Murdoch's Australian is positively salivating over the latest legal manoeuvre by the Mossad-backed lawfare outfit, Shurat HaDin, against Associate Professor Jake Lynch, director of Sydney University's Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies (CPACS), over his courageous stand in defence of Palestinian rights.
Unreported in the Fairfax press or Guardian Australia, Shurat HaDin's pursuit of Professor Lynch is now getting front page treatment in The Australian.
The latest spike in its ongoing 'coverage' of the issue began in earnest on October 30 with the kind of drive-by editorial especially reserved by the paper for anyone who refuses to bend the knee and kiss the Israeli ring.
Exploiting last Saturday night's random attack on a group of Jews at Bondi Beach by youths of Islander background (whose knowledge of, or interest in, Middle Eastern affairs would be less than zero), The Australian's editorialist, hyping the attack as an example of "the vile spectre of anti-Semitism," had no doubt who was to blame:
"It is not altogether surprising given the attitude of the Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies at Sydney University. Last year, the centre shunned a Hebrew University of Jerusalem academic who developed a civics course to unite Arab and Jewish students. Centre director Jake Lynch backed the oppressive boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign. The existence of Israel is accepted in international law and by the UN but some Australian humanities academics think otherwise. In supporting the Palestinian cause, the Left must not allow anti-Semitism to become an article of faith among young people and risk reigniting hatreds that festered across Europe for centuries before 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust." (Dangerous anti-Semitism has no place in Australia: In backing Palestinians, the Left must not demonise Israel)
That outrageous libel was matched by the bizarre front page piece by Ean Higgins and Jared Owens about which I've already posted, To Jewish leaders, incidents prove you can never stop. (See my 30/10/13 post Only in 'The Australian', No. 16,972.) Accompanied by a photograph of a "Holocaust survivor," and opening with a reference to the Bondi Beach attack, it veered from one unrelated matter to another before finally reaching its intended target, Professor Lynch.
The very next day, October 31, again on the front page, we had the headline Anti-Israeli BDS campaign facing court test. The byline? Ean Higgins, naturally. It began:
"The emotive controversy over whether the BDS campaign against Israel is racist and discriminatory will be tested in the Federal Court after an Israeli organisation launched a landmark legal suit."
After outlining something of the history of the case, Higgins went on, on page 2 now, to detail the substance of Shurat HaDin's complaint:
"Shurat HaDin's case will argue that Professor Lynch's support for BDS amounts to racial discrimination against Israelis and Jews, in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act and international conventions including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the application filed with the court, Shurat HaDin claims that Professor Lynch's 'inherent purpose in participating [in] and publicly supporting the BDS movement is to do acts involving adverse distinction, exclusion, restriction and adverse preference based on the Jewish race, descent, national and ethnic origin of goods, services, persons and organisations," which, the godawful legalese notwithstanding, sounds more like a description of Israel's treatment of Palestine's indigenous Arab population.
"Shurat HaDin," Higgins continued, " is not seeking financial restitution... but court orders requiring [Professor Lynch] to apologise for his BDS campaign and desist from it. Professor Lynch rejected Shurat HaDin's claims, and said he would vigorously fight the court action. 'The campaign for an academic boycott of institutional links with Israeli universities is a non-violent campaign for peace with justice in respect of militarism and lawlessness,' Professor Lynch, who is in Britain, told The Australian. 'I am confident we will prove, in court if necessary, that it does not amount to any form of discrimination or racism'."
Higgins then introduced the subject of Shurat HaDin's links with Israeli intelligence, quoting its Australian lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, as saying that "receiving tip-offs from Mossad... was part of the normal practice of lawyers seeking information and evidence to bolster their cases."
How fascinating. Whereas Australia's new foreign minister is adamant that "we don't comment on intelligence matters," Mossad is apparently more than happy to talk to any old Tom, Dick and Andrew!
Higgins then had Jerusalem's Hebrew University, which is seeking ties with Sydney University opposed by Professor Lynch, confirming that, yes, "it ran two programs for serving and future Israeli soldiers," but claiming that these were also "attended by students who were not connected to the military," a complete nonsense, of course, in a society where all Jewish Israelis, save the ultra-orthodox, are required to serve in the army.
He then quoted another Hebrew University spokesman as saying that the entire Hebrew University campus is "is all on Israeli territory." In fact, it is situated on Mt Scopus, an Israeli enclave in the Jordanian-ruled West Bank from 1948-1967.
Now exactly why the Palestinians should be expected to view Mt Scopus, which is east of the so-called Green Line, as Israeli territory when Israel refuses to recognise the Palestinian claim to hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages west of the Green Line is one of life's little mysteries.
But then, even if we ignore the above elephant in the room and concede that Mt Scopus campus is all on Israeli territory, we still have to face the fact that all its access roads run through occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem.
But there's more! There always is in The Australian. There's also the letters page to insult our intelligence, this time with such gems as:
"There is no other tool than anti-Semitism for criticising Israel and the Jewish people.";
"... anti-Semitism deniers such as Jake Lynch," and his "platoon of supporters happily preferring uggboots to jackboots.";
"... a rising tide of anti-Israel sentiment that is expressing itself as anti-Semitism..."
Continued next post...
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Friday, November 1, 2013
Great Moments in Australian Sycophancy
"I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die."
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, Australian PM (1949-1966), Knight of the Order of the Thistle, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle, quoting Elizabethan poet Thomas Ford on the occasion of a visit to Australia by Queen Elizabeth II in 1963
"If my telephone was intercepted when I was prime minister, all that anybody would have heard would have been praise for President Obama."
Julia Gillard, Australian PM (2010-2013), Jerusalem Prize 2013 winner, commenting on the NSA spying scandal at a meeting of the Center for American Progress in Washington DC on October 24, 2013
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, Australian PM (1949-1966), Knight of the Order of the Thistle, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle, quoting Elizabethan poet Thomas Ford on the occasion of a visit to Australia by Queen Elizabeth II in 1963
"If my telephone was intercepted when I was prime minister, all that anybody would have heard would have been praise for President Obama."
Julia Gillard, Australian PM (2010-2013), Jerusalem Prize 2013 winner, commenting on the NSA spying scandal at a meeting of the Center for American Progress in Washington DC on October 24, 2013
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Only in 'The Australian', No. 16,972
Question:
What have...
a) the late night bashing of a Jewish group at Sydney's Bondi Beach;
b) an anti-Israel protest in Denver, Colorado;
c) an elderly Holocaust survivor;
d) SRC election shenanigans at the UNSW;
e) BDS; and
f) Sydney University's CPAC's director, Associate Professor Jake Lynch
... got in common?
Well, absolutely nothing at all - except that they've all been lumped together on the front page of today's Australian, thanks to the creative flair of 'journalists' Ean* Higgins and Jared Owns, under the headline, To Jewish leaders, incident proves you can never stop fighting anti-Semitism.
[*Yes, I have spelt it correctly.]
What have...
a) the late night bashing of a Jewish group at Sydney's Bondi Beach;
b) an anti-Israel protest in Denver, Colorado;
c) an elderly Holocaust survivor;
d) SRC election shenanigans at the UNSW;
e) BDS; and
f) Sydney University's CPAC's director, Associate Professor Jake Lynch
... got in common?
Well, absolutely nothing at all - except that they've all been lumped together on the front page of today's Australian, thanks to the creative flair of 'journalists' Ean* Higgins and Jared Owns, under the headline, To Jewish leaders, incident proves you can never stop fighting anti-Semitism.
[*Yes, I have spelt it correctly.]
The Taming of Tanya
Hope springs eternal, as the saying goes.
Some people out there apparently see Labor's new deputy/shadow foreign minister, Tanya Plibersek, as the Great White Hope of the ALP, partly on the strength of her description of Israel as a "rogue state" back in 2002.
Well, she's come a long way since then. But not, mind you, without a bit of - ahem - 'guidance' from 'friends' in the party:
"A year or so after Tanya Plibersek's widely reported anti-Israel comments, several Jewish friends who were openly Zionist and active in the Labor party told me they had since spent many hours talking to her about Israel, Zionism and the Palestinians. They said she had been quite open to discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [and] her attitudes had shifted. Plibersek now understood why there was a Jewish State and recognised a two-state approach was the only practical solution. I was sceptical. I want to a book launch at Gleebooks where Plibersek was to be the guest speaker. The book was about Israel, the Palestinians and the Middle East, and Gleebooks was a well known gathering place for pro-Palestinian sentiment. I knew the audience would be hostile to Israel and it would be easy to score points by kicking the Israeli can. But Plibersek spoke with insight and genuine conviction. I was intrigued and pleasantly surprised to hear her say injustices suffered by the Palestinians could not be ended and a Palestinian state could not be achieved without ensuring there was a Jewish state and Israel was entitled to security as much as the Palestinians."
(Letter from Irving Wallach, Bronte NSW, The Australian Jewish News, 25/10/13)
Still, one can never be sure she's quite got the message, so:
"Asked whether she would be open to travelling to Israel to further her understanding of the conflict on the ground, she said: 'I have had the pleasure of visiting Israel before, and I would welcome the opportunity to visit again'," (Plibersek 'would welcome' chance to visit Israel, The Australian Jewish News, 25/10/13)
Some people out there apparently see Labor's new deputy/shadow foreign minister, Tanya Plibersek, as the Great White Hope of the ALP, partly on the strength of her description of Israel as a "rogue state" back in 2002.
Well, she's come a long way since then. But not, mind you, without a bit of - ahem - 'guidance' from 'friends' in the party:
"A year or so after Tanya Plibersek's widely reported anti-Israel comments, several Jewish friends who were openly Zionist and active in the Labor party told me they had since spent many hours talking to her about Israel, Zionism and the Palestinians. They said she had been quite open to discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [and] her attitudes had shifted. Plibersek now understood why there was a Jewish State and recognised a two-state approach was the only practical solution. I was sceptical. I want to a book launch at Gleebooks where Plibersek was to be the guest speaker. The book was about Israel, the Palestinians and the Middle East, and Gleebooks was a well known gathering place for pro-Palestinian sentiment. I knew the audience would be hostile to Israel and it would be easy to score points by kicking the Israeli can. But Plibersek spoke with insight and genuine conviction. I was intrigued and pleasantly surprised to hear her say injustices suffered by the Palestinians could not be ended and a Palestinian state could not be achieved without ensuring there was a Jewish state and Israel was entitled to security as much as the Palestinians."
(Letter from Irving Wallach, Bronte NSW, The Australian Jewish News, 25/10/13)
Still, one can never be sure she's quite got the message, so:
"Asked whether she would be open to travelling to Israel to further her understanding of the conflict on the ground, she said: 'I have had the pleasure of visiting Israel before, and I would welcome the opportunity to visit again'," (Plibersek 'would welcome' chance to visit Israel, The Australian Jewish News, 25/10/13)
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
The Unpalatable Truth About Martha Gellhorn 6
"I know now that there are things for which I am prepared to die. I am willing to die for political freedom; for the right to give my loyalty to ideals above a nation and above a class; for the right to teach my child what I think to be the truth; for the right to explore such knowledge as my brains can penetrate; for the right to love where my mind and heart admire, without reference to some dictator's code to tell me what the national canons on the matter are; for the right to work with others of like mind; for a society that seems to me becoming to the dignity of the human race."
Dorothy Thompson, 1937
"What then should we be? That each will answer for himself. But for myself I say: Though stripped of every armor, be a warrior - a warrior of the spirit, for what the spirit knows."
Dorothy Thompson, 1955
***
And so to my concluding post on this subject. I began with the question: Isn't it time to rename The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism? Needless to say, I believe it is.
Also needless to say, I base my case on the fact that Martha Gellhorn failed, and miserably so, the pre-eminent litmus test for journalistic integrity in our time, namely, Palestine or Israel - which side are you on?
So what to call it then? Keeping in mind that the prize is awarded to "journalists whose work has penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth," I'd be inclined to name it (if not after my all-time favourite choice, J.M.N. Jeffries) after the great American journalist Dorothy Thompson (1893-1961).
Dorothy who? I hear you all chorus. Unfortunately, for most of us today, Dorothy Thompson's is a long forgotten name. That wasn't the case, however, in her heyday. For a background sketch, try this from the dust jacket of Peter Kurth's invaluable 1990 biography, American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson:
"For 3 decades, amid the sweeping events of the first half of the twentieth century, no journalist was more controversial, more opinionated, more irreverent, or more quoted than Dorothy Thompson. At the pinnacle of her career, Thompson's thrice-weekly news column, 'On the Record' - one of the longest running news columns ever - reached millions of people around the globe. She was heard by millions more in her regular radio broadcasts. She was satirized by Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year, and in 1939, in a Time magazine cover story, was called the most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt."
For most of her life, Dorothy Thompson was, in fact, an uncritical supporter of the Zionist movement, largely because, like so many other Western intellectuals of the time, she was focused more on the struggle against fascism in Europe, including the appalling resurgence of state-sponsored anti-Semitism under the Nazis in pre-war Germany, than on the crimes of British imperialism in faraway Palestine or elsewhere.
Writes Peter Kurth:
"[S]he had been, up through the end of World War II, one of Zionism's most profoundly moving spokesmen. In May of 1942 she had appeared as a keynote speaker at the Biltmore Hotel in New York, where an international conference had been called to agitate for unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine. There is no question that Dorothy, up to that point, was wholeheartedly sympathetic to the Zionist movement and convinced (as later she was not) that the Jews were 'a separate people'... that needed to be dealt with as such after twenty centuries of persecution and oppression. 'The whole anti-Semitic movement is full of fetish and black magic,' Dorothy had written in 1943. 'It is a kind of modern witchcraft. Back of this black magic is the fact that the Jews do lead an abnormal life. They are a cohesive people without a place on earth of their own. That fact gives them, in the superstitious mind, an atmosphere of doom. An atmosphere of doom produces an atmosphere of fear.' And a state of their own, 'built by themselves and expressing their own peculiar culture and way of life,' might liberate the Jews from their status as outsiders. It would end the 'ghost story' of the Diaspora. It would allow any Jew, anywhere in the world, to make a choice: to become a member of the Jewish state, or to surrender his Jewishness (as distinct from his religious practice) once and for all to the country of his birth.
"Indeed, it was with an eye to the assimilation of the Jews that Dorothy had first thrown her support behind political Zionism. She had been assured 'time and again' (and for the first time in London, in 1920, during the Zionist conference that launched her career) that the Jewish state in Palestine would encompass 'in equal partnership' the indigenous population of the region, and that 'actively dissident Arabs,' if there were any, could be transferred 'to other parts of the vast Pan-Arab Empire, which covers a territory as large as large as the United States.' Ignorant of Arab culture, badly informed about the history of the Middle East, Dorothy had not then imagined that a Palestinian shepherd would care very much whether he drew water from a well in Bethlehem or in Fez. Later she would deeply regret the cultural and racial prejudice that had allowed her to regard 'the Arabs' as interchangeable bodies, indistinguishable one from another and superfluous in the face of Western plans, but even at the height of her devotion to Zionism she never suspected that whole populations (nearly a million people, by most estimates) would be uprooted from their homes in Palestine and driven into exile.
"'I should be opposed to it if I were a Jew,' Dorothy had warned, 'with the undimmed memory of the dispersion of my own people in mind. I should not want any Arab to sit beside the waters of Babylon and weep because he remembered Zion.' Her first trip to Palestine in 1945 had convinced her that Zionism was not the 'liberal crusade' she had thought it to be, 'that the Zionist leaders envisaged,' as she put it, 'not a small state of Jews who chose to live in Israel, but a Zionist state destined to become the leading power in the Middle East, as the ward of world Jewry whatever their citizenship in other countries [might be].' Dorothy was very much upset by Jewish terrorism in the quest for statehood. She was 'shocked beyond measure' when Menachem Begin, one of the leaders of the Irgun group that was responsible for the massacre of more than 250 Arabs at Deir Yassin, was accorded a hero's welcome by the Jews of New York, and when Ben Hecht, Peter Bergson, and other leading Zionists 'put on a show in Madison Square Garden' and 'slandered Great Britain' by displaying the Union Jack topped with the Nazi swastika. The failure of Israel, after 1948, to agree to the fixing of its borders, to heed the call for the internationalization of Jerusalem, or to provide any relief or compensation for the Palestinian refugees led Dorothy to conclude that Zionism was 'an aggressive, chauvinistic movement' and that the State of Israel was 'an expansionist power' - 'a creation of the United Nations decision made against the opposition of the whole Arab and Moslem world.'
"Ultimately Dorothy was more worried about the effect of Israeli propaganda on American foreign policy than she was about the righteousness or iniquity of Israel itself... She was ahead of most of her colleagues in journalism in considering the problem of Israel at all (beyond merely hailing its creation as a humanitarian enterprise or, like Walter Lippmann, arguing that the Western allies ought to 'impose peace' on the Middle East through the establishment of a joint Israeli-Palestinian confederation). But just as Dorothy was one of the first - and only - American journalists to speak out in defense of the Arab nations, so was she the first and most prominent American journalist to be smeared with the label of 'anti-semite'." (pp 423-425)
I'll finish specifically on the issue of the Palestinian Arab refugees of 1948, the ones so venomously slandered by Gellhorn. As it happens, the first ever documentary film in English on the subject of those refugees, Sands of Sorrow (1950), produced by the Council for Relief of Palestine Arab Refugees, was introduced and closed by Dorothy Thompson. Here is her moving introduction:
"I'm Dorothy Thompson and I have been asked to introduce Sands of Sorrow because I've recently returned from visiting the scenes of the picture you are about to see. Of course, the impression left on my mind by these wretched casualties of political change is much more distressing than the film. For no film can convey the icy winds from Mt Hermon as they blow upon flimsy, floorless tents in Syria or the rains that turn dwellings into mud holes in the rainy season in Lebanon. Nor the defeated feeling even of those who are trying to help, but this film tells part of the story that, until now, has hardly been told at all outside the Arab world."
This is light years away from the propagandist bile of Martha Gellhorn.
Re the name change, I rest my case.
Dorothy Thompson, 1937
"What then should we be? That each will answer for himself. But for myself I say: Though stripped of every armor, be a warrior - a warrior of the spirit, for what the spirit knows."
Dorothy Thompson, 1955
***
And so to my concluding post on this subject. I began with the question: Isn't it time to rename The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism? Needless to say, I believe it is.
Also needless to say, I base my case on the fact that Martha Gellhorn failed, and miserably so, the pre-eminent litmus test for journalistic integrity in our time, namely, Palestine or Israel - which side are you on?
So what to call it then? Keeping in mind that the prize is awarded to "journalists whose work has penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth," I'd be inclined to name it (if not after my all-time favourite choice, J.M.N. Jeffries) after the great American journalist Dorothy Thompson (1893-1961).
Dorothy who? I hear you all chorus. Unfortunately, for most of us today, Dorothy Thompson's is a long forgotten name. That wasn't the case, however, in her heyday. For a background sketch, try this from the dust jacket of Peter Kurth's invaluable 1990 biography, American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson:
"For 3 decades, amid the sweeping events of the first half of the twentieth century, no journalist was more controversial, more opinionated, more irreverent, or more quoted than Dorothy Thompson. At the pinnacle of her career, Thompson's thrice-weekly news column, 'On the Record' - one of the longest running news columns ever - reached millions of people around the globe. She was heard by millions more in her regular radio broadcasts. She was satirized by Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year, and in 1939, in a Time magazine cover story, was called the most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt."
For most of her life, Dorothy Thompson was, in fact, an uncritical supporter of the Zionist movement, largely because, like so many other Western intellectuals of the time, she was focused more on the struggle against fascism in Europe, including the appalling resurgence of state-sponsored anti-Semitism under the Nazis in pre-war Germany, than on the crimes of British imperialism in faraway Palestine or elsewhere.
Writes Peter Kurth:
"[S]he had been, up through the end of World War II, one of Zionism's most profoundly moving spokesmen. In May of 1942 she had appeared as a keynote speaker at the Biltmore Hotel in New York, where an international conference had been called to agitate for unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine. There is no question that Dorothy, up to that point, was wholeheartedly sympathetic to the Zionist movement and convinced (as later she was not) that the Jews were 'a separate people'... that needed to be dealt with as such after twenty centuries of persecution and oppression. 'The whole anti-Semitic movement is full of fetish and black magic,' Dorothy had written in 1943. 'It is a kind of modern witchcraft. Back of this black magic is the fact that the Jews do lead an abnormal life. They are a cohesive people without a place on earth of their own. That fact gives them, in the superstitious mind, an atmosphere of doom. An atmosphere of doom produces an atmosphere of fear.' And a state of their own, 'built by themselves and expressing their own peculiar culture and way of life,' might liberate the Jews from their status as outsiders. It would end the 'ghost story' of the Diaspora. It would allow any Jew, anywhere in the world, to make a choice: to become a member of the Jewish state, or to surrender his Jewishness (as distinct from his religious practice) once and for all to the country of his birth.
"Indeed, it was with an eye to the assimilation of the Jews that Dorothy had first thrown her support behind political Zionism. She had been assured 'time and again' (and for the first time in London, in 1920, during the Zionist conference that launched her career) that the Jewish state in Palestine would encompass 'in equal partnership' the indigenous population of the region, and that 'actively dissident Arabs,' if there were any, could be transferred 'to other parts of the vast Pan-Arab Empire, which covers a territory as large as large as the United States.' Ignorant of Arab culture, badly informed about the history of the Middle East, Dorothy had not then imagined that a Palestinian shepherd would care very much whether he drew water from a well in Bethlehem or in Fez. Later she would deeply regret the cultural and racial prejudice that had allowed her to regard 'the Arabs' as interchangeable bodies, indistinguishable one from another and superfluous in the face of Western plans, but even at the height of her devotion to Zionism she never suspected that whole populations (nearly a million people, by most estimates) would be uprooted from their homes in Palestine and driven into exile.
"'I should be opposed to it if I were a Jew,' Dorothy had warned, 'with the undimmed memory of the dispersion of my own people in mind. I should not want any Arab to sit beside the waters of Babylon and weep because he remembered Zion.' Her first trip to Palestine in 1945 had convinced her that Zionism was not the 'liberal crusade' she had thought it to be, 'that the Zionist leaders envisaged,' as she put it, 'not a small state of Jews who chose to live in Israel, but a Zionist state destined to become the leading power in the Middle East, as the ward of world Jewry whatever their citizenship in other countries [might be].' Dorothy was very much upset by Jewish terrorism in the quest for statehood. She was 'shocked beyond measure' when Menachem Begin, one of the leaders of the Irgun group that was responsible for the massacre of more than 250 Arabs at Deir Yassin, was accorded a hero's welcome by the Jews of New York, and when Ben Hecht, Peter Bergson, and other leading Zionists 'put on a show in Madison Square Garden' and 'slandered Great Britain' by displaying the Union Jack topped with the Nazi swastika. The failure of Israel, after 1948, to agree to the fixing of its borders, to heed the call for the internationalization of Jerusalem, or to provide any relief or compensation for the Palestinian refugees led Dorothy to conclude that Zionism was 'an aggressive, chauvinistic movement' and that the State of Israel was 'an expansionist power' - 'a creation of the United Nations decision made against the opposition of the whole Arab and Moslem world.'
"Ultimately Dorothy was more worried about the effect of Israeli propaganda on American foreign policy than she was about the righteousness or iniquity of Israel itself... She was ahead of most of her colleagues in journalism in considering the problem of Israel at all (beyond merely hailing its creation as a humanitarian enterprise or, like Walter Lippmann, arguing that the Western allies ought to 'impose peace' on the Middle East through the establishment of a joint Israeli-Palestinian confederation). But just as Dorothy was one of the first - and only - American journalists to speak out in defense of the Arab nations, so was she the first and most prominent American journalist to be smeared with the label of 'anti-semite'." (pp 423-425)
I'll finish specifically on the issue of the Palestinian Arab refugees of 1948, the ones so venomously slandered by Gellhorn. As it happens, the first ever documentary film in English on the subject of those refugees, Sands of Sorrow (1950), produced by the Council for Relief of Palestine Arab Refugees, was introduced and closed by Dorothy Thompson. Here is her moving introduction:
"I'm Dorothy Thompson and I have been asked to introduce Sands of Sorrow because I've recently returned from visiting the scenes of the picture you are about to see. Of course, the impression left on my mind by these wretched casualties of political change is much more distressing than the film. For no film can convey the icy winds from Mt Hermon as they blow upon flimsy, floorless tents in Syria or the rains that turn dwellings into mud holes in the rainy season in Lebanon. Nor the defeated feeling even of those who are trying to help, but this film tells part of the story that, until now, has hardly been told at all outside the Arab world."
This is light years away from the propagandist bile of Martha Gellhorn.
Re the name change, I rest my case.
Monday, October 28, 2013
The Unpalatable Truth About Martha Gellhorn 5
Fast forward to July 1967, in the wake of Israel's conquest of the remaining 22% of historic Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza Strip), Syria's Golan Heights, and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in the so-called Six Day War. True to form, Gellhorn was there, whitewashing the suffering of a new wave of Palestinian refugees, many of whom were also refugees from the 1948 era.
The following extract comes from her essay Why the Refugees Ran*, included in a 1988 collection of her essays called The Face of War. We see again the Palestinian straw man of her 1961 propaganda piece (joined on this occasion by a Palestinian straw woman); the hoary Zionist myth of Palestinians as witless pawns of Arab radio broadcasts; the always kind and thoroughly decent Israelis at a complete loss as to what has gotten into these people; and the usual apologetics for Israeli aggression:
"Aquabat [sic] Jaber and the neighboring Jericho camps are now ghost towns though probably most of the residents will filter back. No other mass exodus happened anywhere else in West Jordan and it is fishy. The lightning war was not heard even as a passing bang in this valley. The camp leader, himself a Palestinian refugee, is a choleric fat man, a powerful UNRWA administrator, feared and obeyed by his people... Why didn't he prevent this panic flight? We insisted that there must have been some sort of trouble to drive the people away.
"'No, no. The battle lasted an hour, far off,' the camp leader said. 'There was nothing here. No, no, the Israeli army did not come here at all; everything is all right; everything is correct. There are plenty of supplies. There is no trouble.'
"Since non-war had been followed by instant peace, why did the refugees run? 'People talk,' the camp leader said. 'There were a lot of stories. Political party people spread rumors. They said all the young men would be killed. People heard on the radio that this is not the end, only the beginning, so they think maybe it will be a long war and they want to be in Jordan.'
"A group of sullen young men were sitting in a cafe; they tuned in to Radio Cairo as we passed. Perhaps Radio Cairo and all it stands for, Arab politics and propaganda, are the true reason for the first frantic rush of of camp refugees into a second exile across the Jordan. They were not escaping the danger of war, nor fleeing their shattered homes. There are 20 UNRWA refugee camps in West Jordan, not one of them was touched by the war; not one resident was killed (Statement made by UNRWA's chief representative in West Jordan, during an interview on July 4 at Kalandia, which confirmed my own observations.)... I suggest that blind fear of the Israelis, not the dangers of war, was their driving emotion. Radio Cairo had promised destruction of the Jews. King Hussein's last broadcast before his ceasefire is memorable. 'Kill the Jews wherever you find them. Kill them with your hands, with your nails and teeth.' Now the Jews had won, so the Jews would kill them instead.
"The majority of Palestinian refugees do not live in camps. Any of these, like any other Arabs who were exposed to actual war, may have decided to escape immediately lest the fighting go on or start again and trap them in danger. Perhaps some of the first wave of refugees had valid, political reasons for leaving, unlike the later waves of stoical departing Arabs.
"In the last few weeks, neither fear of war nor fear of reprisals nor family nor financial complications explain the smaller but steady flow of people plodding over the Allenby Bridge, no matter what the waiting hardships of exile. 'They don't feel secure,' said an intelligent Palestinian woman on UNRWA's staff in Hebron. 'They don't know what is going to happen next. They want to be among Arabs.' She surprised me by remarking that the local Israeli military commander had been 'very kind to UNRWA, very gentle and helpful,' amazing words for an Arab to use about a Jew. The commander had provided a car for their work, and truck transport for refugee women, children and old people to the Allenby Bridge. I surprised her by remarking that this truck transport, a gesture of decency in the white heat of summer, had been transmuted through propaganda into forced expulsion. If the Israeli army had tried at any moment to prevent the exodus, that would have been treated as forced detention." (pp 297-98)
And how's this for pious claptrap (Forty-six years on, note Gellhorn's advice not to "harass Israel for an overnight solution."):
"Hopefully, the Jordanian and Israeli governments will be able to co-operate... on the return of all those refugees who chose to come back to West Jordan. UNRWA's 'educated guess,' here, is that 100,000** of its West Jordan refugees are now on the east bank... It would be wise and restful not to harass Israel for an overnight solution of the 19-year-old Palestine refugee problem. With time, work, and money, the Israelis will manage simply by treating their acquired Palestine refugee population as people, not as political pawns." (p 298)
That Gellhorn is little more here than a peddler of Israeli propaganda becomes patently obvious when contrasted with the findings of research carried out by American University of Beirut sociologists Peter Dodd and Halim Barakat in September 1967, and set out in their report, River Without Bridges: A Study of the Exodus of the 1967 Palestinian Arab Refugees (The Institute for Palestine Studies, 1969).
Here is the conclusion from Chapter 5, The Exodus: Its Direct & Indirect Causes:
"It is now time to attempt to answer our original question. Why did the exodus of 1967 take place? The answer is that the exodus was a response to the severe situational pressures existing at the time. The situational pressures were generated by the aerial attacks upon a defenseless country, including the extensive use of napalm, the occupation of the West Bank villages by the Israeli army, and the actions of the occupying forces. Certainly the most drastic of these actions was the eviction of civilians and the deliberate destruction of a number of villages. Other actions, such as threats and the mass detention of male civilians, also created situational pressures.
"For a number of reasons, which we have termed indirect causes, the Arab villages were not well equipped to resist these situational pressures. They were caught by surprise, ill-informed and unfamiliar with the terrifying nature of aerial bombardment. Their family-centred social structure decreased attachment to community and to nation. They fled to protect their families, including, and by no means least, the honor of their womenfolk.
"It is our opinion that the fears felt by the Arab villagers were not unreasonable. They are intelligible and explicable. One does not need to view the exodus of June 1967 as a mass panic of superstitious and ignorant people. It seems more reasonable to see the exodus as the response of the Palestinian Arab villagers to the conditions of enemy attack and occupation. In an earlier section of this report, we have presented our finding that the refugee families had strong ties with their home communities: ties of property, of affection, of kinship and of long residence. It is perhaps a measure of the strength of the 'situational pressures' that the families left their homes in spite of these ties. To explain it as a panic does not do justice to the strength of community ties, nor does it explain the cause of the exodus." (pp 54-55)
Israeli historian Tom Segev's book 1967: Israel, the War & the Year That Transformed the Middle East (2007) presents Gellhorn's beautiful Israelis in a very different light, one more in keeping with the Israelis we have all come to - ahem - know and love today.
Segev reveals that a range of strategies, both passive and active, was used by the Israelis to stimulate flight and depopulate the West Bank: The roads leading to Jordan's Allenby Bridge were kept open. The bridge itself was not immediately destroyed. Buses and trucks were made available to speed up the exodus, not as a humanitarian gesture as Gellhorn has it. Again, despite her assertion to the contrary, refugee camps in the Jericho area were bombed, and columns of fleeing refugees were fired on. Vehicles equipped with loudspeakers disseminating disinformation designed to spook civilians into flight, made the rounds of West Bank towns and villages. Hundreds of homes were destroyed in the town of Kalkilya. The villages of Beit Awa and Beit Mirsim in the Hebron area were destroyed. The inhabitants of 3 villages in the Latrun salient, Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba, were expelled and the villages razed. Large numbers of young men were rounded up in Tul Karem and detained. Harassing night searches of Palestinian homes by Israeli troops were instituted. The aim was simply to drive home the message: get out! (Segev, pp 403-407)
Gellhorn, apparently, heard nothing of this. And anyway, why spoil a beautiful friendship with Israel's hero du jour, Defence Minister Moshe Dayan.***
Finally, on the subject of her fanciful speculation about refugees attempting to "filter back," those who tried were simply shot on sight. Only a limited number were later allowed to return as a PR exercise. (Segev, p 540-542)
To be concluded in my next post...
[*Written for the UK Guardian; *Dodd & Barakat estimate the number of 'old [1948] refugees' at 100,000 and the 'new refugees' at 100,000. Later estimates rise to well over 300,000; *** Moorehead, p 426]
The following extract comes from her essay Why the Refugees Ran*, included in a 1988 collection of her essays called The Face of War. We see again the Palestinian straw man of her 1961 propaganda piece (joined on this occasion by a Palestinian straw woman); the hoary Zionist myth of Palestinians as witless pawns of Arab radio broadcasts; the always kind and thoroughly decent Israelis at a complete loss as to what has gotten into these people; and the usual apologetics for Israeli aggression:
"Aquabat [sic] Jaber and the neighboring Jericho camps are now ghost towns though probably most of the residents will filter back. No other mass exodus happened anywhere else in West Jordan and it is fishy. The lightning war was not heard even as a passing bang in this valley. The camp leader, himself a Palestinian refugee, is a choleric fat man, a powerful UNRWA administrator, feared and obeyed by his people... Why didn't he prevent this panic flight? We insisted that there must have been some sort of trouble to drive the people away.
"'No, no. The battle lasted an hour, far off,' the camp leader said. 'There was nothing here. No, no, the Israeli army did not come here at all; everything is all right; everything is correct. There are plenty of supplies. There is no trouble.'
"Since non-war had been followed by instant peace, why did the refugees run? 'People talk,' the camp leader said. 'There were a lot of stories. Political party people spread rumors. They said all the young men would be killed. People heard on the radio that this is not the end, only the beginning, so they think maybe it will be a long war and they want to be in Jordan.'
"A group of sullen young men were sitting in a cafe; they tuned in to Radio Cairo as we passed. Perhaps Radio Cairo and all it stands for, Arab politics and propaganda, are the true reason for the first frantic rush of of camp refugees into a second exile across the Jordan. They were not escaping the danger of war, nor fleeing their shattered homes. There are 20 UNRWA refugee camps in West Jordan, not one of them was touched by the war; not one resident was killed (Statement made by UNRWA's chief representative in West Jordan, during an interview on July 4 at Kalandia, which confirmed my own observations.)... I suggest that blind fear of the Israelis, not the dangers of war, was their driving emotion. Radio Cairo had promised destruction of the Jews. King Hussein's last broadcast before his ceasefire is memorable. 'Kill the Jews wherever you find them. Kill them with your hands, with your nails and teeth.' Now the Jews had won, so the Jews would kill them instead.
"The majority of Palestinian refugees do not live in camps. Any of these, like any other Arabs who were exposed to actual war, may have decided to escape immediately lest the fighting go on or start again and trap them in danger. Perhaps some of the first wave of refugees had valid, political reasons for leaving, unlike the later waves of stoical departing Arabs.
"In the last few weeks, neither fear of war nor fear of reprisals nor family nor financial complications explain the smaller but steady flow of people plodding over the Allenby Bridge, no matter what the waiting hardships of exile. 'They don't feel secure,' said an intelligent Palestinian woman on UNRWA's staff in Hebron. 'They don't know what is going to happen next. They want to be among Arabs.' She surprised me by remarking that the local Israeli military commander had been 'very kind to UNRWA, very gentle and helpful,' amazing words for an Arab to use about a Jew. The commander had provided a car for their work, and truck transport for refugee women, children and old people to the Allenby Bridge. I surprised her by remarking that this truck transport, a gesture of decency in the white heat of summer, had been transmuted through propaganda into forced expulsion. If the Israeli army had tried at any moment to prevent the exodus, that would have been treated as forced detention." (pp 297-98)
And how's this for pious claptrap (Forty-six years on, note Gellhorn's advice not to "harass Israel for an overnight solution."):
"Hopefully, the Jordanian and Israeli governments will be able to co-operate... on the return of all those refugees who chose to come back to West Jordan. UNRWA's 'educated guess,' here, is that 100,000** of its West Jordan refugees are now on the east bank... It would be wise and restful not to harass Israel for an overnight solution of the 19-year-old Palestine refugee problem. With time, work, and money, the Israelis will manage simply by treating their acquired Palestine refugee population as people, not as political pawns." (p 298)
That Gellhorn is little more here than a peddler of Israeli propaganda becomes patently obvious when contrasted with the findings of research carried out by American University of Beirut sociologists Peter Dodd and Halim Barakat in September 1967, and set out in their report, River Without Bridges: A Study of the Exodus of the 1967 Palestinian Arab Refugees (The Institute for Palestine Studies, 1969).
Here is the conclusion from Chapter 5, The Exodus: Its Direct & Indirect Causes:
"It is now time to attempt to answer our original question. Why did the exodus of 1967 take place? The answer is that the exodus was a response to the severe situational pressures existing at the time. The situational pressures were generated by the aerial attacks upon a defenseless country, including the extensive use of napalm, the occupation of the West Bank villages by the Israeli army, and the actions of the occupying forces. Certainly the most drastic of these actions was the eviction of civilians and the deliberate destruction of a number of villages. Other actions, such as threats and the mass detention of male civilians, also created situational pressures.
"For a number of reasons, which we have termed indirect causes, the Arab villages were not well equipped to resist these situational pressures. They were caught by surprise, ill-informed and unfamiliar with the terrifying nature of aerial bombardment. Their family-centred social structure decreased attachment to community and to nation. They fled to protect their families, including, and by no means least, the honor of their womenfolk.
"It is our opinion that the fears felt by the Arab villagers were not unreasonable. They are intelligible and explicable. One does not need to view the exodus of June 1967 as a mass panic of superstitious and ignorant people. It seems more reasonable to see the exodus as the response of the Palestinian Arab villagers to the conditions of enemy attack and occupation. In an earlier section of this report, we have presented our finding that the refugee families had strong ties with their home communities: ties of property, of affection, of kinship and of long residence. It is perhaps a measure of the strength of the 'situational pressures' that the families left their homes in spite of these ties. To explain it as a panic does not do justice to the strength of community ties, nor does it explain the cause of the exodus." (pp 54-55)
Israeli historian Tom Segev's book 1967: Israel, the War & the Year That Transformed the Middle East (2007) presents Gellhorn's beautiful Israelis in a very different light, one more in keeping with the Israelis we have all come to - ahem - know and love today.
Segev reveals that a range of strategies, both passive and active, was used by the Israelis to stimulate flight and depopulate the West Bank: The roads leading to Jordan's Allenby Bridge were kept open. The bridge itself was not immediately destroyed. Buses and trucks were made available to speed up the exodus, not as a humanitarian gesture as Gellhorn has it. Again, despite her assertion to the contrary, refugee camps in the Jericho area were bombed, and columns of fleeing refugees were fired on. Vehicles equipped with loudspeakers disseminating disinformation designed to spook civilians into flight, made the rounds of West Bank towns and villages. Hundreds of homes were destroyed in the town of Kalkilya. The villages of Beit Awa and Beit Mirsim in the Hebron area were destroyed. The inhabitants of 3 villages in the Latrun salient, Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba, were expelled and the villages razed. Large numbers of young men were rounded up in Tul Karem and detained. Harassing night searches of Palestinian homes by Israeli troops were instituted. The aim was simply to drive home the message: get out! (Segev, pp 403-407)
Gellhorn, apparently, heard nothing of this. And anyway, why spoil a beautiful friendship with Israel's hero du jour, Defence Minister Moshe Dayan.***
Finally, on the subject of her fanciful speculation about refugees attempting to "filter back," those who tried were simply shot on sight. Only a limited number were later allowed to return as a PR exercise. (Segev, p 540-542)
To be concluded in my next post...
[*Written for the UK Guardian; *Dodd & Barakat estimate the number of 'old [1948] refugees' at 100,000 and the 'new refugees' at 100,000. Later estimates rise to well over 300,000; *** Moorehead, p 426]
Sunday, October 27, 2013
The Unpalatable Truth About Martha Gellhorn 4
In the West Bank (under Jordanian rule at the time), Gellhorn, who had hearted Republicans in 30s Spain, uncharacteristically finds herself warming to monarchists:
"In Jordan, a refugee's education and self-reliance showed at once in his politics. The better educated, the more able do not waste their time on thoughts of violent revenge, and give their loyalty to King Hussein. The more ignorant and less competent nourish themselves with a passion for Nasser, war, and Return."
In Israel itself, she seeks out "the [Palestinians] who stayed behind, the non-refugees," interviewing a Christian Arab schoolteacher in Galilee who informs her that "[i]n the 1948 war, the next village was bombed by the Jews; when we saw that, we knew we had no hope."
Gellhorn responds with the following parenthetical comment to the reader: "(Pause for breath: the Jewish Air Force at the time consisted of 19 Piper Cubs, a nice little plane, not a bomber...)"
In fact, the fledgling AIF had "25 Avia S-199s (purchased from Czechoslovakia, essentially Czechoslovak-built Messerschmitt Bf 109s) and 62 Supermarine Spitfire LF Mk IXEs (also purchased from Czechoslovakia)... Many of the first IAF's pilots in 1948 were foreign volunteers (both Jewish and non-Jewish) and World War II veterans... As the war progressed more and more aircraft were procured, including Boeing B-17s, Bristol Beaufighters, de Havilland Mosquitoes and P-51D Mustangs..." (Wikipedia)
The following conversation ensues, with Gellhorn displaying a mastery of Zionist talking points, an appalling condescension and racism, and a palpable impatience with an interlocutor who sounds suspiciously like the proverbial straw man:
"'The Arab Kings [says the teacher ] were not the true representatives of the Arab peoples when they made war against Israel. Now all the refugees should come back and we should have Palestine.'
"At this point, I decided to make one long, determined stand to see whether there was any meeting ground of minds on a basis of mutually accepted facts and reasoning.
"'Please bear with me and help me,' said I. 'I am a simple American, and I am trying to understand how the Arab mind works, and I am finding it very difficult. I want to put some things in order; if I have everything wrong, you will correct me. In 1947, the United Nations recommended the Partition of Palestine. I have seen the Partition map and studied it. I cannot tell, but it does not look to me as if the Arabs were being cheated of their share of good land. The idea was that this division would work, if both Jews and Arabs accepted it... The Jews accepted this Partition plan; I suppose because they felt they had to. They were outnumbered about two to one inside the country, and there were the neighboring Arab states with 5 regular armies and 40 million or more citizens, not feeling friendly. Are we agreed so far?'
"'It is right.'
"'The Arab governments and the Palestinian Arabs rejected Partition absolutely. You wanted the whole country. There is no secret about this... The Arab governments never hid the fact that they started the war against Israel. But you, the Palestinian Arabs, agreed to this... And you thought... that you would win and win quickly. It hardly seemed a gamble; it seemed a sure bet. You took the gamble and you lost. I can understand why you have all been searching for explanations of that defeat ever since, because it does seem incredible. I don't happen to accept your explanations, but that is beside the point. The point is that you lost.'
"'Yes.' It was too astonishing; at long last, East and West were in accord on the meaning of words.
"'Now you say that you want to return to the past; you want Partition. So, in fact you say, let us forget that war we started, and the defeat, and, after all, we think Partition is a good, sensible idea. Please answer me this... If the position were reversed, if the Jews had started the war and lost it, if you had won the war, would you now accept Partition? Would you give up part of the country and allow the 650,000 Jewish residents of Palestine - who had fled from the war - to come back?
"'Certainly not,' he said, without an instant's hesitation. 'But there would have been no Jewish refugees. They had no place to go. They would all be dead or in the sea.'
"He had given me the missing clue. The fancy word we use nowadays is 'empathy' - entering into the emotions of others. I had appreciated and admired individual refugees but realized I had felt no blanket empathy for the Palestinian refugees, and finally I knew why... It is hard to sorrow for those who only sorrow over themselves. It is difficult to pity the pitiless. To wring the heart past all doubt, those who cry aloud for justice must be innocent. They cannot have wished for a victorious rewarding war, blame everyone else for their defeat, and remain guiltless. Some of them may be unfortunate human beings... But a profound difference exists between victims of misfortune... and victims of injustice. My empathy knew where it stood, thanks to the schoolteacher... He has never seen even a corner of a real big war; he cannot imagine it. He thinks war is something that lasts a few weeks... you run away for a bit and then come home to your undamaged houses and lead a good life, indeed a better material life than before. None of these Arabs has suffered anything comparable to what survivors of modern war know; none can imagine such catastrophe."
So the Palestinian nakba, the ethnic cleansing of 85% of the population of Palestine overrun by Zionist forces in 1948, the Israeli refusal to allow their return as demanded by international law and the United Nations, the theft of their homes, lands, businesses and bank accounts, and the consignment of around 750,000 people, all indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, to exile in perpetuity, is a mere "misfortune" which cannot even begin to compare with the "injustice" suffered by European Jewry.
But it gets worse. Gellhorn (whose knowledge of Arabic is zero) plumbs new depths of calumny and racist abuse with this outburst:
"Arabs gorge on hate, they roll in it, they breathe it. Jews top the hate list, but any foreigners are hateful enough. Arabs also hate each other, separately and en masse. Their politicians change the direction of their hate as they would change their shirts. Their press is vulgarly base with hate-filled cartoons; their reporting describes whatever hate is now uppermost and convenient. Their radio is a long scream of hate, a call to hate. They teach their children hate in school. They must love the taste of hate; it is their daily bread. And what good has it done them?"
In fact, today's Islamophobic banshees, such as Oriana Fallaci, Pamela Geller, and Melanie Phillips have nothing on Gellhorn:
"Victory over a minor near enemy is planned as as the essential first step on a long triumphant road of conquest. A thousand-year Muslim Reich, the African continent ruled by Egypt, may be a mad dream, but we have experience of mad dreams. We cannot be too careful. The echo of Hitler's voice is heard again in the land, now speaking Arabic."
But, as the following data indicates, there's more, much more, to Gellhorn's Atlantic Monthly hatchet-job on the hapless victims of Israeli ethnic cleansing than meets the eye:
"In the early 1960s the American Zionist Council's (AZC) [AIPAC's parent organization] Magazine Committee met regularly with writers to prepare articles for top US magazines such as Reader's Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, and Life. In its program for 'cultivation of editors' and 'stimulation and placement of suitable articles in the major consumer magazines,' the committee pushed lighter subjects with prepared texts such as the 13th anniversary of Israel's founding while killing investigative pieces at such publications as the Christian Science Monitor. The committee confronted two major news items challenging Israel: fallout from the 'Lavon Affair' (a cover up of failed false-flag Israeli terrorist attacks on US government facilities in Egypt) and American peace proposals calling for the return of some expelled Palestinian refugees to their homes and property in Israel. The Israeli government and its US lobby invested heavily in arguing against the return of Palestinian refugees through The Atlantic, according to yet another secret AZC report: 'The Atlantic Monthly in its October issue carried the outstanding Martha Gellhorn piece on the Arab refugees, which made quite an impact around the country. We arranged for the distribution of 10,000 reprints to public opinion molders in all categories. Acting on information that anti-Israel groups were bombarding the Atlantic with critical letters, we stimulated a letter campaign designed to counteract their impact... Interested friends are making arrangements with the Atlantic for another reprint of the Gellhorn article to be sent to all 53,000 persons whose names appear in Who's Who in America... The November issue of the Atlantic carried a special 64-page Supplement on Israel, with articles by some of Israel's top names... Our Committee is now planning articles for the women's magazines for the trade and business publications'." (The Israel lobby swims The Atlantic, Grant F. Smith, antiwar.com, 17/8/10)
To be continued...
"In Jordan, a refugee's education and self-reliance showed at once in his politics. The better educated, the more able do not waste their time on thoughts of violent revenge, and give their loyalty to King Hussein. The more ignorant and less competent nourish themselves with a passion for Nasser, war, and Return."
In Israel itself, she seeks out "the [Palestinians] who stayed behind, the non-refugees," interviewing a Christian Arab schoolteacher in Galilee who informs her that "[i]n the 1948 war, the next village was bombed by the Jews; when we saw that, we knew we had no hope."
Gellhorn responds with the following parenthetical comment to the reader: "(Pause for breath: the Jewish Air Force at the time consisted of 19 Piper Cubs, a nice little plane, not a bomber...)"
In fact, the fledgling AIF had "25 Avia S-199s (purchased from Czechoslovakia, essentially Czechoslovak-built Messerschmitt Bf 109s) and 62 Supermarine Spitfire LF Mk IXEs (also purchased from Czechoslovakia)... Many of the first IAF's pilots in 1948 were foreign volunteers (both Jewish and non-Jewish) and World War II veterans... As the war progressed more and more aircraft were procured, including Boeing B-17s, Bristol Beaufighters, de Havilland Mosquitoes and P-51D Mustangs..." (Wikipedia)
The following conversation ensues, with Gellhorn displaying a mastery of Zionist talking points, an appalling condescension and racism, and a palpable impatience with an interlocutor who sounds suspiciously like the proverbial straw man:
"'The Arab Kings [says the teacher ] were not the true representatives of the Arab peoples when they made war against Israel. Now all the refugees should come back and we should have Palestine.'
"At this point, I decided to make one long, determined stand to see whether there was any meeting ground of minds on a basis of mutually accepted facts and reasoning.
"'Please bear with me and help me,' said I. 'I am a simple American, and I am trying to understand how the Arab mind works, and I am finding it very difficult. I want to put some things in order; if I have everything wrong, you will correct me. In 1947, the United Nations recommended the Partition of Palestine. I have seen the Partition map and studied it. I cannot tell, but it does not look to me as if the Arabs were being cheated of their share of good land. The idea was that this division would work, if both Jews and Arabs accepted it... The Jews accepted this Partition plan; I suppose because they felt they had to. They were outnumbered about two to one inside the country, and there were the neighboring Arab states with 5 regular armies and 40 million or more citizens, not feeling friendly. Are we agreed so far?'
"'It is right.'
"'The Arab governments and the Palestinian Arabs rejected Partition absolutely. You wanted the whole country. There is no secret about this... The Arab governments never hid the fact that they started the war against Israel. But you, the Palestinian Arabs, agreed to this... And you thought... that you would win and win quickly. It hardly seemed a gamble; it seemed a sure bet. You took the gamble and you lost. I can understand why you have all been searching for explanations of that defeat ever since, because it does seem incredible. I don't happen to accept your explanations, but that is beside the point. The point is that you lost.'
"'Yes.' It was too astonishing; at long last, East and West were in accord on the meaning of words.
"'Now you say that you want to return to the past; you want Partition. So, in fact you say, let us forget that war we started, and the defeat, and, after all, we think Partition is a good, sensible idea. Please answer me this... If the position were reversed, if the Jews had started the war and lost it, if you had won the war, would you now accept Partition? Would you give up part of the country and allow the 650,000 Jewish residents of Palestine - who had fled from the war - to come back?
"'Certainly not,' he said, without an instant's hesitation. 'But there would have been no Jewish refugees. They had no place to go. They would all be dead or in the sea.'
"He had given me the missing clue. The fancy word we use nowadays is 'empathy' - entering into the emotions of others. I had appreciated and admired individual refugees but realized I had felt no blanket empathy for the Palestinian refugees, and finally I knew why... It is hard to sorrow for those who only sorrow over themselves. It is difficult to pity the pitiless. To wring the heart past all doubt, those who cry aloud for justice must be innocent. They cannot have wished for a victorious rewarding war, blame everyone else for their defeat, and remain guiltless. Some of them may be unfortunate human beings... But a profound difference exists between victims of misfortune... and victims of injustice. My empathy knew where it stood, thanks to the schoolteacher... He has never seen even a corner of a real big war; he cannot imagine it. He thinks war is something that lasts a few weeks... you run away for a bit and then come home to your undamaged houses and lead a good life, indeed a better material life than before. None of these Arabs has suffered anything comparable to what survivors of modern war know; none can imagine such catastrophe."
So the Palestinian nakba, the ethnic cleansing of 85% of the population of Palestine overrun by Zionist forces in 1948, the Israeli refusal to allow their return as demanded by international law and the United Nations, the theft of their homes, lands, businesses and bank accounts, and the consignment of around 750,000 people, all indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, to exile in perpetuity, is a mere "misfortune" which cannot even begin to compare with the "injustice" suffered by European Jewry.
But it gets worse. Gellhorn (whose knowledge of Arabic is zero) plumbs new depths of calumny and racist abuse with this outburst:
"Arabs gorge on hate, they roll in it, they breathe it. Jews top the hate list, but any foreigners are hateful enough. Arabs also hate each other, separately and en masse. Their politicians change the direction of their hate as they would change their shirts. Their press is vulgarly base with hate-filled cartoons; their reporting describes whatever hate is now uppermost and convenient. Their radio is a long scream of hate, a call to hate. They teach their children hate in school. They must love the taste of hate; it is their daily bread. And what good has it done them?"
In fact, today's Islamophobic banshees, such as Oriana Fallaci, Pamela Geller, and Melanie Phillips have nothing on Gellhorn:
"Victory over a minor near enemy is planned as as the essential first step on a long triumphant road of conquest. A thousand-year Muslim Reich, the African continent ruled by Egypt, may be a mad dream, but we have experience of mad dreams. We cannot be too careful. The echo of Hitler's voice is heard again in the land, now speaking Arabic."
But, as the following data indicates, there's more, much more, to Gellhorn's Atlantic Monthly hatchet-job on the hapless victims of Israeli ethnic cleansing than meets the eye:
"In the early 1960s the American Zionist Council's (AZC) [AIPAC's parent organization] Magazine Committee met regularly with writers to prepare articles for top US magazines such as Reader's Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, and Life. In its program for 'cultivation of editors' and 'stimulation and placement of suitable articles in the major consumer magazines,' the committee pushed lighter subjects with prepared texts such as the 13th anniversary of Israel's founding while killing investigative pieces at such publications as the Christian Science Monitor. The committee confronted two major news items challenging Israel: fallout from the 'Lavon Affair' (a cover up of failed false-flag Israeli terrorist attacks on US government facilities in Egypt) and American peace proposals calling for the return of some expelled Palestinian refugees to their homes and property in Israel. The Israeli government and its US lobby invested heavily in arguing against the return of Palestinian refugees through The Atlantic, according to yet another secret AZC report: 'The Atlantic Monthly in its October issue carried the outstanding Martha Gellhorn piece on the Arab refugees, which made quite an impact around the country. We arranged for the distribution of 10,000 reprints to public opinion molders in all categories. Acting on information that anti-Israel groups were bombarding the Atlantic with critical letters, we stimulated a letter campaign designed to counteract their impact... Interested friends are making arrangements with the Atlantic for another reprint of the Gellhorn article to be sent to all 53,000 persons whose names appear in Who's Who in America... The November issue of the Atlantic carried a special 64-page Supplement on Israel, with articles by some of Israel's top names... Our Committee is now planning articles for the women's magazines for the trade and business publications'." (The Israel lobby swims The Atlantic, Grant F. Smith, antiwar.com, 17/8/10)
To be continued...
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