Finally, in my series, The Hyping of Hawke, it is sobering to reflect on the fact that what is often referred to today as fake news played a crucial role in the erosion of Labor Party opposition to Hawke's obscene rush to join in the US-led war in the Gulf. It is equally sobering to note just how few questioning journalists there were back then - just like today!
Thankfully, there was one back then, the Reporters without Borders representative in Australia, Max Watts:
"In January 1991, the Australian parliament took a vote on whether to join the United States and go to war with Iraq. A journalist, Max Watts, asked one of the Australian [Labor] senators, the late Olive Zakharov, which way she intended to vote. Through her assistant, Max was informed she planned to vote for going to war. Max asked, Why? He was told that Iraqi soldiers had gone into a hospital in Kuwait, taken 306 babies out of their incubators and left them to die. Max, with his decades of experience in identifying inconsistencies in suspect stories, thought it rather odd that the number should be so precise. Who has time to count to 306 in a war zone?
"Max asked a friend, Dr Rosie Kubb... how many incubators are there in Melbourne? The population of Melbourne is about four million people. Dr Kubb checked it out. There were about 80 incubators for the city of Melbourne, which has a population three times that of the whole of Kuwait.
"The life of a lie may be short, but this lie was believed by enough people for long enough to enable George Bush Sr. to execute Gulf War I. The truth about the Kuwaiti Babies story was not exposed until eleven months later, after the war was over and thousands of innocent people had been killed. The story had been fabricated by a United States public relations company, Hill and Knowlton, to 'sell' the war. The company had dressed the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States as a nurse, and had her filmed telling the story. She was presented on television as a Kuwaiti nurse who had counted the babies, even though she was in the United States at the time the incident was alleged to have taken place." (Invasion of Iraq: An Eyewitness Account, Waratah Rose Gillespie, 2004, p 13)
Showing posts with label propaganda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label propaganda. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
Monday, May 13, 2019
Israel's Real Eurovision Entry
KAN (Israeli Public Broadcasting) Eurovision Israel has produced a fun(ny) haha video, promoting the coming Eurovision Song Contest, to be staged in Tel Aviv this coming weekend. Called This is the land of honey, honey! it bombs (ahem) spectacularly.
"Let Lucy and Elia take you in [sic] a musical journey throughout the most important parts of Israel. We promise you won't forget it," runs the accompanying text. And it's true - This is the land of honey, honey! is not only unforgettable, but uniquely so. It is in fact so bad, so guache, and so tacky, that KAN was forced to issue a same day (10/5) disclaimer after the tweeted thumbs-down started pouring in: "Just to be clear: the musical was satire and was meant to deal with stereotypes about Jews in Israel. YES, also by self-deprecating humor like we love. We know our flaws and we're not ashamed to laugh at all of them."
KAN's disclaimer, however, fails to convince, leading to the inevitable conclusion that the Zionist project, from go to WOE, is, and has never been, a laughing matter, for Palestinians obviously, but also for all sentient Jews and non-Jews not reeling under the influence of ziocaine. Israel's once vaunted propaganda machine, like its military performance since its whipping by Hezbollah in 2006, has seen one spectacular fail after another. This is the land of honey, honey! is just the latest debacle.
To see why, I've transcribed the whole production, adding stage directions in brackets. Keep in mind that Elia's tall, attractive companion, Lucy, is purported to be an Arab Israeli, and note that when she admits this, in contrast with words such as 'Jews' and 'Israel', the word 'Arab' is written in the relevant subtitle in the lower case throughout (arab). You'll note too the capitalised words. Buckets ready?
***
(Clueless young Western couple arrive at Tel Aviv airport for Eurovision. Young women hold signs: Mr Grinfeld, Miss Ayoub. Cut to short, pudgy young man (Elia) holding sign, which reads):
Dare to Dream
Euro(heart circling Star of David)ision
Song Contest
Tel Aviv 2019
Elia (confronts clueless Westerners, singing): Stop, don't say a word. I know just what you heard, that it's a land of war and occupation...
Lucy: But we have so much more than that, you'll see the prices and say, 'what?' we like to call ourselves the startup nation.
Lucy (handing clueless couple mobile phone with image of Elia and herself on it): We're here to be your guide, a small country with big pride
Elia: So please kapara join this quick indoctrination
Lucy (following clueless couple into lift): And there's a lot here to be seen, if you will it, it's no dream, please let us help you have a great vacation
(Clueless couple seated in an empty theatre look cluelessly at one another. Cut to airport terminal. Elia and Lucy pop up, chorusing):
This is the land of milk and honey, honey, we are the land of milk, the land is always sunny, sonny, we are as smooth as silk
Lucy: I'm Lucy, I'm arab, yes some of us live here
Elia: Elia, from Russia, we fled there out of fear
Lucy: In fact most of [sic] Israelis have complex identities, that is why we all look at each other here as frenemies
Elia: Most of us are Jews, but only some of us are greedy
Lucy (in subway with clueless new arrivals): And you might notice people here are very very needy (person stoops to offer coins)
(Cut to bus station)
Lucy: We're generous, we're kind (as some Israeli is shown helping a luggage-ladden visitor onto a bus), we'll always help a stranger
(Cut to interior of bus)
Elia (sitting with Lucy opposite clueless couple): The drivers are all mad, so cars can be a real danger
Lucy: This is the land of honey, honey, and living here is bleak (Cut to Elia lying tummy down on floor of bus) The land is always sunny, sonny
Elia & Lucy (arms around clueless couple): It's your love that we seek
(Cut to panoramic shot of Tel Aviv)
Elia (wearing an 'I love Iron Dome' t-shirt): Such a marvel, look at that, on open shop and it's Shabbat
(Cut to hugging gays)
Elia: Gays are hugging in the streets (Cut to vegan protester), protests against eating meat, it is easy to achieve only in [sic] here, Tel Aviv, only here, in Tel Aviv, It's too expensive but I won't leave, (sitting at cafe table, confiding) They joke that we all drink espresso, which is crazy because like... who doesn't like to drink espresso, it's like coffee, everybody drinks coffee
Lucy (emerging from cafe): Hallas, Elia
(Cut to Elia crossing bridge): Stroll the parks, walk on the bridges and enjoy our lovely bitches
Lucy: But wait! There's so much more to the country than Tel Aviv, tell them boys!
(Cut to Israeli guy in swimwear, singing): In Eilat there are the corals, and the good shawarma
(Cut to orthodox Jewish guy, singing): Haifa has Bahai Gardens, and a good shawarma, all the street food here is great
(Cut to male chorus & Elia): As a game we like to vote it, generally speaking I think you should try shawarma
(Cut to the Dead Sea)
Lucy: This is the lowest place on earth, the deadest of the seas, because of all the... (Elia, floating in the water, replies 'phosphate?') You'll float so be at ease, It's a sad, sad tragedy because of all the factories, in a number of some[sic] years the sea will disappear
(Cut to panoramic shot of East Jerusalem)
Elia & Lucy (popping up suddenly): And our beloved capital, golden Jerusalem, see the shuk, the old city, and (solemnly intoning) visit YAD VASHEM
(Cut to church)
Elia: Experience the holy sites, gods [sic] watching from above, yes, people here are crazy, and that is what we love
(Cut to airport flash dancers): This the land of honey, honey, we're waiting just for you, our land is sunny, sonny, can't wait for the Eurovision too
"Let Lucy and Elia take you in [sic] a musical journey throughout the most important parts of Israel. We promise you won't forget it," runs the accompanying text. And it's true - This is the land of honey, honey! is not only unforgettable, but uniquely so. It is in fact so bad, so guache, and so tacky, that KAN was forced to issue a same day (10/5) disclaimer after the tweeted thumbs-down started pouring in: "Just to be clear: the musical was satire and was meant to deal with stereotypes about Jews in Israel. YES, also by self-deprecating humor like we love. We know our flaws and we're not ashamed to laugh at all of them."
KAN's disclaimer, however, fails to convince, leading to the inevitable conclusion that the Zionist project, from go to WOE, is, and has never been, a laughing matter, for Palestinians obviously, but also for all sentient Jews and non-Jews not reeling under the influence of ziocaine. Israel's once vaunted propaganda machine, like its military performance since its whipping by Hezbollah in 2006, has seen one spectacular fail after another. This is the land of honey, honey! is just the latest debacle.
To see why, I've transcribed the whole production, adding stage directions in brackets. Keep in mind that Elia's tall, attractive companion, Lucy, is purported to be an Arab Israeli, and note that when she admits this, in contrast with words such as 'Jews' and 'Israel', the word 'Arab' is written in the relevant subtitle in the lower case throughout (arab). You'll note too the capitalised words. Buckets ready?
***
(Clueless young Western couple arrive at Tel Aviv airport for Eurovision. Young women hold signs: Mr Grinfeld, Miss Ayoub. Cut to short, pudgy young man (Elia) holding sign, which reads):
Dare to Dream
Euro(heart circling Star of David)ision
Song Contest
Tel Aviv 2019
Elia (confronts clueless Westerners, singing): Stop, don't say a word. I know just what you heard, that it's a land of war and occupation...
Lucy: But we have so much more than that, you'll see the prices and say, 'what?' we like to call ourselves the startup nation.
Lucy (handing clueless couple mobile phone with image of Elia and herself on it): We're here to be your guide, a small country with big pride
Elia: So please kapara join this quick indoctrination
Lucy (following clueless couple into lift): And there's a lot here to be seen, if you will it, it's no dream, please let us help you have a great vacation
(Clueless couple seated in an empty theatre look cluelessly at one another. Cut to airport terminal. Elia and Lucy pop up, chorusing):
This is the land of milk and honey, honey, we are the land of milk, the land is always sunny, sonny, we are as smooth as silk
Lucy: I'm Lucy, I'm arab, yes some of us live here
Elia: Elia, from Russia, we fled there out of fear
Lucy: In fact most of [sic] Israelis have complex identities, that is why we all look at each other here as frenemies
Elia: Most of us are Jews, but only some of us are greedy
Lucy (in subway with clueless new arrivals): And you might notice people here are very very needy (person stoops to offer coins)
(Cut to bus station)
Lucy: We're generous, we're kind (as some Israeli is shown helping a luggage-ladden visitor onto a bus), we'll always help a stranger
(Cut to interior of bus)
Elia (sitting with Lucy opposite clueless couple): The drivers are all mad, so cars can be a real danger
Lucy: This is the land of honey, honey, and living here is bleak (Cut to Elia lying tummy down on floor of bus) The land is always sunny, sonny
Elia & Lucy (arms around clueless couple): It's your love that we seek
(Cut to panoramic shot of Tel Aviv)
Elia (wearing an 'I love Iron Dome' t-shirt): Such a marvel, look at that, on open shop and it's Shabbat
(Cut to hugging gays)
Elia: Gays are hugging in the streets (Cut to vegan protester), protests against eating meat, it is easy to achieve only in [sic] here, Tel Aviv, only here, in Tel Aviv, It's too expensive but I won't leave, (sitting at cafe table, confiding) They joke that we all drink espresso, which is crazy because like... who doesn't like to drink espresso, it's like coffee, everybody drinks coffee
Lucy (emerging from cafe): Hallas, Elia
(Cut to Elia crossing bridge): Stroll the parks, walk on the bridges and enjoy our lovely bitches
Lucy: But wait! There's so much more to the country than Tel Aviv, tell them boys!
(Cut to Israeli guy in swimwear, singing): In Eilat there are the corals, and the good shawarma
(Cut to orthodox Jewish guy, singing): Haifa has Bahai Gardens, and a good shawarma, all the street food here is great
(Cut to male chorus & Elia): As a game we like to vote it, generally speaking I think you should try shawarma
(Cut to the Dead Sea)
Lucy: This is the lowest place on earth, the deadest of the seas, because of all the... (Elia, floating in the water, replies 'phosphate?') You'll float so be at ease, It's a sad, sad tragedy because of all the factories, in a number of some[sic] years the sea will disappear
(Cut to panoramic shot of East Jerusalem)
Elia & Lucy (popping up suddenly): And our beloved capital, golden Jerusalem, see the shuk, the old city, and (solemnly intoning) visit YAD VASHEM
(Cut to church)
Elia: Experience the holy sites, gods [sic] watching from above, yes, people here are crazy, and that is what we love
(Cut to airport flash dancers): This the land of honey, honey, we're waiting just for you, our land is sunny, sonny, can't wait for the Eurovision too
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Offensive vs Defensive Wars...
... your msm guide:
OFFENSIVE WAR
"Syrian government and allied Russian warplanes have intensified a week-long bombardment of Syria's Idlib province, targeting hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure as tens of thousands of residents fled toward the border with Turkey, activists and monitors in the rebel-held region said. The serial campaign has killed about 100 civilians and put at least 10 hospitals out of service." (Air strikes shatter Idlib truce, Zakaria Zakaria, Washington Post/Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald, 8/5/19)
"Waves of Russian and regime jets and helicopters have poured missiles and barrel bombs onto the enclave in the past week, destroying hospitals and killing scores of civilians." (Civilians, hospitals target of new Assad blitz, Richard Spencer, The Times/The Australian, 8/5/19)
defensive war
"In the course of [Operation] Cast Lead [2008-09], Israel had damaged or destroyed 'everything in its way,' and not in its way, including 58,000 homes, 1,500 factories and workshops, 280 schools and kindergartens, electrical, water, and sewage installations, 190 greenhouse complexes, 80% of agricultural crops, and nearly one-fifth of cultivated land. Whole neighborhoods were laid waste. It also damaged and destroyed 29 ambulances, almost half of Gaza's 122 health facilities (including 15 hospitals), and 45 mosques. By the time it withdrew, the IDF had left behind fully 600,000 tons of rubble and 1,400 corpses, 350 of them children." (Gaza: An Inquest into It's Martyrdom, Norman Finkelstein, 2018, p 127)
OFFENSIVE WAR
"Syrian government and allied Russian warplanes have intensified a week-long bombardment of Syria's Idlib province, targeting hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure as tens of thousands of residents fled toward the border with Turkey, activists and monitors in the rebel-held region said. The serial campaign has killed about 100 civilians and put at least 10 hospitals out of service." (Air strikes shatter Idlib truce, Zakaria Zakaria, Washington Post/Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald, 8/5/19)
"Waves of Russian and regime jets and helicopters have poured missiles and barrel bombs onto the enclave in the past week, destroying hospitals and killing scores of civilians." (Civilians, hospitals target of new Assad blitz, Richard Spencer, The Times/The Australian, 8/5/19)
defensive war
"In the course of [Operation] Cast Lead [2008-09], Israel had damaged or destroyed 'everything in its way,' and not in its way, including 58,000 homes, 1,500 factories and workshops, 280 schools and kindergartens, electrical, water, and sewage installations, 190 greenhouse complexes, 80% of agricultural crops, and nearly one-fifth of cultivated land. Whole neighborhoods were laid waste. It also damaged and destroyed 29 ambulances, almost half of Gaza's 122 health facilities (including 15 hospitals), and 45 mosques. By the time it withdrew, the IDF had left behind fully 600,000 tons of rubble and 1,400 corpses, 350 of them children." (Gaza: An Inquest into It's Martyrdom, Norman Finkelstein, 2018, p 127)
Friday, May 10, 2019
'Guardians' of Israel
Most interesting:
"Anonymous far-right groups have launched co-ordinated activity across online platforms in a bid to influence the outcome of the federal election. A group of 'Australian' Facebook pages has been found to be part of a network of at least 15 accounts involved in co-ordinated dissemination of 'misinformation and misleading content', according to analysis by social media intelligence company Storyful... 'Five Facebook pages, sharing anti-Islam content while promoting 'traditional' Australian values, were found to be part of a network of Facebook pages discovered by Storyful that share fringe news content in a co-ordinated manner - links to articles are shared to the network of Facebook pages at the same time and using the same accompanying text. The articles often contain misleading or highly partisan information and many included bigoted or anti-Islam themes. The pages have regularly claimed politicians and the media have remained silent on violence committed by Muslims and frequently spruik One Nation or Fraser Anning.' Storyful, owned by News Corp, The Australian's parent company, said the pages included Guardians of Australia. No sharia law - never ever give up Australia, and Fair Suck Of The Sav, Mate." (Far right unites to sway poll outcome, Mark Schliebs, The Australian, 7/5/19)
Now here's where the plot thickens:
"Of 17 administrators for the Guardians of Australia page, 12 are listed as being in Australia and 3 in Israel. Two accounts listed as belonging to people in India are administrators of the No sharia law - never give up Australia, along with 6 in Australia and 2 whose locations are unknown." (ibid)
If you track down their FB page, you'll see a lead photo, which reads, BANS BEGIN GOA WILL NOT TOLERATE ANTI-JEWISH SPEECH JUST AS WE WILL NOT TOLERATE HATE SPEECH AGAINST THOSE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE IN ISLAM. Scroll down, and you'll come to a gormless Israeli yoof, name of Hananya Naftali, darkly intoning in a video that RADICAL ISLAM WANTS TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD, apparently by stealth, which boy wonder calls "the silent jihad."
Further down, you'll come to another Naftali video: THE ISRAEL-GAZA SITUATION, in which he informs us, in so many words, that while Hamas rains rockets on Israel, Israel responds against "terrorist targets in Gaza," while simultaneously "taking care of civilians" there by showering them with humanitarian aid, electricity and water.
It appears that what these self-proclaimed Guardians of Australia are really guarding is... Israel. What a surprise!
Now just in case your not averse to rolling in his muck, you might want to check out "IDF reservist" Hananya Naftali's tweets.
"Anonymous far-right groups have launched co-ordinated activity across online platforms in a bid to influence the outcome of the federal election. A group of 'Australian' Facebook pages has been found to be part of a network of at least 15 accounts involved in co-ordinated dissemination of 'misinformation and misleading content', according to analysis by social media intelligence company Storyful... 'Five Facebook pages, sharing anti-Islam content while promoting 'traditional' Australian values, were found to be part of a network of Facebook pages discovered by Storyful that share fringe news content in a co-ordinated manner - links to articles are shared to the network of Facebook pages at the same time and using the same accompanying text. The articles often contain misleading or highly partisan information and many included bigoted or anti-Islam themes. The pages have regularly claimed politicians and the media have remained silent on violence committed by Muslims and frequently spruik One Nation or Fraser Anning.' Storyful, owned by News Corp, The Australian's parent company, said the pages included Guardians of Australia. No sharia law - never ever give up Australia, and Fair Suck Of The Sav, Mate." (Far right unites to sway poll outcome, Mark Schliebs, The Australian, 7/5/19)
Now here's where the plot thickens:
"Of 17 administrators for the Guardians of Australia page, 12 are listed as being in Australia and 3 in Israel. Two accounts listed as belonging to people in India are administrators of the No sharia law - never give up Australia, along with 6 in Australia and 2 whose locations are unknown." (ibid)
If you track down their FB page, you'll see a lead photo, which reads, BANS BEGIN GOA WILL NOT TOLERATE ANTI-JEWISH SPEECH JUST AS WE WILL NOT TOLERATE HATE SPEECH AGAINST THOSE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE IN ISLAM. Scroll down, and you'll come to a gormless Israeli yoof, name of Hananya Naftali, darkly intoning in a video that RADICAL ISLAM WANTS TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD, apparently by stealth, which boy wonder calls "the silent jihad."
Further down, you'll come to another Naftali video: THE ISRAEL-GAZA SITUATION, in which he informs us, in so many words, that while Hamas rains rockets on Israel, Israel responds against "terrorist targets in Gaza," while simultaneously "taking care of civilians" there by showering them with humanitarian aid, electricity and water.
It appears that what these self-proclaimed Guardians of Australia are really guarding is... Israel. What a surprise!
Now just in case your not averse to rolling in his muck, you might want to check out "IDF reservist" Hananya Naftali's tweets.
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
More Zionist Hypnosis in Australian MS Press
Whether it's the Nine Entertainment Co press, or the Murdoch, both rags are adamant that Israel and Hamas have fought THREE WARS since 2008:
"... the two sides, we have fought three wars... over the last decade." (Toll rises as Gaza violence flares, Nidal al-Mughrabi, AP, Reuters, Sydney Morning Herald, 6/5/19)
"Israel and Hamas... have fought three wars... since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007." (Rockets, missiles shatter Gaza truce, Fares Akram, AP/The Australian, 6/5/19)
"Israel says its blockade is necessary to stop weapons reaching Hamas, with which it has fought three wars since the group seized control of Gaza in 2007... " (Ceasefire claimed as attacks ebb, Nidal al-Mughrabi/Jeffrey Heller, Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald, 7/5/19)
"Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008 and the escalation brought them to the brink of another." (Israel, Palestinians pull back from brink, AFP/The Australian, 7/5/19)
But were they really WARS, or more akin to just shooting fish in a barrel?
Here is the incomparable Norman Finkelstein once again on the first of these alleged 'wars', Israel's Operation Cast Lead (2008-09), in which he irrefutably testifies to the latter characterisation:
"To justify the magnitude of the devastation it wreaked, Israel endeavored to depict the Gaza invasion as a genuine military contest. [US analyst Anthony] Cordesman* delineated in ominous detail, enhanced by tables, graphs, and figures, the vast arsenal of rockets, mortars, and other weapons that Hamas allegedly manufactured and smuggled in through tunnels (including 'Iranian-made rockets' that could 'strike at much of Southern Israel' and 'hit key infrastructure'), as well as the 'spider web of prepared strong points, underground and hidden shelters, and ambush points' Hamas allegedly constructed. He reported that according to 'Israeli senior officials,' Hamas mustered 6,000-10,000 'core fighters.' He juxtaposed the 'Gaza war' with the 1967 war, the 1973 war, and the 2006 war, as if they belonged on the same plane. He expatiated on Israel's complex war plans and preparations, and he purported that Israel's victory was partly owing to its 'high levels of secrecy,' as if the outcome would have been different had Israel not benefited from the element of surprise. The Israeli brief alleged that Hamas 'amassed an extensive armed force of more than 20,000 armed operatives in Gaza,' 'obtained military supplies through a vast network of tunnels and clandestine arms shipments from Iran and Syria,' and 'acquired advanced weaponry, developed weapons of their own, and increased the range and lethality of their rockets.'
"Nonetheless, even Cordesman was forced to acknowledge, if obliquely, that what Israel fought was scarcely a war. He conceded that Hamas was a 'weak, non-state actor,' whereas Israel possessed a massive armory of state-of-the-art weaponry; that the Israeli air force 'faced limited threats from Hamas's primitive land-based air defense'; that 'sustained ground fighting was limited'; that the Israeli army avoided engagements where it 'would be likely to suffer' significant casualties; and that 'the IDF used night warfare for most combat operations because Hamas did not have the technology or training to fight at night.' However, overwhelmingly, Cordesman persisted in his dubious depiction of Cast Lead. Israel had demonstrated that it could fight 'an air campaign successfully in crowded urban areas,' according to him, as well as 'an extended land battle against a non-state actor.' In fact, the air campaign was not a 'fight' any more than shooting fish in a barrel is a fight. As if (however unwittingly) to bring home this analogy, Cordesman quoted a senior Israeli air force officer who boasted, 'The IAF had flown some 3,000 successful sorties over a small dense area during three weeks of fighting without a single accident or loss.' But how could it be otherwise if 'the planes operated in an environment free of air defenses, enjoying complete aerial superiority'? Depicting Cast Lead as a protracted ground war was no less detached from reality Hamas was barely equipped, barely present in the conflict zones, and barely engaged by Israeli forces except when it could not fight back." (Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, 2018, pp 63-64)
[*"Shortly after Operation Cast Lead ended on 18 January 2009, Anthony Cordesman published a report titled The 'Gaza War': A strategic analysis. It warrants close scrutiny both because Cordesman has been an influential military analyst, and because the report neatly synthesized and systematized Israel's makeshift rebuttals as criticism of the invasion mounted." (ibid, p 39) And how often have we heard this Israeli apologist on Radio National over the years?]
"... the two sides, we have fought three wars... over the last decade." (Toll rises as Gaza violence flares, Nidal al-Mughrabi, AP, Reuters, Sydney Morning Herald, 6/5/19)
"Israel and Hamas... have fought three wars... since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007." (Rockets, missiles shatter Gaza truce, Fares Akram, AP/The Australian, 6/5/19)
"Israel says its blockade is necessary to stop weapons reaching Hamas, with which it has fought three wars since the group seized control of Gaza in 2007... " (Ceasefire claimed as attacks ebb, Nidal al-Mughrabi/Jeffrey Heller, Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald, 7/5/19)
"Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008 and the escalation brought them to the brink of another." (Israel, Palestinians pull back from brink, AFP/The Australian, 7/5/19)
But were they really WARS, or more akin to just shooting fish in a barrel?
Here is the incomparable Norman Finkelstein once again on the first of these alleged 'wars', Israel's Operation Cast Lead (2008-09), in which he irrefutably testifies to the latter characterisation:
"To justify the magnitude of the devastation it wreaked, Israel endeavored to depict the Gaza invasion as a genuine military contest. [US analyst Anthony] Cordesman* delineated in ominous detail, enhanced by tables, graphs, and figures, the vast arsenal of rockets, mortars, and other weapons that Hamas allegedly manufactured and smuggled in through tunnels (including 'Iranian-made rockets' that could 'strike at much of Southern Israel' and 'hit key infrastructure'), as well as the 'spider web of prepared strong points, underground and hidden shelters, and ambush points' Hamas allegedly constructed. He reported that according to 'Israeli senior officials,' Hamas mustered 6,000-10,000 'core fighters.' He juxtaposed the 'Gaza war' with the 1967 war, the 1973 war, and the 2006 war, as if they belonged on the same plane. He expatiated on Israel's complex war plans and preparations, and he purported that Israel's victory was partly owing to its 'high levels of secrecy,' as if the outcome would have been different had Israel not benefited from the element of surprise. The Israeli brief alleged that Hamas 'amassed an extensive armed force of more than 20,000 armed operatives in Gaza,' 'obtained military supplies through a vast network of tunnels and clandestine arms shipments from Iran and Syria,' and 'acquired advanced weaponry, developed weapons of their own, and increased the range and lethality of their rockets.'
"Nonetheless, even Cordesman was forced to acknowledge, if obliquely, that what Israel fought was scarcely a war. He conceded that Hamas was a 'weak, non-state actor,' whereas Israel possessed a massive armory of state-of-the-art weaponry; that the Israeli air force 'faced limited threats from Hamas's primitive land-based air defense'; that 'sustained ground fighting was limited'; that the Israeli army avoided engagements where it 'would be likely to suffer' significant casualties; and that 'the IDF used night warfare for most combat operations because Hamas did not have the technology or training to fight at night.' However, overwhelmingly, Cordesman persisted in his dubious depiction of Cast Lead. Israel had demonstrated that it could fight 'an air campaign successfully in crowded urban areas,' according to him, as well as 'an extended land battle against a non-state actor.' In fact, the air campaign was not a 'fight' any more than shooting fish in a barrel is a fight. As if (however unwittingly) to bring home this analogy, Cordesman quoted a senior Israeli air force officer who boasted, 'The IAF had flown some 3,000 successful sorties over a small dense area during three weeks of fighting without a single accident or loss.' But how could it be otherwise if 'the planes operated in an environment free of air defenses, enjoying complete aerial superiority'? Depicting Cast Lead as a protracted ground war was no less detached from reality Hamas was barely equipped, barely present in the conflict zones, and barely engaged by Israeli forces except when it could not fight back." (Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, 2018, pp 63-64)
[*"Shortly after Operation Cast Lead ended on 18 January 2009, Anthony Cordesman published a report titled The 'Gaza War': A strategic analysis. It warrants close scrutiny both because Cordesman has been an influential military analyst, and because the report neatly synthesized and systematized Israel's makeshift rebuttals as criticism of the invasion mounted." (ibid, p 39) And how often have we heard this Israeli apologist on Radio National over the years?]
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Zionist Hypnosis in Australian MS Press
Rockets, missiles shatter Gaza truce (Fares Akram, AP/The Australian, 6/5/19)
"[Israeli] retaliatory barrages"
"retaliatory airstrikes"
"retaliatory airstrikes"
Toll rises as Gaza violence flares (Nidal al-Mughrabi, AP/Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald, 6/5/19)
"Israel hit back"
"Israel retaliated"
"[Israeli] tanks and aircraft responded"
Israel, Palestinians pull back from brink (AFP/ The Australian, 7/5/19)
"Israeli retaliatory strikes"
"Israel said it strikes were in response to"
"[Israeli] retaliatory barrages"
"retaliatory airstrikes"
"retaliatory airstrikes"
Toll rises as Gaza violence flares (Nidal al-Mughrabi, AP/Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald, 6/5/19)
"Israel hit back"
"Israel retaliated"
"[Israeli] tanks and aircraft responded"
Israel, Palestinians pull back from brink (AFP/ The Australian, 7/5/19)
"Israeli retaliatory strikes"
"Israel said it strikes were in response to"
Shoot at Anything that Moves
Whenever you read about Israeli war crimes in Gaza in the msm, the latter's stenographers will faithfully parrot Israeli army spin about every effort being taken to ensure that Palestinian civilians come to as little harm as possible during the course of military operations. In fact, the opposite is true. For Israel, all Palestinians are the enemy. Hence, Palestinian civilians will always bear the brunt of any such Israeli attack.
Here is more from Norman Finkelstein on the original Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009):
"Parrying the censorious thrust of these human rights reports, Israel's brief declared that it 'took extensive measures to comply with its obligations under international law,' and that... the IDF directed attacks 'solely against military objectives,' and endeavored to ensure that 'civilians and civilian objects would not be harmed...
"Based on what journalists and human rights organizations found, and what Israeli soldiers in the field testified, however, a radically different picture of Cast Lead comes into relief. 'We're going to war,' a company commander told his soldiers before the attack. 'I want aggressiveness - if there's someone suspicious on the upper floor of a house, we'll shell it. If we have suspicions about a house, we'll take it down... There will be no hesitation.' A combatant remembered a meeting with his brigade commander and others where the 'rules of engagement' were 'essentially' conveyed as, 'if you see any signs of movement at all you shoot.' Other soldiers recalled, 'If the deputy battalion commander thought a house looked suspect, we'd blow it away. If the infantryman didn't like the looks of that house - we'd shoot' (unidentified soldier); 'If you face an area that is hidden by a building - you take down the building. Questions such as 'who lives in that building[?]' are not asked' (soldier recalling his brigade commander's order); 'As for rules of engagement, the army's working assumption was that the whole area would be devoid of civilians... Anyone there, as far as the army was concerned, was to be killed' (unidentified soldier); 'We were told: 'any sign of danger, open up with massive fire' (member of a reconnaissance company); 'We shot at anything that moved' (Golani Brigade fighter); 'Despite the fact that no one fired on us, the firing and demolitions continued incessantly' (gunner in a tank crew). 'Essentially, a person only need[ed] to be in a 'problematic' location,' a Haaretz reporter found, 'in circumstances that can broadly be seen as suspicious, for him to be 'incriminated' and in effect sentence to death'." (Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, pp 44-45)
Here is more from Norman Finkelstein on the original Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009):
"Parrying the censorious thrust of these human rights reports, Israel's brief declared that it 'took extensive measures to comply with its obligations under international law,' and that... the IDF directed attacks 'solely against military objectives,' and endeavored to ensure that 'civilians and civilian objects would not be harmed...
"Based on what journalists and human rights organizations found, and what Israeli soldiers in the field testified, however, a radically different picture of Cast Lead comes into relief. 'We're going to war,' a company commander told his soldiers before the attack. 'I want aggressiveness - if there's someone suspicious on the upper floor of a house, we'll shell it. If we have suspicions about a house, we'll take it down... There will be no hesitation.' A combatant remembered a meeting with his brigade commander and others where the 'rules of engagement' were 'essentially' conveyed as, 'if you see any signs of movement at all you shoot.' Other soldiers recalled, 'If the deputy battalion commander thought a house looked suspect, we'd blow it away. If the infantryman didn't like the looks of that house - we'd shoot' (unidentified soldier); 'If you face an area that is hidden by a building - you take down the building. Questions such as 'who lives in that building[?]' are not asked' (soldier recalling his brigade commander's order); 'As for rules of engagement, the army's working assumption was that the whole area would be devoid of civilians... Anyone there, as far as the army was concerned, was to be killed' (unidentified soldier); 'We were told: 'any sign of danger, open up with massive fire' (member of a reconnaissance company); 'We shot at anything that moved' (Golani Brigade fighter); 'Despite the fact that no one fired on us, the firing and demolitions continued incessantly' (gunner in a tank crew). 'Essentially, a person only need[ed] to be in a 'problematic' location,' a Haaretz reporter found, 'in circumstances that can broadly be seen as suspicious, for him to be 'incriminated' and in effect sentence to death'." (Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, pp 44-45)
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
A Blight Unto the Nations
Seldom does the abyss between fact and fiction yawn more widely than in The Economist:
"Little Israel commands attention because it has a big history: biblical romance and technological talent; the slaughter of the Holocaust and military prowess, energetic democracy and the long occupation of land claimed and inhabited by Palestinians." (King Bibi: a parable of modern populism, The Economist/ The Australian, 30/3/19)
"Israel offers an important test of the resilience of democracy. On April 9 voters face a fateful choice. Re-elect Netanyahu and reward him for subverting the independence of Israel's institutions. Or turf him out in the hope of rebuilding trust in democracy - and aspiring to be 'a light unto the nations'." (ibid)
Lest we forget, April 9 will be the 71st anniversary of the massacre of the Palestinian villagers of Deir Yassin, carried out by Irgun terrorists on orders from their leader, Menachem Begin, in 1948.
Begin, of course, went on to found Israel's ruling Likud party in 1973, becoming its prime minister from 1977-83, and presiding over the brutal invasion (1982) and occupation (1982-2000) of Lebanon.
Netanyahu is his ideological heir, presiding in turn over one massacre after another - operations Returning Echo (2012), Pillar of Defence (2012) and Protective Edge (2014) - against the largely defenceless inhabitants of the blockaded Gaza ghetto, not to mention the ongoing bloodletting along the Gaza border.
And how does The Economist spin this butcher's bloody record?
"With deft use of diplomacy and the mostly cautious use of military force he has boosted security without being sucked into disastrous wars." (ibid)
"Little Israel commands attention because it has a big history: biblical romance and technological talent; the slaughter of the Holocaust and military prowess, energetic democracy and the long occupation of land claimed and inhabited by Palestinians." (King Bibi: a parable of modern populism, The Economist/ The Australian, 30/3/19)
"Israel offers an important test of the resilience of democracy. On April 9 voters face a fateful choice. Re-elect Netanyahu and reward him for subverting the independence of Israel's institutions. Or turf him out in the hope of rebuilding trust in democracy - and aspiring to be 'a light unto the nations'." (ibid)
Lest we forget, April 9 will be the 71st anniversary of the massacre of the Palestinian villagers of Deir Yassin, carried out by Irgun terrorists on orders from their leader, Menachem Begin, in 1948.
Begin, of course, went on to found Israel's ruling Likud party in 1973, becoming its prime minister from 1977-83, and presiding over the brutal invasion (1982) and occupation (1982-2000) of Lebanon.
Netanyahu is his ideological heir, presiding in turn over one massacre after another - operations Returning Echo (2012), Pillar of Defence (2012) and Protective Edge (2014) - against the largely defenceless inhabitants of the blockaded Gaza ghetto, not to mention the ongoing bloodletting along the Gaza border.
And how does The Economist spin this butcher's bloody record?
"With deft use of diplomacy and the mostly cautious use of military force he has boosted security without being sucked into disastrous wars." (ibid)
Friday, March 22, 2019
Why History Matters
On 18/3/19 The Australian published a full-page opinion piece, Shared hatred of fanatics, by one of its stable of reactionary pundits, Paul Monk. Monk, thankfully, is only an occasional contributor to Murdoch's Australian mouthpiece. His specialty is Arab/Muslim history, with lashings of Islamophobia. (In earlier scribblings, he has referred to "the dark heart of Islam," declared the Prophet Muhammad to be "a very dubious figure," and claimed his "deity" is "a god of war and conquest." He has also given the thumbs-up to Douglas Murray's The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, and lauded the late Italian Islamophobe, Oriana Fallaci, as "the great Italian journalist.")
Monk is described grandiosely in an appended bio as "a former senior intelligence analyst, long-time consultant in applied cognitive science and author of 10 books, of which the most recent is Dictators and Dangerous Ideas: Uncensored Reflections in an Age of Turmoil."
But back to Shared hatred of fanatics, written in the wake of the Christchurch massacres. It would take multiple posts to deal with all of Monk's distortions, but I restrict myself to his characterisation of the Crusades as a war of self-defence by the West:
"The crusades were a sideshow and a largely unsuccessful pushback against the Muslim conquest of Palestine and the 'holy places' of the Christian religion. This isn't angry rhetoric, it is basic history."
Except that the Muslim conquest of Palestine happened in the 7th century and the First Crusade in the 11th.
God only knows where Monk's picked up his take on the subject - Murray? Fallaci? Any one of a number of historically unsound Islamophobic websites, such as The Gates of Vienna?
So let's see what a reputable historian of the Crusades has to say on the subject of the "basic history" of the crucial First Crusade (1096-99). The following extracts come from Thomas Asbridge's The First Crusade: A New History (2004). (Asbridge is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Queen Mary, University of London.):
"From its genesis, the history of the crusade was blurred by distortion. The image of Muslims as brutal oppressors conjured by Pope Urban [II] was pure propaganda - if anything, Islam had proved over the previous centuries to be more tolerant of other religions than Catholic Christendom." (p 3)
"The first point to acknowledge is that [the Pope's] call to arms made at Clermont was not directly inspired by any recent calamity or atrocity in the East... And although the Holy City of Jerusalem, the expedition's ultimate goal, was indeed in Muslim hands, it had been so for more than 400 years - hardly a fresh wound... The reality was that, when Pope Urban proclaimed the First Crusade at Clermont, Islam and Christendom had coexisted for centuries in relative equanimity. There may at times have been little love lost between Christian and Muslim neighbours, but there was, in truth, little to distinguish this enmity from the endemic political and military struggles of the age." (pp 16-17)
"At the end of the eleventh century, Christendom was in one sense encircled by Islam, with Muslim forces ranged against it to the east along Byzantium's Asian frontier and to the south in the Iberian peninsula. But Europe was a long way from being engaged in an urgent, titanic struggle for survival. No coherent, pan-Mediterranean onslaught threatened, because, although the Moors of Iberia and the Turks of Asia Minor shared a religious heritage, they were never united in one purpose. Where Christians and Muslims did face each other across the centuries, their relationship had been unremarkable, characterised, like that between any potential rivals, by periods of conflict and others of coexistence. There is little or no evidence that either side harboured any innate, empowering religious or racial hatred of the other.
"Most significantly, throughout this period indigenous Christians actually living under Islamic law, be it in Iberia or the Holy Land, were generally treated with remarkable clemency. The Muslim faith acknowledged and respected Judaism and Christianity, creeds with which it enjoyed a common devotional tradition and a mutual reliance upon authoritative scripture. Christian subjects may not have been able to share power with their Muslim masters, but they were given freedom to worship. All around the Mediterranean basin, Christian faith and society survived and even thrived under the watchful but tolerant eye of Islam. Eastern Christendom may have been subjected to Islamic rule, bit it was not on the brink of annihilation, nor prey to any form of systematic abuse." (p 18)
"The problem addressed by the First Crusade - Muslim occupation of Jerusalem and the potential threat of Islamic aggression in the East - had loomed for decades, even centuries, provoking little or no reaction in Rome. Urban II's decision to take up this cause at Clermont was, therefore, primarily proactive rather than reactive, and the crusade was designed, first and foremost, to meet the needs of the papacy. Launched as it was just as Urban began to stabilise his power-base in central Italy, the campaign must be seen as an attempt to consolidate papal empowerment and expand Rome's sphere of influence." (p 19)
"A central feature of Urban's doctrine was the denigration and dehumanisation of Islam. He set out from the start to launch a holy war against what he called 'the savagery of the Saracens', a 'barbarian' people capable of incomprehensible levels of cruelty and brutality. Their supposed crimes were enacted upon two groups. Eastern Christians, in particular the Byzantines, had been 'overrun right up to the Mediterranean Sea'. Urban described how the Muslims 'occupying more and more of the land on the borders of [Byzantium], were slaughtering and capturing many, destroying churches and laying waste to the kingdom of God. So, if you leave them alone much longer they will further grind under their heels the faithful of God. The pope also maintained that Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were being subjected to horrific abuse and exploitation... The accusations had little or no basis in fact, but they did serve Urban's purpose. By expounding upon the alleged crimes of Islam, he sought to ignite an explosion of vengeful passion among his Latin audience, while his attempts to degrade Muslims as 'sub-human' opened the floodgates of extreme, brutal reciprocity. " (pp 33-34)
Getting the history right matters, because if it's left in the hands of Monk, Murray, Fallaci and other xenophobes to distort and mangle, their distortions may well influence the likes of the Christchurch terrorist Brenton Tarrant - with deadly effect.
Monk is described grandiosely in an appended bio as "a former senior intelligence analyst, long-time consultant in applied cognitive science and author of 10 books, of which the most recent is Dictators and Dangerous Ideas: Uncensored Reflections in an Age of Turmoil."
But back to Shared hatred of fanatics, written in the wake of the Christchurch massacres. It would take multiple posts to deal with all of Monk's distortions, but I restrict myself to his characterisation of the Crusades as a war of self-defence by the West:
"The crusades were a sideshow and a largely unsuccessful pushback against the Muslim conquest of Palestine and the 'holy places' of the Christian religion. This isn't angry rhetoric, it is basic history."
Except that the Muslim conquest of Palestine happened in the 7th century and the First Crusade in the 11th.
God only knows where Monk's picked up his take on the subject - Murray? Fallaci? Any one of a number of historically unsound Islamophobic websites, such as The Gates of Vienna?
So let's see what a reputable historian of the Crusades has to say on the subject of the "basic history" of the crucial First Crusade (1096-99). The following extracts come from Thomas Asbridge's The First Crusade: A New History (2004). (Asbridge is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Queen Mary, University of London.):
"From its genesis, the history of the crusade was blurred by distortion. The image of Muslims as brutal oppressors conjured by Pope Urban [II] was pure propaganda - if anything, Islam had proved over the previous centuries to be more tolerant of other religions than Catholic Christendom." (p 3)
"The first point to acknowledge is that [the Pope's] call to arms made at Clermont was not directly inspired by any recent calamity or atrocity in the East... And although the Holy City of Jerusalem, the expedition's ultimate goal, was indeed in Muslim hands, it had been so for more than 400 years - hardly a fresh wound... The reality was that, when Pope Urban proclaimed the First Crusade at Clermont, Islam and Christendom had coexisted for centuries in relative equanimity. There may at times have been little love lost between Christian and Muslim neighbours, but there was, in truth, little to distinguish this enmity from the endemic political and military struggles of the age." (pp 16-17)
"At the end of the eleventh century, Christendom was in one sense encircled by Islam, with Muslim forces ranged against it to the east along Byzantium's Asian frontier and to the south in the Iberian peninsula. But Europe was a long way from being engaged in an urgent, titanic struggle for survival. No coherent, pan-Mediterranean onslaught threatened, because, although the Moors of Iberia and the Turks of Asia Minor shared a religious heritage, they were never united in one purpose. Where Christians and Muslims did face each other across the centuries, their relationship had been unremarkable, characterised, like that between any potential rivals, by periods of conflict and others of coexistence. There is little or no evidence that either side harboured any innate, empowering religious or racial hatred of the other.
"Most significantly, throughout this period indigenous Christians actually living under Islamic law, be it in Iberia or the Holy Land, were generally treated with remarkable clemency. The Muslim faith acknowledged and respected Judaism and Christianity, creeds with which it enjoyed a common devotional tradition and a mutual reliance upon authoritative scripture. Christian subjects may not have been able to share power with their Muslim masters, but they were given freedom to worship. All around the Mediterranean basin, Christian faith and society survived and even thrived under the watchful but tolerant eye of Islam. Eastern Christendom may have been subjected to Islamic rule, bit it was not on the brink of annihilation, nor prey to any form of systematic abuse." (p 18)
"The problem addressed by the First Crusade - Muslim occupation of Jerusalem and the potential threat of Islamic aggression in the East - had loomed for decades, even centuries, provoking little or no reaction in Rome. Urban II's decision to take up this cause at Clermont was, therefore, primarily proactive rather than reactive, and the crusade was designed, first and foremost, to meet the needs of the papacy. Launched as it was just as Urban began to stabilise his power-base in central Italy, the campaign must be seen as an attempt to consolidate papal empowerment and expand Rome's sphere of influence." (p 19)
"A central feature of Urban's doctrine was the denigration and dehumanisation of Islam. He set out from the start to launch a holy war against what he called 'the savagery of the Saracens', a 'barbarian' people capable of incomprehensible levels of cruelty and brutality. Their supposed crimes were enacted upon two groups. Eastern Christians, in particular the Byzantines, had been 'overrun right up to the Mediterranean Sea'. Urban described how the Muslims 'occupying more and more of the land on the borders of [Byzantium], were slaughtering and capturing many, destroying churches and laying waste to the kingdom of God. So, if you leave them alone much longer they will further grind under their heels the faithful of God. The pope also maintained that Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were being subjected to horrific abuse and exploitation... The accusations had little or no basis in fact, but they did serve Urban's purpose. By expounding upon the alleged crimes of Islam, he sought to ignite an explosion of vengeful passion among his Latin audience, while his attempts to degrade Muslims as 'sub-human' opened the floodgates of extreme, brutal reciprocity. " (pp 33-34)
Getting the history right matters, because if it's left in the hands of Monk, Murray, Fallaci and other xenophobes to distort and mangle, their distortions may well influence the likes of the Christchurch terrorist Brenton Tarrant - with deadly effect.
Friday, March 8, 2019
Zionist Propaganda Fatigue
Yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald excelled itself, devoting half a page to Zionist propaganda.
"Spacecraft snaps epic selfie," reads the headline.
That was followed by this nauseous Zionist trumpeting:
"Organisers of a privately funded Israeli space mission released a striking photo on Tuesday, London time. It shows the spacecraft Beresheet, Hebrew for Genesis, orbiting some 37,500 kilometres away, with the entire Earth (including Australia) visible. A plaque includes the Hebrew inscription 'The People Of Israel Live'. It's scheduled to land on the moon on April 11."
And the "epic selfie" of the headline turns out to be a sticker (?), partly obscuring a distant planet Earth. It contains an Israeli flag and the words SMALL COUNTRY, BIG DREAMS - yes, in bold upper case letters.
Meanwhile, in yesterday's Australian, we find the screaming headline Israelis shoot Palestinians dead after car-ram attack.
When you read the report, however, the "car-ram attack" begins to look more like a road accident.
What appears to have happened is this:
1) Israeli troops were leaving a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank after a routine terrorising of its inhabitants.
2) Their vehicle broke down near a bend in the road.
3) Three young Palestinian men in a small car, travelling in the opposite direction, rounded the bend and accidentally collided with the stationary Israeli vehicle, injuring 2 soldiers in the process.
4) Trigger-happy troops opened fire, killing two of the Palestinians and wounding a third.
5) The wounded survivor was forced to confess that he and his friends had intended to ram the troops and also that they had been driving around, "hurling firebombs."
6) Conveniently, the troops allegedly "found additional firebombs" in the Palestinians' car.
In short, the Israeli troops murdered two Palestinian civilians, spun their crime as a response to a terrorist attack, tortured a wounded Palestinian to extract a confession, and planted 'evidence' at the scene of the crime.
Mahmoud Habbash, "a Palestinian supreme [court] judge and adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas," quoted in the AFP report, makes the bleeding obvious point: "It is inconceivable that three young men carry out an operation to run over the occupation soldiers in a car. One driver would be enough."
As it happens, we've seen this scenario before - in the Israeli film Foxtrot (2018), where troops manning a checkpoint shoot up a Palestinian car, killing those inside, and bury the vehicle with the bodies still inside as a cover-up.
Electronic Intifada's Maureen Clare Murphy provides the following context in her report of the incident:
"The Israeli newspaper Haaretz also noted: 'Veteran security figures who have been keeping watch on the West Bank for years can't recall a case of using a car to deliberately ram into people when there was more than one person inside the vehicle.' The paper added: 'Car ramming attacks generally involve one person, who may have acted on momentary impulse.' Israeli forces have opened fire on Palestinian vehicles in which more than one person was traveling in what Israel said were alleged attacks over the past few years, killing a brother in a car with his sister and a teenager travelling with his fiancee. Last year, Israeli forces and armed civilians killed 15 Palestinian assailants or alleged assailants in the West Bank." (Two Palestinians killed in alleged attack, 4/3/19)
But those details would be a bridge too far for Murdoch's Australian.
"Spacecraft snaps epic selfie," reads the headline.
That was followed by this nauseous Zionist trumpeting:
"Organisers of a privately funded Israeli space mission released a striking photo on Tuesday, London time. It shows the spacecraft Beresheet, Hebrew for Genesis, orbiting some 37,500 kilometres away, with the entire Earth (including Australia) visible. A plaque includes the Hebrew inscription 'The People Of Israel Live'. It's scheduled to land on the moon on April 11."
And the "epic selfie" of the headline turns out to be a sticker (?), partly obscuring a distant planet Earth. It contains an Israeli flag and the words SMALL COUNTRY, BIG DREAMS - yes, in bold upper case letters.
Meanwhile, in yesterday's Australian, we find the screaming headline Israelis shoot Palestinians dead after car-ram attack.
When you read the report, however, the "car-ram attack" begins to look more like a road accident.
What appears to have happened is this:
1) Israeli troops were leaving a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank after a routine terrorising of its inhabitants.
2) Their vehicle broke down near a bend in the road.
3) Three young Palestinian men in a small car, travelling in the opposite direction, rounded the bend and accidentally collided with the stationary Israeli vehicle, injuring 2 soldiers in the process.
4) Trigger-happy troops opened fire, killing two of the Palestinians and wounding a third.
5) The wounded survivor was forced to confess that he and his friends had intended to ram the troops and also that they had been driving around, "hurling firebombs."
6) Conveniently, the troops allegedly "found additional firebombs" in the Palestinians' car.
In short, the Israeli troops murdered two Palestinian civilians, spun their crime as a response to a terrorist attack, tortured a wounded Palestinian to extract a confession, and planted 'evidence' at the scene of the crime.
Mahmoud Habbash, "a Palestinian supreme [court] judge and adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas," quoted in the AFP report, makes the bleeding obvious point: "It is inconceivable that three young men carry out an operation to run over the occupation soldiers in a car. One driver would be enough."
As it happens, we've seen this scenario before - in the Israeli film Foxtrot (2018), where troops manning a checkpoint shoot up a Palestinian car, killing those inside, and bury the vehicle with the bodies still inside as a cover-up.
Electronic Intifada's Maureen Clare Murphy provides the following context in her report of the incident:
"The Israeli newspaper Haaretz also noted: 'Veteran security figures who have been keeping watch on the West Bank for years can't recall a case of using a car to deliberately ram into people when there was more than one person inside the vehicle.' The paper added: 'Car ramming attacks generally involve one person, who may have acted on momentary impulse.' Israeli forces have opened fire on Palestinian vehicles in which more than one person was traveling in what Israel said were alleged attacks over the past few years, killing a brother in a car with his sister and a teenager travelling with his fiancee. Last year, Israeli forces and armed civilians killed 15 Palestinian assailants or alleged assailants in the West Bank." (Two Palestinians killed in alleged attack, 4/3/19)
But those details would be a bridge too far for Murdoch's Australian.
Monday, March 4, 2019
The Guardian: Buyer Beware
This being the internet age, I suspect that many consumers of international news are now resorting to the Guardian, whether the UK original, or the Australian spin-off.
'Buyer beware' is my advice. On Palestine/Israel, you invariably get softcore Zionism, and on Syria, crap like this:
"The hope must be that criminal justice will one day close in on Syria's murderous dictator Bashar al-Assad, his henchmen and enablers... It may take time... but criminal investigators will eventually work their way up the chain of responsibility to incriminate Syria's tyrant for the slaughter of his own people for almost eight straight years... The Khmer Rouge trials in Cambodia were held two decades after the genocides. Pinochet was arrested eight years after his dictatorship ended in Chile. Slobodan Milosevic dies in jail, not in a palace." (Assad can still be brought to justice - and Europe's role is crucial, Natalie Nougayrede, 1/3/19)
The good news is that a scan of the comment thread which follows Nougayrede's purple prose reveals that the overwhelming bulk of readers just aren't buying her regime change line.
As one astute reader wrote scathingly, "I am utterly amazed that the comments were ever opened for this article. In fact, there are hardly any Guardian articles open for comment these days. Sometimes I think I might as well be reading Hello magazine."
Exactly why he was amazed becomes clear from his/her second comment: "Natalie Nougayrede - I've never read an article so out of touch with reality. The US, UK, and one or two others, were responsible for fomenting this war; and it never was a civil war. The people who belong in the dock in the Hague are the leaders of these countries. And, as has been known for a long time, Assad did not use chemical weapons against his own people or anyone else. Assad, the Russians, and the Iranians deserve credit for preventing the destruction of yet another Middle Eastern country by Western forces and their proxy terrorist groups which, as always, when it suits them, ignore or flout international law. Iraq was an eye-opener for me. The lies and complicity of our Western mainstream media and its journalists are utterly deplorable, and this article and its like deserve the utmost condemnation."
That comment, by the way, had garnered 42 likes last time I looked.
'Buyer beware' is my advice. On Palestine/Israel, you invariably get softcore Zionism, and on Syria, crap like this:
"The hope must be that criminal justice will one day close in on Syria's murderous dictator Bashar al-Assad, his henchmen and enablers... It may take time... but criminal investigators will eventually work their way up the chain of responsibility to incriminate Syria's tyrant for the slaughter of his own people for almost eight straight years... The Khmer Rouge trials in Cambodia were held two decades after the genocides. Pinochet was arrested eight years after his dictatorship ended in Chile. Slobodan Milosevic dies in jail, not in a palace." (Assad can still be brought to justice - and Europe's role is crucial, Natalie Nougayrede, 1/3/19)
The good news is that a scan of the comment thread which follows Nougayrede's purple prose reveals that the overwhelming bulk of readers just aren't buying her regime change line.
As one astute reader wrote scathingly, "I am utterly amazed that the comments were ever opened for this article. In fact, there are hardly any Guardian articles open for comment these days. Sometimes I think I might as well be reading Hello magazine."
Exactly why he was amazed becomes clear from his/her second comment: "Natalie Nougayrede - I've never read an article so out of touch with reality. The US, UK, and one or two others, were responsible for fomenting this war; and it never was a civil war. The people who belong in the dock in the Hague are the leaders of these countries. And, as has been known for a long time, Assad did not use chemical weapons against his own people or anyone else. Assad, the Russians, and the Iranians deserve credit for preventing the destruction of yet another Middle Eastern country by Western forces and their proxy terrorist groups which, as always, when it suits them, ignore or flout international law. Iraq was an eye-opener for me. The lies and complicity of our Western mainstream media and its journalists are utterly deplorable, and this article and its like deserve the utmost condemnation."
That comment, by the way, had garnered 42 likes last time I looked.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Brace Yourselves
Marie Colvin, the Sunday Times journalist who died in 2012 in the Syrian city of Homs, has lately been the subject of media attention, focusing on a US court case in which her sister was awarded over $300m on the grounds that Colvin was "specifically targeted because of her profession, for the purpose of silencing those reporting on the growing opposition movement in the country." Presumably, this enormous sum is to be paid out of frozen Syrian government funds.
The verdict can legitimately be viewed as a case of lawfare, waged in the context of the US regime change war on Syria. The official narrative, of course, is that Syria is essentially an Arab Spring affair, in which an evil dictator wages brutal war against a people struggling for freedom and democracy, and indications are that we are about to be exposed to an overdose of the official narrative, either wittingly or unwittingly, in the form of a veritable flood of Colvin-related material. These include a biography by Lindsey Hilsum, In Extremis: the Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin, a documentary (Under the Wire) and a feature film (A Private War).
Hilsum, for example, has written (in the Guardian of course) that the verdict "should be celebrated by all who care about freedom of speech. At a time when journalists are frequently vilified and threatened, it acknowledges the significant role we play in exposing war crimes and injustice." (Marie Colvin verdict gives meaning to her death, 3/2/19)
But what of the greatest war crime of all, the plotting and execution of wars of imperial regime change?
In light of the above, US journalist Rick Sterling's expose, Marie Colvin, Homs & media falsehoods (off-guardian.org, 29/1/19), which accuses Colvin of distorting the truth in her Syrian coverage, should be required reading for anyone concerned with separating fact from fiction in the matter of Syria.
But to return to the theme of lawfare, check out this most interesting comment on the Colvin court case from the comment thread which follows Sterling's piece:
"If you have your sights set on becoming a multi-millionaire in America, then suing a country that engages in 'an extra-judicial killing' seems the way to go (though I'm guessing if the country you decide to sue is a member of NATO and/or isn't targeted for US-style regime change then you may have a harder time getting the verdict of your choice rubber-stamped.)
"What makes this brand new, US-created law even easier to rule in your favour is the fact that no actual evidence is required, or to put it another way, it's the quantity of so-called 'evidence' and not the quality. At least that's the case according to the presiding judge, Amy Berman-Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia who ruled that because the defence had gathered nearly a thousand pages of attached exhibits, declarations and 'expert reports', then an actual evidentiary hearing was unnecessary. That's right, the sheer volume of so-called 'evidence' literally outweighed any of its veracity, validity and objectivity.
"To make matters worse (if that is at all possible in a realm beyond satire and farce) it seems the bulk of this 'evidence' wasn't gathered and presented by any state and/or UN agency but by a dubious quasi-legal NGO with the grand-sounding (is there any other kind?) title of the 'Commission for International Justice & Accountability'.
"I should add that, in addition to the CIJA, the court relied on a Syrian defector, codenamed 'Ulysses' (it seems the entire official narrative is a made-for-Hollywood script and it seems no coincidence that this $300m plus court ruling is announced along with a supporting documentary and big screen Hollywood movie) who tells us that 'senior regime officials' celebrated after confirmation of her death, with one officer declaring (no doubt in a low growl): 'Marie Colvin was a dog and now she's dead. Let the Americans help her now.' Oh, and he helpfully tells us the Syrian intelligence officer responsible for targeting Marie 'Matrix' Colvin through the non-existent satellite phone and non-existent informer on the ground was rewarded with a brand new Hyundai car (no doubt painted sinister black or deep blood-red).
"Finally, how judge Jackson, who tells us Marie Colvin 'was specifically targeted because of her profession, for the purpose of silencing those reporting on the growing opposition movement in the country,' came up with the figure of $300m plus to be stolen from any Syrian state assets or accounts that happen to be in unfriendly foreign hands and given to her surviving family is a total mystery. Surely it cannot be for her projected earnings as a Sunday Times hack? (and let's face it, judging from her Homs reportage which is part 'colour revolution lite' and part Mills and Boon, she was hardly going to go on and win any literary Pulitzer prizes." (Paul Harvey, 3/2/19)
The verdict can legitimately be viewed as a case of lawfare, waged in the context of the US regime change war on Syria. The official narrative, of course, is that Syria is essentially an Arab Spring affair, in which an evil dictator wages brutal war against a people struggling for freedom and democracy, and indications are that we are about to be exposed to an overdose of the official narrative, either wittingly or unwittingly, in the form of a veritable flood of Colvin-related material. These include a biography by Lindsey Hilsum, In Extremis: the Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin, a documentary (Under the Wire) and a feature film (A Private War).
Hilsum, for example, has written (in the Guardian of course) that the verdict "should be celebrated by all who care about freedom of speech. At a time when journalists are frequently vilified and threatened, it acknowledges the significant role we play in exposing war crimes and injustice." (Marie Colvin verdict gives meaning to her death, 3/2/19)
But what of the greatest war crime of all, the plotting and execution of wars of imperial regime change?
In light of the above, US journalist Rick Sterling's expose, Marie Colvin, Homs & media falsehoods (off-guardian.org, 29/1/19), which accuses Colvin of distorting the truth in her Syrian coverage, should be required reading for anyone concerned with separating fact from fiction in the matter of Syria.
But to return to the theme of lawfare, check out this most interesting comment on the Colvin court case from the comment thread which follows Sterling's piece:
"If you have your sights set on becoming a multi-millionaire in America, then suing a country that engages in 'an extra-judicial killing' seems the way to go (though I'm guessing if the country you decide to sue is a member of NATO and/or isn't targeted for US-style regime change then you may have a harder time getting the verdict of your choice rubber-stamped.)
"What makes this brand new, US-created law even easier to rule in your favour is the fact that no actual evidence is required, or to put it another way, it's the quantity of so-called 'evidence' and not the quality. At least that's the case according to the presiding judge, Amy Berman-Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia who ruled that because the defence had gathered nearly a thousand pages of attached exhibits, declarations and 'expert reports', then an actual evidentiary hearing was unnecessary. That's right, the sheer volume of so-called 'evidence' literally outweighed any of its veracity, validity and objectivity.
"To make matters worse (if that is at all possible in a realm beyond satire and farce) it seems the bulk of this 'evidence' wasn't gathered and presented by any state and/or UN agency but by a dubious quasi-legal NGO with the grand-sounding (is there any other kind?) title of the 'Commission for International Justice & Accountability'.
"I should add that, in addition to the CIJA, the court relied on a Syrian defector, codenamed 'Ulysses' (it seems the entire official narrative is a made-for-Hollywood script and it seems no coincidence that this $300m plus court ruling is announced along with a supporting documentary and big screen Hollywood movie) who tells us that 'senior regime officials' celebrated after confirmation of her death, with one officer declaring (no doubt in a low growl): 'Marie Colvin was a dog and now she's dead. Let the Americans help her now.' Oh, and he helpfully tells us the Syrian intelligence officer responsible for targeting Marie 'Matrix' Colvin through the non-existent satellite phone and non-existent informer on the ground was rewarded with a brand new Hyundai car (no doubt painted sinister black or deep blood-red).
"Finally, how judge Jackson, who tells us Marie Colvin 'was specifically targeted because of her profession, for the purpose of silencing those reporting on the growing opposition movement in the country,' came up with the figure of $300m plus to be stolen from any Syrian state assets or accounts that happen to be in unfriendly foreign hands and given to her surviving family is a total mystery. Surely it cannot be for her projected earnings as a Sunday Times hack? (and let's face it, judging from her Homs reportage which is part 'colour revolution lite' and part Mills and Boon, she was hardly going to go on and win any literary Pulitzer prizes." (Paul Harvey, 3/2/19)
Friday, January 11, 2019
Zionist Hypocrisy Alert
As rich as Zionist pontification and bombast is in chutzpah, hypocrisy and insufferable arrogance, I dare anyone to top this example:
"The Australian Labor Party recently passed a motion at the national conference that 'calls on the next Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state'... the motion provides much-coveted Western legitimacy for the Palestinian Authority, a non-state entity whose value system is at odds with that of Australia and indeed the entire liberal democratic world. As the international community marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the PA's state-in-waiting is a brazen violator of the declaration's most basic principles yet is being pre-emptively endorsed by Labor." (Palestine policy is a real killer, Danny Eisen & Sheryl Saperia*, The Australian, 8/1/19)
So, a Canadian and an American Zionist team up to condemn the policy of an Australian political party on behalf of a terrorist entity, currently in occupation of the ancestral homeland of the Palestinian people.
Now, if you think that's rich, there's more. There always is with these bullshitters.
For a Zionist to speak of an "entity whose value system is at odds with Australia," is to raise the obvious question as to whether the practises of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, occupation, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, which define the Zionist entity in Palestine, and which have been perpetrated by it on a daily basis ever since its misconception 70 years ago, are compatible with contemporary "Australian values."
What other mob would have the hide to assert an equivalence between an apartheid state and a liberal democracy?
But the piece de resistance, the very pinnacle of Zionist chutzpah, hypocrisy and arrogance must surely be the propagandists' accusation that the Palestinian Authority is a "brazen violator of the UDHR's most basic principles." Truly, is there anything more nauseating than a Zionist orating on the subject of human rights?
One of those "basic principles" can be found in the UDHR's Article 13: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Ever since Zionist terror gangs ethnically cleansed most of Palestine in 1948, their upstart entity has rejected the inalienable right of Palestinian refugees - enshrined in Article 13 - to return to their homeland. And this, solely in the interests of maintaining a Jews-only state so that the likes of Eisen and Saperia can go and live there - if they wish.
Need more be said?
[*Danny Eisen is co-founder of the Canadian Coalition Against terror. Sheryl Saperia is a director of policy at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.]
"The Australian Labor Party recently passed a motion at the national conference that 'calls on the next Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state'... the motion provides much-coveted Western legitimacy for the Palestinian Authority, a non-state entity whose value system is at odds with that of Australia and indeed the entire liberal democratic world. As the international community marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the PA's state-in-waiting is a brazen violator of the declaration's most basic principles yet is being pre-emptively endorsed by Labor." (Palestine policy is a real killer, Danny Eisen & Sheryl Saperia*, The Australian, 8/1/19)
So, a Canadian and an American Zionist team up to condemn the policy of an Australian political party on behalf of a terrorist entity, currently in occupation of the ancestral homeland of the Palestinian people.
Now, if you think that's rich, there's more. There always is with these bullshitters.
For a Zionist to speak of an "entity whose value system is at odds with Australia," is to raise the obvious question as to whether the practises of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, occupation, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, which define the Zionist entity in Palestine, and which have been perpetrated by it on a daily basis ever since its misconception 70 years ago, are compatible with contemporary "Australian values."
What other mob would have the hide to assert an equivalence between an apartheid state and a liberal democracy?
But the piece de resistance, the very pinnacle of Zionist chutzpah, hypocrisy and arrogance must surely be the propagandists' accusation that the Palestinian Authority is a "brazen violator of the UDHR's most basic principles." Truly, is there anything more nauseating than a Zionist orating on the subject of human rights?
One of those "basic principles" can be found in the UDHR's Article 13: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Ever since Zionist terror gangs ethnically cleansed most of Palestine in 1948, their upstart entity has rejected the inalienable right of Palestinian refugees - enshrined in Article 13 - to return to their homeland. And this, solely in the interests of maintaining a Jews-only state so that the likes of Eisen and Saperia can go and live there - if they wish.
Need more be said?
[*Danny Eisen is co-founder of the Canadian Coalition Against terror. Sheryl Saperia is a director of policy at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.]
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Antidotes to the Official Story on Syria
What unmitigated crap this is from The Economist's latest editorial:
"With [Russia's] help, the heinous dictator Assad has won Syria's civil war after nearly eight blood-soaked years... Rather than stitching Syria back together, Russia has let Assad continue to tear it apart. It has helped him bomb his opponents into submission and given cover for his use of poison gas... He has pushed bitter Sunnis into the arms of extremists. Inequality, corruption and divisive rule originally fuelled the rebellion and nurtured the jihadist insurgency... " (After saving Assad's regime, Putin must take hold of the peace, The Economist/ The Australian, 5/1/19)
In one form or another, it has been relentlessly peddled by one msm outlet or another as the official line on the war in Syria - in reality, a war against Syria.
You can see some of its elements above: the demonisation of Asad as a Middle Eastern tyrant out of central casting, masking, of course, his popularity among Syrians generally; the deliberate framing of the conflict as a civil war, to disguise the bleeding obvious fact that it was really just another attempt - after Iraq and Libya - by the US and its client states at regime change; and the perverse portrayal of Asad as a wrecker, rather than as a defender of his country's independence and sovereignty etc etc.
It's more than time for an antidote to the official story's false narrative. I take this opportunity, therefore, to commend either (or both) Tim Anderson's The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change & Resistance (2016) or Stephen Gowans' Washington's Long War on Syria (2017). Since I'm reading the latter at the moment, here's an extract, countering the alleged sectarian nature of the Asad government, another favourite anti-Syrian government propaganda trope:
"The myth that the Assad governments, both those of Hafez and Bashar, were sectarian, persisted for decades, and the myth's longevity was due in no small part to its political utility to Washington and its Sunni Islamist allies. The myth was insinuated into the journalism of North America and Western Europe where it was often used to frame the US war on Bashar al-Assad's Syria as a sectarian civil conflict pursued by a state captured by an Alawite minority to advance its sectarian interests at the expense of the Sunni majority. Accordingly, the Syrian government was often described in the Western press as 'Alawite-led' while the armed opposition was just as often referred to as 'largely Sunni.' This ignored the reality that both the Syrian Arab Army, and Assad's cabinet, were also largely Sunni, and that this was a political (rather than sectarian) conflict between secular Arab nationalists on the one hand, and jihadists (backed by the US and its allies) on the other. But propagation of the myth of sectarian warfare comported with the predilection of Western discourse for Orientalist depictions of the Global South as a territory riven by ancient inter-communal animosities, which necessitated the intervention of the United States - the self-proclaimed force for good in the world - to establish order. It was useful for US strategists to propagate this understanding for a few reasons.
"First, it undergirded the imperialist strategy of divide and rule. Ideological agendas conveyed in Western media reached not only Western audiences, but audiences beyond the West, including in Syria. If the Syrian Sunni majority could be led to understand the Assad government as an instrument of the Alawite community, all the better for the US foreign policy goal of extirpating Arab nationalism from the Syrian state.
"Second, the myth of the Assad government as an Alawite instrument of oppression concealed the central role that secular Arab nationalism played in the Middle East and in the politics of the Assad government. This obfuscated the true dimensions of the conflict. If there were any references in Western media to the Assad government's commitment to the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party's values of freedom from foreign domination, state direction, planning and control of the economy, and working toward the unity of the Arab nation, I'm not aware of them. Acknowledging the ideological framework within which the Syrian government operated, rather than presenting Syrian leaders as motivated by a lust for power to advance a sectarian agenda on behalf of the Alawite minority, would have presented Syria's Arab nationalists as rational actors pursuing what many may have considered defensible, if not praiseworthy goals. However, to serve US foreign policy objectives, US strategists favoured the portrayal of Assad as a power hungry Alawite despot, covering up the Arab nationalist themes that genuinely pervaded his politics.
"Third, the false depiction of the Assad government as animated by a sectarian rather than a secular Arab nationalist agenda encouraged an understanding that US leadership, which is to say, Western interference in Syrian politics, was necessary and desirable for the supposed lofty humanitarian reason of bringing about peace in a country troubled by the oppression of a religious majority by a religious minority.
"In short, the myth of Alawite oppression of the Sunni majority both encouraged the phenomenon of inter-communal strife, and then used it to justify a US-led program of regime change to overcome it." (pp 31-2)
"With [Russia's] help, the heinous dictator Assad has won Syria's civil war after nearly eight blood-soaked years... Rather than stitching Syria back together, Russia has let Assad continue to tear it apart. It has helped him bomb his opponents into submission and given cover for his use of poison gas... He has pushed bitter Sunnis into the arms of extremists. Inequality, corruption and divisive rule originally fuelled the rebellion and nurtured the jihadist insurgency... " (After saving Assad's regime, Putin must take hold of the peace, The Economist/ The Australian, 5/1/19)
In one form or another, it has been relentlessly peddled by one msm outlet or another as the official line on the war in Syria - in reality, a war against Syria.
You can see some of its elements above: the demonisation of Asad as a Middle Eastern tyrant out of central casting, masking, of course, his popularity among Syrians generally; the deliberate framing of the conflict as a civil war, to disguise the bleeding obvious fact that it was really just another attempt - after Iraq and Libya - by the US and its client states at regime change; and the perverse portrayal of Asad as a wrecker, rather than as a defender of his country's independence and sovereignty etc etc.
It's more than time for an antidote to the official story's false narrative. I take this opportunity, therefore, to commend either (or both) Tim Anderson's The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change & Resistance (2016) or Stephen Gowans' Washington's Long War on Syria (2017). Since I'm reading the latter at the moment, here's an extract, countering the alleged sectarian nature of the Asad government, another favourite anti-Syrian government propaganda trope:
"The myth that the Assad governments, both those of Hafez and Bashar, were sectarian, persisted for decades, and the myth's longevity was due in no small part to its political utility to Washington and its Sunni Islamist allies. The myth was insinuated into the journalism of North America and Western Europe where it was often used to frame the US war on Bashar al-Assad's Syria as a sectarian civil conflict pursued by a state captured by an Alawite minority to advance its sectarian interests at the expense of the Sunni majority. Accordingly, the Syrian government was often described in the Western press as 'Alawite-led' while the armed opposition was just as often referred to as 'largely Sunni.' This ignored the reality that both the Syrian Arab Army, and Assad's cabinet, were also largely Sunni, and that this was a political (rather than sectarian) conflict between secular Arab nationalists on the one hand, and jihadists (backed by the US and its allies) on the other. But propagation of the myth of sectarian warfare comported with the predilection of Western discourse for Orientalist depictions of the Global South as a territory riven by ancient inter-communal animosities, which necessitated the intervention of the United States - the self-proclaimed force for good in the world - to establish order. It was useful for US strategists to propagate this understanding for a few reasons.
"First, it undergirded the imperialist strategy of divide and rule. Ideological agendas conveyed in Western media reached not only Western audiences, but audiences beyond the West, including in Syria. If the Syrian Sunni majority could be led to understand the Assad government as an instrument of the Alawite community, all the better for the US foreign policy goal of extirpating Arab nationalism from the Syrian state.
"Second, the myth of the Assad government as an Alawite instrument of oppression concealed the central role that secular Arab nationalism played in the Middle East and in the politics of the Assad government. This obfuscated the true dimensions of the conflict. If there were any references in Western media to the Assad government's commitment to the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party's values of freedom from foreign domination, state direction, planning and control of the economy, and working toward the unity of the Arab nation, I'm not aware of them. Acknowledging the ideological framework within which the Syrian government operated, rather than presenting Syrian leaders as motivated by a lust for power to advance a sectarian agenda on behalf of the Alawite minority, would have presented Syria's Arab nationalists as rational actors pursuing what many may have considered defensible, if not praiseworthy goals. However, to serve US foreign policy objectives, US strategists favoured the portrayal of Assad as a power hungry Alawite despot, covering up the Arab nationalist themes that genuinely pervaded his politics.
"Third, the false depiction of the Assad government as animated by a sectarian rather than a secular Arab nationalist agenda encouraged an understanding that US leadership, which is to say, Western interference in Syrian politics, was necessary and desirable for the supposed lofty humanitarian reason of bringing about peace in a country troubled by the oppression of a religious majority by a religious minority.
"In short, the myth of Alawite oppression of the Sunni majority both encouraged the phenomenon of inter-communal strife, and then used it to justify a US-led program of regime change to overcome it." (pp 31-2)
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Going for the Soft Underbelly
Cor blimey, if this Mordechai Kedar chap isn't the love-child of Oded Yinon, then my name isn't Sir Mark Sykes:
"We may see reports of the frictions only occasionally, but Iran is always a nation on the verge of fragmenting - and right now things are particularly fragile. The social makeup of Iran's population is complex because there is no such thing as an Iranian people or Iranian nation. There are, instead, Iranian citizens divided into many ethnic groups [...] There is a deep hatred of the ayatollahs simmering inside large sectors of Iranian society, a hatred that burst into the streets in a series of large demonstrations last November... The cry 'death to the dictator' was shouted by many, including many women who stood on podiums in front of the public, removed their head coverings and hung them on sticks to show their mockery for the Islamic law they are forced to observe... This is the soft underbelly to which anyone concerned about Iran must pay heed. It is the target at which arrows must be aimed, straight at those ethnic groups fighting for independence and the restless youngsters fighting for liberty. The civilised world can and should find those anti-ayatollah forces, support them and empower them to bring Iran to the same end that met the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia by creating homogenous ethnic states on the ruins of the artificial state of Iran." (Iran is hardly a nation and will likely fall apart, Mordechai Kedar, The Australian, 17/7/18)
And note how Trump, in his own deranged way, seems to be reading from the same script:
"Later, Mr Trump said Russia's position on Iran was because of trading benefits between Moscow and Tehran. 'It is not good for us or for the world, but they have riots in all their cities,' Mr Trump told Fox News of Iran's situation. 'The inflation is rampant, going through the roof. And not that you want to hurt anybody, but that regime wouldn't let the people know that we are behind them 100 per cent'." (Backing for Bibi unlikely unifier, Jacquelin Magnay, The Australian, 18/7/18)
"We may see reports of the frictions only occasionally, but Iran is always a nation on the verge of fragmenting - and right now things are particularly fragile. The social makeup of Iran's population is complex because there is no such thing as an Iranian people or Iranian nation. There are, instead, Iranian citizens divided into many ethnic groups [...] There is a deep hatred of the ayatollahs simmering inside large sectors of Iranian society, a hatred that burst into the streets in a series of large demonstrations last November... The cry 'death to the dictator' was shouted by many, including many women who stood on podiums in front of the public, removed their head coverings and hung them on sticks to show their mockery for the Islamic law they are forced to observe... This is the soft underbelly to which anyone concerned about Iran must pay heed. It is the target at which arrows must be aimed, straight at those ethnic groups fighting for independence and the restless youngsters fighting for liberty. The civilised world can and should find those anti-ayatollah forces, support them and empower them to bring Iran to the same end that met the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia by creating homogenous ethnic states on the ruins of the artificial state of Iran." (Iran is hardly a nation and will likely fall apart, Mordechai Kedar, The Australian, 17/7/18)
And note how Trump, in his own deranged way, seems to be reading from the same script:
"Later, Mr Trump said Russia's position on Iran was because of trading benefits between Moscow and Tehran. 'It is not good for us or for the world, but they have riots in all their cities,' Mr Trump told Fox News of Iran's situation. 'The inflation is rampant, going through the roof. And not that you want to hurt anybody, but that regime wouldn't let the people know that we are behind them 100 per cent'." (Backing for Bibi unlikely unifier, Jacquelin Magnay, The Australian, 18/7/18)
Saturday, July 14, 2018
What Modern War Propaganda Looks Like
War propaganda alert from Caitlin Johnstone: This is what modern war propaganda looks like (medium.com, 5/7/18)
"I've been noticing videos going viral the last few days, some with millions of views, about Muslim women bravely fighting to free themselves from oppression in the Middle East. The videos, curiously, are being shared enthusiastically by many Republicans and pro-Israel hawks, who aren't traditionally the sort of crowd you see rallying to support the civil rights of Muslims.
"Well, you may want to sit down for this shocker, but it turns out that they happen to be women from a nation that the US war machine is currently escalating operations against. They are Iranian.
"Whenever you see the sudden emergence of an attractive media campaign that is sympathetic to the plight of civilians in a resource-rich nation unaligned with the western empire, you are seeing propaganda. When that nation is surrounded by other nations with similar human rights transgressions and yet those transgressions are ignored by that same media campaign, you are most certainly seeing propaganda. When that nation just so happens to already be the target of starvation sanctions and escalated covert CIA ops, you can bet the farm that you are seeing propaganda.
"Back in December a memo was leaked from inside the Trump administration showing how then-Secretary of State, DC neophyte Rex Tillerson, was coached on how the US empire uses human rights as a pretense on which to attack and undermine noncompliant governments. Politico reports: The May 17 memo reads like a crash course for a businessman-turned-diplomat, and its conclusion offers a starkly realist vision: that the US should use human rights as a club against its adversaries, like Iran, China and North Korea, while giving a pass to repressive allies like the Philippines, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. 'Allies should be treated differently - and better - than adversaries. Otherwise, we end up with more adversaries, and fewer allies,' argued the memo, written by Tillerson's influential policy aide, Brian Hook.
"The propaganda machine doesn't operate any differently from the State Department, since they serve the same establishment. US ally Saudi Arabia is celebrated by the mass media for 'liberal reform' in allowing women to drive despite hard evidence that those 'reforms' are barely surface-level cosmetics to present a pretty face to the western world, but Iranian women, who have been able to drive for years, are painted as uniquely oppressed. Iran is condemned by establishment war whores for the flaws in its democratic process, while Saudi Arabia, an actual monarchy, goes completely unscrutinized. This is because the US-centralized power establishment, which has never at any point in its history cared about human rights, plans on effecting regime change in Iran by any means necessary. Should those means necessitate a potentially controversial degree of direct military engagement, the empire needs to make sure it retains control of the narrative.
"This is what war propaganda looks like in the era of social media. It will never look ugly. It will never directly show you its real intentions. If it did, it wouldn't work. It can't just come right out and say 'Hey we need to do horrible, evil things to the people in this country on the other side of the world in your name using your resources, please play along without making a fuss.' It will necessarily look fresh and fun and rebellious. It will look appealing. It will look sexy.
"And it's working. I am currently getting tagged in these videos multiple times a day by Trump supporters who are eager to show me proof that I'm on the wrong side of the Iran issue; the psyop is so well-lubricated with a combination of sleek presentation and confirmation bias that it slides right past their skepticism and becomes accepted as fact, even the one with the Now This pussyhat propaganda logo in the corner.
"Be less trusting of these monsters, please. The people of Afghanistan haven't benefited from the interminable military quagmire that has cost tens of thousands of their lives. The invaders of Iraq were never 'greeted as liberators' by an oppressed population. The humanitarian intervention in Libya left a humanitarian catastrophe in its wake far more horrific than anything it claimed to be trying to prevent. Saving the children of Syria with western interventionism has left half a million Syrians dead.
"If the Iranians do in fact wish to change their government, it should happen without crippling sanctions, collaboration with extremist terror cults, or the rapey tentacles of the CIA manipulating the situation. There has never been a US-led regime change in the Middle East that wasn't disastrous. People should be screaming at the US and its allies to cease these interventions, not applauding propaganda that is clearly being manufactured by that same empire."
"I've been noticing videos going viral the last few days, some with millions of views, about Muslim women bravely fighting to free themselves from oppression in the Middle East. The videos, curiously, are being shared enthusiastically by many Republicans and pro-Israel hawks, who aren't traditionally the sort of crowd you see rallying to support the civil rights of Muslims.
"Well, you may want to sit down for this shocker, but it turns out that they happen to be women from a nation that the US war machine is currently escalating operations against. They are Iranian.
"Whenever you see the sudden emergence of an attractive media campaign that is sympathetic to the plight of civilians in a resource-rich nation unaligned with the western empire, you are seeing propaganda. When that nation is surrounded by other nations with similar human rights transgressions and yet those transgressions are ignored by that same media campaign, you are most certainly seeing propaganda. When that nation just so happens to already be the target of starvation sanctions and escalated covert CIA ops, you can bet the farm that you are seeing propaganda.
"Back in December a memo was leaked from inside the Trump administration showing how then-Secretary of State, DC neophyte Rex Tillerson, was coached on how the US empire uses human rights as a pretense on which to attack and undermine noncompliant governments. Politico reports: The May 17 memo reads like a crash course for a businessman-turned-diplomat, and its conclusion offers a starkly realist vision: that the US should use human rights as a club against its adversaries, like Iran, China and North Korea, while giving a pass to repressive allies like the Philippines, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. 'Allies should be treated differently - and better - than adversaries. Otherwise, we end up with more adversaries, and fewer allies,' argued the memo, written by Tillerson's influential policy aide, Brian Hook.
"The propaganda machine doesn't operate any differently from the State Department, since they serve the same establishment. US ally Saudi Arabia is celebrated by the mass media for 'liberal reform' in allowing women to drive despite hard evidence that those 'reforms' are barely surface-level cosmetics to present a pretty face to the western world, but Iranian women, who have been able to drive for years, are painted as uniquely oppressed. Iran is condemned by establishment war whores for the flaws in its democratic process, while Saudi Arabia, an actual monarchy, goes completely unscrutinized. This is because the US-centralized power establishment, which has never at any point in its history cared about human rights, plans on effecting regime change in Iran by any means necessary. Should those means necessitate a potentially controversial degree of direct military engagement, the empire needs to make sure it retains control of the narrative.
"This is what war propaganda looks like in the era of social media. It will never look ugly. It will never directly show you its real intentions. If it did, it wouldn't work. It can't just come right out and say 'Hey we need to do horrible, evil things to the people in this country on the other side of the world in your name using your resources, please play along without making a fuss.' It will necessarily look fresh and fun and rebellious. It will look appealing. It will look sexy.
"And it's working. I am currently getting tagged in these videos multiple times a day by Trump supporters who are eager to show me proof that I'm on the wrong side of the Iran issue; the psyop is so well-lubricated with a combination of sleek presentation and confirmation bias that it slides right past their skepticism and becomes accepted as fact, even the one with the Now This pussyhat propaganda logo in the corner.
"Be less trusting of these monsters, please. The people of Afghanistan haven't benefited from the interminable military quagmire that has cost tens of thousands of their lives. The invaders of Iraq were never 'greeted as liberators' by an oppressed population. The humanitarian intervention in Libya left a humanitarian catastrophe in its wake far more horrific than anything it claimed to be trying to prevent. Saving the children of Syria with western interventionism has left half a million Syrians dead.
"If the Iranians do in fact wish to change their government, it should happen without crippling sanctions, collaboration with extremist terror cults, or the rapey tentacles of the CIA manipulating the situation. There has never been a US-led regime change in the Middle East that wasn't disastrous. People should be screaming at the US and its allies to cease these interventions, not applauding propaganda that is clearly being manufactured by that same empire."
Monday, July 9, 2018
Must Watch: The Occupation of the American Mind
Sut Jhally's film, The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in the United States, is an absolute must watch. Jhally is professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the director of other films on msm manipulation of the American mind. I received notice of his latest film with the following note attached. Having just viewed it, I fully concur - watch and share widely:
"Despite receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from those who have actually seen it, The Occupation of the American Mind has been repeatedly attacked and misrepresented by right-wing pressure groups and outright ignored by virtually all mainstream media outlets and North American film festivals. To bypass this campaign of misrepresentation and suppression, we've decided to make the film available for FREE online so that people can make up their own minds about its analysis of US media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Please watch and share widely!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmoYoiMgpWU
"Despite receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from those who have actually seen it, The Occupation of the American Mind has been repeatedly attacked and misrepresented by right-wing pressure groups and outright ignored by virtually all mainstream media outlets and North American film festivals. To bypass this campaign of misrepresentation and suppression, we've decided to make the film available for FREE online so that people can make up their own minds about its analysis of US media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Please watch and share widely!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmoYoiMgpWU
Monday, June 25, 2018
Foxtrot? Tommyrot! 2
When I responded to Paul Byrnes' Herald review of the Israeli film Foxtrot (see my 21/6/18 post Foxtrot? Tommyrot!), I was under the impression that the grief-stricken Israeli parents of Act 1 were those of an Israeli soldier killed in Act 2. This, it seems, is not the case, as yet another review of the same film in the same paper (why?) indicates (A bloody legacy, Stephanie Bunbury, 23/6/18).
The parents who wake to a knock on their door one morning, only to be told by military officials that their soldier son, Jonathan, has been killed, apparently represent every Israeli parent: "In Israel, actor Lior Ashkenazi says, everyone knows exactly what has happened; in a country with compulsory national service, that morning knock is like a code. This woman's child must be dead. 'In Israel, everybody knows somebody in this position... It surrounds you: the grief'."
To which I can only add - Bunbury doesn't, of course - if the occupying Israelis are enveloped in grief, it is simply beyond imagining what the occupied Palestinians, whose death toll is infinitely higher, are going through. But when was the last time you saw a commercial release featuring Palestinians in a sympathetic light (not to mention getting TWO reviews in the same media outlet)? In fact, what this 'morning knock' business is really all about is hyping a supposed threat to the occupier by the occupied, and casting the occupiers as victims.
Bunbury then says of Michael, the father, that he "fought his own war in Lebanon. Of course he did: there is always a war on. Everyone carries the same burden." It seems she's blissfully unaware that all of Israel's wars have SFA to do with self-defence, and everything to do with acquiring more territory. Such land-grabs, of course, are always hyped as existential threats, and the "burden" in murder and destruction is borne exclusively by Israel's Arab victims.
Moving on to the second act (which, you'll recall from Byrnes' review, is set at a checkpoint in the desert), we're told that it's set at a "checkpoint near the Lebanese border." Here the confusion grows. The soldiers manning the checkpoint are described as lifting "the barrier for a lone camel passing through." There is, of course, no desert anywhere near the Lebanese border, and certainly no camels either. So what gives?
What Byrnes' in his review calls "an accident" is clarified in Bunbury's: "One of their number panics and shoots an entire car of young Palestinians. The solution presents itself: bury the car, including the bodies, in the ever-present mud." Which only leads to further confusion. Who are these mysterious Palestinian youths (over whom, it seems, no tears are shed)? If the checkpoint is "near the Lebanese border," then it's got to be in the Galilee, and the "young Palestinians" would therefore be Israeli citizens. If, on the other hand, they're Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, then all I can say is they're a bloody long way from home.
More confusion arises from the Israeli response to the gunning down of the Palestinians. As anyone familiar with the modus operandi followed by Israeli troops when they murder Palestinians will know, the invariable practice is simply to blame the victims, stick doggedly to the concocted story, and be hailed as heroes by the vast majority of Israelis. Burying the evidence with the help of a bulldozer that just happens to be nearby? I don't think so.
But Maoz, the film's director has an explanation. Bunbury quotes him as saying, "You don't have to be a genius to understand that there is not such a specific roadblock, not such a specific reality."
And you don't have to be a genius to understand that Maoz, quoted elsewhere in the review referring to Israel "a pathetic and anxious society with the distorted perception that comes out of a terrible past trauma," is playing the Holocaust card, a move designed to get Israel off the hook for its crimes against the Palestinians.
I'll let the Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy have the final say on this phony film:
"The film unit of the Israel Defense Forces spokesman's office would not have dared produce such a pro-Israeli and pro-army film like Foxtrot; they would have known that nobody would believe them. Neither could the unit have produced such an aesthetic film - poetic, symbolic and metaphorical. Nor is there a ship of fools that would accept such a demented level of ignorant assaults on the film by the culture minister without having seen it, she might not have realized what a PR treasure it is.
"Her colleague, a general in the war against the boycott, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who is also information minister, should have instructed his ministry to immediately distribute the film worldwide as part of his battle. There's nothing like Foxtrot for beautifying the image of the state. Look how beautiful we are, we Israelis. What great cinema we have, what beautiful homes we live in and how beautiful are our Holocaust survivors; even our much maligned checkpoints are so beautiful.
"Sanuel Maoz made a beautiful film - and a deceptive, misleading film. The last thing it deserves is to be decried as harming the state. Its foxtrot is dirty dancing. Maoz says that the film is a metaphor for universal questions about fatalism, choice, fate and the individual's ability to shape his future. Those are worthy and fascinating subjects. Maoz could have dealt with them by means of a story line about a wrong diagnosis of cancer, a critical date that a couple never went on, or someone who was fatally late for a flight. Instead, he chose to focus the debate in the context of the Israeli occupation. And so he shouldn't play dumb and claim that this is an artistic and imaginary film, without context or obligation to reality and truth. The moment he chose the occupation as the arena for his film, he turned it into a political and current events film. Not only is that not the way to dance the foxtrot, as Maoz discovered too late, this is not the way the occupation looks - in fact, there's no resemblance at all.
"Beautifying the occupation is no less grave than tarnishing its image. Calling Israeli soldiers is a terrible thing, but presenting them at checkpoints the way Naomi Shemer described the soldiers in her iconic 1968 song At the Nahal Outpost, where she saw 'lots of beautiful things,' as well as 'small poetry books on shelves' - that was no less grave. A lie is a lie, no matter what direction it takes. There aren't lots of beautiful things at a checkpoint. Not even one. Maoz decided to embellish it. He has the artistic right to describe reality as he sees it, but he can't ignore the implications of his hallucinations. When an IDF checkpoint looks like a beautiful surrealistic scene in an old-time Italian movie - maybe they'll believe it in Venice. Here it's not possible. There are no beautiful checkpoints like that, with a camel passing silently by and an ice-cream truck with a blond girl painted on it.
"Neither can he shirk responsibility for the message or for the fact that the Palestinians are momentary extras, and even in that context, their depiction is so different from the reality. In Foxtrot, they ride in a collector's Chevy, with Israeli license plates, wearing their finery, on the way to a wedding or back from a party, erupting in wild joyful song.
"There aren't a lot of apartments designed like the one where Yonatan's parents live and there are no soldiers who sit at checkpoints drawing comics in their many hours of free time and checking the incline of the packing container, which is a metaphor for the extent of being stuck in the mud.
"The soldiers at the checkpoints simply don't look like that. They don't throw sorrowful looks and they're mainly busy with brutality, not comics. Most of them didn't grow up in House Beautiful apartments belonging to handsome architects who married their students; the ones that did go to the elite 8200 intelligence unit. They can be shown anyway one wants, but when an Israeli director with political awareness does that, he's making propaganda, not cinema.
"It's not the 'scene' that everyone is talking about that makes this film infuriating. Not the killing by IDF soldiers and not the concealing of evidence that followed. Foxtrot is trying to conceal something else entirely: It's trying to conceal the ugliness." (A beautiful film about the occupation, 1/10/17)
The parents who wake to a knock on their door one morning, only to be told by military officials that their soldier son, Jonathan, has been killed, apparently represent every Israeli parent: "In Israel, actor Lior Ashkenazi says, everyone knows exactly what has happened; in a country with compulsory national service, that morning knock is like a code. This woman's child must be dead. 'In Israel, everybody knows somebody in this position... It surrounds you: the grief'."
To which I can only add - Bunbury doesn't, of course - if the occupying Israelis are enveloped in grief, it is simply beyond imagining what the occupied Palestinians, whose death toll is infinitely higher, are going through. But when was the last time you saw a commercial release featuring Palestinians in a sympathetic light (not to mention getting TWO reviews in the same media outlet)? In fact, what this 'morning knock' business is really all about is hyping a supposed threat to the occupier by the occupied, and casting the occupiers as victims.
Bunbury then says of Michael, the father, that he "fought his own war in Lebanon. Of course he did: there is always a war on. Everyone carries the same burden." It seems she's blissfully unaware that all of Israel's wars have SFA to do with self-defence, and everything to do with acquiring more territory. Such land-grabs, of course, are always hyped as existential threats, and the "burden" in murder and destruction is borne exclusively by Israel's Arab victims.
Moving on to the second act (which, you'll recall from Byrnes' review, is set at a checkpoint in the desert), we're told that it's set at a "checkpoint near the Lebanese border." Here the confusion grows. The soldiers manning the checkpoint are described as lifting "the barrier for a lone camel passing through." There is, of course, no desert anywhere near the Lebanese border, and certainly no camels either. So what gives?
What Byrnes' in his review calls "an accident" is clarified in Bunbury's: "One of their number panics and shoots an entire car of young Palestinians. The solution presents itself: bury the car, including the bodies, in the ever-present mud." Which only leads to further confusion. Who are these mysterious Palestinian youths (over whom, it seems, no tears are shed)? If the checkpoint is "near the Lebanese border," then it's got to be in the Galilee, and the "young Palestinians" would therefore be Israeli citizens. If, on the other hand, they're Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, then all I can say is they're a bloody long way from home.
More confusion arises from the Israeli response to the gunning down of the Palestinians. As anyone familiar with the modus operandi followed by Israeli troops when they murder Palestinians will know, the invariable practice is simply to blame the victims, stick doggedly to the concocted story, and be hailed as heroes by the vast majority of Israelis. Burying the evidence with the help of a bulldozer that just happens to be nearby? I don't think so.
But Maoz, the film's director has an explanation. Bunbury quotes him as saying, "You don't have to be a genius to understand that there is not such a specific roadblock, not such a specific reality."
And you don't have to be a genius to understand that Maoz, quoted elsewhere in the review referring to Israel "a pathetic and anxious society with the distorted perception that comes out of a terrible past trauma," is playing the Holocaust card, a move designed to get Israel off the hook for its crimes against the Palestinians.
I'll let the Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy have the final say on this phony film:
"The film unit of the Israel Defense Forces spokesman's office would not have dared produce such a pro-Israeli and pro-army film like Foxtrot; they would have known that nobody would believe them. Neither could the unit have produced such an aesthetic film - poetic, symbolic and metaphorical. Nor is there a ship of fools that would accept such a demented level of ignorant assaults on the film by the culture minister without having seen it, she might not have realized what a PR treasure it is.
"Her colleague, a general in the war against the boycott, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who is also information minister, should have instructed his ministry to immediately distribute the film worldwide as part of his battle. There's nothing like Foxtrot for beautifying the image of the state. Look how beautiful we are, we Israelis. What great cinema we have, what beautiful homes we live in and how beautiful are our Holocaust survivors; even our much maligned checkpoints are so beautiful.
"Sanuel Maoz made a beautiful film - and a deceptive, misleading film. The last thing it deserves is to be decried as harming the state. Its foxtrot is dirty dancing. Maoz says that the film is a metaphor for universal questions about fatalism, choice, fate and the individual's ability to shape his future. Those are worthy and fascinating subjects. Maoz could have dealt with them by means of a story line about a wrong diagnosis of cancer, a critical date that a couple never went on, or someone who was fatally late for a flight. Instead, he chose to focus the debate in the context of the Israeli occupation. And so he shouldn't play dumb and claim that this is an artistic and imaginary film, without context or obligation to reality and truth. The moment he chose the occupation as the arena for his film, he turned it into a political and current events film. Not only is that not the way to dance the foxtrot, as Maoz discovered too late, this is not the way the occupation looks - in fact, there's no resemblance at all.
"Beautifying the occupation is no less grave than tarnishing its image. Calling Israeli soldiers is a terrible thing, but presenting them at checkpoints the way Naomi Shemer described the soldiers in her iconic 1968 song At the Nahal Outpost, where she saw 'lots of beautiful things,' as well as 'small poetry books on shelves' - that was no less grave. A lie is a lie, no matter what direction it takes. There aren't lots of beautiful things at a checkpoint. Not even one. Maoz decided to embellish it. He has the artistic right to describe reality as he sees it, but he can't ignore the implications of his hallucinations. When an IDF checkpoint looks like a beautiful surrealistic scene in an old-time Italian movie - maybe they'll believe it in Venice. Here it's not possible. There are no beautiful checkpoints like that, with a camel passing silently by and an ice-cream truck with a blond girl painted on it.
"Neither can he shirk responsibility for the message or for the fact that the Palestinians are momentary extras, and even in that context, their depiction is so different from the reality. In Foxtrot, they ride in a collector's Chevy, with Israeli license plates, wearing their finery, on the way to a wedding or back from a party, erupting in wild joyful song.
"There aren't a lot of apartments designed like the one where Yonatan's parents live and there are no soldiers who sit at checkpoints drawing comics in their many hours of free time and checking the incline of the packing container, which is a metaphor for the extent of being stuck in the mud.
"The soldiers at the checkpoints simply don't look like that. They don't throw sorrowful looks and they're mainly busy with brutality, not comics. Most of them didn't grow up in House Beautiful apartments belonging to handsome architects who married their students; the ones that did go to the elite 8200 intelligence unit. They can be shown anyway one wants, but when an Israeli director with political awareness does that, he's making propaganda, not cinema.
"It's not the 'scene' that everyone is talking about that makes this film infuriating. Not the killing by IDF soldiers and not the concealing of evidence that followed. Foxtrot is trying to conceal something else entirely: It's trying to conceal the ugliness." (A beautiful film about the occupation, 1/10/17)
Thursday, June 21, 2018
Foxtrot? Tommyrot!
How depressing are those book/film reviews in the msm which, inadvertently or otherwise, distort and cover up the reality of Israel's war crimes. (Of course, it goes without saying that Israeli books/films are virtually the only ones to make it into the msm.)
The latest specimen is Paul Byrnes' review of Israeli 'war' film Foxtrot for the Sydney Morning Herald. Herewith my gripes and grumblings:
"If a film makes war seem fun, you can pretty much know the director has never been near one. Samuel Maoz is an exception. He served in the Israeli Defence Force in 1982 during the Israeli occupation in Lebanon. It's clear that it was a shattering experience." (Painful portrait of war's deep scars, 21/6/18)
Yes, Paul, "a shattering experience" it was - particularly for the over 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians who got it in the neck (not to mention the more than 30,000 wounded) when Maoz and his mates blitzkriegged into Lebanon at the time. But we don't want to talk about the real victims here, do we, Paul?
"His first feature film, Lebanon, recreated the life of a tank crew on active duty. The whole film was set inside the tank, which was both technically daring and completely terrifying."
C'mon, Paul, seriously now, where else would you set an Israeli film? Except perhaps in a cockpit, or in the space immediately behind the sights of a rifle.
"Foxtrot is a different kind of movie, but just as scarifying. It steps back to dramatise what it's like for the family of an Israeli soldier when they receive news that he has been killed. That's the first act."
But emphatically not what's it's like for the family of a Palestinian blown away by an Israeli soldier.
"The second act takes place in the desert, where a group of young IDF soldiers man a lonely checkpoint."
Just a minute, Paul. You mean there's still some desert left in Israel - after over 100 years of making the desert bloom? Or are we talking about the Sahara or the Gobi here? Is that where Israel's borders are now? But seriously, the whole fucking point of your Israeli checkpoint is that it's set up with only one purpose in mind - to mess with the lives of occupied Palestinians (as in 'how many checkpoints does a Palestinian have to negotiate to get from occupied Bethlehem to occupied Jerusalem?'). Do you get my drift, Paul? Your Israeli checkpoint needs PEOPLE. Ergo, there is NO SUCH THING as "a lonely checkpoint," OK?
"A third act returns to the family, now in post-traumatic disarray."
Hey, Paul, was part of their "post-traumatic disarray" having their home demolished? Oh wait... that only happens to Palestinian families.
"Foxtrot has been hugely controversial in Israel... The right in Israel objected to the film's depiction of Israeli soldiers covering up evidence of a killing."
Noooo! The most moral army in world, lying? You're kidding me. I simply don't believe it.
"One of the soldiers is Jonathan... In one of the film's most surreal moments, Jonathan dances with his rifle as if it's a woman... making his comrades laugh... He's just a kid, horsing around, trying to entertain his pals and relieve some tension; he's also a bulwark, a defender of the nation."
Oh no, Paul. He's neither "bulwark," nor "defender of the nation." He's an OCCUPIER, pure and simple. Strewth, is it really that hard?
Apparently so. Paul Byrnes has given Tommyrot 4 stars.
The latest specimen is Paul Byrnes' review of Israeli 'war' film Foxtrot for the Sydney Morning Herald. Herewith my gripes and grumblings:
"If a film makes war seem fun, you can pretty much know the director has never been near one. Samuel Maoz is an exception. He served in the Israeli Defence Force in 1982 during the Israeli occupation in Lebanon. It's clear that it was a shattering experience." (Painful portrait of war's deep scars, 21/6/18)
Yes, Paul, "a shattering experience" it was - particularly for the over 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians who got it in the neck (not to mention the more than 30,000 wounded) when Maoz and his mates blitzkriegged into Lebanon at the time. But we don't want to talk about the real victims here, do we, Paul?
"His first feature film, Lebanon, recreated the life of a tank crew on active duty. The whole film was set inside the tank, which was both technically daring and completely terrifying."
C'mon, Paul, seriously now, where else would you set an Israeli film? Except perhaps in a cockpit, or in the space immediately behind the sights of a rifle.
"Foxtrot is a different kind of movie, but just as scarifying. It steps back to dramatise what it's like for the family of an Israeli soldier when they receive news that he has been killed. That's the first act."
But emphatically not what's it's like for the family of a Palestinian blown away by an Israeli soldier.
"The second act takes place in the desert, where a group of young IDF soldiers man a lonely checkpoint."
Just a minute, Paul. You mean there's still some desert left in Israel - after over 100 years of making the desert bloom? Or are we talking about the Sahara or the Gobi here? Is that where Israel's borders are now? But seriously, the whole fucking point of your Israeli checkpoint is that it's set up with only one purpose in mind - to mess with the lives of occupied Palestinians (as in 'how many checkpoints does a Palestinian have to negotiate to get from occupied Bethlehem to occupied Jerusalem?'). Do you get my drift, Paul? Your Israeli checkpoint needs PEOPLE. Ergo, there is NO SUCH THING as "a lonely checkpoint," OK?
"A third act returns to the family, now in post-traumatic disarray."
Hey, Paul, was part of their "post-traumatic disarray" having their home demolished? Oh wait... that only happens to Palestinian families.
"Foxtrot has been hugely controversial in Israel... The right in Israel objected to the film's depiction of Israeli soldiers covering up evidence of a killing."
Noooo! The most moral army in world, lying? You're kidding me. I simply don't believe it.
"One of the soldiers is Jonathan... In one of the film's most surreal moments, Jonathan dances with his rifle as if it's a woman... making his comrades laugh... He's just a kid, horsing around, trying to entertain his pals and relieve some tension; he's also a bulwark, a defender of the nation."
Oh no, Paul. He's neither "bulwark," nor "defender of the nation." He's an OCCUPIER, pure and simple. Strewth, is it really that hard?
Apparently so. Paul Byrnes has given Tommyrot 4 stars.
Saturday, May 12, 2018
MSM: Echo Chamber for Israeli Propaganda
The old 'Arabs strike/Israel retaliates' propaganda meme strikes again:
"Distorting the timelines of events is a longtime Israeli strategy to make its enemies look like the aggressors and pass itself off as the victim. Israel's massive aerial attacks earlier today on [alleged]* Iranians and Syrians - its most extensive cross-border strikes in decades - are carrying out this propaganda strategy to perfection...
"Here's the actual order of events: Just one hour after Donald Trump violated the Iran nuclear deal on May 8, Israel launched missiles against targets south of Damascus, Syria, reportedly killing 15 people, at least 8 of them [allegedly] Iranians.
"In response, Iran early this morning apparently struck back with 20 rockets aimed at the Golan Heights (which is occupied by Israel since 1967 but is still legally part of Syria).
"Hours later, Israeli warplanes attacked dozens of allegedly Iranian targets in Syria.
"The mainstream Western media is falling into Israel's propaganda trap. Most reports are treating the Iranian rockets as the original provocation, and framing Israel's massive air strikes as the (understandable) response... (Israel distorts timeline of events to play victim in the dangerous escalation with Iran and Syria, James North, mondoweiss.net, 10/5/18)
North illustrates with reference to the NYT, WAPO and BBC, but the same formula is used in The Australian/AP of 11/5/18:
"Israel yesterday attacked 'dozens' of [alleged] Iranian targets in neighbouring Syria in response to an [alleged] Iranian rocket barrage on Israeli positions in the [Israeli-occupied] Golan Heights... " (Israel hammers Iran in Syria)
(NB: The initial Israeli provocation isn't mentioned until paragraph 10: "Israel is suspected of striking an Iranian outpost near Damascus late on Tuesday, killing 15 people, at least 8 of them Iranians."
And in the Sydney Morning Herald/Reuters of the same date:
"Confrontation between Israel and [alleged] Iranian forces sharply escalated yesterday after [alleged] Iranian forces launched a rocket attack on Israeli army bases in the [Israeli-occupied] Golan Heights, Israel said, prompting one of the heaviest Israeli barrages in Syria since the conflict there began in 2011." (Rocket duel sends loud message, Stephen Farrell)
(NB: The initial Israeli provocation isn't mentioned until paragraph 17.)
[*My square brackets throughout.]
"Distorting the timelines of events is a longtime Israeli strategy to make its enemies look like the aggressors and pass itself off as the victim. Israel's massive aerial attacks earlier today on [alleged]* Iranians and Syrians - its most extensive cross-border strikes in decades - are carrying out this propaganda strategy to perfection...
"Here's the actual order of events: Just one hour after Donald Trump violated the Iran nuclear deal on May 8, Israel launched missiles against targets south of Damascus, Syria, reportedly killing 15 people, at least 8 of them [allegedly] Iranians.
"In response, Iran early this morning apparently struck back with 20 rockets aimed at the Golan Heights (which is occupied by Israel since 1967 but is still legally part of Syria).
"Hours later, Israeli warplanes attacked dozens of allegedly Iranian targets in Syria.
"The mainstream Western media is falling into Israel's propaganda trap. Most reports are treating the Iranian rockets as the original provocation, and framing Israel's massive air strikes as the (understandable) response... (Israel distorts timeline of events to play victim in the dangerous escalation with Iran and Syria, James North, mondoweiss.net, 10/5/18)
North illustrates with reference to the NYT, WAPO and BBC, but the same formula is used in The Australian/AP of 11/5/18:
"Israel yesterday attacked 'dozens' of [alleged] Iranian targets in neighbouring Syria in response to an [alleged] Iranian rocket barrage on Israeli positions in the [Israeli-occupied] Golan Heights... " (Israel hammers Iran in Syria)
(NB: The initial Israeli provocation isn't mentioned until paragraph 10: "Israel is suspected of striking an Iranian outpost near Damascus late on Tuesday, killing 15 people, at least 8 of them Iranians."
And in the Sydney Morning Herald/Reuters of the same date:
"Confrontation between Israel and [alleged] Iranian forces sharply escalated yesterday after [alleged] Iranian forces launched a rocket attack on Israeli army bases in the [Israeli-occupied] Golan Heights, Israel said, prompting one of the heaviest Israeli barrages in Syria since the conflict there began in 2011." (Rocket duel sends loud message, Stephen Farrell)
(NB: The initial Israeli provocation isn't mentioned until paragraph 17.)
[*My square brackets throughout.]
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