Italy had its Oriana Fallaci, Britain's got its Melanie Phillips, and, not to be outdone, Australia's got... Jennifer Oriel:
"Thank God for Israel. If it weren't for the Jews, the UN would have to battle despots, communists and Islamists." (Say goodbye to a UN that attacks the free world, The Australian, 9/1/17)
How lucky are we, who live in the "free world," to have "the Jews" battling "despots, communists and Islamists" on our behalf?
How fortunate that these Israeli brave hearts should do what they do, solely for our benefit, solely to protect us from the gathering Forces of Darkness... out there... in the night.
How fortunate, too, that we have Jennifer Oriel to remind us of their sacrifice. Because, without it, how could we possibly sleep at night?
So what exactly is it that they do?
Gideon Levy tells us:
"What do you call a regime that every night drags people from their beds? How would you label mass detentions without a warrant? How would you define brutal home searches in the dead of night, some of which have no purpose except as training exercises? What should we call such acts, which the army, the border Police and the Shin Bet security service carry out nightly? What should we call the state in whose name they act - a democracy, the only one in the Middle East? Do you recall dark regimes, think of Latin American juntas, are shocked by Turkey? Welcome to Israel's occupation of the West bank, night after night, just a short drive from your home.
"Each morning, in its Twitter account, the IDF describes its misdeeds of the previous night with a touch of pride: 'During the night our forces arrested wanted men who are suspected of popular terror activities and violent disturbances. They were handed over to the security forces for interrogation.' Wanted men, popular terror, disturbances - the language is polished yet stilted, with childish Hebrew acronyms that seem to conceal a secret. The wording is formulaic, without naming or otherwise disclosing the humanity of the detainees. The army is like a nighttime hunter who each morning displays his nightly catch. Last week there was a night with 23 arrests, 14 the previous week, 10 and 11 in the weeks before that. There is no night without such abductions. Who are they? What did they do? Who cares? They are all part of the 'popular terror' movement, all of them now in the hands of the security services.
"Sometimes, there's a special treat: 'Last night our forces sealed off an apartment and a warehouse in Nablus, which had served for the preparation of terror explosive devices.' Explosive devices? An apartment, a warehouse? By what authority? Nablus is in Area A, supposedly controlled by the Palestinians, but who cares about such trifles? Occasionally there is money involved. 'During the operations of the Etzion Territorial Brigade, our sources seized thousands of shekels that were used to finance terror. These were transferred to the security services.' Sometimes it borders on the grotesque: 'The forces of the Ephraim Territorial Brigade also arrested a person suspected of violent and disorderly conduct in which he climbed onto an army vehicle two months ago. He was sent for interrogation by security forces.' He climbed on a vehicle? Should we laugh, or cry?
"To anyone familiar with the nature of these operations, there is nothing funny about them. They are stomach-turning. Hundreds of thousands of people live in constant terror: children who wet their beds, parents who are afraid to even close an eye. The soldiers blow up the doors of the homes and invade. Before you can even understand what is happening there are dozens of armed men, their faces sometimes covered, in your home, in your bedroom, in your children's bedrooms, in the bathroom. This is how the nightmare begins, the search and the arrests, with neither an explanation nor a court order.
"Sometimes the occupants are pulled out of their home and into the street, without being allowed to get dressed. Occasionally a father is beaten in front of his children. Frequently belongings are broken. All accompanied by bullying and humiliation. Tear gas is often sprayed at the neighbors, outside. These are traumatic experiences for any human being. There is no Palestinian who has not experienced it. There is no Israeli who can imagine it. I once spent a night in the Jenin refugee camp. When soldiers approached the home I was staying in, I almost died of fright. In the end they did not come in, but I will never forget those moments of terror. That's only the beginning of the nightmare. Then the 'wanted person' is taken, handcuffed and blindfolded, for an interrogation whose end is difficult to predict. It will go on for weeks and it will involve humiliation and torture, sometimes without any foundation. Nearly one million Palestinians have been arrested in this manner in the course of the occupation. Nearly one million.
"The Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported last week, based on a United Nations report, that between October 4 and October 17 there were 178 such nighttime raids, around 14 each night. This, in a time of relative calm, apart from the lone-wolf attacks that no raid can prevent. A girl who seeks to die won't be arrested at night. The nighttime terror may actually drive others to another desperate attack.
"Every night, while you were sleeping. And afterward there are more Israelis who dare to claim - out of ignorance or chutzpah - that the occupation is over, or at least that discussing it bores them." (Good morning from the Israeli army's Twitter account, Haaretz, 6/11/16)
So next time you go to bed for a good night's sleep, spare a thought for those on the front line, in far-away Israel, who are making it all possible. Thank God for Israel! And bless you, Jennifer.
Showing posts with label Oriana Fallaci. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oriana Fallaci. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Sunday, October 27, 2013
The Unpalatable Truth About Martha Gellhorn 4
In the West Bank (under Jordanian rule at the time), Gellhorn, who had hearted Republicans in 30s Spain, uncharacteristically finds herself warming to monarchists:
"In Jordan, a refugee's education and self-reliance showed at once in his politics. The better educated, the more able do not waste their time on thoughts of violent revenge, and give their loyalty to King Hussein. The more ignorant and less competent nourish themselves with a passion for Nasser, war, and Return."
In Israel itself, she seeks out "the [Palestinians] who stayed behind, the non-refugees," interviewing a Christian Arab schoolteacher in Galilee who informs her that "[i]n the 1948 war, the next village was bombed by the Jews; when we saw that, we knew we had no hope."
Gellhorn responds with the following parenthetical comment to the reader: "(Pause for breath: the Jewish Air Force at the time consisted of 19 Piper Cubs, a nice little plane, not a bomber...)"
In fact, the fledgling AIF had "25 Avia S-199s (purchased from Czechoslovakia, essentially Czechoslovak-built Messerschmitt Bf 109s) and 62 Supermarine Spitfire LF Mk IXEs (also purchased from Czechoslovakia)... Many of the first IAF's pilots in 1948 were foreign volunteers (both Jewish and non-Jewish) and World War II veterans... As the war progressed more and more aircraft were procured, including Boeing B-17s, Bristol Beaufighters, de Havilland Mosquitoes and P-51D Mustangs..." (Wikipedia)
The following conversation ensues, with Gellhorn displaying a mastery of Zionist talking points, an appalling condescension and racism, and a palpable impatience with an interlocutor who sounds suspiciously like the proverbial straw man:
"'The Arab Kings [says the teacher ] were not the true representatives of the Arab peoples when they made war against Israel. Now all the refugees should come back and we should have Palestine.'
"At this point, I decided to make one long, determined stand to see whether there was any meeting ground of minds on a basis of mutually accepted facts and reasoning.
"'Please bear with me and help me,' said I. 'I am a simple American, and I am trying to understand how the Arab mind works, and I am finding it very difficult. I want to put some things in order; if I have everything wrong, you will correct me. In 1947, the United Nations recommended the Partition of Palestine. I have seen the Partition map and studied it. I cannot tell, but it does not look to me as if the Arabs were being cheated of their share of good land. The idea was that this division would work, if both Jews and Arabs accepted it... The Jews accepted this Partition plan; I suppose because they felt they had to. They were outnumbered about two to one inside the country, and there were the neighboring Arab states with 5 regular armies and 40 million or more citizens, not feeling friendly. Are we agreed so far?'
"'It is right.'
"'The Arab governments and the Palestinian Arabs rejected Partition absolutely. You wanted the whole country. There is no secret about this... The Arab governments never hid the fact that they started the war against Israel. But you, the Palestinian Arabs, agreed to this... And you thought... that you would win and win quickly. It hardly seemed a gamble; it seemed a sure bet. You took the gamble and you lost. I can understand why you have all been searching for explanations of that defeat ever since, because it does seem incredible. I don't happen to accept your explanations, but that is beside the point. The point is that you lost.'
"'Yes.' It was too astonishing; at long last, East and West were in accord on the meaning of words.
"'Now you say that you want to return to the past; you want Partition. So, in fact you say, let us forget that war we started, and the defeat, and, after all, we think Partition is a good, sensible idea. Please answer me this... If the position were reversed, if the Jews had started the war and lost it, if you had won the war, would you now accept Partition? Would you give up part of the country and allow the 650,000 Jewish residents of Palestine - who had fled from the war - to come back?
"'Certainly not,' he said, without an instant's hesitation. 'But there would have been no Jewish refugees. They had no place to go. They would all be dead or in the sea.'
"He had given me the missing clue. The fancy word we use nowadays is 'empathy' - entering into the emotions of others. I had appreciated and admired individual refugees but realized I had felt no blanket empathy for the Palestinian refugees, and finally I knew why... It is hard to sorrow for those who only sorrow over themselves. It is difficult to pity the pitiless. To wring the heart past all doubt, those who cry aloud for justice must be innocent. They cannot have wished for a victorious rewarding war, blame everyone else for their defeat, and remain guiltless. Some of them may be unfortunate human beings... But a profound difference exists between victims of misfortune... and victims of injustice. My empathy knew where it stood, thanks to the schoolteacher... He has never seen even a corner of a real big war; he cannot imagine it. He thinks war is something that lasts a few weeks... you run away for a bit and then come home to your undamaged houses and lead a good life, indeed a better material life than before. None of these Arabs has suffered anything comparable to what survivors of modern war know; none can imagine such catastrophe."
So the Palestinian nakba, the ethnic cleansing of 85% of the population of Palestine overrun by Zionist forces in 1948, the Israeli refusal to allow their return as demanded by international law and the United Nations, the theft of their homes, lands, businesses and bank accounts, and the consignment of around 750,000 people, all indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, to exile in perpetuity, is a mere "misfortune" which cannot even begin to compare with the "injustice" suffered by European Jewry.
But it gets worse. Gellhorn (whose knowledge of Arabic is zero) plumbs new depths of calumny and racist abuse with this outburst:
"Arabs gorge on hate, they roll in it, they breathe it. Jews top the hate list, but any foreigners are hateful enough. Arabs also hate each other, separately and en masse. Their politicians change the direction of their hate as they would change their shirts. Their press is vulgarly base with hate-filled cartoons; their reporting describes whatever hate is now uppermost and convenient. Their radio is a long scream of hate, a call to hate. They teach their children hate in school. They must love the taste of hate; it is their daily bread. And what good has it done them?"
In fact, today's Islamophobic banshees, such as Oriana Fallaci, Pamela Geller, and Melanie Phillips have nothing on Gellhorn:
"Victory over a minor near enemy is planned as as the essential first step on a long triumphant road of conquest. A thousand-year Muslim Reich, the African continent ruled by Egypt, may be a mad dream, but we have experience of mad dreams. We cannot be too careful. The echo of Hitler's voice is heard again in the land, now speaking Arabic."
But, as the following data indicates, there's more, much more, to Gellhorn's Atlantic Monthly hatchet-job on the hapless victims of Israeli ethnic cleansing than meets the eye:
"In the early 1960s the American Zionist Council's (AZC) [AIPAC's parent organization] Magazine Committee met regularly with writers to prepare articles for top US magazines such as Reader's Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, and Life. In its program for 'cultivation of editors' and 'stimulation and placement of suitable articles in the major consumer magazines,' the committee pushed lighter subjects with prepared texts such as the 13th anniversary of Israel's founding while killing investigative pieces at such publications as the Christian Science Monitor. The committee confronted two major news items challenging Israel: fallout from the 'Lavon Affair' (a cover up of failed false-flag Israeli terrorist attacks on US government facilities in Egypt) and American peace proposals calling for the return of some expelled Palestinian refugees to their homes and property in Israel. The Israeli government and its US lobby invested heavily in arguing against the return of Palestinian refugees through The Atlantic, according to yet another secret AZC report: 'The Atlantic Monthly in its October issue carried the outstanding Martha Gellhorn piece on the Arab refugees, which made quite an impact around the country. We arranged for the distribution of 10,000 reprints to public opinion molders in all categories. Acting on information that anti-Israel groups were bombarding the Atlantic with critical letters, we stimulated a letter campaign designed to counteract their impact... Interested friends are making arrangements with the Atlantic for another reprint of the Gellhorn article to be sent to all 53,000 persons whose names appear in Who's Who in America... The November issue of the Atlantic carried a special 64-page Supplement on Israel, with articles by some of Israel's top names... Our Committee is now planning articles for the women's magazines for the trade and business publications'." (The Israel lobby swims The Atlantic, Grant F. Smith, antiwar.com, 17/8/10)
To be continued...
"In Jordan, a refugee's education and self-reliance showed at once in his politics. The better educated, the more able do not waste their time on thoughts of violent revenge, and give their loyalty to King Hussein. The more ignorant and less competent nourish themselves with a passion for Nasser, war, and Return."
In Israel itself, she seeks out "the [Palestinians] who stayed behind, the non-refugees," interviewing a Christian Arab schoolteacher in Galilee who informs her that "[i]n the 1948 war, the next village was bombed by the Jews; when we saw that, we knew we had no hope."
Gellhorn responds with the following parenthetical comment to the reader: "(Pause for breath: the Jewish Air Force at the time consisted of 19 Piper Cubs, a nice little plane, not a bomber...)"
In fact, the fledgling AIF had "25 Avia S-199s (purchased from Czechoslovakia, essentially Czechoslovak-built Messerschmitt Bf 109s) and 62 Supermarine Spitfire LF Mk IXEs (also purchased from Czechoslovakia)... Many of the first IAF's pilots in 1948 were foreign volunteers (both Jewish and non-Jewish) and World War II veterans... As the war progressed more and more aircraft were procured, including Boeing B-17s, Bristol Beaufighters, de Havilland Mosquitoes and P-51D Mustangs..." (Wikipedia)
The following conversation ensues, with Gellhorn displaying a mastery of Zionist talking points, an appalling condescension and racism, and a palpable impatience with an interlocutor who sounds suspiciously like the proverbial straw man:
"'The Arab Kings [says the teacher ] were not the true representatives of the Arab peoples when they made war against Israel. Now all the refugees should come back and we should have Palestine.'
"At this point, I decided to make one long, determined stand to see whether there was any meeting ground of minds on a basis of mutually accepted facts and reasoning.
"'Please bear with me and help me,' said I. 'I am a simple American, and I am trying to understand how the Arab mind works, and I am finding it very difficult. I want to put some things in order; if I have everything wrong, you will correct me. In 1947, the United Nations recommended the Partition of Palestine. I have seen the Partition map and studied it. I cannot tell, but it does not look to me as if the Arabs were being cheated of their share of good land. The idea was that this division would work, if both Jews and Arabs accepted it... The Jews accepted this Partition plan; I suppose because they felt they had to. They were outnumbered about two to one inside the country, and there were the neighboring Arab states with 5 regular armies and 40 million or more citizens, not feeling friendly. Are we agreed so far?'
"'It is right.'
"'The Arab governments and the Palestinian Arabs rejected Partition absolutely. You wanted the whole country. There is no secret about this... The Arab governments never hid the fact that they started the war against Israel. But you, the Palestinian Arabs, agreed to this... And you thought... that you would win and win quickly. It hardly seemed a gamble; it seemed a sure bet. You took the gamble and you lost. I can understand why you have all been searching for explanations of that defeat ever since, because it does seem incredible. I don't happen to accept your explanations, but that is beside the point. The point is that you lost.'
"'Yes.' It was too astonishing; at long last, East and West were in accord on the meaning of words.
"'Now you say that you want to return to the past; you want Partition. So, in fact you say, let us forget that war we started, and the defeat, and, after all, we think Partition is a good, sensible idea. Please answer me this... If the position were reversed, if the Jews had started the war and lost it, if you had won the war, would you now accept Partition? Would you give up part of the country and allow the 650,000 Jewish residents of Palestine - who had fled from the war - to come back?
"'Certainly not,' he said, without an instant's hesitation. 'But there would have been no Jewish refugees. They had no place to go. They would all be dead or in the sea.'
"He had given me the missing clue. The fancy word we use nowadays is 'empathy' - entering into the emotions of others. I had appreciated and admired individual refugees but realized I had felt no blanket empathy for the Palestinian refugees, and finally I knew why... It is hard to sorrow for those who only sorrow over themselves. It is difficult to pity the pitiless. To wring the heart past all doubt, those who cry aloud for justice must be innocent. They cannot have wished for a victorious rewarding war, blame everyone else for their defeat, and remain guiltless. Some of them may be unfortunate human beings... But a profound difference exists between victims of misfortune... and victims of injustice. My empathy knew where it stood, thanks to the schoolteacher... He has never seen even a corner of a real big war; he cannot imagine it. He thinks war is something that lasts a few weeks... you run away for a bit and then come home to your undamaged houses and lead a good life, indeed a better material life than before. None of these Arabs has suffered anything comparable to what survivors of modern war know; none can imagine such catastrophe."
So the Palestinian nakba, the ethnic cleansing of 85% of the population of Palestine overrun by Zionist forces in 1948, the Israeli refusal to allow their return as demanded by international law and the United Nations, the theft of their homes, lands, businesses and bank accounts, and the consignment of around 750,000 people, all indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, to exile in perpetuity, is a mere "misfortune" which cannot even begin to compare with the "injustice" suffered by European Jewry.
But it gets worse. Gellhorn (whose knowledge of Arabic is zero) plumbs new depths of calumny and racist abuse with this outburst:
"Arabs gorge on hate, they roll in it, they breathe it. Jews top the hate list, but any foreigners are hateful enough. Arabs also hate each other, separately and en masse. Their politicians change the direction of their hate as they would change their shirts. Their press is vulgarly base with hate-filled cartoons; their reporting describes whatever hate is now uppermost and convenient. Their radio is a long scream of hate, a call to hate. They teach their children hate in school. They must love the taste of hate; it is their daily bread. And what good has it done them?"
In fact, today's Islamophobic banshees, such as Oriana Fallaci, Pamela Geller, and Melanie Phillips have nothing on Gellhorn:
"Victory over a minor near enemy is planned as as the essential first step on a long triumphant road of conquest. A thousand-year Muslim Reich, the African continent ruled by Egypt, may be a mad dream, but we have experience of mad dreams. We cannot be too careful. The echo of Hitler's voice is heard again in the land, now speaking Arabic."
But, as the following data indicates, there's more, much more, to Gellhorn's Atlantic Monthly hatchet-job on the hapless victims of Israeli ethnic cleansing than meets the eye:
"In the early 1960s the American Zionist Council's (AZC) [AIPAC's parent organization] Magazine Committee met regularly with writers to prepare articles for top US magazines such as Reader's Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, and Life. In its program for 'cultivation of editors' and 'stimulation and placement of suitable articles in the major consumer magazines,' the committee pushed lighter subjects with prepared texts such as the 13th anniversary of Israel's founding while killing investigative pieces at such publications as the Christian Science Monitor. The committee confronted two major news items challenging Israel: fallout from the 'Lavon Affair' (a cover up of failed false-flag Israeli terrorist attacks on US government facilities in Egypt) and American peace proposals calling for the return of some expelled Palestinian refugees to their homes and property in Israel. The Israeli government and its US lobby invested heavily in arguing against the return of Palestinian refugees through The Atlantic, according to yet another secret AZC report: 'The Atlantic Monthly in its October issue carried the outstanding Martha Gellhorn piece on the Arab refugees, which made quite an impact around the country. We arranged for the distribution of 10,000 reprints to public opinion molders in all categories. Acting on information that anti-Israel groups were bombarding the Atlantic with critical letters, we stimulated a letter campaign designed to counteract their impact... Interested friends are making arrangements with the Atlantic for another reprint of the Gellhorn article to be sent to all 53,000 persons whose names appear in Who's Who in America... The November issue of the Atlantic carried a special 64-page Supplement on Israel, with articles by some of Israel's top names... Our Committee is now planning articles for the women's magazines for the trade and business publications'." (The Israel lobby swims The Atlantic, Grant F. Smith, antiwar.com, 17/8/10)
To be continued...
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Oriana Fallaci & George Habash: A Correction 3
My last two posts were predicated on the fact of Oriana Fallaci's having fabricated, in her 2004 Islamphobic rant, The Force of Reason, a whole new jihadi version of George Habash out of the interview she did with him for Life magazine back in 1970.
Having re-read that interview, I now believe that As'ad Abukhalil is absolutely correct: Fallaci was also in the business of putting words into Habash's mouth in 1970.
Two quotations in particular from the Life interview, which appeared under the heading A leader of the fedayeen: 'We want a war like the Vietnam war' in the June 22 issue, warrant attention:
"Countries like Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland, with many Jews among their population, allow their territory to be used as a base for the Jews to fight the Arabs. If Italy, for instance, is a base against the Arabs, the Arabs have a right to use Italy as a base against the Jews."
"The attacks of the Popular Front are based on quality, not quantity. We believe that to kill a Jew far from the battleground has more of an effect than killing 100 of them in battle; it attracts more attention."
When one compares these quotations (with their suggestion that Jews qua Jews, wherever they live, are potential targets for Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) guerillas) with what the PFLP were really saying at the time, their authenticity immediately becomes suspect.
For example, here's a quote from a PFLP booklet, Palestine: Towards a Democratic Solution. (The booklet, in English, was issued by the PFLP Information Department in 1970.):
"The Palestinian liberation movement is not a racial movement with aggressive intentions against the Jews. It is not directed against the Jews. Its object is to destroy the state of Israel as a military, political and economic establishment which rests on aggression, expansion and organic connection with imperialist interests in our homeland. It is against Zionism as an aggressive racial movement connected with imperialism which has exploited the sufferings of the Jews as a stepping stone for the promotion of its interests and the interests of imperialism in this part of the world, which possesses resources and provides a bridgehead into the countries of Africa and Asia. The aim of the Palestinian liberation movement is to establish a democratic national state in Palestine in which both Arabs and Jews will live as citizens with equal rights and obligations..." (pp 7-8)
Oriana Fallaci, therefore, appears to have perpetrated layer upon layer of fabrication as far as the figure of George Habash (and who knows how many others) is concerned, stretching across 4 decades. Perhaps we should consider the creation of an annual 'Oriana Fallaci Prize for Zionist Fabrication'.
Having re-read that interview, I now believe that As'ad Abukhalil is absolutely correct: Fallaci was also in the business of putting words into Habash's mouth in 1970.
Two quotations in particular from the Life interview, which appeared under the heading A leader of the fedayeen: 'We want a war like the Vietnam war' in the June 22 issue, warrant attention:
"Countries like Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland, with many Jews among their population, allow their territory to be used as a base for the Jews to fight the Arabs. If Italy, for instance, is a base against the Arabs, the Arabs have a right to use Italy as a base against the Jews."
"The attacks of the Popular Front are based on quality, not quantity. We believe that to kill a Jew far from the battleground has more of an effect than killing 100 of them in battle; it attracts more attention."
When one compares these quotations (with their suggestion that Jews qua Jews, wherever they live, are potential targets for Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) guerillas) with what the PFLP were really saying at the time, their authenticity immediately becomes suspect.
For example, here's a quote from a PFLP booklet, Palestine: Towards a Democratic Solution. (The booklet, in English, was issued by the PFLP Information Department in 1970.):
"The Palestinian liberation movement is not a racial movement with aggressive intentions against the Jews. It is not directed against the Jews. Its object is to destroy the state of Israel as a military, political and economic establishment which rests on aggression, expansion and organic connection with imperialist interests in our homeland. It is against Zionism as an aggressive racial movement connected with imperialism which has exploited the sufferings of the Jews as a stepping stone for the promotion of its interests and the interests of imperialism in this part of the world, which possesses resources and provides a bridgehead into the countries of Africa and Asia. The aim of the Palestinian liberation movement is to establish a democratic national state in Palestine in which both Arabs and Jews will live as citizens with equal rights and obligations..." (pp 7-8)
Oriana Fallaci, therefore, appears to have perpetrated layer upon layer of fabrication as far as the figure of George Habash (and who knows how many others) is concerned, stretching across 4 decades. Perhaps we should consider the creation of an annual 'Oriana Fallaci Prize for Zionist Fabrication'.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Oriana Fallaci & George Habash: A Correction 2
Further to yesterday's post on Fallaci and Habash, after sending As'ad Abukhalil a link, he has responded to my post on his website as follows:
"Oh no, I am not confused. Her profile in Life magazine was NOT an honest piece of reportage, and it was in that profile that she fabricated a quotation by Habash." (23/8/12)
Just to get to the bottom of the matter, here's Abukhalil's post of 4 February 2008, written in response to my original post on the subject, Fabricating Dr George Habash (2/2/08) (NB: The quotation comes from Fabricating Dr George Habash.):
The lies of Fallaci: "There's only one problem - Habash said nothing of the kind, and the text of Fallaci's 1970 Life interview with him gives her lunacy the lie. To begin with, the interview took place in 1970, not 1972, the Palestinian resistance having been purged from Jordan by July 1971. Then there's the nonsense about the gun. In the introduction to the interview, she wrote, 'We met at night in the suburbs of Amman, in a building attached to a refugee camp. The room contained one desk and a few chairs; outside the closed doors, armed fedayeen stood guard. Inside there were only 4 of us: Habash, myself, a photographer and the man who had driven us there'." (thanks Merc)
Now in my 2008 post, Fabricating Dr George Habash, I compared Fallaci's 1970 Life interview with Habash to the reworking of that interview in her 2004 book The Force of Reason, exposing the latter as an obvious forgery.
It may well be that Fallaci's original Life interview contained a fabricated quotation. I don't know. If that is the case, as Abukhalil contends, then what we're dealing with here amounts to a fabrication (Fallaci: 2004) of a fabrication (Fallaci: 1970). (I note, for example, that AbuKhalil, in his 18/3/12 comments on Daniel Byman's book A High Price: The Triumph & Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism, mentions that Byman cites "an invented quotation attributed falsely by the fanatical Zionist journalist Oriana Fallaci to George Habash." It would be interesting to know what that quotation is.)
I again refer those who are interested in the matter to my original 2/2/08 post Fabricating Dr George Habash.
"Oh no, I am not confused. Her profile in Life magazine was NOT an honest piece of reportage, and it was in that profile that she fabricated a quotation by Habash." (23/8/12)
Just to get to the bottom of the matter, here's Abukhalil's post of 4 February 2008, written in response to my original post on the subject, Fabricating Dr George Habash (2/2/08) (NB: The quotation comes from Fabricating Dr George Habash.):
The lies of Fallaci: "There's only one problem - Habash said nothing of the kind, and the text of Fallaci's 1970 Life interview with him gives her lunacy the lie. To begin with, the interview took place in 1970, not 1972, the Palestinian resistance having been purged from Jordan by July 1971. Then there's the nonsense about the gun. In the introduction to the interview, she wrote, 'We met at night in the suburbs of Amman, in a building attached to a refugee camp. The room contained one desk and a few chairs; outside the closed doors, armed fedayeen stood guard. Inside there were only 4 of us: Habash, myself, a photographer and the man who had driven us there'." (thanks Merc)
Now in my 2008 post, Fabricating Dr George Habash, I compared Fallaci's 1970 Life interview with Habash to the reworking of that interview in her 2004 book The Force of Reason, exposing the latter as an obvious forgery.
It may well be that Fallaci's original Life interview contained a fabricated quotation. I don't know. If that is the case, as Abukhalil contends, then what we're dealing with here amounts to a fabrication (Fallaci: 2004) of a fabrication (Fallaci: 1970). (I note, for example, that AbuKhalil, in his 18/3/12 comments on Daniel Byman's book A High Price: The Triumph & Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism, mentions that Byman cites "an invented quotation attributed falsely by the fanatical Zionist journalist Oriana Fallaci to George Habash." It would be interesting to know what that quotation is.)
I again refer those who are interested in the matter to my original 2/2/08 post Fabricating Dr George Habash.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Oriana Fallaci & George Habash: A Correction
In a recent comment on fabricated quotes by Zionists, As'ad Abukhalil wrote as follows:
"I was thinking about the recent Zionist fabrication of a quotation by Hasan Nasrallah which made it into a front page article in the New York Times. There is a long history of such fabrications: over the decades Zionists have fabricated quotations and attributed them to Nasser, to Ahmed Shuqayri, to Arafat and most recently to Hasan Nasrallah. Oriana Fallaci, the lousy, sleazy, trashy Italian journalist, fabricated a quotation by George Habash which made it into a Life magazine profile of him..." (Zionists & the fabrication of quotes by their enemies, Angry Arab News Service, 17/8/12)
Abukhalil was first alerted to Fallaci's Habash fabrication by me some years back. Unfortunately, however, in recalling the matter, he's confused her 1970 Life magazine profile of Habash, which appears to be an honest piece of reportage, with her later distortion of same in her book-length Islamophobic rant, The Force of Reason (2004).
I refer those who are interested in the full story to my 2/2/08 post Fabricating Dr George Habash.
"I was thinking about the recent Zionist fabrication of a quotation by Hasan Nasrallah which made it into a front page article in the New York Times. There is a long history of such fabrications: over the decades Zionists have fabricated quotations and attributed them to Nasser, to Ahmed Shuqayri, to Arafat and most recently to Hasan Nasrallah. Oriana Fallaci, the lousy, sleazy, trashy Italian journalist, fabricated a quotation by George Habash which made it into a Life magazine profile of him..." (Zionists & the fabrication of quotes by their enemies, Angry Arab News Service, 17/8/12)
Abukhalil was first alerted to Fallaci's Habash fabrication by me some years back. Unfortunately, however, in recalling the matter, he's confused her 1970 Life magazine profile of Habash, which appears to be an honest piece of reportage, with her later distortion of same in her book-length Islamophobic rant, The Force of Reason (2004).
I refer those who are interested in the full story to my 2/2/08 post Fabricating Dr George Habash.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Oriana Fallaci's Ripping Yarns
The quotation from Oriana Fallaci which I used to introduce the previous post got me thinking about this High Priestess of Islamophobia and the incredible liberties she takes with the historical record, an unforgivable crime in my book and the reason for this post.
You may remember her reference to Kara Mustafa, Grand Vizier to Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV and commander of the 1683 Turkish siege of Vienna, as the first link in a supposed Islamo-fascist chain leading all the way to the likes of Yasser Arafat, Bin Laden and Islamist suicide bombers. Such great leaps forward (and backward) are, of course, characteristic of Zionists and Islamophobes, who blithely manipulate history to suit their agenda. Such has been the fate of Kara Mustafa and the siege of Vienna.
Hence the Islamophobic blog Gates of Vienna, which carries the following masthead: "At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war."
War? War? How very Anders Behring Breivik, alleged by the New York Times to have been a contributor to the site. No surprise then to learn that Gates of Vienna held Fallaci in the highest esteem, posting the following tender tribute on the occasion of her death in 2006: "All of us in the Counter-Jihad mourn her passing. All of us will have to work that much harder now that she is gone. Shame on the government of Italy for prosecuting her for telling the truth. Rest in peace, Oriana Fallaci."
Anyway, to cut to the chase, I thought it might be interesting to compare Fallaci's brief but colourful account of 1683 with the historical record. Here, then, is the paragraph which precedes the Fallaci rant I posted yesterday:
"The fact is that in 1683 Europeans were more intelligent than they are today. And apart from the French who also at that time liked to fornicate with Islam (consider the Treaty of Alliance signed by Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil) but had promised the Austrians to remain neutral, they all rushed to defend [Vienna] by now seen as the bulwark of Christianity. All of them, yes. English, Spanish, Germans, Ukrainians, Poles, Italians. (Meaning Genovese, Venetians, Tuscans, Piedmontese, subjects of the Papal State). On September 12 they scored the extraordinary victory that compelled Kara Mustafa to flee abandoning his camels and his elephants, his buffaloes and his mules, his corn and his coffee, his ostriches and his peacocks, his wives and his concubines... Worse: to prevent his wives and his concubines from falling into the hands of the infidel-dogs, Kara Mustafa had to slit their throats one by one." (The Force of Reason, 2004, pp 50-51)
The inventor of the term 'Eurabia' is obviously a go-to if it's a ripping Islamophobic yarn you're after, but if it's the history of the 1683 siege of Vienna you want, try Andrew Wheatcroft's The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans & the Battle for Europe (2008).
First, the myth of a Christian Europe united against a threat to its very existence:
"[Holy Roman Emperor] Leopold [I] could not even instruct his own subjects and be sure they would obey his command. To get support from the states of the Holy Roman Empire, an Emperor had to cajole, persuade or even bribe a set of prickly, argumentative and self-interested electoral princes, local rulers and assemblies. The fundamental rift - between Catholic and Protestant - still influenced Europe's internal politics, and Protestant states felt no natural inclination to come to the aid of a Catholic Emperor. That was within the Holy Roman Empire, over which Leopold had some power. The possibility of rallying Europe as a whole - including the arch enemy France - to follow the Habsburgs' lead was infinitesimal." (p 18)
Second, Kara (That's no way to treat a lady!) Mustafa:
"As he heard the small group of husars charge home, Kara Mustafa left his tent to rejoin the fight, charging into the flank of Jablanowski's column. Most of his bodyguard was killed, and he had been told that if he were captured the sacred standard entrusted to him by the sultan would fall into infidel hands. He returned to his tent for the last time, wrapped the standard in its cover, took his private treasure chest and rode off with a few sipahis towards the safety of Hungary. His final official act was to order the troops besieging Vienna to leave their posts, destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy, and to slaughter all captives. All 3 orders were carried out as far as was possible in the final chaotic hour." (p 186)
Hm... no mention of those unfortunate ladies. Anything in Wheatcroft on Mustafa's presumed harem?:
"[He] was enough of a courtier to pay attention to the sultan, and to take an interest in the young princes, Mustafa and Ahmed; his reward was the hand of an Ottoman princess in marriage, for whom he divorced his first wife." (p 83)
Divorce? Strewth, how is this guy ever going to get the numbers to satisfy Fallaci and the mob over at Gates of Vienna?
OK, let's see what Raphaela Lewis' Everyday Life in Ottoman Turkey (1971) has to say:
"[A] Muslim was permitted as many as 4 wives on the condition that he provided each with a separate and equal establishment... In fact, among certain classes, it was more common to marry and divorce frequently than to suffer the expense of a full quota of 4 wives at once, each with her separate dwelling." (p 104)
Do I really need to go on?
You may remember her reference to Kara Mustafa, Grand Vizier to Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV and commander of the 1683 Turkish siege of Vienna, as the first link in a supposed Islamo-fascist chain leading all the way to the likes of Yasser Arafat, Bin Laden and Islamist suicide bombers. Such great leaps forward (and backward) are, of course, characteristic of Zionists and Islamophobes, who blithely manipulate history to suit their agenda. Such has been the fate of Kara Mustafa and the siege of Vienna.
Hence the Islamophobic blog Gates of Vienna, which carries the following masthead: "At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war."
War? War? How very Anders Behring Breivik, alleged by the New York Times to have been a contributor to the site. No surprise then to learn that Gates of Vienna held Fallaci in the highest esteem, posting the following tender tribute on the occasion of her death in 2006: "All of us in the Counter-Jihad mourn her passing. All of us will have to work that much harder now that she is gone. Shame on the government of Italy for prosecuting her for telling the truth. Rest in peace, Oriana Fallaci."
Anyway, to cut to the chase, I thought it might be interesting to compare Fallaci's brief but colourful account of 1683 with the historical record. Here, then, is the paragraph which precedes the Fallaci rant I posted yesterday:
"The fact is that in 1683 Europeans were more intelligent than they are today. And apart from the French who also at that time liked to fornicate with Islam (consider the Treaty of Alliance signed by Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil) but had promised the Austrians to remain neutral, they all rushed to defend [Vienna] by now seen as the bulwark of Christianity. All of them, yes. English, Spanish, Germans, Ukrainians, Poles, Italians. (Meaning Genovese, Venetians, Tuscans, Piedmontese, subjects of the Papal State). On September 12 they scored the extraordinary victory that compelled Kara Mustafa to flee abandoning his camels and his elephants, his buffaloes and his mules, his corn and his coffee, his ostriches and his peacocks, his wives and his concubines... Worse: to prevent his wives and his concubines from falling into the hands of the infidel-dogs, Kara Mustafa had to slit their throats one by one." (The Force of Reason, 2004, pp 50-51)
The inventor of the term 'Eurabia' is obviously a go-to if it's a ripping Islamophobic yarn you're after, but if it's the history of the 1683 siege of Vienna you want, try Andrew Wheatcroft's The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans & the Battle for Europe (2008).
First, the myth of a Christian Europe united against a threat to its very existence:
"[Holy Roman Emperor] Leopold [I] could not even instruct his own subjects and be sure they would obey his command. To get support from the states of the Holy Roman Empire, an Emperor had to cajole, persuade or even bribe a set of prickly, argumentative and self-interested electoral princes, local rulers and assemblies. The fundamental rift - between Catholic and Protestant - still influenced Europe's internal politics, and Protestant states felt no natural inclination to come to the aid of a Catholic Emperor. That was within the Holy Roman Empire, over which Leopold had some power. The possibility of rallying Europe as a whole - including the arch enemy France - to follow the Habsburgs' lead was infinitesimal." (p 18)
Second, Kara (That's no way to treat a lady!) Mustafa:
"As he heard the small group of husars charge home, Kara Mustafa left his tent to rejoin the fight, charging into the flank of Jablanowski's column. Most of his bodyguard was killed, and he had been told that if he were captured the sacred standard entrusted to him by the sultan would fall into infidel hands. He returned to his tent for the last time, wrapped the standard in its cover, took his private treasure chest and rode off with a few sipahis towards the safety of Hungary. His final official act was to order the troops besieging Vienna to leave their posts, destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy, and to slaughter all captives. All 3 orders were carried out as far as was possible in the final chaotic hour." (p 186)
Hm... no mention of those unfortunate ladies. Anything in Wheatcroft on Mustafa's presumed harem?:
"[He] was enough of a courtier to pay attention to the sultan, and to take an interest in the young princes, Mustafa and Ahmed; his reward was the hand of an Ottoman princess in marriage, for whom he divorced his first wife." (p 83)
Divorce? Strewth, how is this guy ever going to get the numbers to satisfy Fallaci and the mob over at Gates of Vienna?
OK, let's see what Raphaela Lewis' Everyday Life in Ottoman Turkey (1971) has to say:
"[A] Muslim was permitted as many as 4 wives on the condition that he provided each with a separate and equal establishment... In fact, among certain classes, it was more common to marry and divorce frequently than to suffer the expense of a full quota of 4 wives at once, each with her separate dwelling." (p 104)
Do I really need to go on?
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Leave Our Islamophobes Alone, OK?
I love a good old full-bodied Islamophobic rant, don't you?
And nobody does it better than the late Italian 'journalist' Oriana Fallaci:
"What I say is that today's Islamic invasion of Europe is nothing else than a revival of its centuries-old expansionism, of its centuries-old imperialism, of its centuries-old colonialism. More underhand, though. More treacherous. Because this time it is characterized not only by the current Kara Mustafas and Lala Mustafas and Ali Pashas and Ahmet Pashas and and Suleymans the Magnificent, that is by the Bin Ladens and the Al Zarkawis and the various Arafats and the butchers who blow themselves up with the skyscrapers or buses. It is characterized also by the immigrants who settle in our countries, our homelands. And who without any respect for our laws impose on us their own laws. Their own customs, their God. Do you know how many of them live in the European continent, that is in the stretch running from the Atlantic coast to the Urals? About 60 million. In the European Union only, about 25. Outside the European Union, 35. Which includes Switzerland where they account for over 10% of the population, Russia where they account for 10.5%, Georgia where they account for 12%, the island of Malta where they account for 13%, Bulgaria where they account for 15%. And 18% in Cyprus, 19% in Serbia, 30% in Macedonia, 60% in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 90% in Albania, 93.5% in Azerbaijan... For the moment they are scarce only in Portugal where they account for 0.50%, in Ukraine where they account for 0.45%, in Latvia where they account for 0.38%, in Slovakia for 0.19%, in Lithuania for 0.14%, in Iceland for 0.04%. (Lucky Icelanders).But everywhere, even in Iceland, they are visibly increasing. And not only because the invasion is proceeding relentlessly but because the Muslims stand as the most prolific ethnic and religious group in the world. A characteristic favoured by polygamy and the fact that in a woman the Koran sees only a womb for giving birth." (The Force of Reason, 2004, pp 51-52)
Face it, our own common-and-garden Islamphobes of the corporate press are really pretty damn tame by comparison.
Still, up until a week or two ago, they could at least vent their peculiar obsession with nary a care in the world.
Take Piers Akerman for example. According to his professional playpen, The Sunday Telegraph, he had spent the week before last "on tour" in France, investigating what he calls "unwanted Islamic migration." Alas, poor Piers could find no encouraging developments, only a government hamstrung by "its elitist obsession with political correctness" and failing miserably in its Judeo-Christian duty to stem the advancing Islamic tide:
"Much was made of France's decision to ban the burqa, but the reality is the French government is all talk and no action. Not a single case has been pursued against an individual for wearing a full-face cover by the French police since the ban on face-covering headwear came into effect on April 11. In an interview at his Paris office, Bernard Godard, head of the French Interior Ministry's Central Bureau of Religious Affairs, told me the police had been told to 'avoid incidents'. He said about 40 women had been warned against wearing them, but there had been no arrests." (What a pack of burqas, 24/7/11)
Oh for the tumbrils and guillotines of yore! Where were the auto da fes when you needed them? Couldn't the French at least have afforded him the satisfaction of a little round-up, put a few of those burqas behind bars? Something? Anything? No, wherever he looked, all he could see were shameful signs of surrender:
"Politically correct, the French government does not attempt to determine what percentage of the Muslim population is unemployed, though it admits unemployent is high in low-income areas in industrial centre such as Lille, Paris, Lyons and Marseilles, which also happen to have higher numbers of Muslim residents. It would be simple for the government to estimate unemployment levels but it chooses not to, knowing that the details would only inflame the situation. Even in villages with populations of less than 5,000, a few hundred Muslims have been able to exert political influence beyond that warranted by their numbers."
Yes, wherever they went, they took over, staring down any politician, any bureaucrat, anyone who tried to resist, and always getting their way!
But at least, despite the crippling "elitist obsession with political correctness," (alas also alive and well in this once fair land) Piers could tell it like it is, albeit muttering darkly as opposed to shouting, Fallaci-like, from the rooftops: The Muslims are coming! The Muslims are coming!
Ah, yes. Halcyon days!
And then along came that bloody lunatic Anders Behring Breivik to spoil it all.
Talk about the the cat among the pigeons. Now the Islamophobes of the press would have to cough and splutter, pinching their nostrils with one hand and holding this Christianist terrorist rat at arms length with the other in a vain effort to avoid being contaminated by the god-awful stench. Henceforth, or at least until he had faded from the news cycle, they would feel constrained to justify every Islamophobic grunt and motion. Pretty damned uncomfortable!
Take The Australian's steamed foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, for example:
"Breivik espoused hatred of Muslims. Does this make anyone who has questioned multiculturalism, or the success of the mass immigration of North African Muslims to Europe, somehow responsible for Breivik's actions? Certainly not. Any attempt to use this murderous tragedy for mainstream political point scoring is contemptible. Yet there is in truth no movement that can be accurately called a Christian terrorist movement. No serious Christian cleric ever gives such violence succour, no Christian-influenced state ever supports it. The terrorists concerned in custody do not read the Gospels, but always some other conspiracy literature concerning their own hang-ups. Similarly, there was in recent years one authentic Jewish Israeli terrorist, Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994, at the Tomb of the Patriarch in Hebron, shot and killed 29 innocent Palestinians. He was immediately condemned by all shades of Israeli politics and all mainstream shades of the Jewish religion. His action has not been repeated. This is not remotely equivalent to the worldwide Islamist movement of jihadist terror, led by al-Qa'ida but practised by many other groups with a degree of popular support, among them Hamas, Hezbollah, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jemaah Islamiah and many others." (The unheeded steps of a psycho killer, 28/7/11)
Poor Greg! Can you feel his pain? Now as if this 'Don't look at me like that!' cris de coeur weren't bad enough, the very next day, along comes one of the tribe, in a letter to the editor, to berate him for his thoughtful defence of the Judeo- bit of the Judeo-Christian construct:
"Greg Sheridan describes Baruch Goldstein, the religious fanatic who shot dead 29 Palestinians in Hebron on the West Bank in 1994, as the 'one authentic Jewish Israeli terrorist'. Jewish he certainly was, though in the most extreme, fundamentalist way. But his 'Israeliness' went no deeper than his passport. Like a huge proportion of the Jewish settler movement, he was a product of the most fanatically religio-Zionist corners of the American Jewish diaspora, not the overwhelmingly secular and pragmatic Israeli mainstream. Those Jews who are raised in Israel grow up with the realities of war and a desperation for peace rather than some mad ideological fantasy - which is why it was an American import who committed the atrocity, not a home-grown Israeli." Dov Midalia, Bondi Junction, NSW
An American import! Nothing whatever to do with Israel. When it comes to terrorism, Israelis are as pure as the driven snow. Wouldn't hurt a fly. Really.
Enough, I say. Leave our Muslim-bashers alone. They're going through a hard time right now.
And nobody does it better than the late Italian 'journalist' Oriana Fallaci:
"What I say is that today's Islamic invasion of Europe is nothing else than a revival of its centuries-old expansionism, of its centuries-old imperialism, of its centuries-old colonialism. More underhand, though. More treacherous. Because this time it is characterized not only by the current Kara Mustafas and Lala Mustafas and Ali Pashas and Ahmet Pashas and and Suleymans the Magnificent, that is by the Bin Ladens and the Al Zarkawis and the various Arafats and the butchers who blow themselves up with the skyscrapers or buses. It is characterized also by the immigrants who settle in our countries, our homelands. And who without any respect for our laws impose on us their own laws. Their own customs, their God. Do you know how many of them live in the European continent, that is in the stretch running from the Atlantic coast to the Urals? About 60 million. In the European Union only, about 25. Outside the European Union, 35. Which includes Switzerland where they account for over 10% of the population, Russia where they account for 10.5%, Georgia where they account for 12%, the island of Malta where they account for 13%, Bulgaria where they account for 15%. And 18% in Cyprus, 19% in Serbia, 30% in Macedonia, 60% in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 90% in Albania, 93.5% in Azerbaijan... For the moment they are scarce only in Portugal where they account for 0.50%, in Ukraine where they account for 0.45%, in Latvia where they account for 0.38%, in Slovakia for 0.19%, in Lithuania for 0.14%, in Iceland for 0.04%. (Lucky Icelanders).But everywhere, even in Iceland, they are visibly increasing. And not only because the invasion is proceeding relentlessly but because the Muslims stand as the most prolific ethnic and religious group in the world. A characteristic favoured by polygamy and the fact that in a woman the Koran sees only a womb for giving birth." (The Force of Reason, 2004, pp 51-52)
Face it, our own common-and-garden Islamphobes of the corporate press are really pretty damn tame by comparison.
Still, up until a week or two ago, they could at least vent their peculiar obsession with nary a care in the world.
Take Piers Akerman for example. According to his professional playpen, The Sunday Telegraph, he had spent the week before last "on tour" in France, investigating what he calls "unwanted Islamic migration." Alas, poor Piers could find no encouraging developments, only a government hamstrung by "its elitist obsession with political correctness" and failing miserably in its Judeo-Christian duty to stem the advancing Islamic tide:
"Much was made of France's decision to ban the burqa, but the reality is the French government is all talk and no action. Not a single case has been pursued against an individual for wearing a full-face cover by the French police since the ban on face-covering headwear came into effect on April 11. In an interview at his Paris office, Bernard Godard, head of the French Interior Ministry's Central Bureau of Religious Affairs, told me the police had been told to 'avoid incidents'. He said about 40 women had been warned against wearing them, but there had been no arrests." (What a pack of burqas, 24/7/11)
Oh for the tumbrils and guillotines of yore! Where were the auto da fes when you needed them? Couldn't the French at least have afforded him the satisfaction of a little round-up, put a few of those burqas behind bars? Something? Anything? No, wherever he looked, all he could see were shameful signs of surrender:
"Politically correct, the French government does not attempt to determine what percentage of the Muslim population is unemployed, though it admits unemployent is high in low-income areas in industrial centre such as Lille, Paris, Lyons and Marseilles, which also happen to have higher numbers of Muslim residents. It would be simple for the government to estimate unemployment levels but it chooses not to, knowing that the details would only inflame the situation. Even in villages with populations of less than 5,000, a few hundred Muslims have been able to exert political influence beyond that warranted by their numbers."
Yes, wherever they went, they took over, staring down any politician, any bureaucrat, anyone who tried to resist, and always getting their way!
But at least, despite the crippling "elitist obsession with political correctness," (alas also alive and well in this once fair land) Piers could tell it like it is, albeit muttering darkly as opposed to shouting, Fallaci-like, from the rooftops: The Muslims are coming! The Muslims are coming!
Ah, yes. Halcyon days!
And then along came that bloody lunatic Anders Behring Breivik to spoil it all.
Talk about the the cat among the pigeons. Now the Islamophobes of the press would have to cough and splutter, pinching their nostrils with one hand and holding this Christianist terrorist rat at arms length with the other in a vain effort to avoid being contaminated by the god-awful stench. Henceforth, or at least until he had faded from the news cycle, they would feel constrained to justify every Islamophobic grunt and motion. Pretty damned uncomfortable!
Take The Australian's steamed foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, for example:
"Breivik espoused hatred of Muslims. Does this make anyone who has questioned multiculturalism, or the success of the mass immigration of North African Muslims to Europe, somehow responsible for Breivik's actions? Certainly not. Any attempt to use this murderous tragedy for mainstream political point scoring is contemptible. Yet there is in truth no movement that can be accurately called a Christian terrorist movement. No serious Christian cleric ever gives such violence succour, no Christian-influenced state ever supports it. The terrorists concerned in custody do not read the Gospels, but always some other conspiracy literature concerning their own hang-ups. Similarly, there was in recent years one authentic Jewish Israeli terrorist, Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994, at the Tomb of the Patriarch in Hebron, shot and killed 29 innocent Palestinians. He was immediately condemned by all shades of Israeli politics and all mainstream shades of the Jewish religion. His action has not been repeated. This is not remotely equivalent to the worldwide Islamist movement of jihadist terror, led by al-Qa'ida but practised by many other groups with a degree of popular support, among them Hamas, Hezbollah, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jemaah Islamiah and many others." (The unheeded steps of a psycho killer, 28/7/11)
Poor Greg! Can you feel his pain? Now as if this 'Don't look at me like that!' cris de coeur weren't bad enough, the very next day, along comes one of the tribe, in a letter to the editor, to berate him for his thoughtful defence of the Judeo- bit of the Judeo-Christian construct:
"Greg Sheridan describes Baruch Goldstein, the religious fanatic who shot dead 29 Palestinians in Hebron on the West Bank in 1994, as the 'one authentic Jewish Israeli terrorist'. Jewish he certainly was, though in the most extreme, fundamentalist way. But his 'Israeliness' went no deeper than his passport. Like a huge proportion of the Jewish settler movement, he was a product of the most fanatically religio-Zionist corners of the American Jewish diaspora, not the overwhelmingly secular and pragmatic Israeli mainstream. Those Jews who are raised in Israel grow up with the realities of war and a desperation for peace rather than some mad ideological fantasy - which is why it was an American import who committed the atrocity, not a home-grown Israeli." Dov Midalia, Bondi Junction, NSW
An American import! Nothing whatever to do with Israel. When it comes to terrorism, Israelis are as pure as the driven snow. Wouldn't hurt a fly. Really.
Enough, I say. Leave our Muslim-bashers alone. They're going through a hard time right now.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH
Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheehan has predictably weighed in on the Gaza genocide (It's too easy just to blame Jews, 12/1/09), telling his readers that he "just happened to be in Israel" last November. He's being disingenuous. There was of course nothing happenstance about his trip - it was sponsored by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBOD) and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (see my 17/11/08 post Rambam Alert!) , part of a process I call rambamming - defined elsewhere in this blog as "being sponsored by smooth-talking Israel lobbyists in Australia on a grooming session by tough-talking PR people in Israel with a view to the sponsored adopting the missionary position for Israel when required in Australia." To my knowledge, no disclosure that a rambamming has taken place has ever accompanied an article on Israel and the Palestinians by a rambammed Herald journalist. Just click on the rambamming tag at the end of this post for a fuller picture of this below-the-radar activity.
Sheehan's November 2008 rambamming didn't take long to bear fruit (See my 27/11/08 post His Master's Voice), and now that the Israel's army is cutting a bloody swathe through Gaza, and Israel's PR machine is working overtime defending the indefensible, Sheehan's putting pen to paper in defence of Israel's actions should come as no surprise.
There are, of course, the usual factual stuff-ups (a sure give-away that the generalist pundit has only the shakiest grasp of the subject at hand), and I shall deal with these first: 1) Sheehan refers to the group of Israeli settler fanatics illegally occupying a Palestinian house in the Palestinian West Bank city of Hebron as occupying a "settlement." 2) In a reference to Jordan's administration of the West Bank from 1948-1967, he hilariously describes the West Bank Palestinians as an "ethnic majority" and their Jordanian Hashemite rulers as an "ethnic minority." Sheehan is labouring under the illusion that the Hashemites are an ethnic grouping rather than a dynasty. To add to the hilarity, he even has these 'ethnic' Hashemites simultaneously ruling the Gaza Palestinians! 3) Finally, his figure of "6,000 Hamas rocket attacks" on Israel from Gaza (repeated twice) is the same nonsense I've refuted elsewhere (See my 5/1/09 post Go Figure 1). Moreover, assigning all such rockets to Hamas alone is simply incorrect.
Then there's Sheehan's retailing of the contemptible Israeli propaganda line about the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) 'warehousing' "displaced Palestinians for decades because it has been in the interests of the Arab world for this problem not to be solved." He would have us believe that the issue of the Palestinian refugees arises not from Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1948 (glossed over with the neutral-sounding "displaced"), but from a deliberate failure of the UN to disperse them around the Arab world!* Sheehan thus attempts to shift responsibility for the Palestine refugee problem from the Israelis, who created it, to the UN, which set up UNRWA to manage it.
[* Nor was this for want of trying. Consider the following story from the time of the Egyptian military administration of Gaza: "Nasser feared the consequences of provoking the Israelis... He understood that the situation in Gaza was potentially explosive; thousands of refugees crowded into a tiny area with nothing to occupy their minds except the memory of what they'd left behind and how they were going to return. Already some Palestinians were crossing the Armistice lines, usually to collect possessions from the villages which hadn't yet been destroyed by the Israelis, but sometimes also to raid Israeli settlements bordering the Strip. As it was, Israeli reprisals for these incidents were becoming increasingly severe and in Nasser's mind they could easily provide the Israelis with the excuse to launch a full-scale war, which he knew Egypt was unprepared to fight. Nasser's way of defusing the situation, or so he thought, was to draw up a plan in 1954, in conjunction with the United States and UNRWA, to resettle the refugees in the Sinai. By any standards the conditions in the refugee camps were bad but the refugees vehemently opposed any move which either suggested their stay was permanent or that if they were to leave it would be anywhere but back to Palestine. For example when UNRWA had attempted to plant trees in Gaza's camps they were immediately uprooted by enraged residents who berated the Agency for wasting money on something which no one would be around long enough to see grow. Gaza's response to the leaking of the plan was therefore quite predictable. For two days, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, besieging Egyptian personnel in government buildings and burning vehicles and installations." (Stateless in Gaza, Cossali & Robson, 1986, pp 13-14)]
Sheehan also reflects the routine tendency of Zionist propagandists to blur the fundamental distinction between Jews/Judaism, on the one hand, and Zionists/Zionism, on the other. The result is that Melbourne demonstrators, whom he alleges were waving placards which read "Clean the Earth from the dirty Zionists" (photographs anyone?) and "Stop the sub-human Zionist landgrabbing barbarian mass murderers in occupied Palestine," are described as "anti-Jewish." Hyperbole aside (and assuming of course that such placards actually existed), these slogans, prima facie, are clearly directed against the ideology of political Zionism (ie the idea - following the definition of Israeli scholar Uri Davis - that it is a good idea to establish and consolidate in the country of Palestine a sovereign, Jewish state that attempts to guarantee in law and in practice a demographic majority of the Jewish tribes in the territories under its control) and its followers, not Jews or the faith of Judaism as such. In essence, for example, the first is little different to say 'Cleanse the Earth of Communists'. As for the second, I would really only quibble with the inclusion of "sub-human," on the grounds that ideological blindness, whether of the Zionist or any other variety, is, alas, all too human. Moreover, Sheehan might like to take a look at the photograph of the baseball-hatted Zionist at San Francisco's 10/1/09 promassacre rally holding a placard which reads, "Until all of Gaza is destroyed, the job is not done" (indyby.org), or maybe check out some of the racist anti-Arab filth currently flooding cyberspace from Zionist blogs and websites.
Did I say racist anti-Arab filth? Forget cyberspace/blogosphere. Look no further than Sheehan's own opinion piece: "Gaza has become a giant warehouse of misery. It has no economic growth, no prospects, almost no civil order, yet about half the population is under the age of 17. The population has exploded amid economic privation. Women, living under sharia law, are used primarily as breeding stock. When Nizar Rayan, the most senior member of Hamas, was killed in the latest Israeli attacks, he had 4 wives and 14 children." This surely has to be a new low for the Herald: the Palestinian family, currently being hammered mercilessly by Israel's "iron fist," is caricatured by Sheehan, from the comfort of his air-conditioned Fairfax office, as a fanatical, Jew-hating, jihadi husband wielding the sword of sharia law over a supine, bovine wife, who has little option but to keep on flooding the grim and grimy streets of Gaza with babies. And how terribly, terribly inconvenient for the poor Israelis who have to listen to the constant ticking of this demographic time-bomb! Why, it must surely drive them mad, mad enough to...
If Sheehan is seriously concerned about the plight of women, I'd suggest he first look in his own backyard - say in the troubled Sydney suburb of Rosemeadow where almost one quarter of all families are headed by single mothers "totally dependent on welfare," and where "most teenage girls are either pregnant or carrying a child on their hip." (Violence begins where hope ends on Rosemeadow housing estate, John Stapleton, The Australian, 10/1/09)
In addition to its standout racism, Sheehan's paragraph is riddled with falsehoods. If Gazans live in misery and economic deprivation, one need look no further than the decades of de-development the Strip was subjected to under Israeli occupation and the crippling effects of the post 2005 Israeli blockade. And that nonsense about "no civil order" (I assume Sheehan means prior to Israel's bombardment and invasion) has been flatly contradicted by courageous Haaretz journalist Amira Hass who, unlike Sheehan, was actually in Gaza not long after his rambamming. In This is Gaza (27/11/08) she wrote," Gaza is the ability to tell jokes in any situation, and the burning insult of having no running water for 3 or 4 days. And yet, the children go clean and neat to school... Gaza is also parents leaving their children alone at home, without fear, or letting them go to a playground far from home, or go by themselves to their grandmother in the Jabaliya refugee camp... Gaza is people's constant attempt to cling to a normal life, although Israel foists on them abnormal terms of imprisonment, isolation from the rest of the world and deterioration to a state of humiliating dependence on international charity programs."
In melding the febrile Islamophobic fantasies of the late Oriana Fallaci* with the current requirements of Israeli PR, Sheehan's latest propaganda piece plumbs new depths.
[* Sheehan actually reviewed the demented Fallaci's The Force of Reason on 15/5/06. There is not a hint of criticism throughout. His final sentence can only be described as admiring: "The history Oriana Fallaci has felt and seen has filled her final years with a lucid, fearless rage."]
Sheehan's November 2008 rambamming didn't take long to bear fruit (See my 27/11/08 post His Master's Voice), and now that the Israel's army is cutting a bloody swathe through Gaza, and Israel's PR machine is working overtime defending the indefensible, Sheehan's putting pen to paper in defence of Israel's actions should come as no surprise.
There are, of course, the usual factual stuff-ups (a sure give-away that the generalist pundit has only the shakiest grasp of the subject at hand), and I shall deal with these first: 1) Sheehan refers to the group of Israeli settler fanatics illegally occupying a Palestinian house in the Palestinian West Bank city of Hebron as occupying a "settlement." 2) In a reference to Jordan's administration of the West Bank from 1948-1967, he hilariously describes the West Bank Palestinians as an "ethnic majority" and their Jordanian Hashemite rulers as an "ethnic minority." Sheehan is labouring under the illusion that the Hashemites are an ethnic grouping rather than a dynasty. To add to the hilarity, he even has these 'ethnic' Hashemites simultaneously ruling the Gaza Palestinians! 3) Finally, his figure of "6,000 Hamas rocket attacks" on Israel from Gaza (repeated twice) is the same nonsense I've refuted elsewhere (See my 5/1/09 post Go Figure 1). Moreover, assigning all such rockets to Hamas alone is simply incorrect.
Then there's Sheehan's retailing of the contemptible Israeli propaganda line about the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) 'warehousing' "displaced Palestinians for decades because it has been in the interests of the Arab world for this problem not to be solved." He would have us believe that the issue of the Palestinian refugees arises not from Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1948 (glossed over with the neutral-sounding "displaced"), but from a deliberate failure of the UN to disperse them around the Arab world!* Sheehan thus attempts to shift responsibility for the Palestine refugee problem from the Israelis, who created it, to the UN, which set up UNRWA to manage it.
[* Nor was this for want of trying. Consider the following story from the time of the Egyptian military administration of Gaza: "Nasser feared the consequences of provoking the Israelis... He understood that the situation in Gaza was potentially explosive; thousands of refugees crowded into a tiny area with nothing to occupy their minds except the memory of what they'd left behind and how they were going to return. Already some Palestinians were crossing the Armistice lines, usually to collect possessions from the villages which hadn't yet been destroyed by the Israelis, but sometimes also to raid Israeli settlements bordering the Strip. As it was, Israeli reprisals for these incidents were becoming increasingly severe and in Nasser's mind they could easily provide the Israelis with the excuse to launch a full-scale war, which he knew Egypt was unprepared to fight. Nasser's way of defusing the situation, or so he thought, was to draw up a plan in 1954, in conjunction with the United States and UNRWA, to resettle the refugees in the Sinai. By any standards the conditions in the refugee camps were bad but the refugees vehemently opposed any move which either suggested their stay was permanent or that if they were to leave it would be anywhere but back to Palestine. For example when UNRWA had attempted to plant trees in Gaza's camps they were immediately uprooted by enraged residents who berated the Agency for wasting money on something which no one would be around long enough to see grow. Gaza's response to the leaking of the plan was therefore quite predictable. For two days, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, besieging Egyptian personnel in government buildings and burning vehicles and installations." (Stateless in Gaza, Cossali & Robson, 1986, pp 13-14)]
Sheehan also reflects the routine tendency of Zionist propagandists to blur the fundamental distinction between Jews/Judaism, on the one hand, and Zionists/Zionism, on the other. The result is that Melbourne demonstrators, whom he alleges were waving placards which read "Clean the Earth from the dirty Zionists" (photographs anyone?) and "Stop the sub-human Zionist landgrabbing barbarian mass murderers in occupied Palestine," are described as "anti-Jewish." Hyperbole aside (and assuming of course that such placards actually existed), these slogans, prima facie, are clearly directed against the ideology of political Zionism (ie the idea - following the definition of Israeli scholar Uri Davis - that it is a good idea to establish and consolidate in the country of Palestine a sovereign, Jewish state that attempts to guarantee in law and in practice a demographic majority of the Jewish tribes in the territories under its control) and its followers, not Jews or the faith of Judaism as such. In essence, for example, the first is little different to say 'Cleanse the Earth of Communists'. As for the second, I would really only quibble with the inclusion of "sub-human," on the grounds that ideological blindness, whether of the Zionist or any other variety, is, alas, all too human. Moreover, Sheehan might like to take a look at the photograph of the baseball-hatted Zionist at San Francisco's 10/1/09 promassacre rally holding a placard which reads, "Until all of Gaza is destroyed, the job is not done" (indyby.org), or maybe check out some of the racist anti-Arab filth currently flooding cyberspace from Zionist blogs and websites.
Did I say racist anti-Arab filth? Forget cyberspace/blogosphere. Look no further than Sheehan's own opinion piece: "Gaza has become a giant warehouse of misery. It has no economic growth, no prospects, almost no civil order, yet about half the population is under the age of 17. The population has exploded amid economic privation. Women, living under sharia law, are used primarily as breeding stock. When Nizar Rayan, the most senior member of Hamas, was killed in the latest Israeli attacks, he had 4 wives and 14 children." This surely has to be a new low for the Herald: the Palestinian family, currently being hammered mercilessly by Israel's "iron fist," is caricatured by Sheehan, from the comfort of his air-conditioned Fairfax office, as a fanatical, Jew-hating, jihadi husband wielding the sword of sharia law over a supine, bovine wife, who has little option but to keep on flooding the grim and grimy streets of Gaza with babies. And how terribly, terribly inconvenient for the poor Israelis who have to listen to the constant ticking of this demographic time-bomb! Why, it must surely drive them mad, mad enough to...
If Sheehan is seriously concerned about the plight of women, I'd suggest he first look in his own backyard - say in the troubled Sydney suburb of Rosemeadow where almost one quarter of all families are headed by single mothers "totally dependent on welfare," and where "most teenage girls are either pregnant or carrying a child on their hip." (Violence begins where hope ends on Rosemeadow housing estate, John Stapleton, The Australian, 10/1/09)
In addition to its standout racism, Sheehan's paragraph is riddled with falsehoods. If Gazans live in misery and economic deprivation, one need look no further than the decades of de-development the Strip was subjected to under Israeli occupation and the crippling effects of the post 2005 Israeli blockade. And that nonsense about "no civil order" (I assume Sheehan means prior to Israel's bombardment and invasion) has been flatly contradicted by courageous Haaretz journalist Amira Hass who, unlike Sheehan, was actually in Gaza not long after his rambamming. In This is Gaza (27/11/08) she wrote," Gaza is the ability to tell jokes in any situation, and the burning insult of having no running water for 3 or 4 days. And yet, the children go clean and neat to school... Gaza is also parents leaving their children alone at home, without fear, or letting them go to a playground far from home, or go by themselves to their grandmother in the Jabaliya refugee camp... Gaza is people's constant attempt to cling to a normal life, although Israel foists on them abnormal terms of imprisonment, isolation from the rest of the world and deterioration to a state of humiliating dependence on international charity programs."
In melding the febrile Islamophobic fantasies of the late Oriana Fallaci* with the current requirements of Israeli PR, Sheehan's latest propaganda piece plumbs new depths.
[* Sheehan actually reviewed the demented Fallaci's The Force of Reason on 15/5/06. There is not a hint of criticism throughout. His final sentence can only be described as admiring: "The history Oriana Fallaci has felt and seen has filled her final years with a lucid, fearless rage."]
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
The Pundit's Pundit
US scholera Daniel Pipes is in town. We are are honoured. The Man is a scholera's scholera. His profound insights into what makes Muslims tick(ing bombs), drawing on only the most scholeraly of sources, is not for the layman. They require explication by one who has studied for years in The Master's madrasa. As it happens, I am one such. I can read his runes and tease out his subtleties. Hence this post.
Daniel Pipes, I should explain, is director of Islamofabulism Forum and is in Australia for the Intelligence Insulted debate, sponsored by the Sydney Morning Herald and the St James Ethics Centre this very evening (15/4/08) in Sydney. So sought after is he that the SMH's cunning competitor, The Australian, actually mounted a pre-emptive coup, prevailing upon The Master to allow the publication of a talk he had delivered to assorted worshipful Quadranters at a Quadrant soiree the night before.*
Here are excerpts from The Master's message to the Quadrant faithful, published under the title: Europe or Eurabia? Peaceful integration is the least likely way Europe will cope with Islam. My exegesis follows each precious pearl of wisdumb.
"I foresee potentially one of 3 paths for Europe: Muslims dominating, Muslims rejected or harmonious integration."
In his discussion of the first - "Eurabia" - option, The Master quotes the very creme de la creme of Western scholeraship on Islam, the late Oriana (Ignorantissima) Fallaci (Europe as "a colony of Islam") and Mark Steyn-Gang (Europe will "disappear" this century). These two, along with The Master himself of course, constitute the very doyen of the Islamofabulist school of hysterical scholeraship. I should add that, in invoking them, the master was obviously mindful of Quadrant's requirement for the kind of intellectual rigor mortis so prized by the eminent scholeras who write for that 'steamed journal.
"The secularism that predominates in Europe, especially among its elites leads to alienation from the Judeo-Christian tradition, empty church pews and a fascination with Islam."
Precisely! What the Master means by this is that because our political and cultural movers & shakers are so pissed off with JC (Judeo-Christianity that is), they are therefore magnetically drawn, as it were, to Islam. The Master's failure to cite any evidence whatever for this profoundly counter-intuitive insight is deliberate. I should point out that what constitutes the bleeding obvious for him invariably has to be spelt out for lesser mortals. And that is what I am here for. The evidence is there for all to see. Just open your eyes. Are you aware for example that Blair, Sarkozy and Berlusconi, to name but three of Europe's political elite, have all converted to Islam? No? Typical! Blair, in the grip of his "fascination with Islam" has tossed in his job and left Londonistan for Hamastan on a Jihad Airways jet. Sarkozy has just fallen under the spell of that bewitching houri Khalida Baroudi, and Berlusconi has just re-emerged from a period of political Shia-style occultation and re-taken the Italian presidency, sporting (at least Oriana's unfortunate demise spared her this horror) new, black locks!
"Muslims display a religious fervour that translates into jihadi sensibility, a supremacism towards non-Muslims and an expectation that Europe is waiting for conversion to Islam."
The Master is telling us here that French Muslims, to take but one example, are in the process of losing the little Garlic sangfroid that might have rubbed off on them over their civilizing years in France and are willy nilly foaming at the mouth as their once latent inner jihadi terrorists, conjured up by the Terrorist Masters of 9/11, take over. They are, even as my trembling fingers type, roaming the effete streets of gay Paris with a superior air, knocking on the doors of its unsuspecting citizens and tempting the unfortunates within (who, if they'd only known what was coming, would've been out packing the pews!) by proposing a date with 72 virginal Khalida Baroudi look-alikes.
"The contrast in faith also has demographic implications, with Christians having on average 1.4 children a woman...and Muslims enjoying [wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you bet they're enjoying it, the randy buggers!] a dramatically higher...fertlity rate... Russia could become a Muslim-majority country in 2050."
This means that because a European woman only has 1.4 kids, the .4 kid is well, pretty much a dud and has to be discarded. But your randy Muslim, he's fairly pumpin' 'em out, know what I mean? None of this .4 nonsense or anything like that! And as for Russia, there's only one explanation for its "fascination," first with Afghanistan and now with Chechnya. As The Master has pointed out, it's that "fascination with Islam" which comes over any European whose bum is not firmly planted on a pew.
"To employ enough workers to fund existing pension plans, Europe needs millions of immigrants, and these tend to be disproportionately Muslim due to...the turmoil in majority-Muslim countries."
I hasten to point out here that The Master is not, repeat not, implying that said "turmoil" has anything whatever to do with those millions of Iraqi and Afghan refugees liberated from their countries by the his uncle, Sam.
"In addition, many Europeans no longer cherish their history, mores and customs. Guilt about fascism, racism and imperialism leaves many with a sense that their own culture has less value than that of immigrants."
Yes! Yes! The Master is spot on here. If only the real Europeans would cast aside that burdensome, self-hating (The Master calls it "self-disdain") "guilt" and once more return to their fascist, racist, imperialist roots! Unleash their inner Hitlers, Mussolinis and Francos! Cleanse Europe of the Muslim enemy within! And then, and then, take the fight to the Muslim hordes without!
And now for the second option: what might be termed the Reconquista option, or in terms most Australians can understand - Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi. Why dontcha go back where ya came from, Leb! "Indigenous Europeans could resist... they can at any time reassert control should they see Muslims posing a threat to a way of life. This impulse can be seen at work in the French anti-hijab legislation or in Geert Wilder's film, Fitna."
The Master is positively Churchillian, is he not? Can't you see his subtle call to arms? We shall fight them in the high schools! We shall fight them in the cinemas!
"Anti-immigrant parties gain in strength; a potential nativist movement is taking shape across Europe as political parties opposed to immigration focus increasingly on Islam and Muslims."
Now I know what you're thinking, but your wrong. The Master's wording is perhaps too subtle for you ignoramuses. The word he used was "nativist", not Nazi. The Master knows full well that the only Nazis in the world today are among the Muslim untermenschen. Just because "the British National Party, Belgium's Vlaamse Belang, France's National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and the Danish People's Party" will (should they gain power) "reject multiculturalism, cut back on immigration, encourage repatriation of immigrants, support Christian insitutions, increase indigenous European birthrates and broadly attempt to re-establish traditional ways," does not mean that they are Nazi, merely "nativist."
The Master does, however, make clear that that's a most unlikely scenario. As our Israeli friends never tire of reminding us, the fascist virus has decamped from Europe to the Middle East where there are now more Hitlers than you can poke the proverbial stick at. The Europeans are now mere pussy cats, and The Master lets us in on this terrifying little secret: "If anyone is likely to initiate violence, it is the Muslims. They have already engaged in many acts of violence and seem to be spoiling for more."
The third, or "harmonious integration," option is just not on according to The Master. And here he quotes with approval yet another in his suite of impeccably authoritative (and versatile)scholeras, "American columnist [& radio talk show host & pro-war Republican spruiker of American exceptionalism and Judeo-Christian values] Dennis Prager," as saying "It is difficult to imagine any other future scenario for western Europe than its becoming Islamicised or having a civil war."
The man's a genius.
*"St James Ethics Centre director Simon Longstaff was faced with an ethical dilemma of his own making yesterday. Longstaff has set up a forum for live debate called IQ2Oz to raise the level of public discourse on challenging issues. But Longstaff did his best to shut down debate yesterday when he discovered one of his participants, respected Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, had been invited by The Australian's opinion page editor Rebecca Weisser to submit for publication an extract of his address to a Quadrant dinner last night. Longstaff asked Pipes not to publish anything in The Australian before Thursday. When asked how this would foster debate and whether it was ethical behaviour, Longstaff asked for more time to think about it. After a couple of hours, he relented." (Strewth, The Australian, 15/4/08)
Daniel Pipes, I should explain, is director of Islamofabulism Forum and is in Australia for the Intelligence Insulted debate, sponsored by the Sydney Morning Herald and the St James Ethics Centre this very evening (15/4/08) in Sydney. So sought after is he that the SMH's cunning competitor, The Australian, actually mounted a pre-emptive coup, prevailing upon The Master to allow the publication of a talk he had delivered to assorted worshipful Quadranters at a Quadrant soiree the night before.*
Here are excerpts from The Master's message to the Quadrant faithful, published under the title: Europe or Eurabia? Peaceful integration is the least likely way Europe will cope with Islam. My exegesis follows each precious pearl of wisdumb.
"I foresee potentially one of 3 paths for Europe: Muslims dominating, Muslims rejected or harmonious integration."
In his discussion of the first - "Eurabia" - option, The Master quotes the very creme de la creme of Western scholeraship on Islam, the late Oriana (Ignorantissima) Fallaci (Europe as "a colony of Islam") and Mark Steyn-Gang (Europe will "disappear" this century). These two, along with The Master himself of course, constitute the very doyen of the Islamofabulist school of hysterical scholeraship. I should add that, in invoking them, the master was obviously mindful of Quadrant's requirement for the kind of intellectual rigor mortis so prized by the eminent scholeras who write for that 'steamed journal.
"The secularism that predominates in Europe, especially among its elites leads to alienation from the Judeo-Christian tradition, empty church pews and a fascination with Islam."
Precisely! What the Master means by this is that because our political and cultural movers & shakers are so pissed off with JC (Judeo-Christianity that is), they are therefore magnetically drawn, as it were, to Islam. The Master's failure to cite any evidence whatever for this profoundly counter-intuitive insight is deliberate. I should point out that what constitutes the bleeding obvious for him invariably has to be spelt out for lesser mortals. And that is what I am here for. The evidence is there for all to see. Just open your eyes. Are you aware for example that Blair, Sarkozy and Berlusconi, to name but three of Europe's political elite, have all converted to Islam? No? Typical! Blair, in the grip of his "fascination with Islam" has tossed in his job and left Londonistan for Hamastan on a Jihad Airways jet. Sarkozy has just fallen under the spell of that bewitching houri Khalida Baroudi, and Berlusconi has just re-emerged from a period of political Shia-style occultation and re-taken the Italian presidency, sporting (at least Oriana's unfortunate demise spared her this horror) new, black locks!
"Muslims display a religious fervour that translates into jihadi sensibility, a supremacism towards non-Muslims and an expectation that Europe is waiting for conversion to Islam."
The Master is telling us here that French Muslims, to take but one example, are in the process of losing the little Garlic sangfroid that might have rubbed off on them over their civilizing years in France and are willy nilly foaming at the mouth as their once latent inner jihadi terrorists, conjured up by the Terrorist Masters of 9/11, take over. They are, even as my trembling fingers type, roaming the effete streets of gay Paris with a superior air, knocking on the doors of its unsuspecting citizens and tempting the unfortunates within (who, if they'd only known what was coming, would've been out packing the pews!) by proposing a date with 72 virginal Khalida Baroudi look-alikes.
"The contrast in faith also has demographic implications, with Christians having on average 1.4 children a woman...and Muslims enjoying [wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you bet they're enjoying it, the randy buggers!] a dramatically higher...fertlity rate... Russia could become a Muslim-majority country in 2050."
This means that because a European woman only has 1.4 kids, the .4 kid is well, pretty much a dud and has to be discarded. But your randy Muslim, he's fairly pumpin' 'em out, know what I mean? None of this .4 nonsense or anything like that! And as for Russia, there's only one explanation for its "fascination," first with Afghanistan and now with Chechnya. As The Master has pointed out, it's that "fascination with Islam" which comes over any European whose bum is not firmly planted on a pew.
"To employ enough workers to fund existing pension plans, Europe needs millions of immigrants, and these tend to be disproportionately Muslim due to...the turmoil in majority-Muslim countries."
I hasten to point out here that The Master is not, repeat not, implying that said "turmoil" has anything whatever to do with those millions of Iraqi and Afghan refugees liberated from their countries by the his uncle, Sam.
"In addition, many Europeans no longer cherish their history, mores and customs. Guilt about fascism, racism and imperialism leaves many with a sense that their own culture has less value than that of immigrants."
Yes! Yes! The Master is spot on here. If only the real Europeans would cast aside that burdensome, self-hating (The Master calls it "self-disdain") "guilt" and once more return to their fascist, racist, imperialist roots! Unleash their inner Hitlers, Mussolinis and Francos! Cleanse Europe of the Muslim enemy within! And then, and then, take the fight to the Muslim hordes without!
And now for the second option: what might be termed the Reconquista option, or in terms most Australians can understand - Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi. Why dontcha go back where ya came from, Leb! "Indigenous Europeans could resist... they can at any time reassert control should they see Muslims posing a threat to a way of life. This impulse can be seen at work in the French anti-hijab legislation or in Geert Wilder's film, Fitna."
The Master is positively Churchillian, is he not? Can't you see his subtle call to arms? We shall fight them in the high schools! We shall fight them in the cinemas!
"Anti-immigrant parties gain in strength; a potential nativist movement is taking shape across Europe as political parties opposed to immigration focus increasingly on Islam and Muslims."
Now I know what you're thinking, but your wrong. The Master's wording is perhaps too subtle for you ignoramuses. The word he used was "nativist", not Nazi. The Master knows full well that the only Nazis in the world today are among the Muslim untermenschen. Just because "the British National Party, Belgium's Vlaamse Belang, France's National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and the Danish People's Party" will (should they gain power) "reject multiculturalism, cut back on immigration, encourage repatriation of immigrants, support Christian insitutions, increase indigenous European birthrates and broadly attempt to re-establish traditional ways," does not mean that they are Nazi, merely "nativist."
The Master does, however, make clear that that's a most unlikely scenario. As our Israeli friends never tire of reminding us, the fascist virus has decamped from Europe to the Middle East where there are now more Hitlers than you can poke the proverbial stick at. The Europeans are now mere pussy cats, and The Master lets us in on this terrifying little secret: "If anyone is likely to initiate violence, it is the Muslims. They have already engaged in many acts of violence and seem to be spoiling for more."
The third, or "harmonious integration," option is just not on according to The Master. And here he quotes with approval yet another in his suite of impeccably authoritative (and versatile)scholeras, "American columnist [& radio talk show host & pro-war Republican spruiker of American exceptionalism and Judeo-Christian values] Dennis Prager," as saying "It is difficult to imagine any other future scenario for western Europe than its becoming Islamicised or having a civil war."
The man's a genius.
*"St James Ethics Centre director Simon Longstaff was faced with an ethical dilemma of his own making yesterday. Longstaff has set up a forum for live debate called IQ2Oz to raise the level of public discourse on challenging issues. But Longstaff did his best to shut down debate yesterday when he discovered one of his participants, respected Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, had been invited by The Australian's opinion page editor Rebecca Weisser to submit for publication an extract of his address to a Quadrant dinner last night. Longstaff asked Pipes not to publish anything in The Australian before Thursday. When asked how this would foster debate and whether it was ethical behaviour, Longstaff asked for more time to think about it. After a couple of hours, he relented." (Strewth, The Australian, 15/4/08)
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Fabricating Dr George Habash
The founder and former leader of the leftist Palestinian resistance organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Dr George Habash, died of a heart attack in Jordan on January 26 at the age of 82.
Not surprisingly, he got very short shrift in The Australian: Notorious Palestine 'defender' dies at 81 (28/1/08). But things weren't much better over at Fairfax either. When The Sydney Morning Herald decided to run The New York Times obituary (27/1/08) on him, whoever pared it down left out the vital contextualising paragraphs of the original. The header, Dead at 82: Palestinian marxist who took terrorism to the sky (28/1/08) said it all.
On the cutting room floor lay the following paragraphs, the 'why' of Dr Habash, without which the reader can be forgiven for thinking that he was simply off on some mad, aerial frolic:
"A number of accounts say Mr Habash was born in Lydda, Palestine, which is now Lod, Israel. The son of a...[Greek Orthodox] grain merchant, he was known as a hard-working and serious student...He studied medicine at the American University in Beirut, but his studies were interrupted in 1948 when he left...to help his family flee Palestine as violence deepened between Arabs and Jews. That experience of the nascent Israeli army driving the Palestinians from their homes had a profound effect on the young medical student, who began organizing Palestinians as soon as he returned to medical school..."
To understand George Habash and his people one must understand 1948 - but of course that is a temporal bridge too far for our native ms media hacks. The NYT's pale reference to 1948 notwithstanding, its obituary is still woefully inadequate, and one wonders why it is that we recycle so much American media hackery.
An infinitely more erudite, informative and objective assessment of the man, by veteran British Middle East correspondent and author, David Hirst, appeared on the website of The Guardian (27/1/08):
"In his later years, George Habash...was often known as 'the conscience of the Palestine revolution'. He had been one of the very earliest founding fathers of that movement, which pioneered armed struggle and revolutionary violence as the sole means of liberating Palestine. Since it first emerged, in the 1960s as a potent new force on the Middle East stage, the movement suffered all manner of vicissitudes, and its ambitions were eventually reduced, almost out of recognition, to an endless series of surrenders to the exigencies of Pax Americana. But, out of sincerity, rather than the opportunism which has tainted other, lesser radicals of his kind, 'Al Hakim' (the doctor or wise man) remained faithful to his original conviction that by force - and force alone - could the Palestinians recover their rights."
After charting Habash's career through to the expulsion of the Palestinian resistance movement from Jordan in 1971, Hirst concludes:
"Moving to Beirut, along with the rest of the PLO, Habash persisted in some of the more spectacular, publicity-seeking acts of violence - with the 1972 massacre of tourists at Lod (once Lydda and now Ben Gurion) Airport by Japanese Red Army terrorists as perhaps the most successful, if ignoble, of them - but to less and less affect. The whole guerilla movement was moving away from random terrorism of that kind, and, at the same time, looking more and more to diplomacy, first as a supplement to, then as a substitute for, military action. Habash, the radical, made it his business to resist every new stage of this growing moderation. But when, at the Palestine National Council (PNC) meeting in 1988, Arafat made his historic offer of a two-state solution to the Palestine problem, Habash did not walk out of the PLO altogether. Nor did he, 3 years later, when the PNC agreed to go to the 1991 Middle East peace conference in Madrid. He said he would respect the will of the majority, however fiercely he opposed it. That loyalty to Palestinian national unity, along with his personal modesty and simplicity, made him perhaps the most liked of the small, still surviving band of the revolution's original chiefs. He stood down as PFLP leader in 2000, 4 years before the death of Yasser Arafat, and 6 years before the Islamicists of Hamas won their victory in the Palestinian election. Pax Americana meanwhile continues to make paltry progress in its regional diplomacy, and many of those who now so grudgingly support it may well in due course conclude that the 'conscience of the revolution' had always been right in opposing it - and the whole concept of Palestinian moderation."
Now there's food for thought!
I can't help but wonder if this staunchly secular, Christian Palestinian revolutionary ever became aware in his later years of his makeover as a forerunner of Osama Bin Laden at the hands of the late, deranged Italian Islamophobe and 'journalist', Oriana Fallaci. Did he, I wonder, ever remember the interview she conducted with him back in 1970 in Amman, or read it in the now defunct Life magazine, under the heading: A leader of the fedayeen: 'We want a war like the Vietnam war'? (The opening sentence reads: "The man I was facing was responsible for most of the acts of terror the Arabs have committed in Europe.")
Certainly, Islamofabulist Fallaci did - sort of. According to the account in her 2004 book-length rant, The Force of Reason, she interviewed him in Jordan in 1972, "while a conscientious bodyguard protected him by pointing his sub-machine gun at my head. Habash explained to me that the Arabs' enemy was not Israel alone: it was the whole West. Among the targets to hit he cited in fact Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland...'Our revolution is part of the world revolution. It is not confined to the reconquest of Palestine...The time has come to admit that we want a war like the war in Vietnam. That we want another Vietnam, and not only for Palestine but for all the Arab countries'...The Palestine problem is not an aside problem. A problem separated from the Arab Nation's realities. Palestinians are part of the Arab Nation. Therefore the entire Arab Nation must go to war against Europe and America. It must unleash a war against the West. And it will. America and Europe don't know that we Arabs are just at the beginning of the beginning. That the best has yet to come. That from now on there will be no peace for the West...To advance step by step. Millimetre by millimetre. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet'."
She claims that at the time, she did not grasp the full import of his words, but now realises that he "also meant the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war waged by stealing a country [Europe!] from its citizens...In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism...The Islamic holidays, the 5 prayers' interruptions, the halal meat, the face covered also on the identity papers...The Islamic marriage, the polygamy, the stoning of women..." (pp 131-133)
Before the century is out, Fallaci frets, the Mediterranean Sea could become an Islamic lake, as an Islamized Europe to the north joins the Islamic world to the south to form the jihadist global Islamic umma.
There's only one problem - Habash said nothing of the kind, and the text of Fallaci's 1970 Life interview with him gives her lunacy the lie. To begin with, the interview took place in 1970, not 1972, the Palestinian resistance having been purged from Jordan by July 1971. Then there's the nonsense about the gun.
In the introduction to the 1970 interview she had written, "We met at night in the suburbs of Amman, in a building attached to a refugee camp. The room contained one desk and a few chairs; outside the closed doors, armed fedayeen stood guard. Inside there were only 4 of us: Habash, myself, a photographer and the man who had driven us there."
As for the words she alleges he uttered in The Force of Reason, Habash is quoted in the Life interview as saying that, "Our enemy is Israel, plus the Zionist movement that controls many of the countries which support Israel, plus imperialism. I mean specifically British imperialism from 1918, and American imperialism from 1948 on. If we had to face Israel alone, the problem would have been almost a simple one: but we have to stand against whoever supports Israel economically, militarily, politically, ideologically. This means the capitalist countries that have conceived Israel and are now using it as a bulwark to protect their interests in Arabia. They include the US, and almost every country in Europe."
In response to her question, "How far are you planning to go? Do you want to make war on three-fourths of the planet?", Habash replies: "What we want is a war like the war in Vietnam...not just in Palestine, but throughout the Arab world. Palestinians are part of the Arab nation, and what we need is for the whole Arab nation to enter the war; which will occur anyway, within 3 or 4 years [Habash's timing was prophetically correct: 3 years later in October, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a war to reclaim occupied territory in the Sinai and the Golan Heights]. By then, if not before, the revolutionary forces in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon will rise to our side in a total war. Our struggle has barely begun, the worst is yet to come. And it is right for Europe and America to be warned now that there will be no peace for them until there is justice for Palestine."
Habash went on to reassure Ignorantissima (as the Italian newspaper, La Republica, called her) that "we will do our best not to harm Europeans," and stressed that "The goal of our struggle is not only that of restoring the nationhood of Palestine, but to transform it into a socialist state as well."
In explaining the essence of guerilla warfare to her, Habash is quoted as saying: "The main point is to select targets where success is 100% assured. To harrass, to upset, to work on the nerves through unexpected small damages. Brute force is out; this is a thinking man's game. Especially when one is as poor as the Popular Front is. It would be silly for us to even think of waging a regular war; imperialism is too powerful and Israel is too strong. The only way to destroy them is to give a little blow here, a little blow there; to advance step by step, inch by inch, for years, for decades, with determination, doggedness, patience."
It is clear throughout that Habash's models are China, Cuba and Vietnam, that his strategy, as Che Guevara had enjoined, is "To make two, three, many Vietnams," and that his primary focus is the liberation of Palestine. Fallaci's 2004 revision of her 1970 interview with him, to fit her twisted and paranoid Islamophobic fantasies, is nothing less than grotesque.
Fallaci's 1970 interview also makes clear just what it was that launched Habash on his revolutionary career - the Lydda death march of 1948, one of the many war crimes that make up the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) about which our ms media are supremely ignorant. Even here, however, Fallaci can't get her dates right, substituting 1967 for 1948. Habash is speaking: "Then it was 1967 [sic: 1948] and they [the Israelis] came to Lydda and...I don't know how to explain this...what this still means for us not to have a home, not to have a nation, or anyone who cares...They forced us to flee. It is a picture that haunts me and that I'll never forget. Thirty thousand human beings walking, weeping... screaming in terror...women with babies in their arms and children tugging at their skirts...and the Israeli soldiers pushing them on with their guns. Some people fell by the wayside, some never got up again. It was terrible. One thinks: this isn't life, this isn't human. Once you have seen this, your heart and your brain are transformed."
Unfortunately, thanks to the recycling ad nauseam of Fallaci's febrile fantasies on innumerable crank websites, it is the fabricated Habash, rather than the real, that most people will be exposed to.
Not surprisingly, he got very short shrift in The Australian: Notorious Palestine 'defender' dies at 81 (28/1/08). But things weren't much better over at Fairfax either. When The Sydney Morning Herald decided to run The New York Times obituary (27/1/08) on him, whoever pared it down left out the vital contextualising paragraphs of the original. The header, Dead at 82: Palestinian marxist who took terrorism to the sky (28/1/08) said it all.
On the cutting room floor lay the following paragraphs, the 'why' of Dr Habash, without which the reader can be forgiven for thinking that he was simply off on some mad, aerial frolic:
"A number of accounts say Mr Habash was born in Lydda, Palestine, which is now Lod, Israel. The son of a...[Greek Orthodox] grain merchant, he was known as a hard-working and serious student...He studied medicine at the American University in Beirut, but his studies were interrupted in 1948 when he left...to help his family flee Palestine as violence deepened between Arabs and Jews. That experience of the nascent Israeli army driving the Palestinians from their homes had a profound effect on the young medical student, who began organizing Palestinians as soon as he returned to medical school..."
To understand George Habash and his people one must understand 1948 - but of course that is a temporal bridge too far for our native ms media hacks. The NYT's pale reference to 1948 notwithstanding, its obituary is still woefully inadequate, and one wonders why it is that we recycle so much American media hackery.
An infinitely more erudite, informative and objective assessment of the man, by veteran British Middle East correspondent and author, David Hirst, appeared on the website of The Guardian (27/1/08):
"In his later years, George Habash...was often known as 'the conscience of the Palestine revolution'. He had been one of the very earliest founding fathers of that movement, which pioneered armed struggle and revolutionary violence as the sole means of liberating Palestine. Since it first emerged, in the 1960s as a potent new force on the Middle East stage, the movement suffered all manner of vicissitudes, and its ambitions were eventually reduced, almost out of recognition, to an endless series of surrenders to the exigencies of Pax Americana. But, out of sincerity, rather than the opportunism which has tainted other, lesser radicals of his kind, 'Al Hakim' (the doctor or wise man) remained faithful to his original conviction that by force - and force alone - could the Palestinians recover their rights."
After charting Habash's career through to the expulsion of the Palestinian resistance movement from Jordan in 1971, Hirst concludes:
"Moving to Beirut, along with the rest of the PLO, Habash persisted in some of the more spectacular, publicity-seeking acts of violence - with the 1972 massacre of tourists at Lod (once Lydda and now Ben Gurion) Airport by Japanese Red Army terrorists as perhaps the most successful, if ignoble, of them - but to less and less affect. The whole guerilla movement was moving away from random terrorism of that kind, and, at the same time, looking more and more to diplomacy, first as a supplement to, then as a substitute for, military action. Habash, the radical, made it his business to resist every new stage of this growing moderation. But when, at the Palestine National Council (PNC) meeting in 1988, Arafat made his historic offer of a two-state solution to the Palestine problem, Habash did not walk out of the PLO altogether. Nor did he, 3 years later, when the PNC agreed to go to the 1991 Middle East peace conference in Madrid. He said he would respect the will of the majority, however fiercely he opposed it. That loyalty to Palestinian national unity, along with his personal modesty and simplicity, made him perhaps the most liked of the small, still surviving band of the revolution's original chiefs. He stood down as PFLP leader in 2000, 4 years before the death of Yasser Arafat, and 6 years before the Islamicists of Hamas won their victory in the Palestinian election. Pax Americana meanwhile continues to make paltry progress in its regional diplomacy, and many of those who now so grudgingly support it may well in due course conclude that the 'conscience of the revolution' had always been right in opposing it - and the whole concept of Palestinian moderation."
Now there's food for thought!
I can't help but wonder if this staunchly secular, Christian Palestinian revolutionary ever became aware in his later years of his makeover as a forerunner of Osama Bin Laden at the hands of the late, deranged Italian Islamophobe and 'journalist', Oriana Fallaci. Did he, I wonder, ever remember the interview she conducted with him back in 1970 in Amman, or read it in the now defunct Life magazine, under the heading: A leader of the fedayeen: 'We want a war like the Vietnam war'? (The opening sentence reads: "The man I was facing was responsible for most of the acts of terror the Arabs have committed in Europe.")
Certainly, Islamofabulist Fallaci did - sort of. According to the account in her 2004 book-length rant, The Force of Reason, she interviewed him in Jordan in 1972, "while a conscientious bodyguard protected him by pointing his sub-machine gun at my head. Habash explained to me that the Arabs' enemy was not Israel alone: it was the whole West. Among the targets to hit he cited in fact Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland...'Our revolution is part of the world revolution. It is not confined to the reconquest of Palestine...The time has come to admit that we want a war like the war in Vietnam. That we want another Vietnam, and not only for Palestine but for all the Arab countries'...The Palestine problem is not an aside problem. A problem separated from the Arab Nation's realities. Palestinians are part of the Arab Nation. Therefore the entire Arab Nation must go to war against Europe and America. It must unleash a war against the West. And it will. America and Europe don't know that we Arabs are just at the beginning of the beginning. That the best has yet to come. That from now on there will be no peace for the West...To advance step by step. Millimetre by millimetre. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet'."
She claims that at the time, she did not grasp the full import of his words, but now realises that he "also meant the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war waged by stealing a country [Europe!] from its citizens...In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism...The Islamic holidays, the 5 prayers' interruptions, the halal meat, the face covered also on the identity papers...The Islamic marriage, the polygamy, the stoning of women..." (pp 131-133)
Before the century is out, Fallaci frets, the Mediterranean Sea could become an Islamic lake, as an Islamized Europe to the north joins the Islamic world to the south to form the jihadist global Islamic umma.
There's only one problem - Habash said nothing of the kind, and the text of Fallaci's 1970 Life interview with him gives her lunacy the lie. To begin with, the interview took place in 1970, not 1972, the Palestinian resistance having been purged from Jordan by July 1971. Then there's the nonsense about the gun.
In the introduction to the 1970 interview she had written, "We met at night in the suburbs of Amman, in a building attached to a refugee camp. The room contained one desk and a few chairs; outside the closed doors, armed fedayeen stood guard. Inside there were only 4 of us: Habash, myself, a photographer and the man who had driven us there."
As for the words she alleges he uttered in The Force of Reason, Habash is quoted in the Life interview as saying that, "Our enemy is Israel, plus the Zionist movement that controls many of the countries which support Israel, plus imperialism. I mean specifically British imperialism from 1918, and American imperialism from 1948 on. If we had to face Israel alone, the problem would have been almost a simple one: but we have to stand against whoever supports Israel economically, militarily, politically, ideologically. This means the capitalist countries that have conceived Israel and are now using it as a bulwark to protect their interests in Arabia. They include the US, and almost every country in Europe."
In response to her question, "How far are you planning to go? Do you want to make war on three-fourths of the planet?", Habash replies: "What we want is a war like the war in Vietnam...not just in Palestine, but throughout the Arab world. Palestinians are part of the Arab nation, and what we need is for the whole Arab nation to enter the war; which will occur anyway, within 3 or 4 years [Habash's timing was prophetically correct: 3 years later in October, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a war to reclaim occupied territory in the Sinai and the Golan Heights]. By then, if not before, the revolutionary forces in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon will rise to our side in a total war. Our struggle has barely begun, the worst is yet to come. And it is right for Europe and America to be warned now that there will be no peace for them until there is justice for Palestine."
Habash went on to reassure Ignorantissima (as the Italian newspaper, La Republica, called her) that "we will do our best not to harm Europeans," and stressed that "The goal of our struggle is not only that of restoring the nationhood of Palestine, but to transform it into a socialist state as well."
In explaining the essence of guerilla warfare to her, Habash is quoted as saying: "The main point is to select targets where success is 100% assured. To harrass, to upset, to work on the nerves through unexpected small damages. Brute force is out; this is a thinking man's game. Especially when one is as poor as the Popular Front is. It would be silly for us to even think of waging a regular war; imperialism is too powerful and Israel is too strong. The only way to destroy them is to give a little blow here, a little blow there; to advance step by step, inch by inch, for years, for decades, with determination, doggedness, patience."
It is clear throughout that Habash's models are China, Cuba and Vietnam, that his strategy, as Che Guevara had enjoined, is "To make two, three, many Vietnams," and that his primary focus is the liberation of Palestine. Fallaci's 2004 revision of her 1970 interview with him, to fit her twisted and paranoid Islamophobic fantasies, is nothing less than grotesque.
Fallaci's 1970 interview also makes clear just what it was that launched Habash on his revolutionary career - the Lydda death march of 1948, one of the many war crimes that make up the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) about which our ms media are supremely ignorant. Even here, however, Fallaci can't get her dates right, substituting 1967 for 1948. Habash is speaking: "Then it was 1967 [sic: 1948] and they [the Israelis] came to Lydda and...I don't know how to explain this...what this still means for us not to have a home, not to have a nation, or anyone who cares...They forced us to flee. It is a picture that haunts me and that I'll never forget. Thirty thousand human beings walking, weeping... screaming in terror...women with babies in their arms and children tugging at their skirts...and the Israeli soldiers pushing them on with their guns. Some people fell by the wayside, some never got up again. It was terrible. One thinks: this isn't life, this isn't human. Once you have seen this, your heart and your brain are transformed."
Unfortunately, thanks to the recycling ad nauseam of Fallaci's febrile fantasies on innumerable crank websites, it is the fabricated Habash, rather than the real, that most people will be exposed to.
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