Dave Sharma's popped up again in yesterday's Nine Entertainment Co. (formerly Fairfax) rag The Sydney Morning Herald.
In an opinion piece, Middle East power order at stake, this former Australian ambassador to Israel, pro-Israel propagandist, investor in Israeli startups, failed Liberal Party candidate in last year's Wentworth byelection, and Liberal candidate for Wentworth in the coming federal election, weighs in on the subject of Syria. The occasion, of course, is Trump's recent flagged intention to withdraw from the US-generated and sustained conflict there.
All the tell-tale signs of the official story on Syria are there: "civil war", "civilian uprising", "Ba'athist regime of Bashar al-Assad", "rebel-held area around Idlib," the notion that but for Russian and Iranian "intervention" Asad would be toast etc
As you'd expect, Sharma's heart (which never at any stage of his career had room for the plight of the brutalised Palestinians, groaning under the Israeli jackboot) goes out to the Kurds, and their "nascent" state in Syria - they, alas, will have to seek the protection of Asad to escape their Turkish nemesis.
Sharma's bleeding heart is nowhere more poignantly on display than in this particular puke of purple prose: "There are few peoples or nations in the Middle East more deserving of national self-determination and statehood than the Kurds: a people of 35 million who respect the rights of minorities, treat women as equals, eschew terrorism and anti-semitism, and have been a steadfast force for stability in the Middle East and western security partner for decades."
Get it? If you're a useful fool for USrael in its ongoing colonisation, pillage and plunder of the Arab world you're a "steadfast force for stability in the Middle East" and deserving of statehood! Otherwise...
Then, of course, there's the Iranian menace, eternally engaged in "the establishment of a land bridge running from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, and into Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea." And if, God forbid, the US cop does carry through on his proposal to withdraw his thin blue line of 2,000 troops from Syria, Sharma sagely predicts that the Middle East, "not particularly stable now," will "become a little more dangerous."
What rubbish this is! Still, if it helps raise Sharma's profile with the fickle voters of Wentworth...
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
Bolton & Friends Trump Trump
In case you are under the illusion that US presidents alone call the shots when it comes to US foreign policy, check this out:
"President Donald Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, has rolled back Trump's decision to rapidly withdraw from Syria, laying out conditions for a pullout that could leave US forces there for months or even years. Bolton, making a visit to Israel said on Sunday that US forces would remain in Syria until the last remnants of Islamic State were defeated and Turkey guaranteed it would not strike Kurdish forces allied to the United States. He and other top White House advisers have led a behind-the-scenes effort to slow Trump's order and reassure allies, including Israel." (Trump's Syria pull-out on hold, David Sanger, The New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 8/1/19)
The US foreign policy establishment, it seems, has reminded Trump who the real target of the US war machine is - not Islamic State, but Syria (and Iran).
In fact, far from being an enemy of the US, Islamic State (as well as al-Qaida's Syrian franchise, the Nusra Front), should properly be seen as a component part of Washington's strategy to wear down the Syrian Arab Army as a prelude to the eventual overthrow of the Ba'athists in Damascus. As Stephen Gowans puts it:
"That Washington regarded the Nusra Front in a different light than Islamic State, was evidenced, in the first instance, in the reality that CIA-armed and trained rebels were embedded with al-Nusra, but not, it seemed, with Islamic State. One could search far and wide through press reports for mention of insurgents on the Western payroll who were cooperating with the Islamic State and turn up nothing. In contrast, references to US-backed rebels operating conjointly with al-Nusra were legion. Islamic State appeared to be a true anathema as far as Washington was concerned, while it was clear that US officials regarded al-Qaeda's official affiliate in Syria on altogether different terms. This became clear when Russia entered the fray in Syria with the stated goal of destroying terrorist groups, and Washington acted as if it had forgotten that it had tarred Jabhat al-Nusra with the terrorist brush. Russia can't be targeting terrorists, Washington complained. If that were its true goal, it would only be attacking Islamic State. It seemed that, unofficially at least, the United States preferred that Jabhat al-Nusra be viewed as part of the agglomeration of 'moderate' rebel groups. So it is that when the US Director of Intelligence James Clapper was asked exactly who the much-talked-about moderates were, he replied: 'Moderate these days is increasingly becoming anyone who's not affiliated with Islamic State.' Hence, as far as Washington was concerned, every non-Islamic State armed group was moderate, including al-Nusra, even though the al-Qaeda affiliate had been designated a terrorist organization by the United States itself, and despite the fact that it was part of an organization - indeed, the largest part - which attacked New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.
"The reason for separating Islamic State from the Islamist insurgency against the Syrian Ba'athists, and regarding it as immoderate, was that, unlike al-Nusra and the al-Qaeda affiliate's CIA-armed auxiliaries, Islamic State aspired to replace more governments than Washington cared to see replaced. The US government was willing to work with any group which shared its goal of de-Ba'athifying Syria, as long as it limited its aims to that end. But it was not willing to work with an organization which also wanted to oust the government in Baghdad - which Washington had installed - or the monarchy in Riyadh, which Islamic State condemned as un-Islamic, but which Washington considered an important ally.
"What recommended Jabhat al-Nusra to Washington was that it was a useful instrument in the campaign to efface Arab nationalist ideology from the Syrian state. The US strategy was to afford the al-Nusra coalition enough support for it to wear down the Syrian government sufficiently enough that the Ba'athists would acquiesce to a political transition, but never so much support that they would be forced to yield power to the Islamists. In other words, Washington had no intention of seeing either of the participants in the decades-long battle between secular Arab nationalism and Sunni political Islam prevail. Washington would let the two sides bleed each other dry, and when they were exhausted, interpose itself with a 'compromise' candidate who would cater to US interests.
"Washington played a similar game with Islamic State, though not by calibrating its level of support, which it wasn't providing anyway, but by calibrating its military campaign against the group. The Pentagon struck Islamic State hard in Iraq, but barely at all in Syria. US airstrikes were concentrated in Iraq, reported The Wall Street Journal, because 'in Syria, US strikes against the Islamic State would inadvertently help the regime of President Bashar al-Assad militarily.' Likewise, France 'refrained from bombing the group in Syria for fear of bolstering' the Syrian government. The British, too, focused their air war overwhelmingly on Islamic State targets in Iraq, conducting less than 10% of their airstrikes on the Islamist organization's positions in Syria. The New York Times reported that 'United States-led airstrikes in Syria... largely focused on areas far outside government control, to avoid... aiding a leader whose ouster President Obama has called for.' Hence, US-coalition 'airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria... were so limited as to make it little more than a symbolic gesture.' Robert Fisk summed up the phony war against Islamic State in Syria with a sarcastic quip: 'And so we went to war against Isis in Syria - unless, of course, Isis was attacking Assad's regime, in which case we did nothing at all'." (Washington's Long War on Syria, 2017, pp 150-52)
"President Donald Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, has rolled back Trump's decision to rapidly withdraw from Syria, laying out conditions for a pullout that could leave US forces there for months or even years. Bolton, making a visit to Israel said on Sunday that US forces would remain in Syria until the last remnants of Islamic State were defeated and Turkey guaranteed it would not strike Kurdish forces allied to the United States. He and other top White House advisers have led a behind-the-scenes effort to slow Trump's order and reassure allies, including Israel." (Trump's Syria pull-out on hold, David Sanger, The New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 8/1/19)
The US foreign policy establishment, it seems, has reminded Trump who the real target of the US war machine is - not Islamic State, but Syria (and Iran).
In fact, far from being an enemy of the US, Islamic State (as well as al-Qaida's Syrian franchise, the Nusra Front), should properly be seen as a component part of Washington's strategy to wear down the Syrian Arab Army as a prelude to the eventual overthrow of the Ba'athists in Damascus. As Stephen Gowans puts it:
"That Washington regarded the Nusra Front in a different light than Islamic State, was evidenced, in the first instance, in the reality that CIA-armed and trained rebels were embedded with al-Nusra, but not, it seemed, with Islamic State. One could search far and wide through press reports for mention of insurgents on the Western payroll who were cooperating with the Islamic State and turn up nothing. In contrast, references to US-backed rebels operating conjointly with al-Nusra were legion. Islamic State appeared to be a true anathema as far as Washington was concerned, while it was clear that US officials regarded al-Qaeda's official affiliate in Syria on altogether different terms. This became clear when Russia entered the fray in Syria with the stated goal of destroying terrorist groups, and Washington acted as if it had forgotten that it had tarred Jabhat al-Nusra with the terrorist brush. Russia can't be targeting terrorists, Washington complained. If that were its true goal, it would only be attacking Islamic State. It seemed that, unofficially at least, the United States preferred that Jabhat al-Nusra be viewed as part of the agglomeration of 'moderate' rebel groups. So it is that when the US Director of Intelligence James Clapper was asked exactly who the much-talked-about moderates were, he replied: 'Moderate these days is increasingly becoming anyone who's not affiliated with Islamic State.' Hence, as far as Washington was concerned, every non-Islamic State armed group was moderate, including al-Nusra, even though the al-Qaeda affiliate had been designated a terrorist organization by the United States itself, and despite the fact that it was part of an organization - indeed, the largest part - which attacked New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.
"The reason for separating Islamic State from the Islamist insurgency against the Syrian Ba'athists, and regarding it as immoderate, was that, unlike al-Nusra and the al-Qaeda affiliate's CIA-armed auxiliaries, Islamic State aspired to replace more governments than Washington cared to see replaced. The US government was willing to work with any group which shared its goal of de-Ba'athifying Syria, as long as it limited its aims to that end. But it was not willing to work with an organization which also wanted to oust the government in Baghdad - which Washington had installed - or the monarchy in Riyadh, which Islamic State condemned as un-Islamic, but which Washington considered an important ally.
"What recommended Jabhat al-Nusra to Washington was that it was a useful instrument in the campaign to efface Arab nationalist ideology from the Syrian state. The US strategy was to afford the al-Nusra coalition enough support for it to wear down the Syrian government sufficiently enough that the Ba'athists would acquiesce to a political transition, but never so much support that they would be forced to yield power to the Islamists. In other words, Washington had no intention of seeing either of the participants in the decades-long battle between secular Arab nationalism and Sunni political Islam prevail. Washington would let the two sides bleed each other dry, and when they were exhausted, interpose itself with a 'compromise' candidate who would cater to US interests.
"Washington played a similar game with Islamic State, though not by calibrating its level of support, which it wasn't providing anyway, but by calibrating its military campaign against the group. The Pentagon struck Islamic State hard in Iraq, but barely at all in Syria. US airstrikes were concentrated in Iraq, reported The Wall Street Journal, because 'in Syria, US strikes against the Islamic State would inadvertently help the regime of President Bashar al-Assad militarily.' Likewise, France 'refrained from bombing the group in Syria for fear of bolstering' the Syrian government. The British, too, focused their air war overwhelmingly on Islamic State targets in Iraq, conducting less than 10% of their airstrikes on the Islamist organization's positions in Syria. The New York Times reported that 'United States-led airstrikes in Syria... largely focused on areas far outside government control, to avoid... aiding a leader whose ouster President Obama has called for.' Hence, US-coalition 'airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria... were so limited as to make it little more than a symbolic gesture.' Robert Fisk summed up the phony war against Islamic State in Syria with a sarcastic quip: 'And so we went to war against Isis in Syria - unless, of course, Isis was attacking Assad's regime, in which case we did nothing at all'." (Washington's Long War on Syria, 2017, pp 150-52)
Monday, January 7, 2019
Do These Fools & Knaves Really Think...
... we're not wise to their tricks?
2011:
"'The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for president Assad to step aside'... As Obama issued his statement, the leaders of France, Germany and Britain joined him in calling on Assad "to face the reality of the complete rejection of his regime by the Syrian people and to step aside'." (Assad must go, Obama says, Scott Wilson, The Washington Post, 18/8/11)
2019:
"A dozen Latin American governments and Canada have delivered a blistering rebuke to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, questioning the legitimacy of his second term and urging him to hand over power as the only path to restoring democracy in this crisis-wracked South American country... The US is not formally a member of the [Lima] Group but has been a vocal supporter and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo participated in the meeting by video conference." (Regional powers urge Maduro to step down, Franklin Brecino, AP/The Sun-Herald, 6/1/19"
2011:
"'The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for president Assad to step aside'... As Obama issued his statement, the leaders of France, Germany and Britain joined him in calling on Assad "to face the reality of the complete rejection of his regime by the Syrian people and to step aside'." (Assad must go, Obama says, Scott Wilson, The Washington Post, 18/8/11)
2019:
"A dozen Latin American governments and Canada have delivered a blistering rebuke to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, questioning the legitimacy of his second term and urging him to hand over power as the only path to restoring democracy in this crisis-wracked South American country... The US is not formally a member of the [Lima] Group but has been a vocal supporter and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo participated in the meeting by video conference." (Regional powers urge Maduro to step down, Franklin Brecino, AP/The Sun-Herald, 6/1/19"
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Antidotes to the Official Story on Syria
What unmitigated crap this is from The Economist's latest editorial:
"With [Russia's] help, the heinous dictator Assad has won Syria's civil war after nearly eight blood-soaked years... Rather than stitching Syria back together, Russia has let Assad continue to tear it apart. It has helped him bomb his opponents into submission and given cover for his use of poison gas... He has pushed bitter Sunnis into the arms of extremists. Inequality, corruption and divisive rule originally fuelled the rebellion and nurtured the jihadist insurgency... " (After saving Assad's regime, Putin must take hold of the peace, The Economist/ The Australian, 5/1/19)
In one form or another, it has been relentlessly peddled by one msm outlet or another as the official line on the war in Syria - in reality, a war against Syria.
You can see some of its elements above: the demonisation of Asad as a Middle Eastern tyrant out of central casting, masking, of course, his popularity among Syrians generally; the deliberate framing of the conflict as a civil war, to disguise the bleeding obvious fact that it was really just another attempt - after Iraq and Libya - by the US and its client states at regime change; and the perverse portrayal of Asad as a wrecker, rather than as a defender of his country's independence and sovereignty etc etc.
It's more than time for an antidote to the official story's false narrative. I take this opportunity, therefore, to commend either (or both) Tim Anderson's The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change & Resistance (2016) or Stephen Gowans' Washington's Long War on Syria (2017). Since I'm reading the latter at the moment, here's an extract, countering the alleged sectarian nature of the Asad government, another favourite anti-Syrian government propaganda trope:
"The myth that the Assad governments, both those of Hafez and Bashar, were sectarian, persisted for decades, and the myth's longevity was due in no small part to its political utility to Washington and its Sunni Islamist allies. The myth was insinuated into the journalism of North America and Western Europe where it was often used to frame the US war on Bashar al-Assad's Syria as a sectarian civil conflict pursued by a state captured by an Alawite minority to advance its sectarian interests at the expense of the Sunni majority. Accordingly, the Syrian government was often described in the Western press as 'Alawite-led' while the armed opposition was just as often referred to as 'largely Sunni.' This ignored the reality that both the Syrian Arab Army, and Assad's cabinet, were also largely Sunni, and that this was a political (rather than sectarian) conflict between secular Arab nationalists on the one hand, and jihadists (backed by the US and its allies) on the other. But propagation of the myth of sectarian warfare comported with the predilection of Western discourse for Orientalist depictions of the Global South as a territory riven by ancient inter-communal animosities, which necessitated the intervention of the United States - the self-proclaimed force for good in the world - to establish order. It was useful for US strategists to propagate this understanding for a few reasons.
"First, it undergirded the imperialist strategy of divide and rule. Ideological agendas conveyed in Western media reached not only Western audiences, but audiences beyond the West, including in Syria. If the Syrian Sunni majority could be led to understand the Assad government as an instrument of the Alawite community, all the better for the US foreign policy goal of extirpating Arab nationalism from the Syrian state.
"Second, the myth of the Assad government as an Alawite instrument of oppression concealed the central role that secular Arab nationalism played in the Middle East and in the politics of the Assad government. This obfuscated the true dimensions of the conflict. If there were any references in Western media to the Assad government's commitment to the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party's values of freedom from foreign domination, state direction, planning and control of the economy, and working toward the unity of the Arab nation, I'm not aware of them. Acknowledging the ideological framework within which the Syrian government operated, rather than presenting Syrian leaders as motivated by a lust for power to advance a sectarian agenda on behalf of the Alawite minority, would have presented Syria's Arab nationalists as rational actors pursuing what many may have considered defensible, if not praiseworthy goals. However, to serve US foreign policy objectives, US strategists favoured the portrayal of Assad as a power hungry Alawite despot, covering up the Arab nationalist themes that genuinely pervaded his politics.
"Third, the false depiction of the Assad government as animated by a sectarian rather than a secular Arab nationalist agenda encouraged an understanding that US leadership, which is to say, Western interference in Syrian politics, was necessary and desirable for the supposed lofty humanitarian reason of bringing about peace in a country troubled by the oppression of a religious majority by a religious minority.
"In short, the myth of Alawite oppression of the Sunni majority both encouraged the phenomenon of inter-communal strife, and then used it to justify a US-led program of regime change to overcome it." (pp 31-2)
"With [Russia's] help, the heinous dictator Assad has won Syria's civil war after nearly eight blood-soaked years... Rather than stitching Syria back together, Russia has let Assad continue to tear it apart. It has helped him bomb his opponents into submission and given cover for his use of poison gas... He has pushed bitter Sunnis into the arms of extremists. Inequality, corruption and divisive rule originally fuelled the rebellion and nurtured the jihadist insurgency... " (After saving Assad's regime, Putin must take hold of the peace, The Economist/ The Australian, 5/1/19)
In one form or another, it has been relentlessly peddled by one msm outlet or another as the official line on the war in Syria - in reality, a war against Syria.
You can see some of its elements above: the demonisation of Asad as a Middle Eastern tyrant out of central casting, masking, of course, his popularity among Syrians generally; the deliberate framing of the conflict as a civil war, to disguise the bleeding obvious fact that it was really just another attempt - after Iraq and Libya - by the US and its client states at regime change; and the perverse portrayal of Asad as a wrecker, rather than as a defender of his country's independence and sovereignty etc etc.
It's more than time for an antidote to the official story's false narrative. I take this opportunity, therefore, to commend either (or both) Tim Anderson's The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change & Resistance (2016) or Stephen Gowans' Washington's Long War on Syria (2017). Since I'm reading the latter at the moment, here's an extract, countering the alleged sectarian nature of the Asad government, another favourite anti-Syrian government propaganda trope:
"The myth that the Assad governments, both those of Hafez and Bashar, were sectarian, persisted for decades, and the myth's longevity was due in no small part to its political utility to Washington and its Sunni Islamist allies. The myth was insinuated into the journalism of North America and Western Europe where it was often used to frame the US war on Bashar al-Assad's Syria as a sectarian civil conflict pursued by a state captured by an Alawite minority to advance its sectarian interests at the expense of the Sunni majority. Accordingly, the Syrian government was often described in the Western press as 'Alawite-led' while the armed opposition was just as often referred to as 'largely Sunni.' This ignored the reality that both the Syrian Arab Army, and Assad's cabinet, were also largely Sunni, and that this was a political (rather than sectarian) conflict between secular Arab nationalists on the one hand, and jihadists (backed by the US and its allies) on the other. But propagation of the myth of sectarian warfare comported with the predilection of Western discourse for Orientalist depictions of the Global South as a territory riven by ancient inter-communal animosities, which necessitated the intervention of the United States - the self-proclaimed force for good in the world - to establish order. It was useful for US strategists to propagate this understanding for a few reasons.
"First, it undergirded the imperialist strategy of divide and rule. Ideological agendas conveyed in Western media reached not only Western audiences, but audiences beyond the West, including in Syria. If the Syrian Sunni majority could be led to understand the Assad government as an instrument of the Alawite community, all the better for the US foreign policy goal of extirpating Arab nationalism from the Syrian state.
"Second, the myth of the Assad government as an Alawite instrument of oppression concealed the central role that secular Arab nationalism played in the Middle East and in the politics of the Assad government. This obfuscated the true dimensions of the conflict. If there were any references in Western media to the Assad government's commitment to the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party's values of freedom from foreign domination, state direction, planning and control of the economy, and working toward the unity of the Arab nation, I'm not aware of them. Acknowledging the ideological framework within which the Syrian government operated, rather than presenting Syrian leaders as motivated by a lust for power to advance a sectarian agenda on behalf of the Alawite minority, would have presented Syria's Arab nationalists as rational actors pursuing what many may have considered defensible, if not praiseworthy goals. However, to serve US foreign policy objectives, US strategists favoured the portrayal of Assad as a power hungry Alawite despot, covering up the Arab nationalist themes that genuinely pervaded his politics.
"Third, the false depiction of the Assad government as animated by a sectarian rather than a secular Arab nationalist agenda encouraged an understanding that US leadership, which is to say, Western interference in Syrian politics, was necessary and desirable for the supposed lofty humanitarian reason of bringing about peace in a country troubled by the oppression of a religious majority by a religious minority.
"In short, the myth of Alawite oppression of the Sunni majority both encouraged the phenomenon of inter-communal strife, and then used it to justify a US-led program of regime change to overcome it." (pp 31-2)
Friday, January 4, 2019
Why I Don't Buy 'The Saturday Paper'
Here's the reason I don't buy Melbourne publisher Morry Schwartz's The Saturday Paper, which, I hear, is quite popular with progressive Australians:
"Schwartz says: 'I think Israel is over-tackled. The media are too obsessed with it, but a balanced view, sure'." Schwartz also publishes the Quarterly Essay and The Monthly (See my 4/3/14 post The Saturday Paper.)
"The Saturday Paper's coverage of Israel's [2014] assault on Gaza has been conspicuously, well, non-existent." Tim Robertson, Palestine & the Saturday Paper, overland.org.au, 1/8/14 (See my 28/1/15 post The Glass Wall.)
"[The Monthly's] seen as a left-wing publication but the publisher is very right-wing on Israel. He's Jewish... and he's very much to the Benjamin Netanyahu end of politics. So you can't touch [Palestine]. We just don't touch it. There's just a glass wall goes around it." John Van Tiggelen, a former editor of TSP and now staff writer at The Monthly (See my 28/1/15 post The Glass Wall.)
Now as it happens, a copy of TSP dated 27/10/18 has just come my way. That issue contains an analysis, by the paper's chief political correspondent, Karen Middleton, of the fallout from Morrison's Jerusalem fizzer, covering both its impact on the Wentworth byelection and on our relationship with Indonesia. Reading through the piece, Turnbull used to head off regional distrust - lo and behold! - I find Middleton characterising the Palestine/Israel conflict as "longstanding unrest between the Israelis and Palestinian people."
Which, I assume, is music to Morry's ears.
"Schwartz says: 'I think Israel is over-tackled. The media are too obsessed with it, but a balanced view, sure'." Schwartz also publishes the Quarterly Essay and The Monthly (See my 4/3/14 post The Saturday Paper.)
"The Saturday Paper's coverage of Israel's [2014] assault on Gaza has been conspicuously, well, non-existent." Tim Robertson, Palestine & the Saturday Paper, overland.org.au, 1/8/14 (See my 28/1/15 post The Glass Wall.)
"[The Monthly's] seen as a left-wing publication but the publisher is very right-wing on Israel. He's Jewish... and he's very much to the Benjamin Netanyahu end of politics. So you can't touch [Palestine]. We just don't touch it. There's just a glass wall goes around it." John Van Tiggelen, a former editor of TSP and now staff writer at The Monthly (See my 28/1/15 post The Glass Wall.)
Now as it happens, a copy of TSP dated 27/10/18 has just come my way. That issue contains an analysis, by the paper's chief political correspondent, Karen Middleton, of the fallout from Morrison's Jerusalem fizzer, covering both its impact on the Wentworth byelection and on our relationship with Indonesia. Reading through the piece, Turnbull used to head off regional distrust - lo and behold! - I find Middleton characterising the Palestine/Israel conflict as "longstanding unrest between the Israelis and Palestinian people."
Which, I assume, is music to Morry's ears.
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Kevin Rudd's 'The PM Years'
It is in the nature of political lobbies to operate behind closed doors, away from the public eye. Australia's Israel (or Zionist) lobby is no exception. In fact, it is probably true to say that most Australians are simply unaware of its existence, let alone its powerful hold over our elected representatives, not to mention its relentless policing of the corporate media. And that lack of awareness, to be sure, is just the way the lobby would have it.
Be that as it may, given the Israel lobby's hugely successful impact on Middle East policy formulation by governments from both sides of the political divide, as well as its equally successful role in shaping and managing mainstream media discourse on the Middle East, any inside account of its modus operandi is more than welcome. Recent memoirs, by former foreign minister Bob Carr, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, and journalists John Lyons and Mike Carlton, have helped expose the lobby's interventions and manipulations in these two key areas. Indeed, judging by their revelations, it could be said that we are approaching critical mass here - to the point where no truly sentient Australian can any longer feign ignorance of either the Israel lobby's existence or its clout.
I've already mined Carr's Diary of a Foreign Minister (2014) and John Lyons' Balcony Over Jerusalem for their insights. As time permits, I'll move on to Carr's Run for Your Life (2018) and Carlton's On Air (2018) in later posts. For now, I'll deal here with Rudd's Kevin Rudd: The PM Years (2018), annotating where necessary:
"Then there was the question of Israel. Back in 2003, under the Howard government, the Israeli intelligence services had taken it into their heads to use forged Australian passports in one of their operations abroad. They had been found out. Dennis Richardson, the director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation at the time, had hauled them over the coals. The Israelis had been forced to sign an agreement with us that if we were to continue intelligence cooperation with them in the future, they would never do this again. Obviously the Israelis had not taken us seriously, because they did it again - this time in a botched intelligence operation which culminated in the assassination of a Hamas leader visiting Dubai. Mossad had left their paw prints all over the operation. The Israeli authorities plainly did not care that by using and abusing Australian passports, they were placing at risk not just the integrity of our passport system but, more importantly, the safety and security of hundreds of thousands of Australians who travelled on these passports through the Middle East each year.
"The matter was brought to the National Security Committee of the cabinet. Dennis Richardson, who had recently been appointed secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs by our government, was an experienced senior diplomat of the old school. His advice to us was unequivocal: unless Australia wished to be seen as a 'soft touch' by the Israelis, we had to act firmly and decisively. We should expel the Mossad representative at the Israeli embassy in Canberra, and make public our reasons for doing so. Only then would it be considered a significant enough issue in Israel to force the political arm of the government to rein Mossad in.
"I looked around the room. Everyone was nodding in agreement - except Julia [Gillard]. I asked her explicitly whether she supported the recommendation. She grunted her assent. I knew for a fact that Julia had been cultivating a close relationship with the Israeli lobby in Australia. There was nothing wrong with that, particularly given her own pro-Palestinian background from her days as a left-wing political activist. I was also conscious that her partner, Tim, had gone to work for a prominent member of the Jewish community in Melbourne. I didn't want any fractures in the government on this one."
Just how close Gillard's relationship with the Israel lobby was is explored in some detail in Carr's Diary of a Foreign Minister. For the details, I refer you in particular to my posts The Carr Diary: Reflections 4, 5 & 6 (18-20/4/14) and my 18/1/13 post The Prime Minister who Put Her Job on the Line for Israel.
With respect to Rudd's assertion that Gillard had a "pro-Palestinian background from her days as a left-wing political activist," he is mistaken. Just the opposite is the case. (See my post 14/8/10 post The Real Julia Gillard.)
"When [foreign minister] Stephen Smith made our position public, the Israeli government was less than impressed. Their ambassador, Yuval Rotem, came in to protest. And that's when the complaints from the Australian Jewish lobby started to come in thick and fast. I had no qualms about saying publicly that the decision by Israeli intelligence services to use and abuse the Australian passport system was not the action of a friendly government. I then said as much to Prime Minister Netanyahu, and I told him I expected him to take action against Mossad.
"Colin Rubenstein, a leading conservative political activist from Sydney, and Mark Leibler from Melbourne went off their heads. How could Australia have the temerity to treat our friend and ally Israel in such cavalier fashion? How could we be certain that Mossad had done this? Surely we were mistaken... And even if Mossad had done it, weren't such things done on a regular basis in the ugly world of intelligence? I was then lobbied by our own Jewish members of parliament, led by Michael Danby and Mark Dreyfus. They came to see me, demanding that I 'do something'. My response was to ask what they would have done if they were either foreign minister or prime minister of a country and another country had forged their passports in order to assassinate someone who at that stage was under the protection of another country (the UAE) with whom Australia also had a close relationship."
Rubenstein is the executive director of Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and Leibler is its national chairman. AIJAC is based in Melbourne.
"However, out of respect for my parliamentary colleagues, I suggested that we invite leading members of the Jewish community to the Lodge for dinner to discuss the matter further. The dinner was held on 3 June, and I remember the evening well. I sat there politely as Mark Leibler berated me for having committed a hostile act. I found this remarkable as I had been a strong defender of the state of Israel from the earliest days of my diplomatic career and had always been a vigorous campaigner against all forms of anti-Semitism. And for Leibler to attack the democratically elected prime minister of his country as he sought to argue the interests of another country was beyond the pale.
"'You do realise that this is Israel's second offence?' I said. 'What do you mean?' he asked. 'They did exactly the same under Howard, got a gentle rap over the knuckles, and promised never to do it again.' Leibler looked stunned. 'I don't believe you.' 'Then why don't you sit down with the head of Foreign Affairs, who is the former head of ASIO, and I'll authorise him to brief you on exactly what has happened here,' I countered. 'I think you'll find that our response to Israel's actions has been entirely reasonable under the circumstances.'
"Leibler still stared at me in disbelief. And then disbelief turned to anger. Apropos of nothing, he said, 'Julia is looking very good in the public eye these days, Prime Minister. She's performing very strongly. She's a great friend of Israel. But you shouldn't be anxious about her, should you, Prime Minister?' It was Leibler at his menacing worst." (Kevin Rudd: The PM Years, 2018, pp 282-84)
Rudd's dinner at the Lodge is the subject of a most interesting report by Peter Hartcher, the Sydney Morning Herald's international editor, for which see my 22/6/10 post The Best Israel Policy Money Can Buy. See also the account of same in The Australian Jewish News, quoted in my 11/6/10 post Those Irresistable Zionist Pheromones Again 2.
Sadly, "Leibler at his menacing worst" was not the wake-up call that Rudd needed on the matter of Israel, because just over a year later we find him, with Danby, in a Melbourne Max Brenner outlet condemning those advocating its boycott. A more disillusioned Rudd can be seen later in Carr's 2014 Diary of a Foreign Minister, for which see my 20/4/14 post The Carr Diary Reflections 6. Finally, we have the Israel critic of later years, for which see my 23/2/17 post Rudd & Netanyahu Cross Swords, as well as the following passage from his memoir:
"Elsewhere on the international front there was good news to be had. In October 2012, nearly five years after I had launched the initial campaign, the news finally came through of Australia's extraordinary win for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Gillard was never an enthusiast. Through the influence of her 'Middle East Advisor', Bruce Wolpe, Gillard had already begun unravelling a number of Australian votes on UN General Assembly resolutions on Palestine in order to appease the far-right Jewish lobby in Melbourne. When I was prime minister and foreign minister, Australia's voting profile on Israel had changed from one of unquestioning compliance with US and Israeli interests, to one which was much more aligned with British voting patterns in the UN. Our votes were still more sympathetic to Israel than those of the rest of Europe. But this was not good enough for Gillard. The far-right Jewish lobby in Melbourne wanted to go back to the good old days of the Howard government. And Gillard wanted to deliver. This would be coordinated through her loyal operative Wolpe to ensure that Australia would once again join the likes of the US, Palau and maybe two or three other Pacific micro-states, in voting against UN General Assembly resolutions that were critical of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. It was no surprise that Gillard would later be awarded, together with Abbott, an honorary doctorate at an Israeli university for her services to the cause. The only problem was that these were not services to Australia's cause. They were services to the Israeli Government's cause under prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his total opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state." (pp 508-09)
Of course, Rudd still hasn't broken through his childhood/religious/Labor Party conditioning to arrive at a real understanding of the dark apartheid heart of the Zionist project in Palestine, and probably never will, but at least he's experienced a learning curve of sorts.
Be that as it may, given the Israel lobby's hugely successful impact on Middle East policy formulation by governments from both sides of the political divide, as well as its equally successful role in shaping and managing mainstream media discourse on the Middle East, any inside account of its modus operandi is more than welcome. Recent memoirs, by former foreign minister Bob Carr, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, and journalists John Lyons and Mike Carlton, have helped expose the lobby's interventions and manipulations in these two key areas. Indeed, judging by their revelations, it could be said that we are approaching critical mass here - to the point where no truly sentient Australian can any longer feign ignorance of either the Israel lobby's existence or its clout.
I've already mined Carr's Diary of a Foreign Minister (2014) and John Lyons' Balcony Over Jerusalem for their insights. As time permits, I'll move on to Carr's Run for Your Life (2018) and Carlton's On Air (2018) in later posts. For now, I'll deal here with Rudd's Kevin Rudd: The PM Years (2018), annotating where necessary:
"Then there was the question of Israel. Back in 2003, under the Howard government, the Israeli intelligence services had taken it into their heads to use forged Australian passports in one of their operations abroad. They had been found out. Dennis Richardson, the director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation at the time, had hauled them over the coals. The Israelis had been forced to sign an agreement with us that if we were to continue intelligence cooperation with them in the future, they would never do this again. Obviously the Israelis had not taken us seriously, because they did it again - this time in a botched intelligence operation which culminated in the assassination of a Hamas leader visiting Dubai. Mossad had left their paw prints all over the operation. The Israeli authorities plainly did not care that by using and abusing Australian passports, they were placing at risk not just the integrity of our passport system but, more importantly, the safety and security of hundreds of thousands of Australians who travelled on these passports through the Middle East each year.
"The matter was brought to the National Security Committee of the cabinet. Dennis Richardson, who had recently been appointed secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs by our government, was an experienced senior diplomat of the old school. His advice to us was unequivocal: unless Australia wished to be seen as a 'soft touch' by the Israelis, we had to act firmly and decisively. We should expel the Mossad representative at the Israeli embassy in Canberra, and make public our reasons for doing so. Only then would it be considered a significant enough issue in Israel to force the political arm of the government to rein Mossad in.
"I looked around the room. Everyone was nodding in agreement - except Julia [Gillard]. I asked her explicitly whether she supported the recommendation. She grunted her assent. I knew for a fact that Julia had been cultivating a close relationship with the Israeli lobby in Australia. There was nothing wrong with that, particularly given her own pro-Palestinian background from her days as a left-wing political activist. I was also conscious that her partner, Tim, had gone to work for a prominent member of the Jewish community in Melbourne. I didn't want any fractures in the government on this one."
Just how close Gillard's relationship with the Israel lobby was is explored in some detail in Carr's Diary of a Foreign Minister. For the details, I refer you in particular to my posts The Carr Diary: Reflections 4, 5 & 6 (18-20/4/14) and my 18/1/13 post The Prime Minister who Put Her Job on the Line for Israel.
With respect to Rudd's assertion that Gillard had a "pro-Palestinian background from her days as a left-wing political activist," he is mistaken. Just the opposite is the case. (See my post 14/8/10 post The Real Julia Gillard.)
"When [foreign minister] Stephen Smith made our position public, the Israeli government was less than impressed. Their ambassador, Yuval Rotem, came in to protest. And that's when the complaints from the Australian Jewish lobby started to come in thick and fast. I had no qualms about saying publicly that the decision by Israeli intelligence services to use and abuse the Australian passport system was not the action of a friendly government. I then said as much to Prime Minister Netanyahu, and I told him I expected him to take action against Mossad.
"Colin Rubenstein, a leading conservative political activist from Sydney, and Mark Leibler from Melbourne went off their heads. How could Australia have the temerity to treat our friend and ally Israel in such cavalier fashion? How could we be certain that Mossad had done this? Surely we were mistaken... And even if Mossad had done it, weren't such things done on a regular basis in the ugly world of intelligence? I was then lobbied by our own Jewish members of parliament, led by Michael Danby and Mark Dreyfus. They came to see me, demanding that I 'do something'. My response was to ask what they would have done if they were either foreign minister or prime minister of a country and another country had forged their passports in order to assassinate someone who at that stage was under the protection of another country (the UAE) with whom Australia also had a close relationship."
Rubenstein is the executive director of Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and Leibler is its national chairman. AIJAC is based in Melbourne.
"However, out of respect for my parliamentary colleagues, I suggested that we invite leading members of the Jewish community to the Lodge for dinner to discuss the matter further. The dinner was held on 3 June, and I remember the evening well. I sat there politely as Mark Leibler berated me for having committed a hostile act. I found this remarkable as I had been a strong defender of the state of Israel from the earliest days of my diplomatic career and had always been a vigorous campaigner against all forms of anti-Semitism. And for Leibler to attack the democratically elected prime minister of his country as he sought to argue the interests of another country was beyond the pale.
"'You do realise that this is Israel's second offence?' I said. 'What do you mean?' he asked. 'They did exactly the same under Howard, got a gentle rap over the knuckles, and promised never to do it again.' Leibler looked stunned. 'I don't believe you.' 'Then why don't you sit down with the head of Foreign Affairs, who is the former head of ASIO, and I'll authorise him to brief you on exactly what has happened here,' I countered. 'I think you'll find that our response to Israel's actions has been entirely reasonable under the circumstances.'
"Leibler still stared at me in disbelief. And then disbelief turned to anger. Apropos of nothing, he said, 'Julia is looking very good in the public eye these days, Prime Minister. She's performing very strongly. She's a great friend of Israel. But you shouldn't be anxious about her, should you, Prime Minister?' It was Leibler at his menacing worst." (Kevin Rudd: The PM Years, 2018, pp 282-84)
Rudd's dinner at the Lodge is the subject of a most interesting report by Peter Hartcher, the Sydney Morning Herald's international editor, for which see my 22/6/10 post The Best Israel Policy Money Can Buy. See also the account of same in The Australian Jewish News, quoted in my 11/6/10 post Those Irresistable Zionist Pheromones Again 2.
Sadly, "Leibler at his menacing worst" was not the wake-up call that Rudd needed on the matter of Israel, because just over a year later we find him, with Danby, in a Melbourne Max Brenner outlet condemning those advocating its boycott. A more disillusioned Rudd can be seen later in Carr's 2014 Diary of a Foreign Minister, for which see my 20/4/14 post The Carr Diary Reflections 6. Finally, we have the Israel critic of later years, for which see my 23/2/17 post Rudd & Netanyahu Cross Swords, as well as the following passage from his memoir:
"Elsewhere on the international front there was good news to be had. In October 2012, nearly five years after I had launched the initial campaign, the news finally came through of Australia's extraordinary win for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Gillard was never an enthusiast. Through the influence of her 'Middle East Advisor', Bruce Wolpe, Gillard had already begun unravelling a number of Australian votes on UN General Assembly resolutions on Palestine in order to appease the far-right Jewish lobby in Melbourne. When I was prime minister and foreign minister, Australia's voting profile on Israel had changed from one of unquestioning compliance with US and Israeli interests, to one which was much more aligned with British voting patterns in the UN. Our votes were still more sympathetic to Israel than those of the rest of Europe. But this was not good enough for Gillard. The far-right Jewish lobby in Melbourne wanted to go back to the good old days of the Howard government. And Gillard wanted to deliver. This would be coordinated through her loyal operative Wolpe to ensure that Australia would once again join the likes of the US, Palau and maybe two or three other Pacific micro-states, in voting against UN General Assembly resolutions that were critical of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. It was no surprise that Gillard would later be awarded, together with Abbott, an honorary doctorate at an Israeli university for her services to the cause. The only problem was that these were not services to Australia's cause. They were services to the Israeli Government's cause under prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his total opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state." (pp 508-09)
Of course, Rudd still hasn't broken through his childhood/religious/Labor Party conditioning to arrive at a real understanding of the dark apartheid heart of the Zionist project in Palestine, and probably never will, but at least he's experienced a learning curve of sorts.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Martyrs of the Third Intifada
"One of the most enduring popular movements of 2018 has been the ongoing Great March of Return in the besieged Gaza Strip. Since 30 March, thousands of Palestinians in the small coastal territory have demonstrated along the boundary with Israel, demanding the implementation of Palestinian refugees' right of return and an end to the crippling 11-year siege of Gaza.
"But such high-scale mobilisation has come at a high cost: according to Middle East Eye's calculations, 190 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces within the scope of the demonstrations between 30 march and 30 November - equivalent to one Palestinian killed every 31 hours in eight months. The numbers exclude more than 50 victims of air strikes or other Israeli military actions when demonstrations were not taking place.The death toll peaked on 14 May - the day the US opened its embassy in Jerusalem - when 68 people were killed.
"During that same time frame, more than 25,000 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. One Israeli soldier was killed within the context of the March." (from Gaza: The Palestinians who died during the Great March of Return, Ahmad Nafi and Chloe Benoist, middleeasteye.net, 28/12/18)
"But such high-scale mobilisation has come at a high cost: according to Middle East Eye's calculations, 190 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces within the scope of the demonstrations between 30 march and 30 November - equivalent to one Palestinian killed every 31 hours in eight months. The numbers exclude more than 50 victims of air strikes or other Israeli military actions when demonstrations were not taking place.The death toll peaked on 14 May - the day the US opened its embassy in Jerusalem - when 68 people were killed.
"During that same time frame, more than 25,000 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. One Israeli soldier was killed within the context of the March." (from Gaza: The Palestinians who died during the Great March of Return, Ahmad Nafi and Chloe Benoist, middleeasteye.net, 28/12/18)
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