"Ben Zygier was a zealot. Intelligent, restless, he dreamt of working for Mossad. His dream ultimately killed him." So runs the blurb for Jason Koutsoukis' feature article, How life of spy Ben Zygier unravelled in the Sydney Morning Herald of March 25.
Koutsoukis' portrait of Zygier is remarkably accommodating of the young man's Zionist fantasies, with Zygier described as "a passionate Zionist, a young man who had so aspired to a life of heroism" and as "ready to defend Israel against its enemies, no matter what the cost."
His sketch of Zygier's life journey - son of a prominent Melbourne Zionist, graduate of Melbourne's Bialik College*, member of the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, kibbutznik (1995), and eventual Israeli citizen (2003) - is nowhere the occasion for the raising of an editorial eyebrow. All, or so Koutsoukis' treatment of his subject suggests, is as it should be for a young Australian Jew. One simply can not imagine a young Arab-Australian, motivated by a burning desire to defend his people in Gaza or Lebanon, being handled with such kid gloves.
Likewise Koutsoukis' tolerance of Zionist dogma. He blithely refers to Australia's Jewish community as "diaspora Jews," cluelessly giving currency to the Zionist notion that Jews such as the Zygiers, who live outside Israel, are somehow in exile from their real, Jewish homeland.
Equally problematic is Koutsoukis' characterisation of Israel as a "tiny strip of a nation surrounded only by countries either overtly or surreptitiously hostile to its existence." Anyone who's taken the trouble to acquaint himself with the history of this tiny strip of land will have no trouble in tracing this hostility back to imperial Britain's imposition of a European settler-colonial movement on an unwilling indigenous population. Apparently, it's too much to expect a little historical context here.
Then there's Koutsoukis' description of Mossad as "engaged in a furious shadow war against [Israel's] enemies." Now I'd always thought of wars as a matter of tit for tat, but all Koutsoukis can come up with is Israeli 'tat': "Mossad's most recent exploits include the car-bomb assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh in 2008, the January 2010 killing of Hamas operative Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai and at least 5 Iranian nuclear activists." God forbid any suggestion that Mossad is really little more than a glorified death squad.
There is, of course, another way of looking at the story of Ben Zygier, and that is as a case study in Zionist indoctrination. As one who appears to have taken the Mossad mystique more seriously than most, Ben Zygier may be seen as merely an extreme example of what can go wrong when a young Jew, whether in Israel or elsewhere, is raised on the Kool-Aid of Zionist ideology and fairy tales.
As it happens, Israel's preeminent critical journalist, Gideon Levy, has relieved me of the need to spell it out, having done a superb job, under the heading Hating Arabs is Netanyahu's gift to Israelis (Haaretz 7/3/13), of explaining just what it is that goes into the making of a young Israeli today. One need only extrapolate in Zygier's case. (NB: While Levy focuses on the current Israeli prime minister, the racism at the core of Israeli apartheid is as old as the Zionist movement itself and its distorting effect on all who swallow the Zionist narrative uncritically can be profound.):
"Benjamin Netanyahu's children attacked an Arab cleaning man on the seaside promenade in Tel Aviv and caused him serious injuries. They attacked an Arab waiter in a Tel Aviv restaurant with chairs and their fists. They attacked an Arab from Upper Nazareth at the shore of Lake Kinneret because they heard him speaking Arabic. Netanyahu's children waved hate-filled signs against Muslim players of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team and set fire to its club house. Netanyahu's children attacked an Arab woman on a Jerusalem light rail train just because she was an Arab. All these events took place in Israel within a few days. The attackers were not of course the prime minister's biological children, but they were all the creation of his spirit, students of his views and pupils of his government's policies. These Israeli skinheads are the fruits of the nationalistic and racist atmosphere that has grown greatly in recent years, the Netanyahu years.
"Such a streak of anti-Arab violence is not just a coincidence of course. So many of these kinds of violent acts in such a short time never happened here before. Their source is planted deep within the Israeli experience that Likud-led government's have acted to nurture. A Jewish child in Israel grows up with the feeling he is a member of the chosen people, one who is allowed to do almost anything. He learns that only his people have rights to this land. This child knows his country must be Jewish, and only Jewish. During the Netanyahu years the child grew up with a feeling of continual danger, usually exaggerated and hollow. He hears all day long of the dangers lying in wait for him, all at the hands of Arabs and Muslims. He learns he is a member of the people who are always the greatest victims, there are no other victims. There are those who repeat for him that the Arabs are not people like he is, it is doubtful whether they are human beings at all; just suspicious objects, terrorists. They all want to throw him into the sea, stab him, plant a bomb, shoot a Qassam rocket at him or blow themselves up next to him. The child learns that Israel's Arab citizens are a cancer, a stab in the back of the nation and a fifth column; and it is necessary to strip them of all their remnants of rights. He learns that Israel 'gives' the Arabs too much.
"He sees alongside the road a fancy house in an Arab village and tells himself: Look at that. He hears Arab members of Knesset and tells himself: Look at us, what a democracy! He sees a veiled woman or hears someone speaking Arabic and knows this means danger. He doesn't even think to compare the treatment of Jews in Europe in the 1930s to the treatment of Arabs in Israel. He has never met an Arab Israeli for a real conversation, and there is absolutely no chance of that with a Palestinian from the territories.
"This child knows nothing about the Nakba, except that it is an invention of Israel-haters and the very mention of it is treason. Of the hundreds of villages that were destroyed and the fate of their hundreds of thousands of residents, some of whom still live in Israel, torn away from their families, banished from their lands and villages - he knows nothing at all and wants to know nothing. He has no idea what it means to be an Arab child his age in Israel who hears the prime minister of both of them describe the Arab child as a demographic threat. The Jewish child has never heard a single good word from the prime minister on a 5th of the citizens of his country, only condemnation, threats, exclusion and danger. All this he learned in even more forceful terms in recent years, the latest Likud years."
[*For Bialik College see my 21/6/12 post Mystery Man.]
Showing posts with label Jason Koutsoukis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jason Koutsoukis. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Sunday, May 22, 2011
SMH Letters Editor No Einstein
Ali Kazak, former ambassador of Palestine to these shores, submitted the following letter to the Sydney Morning Herald. Although it was published on 18 May, the words in bold were omitted by the letters editor:
"Your Middle East correspondent's article Israel points finger over coordinated incursions (SMH 17/5) contains a number of inaccuracies which need to be corrected. Palestinian refugees are not Syrians of Palestinian descent. They are Palestinians who were ethnically-cleansed [replaced by thrown out] from Palestine by Jewish terrorist organisations such as the Stern Gang who created Israel [replaced by when Israel was created] in its place in 1948. They maintain their Palestinian nationality and refuse to replace it with any other as Israel wishes them to do. Furthermore, it is not correct to describe them as penetrating or infiltrating the border since one does not infiltrate or penetrate into one's own country regardless of its occupation by other people who deny them their right to live in their own homeland. Finally, the Palestinians were not marking the 53rd anniversary of the creation of Israel but the 63rd anniversary of Al-Nakba (the Palestinian Day of Catastrophe) of their dispossession of their homeland. Israel's cold-blooded killing of 3 of the refugees is murder and should be strongly condemned by the Australian government."
This blatant display of censorship/self-censorship warrants several points:
1) By replacing ethnic cleansing with thrown out the Herald is deliberately obfuscating the plain fact that the Palestinian refugees were thrown out for no other reason than that they were non-Jews whose mere existence in Palestine stood in the way of the creation of a majority Jewish Israeli state. Zionist historian and 1948 specialist Benny Morris certainly doesn't baulk at using the term: "There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing... A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians." (See my 11/5/08 post Benny Unhinged)
2) By omitting the reference to Jewish terrorist organisations such as the Stern Gang, the Herald's letter editor reveals himself to be no Einstein. After all, it was Einstein who wrote the following terse letter, dated 10 April 1948 (a day after the notorious act of ethnic cleansing known as the Deir Yassin massacre, perpetrated by the Irgun and the Stern Gang) in response to an invitation to attend a fundraiser for the American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, aka the Stern Gang: "When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsibility for it would be the British and the second responsibility for it the Terrorist organizations built up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people."
3) After reading the Human Rights Watch report on Israel's latest massacre, Israel: Investigate Killings During Border Protests (20/5/11), the expression cold-blooded murder seems nowhere near wide of the mark. As the report says, "Using intentional lethal force where not strictly necessary to protect life is likely to violate the right to life in a non-armed-conflict policing situation such as crowd control, even when carried out by soldiers... Unjustified killings should be prosecuted as crimes." The situation Kazak describes in his letter relates to the protest at the Lebanese border. In relation to this, HRW finds that there was "no imminent threat to the lives of Israeli forces that necessitated use of lethal force," and points out that the Israeli murderers were separated from the unarmed protesters by 2 rows of fencing, one electrified, and a thick row of trees.
The following questions therefore arise: Just what was the letters editor afraid of? What pressures was he/she operating under? Was this a matter of censorship from someone higher up in the Fairfax food chain or an act of self-censorship by the letters editor? Does the Herald have in its possession a list of red line words in relation to Palestine/Israel? If so, what was its origin and what are they? Oh yes, and what ever happened to freedom of speech?
For those interested, see my post on the report by Herald Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis, to which Ali Kazak's letter was a response: Palestinians Dying to Celebrate Israel's 63rd Birthday (17/5/11)
"Your Middle East correspondent's article Israel points finger over coordinated incursions (SMH 17/5) contains a number of inaccuracies which need to be corrected. Palestinian refugees are not Syrians of Palestinian descent. They are Palestinians who were ethnically-cleansed [replaced by thrown out] from Palestine by Jewish terrorist organisations such as the Stern Gang who created Israel [replaced by when Israel was created] in its place in 1948. They maintain their Palestinian nationality and refuse to replace it with any other as Israel wishes them to do. Furthermore, it is not correct to describe them as penetrating or infiltrating the border since one does not infiltrate or penetrate into one's own country regardless of its occupation by other people who deny them their right to live in their own homeland. Finally, the Palestinians were not marking the 53rd anniversary of the creation of Israel but the 63rd anniversary of Al-Nakba (the Palestinian Day of Catastrophe) of their dispossession of their homeland. Israel's cold-blooded killing of 3 of the refugees is murder and should be strongly condemned by the Australian government."
This blatant display of censorship/self-censorship warrants several points:
1) By replacing ethnic cleansing with thrown out the Herald is deliberately obfuscating the plain fact that the Palestinian refugees were thrown out for no other reason than that they were non-Jews whose mere existence in Palestine stood in the way of the creation of a majority Jewish Israeli state. Zionist historian and 1948 specialist Benny Morris certainly doesn't baulk at using the term: "There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing... A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians." (See my 11/5/08 post Benny Unhinged)
2) By omitting the reference to Jewish terrorist organisations such as the Stern Gang, the Herald's letter editor reveals himself to be no Einstein. After all, it was Einstein who wrote the following terse letter, dated 10 April 1948 (a day after the notorious act of ethnic cleansing known as the Deir Yassin massacre, perpetrated by the Irgun and the Stern Gang) in response to an invitation to attend a fundraiser for the American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, aka the Stern Gang: "When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsibility for it would be the British and the second responsibility for it the Terrorist organizations built up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people."
3) After reading the Human Rights Watch report on Israel's latest massacre, Israel: Investigate Killings During Border Protests (20/5/11), the expression cold-blooded murder seems nowhere near wide of the mark. As the report says, "Using intentional lethal force where not strictly necessary to protect life is likely to violate the right to life in a non-armed-conflict policing situation such as crowd control, even when carried out by soldiers... Unjustified killings should be prosecuted as crimes." The situation Kazak describes in his letter relates to the protest at the Lebanese border. In relation to this, HRW finds that there was "no imminent threat to the lives of Israeli forces that necessitated use of lethal force," and points out that the Israeli murderers were separated from the unarmed protesters by 2 rows of fencing, one electrified, and a thick row of trees.
The following questions therefore arise: Just what was the letters editor afraid of? What pressures was he/she operating under? Was this a matter of censorship from someone higher up in the Fairfax food chain or an act of self-censorship by the letters editor? Does the Herald have in its possession a list of red line words in relation to Palestine/Israel? If so, what was its origin and what are they? Oh yes, and what ever happened to freedom of speech?
For those interested, see my post on the report by Herald Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis, to which Ali Kazak's letter was a response: Palestinians Dying to Celebrate Israel's 63rd Birthday (17/5/11)
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Aussie Gold
When Egypt blows, who ya gonna call? Why, our learned foreign editors and valiant Middle East correspondents of course!
From the air-conditioned comfort of his office at Murdoch's News Ltd, The Australian's Jerusalem Prize-winning foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, tells us there's far far worse in the Middle East than your rickety old Mubarak: "Compared with Iran, Egypt and Tunisia were relatively liberal. In Iran the regime was capable of bludgeoning, raping and killing large numbers of its citizens to stay in power, and willing to do so. Iran is an ideological, totalitarian regime. Egypt and Tunisia are ramshackle authoritarian regimes." (Arab awakening or dawn of dark age, Greg Sheridan, 3/2/11)
Meanwhile, The Australian's man on the ground (albeit in his hotel room) in Cairo, John Lyons, is in no mood for such Israeli talking points as his mind concentrates wonderfully following a 'visit' by some dudes in black leather jackets: "So it's come to this: unidentified men entering the hotel rooms of journalists and taking equipment. Cairo is becoming nastier by the hour... In Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, plainclothesmen can knock on anybody's door, take them away and detain or torture them for as long as they want to." (A decrepit regime stoops to conquer, 5/2/11)
The Sydney Morning Herald's Jason Koutsoukis, by contrast, is mixing it with the masses in Tahrir Square, and revealing hitherto unknown talents - a detailed knowledge of Egyptian ID cards and a mastery of written Arabic no less. There he is, describing the crowd's beating of a suspected plainclothes cop, when all of a sudden: "Three or four men then jumped on him and wrestled him to the ground. Soon enough someone was holding up an ID card. 'Yes', he screamed. 'This proves it. He is a policeman'. Inspecting it myself, the ID card looked like any other Egyptian ID card. There was nothing on it to indicate that this man was a policeman. 'You're not looking at it properly', someone said, trying to suggest that relevant detail was hidden in the card's holographic image." (In this atmosphere, lynching is only a matter of time, 5/2/11)
Aussie gold!
From the air-conditioned comfort of his office at Murdoch's News Ltd, The Australian's Jerusalem Prize-winning foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, tells us there's far far worse in the Middle East than your rickety old Mubarak: "Compared with Iran, Egypt and Tunisia were relatively liberal. In Iran the regime was capable of bludgeoning, raping and killing large numbers of its citizens to stay in power, and willing to do so. Iran is an ideological, totalitarian regime. Egypt and Tunisia are ramshackle authoritarian regimes." (Arab awakening or dawn of dark age, Greg Sheridan, 3/2/11)
Meanwhile, The Australian's man on the ground (albeit in his hotel room) in Cairo, John Lyons, is in no mood for such Israeli talking points as his mind concentrates wonderfully following a 'visit' by some dudes in black leather jackets: "So it's come to this: unidentified men entering the hotel rooms of journalists and taking equipment. Cairo is becoming nastier by the hour... In Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, plainclothesmen can knock on anybody's door, take them away and detain or torture them for as long as they want to." (A decrepit regime stoops to conquer, 5/2/11)
The Sydney Morning Herald's Jason Koutsoukis, by contrast, is mixing it with the masses in Tahrir Square, and revealing hitherto unknown talents - a detailed knowledge of Egyptian ID cards and a mastery of written Arabic no less. There he is, describing the crowd's beating of a suspected plainclothes cop, when all of a sudden: "Three or four men then jumped on him and wrestled him to the ground. Soon enough someone was holding up an ID card. 'Yes', he screamed. 'This proves it. He is a policeman'. Inspecting it myself, the ID card looked like any other Egyptian ID card. There was nothing on it to indicate that this man was a policeman. 'You're not looking at it properly', someone said, trying to suggest that relevant detail was hidden in the card's holographic image." (In this atmosphere, lynching is only a matter of time, 5/2/11)
Aussie gold!
Sunday, October 17, 2010
The View from South of the Border
"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came so close to the Israeli border this week he could almost be heard on the other side, calling for 'the Zionists to be wiped out'." (Lebanon visit shows new balance of power, Jason Koutsoukis, Sydney Morning Herald, 16/10/10)
However, his horns and forked tail, which cheekily flicked back and forth, could easily be made out, despite the great clouds of yellow smoke wreathing His Satanic Majesty's presence.
"... Hezbollah, the militant Shiite movement that gives the impression of being driven by two overrriding ambitions: the annihilation of Israel and the piecemeal takeover of Lebanon..." (ibid)
My God, they're a worry. Have I got this right? Israel will be annihilated, but Lebanon will only get Cadbury's chocolate bar treatment?
"As in most other paramilitary organisations, a certain level of paranoia permeates Hezbollah, even its political wing." (ibid)
Even its political wing? Jeez, these guys really do need to chill out!
However, his horns and forked tail, which cheekily flicked back and forth, could easily be made out, despite the great clouds of yellow smoke wreathing His Satanic Majesty's presence.
"... Hezbollah, the militant Shiite movement that gives the impression of being driven by two overrriding ambitions: the annihilation of Israel and the piecemeal takeover of Lebanon..." (ibid)
My God, they're a worry. Have I got this right? Israel will be annihilated, but Lebanon will only get Cadbury's chocolate bar treatment?
"As in most other paramilitary organisations, a certain level of paranoia permeates Hezbollah, even its political wing." (ibid)
Even its political wing? Jeez, these guys really do need to chill out!
"Mr Darwiche's workspace was more like a suite than an office. Thick carpet, mood lighting, a plush sofa or two and the requisite framed portrait of the Hezbollah secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, behind him. On another wall were framed portraits of Ragheb Harb, Abbas al-Musawi and Imad Mughniyah, all former Hezbollah leaders assassinated by Israel." (ibid)
Er... on second thoughts.
"It's such a cliche but you're only as good as your last story. People forget what was in the paper last week, let alone last year." Jason Koutsoukis (quoted in The art of reporting news, Rowena MacDonald, uow.edu.au) Not MERC, Jason.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
One for Jason
The late American comedian George Carlin once asked, "Why do they call Palestinian commandos terrorists, and Israeli terrorists commandos?"
Maybe Fairfax's Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis - who described the Israeli terrorists who shot dead 9 unarmed aid workers on the Mavi Marmara as "commandos"* and the Palestinian commandos who shot dead 4 illegal (and presumably armed) Jewish settlers near Hebron as "terrorists"** - needs to ask himself this question.
[*Fury follows deadly attack, SMH, 1/6/10; ** As Hamas gloats, Israel vows revenge for settler murders, SMH, 2/9/10]
Maybe Fairfax's Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis - who described the Israeli terrorists who shot dead 9 unarmed aid workers on the Mavi Marmara as "commandos"* and the Palestinian commandos who shot dead 4 illegal (and presumably armed) Jewish settlers near Hebron as "terrorists"** - needs to ask himself this question.
[*Fury follows deadly attack, SMH, 1/6/10; ** As Hamas gloats, Israel vows revenge for settler murders, SMH, 2/9/10]
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Journo Hack Hearts PR Flack
In Behind the lines of Mr Cool, Fairfax's Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis, brings his journalistic 'talents' to bear on everyone's favourite spinmeister Mark Regev:
"Regev's greatest gift as a spokesman for Israel is his ability to control himself. It's difficult to imagine him losing his cool, raising his voice or displaying any kind of arrogance and zealotry, which could so easily alienate an audience." (Sydney Morning Herald, 28/8/10)
Yes - in much the same way as Koutsoukis' greatest gift as a journalist is to forgo the kind of homework and hard questions which could so easily have the Israel lobby hassling the Herald's editor.
"'One thing I am meticulous about is to make sure that I am properly prepared and properly briefed on whatever position it is that I am called upon to explain'."
OK. Got that? Before he talks to journalists, Regev must ensure that he has been properly prepared and briefed on whatever position he has been called upon to explain. IOW, that he has the official line down pat.
"'It's never personal for me when I'm on camera'. His boss, Netanyahu, refuses to utter the words 'two-state solution' for fear of inflaming his political allies in [sic] the right, but Regev is unafraid to express his personal view in favour of such an outcome."
So although Mr Spin has just explained that before talking to journalists he learns the official line by heart, the clueless Koutsoukis goes on to describe him as unafraid to express his personal view!?
And this personal view, we are supposed to believe, is really Netanyahu's view - except that he's regrettably forced to take a 'Don't mention the two-state solution' vow of silence for fear of frightening his coalition horses.
OK... And Mr Spin's daring personal view is... ?
"'We need to be respectful of the Palestinian narrative, and of the Arab perspective of this conflict. Palestinians want their own state. I understand that. I support that aspiration'."
Well ain't that nice! His master's voice supports a Palestinian state! What a wonderful world! So I can now move on and blog about something else then?
Not quite. If there's one word in this game that tells you its user is talking through a hole in his posterior, it's the word narrative - a word designed to magically transform the killing fields of occupied Palestine into your proverbial level playing field and conjure up that old cliche about there being two sides to every story.
Nor should it be forgotten (as a vertical German soldier might once have said of a horizontal Pole while standing on the latter's neck):
"'Behind the headlines of this conflict lies the fact that we have been living with each other for such a long time'."
So long, in fact, they're practically best friends:
"'We, Israel and the Palestinians, know each other very well'. Regularly in on-air conflict with representatives for the Palestinian side of the argument, Regev says he enjoys strong personal relationships with the same people off camera."
Yes, Jason, we get along like an olive orchard on fire. But alas, there's a problem:
"'I am strongly of the view that while Palestinian aspiration for statehood is entirely legitimate, I think the Palestinian people have been consistently betrayed by their leadership. Statehood has become a matter of choice for the Palestinian leadership'."
Yes, there's no avoiding the issue. Although Israel is well served by its leaders, the sad fact is the Palestinians are eternally betrayed by theirs.
Now if only they had a visionary leader like Bibi, who, after his meeting with President Obama on July 6, spoke of his "'vision of a demilitarized Palestinian state' that would recognise 'the Jewish state'." (In speech to Jewish leaders, Netanyahu endorses two-state solution, Doug Chandler, The Jewish Week, 7/7/10)
"Regev's greatest gift as a spokesman for Israel is his ability to control himself. It's difficult to imagine him losing his cool, raising his voice or displaying any kind of arrogance and zealotry, which could so easily alienate an audience." (Sydney Morning Herald, 28/8/10)
Yes - in much the same way as Koutsoukis' greatest gift as a journalist is to forgo the kind of homework and hard questions which could so easily have the Israel lobby hassling the Herald's editor.
"'One thing I am meticulous about is to make sure that I am properly prepared and properly briefed on whatever position it is that I am called upon to explain'."
OK. Got that? Before he talks to journalists, Regev must ensure that he has been properly prepared and briefed on whatever position he has been called upon to explain. IOW, that he has the official line down pat.
"'It's never personal for me when I'm on camera'. His boss, Netanyahu, refuses to utter the words 'two-state solution' for fear of inflaming his political allies in [sic] the right, but Regev is unafraid to express his personal view in favour of such an outcome."
So although Mr Spin has just explained that before talking to journalists he learns the official line by heart, the clueless Koutsoukis goes on to describe him as unafraid to express his personal view!?
And this personal view, we are supposed to believe, is really Netanyahu's view - except that he's regrettably forced to take a 'Don't mention the two-state solution' vow of silence for fear of frightening his coalition horses.
OK... And Mr Spin's daring personal view is... ?
"'We need to be respectful of the Palestinian narrative, and of the Arab perspective of this conflict. Palestinians want their own state. I understand that. I support that aspiration'."
Well ain't that nice! His master's voice supports a Palestinian state! What a wonderful world! So I can now move on and blog about something else then?
Not quite. If there's one word in this game that tells you its user is talking through a hole in his posterior, it's the word narrative - a word designed to magically transform the killing fields of occupied Palestine into your proverbial level playing field and conjure up that old cliche about there being two sides to every story.
Nor should it be forgotten (as a vertical German soldier might once have said of a horizontal Pole while standing on the latter's neck):
"'Behind the headlines of this conflict lies the fact that we have been living with each other for such a long time'."
So long, in fact, they're practically best friends:
"'We, Israel and the Palestinians, know each other very well'. Regularly in on-air conflict with representatives for the Palestinian side of the argument, Regev says he enjoys strong personal relationships with the same people off camera."
Yes, Jason, we get along like an olive orchard on fire. But alas, there's a problem:
"'I am strongly of the view that while Palestinian aspiration for statehood is entirely legitimate, I think the Palestinian people have been consistently betrayed by their leadership. Statehood has become a matter of choice for the Palestinian leadership'."
Yes, there's no avoiding the issue. Although Israel is well served by its leaders, the sad fact is the Palestinians are eternally betrayed by theirs.
Now if only they had a visionary leader like Bibi, who, after his meeting with President Obama on July 6, spoke of his "'vision of a demilitarized Palestinian state' that would recognise 'the Jewish state'." (In speech to Jewish leaders, Netanyahu endorses two-state solution, Doug Chandler, The Jewish Week, 7/7/10)
Friday, August 13, 2010
Koutsoukis Recycles Israeli Propaganda
In the context of reporting Israel's judicial inquiry into the handling of its raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla vessel Mavi Marmara on 31/5/10, Fairfax's Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis, writes that: "Things began to go wrong after several of the commandos who were lowered on to the deck of the... Mavi Marmara, were attacked by a number of passengers. Other commandos were sent aboard the Mavi Marmara with orders to save the lives of their comrades, shooting dead 9 passengers and injuring more than 30 others." (Netanyahu to shift blame over deadly raid on Gaza flotilla, Sydney Morning Herald, 9/8/10)
And here's the official Israeli line: "During the boarding of the Mavi Marmara, the demonstrators on board attacked the IDF naval personnel with live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs." (IDF forces met with pre-planned violence when attempting to board flotilla, mfa.gov.il, 31/5/10, updated 21/6/10)
In both accounts the aid activists are the attackers. Koutsoukis fails only to mention their 'weapons'.
Even Murdoch's Middle East correspondent, John Lyons, manages a little more objectivity: "Turkey has called the raid 'state-sponsored terrorism' while Israel has said its commandos were attacked as they attempted to board one of the boats and were acting in self-defence." (Israeli PM defends action on Gaza, The Australian, 10/8/10)
To set the record straight, here's what really happened from the first book-length treatment of the massacre to emerge:
"At around 4:25am on May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos attacked the Mavi Marmara while the boat was in international waters. They had been trailing the convoy for hours and harassing them for about 90 minutes prior to this by circling the ship with Zodiac dinghies full of Israeli commandos. Immediately following the morning prayer, the Zodiacs moved quickly along side the Mavi Marmara. They shot at the ship with paintball rifles and attempted to board. The ship then turned, heading away from Gaza at full speed. Israeli helicopters then descended minutes later, and the commandos began firing smoke and percussion grenades on the ship, followed almost immediately by rubber bullets and live ammunition. Meanwhile, those on the ship were not about to be boarded in international waters, and they resisted the attack with slingshots, bare hands, water hoses, and various objects from the ship. Three Israeli commandos who had dropped from helicopters were overpowered, their weapons disabled, and were taken below the fifth deck, where they were searched and then provided with basic first aid. The other commandos continued to fire live ammunition rounds, shooting dozens of unarmed civilians, including an Indonesian doctor.
"By the time the attack was over, nine people - eight Turkish citizens and a dual American-Turkish citizen - were dead. Autopsy results later revealed that those killed in the attack were shot a total of thirty times. The Guardian reported that 61-year-old Ibrahim Bilgen, 'was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back', and that 19-year-old Furkan Dogan, 'was shot five times from less than 45 cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back'. Footage released by Iara Lee and analyzed by Ali Abunimah shows that the Israelis fired indiscriminately into a crowd of unarmed people huddling behind a cabin door, disproving the claim that the commandos were merely defending themselves against an onslaught." (Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla & How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict, ed by Moustafa Bayoumi, 2010, p 3)
And here's the official Israeli line: "During the boarding of the Mavi Marmara, the demonstrators on board attacked the IDF naval personnel with live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs." (IDF forces met with pre-planned violence when attempting to board flotilla, mfa.gov.il, 31/5/10, updated 21/6/10)
In both accounts the aid activists are the attackers. Koutsoukis fails only to mention their 'weapons'.
Even Murdoch's Middle East correspondent, John Lyons, manages a little more objectivity: "Turkey has called the raid 'state-sponsored terrorism' while Israel has said its commandos were attacked as they attempted to board one of the boats and were acting in self-defence." (Israeli PM defends action on Gaza, The Australian, 10/8/10)
To set the record straight, here's what really happened from the first book-length treatment of the massacre to emerge:
"At around 4:25am on May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos attacked the Mavi Marmara while the boat was in international waters. They had been trailing the convoy for hours and harassing them for about 90 minutes prior to this by circling the ship with Zodiac dinghies full of Israeli commandos. Immediately following the morning prayer, the Zodiacs moved quickly along side the Mavi Marmara. They shot at the ship with paintball rifles and attempted to board. The ship then turned, heading away from Gaza at full speed. Israeli helicopters then descended minutes later, and the commandos began firing smoke and percussion grenades on the ship, followed almost immediately by rubber bullets and live ammunition. Meanwhile, those on the ship were not about to be boarded in international waters, and they resisted the attack with slingshots, bare hands, water hoses, and various objects from the ship. Three Israeli commandos who had dropped from helicopters were overpowered, their weapons disabled, and were taken below the fifth deck, where they were searched and then provided with basic first aid. The other commandos continued to fire live ammunition rounds, shooting dozens of unarmed civilians, including an Indonesian doctor.
"By the time the attack was over, nine people - eight Turkish citizens and a dual American-Turkish citizen - were dead. Autopsy results later revealed that those killed in the attack were shot a total of thirty times. The Guardian reported that 61-year-old Ibrahim Bilgen, 'was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back', and that 19-year-old Furkan Dogan, 'was shot five times from less than 45 cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back'. Footage released by Iara Lee and analyzed by Ali Abunimah shows that the Israelis fired indiscriminately into a crowd of unarmed people huddling behind a cabin door, disproving the claim that the commandos were merely defending themselves against an onslaught." (Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla & How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict, ed by Moustafa Bayoumi, 2010, p 3)
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Robert Fisk vs Jason Koutsoukis
"I know how at least 80% of the clashes [on the Golan Heights] started. In my opinion, more than 80%, but let's talk about 80%. It went this way. We would send a tractor to plough someplace where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was." Moshe Dayan quoted in The Iron Wall, Avi Shlaim, 2001, pp 236-237)
On the subject of the latest flare up on the Israeli-Lebanese border, who are you going to believe, the UK Independent's Beirut-based veteran reporter, Robert Fisk, OR the Sydney Morning Herald's Jerusalem-based babe-in-the-woods, Jason Koutsoukis, channeling an anonymous, but obviously Israeli, senior diplomatic source?
I've taken the liberty below of punctuating Koutsoukis' report with relevant snippets of two (4 & 5/8/10) of Fisk's reports (plus my own comments) in square-bracketed bold.
To begin with, however, here's Fisk on the subject of that elusive Israeli-Lebanese border:
"No one is exactly sure where the Israeli-Lebanese border is. In 2000, the UN drew a 'Blue Line' along what was... the frontier between the French mandate of Lebanon and the British mandate of Palestine. Behind it, from the Lebanese point of view, stands the Israeli 'technical fence', a mass of barbed wire, electrified wires and sandy roads (to look for footprints)." (Israel-Lebanon tensions flare after skirmish leaves 4 dead, 4/8/10) "The 'Blue Line' was inadvisedly drawn on the orders of an ambitious UN civil servant who would one day like to be UN Secretary General. In his haste to draw an 'accurate' border, for example, he put the entire area of Shebaa farms - which was Lebanese during the post-First World War French mandate - south and east of the line, effectively putting it under Israeli occupation (which had in military terms been the case since the 1967 Middle East war. But political errors of this kind sapped the belief of Lebanese authorities in the UN's maps." (UN: Israel was on its own side before border clash, 5/8/10)
Now for Koutsoukis/Fisk:
"A senior diplomatic source, who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity, said preliminary investigations by UN personnel monitoring the border... indicated the Lebanese army planned the attack. ["Now for the Lebanese army to take on the Israelis, with their 264 nuclear missiles, was a tall order. But for the Israeli army to take on the army of one of the smallest countries in the world was surely preposterous, not least because Army Day had been attended by the president of Lebanon, Michel Sleiman, in Beirut only 2 days earlier - when he ordered his soldiers to defend their frontier." 4/8] The source said the UN Interim Force in Lebanon advised Lebanese army commanders early on Tuesday morning that the Israelis would be removing a tree on their side of the border early in the afternoon. ["Israel had apparently not co-ordinated its gardening expedition with the Lebanese via the UN." 5/8] Several hours before the Israelis moved in to begin that work, a senior Lebanese army unit arrived at the Lebanese village of al-Adeisa, which overlooks the site where the tree was to be removed, and took control of the area. They were accompanied by several journalists linked to media outlets controlled by the radical Shiite movement Hezbollah ["At about this time, Al-Akhbar newspaper's local correspondent Assaf Abu Rahal turned up in Addaiseh to cover the story." 4/8. MERC: Al-Akhbar has nothing to do with Hezbollah & Assaf Abu Rahal was a Christian - as, btw, was one of the slain Lebanese soldiers.]... Shortly after 12:15pm, when the Israelis moved a crane close to the border fence to begin removing the tree, a Lebanese army sniper took aim at the the commanders who were supervising the operation from a hill on the Israeli side of the border. 'The sniper was aiming for the most senior IDF officers present, not the person operating the crane where the alleged border infringement took place', the source told the Herald. 'These were not warning shots fired towards the area of the crane. ["The moment the crane's arm crossed the 'technical fence'... Lebanese soldiers opened fire into the air. The Israelis, according to the Lebanese... shot at the Lebanese soldiers." 4/8] Someone took careful aim at the Israeli commanders who were standing several hundred metres away'. One shot hit Colonel Dov Harari in the head, killing him instantly. Another shot caused shrapnel wounds to the chest of a captain, who is in hospital in a serious condition ["And a little time later, an Israeli helicopter - apparently firing from the Israeli side of the border (though that has yet to be confirmed) - fired a rocket at a Lebanese armoured vehicle, killing 3 soldiers and the journalist. Lebanese troops, on orders from Beirut, fired back and killed an Israeli lieutenant." 4/8]... In the clash that followed the sniper's shots, two Lebanese soldiers were killed, and a journalist from the Hezbollah-owned Al Manar television network [MERC: ???] ... Guy Bechor, a senior analyst of Israeli-Arab affairs at the Interdisciplinary Centre at Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, said the entire affair appeared to have been fully planned by the Lebanese army... 'The immediate purpose was to create deterrence with Israel. The Lebanese army has become fed up standing idly by while the IDF operates almost as freely in Lebanese territory as it does in its own territory'." (Lebanese commander ordered sniper attack, 6/8/10) [MERC: Well exactly! Let's here it again: "The Lebanese army has become fed up standing idly by while the IDF operates almost as freely in Lebanese territory as it does in its own territory." ]
PS: "Israeli warplanes have been executing mock intensive air raids in Nabatieh, Iqlim al-Toufah, Marjayoun and Khiam airspace since Friday morning', the [Lebanese] National News Agency said. In addition, the southern towns of Tyre, Hasbya and Bint Jbeil are also experiencing flyovers and dummy attacks." (Israel rattles sabre in south Lebanon, Patrick Galey, Daily Star, 7/8/10)
On the subject of the latest flare up on the Israeli-Lebanese border, who are you going to believe, the UK Independent's Beirut-based veteran reporter, Robert Fisk, OR the Sydney Morning Herald's Jerusalem-based babe-in-the-woods, Jason Koutsoukis, channeling an anonymous, but obviously Israeli, senior diplomatic source?
I've taken the liberty below of punctuating Koutsoukis' report with relevant snippets of two (4 & 5/8/10) of Fisk's reports (plus my own comments) in square-bracketed bold.
To begin with, however, here's Fisk on the subject of that elusive Israeli-Lebanese border:
"No one is exactly sure where the Israeli-Lebanese border is. In 2000, the UN drew a 'Blue Line' along what was... the frontier between the French mandate of Lebanon and the British mandate of Palestine. Behind it, from the Lebanese point of view, stands the Israeli 'technical fence', a mass of barbed wire, electrified wires and sandy roads (to look for footprints)." (Israel-Lebanon tensions flare after skirmish leaves 4 dead, 4/8/10) "The 'Blue Line' was inadvisedly drawn on the orders of an ambitious UN civil servant who would one day like to be UN Secretary General. In his haste to draw an 'accurate' border, for example, he put the entire area of Shebaa farms - which was Lebanese during the post-First World War French mandate - south and east of the line, effectively putting it under Israeli occupation (which had in military terms been the case since the 1967 Middle East war. But political errors of this kind sapped the belief of Lebanese authorities in the UN's maps." (UN: Israel was on its own side before border clash, 5/8/10)
Now for Koutsoukis/Fisk:
"A senior diplomatic source, who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity, said preliminary investigations by UN personnel monitoring the border... indicated the Lebanese army planned the attack. ["Now for the Lebanese army to take on the Israelis, with their 264 nuclear missiles, was a tall order. But for the Israeli army to take on the army of one of the smallest countries in the world was surely preposterous, not least because Army Day had been attended by the president of Lebanon, Michel Sleiman, in Beirut only 2 days earlier - when he ordered his soldiers to defend their frontier." 4/8] The source said the UN Interim Force in Lebanon advised Lebanese army commanders early on Tuesday morning that the Israelis would be removing a tree on their side of the border early in the afternoon. ["Israel had apparently not co-ordinated its gardening expedition with the Lebanese via the UN." 5/8] Several hours before the Israelis moved in to begin that work, a senior Lebanese army unit arrived at the Lebanese village of al-Adeisa, which overlooks the site where the tree was to be removed, and took control of the area. They were accompanied by several journalists linked to media outlets controlled by the radical Shiite movement Hezbollah ["At about this time, Al-Akhbar newspaper's local correspondent Assaf Abu Rahal turned up in Addaiseh to cover the story." 4/8. MERC: Al-Akhbar has nothing to do with Hezbollah & Assaf Abu Rahal was a Christian - as, btw, was one of the slain Lebanese soldiers.]... Shortly after 12:15pm, when the Israelis moved a crane close to the border fence to begin removing the tree, a Lebanese army sniper took aim at the the commanders who were supervising the operation from a hill on the Israeli side of the border. 'The sniper was aiming for the most senior IDF officers present, not the person operating the crane where the alleged border infringement took place', the source told the Herald. 'These were not warning shots fired towards the area of the crane. ["The moment the crane's arm crossed the 'technical fence'... Lebanese soldiers opened fire into the air. The Israelis, according to the Lebanese... shot at the Lebanese soldiers." 4/8] Someone took careful aim at the Israeli commanders who were standing several hundred metres away'. One shot hit Colonel Dov Harari in the head, killing him instantly. Another shot caused shrapnel wounds to the chest of a captain, who is in hospital in a serious condition ["And a little time later, an Israeli helicopter - apparently firing from the Israeli side of the border (though that has yet to be confirmed) - fired a rocket at a Lebanese armoured vehicle, killing 3 soldiers and the journalist. Lebanese troops, on orders from Beirut, fired back and killed an Israeli lieutenant." 4/8]... In the clash that followed the sniper's shots, two Lebanese soldiers were killed, and a journalist from the Hezbollah-owned Al Manar television network [MERC: ???] ... Guy Bechor, a senior analyst of Israeli-Arab affairs at the Interdisciplinary Centre at Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, said the entire affair appeared to have been fully planned by the Lebanese army... 'The immediate purpose was to create deterrence with Israel. The Lebanese army has become fed up standing idly by while the IDF operates almost as freely in Lebanese territory as it does in its own territory'." (Lebanese commander ordered sniper attack, 6/8/10) [MERC: Well exactly! Let's here it again: "The Lebanese army has become fed up standing idly by while the IDF operates almost as freely in Lebanese territory as it does in its own territory." ]
PS: "Israeli warplanes have been executing mock intensive air raids in Nabatieh, Iqlim al-Toufah, Marjayoun and Khiam airspace since Friday morning', the [Lebanese] National News Agency said. In addition, the southern towns of Tyre, Hasbya and Bint Jbeil are also experiencing flyovers and dummy attacks." (Israel rattles sabre in south Lebanon, Patrick Galey, Daily Star, 7/8/10)
Monday, April 5, 2010
Easter in Jerusalem
Imagine the following scenario in Sydney this Easter: The government has blocked all entry points to Sydney's CBD and only those Catholics issued with permits to access St Mary's Cathedral are allowed through. Thousands of soldiers and police have been deployed in the area and have assaulted some of the worshipers seeking entry to the Cathedral.
Impossible to imagine? Substitute Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem for Sydney's CBD and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for St Mary's Cathedral and you've got Easter in Jerusalem this year.
Welcome to Jerusalem, the Eternal, United, Undivided Capital of Israel.
Typically, none of this was reported in the Australian corporate media.* Nor, I venture to add, in hope of contradiction, did any of our church leaders say a word about it. And our politicians? Forget it. But what of those who parade their 'Christian' credentials? Sorry, they appear to be all Christian Zionists these days.
Remember the dhimmi, beloved ideological weapon of Zionist propagandists and Islamophobes?
The dhimmi (an Arabic word meaning a free, non-Muslim subject living in a Muslim country) is the allegedly persecuted non-Muslim (Christian or Jewish) community living under the yoke of Muslim despotism. Dhimmis, so the story goes, having suffered the great misfortune to have once been conquered by Muslims, have been living ever since without any legal rights as second-class non-citizens in Muslim states.
How ironic then, in light of this construct, to hear Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem this Easter railing that "all of the people have the right to access their holy site without harassment, to practice their traditions that have been performed for hundreds of years without any obstacles. The Jerusalem Patriarchate announces its total rejection of all procedures that prevent followers and those of other denominations from reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during Good Friday and Holy Fire Saturday." (Tensions high as Christians flock to Jerusalem, Ma'an News Agency, 3/4/10)
But what would the Greek Orthodox Patriarch really know? Surely Palestinian Christians are faring better under Jerusalem's current Jewish rulers than ever they were under the grinding heel of the Muslim Arab or his successor the Muslim Turk?
But what if those days under Arab and Turkish 'tyranny' were, in hindsight, The Good Old Days?
Here's the first British Governor of Jerusalem (1918-1926), Sir Ronald Storrs, writing about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the time of its passing into British hands:
"The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was for some time guarded by British, French and Italian sentries, and was Out of Bounds to the soldiers who had fought to free it from Ottoman rule. This rule, here at least not oppressive, had been represented within by an hereditary Moslem guardian, a dignified figure in turban and quftan, whose ancestor had been appointed to the place by Omar, the conqueror of Palestine in the 7th century. Strong suggestions were made to me by undenominational Christians that this Moslem ward over the holiest place in Christendom was an outrage, which no Christian Governor should tolerate. Few of these critics had ever entered the Holy Sepulchre (or indeed any other church): none had paused to consider what manner of Christian would have proved an acceptable candidate for the post. The Orthodox community would never have tolerated a Roman Catholic; nor a Roman an Orthodox or an Anglican - even if the Anglican Church had possessed, or aspired to 'rights' in the Sepulchre. Neither could have endured a Protestant - assuming that any Protestant would have consented to act. The Shaikh did his work well, maintaining the Status Quo and public order as long as he could, and on occasion calling on the police. I will go so far as to say that he was the one functionary, military, civil or religious, from High Commissioner to municipal scavenger, against whom throughout my 9 years in Jerusalem I never heard a complaint." (Orientations, 1939, p 308)
[*As usual, far from the action, Fairfax's Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis, was busy chronicling the ravings of a Romanian tourist cavorting in the polluted waters of the Jordan River: "'This is the water that Jesus was washed in', he said. 'This water belongs to God. Why would God want to make anyone sick with this holy water?' Watching a euphoric Mr Ferraro splash around the River Jordan as if it was his bathtub, few could doubt his sincerity. But when he started gargling the muddy concoction, some might reasonably have questioned his mental health." (There's nothing like a dunking in dirty water, Sydney Morning Herald, 2-4/4/10)]
Impossible to imagine? Substitute Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem for Sydney's CBD and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for St Mary's Cathedral and you've got Easter in Jerusalem this year.
Welcome to Jerusalem, the Eternal, United, Undivided Capital of Israel.
Typically, none of this was reported in the Australian corporate media.* Nor, I venture to add, in hope of contradiction, did any of our church leaders say a word about it. And our politicians? Forget it. But what of those who parade their 'Christian' credentials? Sorry, they appear to be all Christian Zionists these days.
Remember the dhimmi, beloved ideological weapon of Zionist propagandists and Islamophobes?
The dhimmi (an Arabic word meaning a free, non-Muslim subject living in a Muslim country) is the allegedly persecuted non-Muslim (Christian or Jewish) community living under the yoke of Muslim despotism. Dhimmis, so the story goes, having suffered the great misfortune to have once been conquered by Muslims, have been living ever since without any legal rights as second-class non-citizens in Muslim states.
How ironic then, in light of this construct, to hear Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem this Easter railing that "all of the people have the right to access their holy site without harassment, to practice their traditions that have been performed for hundreds of years without any obstacles. The Jerusalem Patriarchate announces its total rejection of all procedures that prevent followers and those of other denominations from reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during Good Friday and Holy Fire Saturday." (Tensions high as Christians flock to Jerusalem, Ma'an News Agency, 3/4/10)
But what would the Greek Orthodox Patriarch really know? Surely Palestinian Christians are faring better under Jerusalem's current Jewish rulers than ever they were under the grinding heel of the Muslim Arab or his successor the Muslim Turk?
But what if those days under Arab and Turkish 'tyranny' were, in hindsight, The Good Old Days?
Here's the first British Governor of Jerusalem (1918-1926), Sir Ronald Storrs, writing about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the time of its passing into British hands:
"The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was for some time guarded by British, French and Italian sentries, and was Out of Bounds to the soldiers who had fought to free it from Ottoman rule. This rule, here at least not oppressive, had been represented within by an hereditary Moslem guardian, a dignified figure in turban and quftan, whose ancestor had been appointed to the place by Omar, the conqueror of Palestine in the 7th century. Strong suggestions were made to me by undenominational Christians that this Moslem ward over the holiest place in Christendom was an outrage, which no Christian Governor should tolerate. Few of these critics had ever entered the Holy Sepulchre (or indeed any other church): none had paused to consider what manner of Christian would have proved an acceptable candidate for the post. The Orthodox community would never have tolerated a Roman Catholic; nor a Roman an Orthodox or an Anglican - even if the Anglican Church had possessed, or aspired to 'rights' in the Sepulchre. Neither could have endured a Protestant - assuming that any Protestant would have consented to act. The Shaikh did his work well, maintaining the Status Quo and public order as long as he could, and on occasion calling on the police. I will go so far as to say that he was the one functionary, military, civil or religious, from High Commissioner to municipal scavenger, against whom throughout my 9 years in Jerusalem I never heard a complaint." (Orientations, 1939, p 308)
[*As usual, far from the action, Fairfax's Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis, was busy chronicling the ravings of a Romanian tourist cavorting in the polluted waters of the Jordan River: "'This is the water that Jesus was washed in', he said. 'This water belongs to God. Why would God want to make anyone sick with this holy water?' Watching a euphoric Mr Ferraro splash around the River Jordan as if it was his bathtub, few could doubt his sincerity. But when he started gargling the muddy concoction, some might reasonably have questioned his mental health." (There's nothing like a dunking in dirty water, Sydney Morning Herald, 2-4/4/10)]
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Jason Rocks!
Go Jason!: "In 1989, Mabhouh was part of a team of Palestinian resistance fighters who kidnapped and killed two Israeli soldiers stationed in the Gaza Strip. Israel either killed or arrested most of those believed responsible for the deaths, but Mabhouh got away." (Perfect execution points to Israel, Jason Koutsoukis, Sydney Morning Herald, 6/2/10)
My God, what mad courage possessed Fairfax's Middle East correspondent to cast off the 'militant' shackle, for so long now mandated and policed by Zionist semantic vigilantes, and fearlessly utter the proscribed 'r' word in such a context? What will our hero do next, bring back the 'o' word?
Will there even be a next time, or is Jason Koutsoukis now a marked man, forever condemned to look over his shoulder and block the door of his Jerusalem hotel room with heavy furniture? Jason, mate, whatever you do, don't open your door to a woman. Understand?
My God, what mad courage possessed Fairfax's Middle East correspondent to cast off the 'militant' shackle, for so long now mandated and policed by Zionist semantic vigilantes, and fearlessly utter the proscribed 'r' word in such a context? What will our hero do next, bring back the 'o' word?
Will there even be a next time, or is Jason Koutsoukis now a marked man, forever condemned to look over his shoulder and block the door of his Jerusalem hotel room with heavy furniture? Jason, mate, whatever you do, don't open your door to a woman. Understand?
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Fit to Print?
The heroic saga of the Viva Palestina aid convoy to Gaza has finally made it into the Australian mainstream press.
Sluggish Fairfax Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis actually bestirred himself to note, but only in the context of "clashes between Egyptian security forces and Palestinian protesters at the Rafah border crossing," that: "[A]n international aid convoy, Viva Palestina, including the British MP George Galloway and 17 [sic 1] members of the Turkish Parliament, was allowed to cross at Rafah into Gaza. Mr Galloway had spent the past month travelling from London to deliver 198 truckloads of aid and supplies, challenging Israel and Egypt's blockade of the strip... Egyptian police had earlier scuffled [sic 2] with about 500 Australian, British and American protesters [sic 3], who were travelling with Viva Palestina, as the company tried to leave El Arish, an Egyptian resort [sic 4] city 50 kilometres south of the Gazan border. A number of international protesters were injured, but eventually a compromise was reached and most of the convoy was allowed to enter Gaza. Egyptian officials had told the convoy that some of the trucks could not pass through Rafah and would have to enter Gaza by southern Israel, though there was no guarantee that Israel would allow the trucks into Gaza. 'We refused this', Mr Galloway said. 'It is completely unconscionable that 25% of our convoy should go to Israel and never arrive in Gaza. Because nothing that ever goes to Israel ever arrives in Gaza'." (Hamas confronts Egypt over blockade, Sydney Morning Herald, 8/1/10)
A woefully inadequate account indeed, made even worse by the above-noted innacuracies: 1) There were actually 5 Turkish MPs. Koutsoukis seems to have confused the number of nationalities taking part in the convoy (17) with the number of Turkish MPs; 2) Scuffled? 55 injured, some hospitalised, 7 arrested! Some scuffle! 3) As I've indicated, this was a truly international effort, with representatives from 17 different nations, only one of which, I believe, came from Australia; 4) In describing the Mediterranean port city of El Arish as a "resort city," Koutsoukis seems to be confusing it with the Red Sea resort town, Sharm El Sheikh.
But if you think Koutsoukis sleeps at the proverbial wheel, check out Murdoch's John Lyons: "A riot broke out on the Egyptian border yesterday when trucks with international aid were prevented from entering Gaza.' (Egyptian guard dies in Gaza border clash, The Australian, 8/1/10)
Now in case you were wondering what other important breaking news was preventing Lyons from covering the Viva Palestina epic, allow me to reference his same-day feature article, Roads of rage in Jerusalem. In it, John takes us on a harrowing journey through hell and back, enough to dwarf anything coming out of Gaza or its environs:
Trying to enrol his kids at Jerusalem's French School, he describes at length the unseemly bickering between French and Palestinian parents which caused him to remark to his good wife, "This meeting cannot end well." And the rest, as they say, is all down hill.
"Summer was upon us," he writes, and "while in Australia summer can mean long days, hot nights in the back yard, watching Test cricket or going to the beach, in the Middle East it's a time to be dreaded. This is already one of the most volatile places on earth; add to that searing heat, appalling traffic and people already pumped up on conflict and fear, and the combination can be lethal. Jerusalem becomes a battle zone. Conflict appears to infuse itself into almost every aspect of life here; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sets much of the tone. One hot day as we walked past the Damascus Gate of the Old City we saw a group of young Palestinians and Israelis. They pushed against each other, shouting into each other's faces. The only difference was that the Israelis had guns: they were soldiers." A trivial difference, no doubt, for one in the pay of News Limited. Hardly worth mentioning really.
Then he relates a blood-curdling case of trolley rage involving wifey in a Jerusalem supermarket. A mere bagatelle, however, because "[t]hen we tried driving." The operative word there being tried. Well, what a saga! As important as they are, however, I won't go into the gory details other than to quote the following: "A neighbour, from the European Commission, gave us some driving advice: 'In Israel never give anyone the finger when you're driving'. In Brussels, he said, he'd never hesitated to give other drivers the finger. But he'd done it once in Israel, and saw the recipient reach into her glovebox and pull out a gun. He didn't wait around to see whether she was prepared to use it." Pulling out a gun? Israel? Who would have thought?
And then, who should our terrified scribe run into at the post office but "[t]he rudest woman in the world," followed by... but you've got the picture by now, dear reader.
Viva Palestina? As you can see, The Australian's Middle East correspondent simply had too much on his plate. Perfectly understandable under the circumstances described. But hang on there, isn't it now winter in Jerusalem? Oh, dear!
Ah, Koutsoukis, Lyons, Knight, Brown - where would we be without you?
Sluggish Fairfax Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis actually bestirred himself to note, but only in the context of "clashes between Egyptian security forces and Palestinian protesters at the Rafah border crossing," that: "[A]n international aid convoy, Viva Palestina, including the British MP George Galloway and 17 [sic 1] members of the Turkish Parliament, was allowed to cross at Rafah into Gaza. Mr Galloway had spent the past month travelling from London to deliver 198 truckloads of aid and supplies, challenging Israel and Egypt's blockade of the strip... Egyptian police had earlier scuffled [sic 2] with about 500 Australian, British and American protesters [sic 3], who were travelling with Viva Palestina, as the company tried to leave El Arish, an Egyptian resort [sic 4] city 50 kilometres south of the Gazan border. A number of international protesters were injured, but eventually a compromise was reached and most of the convoy was allowed to enter Gaza. Egyptian officials had told the convoy that some of the trucks could not pass through Rafah and would have to enter Gaza by southern Israel, though there was no guarantee that Israel would allow the trucks into Gaza. 'We refused this', Mr Galloway said. 'It is completely unconscionable that 25% of our convoy should go to Israel and never arrive in Gaza. Because nothing that ever goes to Israel ever arrives in Gaza'." (Hamas confronts Egypt over blockade, Sydney Morning Herald, 8/1/10)
A woefully inadequate account indeed, made even worse by the above-noted innacuracies: 1) There were actually 5 Turkish MPs. Koutsoukis seems to have confused the number of nationalities taking part in the convoy (17) with the number of Turkish MPs; 2) Scuffled? 55 injured, some hospitalised, 7 arrested! Some scuffle! 3) As I've indicated, this was a truly international effort, with representatives from 17 different nations, only one of which, I believe, came from Australia; 4) In describing the Mediterranean port city of El Arish as a "resort city," Koutsoukis seems to be confusing it with the Red Sea resort town, Sharm El Sheikh.
But if you think Koutsoukis sleeps at the proverbial wheel, check out Murdoch's John Lyons: "A riot broke out on the Egyptian border yesterday when trucks with international aid were prevented from entering Gaza.' (Egyptian guard dies in Gaza border clash, The Australian, 8/1/10)
Now in case you were wondering what other important breaking news was preventing Lyons from covering the Viva Palestina epic, allow me to reference his same-day feature article, Roads of rage in Jerusalem. In it, John takes us on a harrowing journey through hell and back, enough to dwarf anything coming out of Gaza or its environs:
Trying to enrol his kids at Jerusalem's French School, he describes at length the unseemly bickering between French and Palestinian parents which caused him to remark to his good wife, "This meeting cannot end well." And the rest, as they say, is all down hill.
"Summer was upon us," he writes, and "while in Australia summer can mean long days, hot nights in the back yard, watching Test cricket or going to the beach, in the Middle East it's a time to be dreaded. This is already one of the most volatile places on earth; add to that searing heat, appalling traffic and people already pumped up on conflict and fear, and the combination can be lethal. Jerusalem becomes a battle zone. Conflict appears to infuse itself into almost every aspect of life here; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sets much of the tone. One hot day as we walked past the Damascus Gate of the Old City we saw a group of young Palestinians and Israelis. They pushed against each other, shouting into each other's faces. The only difference was that the Israelis had guns: they were soldiers." A trivial difference, no doubt, for one in the pay of News Limited. Hardly worth mentioning really.
Then he relates a blood-curdling case of trolley rage involving wifey in a Jerusalem supermarket. A mere bagatelle, however, because "[t]hen we tried driving." The operative word there being tried. Well, what a saga! As important as they are, however, I won't go into the gory details other than to quote the following: "A neighbour, from the European Commission, gave us some driving advice: 'In Israel never give anyone the finger when you're driving'. In Brussels, he said, he'd never hesitated to give other drivers the finger. But he'd done it once in Israel, and saw the recipient reach into her glovebox and pull out a gun. He didn't wait around to see whether she was prepared to use it." Pulling out a gun? Israel? Who would have thought?
And then, who should our terrified scribe run into at the post office but "[t]he rudest woman in the world," followed by... but you've got the picture by now, dear reader.
Viva Palestina? As you can see, The Australian's Middle East correspondent simply had too much on his plate. Perfectly understandable under the circumstances described. But hang on there, isn't it now winter in Jerusalem? Oh, dear!
Ah, Koutsoukis, Lyons, Knight, Brown - where would we be without you?
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Blink & You'd Have Missed It
You've heard of the Great Firewall of China, erected so that the Chinese can't access information relating to certain taboo subjects such as China's occupation and colonization of Tibet and East Turkistan? Well the latest brick in the wall has just been laid by Apple: "Chinese users of the iPhone are unable to download applications related to the Dalai Lama or to Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Uighur leader, after Apple apparently blocked them from its iPhone app store in the country. The move suggests that Apple has followed Google in self-censoring content available in China, under pressure from the Government." (Dalai Lama blocked from download to iPhones in China, Guardian/SMH, 2/1/10)
The operative concept here is self-censorship, which the Western corporate media, in response to decades of sustained bullying by pro-Israel lobby groups, has been practising for yonks. An egregious case in point is the relative lack of media coverage of the Gaza Freedom March and the Gaza Viva Palestina aid convoy to Gaza.
One's astonishment at this was given eloquent voice by Ibrahim Hewitt of the UK charity Interpal: "At a time of year when editors are looking for news items to fill their pages and programmes, one story sticks out: an international aid convoy with 400 participants from Britain alone; 1.5 million people awaiting eagerly its arrival and the relief it will bring; a rogue foreign government hindering the relief effort; and friendly governments and their citizens who have given the convoy a heroic welcome as it passed through their countries, across Europe and what used to be called Asia Minor. Take some Brit heroes - men and women of all faiths and none - sacrificing their time over Christmas and probably the New Year to help people under siege in the land of Christ's birth, and throw in the anniversary of the war that compounded the hardship for good measure. All the ingredients of a major story, you may think, but that's where you'd be wrong. This is one story that the major newspapers and television news programmes in Britain and the USA are avoiding. Apart from two brief paragraphs on the BBC news website, you will be hard pushed to find anything. The Viva Palestina convoy to Gaza is a non-event as far as most of the media are concerned, which begs the obvious question; why? Is it less important than Britain's weather? Or the Queen's speech? Or Victoria Wood's midlife crisis? Or Manchester City's human resources skills? What is it about hundreds of people trying to take desperately-needed relief to millions of their fellow human beings at Christmas - a time of peace and goodwill to all, in case that's passed you by - that editors think is not newsworthy? Could it be because the man behind it is British MP George Galloway? Could it be because the rogue state is Egypt and we are trying to ingratiate ourselves with Hosni Mubarak (God forbid!)? Or could it be that too much coverage might upset the Israeli government whose blockade, imposed with the attendant threat of massive military force, has created the 'shattered society' (see Amnesty's latest report) that awaits the convoy's assistance? Any one of these would be shameful if it were true." (The missing story, middleeastmonitor.org.uk, 28/12/09)
But what about the Australian media? Here's the scorecard:
News Limited: Not a whisper. No surprises there.
Fairfax: A short piece (Hunger strikers press Egypt on Gaza march) in the Sydney Morning Herald, courtesy of Agence France-Presse on 30/12/09. Another shortie (Jews, Arabs call to end blockade) on 2/1/10, courtesy of The New York Times' Ethan Bronner (say no more), which featured a photo of Israelis - Israelis!!! - daubed with Stars of David and holding Israeli flags. The caption: "Peace plea... Israelis rally a year after the war." The only decent Fairfax press coverage that I'm aware of was Andra Jackson's report (Australians' Gaza protest) in The Age of 1/1/10. And where was Fairfax Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis?
SBS Television: One brief, derogatory snippet on the 6.30 pm News, 31/12/09. (See my 1/1/10 post So-called SBS/ABC News) Blink, and you'd have missed it.
ABC: Despite the derogatory introduction by presenter Tony Eastley (see So-called SBS/ABC News), Anne Barker's story on the Gaza Freedom March on Radio National's AM program (International protest over Gaza blockade, 31/12/09) was commendable. But where were ABC Television's Middle East correspondents, Matt Brown and Ben Knight?
Well we know where the latter was, don't we? Knight was in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon, about as far as you could get from Gaza (in Israel), reporting on the woes of Israeli fish farmer Yigal Ben Tzvi. Alas, it seems the bottom has fallen out of Europe's caviar market (Middle East caviar producers hit hard times, 7 pm News, 2/1/10). All the piece wanted was the following surreal exchange:
Ben Knight (scratching head): I seem to recall hearing they haven't got enough to eat down in Gaza.
Ben Tzvi: Let them eat caviar!
The operative concept here is self-censorship, which the Western corporate media, in response to decades of sustained bullying by pro-Israel lobby groups, has been practising for yonks. An egregious case in point is the relative lack of media coverage of the Gaza Freedom March and the Gaza Viva Palestina aid convoy to Gaza.
One's astonishment at this was given eloquent voice by Ibrahim Hewitt of the UK charity Interpal: "At a time of year when editors are looking for news items to fill their pages and programmes, one story sticks out: an international aid convoy with 400 participants from Britain alone; 1.5 million people awaiting eagerly its arrival and the relief it will bring; a rogue foreign government hindering the relief effort; and friendly governments and their citizens who have given the convoy a heroic welcome as it passed through their countries, across Europe and what used to be called Asia Minor. Take some Brit heroes - men and women of all faiths and none - sacrificing their time over Christmas and probably the New Year to help people under siege in the land of Christ's birth, and throw in the anniversary of the war that compounded the hardship for good measure. All the ingredients of a major story, you may think, but that's where you'd be wrong. This is one story that the major newspapers and television news programmes in Britain and the USA are avoiding. Apart from two brief paragraphs on the BBC news website, you will be hard pushed to find anything. The Viva Palestina convoy to Gaza is a non-event as far as most of the media are concerned, which begs the obvious question; why? Is it less important than Britain's weather? Or the Queen's speech? Or Victoria Wood's midlife crisis? Or Manchester City's human resources skills? What is it about hundreds of people trying to take desperately-needed relief to millions of their fellow human beings at Christmas - a time of peace and goodwill to all, in case that's passed you by - that editors think is not newsworthy? Could it be because the man behind it is British MP George Galloway? Could it be because the rogue state is Egypt and we are trying to ingratiate ourselves with Hosni Mubarak (God forbid!)? Or could it be that too much coverage might upset the Israeli government whose blockade, imposed with the attendant threat of massive military force, has created the 'shattered society' (see Amnesty's latest report) that awaits the convoy's assistance? Any one of these would be shameful if it were true." (The missing story, middleeastmonitor.org.uk, 28/12/09)
But what about the Australian media? Here's the scorecard:
News Limited: Not a whisper. No surprises there.
Fairfax: A short piece (Hunger strikers press Egypt on Gaza march) in the Sydney Morning Herald, courtesy of Agence France-Presse on 30/12/09. Another shortie (Jews, Arabs call to end blockade) on 2/1/10, courtesy of The New York Times' Ethan Bronner (say no more), which featured a photo of Israelis - Israelis!!! - daubed with Stars of David and holding Israeli flags. The caption: "Peace plea... Israelis rally a year after the war." The only decent Fairfax press coverage that I'm aware of was Andra Jackson's report (Australians' Gaza protest) in The Age of 1/1/10. And where was Fairfax Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis?
SBS Television: One brief, derogatory snippet on the 6.30 pm News, 31/12/09. (See my 1/1/10 post So-called SBS/ABC News) Blink, and you'd have missed it.
ABC: Despite the derogatory introduction by presenter Tony Eastley (see So-called SBS/ABC News), Anne Barker's story on the Gaza Freedom March on Radio National's AM program (International protest over Gaza blockade, 31/12/09) was commendable. But where were ABC Television's Middle East correspondents, Matt Brown and Ben Knight?
Well we know where the latter was, don't we? Knight was in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon, about as far as you could get from Gaza (in Israel), reporting on the woes of Israeli fish farmer Yigal Ben Tzvi. Alas, it seems the bottom has fallen out of Europe's caviar market (Middle East caviar producers hit hard times, 7 pm News, 2/1/10). All the piece wanted was the following surreal exchange:
Ben Knight (scratching head): I seem to recall hearing they haven't got enough to eat down in Gaza.
Ben Tzvi: Let them eat caviar!
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Norm & Jason
Just look at the kind of Israel-friendly language used by Sydney Morning Herald Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis in his 19/11/09 report Netanyahu shrugs off world criticism:
"Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem"/"built on land [which] is regarded as an illegal settlement by the United Nations"/"Gilo is home to 40,000 Jewish residents and completes a ring of Jewish neighbourhoods."
Jewish neighbourhoods, not Israeli colonies. Jewish residents, not Israeli colonists. Is regarded as illegal by the UN [presumably just another source of subjective opinion], not 'is illegal under international law'. And the 'o' word, occupied - banished entirely!
Contrast this with the no-nonsense language of another news report in the same issue on Sahrawi activist Aminatou Haidar ('African Gandhi' risks life, Xan Rice): "The Moroccan Government, which considers Western Sahara to be its southern provinces, even though this has no foundation in international law..." Render this into Morocco-friendly language and "no foundation in international law" becomes 'regarded as illegal by the UN'...
Israeli propaganda, peddled in the mainstream media by the likes of Koutsoukis, wreaks havoc on the public's understanding of the criminal Israeli colonization underway in occupied Palestine. Look what happened when one of these know-nothing peddler hacks bumped into the formidable Norman Finkelstein on Danish TV (You can enjoy the video on Finkelstein's website):
Norman Finkelstein: Any talks or resolution of the [Israel/Arab] conflict has to be based on international law, and the law is clear: the basic priciple of international law is that it's inadmissable to acquire territory by war. Israel acquired the Golan Heights in the June 1967 war, and therefore, in international law, it has no title to any of the Golan Heights. There has to be a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-June 4 border. That's a precondition. You can't resolve any conflict unless there are basic principles - and the principles for resolving the Israel/Palestine or Israel/Syrian conflict has to be international law.
Adam Holms: Just a couple of days ago Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon paid a visit to our studios. Just listen to what he says: 'Hamas is the real enemy of peace. Hamas is the enemy of Palestinian interests. By the way, Hamas does not represent Palestinian interests but Iranian interests. They're being helped and supplied and financed and equipped by Iran with the same ideology of sharia - a very radical Islamist entity...' It's pretty clear what he's saying: the onus rests with Hamas. What's your take on this?
Norman Finkelstein: Well it's not as if Hamas has been around since eternity. The Israelis had the option of settling the conflict with the Palestinians before January 2006 when Hamas was elected to office. If Hamas is the obstacle, then why weren't they able to settle the conflict before Hamas was elected into office? Because they refused the terms of the international community. Every year, as it happens, in November, the international community votes on a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly to settle the conflict and every year the vote is the same. The whole world on one side, 161 nations last year, and then there are the US, Israel, Naurau, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and sometimes Australia on the other side. The problem is not Hamas. Hamas has repeatedly said it's willing to settle the conflict in the June 67 border.
Adam Holms: But still they refuse to recognise the state of Israel.
Norman Finkelstein: Well they refuse to recognise what they call the legitimacy of the state of Israel, but under international law they're not obliged to recognise the legitimacy of the state of Israel. If you go back to 1947, Gandhi said he'd accept the reality of Pakistan but he would never accept the legitimacy of the state of Pakistan. And Hamas is not expected to be held to a higher level of diplomacy than Gandhi. Gandhi said Pakistan is a reality which I'm forced to accept but I don't accept it as legitimate and that's the same as the position of Hamas.
Adam Holms: But this is what makes Jerusalem wary of Hamas because they keep saying how can you have a neighbour that doesn't recognise our legitimacy?
Norman Finkelstein: You see the problem is... listen to your own language. You're just spouting Israeli propaganda. Why are you saying Jerusalem? East Jerusalem is occupied territory under international law. That was the ruling of the International Criminal Court in 2004, and if you look at the Goldstone Report that just came out... they refer to East Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory. But now you've given over Jerusalem to the Israelis. You're just repeating Israeli propaganda. They have no title under international law to East Jerusalem.
Adam Holms (sheepish & defensive): Speaking of what you call my Israeli propaganda, which I refute, but anyway you're on record for saying that Israel is a terrorist state, a lunatic state... Why do you use such stark language about a state which is essentially just defending its own right to exist?
Norman Finkelstein: OK, you accuse me of using stark and provocative language, so let's take the renowned international jurist Richard Goldstone, who was the chief prosecutor for the war crimes in Rwanda and Yugoslavia - he came out a few weeks ago with a report on what Israel did in Gaza approximately a year ago and he said... Israel's purpose was to 'punish, humiliate and terrorise' a civilian population - terrorise a civilian population. So is Mr Goldstone guilty of incendiary language or is he simply accurately reporting on what happened? Terrorism is a fact and refers to the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure to achieve a political end, and Israel routinely targets civilians and civilian infrastructure to achieve political goals, so it's terrorism. I can't help it if that's what Israel chooses as its targets...
Adam Holms: Terrorist state or self-defence? It depends on the eye that looks at it.
Norman Finkelstein: No. Let's say for argument's sake that Israel were engaged in a war of self-defence in Gaza - that still means you can engage in terrorism. You can be engaged in a war of self-defence, but if, in the course of the war, you're targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure then you're engaged in terrorism. That's the basic distinction in international law between the reason why you went to war and how you're conducting the war.
Adam Holms: What do you think the international community should do about Israel? How should the case of Israel be handled?
Norman Finkelstein: There's a very simple way to handle it. They should enforce the law. That is the easiest and most efficacious way to resolve the conflict.
Adam Holms: So Israel's been granted special treatment you say.
Norman Finkelstein: The law is not being enforced against it. Richard Goldstone is saying Israel is committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, and Israel should be brought before the International Criminal Court if those who are guilty of these crimes are not prosecuted. Just enforce the law. These are not radical ideas...
Koutsoukis and his kind need a similar whipping.
"Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem"/"built on land [which] is regarded as an illegal settlement by the United Nations"/"Gilo is home to 40,000 Jewish residents and completes a ring of Jewish neighbourhoods."
Jewish neighbourhoods, not Israeli colonies. Jewish residents, not Israeli colonists. Is regarded as illegal by the UN [presumably just another source of subjective opinion], not 'is illegal under international law'. And the 'o' word, occupied - banished entirely!
Contrast this with the no-nonsense language of another news report in the same issue on Sahrawi activist Aminatou Haidar ('African Gandhi' risks life, Xan Rice): "The Moroccan Government, which considers Western Sahara to be its southern provinces, even though this has no foundation in international law..." Render this into Morocco-friendly language and "no foundation in international law" becomes 'regarded as illegal by the UN'...
Israeli propaganda, peddled in the mainstream media by the likes of Koutsoukis, wreaks havoc on the public's understanding of the criminal Israeli colonization underway in occupied Palestine. Look what happened when one of these know-nothing peddler hacks bumped into the formidable Norman Finkelstein on Danish TV (You can enjoy the video on Finkelstein's website):
Norman Finkelstein: Any talks or resolution of the [Israel/Arab] conflict has to be based on international law, and the law is clear: the basic priciple of international law is that it's inadmissable to acquire territory by war. Israel acquired the Golan Heights in the June 1967 war, and therefore, in international law, it has no title to any of the Golan Heights. There has to be a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-June 4 border. That's a precondition. You can't resolve any conflict unless there are basic principles - and the principles for resolving the Israel/Palestine or Israel/Syrian conflict has to be international law.
Adam Holms: Just a couple of days ago Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon paid a visit to our studios. Just listen to what he says: 'Hamas is the real enemy of peace. Hamas is the enemy of Palestinian interests. By the way, Hamas does not represent Palestinian interests but Iranian interests. They're being helped and supplied and financed and equipped by Iran with the same ideology of sharia - a very radical Islamist entity...' It's pretty clear what he's saying: the onus rests with Hamas. What's your take on this?
Norman Finkelstein: Well it's not as if Hamas has been around since eternity. The Israelis had the option of settling the conflict with the Palestinians before January 2006 when Hamas was elected to office. If Hamas is the obstacle, then why weren't they able to settle the conflict before Hamas was elected into office? Because they refused the terms of the international community. Every year, as it happens, in November, the international community votes on a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly to settle the conflict and every year the vote is the same. The whole world on one side, 161 nations last year, and then there are the US, Israel, Naurau, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and sometimes Australia on the other side. The problem is not Hamas. Hamas has repeatedly said it's willing to settle the conflict in the June 67 border.
Adam Holms: But still they refuse to recognise the state of Israel.
Norman Finkelstein: Well they refuse to recognise what they call the legitimacy of the state of Israel, but under international law they're not obliged to recognise the legitimacy of the state of Israel. If you go back to 1947, Gandhi said he'd accept the reality of Pakistan but he would never accept the legitimacy of the state of Pakistan. And Hamas is not expected to be held to a higher level of diplomacy than Gandhi. Gandhi said Pakistan is a reality which I'm forced to accept but I don't accept it as legitimate and that's the same as the position of Hamas.
Adam Holms: But this is what makes Jerusalem wary of Hamas because they keep saying how can you have a neighbour that doesn't recognise our legitimacy?
Norman Finkelstein: You see the problem is... listen to your own language. You're just spouting Israeli propaganda. Why are you saying Jerusalem? East Jerusalem is occupied territory under international law. That was the ruling of the International Criminal Court in 2004, and if you look at the Goldstone Report that just came out... they refer to East Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory. But now you've given over Jerusalem to the Israelis. You're just repeating Israeli propaganda. They have no title under international law to East Jerusalem.
Adam Holms (sheepish & defensive): Speaking of what you call my Israeli propaganda, which I refute, but anyway you're on record for saying that Israel is a terrorist state, a lunatic state... Why do you use such stark language about a state which is essentially just defending its own right to exist?
Norman Finkelstein: OK, you accuse me of using stark and provocative language, so let's take the renowned international jurist Richard Goldstone, who was the chief prosecutor for the war crimes in Rwanda and Yugoslavia - he came out a few weeks ago with a report on what Israel did in Gaza approximately a year ago and he said... Israel's purpose was to 'punish, humiliate and terrorise' a civilian population - terrorise a civilian population. So is Mr Goldstone guilty of incendiary language or is he simply accurately reporting on what happened? Terrorism is a fact and refers to the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure to achieve a political end, and Israel routinely targets civilians and civilian infrastructure to achieve political goals, so it's terrorism. I can't help it if that's what Israel chooses as its targets...
Adam Holms: Terrorist state or self-defence? It depends on the eye that looks at it.
Norman Finkelstein: No. Let's say for argument's sake that Israel were engaged in a war of self-defence in Gaza - that still means you can engage in terrorism. You can be engaged in a war of self-defence, but if, in the course of the war, you're targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure then you're engaged in terrorism. That's the basic distinction in international law between the reason why you went to war and how you're conducting the war.
Adam Holms: What do you think the international community should do about Israel? How should the case of Israel be handled?
Norman Finkelstein: There's a very simple way to handle it. They should enforce the law. That is the easiest and most efficacious way to resolve the conflict.
Adam Holms: So Israel's been granted special treatment you say.
Norman Finkelstein: The law is not being enforced against it. Richard Goldstone is saying Israel is committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, and Israel should be brought before the International Criminal Court if those who are guilty of these crimes are not prosecuted. Just enforce the law. These are not radical ideas...
Koutsoukis and his kind need a similar whipping.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Koutsoukis Gets Real
Much of Fairfax Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis' reporting has been problematic and gaffe-prone. (Simply click on his tag at the end of this post and judge for yourself.) In his recent "analysis" of the Goldstone report (Israel & Hamas must heed UN report, SMH, 17/9/09), he arrogantly lectured the (war) criminal and his victim: "If Israel and the Palestinians are ever to escape this conflict, they should follow Justice Goldstone's advice. The self-examination may prove enlightening." The wisdom of Uri Davis' 2003 dictum - "The primary 'terrorist' in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the Government of the State of Israel - not the Palestinian suicide bomber" - eludes him.
Most recently, however, in an online opinion piece in The Age, Koutsoukis revealed an uncharacteristic irritation with Israel's latest round of crying wolf: "Forgive me for being confused, but exactly what are the clear and present dangers facing the State of Israel? According to Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations Gabriella Shalev, her government's main goal at this week's UN General Assembly meeting is to show the world how dangerous Iran is. With Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu said to give what his aides say will be a 'dramatic' speech to the UN on Thursday, Shalev said the Iranian threat would be the main focus. 'We know Iran is a dangerous country', Shalev said on Monday. 'We stress and we emphasize that Iran is not only a threat to Israel, it's a global threat'. Israeli diplomats, Shalev added, would meet with their Australian counterparts and officials from other countries, to make them understand 'the challenges Israel is facing at a very crucial time'. Perhaps Shalev should leave time in her schedule to make sure Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak also understands exactly what those challenges are. Last Friday... Barak gave an interview to Israel's biggest selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Instead of the usual palaver about the threats facing Israel, Barak surprised his questioners with this frank admission: 'Iran does not pose an existential threat to Israel'*, said Barak." (West Bank occupation poses the real threat to Israel, 23/9/09) [*See my 20/9/09 post From the Horse's Mouth]
Koutsoukis concluded as follows: "Next time we hear that denying Palestinian sovereignty is all about security and keeping Israel safe, remember that security has little to do with it. In the words of Ehud Barak, Israel is strong and there is no one who poses an existential threat."
That Barak's admission seems to have come as something of a revelation to Koutsoukis indicates the latter's ignorance of the historical record, which belies the myth of Israel as some sort of naked, trembling virgin continuously circled by packs of leering bikies (to steal Les Visible's memorable simile). As I've already posted on this subject in relation to the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 (See my 29/5/08 post Benny Revisited), I'll leave you with what Israeli historian Tom Segev has to say about the virgin's knocking knees in the lead-up to the second such stoush in 1967:
"US analysts gave Israel complete military superiority over every combination of Arab forces... A year earlier, the Americans had predicted that Palestinian terror attacks might lead to war. In that event, they believed, Israel would destroy the Egyptian air force and 'within days or weeks' would occupy areas of the Sinai, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights - all, evidently, taken as bargaining chips." (1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, 2007, p 253)
"As soon as the crisis of war began, the press began comparing Nasser to Hitler. In the past, other Arab leaders had been compared to Hitler, but this had been done to insult them, not as part of the situational assessment and a reason to attack. 'Nasser speaks clearly, as Hitler did on the eve of the Second World War', wrote Ze'ev Schiff. Nasser's speeches, Radio Cairo broadcasts, and the anti-Semitic cartoons of in the Egyptian press prompted this assertion... This was... Israel's official propaganda line. The Foreign Minister instructed the Israeli embassy in Washington to ask for an urgent meeting with James Reston, associate editor of The New York Times, to persuade him that the only difference between Nasser and Hitler was that Hitler had always claimed he wanted peace, while Nasser was explicit about his aim of destroying Israel." (ibid, p 284)
"The [Israeli] generals were in their forties, family men, but they clung to the Israeli culture of youth; they were like adolescent boys or bulls in rut. They believed in force and they wanted war. War was their destiny. Almost 20 years had passed since the army had won glory in the War of Independence, and 10 years since the victory in the Sinai. They had a limited range of vision and they believed that war was what Israel needed at that moment, not necessarily because they felt the country's existence was in danger, as they wailed in an almost 'Diaspora' tone, but because they believed it was an opportunity to break the Egyptian army." (ibid, p 296)
Most recently, however, in an online opinion piece in The Age, Koutsoukis revealed an uncharacteristic irritation with Israel's latest round of crying wolf: "Forgive me for being confused, but exactly what are the clear and present dangers facing the State of Israel? According to Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations Gabriella Shalev, her government's main goal at this week's UN General Assembly meeting is to show the world how dangerous Iran is. With Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu said to give what his aides say will be a 'dramatic' speech to the UN on Thursday, Shalev said the Iranian threat would be the main focus. 'We know Iran is a dangerous country', Shalev said on Monday. 'We stress and we emphasize that Iran is not only a threat to Israel, it's a global threat'. Israeli diplomats, Shalev added, would meet with their Australian counterparts and officials from other countries, to make them understand 'the challenges Israel is facing at a very crucial time'. Perhaps Shalev should leave time in her schedule to make sure Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak also understands exactly what those challenges are. Last Friday... Barak gave an interview to Israel's biggest selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Instead of the usual palaver about the threats facing Israel, Barak surprised his questioners with this frank admission: 'Iran does not pose an existential threat to Israel'*, said Barak." (West Bank occupation poses the real threat to Israel, 23/9/09) [*See my 20/9/09 post From the Horse's Mouth]
Koutsoukis concluded as follows: "Next time we hear that denying Palestinian sovereignty is all about security and keeping Israel safe, remember that security has little to do with it. In the words of Ehud Barak, Israel is strong and there is no one who poses an existential threat."
That Barak's admission seems to have come as something of a revelation to Koutsoukis indicates the latter's ignorance of the historical record, which belies the myth of Israel as some sort of naked, trembling virgin continuously circled by packs of leering bikies (to steal Les Visible's memorable simile). As I've already posted on this subject in relation to the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 (See my 29/5/08 post Benny Revisited), I'll leave you with what Israeli historian Tom Segev has to say about the virgin's knocking knees in the lead-up to the second such stoush in 1967:
"US analysts gave Israel complete military superiority over every combination of Arab forces... A year earlier, the Americans had predicted that Palestinian terror attacks might lead to war. In that event, they believed, Israel would destroy the Egyptian air force and 'within days or weeks' would occupy areas of the Sinai, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights - all, evidently, taken as bargaining chips." (1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, 2007, p 253)
"As soon as the crisis of war began, the press began comparing Nasser to Hitler. In the past, other Arab leaders had been compared to Hitler, but this had been done to insult them, not as part of the situational assessment and a reason to attack. 'Nasser speaks clearly, as Hitler did on the eve of the Second World War', wrote Ze'ev Schiff. Nasser's speeches, Radio Cairo broadcasts, and the anti-Semitic cartoons of in the Egyptian press prompted this assertion... This was... Israel's official propaganda line. The Foreign Minister instructed the Israeli embassy in Washington to ask for an urgent meeting with James Reston, associate editor of The New York Times, to persuade him that the only difference between Nasser and Hitler was that Hitler had always claimed he wanted peace, while Nasser was explicit about his aim of destroying Israel." (ibid, p 284)
"The [Israeli] generals were in their forties, family men, but they clung to the Israeli culture of youth; they were like adolescent boys or bulls in rut. They believed in force and they wanted war. War was their destiny. Almost 20 years had passed since the army had won glory in the War of Independence, and 10 years since the victory in the Sinai. They had a limited range of vision and they believed that war was what Israel needed at that moment, not necessarily because they felt the country's existence was in danger, as they wailed in an almost 'Diaspora' tone, but because they believed it was an opportunity to break the Egyptian army." (ibid, p 296)
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Groundbreaking Stuff (& Nonsense) at the SMH
Groundbreaking stuff! The Sydney Morning Herald's Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis reveals a hitherto unknown era in Palestinian politics - the Palestinian occupation - yes, occupation - of the West Bank (1948-1967):-
"When Netanyahu's immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, went to Annapolis in 2007 and promised the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have included nearly 100% of the land occupied by Palestinians between 1948 and 1967, even more was on offer than at Camp David. And still Abbas was unable to accept such a deal." (Big step for PM means no turning back now, 16/6/09)
More groundbreaking stuff!! The SMH editorialist reveals for the very first time that Israelis in 1948 were, even then, not only making generous offers (a la Ehud Barak), but that hordes of Palestinians had actually accepted them! If only Arafat had known back at Camp David that his own people had set such a precedent in 1948, the entire course of the Middle East conflict would surely have been different:-
"Palestinians are asked to renounce the right of return to homes from which they were forced or induced to flee in 1948 and 1967..." (16/6/09)
Even more groundbreaking stuff!!! The SMH editorialist discovers that Israel isn't yet a Jewish state. Currently, it's apparently just a "homeland for Jews, mostly" meaning Balfour was right and Herzl was wrong:-
"As part of this [Netanyahu's generous offer], the Palestinians are asked to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, though what this means is unclear. Is Israeli [sic] going to be Jewish, in the sense that Iran is Islamic, or a homeland for Jews, mostly?" (16/6/09)
Yet more groundbreaking stuff!!!! The SMH editorialist has discovered that, contrary to long established historical and political fact, Israel has actually had a constitution now for around 6 decades (but hasn't yet got around to road-testing it):-
"For a country still working on its constitution, 60 [sic] years after its foundation..." (16/6/09)
It's cutting edge, investigative journalism and informed opinion such as this that make the SMH the quality broadsheet we all know and love.
"When Netanyahu's immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, went to Annapolis in 2007 and promised the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have included nearly 100% of the land occupied by Palestinians between 1948 and 1967, even more was on offer than at Camp David. And still Abbas was unable to accept such a deal." (Big step for PM means no turning back now, 16/6/09)
More groundbreaking stuff!! The SMH editorialist reveals for the very first time that Israelis in 1948 were, even then, not only making generous offers (a la Ehud Barak), but that hordes of Palestinians had actually accepted them! If only Arafat had known back at Camp David that his own people had set such a precedent in 1948, the entire course of the Middle East conflict would surely have been different:-
"Palestinians are asked to renounce the right of return to homes from which they were forced or induced to flee in 1948 and 1967..." (16/6/09)
Even more groundbreaking stuff!!! The SMH editorialist discovers that Israel isn't yet a Jewish state. Currently, it's apparently just a "homeland for Jews, mostly" meaning Balfour was right and Herzl was wrong:-
"As part of this [Netanyahu's generous offer], the Palestinians are asked to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, though what this means is unclear. Is Israeli [sic] going to be Jewish, in the sense that Iran is Islamic, or a homeland for Jews, mostly?" (16/6/09)
Yet more groundbreaking stuff!!!! The SMH editorialist has discovered that, contrary to long established historical and political fact, Israel has actually had a constitution now for around 6 decades (but hasn't yet got around to road-testing it):-
"For a country still working on its constitution, 60 [sic] years after its foundation..." (16/6/09)
It's cutting edge, investigative journalism and informed opinion such as this that make the SMH the quality broadsheet we all know and love.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Bloodless Journalism
Remember Gaza?
Fairfax's Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis, reports from the killing fields, but it's a compromised and anodyne effort. (Gaza shifts from a state of war to a state of despair, Sydney Morning Herald, 27/4/09) There's virtually no sense of agency in his report: Israel is shielded by the passive voice, and its monstrous brutality toned down: "The borders between [sic: with] Israel and Egypt remain closed to everything but food and medical supplies [more on that in a minute!] and humanitarian aid. And with things like concrete, steel or any other materials needed to rebuild Gaza prohibited from entering, the thousands of homes, offices and public buildings destroyed in Israel's intense bombing campaign remain just piles of rubble."
And of course there's the obligatory 'balancing' act: "A report released last week by the Israel Defence Forces high command said that 1,166 Palestinians were killed during the 3-week campaign. Of those killed, the report said, 709 were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, and 295 were confirmed as innocent civilians. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, however, said the 22-day offensive resulted in the deaths of 1,417 Palestinians of whom 236 were members of Hamas or other militias, and a further 255 were police officers. Thirteen Israelis were killed."
But there's worse: "An obvious question that springs to mind about Gaza is, 3 months after the end of the Israeli offensive, is life measurably worse for Gaza's 1.5 million citizens? 'A little bit, but not by much', said Hamdan Nimat, a 38-year old father of 4 who was born in the Jabaliya refugee camp, but whose parents were born in Ashkelon, a coastal centre several kilometres north of Gaza now a part of Israel. 'The real truth about life in Gaza is that no one is dying because there is no food', Mr Nimat said. 'Nor is anyone dying because of lack of medicine'." Is this Nimat character for real? I mean really for real? Mr Koutsoukis?
Compare that cosy little assessment to this from Inter Press Service's Mohammed Omer: "Mohammed al-Sheikh Yousef could save his eyesight if only he could cross the border out of Gaza. He was denied a permit by Israel; he got one from Egypt, but not for someone to accompany him. And he can't go on his own, because he cannot see very well. 'If Mohammed does not get out of Gaza for medical treatment within the next 14 days, he may totally lose his eyesight and be blind for life', Dr Mawia Hasaneen, head of the ambulance and emergency service for Gaza hospitals, told IPS in a telephone interview. 'In the past few weeks we have received 150 appeals from people in Gaza who are in need of urgent medical care', says Ron Yaron from Physicians for Human Rights, a human rights group in Israel that campaigns on behalf of Palestinian patients to obtain exit permits for healthcare. 'We submitted 99 applications to the Israeli army on behalf of the patients, but only 15 were approved', Yaron told IPS. 'Israel as the occupying power has primary responsibility for the health of the civilians of Gaza, because it controls the crossings. It should not use the patients as a political tool'. The emergency staff often stand by, helpless spectators to suffering. 'I just received a call from the mother of a 4-year-old child from Jabaliya refugee camp in the north; her son has congestive heart failure and respiratory distress', said Dr Hasaneen. 'As an official I can't stand to watch her child dying simply because medical treatment is not available in Gaza and the borders are closed'. But he has no option but to do just that. The al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, based in Gaza, says that at least 41 Gazans died last year of causes that can be attributed to the collapse of the medical referral process. Currently, it says the condition of hundreds of Gazans is deteriorating rapidly. For Gazans, what happens at the border crossings can make the difference between life and death. Medicines for many easily treated diseases sit across the Rafah crossing with Egypt or the Erez crossing into Israel. Patients cannot get across, and most medicines are not allowed in." (Gazans desperate for medical care denied, 28/4/09)
Compare it too with Israeli journalist Gideon Levy's empathy, passion, plain-speaking and eye for detail: "Alyan Abu-Aun is lying in his tent, his crutches beside him. He smokes cigarettes and stares into the tiny tent's empty space. His young son sits on his lap. Ten people are crammed into the tent, about the size of a small room. It has been their home for 3 months. Nothing remains of their previous home, which the Israel Defense forces shelled during Operation Cast Lead. They are refugees for a second time; Abu-Aun's mother still remembers her home in Sumsum, a town that once stood near Ashkelon. Abu-Aun, 53, was wounded while trying to flee when his home in the Gaza town of Beit Lahia was bombed. He has been on crutches ever since. His wife gave birth during the height of the war, and now the baby is with them in the cold tent. The tent was sent flying during the storm that devoured the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, so the family had to put it back up. They received water only occasionally in a container, and a tiny tin shack serves as a bathroom for the 100 families in this new refugee camp, 'Camp Gaza', in Beit Lahia's Al-Atatra neighbourhood. Abu-Aun sounded particularly bitter this past weekend; the Red Cross refused his family a bigger tent. He has also had enough of eating beans."
"For three months, the Abu-Aun family and thousands of other have been living in five tent encampments built after the war. They have not begun clearing away the ruins of their homes, let alone building new ones. Thousands live in the shadow of the ruins of their homes, thousands in tents, thousands crowded together with their relatives, tens of thousands who are newly homeless and whom the world has lost interest in. After the conference of donor countries, which convened to great fanfare in Sharm el-Sheikh a month and a half ago, which included 75 countries and agreed to transfer $1 billion to rebuild Gaza, nothing happened. Gaza is besieged. There are no building materials. Israel and the world are setting conditions, the Palestinians are incapable of forming a unity government, as is needed, the money and concrete are nowehere to be seen and the Abu-Aun family continue to live in a tent. Even the $900 million promised by the United States is stuck in the cash register. It's doubtful whether it will ever be taken out. America's word.
"It's exactly three months since the much-talked-about war, and Gaza is once again forgotten. Israel has never taken an interest in the welfare of its victims. Now the world has forgotten, too. Two weeks with hardly a Qassam rocket has taken Gaza completely off the agenda. If the Gazans don't hurry up and resume firing, nobody will take an interest in their welfare again. Although not new, this is an especially grievous and saddening message liable to spark the next cycle of violence. And then it will be certain they won't get aid because they will be shooting.
"Somebody must assume responsibility for the fate of the Abu-Aun family and other victims of like them. If they had been injured in an earthquake, the world probably would have helped them recover long ago. Even Israel would have quickly dispatched aid convoys from ZAKA, Magen David Adom, even the IDF. But the Abu-Aun family was not injured by a natural disaster, but by hands and flesh and blood, made in Israel, and not for the first time. The response: no compensation, no aid, no rehabilitation. Israel and the world are too preoccupied to rebuild Gaza. They have become speechless. Gaza, remember?" (Gaza, remember? Haaretz, 19/4/09)
Fairfax's Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis, reports from the killing fields, but it's a compromised and anodyne effort. (Gaza shifts from a state of war to a state of despair, Sydney Morning Herald, 27/4/09) There's virtually no sense of agency in his report: Israel is shielded by the passive voice, and its monstrous brutality toned down: "The borders between [sic: with] Israel and Egypt remain closed to everything but food and medical supplies [more on that in a minute!] and humanitarian aid. And with things like concrete, steel or any other materials needed to rebuild Gaza prohibited from entering, the thousands of homes, offices and public buildings destroyed in Israel's intense bombing campaign remain just piles of rubble."
And of course there's the obligatory 'balancing' act: "A report released last week by the Israel Defence Forces high command said that 1,166 Palestinians were killed during the 3-week campaign. Of those killed, the report said, 709 were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, and 295 were confirmed as innocent civilians. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, however, said the 22-day offensive resulted in the deaths of 1,417 Palestinians of whom 236 were members of Hamas or other militias, and a further 255 were police officers. Thirteen Israelis were killed."
But there's worse: "An obvious question that springs to mind about Gaza is, 3 months after the end of the Israeli offensive, is life measurably worse for Gaza's 1.5 million citizens? 'A little bit, but not by much', said Hamdan Nimat, a 38-year old father of 4 who was born in the Jabaliya refugee camp, but whose parents were born in Ashkelon, a coastal centre several kilometres north of Gaza now a part of Israel. 'The real truth about life in Gaza is that no one is dying because there is no food', Mr Nimat said. 'Nor is anyone dying because of lack of medicine'." Is this Nimat character for real? I mean really for real? Mr Koutsoukis?
Compare that cosy little assessment to this from Inter Press Service's Mohammed Omer: "Mohammed al-Sheikh Yousef could save his eyesight if only he could cross the border out of Gaza. He was denied a permit by Israel; he got one from Egypt, but not for someone to accompany him. And he can't go on his own, because he cannot see very well. 'If Mohammed does not get out of Gaza for medical treatment within the next 14 days, he may totally lose his eyesight and be blind for life', Dr Mawia Hasaneen, head of the ambulance and emergency service for Gaza hospitals, told IPS in a telephone interview. 'In the past few weeks we have received 150 appeals from people in Gaza who are in need of urgent medical care', says Ron Yaron from Physicians for Human Rights, a human rights group in Israel that campaigns on behalf of Palestinian patients to obtain exit permits for healthcare. 'We submitted 99 applications to the Israeli army on behalf of the patients, but only 15 were approved', Yaron told IPS. 'Israel as the occupying power has primary responsibility for the health of the civilians of Gaza, because it controls the crossings. It should not use the patients as a political tool'. The emergency staff often stand by, helpless spectators to suffering. 'I just received a call from the mother of a 4-year-old child from Jabaliya refugee camp in the north; her son has congestive heart failure and respiratory distress', said Dr Hasaneen. 'As an official I can't stand to watch her child dying simply because medical treatment is not available in Gaza and the borders are closed'. But he has no option but to do just that. The al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, based in Gaza, says that at least 41 Gazans died last year of causes that can be attributed to the collapse of the medical referral process. Currently, it says the condition of hundreds of Gazans is deteriorating rapidly. For Gazans, what happens at the border crossings can make the difference between life and death. Medicines for many easily treated diseases sit across the Rafah crossing with Egypt or the Erez crossing into Israel. Patients cannot get across, and most medicines are not allowed in." (Gazans desperate for medical care denied, 28/4/09)
Compare it too with Israeli journalist Gideon Levy's empathy, passion, plain-speaking and eye for detail: "Alyan Abu-Aun is lying in his tent, his crutches beside him. He smokes cigarettes and stares into the tiny tent's empty space. His young son sits on his lap. Ten people are crammed into the tent, about the size of a small room. It has been their home for 3 months. Nothing remains of their previous home, which the Israel Defense forces shelled during Operation Cast Lead. They are refugees for a second time; Abu-Aun's mother still remembers her home in Sumsum, a town that once stood near Ashkelon. Abu-Aun, 53, was wounded while trying to flee when his home in the Gaza town of Beit Lahia was bombed. He has been on crutches ever since. His wife gave birth during the height of the war, and now the baby is with them in the cold tent. The tent was sent flying during the storm that devoured the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, so the family had to put it back up. They received water only occasionally in a container, and a tiny tin shack serves as a bathroom for the 100 families in this new refugee camp, 'Camp Gaza', in Beit Lahia's Al-Atatra neighbourhood. Abu-Aun sounded particularly bitter this past weekend; the Red Cross refused his family a bigger tent. He has also had enough of eating beans."
"For three months, the Abu-Aun family and thousands of other have been living in five tent encampments built after the war. They have not begun clearing away the ruins of their homes, let alone building new ones. Thousands live in the shadow of the ruins of their homes, thousands in tents, thousands crowded together with their relatives, tens of thousands who are newly homeless and whom the world has lost interest in. After the conference of donor countries, which convened to great fanfare in Sharm el-Sheikh a month and a half ago, which included 75 countries and agreed to transfer $1 billion to rebuild Gaza, nothing happened. Gaza is besieged. There are no building materials. Israel and the world are setting conditions, the Palestinians are incapable of forming a unity government, as is needed, the money and concrete are nowehere to be seen and the Abu-Aun family continue to live in a tent. Even the $900 million promised by the United States is stuck in the cash register. It's doubtful whether it will ever be taken out. America's word.
"It's exactly three months since the much-talked-about war, and Gaza is once again forgotten. Israel has never taken an interest in the welfare of its victims. Now the world has forgotten, too. Two weeks with hardly a Qassam rocket has taken Gaza completely off the agenda. If the Gazans don't hurry up and resume firing, nobody will take an interest in their welfare again. Although not new, this is an especially grievous and saddening message liable to spark the next cycle of violence. And then it will be certain they won't get aid because they will be shooting.
"Somebody must assume responsibility for the fate of the Abu-Aun family and other victims of like them. If they had been injured in an earthquake, the world probably would have helped them recover long ago. Even Israel would have quickly dispatched aid convoys from ZAKA, Magen David Adom, even the IDF. But the Abu-Aun family was not injured by a natural disaster, but by hands and flesh and blood, made in Israel, and not for the first time. The response: no compensation, no aid, no rehabilitation. Israel and the world are too preoccupied to rebuild Gaza. They have become speechless. Gaza, remember?" (Gaza, remember? Haaretz, 19/4/09)
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Rewriting History at the SMH
"Lebanon's Shiite population is led by Hasan Nasrallah, whose paramilitary organisation Hezbollah has the backing of Iran and Syria, and which provoked a war against Israel in June 2006 after launching a deadly raid on an Israeli border patrol." ($395m budget to catch Hariri's murderer, Jason Koutsoukis, Sydney Morning Herald, 28/2/09)
It is truly beyond belief that a so-called Middle East correspondent, writing for any newspaper, can get such recent history this wrong: Hezbollah "provoked a war against"... whaaat?!
It is truly beyond belief that a so-called Middle East correspondent, writing for any newspaper, can get such recent history this wrong: Hezbollah "provoked a war against"... whaaat?!
Friday, January 9, 2009
More Junk Journalism
Here's how the Sydney Morning Herald's Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis, kicked off his front page article Israel attacked on two fronts: rockets from Lebanon (9/1/09): "Israeli fears of a war on two fronts intensified yesterday after Palestinian militants in southern Lebanon backed by the radical Islamic Hezbollah movement launched a missile attack on Israel that wounded two people. Up to 5 Katyusha rockets struck northern Israel... An official military source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Herald that between 3 and 5 rockets had landed in Israel."
That's right, it's categorical: Hezbollah-backed Palestinian militants in Lebanon are opening up a second front against poor, peaceful Israel. No doubt about it, according to our Jason. Still, why is his Israeli source so coy? Smell a rat? Read on to the bitter end and this is what you'll find:
"The military source refused to comment on who might have been responsible for the rocket attacks. Although southern Lebanon is controlled by Hezbollah, there are several large Palestinian refugee camps in the area that are home to a number of militant Palestinian groups. 'The area where the rockets were fired from appears to be close to a Palestinian refugee camp', the source said. Even if yesterday's rocket attacks were by Palestinian militants, it is unlikely they were launched without the tacit approval of Hezbollah."
That note of certainty in the first paragraph has gone. Could've been anyone - even Israeli agents in Lebanon*, right? No, not as far as our Jason's concerned, because deep throat - "the source" - reckons "the area where the rockets were fired from appears to be close to a Palestinian refugee camp." Oh? According to Lebanon's The Daily Star, the rockets came from the village of Tair Harfa, more than 10 km south of the southernmost Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Rashidieh. But Hezbollah gave the culprits the thumbs up, didn't it? Well, no: "Hezbollah was thought not to be behind the attack, and assured other members of the [Lebanese] government that it is still committed to Security Council Resolution 1701." (Tensions rise as rockets hit Israel from South Lebanon, Andrew Wander & Mohammed Zaatari, 9/1/09)
[*See Mike Whitney's Israel's Dress Rehearsal for Lebanon, informationclearinghouse.info, 8/1/09]
Koutsoukis even manage to make Murdoch fishwrapper look better: "... sources suggested the 3 Katyushas [3!] might have been fired by militants in support of Hamas..." (Lebanese rockets fire on Israel, John Lyons, The Australian, 9/1/09)
Of Koutsoukis' reporting, Tzvi Fleischer of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has written: "Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis remains a huge improvement over his predecessor Ed O'Loughlin, with most of his repoting reasonable." (Surprised for the better? The Australian Jewish News, 9/1/09) Enough said.
That's right, it's categorical: Hezbollah-backed Palestinian militants in Lebanon are opening up a second front against poor, peaceful Israel. No doubt about it, according to our Jason. Still, why is his Israeli source so coy? Smell a rat? Read on to the bitter end and this is what you'll find:
"The military source refused to comment on who might have been responsible for the rocket attacks. Although southern Lebanon is controlled by Hezbollah, there are several large Palestinian refugee camps in the area that are home to a number of militant Palestinian groups. 'The area where the rockets were fired from appears to be close to a Palestinian refugee camp', the source said. Even if yesterday's rocket attacks were by Palestinian militants, it is unlikely they were launched without the tacit approval of Hezbollah."
That note of certainty in the first paragraph has gone. Could've been anyone - even Israeli agents in Lebanon*, right? No, not as far as our Jason's concerned, because deep throat - "the source" - reckons "the area where the rockets were fired from appears to be close to a Palestinian refugee camp." Oh? According to Lebanon's The Daily Star, the rockets came from the village of Tair Harfa, more than 10 km south of the southernmost Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Rashidieh. But Hezbollah gave the culprits the thumbs up, didn't it? Well, no: "Hezbollah was thought not to be behind the attack, and assured other members of the [Lebanese] government that it is still committed to Security Council Resolution 1701." (Tensions rise as rockets hit Israel from South Lebanon, Andrew Wander & Mohammed Zaatari, 9/1/09)
[*See Mike Whitney's Israel's Dress Rehearsal for Lebanon, informationclearinghouse.info, 8/1/09]
Koutsoukis even manage to make Murdoch fishwrapper look better: "... sources suggested the 3 Katyushas [3!] might have been fired by militants in support of Hamas..." (Lebanese rockets fire on Israel, John Lyons, The Australian, 9/1/09)
Of Koutsoukis' reporting, Tzvi Fleischer of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has written: "Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis remains a huge improvement over his predecessor Ed O'Loughlin, with most of his repoting reasonable." (Surprised for the better? The Australian Jewish News, 9/1/09) Enough said.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Go Figure 1
Back on the propaganda front:-
In my 3/1/09 post Junk Journalism, I quoted the December 2007 document Rocket threat from the Gaza Strip 2000-2007 issued by the Intelligence & Information Center at the Israel Intelligence, Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC) and posted on Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website (mfa.gov.il) to the effect that between 2001 and (end of November) 2007 "there has been a total of 2,383 identified rocket hits in and around the western Negev settlements, with the southern city of Sderot as a priority..." And I drew your attention to this sentence by the Sydney Morning Herald's Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis: "Israel's other key concern was to put an end to the use of Qassam rockets, more than 10,000 of which have landed in the farmlands and cities that surround Gaza over the past 6 years, killing about 20 people." (All bets are off, 3/1/09)
Then The Australian's foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan* weighed in with a new figure: "In the past few years, the terrorist group Hamas has fired more than 6,000 rockets and mortars from Gaza at Israeli civilian targets" (Israel has right to defend citizens, The Sunday Telegraph, 4/1/09). And, in the same issue, his illustrious Daily Telegraph colleague Piers Akerman wrote "Since 2001, Hamas and its allies launched more than 6,400 rockets, mortar bombs and other missiles [stones?] at Israel." (Prodding at lions will bring Hamas undone) Now, if we combine the 2001-2007 figures for rocket and mortar attacks in the IICC document with the estimate for 2008 given in the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs document The Hamas terror war against Israel (mfa.gov.il, 1/1/09), we get a grand total of 7,985 rocket and mortar strikes. If -if - this figure is correct, Sheridan and Akerman are actually understating their case - a bizarre phenomenon indeed!
[*Sheridan, of course, has a way with numbers - see my 4/2/08 post When Even the Retraction is Dodgy.]
Today, it was Chief [Sydney Morning] Herald Correspondent Paul McGeough's turn to get creative: "Tel Aviv's early insistence that this massive military exercise was about putting a halt to Palestinian rockets being fired into or near communities in the south of Israel never rang true." So far, so good. "Measure it by the number of rockets - 8,000 plus over 8 [sic: 7]years - and indeed it sounds like a genuine existential threat." (Mission revealed: destroy Hamas) Oh dear, if only he'd roped in the mortars.
But there's more. Good old Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), the pointy end of the Israel Lobby, also thought he'd have a stab - and where else but in his home away from home, The Australian: "About 6300 rockets and mortars have been indiscriminately launched at Israeli population centres since August 2005, including more than 600 in the past few weeks." (Sorry history behind today's violent images, 5/1/09) Using the data in the mfa.gov.il sources for the period 8/2005-12/2008, we get a total of 6,024 rocket and mortar strikes.
Postscript: "The head of the NSW Jewish Board of deputies, Vic Alhadeff... blamed the crisis in Gaza on Hamas, saying it had fired more than 8,000 rockets and mortars into Israel since 2001." (Australian Jews protest against Israel's action, West & Pearlman, SMH, 6/1/09)
In my 3/1/09 post Junk Journalism, I quoted the December 2007 document Rocket threat from the Gaza Strip 2000-2007 issued by the Intelligence & Information Center at the Israel Intelligence, Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC) and posted on Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website (mfa.gov.il) to the effect that between 2001 and (end of November) 2007 "there has been a total of 2,383 identified rocket hits in and around the western Negev settlements, with the southern city of Sderot as a priority..." And I drew your attention to this sentence by the Sydney Morning Herald's Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis: "Israel's other key concern was to put an end to the use of Qassam rockets, more than 10,000 of which have landed in the farmlands and cities that surround Gaza over the past 6 years, killing about 20 people." (All bets are off, 3/1/09)
Then The Australian's foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan* weighed in with a new figure: "In the past few years, the terrorist group Hamas has fired more than 6,000 rockets and mortars from Gaza at Israeli civilian targets" (Israel has right to defend citizens, The Sunday Telegraph, 4/1/09). And, in the same issue, his illustrious Daily Telegraph colleague Piers Akerman wrote "Since 2001, Hamas and its allies launched more than 6,400 rockets, mortar bombs and other missiles [stones?] at Israel." (Prodding at lions will bring Hamas undone) Now, if we combine the 2001-2007 figures for rocket and mortar attacks in the IICC document with the estimate for 2008 given in the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs document The Hamas terror war against Israel (mfa.gov.il, 1/1/09), we get a grand total of 7,985 rocket and mortar strikes. If -if - this figure is correct, Sheridan and Akerman are actually understating their case - a bizarre phenomenon indeed!
[*Sheridan, of course, has a way with numbers - see my 4/2/08 post When Even the Retraction is Dodgy.]
Today, it was Chief [Sydney Morning] Herald Correspondent Paul McGeough's turn to get creative: "Tel Aviv's early insistence that this massive military exercise was about putting a halt to Palestinian rockets being fired into or near communities in the south of Israel never rang true." So far, so good. "Measure it by the number of rockets - 8,000 plus over 8 [sic: 7]years - and indeed it sounds like a genuine existential threat." (Mission revealed: destroy Hamas) Oh dear, if only he'd roped in the mortars.
But there's more. Good old Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), the pointy end of the Israel Lobby, also thought he'd have a stab - and where else but in his home away from home, The Australian: "About 6300 rockets and mortars have been indiscriminately launched at Israeli population centres since August 2005, including more than 600 in the past few weeks." (Sorry history behind today's violent images, 5/1/09) Using the data in the mfa.gov.il sources for the period 8/2005-12/2008, we get a total of 6,024 rocket and mortar strikes.
Postscript: "The head of the NSW Jewish Board of deputies, Vic Alhadeff... blamed the crisis in Gaza on Hamas, saying it had fired more than 8,000 rockets and mortars into Israel since 2001." (Australian Jews protest against Israel's action, West & Pearlman, SMH, 6/1/09)
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Junk Journalism
Where are you when we need you, Ed O'Loughlin? In his feature on Gaza for today's Sydney Morning Herald, All bets are off, Fairfax's Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis reveals a clear inabilty to fill his predecessor's shoes.
Take this thumbnail sketch of Gaza's history, for example: "Gaza first hit the headlines in the time of Samson who, before falling in love with Delilah, apparently destroyed a Philistine temple there in a powerful fit of pique. In the middle ages, Gaza was famous for linen, so fine that it gave its name to the English word gauze. Gaza has fallen to Alexander the Great, the Romans, the Arab warrior Saladin, Napoleon, the Ottomans and Britain. For each conqueror, the coastal strip was a coveted gem in their imperial crowns. After the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, Gaza was occupied by Egypt, but in 1967 Israel conquered the strip in the Six Day War. At first a spoil of victory, it wasn't long before Israel came to regard Gaza as a burden. The Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin wanted to give it back to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace accords, but his counterpart, Anwar Sadat, refused it because he regarded Gaza as a hotbed of Palestinian nationalism that had threatened regimes in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. By 2005 Israel's then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, elected on a right-wing platform, decided to uproot all Israeli settlements in Gaza and withdraw, leaving the strip dangling, as it were, between an Egypt that feared Gaza, and an Israel that wished it would go away. Home to 1.5 million Palestinians - nearly a million of them registered by the UN as refugees - Gaza was an orphaned strip 40 kilometres long and 12 kilometres wide."
Just pathetic! If Koutsoukis (and/or his editor) think that that is an adequate backgrounder for a feature on what is possibly the worst act of external armed aggression - and we're only half way there yet - ever perpetrated on the inhabitants of Gaza, then he has no right masquerading as an investigative journalist. Samson & Delilah, gauze, and an assortment of historical conquerors are in, but the key event in Gaza's modern history, without which we cannot understand the present juncture, is out. True, there's a mention of the "Arab-Israeli war of 1948," and an acknowledgment that most Gazans are "refugees," but that's it. So, what has he left out? This: the vast bulk of Gaza's population are the descendents of Palestinians ethnically cleansed from southern Palestine by Zionist forces in 1948 and caged up there ever since (except for a period of Egyptian rule - 1948-67) under a brutal Israeli military occupation. For 60 years now, these people, part of the Palestinian refugee diaspora, have clung to their internationally-recognised right of return to their homes and lands in Israel (im)proper, a key Palestinian right largely ignored by Arafat and his successors, but still upheld by Hamas. For Koutsoukis, however, a pair of Biblical lovers is more relevant to the matter under discussion than the Great Ethnic Cleansing - or Nakba - of 1948, and its ongoing relevance to the lives of Palestinian refugees in Gaza today.
Needless to say, the link between Gaza 2008 and Palestine 1948 is seldom made in the Zionised corporate media. The overcrowded Gaza Strip is always a given, it just is. The why and wherefore of its refugee population is almost never explored. Except, on rare ocassions, by serious and informed investigative jornalists such as Britain's Robert Fisk: "How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians," he writes, "to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which - in any other conflict - journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza. That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who live in Ashkelon and the fields around it... were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They - or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren - are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80% of whose families once lived in what is today Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of its people don't come from Gaza. But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza - a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin - and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the 5 sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story." (Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony, The Independent, 30/12/08)
In addition to Koutsoukis' first and major failing, he also misrepresents the historical record when he claims that "Israel came to regard Gaza as a burden" and "the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin wanted to give it back to Egypt as part of the 1979 [Camp David] peace accords..." In 1977 when Begin became prime minister and announced his intention to negotiate peace treaties with Arab leaders, he was asked by a journalist about the fate of the Israeli-occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. HIs response? "What occupied territories? If you mean Judaea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, they are liberated territories. They are part, an integral part, of the land of Israel." (quoted in Imperial Israel: The History of the Occupation of the West Bank & Gaza, Michael Palumbo, 1990, p 132) At the time, Begin ruled out both the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories and a freeze on settlement construction, a position he maintained during the Reagan administration's push for a settlement freeze in 1982. (See Palumbo, Chapter 5, Camp David) So much for the Israelis wanting to lay their "burden" down!
Then there's the bit about Sadat "refusing [Gaza] because he regarded [it] as a hotbed of Palestinian nationalism that had threatened regimes in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon." Certainly, the Palestinian resistance in Jordan had been attacked and driven out by the Jordanian army(1970-71), and, during the initial phase of the Lebanese civil war (1975-82), had sided with Lebanese national and progressive forces in their bid to break the monopoly on power exercised by right-wing Maronite forces. However, baldly asserting that "regimes in Jordan and Lebanon" were "threatened" by the Palestinians is a gross oversimplification at best and completely false at worst. But there's more: to suggest, as Koutsoukis does, that "Palestinian nationalism" in any way, shape or form "threatened" the Asad regime in Syria is a complete and utter nonsense from a 'journalist' who simply hasn't done his homework.
And speaking of failure to do one's homework, cop a load of this: "Israel's other key concern was to put an end to the use of Qassam rockets, more than 10,000 of which have landed in the farmlands and cities that surround Gaza over the past 6 years, killing about 20 people." Ten thousand rockets? Did Koutsoukis simply pluck this out of the air? According to a 12/07 study by the Intelligence & Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence, Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), available at mfa.gov.il, "[a]s of the end of November 2007, there has been a total of 2,383 identified rocket hits in and around the western Negev settlements, with the southern city of Sderot as a priority..."
Something Koutzoukis does get right, however, is how the current hostilities began, an account that runs counter to current USraeli propaganda, which pins the blame squarely on Hamas :"The situation began to deteriorate rapidly on November 4 when Israeli troops entered Gaza to prevent what it claimed was a planned abduction of Israeli soldiers by Hamas using a tunnel it had dug under the security wall. Seven Hamas members were killed prompting immediate retaliation. Over the next 6 weeks Hamas fired more than 300 rockets and mortar shells at Israel, which again sealed its borders. By December 19 - the expiry date of the truce - Hamas, hoping to force Israel into opening the borders, announced it would renew aggression. By Christmas Eve, when Hamas militants fired 70 rockets into Israel, Israel had had enough." Thank God for small mercies.
Take this thumbnail sketch of Gaza's history, for example: "Gaza first hit the headlines in the time of Samson who, before falling in love with Delilah, apparently destroyed a Philistine temple there in a powerful fit of pique. In the middle ages, Gaza was famous for linen, so fine that it gave its name to the English word gauze. Gaza has fallen to Alexander the Great, the Romans, the Arab warrior Saladin, Napoleon, the Ottomans and Britain. For each conqueror, the coastal strip was a coveted gem in their imperial crowns. After the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, Gaza was occupied by Egypt, but in 1967 Israel conquered the strip in the Six Day War. At first a spoil of victory, it wasn't long before Israel came to regard Gaza as a burden. The Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin wanted to give it back to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace accords, but his counterpart, Anwar Sadat, refused it because he regarded Gaza as a hotbed of Palestinian nationalism that had threatened regimes in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. By 2005 Israel's then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, elected on a right-wing platform, decided to uproot all Israeli settlements in Gaza and withdraw, leaving the strip dangling, as it were, between an Egypt that feared Gaza, and an Israel that wished it would go away. Home to 1.5 million Palestinians - nearly a million of them registered by the UN as refugees - Gaza was an orphaned strip 40 kilometres long and 12 kilometres wide."
Just pathetic! If Koutsoukis (and/or his editor) think that that is an adequate backgrounder for a feature on what is possibly the worst act of external armed aggression - and we're only half way there yet - ever perpetrated on the inhabitants of Gaza, then he has no right masquerading as an investigative journalist. Samson & Delilah, gauze, and an assortment of historical conquerors are in, but the key event in Gaza's modern history, without which we cannot understand the present juncture, is out. True, there's a mention of the "Arab-Israeli war of 1948," and an acknowledgment that most Gazans are "refugees," but that's it. So, what has he left out? This: the vast bulk of Gaza's population are the descendents of Palestinians ethnically cleansed from southern Palestine by Zionist forces in 1948 and caged up there ever since (except for a period of Egyptian rule - 1948-67) under a brutal Israeli military occupation. For 60 years now, these people, part of the Palestinian refugee diaspora, have clung to their internationally-recognised right of return to their homes and lands in Israel (im)proper, a key Palestinian right largely ignored by Arafat and his successors, but still upheld by Hamas. For Koutsoukis, however, a pair of Biblical lovers is more relevant to the matter under discussion than the Great Ethnic Cleansing - or Nakba - of 1948, and its ongoing relevance to the lives of Palestinian refugees in Gaza today.
Needless to say, the link between Gaza 2008 and Palestine 1948 is seldom made in the Zionised corporate media. The overcrowded Gaza Strip is always a given, it just is. The why and wherefore of its refugee population is almost never explored. Except, on rare ocassions, by serious and informed investigative jornalists such as Britain's Robert Fisk: "How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians," he writes, "to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which - in any other conflict - journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza. That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who live in Ashkelon and the fields around it... were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They - or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren - are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80% of whose families once lived in what is today Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of its people don't come from Gaza. But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza - a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin - and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the 5 sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story." (Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony, The Independent, 30/12/08)
In addition to Koutsoukis' first and major failing, he also misrepresents the historical record when he claims that "Israel came to regard Gaza as a burden" and "the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin wanted to give it back to Egypt as part of the 1979 [Camp David] peace accords..." In 1977 when Begin became prime minister and announced his intention to negotiate peace treaties with Arab leaders, he was asked by a journalist about the fate of the Israeli-occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. HIs response? "What occupied territories? If you mean Judaea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, they are liberated territories. They are part, an integral part, of the land of Israel." (quoted in Imperial Israel: The History of the Occupation of the West Bank & Gaza, Michael Palumbo, 1990, p 132) At the time, Begin ruled out both the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories and a freeze on settlement construction, a position he maintained during the Reagan administration's push for a settlement freeze in 1982. (See Palumbo, Chapter 5, Camp David) So much for the Israelis wanting to lay their "burden" down!
Then there's the bit about Sadat "refusing [Gaza] because he regarded [it] as a hotbed of Palestinian nationalism that had threatened regimes in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon." Certainly, the Palestinian resistance in Jordan had been attacked and driven out by the Jordanian army(1970-71), and, during the initial phase of the Lebanese civil war (1975-82), had sided with Lebanese national and progressive forces in their bid to break the monopoly on power exercised by right-wing Maronite forces. However, baldly asserting that "regimes in Jordan and Lebanon" were "threatened" by the Palestinians is a gross oversimplification at best and completely false at worst. But there's more: to suggest, as Koutsoukis does, that "Palestinian nationalism" in any way, shape or form "threatened" the Asad regime in Syria is a complete and utter nonsense from a 'journalist' who simply hasn't done his homework.
And speaking of failure to do one's homework, cop a load of this: "Israel's other key concern was to put an end to the use of Qassam rockets, more than 10,000 of which have landed in the farmlands and cities that surround Gaza over the past 6 years, killing about 20 people." Ten thousand rockets? Did Koutsoukis simply pluck this out of the air? According to a 12/07 study by the Intelligence & Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence, Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), available at mfa.gov.il, "[a]s of the end of November 2007, there has been a total of 2,383 identified rocket hits in and around the western Negev settlements, with the southern city of Sderot as a priority..."
Something Koutzoukis does get right, however, is how the current hostilities began, an account that runs counter to current USraeli propaganda, which pins the blame squarely on Hamas :"The situation began to deteriorate rapidly on November 4 when Israeli troops entered Gaza to prevent what it claimed was a planned abduction of Israeli soldiers by Hamas using a tunnel it had dug under the security wall. Seven Hamas members were killed prompting immediate retaliation. Over the next 6 weeks Hamas fired more than 300 rockets and mortar shells at Israel, which again sealed its borders. By December 19 - the expiry date of the truce - Hamas, hoping to force Israel into opening the borders, announced it would renew aggression. By Christmas Eve, when Hamas militants fired 70 rockets into Israel, Israel had had enough." Thank God for small mercies.
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