Daniel Pipes: Jabotinsky Lite

Foaming Islamophobe Daniel Pipes, grand mufti of the US Zionist website, Middle East Forum, recently visited Australia as the guest of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).

So what did he tell the AIJAC crowd?

Well, here's the gist, taken from his near full-page screed in Murdoch's Weekend Australian:

"The moment is right for fresh thinking to dispatch the old and stale Palestinian-Israeli conflict... I shall propose an entirely different approach to resolve the conflict, a reversion to the strategy of deterrence and victory associated with Zionism's great strategist, Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880 - 1940): Israel should aim not to please its enemies but to defeat them." (All-out Israeli victory vital for peace, 24/3/18)

The obvious point to make at the outset, of course, is to ask: since when has Israel's aim EVER been to please the Palestinians, their fellow Arabs or anyone else for that matter?

But it's Pipes' embrace of Jabotinsky, the father of Zionist Revisionism, that I wish to explore here. (Just to contextualise him, remember that Jabotinsky begat Menachem Begin's terrorist Irgun, which begat, post Nakba, Begin's Herut Party, which, with the election of Begin as Israel's 6th PM (1977-83), begat the Likud Party, led today by Benjamin Netanyahu, whose father was Jabotinsky's secretary.)

Pipes, of course, presents what he euphemistically terms Jabotinsky's "strategy of deterrence and victory" (which terminology I shall return to later) as though it were some great break in Zionist strategy, but as Jabotinsky himself wrote in 1923: "There are no meaningful differences between our 'militarists' and our 'vegetarians'. One [Jabotinsky] prefers an iron wall of Jewish bayonets, the other [Weizmann] proposes an iron wall of British bayonets... but we all applaud, day and night, the iron wall."*

Got it? Zionism is Zionism is Zionism, and we waste our time differentiating between its different strains as though one is somehow more palatable than the other, because, whatever the strain, it is simply incompatible with the idea of Israeli Jews living alongside Palestinian Arabs as full and equal citizens in the same land.

To move on. Here's how Pipes packages Jabotinsky for AIJAC and the readers of The Australian: "To gain Palestinian acceptance [of Israel], Israel must return to its old policy of deterrence, of punishing Palestinians severely when they aggress... That's deterrence. It's more than tough tactics, which Israeli governments already pursue: it means developing consistent policies to break rejectionism and encourage Palestinian acceptance of Israel. It implies a strategy to crush irredentist Palestinian ambitions, to finally end the demonising of Jews and Israel, recognise historic Jewish ties to Jerusalem, normalise relations with Israelis, close the suicide factories and shutter the entire machinery of warfare... it requires Palestinians to suffer the bitter crucible of defeat, with its attendant deprivation, destruction and despair."

Putting to one side Pipes' demonising constructions - Palestinian resistance to occupation, colonisation, and apartheid (aggression); Palestinian refusal to accept Israel's bulldozing of their homes and rights (rejectionism); Palestinian international law-backed critiques of Israel's illegal occupation and behaviour (demonisation) etc  - what Pipes is really saying here is that Palestinians must, in effect, become Zionists - but without, of course,the benefits!

And if his appalling genocidal reference to the Palestinians' need to suffer "deprivation, destruction and despair," as if this is something new for them, weren't bad enough, he actually has the gall to state that "If Palestinian defeat is good for Israel, it is ironically even better for Palestinians, who will finally be liberated from ugly irredentist ambitions, revolutionary rhetoric, and genocidal fantasies," and so free to build their "polity, economy, society and culture."

But it gets worse with this demonisation of the Palestinians as the heirs of the Nazis: "Think of a miniature version of post-1945 Germany." And don't you just love the implications of that word "miniature"!

Jabotinsky, of course, was far more honest than Pipes about Zionism's SETTLER-COLONIAL status than Pipes, and never tried to dress up the fate of the Palestinian Arabs at the hands of the Zionist project: "Zionist colonization... must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue... only under the protection of a force independent of the local population - an iron wall which the native population cannot break through."

You can see why Jabotinsky's actual words are nowhere to be found in Pipes' rendering of Jabotinsky: "Zionist colonization"; "iron wall"; "native population."

And again: "We can talk as much as we want  about our good intentions; but they understand as well as we what is not good for them. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie."

And again: "Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers..."

And again: "Colonization can have only one goal. For the Palestinian Arabs this goal is inadmissible. This is in the nature of things. To change that nature is impossible."

And Pipes, the son of Polish Jews, expects the Palestinians to "recognise historic Jewish ties to Jerusalem"!

But there's more. Integral to Jabotinsky's thinking is that Jordan is also Palestine/ Eretz Israel. Not, of course, that Pipes lets his readers in on that thorny aspect of the master's thought.

[*All Jabotinsky quotes from his essay The Iron Wall (We & the Arabs).]

The Trump Declaration

A very comprehensive and insightful essay by Nada Elia on Trump's formal embrace of a Greater Israel. It hits just about every nail on the head:

"It is 'the morning after,' and the world, with few exceptions is denouncing Trump's declaration that the US recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. With those few exceptions, politicians globally are making vapid statements about the 'dangers' of that declaration, namely that it would lead to an escalation of violence, and jeopardize the 'peace process.' There seems to be little recognition of the relentless violence of Israeli settler-colonialism, and the complete violation of the Geneva convention and international law by both Israel and the US president.

"There is something to be said about Israel's deeply-seated need for 'recognition,' of its right to exist, its right to 'defend itself,' and its claim that Jerusalem is its capital city. That need betrays the (sometimes repressed) knowledge that Israel is a usurper, that Jews globally do not have a 'right' to become settlers, and that what Israel is 'defending' is an illegal occupation. Specifically, in the case of Jerusalem, the city is illegally annexed, with a clear system of apartheid privileging one socio-political ethnicity over the indigenous people. It is no wonder a president, Trump, who openly aligns himself with white supremacy as home, would naturally favour Jewish supremacy in historic Palestine. This is his 'Lord Balfour moment,' in which, in a gesture of imperial largesse, he presumes to hand over land that is not his, to another people. Britain's gambit did not work out so well 100 years ago, and neither will Trump's gesture. It may satisfy his own ignominious hubris, his ambition to conclude 'the deal of the century,' but it cannot bring about justice.

"And yet Trump's announcement does not jeopardize the peace process. This is because 'Oslo' was still-born, it just has not been buried yet. Rather, for the past 20 years, it has been on life-support, with no chance of survival. And there has been no 'peace' during the 'process,' only growing injustice, more disenfranchisement of the indigenous people, ongoing ethnic cleansing, and a genocidal siege on two million Palestinians in Gaza. This is the 'process' that led to two intifadas, and created the political context of global grassroots solidarity in the form of BDS.

"And still politicians continue to prop up this cadaver. The European Union, for example, holds on to the chimera of a two-state solution, and 'negotiations' that will determine the fate of Jerusalem. 'There is a UN resolution on this issue and the issue of Jerusalem must be raised in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians,' the EU ambassador to Israel, Emanuele Giaufret, said as he announced that the EU will not be moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"Trump's decision to declare Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has finally unplugged the useless apparatus. Whether the US embassy is moved or not - and that is yet to be determined, and cannot possibly be accomplished in under two to three years - what Trump has achieved is the formal recognition that the US has never been a fair mediator, a 'neutral broker,' but rather that it has always supported Israeli settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. Democrats have been more hypocritical about it, consistently increasing their financial aid to Israel even as they criticized the settlements as an obstacle to peace. Trump lacks any and all diplomacy, and if there is anything he is good at, it is his unabashed embrace of various oppressive systems. His national base is white supremacists, his global base is Zionism, another form of ethnic supremacy.

"The mask has come off. Both in the US as well as in Israel, which is open about its desire to keep on expanding. 'From the river to the sea' is not only the Palestinian dream of liberation, since all of historic Palestine is liberated, it is also the Zionist vision of Greater Israel, which the settlers have been slowly but surely making a reality, with the 'facts on the ground.'

"If any pain is felt today,and in the coming weeks, it is the pain that comes from removing a band-aid that has long covered up a festering wound. The wound will certainly heal better now. And the rage is an expression of the people's recognition that there seems to be no end to imperial hubris in sight. Yet now is not the time to glorify the 'sumoud narrative,' the pain, the rage, the outrage are too raw. Palestinians, especially in Jerusalem, will pay a very high price for for Trump's declaration. Yet we persist, because we must.

One of the earliest Zionist visionaries, Vladimir Jabotinsky, remains relevant today. In his 1923 treatise, The Iron Wall, where he laid out his vision for settler colonialism, he explains, with impressive foresight: 'It may be that some individual Arabs take bribes. But that does not mean that the Arab people of Palestine as a whole will sell that fervent patriotism that they guard so jealously, and which even the Papuans will never sell. Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of 'Palestine' into the 'Land of Israel.'

"No, Trump's declaration has made clear that, just as with South Africa last century, the US government is on the wrong side of history today. And just as with apartheid South Africa, the people of the land, along with the global community, will determine the outcome. Apartheid, or one democratic state?

"Even in the searing pain of 'the morning after,' as we look around and see a clearly-demarcated strategy of resistance, and take in the multiple expressions of global solidarity with the Palestinian people, we know we will overcome, someday." (Trump's 'Lord Balfour moment' is formal recognition the US was never an honest broker, mondoweiss.net, 7/12/17)

Playing With Fire in Jerusalem: 2014 & 1929

Yesterday's attack by two Palestinians on a West Jerusalem synagogue is a stark reminder that those Israelis who would mess with the status quo on occupied Arab East Jerusalem's Haram ash-Sharif are playing with fire. This has been acknowledged by no less than the head of Israel's Shin Bet, Yoram Cohen:

"While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly points an accusing finger at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Israel's top secret security service said Tuesday he did not believe Abbas was responsible for the current round of terror and violence... According to the Shin Bet head, the central factors behind the current violence were the murder of Palestinian teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir... and attempts by Israeli legislators to change the status-quo on the Temple Mount. According to Cohen, visits by right-wing MKs and attempts to introduce legislation which would change the status quo on the flashpoint holy site were the main factors for rising tensions in East Jerusalem... 'The religious aspect which latches onto the (Israeli-Palestinian) conflict is very dangerous and volatile because it has implications on the Palestinians and Muslims around the world. We must do everything we can to defuse the current tensions,' Cohen said." (Shin Bet chief: Abbas is not inciting terror, Attila Somfalvi, ynetnews.com, 18/11/14)

Those possessing more than a nodding acquaintance with modern Palestinian history may recall the events in Jerusalem and Hebron of August 1929 and see a parallel with the situation today. The following vivid account of those events is by American journalist Vincent Sheean:

"The disorders of Friday resulted in many deaths among both Jews and Arabs (the Arabs including Christians as well as Moslems), and the impulse of murder continued for a week. At the end of the terror the official roll for Jerusalem was: 29 Jews and 38 Arabs killed, 43 Jews and 51 Arabs wounded...

"The horrors of Friday in Jerusalem were followed by something much worse: the ghastly outbreak at Hebron, where 64 Jews of the old-fashioned religious community were slaughtered and 54 of them wounded. Hebron was one of the four holy cities of Judaism, and had a small, constant Jewish population since medieval days. These were not Zionists at all; a more innocent and harmless group of people could not have been found in Palestine; many of them were Oriental Jews, and all were religious. They had had nothing to do with the Zionist excesses [in Jerusalem], and had lived in amity with their Arab neighbours up to that day. But when the Arabs of Hebron - an unruly lot, at best - heard that Arabs were being killed by Jews in Jerusalem, and that the Mosque of Omar was in danger, they went mad... the Jewish houses were rushed by the mob, and there was an hour of slashing, killing, stabbing, burning and looting...

"I cannot, at this late date, go through all the story of that week; it has been told over and over again... At the end of the disturbances the official British casualty lists showed 207 dead and 379 wounded among the population of Palestine, of which the dead included 87 Arabs (Christian and Moslem) and 120 Jews, the wounded 181 Arabs and 198 Jews...

"The effort to be an efficient, unemotional newspaper correspondent was difficult to the point of impossibility. Living as I did without sleep and without rest, eating little, and that at the weirdest hours, I should probably have collapsed in time simply from physical exhaustion. But there was a great deal more in it than that. I was bitterly indignant with the Zionists for having, as I believed, brought on this disaster*; I was shocked into hysteria by the ferocity of the Arab anger; and I was aghast at the inadequacy of the British government. I knew that the Moslem authorities were trying to quell the storm, and that the British officials were doing their best against appalling difficulties; I also assumed that the responsible Zionist leaders (none of whom were in Palestine then) had done what they could. But all around me were the visible evidences of their failure. Although I had spent a good part of my life amid scenes of violence and was no stranger to the sight of blood and dying men, I had never overcome my loathing for the spectacle even when it seemed, as in some of the conflicts I had witnessed, compelled by historical necessity. But here, in this miserable little country, no bigger, in relation to the rest of the world, than the tip of your finger in relation to your body, I could see no historical necessity whatever. The country was tiny and already inhabited: why couldn't the Zionists leave it alone? It would never hold enough Jews to make even a beginning towards the solution of the Jewish problem; it would always be a prey to such ghastly horrors as those I saw every day and every night: religion, the eternal intransigence of religion, ensured that the problem could never be solved. The Holy Land seemed as near an approximation of hell on earth as I had ever seen." (Personal History, 1935; quoted in From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism & the Palestine Problem Until 1948, Edited by Walid Khalidi, 1971, pp 298-300)

Britain's 1930 Shaw Commission, charged with the task of investigating these events, concluded that their immediate cause was: "The long series of incidents connected with the Wailing Wall... but the incident among them which in our view contributed most to the outbreak was the Jewish demonstration at the Wailing Wall on 15 August 1929."

"The fundamental cause, without which in our opinion disturbances either would not have occurred or would not have been little more than a local riot," the Commission concluded, "is the Arab feeling of animosity and hostility towards the Jews consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future... The feeling as it exists today is based on the twofold fear of the Arabs that by Jewish immigration and land purchases they may be deprived of their livelihood and in time pass under the political domination of the Jews."

If, for Sheehan, Palestine in 1929 was "as near an approximation of hell on earth as I had ever seen," one can only wonder what he'd make of it today.

[*These were the 'Maccabees', armed followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky, godfather of Revisionist Zionism, the movement which, in its current Likud incarnation, now governs Israel. Netanyahu's fire-eating father, Benzion, was Jabotinsky's secretary. See my 24/9/11 post Benzion, My Father.]

Memo to Bob Carr: Israel is Occupied Palestine

In an opinion piece in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, former Labor foreign ministers, Bob Carr and Gareth Evans, slammed "Australia's new policy of refusing to describe East Jerusalem as 'occupied'":

"If East Jerusalem is not to be referred to as 'occupied', why not Nablus or Bethlehem? If the Australian government can say 'occupied East Jerusalem' is fraught with 'pejorative implications' what is to stop Ms Bishop applying this to the occupied West Bank as a whole?" (East Jerusalem stance will not aid peace process)

Point well taken, but perhaps it's time to broaden the discussion:

If East Jerusalem is to be referred to as occupied (which, if course, it certainly is), why not West Jerusalem?

If Nablus and Bethlehem are to be referred to as occupied (which, of course, they certainly are), why not Jaffa and Haifa?

The simple fact of the matter is that today's 'Israel' - taken by brute force force and ethnic cleansing in 1948 - is just as much occupied Palestine as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - taken by brute force and ethnic cleansing in 1967.

Do Carr and Evans need to consult the shades of the Zionist architects of Israeli-occupied Palestine - from the River to the Sea - to understand the bleeding obvious? Namely, that every inch of Palestine is stolen land? That just about every Jewish Israeli is either a settler or the son and daughter of a settler or the grandson or granddaughter of a settler? That yesterday's kibbutzim and moshavim are today's West Bank settlements? That Israel is because Palestine isn't?

So be it then:

David Ben-Gurion: "If I was an Arab leader, I should never make terms with Israel. That is natural; we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but that was two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"

Vladimir Jabotinsky: "Any native people... views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs... They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervour that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon the prairie..."

Moshe Dayan: "Let us not today fling accusations at the murderers. Who are we that we should argue against their hatred? For eight years now they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their very eyes, we turn into our homestead the land and the villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the cannon we cannot plant a tree and build a home... Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You don't even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahlul, Gvat in the place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Haneifa, and Kfar-Yehoshua in the place of Tel-Shaman. There is not one single place in this country that did not have a former Arab population."

Carr and Evans also wrote:

"Israeli realists know indefinite occupation of the West Bank will degrade their own country, maintaining its Jewish identity only at the price of compromising its democracy."

Can they tell us how maintaining the "Jewish identity" of Israel - at the expense of the non-Jewish Palestinians - is not as racist a project as that of White South Africans maintaining the White identity of South Africa - at the expense of non-White South Africans?

Maybe they need to sit down and listen, really listen, to the unashamedly Zionist, and hence unashamedly racist, Israeli mayor of Upper Nazareth, Shimon Gapso:

"I'm not afraid to say it out loud... Upper Nazareth is a Jewish city and it's important that it remain so. If that makes me a racist, then I'm a proud offshoot of a glorious dynasty of 'racists' that started with the 'Covenant of the Pieces' [that God made with Abraham, recounted in Genesis 15:1-15] and the explicitly racist promise: 'To your seed have I given this land' [Genesis 15:38]...

"The racist Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, not The State of All Its Citizens). Lord Balfour recommended the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Arlosoroff, Moshe Sharett and other racists established the Jewish Agency, and the racist UN decided to establish a Jewish state - in other words, a state for Jews. The racist Ben-Gurion announced the establishment of the Jewish State in the Land of Israel, and during the War of Independence even made sure to bring in hundreds of thousands of Jews and drive out hundreds of thousands of Arabs who had been living here - all to enable it to be founded with the desired racist character.

"Since then, racially pure kibbutzim without a single Arab member and an army that protects a certain racial strain have been established, as have political parties that proudly bear racist names such as Habayit Hayehudi - 'The Jewish Home'. Even our racist national anthem ignores the existence of the Arab minority - in other words, the people Ben-Gurion did not manage to expel in the 1948 war. If not for all that 'racism' it's doubtful we could live here, and doubtful we could live at all.

"In these times of hypocrisy and bleeding-heart sanctimoniousness, of the proliferation of flaky types who are disconnected from reality, in the relative security that causes us to forget the dangers we face, we can sit in north Tel Aviv and cry 'racism' to seem enlightened and good-hearted in our own eyes. We can be shocked at a mayor who prefers that his city, which is right next to the largest Arab city in Israel, retain a Jewish majority and not be swallowed up in the Arab area that surrounds it. There will not be a single Jew in the future Palestinian state, but that's all right. That isn't racism." ('If you think I'm a racist, then Israel is a racist state', Haaretz, 7/8/13)

Israeli Ambassador Departs in Propaganda Fog

Just how many fibs can someone cram into one short (5-sentence) paragraph? (Hint: the author of the following is Yuval Rotem, Israel's ambassador to Australia - alas, sadly leaving these shores):

"The historical relationship between Australia and Israel was forged in the heat of battle during WWI.(1) Members of Zion Mule Corps served alongside Anzac troops on the shores of Gallipoli.(2) The corps, largely made up of Jewish volunteers, recognised the importance of fighting with the Allies and the values they stood for.(3) This relationship strengthened as members of the Light Horse Brigade strove [?] gallantly through the Turkish Ottoman trenches in [?] the city of Be'er Sheva.(4) Fighting for freedom of the land, the soldiers were welcomed into the homes and hearts of Jewish residents."(5) (We are you, and you are us - Israel & Australia share values, The Australian, 28/9/13)

The answer is 5:

1) This, of course, is nothing more than the biggie. Proceed straight to (2).

2) "Alongside Anzac troops on the shores of Gallipoli"? Oh really? Fighting together, were they, with Zionists watching Australian backs, and Australians watching Zionist backs, as the Turkish shells rained down on the shores of Gallipoli?

Well, let's see what the Zion Mule Corp's Christian Zionist commander, Colonel J.H. Patterson, has to say in his book With the Zionists at Gallipoli (1916):

Chapter IX - The Zion Mule Corps Lands in Gallipoli - might be good place to start. Let's see. There's a Colonel Moorhouse. Sorry, he's a Brit. Ah, here's some troops! Sorry, they're French. What about this lot - Lancashire Fusiliers? What a pity, Brits again! Pushing on. Gore blimey, a battalion of Zouaves, in "their semi-barbaric uniform." Shit, French again!

What about Chapter XXI - Work of the Zion Mule Corps? No, no Australians there.

Ah, gold, surely: Chapter XXII The Australians & New Zealanders.

Mention 1: "When I left HQ at Imbros I took passage on a trawler which called in at Anzac, where the Australian-New Zealand Army Corps were dug into the ridges." Slight problem: no sign of the ZMC!

Mention 2: "Camp life at Mena, for the 30-odd thousand [Australians] training there, was very dull indeed. There was not much to relieve the monotony once the Pyramids had been climbed and the Australian colours had been planted on the summits, save an extra dose of sandstorm. It was no wonder, therefore, that every now and again the troops would invade Cairo in force and paint the city red: in fact, one night they painted it very red indeed, when they held a corroboree round the blazing ruins of a Cairene Courtesan's Temple, which they had given to the flames, because the Priestess had had, in some way or other, maladministered the rites!"

(Actually, I don't think this kind of loveable Aussie larrikanism would have been appreciated by the lads of the ZMC, since Patterson writes at one point of his "Israelites" (as he calls them): "It must not be supposed that all the Zionists were saints, or that I did not have my time of trouble and difficulty with them, because some would occasionally murmur and hanker after the 'flesh-pots of Egypt.' They were, indeed, true descendants of those forefathers of theirs who wandered in the wilderness, and whom Moses had so often to chide severely for their stiffneckedness." (Chapter XXI)

Forged in the heat of battle? Pull the other one, Yuval.

3) "Allied values." (Whatever they were/are.) So that's what the Zionist muleteers were doing at Gallipoli - they were drawn there by "Allied values." That's funny, because Benjamin Netanyahu's ideological Godfather Vladimir Jabotinsky, who first dreamt up the idea of a Jewish legion attached to the British army, was not in the least troubled by the pre-war status quo in Turkish-ruled Palestine: "[U]ntil Turkey's entry into the war, Jabotinsky hoped for a stalemate between Britain and Germany and 'peace as soon as possible'. The logical reaction, from Jabotinsky's point of view, to Turkey's entry into the war, was therefore to initiate moves to create a Jewish legion, under British or French auspices, which would participate in the invasion of Palestine." (The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism & the Origins of the Israeli Right, Colin Shindler, 2010, p 23)

Nothing to do with "Allied values." More to do with simply never letting a chance go by!

4) "Be'er Sheva"? There was no Israeli "city of Be'er Sheva," just a Palestinian Arab town called Beersheba.

5) The Australian Light Horse "were welcomed into the homes and hearts of Jewish residents"? What, of Beersheba? Sorry, sport, Beersheba didn't have any Jewish residents. They lived in colonies much further north.

Could Australia's new Israeli ambassador be half as entertaining?

It's Settler-Colonialism, Stupid!

It's hard to believe that, almost 100 years after Britain's Lord Balfour issued his infamous Balfour Declaration in 1917, many people are still abysmally ignorant of the fundamental nature of what is known as the Middle East or Arab-Israeli conflict.

For example, a dumbass Sydney Morning Herald reader sees a photograph of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies' Yair Miller and a Muslim Sheikh walking together in the grounds of Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery in Thursday's edition and pens the following dumbass letter, which an equally dumbass letters editor allows into print in yesterday's edition:

"It's good to hear that Jews and Muslims are to lie peacefully together in Rookwood ('Muslims, Jews on common ground in cemetery squeeze', May 9). A greater challenge will be for them to live peacefully together in Israel ('Israel puts brake on settlements', May 9)."

Both letter writer (John Byrne of Randwick) and editor thus do their bit to perpetuate the insidious misconception that the problem of Palestine is all about a clash of religions.

Nothing, I repeat nothing, could be further from the truth. For want of a little homework, Byrne and his enabler, are apparently unaware - surely the word settlements should give the game away? - that this 'conflict', for want of a better term, is all about land. IOW, at root (no pun intended), the Palestine/Israel problem is a settler-colonial problem.

Of course, today's Zionists loathe the very suggestion that their movement is merely another species of settler-colonialism, and the word 'colonialism' (and its derivatives) gets very short shrift with them indeed. But back in the first half of the 20th century, before Zionist ideologues had dreamt up the pernicious clash of civilizations/religions theory, and colonialism was nowhere near the dirty word it is today, Zionism's leading lights had no problem with the C-word.

Here, for example, is David Ben-Gurion, soon to be Israel's first PM, testifying before the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) in Jerusalem, on July 8, 1947:

Sir Abdur Rahman (India): And are there any Jewish colonies near the Syrian frontier?
Mr. Ben Gurion: Yes, there are.
Sir Abdur Rahman: How many and how far? Just give me the figures.
Mr. Ben Gurion: There are many Jews on the frontier. There is one colony outside the frontier of Lebanon. There is a colony where the frontier is in the middle of the colony. (unispal.un.org)

And here's Benjamin Netanyahu's ideological mentor, Vladimir Jabotinsky, making no bones about the Zionist COLONIZATION of Palestine in 1925:

"Zionist colonization... must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native [Palestinian] population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop under the protection of a force independent of the local population - an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy." (Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of 'Transfer' in Zionist Political Thought, Nur Masalha, 1992, p 28)

And again, writing in his 1923 book The Iron Wall: We & the Arabs:

"If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find a benefactor who will maintain the garrison on your behalf... Zionism is a colonizing adventure and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed force." (ibid, p 45)

But if history books are to John Byrne and the Herald letters editor what garlic is to Dracula, could I at least get them to to take a look at a new (at least for me) and interesting Facebook page, I Acknowledge Apartheid Exists? Sample: "If you do not know enough about the history of the [Israeli] occupation of Palestine then hold your tongue. It is laughable to believe that just because you've read a few mainstream media articles regarding Israel-Palestine you're in any way equipped to say who is the aggressor and who the victim."

Or maybe not, because its creator goes on to say: "Read a fucking book. You don't know where to begin? Here, I'll help you." He then goes on to list 5 of those book thingies. Maybe John Byrne should simply hold his tongue.

No History, Just Mythology, Ideology & Indoctrination

"In essence, Palestine was 'empty' because it could be easily emptied of its population." (M. Shahid Alam, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism, 2009, p 77)

Israeli historian, Tom Segev, is coming to Australia as a guest of Monash University's Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation.

The Australian's Middle East correspondent, John Lyons, has written a welcome profile of Segev, which focuses on a matter which has rarely, if ever, disturbed the complacent Zionist orthodoxy of Murdoch's Australian flagship: the primacy of mythology, ideology and indoctrination over the historical record in Israel, particularly in relation to the Palestinian Nakba of 1948.

Lyons writes that Segev "is one the 'New Historians' from the 1980s when Israel released its first wave of archival documents. 'You could take out a document and say, 'Wow, this is not how we learnt it at school. It was less heroic, less noble than we had learnt at school. Until then we had no history, we had mythology, we had ideology and we had a lot of indoctrination.' Children were taught that when Israel was established in 1948 it had been empty - it was a land without people for a people without land. These historians demolished that myth with documents showing almost half the Arabs who left were forced out, many violently." (Israeli widows reveal the reality of land built on myths, 11/8/12)*

This kind of plain-speaking, of course, is like a red rag to a bull for those who've made it their business to patrol ms media discourse on the subject of Palestine/Israel lest it deviate in any way from Israel's official line, that is from Israeli mythology and ideology. Hence the following letter from Tzvi Fleischer of the Australia-Israel Review, published in The Australian on August 14:

"John Lyon's article on historian Tom Segev... made the absurd claim that before the 'new' historians such as Segev, Israeli 'children were taught that when Israel was established in 1948 it had been empty - it was a land without people for a people without land'. This is not true. There has certainly been criticism of past Israeli curriculums for having paid insufficient attention to the 1948 Palestinian refugees, and Palestinian plight generally, but students were never taught that the land was completely empty. Indeed, the line about 'a land without people for a people without' has nothing to do with the 1948 refugees. It is the core of a twisted criticism of the whole Zionist movement from 1895 onward by Edward Said and his followers. The misrepresentation is two-fold. First, while there was a slogan used by a small part of the Zionist movement for a few years after 1900 that spoke of 'a land without a people for a people without a land', this is materially different from 'a land without people'. The early Zionists were aware that Palestine had Arab inhabitants but noted they were not considered a separate nationality or people at that time."

To interrupt Fleischer's letter here and draw out his meaning:

What he's saying is that the early political Zionists were certainly aware of the existence of Arabs in Palestine but believed that, unlike the Jews, they did not rate as 'a people'. They saw them, if you will, as generic Arabs, equally at home in other parts of the Middle East where Arabic was spoken and Islam practised. In other words, they were eminently portable, or transferable (to adapt the Zionist buzzword 'transfer' - in use in back rooms whenever Palestine's pre-state Zionists met to discuss their 'Arab problem').

On the other hand, these same Zionists took very seriously indeed the idea that Jews were 'a people', at a time when being part of a people, separate from other people, seemed so terribly important. With religion, including Judaism, generally on the skids at the time, and tribalism and nationalism all the go, these Jewish nationalists conned themselves, and the rest of the world, into believing that being a Jew meant so much more than just being the adherent, to a lesser or greater degree, of the Jewish faith. It meant, they believed, belonging to 'a people' who had once had a glorious past in the land of Palestine, which was cruelly terminated by the Romans, and were now living in doleful 'exile' outside Palestine (or the the Land of Israel as they preferred to call it), a state of affairs which could only be relieved by the reconstitution of ancient Israel in today's Palestine.

Mind you, some of them, and they were all European Jews you'll note, really had to wrestle with the idea of finding a common identity with non-European, Arab, Jews, so concerned were they with matters of pedigree:

"The Jaffa colonists outclass the Halukah Jerusalemites as a shire stallion would a worn-out coster's pony. The Yemenites are for the most part undersized and rather poor-spirited natives. They are not racially Jews. They are black, long-headed, hybrid Arabs." (Palestine Reclaimed: Letters from a Jewish Officer in Palestine, Redcliffe N. Salaman, 1920, p 28) [Italics in the original.]

If the concept of 'a people' has more than a touch of arbitrariness and artificiality about it, how much more so that of concocting a people out of a religion? The simple fact is that anybody today who can't bring himself to acknowledge (and celebrate) our hybridity has a problem with reality. And so, for Zionist true believers in such bunkum, whether they be the first Zionists or the likes of Fleischer today, to pose as authorities on who is or who is not worthy of the designation 'a people' is rich indeed, and to be honest, entirely misses the point.

Whether the Arabs of Palestine, especially the majority fellahin, regarded themselves as 'a people' or not, they had been rooted in the land of Palestine for centuries and had prior occupancy of it. The simple fact of the Palestinian Arab's native title to Palestine may not be quite as entertaining as Zionist mythology, but at the end of the day it is one of those basic moral and legal principles we reject at our peril. Upholding it means, quite simply, that Palestine was, still is, and always will be the land of the Arabs who lived there (and in some parts, against incredible odds, still do).

Returning to the rest of Fleischer's letter:

"But for those dedicated to Israel's destruction, such as Said, it is more convenient to dishonestly rewrite the slogan to pretend that the 'racist' Zionists declared Palestinians were not people. Moreover, to characterise Zionist and Israeli history on the basis of this single slogan, employed by a few Zionists for only a few years more than 100 years ago, is to indulge in the crudest form of propaganda."

Fleischer should be careful of accusing others of dishonesty. If he had any respect for its converse, he'd acknowledge that the early Zionists, whether they used the 'land without people' slogan or not, acted as if it were true:

"The fact of an overwhelming indigenous Arab majority confronted the Zionists with an imposing ethical problem, which for the most part they chose not to acknowledge. The earlier Zionist writings almost entirely ignored the Arab issue, forwarding the idea of a Jewish national revival in Palestine without regard to the reality that an exclusively Jewish state would entail the expulsion of the existing population. What reference there was to the Palestinian Arabs was generally derogatory and detached, denying their claim to the land and status as a people. The dehumanized image of the Palestinians which the Zionists developed and propagated was instrumental in displacing the moral issue and establishing an aura of legal justification around Zionist goals and activity." (The Zionist Mind: The Origins & Development of Zionist Thought, Alan R. Taylor, 1974, p 48)**

A more ethical (and therefore marginal) Zionist, Judah Magnes, speaking of Palestine's Arab population, warned in 1930 that '[t]he fact is that they are here in their overwhelming numbers in this part of the world, and whereas it may have been in accord with Israelitic needs in the time of Joshua to conquer the land and maintain their position in it with the sword, that is not in accord with the desire of plain Jews or with the long ethical tradition of Judaism..." (The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis & Reader, Arthur Hertzberg, 1997, p 449)

Another, the armchair Joshua and ideological father of today's dominant Likud strain of Zionism, Vladimir Jabotinsky, recognised the Arab claim to Palestine, but only to dismiss it by asserting (in 1937) that, although "there is no question of ousting the Arabs," they had better get used to the idea of being a minority in the coming Jewish state because their claim on Palestine "is like the claims of appetite versus the claims of starvation." (ibid, p 562)

Needless to say, those actual Joshuas who followed, the Ben-Gurions and the Begins, having the advantage of a Zionist army, trained and armed over the previous decades for the coming confrontation with Palestine's indigenous Arab majority, had no qualms whatever about "ousting the Arabs," and transforming them, in Zionist parlance, into 'absentees', a term that sits cosily with the old 'land without people' slogan.

Finally, here's a most interesting response to Fleischer, published the next day, 15 August:

"Tzvi Fleischer claims history is being dishonestly misrepresented on the basis of a 'single slogan' used by a few Zionists for only 'a few years more than 100 years ago'. In 1935, my husband (then a teenager, now deceased) spent 6 months in a training camp for German Jews being prepared to work on kibbutzim in Palestine. He was told the land of Palestine was empty except for a few nomadic Arabs down in the desert. Similar 'indoctrination' (my husband's word for the training) must have been practised on Australian Jewish youth in that period, as I've heard older Australians born and educated here reciting similar untruths. Funnily enough, another slogan I've heard recalled implicitly admits the land was already occupied and farmed: 'Yard by yard, goat by goat'." (Robyn Walton, Toorak, Vic) 

[*Segev, author of One Palestine, Complete: Jews & Arabs Under the British Mandate (2000), 1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East (2006), and other books, also made the following points in Lyons' report: 1) "Demographically, the Arab population and the ultra-orthodox population in Israel are growing. What that means is that the Zionist element is becoming weaker. In Jerusalem now, in first grade, a majority of children are either Arab or ultra-orthodox. This means Israel is rapidly losing on the front of being Jewish and democratic." 2) "Israel is still trying to project the 'fiction' that the occupation of the Palestinian territories is temporary. 'It is almost 50 years on since we took the territories. The official policy of the Israeli government is a two-state solution but I don't think that the present government actually believes in a two-state solution'... Politically it was 'very clever' of Netanyahu to publicly commit to a two-state solution. 'it enabled him to play for time'..."]

[**For JMN Jeffries' commentary on Zionism's wilful blindness, see my 7/11/11 post None So Blind.]

Yitzhak Shamir, His Gang & Their Nazi Flirtation

This is how Murdoch's Australian spins the newly deceased leader of Israel's infamous Stern Gang. Its sheltered readers could surely do no other than conclude: What a mensch!

"Yitzhak Shamir was a fighter for the Jews long before Israel's creation, an underground leader who led militias against the Arabs and the British. He made no apologies and no compromises - not as an underground fighter, an intelligence agent who hunted Nazis, and as one of Israel's longest-serving prime ministers who refused to bargain for land." (Israel mourns 'brave warrior' Shamir, AP, 2/7/12)

And this is how Fairfax handles him. Dare I say a marked improvement on the above, but grossly deficient nonetheless. Not only is there no mention of the Stern Gang, but take a look at the headline: 

"The man the British Foreign Office once described as 'among the most fanatical terrorist leaders', who went on to become a senior Mossad spy and Israel's second-longest serving prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir has died aged 96. The lifelong hawk and advocate of the aggressive expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, Mr Shamir served as Israel's prime minister from 1983-84, and from 1986-92. He was also foreign minister from 1980-83." (Death of Shamir: Israeli statesman, militant and spy, Ruth Pollard, Sydney Morning Herald, 2/7/12)

These two pieces tell us in microcosm all we really need to know about these two alleged sources of quality journalism. The first, an unabashed apologist for Israeli terrorism and war crimes; the second, a model of self-censorship.

Given their sanitised versions of Yitzhak Shamir's career, you'd never know, for example, that our valiant warrior/militant/statesman was one of the leaders of an outfit (Stern Gang? What Stern Gang?) that once sought an alliance with the Nazis. But you will read, at least in The Australian's account, that he's described as "an intelligence agent who hunted Nazis."

Now when smearing indigenous Palestinian resistance to the Zionist takeover of their homeland, it's a favourite ploy of Zionist propagandists to cite the collaboration of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, with Adolf Hitler. Predictably, however, these same elements are mum on the subject of the Stern Gang's overtures to Mussolini and Hitler during the Second World War (as they are on Zionism's cosy accommodation with the Nazis in general).

Needless to say, given the hold over Western mainstream media opinion and reportage on Palestine by Israel lobbyists, it would be an exercise in futility to expect this particular inconvenient truth to surface in the wash of misleading information currently circulating in the form of reports and obituaries on Shamir's death.*

To remedy this unforgivable dereliction of duty, I've decided to post the final chapter of Lenni Brenner's groundbreaking 1983 study Zionism in the Age of the Dictators in its entirety:

"Until Begin's election victory in 1977, most pro-Zionist historians dismissed Revisionism as the fanatic fringe of Zionism; certainly the more extreme 'Stern Gang', as their enemies called Avraham Stern's Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, were looked upon as of more interest to the psychiatrist than the political scientist. However, opinion toward Begin had to change when he came to power, and when he eventually appointed Yitzhak Shamir as his Foreign Minister it was quietly received, although Shamir had been operations commander of the Stern Gang.

"On the night of 31 August/1 September 1939 the entire command of the Irgun, including Stern, was arrested by the British CID. When he was released, in June 1940, Stern found an entirely new political constellation. Jabotinsky had called off all military operations against the British for the duration of the war. Stern himself was willing to ally himself with the British so long as London would recognise the sovereignty of a Jewish state on both sides of the River Jordan. Until then, the anti-British struggle would have to continue. Jabotinsky knew that nothing would make Britain give the Jews a state in 1940, and he saw the creation of another Jewish Legion with the British Army to be the main task. The two orientations were incompatible and by September 1940 the Irgun was hopelessly split: the majority of both the command and the ranks followed Stern out of the Revisionist movement.

"At birth the new group was at its greatest strength for, as Stern's policies became clearer, the ranks started drifting back into the Irgun or joined the British Army. Stern or 'Yair', as he now called himself, (after Eleazer ben Yair, the commander at Masada during the revolt against Rome) began to define his full objectives. His 18 principles included a Jewish state with its borders as defined in Genesis 15: 18 'from the brook of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates', a 'population exchange', a euphemism for the expulsion of the Arabs and, finally, the building of a Third Temple of Jerusalem. The Stern Group was at this time a bare majority of the military wing of Revisionism but by no means representative of the middle class Jews of Palestine who had backed Jabotinsky. Still less was the fanatic call for a new temple attractive to ordinary Zionists.

"The war and its implications were on everyone's mind and the Stern Gang began to explain their unique position in a series of underground radio broadcasts: 'There is a difference between a persecutor and an enemy. Persecutors have risen against Israel in all generations and in all periods of our diaspora, starting with Haman and ending with Hitler... The source of all our woes is our remaining in exile, and the absence of a homeland and statehood. Therefore, our enemy is the foreigner, the ruler of our land who blocks the return of the people to it. The enemy are the British who conquered the land with our help and who remain here by our leave, and who have betrayed us and placed our brethren in Europe in the hands of the persecutor.'

"Stern turned away from any kind of struggle against Hitler and even began to fantasise about sending a guerilla group to India to help the nationalists there against Britain. He attacked the Revisionists for encouraging Palestinian Jews to join the British Army, where they would be treated as colonial troops, 'even to the point of not being allowed to use the washrooms reserved for European soldiers'. 

"Stern's single-minded belief, that the only solution to the Jewish catastrophe in Europe was the end of British domination of Palestine had a logical conclusion. They could not defeat Britain with their own puny forces, so they looked to her enemies for salvation. They came into contact with an Italian agent in Jerusalem, a Jew who had worked for the British police, and in September 1940 they drew up an agreement whereby Mussolini would recognize a Jewish state in return for Sternist co-ordination with the Italian Army when the country was to be invaded. How seriously either Stern or the Italian agent took these discussions has been debated. Stern feared that the agreement might be part of a British provocation. As a precaution, Stern sent Naftali Lubentschik to Beirut, which was still controlled by Vichy, to negotiate directly with the Axis. Nothing is known of his dealings with either Vichy or the Italians, but in January 1941 Lubentschik met two Germans - Rudolf Rosen and Otto von Hentig, the philo-Zionist, who was then head of the Oriental Department of the German Foreign Office. After the war a copy of the Stern proposal for an alliance between his movement and the Third Reich was discovered in the files of the German Embassy in Turkey. The Ankara document called itself a 'Proposal of the National Military Organisation (Irgun Zvi Leumi) Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the side of Germany.' (The Ankara document is dated 11 January 1941. At that point the Sternists still thought of themselves as the 'real' Irgun, and it was only later that they adopted the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel - Lohamei Herut Yisrael - appellation.) In it the Stern Group told the Nazis:

 'The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question; but this can only be made possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine, and through the establishment of a Jewish state in its historical boundaries...

 'The NMO, which is well-acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans, is of the opinion that:

 1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a New Order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO.

 2. Cooperation between the new Germany and a renewed volkish-national Hebrium would be possible and

 3. The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East.

 'Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany's side.

 'This offer by the NMO... would be connected to the military training and organizing of Jewish manpower in Europe, under the leadership and command of the NMO. These military units would take part in the fight to conquer Palestine, should such a front be decided upon.

 'The indirect participation of the Israeli freedom movement in the New Order in Europe, already in the preparatory stage, would be linked with a positive-radical solution of the European Jewish problem in conformity with the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Jewish people. This would extraordinarily strengthen the moral basis of the New Order in the eyes of all humanity.' 

"The Sternists again emphasised: 'The NMO is closely related to the totalitarian movements of Europe in its ideology and structure.'

"Lubentschik told von Hentig that if the Nazis were politically unwilling to set up an immediate Zionist state in Palestine, the Sternists would be willing to work temporarily along the lines of the Madagascar Plan. The idea of Jewish colonies on the island had been one of the more exotic notions of the European anti-Semites before the war, and with France's defeat in 1940 the Germans revived the idea as part of their vision of a German empire in Africa. Stern and his movement had debated the Nazi Madagascar scheme and concluded that it should be supported, just as Herzl had initially backed the British offer, in 1903, of a temporary Jewish colony in the Kenya Highlands.

"There was no German follow-up on these incredible propositions, but the Sternists did not lose hope. In December 1941, after the British had taken Lebanon, Stern sent Nathan Yalin-Mor to try to contact the Nazis in neutral Turkey, but he was arrested en route. There were no further attempts to contact the Nazis.

"The Stern plan was always unreal. One of the fundamentals of the German-Italian alliance was that the eastern Mediterranean littoral was to be included in the Italian sphere of influence. Furthermore, on 21 November 1941 Hitler met the Mufti and told him that although Germany could not then openly call for the independence of any of the Arab possessions of the British or French - out of a desire not to antagonise Vichy, which still ran North Africa - when the Germans overran the Caucasus, they would swiftly move down to Palestine and destroy the Zionist settlement.

"There is rather more substance to Stern's own self-perception as a totalitarian. By the late 1930s Stern became one of the ring-leaders of the Revisionist malcontents who saw Jabotinsky as a liberal with moral reservations about Irgun terror against the Arabs. Stern felt that the only salvation for the Jews was to produce their own Zionist form of totalitarianism and make a clean break with Britain which, in any case, had abondoned Zionism with the 1939 White Paper. He had seen the WZO make its own accommodation with Nazism by means of the Ha'avara; he had seen Jabotinsky entangle himself with Italy; and he personally had been intimately involved in the Revisionists' dealings with Polish anti-Semites. However, Stern believed that all of these were only half measures.

"Stern was one of the Revisionists who felt that the Zionists, and the Jews, had betrayed Mussolini and not the reverse. Zionism had to show the Axis that they were serious, by coming into direct military conflict with Britain, so that the totalitarians could see a potential military advantage in allying themselves with Zionism. To win, Stern argued, they had to ally themselves with the fascists and Nazis alike: one could not deal with a Petliura or a Mussolini and then draw back from a Hitler.

"Did Yitzhak Yzertinsky - rabbi Shamir - to use his underground nom de guerre, now the Foreign Minister of Israel, know of his movement's proposed confederation with Adolf Hitler? In recent years the wartime activities of the Stern Gang have been thoroughly researched by one of the youths who joined it in the post-war period, when it was no longer pro-Nazi. Baruch Nadel is absolutely certain that Yzertinsky-Shamir was fully aware of Stern's plan: 'They all knew about it.'

"When Shamir was appointed Foreign Minister, international opinion focused on the fact that Begin had selected the organiser of two famous assassinations: the killing of Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident for the Middle East, on 6 November 1944; and the slaying of Counte Folke Bernadotte, the UN's special Mediator on Palestine, on 17 September 1948. Concern for his terrorist past was allowed to obscure the more grotesque notion that a would-be ally of Adolf Hitler could rise the leadership of the Zionist state. When Begin appointed Shamir, and honoured Stern by having postage stamps issued which bore his portrait, he did it with the full knowledge of their past. There can be no better proof than this that the heritage of Zionist collusion with the Fascists and the Nazis, and the philosophies underlying it, carries through to contemporary Israel." (pp 265-69)

[*Just look at this rubbish from yesterday's obit. in the Herald: "But from his days as a militant in the extreme right-wing Lehi movement before Israel's birth in 1948 Shamir always believed the Jewish state should stretch from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River." Now re-read paragraphs 2 & 3 of Brenner's chapter above.]

The 'R' Word

Words of wisdom from Uri Davis:

"There is no collective guilt. Children are not guilty of the crimes of their parents; Germans in general are not guilty of the crimes of the Nazi occupation of Europe; western Christians in general are not guilty of the genocide of the holocaust; and Europe in general is not guilty of crimes against humanity perpetrated against Jews. Only anti-Jewish racists are guilty of what they did and continue to do to Jews. And, by the same token, children of Zionist settlers in geographical Palestine are also not guilty of the crimes perpetrated by their parents. Responsibility is, however, a different matter. While children of Zionist settlers in geographical Palestine are not collectively guilty of the crimes perpetrated by their parents against the native indigenous Palestinian Arab people, citizens of the State of Israel have a responsibility, a duty, which citizens of other states do not have in the same way, to raise their voices against these crimes, act in defence of the victims of these crimes and work for due reparation, compensation and return of the dispossessed and expelled Palestinian Arabs. This is the case not because children of Zionist settlers are collectively guilty of these crimes, but because these crimes were committed and continue to be committed in their name.' (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 12)

Unfortunately, Tal Jabotinsky, great-granddaughter of Zionist revisionist leader, fascist and Likud godfather Vladimir [Ze'ev] Jabotinsky* [1880-1940], just doesn't get the responsibility thing:

"I am very proud of the family I come from, I carry the heritage proudly. I am proud of all my family, including my great-grandfather [Zionist forefather Ze'ev Jabotinsky] and grandfather [Ze'ev's only son], my mother, my father and my siblings. I am here with everything I carry from the Jabotinsky legacy to add to that... Every year there is a special remembrance ceremony. Shimon Peres [and other politicians] are there every year. Politicians and my family are intertwined, it is not a rare thing to pick up the phone and hear one of them - there are a lot of funny stories in my family about that." (A chat with Tal Jabotinsky, new Betar shlicha [Israel representative] in Melbourne, The Australian Jewish News, 7/8/07)

Avindav Begin, grandson of Jabotinsky disciple, Irgun leader and first Likud prime minister of Israel Menachem Begin [1913-1992]**, does:

"'Murderous blood flows in Israeli arteries', says the grandson of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Avindav Begin, who is also the son of the current Likud Knesset member Benny Begin, refuses to stand during the Israeli national anthem 'Hatikva' and participates in protests against the Apartheid Wall. He does not see himself as a Jew or a Zionist and believes that his grandfather did not make real peace with Egypt. He is also not worried about being the target for rotten eggs after his inflammatory interview with Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. The newspaper said in a lengthy report: (Avindav) Begin examines the psychological roots of the Jewish-Arab conflict in his new book End of the Conflict, which was published recently in both Hebrew and Arabic. He suggests a radical solution to spare all religious, national and ideological sectors, encouraging everyone to live together as human beings. Despite being brought up in a very nationalistic family, and perhaps for this reason, he did not agree with the theories of his father and grandfather." (Begin's grandson: 'murderous blood flows in Israeli arteries', paltelegraph.com, 13/2/10)

[*See my 12/6/08 post Pemulwuy in Palestine. **As Irgun leader, Begin was responsible for the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre. As Likud PM (1977-1983), he was responsible for Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the Sabra/Shatila massacre.]

A Murky Legacy

Bear with me while I marshal the expert evidence:

1) "For Zionists to succeed you need to have a Jewish state, with a Jewish flag and a Jewish language. The person who really understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky." (Mussolini on Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the Revisionist Zionist* movement, quoted in The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, Lenni Brenner, 1984, p 98)

2) "It is a sign of the bitter hostility of Labour Zionism* to the memory of the man [Jabotinsky] that David Ben-Gurion routinely referred to as 'Vladimir Hitler' that the Israeli government did not issue an order [to transfer his remains** to Israel] until July 1964, 16 years after the establishment of the Israeli state." (ibid p 108) [** Jabotinsky died in New York in 1940 but wanted his remains transferred to a future Jewish state in Palestine.]

3) "To some British officials... the atrocity at Deir Yassin [perpetrated by the Revisionist Zionist terror organisations, the Irgun and the Stern Gang] came as a revelation about the nature of the new Jewish state. Sir John Troutbeck, the head of the British Middle East Office in Cairo, wrote that 'Deir Yassin is a warning of what a Jew will do to gain his purpose'. On the eve of the Arab-Israeli war the British were apprehensive about its outcome, but virtually no one anticipated the extent of the Arab collapse and the Israeli victory. The British associated themselves with the Arab cause as one that was ultimately compatible with their own sense of mission in the Middle East, and during the course of the war they became convinced that a grave injustice was being perpetrated because of American support of the Israelis. The resentment towards the US still smoulders in the files at the Public Record Office. It existed as the main sentiment underlying official policy, and it was perhaps most indignantly expressed by Troutbeck, who held that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by 'an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders'." (The Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez & Decolonisation, William Roger Louis, 2006, pp 445-446)

4) "When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organisations built up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people." Albert Einstein's written response to an American Stern Gang (LEHI) fundraiser on 10/4/09, the day after the Deir Yassin massacre. [Einstein's letter can be viewed at Deir Yassin Remembered, deir.yassin.org]

5) "In September 1948 Churchill was in the South of France... Among those who visited him there was a Conservative Member of Parliament, Robert Boothby, a strong supporter of Zionism, who had written to The Times protesting against the Arab Legion shelling of Jerusalem. Boothby later recalled that when the conversation turned to the future of the Jews then fighting for their survival on the battlefield, 'I said that they were going to win hands down in Palestine, and get more than they ever expected'. To Boothby's remark, Churchill replied: 'Of course. The Arabs are no match for them. The Irgun people are the vilest gangsters. But, in backing the Zionists these Labour people backed the winners; and then ran out on them'. Churchill also told Boothby he was 'quite right' to send his letter to The Times." (Churchill & The Jews, Martin Gilbert, 2007, p 270)

[*Although the difference between the Revisionist and Labour Zionism is more a matter of style than substance, Uri Davis has pointed out that: "Labour Zionism is an attempt to reconcile the basic tenets of political Zionist and colonial practice with the tenets of the Enlightenment. Since these two sets of values are mutually exclusive, Labour Zionist literature has been largely predicated upon obfuscation of Zionist colonial practice, and upon mystification, ignorance and cultivated deception. Revisionist Zionism has largely escaped the Labour Zionist predicament of attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. In contra-distinction to Labour Zionism, it has attempted, with considerable success, to locate Zionism ideologically and practically inside the tradition of modern secular racism and imperial colonialism." (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 19)]

Hm... gangsters, terrorists, criminals, fascists and Nazis. Well the progeny of this lot, via the mechanism of Irgun leader Menachem Begin's Likud Party, are now in power in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu's father was a senior Jabotinsky aide. Ex-Likud, now Kadima leader (reportedly being 'wooed' by Netanyahu) Tzipi Livni is the daughter of Eitan Livni, the Irgun's Chief of Operations. And they're so proud of their legacy of gangsterism, terrorism, criminality, fascism and Nazism that they want Israeli kids to share it:

"The Education Ministry is introducing a study unit on the 12 underground fighters who were hanged or committed suicide in prison during the British Mandate in Palestine. The 12, known as 'Olei Hagardom' ('those hanged on the gallows'), belonged to the pre-state militias Etzel [Irgun] and Lehi [Stern Gang]. The program, intended for eighth and ninth grades, will include lessons plus a national competition for essays, poems and drawings on subjects such as 'an imaginary conversation I had with one of Olei Hagardom in his last moments in prison' or 'the last letter of a condemned man to his family'. The new unit is already proving controversial. 'Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar is advancing ideological matters close to his heart in the education system', a ministry official charged. 'His ideology is entering the curriculum'. 'It's worrying that the education Ministry is conveying a message sanctifying death and portraying it as sublime', added a senior university historian. Until now, details of the 12 Olei Hagardom - 9 Etzel combatants and 3 Lehi fighters - were taught as part of history lessons, ministry sources said. In a letter announcing the new program, Sa'ar wrote, 'I hope the program, recounting Olei Hagardom's devotion to the struggle for Israel's independence, will bolster the students' ties with their people and heritage... and that their devotion will serve as an ideological model for our youth'... The education system intends to mark Jabotinsky Day next week as required by a law enacted in 2005, the Education Ministry said Monday. Schools were instructed earlier this month to prepare ceremonies and special activities, including lessons about Jabotinsky's character and work. Sa'ar himself will give a civics lesson on Jabotinsky in a high school in the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim." (New study unit on pre-state fighters proves controversial, Or Kashti, Haaretz, 22/12/09)

Way to go! Except that Zionist propagandists of whatever stripe are nothing if not hypocritical. Here's David Feith* in the Wall Street Journal on August 21 pondering (in the words of The Australian where I found it) "the murky legacy of Fateh leader Yasser Arafat": "What's Arabic for plus ca change? Because that was the message last week from the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, where the 'moderate' Fateh party held its first general congress since 1989. Fateh - founded by Yasser Arafat in the 1960s and led since 2004 by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - demonstrated that Palestinian national politics remain mired as ever in conspiracy, duplicity and the glorification of terrorists... Fatah's leaders continue to walk in their founder's footsteps... Fatah's demonstration last week that it remains ideologically stuck in the terrorist pleasantries of the 70s ought to be a stark reminder that when it comes to Palestinian 'moderates', moderation remains a highly relative term." (Fatah's 'moderates' still rejoice in their founder's terrorism, 26/8/09) [* That's correct, son of neocon Douglas]

It doesn't get much more pot & kettle than that.

Avnery's Apology: A Critique

Taking the Canadian Prime Minister's recent parliamentary apology to the indigenous people of Canada as his cue, veteran Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery has followed his problematic essay 1948 (see my 1/6/08 post, Uri Avnery: A Critique) with an equally problematic stab at an official Israeli apology (An Apology, 14/6/08) to the Palestinian people:-

"We recognize the fact that we have committed against you an historic injustice, and we humbly ask your forgiveness. When the Zionist movement decided to establish a national home in this country... it had no intention of building our state on the ruins of another people. Indeed, almost no one in the Zionist movement had ever been in the country before the first Zionist Congress in 1897, or even had any idea about the actual situation here."

Avnery at least appears here to concede that there is no meaningful distinction between "national home" and "state." The contrary has, of course, been argued by legions of Zionist propagandists. The notion that the early Zionists were prepared to settle for anything less than a Jewish state has, however, been decisively refuted by Canadian philosopher and author of The Case Against Israel, Michael Neumann: "Could pre-Israel Zionism be understood as the quest for a homeland as opposed to a state?" he asks. "Was this to be a scattering of Jewish homes and farms, or a Jewish country with its own army, police, and government?" Neumann's evidence leaves us in no doubt. To quote just 3 of his many authoritative statements (pp 23-30):

1) "The founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, had already in 1896 written an essay called 'Der Judenstaat'. In it, he said, 'The Idea which I have developed in this pamphlet is a very old one: it is the restoration of the Jewish state... Let the sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation, the rest we shall manage for ourselves'."

2) "Max Nordau, Herzl's vice-president at early Zionist congresses, wrote in 1920 that: 'I did my best to persuade the claimants of the Jewish state in Palestine that we might find a circumlocution that would say all we meant, but would say it in a way that would avoid provoking the Turkish rulers of the coveted land. I suggested 'Heimstatte [homeland] as a synonym for state... It was equivocal but we all understood what it meant... to us it signified Judenstaat and it signifies the same now'."

3) "Here is Walter Laqueur's account: 'When a Zionist delegation appeared on 27 February 1919 before the Supreme Allied Council, Weizmann was asked by Lansing, the American secretary of state, what exactly was meant by the phrase 'a Jewish national home'. Weizmann replied that for the moment [my italics] an autonomous Jewish government was not wanted, but that he expected that 70 to 80 thousand Jews would emigrate to Palestine annually. Gradually a nation would emerge which would be as Jewish as the French nation was French and the British nation British. Later, when the Jews formed the large majority, they would establish such a government as would answer to the state of the development of the country and to their ideals'."

But when Avnery claims that "the Zionist movement had no intention of building our state on the ruins of another people," it is hard to take him seriously. Assuming that the early Zionists went about their business of agitating for a homeland/state in Palestine without being aware of the grave implications their project held for the majority indigenous Palestinian Arab population defies belief.

Theodore Herzl, the 'father' of political Zionism, was certainly wise to the matter, writing in his diary in 1895: "We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. Let the owners of immovable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back. The voluntary expropriation will be accomplished through our secret agents. The Company would pay excessive prices. We shall then sell only to Jews, and all real estate will be traded only among Jews." (Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, I, 51)

Typically, however, as Israeli historian Benny Morris points out in his discussion of the idea of transfer (the Zionist euphemism for ethnic cleansing) in Zionist thinking, the leaders of the movement tended to be forthcoming only in private*. (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p 41)

That the logic of the Zionist push for a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine meant that the Palestinians, absent an effective campaign of resistance, were doomed to dispossession, must surely have exercised the minds of all concerned, colonists and colonized alike. Neumann again: "Certainly it was possible that the Zionists would settle for less than all of Palestine. It was possible they would not forcibly transfer the indigenous population; it was just barely possible that, somehow, Zionism would be abandoned altogether. But there was no basis for supposing any of these outcomes likely. Nor could it be assumed that even a territorial compromise could be obtained without catastrophe... Indeed, the Palestinians could look at all of modern European history from the 17th century religious wars to the year of the Balfour Declaration as a record of failed territorial compromises. When settlers move into an inhabited area, territorial compromises are all too often mere pauses in a savage process of dispossession. This was apparent at the time. The rise of Zionism coincided with the last bloody stages of just such a process in the American West. Significantly, the American settler's progressive and very violent displacement of the native inhabitants was not some grand scheme thought out in advance. At many points in the story, the settlers seemed to have got all they wanted. But successful settlement and increasing immigration brought new usurpations. Enough was never, it seemed, enough. Even if the Zionists had never dreamed of taking all of Palestine from the Palestinians, it would have been foolish to suppose that they would not come to do so, bit by bit. The prospect of a Jewish state, therefore, posed a mortal danger to the Palestinians, a prospect of ethnic subjugation and very likely of what is now called ethnic cleansing." (pp 45-46)

As improbable as it sounds, Herzl and others may have entertained fantasies that the Palestinian Arabs could simply be bought out, but the Zionist movement's first Likudnik, Vladimir Jabotinsky, put paid to such nonsense in 1923: "Compromisers in our midst attempt to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked by a softened formulation of our goals, or a tribe of money grubbers who will abandon their birthright to Palestine for cultural and economic gains... Colonization has its own explanation, integral and inescapable, and understood by every Jew and Arab with his wits about him. Colonization can have only one goal. For the Palestinian Arabs this goal is inadmissible... Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population." (See my 12/6/08 post, Pemulwuy in Palestine for a fuller quotation) To this end, Jabotinsky saw the necessity for a successful Zionist colonization to proceed behind an iron wall of bayonets, perhaps British, preferably Jewish. He was adamant that every Jew "with his wits about him" understood the logic of the Zionist enterprise, and that the only question was how to cleanse Palestine of its indigenous population. In fact, even Herzl admitted the need for a Jewish paramilitary corps "in preparation for the struggle against the indigenous population whose land was being systematically occupied." (Diaries, I, 88-89) It was of course Zionist militarism and force of arms, Jabotinsky's "iron wall," that prevailed in 1948. Avnery's depiction of his Zionist forbears as essentially well-intentioned blunderers, therefore, lacks all credibility.

[*David Ben-Gurion, who was later to to preside over the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and become Israel's first prime minister, continued this venerable Zionist tradition of dissimulation. He is described by Benny Morris as a man who "knew what to say and what not to say in certain circumstances; what is allowed to be recorded on paper and what is preferable to convey orally or in hint." (The New History & the Old Propagandists, Haaretz 9/5/89)]

"The Zionist founders who came to this country were pioneers who carried in their hearts the most lofty ideals. They believed in national liberation, freedom, justice and equality. We are proud of them. They certainly did not dream of committing an injustice of historic proportions."

Lofty idealists? How to square this with the testimony of Zionist moderate, Ahad Ha-Am, who wrote as early as 1891: "They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination." Ha-Am was later compelled to ask, "Is this the dream of a return to Zion which our people have dreamt for centuries: that we now come to Zion to stain its soil with innocent blood?" He scathingly described Avnery's pioneers as "a small people of new Levantines who vie with other Levantines in shedding blood, in desire for vengeance, and in angry violence? If this be the 'Messiah', then I do not wish to see his coming." (Quoted in The Zionist Mind, Alan R Taylor, p 103)

Or take the findings of the shelved 1919 report, Recommendations of the King-Crane Commission with Regard to Syria-Palestine and Iraq. US President Woodrow Wilson, who believed that the wishes of the population concerned should be the determining element in the choice of a mandatory power, had sent Henry King and Charles Crane to take the pulse of both communities in Syria/Palestine. Finding that Lord Balfour, in his famous 1917 declaration favouring 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people', 'it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine', had gone too far, they called for "the extreme Zionist programme" to be "greatly modified. For a national home for the Jewish people is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State; nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission's conferences with Jewish representatives, that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase." This was for public consumption. It was left to the British interviewees to reveal the elephant in the room: given the intensity of the indigenous opposition to unlimited Jewish immigration, "No British officer, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms."

Nor did Ha-Am's "new Levantines" improve with the advent of a leadership "obsessed"* from the 30s on with the idea of forced transfer of the Palestinians (Morris, Haaretz, 9/5/89) - a leadership who even managed to convince themselves that it was "just, moral and correct,"** who hatched and implemented (in April, 1948) Plan Dalet ["a strategic and ideological anchor and basis for expulsions"***] , and who "understood at every level of military and political decision making that a Jewish state without a large Arab minority would be stronger and more viable both militarily and politically."****

[*Morris, Haaretz, 9/5/89; **Morris, 1948 & After: Israel & the Palestinians, p 43; *** Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p 63; **** Morris, 1948 & After, p 22]

Avnery's idea of "a solution that may not fulfill all justified aspirations nor right all wrongs, but which will allow both our peoples to live their lives in freedom, peace and prosperity" is, of course, the two-state solution: Israel as an apartheid state ("governed by laws of our own making" as he puts it, presumably including those laws which incorporate the distinction between Jews and non-Jews and deny 93% of Israeli territory to non-Jews, Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel and the Palestinian Arab refugees of 1948) on 78% of historic Palestine, and a truncated state of Palestine on the remaining 22% currently occupied by Israel, which he hypes as "... the free and sovereign State of Palestine in all the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, which will be accepted as a full member of the United Nations..." Avnery clings to the stale formula now trotted out by every friend of Israel within coee of a microphone. Meanwhile, the settlements expand, the Jews-only roads snake across the occupied West Bank, and walls and cages spring up around defenceless and impoverished Palestinians faster than than the words 'viable, contiguous and independent Palestinian state' can trip off a politician's lip.

And what of the thorniest problem of all, that of the Palestinian refugees ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces under cover of war in 1948?

We must approach with open hearts, compassion and common sense, the task of finding a just, and viable solution for the terrible tragedy of the refugees and their descendants. Each refugee family must be granted a free choice between the various solutions: repatriation and resettlement in the State of Palestine, with generous assistance; staying where they are or emigration to any country of their choice, also with generous assistance; and yes - coming back to the territory of Israel in acceptable numbers, agreed by us."

Like the two-state solution, Avnery's notion of the refugees exercising a "free choice" of returning to "the territory of Israel in acceptable numbers, agreed by us" is yet another example of his "solution(s) that may not fill all justified aspirations." Despite the fact that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) enshrines the right of all refugees to return and claim their properties (Articles 13 & 17), that the Palestinian refugees have the backing of the UN Charter and international law for their right of return, and that UNGA Resolution 194 calls for precisely that, Avnery is only prepared to go so far.

Sorry, Uri, it's back to the drawing board I'm afraid.

Pemulwuy in Palestine

Rambam (v): To be sponsored by smooth-talking Israel lobbyists in Australia on a grooming session by tough-talking PR people in Israel with a view to the sponsored adopting the missionary position for Israel when required in Australia. Usually said of Australian politicians, media hacks and other serviceable community misleaders.
Rambam Fellowship, Journalists Mission etc: Formal designations given to the process of rambamming. (From MERC's Dictionary of Zionist Discourse)

It's amazing what a little bit of rambamming can do to an Australian politician. Take our Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, for example. She was a bit of an unknown quantity for the Israel lobby prior to her rambamming in 2005 [See my posts Rambammed (23/2/08) & Ram Bam Thank You Ma'am (19/2/08)]:

"[Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) president Philip] Chester said the fact that he had 'never heard [Julia Gillard] say a word about the Middle East' was no indication of any lack of support for Israel, but added that he was more comfortable with Gillard filling the deputy role having been to Israel, which she visited for the first time last year." (Rudd 'good for the Jews', but Gillard still untested, The Australian Jewish News, 7/12/06)

But that was yesterday. This is today:

"Julia Gillard has brought a new abbreviation to the world of politics. In Canberra's corridors of power she is now simply referred to as DPM, a contraction of her position in relation to Kevin Rudd that ignores her other responsibilities as Minister for Education, Social Inclusion, Employment & Workplace Relations. She also appears to be wavering in her habit of acknowledging traditional land owners at the beginning of her speeches. Addressing the Jewish National Fund in Melbourne on Wednesday evening, she acknowledged Albert and Debbie Dadon, Michael Danby, David Ben-Gurion and Mark Dreyfus before giving a nod to the Wurundjieri people and their past and present elders." (Shortcuts for Gillard, DD McNicoll, The Australian, 6/6/08)

See what I mean? The DPM's still reeling from her rambamming back in '05. She's become a soft touch, mere putty in the hands, like so many of her rambammed colleagues. She just can't say no, and now finds herself the guest of honour at the Australian chapter of the JNF.* As she rises to speak to the assembled fundies, she can be heard muttering to herself, 'I don't know what's come over me'. She begins her speech in the customary way, "I would like to acknowledge the...," only to find herself saying, "the Jewish people, the traditional owners of the land of Israel on which we met..." Why, Julia's so out of it she's even seeing the ghost of Jewish elder, David Ben-Gurion, sitting between Danby and Dreyfus! And, will you look at that! Danby's giving a knowing wink to Dreyfus through the shade of Ben-Gurion himself, as if to say, 'That's our girl!'

But seriously now, what the **** is going on here? We have the DPM, whose leader has just formally apologised to the indigenous people of this country "for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these fellow Australians," addressing a meeting of one of the key Zionist colonial institutions responsible for inflicting similar profound grief, suffering and loss on the indigenous people of Palestine, and giving the approving nod to none other than the Lord High Ethnic Cleanser and Architect of the Palestinian Nakba himself, David Ben-Gurion.

Just to put a bit of perspective on this, allow me to quote at length from that honest exponent of gun Zionism, Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940), who bequeathed to us a veritable conga line of Israeli Likudniks such as Begin, Shamir, Sharon, Netanyahu, Olmert, and Tzipi Livni. Jabotinsky wrote in 1923: "Any native people - it's all the same whether they are civilized or savage - views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs. Compromisers in our midst attempt to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked by a softened formulation of our goals, or a tribe of money grubbers who will abandon their birthright to Palestine for cultural and economic gains. I flatly rejected this assessment of the Palestinian Arabs. Culturally they are 500 years behind us, spiritually they do not have our endurance or our strength of will, but this exhausts all of the internal differences... They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervour that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie... This childish fantasy of our 'Arabo-philes' comes from some kind of contempt for the Arab people, of some kind of unfounded view of this race as a rabble ready to be bribed in order to sell out their homeland for a railroad network. Colonization has its own explanation, integral and inescapable, and understood by every Jew and Arab with his wits about him. Colonization can have only one goal. For the Palestinian Arabs this goal is inadmissable. This is in the nature of things. To change that nature is impossible. If it were possible (and I doubt this) to discuss Palestine with the Arabs of Baghdad and Mecca as if it were only some kind of small, immaterial borderland, then Palestine would still remain for the Palestinians not a borderland, but their birthplace, the center and basis of their own national existance. Therefore it would be necessary to carry on colonization against the will of the Palestinian Arabs, which is the same condition that exists now. Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population - an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy. In this sense, there are no meaningful differences between our 'militarists' and our 'vegetarians'. One prefers an iron wall of Jewish bayonets, the other proposes an iron wall of British bayonets, the third proposes an agreement with Baghdad, and appears to be satisfied with Baghdad's bayonets - a strange and somewhat risky taste - but we all applaud, day and night, the iron wall." (Quoted in Lenni Brenner's The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, pp 74-75)

The advocates and practitioners of gun Zionism, of course, spend an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to divert the world's attention from the bloody bayonets of their colonial enterprise in Palestine, but without them they would not have been able to realise their goal of wiping Palestine from the map and creating an ethnically pure nation state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. That Gillard, Rudd & C0 either cannot see - or refuse to see - the Israeli colonial-settler project for what it is, inevitably casts doubt on the sincerity of their apology for "past mistreatment" of Australia's own indigenous population.

To underline Labor's schizophrenia here, the Rudd government is reportedly "considering erecting an official memorial in Canberra commemorating indigenous Australians killed in the so-called 'Aboriginal Wars'... The submission [to do so, from the Labor-aligned Canberra Institute,] nominates a number of conflicts to be commemorated, including the Pemulwuy-led Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars from 1790, the Black Wars of Tasmania, the Port Philip District Wars from 1830 to 1850, the Kalkodoon Wars of North West Queensland 1870 to 1890, and the Western Australian Conflict of 1890 to 1898... [In addition] the Federal Government yesterday announced the inclusion of the Myall Creek Aboriginal massacre site, near Inverell, on the National Heritage List at a 170-year memorial service." (A memorial controversy, Call to honour 'Aboriginal Wars', Sunday Telegraph, 8/6/08)

I'm getting confused. Isn't armed resistance to foreign occupation and dispossession by indigenes officially branded 'terrorism' these days? Surely the Rudd government isn't toying with the idea of an official memorial commemorating a bunch of Aboriginal terrorists? Those who tried to drive us into the sea? Those who spurned our generous offers of baubles and beads? Those who refused to be partners for peace? Those with the blood of our innocent pioneers on their hands? Those who hated us not for anything we allegedly did to them, but simply for being the wonderful folk that we were (and still are)?

How is John Citizen expected to cope with the cognitive dissonance created by commemorating Aboriginal resistance to colonial invasion and dispossession here, while his political representatives condemn it in Palestine as terrorism? How can he be expected to accept an apology for the bloody deeds of his pioneer forbears here, while his political representatives insist on turning Australia's federal parliament into a forum for celebrating the bloody deeds of Israel's pioneers in 1948? (See my 14/3/08 post, The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament 3)

Australian explorer Edward John Eyre wrote in 1845 about Australia's indigenous 'terrorists': "It is true that occasionally many crimes have been committed by them, and robberies and murders have too often occurred; but who can tell what were the provocations which led to, what the feelings which impelled such deeds? Neither have they been the only or the first aggressors, nor has their race escaped unscathed in the contest. Could blood answer blood, perhaps for every drop of European's shed by natives, a torrent of their, by European hands, would crimson the earth." (An Account of the Manners & Customs of the Aborigines & the State of their Relations with Europeans)

What Eyre wrote over one and a half centuries ago resonates today in Palestine.

[*I'll deal with the JNF at length in my next post.]