Phillip Adams' Filibustering

Phillip Adams' interviewed the visiting former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Richard Falk, broadcasting it on ABC Radio National program Late Night Live (LNL) on 3/7/19 under the heading of Richard Falk on Israel, Palestine, Iran and the USA. To begin with, here is my transcription. Note that I cannot beat the idea that Adams is filibustering, even unconsciously, and I will indicate where I think this to be the case in square brackets containing italics. See what you think:

PA: My next guest... is guaranteed to generate a huge amount of correspondence even before he opens his mouth. There have been calls for him to have his visa entry to Australia revoked, and his talk at the NSW Parliament and the University of Sydney to be cancelled. Given that he's here these calls have not been heeded and he has been let into the country, and here at LNL we'd like to hear a range of views. But there's no doubt that any story we do that mentions Israel or Palestine will generate complaints from all sides. [MERC: Note that on the LNL website there are so far 4 comments. Adams' prediction of complaints from all sides has proved erroneous, except for one Zionist who wrote as follows: "As a long time listener to the program, let me say that tax payers money should not be used to give Falk a platform, unless he is going to be properly cross-examined (as opposed to being encouraged) for his rabid irrational hatred of Israel. Not one of Phillip's finer moments."] My guest is Richard Falk, the Albert B. Milbank professor of international law, emeritus, from Princeton University. He was the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Palestine from 2008-2014, and despite his retirement from that lofty position he's back in Australia talking about his hopes for peace between Israel and Palestine. Welcome back, Richard.
RF: Thank you so much.
PA: I should make the point that you're one of the very few guests I have that's older than I am.
RF: Well, I wish that was not my only qualification for being your guest but...
PA: OK, you've visited Australia regularly for some time but have you ever had a chillier reception?
RF: I suppose not. The last time I was here, I also spoke about several issues, but one of them was Israel/Palestine and I think there was some protest at the time also, but rather minimal and not carried on through the media as this was the result of an article in the Australian Jewish News (AJN).
PA: I want to raise that article with you in a minute, but let me ask you this. Have you had similar receptions in other parts of the world?
RF:  Except for Israel itself where I was detained whilst I was serving as the UN Rapporteur. There is a very pro-Zionist NGO called UN Watch that has tried to harass me in various ways over time, including trying to have me denied entry to the UK. So that's my only other experience.
PA: OK, I'm going to restate some of the issues raised by the AJN in their article The furore of Falk visit. First, they claim you support conspiracy theories about 9/11. [MERC: Does anyone really give a damn what the AJN said back when? Falk is here to talk about Palestinian rights in international law.]
RF: Yes, that's always sort of used as a way of showing my supposed extreme and reckless views. My actual position is that the official version of 9/11 has some unanswered questions that the American people, and indeed the world, deserve to know, and for whatever reason those questions that arouse scepticism have never been satisfactorily addressed...
PA: Are you suggesting it might be a false-flag operation? [MERC: And again.]
RF: Well, there are a lot of alternative versions of what actually happened, including that the idea the American establishment at the time knew something was going on and let it happen. What actually happened is something obscure so I don't subscribe to the accusation of any alternate conspiracy theory. All I do subscribe to is a scepticism about the official version, and I wrote the foreword to one of the early books that raised 17 questions about the official version, and it was written by a very distinguished philosopher of religion actually, who happened also to be a friend of mine and a very scrupulous scholar so his questions I think justify an attitude of suspicion, but they don't vindicate an alternative version of what actually happened.
PA: The furore on the Falk visit also said that you blamed the US and Israel for the Boston bombings. [MERC: And again.]
RF: Oh, that again. A lot of people are saying that, but they picked this out of context from my blog. What I actually said was that when you have a foreign policy in an area that is subject to so much turmoil and extremism as the Middle East is, and you intervene in that process, you're bound to have some reverberations from sociopathic individuals living abroad - and the policy toward Israel is very provocative among certain extremist groups - and therefore this kind of negative reverberation is something you have to expect to follow from such a foreign policy.
PA: Note, dear listeners, that we will put up a link to both the article by the Jewish News and Richard's rebuttal on the website. [MERC: And again.] So when we last spoke you were not permitted into Israel. Have you been back in the last 5 years? [MERC: And again. Adams is clearly not interested in what Falk has to say on Palestinian rights and international law.]
RF: I've been invited back several times, but partly for logistical reasons, and partly because I didn't want to repeat the experience of being put in what amounts to a prison by the Israelis, I decided not to go. I've given video clips of my presentations that were the reason I would have gone, but I haven't gone.
PA: OK, what do you make of Gerard [sic] Kushner's Prosperity for Peace Plan? [MERC: And again.]
RF: I don't feel it has much political traction. It's not looking towards an agreement. It's looking towards Palestinian surrender politically, followed by some kind of economic plan that will improve the daily lives of people in the region, or at least that is its promise. But the Palestinians have not struggled for their national rights for almost a century now to surrender for some kind of economic package.
PA: Even if Jared described it as some kind of opportunity of the century, it's interesting there were no Israelis or Palestinians at the launch in Bahrain, and of course, the Palestinians boycotted the event.
RF: Yes, I mean it has very little appeal to people who understand the history and the nature of the tensions and the conflict, and the whole Trump approach since he became president, first appointing three extremists as the representatives of his presidency in the region, not only to Israel, but Kushner, Greenblatt and Friedman are all extremists within the Zionist camp itself.
PA: To which could now be added Bolton. [MERC: Adams diverts Falk again with Bolton who is focused solely on Iran.]
RF: Yes, what they did before this recent Bahrain meeting on the economic dimension of the Kushner Plan was a series of one-sided steps; the movement of the American embassy to Jerusalem in violation of an international UN consensus; the withdrawal of humanitarian assistance to UNRWA that was taking care of the refugees throughout the region; and the recognition of the annexation of the Golan Heights. All of these steps moved away from what prior American presidents had done, which was to lean toward the Israeli side, to be partisan. But what Trump is trying to do is force this Palestinian political surrender, and so it's a shift from partisanship to belligerency as far as the Palestinians are concerned...
PA: You must be watching the tensions between the US and Iran with great concern, as do we all. How do you see this playing out? [MERC: More Adams' diverting onto Iran.]
RF: Well, I think everything in this Trump era is unpredictable and anyone who tries to be too dogmatic about what's going to happen shouldn't be trusted, shouldn't be relied upon. I think it's a very dangerous confrontational policy. I think that the bargain that underlies it is that the Gulf Arab states were so eager to confront Iran that they were willing to make peace with Israel and sacrifice the Palestinian struggle. So from the Palestinian point of view, this is a very adverse development because their support from Arab neighbors has considerably diminished and they're faced with an American administration that's pushing hard the Netanyahu line in Israel, plus a basically unsympathetic regional atmosphere with very few friends of the Palestinian people left in positions of authority.
PA: And of course Trump has this very strong connection to Saudi Arabia as part of his decision- making. [MERC: Now Adams has diverted Falk onto Saudi Arabia.]
RF: Yes, one of the things I think is very harmful to American foreign policy is these two special relationships, one with Israel, one with Saudi Arabia, and when they say special relationships, what they really mean is unconditional support, and so whatever Israel does, whatever Saudi Arabia does, is not seen as wrong, and violations of international law and human rights just fall below the radar. But if Egypt or Turkey did things that becomes a human rights outrage, particularly Turkey these days because it's seen as a kind of friend of the Islamic movement.
PA: My guest is Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law, emeritus from Princeton and former UN Special Rappoteur for Human Rights in Palestine from 2008-2014. Now, the USA is still seen as absolutely crucial in any peace deal to be brokered.
RF: Yes, my own view is that the intergovernmental framework is not capable of producing a sustainable peace. If you are really interested in peace between Palestinians and Israelis it has to be based on the spirit of equality, not on a structure of hierarchy, and all the efforts at producing a peace over the past couple of decades have been based on finding security for Israel but not treating Palestinian needs in any equivalent manner, and my view is that leads to a ceasefire, not a peace.
PA: To take us back to the USA and Iran, might the North Korea playbook apply here? [MERC: North Korea? Here Adams goes again. As issues Palestine and North Korea are chalk and cheese.]
RF: Well, as I say, anything in the Trump era is unpredictable, in terms of both what happens on the Korean peninsula but what broader effects that might have. It is true that if he has success in Korea, he might try the same thing with Iran, and that would make him a very strong presidential candidate in 2020. I don't think the American people, as confused and contradictory as they seem to be at the moment, want a real war with either North Korea or Iran. So from a pragmatic, political point of view, he's much better off being a peacekeeper or peacemaker than being a warmonger, but he has advisers like Bolton and Pompeo who are definitely inclined towards military confrontation.
PA: I think we all agree that giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was a bit premature, but of course from time to time Trump tweets that he is a recipient. What are the main reasons behind the USA's obsession with Iran? Does it go back to the hostage crisis, way back to '79? [MERC: Back to Iran!]
RF: I think that's a very insightful way of putting the question. I do think the humiliation that the US suffered at the hostage crisis left an unhealed wound. And in part the successive hostility towards Iran, which poses no threat whatsoever to either the US or Israel for that matter, is a lingering sense of frustration that the American government was unable to release the hostages, except when Tehran decided it was time to let them go, which was after the Carter presidency, the first day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration, which made people suspicious that there must have been some kind of arrangement between the Reagan people and the Iranian government.*
PA: Since you left your UN post, what has the new rapporteur, Michael Link, been saying about human rights in Israel [sic]?
RF: More or less the same thing I was saying. It is hard to confront the reality of the occupation without coming to the same conclusions if you respect the evidence. I used to say, if you were only 10% objective, you would come to the same conclusions I did. You didn't have to be balanced because Israel itself admits to the expansion of the settlements which are unlawful, it admits to the annexation of parts of the Occupied Territories which contradicts the authority of the UN and international consensus. It has claimed permanent sovereignty over unified Jerusalem which again is contrary to the international consensus. So Israel's own policies, which were in some ways embedded in this basic law they adopted in 2018, which said only Jews have the right of self-determination within Israel, I mean, it more or less accepts the critique that Israel has become an apartheid state, which Israeli leaders themselves have said internally in Israel. They get very angry when it's said outside the confines of Israel.
PA: So do you believe, despite all the problems, all the difficulties, that the two-state solution is still the best option for peace? [MERC: Adams' final diversion - the trusty, long-outmoded two-state solution mantra which has tripped off the tongue of every hack politician and establishment pundit for decades.]
RF: Well, I think in these situations that people who are co-existing have to make the final judgment as to what is acceptable, how they can co-exist together in a sustainable way of mutual respect, and that spirit of equality is what's been missing in the whole diplomatic process because it has been geopolitically tilted towards Israel and that means you are trying to negotiate peace based on inequality and that won't work in my view. So, it requires a real readjustment in the whole Israel/US relationship and the sense of how you achieve peace in a situation of sustained conflict of this sort.

The take-away message here is that Adams is all over the shop with Falk, consistent with his 'don't mention Palestine' practice spanning decades. Could this be any more obvious?

[*Curious here that Falk thinks the 1979 Tehran hostage crisis is the big problem between the US and Iran. Seems like the 1953 CIA coup against the democratically-elected Mosaddegh government and the installation of the repressive pro-US and pro-Israel Shah of Iran are simply not on his radar.]

Why Aren't Australian Journalists Backing Julian Assange? 6

LH has finally tracked down a Late Night Live broadcast, not found in LNL's archives, which corroborates his contention that Phillip Adams "scooped up" Carr, Greer and the Brisbane Writers Festival audience, no less, on September 7, 2018, and took them all to a Brisbane venue known as The New Farm Cinemas to discuss Carr and Greer's books and broadcast it all on LNL. Called Greer and Carr - uncensored, the LNL broadcast is dated 11/9/18.

Phillip Adams began the session by declaring that:

"I can't begin to fathom why the Brisbane Writers Festival has ejected these two and so what we decided to do was have a salon de refuse and that's why we're here tonight."

Greer was first cab off the rank, discussing her book On Rape. Then Adams broached the subject of Julian Assange with her:

"I want to ask you a personal question. I was involved with WikiLeaks and Assange before both became famous brands, and after the trouble in Sweden I've tended to take the John Pilger/Geoffrey Robertson position because I fear for what will happen to Assange if he is sent to the US, but you in fact made me rethink my position. Your view on the Assange case?"

This 'rethinking' amazed me. Had Adams read Greer's book, or was he just reacting to what she had said on the night?

Without giving Greer's full response to Adams' question, I note her following points on Assange on the night:

"He had sex without consulting them"; "this is rape"; "he took a liberty with these women"; "he did [non-consensual sex] 3 times"; "he's still stuck in the embassy where they desperately want to get rid of him. They do say he has personal hygiene problems, which may be a lie"; "I don't like him or the way he's conducted himself, but he has been unfairly dealt with - but not necessarily by his enemies. He's suffered more at the hands of his friends [such as Robertson]." (Note no applause from audience.)

Adams then moved on to ask Carr:

"You describe yourself strongly in the Zionist camp, and as an unabashed supporter of the Jewish state. What changed your mind was pressure applied to you by the lobby when you presented a peace prize to Palestinian leader and frequent LNL guest Hanan Ashrawi. Talk to that."

Here's Carr's full response on the night:

"It was 2003. I was premier of NSW. A peace institute at Sydney University asked me if I'd present an award to Hanan Ashrawi, a brave Palestinian woman. My response was... to encourage a Palestinian woman like this would be good for Israel. In that spirit, and as a long-term president of Labor Friends of Israel, I accepted. There was a hurricane of activity from leaders of the Israel lobby condemning me for agreeing to present the award and I thought for me to accept the invitation and then pull out would be a message for every Australian of Arab background that they really don't count when the Israel lobby gets moving, and I wasn't bloody well going to do it. And with every day I make it clear that to pull out under this sort of pressure would be disgraceful. That taught me a lot about the bullying which is part of the approach of the Israel lobby in Australia, in the US, and elsewhere, and it's fundamentally wrong when they want to blind us to the fact that they're spreading settlements on the West Bank at a pace and a design that will stop a Palestinian state ever being created.. And if they can't see that's not in Israel's interests, then I can't help it, but I'm darn well going to present the case for an end to settlements, for a humane treatment of the occupied Palestinians, and for recognition of Palestine... And I'm proud of being able to shift the attitude of Labor conferences... and get other state Labor conferences to do the same, with a view to having the next national conference of the Labor Party, say in December, in view of all this... recognising Palestine." (Note loud applause from audience.)

So there you have it. But what I find most intriguing in all of this is that nowhere in the msm media did this quite extraordinary holding of a parallel event elicit a mention (at least as far as I am aware), not even from the participants themselves. And also why the broadcast didn't immediately find its way into the LNL archives. I must say too that for me Phillip Adams here remains just as problematic on the subject of Palestine/Israel as ever.

Why Aren't Australian Journalists Backing Julian Assange? 5

On Thursday 20/6/19, Phillip Adams ran a program called The Assange indictment: will the US be able to extradite Julian Assange? It was an interview with international lawyer Geoffrey Robertson who represents Assange. It is of consuming interest to all concerned, as I am, with Assange's plight. Please read it from beginning to end:

Phillip Adams: I promised that Geoffrey Robertson would be on the program tonight to talk about the plight of my friend Julian Assange, and the response to that has been quite extraordinary. A vast bombardment of emails and social media. One of the emails came from an ex-foreign minister of Australia, Bob Carr, and I want to read you the part of it that's relevant. It's a very long email: 

'I look forward to hearing your interview with Geoffrey Robertson about Assange. Up to now I've been an Assange critic. The failure to do redactions, not facing up in Sweden. But the American indictment stops one not short of capital punishment, at 175 years, and it threatens media freedom in exposing abuses, and above all, for Australians, it serves up one of our citizens into the maw of the hideous American justice system. I am meeting with his Australian lawyers next week."

PA: Now before I actually talk to Geoffrey, I just want to remind you what an extraordinary fellow he is. [Note that I've omitted Adams' lengthy tribute to Robertson for reasons of space.]

GR: Very good to be talking to you once again, Phillip.

PA: Now let's do a hypothetical. If every thing goes wrong, what's the worst case scenario for your client?

GR: Oh, he dies in an American supermax. That is what is intended by the current regime. There is no doubt... this takes us back to 2010 when he produced the initial Iraqgate revelations showing the helicopter killing and the aerial manslaughter of a couple of Reuters journalists, some children, and revealed to the world the extraordinary detail of corruption throughout the Middle East, and the misbehaviour in some cases of American troops. Now at that time the Americans convened a Grand Jury in secrecy. Now I had a few high connections with the Obama administration, and I said to them do you really want him because there are dangerous precedents here for The New York Times and newspapers around the world, and they said, in a word, we don't want him but the Pentagon does, and the Pentagon may eventually get its way. And now it's got its way. Julian is in a terrible plight. He's not well, he's banged up in prison for the foreseeable future. The danger is that he will be extradited to America, embroiled in court proceedings. He's charged with conspiring with Chelsea Manning - she got 35 years before she was pardoned by Obama at the end of his run. I don't think that Julian will be pardoned by President Trump. It is US capital punishment in a roundabout way because unless the British courts spring him on one argument or another, the Trump administration is determined to argue that the First Amendment, which famously protects American newspapers and publishers, does not apply to Australians or to non-Americans, which puts American papers in difficulty because so many of their contributors and journalists are non-Americans. But in this particular case, a privilege which is given to all American papers in the public interest, free speech is going to be denied to Julian Assange because he's an Australian.

PA: You represented him previously in a case which he lost. Let's remember that.

GR: Yes, a case we would have won, and I stayed in it because we got the court to rule that he would be tried in secret in Sweden, and I couldn't imagine the Supreme Court of Britain would allow someone to be extradited to Sweden to be tried in secret. But in a foolish, in retrospect, attempt to cosy up to the Swedes and get some release from them, he dropped that point of law and so he lost. But he's been at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for 7 years. I saw him about a week before he was thrown out and he was worried then. He knew that Mike Pence had been in Ecuador, and a much needed loan had been extended to Ecuador, and he feared he would be the collateral. And of course a week or so later he was thrown out. The behaviour was disgraceful, I have to say. They kept his private notes, his legal notes, and showed them to the Americans and the CIA before they returned them, and on every score this isn't the way you treat people you've given asylum to for 7 years. But that's now a thing of the past, and I think next February the proceedings will commence once he's served his term for bail-breaking. He got 6 months for that and he'll have to stay in prison and no doubt will not get bail while he's fighting extradition.

PA: Geoffrey, there may be prosecutorial overreach here. There are 18 charges for heaven's sake. What are the most significant ones?

GR: Well, the most significant one in terms of years in prison are the charges in the Espionage Act, which is a 1921 American law that is basically for spying, and of course for disloyal Americans. But Julian is not an American citizen so it's an inappropriate act, an attempt at an exhorbitant jurisdiction because he didn't do any of the publishing while in America. He did it outside America. But the Americans do have this, and when I was an international appeal judge I used to be irritated by the American fixation on sentences that far exceed the amount of years that the defendant has to live. They sentence people to 100 years in prison. As you say, those charges add up to 175 years, and they're quite capable as they showed in Chelsea Manning's case of having a 50 or 60 year sentence. But in effect the result will be the complete silencing of someone who was a troublemaker as far as they were concerned. But they will effectively silence him for the rest of his life and he will die in an American supermax.

PA: Another part of the email from Bob Carr raises the issue of what a [British] Labour government would do with this - curtail the extradition, even send him back here. What do we do then? Is it true the incumbent government makes a difference in this case?

GR: Oh it does, a complete difference. Actually, to some extent it is a political rather than a legal decision, and this present government [in the form of] Sajid Javid, who's a rather nasty politician, unfortunately because he's the first Muslim politician that has risen to a secretary of state level. He's already shown his teeth by being prepared to have some ISIS Britons dealt with by the death penalty, which hitherto Britain had totally set its face against, and of course he refused to take back that woman whose baby died. So he couldn't wait once the Swedish courts had dropped the case, in effect, or the Swedish prosecutors had fumbled their extradition request. He didn't wait to grant America the extradition right over Julian Assange, and so now the court battle will begin next year. But I do think it's a serious problem for freedom of speech. It doesn't matter whether you love or like or dislike Julian Assange. [Note that I've omitted Robertson's account of former free speech battles for reasons of space.] The question is he is in the process of being crushed by the mighty state, the Goliath that he acted as a David with some slingshot to show what it was up to.

PA: Nonetheless the demonisation of him has not helped. Even in Australia there are people I would have thought would be manning the barricades. Peter Greste, for example, who as you know was in an Egyptian slammer. They were not that sympathetic. The Washington Post, for heaven's sake, has just published the most appallingly aggressive attack on Assange, insisting that he's got to face the music. This poisons the whole process.

GR: I have to say that wiser voices have been heard in America. Jim Goodale, who is the real hero of the Pentagon Papers case. He was the brilliant lawyer for The New York Times. He's come out of retirement saying this is the greatest battle for freedom of speech since the Pentagon Papers, and in some respects more important. The Columbia Journalism Review has come down emphatically on Assange's side. So I think there are wiser voices, but the demonisation has been extraordinary. These proceedings in Sweden, for example, are always called rape proceedings as though there was some violent force being alleged. There's not. It's a charge which the Swedes  call 'minor rape', which is a contradiction in terms as far as we're concerned. Basically it amounts to an allegation that he had consensual sex without wearing an agreed condom. Now that's a million miles removed from our concept of rape as an offence of force and violence, but it's used against him. And the Ecuadorian claim that came straight from a black propaganda that he would smear his room with excrement is ludicrous. He is a fastidious Australian who has always shown respect in my company to the Ecuadorians, and that was a pure lie which went around the world.

PA: I have visited him in the embassy and he was, as you say, fastidious. Had to be in a tiny, claustrophobic space. One of the problems in this country is that neither side of politics have shown the slightest interest or sympathy.

GR: I think he's won some award. If you look at him objectively, he's made a lot more information available. Hardly a week goes by when you don't see sourced some WikiLeaks revelation. We know a lot more, and not all of it of course is anti- the United States. One of the ironies I find in this case is that he released the cables which were not top secret. They were secret but not classified in a way that would mean that a source or human life was in danger if they were released. They were available to 3 million Americans and what they showed was that American foreign policy, at least the CIA-sourced view of the world, was pretty accurate in exposing, or at least being aware of, the level of corruption in many countries. So he has made a lot of information available, most of it of genuine public interest, and for that he's going to be, in effect, crushed to death if the Americans get their way. I hope that they won't. I mean he's got arguments that may prevail and I think although the British have not shown themselves very unbiased so far, he comes up before some tinpot magistrate who described him as a narcissist and a coward, which Julian Assange certainly isn't. And so you've got that prejudice here. I mean, even in the literary field he eats with his fingers said one book about him, completely unaware of the Australian tradition of BBQing. But this is something all Australians should be aware of, that he is being discriminated against both as a person and an Australian.

PA:  I wanted to make the point before we've got a PM and a FM and the Opposition, none of them are speaking out. Is there anything Australia can do?

GR: Well I did have a number of meetings with Julie Bishop who I think was as sympathetic as she could be and arranged for his Australian passport to be renewed. I think there must come a point at which - I mean the man is sick. I haven't been able to visit him yet in his prison but his solicitor has said in court he's been too ill to be produced, and of course, the UN delegate who did see him issued a very stark warning about his health. So I think that is the first thing that Australia must do. The evidence is clear that he's unwell and that he's not being treated properly in prison and that is something that really the Australian government should make a protest about and an inquiry."

Why Aren't Australian Journalists Backing Julian Assange? 4

The matter of Julian Assange and Australian msm journalism just got more and more interesting for me today when I stumbled across a change.org petition update, headed 150,000 signatories then Twitter suspends our petitioner's account on Twitter.

The update, of 19/6/19, was written by... a Phillip Adams, Brisbane, Australia. Of course, the author of the update, is emphatically NOT the well-known Radio National broadcaster despite the identical spelling of their names.

The update set me wondering whether or not any of the 150,000 signatories to the original petition signed it thinking the Brisbane Adams was actually the ABC broadcaster. (You can access the former's update at change.org where he gives his suspended twitter account as @PhillipAdams64.)

Now I may be wrong, but my hunch is that few of them referred to in the update even knew who the broadcaster was.

But then a friend dropped in, assuring me that he'd heard the ABC broadcaster discussing Julian Assange, he seemed to think, positively. This, I thought was most unlike our PEP (Progressive Except Palestine) broadcaster, but felt compelled to check it out anyway.

Adams the broadcaster, of course, runs ABC Radio National's Late Night Live (LNL) program, so I headed to the LNL archives, specifically to the entry labelled 'Journalism', and trawled back in time until I found the only discussion in all of the entries listed there on Julian Assange.

It was dated 2/3/11, and headed Robert Manne: The untold story of Julian Assange. (If Robert Manne is unknown to you, just click on the relevant MERC label below.) Note that Adams and Manne are discussing only that period, in the mid-1990s, well before WikiLeaks, when Assange and others like him were collectively known as cypherpunks.

To cut to the chase, here is Adams' guest, Robert Manne, responding to his request to say where Assange stood in relation to the other 1990s cypherpunks. Note that, while a grudging, highly qualified admiration for Assange is the most we get from Manne, we don't even get that from Phillip Adams. Here's Manne's assessment of Assange, the cypherpunk, vis-a-vis other cypherpunks of the time:

"[Assange] is a real extremist on the hardline, electronic libertarian [model/spectrum?] who just would not put up with any state interference to individual liberties. On the other hand, he was from the point of view of left/right economics, more a left-wing libertarian or a left-wing anarchist in that he just didn't believe in the neoliberal philosophy of dual market and capitalism. So he had quite a complicated position which comes from his postings - which are all available if anyone took the trouble to to read them. So he is very hardline on the question of the struggle against the state trying to suborn individuals who want to communicate privately on the one hand. On the other hand, he's not an Ayn Rand type, whereas a lot of [the cypherpunks] were."

Typically, Phillip Adams asked Manne if Assange was "simply anti-American." Manne disagreed, saying:

"He understands the evils of Communism. One of his great heroes is Alexander Solzhenitsyn... One of the ironies is that people like John Pilger are now his great supporters, but in fact - or Michael Moore, the film maker - Assange doesn't respect people like that in reality... He's not a journalist at all, but even if he was to some extent a journalist... He is a revolutionary, not a non-violent revolutionary... He is the first person who has gotten away with threatening the extremely powerful."

Note that line, "He's not a journalist, but even if he were..."! Not to mention Manne's flabbergasting characterisation of Assange as a "violent" revolutionary because he "got away with threatening the extremely powerful."

Finally, I repeat, this was the only LNL program which touched on the subject of Julian Assange in the LNL archive, and was emphatically NOT any kind of endorsement of him. Consider this for the record.

Phillip Adams: Normalising Zionism

More muddying of the Palestine/Israel waters by the ABC's Philip Adams:

"We are all, each and every one of us, dual citizens... Just as Muslims pray to Mecca, Australia's Roman Catholics are, in a real sense, dual citizens of Australia and Vatican city. Australian Jews, from the Orthodox to the secular, have a form of dual citizenship with Israel. All diaspora cultures are powerfully connected to the cultures that gave them birth... " (Layers of loyalties, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 9/9/17)

Let's get this straight.

Australian Muslims have no designs on Mecca. They merely face it when praying, and, on occasion, visit as pilgrims.

Australia's Roman Catholics acknowledge the Pope as their spiritual leader. For historical reasons, he just happens to reside in the Vatican.

While Israeli Jews resident in Australia may be said to constitute an Israeli diaspora,  Australian Jews, in general (whether born overseas or in Australia), have no diasporic connection whatever with Israel.

Just because political Zionism pushes the fantasy that all Jews, no matter their ethnicity, origin, or current citizenship, constitute a 'people/nation', and that the Zionist entity known as Israel is the 'national home' of this alleged 'people/nation' does not make it so.

And just because successive governments of this entity have sought to con Jews into emigrating there by legislating an apartheid 'Law of Return' (1950), granting anyone who can demonstrate a biological connection with a Jewish woman automatic citizenship rights, does not mean that Australian Jews are bound by it or have to take it seriously.

Suffice it to say that it is precisely the most ardent Zionists in Australia's Jewish community - Colin Rubenstein, Vic Alhadeff, Michael Danby et al - who never take advantage of this "form of dual citizenship," as Adams puts it, and emigrate to Israel.

The only genuine diaspora associated with the usurping Zionist entity is the Palestinian Arab diaspora. But you'll never hear about that from Adams.

Phillip Adams: And the Answer Is?

ABC Radio National personality, Phillip Adams, never ceases to amaze. Here he is introducing a segment on his Late Night Live program called World's largest refugee camp (27/2/17):

"My excuse for retelling the story that I was radicalised at the age of 12 by reading The Grapes of Wrath is simply this - the book we're about to discuss [City of Thorns] begins with 3 sentences from that book. Let me read them. 'There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolise. There is a failure here that topples all our success.' John Steinbeck. And I hope the book we're about to discuss will radicalise another generation. If you look at the collection of Palestinian refugee camps in the world, in Jordan, Lebanon, in the West Bank, Gaza, and formerly in Syria, the numbers are shocking, they're beyond shocking, they're numbing, and the world's sensibility seems to be appropriately numbed. An estimated 5 million Palestinians are living throughout the region, but the world's largest refugee camp, called Dadaab is situated in the desert of Kenya, and has over half a million inhabitants, just like the camps housing generations of Palestinians... "

Let me sum that up for you. Adams is professedly NUMBED by the existence of permanent Palestinian refugee camps in the Middle East, that is, camps that date back to the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 when the ancestors of these refugees were driven out of their Palestinian homeland by Zionist terror gangs.

My reaction: WOW!

To my knowledge this is an Adams first. Here he is, 77 years old; a veteran commentator on, and explorer of, the issues of today, yesterday and tomorrow; a public intellectual; almost, if not already, an Australian icon; and, importantly, an avowed man of the Left; and he's only now discovered something of the significance of the daddy-of-all contemporary refugee problems, the Palestinian refugee problem.

The standout instance of his failure on this issue for me was a 2009 LNL interview with the American-Palestinian writer Saree Makdisi. When Makdisi called for an end to Israel as a Jewish state and the creation of one state for Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, including, by implication, those in refugee exile, Adams worriedly asked how long it would take before Jewish Israelis were a minority in Israel. Makdisi, puzzled, replied, "I don't know. I don't even know that that question matters." At which Adams snapped: "It sure as hell matters to them." (For the all important context, see my 19/9/09 post He Just Doesn't Get It.)

If anyone out there is in a position to raise the issue with Adams, the obvious question to put to him now would be this: you recently indicated that you were numbed by the scale and time of Palestinian refugeedom. But are you sufficiently numbed to support the return of today's Palestinian refugees - from Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere in the Palestinian diaspora - to their former homes and lands in Israel, along with all that that entails by way of equal rights for all, regardless of sectarian affiliation, between the the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea?

Michael Posner: Just Another Progressive Except for Palestine

Phillip Adams' recent interview with visiting* US human rights lawyer and former Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor under Obama, Michael Posner (The business of human rights, LNL, 23/5/16), managed to expose yet another example of the PEP (Progressive Except for Palestine) phenomenon.

"In your affirmation speech to the Obama administration in 2009," asked Adams, "you said your vocation as a human rights lawyer had been shaped by the lessons of the Holocaust. What were those lessons?

Posner replied, "Well, my family... came from Europe, and on my mother's side, in Hungary, a number of my grandmother's siblings had been killed, and on my father's side, French Jews, had been involved in the Maquis, the underground... so I saw the horror of the human capacity for cruelty but also the resilience of the human spirit, the resistance, and that really influenced my decision."

OK, so Posner failed to answer the question, but, hey, who couldn't warm to a guy whose life's work was inspired by the French Resistance? So far, so good.

As the interview progressed, such egregious abusers of human rights such as China, Russia, Egypt, apartheid South Africa and Saudi Arabia came up for mention. But not Israel. Interestingly, it was Adams who raised the subject:

"We talked earlier about your work in Uganda and about the efficacy of economic sanctions, and yet you're not in favour of movements like Boycott Divestment Sanctions, BDS, which has been proposed against Israel over the occupation of Palestine."

"Yeah," responded Posner, "I don't believe that's the most effective way to make change there. I am absolutely committed to the notion of a negotiated settlement, a two-state solution. I believe very strongly, and I believe I was the first assistant secretary of the US to go to Israel. I went 5 times after the Gaza war, the Cast Lead war of 2009, to raise human rights issues. You've got to raise the issues. The need is real. Palestinian rights need to be respected, but I think these issues need to be negotiated by the Israelis and the Palestinians. They're obviously not doing it now but I think we need to keep reinforcing that rather than isolating Israel using boycotts."

Sound familiar? That's right, the stock standard Netanyahu line. In fact, the Israeli prime minister reiterated it only days ago:

"In a bid to head off the latest international initiative aimed at pressuring the parties to reach a Mideast peace deal, Israeli Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has offered to clear his calendar and sit down immediately for one-on-one negotiations with Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas." (Netanyahu: Peace comes from direct negotiations, not from 'international conferences, UN-style', Patrick Goodenough, cnsnews.com, 25/5/16)

But apart from that, Posner's talk about his 2009 visits to Israel "to raise human rights issues" was less than honest.

Remember the UN's September 2009 Goldstone Report, which found that Israel's 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead against Gaza constituted "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population," and which accused Israel of war crimes?

In his definitive study of Operation Cast Lead, 'This Time We Went Too Far': Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion (2010), Norman Finkelstein records that Netanyahu condemned the Report as "a kangaroo court against Israel," that the US Israel lobby called it "rigged" and "deeply flawed," and that the Obama administration "quickly fell into line with the Israel lobby," with Assistant US Secretary of State for Democracy Michael Posner condemning it as - ahem - "deeply flawed." (p 136)

But there's more. We now have access to some of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails, which reveal that:

"The State department devoted itself to, in its own words, 'deferring' UN action on Israeli war crimes, 'reframing the debate' about the atrocities, and 'moving away from the UN'... The messages, some of which are written by high-level State Department officials, expose the role of the US government in undermining the international response to the 2009 United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict, also known as the Goldstone Report... Publicly released Clinton emails reveal that the UNHRC, under heavy US pressure, postponed consideration of the Goldstone Report from October 2 until March 2010. While the UNHRC ultimately endorsed the report's findings on October 16, it took nearly 6 months for the body to urge the UN General Assembly and Security Council to refer the Gaza massacre to the ICC pursuant to 13(b) of the Rome Statute, which the US then blocked." (Deferring justice: Clinton emails show how State Department undermined UN action on Israeli war crimes, Jared Flanery & Ben Norton, salon.com, 20/11/15)

Integral to this process of neutering the Goldstone Report was our Assistant Secretary of State for HUMAN RIGHTS, Michael Posner:

"The State Department's attempts to 'defer' UN action on Israeli war crimes in Gaza are further evinced in a message from Michael Posner - a former assistant secretary of state who served as founding Executive Director of Human Rights First and is now a business professor at NYU. In a November 10, 2010 note, Posner discussed multiple trips he and US government officials took to Israel in order to discuss the Goldstone Report with the Israeli government. Posner revealed the US and Israeli governments worked together in order to 'reframe the public debate' around Israel's attack. He wrote: 'Our approach has been to offer our support and willingness to work with the Government of Israel to 'reframe the public debate' from defensive (responding to Goldstone or Flotilla reports and resolutions at the UN, etc) to a more productive narrative focused on the challenges of fighting an urban or asymetrical war. We are having productive, and generally positive preliminary conversations about a possible GOI white paper that would: 1) set the context, outlining the challenges in fighting an asymetrical conflict; 2) spell out the steps the IDF and other agencies have taken to address these challenges; and 3) identify ongoing challenges that Israel and other professional armies will need to address in the future'." (ibid)

[*To deliver the UNSW's Australian Human Rights Centre's annual lecture.]

Reviewing the Review

Nicely nailed by reviewer Richard King:

"The first thing you find when you open Anti-Semitism is an errata slip informing you that its author, Frederic Raphael, has mistaken D.H. Lawrence for T.E. Lawrence, Arthur Koestler for Arthur Schnitzler and the figure of 16,000 for 1600 (the number of Jews killed in Jedwabne, Poland, in 1941). This is not a great start; one is entitled to expect a little more care, especially given the gravity of the subject and the brevity with which it is treated here. But none of these confusions, or all of them together, is a patch on the central confusion of this book, which is the equation of determined criticism of Israel with historical anti-Semitism." (The flawed equation at the heart of a timely analysis, Sydney Morning Herald, 16/1/16)

However:

"For while it is undoubtedly true that the miasma of anti-Semitism surrounds much dark talk about the Israel 'lobby', and true too that many liberals and left-wingers are apt to downplay the anti-Semitism extant within the Muslim community..."

So, Richard, some talk about the "Israel 'lobby'" is OK, but not other? Can you give me examples? And why is the word 'lobby' in inverted commas?  What's that about?

May I suggest that maybe, if you'd taken the time and trouble to read Mearsheimer & Walt's The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, as every informed person should, I really don't think you'd have used inverted commas in this context.

As for slandering Liberals, Left and Muslims in one fell swoop, I could ask you for chapter & verse on this, but, to take another tack: are you aware that, when all is said and done, for a Zionist, you yourself are actually an anti-Semite? As Chaim Weizmann, who should know a thing or two about Zionism, once declared: "Anti-Semitism... is a bacillus which every Gentile carries with him, wherever he goes and however often he denies it." (Richard Crossman, A Nation Reborn: The Israel of Weizmann, Bevin & Ben-Gurion, 1960, p 21)

"Disproportionate our emphasis on Israel may be..."

Hello? "Our emphasis on Israel"?

What with Zionists blowing their own trumpets on every conceivable occasion when they're not crying anti-Semitism; and the media taking extra-special care not to tread on Israel's toes for fear of coming under Israel lobby pressure (Look, Ma, no inverted commas!) or being smeared as anti-Semitic; and our politicians and journalists, so-called, streaming over to the apartheid state for pro-Israel programming; and Israel routinely testing state-of-the-art weaponry on Palestinian guinea-pigs before exporting it to every conceivable trouble spot around the world; and Israeli-PMs twirling US presidents around their little fingers; and... we're placing a disproportionate emphasis on Israel?!

"Though Raphael is right to say that anti-Semitism and 'anti-Zionism' cannot always be neatly separated..."

No, he's not. He's dead wrong.

Look, it's really not that hard, Richard. If you support the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine, you're a Zionist. If you don't, you're an anti-Zionist.  You are either someone who believes that it is right and proper to have a sectarian, ethnocratic state in Palestine, or you aren't.

Richard King btw is the author of a book titled On Offence. I haven't read it, but let me say that if those who make a show of being offended are his subject, and he hasn't got a chapter or two or three on the mob who have made a career out of taking offence at anyone who looks sideways at Israel, aka the Israel lobby, then he needs to do his homework and put out a revised version NOW.

Be that as it may, I'll forgive him for that great intro. above.

As for Frederic Raphael, who, on investigation, turns out to be a novelist and screenwriter, I thought I'd listen to Phillip Adams' interview with the guy (Anti-Semitism then & now, Late Night Live, 26/11/15)

*...*

I heard him [Raphael] say that "Israel has behaved badly," which is based on the incredible assumption that a colonial-settler state which has taken someone else's land, sent its people packing, and refuses them re-entry because it'd mess with the preferred demographic, has the capacity to behave in any other way than badly.

And - *...* - I heard him refer to the "so-called occupied territories."

Without Phillip Adams, who just had to slip in at one point that he was a "philo-Semite," pulling the bugger up, FFS!

The Mendes Zionist

In a recent column on 'radicalisation', Phillip Adams ventured the following quite unremarkable observation:

"More recently, countless young Australian Jews have headed to Israel and joined the IDF to fight Palestinians. Seems our increasingly worried, watchful spooks have no probs with this. The process of 'radicalisation', of signing up for distant conflicts, may involve religious and/or ideological fervour for Zionists and ISIS recruits." (Easy targets, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 28/11/15)

And yet, as predictably as the sun rising in the east, it provoked some of our good friends, such as Peter Wertheim of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and Danny Lamm of the Zionist Federation of Australia, to rap the old codger severely across the knuckles in the pages of the Australian.

But my all-time fave Zionist rapid/rabid response was that of good old Philip Mendes of Kew, Vic:

"So, Phillip Adams seriously compares all Australian Jews who go on aliyah and join the Israeli army with Australians who join ISIS. Yes, Phillip - all those young men and women who spent years at left-wing Zionist youth groups learning about socialism, secularism and the brotherhood of man are identical to nutty, brainwashed religious extremists going off to slaughter and rape men, women and children." (The Weekend Australian, 19/12/15)

Interesting how the Mendes' faction of Ziozombie manages to combine in one and the same psyche "the brotherhood of man" with the notion that, although he/she was born and bred in Kew, Palestine belongs to him/her, and woe betide any Palestinian who gets in the fucking way, mate.

The Palestine Problem: 98-years Old Today

98 years ago today saw the issue, by the British war cabinet of David Lloyd George (PM) and Lord Balfour (Foreign Secretary), of the worst foreign policy decision ever made by any Western power in modern times.

Dubbed the Balfour Declaration, it reads as follows:

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights or political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

At the time, 92% or more of the population of Palestine were Arabs - both Muslim and Christian.

Think of the implications of describing the overwhelming majority of a country as EXISTING NON-JEWISH COMMUNITIES.

Then think about the plight of those EXISTING NON-JEWISH COMMUNITIES today, the majority in exile, and the rest under a 'shoot first, ask no questions later' military occupation or living as barely-tolerated 3rd class citizens in a Jews-first state.

Now ponder this.  

When required (for his weekly column in The Australian) to come up with an example of British colonial bastardry in the Middle East during World War I, this is the best Philip Adams, one of Australia's leading intellectuals and commentators, renowned for his erudition, humanitarian concern, and avuncular manner, can do:

"Much of the mess in the Middle East is a consequence of colonialism - and the wholly arbitrary designation of nations by bureaucrats from Britain... They'd literally nail a piece of tin on a palm tree and say 'this is Kuwait, the other side's Iraq'." (What is it good for? The Weekend Australian Magazine, 26/9/15)

My Problem with Amira Hass

I thought I'd tune in to Phillip Adams' Late Night Live program on 22/4/15 to hear visiting Israeli journalist Amira Hass, "the only Jewish journalist who has lived among the Palestinians, both in Gaza and now full-time in the West Bank." (Amira Hass: An Israeli journalist living in Palestine)

Adams was, of course, his usual blunt self - 'blunt', that is, in the sense that his interviewing style, particularly with Jewish Zionists, totally contradicts the program's claim to be about "razor-sharp analysis of current events [which] puts you firmly in the big picture."

But it's mainly Hass (unexpectedly I might add) that I have the bigger problem with this time around. While sound on the occupation of 1967, I found the following words more than a little problematic:

"In my lectures here in Australia, I'm speaking to you as one settler to another. This institutionalisation of colonial times I see it everywhere here in Australia. Everywhere. And I also say different things to different audiences. So for people who tell me the solution is to dissolve Israel, I say 'Why don't you dissolve Australia?' And just because you got away with most of the indigenous people... and luckily and happily Israel and Zionism did not decimate the Palestinians. So... it's an extension of London. So I see the whites here and your colonialism is still fresh and the thing is how we look at the future and not the past. We cannot undo the past, but the future has to be worked on..."

Now, to take up my razor...

What does she mean by 'dissolve Israel/dissolve Australia'? Typically Adams didn't ask her.

Was this in response to a questioner who had suggested that Israel's apartheid structure be dismantled? That Israel be de-Zionised? That it become a state of its citizens, with equal rights for all, regardless of ethno-religious affiliation, rather than continue to be reserved as the exclusive domain of those Jews who see themselves as belonging to that entity, 'the Jewish people'? That Israel's outrageous, biology-based, apartheid Law of Return be scrapped? That the indigenous people of Palestine, ethnically cleansed in 1948 and 1967, be allowed to return to their homes and land?

 Was she seriously suggesting that there are no differences between Israel and Australia? Typically, Adams didn't ask her whether she saw Australia as an apartheid state (that is, a state based, like former apartheid South Africa and today's Israel, on a raft of discriminatory legislation), and if so, which discriminatory laws made it so. Nor did he ask her whether indigenous Australians were languishing in exile in refugee camps in neighbouring countries, denied the right of return to Australia.

Why was she using the old Zionist whataboutery: You dare criticise Israel? What about Australia?

And when she said, Israel and Zionism (that is, almost 100 years of Zionist colonisation, dispossession, expulsion and occupation of Palestinians) did not decimate the Palestinians, what the hell was she on about? Typically, there was no response, razor-sharp or otherwise, from Adams.

Finally, in saying that we cannot undo the past, was she implying that Israel was set in concrete in 1948 and must forever remain a Jewish state, and that the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967 must therefore remain in exile?

Phillip Adams: Try-Hard

Poor Phillip Adams. He's been copping some flack over a recent (20/9) column in The Weekend Australian Magazine, in which he mentioned, in passing, the fact that Australian Jews go to Israel to join the army. Merely stating the fact was apparently provocation enough. (See my 23/9/14 post Phillip Adams on the Indoctrinated.)

The following letter, for example, appeared in the latest issue (4/10) of TWAM:

"When will Phillip Adams stop blaming the US and its allies for the ills in the Middle East. And while it may be true that 'generations' of young Australian Jews have headed to Israel to join the army, none has returned radicalised or committed to terrorist acts in this country." Vivian Feldman, East Bentleigh, Vic.

That these little darlings may have been terrorising Palestinians is, of course, neither here nor there to Ms Feldman.

Although Adams doesn't refer to his throwaway line (let alone defend it), or in any way allude to the volume and kind of flack he may have received over it, this week's column, Jewels of the diaspora (4/10), was obviously written in response:

"Though my criticisms of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians have had me branded an anti-Semite in both correspondence and The Australian Jewish News..."

I hate to butt in here, but what "criticisms" is he talking about? Can anyone help me out here?

Anyway...

"... I'm more accurately described as a philo-Semite - someone totally in awe of the Jewish contribution to human civilisation."

The problem with being a philo- is that the fan invariably dons rose-coloured glasses when animadverting on the subject of his fancy. Here's Adams, for example, on his doctors:

"Almost all the doctors, specialists and surgeons who've been keeping me alive are Jewish, many being exiles from apartheid South Africa."

Exiles? Really? From apartheid South Africa or post-apartheid South Africa?

Then there's the use of the word 'diaspora' in his title. Diasporas are exile communities. But I seriously doubt he's referring to places such as Germany, Poland or the former Soviet Union. Whether wittingly or not, in using this term, Adams subscribes to the Zionist foundational myth that Israel, not Europe, is the homeland of Ashkenazi Jews. Adams is, if you like, more of a Zionist than he knows or cares to admit.

Professing philo-Semitism is one thing, but what is one to make of the following:

"Footnote. This atheist christened (pun intended) his firstborn daughter with a Jewish name. Twenty years later, aiming to join that most Jewish calling of psychoanalysis, Dr Rebecca Adams travelled to the US and converted to Judaism in a progressive synagogue. Whereupon my second daughter Meaghan discovered, in an old family Bible, that her dad seems to have had a Jewish great-great-grandmother on his mother's side and is, as a result, almost certainly Jewish. Now that this is public I predict my next criticism of Israel will have me called a 'self-hating Jew'. Shalom."

How curious that Adams, an atheist and, more importantly, reputedly a rational, thinking individual, takes such arcane matters so seriously.

Certainly, if the aim of his declaration of philo-Semitism was to mollify the usual suspects, he wasn't having much success:

"Phillip Adams' column reminds me, as his essays often do, of the Carly Simon song You're so Vain - 'I bet you think this song is about you'. First, having a Jewish great-great-grandmother on his mother's side doesn't necessarily mean he's Jewish, unless that relationship is exclusively matrilineal. And second, criticism of Israeli policies isn't necessarily anti-Semitic. Not unless it fails Natan Sharansky's '3-D test'. Does it demonise, de-legitimise, or apply double standards? To the Jewish nation, an affirmative on any count makes it anti-Semitism." Steve Lieblich, Jewish Community Council of Victoria (Letter, The Australian, 6/10/14)

Natan Sharansky's 3-D test indeed. What gob-smacking arrogance!

Where Mike Carlton might reply with an honest expletive, Adams chooses to tie himself in knots. But seriously, what's the point? No profession of philo-Semitism, or even fantasising out loud that you're Jewish - whatever that means - will ever satisfy a Zionist fanatic.

Phillip Adams on the Indoctrinated

"The terrorists in al-Qa'ida and ISIS are deranged. So, sadly, are the kids with their matchboxes - and the occasional adult arsonists hiding among the 'first responders' in our volunteer fire brigades. A few, a very few will be identified and charged, and some will be convicted and lightly punished. Others will be sent off for psychiatric help. If only they could be accompanied by those Australians who are heeding the call of the so-called 'Islamic State'. The government is understandably concerned by the indoctrination of local youth who head off to Iraq or Syria, though we've not expressed concern about generations of young Australian Jews who've headed for Israel to join the army." (Up in flames, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 20/9/14)

How Much is Phillip Adams Worth?

"The managing director of the ABC Mark Scott has ordered an investigation into the leaking of how much it pays star news and current affairs personalities and leading administrators... Not all ABC talent was mollified. Phillip Adams, of ABC Radio National's Late Night Live took to Twitter: "Just learned that my fellow b'casters at ABC get paid lots more than me. Despite LNL's enduring success. Naughty management." (More than 8c a day keeps ABC competitors at bay, Damien Murphy, Sydney Morning Herald, 21/11/13)

Phillip's can't be an easy job. I mean, just look at the crap he has to put up with:

"Even your amiable columnist is bombarded by tweets, emails and blogs shrieking obscenities in his direction - a cacophony he finds confusing. (Every day he reads he's simultaneously a puppet of Rupert Murdoch and someone who uses the ABC for Bolshevik bias - while being an apologist for Zionism and the Palestinians, and a virulent anti-Semite.)" (The new Norm, Phillip Adams, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 16/11/13)

An apologist for Zionism and the Palestinians, eh?

Let's subject this one to a little empirical testing shall we?

Here's old amiable Adams getting to the bottom of the latest Beirut bombing with The Guardian's recycled Martin Chulov on November 19's LNL:

Adams: Of course, the knee-jerk response was to blame Israel, wasn't it?
Chulov: That's always the case.

Dumbass Arabs!

Now why would anyone blame the bombing of the Iranian Embassy - Iranian FFS! - on the Middle East's only innocent bystander?

I mean, it's not as if Israel has ever actually invaded Lebanon or occupied it or bombed the crap out of it or anything.

And as for those near-daily overflights of Lebanon, they're not birds, they're not (Israeli) planes... they're... they're... Supermen, right?

To answer my initial question - How much is Phillip Adams worth?

IMO, not a brass razoo.

PS: "Radio presenter Phillip Adams is among those planning to raise the pay discrepancy with 'naughty management'. 'Always accepted the fiction that we were paid much the same,' he told Crikey." ('Your' salaries uncapped, Peter Munro, Sydney Morning Herald, 23/11/13) That's not the only fiction he's fallen for.

Phillip Adams Drones On

Phillip Adams was at the Brisbane Writers Festival last week, a fact which would not ordinarily interest me in the least, except for the fact that he was chairing a session on the subject of drones and one of his 3 guests happened to be Israeli Mossad salesman, Michael Bar-Zohar, out here pushing his latest book, Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service. The other two were lawyer Michael (Dan) Mori, associated, you may remember, with the defence of David Hicks, and UK anti-drone activist James Bridle. (You can hear the entire program, broadcast on October 3, on Adams' program, Late Night Live, on Radio National.)

Of course, the incorrigibly Ziophilic Adams, who invariably goes all soft and gooey in the presence of a Zionist, just couldn't help but allude to the 1972 Munich massacre, which he characterised as a terrorist attack which the Israelis "had to respond to."

This was the first of Adams' many services to the Israeli narrative during the course of the program.

Of course, Israel did not have to respond in the way it did, namely by unleashing a Mossad death squad against Palestinian resistance representatives in Rome, Paris, Nicosia and Oslo between October 1972 and July 1973. None of the individuals murdered in this killing spree had any proven connection with the events in Munich. Israel's actions were nothing more than eye-for-an-eye acts of vengeance, as were its murderous bombing runs over Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria in the immediate aftermath of Munich.*

(In the case of Wael Zuaiter, the resistance movement's representative in Rome, gunned down on 16 October 1972, an Italian court set out to try 8 Mossad operatives in absentia for his death but was forced to acquit them for lack of evidence. In its judgment of 17 December 1980, the Court had this to say of the victim: "The fact is that Wael Zuaiter had established strong ties in a number of Italian political, cultural and press circles and had developed an intense propaganda in favour of the Palestinian cause... However, there was nothing to authorize anyone to think that these activities, which were carried out in compliance with the laws of the host country, were a cover-up for any activities which, objectively, were likely to help extremist groups carrying out obviously unacceptable actions." (For a Palestinian: A Memorial to Wael Zuaiter, Ed. by Janet Venn-Brown, 1984, pp 209-210))

Adams' opening question to Bar-Zohar - whether drones were "necessary" - facilitated the first of Bar-Zohar's 'tough neighborhood' whines:

"It's very funny to sit here in Australia. You have no problems. You don't have any border with any enemy state, no danger of something exploding suddenly in a cafe or restaurant... and for you it's very easy to judge the outside world... By the way, Israel doesn't use drones for military purposes [because] terrorists live in densely populated territories."

This would have been an ideal opportunity for a critical and informed chairperson to suggest, in one form or another, that this might have something to do with Australia's having come to terms with its indigenous population, as opposed to Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine's indigenous population, but Adams is neither, instead bending over backwards to accomodate the arrogant sod:

"Michael makes the point that Israeli public opinion does not allow for too many civilian deaths, hence the reluctance to use these damn things."

Notice too, how Bar-Zohar is allowed to get away with the lie that Israel doesn't use drones to kill Palestinians. The reality is that they are an integral part of Israel's policy of 'targeted assassination', a euphemism for wiping out any manifestation of armed resistance to Israeli occupation:

"Each targeted assassination is a large-scale operation that integrates hundreds of specialists from different military branches and security apparatuses. Beyond its reliance on background intelligence (much of it gathered in mass arrests and from Palestinians stopped at checkpoints), targeted assassination depends on sharing real-time information between various agents, commanders, operators, and different military planes and on their ability to act upon it. After a Palestinian is put on the death list, he is followed, sometimes for days, by a 'swarm' of different kinds of unmanned aerial vehicles. Often, different swarms follow different people simultaneously in different areas of the Gaza Strip. In this way, the security services establish the targeted person's daily routines and habits and maintain continued visual contact with him until his killing. As well as being cheaper to operate, unmanned drones have the advantage over manned planes or helicopters because they can remain in the air around the clock... and because their formations circulate in relatively small areas while providing a multiplicity of angles of vision. Moreover, drones are quiet and barely visible to the human eye. This is the reason that, beginning in 2004, the air force started to shoot its missiles from drones, rather than from its more visible battle helicopters. A swarm of various types of drones, each circulating at a different altitude, up to a height of 30,000 feet, is navigated by a GPS system and woven by radio communication into a single synergetic reconnaissance and killing instrument that conducts the entire assassination operation." (The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, ed, by Adi Ophir, Michal Givoni, & Sari Hanafi, 2009,pp 544-545)  [*See also Cut to pieces: the Palestinian family drinking tea in their courtyard, Clancy Chassay, The Guardian, 24/3/09.]

Characteristically, Adams, wasted no time in switching the focus away from Israeli  and onto American war crimes, suggesting to Mori, that unlike Israel, the US is not nearly as averse to a bit of 'collateral damage':

"That doesn't seem to be of great concern in the US, does it?"

Here's what ensued, in particular, Bar-Zohar's second 'tough neighborhood' whine:

Mori: Well, now we're raising the issue of collateral damage and how many civilian deaths are acceptable if we're getting the terrorist planner. Is it OK to kill him if we know there'll be 6 other members of his family, is that OK?

Bar-Zohar: Is it OK? If I listen to all this debate I would find out finally you can't get a war because [Sound of cheering from audience] everything we say - yes, here it's fine, it's fine for you, and I envy you people but when my enemy sits 40 km from my home and attacks me with missiles every day and bombs my restaurants and buses every day, what should I do? Debate what's moral, how to count, how many people are equivalent to death of a terrorist or go after the terrorist. That's the point. And speaking of errors... I can make you a list from here to eternity about the errors which are made in each and every war. War is a very unpleasant business. You've been to war? I've fought in 4 wars in my life. I don't recommend it to anybody, and war is full of mistakes every second and every moment people are killed for no reason and civilians are hurt for no reason so let's not mish-mash everything. There is today a new instrument. Everything changes. Before there were different kinds of war. They were running with spears and arrows. Then the tank came...

James Bridle then intervened to make the following, telling point:

"I totally understand the point Michael is making, that there is a particular situation in Israel that has produced these conditions and these weapons. What these weapons are now doing is carrying the attitudes of that conflict to the rest of the globe."

As did Mori, leading to this little exchange with Bar-Zohar:

Bar-Zohar, No, we didn't produce the killer drones, not at all.

Mori: No, but you produced the concept of executive-directed killings.

Bar-Zohar: No, not for drones.

Mori: No, not for drones, but for the executive determining who's bad and who should be killed.

But Bar-Zohar just couldn't let this one pass:

"You mentioned before about the Munich group which was followed. There was a tribunal in Israel formed by PM Meir, DPM Alon, and Defence Minister Dayan, and they had to approve each file of terrorism submitted to them by the Mossad saying this man should be killed."

At this point, Adams just couldn't help himself, and rushed to Bar-Zohar's aid with this fawning nonsense:

"I think what he might be getting at is that Israel has over quite a long time often done quite remarkable things which the world may have applauded but which weren't really legal. We did a program the other day on Eichman... This is Israeli intelligence - Mossading - at its best, going into another country, taking someone away for a trial back in Israel. You have long history of targeting individuals... but no one does it like the Israelis..."

Bar-Zohar, elated, chimed in with:

"No one does it better, but don't forget we are all the time on the front line..."

Adams blundered on, the imaginary Israel of his salad days, with its legendary Goldas and Moshes, taking possession:

"You have a history as a Labor member of the Knesset. You're the biographer of some very important progressive figures in Israeli politics. There must be times when what Mossad has done or is doing concerns you ethically."

Unfortunately for Adams, his Israeli guest missed the cue to indulge in a bit of good old Israeli 'shoot & cry'. No tortured soul he:

"Not very many times that I remember. You mentioned the case when the Mossad made a mistake killing a poor Moroccan waiter... Israeli government paid a huge amount of money to his family as an indemnity."

Warms your heart, doesn't it?

Adams final Q&A with Bar-Zohar was quality grist to the latter's propaganda mill.  "Michael," he asked, "does Hamas or Hezbollah in Lebanon have access to drones?"

Bar-Zohar: No, they don't need to. They don't need drones. They have 40,000 missiles, 40 THOUSAND MISSILES along the Israeli border ready to be launched.

Adams: Nonetheless, it must be highly possible that we're witnessing an arms race spurred by the widespread use of UAVs by the US.

Bar-Zohar: So far they sent 2 drones which were shot down over the ocean before they came into Israeli territory... but they have 40,000 missiles. That's much more dangerous than the drones.

God knows what the Brisbane audience made of all this.

[*See my 2/7/12 post Massacre Inc.]

Don't Mention the (Palestinian) Refugees

Late Night Live presenter, Phillip Adams, never ceases to amaze. The occasion for my flabbergasting this time around came during his interview (Rethinking Foreign Occupation) with the UN's Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Professor Richard Falk, on September 17.

In discussing the Murdoch press-facilitated Israel lobby attack on him, covered in my 12/9/13 post Anatomy of a Beat-Up, the following exchange took place:

Falk: Israel has tried to discredit the UN auspices and those that are charged with trying to report on what's going on in the occupied Palestinian territories, and it's part of what I call a politics of deflection, getting people to think about the messenger rather than the message. They don't attack my substantive analysis, they attack me as the presenter of that.
Adams: And yet you're a fine young Jewish gent, aren't you?
Falk (embarrassed laugh): I wish.

I cannot help but wonder whether Falk actually squirmed with embarrassment at this point. Be that as it may, the "Jewish gent" quip was as nothing compared to what was to come. Falk is speaking:

"[Israel has] pursued this fragmentation of the Palestinian identity. So when you ask who are the Palestinian people, it's not just those living under occupation, it's the minority in Israel, it's the people in Gaza living under Hamas, it's the refugees..."

Then Adams interrupted, quick as a flash, drowning out the word "refugees" with this most bizarre tangent:

"It's the one and a half million Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Turkey and Jordan."

Syrian refugees!!!

Falk must've thought he was talking with a lunatic. He valiantly tried steering Adams back on course:

"Well, in Turkey, they're Syrian refugees, but in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan there are between 2 and 3 million Palestinian refugees who've been living there generation after generation. It's a horrible reality."

Adams was having none of it, however, and retained his grip on the Syrian straw in a desperate bid to avoid being swept onto those dreaded PALESTINIAN REFUGEE rocks:

"In... in... parentheses, Richard, let's look at the broader Middle East for a moment. You've said there's no good endgame to the conflict in Syria. Where's it heading?"

Falk could hardly believe his ears:

"Oh, I didn't hear the last words."

"Where is the conflict in Syria heading?" replied Adams, white as a sheet by the sound of it.

The cognitive dissonance here was positively crackling, capping a sad pattern of same which I've documented on this blog over the years. Adams can grit his teeth and tolerate discussion of Israel's colonization of the West Bank, but any reference to Israel's original sin - the ethnic cleansing of 1948 - elicits a lightning quick change of subject. Clearly, Palestinian refugees are to Adams what garlic is to Dracula.

I can only speculate that, as an old leftie raised on dreams of kibbutz 'socialism', or baloney about making the desert bloom, or some other such zio-colonial fantasy, he finds the fact of Zionist genocide and expulsion in 1948 simply too awful to contemplate.

Feel free to browse my other posts on Adams, and you'll see what I mean. If you've only got time for two, try The Remarkable Mr Adams (9/9/10) and He Just Doesn't Get It (19/9/09).

What I Think of Phillip Adams

Most thinking Australians, if asked their opinion of Radio National presenter (Late Night Live) and token Murdoch press 'leftie' (The Weekend Australian Magazine) Phillip Adams, would probably cite his progressive views, his avuncular amiability, or his many fine essays. Not me.

I simply cannot get past his hard-wired, almost subliminal, Zionism, imbibed during his youthful infatuation with Melbourne's coterie of leftist Jewish intellectuals, none of whom seem to have communicated to their worshipful protege the elementary distinction between being a Jew and being a Zionist. (See my 19/9/09 post He Just Doesn't Get It.)

Adam's default Zionism, only really surfaces, of course, when the topic under discussion is Palestine/Israel, and even then is generally so understated and fleeting that most listeners are probably unaware of it. Not to mention Adams himself.

As for me, time and again, while listening to his interviews on the topic, I find myself exclaiming: There he goes again! The bugger just can't help himself!

A case in point was his July 22 interview with visiting Palestinian doctor, Mona El-Fara.

The good doctor's harrowing account of the unconscionable levels of stress and malnutrition experienced by Palestinian women and children under Israel's unremitting blockade of Gaza - 75% are anemic - was met thus by Adams:

"We've done programs before on the stress, the terrible tension on both sides when you live in an area of bombardment."

Then, as if this assertion of an equivalence between Palestinian victims and Israeli perpetrators were not outrage enough, it was followed by an invitation for El-Fara to pin the blame for Gaza's suffering on its Hamas defenders:

"Now Israel will of course argue that the response to rocket attacks from Gaza is why they keep lobbing them on you. Are you critical of Hamas?"

Finally, there was Adams' reference to Palestinians "across the diaspora as you describe it."

Now how is one expected to take this, other than to conclude that Adams doesn't really consider that Palestinians whose grandparents were driven out of Palestine by Zionist terror gangs in 1948 constitute a diaspora?

Certainly, when the term was thrown around in true Zionist style (ie, as an ideological categorisation of all Jews not living in Israel) by one of his more recent (12/8) Jewish interviewees, US historian Deborah Lipstadt, Adams felt no need whatever to contest or qualify her use of the term - despite the fact that she was born in New York and has no real connection with Palestine.

Zionist Propaganda Alert

ABC television's religious affairs program Compass is currently screening a series of documentaries under the heading Whatever Happened to...?

As the Compass website explains: "In this series Compass revisits radical religious and social movements in Australia's recent past, exploring their impact and legacy."

To date, they've covered the Hare Krishnas and the Charismatics. Tonight's episode, screened at 6:30 pm, is Whatever Happened to... The Kibbutzim. Here's the blurb:

"Episode 3 - The first Kibbutz was founded in Israel just over 100 years ago. A radical socialist experiment, it combined communal living and Zionist philosophy with the aim of 'making the desert bloom'. Soon there were dozens, and training farms were set up in countries like Australia to prepare young people for the physical hardship of kibbutz life where - in exchange for manual labour - volunteers were provided with food, shelter, education and medical care. In the late 60s and 70s many young Australians, Jewish and non-Jewish, went to Israel to join a kibbutz. Why did they go? How has the experience shaped their lives? And do kibbutzim still operate? Compass finds out."

With a Zionist sales pitch like that - making the desert bloom indeed! - I'm afraid it doesn't bode well. Needless to say, I'll be returning with a corrective after the screening if necessary.

But just in case you find yourself asking whether the kibbutz phenomenon isn't perhaps a tad too marginal to be part of a series on Australian religious and social movements, let me remind you that there is still at least one old bugger around who once came under the influence and has never fully recovered from the experience:

"Two weeks pass [following a hip replacement]. And I've been demoted from the Zimmer to crutches to walking stick. And while I become very attached to my tormentors (a variation on the Stockholm Syndrome), it's time to leave [Mater Hospital]. For Wolper, a Jewish hospital nearer home. If you think the Catholics are tough, you haven't been in Wolper. It's like a kibbutz during the Six-Day War. With a hint of Mississippi slave era (Tote that barge, lift that bale.) And I'm going in for 3 days a week for months." (I'm in the hip crowd, Phillip Adams, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 20/7/13)

Phillip Adams Hails Israeli 'Martyrs'

The Middle East conflict invariably brings out the worst, which is to say the inner Zionist, in Phillip Adams, a phenomenon I've documented many times on this blog. Mind you, the Zionism of Murdoch's token 'leftie' is far from the blatant, in-your-face variety of a Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan. (No branch of the lobby is ever going to offer Adams an equivalent gold star.)

No, Adams' Zionism is more understated, manifesting usually as a fleeting comment, an evasive manoeuvre, or a studied (?) omission. To the untrained ear, you might even miss it. Trawl through my Adams file by clicking on the label below and you'll see what I mean. If you only have time for one example, make it He Just Doesn't Get It (19/9/09).

Here's an example from his column in Saturday's Weekend Australian Magazine. Adams' theme is the often uncertain, or worse, fate of political leaders:

"From Caesar to Gandhi, beware the ides of March. The political reward for Lincoln, JFK and brother Bobby, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King was a bullet. But it's not only the US where the good and the great are cut down. Israel, India and Pakistan have had many martyrs." (The perils of power, 6-7/7/13)

Israel's "good and great... cut down"? Israel's "martyrs"?

With these lines, we enter 'Did he just say what I thought he said?' territory. In Israel we have a nation every one of whose leaders has perpetrated, either directly or indirectly, just about every war crime in the book. But for Adams, despite his bibliophilia, his pretension to worldly wisdom, and his decades of radio interviews with all and sundry, including many critics of Israel and Zionism, the criminality of Israeli colonialism and apartheid never quite seems to register.

By "martyr," I can only assume he's referring to former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated by a settler extremist in 1995, and that he fondly imagines Rabin as Israel's answer to Mandela's peace partner, Frederik de Klerk.*

The reality, of course, is that Rabin was just another Israeli war criminal. As a Palmach commander, he was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian towns of Ramle and Lydda** in 1948, and as defence minister in the Shamir government, he was responsible for the ruthless suppression of the first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1991) with his infamous 'break their bones' policy.

Here's an example of the kind of thuggery meted out to defenceless Palestinian kids by order of Adams' "good and great" Israeli "martyr" during the first intifada:

"On the following day [22 December, 1987] Defence Minister Rabin returned to Israel from an extended trip to the USA, and immediately took a tough line. He made his attitude with regard to the Palestinians clear: 'Their suffering will increase and instead of allowing them to live peacefully, as long as the political situation has not been achieved, they will suffer more and more.' He vowed: 'Every legal means - legal from an Israeli point of view - is justified to put an end to it'... Under Rabin's direction there was massive repression of the demonstrations in the occupied territories, in which hundreds of Palestinians, including many children, would be killed. Some of these Israeli atrocities were witnessed by foreign observers.

"On the evening of Friday 29 January 1988 Karen White, an American journalist, was walking alone in Gaza City. After 7 weeks of unrest the situation was tense, but Karen was not prepared for what she saw. Right before her eyes, an Israeli soldier pulled a boy of 9 or 10 by his hair from a parked car. The youngster was dragged to the ground and kicked in his face and chest. Other soldiers joined in, after which the youngster was ordered to pick up pieces of orange peel from the street. A few hours later Karen noticed a group of Israeli soldiers laughing as they kicked a feeble old man in the genitals for no apparent reason. Such sights were common in the occupied territories, especially since Defence Minister Rabin had announced on 19 January that Palestinians would be confronted with 'force, power and blows' in an attempt to crush the uprising.

"The next day Karen White and her friend, a British lawyer named Catriona Drew, decided to visit the office of the Gaza Bar Association which did valuable work in collecting information on human rights abuses during the intifada. The two women were recognised experts on Israeli human rights violations, since they had previously written an expose on the condition of children in Israeli prisons which was included in the 1987 US State Department Human Rights Report on Israel. There were usually less violent clashes on Saturday than Friday, the Moslem Sabbath, but the women were still apprehensive as they walked along an alley which ran parallel to Omar al-Muktar Street in Gaza City. As the two women reached an intersection faced by the Al-Omari mosque, they saw a large number of Israeli soldiers as well as a group of schoolgirls standing on the street. Two small stones were thrown which harmed no one. At the other end of the block a youth of 17 or 18 stood alone, facing away from the soldiers, who ran towards him from behind. When the soldiers reached the boy, they all began to club, kick, slap and punch him. In her affidavit Karen White stated: 'I did not see this boy throw any stones; the stones that landed on the intersection had been thrown from the other end of the block.' The American journalist feared for the safety of the girls as well as the teenage boy.

"Soon afterwards two more jeeps arrived full of soldiers, four of whom appeared to be sharpshooters. Karen was alarmed because: 'The soldiers placed themselves in front of the schoolgirls and took aim at the group at chest and head level.' Catriona Drew notes in her statement: 'I swear that the stones that were thrown came from the opposite direction and were not thrown by any of the girls or indeed anyone on the street.' The two women put themselves in the line of fire, which forced the soldiers to back off.

"As the two women were about to leave they heard screaming and shouting. The soldiers were dragging the teenage boy along the ground on his back, kicking him over his entire body, including his abdomen and genitals, punching him with their fists and pounding him with their wooden truncheons. The boy's head, face and neck were covered with blood and his nose was obviously broken.

"At this point Karen saw four other soldiers aim their rifles at an 11- or 12-year-old-girl. She followed the soldiers into an alley as they pursued the child. The American journalist found 'all four soldiers with their truncheons raised as the girl cowered against the alley wall'. A soldier grasped the girl's upper arm, causing her to whimper with pain. Karen White pulled the soldier off the girl. Another soldier appeared to be in a frenzy. Shaking violently, he began screaming, then turned and smashed the headlights and windshield of a car parked in the alley. Karen noted: 'I believe that, had I not intervened, the girl would have been seriously injured.'

"When Karen got back to al-Muktar Street, the teenage boy was handcuffed to a shop door. He identified himself as Muhammed al-Jamallah. His little sister was standing next to him, screaming. Karen asked one of the soldiers for the name of his commanding officer and wrote the name down. When she told the soldier she wanted the name to use in a report to a member of the US Congress, he grabbed the paper from her and tore it to pieces with his teeth. Catriona notes that afterwards she saw the soldier 'punch Karen in the stomach and hit her with his rifle'." (Imperial Israel: The History of the Occupation of the West Bank & Gaza, Michael Palumbo, 1990, pp 233-236)

Frankly, Adams' words are an insult to generations of martyred Palestinians.

[*How Rabin's position of a strictly limited Palestinian autonomy could ever be compared to de Klerk's agreement to the principle of one man, one vote in South Africa is beyond me; **For an account of the Lydda death march by George Habash, see my 2/2/08 post Fabricating George Habash.]

A Q&A Journey

Well, Monday night's Q&A has led me on quite a journey. I hope you enjoy the ride:

It began with well-rambammed (2009 & 2010) Liberal Senator George Brandis reflecting thus:

"I think the future [of journalism] lies with quality because... regardless of the variety of platforms that are open I think there will always be a premium for the writers who can go beyond... the popular line... deep into the story, the specialist writers, the analytical writers... I think it's interesting [that] of the 3 Fairfax titles, the one that has suffered the least relative decline in its circulation is the Fin[ancial] Review, which is the most specialist [sic] of the [three], and which, I think, probably has more deep and analytical writing in it than either of the other two."

Er... could he mean deep and analytical like this:

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an example of a clash of competing and legitimate nationalisms; justice demands that each be represented in a territorial accommodation." (The case for intervention, Oliver Kamm, Prospect/The AFR, 8/6/12)

IOW, the so-called I-P conflict is somehow akin to a married couple quarrelling over just how much of the marital bed each should occupy. (Alas, as an obese Israel grows ever more obese, and a near-anorexic Palestine grows ever more anorexic, the latter is always on the verge of falling out of the bed onto the floor.)

The problem with this kind of deep and analytical is that it is neither:

There never was a marriage. Palestine was living in her own home when Israel and his then mate, Britain, came knocking. The always hospitable Palestine at first welcomed them, but sure enough these bastards began to throw their combined weight around, treating her home as if it were their own. Israel, in particular, began making the most outrageous demands (Listen up, bitch, God gave your home to me, OK?). Palestine protested and asked them to leave. To no avail. She fought back, again and again. It nearly killed her. But they were stronger. One day, Israel and his mate, Britain, had a falling out and the latter stormed out of the house, leaving Palestine alone with the more psychotic of the two. With Britain gone, Israel proceeded to rape and beat Palestine at will, reducing her to the pitiful but still defiant creature we see before us now.

But, hey, I've never seen that sort of deep and analytical in the Fin. Review.

Then there was this, also from Brandis:

"You're making the mistake... Louise, of assuming that a single masthead can't embrace a variety of opinions. Take The Australian. They publish Phillip Adams and they publish Christopher Pearson and all points of view in between."

So there you have it. Straight from the horse's mouth. Phillip Adams is the figleaf which enables The Australian to pretend that it's an organ of full spectrum free speech. But what a pathetic, withered, beyond-autumnal figleaf Adams is on the subject matter of this particular blog. For the full story of Adam's deep and analytical, not approach to Palestine/Israel, simply click on the 'Flip Adams' label below and check out his record.

But it was Melbourne University Publishing's Louise Adler's all-too-revealing anecdote on her visit to the Hancock mansion of yore that really had me thinking deeply and analytically, namely about the horrors that lurk within the minds of the born-to-rule brigade known as the Liberal/ Nationalist Party and their corporate backers. Here's Louise:

"I have my own sort of very special experience of the family Hancock. I had a sleepover at the Hancock home - let's call it a home or hacienda or estate - some years ago when Lang Hancock was still alive and I remember there was an evening. I stayed over in the villa in the Rose Garden (underline Rose) and I slept upstairs. My husband is very keen on me not saying I slept on top of Joh Bjelke-Petersen, but I was upstairs and he was downstairs. And over dinner, Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Lang Hancock and his wife at the time and someone from the National Party, whose name I can't remember, actually talked about the strong leadership that was missing in Australia today and they mused about the strong leaders they knew and loved and admired and thought that we needed them. The first name that came up was the Shah of Iran and the second name that came up was a chap called Nicky and I really couldn't figure out who Nicky was until a bolt of lightning hit me and I realised that they were talking about Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator with whom Lang was trying to do a mining deal. And so I agree with you that we should be very worried [about Gina Rinehart]. We should be deeply worried."

Now this took me back to the same night's Four Corners profile of Gina Rinehart, and this bit in particular:

MARIAN WILKINSON: Michael Yabsley and a group of Young Turks in the Liberal Party first met Gina Rinehart back in the 1970s.
MICHAEL YABSLEY: There were half a dozen of us who were heavily involved in student politics. Lang Hancock had made no secret of the fact that he was pretty disenchanted with the generation of politicians at the time and Lang and Gina were keen to develop some relationships. So within that group there were people like Peter Costello, Michael Kroger, Eric Abetz and a number of others, and I was part of that group.

And that took me off, as these things will, back to a speech of Costello's to the Australian Christian Lobby on 23 September 2006. Then Treasurer and PMinesterial wannabe Costello was angsting about the coming March of the Mooslims from Mecca on Canberra (because Mooslims, as you know, unlike the good folk of the ACL, can't seem to separate church (mosque?) and state:

"This does not mean there is no experience of a secular state separate from the religious domain in the Muslim world. The most outstanding example would be the establishment of modern Turkey out of the old Ottoman Empire. Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, well known in Australia as the commander of the Turkish victory at Gallipoli in 1915, went on to found modern Turkey as a secular state: a path he believed would lead to modernity. In my opinion he is one of the great leaders of the 20th century. He should be held out as a model of leadership for the modern Islamic world." (Attaturk's stirling record in smashing the Turkish trade union movement and reducing parliament to a mere adjunct of his Republican Peoples Party would only have added to his allure for Costello.)

Do you see where all this has taken me? I now know that which before I had only guessed: what really turns our Coalition politicians and their corporate backers on, what really gets their juices flowing, is strong leaders... like the Shah of Iran, Nicolae Ceausescu, Kemal Attaturk.

And knowing that, I just can't help wondering now whether this penchant for strongmen might not  stretch  back in time to the likes of ...

Yes, Louise, I agree. We should be deeply worried.