Jerusalem Prize Syndrome

"The Jerusalem (Prize) syndrome is the name given to a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of either political themed obsessive ideas, delusions or other psychosis-like experiences, that are triggered by an award of the Jerusalem Prize." Wickedpedia (See my first, December 2007 post)

We must learn more about our enemies (The Weekend Australian, 29/3/08) is the title of the latest propaganda piece from The Australian's Foreign Editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan.

Australia's enemies? What enemies? We have enemies? Not really. (It's OK, Greg's probably in the grip of Jerusalem (Prize) syndrome again and is actually banging on about Israel.)

"One of the dumbest things you can do in a war is not listen to your enemy...[I]f you get a chance to listen to the enemy talking to his friends, that is invaluable. The worldwide Islamist terror movements are nothing if not voluble and it is amazing how little we listen to them."

"Worldwide Islamist terror movements," eh? So Greg's managed to bug al-Qaida and he's listening in to their chatter? Wrong again! You see, a recently released US Institute for Defence Analyses review of 600,000 Iraqi documents of the Saddam Hussein era has found no evidence of any "direct operational link" between Saddam's regime and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, so Greg has had to console himself with the IDA's crumbs, that is that Saddam had ties (as the US already knew before it mugged Iraq in 2003) to a number of Palestinian groups, including Hamas:

"Last week The Australian gave extensive coverage to some of the thousands of newly translated documents from the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein, which indicated a promiscuous and intense relationship between Saddam's government and international terrorism [as opposed to Israel's strictly platonic and impeccably correct relationship with the US]. Saddam was a great backer of Palestinian terrorism, including Hamas. The documents show that after 9/11 a Palestinian leader, presumably a Hamas leader, told the Iraqis that Hamas had 35 armed terror cells around the world, mingled with refugee populations, including France, Sweden and Denmark."

"Presumably" !!! Greg didn't merely presume last week when writing about the IDA report. In Saddam, the terrorist's friend (22/3/08), he asserted categorically that "There is a close relationship with Hamas, which boasts of its armed cells in France, Sweden and Denmark."

"An internal Iraqi intelligence report of March 26, 2003, reads: 'We have lately been visited by the representatives of the Hamas movement in Baghdad who inform us of the following points: The leadership of the movement in Damascus called us a number of times to make sure we renew our commitment to you against the foolish American attack. A request to open our border checkpoints to let the volunteer fighters participate in the war. An offer from Hamas leader Dr al-Rantisi to carry out demonstrations and suicide attacks to support Iraq."

So Greg's bold leap from "worldwide Islamist terror" to Hamas is based on nothing more than his own presumption! As for his second IDA citation, this tells us no more than that its enemy's armourer, the US, has just invaded a fellow Arab nation, and that Hamas feels the need to demonstrate a little Arab solidarity.

Not only is Greg's construction of a global Hamas locked in a "promiscuous" embrace with Saddam dodgy, so too is his potted history of Hamas: "Hamas began life in 1988 as the Palestinian branch of Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood." [Hamas was actually born in December 1987.] It is extremist ["The Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS) is a Palestinian national liberation movement that struggles for the liberation of the Palestinian occupied territories and for the recognition of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians."* That's "extremist"?], committed to terrorism as a way of life [Well it is the Islamic Resistance Movement, Greg. Presumably, for Greg, the label 'resistance' only applies if the resistance movement is non-Arab.] and totalitarian in its Islamist ideology" ["Hamas...derives its guiding principles from the doctrines and values of Islam." ** But Christian ideology, hey, that's another matter: "The revelations (of imminent conversion to Catholicism) came as Mr Blair admitted for the first time that his faith was 'hugely important' in influencing his decisions during his decade in power, including going to war with Iraq in 2003." (People of faith seen as nutters, says convert Blair, SMH, 26/11/07); "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did." (Bush on the Couch, Justin Frank, 2004 p 72)] (* & ** from Hamas' self-definition quoted in Hamas: A Beginner's Guide, Khaled Hroub 2006 pp 17-18)

"Anyone who thinks it unfair to characterise Hamas as extremist, terrorist, Islamist and totalitarian should read the Hamas charter, which is easily found on the internet. It is a sickening document, full of violence, crude anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories. It says, for example, that Rotary and Lions clubs, as well as Freemasons, of course, are spy organizations in the pay of the Jews."

Really now? But isn't this, for Greg the Catholic, one of Santamaria's boys, a case of people who live in glass houses? He shouldn't really need to google http://www.staycatholic.com/ to know that "The Catholic Church and Freemasonry have been at odds for centuries. Eight popes have condemned it, as well as have the majority of Christian denomnations. Christianity and Freemasonry hold contrary beliefs...The Church's position is expressed in its 'Declaration on Masonic Associations'. It states in part: 'Therefore the Church's negative judgment in regard to Masonic associations remains unchanged, since their principles have always been considered irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church, and therefore membership in them remains forbidden. The faithful who enrol in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion." And wasn't Rotary, at least until recently, labelled a 'subversive' organization by the Catholic church?

"It relies on the notorious tsarist forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to establish Jewish behaviour. It accuses the Jews of being behind not only the French revolution and the communist revolution and WW 1, but even WW 2."

What, in a sudden, inexplicable rush of anti-Semitism to the head? As Hroub (see above) writes, "[The Protocols] found a ripe climate in Palestine because of the creation of Israel in the Palestinian homeland in 1948. This date ended the peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Jews, and unfolded a new chapter of bloody relationships and hatred. Unless this background is taken into account, any understanding of the explicit or implicit attitudes in Hamas to Jews is unlikely. Intrinsically and religiously Hamas could not be anti-Jewish. By virtue of Islamic religious teachings, Hamas, or any other Islamic individual or group is prohibited from inflicting any harm on Jews simply because they are Jews (or Christians or any other group for that matter). So to be factually correct, Hamas is strongly anti-Zionist, not anti-Jew, with the term Zionist defined as 'a person or group whose focus is the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine'. Although in the early years of its inception Hamas made little effort to differentiate between Judaism as a religion and Zionism as a political movement, in later and recent years, Hamas has completely clarified its thinking on this issue. It is anti-Zionist, not anti-Jew." (pp 32-33) To which, it has to be said, Zionists go to extraordinary lengths to equate Zionism, the contemporary political program, with Judaism, the faith. Coming to Palestine as Jews, with the goal of setting up a Jewish state for a supranational entity they termed the 'Jewish people',the Zionists could hardly expect those at the pointy end of their project to waste too much time on semantics.

"The Hamas charter demands Islamist control of all the territory of Israel and Palestine and repeatedly denounces any peace process or compromise that allows Israel to continue to exist."

Of course, Greg shows no such interest in comparable Zionist documents such as the Likud Party platform (1996): "The Government of Israel will enable the Palestinians to manage their lives freely, within the framework of self-government...The government will oppose the establishment of an independent Palestinian state."

As Palestinian-American Professor Saree Makdisi has written in his instructive 2006 essay, The Tempest Over the Hamas Charter (http://www.counterpunch.com/), "Now there can be no doubt that the Hamas charter is not only xenophobic, sectarian, and racist, but also ill-conceived, inaccurate, retrograde, and intellectually vacuous. Nevertheless, the obsessive attention being paid to this document...forces one to ask not merely what purposes such an obsession serves, but also what equally (or even more) important issues it elides or covers up. First, one has to marvel at the interest being paid to the racism of the Hamas charter, given the extraordinary lack of interest in Israel's own racism, which is executed not merely on paper and in theory but actually, practically, materially. Israel's Basic Laws, for example, discriminate between Jews and non-Jews in ways that many...who object most loudly to the mixture of religion and politics strangely don't seem to find objectionable. And Israel's unique existence as a country that expressly claims to be not the state of its actual citizens, but rather of a globally dispersed people manifestly privileges the (non-Israeli) Jews of New York and Chicago over Israel's actually existing non-Jewish citizens. Although they amount to some 20% of the state's population, the latter are literally written into second class status by virtue of their non-Jewishness in what loudly proclaims itself to be the Jewish state."

As to the current status of the charter, Hroub notes, "It is true that many 'anti-Jewish' statements do exist in the Hamas Charter of 1988. Not only is it also true that years later these statements are irrelevant to the present Hamas party, the Charter itself has become largely obsolete. The Charter was written in early 1988 by one individual and was made public without appropriate general Hamas consultation, revision or consensus, to the regret of Hamas' leaders in later years...Hamas leaders...have rarely referred to the Charter or quoted from it, evidence that it has come to be seen as a burden rather than an intellectual platform that embraces the movement's principles. The sophisticated language of the Hamas discourse on the eve of its assuming power after the 2006 elections [quoted above], and the language and discourse of the Charter of 1988, almost appear to describe two completely different movements. Indeed, just two years after the publication of the 1988 Charter...Hamas published documents in 1990 distancing itself from what had been included in the Charter. Emphasizing that its struggle has been merely against Zionists and Zionism, not against the Jews and Judaism, it drew a clear distinction between the two: 'The non-Zionist Jew is one who belongs to the Jewish culture, whether as a believer in the Jewish faith or simply by accident of birth, but...[who] takes no part in aggressive actions against our land and our nation...Hamas will not adopt a hostile position in practice against anyone because of his ideas or his creed but will adopt such a position if those ideas and creed are translated into hostile or damaging actions against our people'." pp 33-34

If Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan were really serious about listening to what Hamas has to say, let him begin with either Hroub's book or Azzam Tamimi's excellent Hamas: Unwritten Chapters, 2007, which not only shows that Hamas has moved on from the language and ideology of the charter but appends the documentation which attests to that.