OMG, yet another religious ratbag pushing the 'CHRISTIANS ONLY (and maybe a few others if you insist) but MUSLIMS NO FUCKING WAY, OK?' line. But, hey, check out the reason:
"For many years I have pointed out the sufferings of Middle Eastern Christians to anyone who would listen, but with minimal impact. The tide is finally turning. Middle Eastern Christians, like Yazidis, Mandaeans and others, represent the pre-Muslim aboriginal populations of their lands, people who have resisted assimilation largely through their religious faiths and refused to embrace Islam after the Muslim invasions of the early Middle Ages..." (Rev) Peter R Green, Silver Street Baptist Mission (Letter, SMH, 10/9/15)
There's more of course, but the Rev's made his point upfront. Which is that he believes as follows (with apologies to Genesis 1):
1 In the beginning God created the Middle Eastern Christian - the aboriginal, and therefore, rightful inhabitants and owners of the Middle East.
2 Then along came the MUSLIMS from... from... wherever, OK?
3 The Muslims told the Christians: convert or die!
4 Why? This was God's great sifting of souls! (The Bugger always works in mysterious ways, OK?)
5 Many, alas, way too many Middle Eastern Christians converted to Islam, whereupon they ceased immediately to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the Middle East.
6 For some inexplicable reason the MUSLIM invaders and occupiers got tired of slaughtering the rest (I did say the Old Bugger worked in mysterious ways) and so some Middle Eastern Christians miraculously remained in the Middle East to this very day, and it is only they who represent the pre-MUSLIM genuine, dinky-di, true blue aboriginal inhabitants (and hence rightful owners) of the Middle East.
All simple-minded, self-serving bullshit, of course.
Look, it's not that hard really. In the Middle East, over the course of time, the aboriginal tillers of the soil have taken on one new religion after the other - various forms of paganism, various forms of Christianity, and various forms of Islam - but they have always remained the aboriginal tillers, and hence rightful owners, of the soil regardless of religious affiliation. (FYI, see my 11/1/11 post Casual Cliocide (to Oud Accompaniment).)
Do these Selective Samaritans seriously think we're fooled by their sectarian shit?
Thankfully, the following letter to the editor (SMH again) preceded the above nonsense:
"As an Arab Christian my heart is broken when I see the suffering of my co-religionists in the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Iraq, and I offer what support I can to them through established charities (Syrian strikes loom, September 9).
"As an Australian citizen I expect my government to use my taxes to help people on the basis of need, irrespective of religion or race. It is unbelievable that we have elected federal representatives deliberately fomenting religious bigotry by stating that some refugees are more deserving than others based on an arbitrary test. I never cease to be amazed by our federal government's descent to the deepest of depths." Elias Nasser, Sylvania
Showing posts with label Arab Christians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arab Christians. Show all posts
Friday, September 11, 2015
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Archbishop Fisher & the Selective Samaritan
Meet the Catholic cleric (Gorgeous George Pell's successor) who's pushing the "persecuted minorities," aka Christians first/only, line:
"[Catholic] Archbishop [of Sydney Anthony] Fisher was meeting Syrian Catholic leaders and the heads of church welfare agencies and parishes to discuss what might be done to provide housing in families, parishes and convents... He said the current persecutions were the worst against Christians in history, including those under maddened Roman emperors: "It's estimated 100,000 Christians are now martyred every year, 11 killed for their faith every hour'.' ('Fleeing Christians should go to the front of the queue', Tess Livingstone, The Australian, 8/9/15)
Given the context, anyone reading the above would be forgiven for assuming that Fisher was talking about 100,000 Middle Eastern Christians (Hey, maybe he was!). In which case, the above comment, trotted out in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis, is grossly irresponsible.
But it's worse than that because, wittingly or not, Fisher is recycling a wholly fallacious and discredited claim:
"The number comes originally from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (GSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the US state of Massachusetts, which publishes such a figure each year in its status of Global Mission. Its researchers started by estimating the number of Christians who died as martyrs between 2000 and 2010 - about 1 million by their reckoning - and divided that number by 10 to get an annual number, 100,000.
"But how do they reach that figure of 1 million? When you dig down, you see that the majority died in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. More than 4 million are estimated to have been killed in that war between 2000 and 2010, and GSGC counts 900,000 of them - or 20% - as martyrs. Over 10 years, that averages out at 90,000 per year.
"So when you hear that 100,000 Christians are dying for their faith, you need to keep in mind that the vast majority - 90,000 - are people who were killed in DR Congo. This means we can say right away that the internet rumours of Muslims being behind the killing of 100,000 Christian martyrs are nonsense. The DRC is a Christian country. In the civil war, Christians were killing Christians." (Are there really 100,000 new Christian martyrs every year? Ruth Alexander, BBC Magazine, 12/11/13)
That BTW was only an excerpt. Feel free to read Alexander's expose in its entirety. But back to Archbishop Fisher.
He appeared on Radio National's Breakfast program this morning, interviewed by Geraldine Doogue (Catholic church calls for preference of persecuted minorities in Australia's refugee intake: Archbishop of Sydney).
Instead of simply stating his preference for NO MUSLIM refugees, he hid behind the following formula:
"Syrian and Iraqi Christians and other persecuted minorities should be given preference, so it wasn't just for Christians."
Which, face it, was basically just code for NO MUSLIM refugees.
And when Doogue invoked the parable of the Good Samaritan, her formula for raising the question of discrimination against MUSLIM refugees, Fisher replied (somewhat Jesuitically for a Dominican I have to say) that: "The Good Samaritan only had one man on the road to deal with. I suspect if he'd seen a dozen, he would've gone to the one who was most desperate."
And that, need I say, was good enough for Geraldine.
"[Catholic] Archbishop [of Sydney Anthony] Fisher was meeting Syrian Catholic leaders and the heads of church welfare agencies and parishes to discuss what might be done to provide housing in families, parishes and convents... He said the current persecutions were the worst against Christians in history, including those under maddened Roman emperors: "It's estimated 100,000 Christians are now martyred every year, 11 killed for their faith every hour'.' ('Fleeing Christians should go to the front of the queue', Tess Livingstone, The Australian, 8/9/15)
Given the context, anyone reading the above would be forgiven for assuming that Fisher was talking about 100,000 Middle Eastern Christians (Hey, maybe he was!). In which case, the above comment, trotted out in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis, is grossly irresponsible.
But it's worse than that because, wittingly or not, Fisher is recycling a wholly fallacious and discredited claim:
"The number comes originally from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (GSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the US state of Massachusetts, which publishes such a figure each year in its status of Global Mission. Its researchers started by estimating the number of Christians who died as martyrs between 2000 and 2010 - about 1 million by their reckoning - and divided that number by 10 to get an annual number, 100,000.
"But how do they reach that figure of 1 million? When you dig down, you see that the majority died in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. More than 4 million are estimated to have been killed in that war between 2000 and 2010, and GSGC counts 900,000 of them - or 20% - as martyrs. Over 10 years, that averages out at 90,000 per year.
"So when you hear that 100,000 Christians are dying for their faith, you need to keep in mind that the vast majority - 90,000 - are people who were killed in DR Congo. This means we can say right away that the internet rumours of Muslims being behind the killing of 100,000 Christian martyrs are nonsense. The DRC is a Christian country. In the civil war, Christians were killing Christians." (Are there really 100,000 new Christian martyrs every year? Ruth Alexander, BBC Magazine, 12/11/13)
That BTW was only an excerpt. Feel free to read Alexander's expose in its entirety. But back to Archbishop Fisher.
He appeared on Radio National's Breakfast program this morning, interviewed by Geraldine Doogue (Catholic church calls for preference of persecuted minorities in Australia's refugee intake: Archbishop of Sydney).
Instead of simply stating his preference for NO MUSLIM refugees, he hid behind the following formula:
"Syrian and Iraqi Christians and other persecuted minorities should be given preference, so it wasn't just for Christians."
Which, face it, was basically just code for NO MUSLIM refugees.
And when Doogue invoked the parable of the Good Samaritan, her formula for raising the question of discrimination against MUSLIM refugees, Fisher replied (somewhat Jesuitically for a Dominican I have to say) that: "The Good Samaritan only had one man on the road to deal with. I suspect if he'd seen a dozen, he would've gone to the one who was most desperate."
And that, need I say, was good enough for Geraldine.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Sheridan Sheds Tears for Middle East Christians 2
Just to finish off:
"The Syrian civil war has been a catastrophe for Syria's Christians. Many have been killed. Many have fled."
And who, O Suppository of All Wisdom, do you suppose is killing Syria's Christians (and other non-Christian minorities)?
Sectarian gangs, armed and trained by that pinnacle of 'Western civilisation', the US (and its camp followers).
"It must drolly and with some bitter irony be recalled, too, that Christians fared a little better in Iraq under Saddam Hussein than during the past 10 years."
Now there's an admission for you! But how grudging is: "fared a little better"?
Do I have to wheel in an Iraqi Christian here? So be it:
"Rana stepped out of church in Baghdad December 2006 to find an envelope wedged against her car windshield. Inside was a bullet - a message that she and her family were next on an assassin's list. They fled the city the next day, leaving behind a business, a home - everything. 'I don't like Saddam Hussein, but he didn't bother the Christians,' said Rana, 29, after a church service in London. 'He was a dictator. When he went, the gangs came from everywhere'," ('People turned on Christians': persecuted Iraqi minorities reflect on life after Saddam, Andrew Testa, worldnews.nbcnews.com, 19/3/13)
And who unleashed those sectarian gangs?
Correct, 'Western civilisation'.
"The Syrian civil war has been a catastrophe for Syria's Christians. Many have been killed. Many have fled."
And who, O Suppository of All Wisdom, do you suppose is killing Syria's Christians (and other non-Christian minorities)?
Sectarian gangs, armed and trained by that pinnacle of 'Western civilisation', the US (and its camp followers).
"It must drolly and with some bitter irony be recalled, too, that Christians fared a little better in Iraq under Saddam Hussein than during the past 10 years."
Now there's an admission for you! But how grudging is: "fared a little better"?
Do I have to wheel in an Iraqi Christian here? So be it:
"Rana stepped out of church in Baghdad December 2006 to find an envelope wedged against her car windshield. Inside was a bullet - a message that she and her family were next on an assassin's list. They fled the city the next day, leaving behind a business, a home - everything. 'I don't like Saddam Hussein, but he didn't bother the Christians,' said Rana, 29, after a church service in London. 'He was a dictator. When he went, the gangs came from everywhere'," ('People turned on Christians': persecuted Iraqi minorities reflect on life after Saddam, Andrew Testa, worldnews.nbcnews.com, 19/3/13)
And who unleashed those sectarian gangs?
Correct, 'Western civilisation'.
Friday, December 5, 2014
Sheridan Sheds Tears for Middle East Christians 1
Uncharacteristically, the Australian's foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, hasn't uttered a word in defence of Israel for almost 6 months now, which must be some kind of record for him. Until now that is. His latest thumbs-up for Jewish State in the Levant (JSIL) comes in the guise of a lament for the plight of the Middle East's Christians:
"Pope Francis was in Istanbul this week to draw attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East. The Pope leads 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. With Bartholomew, Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox, who leads 300 million Orthodox Christians, the Pope said: 'We cannot resign ourselves to a Middle East without Christians who have professed the name of Jesus there for 2000 years.' You would think the world might take notice of this. If so, you would be wrong. This week the Catholic Church has dedicated itself to making society aware of the dire straits in which their co-religionists suffer in the Middle East. Yet there has been no interest in Australia." (We can but mourn for the voiceless Christians of the Middle East, 4/12/14)
So who's to blame here? Why, Edward Said, of course! But let Sheridan explain:
"The nonsensical Edward Said popularised the idea that the West dehumanises the 'other' by making it exotic. Thus we are warned in every part of our culture not to demonise the other. That is quite right, so far as it goes. But this translates into a weird reflex in which any group at war with the West is presumed to be, at least in part, virtuously the 'other'. We demonise ourselves, and we especially demonise anything which smacks of Western civilisation in any part of the world which was once colonised. Middle East Christians suffer from this prejudice in the West. Israel does, too. As part of Western civilisation, it earns whole layers of extra hostility. Hating Israel is part of hating Western civilisation, the default position of the inheritors of the detritus of Marxism in successor ideologies like the Greens."
OK, so if I've got him right, the Catholic Church, Middle Eastern Christians and Israel, are all representatives or extensions of what he calls "Western civilisation" vis-a-vis Said's Muslim 'other'. Now let's, for the sake of argument, assume he's right, OK? Wouldn't that make them all, so to speak, family then? One big, happy Judeo-Christian family?
Since Sheridan's introduced the subject of Israel, let's explore the above idea in relation to Palestinian Christians.
As the representatives of 'Western civilisation' already in Palestine when those exemplary agents of 'Western civilisation', the Zionists, first arrived, wouldn't you have expected them to put out the welcome mat?
Well, guess what? The buggers failed dismally to stick to Sheridan's script:
"On behalf of my brethren, the Christian heads of the different Arab Christian Communities, I speak in the name of the Arab Christian Churches in Palestine. I am an Arab and my connections with the Byzantine Church do not deprive me of being an Arab with Arab blood running in my veins - just as an Englishman is English whether he is Roman Catholic or Anglican. We have confined our statement to three main points: 1. The Christian Arabs in Palestine have everything in common with their Moslem brethren. Religious beliefs do not in any way make them two peoples. They cherish the same hopes and fears and they strive for one goal - freedom and independence. 2. Zionism is a menace to the Christian as well as to the Moslem population in Palestine. A Jewish state in Palestine would result in a gradual decrease in the Arab population and as a consequence the holy places will become lifeless skeletons of stones guarded by monks and devoid of believers. 3. Lastly, the claim of the Zionists to Palestine is based on Biblical promises in the Old Testament. These promises were abrogated by the New Testament; and all promises given to the people of Israel in the Old Testament have been annulled by the advent of Christ." (The Melkite Archbishop of Galilee quoted in the Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, Palestine, 1946)
And once the new Judeo-Christian dispensation known as Israel was established in Palestine in May, 1948, wouldn't you have expected church bells to begin ringing throughout the land? Jews and Christians dancing together in the streets? Inter-faith celebrations lasting well into the night?
Alas, only if, like Tony Abbott, Sheridan's your 'Suppository of All Wisdom':
"Yaacov [Herzog, head of the department of Christian Communities in the Ministry of Religious Affairs] had to devote much of his time to an unpleasant problem that arose during the War of Independence - namely, the desecration of churches and monasteries by IDF soldiers, the looting of their properties, and offensive misuse of their premises. Such abuse had occurred in many places throughout the [1948] war..." (Yaacov Herzog: A Biography, Michael Bar-Zohar, 2003, p 90)
"The neighborhoods of West Jerusalem that were once predominantly Christian - including the German Colony, Talbiya, and Qatamon - were seized by Israel in the war in 1948. The families that fled the fighting were never permitted to return. After the armistice agreement, their homes were seized by Israel's 'Custodian of Absentee Property,' and the Jewish Agency turned them over to new Jewish immigrants." (The Body & the Blood: The Middle East's Vanishing Christians & the Possibility for Peace, Charles M. Sennott, 2001, p 24)
"During the Arab-Israeli war last June [1967] there was much concern about the fate of the holy places in the Old City of Jerusalem. In fact, apart from the church of St Anne, damage to Christian shrines was slight. This was not, however, the case with other Christian property in the Israeli-occupied sector of Jerusalem, belonging to the three major sects, the Latins, Greeks and Armenians. The annexation of the Old City to west Jerusalem, and the return of buildings and cemeteries belonging to them on Mount Sion after a lapse of 20 years, has revealed that these have been extensively desecrated by the occupying forces, and have fared far worse than anything in the Old City during the war. These Christian properties are on the summit of Mount Sion, just outside the city walls to the south. From 1948 until 1967 they were technically in Israel, but the general public was forbidden access to them, and they were under the direct control of the Israeli army.
"Amongst the buildings is the Armenian church of St Saviour, by tradition built on the house of Caiaphas; it is a 15th-century structure... It belongs to the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem, which is also located on Mount Sion, but within the walls of Jerusalem. Since 1948 the prelates of the Armenian church have been unable to visit St Saviour's either from Jordan or Israel. Some years ago a UN truce supervisor was asked about the church, but was unable to get inside it. At the time, he expressed the private opinion that it was being used as an advanced Israeli machine-gun post. "The evidence of recent photographs and reports has proved this conjecture to be correct. The monastery buildings around the church were fortified by the Israelis, and the walls between individual cells demolished to make a continuous passage; the windows were filled with sandbags, and wooden gun emplacements. It is clear that they attached considerable importance to the site, as it commanded the south-west angle of the Old City.
"Less comprehensible was the behaviour of the Israeli soldiers during 20 years of occupation of the buildings. The courtyard of the church of St Saviour is the traditional burying-place of the Patriarchs of the Armenian Church in Jerusalem, and at least 14 of the venerable tombs were smashed open, and their contents desecrated. Two were demolished and excavated to a depth of 6 feet below the ground. "The interior of the church of St Saviour is a scene of total devastation. The carved and gilded altar has been wrecked, and an altar painting lies destroyed on the floor below. The oil paintings that decorated the upper part of the north and south walls have been torn out of their frames leaving only tattered shreds of canvas. Many of the Kutahya tiles, brought specially from Turkey by Armenian pilgrims in the early 18th century, have been ripped from the walls; those that have not been stolen lie smashed on the ground, along with a tangled mass of broken church furniture. The valuable collection of old church vestments has completely disappeared. "So has the well-known Byzantine mosaic, which was in the basement of the monastery. Pere Vincent, the distinguished French scholar, once described it as 'une tres belle mosaique... du IV/V siecle'. It has been expertly lifted and removed. It is common knowledge that the Israeli Minister of Defence, General dayan, has an amateur interest in antiquities; some of his troops would seem to have emulated him.
"Adjacent to the Armenian church is the Greek Orthodox cemetery on Mount Sion, which to judge from the photographs now resembles a film set for the Resurrection. Practically every tomb in the cemetery is smashed. Fragments of marble crosses, angels' wings, and inscriptions lie inextricably mixed with human bones, blackened tree stumps, and the remains of rockets and shells. In contrast to the sack of the Armenian church, the damage could conceivably have been the result of the two wars, in 1948 and 1967, rather than systematic pillage. However, there is no doubt that the cemetery was also occupied by Israeli soldiers; there are well-beaten paths between the tombs, and one of the outhouses is labelled NIGHT CLUB. More graffiti, in Hebrew and English, must have been added by other soldiers to while away their time.
"The state of the third cemetery on Mount Sion, belonging to the Latin church, has been described in a recent issue of the Catholic journal, La Terre Sainte, by the Very Reverend Father Andres. Procureur-General in the Holy Land since 1962, he speaks with authority as he has had the task of supervising the repairs to the damaged cemetery. He begins by deploring the overthrowing of Jewish tombstones by the Arabs of the Mount of Olives - the subject of a recent Israeli White Paper - but observes that they did not, as far as is known, actually drag the corpses out of the tombs, as happened with so many Christian graves. He published several macabre photographs, showing smashed tombs in the Catholic cemetery, with the remains of coffins and the deceased strewn all around. In conclusion he rightly asks why these acts of profanation by the Israelis were not also mentioned in the White Paper.
"As the non-Arab Christian communities are by no means involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, one wonders what possible reason there can have been for the desecration of their cemeteries and churches. It is clear that the pillage and destruction was carried out over a period of years, suggesting that the soldiers' misconduct was condoned by successive generations of Israeli officers. Since the war the Israelis have made it quite clear that whilst some of the recently occupied territories might possibly be negotiable, the Old City is excluded from any bargaining and that they intend to stay. This must give pause for thought to the three major Christian sects in Jerusalem, in light of what has happened to their property during 20 years of occupation; they must surely view the future with apprehension, however much the Israeli government may attempt to reassure them of its benevolence." (The Desecration of Christian Cemeteries & Church property in Israel, Basic Documents Series No. 5, The Institute for Palestine Studies, 1968)
To be continued...
"Pope Francis was in Istanbul this week to draw attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East. The Pope leads 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. With Bartholomew, Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox, who leads 300 million Orthodox Christians, the Pope said: 'We cannot resign ourselves to a Middle East without Christians who have professed the name of Jesus there for 2000 years.' You would think the world might take notice of this. If so, you would be wrong. This week the Catholic Church has dedicated itself to making society aware of the dire straits in which their co-religionists suffer in the Middle East. Yet there has been no interest in Australia." (We can but mourn for the voiceless Christians of the Middle East, 4/12/14)
So who's to blame here? Why, Edward Said, of course! But let Sheridan explain:
"The nonsensical Edward Said popularised the idea that the West dehumanises the 'other' by making it exotic. Thus we are warned in every part of our culture not to demonise the other. That is quite right, so far as it goes. But this translates into a weird reflex in which any group at war with the West is presumed to be, at least in part, virtuously the 'other'. We demonise ourselves, and we especially demonise anything which smacks of Western civilisation in any part of the world which was once colonised. Middle East Christians suffer from this prejudice in the West. Israel does, too. As part of Western civilisation, it earns whole layers of extra hostility. Hating Israel is part of hating Western civilisation, the default position of the inheritors of the detritus of Marxism in successor ideologies like the Greens."
OK, so if I've got him right, the Catholic Church, Middle Eastern Christians and Israel, are all representatives or extensions of what he calls "Western civilisation" vis-a-vis Said's Muslim 'other'. Now let's, for the sake of argument, assume he's right, OK? Wouldn't that make them all, so to speak, family then? One big, happy Judeo-Christian family?
Since Sheridan's introduced the subject of Israel, let's explore the above idea in relation to Palestinian Christians.
As the representatives of 'Western civilisation' already in Palestine when those exemplary agents of 'Western civilisation', the Zionists, first arrived, wouldn't you have expected them to put out the welcome mat?
Well, guess what? The buggers failed dismally to stick to Sheridan's script:
"On behalf of my brethren, the Christian heads of the different Arab Christian Communities, I speak in the name of the Arab Christian Churches in Palestine. I am an Arab and my connections with the Byzantine Church do not deprive me of being an Arab with Arab blood running in my veins - just as an Englishman is English whether he is Roman Catholic or Anglican. We have confined our statement to three main points: 1. The Christian Arabs in Palestine have everything in common with their Moslem brethren. Religious beliefs do not in any way make them two peoples. They cherish the same hopes and fears and they strive for one goal - freedom and independence. 2. Zionism is a menace to the Christian as well as to the Moslem population in Palestine. A Jewish state in Palestine would result in a gradual decrease in the Arab population and as a consequence the holy places will become lifeless skeletons of stones guarded by monks and devoid of believers. 3. Lastly, the claim of the Zionists to Palestine is based on Biblical promises in the Old Testament. These promises were abrogated by the New Testament; and all promises given to the people of Israel in the Old Testament have been annulled by the advent of Christ." (The Melkite Archbishop of Galilee quoted in the Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, Palestine, 1946)
And once the new Judeo-Christian dispensation known as Israel was established in Palestine in May, 1948, wouldn't you have expected church bells to begin ringing throughout the land? Jews and Christians dancing together in the streets? Inter-faith celebrations lasting well into the night?
Alas, only if, like Tony Abbott, Sheridan's your 'Suppository of All Wisdom':
"Yaacov [Herzog, head of the department of Christian Communities in the Ministry of Religious Affairs] had to devote much of his time to an unpleasant problem that arose during the War of Independence - namely, the desecration of churches and monasteries by IDF soldiers, the looting of their properties, and offensive misuse of their premises. Such abuse had occurred in many places throughout the [1948] war..." (Yaacov Herzog: A Biography, Michael Bar-Zohar, 2003, p 90)
"The neighborhoods of West Jerusalem that were once predominantly Christian - including the German Colony, Talbiya, and Qatamon - were seized by Israel in the war in 1948. The families that fled the fighting were never permitted to return. After the armistice agreement, their homes were seized by Israel's 'Custodian of Absentee Property,' and the Jewish Agency turned them over to new Jewish immigrants." (The Body & the Blood: The Middle East's Vanishing Christians & the Possibility for Peace, Charles M. Sennott, 2001, p 24)
"During the Arab-Israeli war last June [1967] there was much concern about the fate of the holy places in the Old City of Jerusalem. In fact, apart from the church of St Anne, damage to Christian shrines was slight. This was not, however, the case with other Christian property in the Israeli-occupied sector of Jerusalem, belonging to the three major sects, the Latins, Greeks and Armenians. The annexation of the Old City to west Jerusalem, and the return of buildings and cemeteries belonging to them on Mount Sion after a lapse of 20 years, has revealed that these have been extensively desecrated by the occupying forces, and have fared far worse than anything in the Old City during the war. These Christian properties are on the summit of Mount Sion, just outside the city walls to the south. From 1948 until 1967 they were technically in Israel, but the general public was forbidden access to them, and they were under the direct control of the Israeli army.
"Amongst the buildings is the Armenian church of St Saviour, by tradition built on the house of Caiaphas; it is a 15th-century structure... It belongs to the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem, which is also located on Mount Sion, but within the walls of Jerusalem. Since 1948 the prelates of the Armenian church have been unable to visit St Saviour's either from Jordan or Israel. Some years ago a UN truce supervisor was asked about the church, but was unable to get inside it. At the time, he expressed the private opinion that it was being used as an advanced Israeli machine-gun post. "The evidence of recent photographs and reports has proved this conjecture to be correct. The monastery buildings around the church were fortified by the Israelis, and the walls between individual cells demolished to make a continuous passage; the windows were filled with sandbags, and wooden gun emplacements. It is clear that they attached considerable importance to the site, as it commanded the south-west angle of the Old City.
"Less comprehensible was the behaviour of the Israeli soldiers during 20 years of occupation of the buildings. The courtyard of the church of St Saviour is the traditional burying-place of the Patriarchs of the Armenian Church in Jerusalem, and at least 14 of the venerable tombs were smashed open, and their contents desecrated. Two were demolished and excavated to a depth of 6 feet below the ground. "The interior of the church of St Saviour is a scene of total devastation. The carved and gilded altar has been wrecked, and an altar painting lies destroyed on the floor below. The oil paintings that decorated the upper part of the north and south walls have been torn out of their frames leaving only tattered shreds of canvas. Many of the Kutahya tiles, brought specially from Turkey by Armenian pilgrims in the early 18th century, have been ripped from the walls; those that have not been stolen lie smashed on the ground, along with a tangled mass of broken church furniture. The valuable collection of old church vestments has completely disappeared. "So has the well-known Byzantine mosaic, which was in the basement of the monastery. Pere Vincent, the distinguished French scholar, once described it as 'une tres belle mosaique... du IV/V siecle'. It has been expertly lifted and removed. It is common knowledge that the Israeli Minister of Defence, General dayan, has an amateur interest in antiquities; some of his troops would seem to have emulated him.
"Adjacent to the Armenian church is the Greek Orthodox cemetery on Mount Sion, which to judge from the photographs now resembles a film set for the Resurrection. Practically every tomb in the cemetery is smashed. Fragments of marble crosses, angels' wings, and inscriptions lie inextricably mixed with human bones, blackened tree stumps, and the remains of rockets and shells. In contrast to the sack of the Armenian church, the damage could conceivably have been the result of the two wars, in 1948 and 1967, rather than systematic pillage. However, there is no doubt that the cemetery was also occupied by Israeli soldiers; there are well-beaten paths between the tombs, and one of the outhouses is labelled NIGHT CLUB. More graffiti, in Hebrew and English, must have been added by other soldiers to while away their time.
"The state of the third cemetery on Mount Sion, belonging to the Latin church, has been described in a recent issue of the Catholic journal, La Terre Sainte, by the Very Reverend Father Andres. Procureur-General in the Holy Land since 1962, he speaks with authority as he has had the task of supervising the repairs to the damaged cemetery. He begins by deploring the overthrowing of Jewish tombstones by the Arabs of the Mount of Olives - the subject of a recent Israeli White Paper - but observes that they did not, as far as is known, actually drag the corpses out of the tombs, as happened with so many Christian graves. He published several macabre photographs, showing smashed tombs in the Catholic cemetery, with the remains of coffins and the deceased strewn all around. In conclusion he rightly asks why these acts of profanation by the Israelis were not also mentioned in the White Paper.
"As the non-Arab Christian communities are by no means involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, one wonders what possible reason there can have been for the desecration of their cemeteries and churches. It is clear that the pillage and destruction was carried out over a period of years, suggesting that the soldiers' misconduct was condoned by successive generations of Israeli officers. Since the war the Israelis have made it quite clear that whilst some of the recently occupied territories might possibly be negotiable, the Old City is excluded from any bargaining and that they intend to stay. This must give pause for thought to the three major Christian sects in Jerusalem, in light of what has happened to their property during 20 years of occupation; they must surely view the future with apprehension, however much the Israeli government may attempt to reassure them of its benevolence." (The Desecration of Christian Cemeteries & Church property in Israel, Basic Documents Series No. 5, The Institute for Palestine Studies, 1968)
To be continued...
Sunday, August 12, 2012
The Ba'th Party: Credit Where Credit's Due
OK...
"Wherever you go in the Middle East today, you see the Arab Spring rapidly turning into the Christian winter. The past few years have been catastrophic for the region's beleaguered 14-million strong Christian minority." (Fatal lot of Christianity's homelands: Syria faces a hardline salafist takeover, William Dalrymple, The Australian, 9/8/12)
Yes...
"Most catastrophically, in Iraq, two thirds of the Christians have fled the country since the fall of Saddam... 'Before the war there was no separation between Christian and Muslim,' I was told on a recent visit by Shamun Daawd, a liquor-store owner who fled Baghdad after he received Islamist death threats... 'Under Saddam no one asked you your religion and we used to attend each other's religious services,' he said. 'Now at least 75% of my Christian friends have fled.'" (ibid)
Hang on!
"[W]hile the regime of the Assad dynasty was a repressive one-party police state in which political freedoms were always severely and often brutally restricted, it did allow the Syrians widespread cultural and religious freedoms. These gave Syria's minorities a security and stability far greater than their counterparts anywhere else in the region. This was particularly true of Syria's ancient Christian communities. The reason for this was that the Assads were Alawite, a syncretic Shia Muslim minority regarded by Sunni Muslims as heretical..." (ibid)
So the Asads protected Syrian Christians from Syria's Sunni Muslims because the Asads are Alawi, but Saddam protected Iraqi Christians from Iraq's Sunni Muslims because he was a... Sunni?
The above contradiction is what you get when you haven't done your homework. What Dalrymple has omitted from his too-superficial argument is any reference to the role of the Ba'th Party, in both its Iraqi and Syrian forms, in combating and suppressing sectarianism (not to mention regionalism and tribalism). The Ba'thist current of Arab nationalism, whatever its other defects, has always vigorously promoted secularism.
Perhaps the best study of the Syrian Ba'th and the issue of sectarianism is Nikolaos van Dam's The Struggle for Power in Syria: Sectarianism, Regionalism and Tribalism in Politics, 1961-1980 (1981):
"In the past, the Arab nationalist movement had always been interwoven with a kind of Sunni Islamism. And the Sunni Arabs, who usually played first fiddle in this movement, assigned in their Arabism such an important and central role to (Sunni) Islam, that heterodox Muslims, let alone Christians, were allotted a secondary place: 'timid subordinates' tolerated by (Sunni Arab) 'superiors'. In fact, many Sunni Arab nationalists tended to regard members of the Arabic-speaking religious minorities as 'imperfect Arabs' because they were heterodox Muslims or not Muslims at all. Equally, the religious minorities tended to suspect Arab nationalism as a disguise for unrestrained Sunni ascendancy, similar to the situation that pertained during the Ottoman Empire, the only difference being that Arab rather than Turkish Sunnis now held power.
"Ba'th ideology had a quite different basis. The Ba'th wanted a united secular Arab society with a socialist system, ie a society in which all Arabs would be equal, irrespective of their religion. This did not imply that Islam was of secondary importance to Ba'thist Arabism. In the Ba'thist view Islam consituted an essential and inseparable part of Arab national culture. Other than the Sunni variants of Arabism, however, the Ba'th considered Islam to be not so much an Arab national religion as an important Arab national cultural heritage, to which all Arabs, whether Muslim or Christians, were equal heirs apparent. In the opinion of Michel 'Aflaq, the Ba'th Party's ideologist, Christian Arabs therefore need feel in no way hindered from being Arab nationalists: 'When their nationalism awakens in them completely and they regain their original nature, the Christian Arabs will realise that Islam is their national culture with which they should satiate themselves, in order that they may understand and love it and to covet it as the most precious thing in their Arabism.'
"It was thus only natural that the Ba'th ideology appealed strongly to Arabic-speaking religious minority members who may have hoped that the Ba'th would help them to free themselves from of their minority status and the narrow social frame of their sectarian, regional and tribal ties.
"Finally, the minority members must have been attracted by the idea that the traditional Sunni-urban domination of Syrian political life might be broken by the establishment of a secular socialist political system as envisaged by the Ba'th, in which there would be no political and socio-economic discrimination against non-Sunnis or, more particularly, against members of heterodox Islamic communities." (pp 32-33)
One of the great ironies of the struggle in Syria today is that, by backing Syria's armed sectarian Sunni opposition movement, the Western powers, who once posed as the protectors of Syria's minorities against Sunni domination (whether Ottoman or post-Ottoman), are now lending material support to their Syrian Sunni oppressors, seemingly with no regard whatever for the fate of these minorities.
"Wherever you go in the Middle East today, you see the Arab Spring rapidly turning into the Christian winter. The past few years have been catastrophic for the region's beleaguered 14-million strong Christian minority." (Fatal lot of Christianity's homelands: Syria faces a hardline salafist takeover, William Dalrymple, The Australian, 9/8/12)
Yes...
"Most catastrophically, in Iraq, two thirds of the Christians have fled the country since the fall of Saddam... 'Before the war there was no separation between Christian and Muslim,' I was told on a recent visit by Shamun Daawd, a liquor-store owner who fled Baghdad after he received Islamist death threats... 'Under Saddam no one asked you your religion and we used to attend each other's religious services,' he said. 'Now at least 75% of my Christian friends have fled.'" (ibid)
Hang on!
"[W]hile the regime of the Assad dynasty was a repressive one-party police state in which political freedoms were always severely and often brutally restricted, it did allow the Syrians widespread cultural and religious freedoms. These gave Syria's minorities a security and stability far greater than their counterparts anywhere else in the region. This was particularly true of Syria's ancient Christian communities. The reason for this was that the Assads were Alawite, a syncretic Shia Muslim minority regarded by Sunni Muslims as heretical..." (ibid)
So the Asads protected Syrian Christians from Syria's Sunni Muslims because the Asads are Alawi, but Saddam protected Iraqi Christians from Iraq's Sunni Muslims because he was a... Sunni?
The above contradiction is what you get when you haven't done your homework. What Dalrymple has omitted from his too-superficial argument is any reference to the role of the Ba'th Party, in both its Iraqi and Syrian forms, in combating and suppressing sectarianism (not to mention regionalism and tribalism). The Ba'thist current of Arab nationalism, whatever its other defects, has always vigorously promoted secularism.
Perhaps the best study of the Syrian Ba'th and the issue of sectarianism is Nikolaos van Dam's The Struggle for Power in Syria: Sectarianism, Regionalism and Tribalism in Politics, 1961-1980 (1981):
"In the past, the Arab nationalist movement had always been interwoven with a kind of Sunni Islamism. And the Sunni Arabs, who usually played first fiddle in this movement, assigned in their Arabism such an important and central role to (Sunni) Islam, that heterodox Muslims, let alone Christians, were allotted a secondary place: 'timid subordinates' tolerated by (Sunni Arab) 'superiors'. In fact, many Sunni Arab nationalists tended to regard members of the Arabic-speaking religious minorities as 'imperfect Arabs' because they were heterodox Muslims or not Muslims at all. Equally, the religious minorities tended to suspect Arab nationalism as a disguise for unrestrained Sunni ascendancy, similar to the situation that pertained during the Ottoman Empire, the only difference being that Arab rather than Turkish Sunnis now held power.
"Ba'th ideology had a quite different basis. The Ba'th wanted a united secular Arab society with a socialist system, ie a society in which all Arabs would be equal, irrespective of their religion. This did not imply that Islam was of secondary importance to Ba'thist Arabism. In the Ba'thist view Islam consituted an essential and inseparable part of Arab national culture. Other than the Sunni variants of Arabism, however, the Ba'th considered Islam to be not so much an Arab national religion as an important Arab national cultural heritage, to which all Arabs, whether Muslim or Christians, were equal heirs apparent. In the opinion of Michel 'Aflaq, the Ba'th Party's ideologist, Christian Arabs therefore need feel in no way hindered from being Arab nationalists: 'When their nationalism awakens in them completely and they regain their original nature, the Christian Arabs will realise that Islam is their national culture with which they should satiate themselves, in order that they may understand and love it and to covet it as the most precious thing in their Arabism.'
"It was thus only natural that the Ba'th ideology appealed strongly to Arabic-speaking religious minority members who may have hoped that the Ba'th would help them to free themselves from of their minority status and the narrow social frame of their sectarian, regional and tribal ties.
"Finally, the minority members must have been attracted by the idea that the traditional Sunni-urban domination of Syrian political life might be broken by the establishment of a secular socialist political system as envisaged by the Ba'th, in which there would be no political and socio-economic discrimination against non-Sunnis or, more particularly, against members of heterodox Islamic communities." (pp 32-33)
One of the great ironies of the struggle in Syria today is that, by backing Syria's armed sectarian Sunni opposition movement, the Western powers, who once posed as the protectors of Syria's minorities against Sunni domination (whether Ottoman or post-Ottoman), are now lending material support to their Syrian Sunni oppressors, seemingly with no regard whatever for the fate of these minorities.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Crocodile Tears for Iraqi Christians
Why should anyone bother reading The Australian? After all its editorialist doesn't. Here's what he had to say on 27 December:
"The flight of despairing Christians is being seen no less starkly elsewhere. 900,000 of Iraq's 1.4 million Christians have fled since 2003. In that time 54 churches have been blown up and 1000 Christians killed." (Religious violence deplorable: Christians increasingly attacked by Islamic extremists)
And who's responsible for this sorry state of affairs? Islamic extremists, of course. But who let them loose? Peter Wilson's report in The Australian of 24 December spells it out:
"'After Saddam fell, Christians were targeted and attacked because everyone thought we were somehow attached to the Americans but the truth is that the US did not do anything for the Christians', Mr [Ra'ad] Emmanuel said. 'A lot of Christians worked for the Americans as translators or in other rules but the Americans have actually left us in a much worse state than we were under Saddam. Saddam did not persecute Christians as much as he did the Shia (Muslims) and Kurds...'" (Terror kills Christmas in Baghdad)
For the Australian's editorialist, neo-conservative ideology dictates that the spotlight must always be fixed on the anti-Christian sectarian genie, never on those responsible for unbottling him - even if that means ignoring the evidence painstakingly gathered by one of its own correspondents.
And why is that? Because, when it came to corporate media barracking for regime change in Iraq, the Murdoch press cheered loudest of all.
"The flight of despairing Christians is being seen no less starkly elsewhere. 900,000 of Iraq's 1.4 million Christians have fled since 2003. In that time 54 churches have been blown up and 1000 Christians killed." (Religious violence deplorable: Christians increasingly attacked by Islamic extremists)
And who's responsible for this sorry state of affairs? Islamic extremists, of course. But who let them loose? Peter Wilson's report in The Australian of 24 December spells it out:
"'After Saddam fell, Christians were targeted and attacked because everyone thought we were somehow attached to the Americans but the truth is that the US did not do anything for the Christians', Mr [Ra'ad] Emmanuel said. 'A lot of Christians worked for the Americans as translators or in other rules but the Americans have actually left us in a much worse state than we were under Saddam. Saddam did not persecute Christians as much as he did the Shia (Muslims) and Kurds...'" (Terror kills Christmas in Baghdad)
For the Australian's editorialist, neo-conservative ideology dictates that the spotlight must always be fixed on the anti-Christian sectarian genie, never on those responsible for unbottling him - even if that means ignoring the evidence painstakingly gathered by one of its own correspondents.
And why is that? Because, when it came to corporate media barracking for regime change in Iraq, the Murdoch press cheered loudest of all.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Friends
"Never have a companion that casts you in the shade." Baltasar Gracian
Liberal MLC David Clarke, whose anti-BDS motion and Zionist rant in the NSW Legislative Council I dealt with in my previous post, has had a circuitous route, to say the least, to Zionism - as Greens MLC John Kaye, outraged by Clarke's predictable smearing of the BDS campaign as anti-Semitic, made clear in his contribution to the 'debate':
"He is the same David Clarke who twice - once in April 2005 and then in April 2007 - attended a commemoration of the rise of the fascist Ustasha Government into power in Croatia in April 1941. He is the same David Clarke who was reprimanded by the chief executive officer of the Jewish Board of Deputies, Mr Vic Alhadeff, who I acknowledge is present in the gallery today. In The Jewish News of 26 April 2007, Mr Alhadeff said of the Hon. David Clarke: 'The function-' that is, the function attended by Mr Clarke- 'celebrated Hitler's establishment of the Nazi state of Croatia... This is a state that supported the Jasenovac extermination camp, where hundreds of thousands of people were murdered, including 60,000 Jews... It is very troubling that such a brutal regime still finds support in democratic Australia'. There is no excuse for the Hon. David Clarke moving this motion when he so shamefully supported the celebration of the Nazi regime in Croatia. Like so many who come from the extreme Right, today he finds himself with the fanatical support of Israel. He joins with groups such as the Australian Protectionist Party and others in opposing the BDS campaign. Many in the Jewish community will be shocked to see the way the Hon. David Clarke summons up the memory of the Holocaust when his mentor-" At which point Clarke, obviously stung, raised a point of order, claiming he found Kaye's comments "offensive" and asking that they be "withdrawn."
By 'mentor' Kaye meant Lyenko Urbanchich, Nazi collaborator and propagandist in Slovenia during WWII and NSW Liberal Party heavyweight until his death in 2006.
Mark Aarons'* obituary of Urbanchich throws the following light on the relationship between Urbanchich and Clarke:
"The peak of Urbanchich's success came in 1977 with the formation of the Liberal Ethnic Council. As council president, he automatically had a seat on the state executive. Other council executive members included his close ally, David Clarke, who learnt ethnic branch stacking techniques from his mentor and today leads the 'Uglies' faction established by Urbanchich 40 years ago. Clarke helped organise the numbers to narrowly save Urbanchich from expulsion from the Liberal Party after a 1979 ABC radio documentary (which I produced) exposed him as a Nazi propagandist. Urbanchich initially defended himself by claiming that documents used in the program were communist forgeries. When copies of his propaganda were found in Western archives (including contemporaneous British intelligence microfilms), he switched to arguing that German censors had inserted the pro-Nazi content. This was rejected by the Liberal inquiry, but, despite the evidence, the 1980 vote to expel him fell just short of the 60% required. The NSW Liberals' moderate faction bitterly regrets this failure. In the following 15 years, Urbanchich successfully continued his ethnic branch stacking. In 1996, Urbanchich and Clarke established the far-right's ironically named 'central committee'. By 2005 Clarke controlled the NSW state executive, the Young Liberals (in NSW and federally) and the NSW Women's Council. From this powerful position, the faction Urbanchich founded in the 1960s has embarked on a purge of moderates, especially in the NSW parliamentary party. Clarke's support base today is the same far-right constituency that Urbanchich built through ethnic branch stacking, especially using extremist elements in the Croatian and Christian Lebanese communities and often involving violence." (Ardent Nazi took Liberal to extremes, Sydney Morning Herald, 4/3/06) [*Aarons is the author of War Criminals Welcome, 2001)
But that was then. This is now. Urbanchich's old-fashioned anti-Semitism must seem a bit musty these days, what with Israel kicking ass with the 'best' of them. Now it's Arabs and Muslims who are the new Jews, so perhaps it's time, as many on the far-right seem to have concluded, to trade in their Judeophobia for Islamophobia. Not that any of the former ever rubbed off on David Clarke, of course. After all, as he explained in a 2005 interview with ABC journalist Monica Attard (abc.net.au/sundayprofile, 18/9/05), Urbanchich had a perfectly satisfactory explanation:
MA: You knew [Urbanchich] well?
DC: Well yes, I mean he was a member of the State Council of the Liberal Party, I mean most people who are members of the State Council of the Liberal Party would know him to varying degrees.
MA: And were you shocked when you learned of his links to the Nazis?
DC: It came as a surprise but at the same time he put forward an explanation that he was working in his position at the behest of the underground. He put forward a proposition supported by some documents that he was part of the underground that was loyal to the government of King Peter which was in exile in London during the war years.
MA: But was it your belief in his story, was that what made you back him and his case against expulsion?
DC: I opposed his expulsion from the Liberal Party and sufficient people did oppose his expulsion on that basis.
MA: And your friendship with him continued thereafter?
DC: I still know Ljenko Urbancic and you know, many people do, he's still a member of the State Council of the Liberal Party.
MA: So you have a friendship now?
DC: Yes I would. Look, I would have friendly relations with him, yes. He's getting on in years, he's into his eighties, it's quite infrequently that you see him at Liberal Party gatherings.
MA: Did you sort of have to take a bit of a lower profile in those years because of what happened with the Liberal Ethnic Council?
DC: No, absolutely not. I'm not ashamed of anything that I've done; I've always stood for good values.
MA: And you're not... you're certainly not ashamed of the continuing relationship with Urbancic?
DC: The situation is: I accept people as I find them and the Liberal Party found that he should remain as a member of the Liberal Party and the Liberal Party accepts that and he's continued as a member of the Party ever since.
We've already glimpsed Vic Alhadeff, for whom the anti-BDS gibberings in the parliamentary bearpit must have been music to the ears, in the gallery, smiling down as Clarke and co strutted their stuff and nonsense. But who else is David Clarke rubbing shoulders with these days?
Well, with some seriously worried (& worrying) people as it happens. The kind who curl up in a foetal position at the mere sight of a hijab. Yes, Clarke was most assuredly among friends at that 'National Conference for All Concerned Christians' in November 2009, according to my impeccable source, Islamophobic website islammonitor.org.
The theme of the conference, which "represented an alliance of Assyrian and Australian Christians," was "Australia's Future & Global Jihad," and its attendees are described as "wanting a halt to Muslim immigration into Australia in order to stop its Islamification." (An emerging Australian-Assyrian Christian alliance?, Gaspar, 28/11/09)
Clarke was lovingly introduced to the assembled concerned Christians by fellow MLC, and Christian Democrat crusader, the Reverend Fred Nile, as "a fearless and uncompromising leader on moral and Muslim issues."
So why exactly have Muslims become an 'issue' for Clarke? Well, 'Gaspar' reports him as telling his audience that "Christianity is under threat from MUSLIM EXTREMISTS [Islam Monitor's capitalisation] (who he sharply distinguished from peaceful Muslims)." Oh dear! The turbanned, scimitar-waving, moustache-twirling hordes are probably advancing on St Mary's Cathedral as we speak! Hijabs in the rear, of course.
The other speakers made up a stellar cast, including Jenny Stokes of Saltshakers, who discussed "Islam and the way it cynically exploits the interfaith movement"; Keith Piper of the Liberty Independent Baptist Church, who spoke about 'Leading Muslims to Christ', which, he claimed he had done - in shopping centres, no less - by "showing them they are victims of lies"; and the incomparable Danny Nalliah of Catch the Fire Ministries, who, among other things, talked about "how President Bush opened up the whole Middle East for Bibles to be brought in."
This lot'd do old Lyenko proud. Still, every cloud has a silver lining as they say, and this conference was no exception. It came in the form of Emmanuel Michael, chairman of the Assyrian Federation of Australia who must have stirred up no end of cognitive dissonance among the anxious Anglos when he expanded thus on the subject of life in Iraq under Saddam Hussein:
"Saddam was a dictator. But he did something for us [Assyrian] Christians. I want you to know this. He was a dictator for people who were against him. Saddam built churches for us. [The] Australian government doesn't do that. Saddam built a church for our community. I want to mention this because he was a dictator. But he did a few things good. One of them was that. And the other was [when] he went to my village, called Sharafiya, north of Mosul. He was surprised. He said to the priest who was greeting him... 'Why are your houses built of mud-brick?' They said, 'Because this land is not ours, it belongs to the Catholic Church' and we have to pay rent'. He said, 'Alright'. He went immediately to the head of the [Catholic] Church and said, 'I'm buying this village'. Saddam bought the village and came back less than 2 hours later and said, 'The village is now yours. It's your property. You can build on it'. And he gave $15,000 to each family. At that time the dinar was worth $3. Now it is worth nothing. You see, he did things to help us, to protect us."
Poor old David, Fred, Danny and the rest must have had heart attacks. Even the guy who'd faithfully recorded the conference's goings on for islammonitor.org, calling himself Gaspar, felt compelled to append the following bracketed comment: "Now there's a bandwagon for the mainstream media to jump on: life was better for Iraqi Christians under Saddam Hussein than under America."
But I digress. Yes, whatever the vibes passing between Urbanchich and Clarke in the old days, Clarke's obviously got a bee in his bonnet about them Muslims these days, and that obviously goes some way toward explaining his conversion to Zionism.
But is that all there is to it? Perhaps Aaron's references to Urbanchich's ethnic branch stacking and use of violent extremists provides the key. David Clarke, of all people, must surely know a good old ethnic branch stack when he sees one. And God knows if Israel isn't the mother of all ethnic branch stacks. Think about it.
Liberal MLC David Clarke, whose anti-BDS motion and Zionist rant in the NSW Legislative Council I dealt with in my previous post, has had a circuitous route, to say the least, to Zionism - as Greens MLC John Kaye, outraged by Clarke's predictable smearing of the BDS campaign as anti-Semitic, made clear in his contribution to the 'debate':
"He is the same David Clarke who twice - once in April 2005 and then in April 2007 - attended a commemoration of the rise of the fascist Ustasha Government into power in Croatia in April 1941. He is the same David Clarke who was reprimanded by the chief executive officer of the Jewish Board of Deputies, Mr Vic Alhadeff, who I acknowledge is present in the gallery today. In The Jewish News of 26 April 2007, Mr Alhadeff said of the Hon. David Clarke: 'The function-' that is, the function attended by Mr Clarke- 'celebrated Hitler's establishment of the Nazi state of Croatia... This is a state that supported the Jasenovac extermination camp, where hundreds of thousands of people were murdered, including 60,000 Jews... It is very troubling that such a brutal regime still finds support in democratic Australia'. There is no excuse for the Hon. David Clarke moving this motion when he so shamefully supported the celebration of the Nazi regime in Croatia. Like so many who come from the extreme Right, today he finds himself with the fanatical support of Israel. He joins with groups such as the Australian Protectionist Party and others in opposing the BDS campaign. Many in the Jewish community will be shocked to see the way the Hon. David Clarke summons up the memory of the Holocaust when his mentor-" At which point Clarke, obviously stung, raised a point of order, claiming he found Kaye's comments "offensive" and asking that they be "withdrawn."
By 'mentor' Kaye meant Lyenko Urbanchich, Nazi collaborator and propagandist in Slovenia during WWII and NSW Liberal Party heavyweight until his death in 2006.
Mark Aarons'* obituary of Urbanchich throws the following light on the relationship between Urbanchich and Clarke:
"The peak of Urbanchich's success came in 1977 with the formation of the Liberal Ethnic Council. As council president, he automatically had a seat on the state executive. Other council executive members included his close ally, David Clarke, who learnt ethnic branch stacking techniques from his mentor and today leads the 'Uglies' faction established by Urbanchich 40 years ago. Clarke helped organise the numbers to narrowly save Urbanchich from expulsion from the Liberal Party after a 1979 ABC radio documentary (which I produced) exposed him as a Nazi propagandist. Urbanchich initially defended himself by claiming that documents used in the program were communist forgeries. When copies of his propaganda were found in Western archives (including contemporaneous British intelligence microfilms), he switched to arguing that German censors had inserted the pro-Nazi content. This was rejected by the Liberal inquiry, but, despite the evidence, the 1980 vote to expel him fell just short of the 60% required. The NSW Liberals' moderate faction bitterly regrets this failure. In the following 15 years, Urbanchich successfully continued his ethnic branch stacking. In 1996, Urbanchich and Clarke established the far-right's ironically named 'central committee'. By 2005 Clarke controlled the NSW state executive, the Young Liberals (in NSW and federally) and the NSW Women's Council. From this powerful position, the faction Urbanchich founded in the 1960s has embarked on a purge of moderates, especially in the NSW parliamentary party. Clarke's support base today is the same far-right constituency that Urbanchich built through ethnic branch stacking, especially using extremist elements in the Croatian and Christian Lebanese communities and often involving violence." (Ardent Nazi took Liberal to extremes, Sydney Morning Herald, 4/3/06) [*Aarons is the author of War Criminals Welcome, 2001)
But that was then. This is now. Urbanchich's old-fashioned anti-Semitism must seem a bit musty these days, what with Israel kicking ass with the 'best' of them. Now it's Arabs and Muslims who are the new Jews, so perhaps it's time, as many on the far-right seem to have concluded, to trade in their Judeophobia for Islamophobia. Not that any of the former ever rubbed off on David Clarke, of course. After all, as he explained in a 2005 interview with ABC journalist Monica Attard (abc.net.au/sundayprofile, 18/9/05), Urbanchich had a perfectly satisfactory explanation:
MA: You knew [Urbanchich] well?
DC: Well yes, I mean he was a member of the State Council of the Liberal Party, I mean most people who are members of the State Council of the Liberal Party would know him to varying degrees.
MA: And were you shocked when you learned of his links to the Nazis?
DC: It came as a surprise but at the same time he put forward an explanation that he was working in his position at the behest of the underground. He put forward a proposition supported by some documents that he was part of the underground that was loyal to the government of King Peter which was in exile in London during the war years.
MA: But was it your belief in his story, was that what made you back him and his case against expulsion?
DC: I opposed his expulsion from the Liberal Party and sufficient people did oppose his expulsion on that basis.
MA: And your friendship with him continued thereafter?
DC: I still know Ljenko Urbancic and you know, many people do, he's still a member of the State Council of the Liberal Party.
MA: So you have a friendship now?
DC: Yes I would. Look, I would have friendly relations with him, yes. He's getting on in years, he's into his eighties, it's quite infrequently that you see him at Liberal Party gatherings.
MA: Did you sort of have to take a bit of a lower profile in those years because of what happened with the Liberal Ethnic Council?
DC: No, absolutely not. I'm not ashamed of anything that I've done; I've always stood for good values.
MA: And you're not... you're certainly not ashamed of the continuing relationship with Urbancic?
DC: The situation is: I accept people as I find them and the Liberal Party found that he should remain as a member of the Liberal Party and the Liberal Party accepts that and he's continued as a member of the Party ever since.
We've already glimpsed Vic Alhadeff, for whom the anti-BDS gibberings in the parliamentary bearpit must have been music to the ears, in the gallery, smiling down as Clarke and co strutted their stuff and nonsense. But who else is David Clarke rubbing shoulders with these days?
Well, with some seriously worried (& worrying) people as it happens. The kind who curl up in a foetal position at the mere sight of a hijab. Yes, Clarke was most assuredly among friends at that 'National Conference for All Concerned Christians' in November 2009, according to my impeccable source, Islamophobic website islammonitor.org.
The theme of the conference, which "represented an alliance of Assyrian and Australian Christians," was "Australia's Future & Global Jihad," and its attendees are described as "wanting a halt to Muslim immigration into Australia in order to stop its Islamification." (An emerging Australian-Assyrian Christian alliance?, Gaspar, 28/11/09)
Clarke was lovingly introduced to the assembled concerned Christians by fellow MLC, and Christian Democrat crusader, the Reverend Fred Nile, as "a fearless and uncompromising leader on moral and Muslim issues."
So why exactly have Muslims become an 'issue' for Clarke? Well, 'Gaspar' reports him as telling his audience that "Christianity is under threat from MUSLIM EXTREMISTS [Islam Monitor's capitalisation] (who he sharply distinguished from peaceful Muslims)." Oh dear! The turbanned, scimitar-waving, moustache-twirling hordes are probably advancing on St Mary's Cathedral as we speak! Hijabs in the rear, of course.
The other speakers made up a stellar cast, including Jenny Stokes of Saltshakers, who discussed "Islam and the way it cynically exploits the interfaith movement"; Keith Piper of the Liberty Independent Baptist Church, who spoke about 'Leading Muslims to Christ', which, he claimed he had done - in shopping centres, no less - by "showing them they are victims of lies"; and the incomparable Danny Nalliah of Catch the Fire Ministries, who, among other things, talked about "how President Bush opened up the whole Middle East for Bibles to be brought in."
This lot'd do old Lyenko proud. Still, every cloud has a silver lining as they say, and this conference was no exception. It came in the form of Emmanuel Michael, chairman of the Assyrian Federation of Australia who must have stirred up no end of cognitive dissonance among the anxious Anglos when he expanded thus on the subject of life in Iraq under Saddam Hussein:
"Saddam was a dictator. But he did something for us [Assyrian] Christians. I want you to know this. He was a dictator for people who were against him. Saddam built churches for us. [The] Australian government doesn't do that. Saddam built a church for our community. I want to mention this because he was a dictator. But he did a few things good. One of them was that. And the other was [when] he went to my village, called Sharafiya, north of Mosul. He was surprised. He said to the priest who was greeting him... 'Why are your houses built of mud-brick?' They said, 'Because this land is not ours, it belongs to the Catholic Church' and we have to pay rent'. He said, 'Alright'. He went immediately to the head of the [Catholic] Church and said, 'I'm buying this village'. Saddam bought the village and came back less than 2 hours later and said, 'The village is now yours. It's your property. You can build on it'. And he gave $15,000 to each family. At that time the dinar was worth $3. Now it is worth nothing. You see, he did things to help us, to protect us."
Poor old David, Fred, Danny and the rest must have had heart attacks. Even the guy who'd faithfully recorded the conference's goings on for islammonitor.org, calling himself Gaspar, felt compelled to append the following bracketed comment: "Now there's a bandwagon for the mainstream media to jump on: life was better for Iraqi Christians under Saddam Hussein than under America."
But I digress. Yes, whatever the vibes passing between Urbanchich and Clarke in the old days, Clarke's obviously got a bee in his bonnet about them Muslims these days, and that obviously goes some way toward explaining his conversion to Zionism.
But is that all there is to it? Perhaps Aaron's references to Urbanchich's ethnic branch stacking and use of violent extremists provides the key. David Clarke, of all people, must surely know a good old ethnic branch stack when he sees one. And God knows if Israel isn't the mother of all ethnic branch stacks. Think about it.
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