In his account of the massacre of the Palestinian Arab inhabitants of Surafend (Sarafand) by ANZACs in December 1918 (following the death of a New Zealand trooper at the hands of an Arab thief), the Australian war correspondent and historian, Henry Gullett wrote as follows:
"In fairness to the New Zealanders, who were the chief actors, and to the Australians who gave them hearty support, the spirit of the men at that time must be considered. They were the pioneers and the leaders of a long campaign. Theirs had been the heaviest sacrifice. The three brigades of Anzac Mounted Division had been for almost three years comrades in arms... The war task was now completed and they... were going home. To them the loss of a veteran comrade by foul murder, at the hands of a race they despised, was a crime that called for instant justice. They were in no mood for delay. In their movement against Surafend, therefore, they felt that, while wreaking vengeance on the Arabs, they would at the same time work off their old feeling against the bias of the disciplinary branch of General Headquarters, and its studied omission to punish Arabs for crime. They were angry and bitter beyond sound reasoning. All day the New Zealanders quietly organised for their work in Surafend, and early in the night marched out many hundreds strong and surrounded the village. In close support and full sympathy were large bodies of Australians. Good or bad, the cause of the New Zealanders was theirs. Entering the village, the New Zealanders grimly passed out all the women and children and then, armed chiefly with heavy sticks, fell upon the men and at the same time fired the houses. Many Arabs were killed, few escaped without injury; the village was demolished. The flames from the wretched houses lit up the countryside, and Allenby and his staff could not fail to see the conflagration and hear the shouts of the troops and the cries of their victims. The Anzacs, having finished with Surafend, raided and burned the neighbouring nomad camp, and then went quickly back to their lines." (Quoted in Paul Daley's Beersheba: A Journey Through Australia's Forgotten War, 2009, pp 343-44)
A comment on my 15/10/12 post Time to Revisit the ANZAC's Sarafand Massacre indicates that bayonets were also used:
"I first heard about this event from the son of a NZ soldier who was there (I think) name of Gainfort and he was in 2000 one of the last survivors of WW 1 being nearly 100 years old. I was told the story after I mentioned a sickly lamb I had, had died. I said it had not been worth treating... and was told 'not worth a bullet'. His father told him they bayonetted the Arabs as they were not worth a bullet. Tough men in those days."
My reason for returning again to this subject, is the appearance of a new book, Hit & Run, by New Zealanders Nicky Hager and John Stephenson. The book's blurb runs:
"In August 2010, a New Zealand soldier died in a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan. In retaliation, the New Zealand SAS led a raid on two isolated villages in search of the fighters they suspected were responsible. They all knew the rules. Prior to firing weapons, their freshly issued orders said, 'the commander approving the strike must determine that no civilians are present.' If they could not assess whether civilians were present, firing was prohibited. But it all went horribly wrong. None of the fighters were found but, by the end of the raid, 21 civilians were dead or wounded. Most were children or women, including a three-year-old girl who was killed. A dozen houses had been burnt or blown up. The operation was personally approved by the prime minister via phone from New Zealand. More missions against the group of fighters and more potential crimes of war followed, including the beating and torture of a prisoner. Afterwards no one took responsibility. The New Zealand military denied the facts and went to great lengths to cover things up. This book is the story of those events. It is, at heart, about the meaning of honour; about who we want to be and what we believe in as New Zealanders."
What we have here is an uncanny similarity to the events of December 1918 in Palestine. It seems that the only appreciable differences between the two war crimes are that, in the case of Afghanistan, the go-ahead came directly from the prime minister of the day, John Key, and not even the women and children were spared. (That is, if, with respect to the latter, Gullett's account is correct.)
Friday, March 31, 2017
Thursday, March 30, 2017
A Tale of Two Protests
In his latest commentary, A tale of two protests, antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo compares two tweeted photographs - one of Yemeni protesters, the other of Russian protesters - and draws a telling conclusion about the priorities and values of Western political and media elites:
"That day hundreds of thousands of Yemenis rallied against the vicious war being waged against them by Saudi Arabia and the United States - and look at the faces in that photo. These are children, their faces distorted by rage at what is happening to their country, and their lives. Their youth is no accident: most of the victims of this sickeningly immoral war are children, felled by US-supplied bombs dropped by US-manufactured warplanes, the rest killed by starvation. The Saudis are committing war crimes in Yemen - one of the poorest nations on earth - with the aid and active assistance of the Pentagon, which is now contemplating an even deeper involvement by the US.
"Yet this massive outpouring of protest received minimal coverage in the Western media compared to another protest that occurred on that same day in Russia, where the Russian bourgeoisie mobilized in the big cities, demonstrating against official corruption. This received front page attention in the Western media, while liberal commentators and their neoconservative allies demanded that President Trump make a statement of support (he did not). Naturally, the photographers from the Western media were swarming all over this manifestation of discontent with the hated Putin (hated, that is, by Western liberals), and, as per usual, they settled on one photo as the 'iconic' image meant to convey the plight of the Russian people...
"There she is, a well-dressed and apparently well-fed young woman being ever-so-gently lifted by the police. There is no expression on her face except for a vague emptiness, an absence of anger, passion, or any of the other emotions one associates with a righteous cause. Contrast this with the faces of the Yemeni children, their visages reflecting the utter desperation of their condition, their little fists raised in expressions of outraged militance - a militance that will, not so far in the future, be aimed at those who killed their brothers, their sisters, their parents, their nation. Aimed, in short, at us." (29/3/17)
"That day hundreds of thousands of Yemenis rallied against the vicious war being waged against them by Saudi Arabia and the United States - and look at the faces in that photo. These are children, their faces distorted by rage at what is happening to their country, and their lives. Their youth is no accident: most of the victims of this sickeningly immoral war are children, felled by US-supplied bombs dropped by US-manufactured warplanes, the rest killed by starvation. The Saudis are committing war crimes in Yemen - one of the poorest nations on earth - with the aid and active assistance of the Pentagon, which is now contemplating an even deeper involvement by the US.
"Yet this massive outpouring of protest received minimal coverage in the Western media compared to another protest that occurred on that same day in Russia, where the Russian bourgeoisie mobilized in the big cities, demonstrating against official corruption. This received front page attention in the Western media, while liberal commentators and their neoconservative allies demanded that President Trump make a statement of support (he did not). Naturally, the photographers from the Western media were swarming all over this manifestation of discontent with the hated Putin (hated, that is, by Western liberals), and, as per usual, they settled on one photo as the 'iconic' image meant to convey the plight of the Russian people...
"There she is, a well-dressed and apparently well-fed young woman being ever-so-gently lifted by the police. There is no expression on her face except for a vague emptiness, an absence of anger, passion, or any of the other emotions one associates with a righteous cause. Contrast this with the faces of the Yemeni children, their visages reflecting the utter desperation of their condition, their little fists raised in expressions of outraged militance - a militance that will, not so far in the future, be aimed at those who killed their brothers, their sisters, their parents, their nation. Aimed, in short, at us." (29/3/17)
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Just Another ALP Show Phony
Compare and contrast:
1)
Pinned Tweet:
Senator Penny Wong 17/9/16 Time for leaders to speak up#leadership
"Nobody needs to defend Pauline Hanson's right to speak. Leadership is about defending those without a voice. Those Pauline Hanson is attacking." Senator Penny Wong
2)
"Penny Wong, the new Foreign Affairs spokesperson for the ALP, has said nothing at all [about the US-backed, Saudi-led, genocidal war on Yemen]. In response to media queries sent to the offices of Plibersek and Wong, I received a response from Stephen Spencer, the media adviser to Wong. He sent me what he said was 'Labor's position on Yemen'. It read:
'Labor is deeply concerned by the conflict in Yemen and the attacks on civilians, schools and hospitals. Labor condemns all violence and urges restraint from all parties. Labor calls on both sides of the Saudi Arabian-Yemeni conflict, the Houthis and the pro-government forces, to de-escalate the conflict and resume negotiations, consistent with UN Security Council resolution 2216. Labor calls on both sides of the Saudi Arabian-Yemeni conflict to restore peace, security and stability to Yemen and the region.'
"This is the only thing they have said about the war on Yemen. They did not release it publicly. The only record of it, until this article, was in the email sent to me." (Penny for her thoughts: ALP changes stance on Yemen from silence to waffly garbage, Michael Brull, newmatilda.com, 29/3/17 )
1)
Pinned Tweet:
Senator Penny Wong 17/9/16 Time for leaders to speak up#leadership
"Nobody needs to defend Pauline Hanson's right to speak. Leadership is about defending those without a voice. Those Pauline Hanson is attacking." Senator Penny Wong
2)
"Penny Wong, the new Foreign Affairs spokesperson for the ALP, has said nothing at all [about the US-backed, Saudi-led, genocidal war on Yemen]. In response to media queries sent to the offices of Plibersek and Wong, I received a response from Stephen Spencer, the media adviser to Wong. He sent me what he said was 'Labor's position on Yemen'. It read:
'Labor is deeply concerned by the conflict in Yemen and the attacks on civilians, schools and hospitals. Labor condemns all violence and urges restraint from all parties. Labor calls on both sides of the Saudi Arabian-Yemeni conflict, the Houthis and the pro-government forces, to de-escalate the conflict and resume negotiations, consistent with UN Security Council resolution 2216. Labor calls on both sides of the Saudi Arabian-Yemeni conflict to restore peace, security and stability to Yemen and the region.'
"This is the only thing they have said about the war on Yemen. They did not release it publicly. The only record of it, until this article, was in the email sent to me." (Penny for her thoughts: ALP changes stance on Yemen from silence to waffly garbage, Michael Brull, newmatilda.com, 29/3/17 )
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
A Fairfax Mystery: The PLO Uprising That Wasn't
WTF is going on at Fairfax?
Here's a two-sentence extract from a piece that appeared on the websites of both Fairfax papers (Age & SMH), Life in the shadows for Palestinians caught in Syria's conflict, by Marika Sosnowski:
"After accepting thousands of Palestinians who fled or were displaced by Israel in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967, in 1970 the PLO under Yasser Arafat clashed with Jordan's Hashemite monarchy. The conflict, which came to be known as Black September, ended with thousands of Palestinians killed and the PLO leadership and militants expelled to Lebanon." (26/3/17)
Now here's how it appeared, in a less coherent form, and containing a marked anti-Palestinian tweak, in the print edition of the SMH on March 27 - I've boldened the changes:
"After accepting thousands of Palestinians who fled or were displaced by its Western neighbour Israel in wars in 1948 and 1967, in 1970 the PLO under Yasser Arafat staged an uprising against their Jordanian hosts, the Hashemite monarchy. The conflict, which came to be known as Black September, was violently quashed by the Jordanian Armed Forces. Thousands of Palestinians were killed and the PLO leadership and fighters were expelled to Lebanon."
Needless to say, anyone with a comprehensive knowledge of modern Palestinian history would know that there was no Palestinian "uprising" in Jordan in 1970. What there was was a bloody crackdown by King Hussein on the armed Palestinian resistance movement based there, and a heroic, but ultimately doomed, defence by the latter against the Jordanian army's vastly superior numbers and firepower.
So how do we account for the two versions? And which is Sosnowski's, who, according to her twitter account, is a Melbourne University-trained lawyer and "regular Middle East commentator"?
Here's a two-sentence extract from a piece that appeared on the websites of both Fairfax papers (Age & SMH), Life in the shadows for Palestinians caught in Syria's conflict, by Marika Sosnowski:
"After accepting thousands of Palestinians who fled or were displaced by Israel in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967, in 1970 the PLO under Yasser Arafat clashed with Jordan's Hashemite monarchy. The conflict, which came to be known as Black September, ended with thousands of Palestinians killed and the PLO leadership and militants expelled to Lebanon." (26/3/17)
Now here's how it appeared, in a less coherent form, and containing a marked anti-Palestinian tweak, in the print edition of the SMH on March 27 - I've boldened the changes:
"After accepting thousands of Palestinians who fled or were displaced by its Western neighbour Israel in wars in 1948 and 1967, in 1970 the PLO under Yasser Arafat staged an uprising against their Jordanian hosts, the Hashemite monarchy. The conflict, which came to be known as Black September, was violently quashed by the Jordanian Armed Forces. Thousands of Palestinians were killed and the PLO leadership and fighters were expelled to Lebanon."
Needless to say, anyone with a comprehensive knowledge of modern Palestinian history would know that there was no Palestinian "uprising" in Jordan in 1970. What there was was a bloody crackdown by King Hussein on the armed Palestinian resistance movement based there, and a heroic, but ultimately doomed, defence by the latter against the Jordanian army's vastly superior numbers and firepower.
So how do we account for the two versions? And which is Sosnowski's, who, according to her twitter account, is a Melbourne University-trained lawyer and "regular Middle East commentator"?
Monday, March 27, 2017
What Would Bin Laden Say?
One of the Guardian's stable of Israel apologists, Nick Cohen, returns to one of his favorite themes, the left's (Cohen is nothing if not broad brush) alleged embrace of 'Islamism' (he's equally broad brush when it comes to political Islam):
"The worst elements on the left once exploited Islamism in an identical manner. When jihadis attacked New York, London or Paris they, too, joined what I called the 'kill us, we deserve it' school of foreign policy analysis. In their case, it was not our tolerance of immigration that brought punishment. Rather, they explained away the crimes of an irrational religious totalitarianism as logical responses to western foreign policy, poverty or discrimination, which... they already opposed." (The lies of the right that debase civilised society, theguardian.com, 26/3/17)
Ah yes, 9/11. Cohen's telling us here that the terror attack on New York, presumably planned by Osama bin Laden, had everything to do with "irrational religious totalitarianism," and nothing whatever to do with "Western foreign policy."
Not according to bin Laden, however:
"People of America,
"I speak to you today about the best way to avoid another Manhattan, about the war, its causes, and its consequences. First of all, I tell you that security is one of the pillars of human life. Free men do not underestimate the value of their security, despite Bush's claim that we hate freedom. Perhaps he can tell us why we did not attack Sweden, for example?
"It is well known that those who despise freedom do not possess proud souls, unlike the nineteen [the 9/11 hijackers], may God bless them. We have been fighting you because we are free men who cannot acquiesce in injustice. We want to restore security to our umma. Just as you violate our security, so we violate yours. Whoever encroaches upon the security of others and imagines that he will himself remain safe is but a foolish criminal. When disasters happen, intelligent people look for the reasons behind them, so that they can avoid them in the future.
"But I am amazed at you. Although we are now into the fourth year since the events of September 11, Bush is still practicing his deception, misleading you about the real reason behind it. As a result, there are still motives for a repeat [attack]. I will explain to you the real reasons behind these events, and I will tell you the truth about the moments when this decision was taken, so that you can reflect on it. God knows that the plan of striking the towers had not occurred to us, but the idea came to me when things went just too far with the American-Israeli alliance's oppression and atrocities against our people in Palestine and Lebanon.
"The events that made a direct impression on me were during and after 1982, when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon with the help of its third fleet. They started bombing, killing, and wounding many, while others fled in terror. I still remember those distressing scenes: blood, torn limbs, women and children massacred. All over the place, houses were being destroyed and tower blocks were collapsing, crushing their residents, while bombs rained down mercilessly on our homes. It was like a crocodile devouring a child, who could do nothing but scream. Does a crocodile understand anything other than weapons? The whole world heard and saw what happened, but did nothing. In those critical moments, many ideas raged inside me, ideas difficult to describe, but they unleashed a powerful urge to reject injustice and a strong determination to punish the oppressors.
"As I looked at those destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the oppressor in kind by destroying towers in America, so that it would have a taste of its own medicine and would be prevented from killing our women and children. On that day I became sure that the oppression and intentional murder of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. It seemed then that 'freedom' and 'democracy' are actually just terror, just as resistance is labelled 'terrorism' and 'reaction.' Imposing lethal sanctions on millions of people, as Bush Sr did, and carrying out the mass butchering of children, is the worst thing that humanity has ever known. So is dropping millions of pounds of bombs and explosives on millions of children in Iraq, as Bush Jr did, to remove a former collaborator, and install a new one who will help steal Iraq's oil, as well as commit other atrocities." (The Towers of Lebanon (29/10/04), from Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, Edited by Bruce Lawrence, 2004, pp 239-40)
Hey, but what would bin Laden know?
"The worst elements on the left once exploited Islamism in an identical manner. When jihadis attacked New York, London or Paris they, too, joined what I called the 'kill us, we deserve it' school of foreign policy analysis. In their case, it was not our tolerance of immigration that brought punishment. Rather, they explained away the crimes of an irrational religious totalitarianism as logical responses to western foreign policy, poverty or discrimination, which... they already opposed." (The lies of the right that debase civilised society, theguardian.com, 26/3/17)
Ah yes, 9/11. Cohen's telling us here that the terror attack on New York, presumably planned by Osama bin Laden, had everything to do with "irrational religious totalitarianism," and nothing whatever to do with "Western foreign policy."
Not according to bin Laden, however:
"People of America,
"I speak to you today about the best way to avoid another Manhattan, about the war, its causes, and its consequences. First of all, I tell you that security is one of the pillars of human life. Free men do not underestimate the value of their security, despite Bush's claim that we hate freedom. Perhaps he can tell us why we did not attack Sweden, for example?
"It is well known that those who despise freedom do not possess proud souls, unlike the nineteen [the 9/11 hijackers], may God bless them. We have been fighting you because we are free men who cannot acquiesce in injustice. We want to restore security to our umma. Just as you violate our security, so we violate yours. Whoever encroaches upon the security of others and imagines that he will himself remain safe is but a foolish criminal. When disasters happen, intelligent people look for the reasons behind them, so that they can avoid them in the future.
"But I am amazed at you. Although we are now into the fourth year since the events of September 11, Bush is still practicing his deception, misleading you about the real reason behind it. As a result, there are still motives for a repeat [attack]. I will explain to you the real reasons behind these events, and I will tell you the truth about the moments when this decision was taken, so that you can reflect on it. God knows that the plan of striking the towers had not occurred to us, but the idea came to me when things went just too far with the American-Israeli alliance's oppression and atrocities against our people in Palestine and Lebanon.
"The events that made a direct impression on me were during and after 1982, when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon with the help of its third fleet. They started bombing, killing, and wounding many, while others fled in terror. I still remember those distressing scenes: blood, torn limbs, women and children massacred. All over the place, houses were being destroyed and tower blocks were collapsing, crushing their residents, while bombs rained down mercilessly on our homes. It was like a crocodile devouring a child, who could do nothing but scream. Does a crocodile understand anything other than weapons? The whole world heard and saw what happened, but did nothing. In those critical moments, many ideas raged inside me, ideas difficult to describe, but they unleashed a powerful urge to reject injustice and a strong determination to punish the oppressors.
"As I looked at those destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the oppressor in kind by destroying towers in America, so that it would have a taste of its own medicine and would be prevented from killing our women and children. On that day I became sure that the oppression and intentional murder of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. It seemed then that 'freedom' and 'democracy' are actually just terror, just as resistance is labelled 'terrorism' and 'reaction.' Imposing lethal sanctions on millions of people, as Bush Sr did, and carrying out the mass butchering of children, is the worst thing that humanity has ever known. So is dropping millions of pounds of bombs and explosives on millions of children in Iraq, as Bush Jr did, to remove a former collaborator, and install a new one who will help steal Iraq's oil, as well as commit other atrocities." (The Towers of Lebanon (29/10/04), from Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, Edited by Bruce Lawrence, 2004, pp 239-40)
Hey, but what would bin Laden know?
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Australia Sells Arms to Saudi Arabia
The Turnbull Government is now directly stoking the US-backed Saudi/UAE war on the Yemeni people:
"Australian firms have secured contracts to supply military equipment to Saudi Arabia, an autocracy accused of ongoing war crimes in a conflict that has killed more than 10,000 civilians. Defence has approved four military exports to the kingdom in the past year and the Australian government has led the push for more. But the government has refused to release details of the approved military sales, citing commercial-in-confidence rules... Mr Pyne [Minister for Defence Industry]... would not comment on the value of materiel exports to Saudi Arabia... He declined to name which businesses accompanied him to Riyadh." (Defence approves military deals with Saudi Arabia, Patrick Begley, Sydney Morning Herald, 25/3/17)
See also my 2/2/16 post Australia's Dogs of War in Yemen.
"Australian firms have secured contracts to supply military equipment to Saudi Arabia, an autocracy accused of ongoing war crimes in a conflict that has killed more than 10,000 civilians. Defence has approved four military exports to the kingdom in the past year and the Australian government has led the push for more. But the government has refused to release details of the approved military sales, citing commercial-in-confidence rules... Mr Pyne [Minister for Defence Industry]... would not comment on the value of materiel exports to Saudi Arabia... He declined to name which businesses accompanied him to Riyadh." (Defence approves military deals with Saudi Arabia, Patrick Begley, Sydney Morning Herald, 25/3/17)
See also my 2/2/16 post Australia's Dogs of War in Yemen.
Saturday, March 25, 2017
The ALP: Neither Principles Nor Brains
God I'm tired of the Australian Labor Party. We all know it's as devoid of principles as a fish is of feathers. But principles aside, what about brains?
OK, wrack yours and come up with just one ALP politician since Whitlam who could be said to have even the proverbial half-a-brain.
Struggling?
Maybe Barry Jones, former Science Minister (1983-90) of 'Knowledge Nation' fame, two-time National President of the ALP (1992-2000; 2005-2006, and now Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne comes to mind. Certainly, he's probably the nearest thing to Einstein to emerge from the ranks of the ALP, which, BTW, he joined in 1950.
I note that he recently (2015) appeared on The Conversation arguing that our political system was in crisis in part because of our politicians' refusal to analyse and explain complex problems. So what happens when Labor's supposed Einstein analyses the modern Middle East, which is one of the things he sets out to do in his 2016 book Knowledge, Courage, Leadership, under the heading Middle Eastern horrors?
Short answer: he screws up.
Some examples:
"After Islam swept through the Middle East, then North Africa and Spain... Christian Europe had limited understanding of the Muslim world, and failed to comprehend deep divisions between Sunnis (and the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect) and Sh'ites [sic], sectarian feuds about organisation and authority in Islam and interpretation of the Qu'ran [sic], which began in the generation after Muhammad's death (632)." (p 154)
Hello? The Wahhabis originated in 18th century Arabia.
"Britain resisted attempts to settle in Palestine large numbers of Jews displaced... from Europe in the 1930s, anxious to avoid offering [sic] Arabs and jeopardising access to oil." (p 155)
This statement is wholly incorrect. Following the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain oversaw the flooding of Palestine with Zionist settlers from Europe. She only sought to restrict the flow in 1939, after 3 years of Arab rebellion. In the words of the MacDonald White Paper of that year: "[T]he fear of the Arabs that this influx will continue indefinitely until the Jewish population is in a position to dominate them [has] made possible disturbances which have given a serious setback to economic progress, depleted the Palestine exchequer, rendered life and property insecure, and produced a bitterness between the Arab and Jewish populations which is deplorable..." The White Paper announced, therefore, that Jewish immigration into Palestine would henceforth be restricted to 75,000 over the next 5 years, and that after that, Jewish immigrants would only be allowed in with the acquiescence of the Palestinian Arabs.
"The creation of Israel (1948)... was a reaction to the horror and moral abyss of the Holocaust... Israel has been subject to constant threat ever since 1948, but it survives." (p 155)
This is patent nonsense. The Zionist movement had been scheming for the creation of 'Israel' from its inception in the 1890s, long before the Holocaust. The leadership of Palestine's armed Zionist gangs in late 40s Palestine were only interested in Holocaust survivors in so far as they could be used as cannon fodder to help wrest control of Palestine from its majority Arab population.
And as for "constant threat" and "survival", one merely has to ask:
a) if you muscle in on someone else's patch, what the hell do you expect you're going to get in return, hugs and kisses?
b) if integrity of life and limb are really what matters to you (and who would deny it?) would you rather be an Israeli Jew or a Palestinian Arab?
"The Suez conflict (1916) in which Britain and France invaded Egypt to reclaim the Suez Canal, which had been nationalised by President Nasser." (p 156)
This is like a summary of World War II which mentions only Italy and Japan on the Axis side. The 1956 aggression against Egypt was the result of an Israeli-French-British conspiracy. On October 29, 1956, Israeli forces crossed into Sinai and raced towards the Suez Canal. A combined Anglo-French paratroop unit was dropped onto Port Said a week later, on November 4, prior to a planned advance on Ismailia and Suez.
"In June 1967 ('The Six Day War') Israel defeated invading forces from Egypt, Syria and Jordan." (p 156)
No, this is Israeli folklore. Israel struck the first blow when it attacked the Egyptian air force on the ground in a surprise pre-emptive attack on the morning of 5 June, 1967. This was followed by similar attacks on the Jordanian, Iraqi and Syrian air forces. As Israeli General Peled, Chief of Logistical Command during the war, wrote on 3 June, 1972 in Le Monde: "All those stories about the huge danger we were facing because of our small territorial size, an argument expounded once the war was over, have never been considered in our calculations. While we proceeded towards the full mobilisation of our forces, no person in his right mind could believe that all this force was necessary to our 'defence' against the Egyptian threat. This force was to crush once and for all the Egyptians at the military level and their Soviet masters at the political level. To pretend that the Egyptian forces concentrated on our borders were capable of threatening Israel's existence does not only insult the intelligence of any person capable of analysing this kind of situation, but is primarily an insult to the Israeli army."
Finally, there's this complete gibberish:
"In Jordan, the West funded and encouraged Hezbollah (jihadist + clean) to weaken Hamas (pragmatic + corrupt), presumably hoping that a fractured leadership would be helpful for Israel. Jordan had been essentially secularist but jihadism has become a significant force." (p 156)
To which one can only respond by asking, WTF was going on in his head when he wrote that?
Jones has been in retirement on a fat parliamentary pension for decades now. He has had all the time in the world (and supposedly the brains) to get the basics of modern Middle Eastern history right. If this, then, is the best our Einstein manque can do on the subject, what hope can we possibly expect from such intellectual pygmies as Shorten and crew?
OK, wrack yours and come up with just one ALP politician since Whitlam who could be said to have even the proverbial half-a-brain.
Struggling?
Maybe Barry Jones, former Science Minister (1983-90) of 'Knowledge Nation' fame, two-time National President of the ALP (1992-2000; 2005-2006, and now Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne comes to mind. Certainly, he's probably the nearest thing to Einstein to emerge from the ranks of the ALP, which, BTW, he joined in 1950.
I note that he recently (2015) appeared on The Conversation arguing that our political system was in crisis in part because of our politicians' refusal to analyse and explain complex problems. So what happens when Labor's supposed Einstein analyses the modern Middle East, which is one of the things he sets out to do in his 2016 book Knowledge, Courage, Leadership, under the heading Middle Eastern horrors?
Short answer: he screws up.
Some examples:
"After Islam swept through the Middle East, then North Africa and Spain... Christian Europe had limited understanding of the Muslim world, and failed to comprehend deep divisions between Sunnis (and the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect) and Sh'ites [sic], sectarian feuds about organisation and authority in Islam and interpretation of the Qu'ran [sic], which began in the generation after Muhammad's death (632)." (p 154)
Hello? The Wahhabis originated in 18th century Arabia.
"Britain resisted attempts to settle in Palestine large numbers of Jews displaced... from Europe in the 1930s, anxious to avoid offering [sic] Arabs and jeopardising access to oil." (p 155)
This statement is wholly incorrect. Following the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain oversaw the flooding of Palestine with Zionist settlers from Europe. She only sought to restrict the flow in 1939, after 3 years of Arab rebellion. In the words of the MacDonald White Paper of that year: "[T]he fear of the Arabs that this influx will continue indefinitely until the Jewish population is in a position to dominate them [has] made possible disturbances which have given a serious setback to economic progress, depleted the Palestine exchequer, rendered life and property insecure, and produced a bitterness between the Arab and Jewish populations which is deplorable..." The White Paper announced, therefore, that Jewish immigration into Palestine would henceforth be restricted to 75,000 over the next 5 years, and that after that, Jewish immigrants would only be allowed in with the acquiescence of the Palestinian Arabs.
"The creation of Israel (1948)... was a reaction to the horror and moral abyss of the Holocaust... Israel has been subject to constant threat ever since 1948, but it survives." (p 155)
This is patent nonsense. The Zionist movement had been scheming for the creation of 'Israel' from its inception in the 1890s, long before the Holocaust. The leadership of Palestine's armed Zionist gangs in late 40s Palestine were only interested in Holocaust survivors in so far as they could be used as cannon fodder to help wrest control of Palestine from its majority Arab population.
And as for "constant threat" and "survival", one merely has to ask:
a) if you muscle in on someone else's patch, what the hell do you expect you're going to get in return, hugs and kisses?
b) if integrity of life and limb are really what matters to you (and who would deny it?) would you rather be an Israeli Jew or a Palestinian Arab?
"The Suez conflict (1916) in which Britain and France invaded Egypt to reclaim the Suez Canal, which had been nationalised by President Nasser." (p 156)
This is like a summary of World War II which mentions only Italy and Japan on the Axis side. The 1956 aggression against Egypt was the result of an Israeli-French-British conspiracy. On October 29, 1956, Israeli forces crossed into Sinai and raced towards the Suez Canal. A combined Anglo-French paratroop unit was dropped onto Port Said a week later, on November 4, prior to a planned advance on Ismailia and Suez.
"In June 1967 ('The Six Day War') Israel defeated invading forces from Egypt, Syria and Jordan." (p 156)
No, this is Israeli folklore. Israel struck the first blow when it attacked the Egyptian air force on the ground in a surprise pre-emptive attack on the morning of 5 June, 1967. This was followed by similar attacks on the Jordanian, Iraqi and Syrian air forces. As Israeli General Peled, Chief of Logistical Command during the war, wrote on 3 June, 1972 in Le Monde: "All those stories about the huge danger we were facing because of our small territorial size, an argument expounded once the war was over, have never been considered in our calculations. While we proceeded towards the full mobilisation of our forces, no person in his right mind could believe that all this force was necessary to our 'defence' against the Egyptian threat. This force was to crush once and for all the Egyptians at the military level and their Soviet masters at the political level. To pretend that the Egyptian forces concentrated on our borders were capable of threatening Israel's existence does not only insult the intelligence of any person capable of analysing this kind of situation, but is primarily an insult to the Israeli army."
Finally, there's this complete gibberish:
"In Jordan, the West funded and encouraged Hezbollah (jihadist + clean) to weaken Hamas (pragmatic + corrupt), presumably hoping that a fractured leadership would be helpful for Israel. Jordan had been essentially secularist but jihadism has become a significant force." (p 156)
To which one can only respond by asking, WTF was going on in his head when he wrote that?
Jones has been in retirement on a fat parliamentary pension for decades now. He has had all the time in the world (and supposedly the brains) to get the basics of modern Middle Eastern history right. If this, then, is the best our Einstein manque can do on the subject, what hope can we possibly expect from such intellectual pygmies as Shorten and crew?
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