OK, so John Howard read federal parliament's report - Intelligence on Iraq's WMD - which showed that a sanctions-weakened Iraq was about as much of a threat to world peace as Monaco, and simply ignored its findings. So why then did he take us to war against Iraq in 2003?
Apart from all the bull in Howard's Lowy Institute speech about everybody, but everybody, at the time having a near gospel belief that Saddam was such a mean and ornery fella he just had to have a stash of WMDs under his bed (and the more so for saying he didn't) and you're left with the odd statement or two that tells us why we really went in. Here they are in chronological order:
"[C]entral to a proper understanding of why the US acted as she did over Iraq, and the implications that had for a close ally such as Australia, is to recognise [her] vulnerability [to more terrorist attacks]."
"Australia's decision to join the coalition in Iraq was a product both of our belief at the time that Iraq had WMD, and the nature of our relationship and alliance with the US."
"Although the legal justification for the action taken against Iraq was based on her cumulative non-compliance with UNSC resolutions, and a properly grounded belief that Saddam possessed WMDs, a powerful element in our decision to join the Americans was, of course, the depth and character of our relationship with the US. Australia had invoked ANZUS in the days following 9/11. We had readily joined the coalition in Afghanistan; Australia had suffered the brutality of Islamic terrorism in Bali. There was a sense then that a common way of life was under threat. At that time, and in those circumstances, and given our shared history and values, I judged that, ultimately, it was in our national interest to stand beside the Americans."
Got the picture? When you're in love, you stand by your man, OK? It's really that simple(-minded). End of story.
Now, having definitively solved that little mystery, there are other revealing threads in his speech worth following up.
For example, in addition to all the ducking and weaving on WMDs, Howard gleefully invokes the spectre of Osama bin Laden and the Islamo-fascist hordes in blithe disregard for bin Laden having long ago written Saddam off as a "socialist infidel."*
As much as he protests, "I never believed that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks nor did president Bush or, to my knowledge, Tony Blair. Such a claim never formed part of the public case put by the Howard government for our Iraqi involvement," Howard flogs the 9/11 attacks for all they're worth:
"Americans thought that their country would be attacked by terrorists again, and soon. To many in the US why wouldn't a rogue state like Iraq supply dangerous weapons to terrorist groups?"
Bringing it closer to home, he invokes the bomb in our own backyard - Bali - and the prospect of "home-grown threats to our peaceful society," conjuring nightmare visions of flinty-eyed, bearded men in flowing white robes bearing nuclear/chemical/biological suitcase bombs, personally packed by a certain "loathsome dictator" who rules over an "outlaw regime/rogue state," and who will go to any lengths to kick down our white picket fences and trample all over our carefully manicured lawns. And who, of course, has more WMDs - gospel! - than you can shake a stick at.
But what the bugger doesn't let on is that Americans didn't automaticaly think of Iraq after 9/11. They had to be 'taught' to think about it. They had to be 'educated'. Enter the neocons:
"The 'Get Iraq' campaign... started within days of the September bombings... It emerged first and particularly from pro-Israel hard-liners in the Pentagon such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and adviser Richard Perle, but also from hard-line neoconservatives, and some journalists and congressmen. Soon it became clear that many, although not all, were in the group that is commonly called in diplomatic and political circles the 'Israel-firsters', meaning that they would always put Israeli policy, or even their perception of it, above anything else." (Pro-Israeli, anti-Arab campaigns could isolate America, Georgie Anne Geyer, uexpress.com, 25/10/01)
Of course, don't expect Howard to go there.
Finally, some other gems... very John Howard:
"The claims of some that life in Iraq was better under Saddam than it has been since, defy belief."
The claims of some? Iraqis perhaps? But then again, what would they know?
"To have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, for a new [UN] resolution added weight to the moral and political case being built for a military operation."
LOL, even if the UN won't give you the green light you need, you're still ahead merely for trying!
"It was inevitable that after Saddam had been toppled a degree of revenge would be exacted, but a stronger security presence would have constrained this."
Inevitable, eh? You mean Rumsfeld didn't really have to send in the likes of Colonel James Steele, "a US veteran of of the 'dirty wars' in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up detention and torture centres... [conducting] some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and [accelerating] the country's descent into full-scale civil war"?**
"[T]he removal of Saddam's regime provided the Iraqi people with opportunities for freedom not otherwise in prospect."
What is it with these born-to-rule bastards? Remember Abbott's campaign slogan - 'Hope, Reward, Opportunity'? As the experience of Iraq should tell us, when a guy in a suit starts banging on about opportunities it's time to batten down the hatches.
[*Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, ed by Bruce Lawrence, 2005, p 184; ** Iraq - searching for Steele, Foreign Correspondent, 2/4/13]
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
Public Servant Blows Whistle on John Howard
"After the fall of Saddam, and when it became apparent that stockpiles of WMDs had - to me unexpectedly - not been found in Iraq, it was all too easy for certain people... to begin claiming that Australia had gone to war based on a 'lie'. That claim is the most notorious one of all about the conduct of my government, and of others, and merits the most emphatic rejection. Not only does it impugn the integrity of the decision-making process at the highest level, but also the professionalism of intelligence agencies here and elsewhere. Some of their key assessments proved to be wrong, but that is a world away from those assessments being the product of deceit and/or political manipulation. In Australia, there was a parliamentary inquiry... which canvassed the pre-war intelligence. In its submission to the former, [the Office of National Assessment] ONA said, 'ONA said in a report of 31 January 2003 that there is a wealth of intelligence on Saddam's WMDs activities, but it paints a circumstantial picture that is conclusive overall rather than resting on a single piece of irrefutable evidence'. The Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO) said in its submission to the same inquiry 'Iraq probably retained a WMD capability - even if that capability had been degraded over time. DIO also assessed that Iraq maintained both an intent and capability to recommence a wider program should circumstances permit it to do so'." (From John Howard's speech to the Lowy Institute, as posted on the Sydney Morning Herald's website under the heading: 'We were right to invade Iraq' - John Howard, 9/4/13)
In the light of former prime minister Howard's reference above to an Australian parliamentary inquiry into Iraq's alleged WMDs, incorporating input from the DIO and the ONA, every Australian should take the time to read and ponder the implications of the following 'opinion piece' - Howard ignored official advice on Iraq's weapons & chose war - in today's Fairfax papers - although why it appeared in the opinion pages when it should have been on page one is a mystery I cannot even begin to fathom. The author, Margaret Swieringa, a retired public servant, is, it would appear, just the whistleblower we had to have:
"Former prime minister John Howard's justification this week on why we went to war against Iraq in 2003 obfuscates some issues.
"I was the secretary to the federal parliamentary intelligence committee from 2002 until 2007. It was then called the ASIO, ASIS & Defence Signals Directorate committee - which drafted the report Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Howard refers to this committee in his speech justifying our involvement in the war. [See above.]
"The reason why there was so much argument about the existence of such weapons before the war in Iraq 10 years ago was that to go to war on any other pretext would have been a breach of international law. As Howard said at the time: 'I couldn't justify on its own a military invasion of Iraq to change the regime. I've never advocated that. Central to the threat is Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons and its pursuit of nuclear capability'.
"So the question is what the government knew or was told about that capability and whether the government 'lied' about the danger that Iraq posed. At the time, Howard and his ministers asserted that the threat to the world from Iraq's WMD was both great and immediate. On February 4, 2003, he said Saddam Hussein had an 'arsenal' and a 'stockpile' and the 'illegal importation of proscribed goods ha[s] increased dramatically in the past few years'. 'Iraq had a massive program for developing offensive biological weapons - one of the largest and most advanced in the world'. On March 18, 2003, foreign minister Alexander Downer told the House of Representatives: 'The strategy of containment [UN sanctions] simply has not worked and now poses an unacceptable risk'. In his speeches at the time, Howard said: 'Iraq has a usable chemical and biological weapons capability which has included recent production of chemical and biological agents; Iraq continues to work on developing nuclear weapons. All key aspects - research and development, production and weaponisation - of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program are active and most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War in 1991'.
"None of the government's arguments were supported by the intelligence presented to it by its own agencies. None of these arguments were true. Howard this week quoted the findings of the parliamentary inquiry, but his quotation is selective to the point of being misleading.
"What was the nature of the intelligence on Iraq's WMD provided to the government? The parliamentary inquiry reported on the intelligence in detail. It gathered information from the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Office of National Assessment. It said:
1. The scale of threat from Iraq's WMD was less than it had been a decade earlier.
2. Under sanctions that prevailed at the time, Iraq's military capability remained limited and the country's infrastructure was still in decline.
3. The nuclear program was unlikely to be far advanced. Iraq was unlikely to have obtained fissile material.
4. Iraq had no ballistic missiles that could reach the US. Most if not all of the few SCUDS that were hidden away were likely to be in poor condition.
5. There was no known chemical weapons production.
6. There was no specific evidence of resumed biological weapons production.
7. There was no known biological weapons testing or evaluation since 1991.
8. There was no known Iraq offensive research since 1991.
9. Iraq did not have nuclear weapons.
10. There was no evidence that chemical weapon warheads for Al Samoud or other ballistic missiles had been developed.
11. No intelligence had accurately pointed to the location of WMD.
"There were minor qualifications to this somewhat emphatic picture. It found there was a limited stockpile of chemical weapon agents, possibly stored in dual-use or industrial facilities. Although there was no evidence that it had done so, Iraq had the capacity to restart its chemical weapons program in weeks and to manufacture in months.
"The committee concluded the 'case made by the government was that Iraq possessed WMD in large quantities and posed a grave and unacceptable threat to the region and the world, particularly as there was a danger that Iraq's WMD might be passed to terrorist organisations. This is not the picture that emerges from an examination of all the assessments provided to the committee by Australia's two analytical agencies'. Howard would claim, no doubt, that he took his views from overseas dossiers. But all that intelligence was considered by Australian agencies when forming their views. They knew, too, of the disputes and arguments within British and US intelligence agencies. Moreover, Australian agencies as well as the British and US intelligence agencies also knew the so-called 'surge of new intelligence' after September 2002 relied almost exclusively on one or two unreliable and self-serving individuals. They knew that Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid, who had defected in 1995, had told Western agencies the nuclear program in Iraq had failed, chemical and biological programs had been dismantled and weapons destroyed.
"There are none so blind who will not see."
PS (13/4/13): Last time I looked, Swieringa's piece had attracted 470 comments, and an accompanying poll, asking whether readers thought Howard was 'lying about the reasons for going to war in Iraq', had attracted over 18, 555 votes, 93% in agreement.
In the light of former prime minister Howard's reference above to an Australian parliamentary inquiry into Iraq's alleged WMDs, incorporating input from the DIO and the ONA, every Australian should take the time to read and ponder the implications of the following 'opinion piece' - Howard ignored official advice on Iraq's weapons & chose war - in today's Fairfax papers - although why it appeared in the opinion pages when it should have been on page one is a mystery I cannot even begin to fathom. The author, Margaret Swieringa, a retired public servant, is, it would appear, just the whistleblower we had to have:
"Former prime minister John Howard's justification this week on why we went to war against Iraq in 2003 obfuscates some issues.
"I was the secretary to the federal parliamentary intelligence committee from 2002 until 2007. It was then called the ASIO, ASIS & Defence Signals Directorate committee - which drafted the report Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Howard refers to this committee in his speech justifying our involvement in the war. [See above.]
"The reason why there was so much argument about the existence of such weapons before the war in Iraq 10 years ago was that to go to war on any other pretext would have been a breach of international law. As Howard said at the time: 'I couldn't justify on its own a military invasion of Iraq to change the regime. I've never advocated that. Central to the threat is Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons and its pursuit of nuclear capability'.
"So the question is what the government knew or was told about that capability and whether the government 'lied' about the danger that Iraq posed. At the time, Howard and his ministers asserted that the threat to the world from Iraq's WMD was both great and immediate. On February 4, 2003, he said Saddam Hussein had an 'arsenal' and a 'stockpile' and the 'illegal importation of proscribed goods ha[s] increased dramatically in the past few years'. 'Iraq had a massive program for developing offensive biological weapons - one of the largest and most advanced in the world'. On March 18, 2003, foreign minister Alexander Downer told the House of Representatives: 'The strategy of containment [UN sanctions] simply has not worked and now poses an unacceptable risk'. In his speeches at the time, Howard said: 'Iraq has a usable chemical and biological weapons capability which has included recent production of chemical and biological agents; Iraq continues to work on developing nuclear weapons. All key aspects - research and development, production and weaponisation - of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program are active and most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War in 1991'.
"None of the government's arguments were supported by the intelligence presented to it by its own agencies. None of these arguments were true. Howard this week quoted the findings of the parliamentary inquiry, but his quotation is selective to the point of being misleading.
"What was the nature of the intelligence on Iraq's WMD provided to the government? The parliamentary inquiry reported on the intelligence in detail. It gathered information from the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Office of National Assessment. It said:
1. The scale of threat from Iraq's WMD was less than it had been a decade earlier.
2. Under sanctions that prevailed at the time, Iraq's military capability remained limited and the country's infrastructure was still in decline.
3. The nuclear program was unlikely to be far advanced. Iraq was unlikely to have obtained fissile material.
4. Iraq had no ballistic missiles that could reach the US. Most if not all of the few SCUDS that were hidden away were likely to be in poor condition.
5. There was no known chemical weapons production.
6. There was no specific evidence of resumed biological weapons production.
7. There was no known biological weapons testing or evaluation since 1991.
8. There was no known Iraq offensive research since 1991.
9. Iraq did not have nuclear weapons.
10. There was no evidence that chemical weapon warheads for Al Samoud or other ballistic missiles had been developed.
11. No intelligence had accurately pointed to the location of WMD.
"There were minor qualifications to this somewhat emphatic picture. It found there was a limited stockpile of chemical weapon agents, possibly stored in dual-use or industrial facilities. Although there was no evidence that it had done so, Iraq had the capacity to restart its chemical weapons program in weeks and to manufacture in months.
"The committee concluded the 'case made by the government was that Iraq possessed WMD in large quantities and posed a grave and unacceptable threat to the region and the world, particularly as there was a danger that Iraq's WMD might be passed to terrorist organisations. This is not the picture that emerges from an examination of all the assessments provided to the committee by Australia's two analytical agencies'. Howard would claim, no doubt, that he took his views from overseas dossiers. But all that intelligence was considered by Australian agencies when forming their views. They knew, too, of the disputes and arguments within British and US intelligence agencies. Moreover, Australian agencies as well as the British and US intelligence agencies also knew the so-called 'surge of new intelligence' after September 2002 relied almost exclusively on one or two unreliable and self-serving individuals. They knew that Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid, who had defected in 1995, had told Western agencies the nuclear program in Iraq had failed, chemical and biological programs had been dismantled and weapons destroyed.
"There are none so blind who will not see."
PS (13/4/13): Last time I looked, Swieringa's piece had attracted 470 comments, and an accompanying poll, asking whether readers thought Howard was 'lying about the reasons for going to war in Iraq', had attracted over 18, 555 votes, 93% in agreement.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Rats in the Ranks
No surprises here:
"Bob Carr may have been Foreign Minister for only 12 months, but he started talking to American diplomats about internal Labor politics nearly 40 years ago. Previously secret US embassy and consulate reports incorporated into a new searchable database unveiled by WikiLeaks on Monday reveal that Senator Carr was a source for US diplomats seeking information on the Whitlam government and the broader Labor movement in the mid-1970s... A former Australian Young Labor president and then education officer with the NSW Labor Council, Senator Carr later 'expressed deep concern to [the US] consul-general over [the] impact of Labor disputes on the prospects of [the] Labor government'. The once confidential cables also suggest US envoys turned to him as a source of background information on Labor figures. For example, Senator Carr explained that a speaker at a pro-Palestinian protest in 1975 - left-wing Labor parliamentarian George Petersen - was 'a NSW equivalent of Victoria's [Bill] Hartley', another prominent Labor Left figure who developed close ties with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.* Senator Carr has long been a strong supporter of Australia's alliance with the US. He was a prominent participant in the Australian American Leadership Dialogue while serving as NSW premier." (Hawke & Carr were US sources on Whitlam turmoil, Philip Dorling, Sydney Morning Herald, 9/4/13)
The late, great George Petersen had Carr figured out decades ago:
"Paul Landa was succeeded as [NSW] Attorney-General by Terry Sheahan. The Cabinet vacancy was filled by Bob Carr, who is an unabashed admirer of United States capitalism, and who became Minister for Environment & Planning. He has been Premier since 1995. Together with the Treasurer, Michael Egan, he represents a total commitment to the ideology of economic rationalism." (George Petersen Remembers: The Contradictions, Problems & Betrayals of Labor in Government in New South Wales, 1998, p 356)
No surprises here either:
"Then ACTU president Bob Hawke was the US embassy's most valued Labor contact, conferring regularly with embassy officers and the consulate in Melbourne... Mr Hawke was especially critical of what he called Mr Whitlam's 'immoral, unethical and ungrateful attitude' towards Israel. He told the US consulate he felt unable to approach the Jewish community for campaign funds because of 'Whitlam's 'unprintable' even-handed 'unprintable' Arab policy'." (ibid)
George Petersen also had Hawke's number, describing him as a "reliable servant of the Australian capitalist class and United States imperialism." (George Petersen Remembers, p 185)
[*This is misleading. Saddam Hussein did not become Secretary of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party until 1979.]
"Bob Carr may have been Foreign Minister for only 12 months, but he started talking to American diplomats about internal Labor politics nearly 40 years ago. Previously secret US embassy and consulate reports incorporated into a new searchable database unveiled by WikiLeaks on Monday reveal that Senator Carr was a source for US diplomats seeking information on the Whitlam government and the broader Labor movement in the mid-1970s... A former Australian Young Labor president and then education officer with the NSW Labor Council, Senator Carr later 'expressed deep concern to [the US] consul-general over [the] impact of Labor disputes on the prospects of [the] Labor government'. The once confidential cables also suggest US envoys turned to him as a source of background information on Labor figures. For example, Senator Carr explained that a speaker at a pro-Palestinian protest in 1975 - left-wing Labor parliamentarian George Petersen - was 'a NSW equivalent of Victoria's [Bill] Hartley', another prominent Labor Left figure who developed close ties with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.* Senator Carr has long been a strong supporter of Australia's alliance with the US. He was a prominent participant in the Australian American Leadership Dialogue while serving as NSW premier." (Hawke & Carr were US sources on Whitlam turmoil, Philip Dorling, Sydney Morning Herald, 9/4/13)
The late, great George Petersen had Carr figured out decades ago:
"Paul Landa was succeeded as [NSW] Attorney-General by Terry Sheahan. The Cabinet vacancy was filled by Bob Carr, who is an unabashed admirer of United States capitalism, and who became Minister for Environment & Planning. He has been Premier since 1995. Together with the Treasurer, Michael Egan, he represents a total commitment to the ideology of economic rationalism." (George Petersen Remembers: The Contradictions, Problems & Betrayals of Labor in Government in New South Wales, 1998, p 356)
No surprises here either:
"Then ACTU president Bob Hawke was the US embassy's most valued Labor contact, conferring regularly with embassy officers and the consulate in Melbourne... Mr Hawke was especially critical of what he called Mr Whitlam's 'immoral, unethical and ungrateful attitude' towards Israel. He told the US consulate he felt unable to approach the Jewish community for campaign funds because of 'Whitlam's 'unprintable' even-handed 'unprintable' Arab policy'." (ibid)
George Petersen also had Hawke's number, describing him as a "reliable servant of the Australian capitalist class and United States imperialism." (George Petersen Remembers, p 185)
[*This is misleading. Saddam Hussein did not become Secretary of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party until 1979.]
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Trapped in Zion
Remember this famous quote from Polish Trotskyist, biographer of Stalin and Trotsky, and self-described "non-Jewish Jew," Isaac Deutscher (1907-1967)?
"A man once jumped from the the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person's legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. The man who escaped from the blazing house, having recovered, would have tried to help and console the other sufferer; and the latter might have realized he was the victim of circumstances over which neither of them had control. But look what happens when these people behave irrationally. The injured man blames the other for his misery and swears to make him pay for it. The other, afraid of the crippled man's revenge, insults him, kicks him, and beats him up whenever they meet. The kicked man again swears revenge and is again punched and punished. The bitter enmity, so fortuitous at first, hardens and comes to overshadow the whole existence of both men and to poison their minds.
"You will, I am sure, recognize yourselves (I said to my Israeli audience), the remnants of European Jewry in Israel, in the man who jumped from the blazing house. The other character represents, of course, the Palestine Arabs, more than a million of them, who have lost their lands and their homes. They are resentful; they gaze from across the frontiers on their old native places; they raid you stealthily and swear revenge. You punch and kick them mercilessly; you have shown that you know how to do it. But what is the sense of it? And what is the prospect?
"The responsibility for the tragedy of European Jews, for Auschwitz, Majdanek, and the slaughters in the ghetto, rests entirely on our own western bourgeois 'civilization', of which Nazism was the legitimate, even though degenerate, offspring. Yet it was the Arabs who were made to pay the price for the crimes the West committed towards the Jews. They are still made to pay for it, for the 'guilty conscience' of the West is, of course, pro-Israeli and anti-Arab. And how easily Israel had allowed itself to be bribed and fooled by the false 'conscience money'." (The Non-Jewish Jew & Other Essays, 1968, pp 136-137)
It's a clever analogy alright but one which completely ignores the history and practice of the Zionist project in Palestine, a colonial-settler phenomenon introduced into Palestine by the British long before the rise of Nazism and its crimes against European Jewry. The terrorists of the Haganah, Irgun, and Stern Gangs cut their teeth breaking Palestinian bones in the pre-war period and would have gone on doing so even if the Nazi Holocaust had not occurred. (This is not to say, however, that their ranks were not augmented by recruits from the pre-war influx of German Jewish refugees, or the smuggling of displaced European Jews into Palestine during and after the war.)
Now although I've already critiqued Deutscher's analogy in an earlier post - About That Falling Man (13/10/10) - I was reminded of it again while reading the memoir cited in my previous post on the Deir Yassin massacre: Christina Jones' The Untempered Wind: Forty Years in Palestine (1975).
Jones, an American Quaker who taught in the Friends' Boys' School in Ramallah from 1922-1962, records a visit in August 17, 1947 by a German Jew who not only revealed no inclination whatever to put the boot into Palestine's indigenous Arab population but rejected Zionism wholesale:
"We had an interesting visitor this morning. He is a German of the Jewish faith but he wanted to talk about Quakerism. Somewhere he had found books on the subject and had written to Philadelphia for information. A Friend there had advised him to get in touch with us. He was in a highly nervous state when he arrived as he had learned only after he got on the bus to come to Ramallah from Jerusalem that last night terrorists had entered an orange grove near Ramleh belonging to an Arab and had killed all of a three-generation family of thirteen persons. He was the only non-Arab on the bus, but no one had paid any attention to him. He said there was much excited talk, some of which he could not understand but one passenger had interpreted. He kept exclaiming, 'Why wouldn't they hate us? Why wouldn't they hate us?' He is a lawyer by profession and had come to Palestine hoping to find peace of mind. As a lawyer, he rejects the Zionist claims of legal or historic rights; surely the Arabs have them if any people have, and the violence with which the 'rights' of the Zionists are enforced troubles him greatly. I suggested that there were probably many like him, and he stopped pacing the floor long enough to say, 'There are thousands of us, but we are trapped here. We have no right here and certainly no right to perpetrate all this violence on the people of this country. We were led to believe that it was a desert, a wilderness, and instead we find it a good country - we find the people living good lives - we like it - but it isn't ours.' I invited him to go to Meeting with me but he refused; he didn't want people in Jerusalem to know he had even come to us lest he or his son suffer reprisals. We drank coffee together and talked about the Society of Friends, and he left in a calmer mood. He also gave me money to get certain Quaker books, but I was to send them to a friend of his in Jerusalem who would pass them on to him later." (pp 67-68)
I agree with Jones that there were probably many such Jews like him in Palestine at the time and will be returning to this issue in a future post. The problem, however, is that clear-thinking, ethical individuals such as Jones' visitor had little or no place in a community controlled by Zionist ideologues, fanatics and killers such as Ben Gurion, Begin and Shamir, who had given their British backers hell and were now chafing at the bit for a final, decisive showdown with Palestine's unsuspecting indigenous population.
"A man once jumped from the the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person's legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. The man who escaped from the blazing house, having recovered, would have tried to help and console the other sufferer; and the latter might have realized he was the victim of circumstances over which neither of them had control. But look what happens when these people behave irrationally. The injured man blames the other for his misery and swears to make him pay for it. The other, afraid of the crippled man's revenge, insults him, kicks him, and beats him up whenever they meet. The kicked man again swears revenge and is again punched and punished. The bitter enmity, so fortuitous at first, hardens and comes to overshadow the whole existence of both men and to poison their minds.
"You will, I am sure, recognize yourselves (I said to my Israeli audience), the remnants of European Jewry in Israel, in the man who jumped from the blazing house. The other character represents, of course, the Palestine Arabs, more than a million of them, who have lost their lands and their homes. They are resentful; they gaze from across the frontiers on their old native places; they raid you stealthily and swear revenge. You punch and kick them mercilessly; you have shown that you know how to do it. But what is the sense of it? And what is the prospect?
"The responsibility for the tragedy of European Jews, for Auschwitz, Majdanek, and the slaughters in the ghetto, rests entirely on our own western bourgeois 'civilization', of which Nazism was the legitimate, even though degenerate, offspring. Yet it was the Arabs who were made to pay the price for the crimes the West committed towards the Jews. They are still made to pay for it, for the 'guilty conscience' of the West is, of course, pro-Israeli and anti-Arab. And how easily Israel had allowed itself to be bribed and fooled by the false 'conscience money'." (The Non-Jewish Jew & Other Essays, 1968, pp 136-137)
It's a clever analogy alright but one which completely ignores the history and practice of the Zionist project in Palestine, a colonial-settler phenomenon introduced into Palestine by the British long before the rise of Nazism and its crimes against European Jewry. The terrorists of the Haganah, Irgun, and Stern Gangs cut their teeth breaking Palestinian bones in the pre-war period and would have gone on doing so even if the Nazi Holocaust had not occurred. (This is not to say, however, that their ranks were not augmented by recruits from the pre-war influx of German Jewish refugees, or the smuggling of displaced European Jews into Palestine during and after the war.)
Now although I've already critiqued Deutscher's analogy in an earlier post - About That Falling Man (13/10/10) - I was reminded of it again while reading the memoir cited in my previous post on the Deir Yassin massacre: Christina Jones' The Untempered Wind: Forty Years in Palestine (1975).
Jones, an American Quaker who taught in the Friends' Boys' School in Ramallah from 1922-1962, records a visit in August 17, 1947 by a German Jew who not only revealed no inclination whatever to put the boot into Palestine's indigenous Arab population but rejected Zionism wholesale:
"We had an interesting visitor this morning. He is a German of the Jewish faith but he wanted to talk about Quakerism. Somewhere he had found books on the subject and had written to Philadelphia for information. A Friend there had advised him to get in touch with us. He was in a highly nervous state when he arrived as he had learned only after he got on the bus to come to Ramallah from Jerusalem that last night terrorists had entered an orange grove near Ramleh belonging to an Arab and had killed all of a three-generation family of thirteen persons. He was the only non-Arab on the bus, but no one had paid any attention to him. He said there was much excited talk, some of which he could not understand but one passenger had interpreted. He kept exclaiming, 'Why wouldn't they hate us? Why wouldn't they hate us?' He is a lawyer by profession and had come to Palestine hoping to find peace of mind. As a lawyer, he rejects the Zionist claims of legal or historic rights; surely the Arabs have them if any people have, and the violence with which the 'rights' of the Zionists are enforced troubles him greatly. I suggested that there were probably many like him, and he stopped pacing the floor long enough to say, 'There are thousands of us, but we are trapped here. We have no right here and certainly no right to perpetrate all this violence on the people of this country. We were led to believe that it was a desert, a wilderness, and instead we find it a good country - we find the people living good lives - we like it - but it isn't ours.' I invited him to go to Meeting with me but he refused; he didn't want people in Jerusalem to know he had even come to us lest he or his son suffer reprisals. We drank coffee together and talked about the Society of Friends, and he left in a calmer mood. He also gave me money to get certain Quaker books, but I was to send them to a friend of his in Jerusalem who would pass them on to him later." (pp 67-68)
I agree with Jones that there were probably many such Jews like him in Palestine at the time and will be returning to this issue in a future post. The problem, however, is that clear-thinking, ethical individuals such as Jones' visitor had little or no place in a community controlled by Zionist ideologues, fanatics and killers such as Ben Gurion, Begin and Shamir, who had given their British backers hell and were now chafing at the bit for a final, decisive showdown with Palestine's unsuspecting indigenous population.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Deir Yassin: 65 Years Today
Today is the 65th anniversary of Palestine's infamous Deir Yassin massacre.
The following diary entries - April 10 & 14 1948 - by American Quaker Christina Jones, a teacher at the Friends' Boys' School in Ramallah at the time, provide a near real-time, albeit second hand, account of the massacre and its aftermath. Particularly prophetic is Jones' reference in the second entry to "an apartheid Jewish State":
[10 April] "The most tragic and dastardly act of the Stern and Irgun occurred at Deir Yasin yesterday afternoon. These terrorists went into the village and massacred 250* old men, women and children and threw their bodies into the village well. Young men of the village were at work in Jerusalem and in their fields. The survivors are being cared for at Beit Safafa. It does not seem possible that it can be true, but the story is confirmed by the International Red Cross delegates and representatives of some of the consulates who have gone to the village. We wonder what the effect will be when the news reaches Lake Success. The fact that it has happened while the Mandate Government is still here indicates the attitude of the Zionists towards it and Great Britain, and sadly underlies their confidence in the support of the USA. To say that this has created panic in surrounding villages puts the situation mildly...
[14 April] "We hear that the terrorists are driving through Jerusalem streets using loud-speakers to warn the people to leave or Deir Yasin will be their fate also. More news of the horrible incident comes to us. The Arabs are surprised that Deir Yasin should be the village attacked, for the people there were thought to be too friendly to the Jews in the past. The village so near to Jerusalem is strategically located for Jewish development, but I am inclined to think it is just part of the campaign to rid the country of Arabs in order to make more room for immigrants so that an apartheid** Jewish State may be set up. I hope I am wrong. It is almost more than one can bear to be so near such a great human tragedy and such sheer brutality." (The Untempered Wind: Forty Years in Palestine, 1975, pp 88-89)
Jones elaborates on her 1948 diary entries thus:
"Statements made by Zionist leaders following the Deir Yasin massacre give chilling reasons for it. In his book, The Revolt, [Menachem] Begin, who commanded the Irgun Zvai Leumi, writes that the terror inspired by this massacre resulted in the 'maddened uncontrolled stampede of 635,000 Arabs... the political and economic significance of this development can hardly be over-estimated.' Ben Gurion, on his part, said: 'Without Deir Yasin, there would be no Israel.' And later Dr Weizmann, first president of Israel, referred to the Arab flight as 'a miraculous simplification of Israel's tasks'... As we watched events during those days, it seemed obvious that the Zionists, fearing a reversal of the United Nations policy, were determined to get all the territory allotted to them in the partition scheme before the end of the Mandate Government and face the world with a fait accompli. The first step was to dispossess the Arabs. Before the British left Palestine, there were already more than 200,000 refugees, and they did not flee from their homes with the thought that it would be for ever." (p 89-90)
[*The accepted figure today is just over 100;** The Reunited National Party of Daniel F. Malan won power in South Africa on an apartheid platform on 26 May 1948. According to Israeli scholar Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "An official South African source is not alone in claiming that Daniel F. Malan visited Israel in May of 1948, but there seems to be no evidence for that claim... Malan actually visited Israel in September of 1953; he was the first foreign prime minister ever to do so." (The Israeli Connection: Whom Israel Arms & Why, 1987, p 110)]
The following diary entries - April 10 & 14 1948 - by American Quaker Christina Jones, a teacher at the Friends' Boys' School in Ramallah at the time, provide a near real-time, albeit second hand, account of the massacre and its aftermath. Particularly prophetic is Jones' reference in the second entry to "an apartheid Jewish State":
[10 April] "The most tragic and dastardly act of the Stern and Irgun occurred at Deir Yasin yesterday afternoon. These terrorists went into the village and massacred 250* old men, women and children and threw their bodies into the village well. Young men of the village were at work in Jerusalem and in their fields. The survivors are being cared for at Beit Safafa. It does not seem possible that it can be true, but the story is confirmed by the International Red Cross delegates and representatives of some of the consulates who have gone to the village. We wonder what the effect will be when the news reaches Lake Success. The fact that it has happened while the Mandate Government is still here indicates the attitude of the Zionists towards it and Great Britain, and sadly underlies their confidence in the support of the USA. To say that this has created panic in surrounding villages puts the situation mildly...
[14 April] "We hear that the terrorists are driving through Jerusalem streets using loud-speakers to warn the people to leave or Deir Yasin will be their fate also. More news of the horrible incident comes to us. The Arabs are surprised that Deir Yasin should be the village attacked, for the people there were thought to be too friendly to the Jews in the past. The village so near to Jerusalem is strategically located for Jewish development, but I am inclined to think it is just part of the campaign to rid the country of Arabs in order to make more room for immigrants so that an apartheid** Jewish State may be set up. I hope I am wrong. It is almost more than one can bear to be so near such a great human tragedy and such sheer brutality." (The Untempered Wind: Forty Years in Palestine, 1975, pp 88-89)
Jones elaborates on her 1948 diary entries thus:
"Statements made by Zionist leaders following the Deir Yasin massacre give chilling reasons for it. In his book, The Revolt, [Menachem] Begin, who commanded the Irgun Zvai Leumi, writes that the terror inspired by this massacre resulted in the 'maddened uncontrolled stampede of 635,000 Arabs... the political and economic significance of this development can hardly be over-estimated.' Ben Gurion, on his part, said: 'Without Deir Yasin, there would be no Israel.' And later Dr Weizmann, first president of Israel, referred to the Arab flight as 'a miraculous simplification of Israel's tasks'... As we watched events during those days, it seemed obvious that the Zionists, fearing a reversal of the United Nations policy, were determined to get all the territory allotted to them in the partition scheme before the end of the Mandate Government and face the world with a fait accompli. The first step was to dispossess the Arabs. Before the British left Palestine, there were already more than 200,000 refugees, and they did not flee from their homes with the thought that it would be for ever." (p 89-90)
[*The accepted figure today is just over 100;** The Reunited National Party of Daniel F. Malan won power in South Africa on an apartheid platform on 26 May 1948. According to Israeli scholar Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "An official South African source is not alone in claiming that Daniel F. Malan visited Israel in May of 1948, but there seems to be no evidence for that claim... Malan actually visited Israel in September of 1953; he was the first foreign prime minister ever to do so." (The Israeli Connection: Whom Israel Arms & Why, 1987, p 110)]
Monday, April 8, 2013
Doing the Donkey* in the NSW Knesset 12
On the speech of of The Hon. Trevor Khan, National Party, in the NSW Legislative Assembly, arising out of the NSW Parliamentary Friends of Israel (PFoI) "study mission" 'debate' of March 14:
Trev's a no-nonsense man, bless him. Back in 2011 when his MLC colleagues were 'debating' BDS in the Upper House, he dismissed BDS protesters as a bunch of ratbags,* and this time around, he's given the whole bloody Parliamentary Friends of Anywhere the big thumbs down:
"I have made a deliberate decision not to be a member of the NSW PFoI, the NSW PFo Lebanon or any group in that regard. In my view, the issues of the Middle East are extraordinarily complex and it is impossible to be a member of one group without offending the other groups. As I have said in other circumstances, my concern is that we live in a liberal democracy and a melting pot of cultures. All cultures must be respected in our country, whether it is in respect of this conflict or the conflict in my grandfather's country, India. If we bring those disputes to Australia we risk bringing upon ourselves a nightmare of ethnic and religious disputes that we will always regret and that has been reflected in part in some of the debate today."
Trev reckons that Max Brenner bloke's got a lot to answer for:
"I remember standing here dealing with the famous issue of Max Brenner and The Greens' passion in that respect. One can only be left appalled with regards to the hysteria that he is capable of bringing to a debate simply because of some bizarre political reason."
But hey, Shaoquett Moselmane's a top bloke:
"The passion The Hon. Shaoquett Moselmane brings to this debate is different. He is to be congratulated on the passion he brings both to the broader ethnic community, and not just the Christians or Muslims."
Alas, despite his down-to-earth, no-nonsense approach, Trev still seems clueless when it comes to the mob who are really stirring the ethnic and religious pot in the NSW Knesset:
"I pay tribute to the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies for encouraging and assisting this tour to go ahead..."
Be that as it may, the absolute final word fell to fellow Nat and mover of the original motion, Rick Colless:
Having taken the plunge and chugalugged the Zionist Kool-Aid like a schoolie on a bender in Bali, Colless' reply lays bare the truly shocking mental price he's paid for such foolishness:
"The Hon. Shaoquett Moselmane said that what was originally Palestine is now Israel. As he would know, originally Palestine includes all of Jordan, so why are the Palestinians not forcing themselves back into Jordan? Most Jordanian people are of Palestinian origin. There is more to the story than simply saying that Israel has taken their land. The honourable member made reference to the Gaza Strip. The 2006 election gave Hamas control of Gaza and the Jews and Christians living there left because they knew what would happen. Some 18 months later, Hamas threw about 600 Fatah people off roofs and killed them. All of these issues must be considered."
Where does one even begin with this guy?
Needless to say, the NSW Knesset being the NSW Knesset, the motion was put and resolved in the affirmative.
To sum up, although the subject of Palestine/Israel has cropped up before in state politics, this time around we seem to be witnessing a concerted move by the Israel lobby to achieve the kind of full spectrum dominance, to borrow the American military term, it already takes for granted in the federal sphere.
I've already marshaled much of the supporting evidence in my 5/8/12 post Israel Now Core NSW Government Business, but here I go again:
Under Baruch O'Farrell's regime we've so far seen:
1) A threat to sack the pro-BDS Marrickville Council in 2011.
2) The inauguration of a Liberal Friends of Israel in August 2012, part of whose activities reportedly involve "intelligence and policy briefings."
3) The further inauguration of a Parliamentary Friends of Israel.
4) The announcement, at a June 2012 Israel Independence Day function, of the formation of a parliamentary committee to revamp NSW's anti-vilification laws. (With a view to criminalising anti-Zionism, BDS?) Note that he also swore, at the same function, to "reaffirm his unwavering commitment to Israel."
5) NSW Police trying (but failing) to prevent a Nakba march taking place in the NSW Supreme Court in May last year (See my 13/5/12 post NSW Police Seek to Can Nakba Commemoration).
6) Jewish Board of Deputies seminars for the NSW Police (See my 28/10/11 post Israel 101 for Cops).
7) The great BDS 'debate' of September 2011, the subject of my Witches Brew series.
8) The January 2013 PFoI 'study tour' to Israel and resulting 'debate', the subject of this Doing the Donkey in the NSW Knesset series.
9) The holding of functions in state parliament occasioned by events in the Jewish religious calendar. (For example, a November 2012 pre-Chanukah function in which the premier revealed that his name was the equivalent of Baruch in Hebrew.)
I rest my case.
[*See my 2/3/13 post Doing the Donkey.]
Trev's a no-nonsense man, bless him. Back in 2011 when his MLC colleagues were 'debating' BDS in the Upper House, he dismissed BDS protesters as a bunch of ratbags,* and this time around, he's given the whole bloody Parliamentary Friends of Anywhere the big thumbs down:
"I have made a deliberate decision not to be a member of the NSW PFoI, the NSW PFo Lebanon or any group in that regard. In my view, the issues of the Middle East are extraordinarily complex and it is impossible to be a member of one group without offending the other groups. As I have said in other circumstances, my concern is that we live in a liberal democracy and a melting pot of cultures. All cultures must be respected in our country, whether it is in respect of this conflict or the conflict in my grandfather's country, India. If we bring those disputes to Australia we risk bringing upon ourselves a nightmare of ethnic and religious disputes that we will always regret and that has been reflected in part in some of the debate today."
Trev reckons that Max Brenner bloke's got a lot to answer for:
"I remember standing here dealing with the famous issue of Max Brenner and The Greens' passion in that respect. One can only be left appalled with regards to the hysteria that he is capable of bringing to a debate simply because of some bizarre political reason."
But hey, Shaoquett Moselmane's a top bloke:
"The passion The Hon. Shaoquett Moselmane brings to this debate is different. He is to be congratulated on the passion he brings both to the broader ethnic community, and not just the Christians or Muslims."
Alas, despite his down-to-earth, no-nonsense approach, Trev still seems clueless when it comes to the mob who are really stirring the ethnic and religious pot in the NSW Knesset:
"I pay tribute to the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies for encouraging and assisting this tour to go ahead..."
Be that as it may, the absolute final word fell to fellow Nat and mover of the original motion, Rick Colless:
Having taken the plunge and chugalugged the Zionist Kool-Aid like a schoolie on a bender in Bali, Colless' reply lays bare the truly shocking mental price he's paid for such foolishness:
"The Hon. Shaoquett Moselmane said that what was originally Palestine is now Israel. As he would know, originally Palestine includes all of Jordan, so why are the Palestinians not forcing themselves back into Jordan? Most Jordanian people are of Palestinian origin. There is more to the story than simply saying that Israel has taken their land. The honourable member made reference to the Gaza Strip. The 2006 election gave Hamas control of Gaza and the Jews and Christians living there left because they knew what would happen. Some 18 months later, Hamas threw about 600 Fatah people off roofs and killed them. All of these issues must be considered."
Where does one even begin with this guy?
Needless to say, the NSW Knesset being the NSW Knesset, the motion was put and resolved in the affirmative.
To sum up, although the subject of Palestine/Israel has cropped up before in state politics, this time around we seem to be witnessing a concerted move by the Israel lobby to achieve the kind of full spectrum dominance, to borrow the American military term, it already takes for granted in the federal sphere.
I've already marshaled much of the supporting evidence in my 5/8/12 post Israel Now Core NSW Government Business, but here I go again:
Under Baruch O'Farrell's regime we've so far seen:
1) A threat to sack the pro-BDS Marrickville Council in 2011.
2) The inauguration of a Liberal Friends of Israel in August 2012, part of whose activities reportedly involve "intelligence and policy briefings."
3) The further inauguration of a Parliamentary Friends of Israel.
4) The announcement, at a June 2012 Israel Independence Day function, of the formation of a parliamentary committee to revamp NSW's anti-vilification laws. (With a view to criminalising anti-Zionism, BDS?) Note that he also swore, at the same function, to "reaffirm his unwavering commitment to Israel."
5) NSW Police trying (but failing) to prevent a Nakba march taking place in the NSW Supreme Court in May last year (See my 13/5/12 post NSW Police Seek to Can Nakba Commemoration).
6) Jewish Board of Deputies seminars for the NSW Police (See my 28/10/11 post Israel 101 for Cops).
7) The great BDS 'debate' of September 2011, the subject of my Witches Brew series.
8) The January 2013 PFoI 'study tour' to Israel and resulting 'debate', the subject of this Doing the Donkey in the NSW Knesset series.
9) The holding of functions in state parliament occasioned by events in the Jewish religious calendar. (For example, a November 2012 pre-Chanukah function in which the premier revealed that his name was the equivalent of Baruch in Hebrew.)
I rest my case.
[*See my 2/3/13 post Doing the Donkey.]
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Mephitic Odours at Monash University
Robyn Williams' The Science Show on ABC Radio National is seldom short of an Israeli scientist to interview, so much so that I felt compelled to post on the phenomenon back in 2010 (1).
An allied phenomenon, which I've also posted on (2), is the growing (and carefully cultivated) links between Australian and Israeli universities.
You'll be unsurprised, therefore, when I inform you that the Science Show of March 30, which featured Williams' interview with Daniel Shechtman, a Nobel Prize-winning professor of chemistry from Israel's Technion, and Edwina Cornish, Monash University's senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor, came live from "a forum on bright ideas and business" at Melbourne's Monash University.
Now while Shechtman's shtick is basically quasiperiodic crystals, for the past 27 years the great man has also been teaching young Israeli scientists how to become entrepreneurs. And for me this is where the show really started to get interesting.
Williams spruiked, sorry asked: "You're talking about Israel which has more investment in research, that's 4.5% of GDP, compared to our own just over 2%, and you've got more start-up companies than almost anywhere on earth, is that right?"
Now listen to this tripe from Shechtman: "Yes, that is the spirit of the country. You know, countries have spirits, whether you know it or not... In England, where you come from, everybody knows about cricket, it's cricket. In Israel the spirit is entrepreneurship. Young people talk about entrepreneurship, discuss entrepreneurship, interact entrepreneurship, they have bright ideas about entrepreneurship, they bring up these ideas everywhere in every conversation."
It was then Cornish's turn to riff: "I agree with Danny that the spirit of a country... is critical to the path of innovation... What we don't have, which Israel has... is this desire to create personal wealth by risking your future within a company. The best and brightest students that we have... want to get into medicine... law... commerce and economics... That's fine, but we don't have the same sense of 'I want my own company', 'I want to be the master of my own destiny', and that's in the DNA of Israelis."
"But what if you were to teach it, as Danny does?" asked Williams.
Having read (or so I can only assume) a little Israeli propaganda tome called Start-Up Nation (3), which hypes the Israel Defense Force (IDF), Israel's factory for thugs and war criminals, as a school for budding entrepreneurs, Cornish duly parroted the party line: "[Israeli] students typically come to the university later in life than in Australia. So they serve in the army and they have fabulous leadership experience when they come back to university so they are grown up when they start in their undergraduate degree..."
And then - the piece de resistance - came this little side-splitting exchange:
Williams: Do you think it would be a good idea to bring back national service, do you think, in November?
Cornish: Well I did suggest to you before that we should declare a war on someone, but...
Williams: Who should we choose? Someone small?
The audience just lapped it up!
Oh yes, Robyn, someone small, small and defenceless like... like... the Palestinians!
But back to our Professor of Israeli Entrepreneurship, and here I broach the real subject of this post.
Could one of Shechtman's estimated 10,000 students (over 27 years) have started up a nifty little outfit called Odortec Ltd perhaps?
Odortec?
Here's some of the spiel from their website skunk-skunk.com:
"Police departments the world over periodically face an acute dilemma in confrontations with violent civil unrest: the need for effective riot control and the duty to preserve the health and safety of all, including the protesters themselves."
Remember that this is coming from a former cog in one of the world's most powerful and experienced (45 yrs) occupying forces, the so-called Israel Defence Forces, and although he's not letting on, the 'rioters' he has in mind are actually Palestinian villagers (and their Israeli and international supporters) involved in a heroic campaign of nonviolent resistance against Israel's illegal, land-grabbing West Bank Apartheid Wall.
"Odortec, supported by a police R&D unit, developed the perfect, if highly pungent, solution: The Skunk. A non-lethal, completely non-toxic liquid spray. The skunk is the most innovative and effective riot control method available... This harmless deterrent consists of an extremely foul-smelling liquid... that can be sprayed over a large area using a standard water cannon. The overpowering odor of the Skunk drives rioters away - and keeps them away - effectively shutting down any escalating situation."
For use against rioters, eh? Well please explain why the heroes of the IDF sprayed it directly into homes in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh in 2011.
(See for yourself on youtube.com/watch?v=-njv7RJqtRM)
"The 'Skunk' is not volatile, it's inflammable... and it poses no health hazard. In fact, despite its outrageous smell, the 'Skunk' liquid is safe to consume... and even clothes hit with the 'Skunk' can be used after a simple washing."
Oh, really? Let's get a second opinion on this, shall we? "The 'Skunk' is a petrochemical designed to cling to any surface that it touches. Once I was hit with the 'Skunk' during a demonstration in Bil'in. I had to throw out everything that the chemical touched as it was impossible to wash out the smell. My backpack, pants, shirt, even my shoes and the notebook I was carrying... had to be thrown out. The smell stayed on my skin and in my hair for weeks after..." (Video: a putrid price for nonviolent resistance - the 'Skunk', Joseph Dana, 972mag.com, 1/5/11)
I can see the Israeli version of Apocalypse Now, can't you?
Colonel Klein: Smell that? You smell that?
Lance: What?
Klein: Skunk, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. [kneels] I love the smell of Skunk in the morning. You know, one time we had a village sprayed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I went in. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' Arab. The smell, you know that smell of rotting flesh, the whole village. Smelled like [sniffing, pondering] victory.
So the next time you hear someone banging on about the spirit of Israeli entrepreneurship it's probably not a good idea to hang around, OK?
[See my posts: (1)The ABC of Zionist Propaganda (12/12/10); (2) Sucked in at Sydney University (26/10/11); (3) Creative Destruction (23/4/10)]
NB: other posts of mine relevant to this subject are: The Banality of Evil (1/2/09); That Shitty Little Country 1 (6/2/09); That Shitty Little Country 2 (24/3/09); and 100 Years of Zionist Shit (20/12/12).
An allied phenomenon, which I've also posted on (2), is the growing (and carefully cultivated) links between Australian and Israeli universities.
You'll be unsurprised, therefore, when I inform you that the Science Show of March 30, which featured Williams' interview with Daniel Shechtman, a Nobel Prize-winning professor of chemistry from Israel's Technion, and Edwina Cornish, Monash University's senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor, came live from "a forum on bright ideas and business" at Melbourne's Monash University.
Now while Shechtman's shtick is basically quasiperiodic crystals, for the past 27 years the great man has also been teaching young Israeli scientists how to become entrepreneurs. And for me this is where the show really started to get interesting.
Williams spruiked, sorry asked: "You're talking about Israel which has more investment in research, that's 4.5% of GDP, compared to our own just over 2%, and you've got more start-up companies than almost anywhere on earth, is that right?"
Now listen to this tripe from Shechtman: "Yes, that is the spirit of the country. You know, countries have spirits, whether you know it or not... In England, where you come from, everybody knows about cricket, it's cricket. In Israel the spirit is entrepreneurship. Young people talk about entrepreneurship, discuss entrepreneurship, interact entrepreneurship, they have bright ideas about entrepreneurship, they bring up these ideas everywhere in every conversation."
It was then Cornish's turn to riff: "I agree with Danny that the spirit of a country... is critical to the path of innovation... What we don't have, which Israel has... is this desire to create personal wealth by risking your future within a company. The best and brightest students that we have... want to get into medicine... law... commerce and economics... That's fine, but we don't have the same sense of 'I want my own company', 'I want to be the master of my own destiny', and that's in the DNA of Israelis."
"But what if you were to teach it, as Danny does?" asked Williams.
Having read (or so I can only assume) a little Israeli propaganda tome called Start-Up Nation (3), which hypes the Israel Defense Force (IDF), Israel's factory for thugs and war criminals, as a school for budding entrepreneurs, Cornish duly parroted the party line: "[Israeli] students typically come to the university later in life than in Australia. So they serve in the army and they have fabulous leadership experience when they come back to university so they are grown up when they start in their undergraduate degree..."
And then - the piece de resistance - came this little side-splitting exchange:
Williams: Do you think it would be a good idea to bring back national service, do you think, in November?
Cornish: Well I did suggest to you before that we should declare a war on someone, but...
Williams: Who should we choose? Someone small?
The audience just lapped it up!
Oh yes, Robyn, someone small, small and defenceless like... like... the Palestinians!
But back to our Professor of Israeli Entrepreneurship, and here I broach the real subject of this post.
Could one of Shechtman's estimated 10,000 students (over 27 years) have started up a nifty little outfit called Odortec Ltd perhaps?
Odortec?
Here's some of the spiel from their website skunk-skunk.com:
"Police departments the world over periodically face an acute dilemma in confrontations with violent civil unrest: the need for effective riot control and the duty to preserve the health and safety of all, including the protesters themselves."
Remember that this is coming from a former cog in one of the world's most powerful and experienced (45 yrs) occupying forces, the so-called Israel Defence Forces, and although he's not letting on, the 'rioters' he has in mind are actually Palestinian villagers (and their Israeli and international supporters) involved in a heroic campaign of nonviolent resistance against Israel's illegal, land-grabbing West Bank Apartheid Wall.
"Odortec, supported by a police R&D unit, developed the perfect, if highly pungent, solution: The Skunk. A non-lethal, completely non-toxic liquid spray. The skunk is the most innovative and effective riot control method available... This harmless deterrent consists of an extremely foul-smelling liquid... that can be sprayed over a large area using a standard water cannon. The overpowering odor of the Skunk drives rioters away - and keeps them away - effectively shutting down any escalating situation."
For use against rioters, eh? Well please explain why the heroes of the IDF sprayed it directly into homes in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh in 2011.
(See for yourself on youtube.com/watch?v=-njv7RJqtRM)
"The 'Skunk' is not volatile, it's inflammable... and it poses no health hazard. In fact, despite its outrageous smell, the 'Skunk' liquid is safe to consume... and even clothes hit with the 'Skunk' can be used after a simple washing."
Oh, really? Let's get a second opinion on this, shall we? "The 'Skunk' is a petrochemical designed to cling to any surface that it touches. Once I was hit with the 'Skunk' during a demonstration in Bil'in. I had to throw out everything that the chemical touched as it was impossible to wash out the smell. My backpack, pants, shirt, even my shoes and the notebook I was carrying... had to be thrown out. The smell stayed on my skin and in my hair for weeks after..." (Video: a putrid price for nonviolent resistance - the 'Skunk', Joseph Dana, 972mag.com, 1/5/11)
I can see the Israeli version of Apocalypse Now, can't you?
Colonel Klein: Smell that? You smell that?
Lance: What?
Klein: Skunk, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. [kneels] I love the smell of Skunk in the morning. You know, one time we had a village sprayed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I went in. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' Arab. The smell, you know that smell of rotting flesh, the whole village. Smelled like [sniffing, pondering] victory.
So the next time you hear someone banging on about the spirit of Israeli entrepreneurship it's probably not a good idea to hang around, OK?
[See my posts: (1)The ABC of Zionist Propaganda (12/12/10); (2) Sucked in at Sydney University (26/10/11); (3) Creative Destruction (23/4/10)]
NB: other posts of mine relevant to this subject are: The Banality of Evil (1/2/09); That Shitty Little Country 1 (6/2/09); That Shitty Little Country 2 (24/3/09); and 100 Years of Zionist Shit (20/12/12).
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