point did he elaborate on Loewenstein's words by observing that "... one of the things the Israel Defense Forces does is mete out collective punishment and practise humiliating the Palestinian people." But even this had to be preceded by a repetition of the above talking point: "While the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel is intolerable..."
Adams really only came alive in his second interviewee of the night - with Melbourne-based GP and author (Raft) Howard Goldenberg, who works for part of the year as a relief doctor in remote Aboriginal communities. When asked why, Goldenberg explained: "Two prime ministers ago we had a national program... called reconciliation. I realise that I live in the nicest, racist country in the world, and it's an enormous privilege to live here... and I enjoy it at the cost of the dispossession of its previous owners, and I thought: I'm in a trade that's portable and I can do a token..."
Wonderful, I thought, a man who practises what he preaches. Then Adams, one of Australia's card-carrying atheists, came out with this: "It's the Jewishness now I want to look at because, to your surprise, you had specifically Jewish reactions to aspects of Aboriginal life. What were they?" Replied Goldenberg: "It was a surprise, but when I reflected, I realised I should have anticipated that members of two peoples with histories of dispossession and humilation and killing would recognise each other, would find points of intersection and of parallel, and I think equally powerful were operations of community and family and those bonds that are extremely strong..." Fair enough. But no, this apparently wasn't good enough for Adams. He had to channel the doctor's thoughts in a specifically Zionist direction: "And also the deep mythology of land, which of course is the Israel story or the claim that Israel makes." Goldenberg took the bait: "That's right, and Aboriginal people remind me from time to time that that reclaiming of land and of pride should be a model to them. All this is unexpected, and then, in really remote places a bloke will hail me and discuss the Middle East with me in a most sophisticated way [Adams laughs], and this bloke, an initiated elder, is watching CNN every night and is much more up to date than I am about the Middle East."
To clarify: Having only just interviewed Antony Loewenstein on the trials of the dispossessed, indigenous population of Palestine, Adams consciously elicits from Goldenberg a statement to the effect that the political Zionist myth of a return to, and a "reclaiming," of Palestine, what he terms the "Israel story," is seen by some Aboriginal Australians (or at least those who watch CNN) as some kind of "model" for Australia's dispossessed, indigenous population. The mind, as they say, boggles.
Adams really only came alive in his second interviewee of the night - with Melbourne-based GP and author (Raft) Howard Goldenberg, who works for part of the year as a relief doctor in remote Aboriginal communities. When asked why, Goldenberg explained: "Two prime ministers ago we had a national program... called reconciliation. I realise that I live in the nicest, racist country in the world, and it's an enormous privilege to live here... and I enjoy it at the cost of the dispossession of its previous owners, and I thought: I'm in a trade that's portable and I can do a token..."
Wonderful, I thought, a man who practises what he preaches. Then Adams, one of Australia's card-carrying atheists, came out with this: "It's the Jewishness now I want to look at because, to your surprise, you had specifically Jewish reactions to aspects of Aboriginal life. What were they?" Replied Goldenberg: "It was a surprise, but when I reflected, I realised I should have anticipated that members of two peoples with histories of dispossession and humilation and killing would recognise each other, would find points of intersection and of parallel, and I think equally powerful were operations of community and family and those bonds that are extremely strong..." Fair enough. But no, this apparently wasn't good enough for Adams. He had to channel the doctor's thoughts in a specifically Zionist direction: "And also the deep mythology of land, which of course is the Israel story or the claim that Israel makes." Goldenberg took the bait: "That's right, and Aboriginal people remind me from time to time that that reclaiming of land and of pride should be a model to them. All this is unexpected, and then, in really remote places a bloke will hail me and discuss the Middle East with me in a most sophisticated way [Adams laughs], and this bloke, an initiated elder, is watching CNN every night and is much more up to date than I am about the Middle East."
To clarify: Having only just interviewed Antony Loewenstein on the trials of the dispossessed, indigenous population of Palestine, Adams consciously elicits from Goldenberg a statement to the effect that the political Zionist myth of a return to, and a "reclaiming," of Palestine, what he terms the "Israel story," is seen by some Aboriginal Australians (or at least those who watch CNN) as some kind of "model" for Australia's dispossessed, indigenous population. The mind, as they say, boggles.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
I did but see him passing by...
"Over the decade, Australia's ardour for Britain and the monarchy faded somewhat, but Menzies' had not. At a function attended by the Queen at Parliament House, Canberra, in 1963, Menzies quoted the Elizabethan poet Thomas Ford: 'I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die'." (Wikipedia entry on Robert Gordon Menzies, Australian prime minister, 1949-1966)
"Ferocious opponents in federal parliament, John Howard and Bob Hawke, agree on at least one thing in their post-political lives: the importance of the US-Australian relationship. Yesterday, in a grand show of bipartisanship, the University of Sydney announced that both had been signed to the advisory council of the US Studies Centre." (Hawke and Howard find common cause in US ties, Luke Slattery, The Australian, 30/6/09)
"Barack Obama has a new best friend among world leaders. His name is Kevin Rudd. A senior official in the Obama Administration said the President had bonded more closely with Mr Rudd than with any other leader. Indeed, the two have taken up where John Howard and George Bush left off, according to the State Department official responsible for US policy in the Asia-Pacific, Kurt Campbell." (Barack's new BFF: a match made in Kevin, Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald, 1/8/09)
"Ferocious opponents in federal parliament, John Howard and Bob Hawke, agree on at least one thing in their post-political lives: the importance of the US-Australian relationship. Yesterday, in a grand show of bipartisanship, the University of Sydney announced that both had been signed to the advisory council of the US Studies Centre." (Hawke and Howard find common cause in US ties, Luke Slattery, The Australian, 30/6/09)
"Barack Obama has a new best friend among world leaders. His name is Kevin Rudd. A senior official in the Obama Administration said the President had bonded more closely with Mr Rudd than with any other leader. Indeed, the two have taken up where John Howard and George Bush left off, according to the State Department official responsible for US policy in the Asia-Pacific, Kurt Campbell." (Barack's new BFF: a match made in Kevin, Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald, 1/8/09)
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Occupations
The word you need to know is occupation
The very definition of a land without a nation
David Rovics
Redoubtable Uighur freedom fighter Rebiya Kadeer is currently in Melbourne for the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) screening of an Australian documentary about her life - The 10 Conditions of Love.
China occupies Rebiya Kadeer's homeland - East Turkistan (Xinjiang). Israel too is an occupying power. However, while China is not an official sponsor of MIFF, Israel is. It is difficult to imagine MIFF director Richard Moore ever accepting China as an official sponsor of the festival. So why then has Israeli sponsorship not been dropped?
Spot the difference:
"It is like being in a small room with your family. You have bolted the doors and all the windows to keep strangers out. But they come anyway - they just walk through your walls as if they weren't there. They say they like your room. They bring their families and their friends. They like the furniture, the food, the garden. You shrink into a corner, pretending they aren't there, tending to your housework, being a rebellious son, a strict father or an anxious mother - crawling about as if everything was normal, as if your room was yours for ever. Your family's faces are growing pale, withdrawn - an ugly grey, as the air in their corner becomes exhausted. The strangers have fresh air, they come and go at will - their cheeks are pink, their voices loud and vibrant. But you cling to your corner, you never leave it, afraid that, if you do, you will not be allowed back." (The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank, Raja Shehadeh, 1982, p 133)
"Our people were branded as 'nationalists' trying to destroy unity between the Chinese and other ethnic groups. The number of arrests increased dramatically throughout the entire Uyghur nation. Hundreds of schools were closed. Thousands were forbidden to work. Tens-of-thousands of people were subjected to searches and scrutiny. Officials and youth under 18 were no longer allowed to pray. Birth control mandates were more strictly enforced. Uyghurs permitted to work had an even harder time finding employment. For example, among 60 employees at a company in our own nation, at most 10 would be Uyghurs. The rest of the employees would be Chinese planted in our land to grow free and to take all of the sunlight, while we were to wither away underneath them." (Dragon Fighter: One Woman's Epic Struggle for Peace with China, Rebiya Kadeer, 2009, p 209)
"An English friend who works for an international organisation was returning at night to Jerusalem from a work visit to Nablus. The road was deserted, he told me. On both sides were large stretches of olive fields which he had enjoyed looking at during his morning drive north to the city. When he got halfway to Jerusalem he saw to his right an entire olive orchard on fire. It was a dark, moonless night. Above he could see the glittering lights of the settlements dominating the hills and down below the unprotected Palestinian orchard, its thousand trees ablaze, beacons of the anger and destructive transformation of this ancient, cursed land. 'It was an awesome sight', he said. 'These trees were not planted in clusters - there was some distance between them. This could not have been a bushfire. It was arson'. Not only had the settlers prevented the farmers from reaching their orchards to pick the olives during this last olive-picking season, they were now burning these ancient trees." (When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, Raja Shehadeh, 2003, pp 150-151)
"I went from house to house, but Chinese people were watching me from every doorway. In the past, there had always been colorful flowers blooming in the gardens and fresh bouquets in lovely vases on the tables outside. But I saw no flowers anywhere as I turned my head, and then my whole body three-hundred-and-sixty degrees in search of a flower. The streets stank of trash... The brook along the village road looked as if it had dried up long ago. And the weeping willows looked like they were indeed weeping in their withered state. The Communists had no relationship with nature, and because the people owned nothing, they felt no sense of responsibility for the environment or property around them... The next morning, we saddled two horses. We wanted to go up into the mountains to the places where we had been so happy as children. Along the Irtysh River, we saw Chinese panning for gold with a sieve. The forest we had loved, which had been full of evergreen and deciduous trees, had been cut down to the ground. I spurred my horse forward. On top of the mountain we had once found only nature, alone with herself. But even here there were Chinese gathering things from these mountains and placing them into their baskets. When I saw so many Chinese even in this place where I had hoped to find peace, I remembered a friend's prediction that I had heard in childhood: 'One day it would rain Chinese from the sky'." (Kadeer, pp 118-119)
"As we neared the top of the hill the clods of soil began to feel wet even though there was no spring nearby and it hadn't rained. We soon realized that we had walked into the open sewers of the Jewish settlement of Talmon to the north. This settlement might have had a rubbish collection system but it did not have one for treating sewage, which was just disposed of down the valley into land owned by Palestinian farmers. We tried to step lightly so as not to drown our shoes in the settlers' shit. As we trudged through the soggy ground we met two boys who showed us the way out of the bog. We noticed they were taking us away from the paved road and told them that was where we were headed. 'It's too dangerous', they said. We asked them why. 'The settlers', they said. 'If you're walking and they drive by they swerve and hit you. They ran over Mazen. And if an army jeep comes they shoot. No one uses the road'." (Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, Raja Shehadeh, 2007, pp 170-171)
"It was as if the walls to our cells were closing in on us a bit more every day. We Uyghurs already felt like we had been locked up, but the confinement was getting even tighter. If a Uyghur boy wanted to learn boxing out of a simple interest in the sport, he was detained as a separatist. If a countryman with a mustache applied for employment, he was forced to shave it off. If someone recited a Uyghur poem, he was considered a fundamentalist. This was a time during which those in power dropped their masks. The high functionaries decided that our Uyghur nation was a part of China and should therefore be settled by even more Chinese. There were scenes in the streets where Chinese would beat Uyghurs, forcing them off sidewalks or buses with the words, 'Get out of here! This is our land!' Women working in civil service were prohibited from wearing long skirts because that garment was considered a symbol of religious values. In the job market there were positions offered exclusively to Chinese - it said so on the signs." (Kadeer, p 306)
The very definition of a land without a nation
David Rovics
Redoubtable Uighur freedom fighter Rebiya Kadeer is currently in Melbourne for the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) screening of an Australian documentary about her life - The 10 Conditions of Love.
China occupies Rebiya Kadeer's homeland - East Turkistan (Xinjiang). Israel too is an occupying power. However, while China is not an official sponsor of MIFF, Israel is. It is difficult to imagine MIFF director Richard Moore ever accepting China as an official sponsor of the festival. So why then has Israeli sponsorship not been dropped?
Spot the difference:
"It is like being in a small room with your family. You have bolted the doors and all the windows to keep strangers out. But they come anyway - they just walk through your walls as if they weren't there. They say they like your room. They bring their families and their friends. They like the furniture, the food, the garden. You shrink into a corner, pretending they aren't there, tending to your housework, being a rebellious son, a strict father or an anxious mother - crawling about as if everything was normal, as if your room was yours for ever. Your family's faces are growing pale, withdrawn - an ugly grey, as the air in their corner becomes exhausted. The strangers have fresh air, they come and go at will - their cheeks are pink, their voices loud and vibrant. But you cling to your corner, you never leave it, afraid that, if you do, you will not be allowed back." (The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank, Raja Shehadeh, 1982, p 133)
"Our people were branded as 'nationalists' trying to destroy unity between the Chinese and other ethnic groups. The number of arrests increased dramatically throughout the entire Uyghur nation. Hundreds of schools were closed. Thousands were forbidden to work. Tens-of-thousands of people were subjected to searches and scrutiny. Officials and youth under 18 were no longer allowed to pray. Birth control mandates were more strictly enforced. Uyghurs permitted to work had an even harder time finding employment. For example, among 60 employees at a company in our own nation, at most 10 would be Uyghurs. The rest of the employees would be Chinese planted in our land to grow free and to take all of the sunlight, while we were to wither away underneath them." (Dragon Fighter: One Woman's Epic Struggle for Peace with China, Rebiya Kadeer, 2009, p 209)
"An English friend who works for an international organisation was returning at night to Jerusalem from a work visit to Nablus. The road was deserted, he told me. On both sides were large stretches of olive fields which he had enjoyed looking at during his morning drive north to the city. When he got halfway to Jerusalem he saw to his right an entire olive orchard on fire. It was a dark, moonless night. Above he could see the glittering lights of the settlements dominating the hills and down below the unprotected Palestinian orchard, its thousand trees ablaze, beacons of the anger and destructive transformation of this ancient, cursed land. 'It was an awesome sight', he said. 'These trees were not planted in clusters - there was some distance between them. This could not have been a bushfire. It was arson'. Not only had the settlers prevented the farmers from reaching their orchards to pick the olives during this last olive-picking season, they were now burning these ancient trees." (When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, Raja Shehadeh, 2003, pp 150-151)
"I went from house to house, but Chinese people were watching me from every doorway. In the past, there had always been colorful flowers blooming in the gardens and fresh bouquets in lovely vases on the tables outside. But I saw no flowers anywhere as I turned my head, and then my whole body three-hundred-and-sixty degrees in search of a flower. The streets stank of trash... The brook along the village road looked as if it had dried up long ago. And the weeping willows looked like they were indeed weeping in their withered state. The Communists had no relationship with nature, and because the people owned nothing, they felt no sense of responsibility for the environment or property around them... The next morning, we saddled two horses. We wanted to go up into the mountains to the places where we had been so happy as children. Along the Irtysh River, we saw Chinese panning for gold with a sieve. The forest we had loved, which had been full of evergreen and deciduous trees, had been cut down to the ground. I spurred my horse forward. On top of the mountain we had once found only nature, alone with herself. But even here there were Chinese gathering things from these mountains and placing them into their baskets. When I saw so many Chinese even in this place where I had hoped to find peace, I remembered a friend's prediction that I had heard in childhood: 'One day it would rain Chinese from the sky'." (Kadeer, pp 118-119)
"As we neared the top of the hill the clods of soil began to feel wet even though there was no spring nearby and it hadn't rained. We soon realized that we had walked into the open sewers of the Jewish settlement of Talmon to the north. This settlement might have had a rubbish collection system but it did not have one for treating sewage, which was just disposed of down the valley into land owned by Palestinian farmers. We tried to step lightly so as not to drown our shoes in the settlers' shit. As we trudged through the soggy ground we met two boys who showed us the way out of the bog. We noticed they were taking us away from the paved road and told them that was where we were headed. 'It's too dangerous', they said. We asked them why. 'The settlers', they said. 'If you're walking and they drive by they swerve and hit you. They ran over Mazen. And if an army jeep comes they shoot. No one uses the road'." (Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, Raja Shehadeh, 2007, pp 170-171)
"It was as if the walls to our cells were closing in on us a bit more every day. We Uyghurs already felt like we had been locked up, but the confinement was getting even tighter. If a Uyghur boy wanted to learn boxing out of a simple interest in the sport, he was detained as a separatist. If a countryman with a mustache applied for employment, he was forced to shave it off. If someone recited a Uyghur poem, he was considered a fundamentalist. This was a time during which those in power dropped their masks. The high functionaries decided that our Uyghur nation was a part of China and should therefore be settled by even more Chinese. There were scenes in the streets where Chinese would beat Uyghurs, forcing them off sidewalks or buses with the words, 'Get out of here! This is our land!' Women working in civil service were prohibited from wearing long skirts because that garment was considered a symbol of religious values. In the job market there were positions offered exclusively to Chinese - it said so on the signs." (Kadeer, p 306)
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Sheikh Jarrah, Berlin
Judenrein
"In 1882, a wealthy Berlin businessman, Friedrich Wilhelm Wessel, bought for 27,000 marks, a small island in the Havel River almost 20 kilometres south-west of [Berlin]... Wessel decided to make it into a park and then sell parcels for the construction of country houses. The site is quite close to Wannsee, where Berliners already went in the summer to bathe. Well-off families had large villas on the island's shores and held regattas there. In 1901, Wessel had the name of his property changed to Schwannenwerder (Swan Island)... [It] became a summer retreat for the upper stratum of the Berlin bourgeoisie. Its layout was simple: a road running around the centre of the island served the 40 lots put on sale, which thus had direct access to the water and to the park, with nothing to block the view in either direction. Enough to charm the most exigent buyers. The great shop-owners such as Berthold Israel and Rudolf Karstadt, bank presidents such as Schlitter, Goldschmidt, Salomonsohn; and the owner of the Trumpf chocolate factory, Richard Monheim, all bought lots on Schwannenwerder. This little colony of millionaires modelled its mores on those of its Wannsee neighbours. They spent weekends and part of the summer season there, and finally began to live there year round after the car made it easier to commute daily to the capital... After the [Nazi] victory in the March 1933 elections, men from the SA branch in [nearby] Zehlendorf invaded the island and symbolically raised the [Nazi] flag over the water tower. The police did not intervene, and in this climate began the forced sales, at low prices, of the properties held by Jews. In a few years Shwannenwerder became the symbol of the Nazi establishment's success. The best known of the parvenus was Joseph Goebbels, who in 1935 bought at a very modest price lot 8-10, owned by the Jewish banker Schlitter. Three years later, he appropriated the neighbouring lot, which had been owned by Samuel Goldschmidt, who had been forced to emigrate... In 1937, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, the head of the Reich's womens' organizations, decided to establish a school for the Reich's girls at number 38, the former home of an industrialist who had been forced to leave. Lot 20-2, the Salomonsohn's villa, was taken over by the chancellery in 1939 and reserved for Hitler's personal use... In the same year Hitler's physician, Dr Theo Morell, obtained an 'Aryanized' lot that had belonged to Georg Solmssen... Within 6 years all the Jews had been driven out. Most of them left the country. Schwannenwerder was absolutely Judenrein, that is 'cleansed' of its Jews. This place is emblematic of what took place in German society... during the 1930s. In a very short time, men and women who had lived in the country for centuries found themselves banished from society. Despite their profound integration and intimate knowledge of German culture, they were considered revolting creatures whose elimination was the necessary condition for establishing collective happiness. Anti-Semitism was no longer the ideology of those on the margins of society. It had become the official doctrine of the National Socialist state and constituted the heart of the Third Reich's ideology." (High Society in the Third Reich, Fabrice d'Almeida, 2008, pp 87-89)
Arabrein
"Israeli riot police have evicted 2 Palestinian families from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem*, defying international protests over Jewish settlement activity in the area. Clashes erupted after police moved in around the homes in the Arab district of Sheikh Jarrah after an Israeli court ordered the eviction of the 53 Palestinians, including 19 minors. Jewish settlers were later seen moving into the houses. Maher Hanoun, the head of one evicted family, said: 'I do not need a tent or rice. What I need is to return to my house, where I and my children were born'. The houses were built in the 1950s by the UN Relief & Works Agency for Palestinian refugees when the area was under Jordanian control. Jordan had not formerly registered the buildings in their names by the time the 1967 war broke out, according to the families' lawyer, Hosni Abu Hussein. In the early 1970s, a Jewish association claimed ownership of the land, based on property deeds from Ottoman times. At first the Palestinian families agreed to pay rent to the association to continue living there as protected tenants. Abu Hussein said they stopped paying when he discovered that the Jewish property deeds had been forged. The British consulate, which is in Sheikh Jarrah along with several other foreign missions, condemned the evictions. 'The Israelis' claim that the imposition of extremist Jewish settlers into this ancient Arab neighbourhood is a matter for the courts or the municipality is unacceptable', it said. 'These actions are incompatible with the Isreali-professed desire for peace'. (Violence as police evict Palestinians, Agencies, The Age, 4/8/09)
[*[Israeli]-occupied East Jerusalem? The Australian prefers "Arab-dominated East Jerusalem" and "disputed East Jerusalem." (International fury as Israel evicts Palestinians, John Lyons, 4/8/09)]
By way of context, see my 8/7/09 post Highway Robbery.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
The Blindness of Bob Hawke
"After 62 years in the labour and Labor movements, 79-year-old Bob Hawke was lauded, applauded and given life Labor Party membership at its national conference in Sydney yesterday. And the longest-serving Labor prime minister's* acceptance speech was typical 'Hawkie': long, teary and self congratulatory... He nominated as one of his greatest achievements helping end the apartheid regime in South Africa by leading an international investment boycott.** He said nothing could beat the day Nelson Mandela walked into his office, took his hand and said: 'Bob, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't be here'. 'That we, a small country, could be so instrumental in bringing to an end that vicious, unfair, unethical regime is something that this great party should forever be proud of', he said to thunderous applause." (He's a Labor man for life, Kerry-Anne Walsh, The Sun-Herald, 2/8/09)
[*1983-1991; ** Interestingly, considering his self-assessment, Hawke doesn't even rate a mention in Robert Harvey's 2001 study, The Fall of Apartheid: The Inside Story from Smuts to Mbeki.]
Of course, when it came to the world's other apartheid state, Israel, Hawke could see neither the woods nor the trees: "This then is the reality with which we are confronted - 18 Arab States covering 13 million square kms and Israel, even with the post-1967 lines... in control of much less than 1% of that figure, threatened constantly with extinction... In the 1930s appeasement under threat and blackmail permitted... the holocaust in which 6 million of our fellow human beings, who happened to be Jews, were exterminated. All mankind was diminished by these events. I do not speak here for my party or for the industrial movement which I lead. But as an individual Australian. I know that I am not an island and I know that if we allow the bell to be tolled for Israel it will have tolled for me, for us all, and we will all to that extent again have been diminished. This would be an especial loss for Australia, which under the leadership of Dr Evatt as Minister for External Affairs, played a major part in the emergence of the State of Israel." (from Hawke's address to the 26th Biennial Conference of the Zionist Federation of Australia & New Zealand, Quadrant, March-April 1974)
IOW: 1) Palestinians (ie ersatz Arabs) can be accomodated quite comfortably in any one of 18 Arab states (as presumably could South African blacks in any one of x African countries); 2) The fact of the Holocaust overides everything else, including the rights of Palestine's indigenous people. It is they (not the Europeans, and certainly not we Australians) who must pay the price for European anti-Semitism; 3) Doc Evatt (not the majority of people who actually lived there) knew what was best for Palestine in 1947 and Australia's reputation stands or falls with his.
Hawke had (has?) no understanding whatever of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948: "Within days of the UN resolution [181] there began a program of mediation based upon the repeated assertion that the armies of the Arab States would invade Israel upon its proclamation as a State and would annihilate it within a matter of days. It was in this context of an attempt virtually to abort the birth of Israel or to ensure its early demise that the Arab States themselves urged Arabs within the proposed State of Israel to flee, thus initiating the problem of the Arab refugees..." (ibid) Hawke could not even bring himself to use the word 'Palestinians'. His speech to the ZFA, if not handed to him on a platter, reveals an outlook so insufferably Eurocentric, colonial, and Zionist as to preclude any realisation of the bleeding-obvious parallels between apartheid Israel and apartheid South Africa.
Australian historian John Hurst, in his 1979 biography of Hawke, attempted to shed some light on Hawke's Ziophilia: "One of the main reasons for Hawke's deep and principled commitment to the Israeli cause was his fundamental belief that the world owed the Jews a place in which they could live free from persecution and oppression. Jews had been reviled, bullied and persecuted for centuries, the scapegoats for the ills of mankind. The Germans alone could not be held responsible for the holocaust... the world had allowed that disaster to happen... Hawke believed, deeply, that the creation of Israel by the United Nations... was a partial redemption of the world's debt to the Jewish people - that nation had to be allowed to live. Hawke had developed a great admiration for the Jewish character, Jewish intelligence and creativity. Jewish determination and the inspired devotion with which Jewish migrants from all parts of the world were turning barren tracts of the Holy Land into fertile ground... There were other, more personal, reasons for Hawke's attachment to the Jews. Anti-Semitism had been rife at one of the schools Hawke attended in his youth. He remembered with revulsion how he had been among the baiters of a Jewish boy, John Eisner, whom he had once physically attacked. Looking back, he felt a deep sense of guilt. As he grew in understanding he developed a contempt for all forms of insidious anti-Semitism. It seemed to him that the anti-Israel position was an expression of a deep-rooted prejudice." (Hawke PM, p 102-103)
I think that Hawke's attack of the guilts explains his blindness to the justice of the Palestinian cause. I wonder what Rudd's excuse is?
[*1983-1991; ** Interestingly, considering his self-assessment, Hawke doesn't even rate a mention in Robert Harvey's 2001 study, The Fall of Apartheid: The Inside Story from Smuts to Mbeki.]
Of course, when it came to the world's other apartheid state, Israel, Hawke could see neither the woods nor the trees: "This then is the reality with which we are confronted - 18 Arab States covering 13 million square kms and Israel, even with the post-1967 lines... in control of much less than 1% of that figure, threatened constantly with extinction... In the 1930s appeasement under threat and blackmail permitted... the holocaust in which 6 million of our fellow human beings, who happened to be Jews, were exterminated. All mankind was diminished by these events. I do not speak here for my party or for the industrial movement which I lead. But as an individual Australian. I know that I am not an island and I know that if we allow the bell to be tolled for Israel it will have tolled for me, for us all, and we will all to that extent again have been diminished. This would be an especial loss for Australia, which under the leadership of Dr Evatt as Minister for External Affairs, played a major part in the emergence of the State of Israel." (from Hawke's address to the 26th Biennial Conference of the Zionist Federation of Australia & New Zealand, Quadrant, March-April 1974)
IOW: 1) Palestinians (ie ersatz Arabs) can be accomodated quite comfortably in any one of 18 Arab states (as presumably could South African blacks in any one of x African countries); 2) The fact of the Holocaust overides everything else, including the rights of Palestine's indigenous people. It is they (not the Europeans, and certainly not we Australians) who must pay the price for European anti-Semitism; 3) Doc Evatt (not the majority of people who actually lived there) knew what was best for Palestine in 1947 and Australia's reputation stands or falls with his.
Hawke had (has?) no understanding whatever of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948: "Within days of the UN resolution [181] there began a program of mediation based upon the repeated assertion that the armies of the Arab States would invade Israel upon its proclamation as a State and would annihilate it within a matter of days. It was in this context of an attempt virtually to abort the birth of Israel or to ensure its early demise that the Arab States themselves urged Arabs within the proposed State of Israel to flee, thus initiating the problem of the Arab refugees..." (ibid) Hawke could not even bring himself to use the word 'Palestinians'. His speech to the ZFA, if not handed to him on a platter, reveals an outlook so insufferably Eurocentric, colonial, and Zionist as to preclude any realisation of the bleeding-obvious parallels between apartheid Israel and apartheid South Africa.
Australian historian John Hurst, in his 1979 biography of Hawke, attempted to shed some light on Hawke's Ziophilia: "One of the main reasons for Hawke's deep and principled commitment to the Israeli cause was his fundamental belief that the world owed the Jews a place in which they could live free from persecution and oppression. Jews had been reviled, bullied and persecuted for centuries, the scapegoats for the ills of mankind. The Germans alone could not be held responsible for the holocaust... the world had allowed that disaster to happen... Hawke believed, deeply, that the creation of Israel by the United Nations... was a partial redemption of the world's debt to the Jewish people - that nation had to be allowed to live. Hawke had developed a great admiration for the Jewish character, Jewish intelligence and creativity. Jewish determination and the inspired devotion with which Jewish migrants from all parts of the world were turning barren tracts of the Holy Land into fertile ground... There were other, more personal, reasons for Hawke's attachment to the Jews. Anti-Semitism had been rife at one of the schools Hawke attended in his youth. He remembered with revulsion how he had been among the baiters of a Jewish boy, John Eisner, whom he had once physically attacked. Looking back, he felt a deep sense of guilt. As he grew in understanding he developed a contempt for all forms of insidious anti-Semitism. It seemed to him that the anti-Israel position was an expression of a deep-rooted prejudice." (Hawke PM, p 102-103)
I think that Hawke's attack of the guilts explains his blindness to the justice of the Palestinian cause. I wonder what Rudd's excuse is?
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Something Quite Disturbing
An Australian blog called The Sensible Jew (TSJ) emerged in May this year to some mainstream media fanfare in The Age. It proclaimed its mission as: "Occupying the territory between the Beth Din & Antony Loewenstein since 2009." Those behind it could abide neither the current Jewish community leadership (too Zionist) or Antony Loewenstein (too anti-Zionist).
The latter, of course, had their measure, writing, in a letter to The Age: "The new blog The Sensible Jew... appears unconcerned with anything other than improving the PR of the Zionist agenda. While a mature debate is raging overseas about war crimes in Gaza, ongoing settlement expansion in the West Bank and racist laws in Israel that would ban Arab memorials for 1948 ethnic cleansing, the mostly anonymous bloggers prefer to talk about Jewish spokespeople appearing clumsy on television. As is seen in Britain and the US, a growing number of concerned citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, are no longer willing to accept a self-described Jewish state that actively discriminates against the non-Jewish population. A global campaign to boycott Israel is growing in strength. Instead, the Australian Jewish community obsesses about who belongs to what Jewish roof body. The parochialism is startling." (13/6/09)
As it happened, the TSJ bloggers recently decided to call it a day - but not before making this revealing comment in their final post: "Some in the [Jewish] community... have rejoiced at this blog's closure. There have been thanks given to God, and other expressions of similar delight. My concern is not that there might be people who disagree with me... but that there are Australian Jews who felt that a group of Zionists, whose beliefs fall very much within the mainstream of Australian Jewish life, could somehow be so vile that this blog's closure could provoke utter bliss. The most radical position presented on this blog has been the mooted democratisation of our leadership. That there is a significant number of people that cannot tolerate such a mild topic for debate without resorting to flaming, abuse, and trolling is symptomatic of something quite disturbing. Many more have commented or emailed to express support for what this blog was about. But such people were rarely motivated to comment on multiple occasions. Some privately confided that they were intimidated by the trolls, or that they just couldn't be bothered fighting with the more conservative elements. Such people felt that if their opinions and identities were made public, they would be publicly shamed, ridiculed, or defamed. Again, such people were not propounding radical views, and ours is not a violent community, so it shocked me profoundly that there was enough fear to keep a significant number quiet." (SJ signs off, 15/7/09)
The very first comment to follow was even more forthright: "But you have learned something that some of us have faced for years in our attempts to offer alternative opinions, that there is a vicious, intolerant and nasty streak in the community, that [, and] I don't like to say this, but say [it] with some sadness, [there is] a good dose of fascism."
Although continuing to cling to their illusions of a kinder, softer Zionism, we should at least be greatful to the TSJ bloggers for such a frank acknowledgment of the nature and modus operandi of the Zionist dead-enders they (and we) have had to contend with.
The latter, of course, had their measure, writing, in a letter to The Age: "The new blog The Sensible Jew... appears unconcerned with anything other than improving the PR of the Zionist agenda. While a mature debate is raging overseas about war crimes in Gaza, ongoing settlement expansion in the West Bank and racist laws in Israel that would ban Arab memorials for 1948 ethnic cleansing, the mostly anonymous bloggers prefer to talk about Jewish spokespeople appearing clumsy on television. As is seen in Britain and the US, a growing number of concerned citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, are no longer willing to accept a self-described Jewish state that actively discriminates against the non-Jewish population. A global campaign to boycott Israel is growing in strength. Instead, the Australian Jewish community obsesses about who belongs to what Jewish roof body. The parochialism is startling." (13/6/09)
As it happened, the TSJ bloggers recently decided to call it a day - but not before making this revealing comment in their final post: "Some in the [Jewish] community... have rejoiced at this blog's closure. There have been thanks given to God, and other expressions of similar delight. My concern is not that there might be people who disagree with me... but that there are Australian Jews who felt that a group of Zionists, whose beliefs fall very much within the mainstream of Australian Jewish life, could somehow be so vile that this blog's closure could provoke utter bliss. The most radical position presented on this blog has been the mooted democratisation of our leadership. That there is a significant number of people that cannot tolerate such a mild topic for debate without resorting to flaming, abuse, and trolling is symptomatic of something quite disturbing. Many more have commented or emailed to express support for what this blog was about. But such people were rarely motivated to comment on multiple occasions. Some privately confided that they were intimidated by the trolls, or that they just couldn't be bothered fighting with the more conservative elements. Such people felt that if their opinions and identities were made public, they would be publicly shamed, ridiculed, or defamed. Again, such people were not propounding radical views, and ours is not a violent community, so it shocked me profoundly that there was enough fear to keep a significant number quiet." (SJ signs off, 15/7/09)
The very first comment to follow was even more forthright: "But you have learned something that some of us have faced for years in our attempts to offer alternative opinions, that there is a vicious, intolerant and nasty streak in the community, that [, and] I don't like to say this, but say [it] with some sadness, [there is] a good dose of fascism."
Although continuing to cling to their illusions of a kinder, softer Zionism, we should at least be greatful to the TSJ bloggers for such a frank acknowledgment of the nature and modus operandi of the Zionist dead-enders they (and we) have had to contend with.
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