Clive Kessler, emeritus professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of NSW, is the author of a feature - Islam cannot disown jihadists driven by rage against history - in this weekend's Australian.
His appended bio says, "He has been researching and writing about the politics of resurgent and militant Islam, in Southeast Asia and globally, for half a century."
So where does 50 years' worth of cogitation on the subject of Islam lead? Apparently, to this sage conclusion:
"By the late 19th and early 20th century, much of the Islamic world had fallen under European colonial domination. It was dismembered and parcelled out among different Western powers - notably France, Britain, Italy and The Netherlands... No longer able to live in the world on their own terms according to their blueprint, the lands of Islam fell under derivatively foreign legal systems. They ceased to live, wherever they once had, under Islamic law, the Shariah. This defeat was humiliating. The world of Islam was wounded at its core. This would have been a painful experience for any once-proud but now enfeebled civilisation. But for Islam it was more and worse, than that. It was more and worse because of its long history of worldly success and its conviction of entitlement, an assurance vouchsafed by God, that Islam would forever be in charge."
In brief, ever since the colonial dismemberment of the Islamic world, instead of moving on, it's been stewing, obsessively sharpening the sword of jihad and generally itching for a return to the fabulous days of shariah!
That this kind of post 9/11 clash of civilizations nonsense is peddled at our universities - Kessler's essay originally appeared on the Australian National University's New Mandala website under the heading A rage against history - may come as a surprise. That it's been taken up and recycled in the Murdoch press, though, comes as no surprise.
Where to begin? Leaving aside Libya and Indonesia, let's concentrate on the Levant in the crucial years from 1918-20.
This was the period which followed the defeat of the Turks by British and Arab forces (the latter led by the Amir Faisal, son of of the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein). Critically, it was the period before the implementation of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement (dividing the area between France and Britain), and the 1917 Balfour Declaration (imposing a Jewish National Home on the Palestinians), when the Arabs had a narrow window of opportunity to realise their dreams. It follows, therefore, that if these dreams were all about Islamic supremacy and shariah, you'd expect that to be reflected in the historical record.
Well, here's the hero of the Arab independence struggle, Faisal, addressing a public meeting of Syrian notables in Damascus in 1919:
"The Turks departed from our lands and we are now as children. We have no government, no army and no educational system. The huge majority of our people have no understanding of patriotism or freedom, or the meaning of independence... That is why we have to make them understand the blessing of independence... and endeavour to spread education, for no nation can survive without education, organisation and equality. I am an Arab and I have no superiority over any other Arab, not even by an atom... I call upon my Arab brethren irrespective of their different sects to grasp the mantle of unity and concord, to spread knowledge, and to form a government that will do us proud, for if we do what the Turks did [in misrule] we will also depart from the land, God forbid; but if we act in a responsible and dutiful way, history will record our deeds with honour. I repeat what I have said in all my previous positions. The Arabs were Arabs before Moses, and Jesus and Muhammad. All religions demand that [their adherents] follow what is right and enjoin brotherhood on earth. And anyone who sows discord between Muslim, Christian and Jew is not an Arab. I am an Arab before all else... The Arabs are diverse peoples living in different regions. The Aleppan is not the same as the Hijazi, nor is the Damascene the same as the Yemeni. That is why my father has made the Arab lands each follow their own special laws that are in accordance with their own circumstances and people... We should have started first by organising a congress that would have set out these laws [the constitution for the Arab state]. But the Arabs now living abroad are better fit to formulate such laws, and that is why we have postponed this matter until the exiles can meet. Those I have recalled from abroad are people who are competent in drafting good laws that are in the spirit of the land and the characteristics of its people. They will meet in Damascus or elsewhere in the Arab world for their congress." (Faisal of Iraq, Ali A. Allawi, 2014, pp 167-68)
Not a whisper about Islam!
And when the aforementioned congress finally convened in Damascus in March 1920, these were its concerns:
"[A] number of key resolutions were unanimously passed. The preamble to the resolutions summarised the position of the nationalists regarding the total independence of Syria within its natural frontiers, including Palestine, drawing on the right of the people to national self-determination, the promises of the Allies and [US President] Wilson's Fourteen Points. The congress rejected the Zionist plan for a Jewish National Home in Palestine and called for administrative decentralisation and a special status for Lebanon. The resolution then declared Syria to be a fully independent state within its natural boundaries and offered the crown of Syria to Faisal as its constitutional king." (p 272)
Just the kind of focus on national independence you'd expect from any newly liberated people:
Needless to say, the Arabs' wholly legitimate desire for the national independence for which they'd fought was anathema to French imperialism (just as it was to British imperialism in the case of Palestine), and Faisal's popular, non-sectarian, constitutional kingdom - along with the hopes for a brighter future which it embodied - was smashed by the French army at the battle of Maysalun in July 1920. (See my 2/6/12 post French Mandate Redux?)
Ah, but you wouldn't expect to read about that in Kessler's piece.
Showing posts with label clash of civilizations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clash of civilizations. Show all posts
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Monday, November 3, 2014
Now For the Catholic Version
I've read thousands of letters to the editor which push one or other element of the false Zionist historical narrative, but the following, from Sophie York, Turramurra, NSW in The Australian, is the first I've ever read in the ms press which pushes a false Catholic narrative:
Here it is, minus the first sentence: "It was determined Catholic monarchs who threw off 700 years of dictatorial Moorish oppression in 1492 at the Battle of Granada, freeing Europe which then developed into constitutional monarchies and democracies. Catholicism, with its belief in individual human dignity, was the seedbed for modern democracy, because it rejected caste systems and wealth dictating innate value. It thus championed the poor, disabled and working-class, it let women work (nuns were teachers and nurses) - and all these formerly disenfranchised groups were eventually given the vote." (29/110/14)
First, a brief perspectival corrective from Emeritus Professor of Hispano-Arabic Studies at the University of Exeter, Richard Hitchcock, taken from his 2014 study Muslim Spain Reconsidered:
"Christians had no 'divine' right of possession over [the Iberian Peninsula]. Furthermore, the Muslims were not an occupying power in Christian territory; they were a permanent presence in the continent of Europe. Their state was one which was governed by a different raft of beliefs, but this circumstance did not necessarily obstruct relations with other powers... In retrospect, one may observe objectively that, by a number of yardsticks, the level of civilisation, for want of a better word, as manifested in al-Andalus was superior to that found elsewhere in the Iberian Peninsula and, in some periods, in the rest of Western Europe... The history of the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages has traditionally been presented as that of two opposing creeds, yet the sources do not support this interpretation. When there were major thrusts from the north southwards or vice versa, it was when political weaknesses were perceived by either side. Such incursions were not motivated by religious interests, except at the time of the Crusades... There was no inherent hostility existing between al-Andalus and other powers in the Iberian Peninsula because of differing religious beliefs, at least for the first three and a half centuries after [the Muslim conquest] of 711." (pp 194-95)
Second, just look at those factoids and sweeping generalisations.
1) Dictatorial? How so?
2) Muslim Granada was blocking the development of constitutional monarchies/democracies in Europe? Come again?
3) Catholicism, with its belief in individual human dignity? Except for Jews (forced conversions/expulsion), Muslims (ditto), Christian dissenters (hello, Inquisition)... need I go on?
4) The Catholic church as a champion of the working class? Pull the other.
As I always say: Only in The Australian.
Here it is, minus the first sentence: "It was determined Catholic monarchs who threw off 700 years of dictatorial Moorish oppression in 1492 at the Battle of Granada, freeing Europe which then developed into constitutional monarchies and democracies. Catholicism, with its belief in individual human dignity, was the seedbed for modern democracy, because it rejected caste systems and wealth dictating innate value. It thus championed the poor, disabled and working-class, it let women work (nuns were teachers and nurses) - and all these formerly disenfranchised groups were eventually given the vote." (29/110/14)
First, a brief perspectival corrective from Emeritus Professor of Hispano-Arabic Studies at the University of Exeter, Richard Hitchcock, taken from his 2014 study Muslim Spain Reconsidered:
"Christians had no 'divine' right of possession over [the Iberian Peninsula]. Furthermore, the Muslims were not an occupying power in Christian territory; they were a permanent presence in the continent of Europe. Their state was one which was governed by a different raft of beliefs, but this circumstance did not necessarily obstruct relations with other powers... In retrospect, one may observe objectively that, by a number of yardsticks, the level of civilisation, for want of a better word, as manifested in al-Andalus was superior to that found elsewhere in the Iberian Peninsula and, in some periods, in the rest of Western Europe... The history of the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages has traditionally been presented as that of two opposing creeds, yet the sources do not support this interpretation. When there were major thrusts from the north southwards or vice versa, it was when political weaknesses were perceived by either side. Such incursions were not motivated by religious interests, except at the time of the Crusades... There was no inherent hostility existing between al-Andalus and other powers in the Iberian Peninsula because of differing religious beliefs, at least for the first three and a half centuries after [the Muslim conquest] of 711." (pp 194-95)
Second, just look at those factoids and sweeping generalisations.
1) Dictatorial? How so?
2) Muslim Granada was blocking the development of constitutional monarchies/democracies in Europe? Come again?
3) Catholicism, with its belief in individual human dignity? Except for Jews (forced conversions/expulsion), Muslims (ditto), Christian dissenters (hello, Inquisition)... need I go on?
4) The Catholic church as a champion of the working class? Pull the other.
As I always say: Only in The Australian.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
It's Settler-Colonialism, Stupid!
It's hard to believe that, almost 100 years after Britain's Lord Balfour issued his infamous Balfour Declaration in 1917, many people are still abysmally ignorant of the fundamental nature of what is known as the Middle East or Arab-Israeli conflict.
For example, a dumbass Sydney Morning Herald reader sees a photograph of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies' Yair Miller and a Muslim Sheikh walking together in the grounds of Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery in Thursday's edition and pens the following dumbass letter, which an equally dumbass letters editor allows into print in yesterday's edition:
"It's good to hear that Jews and Muslims are to lie peacefully together in Rookwood ('Muslims, Jews on common ground in cemetery squeeze', May 9). A greater challenge will be for them to live peacefully together in Israel ('Israel puts brake on settlements', May 9)."
Both letter writer (John Byrne of Randwick) and editor thus do their bit to perpetuate the insidious misconception that the problem of Palestine is all about a clash of religions.
Nothing, I repeat nothing, could be further from the truth. For want of a little homework, Byrne and his enabler, are apparently unaware - surely the word settlements should give the game away? - that this 'conflict', for want of a better term, is all about land. IOW, at root (no pun intended), the Palestine/Israel problem is a settler-colonial problem.
Of course, today's Zionists loathe the very suggestion that their movement is merely another species of settler-colonialism, and the word 'colonialism' (and its derivatives) gets very short shrift with them indeed. But back in the first half of the 20th century, before Zionist ideologues had dreamt up the pernicious clash of civilizations/religions theory, and colonialism was nowhere near the dirty word it is today, Zionism's leading lights had no problem with the C-word.
Here, for example, is David Ben-Gurion, soon to be Israel's first PM, testifying before the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) in Jerusalem, on July 8, 1947:
Sir Abdur Rahman (India): And are there any Jewish colonies near the Syrian frontier?
Mr. Ben Gurion: Yes, there are.
Sir Abdur Rahman: How many and how far? Just give me the figures.
Mr. Ben Gurion: There are many Jews on the frontier. There is one colony outside the frontier of Lebanon. There is a colony where the frontier is in the middle of the colony. (unispal.un.org)
And here's Benjamin Netanyahu's ideological mentor, Vladimir Jabotinsky, making no bones about the Zionist COLONIZATION of Palestine in 1925:
"Zionist colonization... must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native [Palestinian] population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop under the protection of a force independent of the local population - an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy." (Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of 'Transfer' in Zionist Political Thought, Nur Masalha, 1992, p 28)
And again, writing in his 1923 book The Iron Wall: We & the Arabs:
"If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find a benefactor who will maintain the garrison on your behalf... Zionism is a colonizing adventure and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed force." (ibid, p 45)
But if history books are to John Byrne and the Herald letters editor what garlic is to Dracula, could I at least get them to to take a look at a new (at least for me) and interesting Facebook page, I Acknowledge Apartheid Exists? Sample: "If you do not know enough about the history of the [Israeli] occupation of Palestine then hold your tongue. It is laughable to believe that just because you've read a few mainstream media articles regarding Israel-Palestine you're in any way equipped to say who is the aggressor and who the victim."
Or maybe not, because its creator goes on to say: "Read a fucking book. You don't know where to begin? Here, I'll help you." He then goes on to list 5 of those book thingies. Maybe John Byrne should simply hold his tongue.
For example, a dumbass Sydney Morning Herald reader sees a photograph of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies' Yair Miller and a Muslim Sheikh walking together in the grounds of Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery in Thursday's edition and pens the following dumbass letter, which an equally dumbass letters editor allows into print in yesterday's edition:
"It's good to hear that Jews and Muslims are to lie peacefully together in Rookwood ('Muslims, Jews on common ground in cemetery squeeze', May 9). A greater challenge will be for them to live peacefully together in Israel ('Israel puts brake on settlements', May 9)."
Both letter writer (John Byrne of Randwick) and editor thus do their bit to perpetuate the insidious misconception that the problem of Palestine is all about a clash of religions.
Nothing, I repeat nothing, could be further from the truth. For want of a little homework, Byrne and his enabler, are apparently unaware - surely the word settlements should give the game away? - that this 'conflict', for want of a better term, is all about land. IOW, at root (no pun intended), the Palestine/Israel problem is a settler-colonial problem.
Of course, today's Zionists loathe the very suggestion that their movement is merely another species of settler-colonialism, and the word 'colonialism' (and its derivatives) gets very short shrift with them indeed. But back in the first half of the 20th century, before Zionist ideologues had dreamt up the pernicious clash of civilizations/religions theory, and colonialism was nowhere near the dirty word it is today, Zionism's leading lights had no problem with the C-word.
Here, for example, is David Ben-Gurion, soon to be Israel's first PM, testifying before the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) in Jerusalem, on July 8, 1947:
Sir Abdur Rahman (India): And are there any Jewish colonies near the Syrian frontier?
Mr. Ben Gurion: Yes, there are.
Sir Abdur Rahman: How many and how far? Just give me the figures.
Mr. Ben Gurion: There are many Jews on the frontier. There is one colony outside the frontier of Lebanon. There is a colony where the frontier is in the middle of the colony. (unispal.un.org)
And here's Benjamin Netanyahu's ideological mentor, Vladimir Jabotinsky, making no bones about the Zionist COLONIZATION of Palestine in 1925:
"Zionist colonization... must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native [Palestinian] population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop under the protection of a force independent of the local population - an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy." (Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of 'Transfer' in Zionist Political Thought, Nur Masalha, 1992, p 28)
And again, writing in his 1923 book The Iron Wall: We & the Arabs:
"If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find a benefactor who will maintain the garrison on your behalf... Zionism is a colonizing adventure and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed force." (ibid, p 45)
But if history books are to John Byrne and the Herald letters editor what garlic is to Dracula, could I at least get them to to take a look at a new (at least for me) and interesting Facebook page, I Acknowledge Apartheid Exists? Sample: "If you do not know enough about the history of the [Israeli] occupation of Palestine then hold your tongue. It is laughable to believe that just because you've read a few mainstream media articles regarding Israel-Palestine you're in any way equipped to say who is the aggressor and who the victim."
Or maybe not, because its creator goes on to say: "Read a fucking book. You don't know where to begin? Here, I'll help you." He then goes on to list 5 of those book thingies. Maybe John Byrne should simply hold his tongue.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Adjective Power
Every so often along comes a letter to the editor that, like LSD, takes the mind to places it's never been before. And here it is, as you'd expect, in today's Australian:
"Israel takes in all Jewish asylum-seekers and refugees no matter where from. It does this even though it is only one third the size of Tasmania and has no oil wealth and receives no subsidies from the UN or NGOs to cover the cost of resettlement. "Considering so many asylum-seekers come from Islamic countries and claim they are not coming to Australia for economic reasons, they could all be easily resettled in any one of the 57 Islamic countries including their transit points of Indonesia and Malaysia." Michael Burd, Toorak, Vic.
Take that opening sentence for example. It reveals with blinding clarity the sheer transformative power of a simple adjective, in this case 'Jewish'. Simply by qualifying the words 'asylum-seeker' and 'refugee' with the word 'Jewish', Mr Burd actually gets to fool some folks out there that Israel, whose major export since birth has been Palestinian refugees, not only inhabits the moral high ground when it comes to refugees, but is actually (especially with the additions of a) third-size-Tasmania, b) no-oil-wealth, and c) no-UN/NGO-subsidies) a shining example for places like Australia when it comes to the treatment of these unfortunate people.
Just think of the possibilities!
If only some defender of the Third Reich, all those decades ago, had marketed Nazi Germany as a taker of all Aryan asylum-seekers and refugees no matter where from, people might have overlooked the non-Aryans fleeing for their lives or languishing (and worse) in concentration camps.
If only some defender of apartheid South Africa had proclaimed that South Africa takes in all White supremacist asylum-seekers and refugees no matter where from, maybe no one would have noticed the legalised discrimination and casual brutality suffered by non-whites.
See what I mean? A simple, well-placed adjective and you're sure to fool at least some of the readers (or, seeing your letter's in The Australian, most probably all of its readers).
But there's more! Take the adjective 'Islamic' (which Mr Burd trots out in his second paragraph), for example. I had no idea before reading his mind-expanding letter that, simply because a country, perhaps by virtue of maybe having a simple Muslim majority, could be deemed Islamic, an asylum-seeker or refugee, whether true believer or no, could easily be resettled there.
Just imagine, as long as the receiving country is 'Islamic', then all other differences, ethnic, cultural and linguistic simply melt away. Our Muslim asylum-seeker/refugee could be equally easily resettled in Saudi Arabia, Mali or Turkmenistan. Likewise, whether your 'Islamic' country be filthy rich, dirt poor or somewhere in between, it simply wouldn't matter.
Think of the possibilities here. Tony Abbott, for example, could swim out to a boatload of Shiite Hazaras from Afghanistan, attach a rope, and with the other end held firmly in his clenched teeth, single-handedly tow them all the way to Sunni, nay Wahhabi, Saudi Arabia. End of problem. (Maybe end of Hazaras too.)
But there's more, and this is the real power of adjectives! By deploying such heavyweights as 'Jewish', 'Islamic', 'Christian' and so on (black, white, brown and yellow have sort of had their day), you get to foment, spread, hype or reinforce division along sectarian lines. You get to promote that wonderful Clash of Civilizations game that so many of the punters, especially those who read The Australian, love to play.
And, wonder of wonders, you get to drive home the concept and fact of a 'Jewish' state as natural and inevitable. Works a treat.
"Israel takes in all Jewish asylum-seekers and refugees no matter where from. It does this even though it is only one third the size of Tasmania and has no oil wealth and receives no subsidies from the UN or NGOs to cover the cost of resettlement. "Considering so many asylum-seekers come from Islamic countries and claim they are not coming to Australia for economic reasons, they could all be easily resettled in any one of the 57 Islamic countries including their transit points of Indonesia and Malaysia." Michael Burd, Toorak, Vic.
Take that opening sentence for example. It reveals with blinding clarity the sheer transformative power of a simple adjective, in this case 'Jewish'. Simply by qualifying the words 'asylum-seeker' and 'refugee' with the word 'Jewish', Mr Burd actually gets to fool some folks out there that Israel, whose major export since birth has been Palestinian refugees, not only inhabits the moral high ground when it comes to refugees, but is actually (especially with the additions of a) third-size-Tasmania, b) no-oil-wealth, and c) no-UN/NGO-subsidies) a shining example for places like Australia when it comes to the treatment of these unfortunate people.
Just think of the possibilities!
If only some defender of the Third Reich, all those decades ago, had marketed Nazi Germany as a taker of all Aryan asylum-seekers and refugees no matter where from, people might have overlooked the non-Aryans fleeing for their lives or languishing (and worse) in concentration camps.
If only some defender of apartheid South Africa had proclaimed that South Africa takes in all White supremacist asylum-seekers and refugees no matter where from, maybe no one would have noticed the legalised discrimination and casual brutality suffered by non-whites.
See what I mean? A simple, well-placed adjective and you're sure to fool at least some of the readers (or, seeing your letter's in The Australian, most probably all of its readers).
But there's more! Take the adjective 'Islamic' (which Mr Burd trots out in his second paragraph), for example. I had no idea before reading his mind-expanding letter that, simply because a country, perhaps by virtue of maybe having a simple Muslim majority, could be deemed Islamic, an asylum-seeker or refugee, whether true believer or no, could easily be resettled there.
Just imagine, as long as the receiving country is 'Islamic', then all other differences, ethnic, cultural and linguistic simply melt away. Our Muslim asylum-seeker/refugee could be equally easily resettled in Saudi Arabia, Mali or Turkmenistan. Likewise, whether your 'Islamic' country be filthy rich, dirt poor or somewhere in between, it simply wouldn't matter.
Think of the possibilities here. Tony Abbott, for example, could swim out to a boatload of Shiite Hazaras from Afghanistan, attach a rope, and with the other end held firmly in his clenched teeth, single-handedly tow them all the way to Sunni, nay Wahhabi, Saudi Arabia. End of problem. (Maybe end of Hazaras too.)
But there's more, and this is the real power of adjectives! By deploying such heavyweights as 'Jewish', 'Islamic', 'Christian' and so on (black, white, brown and yellow have sort of had their day), you get to foment, spread, hype or reinforce division along sectarian lines. You get to promote that wonderful Clash of Civilizations game that so many of the punters, especially those who read The Australian, love to play.
And, wonder of wonders, you get to drive home the concept and fact of a 'Jewish' state as natural and inevitable. Works a treat.
Monday, December 6, 2010
WikiLeaks 3
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror
T. S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages
"American concerns about a Middle East country other than Iran are revealed in WikiLeaks documents that point to a shift by Turkey, a long-time US ally, towards Islamic fundamentalism... According to WikiLeaks documents published on the website of Der Spiegel, American diplomats depicted the present Turkish leadership as divided and permeated by Islamists. Advisers to Mr Erdogan, one cable said, 'have little understanding of politics beyond Ankara'." (Cable reveals US fear of Turkey's leaders, Abraham Rabinovich, The Australian, 1/12/10)
Hang on! Let me get this right: an American diplomat - American, for God's sake! - reckons Erdogan's men don't have a clue about the world outside their Ankara bubble. The implication, of course, is that only Yankee Doodle Dandies (and their Israeli minders?) know what's really going on outside their Washington bubble. Pull the other.
"Mr Erdogan himself got his information almost exclusively from newspapers with close links to Islamists." (ibid)
You mean, as distinct from Bushama, who gets his almost exclusively from Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, which positively pullulates with Zioncon pundits like Bret Stephens (see WikiLeaks 2)?
"Particular concern was expressed about Mr Erdogan's Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, who was described in one cable as 'exceptionally dangerous'. Mr Davatoglu is seen as wishing to restore the grandeur of the Ottoman Empire, which stretched across much of the Middle East and North Africa for four centuries before collapsing in World War I. According to another document, a Turkish official said, in apparent jest, that Turkey wanted 'to take back Andalusia (in modern Spain) and avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683'." (ibid)
In apparent jest? Egads, lads! Was that viper really just joking?
Afraid so. Andalusia was never an Ottoman possession to begin with. In fact, Al-Andalus (711- 1492) predated the emergence of the Ottoman Turks by centuries. Moreover, the Ottomans hadn't even gotten around to knocking off the Byzantines until 1453.
As for the siege of Vienna, a little perspective, please.
Historian Andrew Wheatcroft concludes his excellent study, The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans & the Battle for Europe (2008), thus:
"During this long struggle between the Ottomans and Habsburgs something unusual happened, which has gone unremarked. For centuries they were the bitterest of enemies. Then they stopped being enemies, even becoming unlikely allies from 1914 to 1918. After that war, commercial ties continued to grow, and in the 1950s Turks began to arrive in Austria as guest workers, as they did in much larger numbers in West Germany. They were not well treated, but virtually no one regarded them as a threat. Now, the west is gripped by fear, and a fresh Battle for Europe promoted as a direct continuation of the old Battle for Europe.
"The contrast between what actually happened and these carefully fabricated myths is startling. Once more the Siege of Vienna in 1683 is becoming an inspirational metaphor of perpetual struggle, of West versus East, of Muslim vs Christian, just as it was hundreds of years ago. Once more the event is serving a polemical purpose. Now it buttresses the idea that a new Battle for Europe is being fought. The Turks of the 21st century must not be allowed to enter the European Union because this will destroy Christendom. They would succeed where their Ottoman predecessors had failed in 1683.
"Those holdings these views include very prominent men, among them a former Commissioner of the European Union, Franz Bolkestein, who said very publicly that if Turkey entered the EU, then 'the liberation* of Vienna in 1683 would have been in vain'. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XIV, also looked to history: 'The roots that have formed Europe, that have permitted the formation of this continent, are those of Christianity. Turkey has always represented another continent, in permanent contrast with Europe. There were the wars against the Byzantine Empire, the fall of Constantinople, the Balkan wars, and the threat against Vienna and Austria. It would be an error to equate the two continents... the entry of Turkey into the EU would be anti-historical'.
"Against history? This is a very strong claim but Bolkestein and Pope Benedict XIV are not the only people who believe in this fable. The masthead of The Gates of Vienna blog puts it simply: 'At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war'. I have tried to present dispassionately what happened centuries ago. There was, in that time, unimaginable cruelty, savagery and implacable hatred among all the combatants. Yet in the 19th century the bitter attitudes that so suffused those struggles diminished, and a new kind of relationship developed, which I have also described. The older feelings and attitudes were (and are) still present but they were (and are) definitely in abeyance.
"Scouring the darker parts of the past, creating false memories for use as weapons, is a risky business. No one can say what will happen as a result. In the Balkan wars of the 1990s we witnessed many examples of a partial view of the past being invoked for political ends. Mythologised history became the excuse for savagery: ethnic cleansing is one of the most loathsome neologisms of the 20th century." (pp 266-267)
Thanks to WikiLeaks we now know that Yankee doodle diplomats possess neither a sense of humour nor a knowledge of history. Erdogan and Davutoglu must have pissed themselves
[*Err... the Pope may be infallible, but not his grasp of history: Vienna didn't fall in 1683, so how could it have been liberated?]
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror
T. S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages
"American concerns about a Middle East country other than Iran are revealed in WikiLeaks documents that point to a shift by Turkey, a long-time US ally, towards Islamic fundamentalism... According to WikiLeaks documents published on the website of Der Spiegel, American diplomats depicted the present Turkish leadership as divided and permeated by Islamists. Advisers to Mr Erdogan, one cable said, 'have little understanding of politics beyond Ankara'." (Cable reveals US fear of Turkey's leaders, Abraham Rabinovich, The Australian, 1/12/10)
Hang on! Let me get this right: an American diplomat - American, for God's sake! - reckons Erdogan's men don't have a clue about the world outside their Ankara bubble. The implication, of course, is that only Yankee Doodle Dandies (and their Israeli minders?) know what's really going on outside their Washington bubble. Pull the other.
"Mr Erdogan himself got his information almost exclusively from newspapers with close links to Islamists." (ibid)
You mean, as distinct from Bushama, who gets his almost exclusively from Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, which positively pullulates with Zioncon pundits like Bret Stephens (see WikiLeaks 2)?
"Particular concern was expressed about Mr Erdogan's Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, who was described in one cable as 'exceptionally dangerous'. Mr Davatoglu is seen as wishing to restore the grandeur of the Ottoman Empire, which stretched across much of the Middle East and North Africa for four centuries before collapsing in World War I. According to another document, a Turkish official said, in apparent jest, that Turkey wanted 'to take back Andalusia (in modern Spain) and avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683'." (ibid)
In apparent jest? Egads, lads! Was that viper really just joking?
Afraid so. Andalusia was never an Ottoman possession to begin with. In fact, Al-Andalus (711- 1492) predated the emergence of the Ottoman Turks by centuries. Moreover, the Ottomans hadn't even gotten around to knocking off the Byzantines until 1453.
As for the siege of Vienna, a little perspective, please.
Historian Andrew Wheatcroft concludes his excellent study, The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans & the Battle for Europe (2008), thus:
"During this long struggle between the Ottomans and Habsburgs something unusual happened, which has gone unremarked. For centuries they were the bitterest of enemies. Then they stopped being enemies, even becoming unlikely allies from 1914 to 1918. After that war, commercial ties continued to grow, and in the 1950s Turks began to arrive in Austria as guest workers, as they did in much larger numbers in West Germany. They were not well treated, but virtually no one regarded them as a threat. Now, the west is gripped by fear, and a fresh Battle for Europe promoted as a direct continuation of the old Battle for Europe.
"The contrast between what actually happened and these carefully fabricated myths is startling. Once more the Siege of Vienna in 1683 is becoming an inspirational metaphor of perpetual struggle, of West versus East, of Muslim vs Christian, just as it was hundreds of years ago. Once more the event is serving a polemical purpose. Now it buttresses the idea that a new Battle for Europe is being fought. The Turks of the 21st century must not be allowed to enter the European Union because this will destroy Christendom. They would succeed where their Ottoman predecessors had failed in 1683.
"Those holdings these views include very prominent men, among them a former Commissioner of the European Union, Franz Bolkestein, who said very publicly that if Turkey entered the EU, then 'the liberation* of Vienna in 1683 would have been in vain'. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XIV, also looked to history: 'The roots that have formed Europe, that have permitted the formation of this continent, are those of Christianity. Turkey has always represented another continent, in permanent contrast with Europe. There were the wars against the Byzantine Empire, the fall of Constantinople, the Balkan wars, and the threat against Vienna and Austria. It would be an error to equate the two continents... the entry of Turkey into the EU would be anti-historical'.
"Against history? This is a very strong claim but Bolkestein and Pope Benedict XIV are not the only people who believe in this fable. The masthead of The Gates of Vienna blog puts it simply: 'At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war'. I have tried to present dispassionately what happened centuries ago. There was, in that time, unimaginable cruelty, savagery and implacable hatred among all the combatants. Yet in the 19th century the bitter attitudes that so suffused those struggles diminished, and a new kind of relationship developed, which I have also described. The older feelings and attitudes were (and are) still present but they were (and are) definitely in abeyance.
"Scouring the darker parts of the past, creating false memories for use as weapons, is a risky business. No one can say what will happen as a result. In the Balkan wars of the 1990s we witnessed many examples of a partial view of the past being invoked for political ends. Mythologised history became the excuse for savagery: ethnic cleansing is one of the most loathsome neologisms of the 20th century." (pp 266-267)
Thanks to WikiLeaks we now know that Yankee doodle diplomats possess neither a sense of humour nor a knowledge of history. Erdogan and Davutoglu must have pissed themselves
[*Err... the Pope may be infallible, but not his grasp of history: Vienna didn't fall in 1683, so how could it have been liberated?]
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Sheridan in Love 3
"Israel is also the only Western nation in the Middle East (with the exception of substantial but minority parts of Lebanon). Israel is the only national expression of Western values, and indeed Western power, in today's Middle East. These terms can be confusing. The West aspires to universal values of democracy and human rights..." (Israel still looks good, warts & all, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, The Australian Literary Review, 6/5/09)
Yes, as a colonial-settler offshoot of Europe, Israel may be the only "Western nation in the Middle East," but how the hell "substantial parts of Lebanon" make it into the same category is beyond me. That aside, as soon as Sheridan trots out ideological constructs such as 'the West', and so-called "Western values," you know you're in clash-of-civilizations territory, where, in the words of Edward Said, "the personification of enormous entities called 'the West' and 'Islam' is recklessly affirmed, as if hugely complicated matters like identity and culture existed in a cartoonlike world where Popeye and Bluto bash each other mercilessly, with one always more virtuous pugilist getting the upper hand over his adversary." (The Clash of Ignorance, The Nation, 22/10/01) In the reductive, us-and-them world of The Australian's foreign editor and neocon magician, over two centuries of bloody European/US meddling, invasion, domination, and control in the Middle East are spirited away as he conjures up a seductive vision of democracy and human rights, to which an entity dubbed 'the West' is supposed to eternally aspire.
Integral to this fantastic vision is the absurd suggestion that Israel, a settler-colonial ethnocracy, which has been dispossessing and oppressing the indigenous Palestinian Arab people for over 60 years, is acting as some sort of vector for democracy and human rights in the Middle East. It is perhaps useful, at this point, to recall Israel's job description, courtesy of Sir Ronald Storrs, the first British Governor of Jerusalem : "It will form for England a little Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism."
As US academic Con Hallinan explains: "Storrs' analogy was no accident. Ireland was where the English invented the tactic of divide and rule, and where the devastating effectiveness of using foreign settlers to drive a wedge between the colonial rulers and the colonized made it a template for worldwide imperial rule. Ariel Sharon and former Prime Minister Menachem Begin normally take credit for creating the 'facts on the ground' policies that have poured more than 420,000 settlers into the Occupied Territories. But they were simply copying Charles I, the English king, who in 1609 forcibly removed the O'Neill and O'Donnell clans from the north of Ireland, moved in 20,000 English and Scottish protestants, and founded the Plantation of Ulster. Protestants were awarded the 'Ulster privilege' which gave them special access to land and lower rents, and also served to divide them from the native Catholics. The 'Ulster privilege' is not dissimilar to the kind of 'privileges' Israeli settlers enjoy in the Territories today, where their mortgages are cheap, their taxes lower and their education subsidized. Prior to the Ulster experiment, the English had tried any number of schemes to tame the restive Irish and build a wall between conqueror and conquered. All of them failed. Then the English hit on the idea of using ethnicity, religion and privilege to construct a society with built-in divisions. It worked like a charm. Once the English hit on the tactic of using ethnic and religious differences to divide a population, the conquest of Ireland became a reality. Within 250 years, that formula would be transported to India, Africa, and the Middle East. It was 'divide and conquer' that made it possible for an insignificant island in the north of Europe to rule the world. Division and chaos, tribal, religious and ethnic hatred, were the secret to empire. It would appear the Israelis have paid close attention to English colonial policy because their policies in the Occupied Territories bear a distressing resemblance to British policies in Ireland." (Divide & conquer: common imperial rules for the 21st century, onlineopinion.com.au, 29/7/04)
Yes, as a colonial-settler offshoot of Europe, Israel may be the only "Western nation in the Middle East," but how the hell "substantial parts of Lebanon" make it into the same category is beyond me. That aside, as soon as Sheridan trots out ideological constructs such as 'the West', and so-called "Western values," you know you're in clash-of-civilizations territory, where, in the words of Edward Said, "the personification of enormous entities called 'the West' and 'Islam' is recklessly affirmed, as if hugely complicated matters like identity and culture existed in a cartoonlike world where Popeye and Bluto bash each other mercilessly, with one always more virtuous pugilist getting the upper hand over his adversary." (The Clash of Ignorance, The Nation, 22/10/01) In the reductive, us-and-them world of The Australian's foreign editor and neocon magician, over two centuries of bloody European/US meddling, invasion, domination, and control in the Middle East are spirited away as he conjures up a seductive vision of democracy and human rights, to which an entity dubbed 'the West' is supposed to eternally aspire.
Integral to this fantastic vision is the absurd suggestion that Israel, a settler-colonial ethnocracy, which has been dispossessing and oppressing the indigenous Palestinian Arab people for over 60 years, is acting as some sort of vector for democracy and human rights in the Middle East. It is perhaps useful, at this point, to recall Israel's job description, courtesy of Sir Ronald Storrs, the first British Governor of Jerusalem : "It will form for England a little Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism."
As US academic Con Hallinan explains: "Storrs' analogy was no accident. Ireland was where the English invented the tactic of divide and rule, and where the devastating effectiveness of using foreign settlers to drive a wedge between the colonial rulers and the colonized made it a template for worldwide imperial rule. Ariel Sharon and former Prime Minister Menachem Begin normally take credit for creating the 'facts on the ground' policies that have poured more than 420,000 settlers into the Occupied Territories. But they were simply copying Charles I, the English king, who in 1609 forcibly removed the O'Neill and O'Donnell clans from the north of Ireland, moved in 20,000 English and Scottish protestants, and founded the Plantation of Ulster. Protestants were awarded the 'Ulster privilege' which gave them special access to land and lower rents, and also served to divide them from the native Catholics. The 'Ulster privilege' is not dissimilar to the kind of 'privileges' Israeli settlers enjoy in the Territories today, where their mortgages are cheap, their taxes lower and their education subsidized. Prior to the Ulster experiment, the English had tried any number of schemes to tame the restive Irish and build a wall between conqueror and conquered. All of them failed. Then the English hit on the idea of using ethnicity, religion and privilege to construct a society with built-in divisions. It worked like a charm. Once the English hit on the tactic of using ethnic and religious differences to divide a population, the conquest of Ireland became a reality. Within 250 years, that formula would be transported to India, Africa, and the Middle East. It was 'divide and conquer' that made it possible for an insignificant island in the north of Europe to rule the world. Division and chaos, tribal, religious and ethnic hatred, were the secret to empire. It would appear the Israelis have paid close attention to English colonial policy because their policies in the Occupied Territories bear a distressing resemblance to British policies in Ireland." (Divide & conquer: common imperial rules for the 21st century, onlineopinion.com.au, 29/7/04)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Stop It or You'll Go Blind!
And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry speak of dreams & leaves,
And the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come & see the blood in the streets.
Come & see
The blood in the streets.
Come & see the blood
In the streets.
Pablo Neruda
The consummate cluelessness of yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald editorial, Israel, Gaza & Huntington, was truly beyond belief.
Over 300 Palestinian inmates of the Gaza Ghetto slaughtered, over 1,000 maimed, and the Herald editorialist can't resist an intellectual wank: "It is perhaps an appropriate epitaph for the American scholar Samuel Huntington that news of his death coincided with renewed hostilities along one of the fault lines he identified in the post-Cold war era. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict preceded Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' theory, and has outlived its author." What has Huntington, or his* 'clash of civilizations', to do with the Gaza massacres? In a word, nothing. [*The first use of this term rightly belongs to neocon 'scholar' Bernard Lewis.]
After relieving himself with this monumental irrelevance, the editorialist follows with this monumental nonsense: "Violence has scarred the region for more than six decades, long enough to make arguments about who started the troubles redundant." There you are. It's like the schoolmaster who comes across the schoolyard bully beating the shit, yet again, out of the scrawny little wog, but who can only respond with, 'I don't know which of you started this, and I don't care!' So Huntington's relevant, but history isn't?
But it gets worse: "In the current bloodletting Hamas fired first, wrecking a ceasefire whose restoration must be the first priority of international peacemaking efforts. " But of course, it's always the Palestinians that begin these dust-ups, isn't it? Remember the party line laid down in an earlier editorial? - "Of course the militant Islamist movement Hamas... provoked the Israeli strikes by firing its rockets into nearby Israeli settlements." (Time for bolder diplomacy in Gaza*, 5/3/08). So just ignore your own paper's report, Militants declare early end to truce agreement (19-20/12/08), which reported that "The truce has been unravelling since Israel crossed into Gaza, killed 6 Hamas fighters and destroyed a tunnel on November 4," and lapse into 'rocket/militant' mantra mode. Saves heaps on thought and research. [*See my 6/3/08 post Mainsewer Media Clueless in Gaza.]
And that business of "the first priority of international peacemaking efforts" being the "restoration" of the ceasefire - how does the Herald get around Tzipi Livni's flat rejection of all "initiatives calling on both sides to hold their fire," and her demand that the international community "support things that are not easy to support"? (See Livni to foreign envoys: pressure Hamas, ynetnews.com, 28/12/08)
Then there's this outright rubber-stamping of a familiar Israeli talking point: "Israel's response - that civilians are being used as human shields for Hamas's terrorist infrastructure - has merit." Would the editorialist still see "merit" in Israel's talking point if he knew that Israel used Israeli Arabs as human shields during its 2006 rampage in Lebanon? According to a 2006 Arab Association for Human Rights report, "[d]uring the war on Lebanon, the Israeli army installed rocket launching bases near [Israeli] Arab towns and villages in the north [of Israel], in some cases only a few metres away," and "the IDF has also transformed areas of certain Arab towns and villages into training camps." (Israeli rocket launching bases and army training camps deliberately constructed near Arab towns and villages, electronicintifada.net, 17/8/06) Or if he'd bothered to acquaint himself with the documentation that shows that the IDF uses Palestinians as human shields in the West Bank? Probably.
Like The Australian editorial analysed in my last post, Israel's wanton spilling of Palestinian blood is really the last thing on the editorialist's mind, the only reference to it being that "[t]he deaths of almost 300 people and wounding of some 600 so far have drawn understandable criticism that the military response is disproportionate." All that matters is its "potential to further radicalise Palestinian youth," which could lead to "retaliation... including a possible new wave of suicide bombings in Israel's cities." So touching, this concern for the serial perpetrator of crimes against humanity.
The sheer inanity of the Herald's editorial wank on the Gaza massacres is capped by a further reference to Huntington in its concluding sentence: "The world is looking to the Obama administration for policies that will discourage all Middle East players from so regularly resorting to violence along one of the cultural and religious fault lines highlighted by Huntington."
Well, well, well. So the world is looking to an American president (-elect) to discourage Israel's resort to violence? Please, spare us the naivete! Is this the same America that's supplied Israel with the GBU-39 smart bombs they're now dropping all over Gaza? (See Israel using new US-supplied smart bombs in Gaza, antiwar.com, 28/12/08) Whoever the world is looking to in this matter, readers seeking an informed analysis of the issue will be well-advised to give Herald editorials a wide berth.
And the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come & see the blood in the streets.
Come & see
The blood in the streets.
Come & see the blood
In the streets.
Pablo Neruda
The consummate cluelessness of yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald editorial, Israel, Gaza & Huntington, was truly beyond belief.
Over 300 Palestinian inmates of the Gaza Ghetto slaughtered, over 1,000 maimed, and the Herald editorialist can't resist an intellectual wank: "It is perhaps an appropriate epitaph for the American scholar Samuel Huntington that news of his death coincided with renewed hostilities along one of the fault lines he identified in the post-Cold war era. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict preceded Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' theory, and has outlived its author." What has Huntington, or his* 'clash of civilizations', to do with the Gaza massacres? In a word, nothing. [*The first use of this term rightly belongs to neocon 'scholar' Bernard Lewis.]
After relieving himself with this monumental irrelevance, the editorialist follows with this monumental nonsense: "Violence has scarred the region for more than six decades, long enough to make arguments about who started the troubles redundant." There you are. It's like the schoolmaster who comes across the schoolyard bully beating the shit, yet again, out of the scrawny little wog, but who can only respond with, 'I don't know which of you started this, and I don't care!' So Huntington's relevant, but history isn't?
But it gets worse: "In the current bloodletting Hamas fired first, wrecking a ceasefire whose restoration must be the first priority of international peacemaking efforts. " But of course, it's always the Palestinians that begin these dust-ups, isn't it? Remember the party line laid down in an earlier editorial? - "Of course the militant Islamist movement Hamas... provoked the Israeli strikes by firing its rockets into nearby Israeli settlements." (Time for bolder diplomacy in Gaza*, 5/3/08). So just ignore your own paper's report, Militants declare early end to truce agreement (19-20/12/08), which reported that "The truce has been unravelling since Israel crossed into Gaza, killed 6 Hamas fighters and destroyed a tunnel on November 4," and lapse into 'rocket/militant' mantra mode. Saves heaps on thought and research. [*See my 6/3/08 post Mainsewer Media Clueless in Gaza.]
And that business of "the first priority of international peacemaking efforts" being the "restoration" of the ceasefire - how does the Herald get around Tzipi Livni's flat rejection of all "initiatives calling on both sides to hold their fire," and her demand that the international community "support things that are not easy to support"? (See Livni to foreign envoys: pressure Hamas, ynetnews.com, 28/12/08)
Then there's this outright rubber-stamping of a familiar Israeli talking point: "Israel's response - that civilians are being used as human shields for Hamas's terrorist infrastructure - has merit." Would the editorialist still see "merit" in Israel's talking point if he knew that Israel used Israeli Arabs as human shields during its 2006 rampage in Lebanon? According to a 2006 Arab Association for Human Rights report, "[d]uring the war on Lebanon, the Israeli army installed rocket launching bases near [Israeli] Arab towns and villages in the north [of Israel], in some cases only a few metres away," and "the IDF has also transformed areas of certain Arab towns and villages into training camps." (Israeli rocket launching bases and army training camps deliberately constructed near Arab towns and villages, electronicintifada.net, 17/8/06) Or if he'd bothered to acquaint himself with the documentation that shows that the IDF uses Palestinians as human shields in the West Bank? Probably.
Like The Australian editorial analysed in my last post, Israel's wanton spilling of Palestinian blood is really the last thing on the editorialist's mind, the only reference to it being that "[t]he deaths of almost 300 people and wounding of some 600 so far have drawn understandable criticism that the military response is disproportionate." All that matters is its "potential to further radicalise Palestinian youth," which could lead to "retaliation... including a possible new wave of suicide bombings in Israel's cities." So touching, this concern for the serial perpetrator of crimes against humanity.
The sheer inanity of the Herald's editorial wank on the Gaza massacres is capped by a further reference to Huntington in its concluding sentence: "The world is looking to the Obama administration for policies that will discourage all Middle East players from so regularly resorting to violence along one of the cultural and religious fault lines highlighted by Huntington."
Well, well, well. So the world is looking to an American president (-elect) to discourage Israel's resort to violence? Please, spare us the naivete! Is this the same America that's supplied Israel with the GBU-39 smart bombs they're now dropping all over Gaza? (See Israel using new US-supplied smart bombs in Gaza, antiwar.com, 28/12/08) Whoever the world is looking to in this matter, readers seeking an informed analysis of the issue will be well-advised to give Herald editorials a wide berth.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Benny Unhinged
Benny Morris' letter to The Irish Times, continued from my previous post:-
"There was no Zionist 'plan' or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of 'ethnic cleansing'. Plan Dalet (Plan D), of March 10th, 1948... was the master plan of the Haganah - the Jewish military force that became the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) - to counter the expected pan-Arab assault on the emergent Jewish state. That's what it explicitly states and that's what it was. And the invasion of the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq duly occured, on May 15th. It is true that Plan D gave the regional commanders carte blanche to occupy and garrison or expel and destroy the Arab villages along and behind the front lines and the anticipated Arab armies' invasion routes. And it is also true that mid-way in the 1948 war the Israeli leaders decided to bar the return of the 'refugees' (those 'refugees' who had just assaulted the Jewish community), viewing them as a potential 5th column and threat to the Jewish state's existence. I for one cannot fault their fears or logic."
No Zionist plan of eviction or ethnic cleansing? Yet Plan Dalet ("master plan of the Haganah") provided for the expulsion of Palestinian townsfolk and villagers. And they weren't allowed to return. So... if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably... isn't a duck!?
The absurdity of Morris' words are obvious. What he is telling us here is that, because Zionist forces 'expected/anticipated' an Arab invasion, they were justified in emptying entire Palestinian towns and villages of their inhabitants and razing them, and had a master plan to do so, which wasn't really a plan of eviction or ethnic cleansing.
But Morris hasn't told the whole story in his letter:
First, Plan Dalet didn't just fall from nowhere into the Haganah's lap. It came from the top, from the Jewish community's leader, David Ben-Gurion:
"On 2 November, ie, almost a month before the UN General Assembly Resolution was adopted... the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion, spelled out for the first time in the clearest possible terms that ethnic cleansing formed the alternative, or complementary, means of ensuring that the new state would be an exclusively Jewish one. The Palestinians inside the Jewish state, he told his audience, could become a 5th column, and if so 'they can either be mass arrested or expelled; it is better to expel them'... Plan Dalet was not created in a vacuum. It emerged as the ultimate scheme in response to the way events gradually unfolded on the ground, through a kind of ad-hoc policy that crystallized with time. But that response was always inexorably grounded in the Zionist ideology and the purely Jewish state that was its goal. Thus, the main objective was clear from the beginning - the de-Arabisation of Palestine - whereas the means to achieve this most effectively evolved in tandem with the actual military occupation of the Palestinian territories that were to become the new Jewish state of Israel. " (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe, p 49)
Second, Plan Dalet had little or nothing to do with any perceived/expected/anticipated Arab invasion. (And, it has to be said, if you go to some corner of the Arab world with the intention of making it as Jewish as England is English, and moving its inhabitants on, you're hardly in a position to blame the Arab states if they get riled on behalf of their fellow Arabs.) Here's the reality:
"Immediately upon the adoption of UN Resolution 181 the Arab leaders officially declared they would despatch troops to defend Palestine. And yet, not once between the end of November 1947 and May 1948 did Ben-Gurion... sense that [his] future state was in any danger, or that the list of military operations was so overwhelming that they would impinge on the proper expulsion of the Palestinians. In public, the leaders of the Jewish community portrayed doomsday scenarios and warned their audiences of an imminent 'second Holocaust'. In private, however, they never used this discourse. They were fully aware that the Arab war rhetoric was in no way matched by any serious preparations on the ground... they were well informed about the poor equipment of these armies and their lack of battlefield experience and... training... The Zionist leaders were confidant they had the upper hand militarily and could drive through most of their ambitious plans. And they were right." (Pappe, p 46)
"The Arab decision as to how much to intervene and assist was directly affected by developments on the ground [ie from December 1947- mid-May 1948]. And on the ground they watched - politicians with growing dismay, intellectuals and journalists with horror - the beginning of a depopulation process unfolding in front of their eyes... Few of them were in any doubt at that early stage, in the beginning of 1948, of the potential disaster awaiting the Palestinian people. But they procrastinated, and postponed, for as long as they could, the inevitable military intervention, and then were only too happy to terminate it sooner rather than later; they knew full well not only that the Palestinians were defeated, but also that their armies stood no chance against the superior forces. In fact, they sent troops into a war they had no chance of winning... Only when the Jewish forces intensified their actions and their true intentions became fully exposed did Arab governments design some sort of a coordinated reaction... and only at the end of April 1948 was it decided that they would send troops into Palestine. By then a quarter of a million Palestinians had already been expelled, 200 villages destroyed and scores of towns emptied." ( Pappe, pp 117-118)
Third, if it isn't already clear from my first point, the real reason for Plan Dalet and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine had more to do with realising the Zionist goal of a Jewish state, that is a state with as many Jews and as few non-Jews as possible, than with facing a potential Arab invasion. "In the territory of their future greater Jewish state there lived, in early December 1947, one million Palestinians... while the Jewish community itself was a minority of 600,000." (Pappe, p 49) Go figure, folks!
So much for The Irish Times letter. But if you thought that Benny Morris was merely a historian ocassionally given to bending history for propaganda purposes, you'd be wrong. The man has another, darker side. In an extended interview with Haaretz journalist Ari Shavit on 9/1/04, the real Benny Morris emerges as a foaming mix of Vladimir Jabotinsky and Oriana Fallaci. Called Survival of the Fittest, the complete interview with additional commentary by Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir can be found at http://www.mideastweb.org/. Take a look at this:
On Ben-Gurion & the goal of a Jewish state: Ben-Gurion was a "transferist" [the Israeli euphemism for someone who believes in expelling the Palestinians from Palestine en masse]. "He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst... If he had not done what he did, a [Jewish] state would not have come into being... Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here." Sometimes people have to make way for an ideological fixation.
Ethnic cleansing is justified: "In certain conditions expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands... There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing... when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide, the annihilation of your people, I prefer ethnic cleansing." Note that the "annihilation" Morris is speaking about has nothing to do with any perceived Arab military threat to the Jewish community, but a Palestinian demographic threat to the viability of a Jewish state: "That is what Zionism faced [in 1948]. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them... I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy... But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice." IOW, contrary to his Irish Times letter, the Palestinians had to go, not because they "launched hostilities on the Jewish community in Palestine in the hope of destroying that community" or "to counter the expected pan-Arab assault on the emergent Jewish state," but because their very existence in Palestine, hostile or otherwise, conflicted with the concept of a Jewish state. He trots out the familiar Zionist trope, "The Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people, did not have even one," and then states, "Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history." And anyway, he says, the Palestinian Nakba was only a matter of "small war crimes." Only "about 800 were killed," and that's "peanuts/chicken feed" compared to other massacres.
Ben-Gurion was a wimp: Ben-Gurion "got cold feet during the war... he should have done a complete job... If Ben-Gurion had... cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River... he would have stabilized the state of Israel for generations."
Transfer Now?: "In the present circumstances it is neither moral nor realistic [to transfer and expel the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza, the Galilee and the Triangle]. The world would not allow it... But, in other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in 5 or 10 years, I can see expulsions... The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb... They are a potential 5th column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state."
The Palestinian right of return: "The entire Palestinian national elite is prone to see us as Crusaders and is driven by the phased plan. That's why the Palestinians are not honestly ready to forgo the right of return. They are preserving it as an instrument with which they will destroy the Jewish state when the time comes."
Islam is the problem: "There is a deep problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien."
Dealing with barbarian Palestinian serial killers: Shavit suggests to Morris that "A large part of the responsibility for Palestinian hatred rests with us. After all, you yourself showed us that the Palestinians experienced a historical catastrophe." Morris responded, "True. But when one has to deal with a serial killer, it's not so important to discover why he became a serial killer. What's important is to imprison the murderer or to execute him... The barbarians who want to take our lives. The people the Palestinian society sends to carry out the terrorist attacks, and in some ways the Palestinian society itself as well... is a very sick society. It should be treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers... Something like a cage has to be built for [the Palestinians]... There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up..."
The future?: "There is no solution... An iron wall is the most reasonable policy for the coming generation... Ben-Gurion argued that the Arabs understand only force... He was right. That's not to say we don't need diplomacy. Both toward the West and for our own conscience..." Note the admission, diplomacy is just to appease the West and salve our consciences.
On universal values: "Preserving my people is more important than universal moral concepts." The tribe comes first.
On the clash of civilizations: "I think there is a clash of civilizations here... I think the West today resembles the Roman Empire... The barbarians are attacking it and they may also destroy it... The Arab world as it is today is barbarian... The phenomenon of the mass Muslim penetration into the West... is creating a dangerous internal threat... Exactly like the Crusaders, we are the vulnerable branch of Europe in this place."
On Zionism: "The whole Zionist project is apocalyptic. It exists within hostile surroundings and in a certain sense its existence is unreasonable... It wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1948 and it's not reasonable that it will succeed now." Shavit asks him sensibly, "If Zionism is so dangerous for the Jews and makes the Arabs so wretched, maybe it's a mistake?" Morris responds, "No, Zionism was not a mistake. The desire to establish a Jewish state here was a legitimate one... But given the character of Islam and the Arab nation, it was a mistake to think that it would be possible to establish a tranquil state here that lives in harmony with its surroundings." I'm reminded here of Einstein's dictum: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Benny's no Einstein.
Our suffering trumps yours: What we "suffered for 2,000 years" is "far more shocking than what happened in 1948 to a small part of the Arab nation that was then in Palestine."
I haven't quite finished with Benny Morris yet. Next post.
"There was no Zionist 'plan' or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of 'ethnic cleansing'. Plan Dalet (Plan D), of March 10th, 1948... was the master plan of the Haganah - the Jewish military force that became the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) - to counter the expected pan-Arab assault on the emergent Jewish state. That's what it explicitly states and that's what it was. And the invasion of the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq duly occured, on May 15th. It is true that Plan D gave the regional commanders carte blanche to occupy and garrison or expel and destroy the Arab villages along and behind the front lines and the anticipated Arab armies' invasion routes. And it is also true that mid-way in the 1948 war the Israeli leaders decided to bar the return of the 'refugees' (those 'refugees' who had just assaulted the Jewish community), viewing them as a potential 5th column and threat to the Jewish state's existence. I for one cannot fault their fears or logic."
No Zionist plan of eviction or ethnic cleansing? Yet Plan Dalet ("master plan of the Haganah") provided for the expulsion of Palestinian townsfolk and villagers. And they weren't allowed to return. So... if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably... isn't a duck!?
The absurdity of Morris' words are obvious. What he is telling us here is that, because Zionist forces 'expected/anticipated' an Arab invasion, they were justified in emptying entire Palestinian towns and villages of their inhabitants and razing them, and had a master plan to do so, which wasn't really a plan of eviction or ethnic cleansing.
But Morris hasn't told the whole story in his letter:
First, Plan Dalet didn't just fall from nowhere into the Haganah's lap. It came from the top, from the Jewish community's leader, David Ben-Gurion:
"On 2 November, ie, almost a month before the UN General Assembly Resolution was adopted... the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion, spelled out for the first time in the clearest possible terms that ethnic cleansing formed the alternative, or complementary, means of ensuring that the new state would be an exclusively Jewish one. The Palestinians inside the Jewish state, he told his audience, could become a 5th column, and if so 'they can either be mass arrested or expelled; it is better to expel them'... Plan Dalet was not created in a vacuum. It emerged as the ultimate scheme in response to the way events gradually unfolded on the ground, through a kind of ad-hoc policy that crystallized with time. But that response was always inexorably grounded in the Zionist ideology and the purely Jewish state that was its goal. Thus, the main objective was clear from the beginning - the de-Arabisation of Palestine - whereas the means to achieve this most effectively evolved in tandem with the actual military occupation of the Palestinian territories that were to become the new Jewish state of Israel. " (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe, p 49)
Second, Plan Dalet had little or nothing to do with any perceived/expected/anticipated Arab invasion. (And, it has to be said, if you go to some corner of the Arab world with the intention of making it as Jewish as England is English, and moving its inhabitants on, you're hardly in a position to blame the Arab states if they get riled on behalf of their fellow Arabs.) Here's the reality:
"Immediately upon the adoption of UN Resolution 181 the Arab leaders officially declared they would despatch troops to defend Palestine. And yet, not once between the end of November 1947 and May 1948 did Ben-Gurion... sense that [his] future state was in any danger, or that the list of military operations was so overwhelming that they would impinge on the proper expulsion of the Palestinians. In public, the leaders of the Jewish community portrayed doomsday scenarios and warned their audiences of an imminent 'second Holocaust'. In private, however, they never used this discourse. They were fully aware that the Arab war rhetoric was in no way matched by any serious preparations on the ground... they were well informed about the poor equipment of these armies and their lack of battlefield experience and... training... The Zionist leaders were confidant they had the upper hand militarily and could drive through most of their ambitious plans. And they were right." (Pappe, p 46)
"The Arab decision as to how much to intervene and assist was directly affected by developments on the ground [ie from December 1947- mid-May 1948]. And on the ground they watched - politicians with growing dismay, intellectuals and journalists with horror - the beginning of a depopulation process unfolding in front of their eyes... Few of them were in any doubt at that early stage, in the beginning of 1948, of the potential disaster awaiting the Palestinian people. But they procrastinated, and postponed, for as long as they could, the inevitable military intervention, and then were only too happy to terminate it sooner rather than later; they knew full well not only that the Palestinians were defeated, but also that their armies stood no chance against the superior forces. In fact, they sent troops into a war they had no chance of winning... Only when the Jewish forces intensified their actions and their true intentions became fully exposed did Arab governments design some sort of a coordinated reaction... and only at the end of April 1948 was it decided that they would send troops into Palestine. By then a quarter of a million Palestinians had already been expelled, 200 villages destroyed and scores of towns emptied." ( Pappe, pp 117-118)
Third, if it isn't already clear from my first point, the real reason for Plan Dalet and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine had more to do with realising the Zionist goal of a Jewish state, that is a state with as many Jews and as few non-Jews as possible, than with facing a potential Arab invasion. "In the territory of their future greater Jewish state there lived, in early December 1947, one million Palestinians... while the Jewish community itself was a minority of 600,000." (Pappe, p 49) Go figure, folks!
So much for The Irish Times letter. But if you thought that Benny Morris was merely a historian ocassionally given to bending history for propaganda purposes, you'd be wrong. The man has another, darker side. In an extended interview with Haaretz journalist Ari Shavit on 9/1/04, the real Benny Morris emerges as a foaming mix of Vladimir Jabotinsky and Oriana Fallaci. Called Survival of the Fittest, the complete interview with additional commentary by Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir can be found at http://www.mideastweb.org/. Take a look at this:
On Ben-Gurion & the goal of a Jewish state: Ben-Gurion was a "transferist" [the Israeli euphemism for someone who believes in expelling the Palestinians from Palestine en masse]. "He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst... If he had not done what he did, a [Jewish] state would not have come into being... Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here." Sometimes people have to make way for an ideological fixation.
Ethnic cleansing is justified: "In certain conditions expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands... There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing... when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide, the annihilation of your people, I prefer ethnic cleansing." Note that the "annihilation" Morris is speaking about has nothing to do with any perceived Arab military threat to the Jewish community, but a Palestinian demographic threat to the viability of a Jewish state: "That is what Zionism faced [in 1948]. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them... I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy... But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice." IOW, contrary to his Irish Times letter, the Palestinians had to go, not because they "launched hostilities on the Jewish community in Palestine in the hope of destroying that community" or "to counter the expected pan-Arab assault on the emergent Jewish state," but because their very existence in Palestine, hostile or otherwise, conflicted with the concept of a Jewish state. He trots out the familiar Zionist trope, "The Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people, did not have even one," and then states, "Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history." And anyway, he says, the Palestinian Nakba was only a matter of "small war crimes." Only "about 800 were killed," and that's "peanuts/chicken feed" compared to other massacres.
Ben-Gurion was a wimp: Ben-Gurion "got cold feet during the war... he should have done a complete job... If Ben-Gurion had... cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River... he would have stabilized the state of Israel for generations."
Transfer Now?: "In the present circumstances it is neither moral nor realistic [to transfer and expel the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza, the Galilee and the Triangle]. The world would not allow it... But, in other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in 5 or 10 years, I can see expulsions... The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb... They are a potential 5th column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state."
The Palestinian right of return: "The entire Palestinian national elite is prone to see us as Crusaders and is driven by the phased plan. That's why the Palestinians are not honestly ready to forgo the right of return. They are preserving it as an instrument with which they will destroy the Jewish state when the time comes."
Islam is the problem: "There is a deep problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien."
Dealing with barbarian Palestinian serial killers: Shavit suggests to Morris that "A large part of the responsibility for Palestinian hatred rests with us. After all, you yourself showed us that the Palestinians experienced a historical catastrophe." Morris responded, "True. But when one has to deal with a serial killer, it's not so important to discover why he became a serial killer. What's important is to imprison the murderer or to execute him... The barbarians who want to take our lives. The people the Palestinian society sends to carry out the terrorist attacks, and in some ways the Palestinian society itself as well... is a very sick society. It should be treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers... Something like a cage has to be built for [the Palestinians]... There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up..."
The future?: "There is no solution... An iron wall is the most reasonable policy for the coming generation... Ben-Gurion argued that the Arabs understand only force... He was right. That's not to say we don't need diplomacy. Both toward the West and for our own conscience..." Note the admission, diplomacy is just to appease the West and salve our consciences.
On universal values: "Preserving my people is more important than universal moral concepts." The tribe comes first.
On the clash of civilizations: "I think there is a clash of civilizations here... I think the West today resembles the Roman Empire... The barbarians are attacking it and they may also destroy it... The Arab world as it is today is barbarian... The phenomenon of the mass Muslim penetration into the West... is creating a dangerous internal threat... Exactly like the Crusaders, we are the vulnerable branch of Europe in this place."
On Zionism: "The whole Zionist project is apocalyptic. It exists within hostile surroundings and in a certain sense its existence is unreasonable... It wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1948 and it's not reasonable that it will succeed now." Shavit asks him sensibly, "If Zionism is so dangerous for the Jews and makes the Arabs so wretched, maybe it's a mistake?" Morris responds, "No, Zionism was not a mistake. The desire to establish a Jewish state here was a legitimate one... But given the character of Islam and the Arab nation, it was a mistake to think that it would be possible to establish a tranquil state here that lives in harmony with its surroundings." I'm reminded here of Einstein's dictum: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Benny's no Einstein.
Our suffering trumps yours: What we "suffered for 2,000 years" is "far more shocking than what happened in 1948 to a small part of the Arab nation that was then in Palestine."
I haven't quite finished with Benny Morris yet. Next post.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Armenia On My Mind
The ABC's current affairs program Foreign Correspondent on 22/4/08 dealt with Turkey, Armenia, and the conflicting passions surrounding the Armenian genocide of 1915. In Armenia/Turkey: Ghosts of the Past, reporter Eric Campbell ably exposed the refusal of the Turkish establishment to acknowledge Turkey's responsibility for the ethnic cleansing of its Armenian minority. So far, so good. The synopsis of the program on Foreign Correspondent's website (www.abc.net.au/foreign), however, detracted massively from Campbell's report.
It contained the following sentence: "Respected historians say as many as a million people were killed and many more made refugees. (see extract*)" The extract turned out to be a quote from The Middle East by Bernard Lewis, billed as "an authority on Islamic and Middle Eastern History." Lewis' description of the mass deportations of Armenian civilians were oddly tentative, almost apologetic: "... a practice sadly familiar in the region since biblical times"/"... the task of escorting the deportees was entrusted to hastily recruited local posses"/"The Ottoman central government seems to have made some effort to curb the excess."
What possessed the ABC? Quoting neocon Godfather and Israel apologist Bernard Lewis ("respected historian" and "authority on Islamic and Middle Eastern history") on the subject of the Armenian genocide is like quoting David Irving on the Nazi genocide*. Despite the synopsis' acknowledgment that "in some countries such as France, it is a criminal offence to deny the Armenian genocide," it appears that those responsible for the program (or at least the synopsis) were unaware that they were quoting a holocaust (as in Armenian holocaust) denier.
In fact, Lewis was convicted of denying the Armenian genocide by a French court in 1995. The relevant part of the judgment reads, "... the fact remains that it was by concealing information contrary to his thesis that the defendant was able to assert that there was 'no serious proof' of the Armenian genocide; consequently he failed in his duties of objectivity and prudence by offering unqualified opinions on such a sensitive subject; and his remarks [in an interview with Le Monde], which could unfairly rekindle the pain of the Armenian community, are tortious and justify compensation..." The plaintiff's brief, quoted in the judgment, advanced the view that Bernard Lewis is "actually an engaged intellectual who conducts intensive 'lobbying' activities on behalf of Turkey."
But it gets worse. Lewis' academic career kicked off with a fascination for Kemal Ataturk's secular/democratic transformation of Turkey, a seductive vision which he communicated directly to Dick Cheney in the months before the US invasion of Iraq and which came to be adopted as a blueprint for a post-Saddam Iraq. The 'Lewis doctrine' as it was known held that democratic transformation could be forced on Iraq and that Ahmad Chalabi was just the man to do it. It was also Lewis, not Samuel Huntington, who constructed the 'clash of civilizations' thesis, the intellectual underpinning of Islamophobia. (See Michael Hirsh's 2004 essay, Bernard Lewis Revisited, at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/)
*Nor can Lewis be entrusted with the subject of the Nazi holocaust. As US academic and author Norman Finkelstein points out, "Especially in the wake of Israel's ill-fated invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and as Israeli propaganda claims came under withering attack by Israel's 'new historians', apologists desperately sought to tar the Arabs with Nazism. Famed historian Bernard Lewis managed to devote a full chapter of his short history of anti-Semitism... to Arab Nazism." (The Holocaust Industry, p 62)
It contained the following sentence: "Respected historians say as many as a million people were killed and many more made refugees. (see extract*)" The extract turned out to be a quote from The Middle East by Bernard Lewis, billed as "an authority on Islamic and Middle Eastern History." Lewis' description of the mass deportations of Armenian civilians were oddly tentative, almost apologetic: "... a practice sadly familiar in the region since biblical times"/"... the task of escorting the deportees was entrusted to hastily recruited local posses"/"The Ottoman central government seems to have made some effort to curb the excess."
What possessed the ABC? Quoting neocon Godfather and Israel apologist Bernard Lewis ("respected historian" and "authority on Islamic and Middle Eastern history") on the subject of the Armenian genocide is like quoting David Irving on the Nazi genocide*. Despite the synopsis' acknowledgment that "in some countries such as France, it is a criminal offence to deny the Armenian genocide," it appears that those responsible for the program (or at least the synopsis) were unaware that they were quoting a holocaust (as in Armenian holocaust) denier.
In fact, Lewis was convicted of denying the Armenian genocide by a French court in 1995. The relevant part of the judgment reads, "... the fact remains that it was by concealing information contrary to his thesis that the defendant was able to assert that there was 'no serious proof' of the Armenian genocide; consequently he failed in his duties of objectivity and prudence by offering unqualified opinions on such a sensitive subject; and his remarks [in an interview with Le Monde], which could unfairly rekindle the pain of the Armenian community, are tortious and justify compensation..." The plaintiff's brief, quoted in the judgment, advanced the view that Bernard Lewis is "actually an engaged intellectual who conducts intensive 'lobbying' activities on behalf of Turkey."
But it gets worse. Lewis' academic career kicked off with a fascination for Kemal Ataturk's secular/democratic transformation of Turkey, a seductive vision which he communicated directly to Dick Cheney in the months before the US invasion of Iraq and which came to be adopted as a blueprint for a post-Saddam Iraq. The 'Lewis doctrine' as it was known held that democratic transformation could be forced on Iraq and that Ahmad Chalabi was just the man to do it. It was also Lewis, not Samuel Huntington, who constructed the 'clash of civilizations' thesis, the intellectual underpinning of Islamophobia. (See Michael Hirsh's 2004 essay, Bernard Lewis Revisited, at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/)
*Nor can Lewis be entrusted with the subject of the Nazi holocaust. As US academic and author Norman Finkelstein points out, "Especially in the wake of Israel's ill-fated invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and as Israeli propaganda claims came under withering attack by Israel's 'new historians', apologists desperately sought to tar the Arabs with Nazism. Famed historian Bernard Lewis managed to devote a full chapter of his short history of anti-Semitism... to Arab Nazism." (The Holocaust Industry, p 62)
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Amir Taheri Alert
Further to my last post on Greg (Jerusaelm Prize) Sheridan's dogged insistence, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida once had a thing goin' on, comes another neocon conjurer, name of Amir Taheri, who pops up from time to time on the 'opinion' pages of (where else) The Australian. In its 'Cut & Paste' for 31/3/08 we're treated to the following gem from a longer, anti-Iranian spray:-
"Amir Taheri, in the Wall Street Journal online, on how, despite the assertions of Barack Obama that theological differences would prevent it, Sunni and Shia extremists are happy to work together, and indeed with anyone else, towards the destruction of the US: 'The suicide attacks that claimed the lives of over 300 Americans, including 241 Marines, in Lebanon in 1983, were joint operations of the Khomeinist Hezbollah and the Marxist Arab Socialist Party, which was linked to the Syrian intelligence services'."
Taheri's piece is of course yet another variation on the clash-of-civilizations theme: the Arab/Muslim enemy constitutes one, unholy, undifferentiated coil of hissing serpents, regardless of secular/religious, Sunni/Shia, or national/international differences. Scratch the surface of any constituent part and underneath you'll find they're all the same, and they're all out to get US.
The only problem with this ideological construct is that, because it bears no relation to reality, its advocates are sorely tempted to play fast and loose with the facts when pushing it. Apart from the omission of relevant contextualising information, there are three major problems with Taheri's opening sentence: 1) There appears to be no such animal as the "Marxist Arab Socialist Party." There was an Arab Socialist Party kicking around in Syria in the early 50s, but that merged with the Ba'th to form the Arab Socialist Ba'th Party in 1953. There is a Lebanese Druze Progressive Socialist Party (currently in the hands of Druze chieftain and Hezbollah foe, Walid Jumblat), which couldn't by any stretch be described as Marxist. And that's about it; 2) The figure of "over 300 American [deaths]" is false. There were 2 suicide attacks in 1983 against American targets in Lebanon. The first, in April 1983 against the US embassy in Beirut, did kill 63 people, but only 17 of them were Americans (The Struggle Over Lebanon, Tabitha Petran, 1987 p 330). Taheri's "over 300 Americans" is actually 258; 3) While welcoming the action against the Marines, Hezbollah, which was still very much a work in progress in those days, has always denied responsibility for it. (For a discussion of same see Hezbollah: Born With a Vengeance, Hala Jaber, 1997 pp 79-80)
Apparently, Taheri has a track record of fixing the facts. In The Amir Taheri Story (Mother Jones 18/11/07), Jonathan Schwarz spills the beans:-
"Amir Taheri is one of the strangest ingredients in America's media soup. There may not be anyone else who simply makes things up as regularly as he does, with so few consequences...
"1) Taheri, who was once editor of a strongly pro-Shah Iranian newspaper during the 70s, left the country after the revolution. Strongly opposed to Iran's current government, he wrote a 1989 book called Nest of Spies: America's Journey to Disaster in Iran. Shaul Bakhash, a specialist in mideast history at George Mason University, reviewed the book for the New Republic and discovered important sections had been fabricated.
"2) In 2006, Taheri claimed the Iranian parliament had passed a law requiring Jews and other minorities to wear special badges in public. The story was picked up all over the world by the New York Post, the Drudge Report, and Canada's National Post. It turned out to be false.
"3) Elena Benador, PR agent for Taheri (as well as Victor Davis Hanson, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Ledeen, Laurie Mylroie, Richard Perle and James Woolsey) defended Taheri. Benador explained that, when it comes to Iran, accuracy is 'a luxury...As much as being accurate is important, in the end it's important to side with what's right. What's wrong is siding with the terrorists'.
"4) Six days after the Iran story was retracted, Taheri met with George Bush at the White House as part of a group of 'Iraq experts'.
"5) Norman Podhoretz, soon to become a senior foreign policy adviser to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign, wrote an article earlier this year called 'The Case for Bombing Iran'. To argue a nuclear-armed Iran could not be deterred, Podhoretz quoted the Ayatollah Khomeini: 'We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world'. Podhoretz later used the quote on the Lehrer Newshour, as did Michael Ledeen in National Review.
"6) Shaul Bakhash was surprised by the quote, never having encountered it before and finding it out of character for Khomeini. The furthest back the quote could be traced was a book by Amir Taheri.
"7) As reported by the Economist, Bakhash recently wrote for a private newsletter that no one can find the book Taheri claimed as his source in the Library of Congress or a search of Farsi works in libraries worldwide. The statement itself can't be found in databases and published collections of Knomeini statements and speeches."
"Amir Taheri, in the Wall Street Journal online, on how, despite the assertions of Barack Obama that theological differences would prevent it, Sunni and Shia extremists are happy to work together, and indeed with anyone else, towards the destruction of the US: 'The suicide attacks that claimed the lives of over 300 Americans, including 241 Marines, in Lebanon in 1983, were joint operations of the Khomeinist Hezbollah and the Marxist Arab Socialist Party, which was linked to the Syrian intelligence services'."
Taheri's piece is of course yet another variation on the clash-of-civilizations theme: the Arab/Muslim enemy constitutes one, unholy, undifferentiated coil of hissing serpents, regardless of secular/religious, Sunni/Shia, or national/international differences. Scratch the surface of any constituent part and underneath you'll find they're all the same, and they're all out to get US.
The only problem with this ideological construct is that, because it bears no relation to reality, its advocates are sorely tempted to play fast and loose with the facts when pushing it. Apart from the omission of relevant contextualising information, there are three major problems with Taheri's opening sentence: 1) There appears to be no such animal as the "Marxist Arab Socialist Party." There was an Arab Socialist Party kicking around in Syria in the early 50s, but that merged with the Ba'th to form the Arab Socialist Ba'th Party in 1953. There is a Lebanese Druze Progressive Socialist Party (currently in the hands of Druze chieftain and Hezbollah foe, Walid Jumblat), which couldn't by any stretch be described as Marxist. And that's about it; 2) The figure of "over 300 American [deaths]" is false. There were 2 suicide attacks in 1983 against American targets in Lebanon. The first, in April 1983 against the US embassy in Beirut, did kill 63 people, but only 17 of them were Americans (The Struggle Over Lebanon, Tabitha Petran, 1987 p 330). Taheri's "over 300 Americans" is actually 258; 3) While welcoming the action against the Marines, Hezbollah, which was still very much a work in progress in those days, has always denied responsibility for it. (For a discussion of same see Hezbollah: Born With a Vengeance, Hala Jaber, 1997 pp 79-80)
Apparently, Taheri has a track record of fixing the facts. In The Amir Taheri Story (Mother Jones 18/11/07), Jonathan Schwarz spills the beans:-
"Amir Taheri is one of the strangest ingredients in America's media soup. There may not be anyone else who simply makes things up as regularly as he does, with so few consequences...
"1) Taheri, who was once editor of a strongly pro-Shah Iranian newspaper during the 70s, left the country after the revolution. Strongly opposed to Iran's current government, he wrote a 1989 book called Nest of Spies: America's Journey to Disaster in Iran. Shaul Bakhash, a specialist in mideast history at George Mason University, reviewed the book for the New Republic and discovered important sections had been fabricated.
"2) In 2006, Taheri claimed the Iranian parliament had passed a law requiring Jews and other minorities to wear special badges in public. The story was picked up all over the world by the New York Post, the Drudge Report, and Canada's National Post. It turned out to be false.
"3) Elena Benador, PR agent for Taheri (as well as Victor Davis Hanson, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Ledeen, Laurie Mylroie, Richard Perle and James Woolsey) defended Taheri. Benador explained that, when it comes to Iran, accuracy is 'a luxury...As much as being accurate is important, in the end it's important to side with what's right. What's wrong is siding with the terrorists'.
"4) Six days after the Iran story was retracted, Taheri met with George Bush at the White House as part of a group of 'Iraq experts'.
"5) Norman Podhoretz, soon to become a senior foreign policy adviser to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign, wrote an article earlier this year called 'The Case for Bombing Iran'. To argue a nuclear-armed Iran could not be deterred, Podhoretz quoted the Ayatollah Khomeini: 'We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world'. Podhoretz later used the quote on the Lehrer Newshour, as did Michael Ledeen in National Review.
"6) Shaul Bakhash was surprised by the quote, never having encountered it before and finding it out of character for Khomeini. The furthest back the quote could be traced was a book by Amir Taheri.
"7) As reported by the Economist, Bakhash recently wrote for a private newsletter that no one can find the book Taheri claimed as his source in the Library of Congress or a search of Farsi works in libraries worldwide. The statement itself can't be found in databases and published collections of Knomeini statements and speeches."
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