First the good news. A new (2013) and youthful (1982) federal Labor MP (Gellibrand), Tim Watts, not only reads books but blogs about them on a website called Blogging the Bookshelf. In fact, all the books he's read from 2013 -2015. He's even got a handy rating system for you: BUY, BORROW, TOSS
But how does Tim choose the books he reads? Does he just walk into a bookshop (or St Vinnies?) and pick them up at random? Does he just read books others have passed on to him or recommended? Does he gravitate towards some subjects rather than others?
He doesn't say. His lists seem pretty much random. Some clarity here would be welcome.
Now for the bad news. Of all the books Tim could have read to gain some idea - which after all is the point of reading books, right? - about WTF is going on in Palestine/Israel he's chosen Start-Up Nation by Dan Senor & Saul Singer* and My Promised Land by Ari Shavit.
The first is about how enforcing an occupation produces budding entrepreneurs. Tim gives it a BORROW rating.
So if I were to write a book suggesting that maybe Australia should introduce conscription and invade, occupy and police PNG because this will turn us into a start-up nation, Tim would rate it BORROW as opposed to TOSS?
The second is about how wonderful Israelis are, and how they created "something unique and quite endearing" in a tough (Arab) neighborhood. Tim gives it a BUY rating.
So if I were to write a self-congratulatory book called My Promised Land about how wonderful Australians are, and how we created 'something unique and quite endearing' in a tough (Aboriginal) neighborhood, Tim would rate it BUY as opposed to TOSS?
Can we detect a pattern here then? An unfortunate predilection for Zionist potboilers?
Why so? Well, this is the Labor Party, and if you want to get ahead there...
And, significantly, he's been rambammed - 2014:
"Watts said he was impressed by the objectivity of the Rambam program, which he said exposed him to a diverse range of views and the space to develop his own views on Israel without intrusion or interference." (See my 9/6/14 post Israeli-Occupied Labor.)
LOLOLOLOL
But I'm curious: where did these two books come from? Michael Danby? AIJAC? Israel's Foreign Ministry?
And I'm also curious as to how a bloke who's declared in parliament that "multiculturalism is important to me" can give the thumbs-up to sales brochures for an ethnocratic, apartheid state.
[*See my 23/4/10 post Creative Destruction.]
PS: Check out his reading list for 2001: Wall-to-wall Leon Uris, including EXODUS. So that's when the Ziobug first bit. It's like the herpes virus, once it's in your system it's there forever!
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Friday, January 8, 2016
Just Another Day in Occupied Palestine
I was driving from Nablus to Ramallah. Light rain was falling as I approached the Israeli checkpoint at Huwwara. Another car was in front of me, moving slowly, trying to keep its distance from an Israeli military vehicle about 50m ahead. No sense in provoking them. On the grassy verge beside the road a young boy was walking in the same direction as the cars. The Israeli military vehicle braked suddenly, an order barking from it. The boy put his hands up. The car in front of me began to drive around the Israeli vehicle. I followed suit. I could see the boy with his hands up as I passed. I looked for the boy in my rear view mirror. He was on the ground. It happened so fast. One minute he's standing there with his arms up. The next he's on the ground, dead. I stopped the car, as did the driver in front of me. We had both just witnessed an execution. Not long after, Israeli state media announced that their military had killed 15-year-old Abdullah Hussein Nasasra from Beit Furik near Nablus. The military said that he had 'charged the armed forces while armed with a knife.' I saw no knife. Nor did I see him charge them. They had guns trained on him. Why would he try to attack them with a knife? (Adapted by MERC from Checkpoint violence: blood and occupation, Vijay Prashad, counterpunch.org, 29/12/15)
Thursday, January 7, 2016
Tom Switzer Channels Oded Yinon in the Herald
Whatever happened to progress? One hundred years ago we had Britain Sir Mark Sykes and France's Georges Picot, smack bang in the middle of World War I, drawing lines on a map of the Middle East and coming up with the Sykes-Picot Agreement: You take those bits and we'll have these, old chap.
Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end.
Well, they haven't, because now we've got Australia's Tom Switzer and America's John Bolton having another go at drawing lines on a map of the Middle East. Here's Switzer (research associate at the University of Sydney's United States Studies Centre and host of Radio National's Between the Lines):
"The problem boils down to this: Iraq and Syria as we know them are gone. Iraq is not one people, but rather three peoples: Kurds, (minority) Sunnis, and (majority) Shiites. Syria is also three peoples: Kurds, (majority) Sunnis, and (minority) Alawites/Shiites, who protect the Christians and other religious minorities. None of this should surprise a student of modern history. Both Iraq and Syria are artificial states and ethnically divided societies created out of the ruins of the the Ottoman Empire a century ago. What the US-led invasion in 2003 and the so-called Arab Spring in 2011 did was unleash age-old sectarian animosities that are eroding political structures and borders that have more or less prevailed since the end of World War I. What to do? John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN and senior fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, has a good idea: create independent states for the Kurds and Sunnis after the defeat of IS. A 'Sunni-stan', he argues, could be a bulwark against the Iran-backed regimes in Damascus and Baghdad." (Redrawing the map is the best solution, Sydney Morning Herald, 5/1/16)
No, the problem really boils down to this - the Switzers and Boltons of this world.
Just a reminder: John Bolton is an American neoconservative, one of the rum crew, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Libby, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith & Abrams, that formed PNAC (Project for a New American Century) back in the 1990s. At the time the PNAC neocons/Ziocons urged Clinton to blitz Iraq - to no avail. Unfortunately for them, they had to wait for Bush Jr, 9/11 and a few plum posts in the Bush administration before they could realise their dream - today's Iraq (and Libya and Syria).
Bolton became US Undersecretary of State and duly went off to confer with USraeli leader Ariel Sharon in February 2003. Needless to say, there was - LOL - a meeting of minds:
Sharon said "that Iran, Libya and Syria should be stripped of weapons of mass destruction after Iraq. 'These are irresponsible states which must be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction, and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve'."
And Bolton replied "that he had no doubt America would attack Iraq, and that it would be necessary thereafter to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea."*
Good old John. As the late Republican Senator (and friend of Jesus) Jesse Helms said in endorsement: "John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armaggedon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world."
Actually, it's not Sir Mark Sykes that Tom Switzer and John Bolton are channeling here. It's Israel's Oded Yinon and his 1982 Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties:
"Iraq... is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria... Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us... and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines... is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north."
But hang on, wasn't Oded Switzer telling us only a matter of weeks ago that "The smartest strategy is for the West to slowly but steadily disengage militarily from the Middle East and allow the people in that region to settle their own differences"?**
Now here he is, hanging with John (Regime Change) Bolton, who wants to create Kurdistan, Sunnistan, Shiastan (and, for all we know, Yazidistan as well). (Hey, maybe they could be called Cheneystan, Rumsfeldistan, Perlestan and so on.)
What ever happened to consistency? Oh, wait, I can guarantee that Oded Switzer will never, ever, want to play around with Israel's borders - wherever they happen to be.
And just remember: Oded Switzer doesn't peddle his dubious wares in the Murdoch press, but in Fairfax and on ABC radio.
Have a nice day!
[*Sharon says US should also disarm Iran, Libya & Syria, Aluf Benn, Haaretz, 18/2/03; **The West should let the Middle East settle its own differences, Sydney Morning Herald, 16/11/15]
Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end.
Well, they haven't, because now we've got Australia's Tom Switzer and America's John Bolton having another go at drawing lines on a map of the Middle East. Here's Switzer (research associate at the University of Sydney's United States Studies Centre and host of Radio National's Between the Lines):
"The problem boils down to this: Iraq and Syria as we know them are gone. Iraq is not one people, but rather three peoples: Kurds, (minority) Sunnis, and (majority) Shiites. Syria is also three peoples: Kurds, (majority) Sunnis, and (minority) Alawites/Shiites, who protect the Christians and other religious minorities. None of this should surprise a student of modern history. Both Iraq and Syria are artificial states and ethnically divided societies created out of the ruins of the the Ottoman Empire a century ago. What the US-led invasion in 2003 and the so-called Arab Spring in 2011 did was unleash age-old sectarian animosities that are eroding political structures and borders that have more or less prevailed since the end of World War I. What to do? John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN and senior fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, has a good idea: create independent states for the Kurds and Sunnis after the defeat of IS. A 'Sunni-stan', he argues, could be a bulwark against the Iran-backed regimes in Damascus and Baghdad." (Redrawing the map is the best solution, Sydney Morning Herald, 5/1/16)
No, the problem really boils down to this - the Switzers and Boltons of this world.
Just a reminder: John Bolton is an American neoconservative, one of the rum crew, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Libby, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith & Abrams, that formed PNAC (Project for a New American Century) back in the 1990s. At the time the PNAC neocons/Ziocons urged Clinton to blitz Iraq - to no avail. Unfortunately for them, they had to wait for Bush Jr, 9/11 and a few plum posts in the Bush administration before they could realise their dream - today's Iraq (and Libya and Syria).
Bolton became US Undersecretary of State and duly went off to confer with USraeli leader Ariel Sharon in February 2003. Needless to say, there was - LOL - a meeting of minds:
Sharon said "that Iran, Libya and Syria should be stripped of weapons of mass destruction after Iraq. 'These are irresponsible states which must be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction, and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve'."
And Bolton replied "that he had no doubt America would attack Iraq, and that it would be necessary thereafter to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea."*
Good old John. As the late Republican Senator (and friend of Jesus) Jesse Helms said in endorsement: "John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armaggedon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world."
Actually, it's not Sir Mark Sykes that Tom Switzer and John Bolton are channeling here. It's Israel's Oded Yinon and his 1982 Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties:
"Iraq... is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria... Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us... and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines... is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north."
But hang on, wasn't Oded Switzer telling us only a matter of weeks ago that "The smartest strategy is for the West to slowly but steadily disengage militarily from the Middle East and allow the people in that region to settle their own differences"?**
Now here he is, hanging with John (Regime Change) Bolton, who wants to create Kurdistan, Sunnistan, Shiastan (and, for all we know, Yazidistan as well). (Hey, maybe they could be called Cheneystan, Rumsfeldistan, Perlestan and so on.)
What ever happened to consistency? Oh, wait, I can guarantee that Oded Switzer will never, ever, want to play around with Israel's borders - wherever they happen to be.
And just remember: Oded Switzer doesn't peddle his dubious wares in the Murdoch press, but in Fairfax and on ABC radio.
Have a nice day!
[*Sharon says US should also disarm Iran, Libya & Syria, Aluf Benn, Haaretz, 18/2/03; **The West should let the Middle East settle its own differences, Sydney Morning Herald, 16/11/15]
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Why is Ruth Pollard Leaving Fairfax?
Sadly, it looks as though Fairfax Media's Middle East correspondent Ruth Pollard is bowing out. I haven't always been kind to her as some of my earlier posts on her reporting attest but I have to say that the quality of her reporting has only improved with time. Suffice it to say that when the AIJAC crowd start yapping about her 'negativity' towards Israel and her lack of 'balance'* you know she's doing something right.
In fact, one tweet I've read has even suggested that Fairfax will be closing its Jerusalem bureau - which could only mean that Fairfax papers from now on will carry only craportage on the Middle East from the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post. This, of course, would constitute yet another huge milestone in Fairfax's decline into irrelevance.
Given earlier ructions over the reporting of Ed O'Loughlin, Fairfax's ME correspondent until 2008, and the Sydney Morning Herald's treatment of its star columnist Mike Carlton following pressure from Israel lobbyists, one cannot help but wonder about the real reasons for Pollard's leaving her post.
I sincerely hope that Ruth finds the time to write a memoir of some kind, one which frankly tackles the subject of Israel lobby pressure on Fairfax Media in general, and the craven crew at the helm of the Herald in particular, and details what must have been for her an incredibly steep learning-curve in occupied Palestine.
[* The truth about the Gaza war (hint: it's not what Ruth Pollard tells you, aijac.org.au, 5/9/15]
In fact, one tweet I've read has even suggested that Fairfax will be closing its Jerusalem bureau - which could only mean that Fairfax papers from now on will carry only craportage on the Middle East from the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post. This, of course, would constitute yet another huge milestone in Fairfax's decline into irrelevance.
Given earlier ructions over the reporting of Ed O'Loughlin, Fairfax's ME correspondent until 2008, and the Sydney Morning Herald's treatment of its star columnist Mike Carlton following pressure from Israel lobbyists, one cannot help but wonder about the real reasons for Pollard's leaving her post.
I sincerely hope that Ruth finds the time to write a memoir of some kind, one which frankly tackles the subject of Israel lobby pressure on Fairfax Media in general, and the craven crew at the helm of the Herald in particular, and details what must have been for her an incredibly steep learning-curve in occupied Palestine.
[* The truth about the Gaza war (hint: it's not what Ruth Pollard tells you, aijac.org.au, 5/9/15]
Monday, January 4, 2016
Anti-Shia Sectarianism: Pillar of the Saudi State
"Saudi officials denied that sectarianism had played any role in the [47 Saudi] executions." (Embassy attack inflames tensions, Ben Hubbard, Sydney Morning Herald, 4/1/16)
The mind-boggling question arises: did the Saudis execute 43 alleged Sunni jihadis simply so that they could claim that their execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr an-Nimr and 3 other Shia political prisoners had nothing to do with sectarianism?
The simple fact of the matter is that anti-Shia sectarianism is part of the Saudi/Wahhabi DNA.
The following text, part of a fatwa issued in 1927 to King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud (1876-1953), the founder of Saudi Arabia (1925-), by the Wahhabi Ikhwan of Nejd, the tribal army that brought him to power, illustrates the kind of Wahhabi sectarianism that the Shia population of Saudi Arabia,* concentrated in Eastern Province, has had to contend with from the very foundation of the Saudi state in 1925:
"As to the Shi'a, we have told the Imam that our ruling is that they must be asked to surrender to true Moslems, and should not be allowed to perform their misguided religious rites in public. We ask that the Imam should order his Viceroy in Hasa to summon the Shi'a to Sheikh Ibn Bishr, before whom they should undertake to follow the religion of God and His Prophet, to cease all prayers to the saintly members of the Prophet's house or others, to cease their heretical innovations such as the commemoration rites performed on the anniversaries of the deaths of members of the House of the Prophet and all other such rites performed in error, and that they should cease to visit the so-called sacred cities such as Karbala and Najaf. They must also attend compulsorily at the Five Prayers in the Mosques, along with the rest of the congregation, and Sunni Imams and muezzins, each with an assistant, should be appointed to instruct them. Shi'as must also be forced to study Sheikh Ibn Abdul Wahhab's Three Principles.
"Any places specially erected for the practice of their rites must be destroyed, and these practices forbidden in mosques or anywhere else.
"Any Shi'a who refuses to keep to these rules must be exiled from Moslem territory.
"With regard to the Shi'as of Qatif, the Imam... should compel the Sheikh Ibn Bishr to go and see personally that our requirements are carried out. We have advised the Imam to send missionaries and teachers to certain districts and villages which have now come under the rule of true Moslems, and to order his viceroys, emirs and other officials to co-operate with these missionaries in bringing these people back to Islam and forbidding sin and lawfulness." (Arabian Days, Sheikh Hafiz Wahba, 1964, pp 135-36)
[*Around 30% of the population of Eastern Province.]
The mind-boggling question arises: did the Saudis execute 43 alleged Sunni jihadis simply so that they could claim that their execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr an-Nimr and 3 other Shia political prisoners had nothing to do with sectarianism?
The simple fact of the matter is that anti-Shia sectarianism is part of the Saudi/Wahhabi DNA.
The following text, part of a fatwa issued in 1927 to King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud (1876-1953), the founder of Saudi Arabia (1925-), by the Wahhabi Ikhwan of Nejd, the tribal army that brought him to power, illustrates the kind of Wahhabi sectarianism that the Shia population of Saudi Arabia,* concentrated in Eastern Province, has had to contend with from the very foundation of the Saudi state in 1925:
"As to the Shi'a, we have told the Imam that our ruling is that they must be asked to surrender to true Moslems, and should not be allowed to perform their misguided religious rites in public. We ask that the Imam should order his Viceroy in Hasa to summon the Shi'a to Sheikh Ibn Bishr, before whom they should undertake to follow the religion of God and His Prophet, to cease all prayers to the saintly members of the Prophet's house or others, to cease their heretical innovations such as the commemoration rites performed on the anniversaries of the deaths of members of the House of the Prophet and all other such rites performed in error, and that they should cease to visit the so-called sacred cities such as Karbala and Najaf. They must also attend compulsorily at the Five Prayers in the Mosques, along with the rest of the congregation, and Sunni Imams and muezzins, each with an assistant, should be appointed to instruct them. Shi'as must also be forced to study Sheikh Ibn Abdul Wahhab's Three Principles.
"Any places specially erected for the practice of their rites must be destroyed, and these practices forbidden in mosques or anywhere else.
"Any Shi'a who refuses to keep to these rules must be exiled from Moslem territory.
"With regard to the Shi'as of Qatif, the Imam... should compel the Sheikh Ibn Bishr to go and see personally that our requirements are carried out. We have advised the Imam to send missionaries and teachers to certain districts and villages which have now come under the rule of true Moslems, and to order his viceroys, emirs and other officials to co-operate with these missionaries in bringing these people back to Islam and forbidding sin and lawfulness." (Arabian Days, Sheikh Hafiz Wahba, 1964, pp 135-36)
[*Around 30% of the population of Eastern Province.]
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Circumlocution Time
"The Israeli military has been accused of reaching an accommodation to keep the peace with Syrian rebel groups, including al-Qa'ida offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as al-Nusra Front, under which injured fighters have been transferred to Israeli hospitals..." (War knocking on Israel's door, Jamie Walker, The Australian, 2/1/16)
(Accused of) reaching an accommodation? Hello? Run that past me again. To keep the peace with al-Qaida Israel takes in its wounded fighters and gives them free state-of-the-art medical care?
Right... so Israel has no choice in the matter? Al-Qaida's like, look after us or else?
Or is the Australian's Middle East correspondent simply afraid to say straight out that the Israeli military have been collaborating with al-Qaida in Syria?
(Accused of) reaching an accommodation? Hello? Run that past me again. To keep the peace with al-Qaida Israel takes in its wounded fighters and gives them free state-of-the-art medical care?
Right... so Israel has no choice in the matter? Al-Qaida's like, look after us or else?
Or is the Australian's Middle East correspondent simply afraid to say straight out that the Israeli military have been collaborating with al-Qaida in Syria?
Saturday, January 2, 2016
Israel's 'Direct Line to Number 10'
It seems that the UK's Labour Friends of Israel has fallen on hard times:
"Under [Labour leader Jeremy] Corbyn, [Rebecca Simon, vice chair of LFI] said, 'Israel has fundamentally been delegitimised.' She added, 'When I started working at LFI, we had a direct line to number 10 and the Foreign Office. Our relationship was strong. Under Jeremy [Corbyn], we are going to have to find new ways of operating.' The fact Israel currently had a 'right wing government' did not help. 'It is very hard when the current government plays into the narrative of those who are blindly against it'." (Don't abandon the Labour Party over Corbyn, pleads activist, Rosa Doherty, thejc.com, 30/12/15)
We had a direct line to number 10 & the Foreign Office.
How revealing. Reminds me of that line in Bob Carr's equally revealing Diary of a Foreign Minister:
"... it's an appalling position if Australia allows a group of businessmen in Melbourne to veto policy on the Middle East." (p 188)
We are going to have to find new ways of operating.
Just imagine:
Knock on door. Opens door to find two smiling Anglo-Israeli operatives, who say: Mind if we storm in and interrogate you about Israel?
Bring it on, Rebecca! Bring-it-on!
"Under [Labour leader Jeremy] Corbyn, [Rebecca Simon, vice chair of LFI] said, 'Israel has fundamentally been delegitimised.' She added, 'When I started working at LFI, we had a direct line to number 10 and the Foreign Office. Our relationship was strong. Under Jeremy [Corbyn], we are going to have to find new ways of operating.' The fact Israel currently had a 'right wing government' did not help. 'It is very hard when the current government plays into the narrative of those who are blindly against it'." (Don't abandon the Labour Party over Corbyn, pleads activist, Rosa Doherty, thejc.com, 30/12/15)
We had a direct line to number 10 & the Foreign Office.
How revealing. Reminds me of that line in Bob Carr's equally revealing Diary of a Foreign Minister:
"... it's an appalling position if Australia allows a group of businessmen in Melbourne to veto policy on the Middle East." (p 188)
We are going to have to find new ways of operating.
Just imagine:
Knock on door. Opens door to find two smiling Anglo-Israeli operatives, who say: Mind if we storm in and interrogate you about Israel?
Bring it on, Rebecca! Bring-it-on!
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