Lies from dodgy sources peddled by Western msm stenographers, aka Middle East correspondents, are an integral part of selling the US-led regime-change operation in Syria. One of the worst offenders is the Guardian's Martin Chulov (formerly of Murdoch's Australian).
Chulov's signature contribution to these lies is the allegation that Damascus and Tehran are involved in a deliberate process of sectarian cleansing in Syria.* In his latest piece, Iran repopulates Syria with Shia Muslims to help tighten regime's control (13/1/17), Chulov asserts that the Iranians are repopulating areas from which Sunni Syrians have fled with Iraqi and Lebanese Shiites.
Were this true, it would indeed be a disturbing development. The Angry Arab News Service provides us with the following corrective "from a journalist working in Syria":
"Chulov's article is very problematic. Its allegations are false and its methodology is flawed. You cannot write an article making such allegations from Lebanon without collecting evidence empirically, without field visits etc, and you cannot write such an article by relying purely on pro-insurgent sources, or even sources who are insurgent officials.
"There are no population swaps in Syria. Iran has no project to alter the social landscape in Syria. That's not why it's in Syria. Iran seeks to support the Assad government for a variety of reasons, but not out of a sectarian project. It would say that Assad is their only reliable partner and is part of the resistance axis; that if he fell, then the whole system would collapse; that if they tried to replace him, then his replacement would sell them out to the Saudis or the Americans; that there is a salafi/wahhabi/takfiri threat coming from Syria which threatens the region, and that they want to stop it in Syria.
"Shias are 1% of Syria's population. Iran works with Sunni militias in Aleppo. These are things you don't know if you report on Syria remotely.
"Chulov says that: 'Russia, in an alliance with Turkey, is using a nominal ceasefire to push for a political consensus between the Assad regime and the exiled opposition.' No. In fact, the exiled opposition seems not to be invited to the talks, only insurgent groups, and it's not so much to reach a political consensus as to impose a new order. Chulov makes a string of baseless assertions and then quotes 'one senior Lebanese leader ' [as saying that 'Iran and the regime don't want any Sunnis between Damascus and Homs and the Lebanese border... Key for Iran are the rebel-held towns of Zabadani and Madaya.']
"Hizballah actually works with Sunni militias in the area between Damascus and Homs. There are senior security officials in Damascus who are Sunnis from the region between Damascus and Homs. Zabadani and Madaya are not key for Iran for the reasons Chulov alleges. First, those two towns are key to Hizballah more than Iran, and this is because Hizballah saw itself as pursuing a Lebanese homeland security strategy which required protecting Lebanon from the car bombs entering it from Western Syria and securing the towns on the border. But once Zabadani and Madaya were surrounded and neutralized as threats (there was a Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham presence there as well as a small ISIS presence) they realized they had a bargaining chip.
"Two Shia towns in Idlib (Fua and Kfarya) have been surrounded and tightly besieged since 2015, with supplies occasionally dropped by air while they were shelled and sniped at by insurgents in adjacent towns. Many of Syria's 230,000 Shia have joined the local branch of Hizballah, and they were furious that their brethren were besieged. This was an issue for Iran, and Iranian officials mentioned the potential 'genocide' in Fua and Kfarya every chance they got. They were obsessed with it. They therefore negotiated a deal in Turkey with Ahrar al-Sham that did NOT involve population exchanges but was still an ugly precedent. On one side, largely Shia forces held two Sunni towns hostage. On the other, Sunni forces held two Shia towns hostage. In Idlib, local factions were also profiting from selling supplies to Fua and Kfarya at very high rates. Anyway, the deal was not an exchange of people, but if a loaf of bread goes into Zabadani, then a loaf has to go into Fua, and if ten bandages go into Madaya, then ten have to go into the two Shia towns in Idlib [province]. And if a sick or wounded person is evacuated from one of the two Sunni towns, then the same thing must take place in the two Shia towns.
"The Syrian government was unhappy about the sectarian nature of this arrangement, and it has not been repeated. But the government would not accept sectarian population exchanges, and no Shias want to go and live in Zabadani and Madaya anyway. When Shias are displaced in Syria, they move into other Shia towns or neighborhoods, or with friends or relatives. The deals that have involved the evacuation of insurgents and their families have been mischaracterized in the media. They are not forced to go to insurgent-held areas in the north such as Idlib. They are given an option by the government forces, either stay and renounce the insurgency or leave to insurgent-held areas in the north, and in most towns where such deals have taken place we actually see an increase in the population because conditions improve and displaced people return. The UN in Syria has not recorded any population exchanges taking place and no outsiders have been imported to live in other peoples' homes. Chulov accepts without any skepticism the statements of an Ahrar al-Sham official based in Turkey who represents a salafi, jihadist, overtly sectarian group. He does not ask for evidence, he just repeats the claims.
"Chulov refers to Wadi Barada and the ongoing fighting there. Hizballah barely has a presence there and acts like special forces supporting the Syrian army's Republican Guard, which is fighting to regain control of the water supply to Damascus which was held by insurgents. In fact, quite a few senior government officials are from Wadi Barada, including the head of the Baath Party and security committee for the rif dimashq province, which reminds me that the governor of Aleppo, a former security officer himself, is from Zabadani.
"Chulov also repeats the lie that Iraqi Shia families have moved into Daraya. They have not. They would not be allowed to anyway, and nobody is moving in because the government is rehabilitating it and has asked international NGOs for help in doing so in order to return the displaced from Daraya. Chulov did not visit Daraya. He did not speak with people in Damascus. He did not ask UN or other NGO officials, he merely repeated opposition claims. Syrian state media did not announce that the Iraqis had arrived at all. There was a destroyed Shia shrine there and some Shia visited it, and from that opposition media sources crafted a story. I'd love to know why an Iraqi Shia would want to move into a bombed-out, abandoned neighborhood with no services, even if the Syrian government would allow such a thing - which they wouldn't. Reporting on Syria requires no standards at all it seems.
"Likewise, the Umayyad Mosque [in Damascus] is not a security zone controlled by Iranian proxies. Chulov, who has not been there, is relying on an insurgent, who also has not been there, to repeat an absurd claim. I was there a week ago. The Umayyad Mosque is in the same situation it was before the conflict, and in the hands of the same forces responsible for securing it before the conflict, the normal Syrian security forces, and anyone can visit it just as before, and there is no Shia plan for it. In fact, if Damascenes even thought there was such a plan they would go crazy and demand that Assad halt such a plan. The Syrian regime has always been very sensitive to the concerns of the Damascene conservative class, and that's why this class has remained loyal.
"There has not been a 'systematic torching of Land Registry offices in areas recaptured on behalf of the regime.' This is without evidence, and in a system as obsessed with paperwork and security as the Syrian one, it would be unthinkable, and most senior officials are Sunni as are most state employees, and they often come from insurgent-held areas - the idea doesn't make any sense. Likewise it is not true that most residents of Zabadani have gone to Idlib. Only a fraction went there because they did not accept the deal. The rest are displaced in the area around it, in Damascus or outside of Syria.
"It often seems like all standards have been abandoned when it comes to writing on Syria." (On Martin Chulov of the Guardian (he is competing with Liz Sly for being the worst correspondent in Beirut), 26/1/17)
[*See also Martin Chulov & The Guardian: at the forefront of Balkanising Syria, Phil Greaves, northernmsmdotcom.wordpress.com, 23/7/13.]
Showing posts with label Martin Chulov. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Martin Chulov. Show all posts
Friday, January 27, 2017
Sunday, June 28, 2015
The Insufferable Hypocrisy (& Short Memory) of Murdoch's Australian
Here's the Australian's editorialist, lashing the ABC for allowing the clearly troubled, ill-informed and attention-seeking Zaky Mallah to strut his stuff on its Q&A program last Monday night:
"In allowing Mallah the floor, Q&A went far beyond its previous efforts allowing Julian Assange and David Hicks to question Julia Gillard and John Howard." (ABC's blunder of judgment, 24/6/15)
Now here's Martin Chulov, a former Middle East correspondent for the Australian, disclosing, in his 2006 book, Australian Jihad, that his paper threw money at Mallah. (The colleague mentioned was fellow journalist Louise Perry):
"Mallah hadn't told us outright the target of his proposed attack, but from the tone of his letter, ASIO looked a likely prospect. There was a stark conflict between our roles as journalists and our duties as citizens to disclose information we had about a planned offence, especially something as serious as a potential act of terrorism. Mallah had told us he would be in touch again shortly to arrange a screening of his [suicide] video... Within a few days, Mallah called again, inviting us to his home...
"'I've got the video now. You can have a look at it, if you want. How much do you think it would be worth?'
"'I don't know, Zak. Why do you want to sell it, anyway?' I asked.
"'Islamicaly we have to clear our debts before we die. I need about $4000 to do that and then I'm sweet.'
"We had earlier arranged with The Australian to offer Mallah several hundred dollars for several of his jihadi photos. We knew the paper wasn't interested in buying his suicide video, but we decided not to refuse his request there and then." (Australian Jihad: The Battle Against Terrorism from Within & Without, p 173)
"In allowing Mallah the floor, Q&A went far beyond its previous efforts allowing Julian Assange and David Hicks to question Julia Gillard and John Howard." (ABC's blunder of judgment, 24/6/15)
Now here's Martin Chulov, a former Middle East correspondent for the Australian, disclosing, in his 2006 book, Australian Jihad, that his paper threw money at Mallah. (The colleague mentioned was fellow journalist Louise Perry):
"Mallah hadn't told us outright the target of his proposed attack, but from the tone of his letter, ASIO looked a likely prospect. There was a stark conflict between our roles as journalists and our duties as citizens to disclose information we had about a planned offence, especially something as serious as a potential act of terrorism. Mallah had told us he would be in touch again shortly to arrange a screening of his [suicide] video... Within a few days, Mallah called again, inviting us to his home...
"'I've got the video now. You can have a look at it, if you want. How much do you think it would be worth?'
"'I don't know, Zak. Why do you want to sell it, anyway?' I asked.
"'Islamicaly we have to clear our debts before we die. I need about $4000 to do that and then I'm sweet.'
"We had earlier arranged with The Australian to offer Mallah several hundred dollars for several of his jihadi photos. We knew the paper wasn't interested in buying his suicide video, but we decided not to refuse his request there and then." (Australian Jihad: The Battle Against Terrorism from Within & Without, p 173)
Thursday, November 21, 2013
How Much is Phillip Adams Worth?
"The managing director of the ABC Mark Scott has ordered an investigation into the leaking of how much it pays star news and current affairs personalities and leading administrators... Not all ABC talent was mollified. Phillip Adams, of ABC Radio National's Late Night Live took to Twitter: "Just learned that my fellow b'casters at ABC get paid lots more than me. Despite LNL's enduring success. Naughty management." (More than 8c a day keeps ABC competitors at bay, Damien Murphy, Sydney Morning Herald, 21/11/13)
Phillip's can't be an easy job. I mean, just look at the crap he has to put up with:
"Even your amiable columnist is bombarded by tweets, emails and blogs shrieking obscenities in his direction - a cacophony he finds confusing. (Every day he reads he's simultaneously a puppet of Rupert Murdoch and someone who uses the ABC for Bolshevik bias - while being an apologist for Zionism and the Palestinians, and a virulent anti-Semite.)" (The new Norm, Phillip Adams, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 16/11/13)
An apologist for Zionism and the Palestinians, eh?
Let's subject this one to a little empirical testing shall we?
Here's old amiable Adams getting to the bottom of the latest Beirut bombing with The Guardian's recycled Martin Chulov on November 19's LNL:
Adams: Of course, the knee-jerk response was to blame Israel, wasn't it?
Chulov: That's always the case.
Dumbass Arabs!
Now why would anyone blame the bombing of the Iranian Embassy - Iranian FFS! - on the Middle East's only innocent bystander?
I mean, it's not as if Israel has ever actually invaded Lebanon or occupied it or bombed the crap out of it or anything.
And as for those near-daily overflights of Lebanon, they're not birds, they're not (Israeli) planes... they're... they're... Supermen, right?
To answer my initial question - How much is Phillip Adams worth?
IMO, not a brass razoo.
PS: "Radio presenter Phillip Adams is among those planning to raise the pay discrepancy with 'naughty management'. 'Always accepted the fiction that we were paid much the same,' he told Crikey." ('Your' salaries uncapped, Peter Munro, Sydney Morning Herald, 23/11/13) That's not the only fiction he's fallen for.
Phillip's can't be an easy job. I mean, just look at the crap he has to put up with:
"Even your amiable columnist is bombarded by tweets, emails and blogs shrieking obscenities in his direction - a cacophony he finds confusing. (Every day he reads he's simultaneously a puppet of Rupert Murdoch and someone who uses the ABC for Bolshevik bias - while being an apologist for Zionism and the Palestinians, and a virulent anti-Semite.)" (The new Norm, Phillip Adams, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 16/11/13)
An apologist for Zionism and the Palestinians, eh?
Let's subject this one to a little empirical testing shall we?
Here's old amiable Adams getting to the bottom of the latest Beirut bombing with The Guardian's recycled Martin Chulov on November 19's LNL:
Adams: Of course, the knee-jerk response was to blame Israel, wasn't it?
Chulov: That's always the case.
Dumbass Arabs!
Now why would anyone blame the bombing of the Iranian Embassy - Iranian FFS! - on the Middle East's only innocent bystander?
I mean, it's not as if Israel has ever actually invaded Lebanon or occupied it or bombed the crap out of it or anything.
And as for those near-daily overflights of Lebanon, they're not birds, they're not (Israeli) planes... they're... they're... Supermen, right?
To answer my initial question - How much is Phillip Adams worth?
IMO, not a brass razoo.
PS: "Radio presenter Phillip Adams is among those planning to raise the pay discrepancy with 'naughty management'. 'Always accepted the fiction that we were paid much the same,' he told Crikey." ('Your' salaries uncapped, Peter Munro, Sydney Morning Herald, 23/11/13) That's not the only fiction he's fallen for.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Gaza-Is-Egypt
As the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the Murdoch press can always be relied upon to push an unabashed USraeli imperial agenda.
Take this, for example, from John Lyons, The Australian's Middle East correspondent*: "At best, the Israeli ground invasion will provide short-term relief from Hamas rockets. But a long term solution is desperately needed. Perhaps the only answer is for the international community to convince neighbouring Egypt to take control of Gaza... Gaza being forced to become part of Egypt - to abandon its weapons and link with the Egyptian economy - is perhaps the only sustainable hope for this tiny, tragic slip of land." (Close combat: conflict enters danger zone, 5/1/09) That's right, forget all about a Palestinian state, forget all about Palestinian national rights ("The UN is not the solution," asserts Lyons), Israel needs some "relief" from the blowback consequent on its own criminal behaviour as Gaza's serial raider/invader (55, 56, 67, o6, 08, 09), occupier (56-57, 67-05), and jailer (05-09), so "the only sustainable hope" for Palestinians in Gaza is to become - Egyptians!
[*Lyons recently succeeded the unlamented Martin Chulov, who now appears to be working for the UK Guardian. Of Lyons, Nick Cater, editor of The Weekend Australian, said in a letter to The Australian Jewish News (28/9/07) that he "is one of the most experienced and accomplished journalists in Australia." Enough said.]
Lyons is faithfully channelling US neocon John Bolton (former US ambassador to the UN 2005-2006 & senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute), on the desirability of a so-called three-state solution to Israel's Palestine problem: "War in the Gaza Strip demonstrates yet again that the current governance paradigm for the Palestinian people has failed," writes Bolton, "Terrorists financed and supplied by Iran control Gaza; the Palestinian Authority is broken, probably irretrievably; and economic development is stalled in Gaza and the West Bank... Let's start by recognizing that trying to create a Palestinian Authority from the old PLO has failed and that any two-state solution based on the PA is stillborn. Hamas has killed the idea... Instead we should look to a 'three-state' approach, where Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank in some configuration reverts to Jordanian sovereignty... Without a larger Egyptian role, Gaza will not, and perhaps cannot, achieve the minimal stability necessary for economic development. Moreover, connecting Gaza to a real economy, rather than a fictional 'Palestinian economy', is the quickest concrete way to improve the lives of Gaza's ordinary citizens." (The three-state option, washingtonpost.com, 5/1/09)
The fact is that the US-financed and supplied terror state Israel, with its metastisizing terrorist infrastructure in the occupied West Bank, never seriously entertained the prospect of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state. Moreover, to pretend, as Lyons and Bolton do, that said terror state, currently engaged in both the economic strangulation of Gaza and the razing of its civic institutions, is not the key impediment to the formation of a "real economy" there, is simply howling bloody nonsense.
We're all familiar with the old Zionist propaganda Palestine-is-Jordan trope. Now it looks like we've got another to deal with: Gaza-is-Egypt. Is there no end to Zionist creativity?
Postscript: Lyons is at it again in today's Australian: "Two men hold the key to halting the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza - French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak... The main card Mr Sarkozy can play is to pressure Mr Assad to force Hamas... to change its behaviour in Gaza... The second card he can play is to convince Mr Mubarak that Egypt embraces Gaza, at least economically, by allowing trade, and using labour from Gaza for its businesses to try to lift the living standards of Gaza." (Sarkozy & Barak hold key) Anyone care to hazard a guess as to what this "distinguished journalist" means by his final clause?
This Lyons is a worry on another score. Israel's Daleks in Gaza are wading through the blood of hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children, yet Lyon's front page report (Hamas terror: every Jewish child now a target) manages to make Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Az-Zahhar's "bloodcurdling" warning that the Israelis "have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine" the real story. Bizarre!
Take this, for example, from John Lyons, The Australian's Middle East correspondent*: "At best, the Israeli ground invasion will provide short-term relief from Hamas rockets. But a long term solution is desperately needed. Perhaps the only answer is for the international community to convince neighbouring Egypt to take control of Gaza... Gaza being forced to become part of Egypt - to abandon its weapons and link with the Egyptian economy - is perhaps the only sustainable hope for this tiny, tragic slip of land." (Close combat: conflict enters danger zone, 5/1/09) That's right, forget all about a Palestinian state, forget all about Palestinian national rights ("The UN is not the solution," asserts Lyons), Israel needs some "relief" from the blowback consequent on its own criminal behaviour as Gaza's serial raider/invader (55, 56, 67, o6, 08, 09), occupier (56-57, 67-05), and jailer (05-09), so "the only sustainable hope" for Palestinians in Gaza is to become - Egyptians!
[*Lyons recently succeeded the unlamented Martin Chulov, who now appears to be working for the UK Guardian. Of Lyons, Nick Cater, editor of The Weekend Australian, said in a letter to The Australian Jewish News (28/9/07) that he "is one of the most experienced and accomplished journalists in Australia." Enough said.]
Lyons is faithfully channelling US neocon John Bolton (former US ambassador to the UN 2005-2006 & senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute), on the desirability of a so-called three-state solution to Israel's Palestine problem: "War in the Gaza Strip demonstrates yet again that the current governance paradigm for the Palestinian people has failed," writes Bolton, "Terrorists financed and supplied by Iran control Gaza; the Palestinian Authority is broken, probably irretrievably; and economic development is stalled in Gaza and the West Bank... Let's start by recognizing that trying to create a Palestinian Authority from the old PLO has failed and that any two-state solution based on the PA is stillborn. Hamas has killed the idea... Instead we should look to a 'three-state' approach, where Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank in some configuration reverts to Jordanian sovereignty... Without a larger Egyptian role, Gaza will not, and perhaps cannot, achieve the minimal stability necessary for economic development. Moreover, connecting Gaza to a real economy, rather than a fictional 'Palestinian economy', is the quickest concrete way to improve the lives of Gaza's ordinary citizens." (The three-state option, washingtonpost.com, 5/1/09)
The fact is that the US-financed and supplied terror state Israel, with its metastisizing terrorist infrastructure in the occupied West Bank, never seriously entertained the prospect of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state. Moreover, to pretend, as Lyons and Bolton do, that said terror state, currently engaged in both the economic strangulation of Gaza and the razing of its civic institutions, is not the key impediment to the formation of a "real economy" there, is simply howling bloody nonsense.
We're all familiar with the old Zionist propaganda Palestine-is-Jordan trope. Now it looks like we've got another to deal with: Gaza-is-Egypt. Is there no end to Zionist creativity?
Postscript: Lyons is at it again in today's Australian: "Two men hold the key to halting the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza - French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak... The main card Mr Sarkozy can play is to pressure Mr Assad to force Hamas... to change its behaviour in Gaza... The second card he can play is to convince Mr Mubarak that Egypt embraces Gaza, at least economically, by allowing trade, and using labour from Gaza for its businesses to try to lift the living standards of Gaza." (Sarkozy & Barak hold key) Anyone care to hazard a guess as to what this "distinguished journalist" means by his final clause?
This Lyons is a worry on another score. Israel's Daleks in Gaza are wading through the blood of hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children, yet Lyon's front page report (Hamas terror: every Jewish child now a target) manages to make Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Az-Zahhar's "bloodcurdling" warning that the Israelis "have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine" the real story. Bizarre!
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Bulls in Rut
"The generals were in their 40s, 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 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." (1967, Tom Segev, p 296)
"Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." (Moshe Dayan)
Israel never, repeat never, starts wars. It is the most peace-loving country on the planet. Its bulging arsenal is basically for show, wheeled out only when the Arabs force their hand. Which they're always doing, of course. It's always warmongering Arabs, never peaceloving Israelis, who start wars. Those who read Murdoch fishwrapper, such as The Australian, know this. This is because the hordes of Zionist propagandists that pullulate on its pages have said it, over and over again, of every Israeli blitzkreig from 1948 to 2006. And they're still at it. Here's their Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov (No price too high for Israel to bring home its soldiers, 19/7/08) laying it on with the proverbial trowel over who was responsible for the 33-Day War against Lebanon in 2006:-
"Kuntar... has been recast as a resistance hero; a man in whose name Hezbollah was prepared to go to war... "
"Those who embraced Kuntar... would find it difficult to criticise the decision to force war on Lebanon... "
"Even before the war he sparked with Israel in 2006, Nasrallah... "
Let's see if this particular talking point agrees with the latest (2008) account of the war by Israeli journalists (Haaretz) Amos Harel and Ami Issacharoff - 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah & the War in Lebanon? The excerpts below come from Chapter 5 - Going to War.
"At 10:15 AM on Wednesday, July 12, 2006, Hezbollah television station Al-Manar reported a successful 'kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers... We've kept our promise to free our prisoners'. In interviews on Arab satellite TV stations, Hezbollah spokesmen stated that the organization did its natural duty to free Lebanese prisoners and was interested in completing a new comprehensive prisoner exchange... At 12:50 that afternoon [Israeli PM Ehud] Olmert held a joint press conference with his [visiting] Japanese guest [PM Koizumi]. Koizumi asked that Israel respond with restraint to Hezbollah's latest provocation and weigh the consequences. Olmert, however, took an entirely different approach: 'The events of this morning cannot be considered a terrorist strike; they are the acts of a sovereign state that has attacked Israel without cause. The Lebanese government, which Hezbollah is part of, is trying to upset regional stability... We will not give in to blackmail or negotiate with terrorists on any aspect of the lives of IDF soldiers'. Olmert also stated... the Israeli response would be 'thundering'.
"[He] wanted to move quickly, on the assumption that the Hezbollah attack offered him a 'window of opportunity' to receive international support for a tough Israeli response. When Sharon was prime minister, senior IDF officers on more than one occasion tried to curb his anger and postpone impulsive decisions. This time, however, the chief of staff was no less bullish than the prime minister. Olmert's advisors claim that no one broached the question of whether to respond. 'It was clear to all of us that we had to respond', they say. The nature of the response was rooted in the decisions that had been made in March 2006, when a basket of targets had been approved. In previous discussions, all the security agencies had recommended a major military operation in the event of another kidnapping attempt..'."
"As at the government meeting... several of the senior [security] officers [at a meeting with defence minister Amir Peretz] seemed to be competing to see who could come up with the most far-reaching proposals and gutsy declarations, while the chief of staff orchestrated the proceedings. Dan Halutz insisted that the incident had to be seen 'as a watershed in the Israeli-Lebanese dialogue' and that targets linked to the Lebanese government had to be hit hard... 'They are to blame', he asserted... At the end of the meeting... IDF spokeswoman Brigadier General Miri Regev briefed reporters that the chief of staff had stated that Israel 'had to put Lebanon back 20 years'... Halutz came up with the idea of attacking the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon as Israel's main response to the kidnapping... 'We have to put out all the lights in Lebanon. We can shut off their electricity for a year, damage at a cost of billions'...
"At 5:00 pm, [Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah held a press conference... 'The only way of returning [the 2 Israeli soldiers] is through indirect negotiations for a prisoner exchange', he said, adding that the operation had been 5 months in the planning. 'We surprised no one. We've been saying for a year that we'd kidnap Israeli soldiers... in order to bring about the release of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners... The prisoners will be returned and we are prepared for a period of quiet, but we are also ready for confrontation. If [you] want confrontation, get ready for some surprises', he threatened.
"In hindsight, Nasrallah's goading words sound like a warning that Israel's leaders should have paid closer attention to. But they also illustrate a missed opportunity on the part of Hezbollah's leadership. Ironically, the person who boasted that he knew how to read the Israelis like the palm of his hand did not dream that their response to the kidnapping would be so devastating. According to Professor Eyal Susser of Tel Aviv University, Nasrallah saw the abduction as a logical move. 'He gambled. Israel was the side that changed the game rules. Nasrallah would have been happy to relinquish the pleasure, but he went to war with his head held high'.
"A Western diplomat posted to Beirut in this period claims that Nasrallah did not forsee war. 'Not even in his worst nightmare. Hezbollah's leaders envisioned a medium-intensity confrontation: heavy shelling for a week immediately followed by negotiations. They believed that the abduction would strengthen their position in Lebanon's political arena... Another Western diplomat holds that Nasrallah's mistake was understandable: 'I know of no state other than Israel that would go to war because of 2 kidnapped soldiers'." (pp 75-84)
Clearly, starting wars is Israel's prerogative.
"Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." (Moshe Dayan)
Israel never, repeat never, starts wars. It is the most peace-loving country on the planet. Its bulging arsenal is basically for show, wheeled out only when the Arabs force their hand. Which they're always doing, of course. It's always warmongering Arabs, never peaceloving Israelis, who start wars. Those who read Murdoch fishwrapper, such as The Australian, know this. This is because the hordes of Zionist propagandists that pullulate on its pages have said it, over and over again, of every Israeli blitzkreig from 1948 to 2006. And they're still at it. Here's their Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov (No price too high for Israel to bring home its soldiers, 19/7/08) laying it on with the proverbial trowel over who was responsible for the 33-Day War against Lebanon in 2006:-
"Kuntar... has been recast as a resistance hero; a man in whose name Hezbollah was prepared to go to war... "
"Those who embraced Kuntar... would find it difficult to criticise the decision to force war on Lebanon... "
"Even before the war he sparked with Israel in 2006, Nasrallah... "
Let's see if this particular talking point agrees with the latest (2008) account of the war by Israeli journalists (Haaretz) Amos Harel and Ami Issacharoff - 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah & the War in Lebanon? The excerpts below come from Chapter 5 - Going to War.
"At 10:15 AM on Wednesday, July 12, 2006, Hezbollah television station Al-Manar reported a successful 'kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers... We've kept our promise to free our prisoners'. In interviews on Arab satellite TV stations, Hezbollah spokesmen stated that the organization did its natural duty to free Lebanese prisoners and was interested in completing a new comprehensive prisoner exchange... At 12:50 that afternoon [Israeli PM Ehud] Olmert held a joint press conference with his [visiting] Japanese guest [PM Koizumi]. Koizumi asked that Israel respond with restraint to Hezbollah's latest provocation and weigh the consequences. Olmert, however, took an entirely different approach: 'The events of this morning cannot be considered a terrorist strike; they are the acts of a sovereign state that has attacked Israel without cause. The Lebanese government, which Hezbollah is part of, is trying to upset regional stability... We will not give in to blackmail or negotiate with terrorists on any aspect of the lives of IDF soldiers'. Olmert also stated... the Israeli response would be 'thundering'.
"[He] wanted to move quickly, on the assumption that the Hezbollah attack offered him a 'window of opportunity' to receive international support for a tough Israeli response. When Sharon was prime minister, senior IDF officers on more than one occasion tried to curb his anger and postpone impulsive decisions. This time, however, the chief of staff was no less bullish than the prime minister. Olmert's advisors claim that no one broached the question of whether to respond. 'It was clear to all of us that we had to respond', they say. The nature of the response was rooted in the decisions that had been made in March 2006, when a basket of targets had been approved. In previous discussions, all the security agencies had recommended a major military operation in the event of another kidnapping attempt..'."
"As at the government meeting... several of the senior [security] officers [at a meeting with defence minister Amir Peretz] seemed to be competing to see who could come up with the most far-reaching proposals and gutsy declarations, while the chief of staff orchestrated the proceedings. Dan Halutz insisted that the incident had to be seen 'as a watershed in the Israeli-Lebanese dialogue' and that targets linked to the Lebanese government had to be hit hard... 'They are to blame', he asserted... At the end of the meeting... IDF spokeswoman Brigadier General Miri Regev briefed reporters that the chief of staff had stated that Israel 'had to put Lebanon back 20 years'... Halutz came up with the idea of attacking the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon as Israel's main response to the kidnapping... 'We have to put out all the lights in Lebanon. We can shut off their electricity for a year, damage at a cost of billions'...
"At 5:00 pm, [Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah held a press conference... 'The only way of returning [the 2 Israeli soldiers] is through indirect negotiations for a prisoner exchange', he said, adding that the operation had been 5 months in the planning. 'We surprised no one. We've been saying for a year that we'd kidnap Israeli soldiers... in order to bring about the release of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners... The prisoners will be returned and we are prepared for a period of quiet, but we are also ready for confrontation. If [you] want confrontation, get ready for some surprises', he threatened.
"In hindsight, Nasrallah's goading words sound like a warning that Israel's leaders should have paid closer attention to. But they also illustrate a missed opportunity on the part of Hezbollah's leadership. Ironically, the person who boasted that he knew how to read the Israelis like the palm of his hand did not dream that their response to the kidnapping would be so devastating. According to Professor Eyal Susser of Tel Aviv University, Nasrallah saw the abduction as a logical move. 'He gambled. Israel was the side that changed the game rules. Nasrallah would have been happy to relinquish the pleasure, but he went to war with his head held high'.
"A Western diplomat posted to Beirut in this period claims that Nasrallah did not forsee war. 'Not even in his worst nightmare. Hezbollah's leaders envisioned a medium-intensity confrontation: heavy shelling for a week immediately followed by negotiations. They believed that the abduction would strengthen their position in Lebanon's political arena... Another Western diplomat holds that Nasrallah's mistake was understandable: 'I know of no state other than Israel that would go to war because of 2 kidnapped soldiers'." (pp 75-84)
Clearly, starting wars is Israel's prerogative.
Monday, July 21, 2008
The 'Motiveless Malignancy' of Samir Quntar
The corporate media, especially the Murdoch branch, thrives on colonial delusions. Take the recent Israeli-Hezbollah prisoner swap. The overwhelmingly pro-Israel reportage and opinion focused almost exclusively on the figure of the demonic native Samir Quntar.
To adapt Frantz Fanon, Quntar is "insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil. He is the corrosive element, destroying all that comes near him; he is the deforming element disfiguring all that has to do with beauty or morality; he is the depository of malificent powers, the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces":
"Kuntar was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Front squad that infiltrated northern Israel by sea on April 22, 1979. In the middle of the night they broke into a residential building, taking Danny Haran and his 4-year old daughter Einat hostage as the rest of the family hid. When they arrived at the seashore, Kuntar made little Einat watch as he shot her father at close range, then murdered her by smashing her head against a rock with his rifle butt. Meanwhile, Haran's wife Smadar, who had hidden in a closet with their 2-year old toddler Yael, accidentally suffocated the child while trying to stifle her cries and preventing Kuntar from finding them. Kuntar bears responsibility for this death as well. This is the child-killer that Hezbollah is greeting with cheers and parades. This is the brutal murderer whose release will be called a victory by extremists throughout the region." (Prisoner deal that had to be made, Dor Shapira, The Australian, 17/7/08)
"Samir Kuntar was sentenced to 3 life terms for killing an Israeli man in front of his 4-year old daughter, then killing the little girl by smashing her skull with his rifle butt." (Editorial, The Australian, 18/7/08)
"Kuntar shot an Israeli man in front of his 4-year old daughter, then killed the little girl by smashing her head with his rifle butt. Kuntar is the kind of disturbed individual who gravitates to violent extremist groups." (Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald, 18/7/08)
"... Samir Kuntar the face of Israeli nightmares for almost 30 years. Kuntar was the type of figure mothers across the country - but especially in the north - had warned their children about. In 1979, he had set out in a boat from Lebanon and rowed ashore in Nahariya, 15 km south of the border, with a gang of Palestinians who had aimed to kidnap, or kill, the first Jews they found. Kuntar was convicted of killing first a policeman, then a father and his 4-year old daughter. The slain man's 2nd daughter, aged 2, was inadvertently smothered by her mother minutes later as the terrified pair hid in an attic... Kuntar, by any measure a child-killer..." (No price too high for Israel to bring home its soldiers, Martin Chulov, The Australian, 19/7/08)
What a beast! - if you automatically believe the Israelis, that is. And believing the Israelis is the way of the corporate media in this country. (The SMH may mock the "monochromatic opinion pages" [Editorial, 19/7/07] of The Australian, but when it comes to their own editorials on the Middle East conflict, they could just as easily have been written by The Australian's foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan: "Israel's armed forces are its pride, the guarantor of the nation's existence and the symbol of a people's determination never again to be herded to their doom by oppressors." (Snipping at Samson, 18/7/08)
The only deviation from the official story I could find was this from the SMH, lifted from The New York Times: "At his 1980 trial Kuntar said Haran had been killed by Israeli soldiers' bullets, according to the court transcripts published this week by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. He testified he had been injured, had passed out and not seen what happened to the child. Witnesses contradict his story." (Many set to welcome 'reviled' prisoner, 17/7/08)
Yediot Aharonat's account (The Kuntar File, Exposed by Nir Gontarz, 14/7/08) seems to have the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs' seal of approval, appearing on its website (http://www.mfa.gov.il/). Classified for almost 30 years, says Yediot Aharonat, it was authorized for publication on 13/7/08 at the newspaper's request.
Yediot Aharonot reports that Quntar initially "confessed that he had bludgeoned Einat to death with the butt of his rifle. Later, however, when testifying in court, Kuntar denied the charges... 'I was hit by 5 bullets. Then Haran got to his feet and signaled to the army forces with his hand to stop them from firing. He was hit by the bullets being shot at him by the soldiers... I lost a lot of blood and passed out. I didn't know what else was happening with me until I woke up in the morning and found myself in the military's hands. I didn't hurt the girl at all and I didn't see how she met her death'. However, in court, prosecution witness no. 4 testified that he saw Danny Haran stand up and shout, 'Cease your fire, don't shoot. My little girl is here'. Immediately thereafter he saw Danny shot by Kuntar. Testimony was also given in court by a doctor who ruled that Einat's death had been caused by a direct blow with a blunt instrument, something like a stick or a rifle butt... 'Kuntar went over to Einat Haran and hit her head twice with the butt of his rifle, with the intent of killing her', wrote the judges in their verdict... As a result of the blows, Einat suffered skull fractures and fatal brain damage causing her death. They murdered the hostages - a helpless father and daughter, in cold blood'. They wrote in the sentence, 'By these acts the defendants reached an all-time moral low... an unparalleled satanic act... the punishments we are about to impose on the defendants cannot begin to match the brutality of their actions... "
End of story? Not quite. Before you abandon your critical faculties entirely, consider the following data about what happens to Palestinians when they enter the Kafkaesque world of Israeli 'justice':-
"His name is Muhammad Ali Khalil Hasan... There are 2 charge-sheets against him, one at Nablus and the other at Lydda. But the prosecutor comforted me: 'If he gets a life term in Lydda, that'll be enough for us and we won't put him on trial at Nablus...'
"He is an educated man. The first time he had been arrested was 2 years before. At that time he was badly beaten, so much so that he could hardly move, but he was later released for lack of proof. The second time he was arrested was on 22 July 1971, charged with being the leader of a large Fatah group... His mother was arrested with him. He told me later that his interrogators started beating him in her presence, and told her that if she didn't say everything she knew about her son, they would go on beating him. His poor mother, who really did not know anything, denied any knowledge about her son. She was arrested, held at the Nablus prison, and received a very light sentence at the trial because of her age. She asked me to help her son. I explained to her that it was an almost hopeless case. She understood.
"Muhammad talked about his family and about himself: he was a teacher and the director of an UNRWA school in Nablus. He had brothers in various Arab countries, who in spite of being refugees like him, had acquired academic education. One of his brothers had come to Nablus after the [1967] war and had been killed in the street by Israeli soldiers; this had left a deep impression in Muhammad: 'He was a civilian. He had come to his home and family. Why did they kill him?'
"To his judges in Lydda he said: 'It was not I who came to you in Tel-Aviv, but you who came to me in Nablus. So who should be trying whom?' He was transferred to the Ramleh prison. All those who act proudly during their trial pay the price for it. Whoever dares to express his credo during trial, talking of his homeland, of the Palestinians, of the revolution, gets his due in prison when the sentence is pronounced.
"When I visited him at the Ramleh prison, he told me that he had been put in solitary confinement for 31 days, and for many months his mother had not been allowed to visit him. It is hard for the patriot to learn 'good manners'." (With My Own Eyes: Israel & the Occupied Territories 1967-1973, Felicia Langer, 1975, p 93)
"The Landau Commission [1987] report [into the General Security Services] confirmed what had long been alleged by Palestinian detainees, their Palestinian and Israeli lawyers, and local human rights organizations: that GSS agents had used violent interrogation methods routinely on Palestinian detainees since at least 1971 and that they had routinely lied about such practices when confessions were challenged in court on the grounds that they had been coerced." (Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank & Gaza, Lisa Hajjar, 2005, p 70)
"It is clear that this is not a natural and ordinary court system, but some solution that the military administration found for the purpose of enforcing the occupation regime. The job that is done there is not purely jurisdictional. In fact, the situation in the military court in Gaza does not look like something of this world. Hundreds of families are outside, dozens of prisoners are inside, most very young. The impression is that they have lost faith in the system and do not even try to defend themselves. They confess to everything. The defense counsels, who are in many cases pathetic characters, also accept the situation and act, in fact, as mediators for the purpose of punishment. I found there a total symbiosis between the prosecution, the judges and the lawyers, while the accused are at the side. And everything is taking place in stoic agreement." (Israeli Judge Aryeh Cox, quoted in Courting Conflict, p 102)
"Another advantage prosecutors enjoy is the tendency of judges to favour the testimony of their witnesses over those of the defense... [A] Gazan lawyer told of a soldier who testified in a case against one of his clients, saying he had witnessed the man throwing stones at 9:15 am in Jabalya refugee camp. The client was found guilty. Several days later, the same soldier testified against another client, reporting that he had seen the man throwing stones at 9.30 am (on the same day as the earlier case) in Rafah refugee camp. The lawyer questioned the soldier about how long it would take to get from Jabalya to Rafah, to which the soldier responded that the trip would take about 45'... The lawyer then asked the judge to dismiss this case because the soldier could not possibly have been in both places as he had testified. Rather than acknowledging that the soldier was perjuring himself in at least one of the cases, the judge ordered that the lawyer be thrown out of court because his line of questioning had insulted the soldier." (ibid pp 112-113)
"Israel's military court system for Palestinian suspects in the West Bank produces almost automatic convictions, an Israeli human rights group charged Sunday. The group, Yesh Din, said in a new report that in 2006 more than 99.7% of those accused were convicted, 95% in plea bargains." (Report: Israeli military courts automatically convict Palestinians, Haaretz, 6/1/08)
Whatever the truth in this matter, there was no avoiding the media's exclusive focus on Israeli suffering. The only deaths that matter are Israeli deaths. Quntar, it seems, was just one more monster from the Dark Side, aka Lebanon, where death is a way of life. His sole purpose was to afflict Jews (or, in the words of the Herald editorialist, an "oppressor" bent on herding Jews to their "doom"). The one reference in all the coverage I could find which might suggest that another side to the story were these 2 sentences in the Herald: "In 1978 Kuntar went to the Israel-Lebanon border after Israel invaded southern Lebanon. His stepmother and brother said he returned deeply affected by the deaths he witnessed." (Many set to welcome 'reviled' prisoner, 17/7/08) What was it that so affected Quntar? Consider the following testimonies:-
"It may be pertinent... to mention that provocative as the Palestinians had often been on the Lebanese border, it was Israel that had, as it were, called the shots there since the border became a 'hot' one in 1968. According to the tally of the Lebanese army (before its disintegration in 1976), Israeli violations of Lebanese territory in the period 1968-1974 occurred at the rate of 1.4 violations per day. This increased to 7 violations per day during 1974-75. In the 8 months' period between 1 January 1975 and 21 August 1975 (when the Lebanese army's tally ended), the following Israeli violations were recorded: air space 1,101; territorial waters 215; artillery shellings 2,180; machine-gun firing 303; air and naval raids 40; temporary installation inside Lebanese territory 193; road building 3; land incursions 151. This averages out to 17 violations per day." (Conflict & Violence in Lebanon: Confrontation in the Middle East, Walid Khalidi, 1979, p 124)
"London Guardian correspondent Irene Beeson reports that '150 or more towns and villages in South Lebanon... have been repeatedly savaged by the Israeli armed forces since 1968'. She describes the history of the village of Khiyam, bombed from 1968. By the time Israel invaded 10 years later, only 32 of its 30,000 inhabitants remained. 'They were massacred in cold blood' by the Haddad forces that Israel had established in the south... By October 1977 it was estimated that the total number of refugees from the south (mostly impoverished Shiite Lebanese Muslims) had reached 300,000." (The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians, Noam Chomsky, 1983, p 191)
"Thousands of people are now on the move northwards to Beirut... displaced by what is simply a campaign of military terror conducted against them by the Israeli army, navy and airforce and its Lebanese Christian allies. People are being bombed, rocketed, shelled and shot all over South Lebanon but their sufferings have been almost entirely ignored... The Israelis in fact seem to have the same attitude towards the Arabs of South Lebanon as Hopalong Cassidy did towards Indians - namely that the only good ones are dead ones. Over the years I have seen dozens of dead women and children killed by Israeli attacks in the south - and very few corpses of young men, let alone young men in the green fatigues that Palestinian militia groups now almost always wear." (Where bombs still fall, Christopher Bourne, New Statesman, 3/8/79)
As Ben Hecht once said, "Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock." But just when you think it couldn't get worse, you get the letter writers from Planet Zion:-
Notwithstanding 197 nameless (as far as the corporate press is concerned) Arab bodies, Howard Hilton of Alexandria, NSW had this to say: "Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah was the condition of the prisoners. The Palestinian prisoners were all alive and healthy, the 2 Israelis were dead. No matter one's view of this conflict, the choice of one's captors would be a no-brainer." (The Australian, 19/7/08)
Under the Orwellian heading "The truth about Kuntar", Dov Midalia of Bondi Junction, NSW thought he'd outdo The Australian in grand guignol: "After finding his way into a sleepy Israeli town, Kuntar killed the policeman, broke into an apartment and took the man and his daughter at gunpoint to a beach. Here, in full view of eyewitnesses, he shot and then drowned the man in front of his little girl, and then picked her up, swung her head against the rocks and smashed her skull in with his rifle-butt." (The Australian, 21/7/08) Apparently the witnesses were so transfixed by Quntar's murderous acrobatics they forgot to shoot.
Of course, while we're in the late 70s, I guess no one out there in mass media land would be interested in the 'motiveless malignancy' of Israeli Lieutenant P, would they? Lt P? Well, he and his mates in the Israeli army invaded south Lebanon in 1978, with the results you see above. He and two corporals, feeling a tad bored, "decided to go on a man-hunting (accepted Israeli army jargon) expedition and brought back 4 villagers including a youth of 16. The 4 were put in separate rooms and their hands and feet were bound with nylon cords. Lieutenant P then tortured them before strangling them with the cord, and the bodies were disposed of in a nearby well." (Furore in Israel over army murders, The Middle East, September 1979)
Initially sentenced to 8 years in the clink, Lt P had his sentence reduced by Israeli Chief of Staff General Raphael Eitan to 2 years.
To adapt Frantz Fanon, Quntar is "insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil. He is the corrosive element, destroying all that comes near him; he is the deforming element disfiguring all that has to do with beauty or morality; he is the depository of malificent powers, the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces":
"Kuntar was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Front squad that infiltrated northern Israel by sea on April 22, 1979. In the middle of the night they broke into a residential building, taking Danny Haran and his 4-year old daughter Einat hostage as the rest of the family hid. When they arrived at the seashore, Kuntar made little Einat watch as he shot her father at close range, then murdered her by smashing her head against a rock with his rifle butt. Meanwhile, Haran's wife Smadar, who had hidden in a closet with their 2-year old toddler Yael, accidentally suffocated the child while trying to stifle her cries and preventing Kuntar from finding them. Kuntar bears responsibility for this death as well. This is the child-killer that Hezbollah is greeting with cheers and parades. This is the brutal murderer whose release will be called a victory by extremists throughout the region." (Prisoner deal that had to be made, Dor Shapira, The Australian, 17/7/08)
"Samir Kuntar was sentenced to 3 life terms for killing an Israeli man in front of his 4-year old daughter, then killing the little girl by smashing her skull with his rifle butt." (Editorial, The Australian, 18/7/08)
"Kuntar shot an Israeli man in front of his 4-year old daughter, then killed the little girl by smashing her head with his rifle butt. Kuntar is the kind of disturbed individual who gravitates to violent extremist groups." (Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald, 18/7/08)
"... Samir Kuntar the face of Israeli nightmares for almost 30 years. Kuntar was the type of figure mothers across the country - but especially in the north - had warned their children about. In 1979, he had set out in a boat from Lebanon and rowed ashore in Nahariya, 15 km south of the border, with a gang of Palestinians who had aimed to kidnap, or kill, the first Jews they found. Kuntar was convicted of killing first a policeman, then a father and his 4-year old daughter. The slain man's 2nd daughter, aged 2, was inadvertently smothered by her mother minutes later as the terrified pair hid in an attic... Kuntar, by any measure a child-killer..." (No price too high for Israel to bring home its soldiers, Martin Chulov, The Australian, 19/7/08)
What a beast! - if you automatically believe the Israelis, that is. And believing the Israelis is the way of the corporate media in this country. (The SMH may mock the "monochromatic opinion pages" [Editorial, 19/7/07] of The Australian, but when it comes to their own editorials on the Middle East conflict, they could just as easily have been written by The Australian's foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan: "Israel's armed forces are its pride, the guarantor of the nation's existence and the symbol of a people's determination never again to be herded to their doom by oppressors." (Snipping at Samson, 18/7/08)
The only deviation from the official story I could find was this from the SMH, lifted from The New York Times: "At his 1980 trial Kuntar said Haran had been killed by Israeli soldiers' bullets, according to the court transcripts published this week by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. He testified he had been injured, had passed out and not seen what happened to the child. Witnesses contradict his story." (Many set to welcome 'reviled' prisoner, 17/7/08)
Yediot Aharonat's account (The Kuntar File, Exposed by Nir Gontarz, 14/7/08) seems to have the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs' seal of approval, appearing on its website (http://www.mfa.gov.il/). Classified for almost 30 years, says Yediot Aharonat, it was authorized for publication on 13/7/08 at the newspaper's request.
Yediot Aharonot reports that Quntar initially "confessed that he had bludgeoned Einat to death with the butt of his rifle. Later, however, when testifying in court, Kuntar denied the charges... 'I was hit by 5 bullets. Then Haran got to his feet and signaled to the army forces with his hand to stop them from firing. He was hit by the bullets being shot at him by the soldiers... I lost a lot of blood and passed out. I didn't know what else was happening with me until I woke up in the morning and found myself in the military's hands. I didn't hurt the girl at all and I didn't see how she met her death'. However, in court, prosecution witness no. 4 testified that he saw Danny Haran stand up and shout, 'Cease your fire, don't shoot. My little girl is here'. Immediately thereafter he saw Danny shot by Kuntar. Testimony was also given in court by a doctor who ruled that Einat's death had been caused by a direct blow with a blunt instrument, something like a stick or a rifle butt... 'Kuntar went over to Einat Haran and hit her head twice with the butt of his rifle, with the intent of killing her', wrote the judges in their verdict... As a result of the blows, Einat suffered skull fractures and fatal brain damage causing her death. They murdered the hostages - a helpless father and daughter, in cold blood'. They wrote in the sentence, 'By these acts the defendants reached an all-time moral low... an unparalleled satanic act... the punishments we are about to impose on the defendants cannot begin to match the brutality of their actions... "
End of story? Not quite. Before you abandon your critical faculties entirely, consider the following data about what happens to Palestinians when they enter the Kafkaesque world of Israeli 'justice':-
"His name is Muhammad Ali Khalil Hasan... There are 2 charge-sheets against him, one at Nablus and the other at Lydda. But the prosecutor comforted me: 'If he gets a life term in Lydda, that'll be enough for us and we won't put him on trial at Nablus...'
"He is an educated man. The first time he had been arrested was 2 years before. At that time he was badly beaten, so much so that he could hardly move, but he was later released for lack of proof. The second time he was arrested was on 22 July 1971, charged with being the leader of a large Fatah group... His mother was arrested with him. He told me later that his interrogators started beating him in her presence, and told her that if she didn't say everything she knew about her son, they would go on beating him. His poor mother, who really did not know anything, denied any knowledge about her son. She was arrested, held at the Nablus prison, and received a very light sentence at the trial because of her age. She asked me to help her son. I explained to her that it was an almost hopeless case. She understood.
"Muhammad talked about his family and about himself: he was a teacher and the director of an UNRWA school in Nablus. He had brothers in various Arab countries, who in spite of being refugees like him, had acquired academic education. One of his brothers had come to Nablus after the [1967] war and had been killed in the street by Israeli soldiers; this had left a deep impression in Muhammad: 'He was a civilian. He had come to his home and family. Why did they kill him?'
"To his judges in Lydda he said: 'It was not I who came to you in Tel-Aviv, but you who came to me in Nablus. So who should be trying whom?' He was transferred to the Ramleh prison. All those who act proudly during their trial pay the price for it. Whoever dares to express his credo during trial, talking of his homeland, of the Palestinians, of the revolution, gets his due in prison when the sentence is pronounced.
"When I visited him at the Ramleh prison, he told me that he had been put in solitary confinement for 31 days, and for many months his mother had not been allowed to visit him. It is hard for the patriot to learn 'good manners'." (With My Own Eyes: Israel & the Occupied Territories 1967-1973, Felicia Langer, 1975, p 93)
"The Landau Commission [1987] report [into the General Security Services] confirmed what had long been alleged by Palestinian detainees, their Palestinian and Israeli lawyers, and local human rights organizations: that GSS agents had used violent interrogation methods routinely on Palestinian detainees since at least 1971 and that they had routinely lied about such practices when confessions were challenged in court on the grounds that they had been coerced." (Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank & Gaza, Lisa Hajjar, 2005, p 70)
"It is clear that this is not a natural and ordinary court system, but some solution that the military administration found for the purpose of enforcing the occupation regime. The job that is done there is not purely jurisdictional. In fact, the situation in the military court in Gaza does not look like something of this world. Hundreds of families are outside, dozens of prisoners are inside, most very young. The impression is that they have lost faith in the system and do not even try to defend themselves. They confess to everything. The defense counsels, who are in many cases pathetic characters, also accept the situation and act, in fact, as mediators for the purpose of punishment. I found there a total symbiosis between the prosecution, the judges and the lawyers, while the accused are at the side. And everything is taking place in stoic agreement." (Israeli Judge Aryeh Cox, quoted in Courting Conflict, p 102)
"Another advantage prosecutors enjoy is the tendency of judges to favour the testimony of their witnesses over those of the defense... [A] Gazan lawyer told of a soldier who testified in a case against one of his clients, saying he had witnessed the man throwing stones at 9:15 am in Jabalya refugee camp. The client was found guilty. Several days later, the same soldier testified against another client, reporting that he had seen the man throwing stones at 9.30 am (on the same day as the earlier case) in Rafah refugee camp. The lawyer questioned the soldier about how long it would take to get from Jabalya to Rafah, to which the soldier responded that the trip would take about 45'... The lawyer then asked the judge to dismiss this case because the soldier could not possibly have been in both places as he had testified. Rather than acknowledging that the soldier was perjuring himself in at least one of the cases, the judge ordered that the lawyer be thrown out of court because his line of questioning had insulted the soldier." (ibid pp 112-113)
"Israel's military court system for Palestinian suspects in the West Bank produces almost automatic convictions, an Israeli human rights group charged Sunday. The group, Yesh Din, said in a new report that in 2006 more than 99.7% of those accused were convicted, 95% in plea bargains." (Report: Israeli military courts automatically convict Palestinians, Haaretz, 6/1/08)
Whatever the truth in this matter, there was no avoiding the media's exclusive focus on Israeli suffering. The only deaths that matter are Israeli deaths. Quntar, it seems, was just one more monster from the Dark Side, aka Lebanon, where death is a way of life. His sole purpose was to afflict Jews (or, in the words of the Herald editorialist, an "oppressor" bent on herding Jews to their "doom"). The one reference in all the coverage I could find which might suggest that another side to the story were these 2 sentences in the Herald: "In 1978 Kuntar went to the Israel-Lebanon border after Israel invaded southern Lebanon. His stepmother and brother said he returned deeply affected by the deaths he witnessed." (Many set to welcome 'reviled' prisoner, 17/7/08) What was it that so affected Quntar? Consider the following testimonies:-
"It may be pertinent... to mention that provocative as the Palestinians had often been on the Lebanese border, it was Israel that had, as it were, called the shots there since the border became a 'hot' one in 1968. According to the tally of the Lebanese army (before its disintegration in 1976), Israeli violations of Lebanese territory in the period 1968-1974 occurred at the rate of 1.4 violations per day. This increased to 7 violations per day during 1974-75. In the 8 months' period between 1 January 1975 and 21 August 1975 (when the Lebanese army's tally ended), the following Israeli violations were recorded: air space 1,101; territorial waters 215; artillery shellings 2,180; machine-gun firing 303; air and naval raids 40; temporary installation inside Lebanese territory 193; road building 3; land incursions 151. This averages out to 17 violations per day." (Conflict & Violence in Lebanon: Confrontation in the Middle East, Walid Khalidi, 1979, p 124)
"London Guardian correspondent Irene Beeson reports that '150 or more towns and villages in South Lebanon... have been repeatedly savaged by the Israeli armed forces since 1968'. She describes the history of the village of Khiyam, bombed from 1968. By the time Israel invaded 10 years later, only 32 of its 30,000 inhabitants remained. 'They were massacred in cold blood' by the Haddad forces that Israel had established in the south... By October 1977 it was estimated that the total number of refugees from the south (mostly impoverished Shiite Lebanese Muslims) had reached 300,000." (The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians, Noam Chomsky, 1983, p 191)
"Thousands of people are now on the move northwards to Beirut... displaced by what is simply a campaign of military terror conducted against them by the Israeli army, navy and airforce and its Lebanese Christian allies. People are being bombed, rocketed, shelled and shot all over South Lebanon but their sufferings have been almost entirely ignored... The Israelis in fact seem to have the same attitude towards the Arabs of South Lebanon as Hopalong Cassidy did towards Indians - namely that the only good ones are dead ones. Over the years I have seen dozens of dead women and children killed by Israeli attacks in the south - and very few corpses of young men, let alone young men in the green fatigues that Palestinian militia groups now almost always wear." (Where bombs still fall, Christopher Bourne, New Statesman, 3/8/79)
As Ben Hecht once said, "Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock." But just when you think it couldn't get worse, you get the letter writers from Planet Zion:-
Notwithstanding 197 nameless (as far as the corporate press is concerned) Arab bodies, Howard Hilton of Alexandria, NSW had this to say: "Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah was the condition of the prisoners. The Palestinian prisoners were all alive and healthy, the 2 Israelis were dead. No matter one's view of this conflict, the choice of one's captors would be a no-brainer." (The Australian, 19/7/08)
Under the Orwellian heading "The truth about Kuntar", Dov Midalia of Bondi Junction, NSW thought he'd outdo The Australian in grand guignol: "After finding his way into a sleepy Israeli town, Kuntar killed the policeman, broke into an apartment and took the man and his daughter at gunpoint to a beach. Here, in full view of eyewitnesses, he shot and then drowned the man in front of his little girl, and then picked her up, swung her head against the rocks and smashed her skull in with his rifle-butt." (The Australian, 21/7/08) Apparently the witnesses were so transfixed by Quntar's murderous acrobatics they forgot to shoot.
Of course, while we're in the late 70s, I guess no one out there in mass media land would be interested in the 'motiveless malignancy' of Israeli Lieutenant P, would they? Lt P? Well, he and his mates in the Israeli army invaded south Lebanon in 1978, with the results you see above. He and two corporals, feeling a tad bored, "decided to go on a man-hunting (accepted Israeli army jargon) expedition and brought back 4 villagers including a youth of 16. The 4 were put in separate rooms and their hands and feet were bound with nylon cords. Lieutenant P then tortured them before strangling them with the cord, and the bodies were disposed of in a nearby well." (Furore in Israel over army murders, The Middle East, September 1979)
Initially sentenced to 8 years in the clink, Lt P had his sentence reduced by Israeli Chief of Staff General Raphael Eitan to 2 years.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Murdoch's Man in Gaza
In my 17/5/08 post, Murdoch's Man in Beirut, I drew the reader's attention to the hack, ramshackle journalism of The Australian's Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov.
Here are two, more recent examples:-
"The announcement of indirect talks between Syria and Iran [sic], to be brokered by Turkey, did not come as a surprise to Washington... " (Israel's gamble on Syria isolates US, 24/5/08)
And, as our intrepid News Limited journalist picks his way among the smoking ruins and rotting garbage of terror hotspot Hamastan, he makes a truly amaaazing discovery: Gazans are "continuing to blame the Israelis and their allies for the crushing two-year siege." (Gazans stock up as Israel threatens war, 7/6/08)
Here are two, more recent examples:-
"The announcement of indirect talks between Syria and Iran [sic], to be brokered by Turkey, did not come as a surprise to Washington... " (Israel's gamble on Syria isolates US, 24/5/08)
And, as our intrepid News Limited journalist picks his way among the smoking ruins and rotting garbage of terror hotspot Hamastan, he makes a truly amaaazing discovery: Gazans are "continuing to blame the Israelis and their allies for the crushing two-year siege." (Gazans stock up as Israel threatens war, 7/6/08)
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Murdoch's Man in Beirut
Is it possible to work for Murdoch as a Middle East correspondent and produce anything of real value? A purely rhetorical question, of course. However, putting the routine pro-Israel/US framing aside (Hezbollah gunmen "holding the country to ransom"), haven't we at least got a right to expect The Australian's Middle East correspondent to get the basics right? To be on top of the facts, whatever the spin placed on them? To do a modicum of cross-checking? To maybe read through his report before sending it off for publication? I'm talking of course about Martin Chulov, currently 'reporting' on the latest clashes between Lebanese government and opposition forces, and the answer to my questions is apparently 'no'.
Take this report, for example: "Sunday's violence, the worst internal strife in Lebanon for 18 years, came amid reports that several opposition-aligned guerillas had been mutilated as payback for their involvement in earlier attacks. Two men from the pro-Syrian Hezb al-Kulmi faction had one hand and one foot chopped off, allegedly by opposition-aligned factions." (Militias renew violence with attack on village, 13/5/08)
First, with regard to Lebanon's "worst internal strife for 18 years," Chulov seems to have forgotten last year's fighting between the Lebanese Army and Fateh al-Islam militants in Nahr al-Bared camp north of Tripoli, which raged for over 3 months and left around 400 dead (Families return to Lebanon camps, 10/10/07, http://www.bbc.co.uk/).
Second, that "Hezb al-Kulmi faction" is woefully transliterated from the Arabic. His use of incorrectly transliterated Arabic suggests that he's never even heard of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), which begs the question what is he doing reporting on Lebanon? And if he has heard of the SSNP before, is there no-one who can vet his transliteration, which should have read 'Hezb al-Qaumi'.
Third, his talk of 'mutilation'. This seems to be a glancing reference to the worst act of violence to come out of the clashes: a massacre of 13 SSNP members, including an Australian of Lebanese origin (reported in Australia the day before), by gunmen belonging to Saad Hariri's Future Movement in the northern town of Halba. Yet, even though this key event has an Australian angle, Chulov skates over it.
Finally, what is one to make of his nonsensical assertion that "opposition-aligned guerillas" had been mutilated by "opposition-aligned factions"?
And take a look at this report: after reference to Hezbollah "sparking the worst round of civil conflict for 17 years" and again overlooking Nahr al-Bared, Chulov writes that "After earlier indicating it would comply with Hezbollah's demands to overturn two decisions - to sack the opposition-friendly airport security chief and dismantle an independent communications network - the Government said yesterday it would now stand by the moves." (We won't stay on sidelines, warns Lebanese army, 14/5/08)
Let's be clear here. Chulov is telling us that the Lebanese government, after first moving against Hezbollah and then backing down, has now decided to "stand by" its original move. This, of course, was not the case, as this Associated Press report of the same day made clear:
"The US-backed Cabinet on Wednesday reversed measures against the militant Hezbollah movement that set off Lebanon's worst violence since the 1975-90 civil war... Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said the government made a 'courageous' decision to revoke the measures 'in view of the higher national interest'." (Lebanese Cabinet reverses anti-Hezbollah decisions, Katarina Kratovac)
Incidentally, Chulov was back on track by 17/5/08 with "The Government had just given way on two issues that a week earlier it had considered bastions of sovereignty. The first was a move to sack the airport security chief... whose allegiances did not lie with the law-makers. The second was to dismantle a communications network used by Hezbollah to avoid the electronic eavesdroppers of Israel and the West."
And how about this thoroughly misleading final paragraph: "Since the end of the war with Israel in 2006, Hezbollah has demanded a greater say in Lebanese affairs. The elected Government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has attempted to stand firm in the face of the Opposition's bid for power, which has seen 4 government MPs slain and its majority in parliament steadily whittled away."
This can only be understood as an insinuation that Hezbollah itself has been knocking off government MPs. Yet there is no evidence that this is the case and no-one in government ranks is asserting it. Clumsy writing or a deliberate attempt to smear Hezbollah?
Take this report, for example: "Sunday's violence, the worst internal strife in Lebanon for 18 years, came amid reports that several opposition-aligned guerillas had been mutilated as payback for their involvement in earlier attacks. Two men from the pro-Syrian Hezb al-Kulmi faction had one hand and one foot chopped off, allegedly by opposition-aligned factions." (Militias renew violence with attack on village, 13/5/08)
First, with regard to Lebanon's "worst internal strife for 18 years," Chulov seems to have forgotten last year's fighting between the Lebanese Army and Fateh al-Islam militants in Nahr al-Bared camp north of Tripoli, which raged for over 3 months and left around 400 dead (Families return to Lebanon camps, 10/10/07, http://www.bbc.co.uk/).
Second, that "Hezb al-Kulmi faction" is woefully transliterated from the Arabic. His use of incorrectly transliterated Arabic suggests that he's never even heard of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), which begs the question what is he doing reporting on Lebanon? And if he has heard of the SSNP before, is there no-one who can vet his transliteration, which should have read 'Hezb al-Qaumi'.
Third, his talk of 'mutilation'. This seems to be a glancing reference to the worst act of violence to come out of the clashes: a massacre of 13 SSNP members, including an Australian of Lebanese origin (reported in Australia the day before), by gunmen belonging to Saad Hariri's Future Movement in the northern town of Halba. Yet, even though this key event has an Australian angle, Chulov skates over it.
Finally, what is one to make of his nonsensical assertion that "opposition-aligned guerillas" had been mutilated by "opposition-aligned factions"?
And take a look at this report: after reference to Hezbollah "sparking the worst round of civil conflict for 17 years" and again overlooking Nahr al-Bared, Chulov writes that "After earlier indicating it would comply with Hezbollah's demands to overturn two decisions - to sack the opposition-friendly airport security chief and dismantle an independent communications network - the Government said yesterday it would now stand by the moves." (We won't stay on sidelines, warns Lebanese army, 14/5/08)
Let's be clear here. Chulov is telling us that the Lebanese government, after first moving against Hezbollah and then backing down, has now decided to "stand by" its original move. This, of course, was not the case, as this Associated Press report of the same day made clear:
"The US-backed Cabinet on Wednesday reversed measures against the militant Hezbollah movement that set off Lebanon's worst violence since the 1975-90 civil war... Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said the government made a 'courageous' decision to revoke the measures 'in view of the higher national interest'." (Lebanese Cabinet reverses anti-Hezbollah decisions, Katarina Kratovac)
Incidentally, Chulov was back on track by 17/5/08 with "The Government had just given way on two issues that a week earlier it had considered bastions of sovereignty. The first was a move to sack the airport security chief... whose allegiances did not lie with the law-makers. The second was to dismantle a communications network used by Hezbollah to avoid the electronic eavesdroppers of Israel and the West."
And how about this thoroughly misleading final paragraph: "Since the end of the war with Israel in 2006, Hezbollah has demanded a greater say in Lebanese affairs. The elected Government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has attempted to stand firm in the face of the Opposition's bid for power, which has seen 4 government MPs slain and its majority in parliament steadily whittled away."
This can only be understood as an insinuation that Hezbollah itself has been knocking off government MPs. Yet there is no evidence that this is the case and no-one in government ranks is asserting it. Clumsy writing or a deliberate attempt to smear Hezbollah?
Monday, February 18, 2008
Imad Mughniyah: Allegation as Fact
Senior Hezbollah military leader, Imad Mughniyah, was killed in Damascus on 12/2/08 when his vehicle exploded. A persistent Israeli/US charge for many years has been that Iran/Hezbollah were behind the bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, and that Mughniyah had "orchestrated" the attack.
Contrast the different approaches to the allegation by Fairfax and Murdoch:
Fairfax: "Israel blames him for bomb attacks against its embassy and a community centre in Argentina in 1992 and 1994." Israel braces for retaliation after Hezbollah chief killed, Ed O'Loughlin, SMH, 15/2/08
Murdoch: "Mughnieh had been a high profile Israeli target since he led two attacks on Israeli interests in Argentina in 1992 and 1993." Divided Beirut turns out to mark death of slain leaders, Martin Chulov, The Australian, 15/2/08; "In 1993, Mughnieh orchestrated the attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and a later bombing of a Jewish centre in the Argentinian city." Slain terrorist stayed in shadows, Martin Chulov, The Australian, 16/2/08
O'Loughlin merely reports the allegation. Chulov reports the allegation as fact.
[Notice too the discrepancy between O'Loughlin and Chulov when it comes to dates. Predictably, Chulov's dates are wrong. The bombing took place, not in 1993, but 1994. In addition, he gets the year of the earlier bombing of Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires right (1992) in his first report, but wrong (1993) in his second. Where pro-Israel propaganda trumps factual reporting, however, as it generally does in the Murdoch press, screwing up dates is a mere bagatelle.]
The allegation will, of course, continue to be presented as fact in the Murdoch press and myriad other pro-Israel propaganda outlets, especially on the internet. For what it's worth, however, anyone interested in the truth should consult Gareth Porter's 18/1/08 investigation for the The Nation, Bush's Iran/Argentina Terror Frame-Up. Porter's is a model of investigative journalism. The entire article can be accessed at:- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080204/porter
Here is Porter's introduction to whet your appetite:-
"Although nukes and Iraq have been the main focus of the Bush Administration's pressure campaign against Iran, US officials also seek to tar Iran as the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. And Team Bush's latest tactic is to play up a 13-year-old accusation that Iran was responsible for the notorious Buenos Aires bombing that destroyed the city's Jewish Community Center, known as AMIA, killing 86 and injuring 300, in 1994. Unnamed senior Administration officials told the Wall Street Journal January 15 that the bombing in Argentina 'serves as a model for how Tehran has used its overseas embassies and relationship with foreign militant groups, in particular, Hezbollah, to strike at its enemies'.
"This propaganda campaign depends heavily on a decision last November by the General Assembly of Interpol, which voted to put 5 former Iranian officials and a Hezbollah leader [Imad Mughniyeh] on the international police organization's 'red list' for allegedly having planned the July 1994 bombing. But the WSJ reports that it was pressure from the Bush Administration, along with Israeli and Argentine diplomats that secured the Interpol vote. In fact, the Bush Administration's manipulation of the Argentine bombing case is perfectly in line with its long practice of using distorting and manufactured evidence to build a case against its geopolitical enemies.
"After spending several months interviewing officials at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires familiar with the Argentine investigation, the head of the FBI team that assisted it and the most knowledgeable independent Argentine investigator of the case, I found that no real evidence has ever been found to implicate Iran in the bombing. Based on these interviews and the documentary record of the investigation, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the case against Iran over the AMIA bombing has been driven from the beginning by US enmity toward Iran, not by a desire to find the real perpetrators."
Now, Mughniyeh might not have had anything to do with the AMIA bombing, but did you know about his "alleged role as the terrorist 'mastermind' behind the planning for Hezbollah's July 2006 war with Israel..?" (Chulov again, 16/2/08) No? Neither did I!
Let us deal with this (unsourced, of course) sweeping allegation that Mughniyeh had planned a war against Israel in 2006: Hezbollah had planned to abduct Israeli soldiers - but for a prisoner exchange, not a war. In fact, Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is on record as saying that "We had not forseen, not even to one-hundredth, that the hostage taking would lead to a war of that scope...it was not possible that a reaction to a hostage taking reaches such proportions." [Quoted in The 33-Day War by Achcar & Warschawski, p 33] Tragically, it seems Nasrallah wasn't aware of Moshe Dayan's dictum: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." No, the planning for a war with Hezbollah was actually the other way around. In the words of Ron Pundak, Director-General of the Peres Center for Peace: "Hezbollah gave them a wonderful option to do something the army was already prepared to do, with a well-constructed operational plan on the shelf." (Achcar & Warschawski, p 35)
Contrast the different approaches to the allegation by Fairfax and Murdoch:
Fairfax: "Israel blames him for bomb attacks against its embassy and a community centre in Argentina in 1992 and 1994." Israel braces for retaliation after Hezbollah chief killed, Ed O'Loughlin, SMH, 15/2/08
Murdoch: "Mughnieh had been a high profile Israeli target since he led two attacks on Israeli interests in Argentina in 1992 and 1993." Divided Beirut turns out to mark death of slain leaders, Martin Chulov, The Australian, 15/2/08; "In 1993, Mughnieh orchestrated the attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and a later bombing of a Jewish centre in the Argentinian city." Slain terrorist stayed in shadows, Martin Chulov, The Australian, 16/2/08
O'Loughlin merely reports the allegation. Chulov reports the allegation as fact.
[Notice too the discrepancy between O'Loughlin and Chulov when it comes to dates. Predictably, Chulov's dates are wrong. The bombing took place, not in 1993, but 1994. In addition, he gets the year of the earlier bombing of Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires right (1992) in his first report, but wrong (1993) in his second. Where pro-Israel propaganda trumps factual reporting, however, as it generally does in the Murdoch press, screwing up dates is a mere bagatelle.]
The allegation will, of course, continue to be presented as fact in the Murdoch press and myriad other pro-Israel propaganda outlets, especially on the internet. For what it's worth, however, anyone interested in the truth should consult Gareth Porter's 18/1/08 investigation for the The Nation, Bush's Iran/Argentina Terror Frame-Up. Porter's is a model of investigative journalism. The entire article can be accessed at:- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080204/porter
Here is Porter's introduction to whet your appetite:-
"Although nukes and Iraq have been the main focus of the Bush Administration's pressure campaign against Iran, US officials also seek to tar Iran as the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. And Team Bush's latest tactic is to play up a 13-year-old accusation that Iran was responsible for the notorious Buenos Aires bombing that destroyed the city's Jewish Community Center, known as AMIA, killing 86 and injuring 300, in 1994. Unnamed senior Administration officials told the Wall Street Journal January 15 that the bombing in Argentina 'serves as a model for how Tehran has used its overseas embassies and relationship with foreign militant groups, in particular, Hezbollah, to strike at its enemies'.
"This propaganda campaign depends heavily on a decision last November by the General Assembly of Interpol, which voted to put 5 former Iranian officials and a Hezbollah leader [Imad Mughniyeh] on the international police organization's 'red list' for allegedly having planned the July 1994 bombing. But the WSJ reports that it was pressure from the Bush Administration, along with Israeli and Argentine diplomats that secured the Interpol vote. In fact, the Bush Administration's manipulation of the Argentine bombing case is perfectly in line with its long practice of using distorting and manufactured evidence to build a case against its geopolitical enemies.
"After spending several months interviewing officials at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires familiar with the Argentine investigation, the head of the FBI team that assisted it and the most knowledgeable independent Argentine investigator of the case, I found that no real evidence has ever been found to implicate Iran in the bombing. Based on these interviews and the documentary record of the investigation, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the case against Iran over the AMIA bombing has been driven from the beginning by US enmity toward Iran, not by a desire to find the real perpetrators."
Now, Mughniyeh might not have had anything to do with the AMIA bombing, but did you know about his "alleged role as the terrorist 'mastermind' behind the planning for Hezbollah's July 2006 war with Israel..?" (Chulov again, 16/2/08) No? Neither did I!
Let us deal with this (unsourced, of course) sweeping allegation that Mughniyeh had planned a war against Israel in 2006: Hezbollah had planned to abduct Israeli soldiers - but for a prisoner exchange, not a war. In fact, Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is on record as saying that "We had not forseen, not even to one-hundredth, that the hostage taking would lead to a war of that scope...it was not possible that a reaction to a hostage taking reaches such proportions." [Quoted in The 33-Day War by Achcar & Warschawski, p 33] Tragically, it seems Nasrallah wasn't aware of Moshe Dayan's dictum: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." No, the planning for a war with Hezbollah was actually the other way around. In the words of Ron Pundak, Director-General of the Peres Center for Peace: "Hezbollah gave them a wonderful option to do something the army was already prepared to do, with a well-constructed operational plan on the shelf." (Achcar & Warschawski, p 35)
Monday, February 11, 2008
Scoop! Gaza Goes Global!
Sinister forces are on the march and threatening Israel's very existence! How do I know? you ask. It's all here in The Australian!
In Suicide bombing returns to Israeli soil after a year (5/2/08), Jerusalem correspondent, Abraham Rabinovich, says, "Mr Diskin [head of Israel's internal intelligence agency, Shin Bet] told Israel's cabinet that since Hamas breached the border with Egypt almost two weeks ago, advanced weaponry and dozens of trained militants from Iran, Syria and Egypt have poured into the Gaza Strip. He said the weapons included long-range rockets capable of hitting Israeli towns that were previously beyond Hamas's reach..." Whoa! "Advanced weaponry and dozens of trained militants"? Crikey!
Then he says, "Israel Radio yesterday quoted a security official as saying Hamas was building a substantial military potential in Gaza and sought to reach mutual deterrence with Israel. The official said it was necessary to launch a ground offensive to smash this capability before it advanced much further."
Hm, "mutual deterrence with Israel"? Scary, eh! What was that you said? Probably the lads in Israeli PR concocted it as a pretext for the Israeli Defence Forces to waltz in and re-arrange the furniture? My God, you're cynical, my friend. This is The Australian, not The Syrian Morning Herald! Now listen to this:-
It's headlined, Breach 'let jihadis flood into Gaza' (9/2/08), and it's by their Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov. Chulov says, "The Palestinian Authority claims the two-week breach of the border between Israel and Egypt last month allowed up to 2,000 global jihadi militants to infiltrate the strip to take up the fight against Israel."
Great Scott! Before you can say, 'Greg Sheridan', the "global jihadi militant" count's up from "dozens" to "2,000!" Sorry? What's that you're asking? Questions, questions, you're full of 'em. Had they been hanging about in the Sinai just waiting to pounce? If they wanted to "fight against Israel," why didn't they "infiltrate" Israel and not Gaza? Wouldn't they have gotten in the way of all those "would-be suicide bombers who crossed into the Sinai desert from Gaza...plotting to strike Israeli cities" (The Australian, 6/2/08)? Blimey! I wish you'd treat this with the seriousness it deserves. Anyway, Chulov says it's a PA, not a PR source, you ignoramus.
Listen to this. He goes on to say that "Security sources in the West Bank say the men, many of whom battled coalition forces in Iraq, brought with them weapons and explosives to add to an already formidable arsenal controlled by Hamas. The men have begun tours of Hamas training camps throughout Gaza and have vowed to step up attacks on the Israeli side of the security barrier, say key figures among Fatah forces loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas..."
Thank God we don't live in Israel! What's that? More carping questions? Why didn't they just go directly into Israel? You're incorrigible, you know that?
Chulov also says, "'Hamas has turned the Gaza Strip into an international centre for global jihad', one official said. Another told Israeli media: 'Most of the men who entered the Gaza Strip through the breached border are now being trained in Hamas's camps and schools'."
Strewth, now I'm getting confused. I thought Rabinovich said Diskin said they were already trained! And Chulov's already had the PA saying they'd fought in Iraq against the cowboys! So why do they need to be "trained" by Hamas? And what's this about going to school?
Deep breath. I must have faith. Greg, Martin, Abraham, Rupert - they've never let me down before. And anyways, surely the PA guys'd know a battle-scarred global jihadi if they saw one? After all, weren't they all "global jihadi militants" themselves only a short time ago before they saw the light and teamed up with the Israelis and the Americans?
Oh no, I should've stopped there. Now Chulov's saying, "Palestinian Authority officials have in the past falsely claimed Iranian academics and regime figures had infiltrated Gaza using a tunnel network, which runs under the southern border."
What the hell are you laughing at? Shut your mouth! I swear, if you crack any bloody jokes about Iranians wearing black gowns and mortar boards, and clutching PhDs in their hands, popping up out of holes in the ground to teach ex-Iraqi global jihadi militants Shi'ism 101 in Hamas schools -or say anything about Ayatollahs covered in mud - I'll do what Chulov reckons the Egyptians are going to do to anyone who infiltrates into Egypt again: I'll break your bloody legs!
In Suicide bombing returns to Israeli soil after a year (5/2/08), Jerusalem correspondent, Abraham Rabinovich, says, "Mr Diskin [head of Israel's internal intelligence agency, Shin Bet] told Israel's cabinet that since Hamas breached the border with Egypt almost two weeks ago, advanced weaponry and dozens of trained militants from Iran, Syria and Egypt have poured into the Gaza Strip. He said the weapons included long-range rockets capable of hitting Israeli towns that were previously beyond Hamas's reach..." Whoa! "Advanced weaponry and dozens of trained militants"? Crikey!
Then he says, "Israel Radio yesterday quoted a security official as saying Hamas was building a substantial military potential in Gaza and sought to reach mutual deterrence with Israel. The official said it was necessary to launch a ground offensive to smash this capability before it advanced much further."
Hm, "mutual deterrence with Israel"? Scary, eh! What was that you said? Probably the lads in Israeli PR concocted it as a pretext for the Israeli Defence Forces to waltz in and re-arrange the furniture? My God, you're cynical, my friend. This is The Australian, not The Syrian Morning Herald! Now listen to this:-
It's headlined, Breach 'let jihadis flood into Gaza' (9/2/08), and it's by their Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov. Chulov says, "The Palestinian Authority claims the two-week breach of the border between Israel and Egypt last month allowed up to 2,000 global jihadi militants to infiltrate the strip to take up the fight against Israel."
Great Scott! Before you can say, 'Greg Sheridan', the "global jihadi militant" count's up from "dozens" to "2,000!" Sorry? What's that you're asking? Questions, questions, you're full of 'em. Had they been hanging about in the Sinai just waiting to pounce? If they wanted to "fight against Israel," why didn't they "infiltrate" Israel and not Gaza? Wouldn't they have gotten in the way of all those "would-be suicide bombers who crossed into the Sinai desert from Gaza...plotting to strike Israeli cities" (The Australian, 6/2/08)? Blimey! I wish you'd treat this with the seriousness it deserves. Anyway, Chulov says it's a PA, not a PR source, you ignoramus.
Listen to this. He goes on to say that "Security sources in the West Bank say the men, many of whom battled coalition forces in Iraq, brought with them weapons and explosives to add to an already formidable arsenal controlled by Hamas. The men have begun tours of Hamas training camps throughout Gaza and have vowed to step up attacks on the Israeli side of the security barrier, say key figures among Fatah forces loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas..."
Thank God we don't live in Israel! What's that? More carping questions? Why didn't they just go directly into Israel? You're incorrigible, you know that?
Chulov also says, "'Hamas has turned the Gaza Strip into an international centre for global jihad', one official said. Another told Israeli media: 'Most of the men who entered the Gaza Strip through the breached border are now being trained in Hamas's camps and schools'."
Strewth, now I'm getting confused. I thought Rabinovich said Diskin said they were already trained! And Chulov's already had the PA saying they'd fought in Iraq against the cowboys! So why do they need to be "trained" by Hamas? And what's this about going to school?
Deep breath. I must have faith. Greg, Martin, Abraham, Rupert - they've never let me down before. And anyways, surely the PA guys'd know a battle-scarred global jihadi if they saw one? After all, weren't they all "global jihadi militants" themselves only a short time ago before they saw the light and teamed up with the Israelis and the Americans?
Oh no, I should've stopped there. Now Chulov's saying, "Palestinian Authority officials have in the past falsely claimed Iranian academics and regime figures had infiltrated Gaza using a tunnel network, which runs under the southern border."
What the hell are you laughing at? Shut your mouth! I swear, if you crack any bloody jokes about Iranians wearing black gowns and mortar boards, and clutching PhDs in their hands, popping up out of holes in the ground to teach ex-Iraqi global jihadi militants Shi'ism 101 in Hamas schools -or say anything about Ayatollahs covered in mud - I'll do what Chulov reckons the Egyptians are going to do to anyone who infiltrates into Egypt again: I'll break your bloody legs!
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