One of Gideon Levy's best essays: This biography makes it clear: The founder f the Palestinian Popular Front was right (Haaretz, 15/4/18):
"George Habash was Israel's absolute enemy for decades, the embodiment of evil, the devil incarnate. Even the title 'Dr.' before his name - he was a pediatrician - was considered blasphemous. Habash was plane hijackings, Habash was terror and terror alone. In a country that doesn't recognize the existence of Palestinian political parties (have you ever heard of a Palestinian political party? - there are only terror groups) knowledge about the man who headed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was close to zero. What's there to know about him? A terrorist. Subhuman. Should be killed. Enemy. The fact that he was an ideologue and a revolutionary, that his life was shaped by the expulsion from Lod, changed nothing. He remains the plane hijacker from Damascus, the man from the Rejectionist front who was no different from all the rest of the 'terrorists' from Yasser Arafat to Wadi Haddad to Nayef Hawatmeh.
"Now along comes Eli Galia's Hebrew-language book 'George Habash: A Political Biography.' It outlines the reality, far from the noise of propaganda, ignorance and brainwashing, for the Israeli reader who agrees to read a biography of the enemy. Presumably only a few will read it, but this work by Galia, a Middle East affairs expert, is very deserving of praise. It's a political biography, as noted in its subtitle, so it almost entirely lacks the personal, spiritual and psychological dimension; there's not even any gossip. So reading it requires a lot of stamina and specialized tastes. Still, it's fascinating.
"Galia has written a nonjudgmental and certainly non-propagandistic biography. Taking into consideration the Israeli mind today, this isn't to be taken for granted. Galia presents a wealth of information, with nearly a thousand footnotes, about the political path of Habash, a man who was considered dogmatic even though he underwent a number of ideological reversals in his life. If that's dogmatism, what's pragmatism? The dogmatic Habash went through more ideological changes than any Israeli who sticks to the Zionist narrative and doesn't budge an inch - and who of course isn't considered dogmatic.
"In the book, Habash is revealed as a person of many contradictions: a member of the Christian minority who was active in the midst of a large Muslim majority, a bourgeois who became a Marxist, a tough and inflexible leader who was once seen weeping in his room as he wrote an article about Israel's crimes against his people. He had to wander and flee for his life from place to place, sometimes more for fear of Arab regimes than of Israel. He was imprisoned in Syria and fled Jordan, he devoted his life to a revolution that never happened. It's impossible not to admire a person who devoted his life to his ideas, just as you have to admire the scholar who has devoted so much research for so few readers who will take an interest in the dead Habash, in an Israel that has lost any interest in the occupation and the Palestinian struggle.
"The book gives rise to the bleak conclusion that Habash was right. For most of his life he was a bitter enemy of compromises, and Arafat, the man of compromise, won the fascinating historical struggle between the two. They had a love-hate relationship, alternately admiring and scorning each other, and never completely breaking off their connection until Arafat won his Pyrrhic victory. What good have all of Arafat's compromises done for the Palestinian people? What came out of the recognition of Israel, of the settling for a Palestinian state on 22% of the territory, of the negotiations with Zionism and the United States? Nothing but the entrenchment of the Israeli occupation and the strengthening and massive development of the settlement project.
"In retrospect, it makes sense to think that if that's how things were, maybe it would have been better to follow the uncompromising path taken by Habash, who for most of his life didn't agree to any negotiations with Israel, who believed that with Israel it was only possible to negotiate by force, who thought Israel would only change its position if it paid a price, who dreamed of a single, democratic and secular state of equal rights and refused to discuss anything but that. Unfortunately, Habash was right. It's hard to know what would have happened had the Palestinians followed his path, but it's impossible not to admit that the alternative has been a resounding failure.
"Habash, who was born in 1926, wrote about his childhood: 'Our enemies are not the Jews but rather the British... The Jews' relations with the Palestinians were natural and sometimes even good' (p 16). He went to study medicine at the American University in Beirut; his worried mother and father wrote him that he should stay there; a war was on. But Habash returned to volunteer at a clinic in Lod; he returned and he saw. The sight of the Israeli soldiers who invaded the clinic in 1948 ignited in him the flame of violent resistance: 'I was gripped by an urge to shoot them with a pistol and kill them, and in the situation of having no weapons I used mute words. I watched them from the sidelines and said to myself: This is our land, you dogs, this is our land and not your land. We will stay here to kill you. You will not win this battle.' (p 22) On July 14 he was expelled from his home with the rest of his family. He never returned to the city he loved. He never forgot the scenes of Lod in 1948, nor did he forget the idea of violent resistance. Can the Israeli leader understand how he felt?
"Now based in Beirut, he took part in terror operations against Jewish and Western targets in Beirut, Amman and Damascus: 'I personally lobbed grenades and I participated in assassination attempts. I had endless enthusiasm when I was doing that. At the time, I considered my life worthless relative to what was happening in Palestine.' 'The Palestinian Che Guevara' - both of them were doctors - made up his mind to wreak vengeance for the Nakba upon the West and the leaders of the Arab regimes that had abandoned his people, even before taking vengeance on the Jews. He even planned to assassinate King Abdullah of Jordan. He founded a new student organization in Beirut called the Commune, completed his specialization in pediatrics and wrote: 'I took the diploma and said: Congratulations, Mother, your son is a doctor, so now let me do what I really want to do. And indeed, that's what happened.' (p 41)
"Habash was once asked whether he was the Che Guevara of the middle East and replied that he would prefer to be the Mao Zedong of the Arab masses. He was the first to raise the banner of return and and in the meantime he opened clinics for Palestinian refugees in Amman. For him, the road back to Lod passed through Amman, Beirut and Damascus. The idea of Pan-Arabism stayed with him for many years, until he despaired of that as well. He also had to leave medicine: 'I am a pediatrician, I have enjoyed this greatly. I believed that I had the best job in the world but I had to make the decision I have taken and I don't regret it... A person cannot split his emotions in that way: to heal on the one hand and kill on the other. This is the time when he must say to himself: one or the other.'
"This book isn't arrogant and it isn't Orientalist; it is respectful of the Palestinian national ideology and those who articulated and lived it, even if the author doesn't necessarily agree with that ideology or identify with it. This is something quite rare in the Israeli landscape when it comes to Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. Nor does the author venerate what's not worthy of veneration, and he doesn't have any erroneous romantic or other illusions. Galia presents a bitter, tough, uncompromising, very much failed and sometimes exceedingly cruel struggle for freedom, self-respect and liberation. And this is what is said in the founding document of the PFLP, which Habash established in December 1967 after having despaired of Palestinian unity: 'The only weapon left to the masses in order to restore history and progress and truly defeat enemies and potential enemies in the long run is revolutionary violence... The only language that the enemy understands is the language of revolutionary violence.' (p 125)
"But this path too met with failure. 'The essential aim of hijacking airplanes,' wrote Habash, 'was to bring the Palestinian question out of anonymity and expose it to Western public opinion, because at that time it was unknown in Europe and in the United States. We wanted to undertake actions that would make an impression on the senses of the entire world... There was international ignorance regarding our suffering, in part due to the Zionist movement's monopoly on the mass media in the West.' (p 151) The PFLP plane hijackings in the early 1970s indeed achieved international recognition of the existence of the Palestinian problem, but so far this recognition hasn't led anywhere. The only practical outcome has been the security screenings at airports everywhere around the world - and thank you, George Habash. I read Galia's book on a number of flights, even though this isn't an airplane book, and I kept thinking that were it not for Habash my wanderings at airports would have been a lot shorter. In my heart I forgave him for that, for what other path was open to him and his defeated, humiliated and bleeding people?
"Not much is left of his ideas. What has come of the scientific idealism and the politicization of the masses, the class struggle and the anti-imperialism, the Maoism and of course the transformation of the struggle against Israel into an armed struggle, which according to the plans was supposed to develop from guerrilla warfare into a national war of liberation? Fifty years after the founding of the PFLP and 10 years after the death of its founder, what remains? Habash's successor, Abu Ali Mustafa, was assassinated by Israel in 2001; his successor's successor, Ahmad Saadat, has been in an Israeli prison since 2006 and very little remains of the PFLP.
"During all my decades covering the Israeli occupation, the most impressive figures I met belonged to the PFLP, but now not much remains except fragments of dreams. The PFLP is a negligible minority in intra-Palestinian politics, a movement that once thought to demand equal power with Fatah and its leader, Arafat. And the occupation? It's strong and thriving and its end looks further off than ever. If that isn't failure, what is?
"Yet Habash always knew how to draw lessons from failure after failure. How resonant today is his conclusion following the Naksa, the defeat in 1967 that broke his spirit, to the effect that 'the enemy of the Palestinians is colonialism, capitalism and the global monopolies... This is the enemy that gave rise to the Zionist movement, made a covenant with it, nurtured it, protected it and accompanied it until it brought about the establishment of the aggressive and fascistic State of Israel.' (p 179) From the Palestinian perspective, not much has changed. It used to be that this was read in Israel as hostile and shallow propaganda. Today it could be read otherwise.
"After the failure of 1967, Habash redefined the goal: the establishment of a democratic state in Palestine in which Arabs and Jews would live as citizens with equal rights. Today this idea, too, sounds a bit less strange and threatening than it did when Habash articulated it.
"On the 40th anniversary of Israel's founding, Habash wrote that Israel was galloping toward the Greater Land of Israel and that the differences between the right and the left in the country were becoming meaningless. How right he was about that, too. At the same time, he acknowledged Israel's success and the failure of the Palestinian national movement. And he was right about that, too.
"And one last correct prophecy, though a bitter one, that he made in 1981: 'The combination of loss of lives and economic damage has considerable influence on Israeli society, and when that happens there will be a political, social and ideological schism on the Israeli street and in the Zionist establishment between the moderate side that demands withdrawal from the occupied territories and the extremist side that continues to cling to Talmudic ideas and dreams. Given the hostility between these two sides, the Zionist entity will experience a real internal split.' (p 329)
"This has yet to happen.
"Imad Saba, a dear friend who was active in the PFLP and is in exile in Europe, urged me for years to try to meet with Habash and interview him for Haaretz. As far as is known, Habash never met with Israelis, except during the days of the Nakba. Many years ago in Amman I interviewed Hawatmeh, Habash's partner at the start and the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which split off from the PFLP in 1969. At the time of the interview, Habash was also living in Amman and was old and sick. I kept postponing my approach - until he died. When reading the book, I felt very sorry that I had not met this man."
Showing posts with label George Habash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Habash. Show all posts
Sunday, May 6, 2018
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Oriana Fallaci & George Habash: A Correction 3
My last two posts were predicated on the fact of Oriana Fallaci's having fabricated, in her 2004 Islamphobic rant, The Force of Reason, a whole new jihadi version of George Habash out of the interview she did with him for Life magazine back in 1970.
Having re-read that interview, I now believe that As'ad Abukhalil is absolutely correct: Fallaci was also in the business of putting words into Habash's mouth in 1970.
Two quotations in particular from the Life interview, which appeared under the heading A leader of the fedayeen: 'We want a war like the Vietnam war' in the June 22 issue, warrant attention:
"Countries like Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland, with many Jews among their population, allow their territory to be used as a base for the Jews to fight the Arabs. If Italy, for instance, is a base against the Arabs, the Arabs have a right to use Italy as a base against the Jews."
"The attacks of the Popular Front are based on quality, not quantity. We believe that to kill a Jew far from the battleground has more of an effect than killing 100 of them in battle; it attracts more attention."
When one compares these quotations (with their suggestion that Jews qua Jews, wherever they live, are potential targets for Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) guerillas) with what the PFLP were really saying at the time, their authenticity immediately becomes suspect.
For example, here's a quote from a PFLP booklet, Palestine: Towards a Democratic Solution. (The booklet, in English, was issued by the PFLP Information Department in 1970.):
"The Palestinian liberation movement is not a racial movement with aggressive intentions against the Jews. It is not directed against the Jews. Its object is to destroy the state of Israel as a military, political and economic establishment which rests on aggression, expansion and organic connection with imperialist interests in our homeland. It is against Zionism as an aggressive racial movement connected with imperialism which has exploited the sufferings of the Jews as a stepping stone for the promotion of its interests and the interests of imperialism in this part of the world, which possesses resources and provides a bridgehead into the countries of Africa and Asia. The aim of the Palestinian liberation movement is to establish a democratic national state in Palestine in which both Arabs and Jews will live as citizens with equal rights and obligations..." (pp 7-8)
Oriana Fallaci, therefore, appears to have perpetrated layer upon layer of fabrication as far as the figure of George Habash (and who knows how many others) is concerned, stretching across 4 decades. Perhaps we should consider the creation of an annual 'Oriana Fallaci Prize for Zionist Fabrication'.
Having re-read that interview, I now believe that As'ad Abukhalil is absolutely correct: Fallaci was also in the business of putting words into Habash's mouth in 1970.
Two quotations in particular from the Life interview, which appeared under the heading A leader of the fedayeen: 'We want a war like the Vietnam war' in the June 22 issue, warrant attention:
"Countries like Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland, with many Jews among their population, allow their territory to be used as a base for the Jews to fight the Arabs. If Italy, for instance, is a base against the Arabs, the Arabs have a right to use Italy as a base against the Jews."
"The attacks of the Popular Front are based on quality, not quantity. We believe that to kill a Jew far from the battleground has more of an effect than killing 100 of them in battle; it attracts more attention."
When one compares these quotations (with their suggestion that Jews qua Jews, wherever they live, are potential targets for Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) guerillas) with what the PFLP were really saying at the time, their authenticity immediately becomes suspect.
For example, here's a quote from a PFLP booklet, Palestine: Towards a Democratic Solution. (The booklet, in English, was issued by the PFLP Information Department in 1970.):
"The Palestinian liberation movement is not a racial movement with aggressive intentions against the Jews. It is not directed against the Jews. Its object is to destroy the state of Israel as a military, political and economic establishment which rests on aggression, expansion and organic connection with imperialist interests in our homeland. It is against Zionism as an aggressive racial movement connected with imperialism which has exploited the sufferings of the Jews as a stepping stone for the promotion of its interests and the interests of imperialism in this part of the world, which possesses resources and provides a bridgehead into the countries of Africa and Asia. The aim of the Palestinian liberation movement is to establish a democratic national state in Palestine in which both Arabs and Jews will live as citizens with equal rights and obligations..." (pp 7-8)
Oriana Fallaci, therefore, appears to have perpetrated layer upon layer of fabrication as far as the figure of George Habash (and who knows how many others) is concerned, stretching across 4 decades. Perhaps we should consider the creation of an annual 'Oriana Fallaci Prize for Zionist Fabrication'.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Oriana Fallaci & George Habash: A Correction 2
Further to yesterday's post on Fallaci and Habash, after sending As'ad Abukhalil a link, he has responded to my post on his website as follows:
"Oh no, I am not confused. Her profile in Life magazine was NOT an honest piece of reportage, and it was in that profile that she fabricated a quotation by Habash." (23/8/12)
Just to get to the bottom of the matter, here's Abukhalil's post of 4 February 2008, written in response to my original post on the subject, Fabricating Dr George Habash (2/2/08) (NB: The quotation comes from Fabricating Dr George Habash.):
The lies of Fallaci: "There's only one problem - Habash said nothing of the kind, and the text of Fallaci's 1970 Life interview with him gives her lunacy the lie. To begin with, the interview took place in 1970, not 1972, the Palestinian resistance having been purged from Jordan by July 1971. Then there's the nonsense about the gun. In the introduction to the interview, she wrote, 'We met at night in the suburbs of Amman, in a building attached to a refugee camp. The room contained one desk and a few chairs; outside the closed doors, armed fedayeen stood guard. Inside there were only 4 of us: Habash, myself, a photographer and the man who had driven us there'." (thanks Merc)
Now in my 2008 post, Fabricating Dr George Habash, I compared Fallaci's 1970 Life interview with Habash to the reworking of that interview in her 2004 book The Force of Reason, exposing the latter as an obvious forgery.
It may well be that Fallaci's original Life interview contained a fabricated quotation. I don't know. If that is the case, as Abukhalil contends, then what we're dealing with here amounts to a fabrication (Fallaci: 2004) of a fabrication (Fallaci: 1970). (I note, for example, that AbuKhalil, in his 18/3/12 comments on Daniel Byman's book A High Price: The Triumph & Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism, mentions that Byman cites "an invented quotation attributed falsely by the fanatical Zionist journalist Oriana Fallaci to George Habash." It would be interesting to know what that quotation is.)
I again refer those who are interested in the matter to my original 2/2/08 post Fabricating Dr George Habash.
"Oh no, I am not confused. Her profile in Life magazine was NOT an honest piece of reportage, and it was in that profile that she fabricated a quotation by Habash." (23/8/12)
Just to get to the bottom of the matter, here's Abukhalil's post of 4 February 2008, written in response to my original post on the subject, Fabricating Dr George Habash (2/2/08) (NB: The quotation comes from Fabricating Dr George Habash.):
The lies of Fallaci: "There's only one problem - Habash said nothing of the kind, and the text of Fallaci's 1970 Life interview with him gives her lunacy the lie. To begin with, the interview took place in 1970, not 1972, the Palestinian resistance having been purged from Jordan by July 1971. Then there's the nonsense about the gun. In the introduction to the interview, she wrote, 'We met at night in the suburbs of Amman, in a building attached to a refugee camp. The room contained one desk and a few chairs; outside the closed doors, armed fedayeen stood guard. Inside there were only 4 of us: Habash, myself, a photographer and the man who had driven us there'." (thanks Merc)
Now in my 2008 post, Fabricating Dr George Habash, I compared Fallaci's 1970 Life interview with Habash to the reworking of that interview in her 2004 book The Force of Reason, exposing the latter as an obvious forgery.
It may well be that Fallaci's original Life interview contained a fabricated quotation. I don't know. If that is the case, as Abukhalil contends, then what we're dealing with here amounts to a fabrication (Fallaci: 2004) of a fabrication (Fallaci: 1970). (I note, for example, that AbuKhalil, in his 18/3/12 comments on Daniel Byman's book A High Price: The Triumph & Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism, mentions that Byman cites "an invented quotation attributed falsely by the fanatical Zionist journalist Oriana Fallaci to George Habash." It would be interesting to know what that quotation is.)
I again refer those who are interested in the matter to my original 2/2/08 post Fabricating Dr George Habash.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Oriana Fallaci & George Habash: A Correction
In a recent comment on fabricated quotes by Zionists, As'ad Abukhalil wrote as follows:
"I was thinking about the recent Zionist fabrication of a quotation by Hasan Nasrallah which made it into a front page article in the New York Times. There is a long history of such fabrications: over the decades Zionists have fabricated quotations and attributed them to Nasser, to Ahmed Shuqayri, to Arafat and most recently to Hasan Nasrallah. Oriana Fallaci, the lousy, sleazy, trashy Italian journalist, fabricated a quotation by George Habash which made it into a Life magazine profile of him..." (Zionists & the fabrication of quotes by their enemies, Angry Arab News Service, 17/8/12)
Abukhalil was first alerted to Fallaci's Habash fabrication by me some years back. Unfortunately, however, in recalling the matter, he's confused her 1970 Life magazine profile of Habash, which appears to be an honest piece of reportage, with her later distortion of same in her book-length Islamophobic rant, The Force of Reason (2004).
I refer those who are interested in the full story to my 2/2/08 post Fabricating Dr George Habash.
"I was thinking about the recent Zionist fabrication of a quotation by Hasan Nasrallah which made it into a front page article in the New York Times. There is a long history of such fabrications: over the decades Zionists have fabricated quotations and attributed them to Nasser, to Ahmed Shuqayri, to Arafat and most recently to Hasan Nasrallah. Oriana Fallaci, the lousy, sleazy, trashy Italian journalist, fabricated a quotation by George Habash which made it into a Life magazine profile of him..." (Zionists & the fabrication of quotes by their enemies, Angry Arab News Service, 17/8/12)
Abukhalil was first alerted to Fallaci's Habash fabrication by me some years back. Unfortunately, however, in recalling the matter, he's confused her 1970 Life magazine profile of Habash, which appears to be an honest piece of reportage, with her later distortion of same in her book-length Islamophobic rant, The Force of Reason (2004).
I refer those who are interested in the full story to my 2/2/08 post Fabricating Dr George Habash.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Greg Sheridan On His Hind Legs
"Sir, Greg Sheridan's preaching morality is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." (With apologies to Dr Johnson)
Speaking of shills for Israel, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, foreign editor of Murdoch's Australian, is at it again:
"Australian taxpayers should not be forced to fund organisations with links to terrorists. This is the case with aid to at least one Palestinian group." (Don't give aid to groups with terrorist connections, 3/5/12)
Oh yes, Palestinians, terrorism. Mind if I nod off now?
"It's not against the law, but it's wrong. It's morally and politically objectionable. It ought to stop."
Hello? A faithful servant of the guy who's just been accused by a UK parliamentary committee of "wilful blindness," and deemed "not fit to run a major international company," lectures us about wrong and right? So where'd you get your chutzpah, Greg?
"The Australian government aid agency, Ausaid, gives millions of dollars, through the private charity World Vision, to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which works in the Gaza Strip."
The G-G-G-Gaza Strip? Home of the H-H-H-Hamas "death cult,"* right, Greg? (See my 21/5/09 post Repeat After Me.)
"The problem is..."
Stop right there. If a Zionist shill like Sheridan says it's a problem, then we all better sit up and take notice, right? Wrong.
"... the UAWC and its personnel have deep links with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is a proscribed terrorist organisation under the relevant UN list, Australian legislation and the legislation of numerous other countries. It is one of the central progenitors of modern terrorism."
I'm so glad you said "one of the central progenitors of modern terrorism," Greg. Could the others have included the Irgun and the Stern Gang, who were strutting their stuff when George Habash was still in short pants? (See my posts Breathtaking Zionist Hypocrisy (27/6/08) & Fabricating Dr George Habash (2/2/08))
Now where's all this froth and bubble coming from?
"[A] group of Israeli lawyers, Shurat HaDin [which] sent a complaint to Ausaid and World Vision charging that these bodies would be in breach of the law because support for UAWC could be construed as indirect support for a terrorist organisation."
Could be construed as..? Right. As a Zionist shill Greg knows all about putting a construction on things (Hamas death cult?) but not even he can get excited over this particular construction:
"I think that overstates the legal case...
However, even an Israeli fart would be taken seriously by Greg, so...
"... but I think the moral and political case against funding the UAWC is overwhelming."
Groan. But do not despair, even a Sheridan piece can occasionally yield a grain of truth:
"In the Palestinian territories, it can be difficult to work effectively on the ground and not rub shoulders with people who have terrorist connections."
Yes, Greg, Palestinians can hardly move from A to B without running a gauntlet of trigger-happy terrorists, quaintly labelled 'Israel Defence Forces'.
But hey, there's more!
"I asked Teresa Gambaro, the opposition's development assistance spokeswoman, about the UAWC."
Of course you did! I mean, she's been rambammed real good (2006/2012), hasn't she?
"It would appear that Ausaid is providing funds to World Vision to fund an organisation that has links to a terrorist organisation."
How lame is that? Seriously, Teresa really should stick to things she knows about - you know, like telling migrants how to queue and use deodorant. (See my 6/2/12 post Here We Go Again!)
Related Posts: 'On whose back are we fighting terrorism?' (15/7/08); Charities of Middle Eastern Appearance (2/8/08)
PS: According to The Australian Jewish News, veteran Israel-friendly senator, Michael Ronaldson (rambammed 2007), has written to foreign minister Bob Carr calling for an Ausaid investigation into Shurat HaDin's allegations to be made public and the holding of a "proper inquiry." Senator demands inquiry into 'terror' funding (4/5/12) ends with the following conclusive evidence that the UAWC is as guilty as hell: "According to Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, the UAWC does support the global Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions campaign against Israel."
Speaking of shills for Israel, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, foreign editor of Murdoch's Australian, is at it again:
"Australian taxpayers should not be forced to fund organisations with links to terrorists. This is the case with aid to at least one Palestinian group." (Don't give aid to groups with terrorist connections, 3/5/12)
Oh yes, Palestinians, terrorism. Mind if I nod off now?
"It's not against the law, but it's wrong. It's morally and politically objectionable. It ought to stop."
Hello? A faithful servant of the guy who's just been accused by a UK parliamentary committee of "wilful blindness," and deemed "not fit to run a major international company," lectures us about wrong and right? So where'd you get your chutzpah, Greg?
"The Australian government aid agency, Ausaid, gives millions of dollars, through the private charity World Vision, to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which works in the Gaza Strip."
The G-G-G-Gaza Strip? Home of the H-H-H-Hamas "death cult,"* right, Greg? (See my 21/5/09 post Repeat After Me.)
"The problem is..."
Stop right there. If a Zionist shill like Sheridan says it's a problem, then we all better sit up and take notice, right? Wrong.
"... the UAWC and its personnel have deep links with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is a proscribed terrorist organisation under the relevant UN list, Australian legislation and the legislation of numerous other countries. It is one of the central progenitors of modern terrorism."
I'm so glad you said "one of the central progenitors of modern terrorism," Greg. Could the others have included the Irgun and the Stern Gang, who were strutting their stuff when George Habash was still in short pants? (See my posts Breathtaking Zionist Hypocrisy (27/6/08) & Fabricating Dr George Habash (2/2/08))
Now where's all this froth and bubble coming from?
"[A] group of Israeli lawyers, Shurat HaDin [which] sent a complaint to Ausaid and World Vision charging that these bodies would be in breach of the law because support for UAWC could be construed as indirect support for a terrorist organisation."
Could be construed as..? Right. As a Zionist shill Greg knows all about putting a construction on things (Hamas death cult?) but not even he can get excited over this particular construction:
"I think that overstates the legal case...
However, even an Israeli fart would be taken seriously by Greg, so...
"... but I think the moral and political case against funding the UAWC is overwhelming."
Groan. But do not despair, even a Sheridan piece can occasionally yield a grain of truth:
"In the Palestinian territories, it can be difficult to work effectively on the ground and not rub shoulders with people who have terrorist connections."
Yes, Greg, Palestinians can hardly move from A to B without running a gauntlet of trigger-happy terrorists, quaintly labelled 'Israel Defence Forces'.
But hey, there's more!
"I asked Teresa Gambaro, the opposition's development assistance spokeswoman, about the UAWC."
Of course you did! I mean, she's been rambammed real good (2006/2012), hasn't she?
"It would appear that Ausaid is providing funds to World Vision to fund an organisation that has links to a terrorist organisation."
How lame is that? Seriously, Teresa really should stick to things she knows about - you know, like telling migrants how to queue and use deodorant. (See my 6/2/12 post Here We Go Again!)
Related Posts: 'On whose back are we fighting terrorism?' (15/7/08); Charities of Middle Eastern Appearance (2/8/08)
PS: According to The Australian Jewish News, veteran Israel-friendly senator, Michael Ronaldson (rambammed 2007), has written to foreign minister Bob Carr calling for an Ausaid investigation into Shurat HaDin's allegations to be made public and the holding of a "proper inquiry." Senator demands inquiry into 'terror' funding (4/5/12) ends with the following conclusive evidence that the UAWC is as guilty as hell: "According to Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, the UAWC does support the global Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions campaign against Israel."
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Fabricating Dr George Habash
The founder and former leader of the leftist Palestinian resistance organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Dr George Habash, died of a heart attack in Jordan on January 26 at the age of 82.
Not surprisingly, he got very short shrift in The Australian: Notorious Palestine 'defender' dies at 81 (28/1/08). But things weren't much better over at Fairfax either. When The Sydney Morning Herald decided to run The New York Times obituary (27/1/08) on him, whoever pared it down left out the vital contextualising paragraphs of the original. The header, Dead at 82: Palestinian marxist who took terrorism to the sky (28/1/08) said it all.
On the cutting room floor lay the following paragraphs, the 'why' of Dr Habash, without which the reader can be forgiven for thinking that he was simply off on some mad, aerial frolic:
"A number of accounts say Mr Habash was born in Lydda, Palestine, which is now Lod, Israel. The son of a...[Greek Orthodox] grain merchant, he was known as a hard-working and serious student...He studied medicine at the American University in Beirut, but his studies were interrupted in 1948 when he left...to help his family flee Palestine as violence deepened between Arabs and Jews. That experience of the nascent Israeli army driving the Palestinians from their homes had a profound effect on the young medical student, who began organizing Palestinians as soon as he returned to medical school..."
To understand George Habash and his people one must understand 1948 - but of course that is a temporal bridge too far for our native ms media hacks. The NYT's pale reference to 1948 notwithstanding, its obituary is still woefully inadequate, and one wonders why it is that we recycle so much American media hackery.
An infinitely more erudite, informative and objective assessment of the man, by veteran British Middle East correspondent and author, David Hirst, appeared on the website of The Guardian (27/1/08):
"In his later years, George Habash...was often known as 'the conscience of the Palestine revolution'. He had been one of the very earliest founding fathers of that movement, which pioneered armed struggle and revolutionary violence as the sole means of liberating Palestine. Since it first emerged, in the 1960s as a potent new force on the Middle East stage, the movement suffered all manner of vicissitudes, and its ambitions were eventually reduced, almost out of recognition, to an endless series of surrenders to the exigencies of Pax Americana. But, out of sincerity, rather than the opportunism which has tainted other, lesser radicals of his kind, 'Al Hakim' (the doctor or wise man) remained faithful to his original conviction that by force - and force alone - could the Palestinians recover their rights."
After charting Habash's career through to the expulsion of the Palestinian resistance movement from Jordan in 1971, Hirst concludes:
"Moving to Beirut, along with the rest of the PLO, Habash persisted in some of the more spectacular, publicity-seeking acts of violence - with the 1972 massacre of tourists at Lod (once Lydda and now Ben Gurion) Airport by Japanese Red Army terrorists as perhaps the most successful, if ignoble, of them - but to less and less affect. The whole guerilla movement was moving away from random terrorism of that kind, and, at the same time, looking more and more to diplomacy, first as a supplement to, then as a substitute for, military action. Habash, the radical, made it his business to resist every new stage of this growing moderation. But when, at the Palestine National Council (PNC) meeting in 1988, Arafat made his historic offer of a two-state solution to the Palestine problem, Habash did not walk out of the PLO altogether. Nor did he, 3 years later, when the PNC agreed to go to the 1991 Middle East peace conference in Madrid. He said he would respect the will of the majority, however fiercely he opposed it. That loyalty to Palestinian national unity, along with his personal modesty and simplicity, made him perhaps the most liked of the small, still surviving band of the revolution's original chiefs. He stood down as PFLP leader in 2000, 4 years before the death of Yasser Arafat, and 6 years before the Islamicists of Hamas won their victory in the Palestinian election. Pax Americana meanwhile continues to make paltry progress in its regional diplomacy, and many of those who now so grudgingly support it may well in due course conclude that the 'conscience of the revolution' had always been right in opposing it - and the whole concept of Palestinian moderation."
Now there's food for thought!
I can't help but wonder if this staunchly secular, Christian Palestinian revolutionary ever became aware in his later years of his makeover as a forerunner of Osama Bin Laden at the hands of the late, deranged Italian Islamophobe and 'journalist', Oriana Fallaci. Did he, I wonder, ever remember the interview she conducted with him back in 1970 in Amman, or read it in the now defunct Life magazine, under the heading: A leader of the fedayeen: 'We want a war like the Vietnam war'? (The opening sentence reads: "The man I was facing was responsible for most of the acts of terror the Arabs have committed in Europe.")
Certainly, Islamofabulist Fallaci did - sort of. According to the account in her 2004 book-length rant, The Force of Reason, she interviewed him in Jordan in 1972, "while a conscientious bodyguard protected him by pointing his sub-machine gun at my head. Habash explained to me that the Arabs' enemy was not Israel alone: it was the whole West. Among the targets to hit he cited in fact Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland...'Our revolution is part of the world revolution. It is not confined to the reconquest of Palestine...The time has come to admit that we want a war like the war in Vietnam. That we want another Vietnam, and not only for Palestine but for all the Arab countries'...The Palestine problem is not an aside problem. A problem separated from the Arab Nation's realities. Palestinians are part of the Arab Nation. Therefore the entire Arab Nation must go to war against Europe and America. It must unleash a war against the West. And it will. America and Europe don't know that we Arabs are just at the beginning of the beginning. That the best has yet to come. That from now on there will be no peace for the West...To advance step by step. Millimetre by millimetre. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet'."
She claims that at the time, she did not grasp the full import of his words, but now realises that he "also meant the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war waged by stealing a country [Europe!] from its citizens...In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism...The Islamic holidays, the 5 prayers' interruptions, the halal meat, the face covered also on the identity papers...The Islamic marriage, the polygamy, the stoning of women..." (pp 131-133)
Before the century is out, Fallaci frets, the Mediterranean Sea could become an Islamic lake, as an Islamized Europe to the north joins the Islamic world to the south to form the jihadist global Islamic umma.
There's only one problem - Habash said nothing of the kind, and the text of Fallaci's 1970 Life interview with him gives her lunacy the lie. To begin with, the interview took place in 1970, not 1972, the Palestinian resistance having been purged from Jordan by July 1971. Then there's the nonsense about the gun.
In the introduction to the 1970 interview she had written, "We met at night in the suburbs of Amman, in a building attached to a refugee camp. The room contained one desk and a few chairs; outside the closed doors, armed fedayeen stood guard. Inside there were only 4 of us: Habash, myself, a photographer and the man who had driven us there."
As for the words she alleges he uttered in The Force of Reason, Habash is quoted in the Life interview as saying that, "Our enemy is Israel, plus the Zionist movement that controls many of the countries which support Israel, plus imperialism. I mean specifically British imperialism from 1918, and American imperialism from 1948 on. If we had to face Israel alone, the problem would have been almost a simple one: but we have to stand against whoever supports Israel economically, militarily, politically, ideologically. This means the capitalist countries that have conceived Israel and are now using it as a bulwark to protect their interests in Arabia. They include the US, and almost every country in Europe."
In response to her question, "How far are you planning to go? Do you want to make war on three-fourths of the planet?", Habash replies: "What we want is a war like the war in Vietnam...not just in Palestine, but throughout the Arab world. Palestinians are part of the Arab nation, and what we need is for the whole Arab nation to enter the war; which will occur anyway, within 3 or 4 years [Habash's timing was prophetically correct: 3 years later in October, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a war to reclaim occupied territory in the Sinai and the Golan Heights]. By then, if not before, the revolutionary forces in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon will rise to our side in a total war. Our struggle has barely begun, the worst is yet to come. And it is right for Europe and America to be warned now that there will be no peace for them until there is justice for Palestine."
Habash went on to reassure Ignorantissima (as the Italian newspaper, La Republica, called her) that "we will do our best not to harm Europeans," and stressed that "The goal of our struggle is not only that of restoring the nationhood of Palestine, but to transform it into a socialist state as well."
In explaining the essence of guerilla warfare to her, Habash is quoted as saying: "The main point is to select targets where success is 100% assured. To harrass, to upset, to work on the nerves through unexpected small damages. Brute force is out; this is a thinking man's game. Especially when one is as poor as the Popular Front is. It would be silly for us to even think of waging a regular war; imperialism is too powerful and Israel is too strong. The only way to destroy them is to give a little blow here, a little blow there; to advance step by step, inch by inch, for years, for decades, with determination, doggedness, patience."
It is clear throughout that Habash's models are China, Cuba and Vietnam, that his strategy, as Che Guevara had enjoined, is "To make two, three, many Vietnams," and that his primary focus is the liberation of Palestine. Fallaci's 2004 revision of her 1970 interview with him, to fit her twisted and paranoid Islamophobic fantasies, is nothing less than grotesque.
Fallaci's 1970 interview also makes clear just what it was that launched Habash on his revolutionary career - the Lydda death march of 1948, one of the many war crimes that make up the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) about which our ms media are supremely ignorant. Even here, however, Fallaci can't get her dates right, substituting 1967 for 1948. Habash is speaking: "Then it was 1967 [sic: 1948] and they [the Israelis] came to Lydda and...I don't know how to explain this...what this still means for us not to have a home, not to have a nation, or anyone who cares...They forced us to flee. It is a picture that haunts me and that I'll never forget. Thirty thousand human beings walking, weeping... screaming in terror...women with babies in their arms and children tugging at their skirts...and the Israeli soldiers pushing them on with their guns. Some people fell by the wayside, some never got up again. It was terrible. One thinks: this isn't life, this isn't human. Once you have seen this, your heart and your brain are transformed."
Unfortunately, thanks to the recycling ad nauseam of Fallaci's febrile fantasies on innumerable crank websites, it is the fabricated Habash, rather than the real, that most people will be exposed to.
Not surprisingly, he got very short shrift in The Australian: Notorious Palestine 'defender' dies at 81 (28/1/08). But things weren't much better over at Fairfax either. When The Sydney Morning Herald decided to run The New York Times obituary (27/1/08) on him, whoever pared it down left out the vital contextualising paragraphs of the original. The header, Dead at 82: Palestinian marxist who took terrorism to the sky (28/1/08) said it all.
On the cutting room floor lay the following paragraphs, the 'why' of Dr Habash, without which the reader can be forgiven for thinking that he was simply off on some mad, aerial frolic:
"A number of accounts say Mr Habash was born in Lydda, Palestine, which is now Lod, Israel. The son of a...[Greek Orthodox] grain merchant, he was known as a hard-working and serious student...He studied medicine at the American University in Beirut, but his studies were interrupted in 1948 when he left...to help his family flee Palestine as violence deepened between Arabs and Jews. That experience of the nascent Israeli army driving the Palestinians from their homes had a profound effect on the young medical student, who began organizing Palestinians as soon as he returned to medical school..."
To understand George Habash and his people one must understand 1948 - but of course that is a temporal bridge too far for our native ms media hacks. The NYT's pale reference to 1948 notwithstanding, its obituary is still woefully inadequate, and one wonders why it is that we recycle so much American media hackery.
An infinitely more erudite, informative and objective assessment of the man, by veteran British Middle East correspondent and author, David Hirst, appeared on the website of The Guardian (27/1/08):
"In his later years, George Habash...was often known as 'the conscience of the Palestine revolution'. He had been one of the very earliest founding fathers of that movement, which pioneered armed struggle and revolutionary violence as the sole means of liberating Palestine. Since it first emerged, in the 1960s as a potent new force on the Middle East stage, the movement suffered all manner of vicissitudes, and its ambitions were eventually reduced, almost out of recognition, to an endless series of surrenders to the exigencies of Pax Americana. But, out of sincerity, rather than the opportunism which has tainted other, lesser radicals of his kind, 'Al Hakim' (the doctor or wise man) remained faithful to his original conviction that by force - and force alone - could the Palestinians recover their rights."
After charting Habash's career through to the expulsion of the Palestinian resistance movement from Jordan in 1971, Hirst concludes:
"Moving to Beirut, along with the rest of the PLO, Habash persisted in some of the more spectacular, publicity-seeking acts of violence - with the 1972 massacre of tourists at Lod (once Lydda and now Ben Gurion) Airport by Japanese Red Army terrorists as perhaps the most successful, if ignoble, of them - but to less and less affect. The whole guerilla movement was moving away from random terrorism of that kind, and, at the same time, looking more and more to diplomacy, first as a supplement to, then as a substitute for, military action. Habash, the radical, made it his business to resist every new stage of this growing moderation. But when, at the Palestine National Council (PNC) meeting in 1988, Arafat made his historic offer of a two-state solution to the Palestine problem, Habash did not walk out of the PLO altogether. Nor did he, 3 years later, when the PNC agreed to go to the 1991 Middle East peace conference in Madrid. He said he would respect the will of the majority, however fiercely he opposed it. That loyalty to Palestinian national unity, along with his personal modesty and simplicity, made him perhaps the most liked of the small, still surviving band of the revolution's original chiefs. He stood down as PFLP leader in 2000, 4 years before the death of Yasser Arafat, and 6 years before the Islamicists of Hamas won their victory in the Palestinian election. Pax Americana meanwhile continues to make paltry progress in its regional diplomacy, and many of those who now so grudgingly support it may well in due course conclude that the 'conscience of the revolution' had always been right in opposing it - and the whole concept of Palestinian moderation."
Now there's food for thought!
I can't help but wonder if this staunchly secular, Christian Palestinian revolutionary ever became aware in his later years of his makeover as a forerunner of Osama Bin Laden at the hands of the late, deranged Italian Islamophobe and 'journalist', Oriana Fallaci. Did he, I wonder, ever remember the interview she conducted with him back in 1970 in Amman, or read it in the now defunct Life magazine, under the heading: A leader of the fedayeen: 'We want a war like the Vietnam war'? (The opening sentence reads: "The man I was facing was responsible for most of the acts of terror the Arabs have committed in Europe.")
Certainly, Islamofabulist Fallaci did - sort of. According to the account in her 2004 book-length rant, The Force of Reason, she interviewed him in Jordan in 1972, "while a conscientious bodyguard protected him by pointing his sub-machine gun at my head. Habash explained to me that the Arabs' enemy was not Israel alone: it was the whole West. Among the targets to hit he cited in fact Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland...'Our revolution is part of the world revolution. It is not confined to the reconquest of Palestine...The time has come to admit that we want a war like the war in Vietnam. That we want another Vietnam, and not only for Palestine but for all the Arab countries'...The Palestine problem is not an aside problem. A problem separated from the Arab Nation's realities. Palestinians are part of the Arab Nation. Therefore the entire Arab Nation must go to war against Europe and America. It must unleash a war against the West. And it will. America and Europe don't know that we Arabs are just at the beginning of the beginning. That the best has yet to come. That from now on there will be no peace for the West...To advance step by step. Millimetre by millimetre. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet'."
She claims that at the time, she did not grasp the full import of his words, but now realises that he "also meant the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war waged by stealing a country [Europe!] from its citizens...In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism...The Islamic holidays, the 5 prayers' interruptions, the halal meat, the face covered also on the identity papers...The Islamic marriage, the polygamy, the stoning of women..." (pp 131-133)
Before the century is out, Fallaci frets, the Mediterranean Sea could become an Islamic lake, as an Islamized Europe to the north joins the Islamic world to the south to form the jihadist global Islamic umma.
There's only one problem - Habash said nothing of the kind, and the text of Fallaci's 1970 Life interview with him gives her lunacy the lie. To begin with, the interview took place in 1970, not 1972, the Palestinian resistance having been purged from Jordan by July 1971. Then there's the nonsense about the gun.
In the introduction to the 1970 interview she had written, "We met at night in the suburbs of Amman, in a building attached to a refugee camp. The room contained one desk and a few chairs; outside the closed doors, armed fedayeen stood guard. Inside there were only 4 of us: Habash, myself, a photographer and the man who had driven us there."
As for the words she alleges he uttered in The Force of Reason, Habash is quoted in the Life interview as saying that, "Our enemy is Israel, plus the Zionist movement that controls many of the countries which support Israel, plus imperialism. I mean specifically British imperialism from 1918, and American imperialism from 1948 on. If we had to face Israel alone, the problem would have been almost a simple one: but we have to stand against whoever supports Israel economically, militarily, politically, ideologically. This means the capitalist countries that have conceived Israel and are now using it as a bulwark to protect their interests in Arabia. They include the US, and almost every country in Europe."
In response to her question, "How far are you planning to go? Do you want to make war on three-fourths of the planet?", Habash replies: "What we want is a war like the war in Vietnam...not just in Palestine, but throughout the Arab world. Palestinians are part of the Arab nation, and what we need is for the whole Arab nation to enter the war; which will occur anyway, within 3 or 4 years [Habash's timing was prophetically correct: 3 years later in October, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a war to reclaim occupied territory in the Sinai and the Golan Heights]. By then, if not before, the revolutionary forces in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon will rise to our side in a total war. Our struggle has barely begun, the worst is yet to come. And it is right for Europe and America to be warned now that there will be no peace for them until there is justice for Palestine."
Habash went on to reassure Ignorantissima (as the Italian newspaper, La Republica, called her) that "we will do our best not to harm Europeans," and stressed that "The goal of our struggle is not only that of restoring the nationhood of Palestine, but to transform it into a socialist state as well."
In explaining the essence of guerilla warfare to her, Habash is quoted as saying: "The main point is to select targets where success is 100% assured. To harrass, to upset, to work on the nerves through unexpected small damages. Brute force is out; this is a thinking man's game. Especially when one is as poor as the Popular Front is. It would be silly for us to even think of waging a regular war; imperialism is too powerful and Israel is too strong. The only way to destroy them is to give a little blow here, a little blow there; to advance step by step, inch by inch, for years, for decades, with determination, doggedness, patience."
It is clear throughout that Habash's models are China, Cuba and Vietnam, that his strategy, as Che Guevara had enjoined, is "To make two, three, many Vietnams," and that his primary focus is the liberation of Palestine. Fallaci's 2004 revision of her 1970 interview with him, to fit her twisted and paranoid Islamophobic fantasies, is nothing less than grotesque.
Fallaci's 1970 interview also makes clear just what it was that launched Habash on his revolutionary career - the Lydda death march of 1948, one of the many war crimes that make up the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) about which our ms media are supremely ignorant. Even here, however, Fallaci can't get her dates right, substituting 1967 for 1948. Habash is speaking: "Then it was 1967 [sic: 1948] and they [the Israelis] came to Lydda and...I don't know how to explain this...what this still means for us not to have a home, not to have a nation, or anyone who cares...They forced us to flee. It is a picture that haunts me and that I'll never forget. Thirty thousand human beings walking, weeping... screaming in terror...women with babies in their arms and children tugging at their skirts...and the Israeli soldiers pushing them on with their guns. Some people fell by the wayside, some never got up again. It was terrible. One thinks: this isn't life, this isn't human. Once you have seen this, your heart and your brain are transformed."
Unfortunately, thanks to the recycling ad nauseam of Fallaci's febrile fantasies on innumerable crank websites, it is the fabricated Habash, rather than the real, that most people will be exposed to.
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