When was the last time you saw an interview with a foreign ambassador in The Sydney Morning Herald?
As usual, I stand to be corrected, but I can't remember one - ever. Why then has the Herald devoted an entire page of today's issue to a softly, softly, ever so softly, warm and fuzzy interview (by Damien Murphy) with Israel's ambassador to Australia, Yuval Rotem?
Israeli exceptionalism... again?
Ah, but the man's a star!
"Rotem is used to attention. He was a media darling in his previous posting in Los Angeles, thanks not only to the proximity of Hollywood's influential Jewish population." (Treading the halls of power)
Media darling... not only to? In cold, hard fact, not at all to it seems:
"Flush with the worldwide publicity generated by this summer's [2003] visit to Israel by actor Christopher Reeve, Ambassador Yuval Rotem of the Israel Consulate of Los Angeles said that in September he will 're-embark on this mission, to appeal to some people from the entertainment industry and ask them to pay a visit'. The paralyzed actor's high-profile July 28-August 1 visit - a story that drew worldwide media attention during a lull in Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli countermeasures - may have prompted the LA diplomat to ask more of Hollywood. However, despite visits to Israel this year by Reeve, Whitney Houston and film producer Lawrence Bender, vocal support for Israel in Hollywood - including that of Hollywood's Jews - appears rare. 'For some reason in Hollywood', said independent filmmaker Henry Jaglom, 'people feel they have to take a stance - 'OK, I'm either pro-Israel or anti-Israel' - not that there are different ways to be pro-Israel. Jews are sort of scared to make their own case', Jaglom told The Journal. 'The word 'Zionism' becomes like a dirty word' ... Rotem began calling for more celebrities to visit Israel in speeches and other forums about 15 months ago, 'when I saw Oliver Stone spending 3 days with Yasser Arafat in the compound in Ramallah and [he] expressed... his sympathy with Yasser Arafat'. Aside from the Reeve visit, in which Rotem's office was directly involved, the diplomat said, 'I can't report to you that I've had a great success. It's not so easy to mobilize those people'." (Israel to seek celebrity support, David Finnigan, jewishjournal.com, 28/8/03)
Some media darling, darling!
Oh well, if even Hollywood's now giving you the cold shoulder, gather ye rosebuds where ye may:
"[Rotem] reached out to poor communities in East LA, especially Hispanics, and through his Howard Hughes-like habit of employing Mormons, a practice continued in Canberra."
Did he minister then, Mother-Theresa-like, to the Wretched of the Earth in the barrios of East LA, flanked by clean-cut, white-shirted bicycle-riders, dispensing recycled US tax dollars and Israeli flags, or did he merely give a job to a young Morman Zionist of Hispanic background?
Would you believe the latter?
As that young, hot-to-trot MZoHb, Mark Paredes, Rotem's LA press attache at the time, says: "[T] here is a growing realization in Jewish communities worldwide that they need allies, especially non-Jewish ones. Jewish leaders who might have hesitated to accept support from Christian churches 15 or 20 years ago are now showing up at Evangelical rallies and seeking to win over pastors at Protestant General Assemblies. It's a different world for Jewish interfaith outreach, and I firmly believe that there is a place for Mormons in it." (Jewish-Mormon relations: Mark Paredes leads the way, blogs.chron.com, 26/7/10)
Oh well, an Israeli ambassador's gotta do what an Israeli ambassador's gotta do, I guess.
"Here, Rotem is reaching out to Aboriginal communities, and his embassy is funding the Allira Aboriginal Knowledge IT Centre in Dubbo, which opened in September and aims to help local elders record their oral history and traditions." (Treading the halls of power, Damien Murphy)
A saint, I tell you, a saint! But ministering to the Wretched of the Earth in Dubbo is the least of it. Rotem also ministers to ministers and ministerial wannabes in Canberra:
"Groups of influential Australians are taking guided tours of Israel, proof, Rotem believes, of the continuing strength of the bilateral relationship despite interruption over the passports and the flotilla action."
All pull factors, of course.
Q & A time:
DM: "Post-Holocaust Israel was widely regarded in the West as a heroic endeavour, but it is not so clear cut any longer. What happened?"
YR: "It is a very fair question. But it is a question faced also by the Americans, the British and the French. The era has changed the world. Your enemy is not an army of a neighbouring country. Your enemy can be faceless. Your enemy can be in a cave. Your enemy can be using unknown cheque accounts and be trained in undislosed locations. Despite all your efforts... there may be 16, 17, 18 or so cuckoos who are trying to understand your way of life."
I may still be trying to get my head around that last sentence, but Murphy must have been happy with it because he breathlessly hurries on to pot Rotem's biography and describe how he'd been looking for a long-lost, Holocaust-era cousin ("even seeking help from the Mormon archives in Salt Lake City") and found him in Melbourne. Touched I was, touched.
But back to core business, defined by Rotem as "physically advancing Israeli affairs in Australia." Example: "In August Rotem took 40 Israeli companies and their water technology solutions to see if their strength in technology, science and IT could be useful to West Australian miners."
Of course, the delicate issue of Mossad's purloining of Australian passports for use by Israeli death squads had to come up, eliciting this enlightening comment (to which I've added some clarifications in square brackets): " Given the fact that Australia has been a constantly friendly country to Israel [ie a soft touch]... there was an issue. We took note of the Australian position and we both realised we needed to move forward [ie we didn't need the bad PR and they badly needed to fund an election campaign]. The beauty of this relationship between our two countries is that even if we have an issue we know how to overcome, we know how to move into repairing and reconstructing this relationship. I think the fact that we have so many visits from Australia to Israel is to some extent an indication and a test for good relationship [ie we whip 'em over to Israel, mess with their minds, mmm... innoculate 'em so to speak, and, hey presto, no more negative vibes!] ... if it was not on good terms, it would be more difficult to go back to business."
Apparently, it didn't occur to Murphy to ask when Israel was going to apologise to Australia in view of reports that it is about to apologise to Britain. Being in love means never having to say you're sorry, I guess.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Bird-Brain
"First there was the killer shark that Egypt said Mossad had dropped in its coastal waters to scare off tourists from its Red Sea resorts. Now Saudi Arabia has 'arrested' a vulture on suspicion of spying for the Israeli intelligence agency. The offending bird, which had apparently been tagged by researchers from Tel Aviv University studying migration patterns, was captured in a rural area of the Saudi kingdom, which is officially still at war with the Jewish state. The global positioning transmitter and a leg bracelet marked 'R65 - Tel Aviv University' were perceived by the Saudis as sophisticated espionage equipment to allow the bird to send intelligence back to Israel. The Saudi newspaper al-Weeam said residents of the area in which the bird was caught called the tracking paraphernalia evidence of a 'Zionist plot', although there was no official reaction from the security services to whom it was handed." (Vulture held as Mossad spy, James Hider, The Times/The Australian, 7/1/11)
Blimey, how dumb are those Arabs! But wait a minute, what's this? A caution from The Angry Arab:
"Although I had received many links from readers about the alleged Saudi accusation of a vulture spying for Israel, I refused to post any because I suspected that it was a fabrication of the Israeli propaganda machine. Today, a Western journalist in the Middle East, Rasmus, sent me this: 'I urge you to look closer at the story about the alleged spy-vulture. As far as I can find out, the original reports from Saudi media say NOTHING about a bird being in the custody of the Saudi security forces nor that they suspect it of having been trained by Mossad. It was just some villagers who got scared by the big bird with the weird transmitter, caught it and handed it over to the authorities (unspecified). The rest is only to be found in the report from the rightwing Israeli paper Maariv which started the flood of reports in the Western media, all saying that Saudi intelligence had arrested a vulture on charges of espionage (or, speaking more plainly: once again the stupid, anti-Semitic Arabs make wild claims). This story needs to be refuted'." (angryarab.blogspot.com, 6/1/11)
Indeed, but not only is your Times Middle East correspondent (and obvious David Attenborough wannabe), James Hider (author of The Spiders of Allah: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of the Holy War), unable to smell a rat when its distinctive odour is all over a story, but he actually goes on to pontificate on Arab 'paranoia':
"Paranoia among Israel's enemies and its nominal friends means countries such as Egypt, which has signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state, are locked with it in mutual distrust in what has been described as a 'cold peace'. Such paranoia reflects the reach of Israeli intelligence and the inability of intelligence organisations in the Muslim world to match it. Last week Iran hanged a man it accused of being a spy for Israel after several assassinations and kidnappings of its nuclear scientists. Lebanon has charged several of its citizens with spying for the Jewish state."
The implication, of course, is that not only are Arabs dumb and paranoid, but they've actually taken to eating their own out of sheer paranoia! Not bad mileage for a story about a tagged vulture.
But how could anyone with even the shakiest handle on the Palestine-Israel issue seriously say, as Hider once did to David Frost* (in Frost Over the World), that the problem basically boils down to an unwillingness to compromise. Your average Israeli from Tel Aviv and your average Palestinian from Ramallah, he told Frost, have probably got a huge amount in common - after all, they're just ordinary, normal people. The problem is that on the fringes you've got the Hamases on the one hand and the Israeli settlers on the other - and there's no room for compromise there. [*Hider's sufficiently happy with that interview to host it on his blog, jameshider.wordpress.com.]
How profound! Thankyou so much, James. We're all so refreshed and challenged by your unique point of view. See you later, alligator!
PS (13/1/11): You'll be pleased to know that, according to The Australian of 13 January, the Saudis have finally released the "Mossad vulture." The final paragraph of its brief report reads: "The Jerusalem Post reported that Dan Alon, director of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, was 'filled with joy to hear of the bird's release, and added that tracking the bird's movement will greatly aid in defended [sic] endangered species in the future'." (Saudis free 'Mossad vulture') Aw... that's so nice! The milk of human kindness only flows through Israeli veins.
Blimey, how dumb are those Arabs! But wait a minute, what's this? A caution from The Angry Arab:
"Although I had received many links from readers about the alleged Saudi accusation of a vulture spying for Israel, I refused to post any because I suspected that it was a fabrication of the Israeli propaganda machine. Today, a Western journalist in the Middle East, Rasmus, sent me this: 'I urge you to look closer at the story about the alleged spy-vulture. As far as I can find out, the original reports from Saudi media say NOTHING about a bird being in the custody of the Saudi security forces nor that they suspect it of having been trained by Mossad. It was just some villagers who got scared by the big bird with the weird transmitter, caught it and handed it over to the authorities (unspecified). The rest is only to be found in the report from the rightwing Israeli paper Maariv which started the flood of reports in the Western media, all saying that Saudi intelligence had arrested a vulture on charges of espionage (or, speaking more plainly: once again the stupid, anti-Semitic Arabs make wild claims). This story needs to be refuted'." (angryarab.blogspot.com, 6/1/11)
Indeed, but not only is your Times Middle East correspondent (and obvious David Attenborough wannabe), James Hider (author of The Spiders of Allah: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of the Holy War), unable to smell a rat when its distinctive odour is all over a story, but he actually goes on to pontificate on Arab 'paranoia':
"Paranoia among Israel's enemies and its nominal friends means countries such as Egypt, which has signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state, are locked with it in mutual distrust in what has been described as a 'cold peace'. Such paranoia reflects the reach of Israeli intelligence and the inability of intelligence organisations in the Muslim world to match it. Last week Iran hanged a man it accused of being a spy for Israel after several assassinations and kidnappings of its nuclear scientists. Lebanon has charged several of its citizens with spying for the Jewish state."
The implication, of course, is that not only are Arabs dumb and paranoid, but they've actually taken to eating their own out of sheer paranoia! Not bad mileage for a story about a tagged vulture.
But how could anyone with even the shakiest handle on the Palestine-Israel issue seriously say, as Hider once did to David Frost* (in Frost Over the World), that the problem basically boils down to an unwillingness to compromise. Your average Israeli from Tel Aviv and your average Palestinian from Ramallah, he told Frost, have probably got a huge amount in common - after all, they're just ordinary, normal people. The problem is that on the fringes you've got the Hamases on the one hand and the Israeli settlers on the other - and there's no room for compromise there. [*Hider's sufficiently happy with that interview to host it on his blog, jameshider.wordpress.com.]
How profound! Thankyou so much, James. We're all so refreshed and challenged by your unique point of view. See you later, alligator!
PS (13/1/11): You'll be pleased to know that, according to The Australian of 13 January, the Saudis have finally released the "Mossad vulture." The final paragraph of its brief report reads: "The Jerusalem Post reported that Dan Alon, director of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, was 'filled with joy to hear of the bird's release, and added that tracking the bird's movement will greatly aid in defended [sic] endangered species in the future'." (Saudis free 'Mossad vulture') Aw... that's so nice! The milk of human kindness only flows through Israeli veins.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Running Amok at The Australian
Murdoch's The Australian, which ludicrously bills itself as the 'Heart of the Nation', is the most blatantly and relentlessly ideological of Australia's corporate fishwrappers. This purveyor of climate change 'scepticism', free market fundamentalism, militarism, Islamophobia, general all-round nastiness, and (despite the occasional sop to the contrary) pro-Israel zealotry, was recently the subject of a well-deserved verbal walloping by former Labor Party leader Mark Latham. Some excerpts:
"In the self-indulgence stakes it is hard to beat The Australian. Newspapers are supposed to talk to their readers about interesting events. Too often The Australian talks to itself about itself. Barely an edition passes without the denigration of its imagined foes, defined as those who disagree with its editorial line and/or work for rival media companies - a broad catchment. Barely an edition passes without the invention of a new angle by which the paper can boast of its imagined magnificence." (Yes, it's you I'm talking about, The Weekend Australian Financial Review, 29/12/10)
"The problem with modern journalism is one of expectations. As Peter Costello has noted, journalism is the only profession in which its proponents have no direct experience with their subject matter (as parliamentarians or public servants) yet regard themselves as experts. Given the nature of their work, reporters spend a lot of time hanging around important people, building an impression that they know what these people are thinking. These two factors combine to create a psychology of false wisdom. When a politician provides a journalist with off-the-record information, it is usually reported at face value. No weight is given to the way in which politicians tell reporters only what they want them to hear - to set a certain agenda, to destabilise a certain opponent, to achieve a certain self-serving goal. Journalists have an expectation of knowing all when, in practice, they can only ever know a small portion of a politician's activities." (ibid)
[Although Latham doesn't mention foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan in his serve, the glove certainly fits. With respect to the latter's 'coverage' of the Middle East conflict in particular, and Middle East issues in general, he acts merely as a medium for Israeli politicians, channeling their words and agenda, unmediated by any hint of critical analysis or scepticism.]
"[The Australian's] owners and managers not only have a strongly formed opinion about politics, they believe their views should be adopted by the political system. Its editorial statement of December 18 captures this approach neatly: the paper has 'well-developed ideas about what Australia needs and it is against this vision that we assess policies and tactics'. This could readily pass for the charter of a political party. In some respects, this is what The Australian has become. It sees itself as a participant in the political process, forging a lively policy agenda and making and breaking political leaders. Have no doubt The Australian considers itself one of the most important institutions in Parliament House. It has moved beyond the dissemination of news and into the distribution of political power. Just as it is willing to browbeat politicians who defy its editorial line, the same self-indulgent methods are applied to its rivals in the media. Ultimately, this is what its edition of December 18 was about. It declared that day 'a crisis in political journalism that mirrors the crisis in the political class' and, more generally, the media 'have lost the trust of consumers'. I agree with these statements. The sad thing for The Australian is its lack of awareness in appreciating its own role, spearheading the decline in political journalism in this country. As the ancient Greeks inquired, in words inscribed on the golden stone walls of Delphi, 'who will guard the guardians?' The Australian is out of control." (ibid)
I'm reminded of an earlier Latham reflection on the antipodean component of Murdoch's "Evil Empire":
"How bad are News Limited and its anti-Labor propaganda? It's a running dog for Howard and the Libs, with its shocking stance on Iraq, the neoconservatism of The Australian and its disgraceful defence of Abbott and his scam with Australians for Honest Politics. In my experience, it's a company run on personal connections and preferences, not the facts. I'm embarrassed to think I used to be a columnist for the Tele. Ian Moore and David Penberthy have their heads in the toilet bowl over Sandra in my office and this business with her partner, who's in strife over his role in a Port Kembla brothel. In truth, the Tele loves brothels, they help to pay their wages and add to Murdoch's profits. Just look down the back of the paper, page after page of brothel advertising. Moralising, hypocritical Tories - is there a worse species of animal on earth?" (The Latham Diaries, Wednesday, 3 September 2003, pp 232-233)
Wonderful stuff!
"In the self-indulgence stakes it is hard to beat The Australian. Newspapers are supposed to talk to their readers about interesting events. Too often The Australian talks to itself about itself. Barely an edition passes without the denigration of its imagined foes, defined as those who disagree with its editorial line and/or work for rival media companies - a broad catchment. Barely an edition passes without the invention of a new angle by which the paper can boast of its imagined magnificence." (Yes, it's you I'm talking about, The Weekend Australian Financial Review, 29/12/10)
"The problem with modern journalism is one of expectations. As Peter Costello has noted, journalism is the only profession in which its proponents have no direct experience with their subject matter (as parliamentarians or public servants) yet regard themselves as experts. Given the nature of their work, reporters spend a lot of time hanging around important people, building an impression that they know what these people are thinking. These two factors combine to create a psychology of false wisdom. When a politician provides a journalist with off-the-record information, it is usually reported at face value. No weight is given to the way in which politicians tell reporters only what they want them to hear - to set a certain agenda, to destabilise a certain opponent, to achieve a certain self-serving goal. Journalists have an expectation of knowing all when, in practice, they can only ever know a small portion of a politician's activities." (ibid)
[Although Latham doesn't mention foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan in his serve, the glove certainly fits. With respect to the latter's 'coverage' of the Middle East conflict in particular, and Middle East issues in general, he acts merely as a medium for Israeli politicians, channeling their words and agenda, unmediated by any hint of critical analysis or scepticism.]
"[The Australian's] owners and managers not only have a strongly formed opinion about politics, they believe their views should be adopted by the political system. Its editorial statement of December 18 captures this approach neatly: the paper has 'well-developed ideas about what Australia needs and it is against this vision that we assess policies and tactics'. This could readily pass for the charter of a political party. In some respects, this is what The Australian has become. It sees itself as a participant in the political process, forging a lively policy agenda and making and breaking political leaders. Have no doubt The Australian considers itself one of the most important institutions in Parliament House. It has moved beyond the dissemination of news and into the distribution of political power. Just as it is willing to browbeat politicians who defy its editorial line, the same self-indulgent methods are applied to its rivals in the media. Ultimately, this is what its edition of December 18 was about. It declared that day 'a crisis in political journalism that mirrors the crisis in the political class' and, more generally, the media 'have lost the trust of consumers'. I agree with these statements. The sad thing for The Australian is its lack of awareness in appreciating its own role, spearheading the decline in political journalism in this country. As the ancient Greeks inquired, in words inscribed on the golden stone walls of Delphi, 'who will guard the guardians?' The Australian is out of control." (ibid)
I'm reminded of an earlier Latham reflection on the antipodean component of Murdoch's "Evil Empire":
"How bad are News Limited and its anti-Labor propaganda? It's a running dog for Howard and the Libs, with its shocking stance on Iraq, the neoconservatism of The Australian and its disgraceful defence of Abbott and his scam with Australians for Honest Politics. In my experience, it's a company run on personal connections and preferences, not the facts. I'm embarrassed to think I used to be a columnist for the Tele. Ian Moore and David Penberthy have their heads in the toilet bowl over Sandra in my office and this business with her partner, who's in strife over his role in a Port Kembla brothel. In truth, the Tele loves brothels, they help to pay their wages and add to Murdoch's profits. Just look down the back of the paper, page after page of brothel advertising. Moralising, hypocritical Tories - is there a worse species of animal on earth?" (The Latham Diaries, Wednesday, 3 September 2003, pp 232-233)
Wonderful stuff!
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Israel's Hottie Down Under
The Australian's foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, still hasn't recovered from his December 2010 Movers & Shakers Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (aka the Australia Israel Leadership Forum), returning to it again and again in his columns. Undoubtedly, Sheridan of Israel (as future generations will surely know him) has far and away the most advanced case of Jerusalem Syndrome (JS) of any among Australia's rambammed court scribblers, if not the world's.
Today he muses on exactly what it is about us that gets Israel's juices going. Is it our cute little arse? Our pert breasts? Our dripping wet Boy Toy t-shirt? Our We Love U Israel tats? No, that's not quite it (although we are drop-dead gorgeous if I do say so myself). No, according to Sheridan of Israel:
"... Israel's affection for Australia follows decades of strong support for Jerusalem from Canberra. But it has deeper historical roots. Australian forces were important in driving the Ottomans out of the land of Israel in World War I, and important too in World War II in ensuring that Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic genocide never reached the Jews of Palestine." (Served very well by the stereotypes)
See what JS does to the brain? In WWI Australian troops drove the Turks out of Israel, while in WWII they kept the Germans out of Palestine!
But that's a mere bagatelle to what follows:
"But the way the Australian troops conducted themselves there, the easygoing informality and friendliness of the diggers, is a legend that survives in Israel still, and it often leads to a comparison between Israeli and Australian informality and social egalitarianism." (ibid)
Isn't that wonderful? Our diggers and Palestine's Jewish colons got on like the proverbial house on fire.
Except that's not what the historical record shows, at least in the form of Australian War Memorial document AWM52/ Australian Military Forces, Army headquarters, formation & unit diaries, 1939-1945/1/12/16 East & Middle East Units/ AIF Details Tel Aviv Commanding Officers/ December 1941-May 1942 (awm.gov.au).
Seems the diggers were getting ripped off something terrible in Tel Aviv's eateries, so much so that... well, read for yourself:
"19. The Australian Imperial Forces [AIF] Amenities Officer then addressed the conference... [stating] that his duties as AIF Amenities gave him many opportunities to hear opinions of members of the AIF; he further stated that the fluctuation and rise of prices were not explained to the troops and therefore had created bad feelings among them... He gave examples of bad feelings and told of his experiences whilst censoring letters of troops to their folks in Australia, in which they had written plainly in a lot of cases, in such a way that it could only mean that there would be repercussions toward our own Jewish community in Australia if this continued. In some cases where unfair criticism had occurred, he had taken steps to prevent this criticism reaching Australia. He stated that he was aware of certain second rate newspapers in Australia taking up the story and, whether fair or unfair, the Australian Jewish Community would suffer to some degree." (Weekly Conference - Held at the office of the Town Major 17 March 42)
Yes, that's history for you. Messy, inconvenient, devilish in its detail, a spanner in the works. But Sheridan doesn't do history. Whether he's scribbling about the past or the present, his thing is always mythistory.
Today he muses on exactly what it is about us that gets Israel's juices going. Is it our cute little arse? Our pert breasts? Our dripping wet Boy Toy t-shirt? Our We Love U Israel tats? No, that's not quite it (although we are drop-dead gorgeous if I do say so myself). No, according to Sheridan of Israel:
"... Israel's affection for Australia follows decades of strong support for Jerusalem from Canberra. But it has deeper historical roots. Australian forces were important in driving the Ottomans out of the land of Israel in World War I, and important too in World War II in ensuring that Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic genocide never reached the Jews of Palestine." (Served very well by the stereotypes)
See what JS does to the brain? In WWI Australian troops drove the Turks out of Israel, while in WWII they kept the Germans out of Palestine!
But that's a mere bagatelle to what follows:
"But the way the Australian troops conducted themselves there, the easygoing informality and friendliness of the diggers, is a legend that survives in Israel still, and it often leads to a comparison between Israeli and Australian informality and social egalitarianism." (ibid)
Isn't that wonderful? Our diggers and Palestine's Jewish colons got on like the proverbial house on fire.
Except that's not what the historical record shows, at least in the form of Australian War Memorial document AWM52/ Australian Military Forces, Army headquarters, formation & unit diaries, 1939-1945/1/12/16 East & Middle East Units/ AIF Details Tel Aviv Commanding Officers/ December 1941-May 1942 (awm.gov.au).
Seems the diggers were getting ripped off something terrible in Tel Aviv's eateries, so much so that... well, read for yourself:
"19. The Australian Imperial Forces [AIF] Amenities Officer then addressed the conference... [stating] that his duties as AIF Amenities gave him many opportunities to hear opinions of members of the AIF; he further stated that the fluctuation and rise of prices were not explained to the troops and therefore had created bad feelings among them... He gave examples of bad feelings and told of his experiences whilst censoring letters of troops to their folks in Australia, in which they had written plainly in a lot of cases, in such a way that it could only mean that there would be repercussions toward our own Jewish community in Australia if this continued. In some cases where unfair criticism had occurred, he had taken steps to prevent this criticism reaching Australia. He stated that he was aware of certain second rate newspapers in Australia taking up the story and, whether fair or unfair, the Australian Jewish Community would suffer to some degree." (Weekly Conference - Held at the office of the Town Major 17 March 42)
Yes, that's history for you. Messy, inconvenient, devilish in its detail, a spanner in the works. But Sheridan doesn't do history. Whether he's scribbling about the past or the present, his thing is always mythistory.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
An Egyptian Reichstag Fire?
Sydney Morning Herald pundit, Gerard Henderson, unlike his colleague, the dreadful, rambammed Paul Sheehan, usually avoids commenting on Middle Eastern affairs, for which we're all terribly grateful. However, with Christians - in Egypt this time - the target of yet another terrorist outrage, he couldn't resist weighing in with this utterly pedestrian guesswork:
"The bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt, at the weekend, apparently by a radical Islamist, was widely reported as a suicide attack... Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak, has said that the work was the work of 'foreign hands'. He seems to believe that the suicide/homicide attack was organised by a person loyal to al-Qaida who entered Egypt to commit crime - following threats by Osama bin Laden's followers directed at Egypt's Copts. This analysis is probably correct." (The intelligence & the luck that saves us from murderers, 4/1/11)
As'ad AbuKhalil (aka The Angry Arab), a genuine expert on such matters, however, smells a rat - or two:
"I wouldn't put it past the Mubarak regime to plot a deterioration of the security situation as a necessary prerequisite for the coronation of Jamal Mubarak. They want to subjugate and intimidate people first." (angryarab.blogspot.com, 2/1/11)
"Another scenario for what happened in Alexandria is that the military-intelligence apparatus engineeered the explosion in order to sabotage the coronation of Jamal Mubarak and promote a candidate for the military-intelligence apparatus as the rescuer. With those sinister regimes, expect the most sinister of scenarios." (ibid, 3/1/11)
Now as Dr Phil always reminds us, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So, keeping AbuKhalil's suspicions in mind, I think it's perhaps worth going back to Egypt in 1981, to the days of Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat, and having a look at an earlier round of sectarian conflict there.
First, a little context:
"The jama'at islamiyya [Islamic Associations] were the Islamicist student associations that became the dominant force on Egyptian university campuses during Sadat's presidency [1970-1981]. They constituted the Islamicist's only genuine mass organizations. Although they were at first a minority within the Egyptian student movement (then dominated by the Nasserist left and Marxist currents) that arose just after the country's defeat in the 1967 war, the Islamicist students made their breakthrough during the period of relative calm that prevailed on the campuses after the October war of 1973. A mere 4 years later, they were in complete control of the universities and had driven the left organizations underground. Having managed to dominate the Student Union and the most important faculties, the jama'at now represented a threat to the regime, which had initially favoured them. They began to exploit opposition to the policy of peace with Israel on which Sadat, the 'peace president', had gambled his legitimacy and political survival. From that point onwards they suffered administrative harassment and later police repression by the government that had previously handled them with kid gloves. The jama'at islamiyya thus won recognition as an opposition force. From then on, their numbers rose steadily. The regime saw no way of heading off the danger except direct confrontation, dramatized by the 'confessional sedition' in az-Zawiyya al-Hamra in June 1981. In September of that year the jama'at islamiyya were dissolved (although they had never been legally registered in the first place); their infrastructure was destroyed and their leaders arrested. One month later, Sadat was killed by an Islamicist militant, Khalid al-Islambuli, whose brother, a leader of the jama'at islamiyya at the University of Asyut, had been maltreated during his arrest in September.
"The jama'at islamiyya were therefore an important part of the Egyptian political scene during Sadat's presidency. Although they were a student movement, their actions had effects which reached well beyond the confines of the universities, and they intervened directly in political life.
"The jama'at islamiyya referred constantly to the umma islamiyya, or 'Community of Believers' as it existed, in their view, at the time of the 'golden age of Islam' during the reign of the first 4 caliphs, the 'rightly guided caliphs' (al-khulafa' ar-rashidun). Their objective was the renaissance of this umma through the restoration of the caliphate. The means they employed to achieve this aim were meant to offer a foretaste of what life would be like in the radiant future, while simultaneously manifesting their militant and exemplary break with contemporary Egyptian society." (The Prophet & Pharaoh: Muslim Extremism in Egypt, Giles Kepel, 1984, pp 129-130)
Now to those events in Cairo's az-Zawiyya al-Hamra district:
"The jama'at were attacked and liquidated by the regime as centrifugal forces whose aim was the destruction of the 'Egyptian nation', based, according to an old myth reactivated by Sadat, on the harmonious coexistence of the Copts and the Muslims. When the state's attack came, there were no massive expressions of solidarity with the Islamicists on the part of Egyptian Muslims. In order to establish a confessional balance in the repression and thus to disarm any potential Muslim solidarity, the regime also dealt heavy blows to the Coptic Church and hierarchy, which were cast as the Christian equivalent not of al-Azhar, which is the institutional reality, but of the jama'at. Sadat's position in mid-1981 was precarious. During the past year the peace treaty with Israel had won him considerable prestige among a population weary of the uninterrupted state of war that had prevailed since Nasser's time. But the benefits the president had drawn from the treaty were being whittled down by the various insults that came from the Begin government, the most deeply resented of which was the proclamation of Jerusalem as the indivisible capital of the Jewish state. The state's inability to deal with Egypt's internal problems was also becoming more manifest day by day.
"Threatened by the Islamicist movement (which capitalized on the general disenchantment), criticized by the Coptic Church, and pilloried by intellectuals in the few tolerated opposition bulletins, the president was also isolated on the Middle Eastern scene, and felt that he had been abandoned by the Reagan administration, which no longer accorded him the privileged status he had enjoyed under Carter. Sadat had also aged. The political genius who had consistently outmanoeuvred his adversaries, playing one against the other, had become a self-satisfied autocrat intoxicated by the fulsome praise heaped upon him by the Western mass media. His political advisers had been replaced by courtiers, careerists, and cops. Nabawi Isma'il, the minister of the interior, ran an army of agents provocateurs, thugs, and anti-riot brigades of ever-increasing size and influence. It was in this fin de regne atmosphere that the June 1981 incidents broke out in Cairo's az-Zawiyya al-Hamra district.
"The origin of the events is not clear, and the various accounts are contradictory. Some say that it all started with an altercation between two local gossips, one Muslim and the other Christian, others that militants of the jama'at islamiyya had taken over a plot of land owned by a Copt to build a mosque on it. Whatever the truth, a pitched battle soon erupted between the two communities in this poor and overcrowded Cairo neighbourhood. They were egged on by mysterious provocateurs, and probably further inflamed by the intense summer heat and the cuts in the water supply. Atrocious crimes were committed by people who had earlier lived together peacefully: men and women were slaughtered; babies were thrown from windows, their bodies crushed on the pavement below; there was looting, killing, and arson. At the same time, leaflets were distributed elsewhere in the city urging each community to take up arms. The neighbourhood was finally sealed off by the police, who according to most witnesses intervened only after irreparable damage had already been done.
"The horror aroused in the country by news of the atrocities committed by extremists on both sides created the situation the regime needed to crush the jama'at by severing the bonds of solidarity with the mass of Muslims: they were charged with particularly odious crimes. On 8 September a long article in al-Ahram presented the official version of the background to the events. The jama'at had just been dissolved, and their members were being sought by police throughout the country." (ibid pp 166-167)
"The bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt, at the weekend, apparently by a radical Islamist, was widely reported as a suicide attack... Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak, has said that the work was the work of 'foreign hands'. He seems to believe that the suicide/homicide attack was organised by a person loyal to al-Qaida who entered Egypt to commit crime - following threats by Osama bin Laden's followers directed at Egypt's Copts. This analysis is probably correct." (The intelligence & the luck that saves us from murderers, 4/1/11)
As'ad AbuKhalil (aka The Angry Arab), a genuine expert on such matters, however, smells a rat - or two:
"I wouldn't put it past the Mubarak regime to plot a deterioration of the security situation as a necessary prerequisite for the coronation of Jamal Mubarak. They want to subjugate and intimidate people first." (angryarab.blogspot.com, 2/1/11)
"Another scenario for what happened in Alexandria is that the military-intelligence apparatus engineeered the explosion in order to sabotage the coronation of Jamal Mubarak and promote a candidate for the military-intelligence apparatus as the rescuer. With those sinister regimes, expect the most sinister of scenarios." (ibid, 3/1/11)
Now as Dr Phil always reminds us, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So, keeping AbuKhalil's suspicions in mind, I think it's perhaps worth going back to Egypt in 1981, to the days of Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat, and having a look at an earlier round of sectarian conflict there.
First, a little context:
"The jama'at islamiyya [Islamic Associations] were the Islamicist student associations that became the dominant force on Egyptian university campuses during Sadat's presidency [1970-1981]. They constituted the Islamicist's only genuine mass organizations. Although they were at first a minority within the Egyptian student movement (then dominated by the Nasserist left and Marxist currents) that arose just after the country's defeat in the 1967 war, the Islamicist students made their breakthrough during the period of relative calm that prevailed on the campuses after the October war of 1973. A mere 4 years later, they were in complete control of the universities and had driven the left organizations underground. Having managed to dominate the Student Union and the most important faculties, the jama'at now represented a threat to the regime, which had initially favoured them. They began to exploit opposition to the policy of peace with Israel on which Sadat, the 'peace president', had gambled his legitimacy and political survival. From that point onwards they suffered administrative harassment and later police repression by the government that had previously handled them with kid gloves. The jama'at islamiyya thus won recognition as an opposition force. From then on, their numbers rose steadily. The regime saw no way of heading off the danger except direct confrontation, dramatized by the 'confessional sedition' in az-Zawiyya al-Hamra in June 1981. In September of that year the jama'at islamiyya were dissolved (although they had never been legally registered in the first place); their infrastructure was destroyed and their leaders arrested. One month later, Sadat was killed by an Islamicist militant, Khalid al-Islambuli, whose brother, a leader of the jama'at islamiyya at the University of Asyut, had been maltreated during his arrest in September.
"The jama'at islamiyya were therefore an important part of the Egyptian political scene during Sadat's presidency. Although they were a student movement, their actions had effects which reached well beyond the confines of the universities, and they intervened directly in political life.
"The jama'at islamiyya referred constantly to the umma islamiyya, or 'Community of Believers' as it existed, in their view, at the time of the 'golden age of Islam' during the reign of the first 4 caliphs, the 'rightly guided caliphs' (al-khulafa' ar-rashidun). Their objective was the renaissance of this umma through the restoration of the caliphate. The means they employed to achieve this aim were meant to offer a foretaste of what life would be like in the radiant future, while simultaneously manifesting their militant and exemplary break with contemporary Egyptian society." (The Prophet & Pharaoh: Muslim Extremism in Egypt, Giles Kepel, 1984, pp 129-130)
Now to those events in Cairo's az-Zawiyya al-Hamra district:
"The jama'at were attacked and liquidated by the regime as centrifugal forces whose aim was the destruction of the 'Egyptian nation', based, according to an old myth reactivated by Sadat, on the harmonious coexistence of the Copts and the Muslims. When the state's attack came, there were no massive expressions of solidarity with the Islamicists on the part of Egyptian Muslims. In order to establish a confessional balance in the repression and thus to disarm any potential Muslim solidarity, the regime also dealt heavy blows to the Coptic Church and hierarchy, which were cast as the Christian equivalent not of al-Azhar, which is the institutional reality, but of the jama'at. Sadat's position in mid-1981 was precarious. During the past year the peace treaty with Israel had won him considerable prestige among a population weary of the uninterrupted state of war that had prevailed since Nasser's time. But the benefits the president had drawn from the treaty were being whittled down by the various insults that came from the Begin government, the most deeply resented of which was the proclamation of Jerusalem as the indivisible capital of the Jewish state. The state's inability to deal with Egypt's internal problems was also becoming more manifest day by day.
"Threatened by the Islamicist movement (which capitalized on the general disenchantment), criticized by the Coptic Church, and pilloried by intellectuals in the few tolerated opposition bulletins, the president was also isolated on the Middle Eastern scene, and felt that he had been abandoned by the Reagan administration, which no longer accorded him the privileged status he had enjoyed under Carter. Sadat had also aged. The political genius who had consistently outmanoeuvred his adversaries, playing one against the other, had become a self-satisfied autocrat intoxicated by the fulsome praise heaped upon him by the Western mass media. His political advisers had been replaced by courtiers, careerists, and cops. Nabawi Isma'il, the minister of the interior, ran an army of agents provocateurs, thugs, and anti-riot brigades of ever-increasing size and influence. It was in this fin de regne atmosphere that the June 1981 incidents broke out in Cairo's az-Zawiyya al-Hamra district.
"The origin of the events is not clear, and the various accounts are contradictory. Some say that it all started with an altercation between two local gossips, one Muslim and the other Christian, others that militants of the jama'at islamiyya had taken over a plot of land owned by a Copt to build a mosque on it. Whatever the truth, a pitched battle soon erupted between the two communities in this poor and overcrowded Cairo neighbourhood. They were egged on by mysterious provocateurs, and probably further inflamed by the intense summer heat and the cuts in the water supply. Atrocious crimes were committed by people who had earlier lived together peacefully: men and women were slaughtered; babies were thrown from windows, their bodies crushed on the pavement below; there was looting, killing, and arson. At the same time, leaflets were distributed elsewhere in the city urging each community to take up arms. The neighbourhood was finally sealed off by the police, who according to most witnesses intervened only after irreparable damage had already been done.
"The horror aroused in the country by news of the atrocities committed by extremists on both sides created the situation the regime needed to crush the jama'at by severing the bonds of solidarity with the mass of Muslims: they were charged with particularly odious crimes. On 8 September a long article in al-Ahram presented the official version of the background to the events. The jama'at had just been dissolved, and their members were being sought by police throughout the country." (ibid pp 166-167)
Round Round Get Around... 8
They get around:
"At least 7 Israeli arms dealers are currently in jail in four countries... the United States, Russia, France and Britain - on charges of illegal arms dealing. Some of them are also suspected of crimes such as forgery, bribery, money-laundering and violating UN Security Council embargoes. Such arrests are briefly covered in Israel and then forgotten. But they have a cumulative effect that is very damaging to Israel's image, or what remains of it. Even though it is doubtful whether those in jail know one another, they have quite a lot in common. All are men in their 50s and 60s. All are well to do (or were in the past), having made most of their money in international arms dealing or in exporting security services and equipment from Israel. They served in the Israel Defense Forces and reached mid-level ranks (from captain to lieutenant colonel), and when they were arrested, they denied the charges. Friends who came to their assistance described them, naturally, as 'the salt of the earth'.* All 7 are familiar faces in the corridors of the defense establishment, and at one time received arms dealing permits from the Defense Ministry. All sought to 'expedite procedures' in violation of local or international laws, and did so out of pure greed. Due to this covetousness, they also fell into traps and can expect to face many years in jail." (Why are so many Israelis arrested over illegal arms deals worldwide? Yossi Melman, Haaretz, 1/7/10) [*Monosodium glutamate of the earth?]
"Two Israeli businessmen have been arrested in Georgia on suspicion of offering the deputy finance minister millions of dollars in bribes, local media reported Saturday... According to the report, Ron Fuchs and Zeev Frenkiel were arrested two days ago during a meeting with Georgian Deputy Finance minister Avtandil Kharadze... According to Georgian prosecutors, the two were awarded nearly $100 million in an arbitration process, but the Georgian government had tried to challenge the decision to transfer them the money... The affair began in 1991, when a company represented by Fuchs started looking for investment opportunities in Georgia's energy sector. In 1992 the company established a joint venture with the Georgian state oil company and obtained concession on the construction of an oil pipeline to transport Azerbaijani oil to the western market via Georgia and Turkey. The two had sued the Georgian government after a deal they signed for the development of oil pipelines in the country was revoked." (2 Israelis suspected of bribing Georgian minister, Ronen Medzini, ynetnews.com, 16/10/10)
"A remote-control drone operated by the Mexican government crashed in the United States near El Paso, Texas, this week, the US Customs & Border Protection agency confirms to TPM... A spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board... tells TPM that the plane that crashed was a 'mini-orbiter UAV' but declined to elaborate further. A Google search turns up a drone called an Orbiter Mini UAV made by Aeronautics Defense Systems, an Israeli company... Last year, Mexico spent $23.25 million to buy an 'unspecified' number of Hermes 450 drones from the Israel-based Elbit Systems Ltd, Reuters reported in August." (Unmanned Mexican drone crashes near El Paso, Texas, Eric Lach, tpmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com, 16/12/10)
"It is fitting that the man described as the 'fixer' in Kosovo's alleged organ [donor] ring was an Israeli of Turkish descent. Moshe Harel, a fugitive wanted by Interpol in connection with the case, is accused of matching potential donors recruited in Turkey with recipients, many if not all of whom had connections with Israel... Last month the recipients of organs illegally transplanted in a private hospital in South Africa were described as Israelis. The donors - said to have included children - were Brazilians and Romanians... Netcare of South Africa... admitted in court to receiving R3.8m from an illegal organ trafficking syndicate." (Kosovo organ donor ring: the Israeli connection, Paul Lewis, guardian.co.uk, 17/12/10)
"The police crackdown on a rogue [Trinidad & Tobago] Government spy agency at the break of dawn on October 23 this year was compromised by a police double agent, who tipped off agency head Nigel Clement that a high-level police swat team was on their way. Sunday Express investigations into the unfolding spy drama involving the abuse of secret wiretaps by the Patrick Manning administration, have found a tangled web of shadowy political and itelligence figures; Israeli operatives; a stunning amount of intercepted data that has little or nothing to do with crime; the whistle-blower intelligence analyst who called attention to the Government's secret electronic spying on citizens, including President George Maxwell Richards; a slush fund that ran well over the seven-figure mark; a coded message sent to the Israeli spy equipment manufacturer for urgent sanitisation assistance; and police spies." (Spy games, Camini Marajh, trinidadexpress.com, 18/12/10)
"At least 7 Israeli arms dealers are currently in jail in four countries... the United States, Russia, France and Britain - on charges of illegal arms dealing. Some of them are also suspected of crimes such as forgery, bribery, money-laundering and violating UN Security Council embargoes. Such arrests are briefly covered in Israel and then forgotten. But they have a cumulative effect that is very damaging to Israel's image, or what remains of it. Even though it is doubtful whether those in jail know one another, they have quite a lot in common. All are men in their 50s and 60s. All are well to do (or were in the past), having made most of their money in international arms dealing or in exporting security services and equipment from Israel. They served in the Israel Defense Forces and reached mid-level ranks (from captain to lieutenant colonel), and when they were arrested, they denied the charges. Friends who came to their assistance described them, naturally, as 'the salt of the earth'.* All 7 are familiar faces in the corridors of the defense establishment, and at one time received arms dealing permits from the Defense Ministry. All sought to 'expedite procedures' in violation of local or international laws, and did so out of pure greed. Due to this covetousness, they also fell into traps and can expect to face many years in jail." (Why are so many Israelis arrested over illegal arms deals worldwide? Yossi Melman, Haaretz, 1/7/10) [*Monosodium glutamate of the earth?]
"Two Israeli businessmen have been arrested in Georgia on suspicion of offering the deputy finance minister millions of dollars in bribes, local media reported Saturday... According to the report, Ron Fuchs and Zeev Frenkiel were arrested two days ago during a meeting with Georgian Deputy Finance minister Avtandil Kharadze... According to Georgian prosecutors, the two were awarded nearly $100 million in an arbitration process, but the Georgian government had tried to challenge the decision to transfer them the money... The affair began in 1991, when a company represented by Fuchs started looking for investment opportunities in Georgia's energy sector. In 1992 the company established a joint venture with the Georgian state oil company and obtained concession on the construction of an oil pipeline to transport Azerbaijani oil to the western market via Georgia and Turkey. The two had sued the Georgian government after a deal they signed for the development of oil pipelines in the country was revoked." (2 Israelis suspected of bribing Georgian minister, Ronen Medzini, ynetnews.com, 16/10/10)
"A remote-control drone operated by the Mexican government crashed in the United States near El Paso, Texas, this week, the US Customs & Border Protection agency confirms to TPM... A spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board... tells TPM that the plane that crashed was a 'mini-orbiter UAV' but declined to elaborate further. A Google search turns up a drone called an Orbiter Mini UAV made by Aeronautics Defense Systems, an Israeli company... Last year, Mexico spent $23.25 million to buy an 'unspecified' number of Hermes 450 drones from the Israel-based Elbit Systems Ltd, Reuters reported in August." (Unmanned Mexican drone crashes near El Paso, Texas, Eric Lach, tpmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com, 16/12/10)
"It is fitting that the man described as the 'fixer' in Kosovo's alleged organ [donor] ring was an Israeli of Turkish descent. Moshe Harel, a fugitive wanted by Interpol in connection with the case, is accused of matching potential donors recruited in Turkey with recipients, many if not all of whom had connections with Israel... Last month the recipients of organs illegally transplanted in a private hospital in South Africa were described as Israelis. The donors - said to have included children - were Brazilians and Romanians... Netcare of South Africa... admitted in court to receiving R3.8m from an illegal organ trafficking syndicate." (Kosovo organ donor ring: the Israeli connection, Paul Lewis, guardian.co.uk, 17/12/10)
"The police crackdown on a rogue [Trinidad & Tobago] Government spy agency at the break of dawn on October 23 this year was compromised by a police double agent, who tipped off agency head Nigel Clement that a high-level police swat team was on their way. Sunday Express investigations into the unfolding spy drama involving the abuse of secret wiretaps by the Patrick Manning administration, have found a tangled web of shadowy political and itelligence figures; Israeli operatives; a stunning amount of intercepted data that has little or nothing to do with crime; the whistle-blower intelligence analyst who called attention to the Government's secret electronic spying on citizens, including President George Maxwell Richards; a slush fund that ran well over the seven-figure mark; a coded message sent to the Israeli spy equipment manufacturer for urgent sanitisation assistance; and police spies." (Spy games, Camini Marajh, trinidadexpress.com, 18/12/10)
Monday, January 3, 2011
The Israeli Model
The Australian's Israeli correspondent, Abraham Rabinovich, recently put together a little promo for MEMRI, those industrious Israeli cherry-pickers of the Arabic-language media, who craftily translate, package and deliver to the Western media anything they think might paint the Arabs in a negative light. (For the full monty on MEMRI, see my 27/7/08 post The Beat-Up Goes On)
Rabinovich opens with a caricature of an Arab media as awash in jihadi jibber-jabber as central Queensland is today in floodwaters, albeit with the odd island of 'moderate', pro-Western discourse bravely holding out against the jihadi tide:
"Amid calls for jihad emanating from websites and television channels in the Muslim world, a counterpoint has emerged: fierce Arab self-criticism and openness to the West. Although small in number compared with fundamentalists in the media, Muslim liberals have been able to expose the Arab world to a totally different, often shocking, way of seeing itself." (Reforming voices in the Middle East, 1/1/11)
The standout performer in this joint Rabinovich-MEMRI production is undoubtedly Qatar's Sheik Abd al-Hamid al-Ansari:
"Sheik Abd al-Hamid al-Ansari, former dean of Islamic law at Qatar University, attributes the backwardness of the modern Arab world to the disappearance of critical thinking and the resultant absence of accountability. 'Despite the defeats we have suffered for half a century [an apparent reference to to the wars with Israel] we have not learned a thing' he said on Abu-Dhabi TV. 'We say that Israel is the enemy and that we hate it, but let's ask ourselves why Israel is always victorious. It is because it has a tradition of accountability'. Although Israel was the victor in its war with Hezbollah in 2006, said al-Ansari, most Arabs chose to believe otherwise. 'Would you believe that after the war, Israel, despite all it had achieved, established a committee to examine the accountability of the government because it hadn't achieved a total victory; just 80% instead of 100%?* We, on the other hand, are still proclaiming from the rooftops that we won'. Although Israel is a target of vilification in the Arab media, it is not infrequently portrayed, as by al-Ansari, in a positive context as an example of a modern society from which Arabs could learn."
Of course, this particular, MEMRI-treated, account of al-Ansari's views may or may not be entirely accurate. That's MEMRI for you. What intriqued me, however, was Rabinovich's conceit that the Arabs have something positive to learn from Israel, which he touts as a paragon of 'modernity' - the latest weasel word doing the rounds.
Let's put this to the test then. What do the experts have to say about the nature of the society that Rabinovich would have the Arabs emulate? And just how 'modern' is Israel?
"A pioneering research study dealing with Israeli Jews' memory of the conflict with the Arabs, from its inception to the present, came into the world together with the war in Gaza. The sweeping support for Operation Cast Lead confirmed the main diagnosis that arises from the study, conducted by Daniel Bar-Tal, one of the world's leading political psychologists, and Rafi Nets-Zehngut, a doctoral student: Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering... Bar-Tal, who has won international awards for his scientific work, immigrated to Israel from Poland** as a child in the 1950s. 'I grew up in a [Polish] society that for the most part did not accept the reality that the authorities tried to portray, and fought for a different future', he says. 'I have melancholy thoughts about nations where there is an almost total identity between the agents of a conflict, on the one hand, who nurture the siege mentality and the existential fear, and various parts of society, on the other. Nations that respond so easily to battle cries and hesitate to enlist in favor of peace do not leave room for building a better future'. Bar-Tal emphasizes that the Israeli awareness of reality was also forged in the context of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens, but relies primarily on prolonged indoctrination that is based on ignorance and even nurtures it. In his opinion... the general public has not been interested in knowing what Israel did in Gaza for many years; how the disengagement was carried out and why, or what its outcome was for the Palestinians; why Hamas came to power in democratic elections; how many people were killed in Gaza from the disengagement until the start of the recent war; and whether it was possible to extend the recent ceasefire or even who violated it first. 'Although there are accessible sources, where it is possible to find the answers to those questions, the public practices self-censorship and accepts the establishment version, out of an unwillingness to open up to alternative information - they don't want to be confused with the facts. We are a nation that lives in the past, suffused with anxiety and suffering from chronic closed-mindedness', charges Bar-Tal."
Chronic closed-mindedness, eh? Now what was that that the Sheik was saying about the disappearance of critical thinking in the Arab world? Living in the past? Now what was that Rabinovich was saying about Israel being an example of a modern society?
I rest my case.
[*When the Sheik talks of Israel achieving an 80% victory in Lebanon in 2006, but nevertheless setting up a committee to examine the government's accountability for the remaining 20% failure, he is, of course, talking (through his turban) about the Winograd Commission. In their partisan account of the war, 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah & the War in Lebanon (2008), Haaretz journalists Harel and Issacharoff write: "The word 'failure' appeared in the report dozens of times. 'The primary responsibility for these serious failings rests with the Prime Minister, the minister of defense and the (outgoing) Chief of Staff'." (p 246) But did such a finding cost Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz their heads? No. So much for accountability. And so much for the sheik's imagined 80% victory. Moreover, his reference to all Israel had achieved has me wondering. Does this include the near 5 thousand Lebanese dead and wounded, or the 10,000 Lebanese homes destroyed, as cited by Harel & Issacharoff? (p 249)
** The Economist's 2010 Democracy Index, incidentally, categorises both Israel and Poland as "flawed democracies." Interestingly, however, in the crucial area of civil liberties, Poland rates 9.12; Israel 5.29.]
Rabinovich opens with a caricature of an Arab media as awash in jihadi jibber-jabber as central Queensland is today in floodwaters, albeit with the odd island of 'moderate', pro-Western discourse bravely holding out against the jihadi tide:
"Amid calls for jihad emanating from websites and television channels in the Muslim world, a counterpoint has emerged: fierce Arab self-criticism and openness to the West. Although small in number compared with fundamentalists in the media, Muslim liberals have been able to expose the Arab world to a totally different, often shocking, way of seeing itself." (Reforming voices in the Middle East, 1/1/11)
The standout performer in this joint Rabinovich-MEMRI production is undoubtedly Qatar's Sheik Abd al-Hamid al-Ansari:
"Sheik Abd al-Hamid al-Ansari, former dean of Islamic law at Qatar University, attributes the backwardness of the modern Arab world to the disappearance of critical thinking and the resultant absence of accountability. 'Despite the defeats we have suffered for half a century [an apparent reference to to the wars with Israel] we have not learned a thing' he said on Abu-Dhabi TV. 'We say that Israel is the enemy and that we hate it, but let's ask ourselves why Israel is always victorious. It is because it has a tradition of accountability'. Although Israel was the victor in its war with Hezbollah in 2006, said al-Ansari, most Arabs chose to believe otherwise. 'Would you believe that after the war, Israel, despite all it had achieved, established a committee to examine the accountability of the government because it hadn't achieved a total victory; just 80% instead of 100%?* We, on the other hand, are still proclaiming from the rooftops that we won'. Although Israel is a target of vilification in the Arab media, it is not infrequently portrayed, as by al-Ansari, in a positive context as an example of a modern society from which Arabs could learn."
Of course, this particular, MEMRI-treated, account of al-Ansari's views may or may not be entirely accurate. That's MEMRI for you. What intriqued me, however, was Rabinovich's conceit that the Arabs have something positive to learn from Israel, which he touts as a paragon of 'modernity' - the latest weasel word doing the rounds.
Let's put this to the test then. What do the experts have to say about the nature of the society that Rabinovich would have the Arabs emulate? And just how 'modern' is Israel?
"A pioneering research study dealing with Israeli Jews' memory of the conflict with the Arabs, from its inception to the present, came into the world together with the war in Gaza. The sweeping support for Operation Cast Lead confirmed the main diagnosis that arises from the study, conducted by Daniel Bar-Tal, one of the world's leading political psychologists, and Rafi Nets-Zehngut, a doctoral student: Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering... Bar-Tal, who has won international awards for his scientific work, immigrated to Israel from Poland** as a child in the 1950s. 'I grew up in a [Polish] society that for the most part did not accept the reality that the authorities tried to portray, and fought for a different future', he says. 'I have melancholy thoughts about nations where there is an almost total identity between the agents of a conflict, on the one hand, who nurture the siege mentality and the existential fear, and various parts of society, on the other. Nations that respond so easily to battle cries and hesitate to enlist in favor of peace do not leave room for building a better future'. Bar-Tal emphasizes that the Israeli awareness of reality was also forged in the context of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens, but relies primarily on prolonged indoctrination that is based on ignorance and even nurtures it. In his opinion... the general public has not been interested in knowing what Israel did in Gaza for many years; how the disengagement was carried out and why, or what its outcome was for the Palestinians; why Hamas came to power in democratic elections; how many people were killed in Gaza from the disengagement until the start of the recent war; and whether it was possible to extend the recent ceasefire or even who violated it first. 'Although there are accessible sources, where it is possible to find the answers to those questions, the public practices self-censorship and accepts the establishment version, out of an unwillingness to open up to alternative information - they don't want to be confused with the facts. We are a nation that lives in the past, suffused with anxiety and suffering from chronic closed-mindedness', charges Bar-Tal."
Chronic closed-mindedness, eh? Now what was that that the Sheik was saying about the disappearance of critical thinking in the Arab world? Living in the past? Now what was that Rabinovich was saying about Israel being an example of a modern society?
I rest my case.
[*When the Sheik talks of Israel achieving an 80% victory in Lebanon in 2006, but nevertheless setting up a committee to examine the government's accountability for the remaining 20% failure, he is, of course, talking (through his turban) about the Winograd Commission. In their partisan account of the war, 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah & the War in Lebanon (2008), Haaretz journalists Harel and Issacharoff write: "The word 'failure' appeared in the report dozens of times. 'The primary responsibility for these serious failings rests with the Prime Minister, the minister of defense and the (outgoing) Chief of Staff'." (p 246) But did such a finding cost Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz their heads? No. So much for accountability. And so much for the sheik's imagined 80% victory. Moreover, his reference to all Israel had achieved has me wondering. Does this include the near 5 thousand Lebanese dead and wounded, or the 10,000 Lebanese homes destroyed, as cited by Harel & Issacharoff? (p 249)
** The Economist's 2010 Democracy Index, incidentally, categorises both Israel and Poland as "flawed democracies." Interestingly, however, in the crucial area of civil liberties, Poland rates 9.12; Israel 5.29.]
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