More Sewage from Hitchens

"[Edward Said] never lost the capacity to be wounded by the treachery and opportunism of supposed friends. A few weeks ago he called to ask whether I had read a particularly stupid attack on him by his very old friend Christopher Hitchens in The Atlantic Monthly. He described with pained sarcasm a phone call in which Hitchens had presumably tried to square his own conscience by advertising to Edward the impending assault. I asked Edward why he was surprised, and indeed why he cared. But he was surprised and he did care. His skin was so, so thin, I think because he knew that as long as he lived, as long as he marched forward as a proud, unapologetic and vociferous Palestinian, there would be some enemy on the next housetop down the street eager to pour sewage on his head." (Edward Said, Dead at 66, Alex Cockburn, 25/9/03)

Christopher Hitchens once co-edited a book with Edward Said called Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship & the Palestinian Question (1988). Now, in a recent book review in The Atlantic Monthly (Idealism of an earlier age), recycled in Murdoch's Australian Financial Review (16/4/10), Hitchens is blaming the (Palestinian) victims and putting the spew into spurious scholarship:

"Almost no concession made by either side was ever sincere, or would not have been withdrawn or amended if the other party had accepted it."

There are no Palestinian victims here, no colonised, no occupied - just one of two presumably evenly-matched sides, slugging it out, and, most importantly, refusing to concede an inch to the other.

Yet, in 1996, in his introduction to Said's essays on the bankrupt Oslo 'peace process', Peace & Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Processs, Hitchens couldn't have been clearer on the subject of who was wielding the hammer:

"Consider merely the question of Gaza. If the Belgians or the Dutch or the British had ever dared run a conquered territory in this way, in the period after 1945, it can be hoped (and it may even be believed) that a torrent of international condemnation would have descended. Nobody has ever visited this part of the projected 'Greater Israel' and come away with anything but the most decided revulsion. Having shamed themselves beyond description in this little strip of former Palestine, the Israeli authorties smilingly decided to make a present of it to their former subjects. I should here like to quote from an interview I conducted, in the week of the White House handshake, with Ilan Halevi of the PLO delegation. (Mr Halevi is a Palestinian Jew and was at the time the ambassador of the PLO to the Socialist International, as well as a strong supporter of the Arafat-Rabin accord.) 'When they offered us Gaza as a beginning', he told me, 'I suggested that we say, 'Sure. But what will you give us in exchange?' It may or may not be significant that the only decent Jewish joke to come out of the whole affair was told by a member of the PLO. The offer was, in other words, always understood at some level as a sordid trap. On the day of the White House accords, I also dined with a senior American diplomat who had once had charge of Israel-Palestine negotiations. He told me of a previous occasion, when the late Gen. Moshe Dayan had suggested a 'Gaza first' ploy. Instructed to wait upon Dayan and tell him that such an offer was too transparent by half, my vis-a-vis had found him no whit abashed. 'Never mind', said the hero of 1967, 'We'll still double-cross that bridge when we come to it'." (p xvi-xvii)

But it gets worse. According to the Hitchens of 2010, not only does he entertain the notion that the victims of Zionist aggression should have been in the business of making concessions to their aggressors, but that they should also have been owning up to their hand in... the Nazi Holocaust no less:

"There was perhaps a moment when an unambivalent Israeli admission of responsibility for the original expulsion of the Palestinians could have had a healing and even cathartic effect. There may even have been a time when a sincere Arab denunciation of the role of the grand mufti of Jerusalem in the Holocaust* might have softened a heart or two. But that time is well in the past... The parties of God have the ordering of things now, and we must wait meekly upon their awful pleasure."

If only the Palestinian victims had damned one of their own for daring to sup with the devil of the day in defence of his people and homeland (conveniently overlooking, of course, the fact that Zionist ultras were actively seeking the same devil's blessing in their war with the British), a heart or two might have softened!?

Here's the spew in Hitchen's spurious scholarship: 1) The mufti's doings in Nazi Germany and the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 are on a par and a mutual apology is therefore in order; 2) Ben-Gurion and his successors had a heart.

At two points in Said's introduction to Blaming the Victims, it's almost as though, in relation to this particular bucket of Hitchens', he had his co-editor in mind:

"Almost from the moment that the state of Israel came into being in 1948 - and although the preparations were made well before that time - the West was deluged with a whole series of narratives and images that acquired the solidity and the legitimacy of 'truth'. In spite of the presence of a comfortable 67% majority of Palestinian Arabs who owned over 90% of the land in 1948 (this was after decades of Jewish immigration and settlement) the world heard of an 'empty' territory whose inhabitants brutishly opposed Jewish settlement in Zion even after the Holocaust had occurred. Thereafter the myths proliferated and formed a system which, in the West at least, it became inordinately difficult to deny. The 'Arabs' left Palestine because their leaders told them to; the Arabs were out to destroy the Jewish state, and since they were already in league with Hitler, their opposition to Israel was essentially racist and fascist..." (pp 3-4) And, further on: "Most of all the Palestinian has suffered because he or she has been unknown, an unacknowledged victim, and worse, a victim blamed not only for his or her disasters, but for those of others as well." (p 6)

Said had expanded on this idea in an earlier work, After the Last Sky (1986):

"There has been no misfortune worse for us than that we are ineluctably viewed as the enemies of the Jews. No moral and political fate worse, none at all, I think: no worse, there is none. With so much discussion recently of the Holocaust, I am centrally aware of the fact of the destruction of European Jews, an abomination which nevertheless I find hard to consider separately; there is always the connection made between Israel and the Holocaust, how one makes restitution for the other. I find myself saying that a generation later the Holocaust has victimized us too, but without the terrifying grandeur and sacriligeous horror of what it did to the Jews. Seen from the perspective provided by the Holocaust, we are as inconsequential as children on a playground; and yet - one more twist in the reductive spiral - even at play we cannot be enjoyed or looked at simply as that, as children playing games that signify little. Just by virtue of where we stand, every playground is seen as a 'breeding ground for terrorists', every pastime a 'secret plan for the destruction of Israel', as if our own destruction was not a great deal more probable. Something either pernicious or negligible can be attributed to us, no matter what we do, wherever we are, however we think or act." (p 134)

Hitchens' obscene suggestion that the victims of the Zionist project in Palestine should be apologising for their alleged part in the Hitlerian Holocaust would have Said turning in his grave.

[* See my 22/3/08 post The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament 6]

A New Dawn of American Leadership

The rhetoric: "And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand." (from President-elect Barack Obama's victory speech at Chicago's Grant Park)

The reality: "Why is he asking Rahm Emanuel - 'Rahmbo', one of [Washington's] most in-your-face partisan actors - to be his chief of staff?... [I]n the modern White House, the chief of staff is one of the most powerful posts, the gatekeeper to the president on every issue, the person with the last word... Mr Emanuel... knows the White House, having been a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton. In a brief career as an investment banker after that, he made millions and became familiar with Wall Street; in the House, he helped negotiate the government bailout of the financial system... But there's the matter of his temperament - or, as Mr Emanuel says, 'I swear a lot'. He also yells a lot, and in his sentences his favourite expletive can serve as subject, verb or adjective when he is facing down recalcitrant Democrats or Republican opponents... In the Clinton administration, Mr Emanuel raised eyebrows when, as chairman of the 1993 inaugural committee, he rode in the parade in a car emblazoned with his name... Mr Emanuel has worked at good relations with Republicans... Late last week, Mr Emanuel called Ray LaHood, a Republican from downstate Illinois, for advice about his career. 'A chief of staff is sort of the alter ego of the president', Mr LaHood said. 'Philosophically, on principles and values, they just have to be totally in sync'. He thinks Mr Emanuel would be 'a perfect fit'."* (Rahmbo the gatekeeper: he swears by his boss, Jackie Calmes, The New York Times, repub SMH, 7/11/08)

So chief of staff Emanuel is a foul-mouthed, narcissistic, investment banker turned Democrat politician, who pals around with Republicans and whose principles and values Obama shares. How reassuring. But it gets worse: "Emanuel is the son of a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who was a member of the Irgun (Etzel or IZL), a militant Zionist group that operated in Palestine between 1931 and 1948." (Sources: Rahm Emanuel accepts Obama offer to be chief of staff, Haaretz, 6/11/08) Irgun terrorists achieved notoriety with the blowing up of Jerusalem's King David Hotel in 1946 (88 dead) and the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948 (100+ dead), to cite but two of their 'achievements'. The Irgun's leader, Menachem Begin, described by the architect of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and Israel's first prime minister (1948-1963), David Ben-Gurion, as "clearly a Hitler type," went on to lead the Irgun's ideological successor, the Likud, to victory in the Israeli elections of 1977.

But maybe Rahmbo's put this legacy behind him? No such luck. Apparently, he's a real chip off the old block** - after all, Daddy didn't name him Rahm Israel Emanuel for nothing: "Emanuel continued his father's tradition of active support for Israel; during the 1991 Gulf War he volunteered to help maintain Israeli army vehicles near the Lebanon border when southern Lebanon was still occupied by Israeli forces. As White House political director in the first Clinton administration, Emanuel orchestrated the famous 1993 signing ceremony of the 'Declaration of Principles' between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin." (Obama picks pro-Israel hardliner for top post, Ali Abunimeh, The Electronic Intifada, 5/11/08) Of this sealing of the Oslo 'peace process', with its famous Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn, Edward Said lamented at the time: "The vulgarities of the White House ceremony, the degrading spectacle of Yasir Arafat thanking everyone for what, in fact, was the suspension of most of his people's rights, and the fatuous solemnity of Bill Clinton's performance - like a 20th century Roman emperor shepherding two vassal kings through rituals of reconciliation and obeisance - all these only temporarily obscure the truly astonishing proportions of the Palestinian capitulation... [L]et us call the agreement by its real name: an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles." (Peace & its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process, 1996, p 7)

Not surprisingly, Emanuel has real form as an unabashed apologist in Congress for Israeli brutality: "In June 2003... he signed a letter criticizing Bush for being insufficiently supportive of Israel. 'We were deeply dismayed to hear your criticism of Israel for fighting acts of terror', Emanuel, along with 33 other Democrats wrote to Bush. The letter said that Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian political leaders 'was clearly justified as an application of Israel's right to self-defense' (Pelosi supports Israel's attacks on Hamas group, San Francisco Chronicle, 14/6/03). In July 2006, Emanuel was one of several members who called for the cancellation of a speech to Congress by visiting Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki because al-Maliki had criticized Israel's bombing of Lebanon. Emanuel called the Lebanese and Palestinian governments 'totalitarian entities with militias and terrorists acting as democracies' in a 19 July speech supporting a House resolution backing Israel's bombing of both countries that caused thousands of civilian victims."* (Abunimeh)

Finally, "... Emanuel accompanied Obama to a meeting of AIPAC's executive board just after the Illinois senator had addressed the pro-Israel lobby's conference last June. " (Abunimeh) At that conference, Obama swore ritual fealty to Israel: "Our alliance is based on shared interests and shared values. Those who threaten Israel, threaten us. Israel has always faced these threats on the front lines. And I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel's security."

But God help Obama if ever his "unshakeable commitment" to Israel gets the wobbles: "There's the story of how, the night after Clinton was elected, Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting 'Dead!... Dead!... Dead! and plunging the knife into the table after every name. 'When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape', one campaign veteran recalls. 'It was like something out of The Godfather'."*** (Forget the Honeymoon: Getting Down to Bizness with Obama, Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com, 7/11/08)

[*Try working these clowns out: LaHood is an Illinois Republican of Lebanese origin. While Rahmbo is using his congressional seat to urge US backing for Israel's 2006 bomb-Lebanon-back-to-the-stone-age rampage (19/7/06), LaHood is "join[ing] with a small group of members of Congress in pressing the State Department to urge Israel to exercise more restraint in its bombing of Lebanon... 'I don't think it's right for [the Israelis] to close the airport, just bomb every runway, I think that's wrong. And I think it's wrong to bomb every major artery out of... Beirut and out of Lebanon. And then to go in and some of these oil refineries they've destroyed and some of the areas of Beirut that were just re-built over the last 10 years were bombed. I just think this is wrong." (LaHood on Lebanon, Mike Dorning, swamppolitics.com, 18/7/08)]
[** And here's a slice of Daddy: "Dr Benjamin Emanuel said he was convinced that his son's appointment would be good for Israel. 'Obviously, he will influence the president to be pro-Israel', he was quoted as saying. 'Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House'." (Emanuel to be Obama's chief of staff, The Jerusalem Post, 6/11/08)]
[*** This quote comes originally from a Rolling Stone article on Rahmbo by Joshua Green, The Enforcer (20/10/05). In it, Green cites Rahmbo as the guy responsible for "beating back the Republican-led impeachment" of Clinton. And who presided over the impeachment vote? Ray LaHood (wikipedia). Curiously, in Green's article, you will find absolutely no mention of Rahmbo's Zionist upbringing, merely: "The second of 3 sons born to a pediatrician father and a civil-rights-activist mother..." Nonetheless, it is well worth reading. Clinton veterans, for example, knew Rahmbo was on the prowl because "... 'he's got this big old pair of brass balls, and you can just hear 'em clanking when he walks down the halls of Congress', says Paul Begala, who served with Emanuel on Clinton's staff."]