First They Came for Assange

A must-read from Greece's former finance minister and Professor of Economics at the University of Athens, Yanis Varoufakis:

"My meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange all took place in the same small room. As the intelligence services of a variety of countries know, I visited Assange in Ecuador's London embassy many times between the fall of 2015 and December 2018. What these snoops do not know is the relief I felt every time I left.

"I wanted to meet Assange because of my deep appreciation of the original WikiLeaks concept. As a teenager reader George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, I, too, was troubled by the prospect of a high-tech surveillance state and its likely effect on human relations. Assange's early writings - particularly his idea of using states' own technology to create a huge digital mirror that could show everyone what they were up to filled me with hope that we might collectively defeat Big Brother.

"By the time I met Assange, that early hope had faded. Surrounded by bookcases featuring Ecuadorian literature and government publications, we would sit and chat late into the night. A device on top of a bookshelf emitted mind-numbing white noise to counter listening devices. As time passed, the claustrophobic living room, the badly hidden ceiling-mounted camera pointing at me, the white noise, and the stale air made me want to run out into the street.

"Assange's detractors have been saying for years that his confinement was self-inflicted: he hid in Ecuador's embassy because he jumped bail in the United Kingdom to avoid answering sexual assault allegations in Sweden. Women must be heard when reporting assault. Only the violence that men have inflicted upon women for millennia is viler than the disrespect and denigration to which women are subjected when they speak up.

"I recall saying to Julian that, had it been me, I would want to confront my accusers, and listen to them carefully and respectfully, regardless of whether official charges had been brought. He replied that he, too, wanted that. 'But, Yanis,' he said, 'if I were to go to Stockholm, they would throw me in solitary and, before I got a chance to answer any allegations, I would be bundled into a plane heading for a US supermax prison.' To drive the point home, he showed me his lawyers' offer to Swedish authorities to go to Stockholm if they guaranteed that he would not be extradited to the United States on espionage charges. Sweden never considered the proposal.

"During Assange's years in Ecuador's embassy, in circumstances that the United Nations deemed 'arbitrary detention,' many friends and colleagues mocked his fear - and lambasted me for believing him. Last September, the historian and feminist intellectual Germaine Greer summed up that belief on Australian public radio: 'He won't be extradited to the United States,' she said derisively, blaming Julian's lawyers for misleading him into fearing such an extradition while collecting his book's royalties.

"Now he is languishing in Belmarsh, a notorious English high-security prison, in a windowless basement cell with even less fresh air and light than before. Unable to receive visitors, he awaits extradition to the US. 'Let him rot in hell,' is a frequent response from good people around the world who were incensed by WikiLeaks' release of Hillary Clinton's emails ahead of the 2016 US presidential election, which blew fresh wind into Donald Trump's sails. Why, they ask, has Assange not released anything damning on Trump or Russian President Vladimir Putin?

"Before I explain why his detractors should reconsider, let me state for the record my personal frustration with his support of Brexit, his injudicious attacks against his feminist critics, his editorializing in favour of Trump, and, crucially, his communications with Trump's people. I expressed this frustration to his face several times. But castigating WikiLeaks for not publishing leaks that damage all sides equally is to miss the point. WikiLeaks was established as a digital mailbox where whistle-blowers could deposit information that is true and whose revelation is in the public interest. This is WikiLeak's sole obligation. By design, it cannot control who leaks what; its technology prevents even Assange from knowing a whistle-blower's identity. If this means that most leaks will embarrass Western powers, that is WikiLeaks' great, if imperfect, service to us - service that, to my frustration, was diminished by Julian's editorializing.

"Recent developments prove that his current predicament has nothing to do with the Swedish allegations or his role in aiding Trump against Clinton. With Chelsea Manning in prison again for refusing to confess that Assange incited, or helped, her to leak evidence of US atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, the best explanation of what is going on comes from Mike Pompeo, Trump's first CIA director and now US Secretary of State.

"Pompeo described WikiLeaks as 'a non-state hostile intelligence service.' That is exactly right. But it is an equally accurate description of what every self-respecting news outlet ought to be. As Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky have warned, journalists who fail to oppose Assange's extradition to the US could be next on the hit list of a president who considers them the 'enemy of the people.' Celebrating his arrest and turning a blind eye to Manning's continued suffering is a gift to liberalism's greatest foes.

"Besides liberalism, Assange's persecution by the US security-industrial complex has another victim: women. No woman, in Sweden or elsewhere, will get justice if he is now thrown into a supermax prison for revealing crimes against humanity perpetrated by awful men in or out of uniform. No feminist goal is served by Manning's continued suffering.

"So here is an idea: Let us join forces to block Assange's extradition from any European country to the US, so that he can travel to Stockholm and give his accusers an opportunity to be heard. Let us work together to empower women, while protecting whistle-blowers who reveal nefarious behavior that governments, armies, and corporations would prefer to keep hidden."

Palestinian

In reporting the brutal murder in Melbourne of  Palestinian Israeli exchange student Aya Maasarwe, the Australian corporate media have referred to her either as an 'Israeli' or an 'Arab Israeli', the latter being the preferred Zionist term for the Palestinian minority who managed to avoid being driven into stateless exile in 1948, were kept under military lock and key until 1966, and who only thereafter received Israeli - second class - citizenship.

I can't recall seeing Aya anywhere in the media described as what she was, a 'Palestinian Israeli'. Here is yet another example of how a hopelessly biased, Zionised media misrepresents, marginalises, and erases Palestinian reality.

Another Palestinian Israeli, the poet Mahmoud Darwish, wrote the following lines, taken from his 1966 poem, A Lover from Palestine. He was, of course, referring to his stolen homeland. My thoughts are of Aya Maasarwe as I type Darwish's words here:

Palestinian, her eyes and her tattoo
Palestinian, her name
Palestinian, her dreams and her sorrow
Palestinian, her scarf, her feet, and her body
Palestinian, her words and her silence
Palestinian, her voice
Palestinian, her birth and her death

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)

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."

The 'Quality Journalism' of Caroline Overington

Margaret Simons,* the director of Melbourne University's Centre for Advanced Journalism, bemoans the future of journalism in a Guardian opinion piece, Journalism faces a crisis worldwide - we might be entering a new dark age (15/4/17). 

Despite her forebodings, however, she remains determinedly chipper:

"[T]here is a new concern for the virtues of the traditional newsroom and what good journalists do. That is, find things out, verify the facts and publish them in outlets which... can generally be relied upon to provide the best available version of the truth. [...]

"The experience of the last decade tells us the citizen-journalist cannot replace the work done by properly resourced and trained professionals..."

Sounds lovely, doesn't it? The problem is that on one particular issue - the contemporary Middle East - as the evidence adduced by this particular citizen-journalist over an almost ten year period has shown, such pieties simply do not apply when it comes to mainstream journalism. Indeed, much of what is written on the subject verges on fiction.

The latest glaring example is the hatchet job on the wife of the Syrian president by the Australian's associate editor Caroline Overington. (Keep in mind as you read her opening paragraphs - all I intend to burden you with -  that Overington describes herself on her twitter profile as a "total feminist, no exceptions," and that in 'rebel' Syria, women have been everywhere thrust back into purdah):

"Once upon a time there was a little girl who was known to her friends as Emma, who grew up in a pebbled house in London and went to the finest schools. Emma's father was a doctor, her mother a diplomat, and besides being pretty, Emma was bright and everyone agreed she had the world at her feet. But then, at 25, Emma met a man who took her to his castle in Damascus. She was smitten, so when he proposed marriage she agreed to become his wife and, in the process, became first lady of Syria... And the West rejoiced. Here was a young British woman, at once elegant and poised; a native English-speaker who also spoke Arabic and French; who had worked as a banker in New York; who had been accepted to Harvard; who was interested in the plight of women and girls in the Middle East; who did not cover her hair, and wore stylish trousers. Surely she was the perfect fusion of Arab and Western ideals? That was the fairytale.

"Now comes the nightmare. Asma al-Assad, the British-born wife of Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, is now 41 and the mother of three young children. Once so pretty, she is now a repugnant creature, the first lady of hell." (Once adored, now abhorred: the transformation of the Syrian dictator's bride, 15/4/17)

Seriously, would it surprise you to find that Overington also describes herself in her twitter profile as a writer of "sexy thrillers"?

How I'd love to be a fly on the wall when Simons fields questions from her students about the Murdoch press in particular.

[*Simons, it should not be forgotten, was more than happy to take the side of the Israel lobby against false allegations of anti-Semitism directed against Age journalist Michael Backman back in 2009. See my 23/1/09 post The Backman Beat-Up.]

'Republic of Fear' Revisited

In his moving feature, The women of Mosul & liberation from IS, Fairfax journalist Michael Bachelard writes that:

"Repression of all kinds was routine. Conservative Islam might require modesty but IS demanded invisibility. Under strictly enforced clothing rules, it was virtually impossible to visit the public square - certainly not without a male relative. 'Everyone was looking at you, all the time. Everyone was watching your movements,' says mother-of-five Ayat, at the Jada'ah camp near Qayyarah. 'We were to afraid to do anything... so we stopped going out at all.' Failing to wear gloves, flat shoes, or the double veil; even allowing a glimpse of flesh by lifting the veil a crack to check money at the market or to sip a drink - any of these breaches could lead to punishment. Some women were fined 50,000 ($50) or 100,000 dinars, others were whipped or hit with a wooden baton." (Sydney Morning Herald, 5/3/17)

This is Iraq 2017, 14 years on from the US overthrow of the secular, Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003. While Saddam's Iraq may now be just a distant memory for women like Ayat, older Iraqi women would perhaps remember it with  more than just nostalgia, even, relative to the present, as a kind of paradise lost.

It is worth remembering just how that relative paradise was viewed in the West before it was swept away in 2003, and replaced with the current nightmare world of Shia sectarianism in Baghdad and Wahhabi sectarian madness in Mosul.

Perhaps the most influential book on the subject of pre-2003 Iraq was the best-selling Republic of Fear (1989), written by Iraqi expat, Samir al-Khalil, the nom de plume of Kanan Makiya,

Makiya's thesis is that "Fear is the cement that holds together this strange body politic in Iraq. All forms of organization not directly controlled by the party have been wiped out. The public is atomized and broken up, which is why it can be made to believe anything. A society that used to revel in politics is not only subdued and silent, but profoundly apolitical. Fear is the agency of that transformation; the kind of fear that comes not only from what the neighbours might say, but that makes people careful of what they say in front of their children." (p 275)

Makiya, it should be pointed out, along with the likes of Ahmad Chalabi and Fouad Ajami, went on to become the 'native informant' component of the US ziocons, whose strident advocacy of regime change in Iraq was critical to the Bush/Blair invasion and occupation of Iraq, and he is on record as having described the initial US 'shock and awe' bombing of Baghdad as "music to my ears."*

Needless to say, without that invasion and occupation, first Al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), and then its even more extreme offspring, Islamic State (IS), would never have appeared on the Iraqi scene, let alone gone on to take key Iraqi cities such a Mosul and transform them into the kind of Wahhabi sectarian hellholes described by women such as Ayat.

Makiya, writing on the subject of Iraqi women under Baathist rule in Republic of Fear, depicts, relative to the lives of women in Mosul under Islamic State, what must seem to us now as a near golden age of feminism:

"The entry of women into the educational system as a whole is another noteworthy Ba'thist accomplishment. In 1970-71, there were 318,524 girls in primary school, 88,595 at the secondary level, and 9,212 at the university level. For the 1979-80 school year the absolute numbers were respectively as follows: 1,165,856, 278,485, and 28,647. By 1980 women accounted for 46% of all teachers, 29% of physicians, 46% of dentists, 70% of pharmacists, 15% of accountants, 14% of factory workers, and 16% of civil servants [...] The important thing about all the legislation on women was precisely where it chose to make the break with tradition. Islamic law has always been clear regarding its view of the subordinate status of women in relation to men as a direct consequence of their sex... Moreover, there is nothing in the very sincere and far-reaching efforts of the Bath to involve women in the labour force or to mobilize them that is un-Islamic, although it certainly represents a radical break with traditional society and deeply cherished values. One need only mention the masses of veiled women mobilized by the Islamic movement in Iran, not only against the Shah, but to break up some of the early feminist demonstrations against Khomeini's edict on the veil." (pp 89-91)

All of which only accentuates the culpability of Bush, the Ziocons, and their Arab fellow travellers, for the appalling plight of the women so vividly described by Bachelard.

[*See Advocating a war in Iraq & offering an apology for what came after, Tim Arango, nytimes.com, 13/5/16]

Meet 'Mad Dog' Mattis

Say what you will about Donald ('Grab Them by the Pussy') Trump, we can at least take some courage from the fact that that he'll be advised by some of the best and brightest (not to mention feminist) minds America has to offer. For example: 

"General James Mattis, who retired in 2013 after a 44-year career, met Mr Trump yesterday at the president-elect's golf club... A senior commander in Afghanistan and Iraq, he fell out of favour during the Obama administration for his tough stance on Iran. The selection of General Mattis as defence secretary would cap a national security team that is strikingly more bellicose and uncompromising than that of Mr Obama.

"General Mattis, 66, nicknamed 'Mad Dog', attracted controversy and admiration in 2005 when he said shooting Taliban fighters was fun and mocked their sexual potency. 'You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,' he said. 'You know guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling.'

"A year earlier he had commanded US marines in the battle of Fallujah. During the Iraq invasion, a young platoon commander was shocked to find General Mattis, then a brigadier-general, in a fighting hole with a sergeant and a lance corporal. General Mattis used the dictum: 'Be polite, be professional but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.' He was also nicknamed the 'warrior monk' and is said to own more than 7000 books. He impressed on his troops the need to be culturally sensitive and stressed that humanitarian actions would undermine the Islamist enemies." (Carter & Clapper seek to oust admiral eyed by new president, AFP, The Sunday Times/ The Australian, 21/11/16)

7,000 books? Check out these li'l beauties from LtGen James Mattis' Reading List, Small Wars Journal (5/6/07):

Israel's Lebanese War, A Preliminary Assessment - Dr. Martin van Creveld, The RUSI Journal, October 2006
The Crisis of Islam: Holy War & Unholy Terror - Bernard Lewis
What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam & Modernity in the Middle East - Bernard Lewis
From Beirut to Jerusalem - Thomas Friedman
Hatred's Kingdom - Dore Gold
The Arab Mind - Raphael Patai
A Peace to End All Peace - David Fromkin
The Arab Israeli Wars - Chaim Herzog

No nasty Edward Said stuff there...

My Michaelia Cash Nightmare

I didn't set out to write a post about Senator Michaelia Cash, Minister for Employment & Women. All I knew about her was the Hair, the Gear, and the hots for Thatcher. There was no reason to inquire further. What I knew was bad enough. But then I read about the case of Tahira Sajid:

"Single mother and asylum seeker Tahira Sajid is battling ovarian cancer while living in abject poverty in Sydney's southeast. But that is the least of her worries. 'My claim has been refused so I have to go back to Pakistan with my daughter by the end of next month, where I will have no support or protection,' the 45-year-old said. 'I will face harm if I go back.'

"When Ms Sajid's husband was threatened by the Taliban, the couple fled with their 8-year-old daughter Malaika to Australia in 2012. Ms Sajid said that she was then pressured into agreeing to a divorce.

"'Tahira has no financial support from her ex-husband or any other relatives and has the responsibility of taking care of her daughter and school expenses,' friend Fukher Batool, who has helped out with her rent and groceries, said. The parents have lived apart in Australia on consecutive bridging visas, but with Malaika they have been refused permanent residency and will be forced back to Pakistan, unless Ms Sajid's pleas are heard by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. 'If I go back to Pakistan, my ex-husband will take Malaika away. I don't have protection from anyone or the law there,' Ms Sajid said.

"Louisa McKimm of the Immigration Advice and Rights Centre represented Ms Sajid and her daughter until their case was rejected by then assistant immigration minister Michaelia Cash, on September 18, before Senator Cash changed portfolios following the leadership spill. 'It was the saddest day of my career telling Tahira that she was refused,' Ms McKimm said.

"Less than half of Pakistan's women were literate and it was unlikely that Malaika would receive schooling if she returned because she was female, she said, which meant Australia had obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to protect her right to education...

"Tahira is not of a high class; we are dealing with a woman who is going back to Pakistan single, her parents have passed away, she doesn't have a great education and she is very weak physically from the cancer battle,' she said. After surgery and an intensive course of combined chemotherapy and radiotherapy at Westmead Hospital, the ovarian cancer has been held at bay, but Ms Sajid said she would not get follow-ups if she left Australia's well-equipped healthcare system. As for Malaika, there's no doubt what she wants. 'I don't want to go back,' she said. 'I want to stay and learn'." (Cancer least of the battle for outcast Tahira, Gina Rushton, The Australian, 12/10/15)

Shit!  Rejected by... Michaelia Cash. Is the woman human, I thought?

Then I read this:

"A new agreement with Australia will allow Israelis to work Down Under, Dave Sharma, Australia's ambassador to Israel, announced on Wednesday. 'Aus just signed work and holiday visa arrangement with Israel,' Sharma tweeted. 'Young Israelis can now work + travel in Aus & vice versa.' The agreement provides for 500 work-travel visas to be awarded annually to Israelis and Australians between the ages of 18 and 30 for one another's country, Ynet reported Thursday..." (Australia & Israel sign mutual travel-work visa deal, Haaretz, 22/10/14)

As indicated, the Haaretz report didn't end there. It went on to say this:

"Criteria to receive such a visa include having done military or national service, according to Ynet..."

WTF is going on here?  Kick arse in Palestine, then R&R in Australia. Bombs away in Iraq and Syria, then R&R in Israel? The mind boggles.

And then, as I stopped shaking my head and resumed reading, there it was - that bloody name. Again:

"The deal was signed between Senator Michaelia Cash, Australia's assistant minister for immigration and border protection, and Shmuel Ben-Shmuel, the Israeli ambassador to Australia."

Following which, I read this from Cash's (Iron?) maiden speech:

"As a Liberal I believe in minimal government interference and that the role of government is to create and maintain a regulatory and taxation environment conducive to allowing the private sector to get on with the job." (2/9/08)

OSFBB: Open Slather for Big Business! Cash by name, cash by nature.

Then, finally, there was this, which took me back to poor little Malaika:

"Celebrating International Day of the Girl Child with our young female leaders@girlguidesaust" (The latest Michaelia Cash tweet)

International Day of the Girl Child... just 23 days after giving Malaika and her mother the flick.

The Tunnel Vision of Geraldine Brooks 2

I was sufficiently intrigued by Geraldine Brooks' Zionist myopia to check her out more fully. For what they're worth, here are a few bits and pieces I came across:

1) Geraldine Doogue interviews Brooks on the ABC's Compass program, 27/4/08 (The interpolations are mine.):

GD: Now you converted to Judaism from Catholicism. Why so?

GB: Well, actually from nothing. I had left Catholicism behind and I'd been cruising along as a merry atheist. And I guess I have to go back to my father. One of his great fascinations and passions in life grew out of the fact that during World War II he served in what was then Palestine. And because he was a passionate socialist leftie, he was of course attracted to the idea of the Kibbutz movement. And so this was very formative for him and this was one of the things that really animated him.

[So here was a bloke who mistook the colonising - think Jewish settlements today - Jews-only kibbutz movement for socialism, and ignored what was really going on in Palestine at the time. Zionist myopia seems to run in the family.]

I remember the first time I ever paid attention to a news story in the paper was during the Six Day War because Dad cared so passionately about all these places that he'd been to. And I remember when I was about 14 or 15 I would ostentatiously haul around these dog-eared copies of The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich. I could recite Yevtushenko's Babi Yar and I started wearing a Star of David. So there was this kind of engagement, I think, with the history of the Jews that remained a kind of interest of mine.

[Obviously, Dad didn't have the wherewithal to distinguish between Judaism and political Zionist triumphalism. Hence young Geraldine's rushing around, fantasising about a second holocaust, while Israel's engaged in its second great land grab (West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, Golan Heights, Sinai) of the 20th century. Now here we are, 48 years on, with Israeli settlements mushrooming, and there's no evidence that I can find that she's learnt anything new on the subject. Pathetic.]

And then, when I fell in love with a Jewish man [US writer Tony Horwitz], and we were planning to be married, I just couldn't bring myself to be the end of the line for his heritage.

[OMG, is she for real?]

GD: What do you mean?

GB: Well, Judaism is passed through the maternal line - a fact that I've always found engaging for its pragmatism as well as for its feminist implications - but if I had married him and not converted then our children would not be considered Jewish.

GD: Did he care?

GB: He didn't give two hoots! (They both laugh.) But it was just something that I felt that I wanted to do because I didn't want to be another instrument in the shadow of the Shoah, of destroying a Jewish family that had made it through the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans all the way to the end of the 20th century.

[OMFG, she is for real! The Romans FFS!]

2) You'll note the reference to feminism. Brooks is big on feminism, but some, to put it mildly, aren't too impressed. Here's an extract from the Australian-Palestinian novelist Randa Abdel-Fatteh's review of Brooks' 1994 book Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women:

"In perhaps the most astonishing display of veil fetishism in the book, Brooks reflects on her visit to Gaza, where it is as if a brutal military occupation does not exist. The reader is instead regaled with more stories about sexuality and veiling. Brooks says, 'The struggle had changed and so had Gaza. Driving from the huge military roadblock that divides the Gaza Strip from Israel, I hadn't seen a single unveiled woman.' It is astounding that Brooks, a feminist and journalist who purports to be concerned about the situation of Muslim women and human rights abuses, can only summon a comment about the veil in her assessment of her trip to Gaza. Brooks displays no interest in the impact of Israel's occupation on the lives of Palestinian women - the violation of their basic human rights, the impediments that the occupation places on their choices, freedom of movement, and their access to education and health services, as examples. What matters to the classic Orientalist is what Muslim women wear, and that any oppression they suffer must be due to Islam." (Griffith Review)

3) By their tweets ye shall know them: here's one of Brooks' from 18/6:

"Congrats. But please stop releasing balloons, which end up in the ocean killing marine life."

Now while this is a sentiment I agree with, I note that Israel's genocidal war on Gaza last year elicited not a peep/tweet from Brooks. Did she, I wonder, think about the women of Gaza she'd met in the 90s? Too busy dreaming of Davo?

Her retweeting of the following Horwitz tweet, however, is telling - of both:

"Iraq was always 3 nations and should become so again. Kurdistan already set, divide rest between Shiite and Sunni before it's full civil war." (14/6/14)

4) Horwitz, himself, is a little more forthcoming on Gaza. Here's his idea of an appropriate comment on the Gaza massacres:

"My Middle East peace plan. Text everyone to leave and pour sand over the entire region." (29/7/14).

And here's another example of his talent for smartarsery:

"Mideast progress: Miss Lebanon refers to photo-bombing contestant as Miss Israel rather than 'Miss Zionist Entity'" (20/1/15)

Needless to say, The Secret Chord was given the thumbs up in a review in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald and should sell like the proverbial hotcakes. Alas, such is the way of the world.

So You Think It's Tough Being a Woman in the Labor Party?

"Women face systemic, cultural and rules-based impediments to participation in the Labor Party, according to a landmark report that urges strengthening affirmative action requirements for selecting candidates, officials and union delegations, and imposing sanctions for failure to comply." (Labor's internal sexism revealed, Troy Bramston, The Australian, 4/7/15)

OK, so Labor's still too blokey for female candidates. But, hey, it could be worse, far worse.

What if the candidate is not only a woman but has also been critical - even ONCE - of Israel as well?

That's when the going really gets tough. That's when a sort of McCarthyite process kicks in: 'Are you now, or have you ever been, a Palestinian sympathiser?'

Think I'm exaggerating? I wish! Just click on the Julia Irwin, Rose Jackson or Tanya Plibersek labels below...

The Selective Outrage of Paul Sheehan

Brown MUSLIM men... very, very bad:

"Western women appear to be a magnet for leering and Egypt is known to have a wider problem of sexual assaults." (Sexual repression a thorn in side of Egypt democracy, Paul Sheehan, Sydney Morning Herald, 4/7/13)

White CHRISTIAN men... no worries, mate:

"A person could visit Angkor, one of the world's greatest cultural destinations, and for less than $US100 purchase some or all of the following smorgasbord of experiences in a single day... One bar girl to provide a 'happy ending' ($US25)." (Fortress of solitude, Paul Sheehan, The Age, 20/11/10)*

[*See my 7/5/11 post Killer Letter.]

An Australian First?

Has an Australian politician's total ignorance* of a subject ever gotten in the way of his holding forth on it?

Until Monday night's Q&A my guess would've been no.

I'm happy to have been proven wrong.  

The topic under discussion was Saudi society/women.

When compere Tony Jones asked ex-Labor leader Mark Latham for his opinion, Latham responded simply:

"I just don't know enough about the society, Tony, to add to the discussion. You are better getting another comment from Lina than from me."

Now in case you think I'm making too much of Latham's achievement here, contrast his admirable restraint with the waffle which followed from motormouth Craig Emerson:

"More broadly I think the progress of women is stuttering progress at best. You know, they strive - they seek the sorts of opportunities that blokes have had for thousands of years, and when they do they often find they're up against resistance, a brick wall. You think of that poor little girl who the Taliban shot in the head because she wanted to go to school. She did go to school and she encouraged other girls to go to school. Now that's an extreme example but that's what, you know, young women can be up against around the world. Another girl was doused with acid because she wanted to have a boyfriend who wasn't designated by her parents or someone else to be the right and just boyfriend. I mean these are basic rights that I think women around the world do not enjoy and I think women and men should back them in and continue making progress because it is not satisfactory."

[*See my 6/2/12 post On Ignorance.]

Unmasking a Zionist Misrepresentation 1

The particular Zionist misrepresentation I have in mind came in the opening paragraphs of an opinion piece by Ida Lichter, Feminists forget their Muslim sisters, in yesterday's Australian:

"An article in a Hamas daily accuses women of spreading a recent outbreak of swine flu. The columnist blames women for being transmitters of epidemics due to a predilection for congregating in groups to exchange news and rumours. He suggested that outbreaks could be averted if men imposed more limitations on women's movements. These claims might be dismissed as laughable, but they are not isolated allegations of female culpability."

'Aha!' the reader is supposed to respond, 'not only is Hamas a terrorist organization but misogynist as well!'

However, this is an 'opinion' piece in The Australian, and any thinking reader will take a few precautionary steps before jumping to the kind of conclusion Ida and Rupert are hoping for.

Google the words 'Hamas' & 'swine flu', for example, and you're liable to find a slightly more detailed version of the above, something like this:

"A Hamas columnist has attributed the outbreak of swine flu to the freedom of women. In a piece transcribed by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) on Friday, Issam Shawer, who writes for Felesteen [sic], claimed that the outbreak of swine flu in the West Bank and Gaza was caused by 'women [who] emerge from every corner... and then congregate in one place. Women are the most numerous and fastest transmitters of viral diseases and epidemics such as swine flu. They spread news and rumours, but also viruses that waft through the stuffy air. Then they disperse, and many go on to perform some other duty at some other home or function hall. This is why I think women are the fastest transmitters of epidemics.' Mr Shawer's piece, published on December 24, offers a solution. As well as wearing a niqab, '[men] can also take a greater part in fighting disease by imposing stricter constraints on the movement and gatherings of the womenfolk - at least in the next 3 months.'" (Women spread swine flu, Hamas columnist claims, Sandy Rashty, thejc.com, 4/2/13)

Well, the fact that you're dealing with MEMRI, an Israeli propaganda outfit that trawls the Arab (and Iranian) media for items which can be used to blacken Arabs (and Iranians), should set off alarm bells. (Selective) MEMRI translates - how accurately is anybody's guess - and cuts and pastes these items, posting the finished product as black propaganda on its website to fuel the demands of the Arabo-/Islamo-phobic market for ever more sensational dispatches from the dark abyss which the Arab world is made out to be.

Locate the Hamas/swine flu item on MEMRI's website and you'll first find this potted summary, beyond which 9 out of 10 customers will probably not venture:

"Columnist in Hamas daily calls to limit women's movement because they spread disease (1/2/13): Following a recent outbreak of swine flu in the West Bank, which later spread to Gaza as well, 'Issam Shawer, a columnist in the Hamas daily Falastin, wrote that women are the worst transmitters of diseases because they tend to gather in groups and to move from place to place. He advised them to wear a niqab, saying it protects them from infection, and called to limit their movements in the next few months in order to curb the spread of germs."

Note that what follows are "excerpts" only; that the original Arabic text is nowhere in sight for purposes of comparison; and that no mention is made of Gaza. Still, reading through them and noting the contextualising lines that are omitted from the above variations puts Shawer's supposed misogyny in a completely new light. First, it's obvious he's motivated by a concern over the spread of a life-threatening disease, not by some supposed Islamic loathing of women. Second, he's not having a go at Arab women as women, but rather warning them about the possible health consequences of otherwise "positive" customary behaviour. Nor is he exploiting the epidemic to sell the niqab. Third, he also enjoins Arab men to refrain from certain customary practices which could also help spread the disease. Fourth, it's clear that his advice has a use-by date of 3 months. Here's the rest of MEMRI's 'translation' with the omitted information highlighted:

"The following are excerpts from his article: The swine flu virus, H1N1, is spreading through West Bank towns, especially the northern ones. Four people have died so far and dozens are sick, and the numbers are increasing, [though] we hope they will stop. I believe that women are the most numerous and fastest transmitters of viral diseases and epidemics such as swine flu, and I am not making baseless accusations when I describe them as such. This is especially [true] in Arab societies like ours, which follow customs that are positive and pleasant, but are also deadly in [certain] unusual circumstances. [For example, when there is need] to make a condolence call, women emerge from every corner and flock from every direction, even from afar, and then congregate in one place. They comfort [the family] and also trade stories - this is very important to them and spread news and rumors, but also viruses that waft through the stuffy air. Then they disperse, and many go on to perform some other duty at some other home or function hall. This is why I think women are the fastest transmitters of epidemics. Some of them take the necessary precautions and wear face masks when they are alone, yet, when they meet, they remove the masks to chat and to do what they are best at: exchanging news. But viruses also find their way to new victims in this manner. There is endless evidence that what we have said [here] about women [is true]. Therefore, they must understand that the duty of protecting the life and health of society is greater than other duties that can be performed in less harmful ways. Also, we cannot avoid mentioning the advantage of the niqab, worn by devout Muslim women, in protecting them from contagious diseases. Men, too, have a role in spreading infection, but since they keep busy, and are slower to perform their [social] duties and follow the traditional customs, they have a smaller role in this compared to the 'other side'. Nevertheless, they can [help] stop the spread of disease by avoiding some inappropriate customs like kissing [people] at weddings and funerals and serving coffee in non-disposable glasses. They can also take a greater part in fighting disease by imposing stricter constraints on the movement and gatherings of the womenfolk, as broadly as possible... at least in the next 3 months.'"

Finally, google the words 'swine flu' & 'prevention' and you'll come across the kind of advice which merely corroborates Shawer's:

"Contain your coughs and sneezes: Cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze or cough. Avoid contact: Stay away from crowds if possible. Reduce exposure within your household: If a member of your household has H1N1 swine flu, designate one other household member to be responsible for the ill person's close personal care." (MayoClinic.com)

My, haven't we come a long way from Ada Lichter?

Life Imitates Art

(Or Marquez imitates Diaz.)

Comic genius Tracey Ullman was born to send up the rest of us, in particular the Americans who walk among us.

From her State of the Union series, Tracey does ditzy/effervescent (take your pick) actress Cameron Diaz:

Voiceover: At an independent film festival in Portland, Oregan, Cameron Diaz talks about her latest movie.
Compere: We're talking to Cameron Diaz who stars in a new movie, That Terrible Time of the Month, a film about female genital mutilation.
Diaz (skolling coke and repeatedly burping): I'm sorry... I can just do that!
-Cameron, welcome.
Diaz (burps again, laughing hysterically)
- Cameron, welcome. Thankyou for talking to us.
Diaz: Hello, thankyou, thankyou.
-So what got you interested in female genital mutilation?
Diaz: Well, I was buying these amazing jeans from Fred Segal and it got me thinking that, like, African girls they can't even wear jeans because of their painfully mutilated geni-als, and that's just so sad and amazing because this is really like... the... golden age of American blue jeans so...
-So is it true that rock star Bono made you into more of an activist [Diaz burps] on this cause?
Diaz (laughs hysterically, crushing coke can): Who told you this? [Throws crushed can on floor] Um, yeah. We were on Larry David's plane and Bono took me into the bathroom, which is like amazing, like surrounded by, like Tibetan prayer flags and stuff, and he showed me where they do the actual circumcision. [Opening legs wide] It's like in here and they just -tshh- take it all out and then it was really sad and amazing [laughs].
-Let's see a clip from That Terrible Time of the Month which is creating Oscar buzz.
Diaz: Oh no, just stop! Just stop.

Diaz, brandishing rifle, bursts into African mud hut, screaming at off camera clitorodectimist: Just stop right now! Drop that clitoris! OK, Togo, c'mon [African girl runs to her as Diaz backs out still training her rifle on off camera clitorodectimist] You are really sad [burps] and... not amazing [farts].

OK, that's the 'art', now here's 'life'. Tracey'd love it:

"While [US] Department of Defense... policies still restrict women from serving in combat units, the soldiers selected from this group [of female trainees] will serve alongside the Army's most elite units on the battlefield. The Army has never selected women to do a mission because of their sex, until now. It is recruiting female soldiers to work closely with Special Forces teams and Ranger units during raids. Because women and children are often held in a separate room while soldiers search the compound, these teams go into villages in Afghanistan to build rapport with women, as it is culturally inappropriate for male soldiers to talk with them... The teams are trained to have a deeper understanding of Afghan culture and to connect with women in the villages to gather information on enemy activities. The teams aim to create a dialogue between US forces and Afghan women, which can help in medical clinics or building governance...

"The Soldier Urban Reaction Facility (SURF) was created to focus on building rapport in a foreign culture. Using cameras, the instructors can watch how the soldiers might handle different worst-case scenarios, staged in each of the 4 rooms. Built out of wood with faux arches and a crescent hanging over the opening, it looked like a cheap, rundown amusement park, but it is intended to resemble the Middle East. Rugs covered the floors. Pillows lined the walls of one room. In the center of the third room was a low table covered by a maroon cloth.

"When the test started, [Sgt Janiece] Marquez knocked softly on the door and was greeted by 7 female soldiers posing as 'villagers'. 'How is everyone?' Marquez asked, taking a seat on the floor and laying her rifle nearby. The 'villagers' started speaking at once. Their husbands beat them. One said she didn't want to be a sex slave around only to make babies. The 'villagers' demanded education. Freedom. Equality. The pleas were lost in a shrill wall of sound. 'Ladies, I can only speak to one of you at a time', Marquez said calmly. But before the meeting could get going, two soldiers acting as husbands burst into the room. Screaming and waving an AK-47 rifle, the men chased their wives into a back room. Marquez, startled, jumped up and snatched her rifle. Holding it in both hands, she backed away from the men, who were huge, compared with her. 'Why are you in my house?' demanded Spc David Atkinson. 'Who let you in here? Which one?' As Atkinson yelled, his partner, Staff Sgt. Mike Ward, started hauling the women out. Holding the women by the hair and 'slapping' them, Ward screamed at Marquez. She raised her rifle and ordered the men to get on their knees. 'Are you here to execute us?' Atkinson screamed. 'Lay down', Marquez said, grabbing Atkinson's AK-47, which had been dropped in the commotion. The men acted stunned, but they complied. After kneeling and stretching their arms out across the table, they began to yell at Marquez. 'Why are you in my house?' 'I am here to listen to your concerns', Marquez said, her rifle still trained on them. 'This is how you help people?' Atkinson screamed. 'By coming into my house and making me get on the floor? You want to keep disrespecting us?' Her training as an interrogator kicked in. 'Right now, you're under an insurgency', she told them. 'We fear for not only you but your wives. I am here to help people'." (In a new elite army unit, women serve alongside Special Forces, but first they must make the cut, Kevin Maurer, The Washington Post, 28/10/11)

Oh, and 'saving' brown (Afghan) women from brown (Afghan) men doesn't come cheap: $444 billion in the past decade to be exact.

Killer Letter

My, doesn't twice (2006 & 2008) rambammed* Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheehan get around:

"Paul Sheehan's criticism of the potential of sharia to be exploited as a tool for the repression of women is interesting in light of his travel article last November on Cambodia, in which he recommended Siem Reap's 'cheap flesh-pot options' and included 'one bar girl to provide a happy ending' for $US25 in a daily 'smorgasbord of experiences'. His attitude towards women is offensive, even more so when he hypocritically asserts that repression and sexual exploitation of women is reprehensible in the context of Islam but not in the prostitution and sex trafficking industries of south-east Asia." Clare Hodgson New Lambton (SMH, 6/5/11)

And here are the opening sentences of the steaming doo doo that prompted Clare Hodgson, bless her soul, to pen the above letter:

"Four is the number at the heart of the violent counter-reformation that confronts our Western values. Four is the number of wives the Koran says a man may have. No such latitude is afforded to women. Osama bin Laden, above all a man of the Koran, took his full quota of wives..." (Repressing women is sharia's raison d'etre, Paul Sheehan, SMH, 5/5/11)

[* See my 30/3/09 post I've been to Israel too]

From what deep cesspool of hatred...?

Sexual assault in Egypt/the Middle East/the Muslim world is no aberration, it's just sooo Islamic, writes recently Rambammed Murdoch columnist Miranda Devine:

"It's shocking, but should we be surprised that a blonde, unveiled Western female reporter covering the protests in Egypt was subject to a 'brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating' by a group of frenzied men? The 20-30 minute attack on US 60 Minutes reporter Lara Logan in Cairo's crowded Tahrir Square last week was a slap in the face for idealists talking up the anti-government protests across the Middle East as the flowering of democracy. At a time when fundamentalist Islam is on the march, why would Western liberal values such as female equality suddenly fill a vacuum left by departing autocrats? The increasing misogyny and subjugation of women in the Muslim world is the single insurmountable obstacle to democratisation... [T]he 39-year-old foreign correspondent represented the decadence of the West to a certain brand of Islamist. She was nothing better than a whore, to be brought down flagrantly in public and given what she deserved... [H]er treatment was no aberration in the Middle East. Rampant sexual harassment, public fondling and groping of women is a fact of life..." (Frenzied assault on West's values, Sunday Telegraph, 20/2/11)

Sexual assault in the Catholic Church, on the other hand, is most definitely an aberration and has nothing whatever to do with the Church or, God forbid, Christianity:

"The pursuit of the Pope reached absurd heights this week with news that atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have asked the Australian barrister Geoffrey Robertson to draw up a case to arrest Benedict XVI for alleged cover-up of paedophilia in the Catholic Church. That these exhibitionist atheists should seize on the tragedy of child sexual abuse by a small minority of Catholic priests to pursue their vendetta against religion is stomach-turning. Dawkins has become shrill with excitement, describing the Pope as 'a leering old villain in a frock'. He said the Pope 'should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice - the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gouging, truth-hating, child-raping institution - while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, around his ears'. From what deep cesspool of hatred do those words spring?" (Evildoers, not Pope, to blame, Sydney Morning Herald, 16/4/10)

And here are a few more aberrations Miranda might like to consider for future columns in the unlikely event she's more interested in the plight of women than in demonising Muslims:

"Reports of sexual assault by US military personnel against both fellow troops and civilians rose by 8% last year to 2,923, the Pentagon says." (US military sex attack reports up, newsvote.bbc.co.uk, 18/3/09)

"Systematic sexual violence continues to be carried out against Congolese women and girls caught up in mass expulsions from Angola to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a UN survey said on Friday. Community leaders recorded 182 reported rapes in 72 villages along the border in January alone, while a UN assessment mission confirmed 1,357 reported rape cases in one village in a 6-t0-8 month period last year, said the official, Margot Wallstrom." (Systematic rape continues on Congo-Angola border: UN, reuters.com, 11/2/11)

"The damning report on sexual misbehaviour aboard the Royal Australian Navy supply ship HMAS Success has blamed a small group of sailors in the engineering departnent who were protected by some of the ship's officers... Senior defence force officers were dismayed by the strength of the allegations of sexual misconduct, intimidation and miscarriages of justice contained in the report... Three senior sailors were removed from the ship in Singapore in May 2009 after allegations they were involved in a competition to see how many female sailors they could get into bed with." (Warship's 'bullet-proof' engineers blamed for sexual misconduct, Brendan Nicholson, The Australian, 22/2/11)

For those interested, the definitive riposte to Devine's smears must surely be Noha Radwan's How Egyptian women took back the street between two 'Black Wednesdays': A first person account. Here's the opening paragraph: "On February 16, Roger Ebert, an American film critic and commentator, tweeted: 'The attack on Lara Logan brings Middle Eastern attitudes toward women into sad focus'. While the attack... was a tragic and upsetting event, it needs to be understood in its political context. Any attempt to propound this in such familiar orientalist terms would be offensive and unfair, not only to Egyptians protesting for democracy, but to Logan herself. She was not attacked as a woman - although the gendered nature of the assault is indisputable; she was attacked as a professional journalist and a supporter of the Egyptian protest. I, too, was attacked, probably by the same type of thugs who attacked Logan. I understand both attacks in light of Egypt's political conditions and the role of the Egyptian women in an ongoing struggle against oppressive and undemocratic government. The heinous attacks mark much more than 'attitudes towards women'. Perhaps they mark the desperation of a dying regime." (jadaliyya.com, 20/2/11)

Clive James & Brown Women

Gayatri Spivak could have had Clive James in mind when coining her classic line about the urge of the white man to save brown women from brown men. James' urge, already the subject of one post on this blog (Giving Poetry a Bad Name, 17/3/09), has resurfaced. Not that I'd have noticed without reading The Australian, of course. They just love the bugger over there at News Ltd.

In the paper's column, Global Briefing: Journals, under the heading No honour in killing (8/9/09), the reader is informed that James had asked, in an essay in the British monthly Standpoint, "how Western feminists can turn a blind eye to the honour killing of women." He is quoted as saying: "We are told that when it comes to a case of honour [killing], Jordan is one of the more progressive Islamic communities. In Jordan, only one-quarter of all homicides are cases of honour. In the Palestinian sectors of the West Bank and in Gaza, the proportion is two-thirds."

We are told... By whom? James doesn't say. Unlike MERC, he doesn't do footnotes. Ready? A quick google for 'honour killings/Jordan' elicits the following: "The Jordan Times estimated in 1994 that between 28 and 60 Jordanian women... die in 'honour' killings every year... The death-toll may even run into the hundreds..." ('Honour' killings, (2) Jordan, gendercide.org). Do the same for Palestine, and you get this: "Given that honor killings often remain a private family affair, no official statistics are available on the practice or its frequency. According to a November 1997 report of the Women's Empowerment Project... there were 20 honor killings in Gaza and the West Bank in 1996." (Commodifying Honor in Female Sexuality: Honor killings in Palestine, Suzanne Ruggi, MERIP, Spring 1998)

The editor of the Australian column concludes thus: "Drawing on an article by the late Australian journalist Pamela Bone, Clive's conclusion is that feminists have been hiding - 'eloquent in their condemnation of Western evils', but ignoring the treatment of women within the culture of Islam."

Hello? Drawing on an article by the late Australian journalist Pamela Bone? Now there's an authority for you! As an apologist for Israel (and associate editor of The Age), Pamela Bone could apologise with the best of them: "Yes, what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians is terrible. But what the Palestinians are doing to the Israelis is also terrible. One can hate the destruction of Palestinian homes (I do) but could at least recognise the reason for the destruction is arms-smuggling tunnels underneath them." (Anti-Semitism: the old hatred returns, The Age, 31/7/04)

And that phrase the treatment of women within the culture of Islam - how sly is that? What precisely does within the culture of Islam mean? That the practice of honour killing is... Islamic? To return to Ruggi's article quoted above: "The honour killing emerged in the pre-Islamic era, according to Sharif Kanaana, professor of anthropology at Birzeit University... 'In an Islamic context, punishment for relationships out of wedlock is stipulated as 100 lashes if the woman is single, or if married, death by stoning. In both cases, however, there must be 4 witnesses willing to testify that the sexual act took place; conditions which make punishment difficult'." OK, so it's not Islamic, but anyone reading No honour in killing in The Australian won't be exposed to this clarification. And that's the whole point over at News Ltd, isn't it? Keep them in the dark and feed them on Islamophobic bullshit.

Should Clive have hung his Islamophobic rant on the death by stoning hook instead? Well, if he had, he'd have opened Pandora's box. According to the Bible, a woman can be stoned for adultery or for not being a virgin on her wedding night, for example. Stoning is also the penalty for apostasy, witchcraft, disobeying one's parents, breaking the Sabbath and cursing the king. And if an ox were to gore a man or woman? You guessed it - death by stoning. (skepticsannotatedbible.com)

In an attempt to ward off any scrutiny of the culture of Judaism, James issues the following disclaimer in his Standpoint essay, A Veil of Silence over Murder: "And the fact that there are men in charge of synagogues who feel the same [ie banning menstruating women] is not really an answer, because except for the occasional ultra-Orthodox headcase no man who runs a synagogue wants to burn [Pakistani-style] the women inside it." And that's that? Not by a long chalk. You see, James is as ignorant of Judaism as he is of Islam.

Israel Shahak, the late author of Jewish History, Jewish Religion (1994), tells us that "[s]exual intercourse between a married Jewish woman and any man other than her husband is a capital offence for both parties, and one of the 3 most heinous sins." But, he points out (and no doubt James will be relieved to hear this), "the concept of adultery... does not apply to intercourse between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman; rather, the Talmud equates such intercourse to the sin of bestiality... This does not imply that sexual intercourse between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman is permitted - quite the contrary. But the main punishment is inflicted on the Gentile woman; she must be executed, even if she was raped by the Jew: 'If a Jew has coitus with a Gentile woman, whether she be a child of 3 or an adult, whether married or unmarried... she must be killed, as is the case with a beast, because through her a Jew got into trouble'." (p 87)

And James reckons feminists turn a blind eye...

Giving Poetry a Bad Name

I first came across the following poem on Michael Danby's website. (Before you leap to the conclusion that Danby's a lover of verse, let me stress that it is the one & only poem on his website):-

Yusra

The Public Morals Unit of Hamas
Saw Yusra al-Azzuri, bold as brass,
In Gaza City, walk with her betrothed,
Her sister also present. Half unclothed.
All three behaved as if beyond the reach
Of justice. Laughing, dancing on the beach,
They almost touched. They thought to drive away.
The Unit followed them without delay.
Her young man drove. Beside him as they fled,
Yusra died quickly in a hail of lead.
The other two were hauled out of the car
And beaten senseless. With an iron bar,
The riddled corpse of Yusra, as the worst
Offender, was assaulted till it burst.
She would have prayed for death. It can be said,
Therefore, it was a blessing she was dead
Already. Thus we look for just one touch
Of grace in this catastrophe. Too much
To bear, the thought that those young men were glad
To be there. Won't the memory drive them mad?
Could they not see the laughter in her face
Was heaven on earth, the only holy place?
Perhaps they guessed, and acted from the fear
That Paradise is nowhere if not here.
Yusra, your name too lovely to forget
Shines like a sunrise joined to a sunset.
The day between went with you. Where you are,
That light around you is your life, Yusra.

It was written by expatriate Australian poet and UK TV wit Clive James and published in The Australian's literary supplement The Australian Literary Review of September 7 2007. To the best of my knowledge, apart from Danby's website, its only other airing has been in James' recently published collection Opal Sunset: Selected Poems 1958-2008. Thank God for small mercies.

At first blush, one might assume, as reviewer Benjamin Lytal of the Los Angeles Times did, that Yusra has some basis in fact: "Others, like Yusra, take a name out of the headlines in order to saddle current events with James' metered chivalry." But, like Lytal, you'd be wrong. Yusra al-Azzuri is pure fiction and Hamas has no 'Public Morals Unit'.

The closest I can find to a 'PMU' in the Palestinian territories is a 'morality police' unit set up by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah following Hamas' successful pre-emptive coup in Gaza in 2007. Its job is reportedly to "comb the streets of central Ramallah to maintain 'public order' and 'tradition' [and] bust anyone caught violating the fast during Ramadan..." (Fatah uses 'morality police' to burnish image, Joshua Mitnick, Christian Science Monitor, 11/10/07) And that's "bust," as in take offenders down to the station for a talk - not riddle them with bullets and beat their corpses to a pulp. While noting that the PA's establishment of a 'morality police' unit was designed to compete with Hamas' reputation among all Palestinians for piety and lack of corruption, Mitnick writes that "no such morality squad exists in Gaza," and adds that "local observers say that in a territory known as more traditional than the West Bank, Hamas has been careful not to give its critics a justification for allegations that it is a Taliban wannabe."

James' fabrication cannot simply be excused as poetic licence. Yusra is blatant black propaganda, pure and simple. It tells us nothing whatever about Hamas, Palestinians, or Gaza. Just look at those young lovers: taking the (sports?) car for a spin along the coast as though they were the Gazan equivalent of middle class Lebanese twentysomethings on a jaunt to Beirut's Corniche, for God's sake. The fact that blockaded, impoverished, fuel-starved Gaza has been virtually carless for years, is simply not on James' radar. No, what Yusra is really all about is James and his lurid, post 9/11 orientalist fantasies.

In the unlikely event that James ever chooses to write about the real thing, of course, he could always draw on the actual case of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish divorcee who was beaten to the point of requiring medical treatment in her Jerusalem home by thugs in the pay of an ultra-Orthodox 'modesty patrol' because she had allegedly "stopped maintaining an ultra-Orthodox lifestyle and had relationships with men." The mercenaries who carried out the attack had been, in the words of the Israeli judge who sentenced one of them to 4 years jail, "hired to beat and abuse, to curse and threaten, to humiliate and brutalize" the woman. (Modesty patrol 'mercenary' gets 4 years for assaulting woman, Yair Ettinger, Haaretz, 16/3/09) Fat chance!

But there's another twist to this story. George Orwell, who once opined that "during times of universal deceit, telling truth becomes a revolutionary act," would no doubt be turning in his grave if he knew that James had been awarded the 2008 Orwell Prize for political journalism. Here's Jean Seaton, chair of the Orwell Prize and professor of media history at the University of Westminster: "Clive James is a master, in the Orwell tradition, of the essay. Whether written or broadcast, his words are sharp but humane."(Hari & James take Orwell prizes, Stephen Brook, guardian.co.uk, 25/4/08)

Ever read a James essay? One such appeared in The Australian of 10 April 2004. Written in bad blood is James' take on the history of the Palestine -Israel conflict. Unsurprisingly, considering he's the author of Yusra, he manages to get just about everything wrong. For reasons of space, I will deal only with the slanders, distortions, and errors of just the first half of this appalling diatribe:-

According to James, the Palestinians are possessed of "the mad idea that the Jews have no right to exist... and the equally mad idea that the state of Israel can somehow be eliminated." That's "the Jews" anywhere and everywhere, folks, not just those who flooded into Palestine. A bit like asserting that indigenous Australians were not only opposed to those who invaded and colonized their homeland but also opposed the very existence of each and every European in the lands from which the invaders and settlers first issued. For James, the Palestinians weren't simply opposed to the handover of their homeland by a European colonial power to a bunch of European settlers who wanted to turn it into an ethnically exclusive state at their expense - no, they just hated Jews. Full stop. End of story.

This outrageous slander of the victims of the Zionist colonial-settler project in Palestine came about, according to James, because the "Arab nations never studied at the University of the Holocaust [and] saw nothing wrong with Hitler's determination that as many potential colonists as possible should be dealt with at source."

Studied at the 'University of the Holocaust'?! Presumably, "the Arabs" (but not necessarily the Europeans) should have been alive to the fact that another European colonial power, other than the one forcing the foreign settlers on them, had 'issues' with certain European 'tribes' to its east and was intent on rolling them. And not only should they have twigged to that - they should also have jumped for joy at the prospect of helping out the most persecuted of those European 'tribes' by a) prevailing upon their own colonial master to open the gates of Palestine to said 'tribe', and b) prevailing upon the Palestinians themselves to shower its members with rice and rose petals before promptly handing over their house and car keys and then decamping across the Jordan.

Apart from the odd reference to this or that Zionist primer, James appears simply to make things up as he goes along: "Ben-Gurion was ready to accept a partition of Palestine: even though his resulting portion would be tiny..." Oh, really?If 56% of Palestine is "tiny" for those who had bought up a mere 6% of it prior to 1947, how then would James describe the 44% alloted to the Palestinians? Teensy? How, moreover, would he describe a Palestinian state on a mere 22%? Teensy weensy? And how would he describe a Palestinian state on 22% minus Jewish settlement blocs, apartheid wall, Jews-only roads, army bases, etc? Microscopic?

James makes basic errors such as in "when the new state was attacked [by the Arab states] from all sides... the Irgun teamed up with the Stern Gang to massacre over 300 Arabs at Deir Yassin, and the exodus of the Palestinians ensued." The Deir Yassin massacre occurred over a month before the Arab armies entered Palestine, and just over 100 Palestinians were butchered. Moreover, the Palestinian "exodus" was well under way by the time the Arab armies intervened.

Crucially, he glosses over David Ben-Gurion's key role in planning and implementing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, using the Irgun and Stern Gang as fall guys: "Although [the Palestinians'] disappearance suited Ben-Gurion's purposes - already embattled on a half-dozen external fronts, he would probably have lost the war if he had been forced to fight on an internal front as well." As Zionist historian Benny Morris has pointed out, Ben-Gurion was a "transferist... He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst... Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here." To which I would add this from Israeli historian Ilan Pappe: "On 2 November, ie, almost a month before the UN General Assembly [partition] Resolution was adopted... the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion, spelled out for the first time in the clearest possible terms that ethnic cleansing formed the alternative, or complementary means of ensuring that the new state would be an exclusively Jewish one. The Palestinians inside the Jewish state, he told his audience, could become a fifth column, and if so 'they can either be mass arrested or expelled; it is better to expel them'." ( The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p 49)

And check out these bizarre sentences: "The Jews were suitably sorry at the time. But the Palestinians were sorry forever." Run that past me again. If "the Jews" were in fact "suitably sorry" at the time, all they had to do was facilitate the return of the refugees - as opposed to what they actually did (and have continued to do ever since) - block it and confiscate the refugees' homes and lands. And if the Palestinians, as a consequence of their dispossession in 1948, then became in James' ridiculous phraseology "sorry forever" would that not be sufficient to account for their rage without all that nonsense about anti-Semitism?

Nowhere does James' cluelessness come through better than in this outrageous statement: "There is enough oil money in the Arab nations to give every refugee a hotel suite with 24-hour room service. Instead they have been obliged to remain in camps that are display cases, so that they can testify with their desperation to Jewish inhumanity." If the goose had bothered to find out what the refugees themselves thought about their plight, he'd have discovered that nothing short of a return to what is rightfully theirs is acceptable to them. But face it, research or no research, if you've got a modicum of empathy for anyone who has been rudely shoved aside by those more powerful, you wouldn't even entertain such a callous and insensitive idea in the first place.

Poet? Orwell-Prize-winning journalist? You've got to be joking!