A striking documentary about male and female Palestinian rappers in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel proper:
Tag Archive for 'gaza'
Robert Fisk in the London Independent on the current crisis in Lebanon:
Another American humiliation. The Shia gunmen who drove past my apartment in west Beirut yesterday afternoon were hooting their horns, making V-signs, leaning out of the windows of SUVs with their rifles in the air, proving to the Muslims of the capital that the elected government of Lebanon has lost.
And it has. The national army still patrols the streets, but solely to prevent sectarian killings or massacres. Far from dismantling the pro-Iranian Hizbollah’s secret telecommunications system – and disarming the Hizbollah itself – the cabinet of Fouad Siniora sits in the old Turkish serail in Beirut, denouncing violence with the same authority as the Iraqi government in Baghdad’s green zone…
No, this is not a civil war. Nor is it a coup d’etat, though it meets some of the criteria. It is part of the war against America in the Middle East. The Hizbollah “must stop sowing trouble,” the White House said rather meekly. Yes, like the Taliban. And al-Qa’ida. And the Iraqi insurgents. And Hamas. And who else?
My following piece in the Melbourne Age, co-written with Michael Shaik, reflects on Israel’s 60th anniversary:
“If you will it,” wrote Theodore Herzl, the founding father of the Zionist movement, in 1902, “it is no dream.”
The dream to which he referred was the establishment of a Jewish state in the Arab country of Palestine.
To realise the dream, he insisted, the Jews must be willing to seize the reigns of history by renouncing the classical Jewish tradition of pacifism and collaborating with European anti-Semites who supported the Zionist movement as a means of ridding Europe of its “Jewish problem”.
Ultimately, the indigenous population of Palestine would have to be forced from the country.
In 1948 the dream was realised with the establishment of the state of Israel and the flight of the Palestinians from almost 80% of their homeland. Though some Zionist apologists have insisted that Israel did not practice a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing, the displacement of the Palestinians was an indispensable part of the Zionist dream.
In a country that was overwhelmingly non-Jewish it would have been impossible to establish a Jewish state without the expulsion of its native population.
While the transformation of Palestine into a Jewish state was a sudden and violent event, however, Israel’s subsequent transformation into a Jewish-Palestinian entity has been a gradual and predictable process.
In 1967 Israel conquered the remainder of Palestine, comprising of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Because of the speed of the victory, the Israeli army was unable to carry out a comprehensive program of ethnic cleansing but nevertheless began colonising its newly occupied territories with Jewish settlers.
In 1973 Ariel Sharon boasted that Israel would “make a pastrami sandwich” of the Palestinians by building strips of settlements throughout the West Bank. In 1983 the former head of Israeli military intelligence, Professor Yehoshafat Harkabi warned that Israel’s continued colonisation of the occupied territories would lead to the transformation of Israel into an Arab-Jewish state and the consequent “Belfastisation” of the area.
Today 450,000 settlers dominate 40% of the West Bank, while the ratio of Palestinians to Jews living between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River is nearing one to one.
Last year Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that without a two-state solution the Palestinians would eventually opt for a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights and Israel would be finished as a Jewish state. His vision of a two-state solution, however, is unconvincing.
The Realignment Plan, which formed the platform upon which Olmert was elected, calls for the consolidation of Israel’s Jewish majority by the unilateral annexation of all of “Greater Jerusalem”, the Jordan Valley and all of the West Bank settlement blocs.
If this plan is realised the “state” remaining to the Palestinians will constitute a patchwork of reservations, surrounded by Jewish settlements, subdivided by “bypass roads” (which Palestinians are banned from using) and totally dependent on Israel for their electricity, water supply and access to the rest of the world.
Last time such an arrangement was tried was in 1980s South Africa, where the government endeavoured to conceal the ugly reality of apartheid by creating the fiction of “Bantustans” or “Black Homelands” for its black population, while maintaining total control over the country’s natural resources and road network.
Israel’s strategy for dealing with criticism of its colonisation of the occupied territories has been to keep the issue out of sight and off the agenda. The core issue, its advocates claim, is that Arafat/Hamas/the Palestinians refuse to renounce violence and recognise Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
Leaving aside the proposition that an occupied population must renounce violence while they are being violently dispossessed by an occupying power, the argument raises some interesting issues for a state that claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East.
According to the American Declaration of Independence, governments are instituted among men to secure the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to abolish it.
This contradiction, however, is unlikely to intrude upon the festivities of those gathering in Jerusalem to celebrate Israel’s 60th birthday. In March Kevin Rudd invoked the memory of the Holocaust when he moved a motion in Parliament commending Israel for its “commitment to democracy, the Rule of Law and pluralism” and pledging Australia’s friendship, commitment and enduring support.
Following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the British historian Arnold Toynbee described the Western powers’ insistence that a non-Western people should be made to compensate European Jewry for a crime of which they were completely innocent as a “declaration of the inequality of the Western and non-Western sections of the human race”.
Sixty years later the Palestinians are still paying for the Nazis’ crimes.
Michael Shaik is the public advocate for Australians for Palestine. Antony Loewenstein is journalist and co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices.
My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey:
Antony Loewenstein, author of My Israel Question and the co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, writes:
“I am not a Jew”, said an Arab radio journalist in Jerusalem to the New York Times.
“How can I belong to a Jewish state? If they define this as a Jewish state, they deny that I am here.”
Israel’s 60th anniversary has generated mountains of international news coverage that highlights the achievements of the state since 1948 and the many challenges facing the relatively new nation. The Australian echoed the general pessimism by predicting ongoing conflict with the Palestinians and the Arab world.
Absent, however, from a great deal of Western reporting is an honest appraisal of Israel’s ongoing strangulation of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Neither major side of Australian politics dares speak out against this travesty and the director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilization at Monash University today in The Age completely ignores the occupation altogether.
The Washington Post this week repeated the usual mantra of blaming the victims for their predicament, perhaps only bettered by a former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post who managed to celebrate Israel’s birthday in the Wall Street Journal without once mentioning that Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank is growing by the day. Haaretz reports that the world head of Likud is even demanding that the Palestinians be banned from commemorating their “Nakba Day”.
Acknowledging the birth of a nation, not unlike Australia, requires understanding the peoples who suffered from the outset. For hardline Zionists, the Palestinians are sore losers while a prominent Israeli intellectual tells The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that the Palestinians are dedicated to “bringing chaos” to the Jewish state. The Australian Jewish News strongly implied in their editorial last week that the mainstream media should only publish articles that praise the Jewish state. “Bias” is seen around every corner.
Ariel Sharon’s former advisor Dov Weisglass wrote this week in Israel’s biggest selling daily that Hamas must be destroyed, “in line with humanitarian limits” even as the international community begins to understand the futility of this policy.
9/11 has merely reinforced these racist stereotypes about Arabs, although former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said the attacks were “benefiting” the Zionist cause.
60 years after Israel’s birth, the two peoples have never been further apart. The Israeli press is barred from entering Gaza, so we rely on Gazans to explain their suffering at the hands of a Washington-led economic blockade. The Guardian is one of the few Western media outlets that regularly publish these accounts, including news about the allocation of building permits in the West Bank to only Jewish settlers.
The anniversary celebrations have revealed a growing number of Diaspora Jews speaking critically of their supposed homeland. Britain and America are witnessing growing media coverage of these dissident positions. Jewish voices are now some of the strongest advocates in challenging the “peace process” fraud.
Within Israel itself, the mainstream media is thriving with debate.
Haaretz, arguably the finest newspaper in the world, proves that a news outlet can honestly describe the truth about the Jewish state. This week has been no exception. Pro-Zionist, anti-Zionist, pro-Israel and pro-human rights all exist harmoniously. An eloquent essay in Haaretz, by Israeli human rights lawyer Daphna Golan, articulated the true message of Israel’s 60th anniversary:
We must speak out loudly and openly with everyone — about the past, present and future, about a life of fair, decent neighbourly relations. Without red and green lines and with no prior conditions. Only about how we will live here together and separately, Jews and Arabs, in reconciliation.
A large collection of British Jews published the following letter in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper:
In May, Jewish organisations will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating. Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-semitism and Hitler’s genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasised, what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Naqba is to the Palestinians.
In April 1948, the same month as the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa’s market square, Plan Dalet was put into operation. This authorised the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of the indigenous population outside the borders of the state. We will not be celebrating.
In July 1948, 70,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in Lydda and Ramleh in the heat of the summer with no food or water. Hundreds died. It was known as the Death March. We will not be celebrating.
In all, 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. Some 400 villages were wiped off the map. That did not end the ethnic cleansing. Thousands of Palestinians (Israeli citizens) were expelled from the Galilee in 1956. Many thousands more when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Under international law and sanctioned by UN resolution 194, refugees from war have a right to return or compensation. Israel has never accepted that right. We will not be celebrating.
We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.
We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.
Israel and Hamas, like two peas in a pod (courtesy of Haaretz’s Gideon Levy.)
As Israel’s 60th anniversary approaches, the country’s creeping apartheid continues:
Among the many tools used in the battle between Israel’s Arabs and Jews, you can add a new one: gentrification.
The Arab Association for Human Rights alleges that Arab residents in a seaside neighborhood of Jaffa are being driven out so that the area can be developed for wealthy Jews.
The inclusion of Hamas in any peace negotiations is essential. The fact that this is denied by the American political elite is typical of its delusions.
The Middle East is on fire. Israel is killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza. But the Australian Jewish News decides to feature on the front page of its website the following “story“:
Israeli Ambassador Yuval Rotem and his family visited Dreamworld and WhiteWater World on the Gold Coast this week for some holiday thrills.
Rotem tried out the newest ride at Dreamworld, the Mick Doohan Motorcoaster, which features life-size replicas of 500cc racing bikes which zoom to 720km/hour in three seconds.
His family also tackled the Cyclone rollercoaster, Nickelodeon Central and visited Tiger Island before strolling next door to WhiteWater World for more rides…
Dressed in fashionable boardshorts, a cap and comfortable Crocs, the ambassador couldn’t help but praise the blue Queensland skies and the balmy 25-degree heat.
“I sometimes wish Canberra had this weather. It’s lovely and warm, and feels great to be alive,” he said.
Words fail.
Yes, the paper is a serious publication.
Passover is a time, first of all, to speak of real liberation from all-too-real bondage. This Passover is a time to speak of Zimbabwe and Tibet — and perhaps even Gaza.
The next UN investigator into Israeli conduct in the occupied territories has stood by comments comparing Israeli actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis. Speaking to the BBC, Professor Richard Falk said he believed that up to now Israel had been successful in avoiding the criticism that it was due.
My latest New Matilda column is about the need to talk to Hamas and speak honestly about Israel’s ever-expanding occupation:
The international isolation of Hamas has failed. This is not merely the opinion of those who believe that the democratically elected Palestinian Government should be engaged, but includes a number of prominent Israelis, including Yossi Alpher, the former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Life in Gaza, suffering under an economic and military blockade, remains tough. Security has largely been restored due to Hamas security services, although some Gazans complain of a loss of individual rights, press freedom and women’s mobility. Hamas-controlled media continues to broadcast incitement against Jews.
Despite these challenges, Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal reiterated last week his group’s commitment to a two-state solution and the need for the establishment of a sovereign state within the 1967 borders. His call was ignored throughout the world. Even the New York Times recently intimated that forever shunning Hamas was counter-productive.
Former Israeli official Daniel Levy - writer of the essential blog Prospects for Peace - offers thoughts to the next US President (though clearly the idea of engaging Hamas is something the Australian government is already keen to ignore, preferring to stick with failed policies of the Bushies):
Contrary to popular misperception, Hamas and al-Qaeda are adversaries, not allies. Hamas is about ending the occupation and reforming Palestinian society; al-Qaeda, about opposing the West per se and spreading chaos in the Muslim world and beyond. One is reformist, the other revolutionary; one nationalist, the other post-nationalist; one grievance-based, the other fundamentalist. Hamas has signaled that it will accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It can be worked with, albeit indirectly for political reasons. Under a new administration, U.S. policy toward Hamas should enter a period of deniable ambiguity, as third parties (principally Arab and European) explore a series of propositions with the Hamas leadership.
Following my joint op-ed in yesterday’s Age newspaper, the following letters appear in today’s edition:
IT IS refreshing to see the truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Opinion, 31/03) discussed in such a dispassionate manner. No emotive rhetoric denouncing the other side’s horrors but conveniently ignoring their side’s horrors, but simply the facts as they really are. Here is some more startling truth: the Israeli Government does not want peace with the Palestinians, at least not yet. By previously playing Hamas against Fatah, and now playing Fatah against Hamas, the Government has been able to proceed with the unfettered building of more settlements in the West Bank.
I dread to wonder when this process of claiming Palestinian land will finally stop. It might seem unpalatable for some people that this could be the case, but you need to separate rhetoric from action. The fact is that Israel has been taking Arab land since the declaration of Israel as a state. It would be naive to imagine that this was never the intended outcome.
Paul Gosling, Langwarrin
Nothing but more prejudice
WHAT we have to strive for amid the plethora of opinions on Israel is tolerance, moderation and open-mindedness. The last things we need in this raging debate are articles that are extreme and inflammatory.
Peter Slezak and Antony Loewenstein have written such an article. They accuse Israel of “ethnic-cleansing” and of killing innocent civilians. They accuse past leaders and heroes of being bigoted and ruthless, and half the population of being inherently racist. These accusations portray Israel as a bloodthirsty, inhumane and racist nation. This is not only unbelievably false, but it is dangerous and irresponsible.
Israel’s problems and mistakes, although undeniable and regrettable, do not define Israel as a whole, just as suicide bombers do not define Palestinians as a whole.
Primarily, Israel is a vibrant democratic state that upholds concepts of pluralism and freedom, and that is what Slezac and Loewenstein omit from their article. Have they helped us take a step towards tolerance, moderation and balanced dialogue, or have they incited more hatred, created more polarised views and instigated more extremism in a context in which extremism is the root of all evil? The irony of their final plea for “balanced dialogue” is almost palpable.
Oscar Schwartz, Toorak
All have things in common
THE articles by Peter Slezak and Antony Loewenstein and that of Dvir Abramovich, although different in content, both indicate a way forward in the Palestinian region: a single, democratic, and secular state that can be a religious homeland for all who want such, without being a religious state for any. Whether Muslim, Christian or Jew, whether indigenous Semite or more recent migrants — all have common interests that far outweigh their differences. All are deserving of equal treatment under the law without ethnic or religious distinction, all are deserving of security of home and all are deserving of a just resolution to past conflicts.
The problems of the Palestinian region will not be solved while there are some who seek dominance for their religion or nationality over the rights of others.
Lev Lafayette, Ripponlea
Prescription for conflict
PETER Slezak and Antony Loewenstein claim that speaking honestly about Israelis and Palestinians is fraught, which is probably why they have chosen not to do so. Israeli Arabs have the same rights as Israel’s other citizens, and far more than Arabs in any other Middle East state, yet Slezak and Loewenstein accuse Israel of discrimination and “ethnic cleansing”. They also blame the conflict and occupation on Israel, rather than the constant Palestinian refusal to accept land in return for acceptance of Israel’s right to exist in peace.
Similarly, despite their token condemnation of Hamas and Hezbollah rocket fire, they are far more critical of Israel’s efforts to defend its citizens. To ignore the facts that every aspect of Israel’s conduct they object to is the direct result of Palestinian or Arab terrorism or intransigence belies their claim to be true friends of Israel. It is a prescription for continued conflict, not for peace.
Justin Lipton, Melbourne
The following article, co-written with a colleague, appears in today’s Age newspaper:
On the world stage, Israel has been traditionally cast as David in a battle against Goliath. But this is too simplistic, for Israel is not without its sins, write Peter Slezak and Antony Loewenstein.
Speaking honestly about Israel and Palestine has always been fraught. Contrary to popular perception, the official public voice of the Australian Jewish community is not without dissent among Jews around the country. Indeed, there is a belief among some that the mainstream view is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile with the facts, and that Israel and its supporters can no longer justifiably portray the Jewish state as victim, acting only in self-defence.
In their controversial book The Israel Lobby, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt point out that the popular image of David confronted by Goliath, cultivated to maintain Jewish support, is the reverse of the truth. Even from the 1948 War of Independence, well before large-scale US aid, Israeli military power was always superior to that of its neighbours.
Notwithstanding Israel’s military strength, the recent Lebanon war was not just the military disaster to which the Winograd report confined its attention, but a disproportionate response to supposed provocation and involved large-scale war crimes.
While rockets from Hezbollah or Hamas fired on civilians are undeniably crimes, the excesses of Israeli military action, collective punishment and targeted assassinations may be condemned in the same terms and are harder to see as self-defence.
Even more difficult to justify as self-defence is a brutal 40-year military occupation and nearly half a million Israeli settlers on Palestinian land in violation of international law. Despite pious rhetoric from Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that echoes that of US leaders, the very possibility of a just two-state solution appears remote.
The discrepancy between popular image and tragic reality is not new. For example, conveniently forgotten amid the rhetoric of “existential threat” and Israeli virtue is the 1982 invasion of Lebanon that caused around 20,000 civilian deaths that cannot conceivably be characterised as unintended “collateral damage”. These do not include thousands of victims at Sabra and Shatila for which then defence minister Ariel Sharon was found personally culpable. Such ugly truths have become difficult for Jews to condone in silence.
Despite the efforts of the local Israel lobby, such uncomfortable facts have been highlighted by the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, Israel’s press and academia. For all its faults, Israel has a vigorous and more open intellectual culture and media where the myths sustaining Diaspora communities have been overturned.
For example, a poll conducted by the daily newspaper Haaretz and Tel-Aviv University revealed that nearly two-thirds of the Israeli population wants to negotiate directly with Hamas, contrary to typical media representations of the so-called “peace process”. In reality, the “peace process” is a US-driven policy — in this case subverting the elected Palestinian Government through funding and arming Fatah proxies and their attempted coup in Gaza.
Despite outrage in the Jewish community at the common description of Israel as a racist state responsible for “ethnic cleansing”, the evidence to warrant such confronting language is undeniable. Israel is not the state of its citizens but only of the Jewish people, thereby officially discriminating against a fifth of its population, quite apart from the many administrative, financial and other systematic ways in which Israeli Arabs are disadvantaged.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel recently found that half of Israelis would not live in the same building as Arabs, would not let them into their homes and would not allow their children to befriend them.
The systematic, planned dispossession of Palestinians since 1948, and accompanying atrocities such as the massacre at Deir Yassin in 1948 are rarely discussed in the West, even though they have been extensively documented by Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappe in his recent book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
The Zionist myth of “a land without a people for a people without a land” continues to be propagated despite being exposed by several Jewish historians as a fraud that has hidden the real tragedy of Palestinian dispossession. The founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, privately wrote that “We must expropriate gently” and Arab expulsion must be discreet.
Leading Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote that the country’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and defence minister, Moshe Dayan, “repeatedly voiced the hope that Israel could complete its historic mission and round out its borders (as well as expel its own, inconvenient Arab minority)”. Ben-Gurion had said as early as 1938: “I support compulsory transfer (of Palestinian Arabs). I do not see in it anything immoral.”
Facing these facts in the Jewish community is discouraged by those who, in American broadcaster Ed Murrow’s familiar words, confuse dissent with disloyalty. Those who voice them are denounced as anti-Semitic or ostracised as “self-hating” Jews. It is revealing that the intense debate about the role of the Israel lobby in the US has not featured in the Australian Jewish community — a symptom of the local lobby’s success in discouraging dissent from the official line.
However, the true friends of Israel are not those who serve as propagandists for official myths but those who stand with the many Israelis to condemn not only the crimes of Palestinians, but also those of the state of Israel. Independent Australian Jewish voices who speak out against crimes committed in their name recognise a responsibility to the wider community, especially Australian Palestinians, to participate in a more balanced dialogue.
Dr Peter Slezak lectures in philosophy at the University of NSW. Antony Loewenstein is a journalist and author of My Israel Question (MUP 2007).
The humanity of Jewish musician Daniel Barenboim continues to reverberate around the world:
Controversial conductor to lead orchestra of Israeli, Palestinian youths in concert ‘against ignorance’ in Jerusalem, says he will not partake in upcoming festivities marking Israel’s independence out of respect for Palestinian suffering
Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim will lead an orchestra of 33 young Israeli and Palestinians in Jerusalem Friday in what he called a concert ”against ignorance and lack of curiosity” on both sides of the conflict.
At a news conference Thursday in the concert hall of the YMCA on the Jewish side of the city, Barenboim said Friday’s two performances, entitled ”A concert for two peoples,” will be the first time the young musicians have played together in public.
My following book review appears in today’s edition of Sydney’s Sun-Herald newspaper:
Israel and the Clash of Civilisations
Jonathan Cook
(Pluto Press, $42.95)
The September 11 attacks on New York and Washington caused the Western media and political elite to seriously examine their behaviour in the Middle East. Most concluded that maintaining client states was the only viable way forward; the desperate need for oil supplies supplanted most other considerations.
The US-led invasion of Iraq was a radical form of shock treatment designed to unseat a once friendly Washington-friendly dictator. The nationalist insurgency crushed those plans, leaving the world’s sole super-power battling a relatively small number of fighters whose sole goal was the removal of an unforgiving occupation.
One country that has received relatively little scrutiny in the years since September 11 has been Israel.
The Jewish state has the most powerful military in the region, with an estimated 200 nuclear warheads, and an arsenal of cluster bombs that it used against civilians in Lebanon in the final days of its botched 2006 campaign against Hizbollah.
During the recent Australian parliamentary motion to celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd described the country as a “custodian of freedom” amongst dictatorships. In his compelling new book, Jonathan Cook, former Guardian journalist and current resident of Nazareth, challenges this perception and concludes that, like the Bush administration, Israel actively pursue policies that lead to civil war and partition. Cook bravely skewers the mainstream narrative of a Jewish state constantly striving for peace with the Palestinians.
Israel’s security establishment developed ideas in the 1980s that advocated dissolving many of the Middle East nations, leaving Israel, like the Ottomans in centuries past, to be the local imperial power. “In this way, hoped Israel and the [predominantly Zionist] neo-cons”, Cook writes, “large and potentially powerful states such as Iraq and Iran could be partitioned between their ethnic rivalries and sectarian communities.”
Aid agencies reported in 2007 that eight million Iraqis, nearly a third of the population, required emergency aid and millions were both internally and externally displaced. Was this the intended goal?
The similarities between the Israeli occupation of Gaza and West Bank and America’s plans in Iraq are meticulously examined. Cook argues that Washington found an invaluable template for its own occupation after carefully studying the Jewish state’s record in dividing and conquering the indigenous population.
Cook approvingly quotes Palestinian academic Karma Nabulsi who has written of a “Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed, ruled by disparate militias, gangs, religious ideologues and extremists, broken up into ethnic and religious tribalism and co-opted collaborationists.”
David Rose, in a recent issue of Vanity Fair, reported on Bush administration plans to trigger a civil war between Hamas and Fatah after the former won a free and fair election in the Palestinian territories in 2006. The “wrong” party had won. Nabulsi’s nightmare had come true.
“As far as the neocons were concerned, whatever Israel wanted, it should get”, writes Cook, whose summary of the last eight years is reflected in the public utterances of Washington’s leading power-brokers. After Israel’s futile war against Lebanon in 2006 – with over 1000 Lebanese civilians killed – leading neocon Meyrav Wurmser, whose husband was a former senior advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, lamented Israel’s performance. “The anger [in the White House] is over the fact that Israel did not fight against the Syrians”, she said. “The neocons are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time and space [before the UN resolution ended the conflict.]”
These noble ideas were clearly what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had in mind when she talked during the war about “birth pangs” of a new Middle East. Cook explains that there are times when Washington tries to push Israel into actions it would not rather not do itself and other times when the Jewish state acts recklessly, such as the ever-growing expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and America remains mute. It’s a relationship that is widely accepted by the foreign policy elite and the vast majority of the establishment media.
Challenging its integrity guarantees charges of anti-Semitism or disloyalty by the Zionist lobby.
This book, while not containing a great deal of original research, is an important contribution to understanding why “Israel’s role [is] to dictate and terrify other states in the region with threats of punishment so that they dare not step out of line.”
The result, while temporarily successful on military grounds, has left the Jewish state isolated internationally and reviled across the Arab world. If Israel is to survive for another 60 years, it will need to understand that the ongoing occupation has corrupted its soul. The current signs are that its leadership doesn’t grasp this basic fact.
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, March 23:
The amount of support being shown for Israel these days is almost embarrassing. The parade of highly-placed foreign guests and the warm reception received by Israeli statesmen abroad have not been seen for quite some time. Who hasn’t come to visit lately? From the German chancellor to the leading frontrunner for the American presidency. And the secretary-general of the United Nations is on his way. A visit to Israel has become de rigueur for foreign pols. If you haven’t been here, you’re nowhere.
The visitors are taken, of course, to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, the Western Wall and now to Sderot as well - the new national pilgrimage site. A few also pay a perfunctory visit to Ramallah; no one goes to the Gaza Strip, and they all have nothing but praise for Israel. Not a word of criticism on the occupation, on Israel’s violent operations in the territories, on the siege and the starving - with the exception of a few vague remarks on the need for a solution. Israel squeezes the Sderot “informational” lemon for all it’s worth.
Also not genuine is the idea that blind, unconditional friendship is friendship. The support for Israel as a just enterprise that is extended by most of the West does not mean accepting all of its caprices. A true friend of Israel, one that is sincerely concerned for its fate, is only that friend who dares to express sharp criticism of its policy of occupation, which poses the most serious risk to its future, and who also takes practical steps to end it. Most of the “friendly” statesmen do not understand this.
A disturbing but unsurprising poll result:
A new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight young men, most of them teenagers, an indication of the alarming level of Israeli-Palestinian tension in recent weeks.
The survey also shows unprecedented support for the firing of rockets on Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip and for the end of the peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli leaders.
The pollster who conducted the survey, Khalil Shikaki, said he was shocked because it showed greater support for violence than any of the surveys he had conducted over the past 15 years in the Palestinian areas. Never before, he said, had a majority favored an end to negotiations or the firing of rockets at Israel.
“There is real reason to be concerned,” Shikaki said in an interview at his West Bank office. His Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which conducts a survey every three months, is widely viewed as among the few independent and reliable gauges of Palestinian public opinion.
After decades of occupation and Israeli repression, and years of failed “peace talks”, an increasing number of Palestinians now believe that armed struggle is the only way to get results. Violence should be condemned on all sides, but we must try and understand why many disadvantaged groups support it.
Following my recent article in Crikey - discussing Australia’s parliamentary motion celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary as well as the local Zionist lobby’s shenanigans - a number of letter writers responded yesterday:
Bren Carlill, analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, writes: “Re. “Our “passionately pro Israel” PM throws compassion out the window” (13 March, item 10).” In Thursday’s Crikey, Antony Loewenstein slammed Wednesday’s bipartisan Parliamentary motion celebrating 60 years of Israeli independence. Allow me to retort. He opened with a statistic; 50% of Israelis wouldn’t want to live in the same building as an Arab. Such a statistic is worrying, though perhaps partially explained (but not justified) by the parallel statistic that 70-80% of Palestinian children aspire to be suicide bombers, that Israeli Arab politicians (yes – Israeli Arabs have the same civil rights as Israeli Jews) have cheered on terrorist organisations, and actively resist attempts to better integrate Arabs into Israeli society so as not to “Israelise” Arab youth. Loewenstein decried Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s “absence” of compassion for Palestinians. I can’t claim to speak for Mr. Rudd, but I’m sure the man has gone on record saying he wants Palestinians to be secure, safe, democratic, prosperous and independent. I heartily agree, which is probably why in tomorrow’s Crikey, Loewenstein will probably likewise curse my lack of compassion. Apart from wild allegations about yet another supposed Jewish conspiracy solely designed to harm him, the main thing in Loewenstein’s spray needing a response is something he’s been tossing round in recent days – that a majority of Israelis would be willing to negotiate with Hamas. Loewenstein is making the leap that since some Israelis are willing to talk to Hamas, therefore “the democratically-elected Hamas” must be alright.
I quote from his letter to the Sydney Morning Herald on 13 March: “[Robert Goot and David Knoll] portray the Palestinians as bloodthirsty terrorists out to obliterate all Jews. Many Israelis do not agree, a majority recently telling a Haaretz-sponsored poll that they believed in talks between Hamas and the Israeli government.” He’s right in one thing; Israelis don’t believe all Palestinians are bloodthirsty terrorists, but they do believe Hamas-niks are. But that doesn’t stop Israelis being willing to negotiate with Hamas if it would bring about a true ceasefire. The problem is, during its last “ceasefire,” Hamas never truly ceased firing. It spent the time passing on rockets and assistance to groups like Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who never stopped indiscriminately shelling Israeli towns. If Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, stops rockets being fired into Israel, Israel would immediately stop attacking Hamas positions. If Hamas were to recognise Israel’s existence (as per international demands), Israel would begin trading with Gaza again. After all, Syria doesn’t recognise Israel’s existence, and Israel doesn’t trade with it, either. Ultimately, Loewenstein’s true position wasn’t revealed in Crikey or the SMH, but in an ad on page 7 of Wednesday’s Australian. The ad made clear by focusing on 1948, not 1967, that its backers — including Loewenstein — don’t think Israel is wrong because of the occupation, or settlements or its choices in defending itself against Palestinian violence, but rather because of its existence. Charming.
James Harper writes: Les Heimann’s response (Friday, comments) to Antony Loewenstein’s piece has all the hallmarks of the Zionist lobby. While he makes it abundantly clear that he regards Loewenstein as at worst a liar and at best a misrepresenter of the facts, he at no time tries to clarify which part of Antony’s piece is incorrect or how. This is an age old tactic of smearing the man rather than challenging the facts. Keep up the good work Antony. I have long given up hope of any facts from the pro Israel side of the fence.
Duncan Beard writes: Les Heimann writes that Anthony Lowenstein “has [the] right in the privacy of his own home to believe what he likes”. Bullsh-t. Loewenstein can believe - in public - whatever the hell he likes, whether you or I like it or not. Public criticism of the occupation of Palestine is not illegal, nor is it “misrepresentation” or “squirting fantasies”, as you seem to think. We’re not a police state yet, mate.
Frank Birchall writes: Les Heimann’s piece is long on attacking Antony Loewenstein, ad hominem, but extremely short on argument and evidence. According to Les, what Antony said in Crikey is “misrepresentation” and “fantasy”, but Les conveniently omits to specify just what these “fantasies” etc. consist of. Don’t keep us in suspense, Les, let’s have some facts in rebuttal instead of a cheap personal shot.
A few comments are in order. The first statement, by a hack from the country’s belligerent Zionist lobby, seems desperate to prove that Palestinians are as racist as Israelis. The idea that a majority of Israelis support engagement with Hamas is something his organisation and virtually all similar Zionist lobbies in the West conveniently ignore, preferring to advocate a never-ending military campaign against “terrorists.”
After 60 years, those kind of policies have been really successful in bringing peace to the Jewish state.
UPDATE: AIJAC are about as popular in Australia as a Chinese soldier massacring Tibetan monks in Lhasa.
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, March 16:
Defense Minister Ehud Barak is a bitter disappointment. He was the first statesman who dared suggest brave, though lacking, solutions. Now, he has turned into the chief saboteur of any chance for a calm in the fighting, a cease-fire or diplomatic progress. Barak has long forsaken talk of peace. He certainly does not believe in Olmert’s peace initiative and istrying his best to destroy it.
If you fear Likud Chair Benjamin Netanyahu, how much worse can his potential damage to the peace process be than Barak’s? Their rhetoric, as well as their actions, have now become indistinguishable. If calm seems at hand, Barak gives the go-ahead for a silly and dangerous assassination attempt in tranquil Bethlehem; just to rekindle the fire, lest there be a lull.
If there’s a lull in Qassams fired, then Barak does everything he can to ensure their renewal to justify the “large-scale op” in Gaza he intends to make. IF Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is desperately trying to push forward talks, Barak eliminates any chance of bolstering his support. If Hamas suggests a cease-fire, Barak responds: “We will witness harsh scenes in Gaza before a calm is reached.” If all’s quiet on the northern front, then Israeli pyromania claims Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyah, according to allegations. The security establishment does as it pleases: Killing; destroying; barring; seizing funds; issuing orders to close stores and factories in the West Bank; allowing construction in West Bank settlements; utterly humiliating the Palestinian Authority. It is oblivious to negotiations, Israeli commitments or lofty talk of peace.