In support of the contention that age doesn't automatically confer wisdom, I offer the following reflection by birthday boy, Uri Avnery:
"The Arabs were here before we arrived... I still believe that the early Zionists made a terrible mistake when they did not try to combine their aspirations with the hopes of the Palestinian population. Realpolitik told them to embrace their Turkish oppressors instead. Sad. The best description of the conflict was given by the historian Isaac Deutscher: a man lives in an upper floor of a house that catches fire. In desperation the man jumps out of the window and lands on a passerby down below, who is grievously injured and becomes an invalid. Between the two, there erupts a deadly conflict. Who is right?" (A confession: Uri Avnery turns 93, antiwar.com, 8/9/17)
The first 3 sentences indicate either that Avnery has no real understanding of the settler-colonial nature of the Zionist movement or, more likely, is merely having a lend of us. Beyond sad.
Given its settler-colonial nature, at no stage in its history could the Zionist movement have given any serious thought to "combining their aspirations with the hopes of the Palestinian population."
Just to drive home the point, let me quote from an early Zionist document which a reader of this blog kindly referred me to recently. The author of Our Program, Menachem Ussishkin, Secretary of the First Zionist Congress (1897) and head of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) from 1923 until 1941, wrote in 1904:
"In order to create... a Jewish state in Palestine, it is above all necessary that the whole soil of Palestine... should be in the possession of Jews... But how is land obtained in any country? Only in one of the following three ways: by force, that is, by depriving the possessor of his property by violent means; by forced sale, that is, by expropriation (the taking of private property for public purposes) by the state; or by voluntary sale. Which of these three means is applicable in Palestine? The first is entirely excluded. For that we are too weak... "
Not excluded, mind you, because it was morally repugnant, but excluded because the Zionist movement had yet to take up arms and ethnically cleanse Palestine. Ussishkin, btw, would go on, in 1936, to advocate that the Palestinian Arabs be transferred to Iraq.
As for Avnery's "best description of the conflict [with the Palestinians]," Deutscher's fable of the falling man, see Christopher Hitchens' demolition job on that, quoted in my 27/2/14 post George Brandis, 'Hitch 22' and Some Burning Questions.
Showing posts with label JNF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JNF. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Uproot Nation
Here's the Jewish National Fund's latest campaign ad, as seen at jwire.com.au:
JNF Blue Box Pesach Campaign 2017
Help Ethiopian Jews find their roots
Donate Now
The irony is breathtaking.
First, Israel uproots thousands of Ethiopian Jews in the 80s and 90s, and airlifts them to the usurped homeland of the uprooted Palestinians, where, of course, they have no roots. Now it's soliciting money to help these same uprooted Ethiopians find - wait for it - their roots.
JNF Blue Box Pesach Campaign 2017
Help Ethiopian Jews find their roots
Donate Now
The irony is breathtaking.
First, Israel uproots thousands of Ethiopian Jews in the 80s and 90s, and airlifts them to the usurped homeland of the uprooted Palestinians, where, of course, they have no roots. Now it's soliciting money to help these same uprooted Ethiopians find - wait for it - their roots.
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
You Wouldn't Read About It
Hm...
"Australia's eight most active environmental groups with tax-exempt status pulled in $83 million last year and received almost three quarters of a billion dollars in the past decade... The use of tax-exempt charity status to fund environmental challenges to developments through the courts and public campaigns has become a major concern within the government, the Australian Taxation Office as well as in the US. Environmental groups and US-based billion-dollar foundations have used charity status to help fund their actions, funnelling funds to groups without tax exemptions and hiding donors." (Green groups' $685m windfall over decade, Joe Kelly/Dennis Shanahan, The Australian, 1/11/16)
Uh-huh... so environmental groups who are trying to prevent Australia being raped, pillaged and plundered by assorted corporate rapists, pillagers and plunderers need to be stopped. And who are they? I hear you ask.
The guilty-as-hell are all there in The Australian as follows: Greenpeace, WWF Australia, Friends of the Earth Australia, The Sunrise Project, Lock the Gate Alliance, 350 Australia, ACF and the Wilderness Society.
But wait, where's the tax-exempt 'environmental charity', JNF Environmental Association of Australia Inc?* Why aren't they on the Murdoch hitlist?
Well, if I may hazard a guess, it's probably because they're off doing sterling work... in Israel.
For example:
"An upgraded clubhouse for lone soldiers who have immigrated to Israel without their parents has been established in Raanana with the support of JNF Australia and the Bolot family of Sydney, Auckland and London." (Bolot family supports lone soldier clubhouse, jwire.com.au, 9/3/16)
Or maybe they're hosting hot Israeli generals at their Gala Dinners who talk about cool things like the 1976 "Entebbe rescue operation" and how it "symbolises the best of the IDF, its courage, its values and its integrity." (Mofaz addresses JNF Gala Dinner, jwire.com.au, 12/9/16)
[*See my 21/5/15 post The Last 'Australian Environmental Charity' Left Standing?]
"Australia's eight most active environmental groups with tax-exempt status pulled in $83 million last year and received almost three quarters of a billion dollars in the past decade... The use of tax-exempt charity status to fund environmental challenges to developments through the courts and public campaigns has become a major concern within the government, the Australian Taxation Office as well as in the US. Environmental groups and US-based billion-dollar foundations have used charity status to help fund their actions, funnelling funds to groups without tax exemptions and hiding donors." (Green groups' $685m windfall over decade, Joe Kelly/Dennis Shanahan, The Australian, 1/11/16)
Uh-huh... so environmental groups who are trying to prevent Australia being raped, pillaged and plundered by assorted corporate rapists, pillagers and plunderers need to be stopped. And who are they? I hear you ask.
The guilty-as-hell are all there in The Australian as follows: Greenpeace, WWF Australia, Friends of the Earth Australia, The Sunrise Project, Lock the Gate Alliance, 350 Australia, ACF and the Wilderness Society.
But wait, where's the tax-exempt 'environmental charity', JNF Environmental Association of Australia Inc?* Why aren't they on the Murdoch hitlist?
Well, if I may hazard a guess, it's probably because they're off doing sterling work... in Israel.
For example:
"An upgraded clubhouse for lone soldiers who have immigrated to Israel without their parents has been established in Raanana with the support of JNF Australia and the Bolot family of Sydney, Auckland and London." (Bolot family supports lone soldier clubhouse, jwire.com.au, 9/3/16)
Or maybe they're hosting hot Israeli generals at their Gala Dinners who talk about cool things like the 1976 "Entebbe rescue operation" and how it "symbolises the best of the IDF, its courage, its values and its integrity." (Mofaz addresses JNF Gala Dinner, jwire.com.au, 12/9/16)
[*See my 21/5/15 post The Last 'Australian Environmental Charity' Left Standing?]
Thursday, May 21, 2015
The Last 'Australian Environmental Charity' Left Standing?
One to watch:
"Any move by the Coalition to narrow the definition of what constitutes an 'environmental organisation' - and strip them of their charitable status as a result - would represent an 'attack on Australian democracy', legal experts have warned. Donors to 600 Australian environment groups, including Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), face losing the right to deduct donations from their tax as a parliamentary committee investigates the register of organisations administered by the federal environment department. Campaigners believe the inquiry is being driven by the mining industry." (Environmental groups find there's no charity in politics, Heath Aston, Sydney Morning Herald, 19/5/15)
That'd be right.
But whichever environmental organisations lose their place on the Register of Environmental Organisations, and hence their tax-deductability status, you can be sure that one particular 'environmental' organisation will remain unscathed, namely, the Jewish National Fund Environmental Association of Australia Inc.
A most interesting outfit this one. The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was created at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1901, long before environmentalism appeared on the scene.
Back then, it was simply an integral component of the British-backed Zionist settler-colonial invasion, occupation, and colonisation of Arab Palestine, which began in earnest with the Balfour Declaration of November, 1917 and continues to this day with Palestine almost wiped off the map, and the Palestinian people living either in exile or under occupation.
The JNF's founding details clearly mark it out as a tool of Zionist settlement:
"(1) Ownership of the 'Jewish National Fund' was to be vested in 'the Jewish people'. (2) Administration of the Fund was to be by the Small Actions Committee (executive of the World Zionist Organization). (3) Proceeds of the Fund were to 'be used only for the purchase of land in Palestine and Syria'. (4) No expenditures were to be effected until 'a total to be determined by the Congress had been achieved'; 200,000 pounds was suggested. (5) Of this suggested total, one-half could be used for the purchase of land, the remainder to be held to accumulate interest; 'until colonization on a large scale is possible', annual collections could... be dispersed similarly." (The Jewish National Fund, Walter Lehn, 1988, p 21)
These days, however, with green-washing all the go, the JNF defines itself, in its mission statement, as the 'Environmental arm of the Jewish people. Promoting an improved environment in Israel through support from Jews throughout the world.'
Exactly what this arm of Zionist colonisation and apartheid is doing on a register of Australian environmental organisations is just another of life's little mysteries.
That any parliamentary/bureaucratic tinkering with definitions might prove uncomfortable to the JNFEAA may be gleaned from the following submission, dated 7/12/11, sent by Robert P. Schneider, CEO of JNF & JNFEA to Treasury's Philanthropy and Exemptions Unit. In Re: Proposed introduction of a statutory definition of 'Charity', we find the following cute attempt to internationalise this most national of organisations:
"The JNF is the Australian arm of the Jewish National Fund, an international environmental agency headquartered in Israel but with supporting offices in some 40 countries around the world... The organisation... is entrusted with the conservation of land and natural resources in Israel but through the expertise it has gained over the years - in particular in afforestation and water conservation - this expertise is shared internationally through the organisation's affiliation to world conservation bodies as well as through its various offices around the world including Australia."
The submission goes on to plead that "a body whose dominant purpose is charitable... not be precluded from being considered 'charitable' by reason only of the fact that it provides benefits in accordance with that purpose in an overseas country or countries." (PDF, treasury.gov.au)
Or countries? Pull the other!
And just in case you're wondering what those benefits might entail, here's the hard-sell from the latest full-page JNF add in the Australian Jewish News (20/3/15):
2015 JNF BLUE BOX PESACH CAMPAIGN: HELP KIDS LEARN FOR A BETTER FUTURE
"Every child deserves the right to live, learn and play without fear. So please help us create new Garden Classrooms for children in Israel's South. These children endure financial hardship and have been traumatised by years of rocket fire from Gaza. The Garden Classroom will become a haven for learning and activity and will give these vulnerable children an opportunity for educational and emotional development."
It's all in the labeling, you see: classrooms are classrooms are classrooms, but call them 'garden classrooms', and they somehow become 'environmental' and can be paid for by untaxed Australian dollars.
[FYI: Read my JNF backgrounder, A Certain Jewish Tree Planting Group (14/6/08).]
"Any move by the Coalition to narrow the definition of what constitutes an 'environmental organisation' - and strip them of their charitable status as a result - would represent an 'attack on Australian democracy', legal experts have warned. Donors to 600 Australian environment groups, including Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), face losing the right to deduct donations from their tax as a parliamentary committee investigates the register of organisations administered by the federal environment department. Campaigners believe the inquiry is being driven by the mining industry." (Environmental groups find there's no charity in politics, Heath Aston, Sydney Morning Herald, 19/5/15)
That'd be right.
But whichever environmental organisations lose their place on the Register of Environmental Organisations, and hence their tax-deductability status, you can be sure that one particular 'environmental' organisation will remain unscathed, namely, the Jewish National Fund Environmental Association of Australia Inc.
A most interesting outfit this one. The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was created at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1901, long before environmentalism appeared on the scene.
Back then, it was simply an integral component of the British-backed Zionist settler-colonial invasion, occupation, and colonisation of Arab Palestine, which began in earnest with the Balfour Declaration of November, 1917 and continues to this day with Palestine almost wiped off the map, and the Palestinian people living either in exile or under occupation.
The JNF's founding details clearly mark it out as a tool of Zionist settlement:
"(1) Ownership of the 'Jewish National Fund' was to be vested in 'the Jewish people'. (2) Administration of the Fund was to be by the Small Actions Committee (executive of the World Zionist Organization). (3) Proceeds of the Fund were to 'be used only for the purchase of land in Palestine and Syria'. (4) No expenditures were to be effected until 'a total to be determined by the Congress had been achieved'; 200,000 pounds was suggested. (5) Of this suggested total, one-half could be used for the purchase of land, the remainder to be held to accumulate interest; 'until colonization on a large scale is possible', annual collections could... be dispersed similarly." (The Jewish National Fund, Walter Lehn, 1988, p 21)
These days, however, with green-washing all the go, the JNF defines itself, in its mission statement, as the 'Environmental arm of the Jewish people. Promoting an improved environment in Israel through support from Jews throughout the world.'
Exactly what this arm of Zionist colonisation and apartheid is doing on a register of Australian environmental organisations is just another of life's little mysteries.
That any parliamentary/bureaucratic tinkering with definitions might prove uncomfortable to the JNFEAA may be gleaned from the following submission, dated 7/12/11, sent by Robert P. Schneider, CEO of JNF & JNFEA to Treasury's Philanthropy and Exemptions Unit. In Re: Proposed introduction of a statutory definition of 'Charity', we find the following cute attempt to internationalise this most national of organisations:
"The JNF is the Australian arm of the Jewish National Fund, an international environmental agency headquartered in Israel but with supporting offices in some 40 countries around the world... The organisation... is entrusted with the conservation of land and natural resources in Israel but through the expertise it has gained over the years - in particular in afforestation and water conservation - this expertise is shared internationally through the organisation's affiliation to world conservation bodies as well as through its various offices around the world including Australia."
The submission goes on to plead that "a body whose dominant purpose is charitable... not be precluded from being considered 'charitable' by reason only of the fact that it provides benefits in accordance with that purpose in an overseas country or countries." (PDF, treasury.gov.au)
Or countries? Pull the other!
And just in case you're wondering what those benefits might entail, here's the hard-sell from the latest full-page JNF add in the Australian Jewish News (20/3/15):
2015 JNF BLUE BOX PESACH CAMPAIGN: HELP KIDS LEARN FOR A BETTER FUTURE
"Every child deserves the right to live, learn and play without fear. So please help us create new Garden Classrooms for children in Israel's South. These children endure financial hardship and have been traumatised by years of rocket fire from Gaza. The Garden Classroom will become a haven for learning and activity and will give these vulnerable children an opportunity for educational and emotional development."
It's all in the labeling, you see: classrooms are classrooms are classrooms, but call them 'garden classrooms', and they somehow become 'environmental' and can be paid for by untaxed Australian dollars.
[FYI: Read my JNF backgrounder, A Certain Jewish Tree Planting Group (14/6/08).]
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Ach Mein Gott!
Truly, Zionist stuff and nonsense gets more gob-smackingly bizarre by the day.
Take the full-page Jewish National Fund (JNF) ad in this week's (10/10) Australian Jewish News, for example. It's simply beyond parody:
SUPPORTING ISRAEL'S FRONTLINE COMMUNITIES IN THE SOUTH
JNF NSW ANNUAL DINNER
Tuesday 28th October 2014
GUEST SPEAKERS:
Dr BERND WOLLSCHLAEGER
Dr Bernd Wollschlaeger, the son of an Iron Cross decorated NAZI officer, shares his remarkable journey to Judaism, service in the IDF and insights into the banality of evil. Learn how the resurgence of anti-semitism in Europe and around the world can and must be defeated.
IMPORTANT UPDATE
Major G, injured leading an elite unit in Gaza will give a personal account of Operation Protective Edge. Hear his chilling testimony.
Take the full-page Jewish National Fund (JNF) ad in this week's (10/10) Australian Jewish News, for example. It's simply beyond parody:
SUPPORTING ISRAEL'S FRONTLINE COMMUNITIES IN THE SOUTH
JNF NSW ANNUAL DINNER
Tuesday 28th October 2014
GUEST SPEAKERS:
Dr BERND WOLLSCHLAEGER
Dr Bernd Wollschlaeger, the son of an Iron Cross decorated NAZI officer, shares his remarkable journey to Judaism, service in the IDF and insights into the banality of evil. Learn how the resurgence of anti-semitism in Europe and around the world can and must be defeated.
IMPORTANT UPDATE
Major G, injured leading an elite unit in Gaza will give a personal account of Operation Protective Edge. Hear his chilling testimony.
Monday, November 4, 2013
More Hounding of Jake Lynch 3
November 2, Day 4 of The Australian's attack on Professor Jake Lynch, finally saw the sound and fury move from the front page into the paper's equally arid interior, probably because the attack's principal spear-carrier this time around, Ean - with an E - Higgins, was getting too little joy from Education Minister Christopher Pyne, who "condemned the BDS campaign against Israel, but backed down on a Coalition promise to cut funds to academics who promoted it." (Coalition backs off on BDS)
That "promise," of course, had come from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. However, "[i]n response to questions from The Weekend Australian, Mr Pyne... declined to say he would uphold the categoric policy enunciated by Ms Bishop..." (ibid)
Higgin's fizzer notwithstanding, one of the paper's bigger guns, associate editor Cameron Stewart (rambammed: 2005), was wheeled out to blaze away at the BDS campaign in an opinion piece, which oddly never even got around to mentioning Professor Lynch. Stewart's aim was simply to smear the campaign, in the usual fashion, as a manifestation of anti-Semitism. Much of it consisted of a recycling of the nonsense trotted out on Day 1 of the current attack.
First, there was that convenient springboard, the "violent assault on a Jewish family at Bondi... last weekend." This obviously random attack, by a group of Islander youths, although typical of countless other unprovoked, alcohol-fueled, Saturday night bashings of people of every stripe by thugs of every stripe in Sydney, allegedly had "[t]he Jewish community on tenterhooks," and, according to Cameron, became the occasion for an outpouring of support for the community by religious (including Muslim), ethnic, and sporting groups, and federal and state politicians such as Turnbull, Danby, and O'Farrell.
Juxtaposing an alleged "deep unease" in the Australian Jewish Community with a bald assertion that "anti-Semitic acts are on the rise overseas," Stewart then cited "an anti-Israel protest in Denver, Colorado, as well as demonstrations in France and Belgium" as evidence of the latter. Thus is the dross of a vicious and deplorable, but not particularly unusual, assault, having bugger all to do with genuine anti-Semitism, let alone Palestine/Israel, transmuted by the Murdoch press into yet another manifestation of a supposed rising tide of anti-Semitism, of which anti-Israel protests are, of course, merely the current manifestation.
So let's pause and take a closer look at the "anti-Israel" protest in Denver. Here's The Times of Israel account: "Advertisements accusing Israel of 'ethnic cleansing' appeared on Denver-area buses while the Jewish National Fund held its annual conference in the city. The ads, which include the slogan 'Want Peace? Stop ethnic cleansing in Palestine', were sponsored by the website Notaxdollarstoisrael.com and the Colarado BDS Campaign... Colorado BDS held what it called a 'counter-conference'... to coincide with the JNF session. It included plans for protests outside the Governor's mansion and the JNF conference..." (Denver buses carry anti-Israel ads during JNF conference, 29/10/13)
Photos of the protest at another website show people, including anti-Zionist religious Jews, holding placards reading: Jewish National Fund: Racist; JNF: Violation of Judaism & Godly compassion; Judaism Condemns the State of 'Israel' And its Atrocities.
Enough said.
Interestingly, even Stewart felt compelled to play down the hysteria being whipped up by his own paper over the incident at Bondi: "A closer examination... suggests it was almost certainly a random attack..." This statement of the bleeding obvious, however, was not going to deter him from his work of smearing criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism: "... but it has served to cast a spotlight on anti-Semitism in Australia as some anti-Israel fringe groups are blurring the boundaries between race and politics." The sly implication here, of course, is that anyone who criticises Israel is a demented fringe-dweller who just can't help crossing over to the Dark Side at times.
That other hyped 'incident' of Day 1, involving a pair of UNSW student buffoons and your stereotypical 'offended' Jewish student - "Today I had the worst experience of anti-Semitism in my life" - was again trotted out, and reflected on at length by a "child survivor of the Holocaust and an expert on trauma," called upon by Stewart to dilate on the nature of such 'suffering': "It's like their nightmares coming true again."
Amusingly, in stressing Australia's "relatively easy assimilation of Jews into all aspects of Australian society," Stewart must unwittingly have offended the usual suspects by citing as an example of Jewish success in Australia onetime (1931-36) governor-general Sir Isaac Isaacs, who was firmly of the view that political Zionism "is founded on principles that bear a striking resemblance to the slanderous doctrines that Hitler put forward in justifying Anti-Semitism" and "detracts from the noble principles of our religion." And how right he was when he predicted that the Zionist project in Palestine "would deny equal rights of citizenship to Arabs and others, and would imperil the security of the Holy Places of other faiths." (Isaac Isaacs, Zelman Cowan, 1967, p 234)
Finally, there was the usual spray of letters, falsely conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Too wearisome to repeat, I'll leave you with the shorter of the two more clear-thinking efforts (the other was by Greens senator Lee Rhiannon):
"George Fishman (Letters 1/11) goes much too far saying 'supporters of the BDS are a mask for hatred of Jews.' The fact is there are many people like me who want to see Israel treat Palestinians in a humane and just way. Supporting the BDS is one small way of protesting against Israel, not the Jewish population." Judy White, Rose Bay, NSW
Judy must be one of Cameron Stewart's fringe-dwellers.
PS: Response (4/11/13) from Daniel Lewis, Rushcutters Bay, NSW: "While I'm sure Judy White would never identify with anti-Semites, there is a simple test. Besides Israel, who else are you boycotting? Syria has killed more Palestinians in the past year than Israel. Hamas killed more Palestinians in 2008 than Israel did. Jordan killed more Palestinians in a single week than Israel did in the following 50 years..." So says Daniel Lewis, but here's a question for him: What were those Palestinians doing in Syria, the Gaza Strip and Jordan in the first place?
That "promise," of course, had come from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. However, "[i]n response to questions from The Weekend Australian, Mr Pyne... declined to say he would uphold the categoric policy enunciated by Ms Bishop..." (ibid)
Higgin's fizzer notwithstanding, one of the paper's bigger guns, associate editor Cameron Stewart (rambammed: 2005), was wheeled out to blaze away at the BDS campaign in an opinion piece, which oddly never even got around to mentioning Professor Lynch. Stewart's aim was simply to smear the campaign, in the usual fashion, as a manifestation of anti-Semitism. Much of it consisted of a recycling of the nonsense trotted out on Day 1 of the current attack.
First, there was that convenient springboard, the "violent assault on a Jewish family at Bondi... last weekend." This obviously random attack, by a group of Islander youths, although typical of countless other unprovoked, alcohol-fueled, Saturday night bashings of people of every stripe by thugs of every stripe in Sydney, allegedly had "[t]he Jewish community on tenterhooks," and, according to Cameron, became the occasion for an outpouring of support for the community by religious (including Muslim), ethnic, and sporting groups, and federal and state politicians such as Turnbull, Danby, and O'Farrell.
Juxtaposing an alleged "deep unease" in the Australian Jewish Community with a bald assertion that "anti-Semitic acts are on the rise overseas," Stewart then cited "an anti-Israel protest in Denver, Colorado, as well as demonstrations in France and Belgium" as evidence of the latter. Thus is the dross of a vicious and deplorable, but not particularly unusual, assault, having bugger all to do with genuine anti-Semitism, let alone Palestine/Israel, transmuted by the Murdoch press into yet another manifestation of a supposed rising tide of anti-Semitism, of which anti-Israel protests are, of course, merely the current manifestation.
So let's pause and take a closer look at the "anti-Israel" protest in Denver. Here's The Times of Israel account: "Advertisements accusing Israel of 'ethnic cleansing' appeared on Denver-area buses while the Jewish National Fund held its annual conference in the city. The ads, which include the slogan 'Want Peace? Stop ethnic cleansing in Palestine', were sponsored by the website Notaxdollarstoisrael.com and the Colarado BDS Campaign... Colorado BDS held what it called a 'counter-conference'... to coincide with the JNF session. It included plans for protests outside the Governor's mansion and the JNF conference..." (Denver buses carry anti-Israel ads during JNF conference, 29/10/13)
Photos of the protest at another website show people, including anti-Zionist religious Jews, holding placards reading: Jewish National Fund: Racist; JNF: Violation of Judaism & Godly compassion; Judaism Condemns the State of 'Israel' And its Atrocities.
Enough said.
Interestingly, even Stewart felt compelled to play down the hysteria being whipped up by his own paper over the incident at Bondi: "A closer examination... suggests it was almost certainly a random attack..." This statement of the bleeding obvious, however, was not going to deter him from his work of smearing criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism: "... but it has served to cast a spotlight on anti-Semitism in Australia as some anti-Israel fringe groups are blurring the boundaries between race and politics." The sly implication here, of course, is that anyone who criticises Israel is a demented fringe-dweller who just can't help crossing over to the Dark Side at times.
That other hyped 'incident' of Day 1, involving a pair of UNSW student buffoons and your stereotypical 'offended' Jewish student - "Today I had the worst experience of anti-Semitism in my life" - was again trotted out, and reflected on at length by a "child survivor of the Holocaust and an expert on trauma," called upon by Stewart to dilate on the nature of such 'suffering': "It's like their nightmares coming true again."
Amusingly, in stressing Australia's "relatively easy assimilation of Jews into all aspects of Australian society," Stewart must unwittingly have offended the usual suspects by citing as an example of Jewish success in Australia onetime (1931-36) governor-general Sir Isaac Isaacs, who was firmly of the view that political Zionism "is founded on principles that bear a striking resemblance to the slanderous doctrines that Hitler put forward in justifying Anti-Semitism" and "detracts from the noble principles of our religion." And how right he was when he predicted that the Zionist project in Palestine "would deny equal rights of citizenship to Arabs and others, and would imperil the security of the Holy Places of other faiths." (Isaac Isaacs, Zelman Cowan, 1967, p 234)
Finally, there was the usual spray of letters, falsely conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Too wearisome to repeat, I'll leave you with the shorter of the two more clear-thinking efforts (the other was by Greens senator Lee Rhiannon):
"George Fishman (Letters 1/11) goes much too far saying 'supporters of the BDS are a mask for hatred of Jews.' The fact is there are many people like me who want to see Israel treat Palestinians in a humane and just way. Supporting the BDS is one small way of protesting against Israel, not the Jewish population." Judy White, Rose Bay, NSW
Judy must be one of Cameron Stewart's fringe-dwellers.
PS: Response (4/11/13) from Daniel Lewis, Rushcutters Bay, NSW: "While I'm sure Judy White would never identify with anti-Semites, there is a simple test. Besides Israel, who else are you boycotting? Syria has killed more Palestinians in the past year than Israel. Hamas killed more Palestinians in 2008 than Israel did. Jordan killed more Palestinians in a single week than Israel did in the following 50 years..." So says Daniel Lewis, but here's a question for him: What were those Palestinians doing in Syria, the Gaza Strip and Jordan in the first place?
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Israel's Bob Browns to Visit Australia
A full-page advertisement in The Australian Jewish News (4/10) for this year's Jewish National Fund (JNF) Gala Dinner reminded me of our rambammed student politicians (class of 2010), the subject of my October 1 post, A Transformative Experience.
You'll recall:
"Tania Levi, a KKL-JNF guide, was explaining the importance of KKL-JNF's water projects to a group of young Australian politicians who were visiting Israel as part of a fact-finding mission to the Middle East. Members of the group included Duncan McDonald, John Shipp, Xavier Williams, Jesse Overton-Skinner, Eloise Howse, Jesse Marshall and Joel Burnie... This was the first time that the group had heard about KKL-JNF, so Tania briefly reviewed KKL-JNF's history... emphasizing the fact that KKL-JNF is Israel's largest and oldest green organization and leads the country's water recycling efforts." (Young Australian politicians visit KKL Negev water projects, KKL-JNF, The Jerusalem Post, 8/8/10)
Alas, the above KKL-JNF press release didn't record the gormless group's reactions on learning that Israel's JNF was actually a tree-hugging outfit.
If they had, maybe we'd have read about the chorus of cools, awesomes, amazings, and I-had-absolutely-no-ideas from Duncan, John, Xavier, Jesse, Eloise, Jesse and Joel at this revelation.
Having learnt all there is to know then and there from the lovely Tania about Israel's cool, awesome, truly amazing Jewish Green - sorry, National - Fund, I imagine they'd all be looking forward to attending this year's JNF Australia 2013 Gala Dinner where they'll get to hear from Israel's leading green activists, Yaacov Peri MK and Avigdor Kahalani, keynote and guest speakers respectively:
"Minister Yaacov Peri is a former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency and was the President and CEO of Cellcom. He is currently Minister of Science, Technology & Space and a member of the Yesh Atid party in the Knesset."
"Brigadier-General (ret.) Avigdor Kahalani served with distinction in the IDF in a career spanning 30 years. He is most famous for his heroics in the Yom Kippur War for which he received the highest military decoration, the Medal of Valor."
Green credentials don't come much better than that. And only $70 per head too!
You'll recall:
"Tania Levi, a KKL-JNF guide, was explaining the importance of KKL-JNF's water projects to a group of young Australian politicians who were visiting Israel as part of a fact-finding mission to the Middle East. Members of the group included Duncan McDonald, John Shipp, Xavier Williams, Jesse Overton-Skinner, Eloise Howse, Jesse Marshall and Joel Burnie... This was the first time that the group had heard about KKL-JNF, so Tania briefly reviewed KKL-JNF's history... emphasizing the fact that KKL-JNF is Israel's largest and oldest green organization and leads the country's water recycling efforts." (Young Australian politicians visit KKL Negev water projects, KKL-JNF, The Jerusalem Post, 8/8/10)
Alas, the above KKL-JNF press release didn't record the gormless group's reactions on learning that Israel's JNF was actually a tree-hugging outfit.
If they had, maybe we'd have read about the chorus of cools, awesomes, amazings, and I-had-absolutely-no-ideas from Duncan, John, Xavier, Jesse, Eloise, Jesse and Joel at this revelation.
Having learnt all there is to know then and there from the lovely Tania about Israel's cool, awesome, truly amazing Jewish Green - sorry, National - Fund, I imagine they'd all be looking forward to attending this year's JNF Australia 2013 Gala Dinner where they'll get to hear from Israel's leading green activists, Yaacov Peri MK and Avigdor Kahalani, keynote and guest speakers respectively:
"Minister Yaacov Peri is a former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency and was the President and CEO of Cellcom. He is currently Minister of Science, Technology & Space and a member of the Yesh Atid party in the Knesset."
"Brigadier-General (ret.) Avigdor Kahalani served with distinction in the IDF in a career spanning 30 years. He is most famous for his heroics in the Yom Kippur War for which he received the highest military decoration, the Medal of Valor."
Green credentials don't come much better than that. And only $70 per head too!
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
A Transformative Experience
Does rambamming work?
Like a charm, apparently:
2009:
"Deputy PM Julia Gillard's outspoken support for Israel's attack on Gaza earlier this year prompted angry criticism from many, including from inside her own party. Elly Howse, a member of the Young Labor Left and the ALP, condemned her party for supporting the war at a protest in Sydney against the visiting Zionist war criminal Dan Gillerman on March 2. Labor should have 'condemned the horrific and overblown reaction by Israel in dealing with Gaza and Hamas,' Howse told Green Left Weekly on March 3. Labor still supports a two-state solution, Howse pointed out, arguing that, therefore, it should have taken a stand for Palestine. Asked how widespread her views were inside the ALP, Howse, who is also an education officer at Sydney University's Student Representative Council, pointed to the formation of Labor for a Just Palestine in Queensland as evidence her views were not unique. 'There are many progressive people in the young section of the party, and in the professional party, who were outraged at what was happening inside Palestine. We have to make sure the progressive people get a voice and get into office, not people who are sucked into the Labor Party machine.' Australia needs a distinct relationship with Israel, Howse said. 'Israel has shown that it thinks it's above international law and basic human rights. Australia has to tell the rest of the international community that it disagrees. UN condemnation of Israel is proof that Australia needs to reduce its ties with such a warmongering country, not increase them.' Howse pointed to Palestine Solidarity Week, from March 30 to April 4 at Sydney University, as a way for students to get involved in the solidarity movement. She thinks there is scope for the global BDS campaign in Australia. 'I would really like to turn it into a major campaign for Young Labor Left,' she said." (ALP must support Palestine, Pip Hinman, Green Left Weekly, 7/3/09)
2010:
"'Many Middle-Eastern [sic] experts are of the opinion that future wars in the Middle East will be caused by the region's severe water shortage, which is why this issue is so high on Israel's priority list.' Tania Levi, a KKL-JNF tourist guide, was explaining the importance of KKL-JNF's water projects to a group of young Australian politicians who were visiting Israel as part of a fact-finding mission to the Middle East. Members of the group included Duncan McDonald [Lib], John Shipp [Lib], Xavier Williams [Lab], Jesse Overton-Skinner [Lab], Eloise Howse [Lab], Jesse Marshall [Lab] and Joel Burnie [AIJAC]. The organizers of the group's visit to Israel asked that the group visit KKL-JNF sites in the Negev desert where they could see Israel's water conservation efforts first-hand and understand their geopolitical significance. This was the first time that the group had heard about KKL-JNF, so Tania briefly reviewed KKL-JNF's history and described the organization's unique position in Israel, emphasizing the fact that KKL-JNF is Israel's largest and oldest green organization and leads the country's water-recycling efforts... The group was fascinated by Tania's detailed presentation, and asked many questions about KKL-JNF and the water crisis... Their schedule, however, was very tight, and Tania wanted to show them how recycled water made the desert bloom." (Young Australian politicians visit KKL Negev water projects, KKL-JNF, The Jerusalem Post, 8/8/10) [See my 27/10/10 post Meet Australia's Future Political Leaders.]
2012:
"Another recent student leader, who asked not to be identified, told New Matilda that she was 22-years old when she went. On her trip, like all years, there were two Young Liberals, two from Young Labor Left, and two from Young Labor Right. 'Going over there makes you realise there are complexities between Israel and Palestine,' she said... The real purpose of the trips, she stated, was to 'stimulate debate. I'd like to go back and spend more time, including in Gaza. One of the benefits of the trip is that I realised Israel wasn't going anywhere. They're proud they've turned the desert into a thriving economy'." (Zionist lobby courts Aussie students, Antony Loewenstein, New Matilda, 16/8/13)
2013:
"Student recipients of the Rambam Fellowship come from Liberal, Labor Right, and Labor Left factions. For members of Labor Left who accept the Fellowship, the matter is particularly complicated as their actions contradict the faction's stance against Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Former USYD SRC President and recipient of the Rambam Fellowship Elly Howse was said to have taken part in a sponsored trip with strong anti-Zionist views, but returned home more sympathetic to Israel. Honi was unable to reach Howse for comment." (NUS Israel trips are no spiritual pilgrimage, Rafi Alam & Xiaoran Shi, Honi Soit, 19/8/13)
Like a charm, apparently:
2009:
"Deputy PM Julia Gillard's outspoken support for Israel's attack on Gaza earlier this year prompted angry criticism from many, including from inside her own party. Elly Howse, a member of the Young Labor Left and the ALP, condemned her party for supporting the war at a protest in Sydney against the visiting Zionist war criminal Dan Gillerman on March 2. Labor should have 'condemned the horrific and overblown reaction by Israel in dealing with Gaza and Hamas,' Howse told Green Left Weekly on March 3. Labor still supports a two-state solution, Howse pointed out, arguing that, therefore, it should have taken a stand for Palestine. Asked how widespread her views were inside the ALP, Howse, who is also an education officer at Sydney University's Student Representative Council, pointed to the formation of Labor for a Just Palestine in Queensland as evidence her views were not unique. 'There are many progressive people in the young section of the party, and in the professional party, who were outraged at what was happening inside Palestine. We have to make sure the progressive people get a voice and get into office, not people who are sucked into the Labor Party machine.' Australia needs a distinct relationship with Israel, Howse said. 'Israel has shown that it thinks it's above international law and basic human rights. Australia has to tell the rest of the international community that it disagrees. UN condemnation of Israel is proof that Australia needs to reduce its ties with such a warmongering country, not increase them.' Howse pointed to Palestine Solidarity Week, from March 30 to April 4 at Sydney University, as a way for students to get involved in the solidarity movement. She thinks there is scope for the global BDS campaign in Australia. 'I would really like to turn it into a major campaign for Young Labor Left,' she said." (ALP must support Palestine, Pip Hinman, Green Left Weekly, 7/3/09)
2010:
"'Many Middle-Eastern [sic] experts are of the opinion that future wars in the Middle East will be caused by the region's severe water shortage, which is why this issue is so high on Israel's priority list.' Tania Levi, a KKL-JNF tourist guide, was explaining the importance of KKL-JNF's water projects to a group of young Australian politicians who were visiting Israel as part of a fact-finding mission to the Middle East. Members of the group included Duncan McDonald [Lib], John Shipp [Lib], Xavier Williams [Lab], Jesse Overton-Skinner [Lab], Eloise Howse [Lab], Jesse Marshall [Lab] and Joel Burnie [AIJAC]. The organizers of the group's visit to Israel asked that the group visit KKL-JNF sites in the Negev desert where they could see Israel's water conservation efforts first-hand and understand their geopolitical significance. This was the first time that the group had heard about KKL-JNF, so Tania briefly reviewed KKL-JNF's history and described the organization's unique position in Israel, emphasizing the fact that KKL-JNF is Israel's largest and oldest green organization and leads the country's water-recycling efforts... The group was fascinated by Tania's detailed presentation, and asked many questions about KKL-JNF and the water crisis... Their schedule, however, was very tight, and Tania wanted to show them how recycled water made the desert bloom." (Young Australian politicians visit KKL Negev water projects, KKL-JNF, The Jerusalem Post, 8/8/10) [See my 27/10/10 post Meet Australia's Future Political Leaders.]
2012:
"Another recent student leader, who asked not to be identified, told New Matilda that she was 22-years old when she went. On her trip, like all years, there were two Young Liberals, two from Young Labor Left, and two from Young Labor Right. 'Going over there makes you realise there are complexities between Israel and Palestine,' she said... The real purpose of the trips, she stated, was to 'stimulate debate. I'd like to go back and spend more time, including in Gaza. One of the benefits of the trip is that I realised Israel wasn't going anywhere. They're proud they've turned the desert into a thriving economy'." (Zionist lobby courts Aussie students, Antony Loewenstein, New Matilda, 16/8/13)
2013:
"Student recipients of the Rambam Fellowship come from Liberal, Labor Right, and Labor Left factions. For members of Labor Left who accept the Fellowship, the matter is particularly complicated as their actions contradict the faction's stance against Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Former USYD SRC President and recipient of the Rambam Fellowship Elly Howse was said to have taken part in a sponsored trip with strong anti-Zionist views, but returned home more sympathetic to Israel. Honi was unable to reach Howse for comment." (NUS Israel trips are no spiritual pilgrimage, Rafi Alam & Xiaoran Shi, Honi Soit, 19/8/13)
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
How Green Was Their Valley 2
"Indeed, the central problem for the Zionists was that all the fertile land was already being cultivated, by people who were not prepared to part with it. Like all native people the land for them was an integral part of the cycle of life. That was the way it had always been and not until the Zionists arrived had they had to face life without it. It was the latifundistas living outside Palestine and the middlemen who negotiated the deals who gave the Zionists their foothold. Once the contracts were signed they drove the tenant cultivators away.* There was no remorse: where these uprooted people went was none of their business. The British, in charge of this supposedly 'sacred trust of civilisation', as the mandate was described in article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, were complicit in this ruthless process, providing an umbrella of armed and pseudo-legal protection. [*See my22/4/10 post Perennial Terrorism.]
"Through legal purchase the Zionists were never going to get what they wanted. By 1945 they had acquired less than 6% of Palestine and remained a one-third minority of the population despite the massive immigration of the 1930s. David Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders knew that only war would give them what they wanted. They played a crafty game, dumping the British when they were no longer of any use and turning to the United States. Partition was a complete violation of the natural rights of the indigenous people but was welcomed by the Zionists, naturally, as they were being given what they did not possess and had no right to possess. At the same time as pretending to be satisfied with partition, they regarded it only as the first step. It was not just that the Americans had concluded by early 1948 that Palestine could not be partitioned peacefully. The Zionists would never allow it to be partitioned peacefully as this would leave the Palestinians on their land. There could be no Jewish state as long as they stayed, and if there is a regret in the Benny Morris school of historical reflection it is only that the opportunity was lost to get rid of them all.
"In the meantime land hunger focused settler eyes on possibilities in the rich, fertile and well-watered Huleh valley. Draining what were called the swamps of Huleh would create more room for colonization but for the time being remained beyond their technical and financial means. When it happened it was inscribed as one of the founding myths of Zionists: the redemption of the land, making the desert bloom, and all the rest of it, when in fact the settlers ruined in the Huleh valley what was an ecologically rich wetland with few parallels in the Middle East.
"From the beginning control of water was essential to the Zionist project. Weizmann fought hard at the Paris peace conference in 1919 for the Syrian headlands of Palestine's water to be included in the British mandate and therefore within the borders of the Zionist state Lloyd-George, Balfour and Churchill wanted to establish in the heart of the Middle East while talking endlessly about nothing more than a 'national home' for the Jewish people. Weizmann's scheming and lobbying broke against the rock of French strategic interest but seizing and controlling water resources in and around Palestine remained a prime target of the Zionist leadership, with their diversion of these waters creating one of the many crises that preceded the 1967 war.
"The Huleh valley stood out from the beginning of Zionist settlement. The first colony in the valley was established in the 1880s but because of the ravages of malaria no further settlements were established for half a century. In the 1930s, Steimatzky's Palestine Guide noted the drainage of 'swamps and marshes' since the First World War, ending the scourge of malaria and restoring 'fertile tracts of land to cultivation thus increasing the tillable area of Palestine'. Unique amongst Palestine's network of rivers, lakes and subterranean aquifers, the Huleh wetlands 'which are now marshy tracts offer untold opportunities for agricultural development. Thorough drainage is the first need, to be followed by systematic irrigation. This land has been granted for use under a concession to a group which did not avail itself of the concession. The concession has now passed to a Jewish group which will soon start on the preliminary work'. (p xii)
"In his collection of essays on land acquisition in Palestine, Arthur Ruppin, a German lawyer who settled in Jaffa as the chief land purchasing and development officer for the Palestine Office of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), lists the Huleh wetland as land which might be uncultivable for the Palestinian settled and nomad population but which would be cultivable for incoming Jewish colons, given their access to credit and use of modern farm machinery.* The fertile land around the lake was either state land from Ottoman times or already owned and cultivated, with only one Zionist settlement having been established up to the outbreak of the Second World War. Ruppin wanted to open up land for settlement by draining the wetlands, which were for him no more than marsh and swamp waiting to be reclaimed. (*Three Decades of Palestine, 1936, pp 207-208)
"In a memorandum handed to Sir John Hope-Simpson, sent to Palestine in 1930 to investigate immigration, land development and settlement, three major causes of rising distress amongst the Palestinians, Ruppin attempted to show that 'if the farming of the fellaheen were to be a little bit intensified - in the coastal zone, Beisan, Huleh and the lower Jordan Valley - the Jews would be able to buy 1,300,000 dunums without displacing the people who have so far [sic] worked the land. Fifty-five thousand [Jewish] families could be settled on this land.'* Hope-Simpson demurred on various grounds, one of them being that the Jewish National Fund (JNF) would not let 'Arabs' work on its land and that and that 'increasing land purchases will displace the Arabs from many parts of Palestine.' This in fact is what happened as part of a process Hope-Simpson described as the 'extra-territorialisation' of land once purchased by the JNF and put beyond purchase or rental by non-Jews forever. Zionist colonists who still used the Palestinians on the land or in workshops and factories were violating the Jewish-only labor 'principles' that were the corollary of the 'princples' governing land purchase. (*Alex Bein, ed, Arthur Ruppin: Memoirs, Diaries, Letters, 1971)
"At the age of 50 Ruppin and others founded the Brit Shalom movement. It was committed to 'Jewish-Arab' friendship but the refusal of the Palestinians to give up their rights and their land eventually forced him to conclude that negotiations would achieve nothing and that if the Zionist project was to succeed, 'we must increase our strength and our numbers until we reach parity with the Arabs. The life or death of the Zionist movement will depend on this... Perhaps a bitter truth but it is the truth with a capital T.' Writing in 1936 he expected this point to be reached in 5-10 years.* Ruppin died in 1943 so was not around when not just parity but numerical superiority was achieved by expelling the bulk of the indigenous Palestinian population in 1948. In the language of the occupier, there were 12 'Jewish' and 23 'Arab' 'settlements' in the Huleh valley by 1948. 'Following the establishment of the State of Israel and during the 1948 War of Independence the Arab inhabitants left the valley, moving to neighboring Arab countries'.**" (*Arthur Ruppin: Memoirs... p 320; **Lake Hula-Lake Agmon, Zohary & Hambright, jewishvirtuallibrary.org)
To be continued...
"Through legal purchase the Zionists were never going to get what they wanted. By 1945 they had acquired less than 6% of Palestine and remained a one-third minority of the population despite the massive immigration of the 1930s. David Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders knew that only war would give them what they wanted. They played a crafty game, dumping the British when they were no longer of any use and turning to the United States. Partition was a complete violation of the natural rights of the indigenous people but was welcomed by the Zionists, naturally, as they were being given what they did not possess and had no right to possess. At the same time as pretending to be satisfied with partition, they regarded it only as the first step. It was not just that the Americans had concluded by early 1948 that Palestine could not be partitioned peacefully. The Zionists would never allow it to be partitioned peacefully as this would leave the Palestinians on their land. There could be no Jewish state as long as they stayed, and if there is a regret in the Benny Morris school of historical reflection it is only that the opportunity was lost to get rid of them all.
"In the meantime land hunger focused settler eyes on possibilities in the rich, fertile and well-watered Huleh valley. Draining what were called the swamps of Huleh would create more room for colonization but for the time being remained beyond their technical and financial means. When it happened it was inscribed as one of the founding myths of Zionists: the redemption of the land, making the desert bloom, and all the rest of it, when in fact the settlers ruined in the Huleh valley what was an ecologically rich wetland with few parallels in the Middle East.
"From the beginning control of water was essential to the Zionist project. Weizmann fought hard at the Paris peace conference in 1919 for the Syrian headlands of Palestine's water to be included in the British mandate and therefore within the borders of the Zionist state Lloyd-George, Balfour and Churchill wanted to establish in the heart of the Middle East while talking endlessly about nothing more than a 'national home' for the Jewish people. Weizmann's scheming and lobbying broke against the rock of French strategic interest but seizing and controlling water resources in and around Palestine remained a prime target of the Zionist leadership, with their diversion of these waters creating one of the many crises that preceded the 1967 war.
"The Huleh valley stood out from the beginning of Zionist settlement. The first colony in the valley was established in the 1880s but because of the ravages of malaria no further settlements were established for half a century. In the 1930s, Steimatzky's Palestine Guide noted the drainage of 'swamps and marshes' since the First World War, ending the scourge of malaria and restoring 'fertile tracts of land to cultivation thus increasing the tillable area of Palestine'. Unique amongst Palestine's network of rivers, lakes and subterranean aquifers, the Huleh wetlands 'which are now marshy tracts offer untold opportunities for agricultural development. Thorough drainage is the first need, to be followed by systematic irrigation. This land has been granted for use under a concession to a group which did not avail itself of the concession. The concession has now passed to a Jewish group which will soon start on the preliminary work'. (p xii)
"In his collection of essays on land acquisition in Palestine, Arthur Ruppin, a German lawyer who settled in Jaffa as the chief land purchasing and development officer for the Palestine Office of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), lists the Huleh wetland as land which might be uncultivable for the Palestinian settled and nomad population but which would be cultivable for incoming Jewish colons, given their access to credit and use of modern farm machinery.* The fertile land around the lake was either state land from Ottoman times or already owned and cultivated, with only one Zionist settlement having been established up to the outbreak of the Second World War. Ruppin wanted to open up land for settlement by draining the wetlands, which were for him no more than marsh and swamp waiting to be reclaimed. (*Three Decades of Palestine, 1936, pp 207-208)
"In a memorandum handed to Sir John Hope-Simpson, sent to Palestine in 1930 to investigate immigration, land development and settlement, three major causes of rising distress amongst the Palestinians, Ruppin attempted to show that 'if the farming of the fellaheen were to be a little bit intensified - in the coastal zone, Beisan, Huleh and the lower Jordan Valley - the Jews would be able to buy 1,300,000 dunums without displacing the people who have so far [sic] worked the land. Fifty-five thousand [Jewish] families could be settled on this land.'* Hope-Simpson demurred on various grounds, one of them being that the Jewish National Fund (JNF) would not let 'Arabs' work on its land and that and that 'increasing land purchases will displace the Arabs from many parts of Palestine.' This in fact is what happened as part of a process Hope-Simpson described as the 'extra-territorialisation' of land once purchased by the JNF and put beyond purchase or rental by non-Jews forever. Zionist colonists who still used the Palestinians on the land or in workshops and factories were violating the Jewish-only labor 'principles' that were the corollary of the 'princples' governing land purchase. (*Alex Bein, ed, Arthur Ruppin: Memoirs, Diaries, Letters, 1971)
"At the age of 50 Ruppin and others founded the Brit Shalom movement. It was committed to 'Jewish-Arab' friendship but the refusal of the Palestinians to give up their rights and their land eventually forced him to conclude that negotiations would achieve nothing and that if the Zionist project was to succeed, 'we must increase our strength and our numbers until we reach parity with the Arabs. The life or death of the Zionist movement will depend on this... Perhaps a bitter truth but it is the truth with a capital T.' Writing in 1936 he expected this point to be reached in 5-10 years.* Ruppin died in 1943 so was not around when not just parity but numerical superiority was achieved by expelling the bulk of the indigenous Palestinian population in 1948. In the language of the occupier, there were 12 'Jewish' and 23 'Arab' 'settlements' in the Huleh valley by 1948. 'Following the establishment of the State of Israel and during the 1948 War of Independence the Arab inhabitants left the valley, moving to neighboring Arab countries'.**" (*Arthur Ruppin: Memoirs... p 320; **Lake Hula-Lake Agmon, Zohary & Hambright, jewishvirtuallibrary.org)
To be continued...
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Fiddler With No Roof
Q&A buffs out there may remember when Israeli historian Ilan Pappe was on the panel last September.
They may even remember this particular question from one, Marrianne Fraser:
"After all the pogroms throughout the centuries, with Jews never being able to own land in any country they lived in and being forced from their homes time and again as portrayed so well in my favourite musical Fiddler on the Roof, and after the Holocaust, isn't it just for Jews to have been given a place to call their own?"
Certainly, they'll remember Pappe's memorable reply:
"You know, this kind of question always reminds me of people setting off in search of a refuge for battered women and abused children. They find a home where another family lives, throw them off the balcony, and their home becomes the refuge." (The rest of that response and more may be found in my 22/9/12 post The Nakba Comes to Q&A.)
Well, Fiddler on the Roof's Tevye has made a welcome reappearance in a new Rabbis4 Human Rights production called Theodore Bikel: It hurts that the descendents of Anatevka expel Israeli Bedouin, just posted on YouTube.
Set against the backdrop of Israeli government bulldozers demolishing the Bedouin village of El-Araqib, and Israeli troops terrorising its inhabitants, apparently to make way for a Jewish National Fund project called 'The Ambassadors Forest', Tevye, in trademark cap, makes the following plea:
"My name is Theodore Bikel and I want to ask you to help prevent a terrible moral tragedy.
"I've spent much of my life playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. I see a parallel with what is happening today. 40,000 Bedouins in the Negev Desert are being told to get out of their homes.
"Remember the scene in Fiddler on the Roof when the Russians arrived and tell them they have 3 days to get out? Tevye says, Why should I get out? He says, Not just you, all of you! Tevye says, Why should we leave? He says, I don't know why. I have an order here. Tevye says, A piece of paper can get me out? What if we refuse to leave? He says, You know the consequences of refusal.
"It hurts me. But what hurts me even more is the fact that the very people who are telling them to get out are the descendents of the people of Anatevka - my people. I want to prevent that. I want to prevent an injustice. I want you to help and join me and join the Rabbis4 Human Rights."
They may even remember this particular question from one, Marrianne Fraser:
"After all the pogroms throughout the centuries, with Jews never being able to own land in any country they lived in and being forced from their homes time and again as portrayed so well in my favourite musical Fiddler on the Roof, and after the Holocaust, isn't it just for Jews to have been given a place to call their own?"
Certainly, they'll remember Pappe's memorable reply:
"You know, this kind of question always reminds me of people setting off in search of a refuge for battered women and abused children. They find a home where another family lives, throw them off the balcony, and their home becomes the refuge." (The rest of that response and more may be found in my 22/9/12 post The Nakba Comes to Q&A.)
Well, Fiddler on the Roof's Tevye has made a welcome reappearance in a new Rabbis4 Human Rights production called Theodore Bikel: It hurts that the descendents of Anatevka expel Israeli Bedouin, just posted on YouTube.
Set against the backdrop of Israeli government bulldozers demolishing the Bedouin village of El-Araqib, and Israeli troops terrorising its inhabitants, apparently to make way for a Jewish National Fund project called 'The Ambassadors Forest', Tevye, in trademark cap, makes the following plea:
"My name is Theodore Bikel and I want to ask you to help prevent a terrible moral tragedy.
"I've spent much of my life playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. I see a parallel with what is happening today. 40,000 Bedouins in the Negev Desert are being told to get out of their homes.
"Remember the scene in Fiddler on the Roof when the Russians arrived and tell them they have 3 days to get out? Tevye says, Why should I get out? He says, Not just you, all of you! Tevye says, Why should we leave? He says, I don't know why. I have an order here. Tevye says, A piece of paper can get me out? What if we refuse to leave? He says, You know the consequences of refusal.
"It hurts me. But what hurts me even more is the fact that the very people who are telling them to get out are the descendents of the people of Anatevka - my people. I want to prevent that. I want to prevent an injustice. I want you to help and join me and join the Rabbis4 Human Rights."
Sunday, June 23, 2013
How Palestinian Beersheba Became Israeli Be'er Sheva
The ethnic cleansing of 85% of the Palestinian Arab population living in the area overrun by Zionist forces in 1948 included that of the town of Beersheba in Palestine's southern Negev Desert area.
Some idea of what the inhabitants of Beersheba were forced to endure at the time may be found in an illuminating book on the Palestinian Nakba by Israeli photography and visual culture theorist Ariella Azoulay: From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction & State Formation, 1947-1950 (2011). In her book, Azoulay combines Israeli archival photographs of the time with her own insightful, contextualising 'readings' of them.
Here are some of Azoulay's 'readings' which relate to the fate of Beersheba and its people. (The numbering relates to the order in which the photograph and its 'reading' appear in the text.):
1) "These are the mosque's final hours serving the town's Palestinian population. The new inhabitants will change its function many times, ignoring the original purpose for which it was built. When the photograph was taken, it was being used as a detention camp. Most of the people seen outside the walls of the temporary detention camps established in public buildings are Israeli soldiers. The army left 100 healthy, strong Arab men in the city to help them clean up and remove rubble. Until a few days ago they had lived in the buildings whose ruins they're now required to clear away. During the few hours they're not engaged in that activity, they're shut up in the mosque with mattresses, blankets and other belongings they've managed to save from their homes. The official caption describes them as 'Arab prisoners of war'. They'll soon be transferred to a different prisoner of war camp in Israel.
2) "About 3,000 Palestinians lived in the town at the end of the British Mandate. The day after Beersheba was captured, the only people on the street were armed soldiers on patrol whose job was to prevent life in town from returning to normal and lay the groundwork for transforming Beersheba into a Jewish town. The orders were to settle 3,000 Jews. The residents expelled from the town won't be able to enjoy the beautiful trees which will grow from the saplings recently planted along the sidewalk, and the mosque will no longer be a place of prayer."
3) "According to the [UN] Partition Plan [of 1947], seemingly accepted by the Jews, Beersheba was to have been part of the Palestinian state. But this was neither the first nor the last time Israel had violated the conditions set by the ceasefires that had been reached and the UN resolution (acting in the spirit of 'UN - Shmoo-N,' even before that policy had a name), creating facts on the ground that were inconsistent with these agreements. The conquest of Beersheba was an example. Men who had been captured, and who the soldiers suspected had not surrendered all their weapons, were shot. Others were transferred to prison camps. It's not possible to tell from the photograph what will happen to the captured Egyptian soldiers leaving the building [with hands in the air]."
5) "The [Hebrew] slogan on the bus, 'On to Gaza,' doesn't refer to the destination of the 'Egyptian prisoners of war.' They'll be exchanged a few months later, in February 1949, as part of the armistice agreement with Egypt, and now they're on their way to a prisoner of war camp. The slogan might be the warcry of fighters on their way to capture Gaza - even though, at the end of the day, they didn't capture Gaza then - or the sign on the buses that carried the residents of Beersheba who had been expelled to Gaza. Dozens of buses were put at the disposal of the residents after the town was captured, and the orders were clear: 'If we see anyone here after 8 o'clock tomorrow, we'll kill them'."
74) "The actual capture of the town during what is officially described as a 'war' was only the first in a series of non-military occupations that validated the army's behavior and played their part in expropriating the town from its residents. These began with the caption's official wording that, in one version or another, was on everyone's lips - 'The town is empty of inhabitants' - until, a few days later, this building became the JNF House. The owners of the shops on the ground floor, like the owners of the apartments above, must have been among the 450,000 refugees who in the 1960s filled out property-claim forms for the UN Reconciliation Commission that prepared an estimate (published on April 28, 1968) of the value of 'abandoned' Arab property. There's no need to mention that Israel rejected the document and ignored its implications."
88) "Military occupation was not enough to turn Beersheba, which was to have been included in the Arab state, into a Jewish town. Civil occupation was also necessary. Beginning in October 1948, after extensive areas had been captured in military operations in the south and in the north, feverish discussions were held regarding the appropriate procedure for taking over Arab land. These discussions occurred in various committees established for that purpose - the Transfer Committee headed by Yosef Weitz, the Ministerial Committee for Abandoned Property, the Committee for Distributing Lands, the JNF - as well in conversations and discussions between the Prime Minister and his associates. The solution eventually found, after many revisions, was for the state to 'legally' sell the 'abandoned' lands to the JNF as part of a 'development plan' so that the rights of the ongoing owners would allegedly be preserved. In May 1949, when Israel was accepted as a member of the United Nations, the hairsplitting ceased, and all the territory which was 'held' became part of the sovereign state of Israel. It was now important to quickly get the buildings ready for new Jewish immigrants. During the early years, the state used DDT to fumigate both the bodies of Jewish immigrants from North Africa so they wouldn't transmit disease, and the walls of the Arab houses before the Jewish immigrants moved in. If the boy has already learned Hebrew and knows how to ask what the man holding the large, noisy apparatus is doing, the proud reply would certainly be that he's preparing a lovely, disease-free home for him."
Some idea of what the inhabitants of Beersheba were forced to endure at the time may be found in an illuminating book on the Palestinian Nakba by Israeli photography and visual culture theorist Ariella Azoulay: From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction & State Formation, 1947-1950 (2011). In her book, Azoulay combines Israeli archival photographs of the time with her own insightful, contextualising 'readings' of them.
Here are some of Azoulay's 'readings' which relate to the fate of Beersheba and its people. (The numbering relates to the order in which the photograph and its 'reading' appear in the text.):
1) "These are the mosque's final hours serving the town's Palestinian population. The new inhabitants will change its function many times, ignoring the original purpose for which it was built. When the photograph was taken, it was being used as a detention camp. Most of the people seen outside the walls of the temporary detention camps established in public buildings are Israeli soldiers. The army left 100 healthy, strong Arab men in the city to help them clean up and remove rubble. Until a few days ago they had lived in the buildings whose ruins they're now required to clear away. During the few hours they're not engaged in that activity, they're shut up in the mosque with mattresses, blankets and other belongings they've managed to save from their homes. The official caption describes them as 'Arab prisoners of war'. They'll soon be transferred to a different prisoner of war camp in Israel.
2) "About 3,000 Palestinians lived in the town at the end of the British Mandate. The day after Beersheba was captured, the only people on the street were armed soldiers on patrol whose job was to prevent life in town from returning to normal and lay the groundwork for transforming Beersheba into a Jewish town. The orders were to settle 3,000 Jews. The residents expelled from the town won't be able to enjoy the beautiful trees which will grow from the saplings recently planted along the sidewalk, and the mosque will no longer be a place of prayer."
3) "According to the [UN] Partition Plan [of 1947], seemingly accepted by the Jews, Beersheba was to have been part of the Palestinian state. But this was neither the first nor the last time Israel had violated the conditions set by the ceasefires that had been reached and the UN resolution (acting in the spirit of 'UN - Shmoo-N,' even before that policy had a name), creating facts on the ground that were inconsistent with these agreements. The conquest of Beersheba was an example. Men who had been captured, and who the soldiers suspected had not surrendered all their weapons, were shot. Others were transferred to prison camps. It's not possible to tell from the photograph what will happen to the captured Egyptian soldiers leaving the building [with hands in the air]."
5) "The [Hebrew] slogan on the bus, 'On to Gaza,' doesn't refer to the destination of the 'Egyptian prisoners of war.' They'll be exchanged a few months later, in February 1949, as part of the armistice agreement with Egypt, and now they're on their way to a prisoner of war camp. The slogan might be the warcry of fighters on their way to capture Gaza - even though, at the end of the day, they didn't capture Gaza then - or the sign on the buses that carried the residents of Beersheba who had been expelled to Gaza. Dozens of buses were put at the disposal of the residents after the town was captured, and the orders were clear: 'If we see anyone here after 8 o'clock tomorrow, we'll kill them'."
74) "The actual capture of the town during what is officially described as a 'war' was only the first in a series of non-military occupations that validated the army's behavior and played their part in expropriating the town from its residents. These began with the caption's official wording that, in one version or another, was on everyone's lips - 'The town is empty of inhabitants' - until, a few days later, this building became the JNF House. The owners of the shops on the ground floor, like the owners of the apartments above, must have been among the 450,000 refugees who in the 1960s filled out property-claim forms for the UN Reconciliation Commission that prepared an estimate (published on April 28, 1968) of the value of 'abandoned' Arab property. There's no need to mention that Israel rejected the document and ignored its implications."
88) "Military occupation was not enough to turn Beersheba, which was to have been included in the Arab state, into a Jewish town. Civil occupation was also necessary. Beginning in October 1948, after extensive areas had been captured in military operations in the south and in the north, feverish discussions were held regarding the appropriate procedure for taking over Arab land. These discussions occurred in various committees established for that purpose - the Transfer Committee headed by Yosef Weitz, the Ministerial Committee for Abandoned Property, the Committee for Distributing Lands, the JNF - as well in conversations and discussions between the Prime Minister and his associates. The solution eventually found, after many revisions, was for the state to 'legally' sell the 'abandoned' lands to the JNF as part of a 'development plan' so that the rights of the ongoing owners would allegedly be preserved. In May 1949, when Israel was accepted as a member of the United Nations, the hairsplitting ceased, and all the territory which was 'held' became part of the sovereign state of Israel. It was now important to quickly get the buildings ready for new Jewish immigrants. During the early years, the state used DDT to fumigate both the bodies of Jewish immigrants from North Africa so they wouldn't transmit disease, and the walls of the Arab houses before the Jewish immigrants moved in. If the boy has already learned Hebrew and knows how to ask what the man holding the large, noisy apparatus is doing, the proud reply would certainly be that he's preparing a lovely, disease-free home for him."
Monday, May 20, 2013
Join the Dots...
1) "The centrality of Israel in the workings of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) and other mainstream 'peak bodies', such as... the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBOD), is misplaced and a waste of time and limited community resources. Local issues, some of which include aged care, social welfare, education, abuse, alcohol/drugs and social entrepreneurship, deserve the attention of groups whose imprimatur is to support the community needs of Australian Jews." (Community begins at home, Manny Waks, The Australian Jewish News, 9/11/12) (See my 14/1/13 post Where's This All Going?)
2) "The Jewish National Fund (JNF) in NSW raised more than $8 million last year it was revealed at their annual general meeting last Tuesday night. President Alex Abulafia said it was a staggering amount of money and it shows the community is connecting with the organisation and its projects... He said that people seem to enjoy the fact that they can go to Israel and visit buildings, facilities, water reservoirs and sites that they have contributed to... Abulafia said that in a couple of years, he hopes JNF NSW can raise $10 million each year." (JNF NSW raises more than $8 mil, The AJN, 17/5/13)
3) "If you thought poverty wasn't a problem for the Jewish community, think again. A recent report from Monash University's Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation revealed 6500 Jews in Victoria (18.4% of the community) and 5000 in NSW (15.7%) are scraping by with a weekly income of between just $200 and $400." (The poverty precipice, Timna Jacks, The AJN, 17/5/13)
2) "The Jewish National Fund (JNF) in NSW raised more than $8 million last year it was revealed at their annual general meeting last Tuesday night. President Alex Abulafia said it was a staggering amount of money and it shows the community is connecting with the organisation and its projects... He said that people seem to enjoy the fact that they can go to Israel and visit buildings, facilities, water reservoirs and sites that they have contributed to... Abulafia said that in a couple of years, he hopes JNF NSW can raise $10 million each year." (JNF NSW raises more than $8 mil, The AJN, 17/5/13)
3) "If you thought poverty wasn't a problem for the Jewish community, think again. A recent report from Monash University's Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation revealed 6500 Jews in Victoria (18.4% of the community) and 5000 in NSW (15.7%) are scraping by with a weekly income of between just $200 and $400." (The poverty precipice, Timna Jacks, The AJN, 17/5/13)
Monday, February 18, 2013
Prisoner X 6: The View from 'The Australian'
Although the Fairfax press has had the running with the case of Prisoner X, Murdoch's Australian has also managed some useful reporting.
There's the testimony of Zygier's Israeli lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, for example:
"Mr Feldman, one of the last people to Zygier alive, would not detail the specific charge but said last night it was 'not on the high level of gravity.' Asked about reports in Israel that Zygier was accused of 'treason', Mr Feldman said: 'I can't go into specifics but treason doesn't have to be somebody who is in coalition with Hezbollah or any other enemy of Israel... Mr Feldman visited the high security cell at the prison in Israel in the days before his death to discuss whether he should accept a plea bargain and face a shorter prison sentence or contest the charges and risk a longer sentence. He described the treatment of Zygier as 'stupid, inhumane and repulsive'... Mr Feldman said his client 'claimed before me he had done nothing wrong'... Mr Feldman would not detail the specific charge against Zygier or any security details, citing a secrecy agreement he had signed. But he said his impression of Zygier was that he was 'someone who was not a traitor by nature or ideology. He was involved in something that I cannot go into but this concern does not threaten the security or the government of Israel,' he said." (Zygier's family never knew charges, Paul Maley & John Lyons, 15/2/13)
Feldman's words add weight to the theory that Zygier had been (or was about to) talking to an Australian agency about Mossad's misuse of Australian passports, a matter that would normally place him in the category of whistleblower. If so, it would appear that, despite all his years of Zionist indoctrination from Bialik College on, Zygier still had sufficient independence of mind to speak out when confronted with real evidence of Israeli hands in Australian pockets. In a normal country that would be seen as an act of personal courage and integrity, but in a paranoid and security conscious apartheid state, it is bound to be construed as a hanging offence.
Further light is shed on the strangely passive attitude of Zygier's family to his detention and death:
"The Australian understands Zygier's family received very little information about his case... It is understood Zygier's family are satisfied that his rights were attended to at all times by Israeli authorities. They do not harbour any doubt about the verdict of an Israeli investigation into Zygier's death, which found the former lawyer had hanged himself in a cell supposed to be under constant surveillance... [family friend of Zygier] Mr Greener said the family had been devastated by Zygier's death. Zygier's father had retired from his role at the Jewish Community Council of Victoria soon after the funeral and had returned to work as executive director of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission only in the past 6 months." (ibid) [NB, I assume that these references to Zygier's 'family' are to his Melbourne family. As to his Israeli wife and children, so far no one's said a word.]
Then came this from the Weekend Australian :
"Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported yesterday that the Zygier family had recently signed a deal with Israel to accept 'several million shekels' in compensation. The paper quoted one of Zygier's lawyers as saying Israeli authorities had threatened the Australian, while he was in solitary confinement, that unless he pleaded guilty, he was likely to be sentenced to a long prison term and would be shunned by his family and the Jewish community. Zygier's family has not commented since ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent broke the story on Tuesday." (ASIO knew all about spy Zygier, John Lyons, 16/2/13)
And this:
"The fathers of two Australians whose passports were used by Mossad agents have declined to comment on the Zygier case, with one denying any connection between the events. Lawyer Harvey Bruce... is the father of Joshua Bruce, who had been studying in Jerusalem for seven years his passport was used in the assassination of Mabhouh. Mr Bruce said he was 'not at all' happy to discuss the case. 'There's no connection as far as I'm concerned,' he said. The office of Joe Krycer, father of Tel Aviv speech therapist Joshua Aaron Krycer, whose passport was also used in 2010, said he would not be commenting. Mr Krycer works in the same Caulfield South building as Zygier's father, Geoffrey, Mr Krycer is Victorian bequest director for the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which raises money for land conservation projects in Israel, while Mr Zygier is executive director of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission." (ibid)
Finally, there's the suggestion, from 'an Israeli official' admittedly, that the Australian authorities know more than they're letting on:
"Australia has not made a single request for information about the Ben Zygier case since news of the alleged spy's incarceration and death in an Israeli prison broke this this week. Amid a storm of speculation about the reason for the suspected Mossad spy's jailing, including the claim he may have been about to divulge information about Australian passport fraud, a senior Israeli official said Canberra was unlikely to make a request because the Gillard government already had detailed knowledge of the case. 'Every day that goes by you see how deeply involved they were,' the official told The Weekend Australian. 'They interrogated him, they suspected him, they knew many things. It is clear they were in the know long before he died. Then when the coffin was returned to Australia, they knew he was not some backpacker who got lost trekking'... Israel's Channel 10 said in 2009, Australian intelligence officers interrogated Zygier about trips he took to Iran, Lebanon and Syria. The report alleged that the case was leaked to an Australian reporter who phoned Zygier and questioned him about his alleged links to the Mossad. The reporter, Jason Koutsoukis, told Israel's Channel 2 TV that Zygier strongly denied the allegations. Zygier was arrested shortly after they spoke... Zygier was caught between two intelligence services, Israeli sources said. Mossad believed he was on the 'verge' of passing information to the Australians. Soon after his return to Israel, Mossad's domestic counterpart, Shin Bet, swooped and Zygier was arrested..." (ibid)
In stark contrast with the Australian's Prisoner X reportage, the editorialist, whose frequent foaming fulminations on behalf of Israel over the years deserve to be the subject of media legend, has been strangely silent. Equally so has been the swarm of Zionist letter writers who normally never miss an opportunity to land one on the letters page. These pests appear, thus far at any rate, to be waiting this one out.
The paper's most public Zionist voice, foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, only recently baaack in print after a mysterious absence, weighed in on the subject on 14 February, titillating us all with a tribute to the Mossad "mystique":
"I have met a number of former Mossad personnel who seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Arab world. They can tell you which cities to visit, almost which restaurant to go to, across the Middle East... If a former Mossad agent has ended up in an Israeli prison, this can only indicate that something has gone terribly wrong. Apart from the inherent sensitivity of any information involved in the case, the Israelis would hate to admit publicly a problem with one of their agents. This would undermine the mystique of super motivated, super capable Mossad agents combing all over the world, working their magical craft to serve Israel's interests." (Mystique of Mossad its greatest weapon)
Fortunately, he's had nothing to say on the subject since!
There's the testimony of Zygier's Israeli lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, for example:
"Mr Feldman, one of the last people to Zygier alive, would not detail the specific charge but said last night it was 'not on the high level of gravity.' Asked about reports in Israel that Zygier was accused of 'treason', Mr Feldman said: 'I can't go into specifics but treason doesn't have to be somebody who is in coalition with Hezbollah or any other enemy of Israel... Mr Feldman visited the high security cell at the prison in Israel in the days before his death to discuss whether he should accept a plea bargain and face a shorter prison sentence or contest the charges and risk a longer sentence. He described the treatment of Zygier as 'stupid, inhumane and repulsive'... Mr Feldman said his client 'claimed before me he had done nothing wrong'... Mr Feldman would not detail the specific charge against Zygier or any security details, citing a secrecy agreement he had signed. But he said his impression of Zygier was that he was 'someone who was not a traitor by nature or ideology. He was involved in something that I cannot go into but this concern does not threaten the security or the government of Israel,' he said." (Zygier's family never knew charges, Paul Maley & John Lyons, 15/2/13)
Feldman's words add weight to the theory that Zygier had been (or was about to) talking to an Australian agency about Mossad's misuse of Australian passports, a matter that would normally place him in the category of whistleblower. If so, it would appear that, despite all his years of Zionist indoctrination from Bialik College on, Zygier still had sufficient independence of mind to speak out when confronted with real evidence of Israeli hands in Australian pockets. In a normal country that would be seen as an act of personal courage and integrity, but in a paranoid and security conscious apartheid state, it is bound to be construed as a hanging offence.
Further light is shed on the strangely passive attitude of Zygier's family to his detention and death:
"The Australian understands Zygier's family received very little information about his case... It is understood Zygier's family are satisfied that his rights were attended to at all times by Israeli authorities. They do not harbour any doubt about the verdict of an Israeli investigation into Zygier's death, which found the former lawyer had hanged himself in a cell supposed to be under constant surveillance... [family friend of Zygier] Mr Greener said the family had been devastated by Zygier's death. Zygier's father had retired from his role at the Jewish Community Council of Victoria soon after the funeral and had returned to work as executive director of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission only in the past 6 months." (ibid) [NB, I assume that these references to Zygier's 'family' are to his Melbourne family. As to his Israeli wife and children, so far no one's said a word.]
Then came this from the Weekend Australian :
"Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported yesterday that the Zygier family had recently signed a deal with Israel to accept 'several million shekels' in compensation. The paper quoted one of Zygier's lawyers as saying Israeli authorities had threatened the Australian, while he was in solitary confinement, that unless he pleaded guilty, he was likely to be sentenced to a long prison term and would be shunned by his family and the Jewish community. Zygier's family has not commented since ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent broke the story on Tuesday." (ASIO knew all about spy Zygier, John Lyons, 16/2/13)
And this:
"The fathers of two Australians whose passports were used by Mossad agents have declined to comment on the Zygier case, with one denying any connection between the events. Lawyer Harvey Bruce... is the father of Joshua Bruce, who had been studying in Jerusalem for seven years his passport was used in the assassination of Mabhouh. Mr Bruce said he was 'not at all' happy to discuss the case. 'There's no connection as far as I'm concerned,' he said. The office of Joe Krycer, father of Tel Aviv speech therapist Joshua Aaron Krycer, whose passport was also used in 2010, said he would not be commenting. Mr Krycer works in the same Caulfield South building as Zygier's father, Geoffrey, Mr Krycer is Victorian bequest director for the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which raises money for land conservation projects in Israel, while Mr Zygier is executive director of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission." (ibid)
Finally, there's the suggestion, from 'an Israeli official' admittedly, that the Australian authorities know more than they're letting on:
"Australia has not made a single request for information about the Ben Zygier case since news of the alleged spy's incarceration and death in an Israeli prison broke this this week. Amid a storm of speculation about the reason for the suspected Mossad spy's jailing, including the claim he may have been about to divulge information about Australian passport fraud, a senior Israeli official said Canberra was unlikely to make a request because the Gillard government already had detailed knowledge of the case. 'Every day that goes by you see how deeply involved they were,' the official told The Weekend Australian. 'They interrogated him, they suspected him, they knew many things. It is clear they were in the know long before he died. Then when the coffin was returned to Australia, they knew he was not some backpacker who got lost trekking'... Israel's Channel 10 said in 2009, Australian intelligence officers interrogated Zygier about trips he took to Iran, Lebanon and Syria. The report alleged that the case was leaked to an Australian reporter who phoned Zygier and questioned him about his alleged links to the Mossad. The reporter, Jason Koutsoukis, told Israel's Channel 2 TV that Zygier strongly denied the allegations. Zygier was arrested shortly after they spoke... Zygier was caught between two intelligence services, Israeli sources said. Mossad believed he was on the 'verge' of passing information to the Australians. Soon after his return to Israel, Mossad's domestic counterpart, Shin Bet, swooped and Zygier was arrested..." (ibid)
In stark contrast with the Australian's Prisoner X reportage, the editorialist, whose frequent foaming fulminations on behalf of Israel over the years deserve to be the subject of media legend, has been strangely silent. Equally so has been the swarm of Zionist letter writers who normally never miss an opportunity to land one on the letters page. These pests appear, thus far at any rate, to be waiting this one out.
The paper's most public Zionist voice, foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, only recently baaack in print after a mysterious absence, weighed in on the subject on 14 February, titillating us all with a tribute to the Mossad "mystique":
"I have met a number of former Mossad personnel who seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Arab world. They can tell you which cities to visit, almost which restaurant to go to, across the Middle East... If a former Mossad agent has ended up in an Israeli prison, this can only indicate that something has gone terribly wrong. Apart from the inherent sensitivity of any information involved in the case, the Israelis would hate to admit publicly a problem with one of their agents. This would undermine the mystique of super motivated, super capable Mossad agents combing all over the world, working their magical craft to serve Israel's interests." (Mystique of Mossad its greatest weapon)
Fortunately, he's had nothing to say on the subject since!
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
The Airbrushing of Frank Lowy
Take a look at the opening paragraph of this Sydney Morning Herald report on Frank Lowy, Australian billionaire and generous donor to such deserving 'charities' as Israel's Jewish National Fund (JNF) and Australia's LibLab:
"The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and one of Australia's greatest refugee success stories, Frank Lowy, joined forces last night to defend multiculturalism against criticisms prompted by the riots in Sydney on Saturday... Giving the inaugural Australian Multicultural Council, Mr Lowy said it was time to move the discussion about multiculturalism to a new phase, 'beyond the recognition that it makes for a more vibrant community, or that we now have a wider choice of restaurants'." (Gillard, Lowy defend multiculturalism, Phillip Coorey, 20/9/12)
What a man, we're expected to exclaim. From refugee rags to riches beyond the dreams of avarice and on to multicultural icon. Bring on the musical!
Reality, however, cannot so easily be (air)brushed aside.
I dedicate this post, therefore, to a critical examination of the two key propositions that underpin Coorey's report: 1) that Lowy was a refugee; and 2) that Lowy is such a paragon of multiculturalism that we, the public, should sit up and take notice of what he says on the subject.
Not that I haven't already animadverted on these matters before - namely in the two posts, Frank Lowy: Arab Fighter (14/11/10) and Refugees (19/7/10) - however, in this post I'll be drawing on a new (for me) source: Jill Margo's 2000 biography of Lowy: Frank Lowy: Pushing the Limits.
Firstly, was Lowy a refugee or an immigrant?
After the war, Lowy and other members of his family returned from Russian-occupied Budapest to their home town, Filakovo, in Czechoslovakia:
"The Holocaust was finally over," writes Margo. "Frank locked away the experience and did not revisit it for 40 years. Throughout 1945 his family began to pick up the pieces of their shattered life. Alex established his own business and opened a shop. John found a new interest: Zionism. Frank was sent to nearby Kosice and a Zionist-funded camp for youngsters, where he was taught primarily about Palestine and Zionism... the Zionist Youth Group [there] was encouraging young people to emigrate to Palestine. Frank understood that this was an opportunity for a new start: There was nothing for me in Czechoslovakia, memories were terrible and I felt enormous inner pressure to leave. I had missed so many years at school, was not motivated to catch up and had no desire to create roots there. Joining the group to go to Palestine was like going to a school camp. This offered a new beginning, a new country, a new identity, a chance to be part of the Jewish drive to create a homeland. The Jewish Agency sent emissaries, collecting strays and displaced persons, and moving them clandestinely to Palestine. I felt I was leaving a place to which I did not belong for a much brighter future." (pp 32-33)
So the reason why Lowy left Czechoslovakia was because he'd been bitten by the Zionist bug. And yet, in his address to the AMC, in which he portrays himself as a refugee, all mention of the siren call of Zion is missing, to be replaced by this:
"And they have returned to their small town [Filakovo] to find they are no longer welcome... The surviving members of this close family know they have become temporary residents in their town and must find somewhere else to be."
In spinning himself as a refugee, Lowy has sketched a postwar atmosphere of anti-Semitic menace, necessitating flight. Nowhere, however, in Margo's biography is there any suggestion that post-war Filakovo is some kind of anti-Semitic hotbed. In fact, his brother John, the first in the family to be bitten by the Zionist bug, is quoted as complaining only that "I felt I had no identity. I was born in Czechoslovakia and was a Czechoslovakian citizen but neither Czech nor Slovak... Palestine seemed to be the place for recreating an identity." (p 32)
It's clear from the above that Lowy did not flee Czechoslovakia for Palestine. Rather he'd been indoctrinated and lured there by Zionist agents (whose only mission was to boost the size of the Jewish community in Palestine vis-a-vis the Palestinian Arabs). And just as Lowy has departed from Margo in his sketch of postwar Filakovo, so too with his account of his journey by boat to Palestine. In Margo, his boat contains 400 passengers (p 33), while in his AMC speech, it's risen to 700. Likewise, in Margo there's no hint of brutality when his boat is intercepted by the British, but in his AMC speech, we get this far more colourful account: "There are scuffles and commotion as the British soldiers board the boat. At gunpoint the frightened refugees are herded into the grey, steel hull of the warship."
Lowy might play the refugee in his AMC speech but the reality was that he'd been recruited, along with thousands of others in the postwar years, by agents of David Ben-Gurion's Jewish Agency for a Mossad-organised attempt to breach Britain's blockade of Palestine, established not, it should be remembered, as an act of anti-Semitic cruelty, but simply to prevent the swamping of Palestine's majority Arab population by illegal Jewish immigration. As the British government stated at the time: "[this] illegal traffic is not, as has been maintained, a movement arising spontaneously among the European Jews who see in Palestine their only hope for the future. Nor are those who encourage and direct it inspired solely by the sympathy which is so widely felt for suffering [rather it is] a widely ramified and highly organized movement supported by very large financial contributions from Zionist sources, which has been built up and put into operation by unscrupulous persons in an attempt tp force the hand of His Majesty's government and anticipate their decision on future policy in Palestine."*
With regard to Palestine then, Lowy was not only not a refugee but an illegal immigrant, an unwitting pawn, if you will, in a Zionist people-smuggling operation, itself just one aspect of the postwar Zionist rebellion against British mandate rule in Palestine.
Fast forwarding then to his decision in 1952 to migrate to Australia from what was by then Israel, we read in Margo that:
"When Frank first went to Israel there was every expectation the rest of the family would follow. But while he was there, Ilona [Lowy's mother] and his brother Alex followed [sister] Edith and her husband to Australia. They could have gone to Israel but economic conditions in the early 1950s were harsh... The thought of leaving Israel was difficult... but, for Frank and his brother John, the urge to be reunited with their mother Ilona was stronger." (p 52)
With regard to Australia then, Lowy was simply an immigrant, not a refugee.
Secondly, is Lowy such a paragon of multiculturalism that he should be lecturing us on the subject?
With the events of September 15 in mind, Lowy opined in his AMC address that migrants "should agree to live by the standards and values of this society... and agree to pass on these values to your children, to ensure they receive a broad and balanced education, untainted by the ideology of hate."
But Lowy's a Zionist who has donated significant sums of money to one of the main arms of Zionist colonialism in Palestine, the Jewish National Fund. As a financial backer of the JNF, Lowy's therefore doing his bit to ensure the maintenance of Zionist settler-colonial rule in Palestine over its indigenous Palestinian Arab population, whether they be in perpetual exile, under military occupation or living in Israel as second-class citizens. To advocate multiculturalism in Australia while funding monoculturalism and apartheid in another is to risk being called a hypocrite.
But there's another reason why Lowy's little homily on multiculturalism rings hollow. It has to do with what he was doing in Palestine in the critical year of the Palestinian Nakba, 1948. All we get in his AMC speech is this:
"Ashore in Palestine, he feels a sense of freedom. No one is chasing him or pointing a gun at him because he is Jewish. But the following year he's in a makeshift uniform, back in the turmoil of war, fighting in the War of Independence for the new state of Israel."
Of course, this kind of patter is the usual stock-in-trade of the Zionist true believer, who cannot bring himself to acknowledge the reality of the massacres and expulsions of Palestine's indigenous Arab population that were perpetrated by Zionist forces in Palestine in 1948. The historical record, however, is what should guide the rest of us. Relying on Margo's sketchy, no doubt sanitised, account of this period in Lowy's life, and fleshing it out with data from scholars of the Nakba, we can get at least some idea of Lowy's involvement in the events of 1948:
Margo mentions an Israeli attack on the Palestinian village of Sejera [ash-Shajara] in February 1948, in which Lowy was wounded. Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi has written of it: "In mid-February 1948, as a battle flared between Arab and Haganah forces in the Baysan Valley, the Haganah forces carried out a diversionary attack on ash-Shajara." (All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, 1992, p 541)
Margo reveals that Lowy was involved in the 'liberation' of Tiberias in April 1948: "We would occupy one house and then move to the next. First we would break down the door, check if anyone was inside, throw in a grenade and then occupy it." (p 43) Michael Palumbo adds the necessary context: "[W]hen it was learned that the British were about to evacuate Tiberias, a company of elite Palmach troops were sent in to reinforce the town's Jewish militia. On the night of 17-18 April, a co-ordinated drive was made to cut the Arab section of town in two. Barrel-bombs, loudspeakers and 'horror sounds' were used to frighten the civilian population. (The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland, 1987, p 107)
After the fall of Tiberias, Israeli troops reportedly looted and desecrated Christian religious establishments there. (Palumbo, p 108)
In June 1948, according to Margo, Lowy joined the Barak battalion of the Golani Brigade. She quotes his commanding officer, Rafi Kocer thus: "They were a highly motivated unit. In some ways I think they were avenging the Holocaust and empowering themselves." (p 46) The question of exactly why Lowy and his troop should be avenging the Holocaust by attacking Palestinian Arabs obviously didn't occur to either Kocer or Margo. I wonder if it's ever occurred to Lowy?
Margo cites a second, final attack by the Golanis on Sejera in June 1948, though her timing appears to be out, however. Here's Khalidi again: "The village was captured on 6 May 1948 in the aftermath of the fall of Tiberias... The attack was part of a Haganah effort to consolidate its hold on lower Galilee before 15 May. Units of the Golani Brigade (mainly the 12th or Barak Battalion) struck at dawn and took the village after a 'powerful attack', according to the History of the Haganah. An unspecified number of villagers were killed during the attack; the Haganah's account states that the village's inhabitants 'fled leaving their dead behind'." (p 541)
Margo goes on to say that "[i]n the 6 months between July and December 1948, Kocer's commando unit had been involved in 73 combat missions, many behind enemy lines," and that from October 1948 Lowy was involved in fighting against the Egyptians in the Western Negev. (p 50)
While only Lowy himself is privy to the precise details of his involvement in what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe describes as the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which led to the Palestinian refugee problem that is still with us today (5.5 million souls and growing), the data presented above is surely sufficient to cast doubt on whether he's really the right person to be lecturing Australians on the meaning of multiculturalism.
[*Quoted in From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel, Idith Zertal, 1998, p 237]
"The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and one of Australia's greatest refugee success stories, Frank Lowy, joined forces last night to defend multiculturalism against criticisms prompted by the riots in Sydney on Saturday... Giving the inaugural Australian Multicultural Council, Mr Lowy said it was time to move the discussion about multiculturalism to a new phase, 'beyond the recognition that it makes for a more vibrant community, or that we now have a wider choice of restaurants'." (Gillard, Lowy defend multiculturalism, Phillip Coorey, 20/9/12)
What a man, we're expected to exclaim. From refugee rags to riches beyond the dreams of avarice and on to multicultural icon. Bring on the musical!
Reality, however, cannot so easily be (air)brushed aside.
I dedicate this post, therefore, to a critical examination of the two key propositions that underpin Coorey's report: 1) that Lowy was a refugee; and 2) that Lowy is such a paragon of multiculturalism that we, the public, should sit up and take notice of what he says on the subject.
Not that I haven't already animadverted on these matters before - namely in the two posts, Frank Lowy: Arab Fighter (14/11/10) and Refugees (19/7/10) - however, in this post I'll be drawing on a new (for me) source: Jill Margo's 2000 biography of Lowy: Frank Lowy: Pushing the Limits.
Firstly, was Lowy a refugee or an immigrant?
After the war, Lowy and other members of his family returned from Russian-occupied Budapest to their home town, Filakovo, in Czechoslovakia:
"The Holocaust was finally over," writes Margo. "Frank locked away the experience and did not revisit it for 40 years. Throughout 1945 his family began to pick up the pieces of their shattered life. Alex established his own business and opened a shop. John found a new interest: Zionism. Frank was sent to nearby Kosice and a Zionist-funded camp for youngsters, where he was taught primarily about Palestine and Zionism... the Zionist Youth Group [there] was encouraging young people to emigrate to Palestine. Frank understood that this was an opportunity for a new start: There was nothing for me in Czechoslovakia, memories were terrible and I felt enormous inner pressure to leave. I had missed so many years at school, was not motivated to catch up and had no desire to create roots there. Joining the group to go to Palestine was like going to a school camp. This offered a new beginning, a new country, a new identity, a chance to be part of the Jewish drive to create a homeland. The Jewish Agency sent emissaries, collecting strays and displaced persons, and moving them clandestinely to Palestine. I felt I was leaving a place to which I did not belong for a much brighter future." (pp 32-33)
So the reason why Lowy left Czechoslovakia was because he'd been bitten by the Zionist bug. And yet, in his address to the AMC, in which he portrays himself as a refugee, all mention of the siren call of Zion is missing, to be replaced by this:
"And they have returned to their small town [Filakovo] to find they are no longer welcome... The surviving members of this close family know they have become temporary residents in their town and must find somewhere else to be."
In spinning himself as a refugee, Lowy has sketched a postwar atmosphere of anti-Semitic menace, necessitating flight. Nowhere, however, in Margo's biography is there any suggestion that post-war Filakovo is some kind of anti-Semitic hotbed. In fact, his brother John, the first in the family to be bitten by the Zionist bug, is quoted as complaining only that "I felt I had no identity. I was born in Czechoslovakia and was a Czechoslovakian citizen but neither Czech nor Slovak... Palestine seemed to be the place for recreating an identity." (p 32)
It's clear from the above that Lowy did not flee Czechoslovakia for Palestine. Rather he'd been indoctrinated and lured there by Zionist agents (whose only mission was to boost the size of the Jewish community in Palestine vis-a-vis the Palestinian Arabs). And just as Lowy has departed from Margo in his sketch of postwar Filakovo, so too with his account of his journey by boat to Palestine. In Margo, his boat contains 400 passengers (p 33), while in his AMC speech, it's risen to 700. Likewise, in Margo there's no hint of brutality when his boat is intercepted by the British, but in his AMC speech, we get this far more colourful account: "There are scuffles and commotion as the British soldiers board the boat. At gunpoint the frightened refugees are herded into the grey, steel hull of the warship."
Lowy might play the refugee in his AMC speech but the reality was that he'd been recruited, along with thousands of others in the postwar years, by agents of David Ben-Gurion's Jewish Agency for a Mossad-organised attempt to breach Britain's blockade of Palestine, established not, it should be remembered, as an act of anti-Semitic cruelty, but simply to prevent the swamping of Palestine's majority Arab population by illegal Jewish immigration. As the British government stated at the time: "[this] illegal traffic is not, as has been maintained, a movement arising spontaneously among the European Jews who see in Palestine their only hope for the future. Nor are those who encourage and direct it inspired solely by the sympathy which is so widely felt for suffering [rather it is] a widely ramified and highly organized movement supported by very large financial contributions from Zionist sources, which has been built up and put into operation by unscrupulous persons in an attempt tp force the hand of His Majesty's government and anticipate their decision on future policy in Palestine."*
With regard to Palestine then, Lowy was not only not a refugee but an illegal immigrant, an unwitting pawn, if you will, in a Zionist people-smuggling operation, itself just one aspect of the postwar Zionist rebellion against British mandate rule in Palestine.
Fast forwarding then to his decision in 1952 to migrate to Australia from what was by then Israel, we read in Margo that:
"When Frank first went to Israel there was every expectation the rest of the family would follow. But while he was there, Ilona [Lowy's mother] and his brother Alex followed [sister] Edith and her husband to Australia. They could have gone to Israel but economic conditions in the early 1950s were harsh... The thought of leaving Israel was difficult... but, for Frank and his brother John, the urge to be reunited with their mother Ilona was stronger." (p 52)
With regard to Australia then, Lowy was simply an immigrant, not a refugee.
Secondly, is Lowy such a paragon of multiculturalism that he should be lecturing us on the subject?
With the events of September 15 in mind, Lowy opined in his AMC address that migrants "should agree to live by the standards and values of this society... and agree to pass on these values to your children, to ensure they receive a broad and balanced education, untainted by the ideology of hate."
But Lowy's a Zionist who has donated significant sums of money to one of the main arms of Zionist colonialism in Palestine, the Jewish National Fund. As a financial backer of the JNF, Lowy's therefore doing his bit to ensure the maintenance of Zionist settler-colonial rule in Palestine over its indigenous Palestinian Arab population, whether they be in perpetual exile, under military occupation or living in Israel as second-class citizens. To advocate multiculturalism in Australia while funding monoculturalism and apartheid in another is to risk being called a hypocrite.
But there's another reason why Lowy's little homily on multiculturalism rings hollow. It has to do with what he was doing in Palestine in the critical year of the Palestinian Nakba, 1948. All we get in his AMC speech is this:
"Ashore in Palestine, he feels a sense of freedom. No one is chasing him or pointing a gun at him because he is Jewish. But the following year he's in a makeshift uniform, back in the turmoil of war, fighting in the War of Independence for the new state of Israel."
Of course, this kind of patter is the usual stock-in-trade of the Zionist true believer, who cannot bring himself to acknowledge the reality of the massacres and expulsions of Palestine's indigenous Arab population that were perpetrated by Zionist forces in Palestine in 1948. The historical record, however, is what should guide the rest of us. Relying on Margo's sketchy, no doubt sanitised, account of this period in Lowy's life, and fleshing it out with data from scholars of the Nakba, we can get at least some idea of Lowy's involvement in the events of 1948:
Margo mentions an Israeli attack on the Palestinian village of Sejera [ash-Shajara] in February 1948, in which Lowy was wounded. Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi has written of it: "In mid-February 1948, as a battle flared between Arab and Haganah forces in the Baysan Valley, the Haganah forces carried out a diversionary attack on ash-Shajara." (All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, 1992, p 541)
Margo reveals that Lowy was involved in the 'liberation' of Tiberias in April 1948: "We would occupy one house and then move to the next. First we would break down the door, check if anyone was inside, throw in a grenade and then occupy it." (p 43) Michael Palumbo adds the necessary context: "[W]hen it was learned that the British were about to evacuate Tiberias, a company of elite Palmach troops were sent in to reinforce the town's Jewish militia. On the night of 17-18 April, a co-ordinated drive was made to cut the Arab section of town in two. Barrel-bombs, loudspeakers and 'horror sounds' were used to frighten the civilian population. (The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland, 1987, p 107)
After the fall of Tiberias, Israeli troops reportedly looted and desecrated Christian religious establishments there. (Palumbo, p 108)
In June 1948, according to Margo, Lowy joined the Barak battalion of the Golani Brigade. She quotes his commanding officer, Rafi Kocer thus: "They were a highly motivated unit. In some ways I think they were avenging the Holocaust and empowering themselves." (p 46) The question of exactly why Lowy and his troop should be avenging the Holocaust by attacking Palestinian Arabs obviously didn't occur to either Kocer or Margo. I wonder if it's ever occurred to Lowy?
Margo cites a second, final attack by the Golanis on Sejera in June 1948, though her timing appears to be out, however. Here's Khalidi again: "The village was captured on 6 May 1948 in the aftermath of the fall of Tiberias... The attack was part of a Haganah effort to consolidate its hold on lower Galilee before 15 May. Units of the Golani Brigade (mainly the 12th or Barak Battalion) struck at dawn and took the village after a 'powerful attack', according to the History of the Haganah. An unspecified number of villagers were killed during the attack; the Haganah's account states that the village's inhabitants 'fled leaving their dead behind'." (p 541)
Margo goes on to say that "[i]n the 6 months between July and December 1948, Kocer's commando unit had been involved in 73 combat missions, many behind enemy lines," and that from October 1948 Lowy was involved in fighting against the Egyptians in the Western Negev. (p 50)
While only Lowy himself is privy to the precise details of his involvement in what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe describes as the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which led to the Palestinian refugee problem that is still with us today (5.5 million souls and growing), the data presented above is surely sufficient to cast doubt on whether he's really the right person to be lecturing Australians on the meaning of multiculturalism.
[*Quoted in From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel, Idith Zertal, 1998, p 237]
Monday, July 16, 2012
Labor Isn't a Brand, It's a Zionist Cause
"Delegates, sometimes when reforming our great Party is talked about, people say there is a problem with the Labor brand. But delegates, Labor isn't a brand, it's a cause." (Prime Minister Julia Gillard, NSW ALP State Conference, 15/7/12)
But what kind of cause? Alas, a deeply Zionist one.
Just follow the thread:
"A story of plot and counter plot, of frustration and ultimate success was told by The Right Honourable Dr HV Evatt to over 400 people at the Maccabean Hall when the Jewish National Fund opened its Jubilee Year last Monday night. Dr Evatt was President of UN committee on Palestine in 1947, and in 1949 was chairman of the Paris Assembly which debated the Trusteeship of Palestine. Later as Australia's delegate to UN he exercised his chairman's casting vote and was instrumental in having Israel admitted to UN membership. 'Australia stood for justice and had a knowledge of what justice demanded,' said Dr Evatt. 'When the debate was taking place on the establishment of Israel as a State, Australia did not avoid its responsibilities - it voted 'yes' and also voted for full recognition instead of de facto recognition.' Dr Evatt said Israel would stand side by side with Australia in the name of democracy and law and will do all it can to avert war. Mr A Landa, MLA, declared that if it were not for Dr Evatt in the years of 1947-49, Israel - who knows - may not have been in existence today... Mr Landa described Israel as a bastion of democracy in the Middle East. Mr HB Newman presented Dr Evatt with a parchment which was a certificate showing that a forest of 10,000 trees had been contributed by the Australian Jewish community and planted in Israel in Dr Evatt's name." (Dr Evatt at JNF Jubilee, Sydney Jewish News, 24/3/52)
"The ACTU president, Mr [Bob] Hawke, said yesterday that if he were the Israeli prime minister he would drop an atomic bomb on invading Arabs." (Hawke: I'd A-bomb Arabs, Chris Forsyth, The Daily Telegraph, 16/2/74)*
"UNION CHIEF WHO SAID: 'I'm proud our nation helped to kill Hamas terrorist in Dubai'... come hear outspoken Paul Howes." (JNF ad for its 2010 AGM, The Australian Jewish News, 7/5/10)**
"... ALP officials, Eric Roozendaal and Mark Arbib have spoken to me and requested that I should have my speeches vetted, visit the Holocaust Memorial, visit Israel and meet with members of various Jewish organisations..." (Julia Irwin, former Labor member for Fowler, August 2010)***
[*See my 13/7/10 post The Heart that Throbs for Bomber Bob; **See my 8/5/10 post Zionism Red in Tooth & Claw; ***See my 11/8/10 post Julia Irwin Spills the Beans.]
But what kind of cause? Alas, a deeply Zionist one.
Just follow the thread:
"A story of plot and counter plot, of frustration and ultimate success was told by The Right Honourable Dr HV Evatt to over 400 people at the Maccabean Hall when the Jewish National Fund opened its Jubilee Year last Monday night. Dr Evatt was President of UN committee on Palestine in 1947, and in 1949 was chairman of the Paris Assembly which debated the Trusteeship of Palestine. Later as Australia's delegate to UN he exercised his chairman's casting vote and was instrumental in having Israel admitted to UN membership. 'Australia stood for justice and had a knowledge of what justice demanded,' said Dr Evatt. 'When the debate was taking place on the establishment of Israel as a State, Australia did not avoid its responsibilities - it voted 'yes' and also voted for full recognition instead of de facto recognition.' Dr Evatt said Israel would stand side by side with Australia in the name of democracy and law and will do all it can to avert war. Mr A Landa, MLA, declared that if it were not for Dr Evatt in the years of 1947-49, Israel - who knows - may not have been in existence today... Mr Landa described Israel as a bastion of democracy in the Middle East. Mr HB Newman presented Dr Evatt with a parchment which was a certificate showing that a forest of 10,000 trees had been contributed by the Australian Jewish community and planted in Israel in Dr Evatt's name." (Dr Evatt at JNF Jubilee, Sydney Jewish News, 24/3/52)
"The ACTU president, Mr [Bob] Hawke, said yesterday that if he were the Israeli prime minister he would drop an atomic bomb on invading Arabs." (Hawke: I'd A-bomb Arabs, Chris Forsyth, The Daily Telegraph, 16/2/74)*
"UNION CHIEF WHO SAID: 'I'm proud our nation helped to kill Hamas terrorist in Dubai'... come hear outspoken Paul Howes." (JNF ad for its 2010 AGM, The Australian Jewish News, 7/5/10)**
"... ALP officials, Eric Roozendaal and Mark Arbib have spoken to me and requested that I should have my speeches vetted, visit the Holocaust Memorial, visit Israel and meet with members of various Jewish organisations..." (Julia Irwin, former Labor member for Fowler, August 2010)***
[*See my 13/7/10 post The Heart that Throbs for Bomber Bob; **See my 8/5/10 post Zionism Red in Tooth & Claw; ***See my 11/8/10 post Julia Irwin Spills the Beans.]
Monday, August 22, 2011
What's Eating Raimond Gaita?
"There is always a litmus test to assess a person's intellectual and moral courage. In the West, especially in America, this litmus test is provided bt the Middle East issue. The intellectual and moral cowardice of Western intellectuals on this issue is stunning. Paradoxically, by censoring their views on Israel, they have done great damage to Israel by failing to point out to it the sheer folly of remaining in perpetual conflict with its neighbours. The next time any Western intellectual calls upon the rest of the world to show courage by speaking 'truth to power' he or she should lead the charge by speaking 'truth to power' on the Israel-Palestine dispute." Kishore Mahbubani
I notice that Australian ethicist Raimond Gaita seems to be attracting some attention, his sequel to his 1998 memoir Romulus, My Father, called After Romulus, having just been launched at a 3-day conference devoted to his life and works at Adelaide's Flinders University. Gaita is also the editor of Gaza: Morality, Law & Politics (2010), a volume of essays. While I haven't yet read Gaita's contribution(s) in the aforementioned book, I have read his rebuttal to Michael Brull's critique of his position on the Palestine problem. Both may be found at the Independent Australian Jewish Voices website (iajv.org). Frankly, Gaita's rebuttal does not exactly inspire me with much confidence in the man. Some examples:
"In my lecture [on Slow TV] I suggested that it is misleading to call the Palestinian Arabs the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine because in the context in which it is commonplace to call Israel a colonial-settler state, it implies that Jews who came to Palestine and established political institutions there had no more right to do so than the British and other white settlers had the right to do so in Australia - no right at all, in fact."
By suggesting that Israel is not really a colonial-settler state, and that the Palestinian Arabs are not really indigenes (without saying what it is or who they are), Gaita is engaged in a bit of special pleading vis-a-vis other colonial-settler states such as the United States and Australia. Why?
"It is true that the balance of my talk was pro-Israel insofar as I argued against a bi-national state in favour of a two-state solution and insofar as I devoted more time to defending Israel against critics than I did to detailing Israeli injustices against the Palestinians. My lecture was the 3rd in a series... whose audience had, in the previous 2 lectures, shown palpable hostility towards Israel. Ghassan Hage... was to speak the next week and I knew he would argue, passionately, an anti-Zionist case. The audience at the series did not need more criticism of Israel."
More special pleading. Why (when he's admitted elsewhere in the text that the Palestinians were "dispossessed") does he feel this need to defend the indefensible?
"Though I denied that 'Zionism is intrinsically racist, that racism is of its essence', I acknowledged the 'probably true claim that for racist reasons common in colonial settler states the full humanity of the Palestinian Arabs was at best only partially visible to early Zionist settlers' and 'that racism against the Palestinian Arabs [probably] now goes deep in Israeli society'. And more."
Putting aside the fact that he's aleady baulked at recognising Israel as a colonial-settler state, why is he splitting hairs here? And what gives with that risible circumlocution: "...the full humanity of the Palestinian Arabs was at best only partially visible to early Zionist settlers"?
"I said in my talk that if one goes by their words, the millions of Muslims throughout the world hate Jews with a murderous ferocity. I take that to be a statement of fact."
What an extraordinarily sweeping generalisation for a man of reason, a 'philosopher', to make.
Gaita seems to be quite conflicted on this issue. So what is it that's eating him? I believe the following letter to The Australian Jewish News of 3/12/10 provides the answer. I quote it in full (quite apart from the issue at hand, it provides a fascinating insight into what goes on at Zionist functions), directing a number of questions and comments to Gaita along the way:
"The letter by the federal president of Jewish National Fund (JNF), Grahame Leonard (AJN 19/11), is astonishing for the fact that it publicly expressed regret that the JNF had invited me to speak at a fundraising dinner in Sydney on November 8, and also because it implied that in speaking as I did I betrayed the good faith of the NSW leadership."
You attended the fundraiser of an arm of the state you know is guilty of "war crimes and crimes against humanity" (to use your own words from the earlier text)? Do you even know anything about the JNF and its role as an agent of Zionist colonisation and Palestinian dispossession? And you're surprised at their response when you deviate from the script, which demands nothing less than platitudes and/or gushing praise for their state-idol?
"I said nothing on that night that I had not said in... publications known to those who invited me... Nor did I say anything that is in substance different from opinions expressed by many Israelis, including Amos Oz and David Grossman. The accusation that I had betrayed the good faith of anyone in the JNF is as baseless as it is insulting."
I wonder; do you feel the need to confine your opinions on this issue within parameters set by Israel's loyal (ie soft Zionist) opposition, as exemplified by the likes of Oz and Grossman? If so, what ever happened to speaking out without fear or favour, surely the essence of free and frank discussion?
"Perhaps, though, it is not the relatively moderate political opinions that I expressed, but the fact that I expressed political opinions at all, that offended Leonard. He says that JNF is an 'apolitical' organisation. I doubt that many people will believe that, but be that as it may: no-one who was at the dinner or who had even read the ad for it could have failed to realise that the discussion was always intended to be political... Was anyone surprised when (to unfailing applause) two of the panellists repeatedly attacked Goldstone and human rights groups that had pretty much unanimously accused Israel of war crimes if not crimes against humanity? Or, when General Yaacov Amidror finished his concluding remarks by saying (again to resounding applause) that the world loved Israel only when it bled, but Israel would not bleed in order to earn the love of the world. Of course not. I therefore draw the unsurprising conclusion that the federal president of JNF cannot tolerate even relatively moderate criticism of Israel's conduct, even though the same criticism is voiced by some of its most distinguished patriots."
Exactly! You were invited as an adornment, a pretty face, a trophy intellectual if you will. You were not expected to say anything (even mildly) critical of the object of Leonard and Co's affection. There can be no deviation from the party line with these people. And you didn't understand this before you accepted the JNF's invitation to speak?
"The report to which Leonard's letter is a response (AJN 19/11) refers to the fact that my wife is Israeli. I do not recall saying that in the discussion, but it is true: her family on her mother's side lived for at least 8 generations in Jerusalem. I went to Sydney for 3 days from London in the midst of a lunatically busy schedule... only because Israel matters to me in large part because my wife's truthful love for Israel matters to me."
There you have it. Can we really expect Gaita to call a spade a spade on this issue when he's carrying that kind of baggage?
I notice that Australian ethicist Raimond Gaita seems to be attracting some attention, his sequel to his 1998 memoir Romulus, My Father, called After Romulus, having just been launched at a 3-day conference devoted to his life and works at Adelaide's Flinders University. Gaita is also the editor of Gaza: Morality, Law & Politics (2010), a volume of essays. While I haven't yet read Gaita's contribution(s) in the aforementioned book, I have read his rebuttal to Michael Brull's critique of his position on the Palestine problem. Both may be found at the Independent Australian Jewish Voices website (iajv.org). Frankly, Gaita's rebuttal does not exactly inspire me with much confidence in the man. Some examples:
"In my lecture [on Slow TV] I suggested that it is misleading to call the Palestinian Arabs the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine because in the context in which it is commonplace to call Israel a colonial-settler state, it implies that Jews who came to Palestine and established political institutions there had no more right to do so than the British and other white settlers had the right to do so in Australia - no right at all, in fact."
By suggesting that Israel is not really a colonial-settler state, and that the Palestinian Arabs are not really indigenes (without saying what it is or who they are), Gaita is engaged in a bit of special pleading vis-a-vis other colonial-settler states such as the United States and Australia. Why?
"It is true that the balance of my talk was pro-Israel insofar as I argued against a bi-national state in favour of a two-state solution and insofar as I devoted more time to defending Israel against critics than I did to detailing Israeli injustices against the Palestinians. My lecture was the 3rd in a series... whose audience had, in the previous 2 lectures, shown palpable hostility towards Israel. Ghassan Hage... was to speak the next week and I knew he would argue, passionately, an anti-Zionist case. The audience at the series did not need more criticism of Israel."
More special pleading. Why (when he's admitted elsewhere in the text that the Palestinians were "dispossessed") does he feel this need to defend the indefensible?
"Though I denied that 'Zionism is intrinsically racist, that racism is of its essence', I acknowledged the 'probably true claim that for racist reasons common in colonial settler states the full humanity of the Palestinian Arabs was at best only partially visible to early Zionist settlers' and 'that racism against the Palestinian Arabs [probably] now goes deep in Israeli society'. And more."
Putting aside the fact that he's aleady baulked at recognising Israel as a colonial-settler state, why is he splitting hairs here? And what gives with that risible circumlocution: "...the full humanity of the Palestinian Arabs was at best only partially visible to early Zionist settlers"?
"I said in my talk that if one goes by their words, the millions of Muslims throughout the world hate Jews with a murderous ferocity. I take that to be a statement of fact."
What an extraordinarily sweeping generalisation for a man of reason, a 'philosopher', to make.
Gaita seems to be quite conflicted on this issue. So what is it that's eating him? I believe the following letter to The Australian Jewish News of 3/12/10 provides the answer. I quote it in full (quite apart from the issue at hand, it provides a fascinating insight into what goes on at Zionist functions), directing a number of questions and comments to Gaita along the way:
"The letter by the federal president of Jewish National Fund (JNF), Grahame Leonard (AJN 19/11), is astonishing for the fact that it publicly expressed regret that the JNF had invited me to speak at a fundraising dinner in Sydney on November 8, and also because it implied that in speaking as I did I betrayed the good faith of the NSW leadership."
You attended the fundraiser of an arm of the state you know is guilty of "war crimes and crimes against humanity" (to use your own words from the earlier text)? Do you even know anything about the JNF and its role as an agent of Zionist colonisation and Palestinian dispossession? And you're surprised at their response when you deviate from the script, which demands nothing less than platitudes and/or gushing praise for their state-idol?
"I said nothing on that night that I had not said in... publications known to those who invited me... Nor did I say anything that is in substance different from opinions expressed by many Israelis, including Amos Oz and David Grossman. The accusation that I had betrayed the good faith of anyone in the JNF is as baseless as it is insulting."
I wonder; do you feel the need to confine your opinions on this issue within parameters set by Israel's loyal (ie soft Zionist) opposition, as exemplified by the likes of Oz and Grossman? If so, what ever happened to speaking out without fear or favour, surely the essence of free and frank discussion?
"Perhaps, though, it is not the relatively moderate political opinions that I expressed, but the fact that I expressed political opinions at all, that offended Leonard. He says that JNF is an 'apolitical' organisation. I doubt that many people will believe that, but be that as it may: no-one who was at the dinner or who had even read the ad for it could have failed to realise that the discussion was always intended to be political... Was anyone surprised when (to unfailing applause) two of the panellists repeatedly attacked Goldstone and human rights groups that had pretty much unanimously accused Israel of war crimes if not crimes against humanity? Or, when General Yaacov Amidror finished his concluding remarks by saying (again to resounding applause) that the world loved Israel only when it bled, but Israel would not bleed in order to earn the love of the world. Of course not. I therefore draw the unsurprising conclusion that the federal president of JNF cannot tolerate even relatively moderate criticism of Israel's conduct, even though the same criticism is voiced by some of its most distinguished patriots."
Exactly! You were invited as an adornment, a pretty face, a trophy intellectual if you will. You were not expected to say anything (even mildly) critical of the object of Leonard and Co's affection. There can be no deviation from the party line with these people. And you didn't understand this before you accepted the JNF's invitation to speak?
"The report to which Leonard's letter is a response (AJN 19/11) refers to the fact that my wife is Israeli. I do not recall saying that in the discussion, but it is true: her family on her mother's side lived for at least 8 generations in Jerusalem. I went to Sydney for 3 days from London in the midst of a lunatically busy schedule... only because Israel matters to me in large part because my wife's truthful love for Israel matters to me."
There you have it. Can we really expect Gaita to call a spade a spade on this issue when he's carrying that kind of baggage?
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Meet Australia's Future Political Leaders
Here's a little rambam* that until now had slipped under my radar, probably because, as far as I'm aware, it received zero attention in the Australian ms media. The rambammed were a gaggle of Lib-Lab student politicians whose knowledge of the Middle East conflict appears to be zero, no doubt making them ideal material for a rambamming. Their essential cluelessness, and the wide-eyed innocence with which they appear to have taken the lolly waved at them by a certain unmentionable with a jutting agenda, surely marks them out for political office in this great nation of ours. [*For a definition, see my previous post.]
The extract below comes from a Jewish National Fund (JNF) press release, Young Australian politicians visit KKL Negev water projects, published in The Jerusalem Post on August 8. My comments in square brackets bold:
"'Many Middle-Eastern experts are of the opinion that future wars in the Middle East will be caused by the region's severe water shortage, which is why the issue is so high on Israel's priority list'. Tania Levi, a KKL-JNF tourist guide, was explaining the importance of KKL-JNF's water projects to a group of young Australian politicians who were visiting Israel as part of a fact-finding mission [!] to the Middle East. Members of the group included Duncan McDonald, John Shipp, Xavier Williams, Jesse Overton-Skinner, Eloise Howse, Jesse Marshall and Joel Burnie [of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC)]. The organizers of the group's trip to Israel [Obviously, AIJAC] asked that the group visit KKL-JNF sites in the Negev desert where they could see Israel's water conservation efforts firsthand and understand their geopolitical significance. This was the first time that the group had heard about KKL-JNF [!!], so Tania briefly reviewed KKL-JNF's history and described the organization's unique position in Israel, emphasizing the fact that KKK-JNF is Israel's largest and and oldest green organization [!!! Just click on the JNF tag at the bottom of this post and check this one out. If you've only time for one post, read A Certain Jewish Tree Planting Group (14/6/08)] and leads the country's water recycling efforts. The site chosen as an example of a large-scale water recycling project in the desert was the recently dedicated Arye Pools near Beersheva, which is part of the Bnei Shimon region water reclamation project and is sponsored by JNF Australia. The building of the Arye Pools was made possible thanks to a contribution of Tom and Rae Mandel, also from Australia. Tania opened a map of Israel and showed the group where the Arye Pools and the Negev desert are located: 'To get an idea of how important water is to any agreement reached between the countries of the Middle East', Tania continued, 'let's look at the peace agreement Israel signed with Jordan. One of the stipulations of that contract is that Israel must provide Jordan with nearly 75 million cubic meters of water per year. This is quite an undertaking for a country with very limited freshwater resources. In order to be able to meet this obligation, Israel through KKL-JNF, has become the world leader [!!!!] in recycling purified sewage water for agricultural purposes. Almost 70% of our sewage is recycled, freeing up precious drinking water for domestic usage'." [What a wonderful neighbour Israel is! Sewage is recycled merely to please Jordan! Did our budding apparatchiks chorus 'Awesome!'?]
I interrupt young Tania for a minute to pose a question: What is the JNF really up to in the Negev?
In a word, Judaisation: "The [Israeli] government has several reasons for developing the Negev. It wants to bring jobs to rural Israel, more evenly distribute the country's population and tip the Arab-Jewish democratic balance in the Negev and Galilee regions - where there are heavy concentrations of Israeli Arabs - more solidly in favour of Jews. This is part and parcel with how Israel's leadership envisions the Jewish state. Not only must Israel as a whole be mostly Jewish, but every major region within it should be majority Jewish too... While the Negev is roughly 60% Jewish, the Arabs who live there - most of them Bedouin - have much higher birthrates than the local Jews. The government has tried to shore up the Jewish population of the Negev by encouraging new [Jewish] immigrants to move there... The JNF is investing $600 million [Tax free? but of course!] over 10 years in a plan called Blueprint Negev to build new communities in the rural desert, improve Beersheva's infrastructure, invest in the city's hospital, university and cultural institutions, and increase employment opportunities in the area." (The Negev's 21st-century pioneers, Uriel Heilman, B'nai B'rith Magazine, Winter 2008-2009)]
To return to Tania's greenwash: "KKL-JNF has built over 220 water reservoirs throughout the country over the past few years. In any future agreement with Palestinians, water will be a major issue. Water knows no political borders. If, for example, the Palestinian city of Nablus does not treat its sewage, it flows over the green line towards the Israeli city of Netanya [Is there no end to Palestinian terrorism?]... [T]he group was fascinated by Tania's detailed presentation, and asked many questions about KKL-JNF and the water crisis. They were especially interested to hear about recycling, desalination, and the proposed Dead Sea-Red Sea Canal. Their schedule, however, was very tight, and Tania wanted to show them how recycled water made the desert bloom... [An oldie, but a goldie. For the dirt on Israel's incredible reputation as a bloomer of deserts, see my 25/11/08 post Sir Bob Wows JNFaithful at Galah Dinner.]"
Dashed pity about the kids having such a tight schedule. I'm sure that's all that prevented them from popping into Beersheva's Ben-Gurion University and hearing from academic Neve Gordon a first hand account of Israel's other method of tipping the Arab-Jewish demographic balance more solidly in favour of Jews: ethnic cleansing: "The signs of destruction [in the Bedouin village of Arakib] were immediately evident. I first noticed the chickens and geese running loose near a bulldozed house, and then saw another house and then another one, all of them in rubble. A few children were trying to find a shaded spot to hide from the scorching desert sun, while behind them a stream of black smoke rose from the burning hay. The sheep, goats and cattle were nowhere to be seen - perhaps because the police had confiscated them. Scores of Bedouin men were standing on a yellow hill, sharing their experiences from the early morning hours, while all around them uprooted olive trees lay on the ground. A whole village comprising between 40 and 45 houses had been completely razed in less than 3 hours." (Ethnic cleansing in the Israeli Negev: The razing of a Bedouin village by Israeli police show just how far the state will go to achieve its aim of Judaising the Negev region, guardian.co.uk, 28/7/10)
The extract below comes from a Jewish National Fund (JNF) press release, Young Australian politicians visit KKL Negev water projects, published in The Jerusalem Post on August 8. My comments in square brackets bold:
"'Many Middle-Eastern experts are of the opinion that future wars in the Middle East will be caused by the region's severe water shortage, which is why the issue is so high on Israel's priority list'. Tania Levi, a KKL-JNF tourist guide, was explaining the importance of KKL-JNF's water projects to a group of young Australian politicians who were visiting Israel as part of a fact-finding mission [!] to the Middle East. Members of the group included Duncan McDonald, John Shipp, Xavier Williams, Jesse Overton-Skinner, Eloise Howse, Jesse Marshall and Joel Burnie [of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC)]. The organizers of the group's trip to Israel [Obviously, AIJAC] asked that the group visit KKL-JNF sites in the Negev desert where they could see Israel's water conservation efforts firsthand and understand their geopolitical significance. This was the first time that the group had heard about KKL-JNF [!!], so Tania briefly reviewed KKL-JNF's history and described the organization's unique position in Israel, emphasizing the fact that KKK-JNF is Israel's largest and and oldest green organization [!!! Just click on the JNF tag at the bottom of this post and check this one out. If you've only time for one post, read A Certain Jewish Tree Planting Group (14/6/08)] and leads the country's water recycling efforts. The site chosen as an example of a large-scale water recycling project in the desert was the recently dedicated Arye Pools near Beersheva, which is part of the Bnei Shimon region water reclamation project and is sponsored by JNF Australia. The building of the Arye Pools was made possible thanks to a contribution of Tom and Rae Mandel, also from Australia. Tania opened a map of Israel and showed the group where the Arye Pools and the Negev desert are located: 'To get an idea of how important water is to any agreement reached between the countries of the Middle East', Tania continued, 'let's look at the peace agreement Israel signed with Jordan. One of the stipulations of that contract is that Israel must provide Jordan with nearly 75 million cubic meters of water per year. This is quite an undertaking for a country with very limited freshwater resources. In order to be able to meet this obligation, Israel through KKL-JNF, has become the world leader [!!!!] in recycling purified sewage water for agricultural purposes. Almost 70% of our sewage is recycled, freeing up precious drinking water for domestic usage'." [What a wonderful neighbour Israel is! Sewage is recycled merely to please Jordan! Did our budding apparatchiks chorus 'Awesome!'?]
I interrupt young Tania for a minute to pose a question: What is the JNF really up to in the Negev?
In a word, Judaisation: "The [Israeli] government has several reasons for developing the Negev. It wants to bring jobs to rural Israel, more evenly distribute the country's population and tip the Arab-Jewish democratic balance in the Negev and Galilee regions - where there are heavy concentrations of Israeli Arabs - more solidly in favour of Jews. This is part and parcel with how Israel's leadership envisions the Jewish state. Not only must Israel as a whole be mostly Jewish, but every major region within it should be majority Jewish too... While the Negev is roughly 60% Jewish, the Arabs who live there - most of them Bedouin - have much higher birthrates than the local Jews. The government has tried to shore up the Jewish population of the Negev by encouraging new [Jewish] immigrants to move there... The JNF is investing $600 million [Tax free? but of course!] over 10 years in a plan called Blueprint Negev to build new communities in the rural desert, improve Beersheva's infrastructure, invest in the city's hospital, university and cultural institutions, and increase employment opportunities in the area." (The Negev's 21st-century pioneers, Uriel Heilman, B'nai B'rith Magazine, Winter 2008-2009)]
To return to Tania's greenwash: "KKL-JNF has built over 220 water reservoirs throughout the country over the past few years. In any future agreement with Palestinians, water will be a major issue. Water knows no political borders. If, for example, the Palestinian city of Nablus does not treat its sewage, it flows over the green line towards the Israeli city of Netanya [Is there no end to Palestinian terrorism?]... [T]he group was fascinated by Tania's detailed presentation, and asked many questions about KKL-JNF and the water crisis. They were especially interested to hear about recycling, desalination, and the proposed Dead Sea-Red Sea Canal. Their schedule, however, was very tight, and Tania wanted to show them how recycled water made the desert bloom... [An oldie, but a goldie. For the dirt on Israel's incredible reputation as a bloomer of deserts, see my 25/11/08 post Sir Bob Wows JNFaithful at Galah Dinner.]"
Dashed pity about the kids having such a tight schedule. I'm sure that's all that prevented them from popping into Beersheva's Ben-Gurion University and hearing from academic Neve Gordon a first hand account of Israel's other method of tipping the Arab-Jewish demographic balance more solidly in favour of Jews: ethnic cleansing: "The signs of destruction [in the Bedouin village of Arakib] were immediately evident. I first noticed the chickens and geese running loose near a bulldozed house, and then saw another house and then another one, all of them in rubble. A few children were trying to find a shaded spot to hide from the scorching desert sun, while behind them a stream of black smoke rose from the burning hay. The sheep, goats and cattle were nowhere to be seen - perhaps because the police had confiscated them. Scores of Bedouin men were standing on a yellow hill, sharing their experiences from the early morning hours, while all around them uprooted olive trees lay on the ground. A whole village comprising between 40 and 45 houses had been completely razed in less than 3 hours." (Ethnic cleansing in the Israeli Negev: The razing of a Bedouin village by Israeli police show just how far the state will go to achieve its aim of Judaising the Negev region, guardian.co.uk, 28/7/10)
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Sixteen Angry Men 3
Continued from SAM 2:
Sorry about the anti-climax. The law can indeed be an ass:
"The District Court of the District of Columbia, where the suit was filed, never addressed the merits of the complaint, but dismissed the case on a procedural technicality known as 'standing'. That concept prohibits a plaintiff from going forward on a lawsuit unless he can first show that he has been 'injured in fact, that the injury was caused by the defendant's challenged action and that the relief requested by the plaintiffs would provide redress for the injuries suffered'. Unless a plaintiff can overcome the 'standing' threshold, the suit will be thrown out of court. It was Judge Jackson's decision that few of the plaintiffs suffered a judicially recognizable injury directly attributable to the tax-exempt status of the 6 organizations. For those Palestinian landowners whose land had been confiscated, the judge held that revoking the tax-exempt status of the organizations would not redress their injuries; that the Israeli Government would have committed the wrongs regardless of the 6 US organizations' tax-exempt status. Concluded Judge Jackson: it would be 'more fanciful still to assume here that the government of Israel is so responsive to changes in US tax laws that the withdrawal of benefits from US contributors will work any alteration whatsoever in the character of its occupation of territory it now holds by force in the Middle East'. Judge Jackson ruled conservatively on the issue of standing, refusing to push the definition of injury to include the harm complained of by the plaintiffs. Judicial recognition of injury remained narrow, reinforcing a national trend excluding third parties from seeking judicial relief." (The Palestine-Israel Conflict in the US Courtroom, Rex Wingerter, September 1985, ameu.org)
Sorry about the anti-climax. The law can indeed be an ass:
"The District Court of the District of Columbia, where the suit was filed, never addressed the merits of the complaint, but dismissed the case on a procedural technicality known as 'standing'. That concept prohibits a plaintiff from going forward on a lawsuit unless he can first show that he has been 'injured in fact, that the injury was caused by the defendant's challenged action and that the relief requested by the plaintiffs would provide redress for the injuries suffered'. Unless a plaintiff can overcome the 'standing' threshold, the suit will be thrown out of court. It was Judge Jackson's decision that few of the plaintiffs suffered a judicially recognizable injury directly attributable to the tax-exempt status of the 6 organizations. For those Palestinian landowners whose land had been confiscated, the judge held that revoking the tax-exempt status of the organizations would not redress their injuries; that the Israeli Government would have committed the wrongs regardless of the 6 US organizations' tax-exempt status. Concluded Judge Jackson: it would be 'more fanciful still to assume here that the government of Israel is so responsive to changes in US tax laws that the withdrawal of benefits from US contributors will work any alteration whatsoever in the character of its occupation of territory it now holds by force in the Middle East'. Judge Jackson ruled conservatively on the issue of standing, refusing to push the definition of injury to include the harm complained of by the plaintiffs. Judicial recognition of injury remained narrow, reinforcing a national trend excluding third parties from seeking judicial relief." (The Palestine-Israel Conflict in the US Courtroom, Rex Wingerter, September 1985, ameu.org)
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Zionist Chameleon
In Australia, Harry's grey as:
"It's simple, says Harry Triguboff, Sydney has too much green and not enough grey, and if you want to look at trees - well, go climb a mountain. The views of the Meriton boss, Australia's biggest property developer, are likely to outrage conservationists - particularly his declaration that Sydney has 'too many forests and parks. You go north and we have all these reserves and you go south and you have all these reserves, and they are the best part of the coast. That is crazy. We should be building on this area', he said. 'If they want to see trees, they can go to Katoomba, there are plenty of trees there'." (Triguboff: let's trade trees for homes, Andrew Clennell, Sydney Morning Herald, 11/10/06)
But in Israel, he undergoes an amazing change of colour:
"Harry Triguboff is the best possible example of a Jew, Zionist, and human being', said Jewish National Fund (JNF) World Chairman Efi Stenzler at a ceremony dedicating the newly expanded open theater of the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC)* on Tuesday, September 14 which has been named in honour of Mr Triguboff's myriad of contributions to the State of Israel... Harry Triguboff, a resident and citizen of Sydney, Australia and a property developer by profession, has for many years been closely connected with JNF Australia**, JNF and the State of Israel. Over the years there have been a great number of worthy beneficiaries of his generosity. His contributions include water reservoirs and facilities, forests and forest rehabilitation, ecological summer camps, river rehabilitation aside from many projects that he has contributed to through other organizations." (New amphitheater dedicated to Harry Triguboff at the IICC, jpost.com, 19/9/10)
[* That's right, a Mossad museum! **For aficionados of greenwash, see my 14/6/08 post A Certain Jewish Tree Planting Group]
"It's simple, says Harry Triguboff, Sydney has too much green and not enough grey, and if you want to look at trees - well, go climb a mountain. The views of the Meriton boss, Australia's biggest property developer, are likely to outrage conservationists - particularly his declaration that Sydney has 'too many forests and parks. You go north and we have all these reserves and you go south and you have all these reserves, and they are the best part of the coast. That is crazy. We should be building on this area', he said. 'If they want to see trees, they can go to Katoomba, there are plenty of trees there'." (Triguboff: let's trade trees for homes, Andrew Clennell, Sydney Morning Herald, 11/10/06)
But in Israel, he undergoes an amazing change of colour:
"Harry Triguboff is the best possible example of a Jew, Zionist, and human being', said Jewish National Fund (JNF) World Chairman Efi Stenzler at a ceremony dedicating the newly expanded open theater of the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC)* on Tuesday, September 14 which has been named in honour of Mr Triguboff's myriad of contributions to the State of Israel... Harry Triguboff, a resident and citizen of Sydney, Australia and a property developer by profession, has for many years been closely connected with JNF Australia**, JNF and the State of Israel. Over the years there have been a great number of worthy beneficiaries of his generosity. His contributions include water reservoirs and facilities, forests and forest rehabilitation, ecological summer camps, river rehabilitation aside from many projects that he has contributed to through other organizations." (New amphitheater dedicated to Harry Triguboff at the IICC, jpost.com, 19/9/10)
[* That's right, a Mossad museum! **For aficionados of greenwash, see my 14/6/08 post A Certain Jewish Tree Planting Group]
Sixteen Angry Men 2
Continued from SAM 1:
Those 'Charities': All Roads Lead to... Jerusalem
"The World Zionist Organization American Section is a component and agent of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) based in Jerusalem. The WZO, founded in 1897, has as its stated objective the establishment and development of the state of Israel in Palestine. Also known as the Jewish Agency (JA), from 1922 until 1948, the WZO/JA acted as the political organization and governing body of the Jewish community in Palestine. After the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the state of Israel enacted laws and covenants establishing the WZO/JA as a component of the government of the state of Israel, with particular responsibility for the development and settlement of the country, the encouragement of Jewish immigration to Israel, and the absorption of Jewish immigrants. The WZO continues to fulfil this government function, and is particularly active in planning and implementing the seizure and occupation of Palestinian Arab-owned land in the West Bank for the development of exclusively Jewish settlements. The WZO collects contributions from donors in the US, which are deducted by such donors for US income tax purposes, and acts as a conduit to transfer the funds to its Israeli counterpart where they are used to further the above-described activities and functions.
"The Jewish Agency American Section is a component and agent of the WZO and the JA based in Jerusalem, and is registered as the agent of the WZO/JA pursuant to the US Foreign Agents Registration Act. Through subsidiary organizations, including the American Zionist Council and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, it engages in political propaganda and lobbying within the US.
"The United Israel Appeal... is a principal beneficiary of the United Jewish Appeal. It serves as a conduit for funds raised in the US to the JA for Israel, its operating agent, and then to the WZO/JA in Jerusalem, for the purposes and activities described below. The United Jewish Appeal is the major Jewish fundraising organization in the US. Contributions solicited and received by it are transferred to the UIA, Inc. and thence in conduit fashion to the WZO/JA.
"The Jewish National Fund... (JNF), by virtue of covenants and statutes of the state of Israel, is directed by the Zionist Executive of the WZO for the 'reclamation' and development of the land of Israel and the territories under military occupation by Israel. The JNF acquires land (through confiscation or otherwise) from the Palestinian Arab residents of Israel and the occupied West Bank for the exclusive occupation and use of Israeli Jews... Contributions solicited and raised by the American component of the JNF are also transferred in conduit fashion to Israel.
"The Americans for a Safe Israel acts as the agent for the sale - exclusively to American Jews and to no others - of land on the West Bank acquired by confiscation or otherwise from the Palestinian Arab residents, for the establishment of exclusively Jewish settlements.
The Legal Argument
"Because of the tremendous benefits accruing to private individuals and organizations as a consequence of tax-exempt status and because of the loss to the federal treasury of tax revenue that would otherwise be collected, organizations which are tax-exempt pursuant to 26 US Code Section 501(c)(3) must strictly confine their activities to those furthering the religious, charitable or educational purposes for which tax-exempt status is provided by law, and must not engage in activities that contravene the public policy and interests of the US. Contributions by US taxpayers to charitable organizations or governmental entities outside the US are not deductible by such donors. Likewise, contributions by US taxpayers to charitable organizations in the US are not deductible by such donors where such organizations serve merely as conduits for the donated funds... to charitable organizations or governmental entities outside the US...
"The WZO AS, the JA AS, the UIA, and the JNF... are merely conduits of funds donated to them, which flow directly to components of the State of Israel. The above-named US-based Zionist organizations continue to have recognition of tax-exempt status, and the ability to attract deductible contributions, despite the fact that their activities contravene fundamental public policies of the US and despite the fact that a substantial portion of their activities are neither religious, charitable, nor educational as defined by US tax laws. Specifically, each of these organizations supports, financially and politically, the confiscation of land on the West Bank owned by Palestinian Arabs for the establishment of exclusively Jewish settlements. These settlements contravene [& continue to contravene] the stated foreign policy of the US as expressed since 1977 by President Carter and later by President Reagan. They also contravene the public policy of the US in that the settlements are discriminatory on the basis of race and national origin.
"The above organizations are not engaging in educational activities within the meaning of US tax laws, since they engage in one-sided and prejudicial propaganda designed to misinform the American people with regard to the genuine dignity and continued suffering of the Palestinian people. These organizations support policies aiming at the 'desertification' of Palestinian land, destroying crops through defoliation and other means, uprooting orchards, and directing water from cultivated land. The organizations in question deliberately and systematically suppress information about these actions and proclaim instead, in propaganda broadsides, that they are supporting policies designed to make the desert bloom. The JNF comingles funds raised in the US into the general funds of the State of Israel without any US control, where they are used apparently for military, and not charitable, purposes...
"The continuing refusal by the defendants, Secretary of the US Treasury and the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, to disallow charitable deductions, claimed by US donors for contributions to these conduit organizations, constitutes a violation of their responsibilities and a violation of federal law."
To be continued...
[Those of you wondering just how many tax deductible Australian dollars have recently found their way to Israel via the UIA conduit, will be interested to know that the UAI's Melbourne office alone, run BTW by former Israeli naval commander and Israeli citizen, Meir Buber, "over 5 appeal campaigns... raised $87 million - per capita the highest amount of any UIA... or JA appeal." (Buber's $87 million charity achievement, jewishnews.net.au, 21/9/10)]
Those 'Charities': All Roads Lead to... Jerusalem
"The World Zionist Organization American Section is a component and agent of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) based in Jerusalem. The WZO, founded in 1897, has as its stated objective the establishment and development of the state of Israel in Palestine. Also known as the Jewish Agency (JA), from 1922 until 1948, the WZO/JA acted as the political organization and governing body of the Jewish community in Palestine. After the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the state of Israel enacted laws and covenants establishing the WZO/JA as a component of the government of the state of Israel, with particular responsibility for the development and settlement of the country, the encouragement of Jewish immigration to Israel, and the absorption of Jewish immigrants. The WZO continues to fulfil this government function, and is particularly active in planning and implementing the seizure and occupation of Palestinian Arab-owned land in the West Bank for the development of exclusively Jewish settlements. The WZO collects contributions from donors in the US, which are deducted by such donors for US income tax purposes, and acts as a conduit to transfer the funds to its Israeli counterpart where they are used to further the above-described activities and functions.
"The Jewish Agency American Section is a component and agent of the WZO and the JA based in Jerusalem, and is registered as the agent of the WZO/JA pursuant to the US Foreign Agents Registration Act. Through subsidiary organizations, including the American Zionist Council and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, it engages in political propaganda and lobbying within the US.
"The United Israel Appeal... is a principal beneficiary of the United Jewish Appeal. It serves as a conduit for funds raised in the US to the JA for Israel, its operating agent, and then to the WZO/JA in Jerusalem, for the purposes and activities described below. The United Jewish Appeal is the major Jewish fundraising organization in the US. Contributions solicited and received by it are transferred to the UIA, Inc. and thence in conduit fashion to the WZO/JA.
"The Jewish National Fund... (JNF), by virtue of covenants and statutes of the state of Israel, is directed by the Zionist Executive of the WZO for the 'reclamation' and development of the land of Israel and the territories under military occupation by Israel. The JNF acquires land (through confiscation or otherwise) from the Palestinian Arab residents of Israel and the occupied West Bank for the exclusive occupation and use of Israeli Jews... Contributions solicited and raised by the American component of the JNF are also transferred in conduit fashion to Israel.
"The Americans for a Safe Israel acts as the agent for the sale - exclusively to American Jews and to no others - of land on the West Bank acquired by confiscation or otherwise from the Palestinian Arab residents, for the establishment of exclusively Jewish settlements.
The Legal Argument
"Because of the tremendous benefits accruing to private individuals and organizations as a consequence of tax-exempt status and because of the loss to the federal treasury of tax revenue that would otherwise be collected, organizations which are tax-exempt pursuant to 26 US Code Section 501(c)(3) must strictly confine their activities to those furthering the religious, charitable or educational purposes for which tax-exempt status is provided by law, and must not engage in activities that contravene the public policy and interests of the US. Contributions by US taxpayers to charitable organizations or governmental entities outside the US are not deductible by such donors. Likewise, contributions by US taxpayers to charitable organizations in the US are not deductible by such donors where such organizations serve merely as conduits for the donated funds... to charitable organizations or governmental entities outside the US...
"The WZO AS, the JA AS, the UIA, and the JNF... are merely conduits of funds donated to them, which flow directly to components of the State of Israel. The above-named US-based Zionist organizations continue to have recognition of tax-exempt status, and the ability to attract deductible contributions, despite the fact that their activities contravene fundamental public policies of the US and despite the fact that a substantial portion of their activities are neither religious, charitable, nor educational as defined by US tax laws. Specifically, each of these organizations supports, financially and politically, the confiscation of land on the West Bank owned by Palestinian Arabs for the establishment of exclusively Jewish settlements. These settlements contravene [& continue to contravene] the stated foreign policy of the US as expressed since 1977 by President Carter and later by President Reagan. They also contravene the public policy of the US in that the settlements are discriminatory on the basis of race and national origin.
"The above organizations are not engaging in educational activities within the meaning of US tax laws, since they engage in one-sided and prejudicial propaganda designed to misinform the American people with regard to the genuine dignity and continued suffering of the Palestinian people. These organizations support policies aiming at the 'desertification' of Palestinian land, destroying crops through defoliation and other means, uprooting orchards, and directing water from cultivated land. The organizations in question deliberately and systematically suppress information about these actions and proclaim instead, in propaganda broadsides, that they are supporting policies designed to make the desert bloom. The JNF comingles funds raised in the US into the general funds of the State of Israel without any US control, where they are used apparently for military, and not charitable, purposes...
"The continuing refusal by the defendants, Secretary of the US Treasury and the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, to disallow charitable deductions, claimed by US donors for contributions to these conduit organizations, constitutes a violation of their responsibilities and a violation of federal law."
To be continued...
[Those of you wondering just how many tax deductible Australian dollars have recently found their way to Israel via the UIA conduit, will be interested to know that the UAI's Melbourne office alone, run BTW by former Israeli naval commander and Israeli citizen, Meir Buber, "over 5 appeal campaigns... raised $87 million - per capita the highest amount of any UIA... or JA appeal." (Buber's $87 million charity achievement, jewishnews.net.au, 21/9/10)]
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