Australia must recognise Palestine as a separate state to help facilitate international peace, a Labor MP said.
Maria Vamvakinou tabled a motion in parliament on Monday calling for
the government to support Palestine, in response to the UN international
day of solidarity with the Palestinian people, which was on Saturday.
“On this day, we need to acknowledge and understand that the
prospects for a two-state solution are increasingly dissipating and we
are left with very few options,” Vamvakinou said in tabling the report.
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“We
are, potentially, embarking on a road map that leads to nowhere. Such a
prospect will have horrendous implications not only for the
Palestinians and the Israelis, but for the international community.
Essentially there will be no peace for any of us.”
Vamvakinou, who co-convenes the Australian Parliamentary Friends of
Palestine group, said international recognition was the only way to end
the deadlock.
“Australia and indeed this parliament must now recognise the state of
Palestine and Australia must vote yes at the UN for Palestinian
statehood,” she said.
The motion had bipartisan support, with Vamvakinou’s co-covenor the Liberal MP Craig Laundy, speaking for the motion.
“The people of Palestine, for the last almost 60 years, haven’t had a
fair go,” he said. “Imagine if you will, coming home this afternoon to
your home, going to put your key in the door and it didn’t fit.
“You knock on the door. Someone you don’t know opens the door and
they’re in your home. That’s what happened here, that’s what happened
all those years ago. And a people have been displaced and fighting for
an identity ever since.”
He accused lobbyists of hijacking the debate. “The things we discuss
in this chamber should not be influenced by the lobby. They should be
influenced by what’s right.”
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Laundy
told Guardian Australia that he is using his position as co-chair of
the friendship group to “continue the discussion with my colleagues and
try to progress the debate towards a meaningful, two-state solution”.
A number of countries – most recently, Sweden
– have formally recognised the state of Palestine in a diplomatic push
to get UN backing for a resolution on ending some Israeli settlements.
Three state branches of the Labor party
– New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland – have adopted
positions recognising Palestine, a move the head of the Palestinian
delegation to Australia, Izzat Abdulhadi, calls encouraging. “We need
international support … We’re not asking for the moon,” Abdulhadi told
Guardian Australia.
He said he has regular dialogue with the government over the issue.
“We’d like to have a Palestinian state based on negotiation [with
Israel] ... but it is impossible now,” he said.
Guardian Australia contacted the Israeli embassy for comment.
Relations between Australia and the Palestinian delegation have been strained for more than a year, since Australia softened its stance on Israeli settlements.
“This shift reflected the government’s concern that Middle East
resolutions should be balanced,” the foreign minister, Julie Bishop,
said in November 2013.
“The government will not support resolutions which are one-sided and
which prejudge the outcome of final-status negotiations between the two
sides.”
Supporters of Australia’s policy shift
see it as vital for a more fair and frank discussion on the vexed
Israeli-Palestinian issue within the UN, which they say is biased
towards Palestinians.
As the world lumbers once more to war John Pilger looks at the rise of the people admist the predicatable silence of the media.
“There
is a taboo,” said the visionary Edward Said, “on telling the truth
about Palestine and the great destructive force behind Israel. Only when
this truth is out can any of us be free.”
For many people, the truth is out now. At last, they know. Those once
intimidated into silence can’t look away now. Staring at them from
their TV, laptop, phone, is proof of the barbarism of the Israeli state
and the great destructive force of its mentor and provider, the United
States, the cowardice of European governments, and the collusion of
others, such as Canada and Australia, in this epic crime.
The attack on Gaza was an attack on all of us. The siege of Gaza is a
siege of all of us. The denial of justice to Palestinians is a symptom
of much of humanity under siege and a warning that the threat of a new
world war is growing by the day.
When Nelson Mandela called the struggle of Palestine “the greatest
moral issue of our time”, he spoke on behalf of true civilisation, not
that which empires invent. In Latin America, the governments of Brazil,
Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, El Salvador, Peru and Ecuador have made their
stand on Gaza. Each of these countries has known its own dark silence
when immunity for mass murder was sponsored by the same godfather in
Washington that answered the cries of children in Gaza with more
ammunition to kill them.
Unlike Netanyahu and his killers, Washington’s pet fascists in Latin
America didn’t concern themselves with moral window dressing. They
simply murdered, and left the bodies on rubbish dumps. For Zionism, the
goal is the same: to dispossess and ultimately destroy an entire human
society: a truth that 225 Holocaust survivors and their descendants have
compared with the genesis of genocide.
Nothing has changed since the Zionists' infamous “Plan D” in 1948
that ethnically cleansed an entire people. Recently, on the website of
the Times of Israel were the words: “Genocide is Permissible”. A deputy
speaker of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Moshe Feiglin, demands a
policy of mass expulsion into concentration camps. An MP, Ayelet
Shaked, whose party is a member of the governing coalition, calls for
the extermination of Palestinian mothers to prevent them giving birth to
what she calls “little snakes”.
For years, reporters have watched Israeli soldiers bait Palestinian
children by abusing them through loud-speakers. Then they shoot them
dead. For years, reporters have known about Palestinian women about to
give birth and refused passage through a roadblock to a hospital; and
the baby has died, and sometimes the mother.
For years, reporters have known about Palestinian doctors and
ambulance crews given permission by Israeli commanders to attend the
wounded or remove the dead, only to be shot through the head.
For years, reporters have known about stricken people prevented from
getting life-saving treatment, or shot dead when they’ve tried to reach a
clinic for chemotherapy treatment. One elderly lady with a walking
stick was murdered in this way – a bullet in her back.
When I put the facts of this crime to Dori Gold, a senior adviser to
the Israeli prime minister, he said, “Unfortunately in every kind of
warfare there are cases of civilians who are accidentally killed. But
the case you cite was not terrorism. Terrorism means putting the
cross-hairs of the sniper’s rifle on a civilian deliberately.”
I replied, “That’s exactly what happened.”
“No,” he said, “it did not happen.”
Such a lie or delusion is repeated unerringly by Israel's apologists.
As the former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges points out, the
reporting of such an atrocity invariably ends up as “caught in the
cross-fire”. For as long as I have covered the Middle East, much if not
most of the western media has colluded in this way.
In one of my films, a Palestinian cameraman, Imad Ghanem, lies
helpless while soldiers from the “most moral army in the world” blew
both his legs off. This atrocity was given two lines on the BBC website.
Thirteen journalists were killed by Israel in its latest bloodfest in
Gaza. All were Palestinian. Who knows their names?
Something is different now. There is a huge revulsion across the world; and the voices of sensible
liberalism are worried. Their hand wringing and specious choir of
“equal blame” and "Israel's right to defend itself" will not wash any
more; neither will the smear of anti-Semitism. Neither will their
selective cry that "something must be done" about Islamic fanatics but
nothing must be done about Zionist fanatics.
One sensible liberal voice, the novelist Ian McEwan, was being
celebrated as a sage by the Guardian while the children of Gaza were
blown to bits. This is the same Ian McEwan who ignored the pleading of
Palestinians not to accept the Jerusalem Prize for literature. “If I
only went to countries that I approve of, I probably would never get out
of bed,” said McEwan.
If they could speak, the dead of Gaza might say: Stay in bed, great
novelist, for your very presence smoothes the bed of racism, apartheid,
ethnic cleansing and murder – no matter the weasel words you uttered as
you claimed your prize.
Understanding the sophistry and power of liberal propaganda is key to
understanding why Israel’s outrages endure; why the world looks on; why
sanctions are never applied to Israel; and why nothing less than a
total boycott of everything Israeli is now a measure of basic human
decency.
The most incessant propaganda says Hamas is committed to the
destruction of Israel. Khaled Hroub, the Cambridge University scholar
considered a world leading authority on Hamas, says this phrase is
"never used or adopted by Hamas, even in its most radical statements".
The oft-quoted "anti-Jewish" 1988 Charter was the work of "one
individual and made public without appropriate Hamas consensus.... The
author was one of the 'old guard' "; the document is regarded as an
embarrassment and never cited.
Hamas has repeatedly offered a 10-year truce with Israel and has long
settled for a two-state solution. When Medea Benjamin, the fearless
Jewish American activist, was in Gaza, she carried a letter from Hamas
leaders to President Obama that made clear the government of Gaza wanted
peace with Israel. It was ignored. I personally know of many such
letters carried in good faith, ignored or dismissed.
The unforgivable crime of Hamas is a distinction almost never
reported: it is the only Arab government to have been freely and
democratically elected by its people. Worse, it has now formed a
government of unity with the Palestinian Authority. A single, resolute
Palestinian voice – in the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council
and the International Criminal Court – is the most feared threat.
Since 2002, a pioneering media unit at Glasgow University has
produced remarkable studies of reporting and propaganda in
Israel/Palestine. Professor Greg Philo and his colleagues were shocked
to find a public ignorance compounded by TV news reporting. The more
people watched, the less they knew.
Greg Philo says the problem is not “bias” as such. Reporters and
producers are as moved as anyone by the suffering of Palestinians; but
so imposing is the power structure of the media - as an extension of the
state and its vested interests - that critical facts and historical
context are routinely suppressed.
Incredibly, less than nine per cent of young viewers interviewed by
Professor Philo’s team were aware that Israel was the occupying power,
and that the illegal settlers were Jewish; many believed them to be
Palestinian. The term “Occupied Territories” was seldom explained. Words
such as “murder”, “atrocity”, “cold-blooded killing” were used only to
describe the deaths of Israelis.
Recently, a BBC reporter, David Loyn, was critical of another British
journalist, Jon Snow of Channel 4 News. Snow was so moved by what he
had seen in Gaza he went on YouTube to make a humanitarian appeal. What
concerned the BBC man was that Snow had breached protocol and been
emotional in his YouTube piece.
“Emotion,” wrote Loyn, “is the stuff of propaganda and news is
against propaganda”. Did he write this with a straight face? In fact,
Snow’s delivery was calm. His crime was to have strayed outside the
boundaries of fake impartiality. Unforgivably, he didn’t censor himself.
In 1937, with Adolf Hitler in power, Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The
Times in London, wrote the following in his diary: “I spend my nights in
taking out anything which will hurt [German] susceptibilities and in
dropping in little things which are intended to soothe them.”
On 30 July, the BBC offered viewers a masterclass in the Dawson
Principle. The diplomatic correspondent of the programme Newsnight, Mark
Urban, gave five reasons why the Middle East was in turmoil. None
included the historic or contemporary role of the British government.
The Cameron government’s dispatch of £8 billion worth of arms and
military equipment to Israel was airbrushed. Britain’s massive arms
shipment to Saudi Arabia was airbrushed. Britain’s role in the
destruction of Libya was airbrushed. Britain’s support for the tyranny
in Egypt was airbrushed.
As for the British invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, they didn’t happen, either.
The only expert witness on this BBC programme was an academic called
Toby Dodge from the London School of Economics. What viewers needed to
know was that Dodge had been a special adviser to David Petraeus, the
American general largely responsible for the disasters in Iraq and
Afghanistan. But this, too, was airbrushed.
In matters of war and peace, BBC-style illusions of impartiality and
credibility do more to limit and control public discussion than tabloid
distortion. As Greg Philo pointed out, Jon Snow’s moving commentary on
YouTube was limited to whether the Israeli assault on Gaza was
proportionate or reasonable. What was missing – and is almost always
missing – was the essential truth of the longest military occupation in
modern times: a criminal enterprise backed by western governments from
Washington to London to Canberra.
As for the myth that "vulnerable" and "isolated" Israel is surrounded
by enemies, Israel is actually surrounded by strategic allies. The
Palestinian Authority, bankrolled, armed and directed by the US, has
long colluded with Tel Aviv. Standing shoulder to shoulder with
Netanyahu are the tyrannies in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United
Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar - if the World Cup ever gets to Qatar,
count on Mossad to run the security.
Resistance is humanity at its bravest and most noble. The resistance
in Gaza is rightly compared with the 1943 Jewish uprising in the Warsaw
Ghetto – which also dug tunnels and deployed tactics of subterfuge and
surprise against an overpowering military machine. The last surviving
leader of the Warsaw uprising, Marek Edelman, wrote a letter of
solidarity to the Palestinian resistance, comparing it with the ZOB, his
ghetto fighters. The letter began: “Commanders of the Palestine
military, paramilitary and partisan operations – and to all soldiers [of
Palestine].”
Dr. Mads Gilbert is a Norwegian doctor renowned for his heroic work
in Gaza. On 8 August, Dr. Gilbert returned to his hometown, Tronso in
Norway which, as he pointed out, the Nazis had occupied for seven years.
He said, “Imagine being back in 1945 and we in Norway did not win the
liberation struggle, did not throw out the occupier. Imagine the
occupier remaining in our country, taking it piece by piece, for decades
upon decades, and banishing us to the leanest areas, and taking the
fish in the sea and the water beneath us, then bombing our hospitals,
our ambulance workers, our schools, our homes.
“Would we have given up and waved the white flag? No, we would not!
And this is the situation in Gaza. This is not a battle between
terrorism and democracy. Hamas is not the enemy Israel is fighting.
Israel is waging a war against the Palestinian people’s will to resist.
It is the Palestinian people’s dignity that they will not accept this.
“In 1938, the Nazis called the Jews Untermenschen – subhuman. Today,
Palestinians are treated as a subhuman people who can be slaughtered
without any in power reacting.
“So I have returned to Norway, a free country, and this country is
free because we had a resistance movement, because occupied nations have
the right to resist, even with weapons – it’s stated in international
law. And the Palestinian people’s resistance in Gaza is admirable: a
struggle for us all.”
There are dangers in telling this truth, in breaching what Edward
Said called “the last taboo”. My documentary, Palestine Is Still the
Issue, was nominated for a Bafta, a British academy award, and praised
by the Independent Television Commission for its “journalistic
integrity” and the “care and thoroughness with which it was researched.”
Yet, within minutes of the film’s broadcast on Britain’s ITV Network, a
shock wave struck – a deluge of emails described me as a “demonic
psychopath”, “a purveyor of hate and evil”, “an anti-Semite of the most
dangerous kind”. Much of this was orchestrated by Zionists in the US who
could not possibly have seen the film. Death threats arrived at a rate
of one a day.
Something similar happened to the Australian commentator Mike Carlton
last month. In his regular column in the Sydney Morning Herald, Carlton
produced a rare piece of journalism about Israel and the Palestinians;
he identified the oppressors and their victims. He was careful to limit
his attack to "a new and brutal Israel dominated by the hard-line,
right-wing Likud party of Netanyahu". Those who had previously run the
Zionist state, he implied, belonged to "a proud liberal tradition".
On cue, the deluge struck. He was called “a bag of Nazi slime, a
Jew-hating racist.” He was threatened repeatedly, and he emailed his
attackers to “get fucked”.
The Herald demanded he apologise. When he refused, he was suspended,
then he resigned. According to the Herald’s publisher, Sean Aylmer, the
company “expects much higher standards from its columnists”.
The "problem” of Carlton's acerbic, often solitary liberal voice in a
country in which Rupert Murdoch controls 70 per cent of the capital
city press - Australia is the world's first murdocracy - would be solved
twice over. The Australian Human Rights Commission is to investigate
complaints against Carlton under the Racial Discrimination Act, which
outlaws any public act or utterance that is “reasonably likely … to
offend, insult, humiliate another person or a group of people” on the
basic of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin.
In contrast to safe, silent Australia - where the Carltons are made
extinct - real journalism is alive in Gaza. I often speak on the phone
with Mohammed Omer, an extraordinary young Palestinian journalist, to
whom I presented, in 2008, the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.
Whenever I called him during the assault on Gaza, I could hear the whine
of drones, the explosion of missiles. He interrupted one call to attend
to children huddled outside waiting for transport amidst the
explosions. When I spoke to him on 30 July, a single Israeli F-19
fighter had just slaughtered 19 children. On 20 August, he described how
Israeli drones had effectively “rounded up” a village so that they
could savagely gunned down.
Every day, at sunrise, Mohammed looks for families who have been
bombed. He records their stories, standing in the rubble of their homes;
he takes their pictures. He goes to the hospital. He goes to the
morgue. He goes to the cemetery. He queues for hours for bread for his
own family. And he watches the sky. He sends two, three, four dispatches
a day. This is real journalism.
“They are trying to annihilate us,” he told me. “But the more they bomb us, the stronger we are. They will never win.”
The great crime committed in Gaza is a reminder of something wider and menacing to us all.
Since 2001, the United States and its allies have been on a rampage.
In Iraq, at least 700,000 men, women and children are dead as a result.
The rise of jihadists – in a country where there was none – is the
result. Known as al-Qaeda and now the Islamic State, modern jihadism was
invented by US and Britain, assisted by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The
original aim was to use and develop an Islamic fundamentalism that had
barely existed in much of the Arab world in order to undermine pan-Arab
movements and secular governments.
By the 1980s, this had become a weapon to destroy the Soviet Union in
Afghanistan. The CIA called it Operation Cyclone; and a cyclone it
turned out to be, with its unleashed fury blowing back in the faces of
its creators.
The attacks of 9/11 and in London in July, 2005 were the result of
this blowback, as were the recent, gruesome murders of the American
journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. For more than a year, the
Obama administration armed the killers of these two young men - then
known as ISIS in Syria - in order to destroy the secular government in
Damascus.
The West's principal "ally" in this imperial mayhem is the medieval
state where beheadings are routinely and judicially carried out - Saudi
Arabia. Whenever a member of the British Royal Family is sent to this
barbaric place, you can bet your bottom petrodollar that the British
government wants to sell the sheiks more fighter planes, missiles,
manacles. Most of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, which
bankrolls jihadists from Syria to Iraq.
Why must we live in this state of perpetual war?
The immediate answer lies in the United States, where a secret and
unreported coup has taken place. A group known as the Project for a New
American Century, the inspiration of Dick Cheney and others, came to
power with the administration of George W Bush. Once known in Washington
as the “crazies”, this extreme sect believes in what the US Space
Command calls “full spectrum dominance”.
Under both Bush and Obama, a 19th-century imperial mentality has
infused all departments of state. Raw militarism is ascendant; diplomacy
is redundant. Nations and governments are judged as useful or
expendable: to be bribed or threatened or "sanctioned".
On 31 July, the National Defense Panel in Washington published a
remarkable document that called for the United States to prepare to
fight six major wars simultaneously. At the top of the list were Russia
and China – nuclear powers.
In one sense, a war against Russia has already begun. While the world
watched horrified as Israel assaulted Gaza, similar atrocities in
eastern Ukraine were barely news. At the time of writing, two Ukrainian
cities of Russian-speaking people – Donetsk and Luhansk – are under
siege: their people and hospitals and schools blitzed by a regime in
Kiev that came to power in a putsch led by neo-Nazis backed and paid for
by the United States.
The coup was the climax of what the Russian political observer Sergei
Glaziev describes as a 20-year "grooming of Ukrainian Nazis aimed at
Russia". Actual fascism has risen again in Europe and not one European
leader has spoken against it, perhaps because the rise of fascism across
Europe is now a truth that dares not speak its name.
With its fascist past, and present, Ukraine is now a CIA theme park, a
colony of NATO and the International Monetary Fund. The fascist coup in
Kiev in February was the boast of US assistant secretary of state
Victoria Nuland, whose "coup budget" ran to $5 billion.
But there was a setback. Moscow prevented the seizure of its
legitimate Black Sea naval base in Russian-speaking Crimea. A referendum
and annexation quickly followed. Represented in the West as the
Kremlin's "aggression", this serves to turn truth on its head and cover
Washington's goals: to drive a wedge between a "pariah" Russia and its
principal trading partners in Europe and eventually to break up the
Russian Federation.
American missiles already surround Russia; NATO’s military build-up
in the former Soviet republics and eastern Europe is the biggest since
the second world war.
During the cold war, this would have risked a nuclear holocaust. The
risk has returned as anti-Russian misinformation reaches crescendos of
hysteria in the US and Europe. A textbook case is the shooting down of a
Malaysian airliner in July.
Without a single piece of evidence, the US and its NATO allies and
their media machines blamed ethnic Russian “separatists” in Ukraine and
implied that Moscow was ultimately responsible. An editorial in The
Economist accused Vladimir Putin of mass murder. The cover of Der
Spiegel used faces of the victims and bold red type, “Stoppt Putin
Jetzt!” (Stop Putin Now!) In the New York Times, Timothy Garton Ash
substantiated his case for “Putin’s deadly doctrine” with personal abuse
of “a short, thickset man with a rather ratlike face”.
The Guardian’s role has been important. Renowned for its
investigations, the newspaper has made no serious attempt to examine who
shot the aeroplane down and why, even though a wealth of material from
credible sources shows that Moscow was as shocked as the rest of the
world, and that the airliner may well have been brought down by the
Ukrainian regime.
With the White House offering no verifiable evidence – even though US
satellites would have observed the shooting-down - the Guardian’s
Moscow correspondent Shaun Walker stepped into the breach. "My audience
with the Demon of Donetsk," was the front-page headline over Walker's
breathless interview with one Igor Bezler.
"With a walrus moustache, a fiery temper and a reputation for
brutality," he wrote, "Igor Bezler is the most feared of all the rebel
leaders in eastern Ukraine ... nicknamed The Demon ... If the Ukrainian
security services, the SBU, are to be believed, the Demon and a group of
his men were responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight
MH17… as well as allegedly bringing down MH17, the rebels have shot down
10 Ukrainian aircraft.” Demon Journalism requires no further evidence.
Demon Journalism makes over a fascist-contaminated junta that seized
power in Kiev as a respectable "interim government". Neo-Nazis become
mere "nationalists". "News" sourced to the Kiev junta ensures the
suppression of a US-run coup and the junta's systematic ethnic cleaning
of the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine.
That this should happen in the borderland through which the original
Nazis invaded Russia, extinguishing some 22 million Russian lives, is of
no interest. What matters is a Russian "invasion" of Ukraine that seems
difficult to prove beyond familiar satellite images that evoke Colin
Powell's fictional presentation to the United Nations "proving" that
Saddam Hussein had WMD.
"You need to know that accusations of a major Russian ‘invasion’ of
Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence," wrote a
group of former senior US intelligence officials and analysts, the
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, to German Chancellor
Angela Merkel. "Rather, the ‘intelligence’ seems to be of the same
dubious, politically ‘fixed’ kind used 12 years ago to ‘justify’ the
U.S.-led attack on Iraq.”
The jargon is "controlling the narrative". In his seminal Culture and
Imperialism, Edward Said was more explicit: the western media machine
was now capable of penetrating deep into the consciousness of much of
humanity with a "wiring" as influential as that of the imperial navies
of the 19th century. Gunboat journalism, in other words. Or war by
media.
Yet, a critical public intelligence and resistance to propaganda does
exist; and a second superpower is emerging – the power of public
opinion, fuelled by the internet and social media.
The false reality created by false news delivered by media
gatekeepers may prevent some of us knowing that this new superpower is
stirring in country after country: from the Americas to Europe, Asia to
Africa. It is a moral insurrection, exemplified by the whistleblowers
Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange. The question begs:
will we break our silence while there is time?
When I was last in Gaza, driving back to the Israeli checkpoint, I
caught sight of two Palestinian flags through the razor wire. Children
had made flagpoles out of sticks tied together and they’d climbed on a
wall and held the flag between them.
The children do this, I was told, whenever there are foreigners
around, because they want to show the world they are there - alive, and
brave, and undefeated.
This article is adapted from John Pilger’s Edward Said Memorial
Lecture, delivered in Adelaide, Australia, on 11 September. You can read
more of John’s work at his personal website.
Image by John Graham Dr. Evan Jones continues his in-depth analysis of how
Fairfax has propagated an Israeli narrative on the massacre in Gaza. See
yesterday’s Part II(a).
Jihadis for Jerusalem
There was the article, formally straight up down reporting but
substantively subversive, by Nick Toscano and Ben Doherty, ‘Melbourne
school colleagues in Israeli army injured in Gaza’, 5 August. What’s this then?
'Two former students of a Jewish school in Melbourne have been
wounded while fighting for the Israeli army in Gaza. … The combat
soldiers are former students of Leibler Yavneh College in Elsternwick …'
'[Zionist youth movement] Bnei Akiva Melbourne president Romy
Spicer … said that out of the 365 students and leaders in Melbourne's
Bnei Akiva program, as many as 10 had joined the Israeli army in the
past two years. "What drives them is a love and passion for Zionism,"
she said. …'
'There are about 2500 foreign citizens from more than 60 countries enlisted in the Israeli Defence Forces.
… The Israeli embassy in Canberra refused to comment on the number of
Australians fighting for the IDF, but it is believed in excess of 100
are enlisted.'
'Our mission as a Modern Orthodox, Religious-Zionist School is to nurture students to be:
[among others] committed Australians, aware of and loyal to their communal, civic and personal responsibilities. …
We believe in fostering each
student’s personal, emotional and intellectual commitment to
Religious-Zionist ideals and to the State of Israel'
Now why aren’t the Australian authorities visiting Leibler Yavneh
College and Bnei Akiva to inquire of this proselytising process by which
some of their charges become jihadis in an occupying army?
Sensing a public relations dilemma, Danny Lamm, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, reassures us (7 August):
The implication that Australian Jews go to Israel to join the IDF
is misleading and incorrect. Israel has compulsory national service
because it must, because in its history it has been threatened and
attacked by hostile neighbours. All Israeli citizens must serve in the
army, including immigrants. [Well not quite all]
Lamm omits that the young Australians choosing ‘to move to Israel to
build a life, find a job and raise their children in the only Jewish
state’ have to serve a rite of passage that involves harassing,
dispossessing and murdering Palestinians. And they do this out of
choice. Committed Australians, aware of and loyal to their communal,
civic and personal responsibilities indeed.
(image by John Graham)
A Sydney Morning Herald ‘balanced’ pairing
The Sydney Morning Herald published a pairing on 30 July, not reproduced in the Age – Yuli Novak (sometime Israeli Air Force officer, now Executive Director of Breaking the Silence) and Yair Miller (president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies).
Novak recalls that a one-ton bomb dropped in 2002 that killed 14
civilians as well as its intended Hamas target then raised concerns in
some Israeli circles. She notes that 100 one-ton bombs have been dropped
on Gaza during Operation Protective Edge (sic), raising little domestic
concern. Miller’s article (endless unprovoked terrorism from Hamas,
which means that the promised ‘land for peace’ idea is in tatters) is
rubbish from start to finish.
The Letters pages
The Letters offerings on the Gaza attack offer slightly more
‘balance’ than the Opinion offerings. There is, of course, a swathe of
‘Israel can do no wrong’ letters. Thus, for example, Malcolm Rayne (Age, 24 July):
'I am appalled at the double standards being applied towards
Israel. … How many ‘‘do-gooders’’ would be howling about the injustice
of it all if Australia rightfully defended itself [if rockets started
hitting our cities]? Is this just another sign of anti-Semitism at its
best, because after all, it’s only the Jews? I don’t see any protests to
The Age regarding China’s illegal occupation of Tibet … Israel wants
nothing more than peace.'
And here’s the familiar names (Mark Leibler & Colin Rubinstein) from the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (Age, 25 July)
'Your editorial (‘Might overwhelms the right to defend’, 23/7) was inflammatory. Hamas,
a terrorist organisation proscribed by many nations, including
Australia, initiated this conflict by escalating rocket attacks across
Israel. It rejected Israel's overtures to de-escalate, as well as three
Arab ceasefire proposals Israel accepted. … .
'Every Gazan civilian killed is tragic, but they are
overwhelmingly victims of these callous human-shield tactics. Israel
warns civilians of impending strikes by dropping leaflets, texting and
phoning. … The partial Gaza blockade … targets only materials with
military uses, allowing food, medicine, consumer goods, water, fuel and
power. It was only imposed after rocket attacks.'
This letter is steeped in lies, but what can one expect from agents
for a rogue state. At least Fairfax has ceased publishing articles by
such AIJAC functionaries who, during previous Israeli offensives, have
graced Fairfax’s opinion pages on a regular basis.
The media gives Israel-firsters special dispensation. The press has
long since declined to publish opinion or letters from flat-earthers, or
those who insist that the world was created in 4004BC. Israel-firsters
are given access to endlessly declaim that Israel is as pure as the
driven snow, and to hell with the credibility of the specific claims.
One reason why China’s illegal occupation of Tibet gets less coverage
in the letters pages is because there is nobody being regularly
published who defends that takeover as just and the Tibetans as
terrorists. The claim that Hamas hides behind human shields has been
reproduced as a mantra, but it isn’t true. Ditto firing rockets from
hospitals, etc.
As for Israel’s exit from Gaza, well the lies are now
well-established truths. Here’s one from an inveterate letter-writer,
Alan Freedman, from East St Kilda (SMH, 6 August):
'Remember, too, that the blockade was instituted only after
Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza Strip and was subsequently
subjected to rocket fire and terrorist attacks from Hamas.'
Ah, another standard Hasbara furphy regarding the ‘complete’ withdrawal from Gaza. Noam Chomsky’s recent piece on TomDispatch provides insight into the Gaza ‘withdrawal’ (and its context):
'[The November 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access Between
Israel and the Palestinian Authority] was reached shortly after Israel
withdrew its settlers and military forces from Gaza. The motive for the
disengagement was explained by Dov Weissglass, a confidant of then-Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, who was in charge of negotiating and
implementing it. "The significance of the disengagement plan is the
freezing of the peace process," Weissglass informed the Israeli press.
"And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a
Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the
borders, and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the
Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed
indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and
permission. All with a [U.S.] presidential blessing and the ratification
of both houses of Congress." …
'In their comprehensive history of Israeli settlement in the
occupied territories, Israeli scholars Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar
describe what actually happened when that country disengaged: the ruined
territory [Gaza] was not released "for even a single day from Israel's
military grip or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants
pay every day." After the disengagement, "Israel left behind scorched
earth, devastated services, and people with neither a present nor a
future. The settlements were destroyed in an ungenerous move by an
unenlightened occupier, which in fact continues to control the territory
and kill and harass its inhabitants by means of its formidable military
might."
If Freedman rushed more to the books than to penning missives, he
might have developed some sympathy for one Darren Stein, of Bondi (SMH, 28 July), who wrote:
'… I wish to write that there are indeed many Jews who are
quietly feeling deeply ashamed and conflicted about the fighting in Gaza
and the massive death toll on the Palestinian side, whether Hamas has
provoked this or not. If we were to put our humanity before our
religion, gender or ethnicity, the world would be a more peaceful place.
If I express shock and grief for the innocents who have perished in
Gaza, I am not a self-hating Jew, I am a human being, and anyone who
condemns me for that has clearly compromised that element of themselves.
Remember that Fairfax, as with the Murdoch press, has regularly
endorsed its journalists being carried off on paid junkets to Israel
whereupon they return to debase their calling. Fairfax columnist Paul
Sheehan, sometime junketer, evidently on the drip, has well reproduced
the IDF’s story on Gaza (SMH, 4 August).
The Mike Carlton episode
And then there is (or was) the contracted columnist Mike Carlton, atypically going to the heart of the matter (SMH, 26 July):
'It is a breathtaking irony that these atrocities can be
committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and
culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the
Holocaust at the centre of their race memory. …
in all these long and agonising decades, Israel has never offered
the Palestinians a just and equitable peace. They would have only a
splintered, vassal state, their polity and economy and even their
borders and freedom of travel and trade managed and determined by
Israel. The occupation of Palestinian lands would remain with the
relentless expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank of
the Jordan and the Dead Sea.'
There followed the predictable tidal wave of abuse from the Israel-firsters, and Carlton’s published rejoinder (2 August):
‘Heil Hitler, you ignorant, Jew-hating, anti-Semitic slime.’
[That phrase is not reproduced online] As I predicted, the abusive
emails and tweets have been thundering in all week, hundreds of them.
That effort was typical. The Israel lobby - or as I prefer it, the Likud
Lobby – rose in fury at last week's column about Israel's war crimes
against civilians in Gaza. I lost count of the times I was called a
Nazi. … More disturbing was a broad streak of Jewish racism and bigotry
every bit as vicious as the anti-Semitism some of these people claimed
to find behind every rock.'
As we now know, Carlton also engaged in a direct rejoinder to his
delightful correspondents, which led to his being disciplined by the
Fairfax headmaster, Sean Aylmer, and his subsequent resignation
(complementing his 2008 sacking before 2009 reinstatement). And there
goes the only plain-speaking person on Israel (or politics generally),
and Fairfax will now concentrate exclusively on its preferred
obfuscatory mush.
Jonathan Holmes (Age, 13 August) took Carlton to task for replying in such a manner, or perhaps for replying at all.
'What you don't do, ever - not to the most abusive, and certainly
not to impassioned but reasonable critics - is tell them to get
f---ed.'
Reasonable critics? They don’t exist in zio-land. But quite so. Never reply to a zio critic because it only encourages them.
The cartoons
Then there was LeLievre’s cartoon that accompanied Carlton’s 26 July SMH
article. The cartoon showed a kippah-ed Israeli watching, TV-style in
armchair comfort (Star-of-David blazoned), the Gaza bombardment.
Following feedback from no doubt ‘impassioned but reasonable critics’
Fairfax editorial apologised (4 August) for the ‘distress’ caused to some readers.
(By contrast, SMH cartoonist Alan Moir kept under the radar with perennial cartoons implying a dual Israel-Hamas madness.)
Overland Editor Jeff Sparrow agreed with Fairfax editorial (Crikey, 5 August), claiming an essentialist dimension to the LeLievre cartoon, comparable to those demonising Muslims.
Notes the Herald editorial:
'A strong view was expressed that the cartoon, by Glen Le Lievre,
closely resembled illustrations that had circulated in Nazi Germany.
These are menacing cartoons that continue to haunt and traumatise
generations of Jewish people.'
The comparison is inappropriate. The infamous odious graphics from Julius Streicher’s Hitler-era Der Stürmer
‘essentialise’ Jewry as financial predators, sexual predators, etc.
LeLievre’s cartoon only thinly caricatures an actual event. The Star of
David is not essentialising Jewry, but is the emblem of the Israeli
state.
Perhaps LeLievre might have omitted the kippah, but (as noted by
MarilynJS on the Sparrow article), there were kippah-ed groups on the
Sderot hill who came to witness the pulverisation of a subject people.
The same thing happened during Operation Cast Lead (sic) in 2008-09.
Who is suffering distress and being traumatised? Palestinians are the
new Jews.
Simultaneously, TheAge’s John Spooner had published several cartoons
which are straight out of the Hasbara songbook – the whole problem is
due to Hamas fanaticism. One cartoon has a Hamas operative firing a
rocket from a hospital operating room.
What constraints one puts on press cartoonists is a difficult issue.
Cartoonists are at the forefront of lateral thinking and courageous
social and political commentary, and Australian cartoonists have a
global reputation for it.
Over the years in the present context, Bruce Petty and Michael Leunig (TheAge), Geoff Pryor and Ian Sharpe (Canberra Times) and David Rowe (Australian Financial Review), with varying degrees of subtlety, have had published powerful indictments of Israeli perfidy.
But then TheAge editor Michael Gawenda pulled Leunig’s cartoon juxtaposing the hyperbole of Auschwitz and of the Israeli war machine in 2002. And TheAge leaves untouched Spooner’s mythical characterisations of the Gaza bombardment while the SMH apologises for LeLievre’s naturalistic characterisation of the squalid Sderot spectacle. Two weights, two measures.
(image by John Graham)
The quintessence of the Fairfax coverage
What is missing is the root cause of the latest Gaza catastrophe
—Israel’s imperative, in its DNA, towards ethnic cleansing. The 1948-49
Occupation is its foundation, the 1967 Occupations its natural
extension. The step-wise obliteration of Gaza is the grisly sideshow for
entertainment-deprived sadists. But day after day, the less heralded
details of the purification machine press on relentlessly.
The paltry Fairfax coverage is certainly not a reflection of
objective detachment. It highlights more than a casual inattention to
contemporary moral priorities. Rather, it reflects a conscious
partisanry towards a long-standing tyranny that makes Fairfax editorial
both cowardly and complicit.
During this wretched period of myriad large-scale calamities, Waleed Aly had an article in the Age (25 July),
titled ‘Deciding which deaths matter and which don’t’. In referring to
the appalling celebration of Gazans’ suffering in the Egyptian media
(‘now effectively a propaganda arm of the government’), Aly notes:
'But that's what happens when the sanctity of life meets the
power of politics. … It doesn't matter who dies. It doesn't matter how
many. … We decide which deaths to mourn, which to ignore, which to
celebrate, and which to rationalise on the basis of what story we want
them to tell. … And that, I fear, is a universal principle.'
The Jewish Holocaust (as with other Holocausts) was a product not
merely of global lack of awareness – it was also partly a horrendous
casualty of contemporary power politics.
So also with Palestine, and Gaza in particular. Of course, with
official and social media intrusion, we all know this story in the
finest detail, but knowledge of criminality is of little import.
Power politics and particular interests still reign, and the official
media, including Fairfax, is their handmaiden. ‘Never again’ is a
slogan that can’t be taken seriously.
(image by John Graham) Dr. Evan Jones
continues his customary in-depth analysis of how Fairfax has
propagated an Israeli narrative on the massacre in Gaza. Part II(b)
follows tomorrow.
Fairfax media’s masthead is ‘Independent Always’. It should more
accurately read ‘Independent Sometimes, But Rarely When It Matters’.
Fairfax has fallen down on Ukraine and Russia, with spinmeister Peter Hartcher at the helm. But Israel is the acid test.
I covered the first two weeks of the Sydney Morning Herald’s coverage of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza to 22 July here. It was a definite fail. This time, I devote predominant emphasis to Melbourne’s TheAge, whose coverage has been more substantial. It is a significant fail. But the details are important.
Ruth Pollard
First, there is Fairfax’s designated Middle East correspondent, Ruth
Pollard. Her coverage, in its depth, intelligence and integrity, has
been outstanding. She brings us close, from our armchairs, to the
carnage in its horror and implied depravity. Here is Pollard, 1 August:
‘Four donkeys lay dead at the gate of the Jabalia Elementary
Girls School in Gaza, the first indication of the bloody human toll
inside. Three heavy artillery shells hit the United Nations school in
the early hours of Wednesday, killing 19 and wounding at least 100. More
than 3300 Palestinians were sheltering there after fleeing from
Israel's military operations in Gaza. …
"These are people who were instructed to leave their homes by the Israeli army," the UN
Relief and Works Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl said. He
condemned the attack as "a serious violation of international law by
Israeli forces". It was the second mass casualty attack, and the sixth
strike, on a UN school since Israel's military offensive in Gaza began on July 8.
"The precise location of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School and
the fact that it was housing thousands of internally displaced people
was communicated to the Israeli army 17 times to ensure its protection;
the last ... just hours before the fatal shelling," Mr Krahenbuhl said. UN shelters are overflowing, he said, and UN staff – "the very people leading the humanitarian response" – are being killed.’
‘… it is clear, says the UNDP's special representative Frode
Mauring, that they have destroyed much more [than weapons stores and
tunnels]. There can be no real recovery, he warned, until both Israel
and Egypt lift their siege on Gaza. "We cannot have a situation where we
continue to take 20 months to get approvals from [Israel] to do
construction," says Mr Mauring. There has not been a single construction
project approved in Gaza since May 2013.
Three direct hits on Gaza City's main sewage plant means at least
30 million litres of untreated sewage each day is pouring into the
Mediterranean, says Monzir Shublaq, director-general of Coastal
Municipal Water Utilities. … It is a similar story with Gaza's main
power station, taken out of action in an air strike on July 29.'
‘Some men held a child in each arm, those who could raised their
hands in surrender. Others held white flags, while four carried elderly
relatives on their shoulders.
‘But as the extended Abu Rujaila family – a terrified group of 30
children, 30 women and 25 men – made their way towards the Israeli
tanks at the entrance to their village, they say the soldiers opened
fire. The group had already counted 17 bodies on the street and it was
as they met a larger gathering of about 3000 residents also trying to
flee that at least 35 people were shot and many seriously injured. …
They had endured three days of Israeli bombardment, in which many of the
houses around them were systematically destroyed. At least 14 members
of the family were killed, Tamer [Rujaila] says. …
‘Major Arye Shalicar of the Israel Defence Forces
said: "At this point it is very hard to check each single allegation
but we have a major-general who is about to look into each single
incident during the operation and is going to put together a report. "We
have time and again proven we do everything in our power to not hurt
civilians …”
(‘When I grow up, I’ll already be dead’. Image: Jacek Woźniak, Le Canard Enchainé)
‘Fairfax Media
has interviewed eight families who lost multiple members in single
Israeli attacks over the past month, mostly in air strikes in the dead
of night. The numbers are almost incomprehensible – the Abu Jame family
lost 26 people, including 19 children and five women, in one air strike;
the a-Najjar family lost 20 people, including 12 children and six
women. …
‘Nafjas al-Najjar, 45, … is lying on a bed in a small room in her
brother's house, covered in a blue checked sheet. Her pelvis is broken,
her left eye black. … She has barely left her mother's side since the
attack that killed her father and siblings. "What is our guilt? What is
the guilt of my husband and children?" Nafjas asks.’
Curiously, TheAge has supplemented Pollard’s
mercurial reporting with multiple and superfluous re-printings of
articles by Reuters and other agency correspondents, heavy with
quotations of meaningless platitudes from the usual political
heavyweights.
The ‘pox on both their houses’ brigade
There is a smattering of opinion pieces in the category of ‘a pox on both their houses’.
International law academic, Ben Saul, (29 July) claims
‘both sides at some level want war … neither [side being] motivated by rational assessment of its own interests …’
TheNew York Times’ Thomas Friedman appears again, decrying (atypically for an Israeli partisan) the mutual belligerence (4 August).
Friedman’s forte is self-promotion, and he sashays between the offices
of Tel Aviv and Ramallah disdainful of their ignoring his wisdom.
Notable in this genre is the piece by noted defence analyst academic, Hugh White (5 August). This expert evidently has no idea of his subject.
‘Israel wants to live in peace … [Both sides’ long-term goals]
‘can only be achieved through negotiation. The shape of a deal is well
known – it is the two-state solution that was so nearly reached at Camp
David in 2000. But no deal can be done without both sides making
significant concessions ….’
What? Israel clearly has no interest in peace. Nothing was ‘nearly
reached’ at Camp David, and the two-state solution is an illusion. And
‘significant concessions’ from the Palestinians who have nothing other
than their existence to concede? White’s piece is white noise.
(image by John Graham)
The Israel-firsters
TheAge’s opinion pieces on Gaza are dominated by the Israel-firsters. It is instructive to list them.
Daley laments Obama’s inaction in the face of myriad enemies on the
march. Daley accuses Russia of being hysterical, but her piece is a
masterpiece of hysteria and fantasy. She moves on to Israel, whose
patience ‘has been exhausted’ in the face of terrorism. The article is a
travesty and a disgrace to journalism.
Jackson Diehl, Washington Post foreign affairs ‘specialist’ (23 July):
Ultimately, the Palestinians are always to blame. Diehl concludes:
‘The [new generation of Palestinian leaders, issuing from fair
elections] might turn out to be more or less willing to negotiate with
Israel or to lay the groundwork for statehood. But they would, at least,
end a dismal era in which one set of Palestinian leaders dodged
multiple peace proposals and the other engaged in futile wars.’
Dyrenfurth laments the current crowd running Israel, but his
unrepentant Labour Zionism glorifies the criminal zealots who set the
racist foundations that have naturally been bequeathed to Israel’s
current leaders. Dyrenfurth supports ongoing Jewish migration (‘aliyah’
— hasn’t he read Shlomo Sand?) which reinforces ethnic cleansing.
No serious academic throws around loosely the much-abused label ‘fascism’. But here Dyrenfurth calls Hamas a ‘fascistic death cult’, ‘committed to the annihilation of Israel’.
Wrong on both counts, and more besides. Dyrenfurth is ‘proud to call
myself a Zionist’, but a reasonable, rational Zionist is an oxymoron.
Ben-Moshe highlights insults and attacks on Jews following Israel’s
bombardment of Gaza. These are odious events but he is loose with his
claims regarding their extent. Thus he claims:
‘… in Paris where Jews were trapped inside a synagogue as anti-Israel protesters bayed for blood’.
He is appalled that Israel’s detractors talk of genocide, yet the
question of the label’s applicability remains pertinent. Expatriate,
Ilan Pappe, forced by intolerance from his country, talks of ‘incremental genocide’.
The attribution cannot be dismissed out of hand. Palestinians are being
displaced, murdered en masse because of their ethnicity.
Ben-Moshe is nonplussed that Israel could be accused of war crimes
when the mass murder of another 2000 Palestinians and the wholesale
destruction of infrastructure is merely an act of self-defence. The
problem, claims Ben-Moshe, is double standards with respect to Israel.
For once, Ben-Moshe is entirely right, but it’s Israel’s impunity, not
the ‘unreasonable’ criticisms of its actions, that constitutes the
double standards.
Gordis is irritated because the slaughter of Gazans has involved his
plane out of Tel Aviv being diverted from its normal course. Gordis
claims:
‘… none of this would have happened had Ariel Sharon not pulled
out of Gaza in 2005. Many are now convinced that if the pull-out from
Gaza was foolish, a parallel move on the West Bank would be suicidal. …
[The battle will have ] profound implications for the possibility
of peace with any of the Palestinians and the likelihood that Israelis
would willingly cede more territory after what they have witnessed this
month.’
The expropriation of Palestinian territory will continue on any excuse, thank you very much.
Paul Monk, ‘former [Australian] senior intelligence analyst’ (14 August):
Monk says, let’s transcend the heat and the prejudices. He offers us some:
‘… bedrock facts, easily checked. … If you do not take them into
account, you will not be able to hold an informed or responsible
conversation on the subject. Pity, partisan anger and frustration don’t
suffice.’
Monk’s bedrock facts turn out to be a series of whoppers. Monk refers
to the 1936 British Peel Commission, the first to contemplate the
partition of Palestine. Claims Monk, ‘The Arab leaders flatly rejected
it.’ They might well have, as the imposition of a Jewish state on an
already populated landscape was naturally unacceptable; in any case, the
plan was an absurdity.
The then Palestinian ‘National Committee’ proposed, in effect, a
‘one-state solution’; the Palestinians, being as yet colonial subjects
without rights, were naturally ignored.
But the Peel proposal (the ‘Jewish’ section was small but contained
the most fertile land) was deemed unacceptable by the Zionists,
particularly the influential extremist Vladimir Jabotinsky.
Monk misrepresents this ‘bedrock fact’, as he does his others
(including the evacuation of Gaza). The combination of claimed sober
objectivity and naked prejudice is spectacular. Monk’s objectivity is
also on display in a review in Quadrant, October 2010, of a book by Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed. Monk calls the book a tour de force. Its thesis?
‘… the root cause of both the conflict and the flight
of Palestinian Arabs from their homes in 1948 was not Zionism, but the
refusal of the Arab leadership to accept a deal on any terms with the
Jews about the existence of a Jewish state of any kind in Palestine.’
Is that so? A tour de force indeed. Monk had another article in Quadrant,
June 2010, ‘Why Should We Study History?’. The object of this article
was to urge a reclamation of Chinese history from control by Chinese
authorities. An excellent principle — one yet to be learned, it appears,
by Monk himself.
(map of the West Bank and Gaza strip in 2007 - courtesy Wikipedia)
Gordis recalls the 1956 murder of a kibbutz security guard by Gazans, and the speech by Moshe Dayan (then Defence Minister):
"Let us not delude ourselves from seeing the hatred that inflames
and fills the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who live
around us. Let us not avert our eyes, lest our arms weaken."
Gordis claims:
‘Those refugee camps [in Gaza] were not of Israel's making, but
still, Israelis recognised and were pained by the suffering on the Arab
side, caused by Arab losses in the first Arab-Israeli war, a war Israel
did not seek. Today, no less, Israelis understand Gazan anger at the
siege and are anguished by the civilian losses in Gaza.’
Hello? More ‘bedrock facts’ perhaps? Gordis continues:
'In recent years, many Israelis on the political left had
"forgotten" the loathing that surrounds them. It is Hamas that has
reminded them, Hamas that has rekindled Israeli resilience, with the
deaths. Young Israelis … must be willing to sacrifice to preserve what
their grandparents' generation built.'
Dana Amir, an Israeli living in Australia (31 August):
Claims Amir:
‘We could fight each other for another few generations, or we
could divide the land so both sides have a state. I'm proud that
successive Israeli governments, buoyed by majority opinion, have been
willing to do just that. We have engaged in peace talks, we have made
offers. …
'Israelis and Palestinians have a lot in common, and not just a
homeland. We both see in our history a large measure of victimhood. And
while I feel the Palestinians' plight is mostly their own making, that
is my opinion, and I can't take away from Palestinians how they view the
world. … But Palestinians have chosen to be defined by their
victimhood. And for as long as they continue to do so, they will not
take hold of their destiny but continue denying responsibility for their
fate or actions. …
'In the meantime, Israel will keep protecting its people, by
fighting when it needs to, but at all times offering an olive branch in
peace. Because Israel and its leadership know the Palestinians are there
to stay. It's just waiting for the Palestinian leadership to come to
the same realisation.’
Amir also opined:
‘Two weeks ago in this paper, an anonymous Israeli declared shame
in her citizenship. I'm proud that she has the right to do this, and
can do so safely, both here and in Israel. However, her anonymity was
insulting. Australia and Israel is not Gaza or Nazi Germany. Israelis
and Australian Jews can, and do, criticise Israel.’
Well hello? Wrong, Dana, dangerously wrong, wrong. The ‘anonymous Israeli’, now a refugee in Australia, was published (‘just a mother pleading for peace’) on 17 August:
‘Yes, I am ashamed of being an Israeli and violence is not the
answer. We must find another way before more innocent children are
killed. … I know I'm not the only Israeli who is ashamed. I just know
that most who are don't want to be accused of being anti-Semitic and
remain silent. I can't be labelled. I'm not anti-Semitic. I'm not
anti-Palestinian. I'm not a Zionist. I am a mother. A mother who is so
blessed to have my children safe in their beds at night. I will not
remain silent.’
Here we have a sizeable representative sample of the ethnic cleansing
fan club. Inexpert experts, dyed-in-the-wool local Zionist zealots and
dissembling Israelis conveniently ignorant of their country’s own
history. It’s all the fault of the Palestinians, especially Hamas.
Here, and with the ‘both sides to blame’ crowd, there is the odd
criticism of Israel, with crocodile tears shed for Gaza victims —but it
is a short, muffled insertion before the author moves on to the real
problem.
Did TheAge publish anybody with a pro-Palestinian perspective? Ah yes, one article alone (also in the SMH), by Peter George, long-time ABC Middle East Correspondent (6 August). Claims George:
‘If Israel is indeed facing an existential threat, then Netanyahu
bears the lion's share of blame. For years he has held all the cards in
the stand-off between Israelis and Palestinians and failed to use them
for his nation's long-term benefit. … Hand-in-hand with rejectionist
politicians, an aggressive settler movement and those who believe in an
expansionist Israel, Netanyahu has determinedly blocked Palestinian
aspirations for nationhood …
'Netanyahu needs to recognise that the other ‘terrorist’ organisation, Hamas,
also reflects legitimate Palestinian aspirations. … Its public position
was aggressively anti-Israeli but, while reporting from there, it was
made clear to me by Hamas
leaders that under the right circumstances the public and private
postures could be very different – as is always the case in
international disputes.
'But Netanyahu and his predecessor, Ariel Sharon failed to heed
the lessons that Rabin learnt in the '80s. Their policies of increasing
the stranglehold on Gazans in their prison and refusing to deal in any
way with their elected government, while tightening the fist of
occupation on the West Bank and East Jerusalem and leaving no hope for
peace have led directly to the latest series of catastrophes.’
Quite. One opinion piece sympathetic to the victims in over seven
weeks of carnage, not counting Israel’s West Bank brutality before Gaza
became the target.
It is instructive that Fairfax has never (repeat, never) reproduced an article from the two Israeli Haaretz
journalists, Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, who have repeatedly
highlighted the crimes of their country’s leadership. Curiously, an Age editorial (2 August) quoted Levy approvingly:
‘Commentator Gideon Levy wrote poignantly in Haaretz this week of
the "malignant cloud of denial" that appears to have settled on Israeli
society, a readiness to simply blame Hamas
for every atrocity, regardless of the actions of the Israeli military.
"Israelis' hands are clean and their consciences are quiet – so quiet
you could cry," Levy wrote. His is a timely warning of the dangers in
the constant resort to violence over the pursuit of peace.’
Then why not reproduce the occasional article by Levy or Hass? The
reaction from the Australian Israel-firsters would be immensely
educational.
Tomorrow - Part II(b): Dr Jones looks at the Jihadis for Jerusalemand the issue of former Fairfax journalist, Mike Carlton, who ran foul of the powerful Likud lobby.
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