Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The Schlocky Horror Show

OK, so you don't read Murdoch's Australian, but the conga line of suckholes who mislead us, or at least those in their ears, do.

So, to ensure you're in the loop, and not left wondering why, when the shit hits the fan, we too are in like Flynn, here are some snatches of its near constant, remorseless editorial drumbeat for war with Iran - and this for the month of January alone:

"Iran's brinkmanship over the Strait of Hormuz and its threat to choke off oil supplies, an act of hostility that would send energy prices soaring and further imperil the global economy, demands a determined and unflinching response from the international community... Iran must be curtailed now... The mullahs' malevolence is palpable. So is their scurrilous intrique... The international community must be resolute... Difficult though it is, Iran is a challenge from which the international community must not shrink." (Troubled oil on Iran's waters, 4/1/12)

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's grim warning... about the catastrophic consequences for world security of allowing the Iranian regime to acquire nuclear weapons could hardly be more timely or appropriate... [Sanctions] will work he says, only if accompanied by a clear statement from the international community, led by the US, that military action could follow if sanctions fail... Tehran is up in arms, threatening revenge over the assassination of another its top nuclear scientists. But given its flagrant defiance of world opinion, including 5 UN resolutions, it can hardly be surprised if it is being targeted in a clandestine war, most likely launched by Western and Israeli intelligence.... We need to face the fact that this country, run by a dangerous cabal of mullahs and led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, is on the cusp of being able to build nuclear weapons... There is no escaping the grim reality, as Mr Netanyahu says, that the world faces catastrophe if Iran gets nuclear weapons. Mr Netanyahu speaks from the perspective of the existential threat Iran poses to his country. But the entire world is threatened... Mr Netanyahu is right to suggest it must be made clear by the international community that if enhanced sanctions fail, military action will become a live option." (Iranian nuclear weapons a threat to global peace, 14/1/12)

"As an act of delusional bravado, the Iranian parliament's rush to impose an immediate embargo on oil sales to Europe as its way of pre-empting EU oil sanctions could hardly be more depressingly indicative of the mood of irrational defiance that persists in Tehran... Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, has indicated his government is again considering unilateral military action to prevent Iran from turning nuclear...In that warning by Mr Barak and the defiant response by Tehran to the EU's sanctions are the two sides of the challenge confronting the international community in trying to persuade the mullahs to pull back from the brink... [T]he mullahs must be left in no doubt the alternative to their obduracy and defiance is military action, something Israelis could well want to see happen in an election year when President Barack Obama may find himself left with no alternative but to support it... [U]nless the mullahs can be persuaded that this time sanctions really will cause major damage and that the doom-ladden scenario outlined by Mr Barak is a real possibility if all else fails, attempts to get Iran to negotiate are unlikely to get anywhere." (Hope for Iranian oil sanctions, 30/1/12)

Fair dinkum, is this The Schlocky Horror Show or what? And those mullahs, aren't they simply maleficent? Only in The Australian.

Beautiful Sets of Figures

Hanging with the big boys doesn't come cheap:

"Each of the 1550 Diggers on the ground in Afghanistan is costing Australian taxpayers $1 million. That was the figure for Australia's war effort last financial year - and it is only going to get bigger. Taxpayers will be hit with a new bill of more than $1 billion next year to fund the war in Afghanistan as the government struggles to conjure up a promised May budget surplus. The cost of the war hit $1.6 billion for the past financial year. By June 2013, the overall outlay for the Afghanistan campaign will reach more than $7.4 billion..." (Million-dollar Diggers: What each soldier in Afghanistan costs taxpayers, Ian McPhedran, Daily Telegraph, 18/1/12)

"Australia's spies now cost more than $1 billion a year to run ... according to a landmark review of the country's intelligence community... ASIO alone grew by 471% between 2001 and 2010 and this year will occupy new headquarters in Canberra worth $590 million..." (Soaring cost of spy force passes $1b, Dylan Welch, Sydney Morning Herald, 26/1/12)

Taxpayer? How stupid are you?

Monday, January 30, 2012

False Historical Narratives

The next time you hear some ignoramus out there prattling on about competing narratives in the context of the Palestine/Israel 'conflict', along the lines of the old cliche that there are always two sides to every story, recall the following, lucid analysis of the false historical narrative by evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers from his important new book, Deceit & Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others (2011):

"False historical narratives are lies we tell one another about our past. The usual goals are self-glorification and self-justification. Not only are we special, so are our actions and those of our ancestors. We do not act immorally, so we owe nothing to anyone. False historical narratives act like self-deceptions at the group level, insofar as many people believe the same falsehood. If a great majority of the population can be raised on the same false narrative, you have a powerful force available to achieve group unity. Of course, leaders can easily exploit this resource by coupling marching orders with the relevant illusion: German people have long been denied their rightful space, so Dass Deutsche Volk muss Lebensraum haben! (German people must have room in which to live!) - neighbors beware. Or the Jewish people have a divine right to Palestine because ancestors living in the general area some two thousand years ago wrote a book about it - non-Jewish occupants and neighbors better beware. Most people are unconscious of the deception that went into constructing the narrative they now accept as true. Nor are they usually aware of the emotional power of such narratives or that these may entrain long-term effects.

"There is a deep contradiction within the study of history between ferreting out the truth regarding the past and constructing a false historical narrative about it. As we have seen in this book, we make up false narratives all the time, about our own behaviour, about our relationships, about our larger groups. Creating one for one's larger religion or nation only extends the canvas. Usually a few brave historians in every society try to tell the truth about the past - that the Japanese army ran a vast, forced system of sexual slavery in World War II, that the United States committed wholesale slaughter against Koreans during the Korean War and against Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotians in the Vietnam War, that the Turkish government committed genocide against its successful sub-group of Armenians, that the Zionist conquerors of Palestine committed ethnic cleansing against some 700,000 Palestinians, that the United States has waged a long campaign of genocide and murder against American Indians, from the nation's founding to the murder by proxy of more than a half million in the 1980s alone, not counting before or after, and it has sought through military means to determine the fate of the entire New World for well over a century. But most historians will tell only some version of the conventional, self-aggrandizing story, and most people in the relevant countries will not have heard of (or believed) the factual assertions I just made.

"One noteworthy fact is that the younger the recipient of the knowledge, the greater the pressure to tell a false story. So we are apt to tell our children a heroic version of our past and reserve for our university students a more nuanced view. This of course strengthens the bias, since views learned early have special power and not everyone attends college, or studies history if they do. Fortunately, the young often appear naturally to resist parental and adult nonsense, so there is at least some tendency to resist and upgrade. Just the same, there are strong pressures on professional historians to come up with a positive story, in part to undergird what is taught more widely.

"Make no mistake about it. People feel strongly about these matters. One person's false historical narrative is another's deeply personal group identity - and what right do you have commenting on my identity in the first place? Many Turkish people may well feel that I have slandered their country regarding its Armenian genocide, while I believe I have merely told the truth. The same may be true (though less strongly) for some Japanese people regarding their country's practice of sexual slavery during World War II. Most Americans could hardly care less. So we wiped out the Amerindians - so what? So we repeatedly waged aggressive war on Mexico and stole nearly half their country. They probably deserved it. And, yes, since then we have fought a staggering series of wars ourselves and by proxies - even recently supporting genocide in such diverse places as Central America, Vietnam, Cambodia, and even East Timor, while blocking international action against it in Rwanda - but so the hell what? Only a left-wing nutcase would dwell on such minor details. Isn't that what great powers do, and aren't we the greatest?

"Israel is no different from any other country or group in having its own false historical narrative, and Israel's is especially important because it exacerbates a set of troubled international and intergroup relations. The narrative is also one that is accepted almost wholesale in the United States, the most powerful military nation in the world. As the old joke goes, why doesn't Israel become the 51st state? Because then it would have only 2 senators. Again, feelings run high. Some regard as anti-Semitic any attack on the behavior of Israel (or its underlying narrative). I regard this as nonsense and follow instead what seem to me to be the best Israeli (and Arab) historians - and their (largely Jewish) American counterparts - in describing a false historical narrative used to expand Israel at a cost to its neighbors by waging regular war on them to seize land and water (with near-constant US support), all in the name of fighting terrorism, while using state terrorism as the chief weapon. The narrative inverts reality: Israel wants only peace with its Arab neighbors (from as early as 1928), who to this very day reject peace at every turn and seek the total destruction of Israel and its Jewish population.

"But what are we to do? Yes, feelings run high, but false historical narratives are a critical part of self-deception at the group level, often with horrendous affects on others - if not on those practicing them. To discuss the subject we need examples. Are we to leave out this important topic because on any given example feelings are easily bruised and controversy aroused? I see no sense in this. A theory of self-deception is not of much use if it can't be applied to cases of actual human importance. Of course, I am more likely to be biased on these topics than on, say, the immunology of self-deception, but for me the risk of appearing foolish, indeed self-deluded, is preferable to the cowardice of not taking a position." (pp 215-218)

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Lord Gingrich

"One of my new year's resolutions was to ignore the Republican primaries in the United States, but I have broken it already. They have a horrible, irresistable fascination, not unlike watching a funnel web spider crawling across your lounge-room carpet. All those spray-on tans, spay-on first names - Mitt, Newt, Rick, Ron - and worse, those spray-on opinions confected out there on the lunar right. These people have spun so far off any rational policy axis that they make George W. Bush look like a Roosevelt liberal." (A field so scary that you can't turn away, Mike Carlton, Sydney Morning Herald, 21/1/12)

What more is there to say than that?

Plenty! Did you know, for example, that Newt Gingrich is a reincarnation of Britain's Lord Balfour? Allow me to explain.

I sort of half suspected it when Lord Gingrich blithely declared last month that the Palestinians are an "invented" people (See my 19/12/11 post Newt Gingrich, 'Historian'), an utterance, need I tell you, which took me back to the Balfour Declaration's "existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" (who just happened at the time - 1917 - to make up over 90% of Palestine's population), and Lord Balfour's later, blithe announcement that, as far as these barely discernible non-Jews were concerned: "[W]e do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of [Palestine]." (See my 11/11/11 post Guilty As Hell.)

And then when I learnt that Gingrich has a Zionist in his ear, one Sheldon Adelson, a multi-billionaire casino mogul, Bibi buddy, AIPAC and Gingrich campaign donor, I thought immediately of Chaim Weizmann (who was surely worse than any flea in Balfour's). Oh, and there was also Lord Gingrich's blithe promise to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem with quite cavalier disregard for the implications of same. But that still wasn't enough to catapult me into the ranks of those who believe in reincarnation. No, it was the following revelation that did it:

"The Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has promised to establish a permanent base on the moon by 2020 if elected... 'By the end of my second term [!], we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American', Reuters reported the presidential hopeful as saying. 'We will have commercial near-Earth activities that include science, tourism and manufacturing, because it is in our interest to acquire so much experience in space that we clearly have a capacity that the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching', he said... 'If we do it right, it'll be wild and it will be just the most fun you've ever seen', he said." (Gingrich pledges to relaunch space race, Sydney Morning Herald, 27/1/12)

No, that didn't really have me thinking of a Balfour-style Gingrich Declaration: Lord Gingrich's Government view with favour the establishment on the moon of a space base for the American people... etc. What really persuaded me were Lord Gingrich's words: 'If we do it right, it'll be wild and it will be just the most fun you've ever seen'.

Pure Balfour, my dear!

I mean, listen to Lord Balfour defend (in the House of Lords on 21 June 1922) what he called the "great ideal" of establishing on the moon - sorry - in Palestine a National Home for the Jewish people: "It may fail. I do not deny that this is an adventure. Are we never to have adventures? Are we never to try new experiments?"

Pure Gingrich, my dear!

Saturday, January 28, 2012

With My Own Eyes. Really!

Schlock horror:

"Syria is deploying large numbers of Hezbollah and Iranian snipers as 'military consultants' to murder anti-regime protesters, a senior government defector has told The Times... [Mahmoud Haj Hamad, the top auditor at the Defence Ministry said,] 'At the beginning there were hundreds, then when things started to get worse, they started to bring in more outsiders. The numbers were huge - in the thousands'. The foreign recruits are prized by the regime for their street-fighting abilities, having crushed dissent in Iran and Lebanon." ('Foreign snipers' in Syria, Nate Wright & James Hider, The Times/The Australian, 27/1/12)

But hang on a minnie! Let's think this one through. Back in 2009, at the height of the anti-government protests in Tehran, not only Hezbollah, but Hamas as well, were allegedly helping the Iranian regime to put them down. What's more, your Hezbollahs were alleged to have been riding motorcycles whilst doing so - presumably because the Iranians haven't quite mastered that species of tres sophisticated technology yet. (See my 23/6/09 post Hezbikies Ho!)

So what I want to know is, if Iran's Revolutionary Guards were so bloody incompetent in 2009 that they needed Lebanese and Palestinian ring-ins to do their dirty work for them, why would the Syrian regime today be importing the same incompetent Iranians to do its dirty work?

But that's not all. If Lebanon's Hezbollahs could cycle all the way to Iran in 2009, despite the absence of a common border, how come they're bikeless in Syria (which borders Lebanon) today?

And - need I ask? - where the hell's Hamas this time around?

Finally, Hezbollah is supposed to have cut its teeth crushing dissent in Lebanon? After Messrs Wright and Hider have revealed exactly what "dissent" it is that Hezbollah is supposed to have "crushed," perhaps they could tell us if that was that with or without Iranian and/or Syrian assistance?

Oh, and here's one for our intrepid journalists: Are you guys sure 'Mahmoud Haj Hamad' is really from Syria? He wouldn't by any chance be an Iraqi with a vivid imagination who answers to the name Curveball*, would he?

[*See my 17/2/11 post Words Fail Me.]

Israeli Pheromone Madness

I guess addiction is something we all have to struggle with in one form or another. Take Israeli pheromone abuse, for example.

Apparently, once and future (?) prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who once admitted mainlining this most addictive of substances - 'Support for Israel is in my DNA' - is struggling with the habit, albeit with little success so far:

"Mr Rudd, the current Foreign Minister, split with the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, over Palestinian efforts to win membership of the key United Nations cultural body, UNESCO, recommending that Australia abstain in the vote, only to be overruled. Professor Evans will argue [in an Australia Day speech] Mr Rudd has made a 'so far not completely successful' effort to recalibrate Australia's total support for Israel's security while at the same time encouraging a breakthrough in the peace process." (Rudd aims worthy of support, says Evans, Daniel Flitton, Sydney Morning Herald, 26/1/12)

Alas, present prime minister Julia Gillard shows no such inclination. In fact, far from kicking the habit, this sad, drug-addled creature is actually stocking up on supplies:

"Julia Gillard has moved to strengthen her already close relations with the Jewish community by giving her new business liaison adviser, Bruce Wolpe, the specific task of liaising with it. Some caucus colleagues think treating the Jewish community in this special way is unwise, even weird. One called it 'a curious decision'. Another said: 'This is amateurish. Singling out the Jewish community when there are so many other components of Australian society is hard to comprehend'. A third said that the level and quality of access for the Jewish community was already superior to that of others and this could further that perception." (PM's Jewish move queried, Michelle Grattan, The Age, 25/1/12)

Unfortunately, we never seem to learn from the American example. Over there, Congress has become a virtual Israeli pheromone den, and US presidents can be heard abjectly babbling about the 'unbreakable bond' which is the bane of their lives and reduces them to the pitiful wrecks we see before us on news bulletins. Is this really what we want here in Australia?

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Invasion Day 2012

"From humble beginnings, we have spread across this vast continent to become the vibrant, diverse and free nation that we are today. In populating this 'continent for a nation', we have joined the world's oldest continuing culture with other cultures from all over the globe. This population continues to grow, and with a proper concern for the natural environment, our economy remains prosperous." (Editorial: Celebrating our Australia Day, The Australian)

"The first Maliangapa stronghold to fall was the watered swampland of Torowoto. It became the property of Edward Henry of Victoria, a holding that also took in the long, deep waterhole on Yancannia Creek some 30 kms east of Torowoto. The white men built a log hut beside the waterhole as headquarters for the station that took its name from the creek. The owner did not come to live there himself, but left it to manager Hazlewood to superintend the stocking of the Maliangapa grasslands with sheep. The dark people disliked having to share the waterhole with the station men and the tribal land with the sheep. They had frequently in the past extended courtesies to white travellers journeying through their territory, but they raised serious objection to the takeover of their lands. They resented the discourtesy of this uninvited invasion of their privacy, and the arbitrary demands made upon them by their guests. When it became clear that the 'visitors' had every intention of making an indefinite stay, they rebelled. In fact they rebelled repeatedly, and angry spears flew, the Europeans fighting back through the chinks in the walls of their hut. There had already been some tribal unrest when W.H. Tietkens called at Yancannia in 1865, and met a young warrior decked out in paint and feathers, armed with spear, shield, and boomerang. Previously worsted in at least one engagement, he had accepted the name of 'Monkey' bestowed by the mocking whites, and learned to ride their horses and smoke their tobacco. Yet it required further chastisement to bring the Maliangapa to a proper state of submission. Some time after Tietkens had left the station, where an uneasy peace reigned, the warrior Monkey lost his life in another forlorn bid to burn down the log hut and kill its immovable occupants." (Lament for the Barkindji, Bobbie Hardy, 1976, pp 117-118)

"Neither the magic of the mekigar nor the potions of the white men could avert the moment when the Barkindji peoples were outnumbered on their own land, for as their numbers diminished so did those of the conquerors increase. That time came more quickly for some than for others. Probably until the gold rush to Mount Browne in 1881 the Maliangapa were not overwhelmed numerically, and could still cherish an illusion of themselves as an entity. But by the end of the 1860s there was no part of the frontages that was not entirely overrun with whites, not only on the stations that lined the riverbanks all the way from Wentworth to Fort Bourke, but in the spate of hotels and small port towns that came in the wake of the river steamers. In them the Barkindji of the Darling first experienced the joys of urban living, and the taste of grog that dulled the ache of despair." (ibid, p 141)

"It was the second generation of the subjugated who felt the all-engulfing silence, for their fathers of the pastoral era had not been similarly deprived. True, the quietly breathing hills of the Maliangapa had long been overrun with the sheep of Mount Poole Station, and the people been forced to bend, not without some coercion and contesting of rights, to the will of the white man, before that day in 1880 when a predatory prospector first had an inkling of the gold that was in them... Regardless of the dry remoteness of the supposed El Dorado, the white men flocked there in hundreds when the news leaked out. Many perished by the way, or in the typhoid-ridden shanties of Mount Browne. The survivors fanned out over the Maliangapa hills, and north and west beyond their borders. Most of the gold they found was a nine days' wonder, like the ephemeral settlements that sprang up and as quickly died, leaving the ravished hills to nurse their scars in solitude but for the omnipresent bleating of the sheep that not even the magic of the mekigar could dispel." (ibid, p 150)

"Wave after wave of subdivision of the land had thrown out the survivors of the Barkindji peoples on to the scrap-heap of white society. The Maliangapa at Tibooburra were the last communal group of any size to be dislocated, and this final coercive blow virtually completed the process. During the days of the station blacks the dark people had been working towards a compromise between the tribal condition of their fathers and the demands of their white conquerors. Even after the era of paternalistic squatters had ended, many were able to continue their forward drive as nomadic workers and stockmen on the remaining large holdings. But the story had been one of continuing displacement and disruption, and there had been no stability to nurture their adaptation. It was impossible for them to make the difficult transition from tribalism to Westernisation when the white man's hunger for land was so intense. They needed time and help to adjust to a system of economic values and techniques, to say nothing of social values and ideals vastly different from those of their own tradition. Instead, they were progressively squeezed out from the land that gave them continuity and contentment. Even though for many it was it was an adopted land and often defaced almost beyond recognition by pastoralism, they still drew strength from association with it, and from their own ability to live self-respecting Aboriginal lives within its borders, while working European-fashion to support themselves.

"Those who were transferred to the reserves faced artificial and cramped living, and were subjected to tension-producing coercions and unhealthy European influences. The education designed for their acclimatisation was neither palatable nor stimulating, and while the old people clung to a Dreamtime that was strictly yesterday's, the young aped the brittle modes that they saw on the surface of the new white 20th century. They could see no deeper, for the white man, despising them, kept them apart and separate from his own society. And with their continued but hardly surprising failure to conform to his standards, he despised them the more.

"Almost all trace of the tribal imprint on the land was obliterated. The Darling, the tribal Barka, was taken over now by white fishermen who wrote angry letters to the paper when outsiders came there to poach on their preserve. A local cleric attributed the sterling character of his outback parishioners to their British ancestry. The dust storms rose as the tribal land was ravaged. In 1938 the white Australians celebrated their 150th anniversary in occupation of the black man's land. There was a 'back to Wilcannia week' in which its first people, the Aborigines, took their place in the procession that wended its way down the main street. It was quite an occasion, and the Governor of New South Wales paid a visit to the town. At the local school he was presented with a carved Aboriginal shield. A less publicised item of news was that the local Parents' & Citizens' Association was currently up in arms regarding the presence of the shield-maker's descendants at the school.

"Celebrations were also held in Sydney that year. It was deemed appropriate that a corroboree should be staged on this gala occasion, and a combined party from the Brewarrina and Menindee missions was invited to give the performance. Their conduct throughout the tour was exemplary, a gratified Board was able to report, and the little troupe played a prominent part in the landing ceremony at Farm Cove and the subsequent pageant that traversed the city streets. These dancers who performed so courteously on a white man's holiday were the only Aborigines left in New South Wales who had even a glimmering of the old corroboree steps, for their subjection had come long after the Cammeraygal and other tribes around Sydney were destroyed. Yet in their own homeland much water had already flowed down the Barka since its name was changed to Darling. Some day perhaps the survivors of the Barkindji would win through to enrich the values of a more mature and less arrogant Australia. Their children are still waiting for this to happen." (ibid, pp 221-222)

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Howler 2

"People will die. They died the last time the navy forced boats back to Indonesia and they will die the next. They have always died. That's why the navy hates these operations and that loathing is deep in the DNA of the service. It goes back to the violent blockade carried out by the Royal Navy before and after the Second World War to prevent Jews reaching Palestine. Jews were trapped in Europe. Jews and sailors died at sea. The film is called Exodus." (Turn the boats back & people will die - Abbott knows this)

These are the opening two paragraphs of David Marr's otherwise relevant and accurate analysis in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald of the latest twist in the LibLab muscle-flexing competition over which party can be tougher on asylum seekers - Tony Abbott's declaration that, if elected prime minister at the next election, he'll order the Navy to turn refugee boats back to Indonesia.

Unfortunately, Marr has once before put his foot in his mouth with this Exodus-asylum seeker analogy, but, presumably in the absence of anyone (MERC excepted) having drawn his attention to what amounts essentially to a caricature of postwar events off the Palestinian coast, he's gone and done it again. Getting it wrong once may be excusable, but this reappearance of his initial howler does no credit to his reputation as a serious scholar. (See my 29/12/10 post Howler)

The sad fact is that Marr obviously still believes - in 2012! - that Exodus (1958), Leon Uris' best-selling Zionist propaganda novel, and the Otto Preminger film (1960) of the same name based on it, is historically supportable.

Whatever the worth of his expert opinion on the history and plight of asylum seekers heading by boat to these shores from Indonesia, Marr's portrayal of the 1940s Exodus phenomenon as a simple matter of desperate Jews with nowhere else to go up against an implacable British government presumably presided over by some earlier British incarnation of Tony Abbott is nothing more than an ill-considered retrojection of the Australian present into the Palestinian past. Had these same Exodus Jews been off the coast of England, knocking on England's door, Marr's analogy might have been on surer footing, but, in that event, it would have been the Zionist movement, not the British Navy, resisting their entry.

Hypothetical historical scenarios aside, what Marr's simple-minded Exodus version of history overlooks is the then Zionist leadership's cruel and cynical campaign to use displaced European Jews as a propaganda weapon in their violent struggle to dislodge their former ally, Britain, from Palestine and gain the upper hand there over the majority indigenous Palestinian Arab population.

Now I've dealt with this matter before, particularly in my 17/6/10 post Cannon Fodder for Zion: Exodus 1947, but seeing Marr's specifically referenced the film Exodus this time, I can do no better than clarify the matter by quoting from M.M. Silver 's recent study, Our Exodus: Leon Uris & the Americanization of Israel's Founding Story (2010):

"The Exodus incident, in its real and fictionalized guises, was about politics. Throughout the real-life saga of the Exodus, the Zionist leadership grasped its political implications. 'From the very start', writes Tom Segev, the Exodus ship affair 'was intended as a public-relations tool for the Zionist movement'. For instance, throughout the... affair Palmach chief Yigal Allon displayed a keen awareness of its political and public relations utility. Allon cabled Palmach comrades in Europe, saying 'it's inconceivable that Jews can be expelled from Eretz Israel without their doing the utmost to resist deportation'. Much like the fictional Ari Ben Canaan, Allon understood that while Jews would need to fight to win political independence, the value of this particular battle over Exodus was not to be measured in terms of what actually happened on the boat. Its worth was the way waves lapped from the ship in public consciousness. Resistance to the British, Allon explained in his June 21, 1947, cable, "should make the process of deportation as difficult as possible, since this, anyway, is one of the less pleasant tasks an oppressive administration has to fulfill. Now and then resistance has to rekindle the support of our people in the Diaspora, who might be able to help us and to awaken the conscience of those nations of the world who have not yet lost theirs'.

"In the battle for public perception, one of the Zionists' strongest cards was the ship's name. A brilliant, and highly deliberate, designation chosen by Moshe Sneh, the head of Mossad le-Aliyah Bet (the organization that spearheaded the illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine), the name Exodus reinforced a contemporary understanding that the Jewish campaign for survival and rebirth had universal implications... In the annals of illegal Zionist immigration to Eretz Israel, the name Exodus was uniquely rooted in biblical ground recognizable to Christians and Jews alike. The name powerfully associated the age-old Jewish struggle for freedom with the uplifting sense of democratic triumph in the postwar world. 'The name is a stroke of genius', noted the highly communicative director of the Jewish Agency's Political Department, Moshe Shertok (Sharett). 'This name by itself says more than anything which has ever been written about it [the boat's story]'.

"Few parties connected to the Exodus affair questioned the morality of relating to the 4,500 DPs as instruments operated to promote political visions of Mandatory Palestine's future. Few wondered whether it was cynical to exploit the fate of Holocaust survivors for political purposes. In this important respect, fiction followed real life. In Uris's fictional Exodus, Kitty Freemont remonstrates here and there about how Ari Ben Canaan is an 'inhuman beast', after the Yishuv partisan orchestrates an 85-hour hunger strike to stir world sympathy for the boat... Overall, however, Ari's act is lauded in the book as consummate politics, and Kitty, his American admirer, comes to accept the necessity of his methods. Similarly, in the real-life Exodus episode, the political and public relations effects of the DPs plight took precedence over their actual suffering - virtually nobody among the Zionists or their supporters identified this tendency as cynicism... The Jewish Agency, functionally the government of prestate Israel, was a political institution, and the politics of the Exodus affair were inextricably tied to calculations about world public opinion. The intensity of the Exodus ha'apalah struggle was calibrated strictly in line with public responses. As soon as Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders judged that UNSCOP's officials had turned the corner and were formulating recommendations in favor of a Jewish state, they knew that the time had come to scale back the Exodus struggle." (pp 78-80)

David, no third time, please!

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

American Clueless

"About 18 months before I arrived in Iraq, one of my predecessors had ordered My Arabic Library, $88,000 worth of books, an entire shipping container. My Arabic Library was a Bush-era, US government-wide project to translate American books, so we now have Tom Sawyer, The House of the Seven Gables, and Of Mice & Men in Arabic. The Embassy had big plans for the books, claiming, 'It is so important that the children of Baghdad, the next generation of leaders of Iraq, obtain basic literacy skills. A love of learning and literacy will mean better job opportunities for them when they grow up. They will be able to better support their families and help build a more prosperous Iraq'.

"Everyone forgot about the books until we learned that a truck was bringing them in from Jordan. After our prayers that the driver would abandon the truck en route failed, my team was stuck with the problem of what to do with a container of books that no one wanted. Apparently, there was little interest among Iraqi schools in reading The Crucible or Moby-Dick, as the books didn't fit into their centralized curriculum. I was charged with getting rid of them, to anywhere; the lucky winner needed only a truck. We cajoled a nearby school to take the whole mess from us as a personal favor. Their only condition was that they would not have to do the loading themselves, so that is how a couple of us ended up humping books into a flatbed truck while a high school principal and a local truck driver sat in the shade smoking, watching us. We heard later from a third party that, failing to sell the books on the black market, the principle just dumped them behind the school." (We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts & Minds of the Iraqi People, Peter Van Buren, 2011, p 1)

"The newspaper men to whom I talked in Syria were particularly difficult. They were bitterly nationalistic and bitterly opposed to Israel and they badgered me with questions about why I should support the Israeli cause. 'The Balfour resolution [sic] for establishment of a Jewish homeland was accepted by the United States and Great Britain after the First World War', I usually replied. 'This action encouraged the buying of land by the Jews on the assurance that a homeland would be created for them in Palestine. I feel that it practically committed our government to assist in the creation of a government there eventually, because there cannot be a homeland without a government'. The Syrian reporters were never satisfied with this answer and the most I ever persuaded them to admit was that I was honestly expressing my point of view. That, however, obviously did not mean to them that I was entitled to a point of view on this controversial and important subject.

"One evening in Damascus we had dinner with the head of of the Syrian foreign office in a kind of night club and restaurant. There were a number of guests and I noticed that a handsome, uniformed man who sat opposite me at the table seemed to be someone of importance. 'Who is that gentleman?' I asked the man sitting next to me in a low voice. He looked startled and raised his finger to his lips. 'That', he said in a whisper, 'is the dictator of Syria, General Fawzi Selo'.

"The General seemed to have little to say and did not even speak to me during the meal, so I paid no more attention. But after dinner, with no preliminaries but with the air of a man accustomed to giving commands, he walked around to me and said: 'Madame, you have been very friendly to Israel'. 'Yes', I replied, 'I am friendly to all. I am equally friendly to your people'. 'But', he persisted with some sign of irritation, 'you have worked for Israel!' 'That is true', I said. 'When I think a thing is good, I also think it should be given help'. He did not reply, but he stared at me with what I thought was anger. Then he turned on his heel and, without another word, walked away." (On My Own, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1959, pp 119-121)

Monday, January 23, 2012

No Whispering in the Heart?

You may have noticed that one of Australia's most prominent Zionists, lawyer Mark Leibler, is heavily involved in the current push to recognise indigenous Australians and remove racially discriminatory provisions in the Constitution:

"Mark Leibler, better known as a leading corporate and tax lawyer at Arnold Bloch Leibler, was co-chair, with Patrick Dodson, of the expert panel. Its report, Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution, was released yesterday with a national referendum to be held either before, or at, the next federal election next year. Speaking to Prejudice yesterday, Leibler said he was asked by the Prime Minister to take on the co-chair role in 2010. 'I felt it was important and I agreed', he said." (Constitution report leaves Leibler proud, Susannah Moran, Prejudice/The Australian, 20/1/12)

As he explained recently in an Age opinion piece, Leibler felt the issue was very important and agreed to Gillard's request for very personal reasons:

"Racism turns your life into a lottery. It reduces your ability to control your destiny or make decisions for yourself. To stay or go becomes a matter of life or death. Racism condemned my maternal grandparents to being murdered in Auschwitz. In 1939, it drove my parents from Belgium and the Nazis to find sanctuary in Australia." (Racism still shadows our history, 20/1/12)

A cris de coeur, indeed. And so beautifully put. But something nags.

As Leibler wrote this, did he for one moment pause to consider that whole generations of Palestinians have had their lives turned upside down so that, in addition to his parents' Australian sanctuary, he (and they) could also call Israel home? Did it cross his mind for so much as a nanosecond that Israel is because Palestine isn't? Did he perish the thought that maybe, just maybe, Palestinians too are the victims of a profoundly racist project?

Unsurprisingly, following his deeply felt prelude, fine, noble sentiments followed:

"As far as the constitution is concerned [Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people] are invisible; no mention of their heritage and cultures; no mention of their place as the first inhabitants of this country and as the world's oldest continuing cultures. How did this happen? Because the constitution, understandably, reflects the values and beliefs of the time it was drafted. The founding fathers'... perspectives - including those on race - were of the 19th century, not the 21st... Today, there is no more pressing need than to remove the sections in the constitution dealing with race and to end the exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from the document and, at the same time, acknowledging their place, cultures and languages as integral to our nation's identity."

But did it ever enter the mind of this Zionist advocate that, where the indigenous Arab inhabitants of Palestine are concerned, Zionists have written the book on invisibility - whether it's a 'people without a land for a land without a people', or Golda Meir's "non-existent" Palestinians or Zionist lobby-funded Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's "invented" Palestinians, or a myriad other variations on the theme?

Dit it occur to him how so 19th century is the idea of an ethnographic state such as Israel, a state which excludes ethnically-cleansed Palestinian refugees simply because they're not Jewish, but hoovers up any Jew, anywhere on the planet, even ferreting out and uprooting so-called 'lost tribes', proclaiming that the land of Israel is their exclusive and God-given birthright?

Did he possibly reflect that there is no more pressing need than to remove the panoply of apartheid legislation, beginning with the thoroughly racist Law of Return, which underpins Israel's 'Jewishness' and forever excludes non-Jewish Palestinians from becoming integral to its identity?

I seriously doubt it.

I'm reminded here of the 19th century Sydney barrister, Richard Windeyer. Australian historian Henry Reynolds describes a man as dismissive of Aboriginal rights to the land of Australia as any latter day Zionist is of Palestinian rights to Palestine.

Windeyer, writes Reynolds, in the context of an 1842 debate, "took particular exception to the proposition that the Europeans 'had no right to take the land'. That claim, he argued, begged the whole question 'which is whether the land be theirs'. Europeans who ventured into the interior of Australia had met Aboriginal people and had assumed the land was 'more or less appropriated'. But the tribes didn't actually inhabit the land. Rather they ranged over it. 'That they have never tilled the soil, or enclosed it, or cleared any portion of it, or planted a single tree, or grain or root, is acknowledged'. As a consequence there was no ownership. Aboriginal occupation of the land did not 'by the law of nature establish any title to the substance of the soil'. It was, indeed, 'the height of absurdity to talk of the title of these men of the woods to anything not under the control of their bludgeons'... In a sweeping peroration Windeyer declared: The consideration of the rights of the Aborigines to the enjoyment of their laws and customs, to the soil of the country, to its wild animals is done. The argument is sound, the chain of reasoning is complete'." (This Whispering in Our Hearts, 1998, pp 20-21)

But something still nagged at the man. As Reynolds puts it:

"And yet that was not the final word. His powerful analysis had not satisfied his own conscience. 'How is it our minds are not satisfied?' he asked. 'What means this whispering in the bottom of our hearts?' (ibid)

No such whispering in your heart, Mark Leibler?

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Why So Shy?

So shy, apparently, is Melbourne "businessman and philanthropist" (AJN, 20/1/12) Albert Dadon about his Australia Israel Leadership Forum (AILF) - which, in its latest manifestation, has grown like good old Topsy into the Australia Israel United Kingdom Leadership Forum (AIUKLF) - that a complete list of those attending its January love-in in Jerusalem cannot be had - not even on Albert's very own Australia Israel Cultural Exchange (AICE) website!

A cast of thousands, both Aussies and Brits, with more Israeli prime ministers, past and present, than you can shake a stick at, and with 'is Lordship Tony Blair 'imself in attendance, and we barely know who fronted!

All we get are gnomic references in The Australian Jewish News such as this: "There was also a raft of international journalists on hand, including The Australian newspaper's foreign editor Greg Sheridan." (Bibi, Blair headline at leadership forum, 20/1/12)

Rafts of international journos, slews of political 'talent', and we the public, their adoring readers/fans, know virtually nothing about it, dammit!

Why isn't the corporate press crowing about this celebrity confab? Why must we first scour a Sheridan column, or stumble across a disclaimer at the foot of a piece by the Herald's now twice-rambammed Asia-Pacific editor, Hamish McDonald (see my 13/1/12 post Ain't love Grand?), to discover even the mere existence of this muted manifestation of movers, this shadowy shindig of shakers? Why must it be left for a humble citizen journalist, such as myself, to scratch around the internet in a near vain effort to round up the revellers?

My gleanings so far reveal only that, in addition to Sheridan and McDonald, "British and Australian lawmakers from both sides of politics were represented. Among the Australian contingent in Jerusalem was Mark Arbib, federal minister for sport & assistant treasurer; Jewish members of Parliament Michael Danby and Joshua Frydenberg... The Britons included Alistair Burt, minister for the Middle East, and Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard." (Joint Australian, British delagation meets Netanyahu, Fayyad, m.jta.org, 17/1/12)

Minister for the Middle East? Is this a first? You couldn't make this stuff up!

OK, so much for the event itself. In Australia, how's the AIUKLF bearing fruit?

I've already registered Sheridan's two lemons and noted that by McDonald (See Ain't Love Grand, 13/1/12, and Faulty Connection, 14/1/12), but observe that the latter's back in today's Sydney Morning Herald with another - Life in Israel an ultra-orthodox paradox - that, in addition to its decidedly desiccated substance, fairly gives me the following pips, which I've taken the trouble to extract for you:

"In Israel itself, the old mix of nation-building pioneers - Ashkenazi Jews steeped in European high culture, kibbutzim making a wilderness bloom, doughty women doing what were then 'men's jobs' everywhere else - is fading fast."

Now if that ain't an A-Z collection of Zionist cliches I don't know what is.

"Internally, the dominance of the right and ultra-orthodox are removing bit by bit Israel's old liberality."

Funny how none of that old Israeli liberality managed to benefit the Palestinians, eh?

"Israelis say Abbas and his non-party Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, can't modify the 'right of return' (to pre-1948 homes) in their demands, and still indoctrinate children that Israel has no right to exist (an accusation disputed by European Union and British monitors of West Bank schools)."

I suppose the bit about EU monitors is about as good as we're going to get from Maccas.

So this is the kind of AIUKLF-generated tripe we're reading in both wings of the corporate press here in Australia. Can't imagine what UK readers are having dished up at the moment by the rest of that mysterious raft of international journalists.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The Pop-Up Propagandist

On the rare occasion when corporate press reporting of Palestine/Israel gets real an interesting pattern emerges:

Take, for example, Fairfax Middle East correspondent Ruth Pollard's informative and harrowing snapshot of Israeli colonial metastization in the West Bank in Monday's Sydney Morning Herald:

First there's the statistics, giving the reader some idea of the overall scale of the problem:

" A 20% rise in settlement construction across the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the past year has taken land critical to the creation of a Palestinian state and placed a two-state solution further away than ever a report has found. Building has started on at least 1850 housing units, while there were 3500 units already under construction, the Israeli settlement watch group Peace Now said. Eleven new settlements - home to 2300 settlers and 680 structures - were recognised by Israel last year when it legalised those outposts (outposts are created when a settlement expands to a new area of land). A further 1577 units were flagged as part of the Ministry of Housing's official list of pending tenders, the report found. 'The Netanyahu government is promoting several plans precisely in disputed areas which could prevent the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel', Peace Now found..." (Palestinians live in fear for their lives as two-state solution hopes fade)

Then there's the account of Israeli settler wolves descending on the Palestinian fold, giving the reader an insight into what life is like for Palestinians at the pointy end of the process:

"The West Bank village of Asira, just south of Nablus, knows too well the challenges of living under Israel's military occupation in the shadow of a settlement. Villagers said they were consistently attacked by residents of the neighbouring settlement of Yizhar, as often as once a week. But the house that bears the brunt of those attacks is the Maklouf residence. It is the last home in the village and closest to the settlement. The family has an extraordinary collection of home movies, shot by their mother on a hand-held video recorder, that depict life on the front line of settler violence. In video after video, seen by the Herald, armed settlers, their faces covered by scarves, charge down the hill towards the Maklouf home, firing guns, throwing stones and weilding iron bars, and screaming obscenities against the prophet Muhammad, the family and the village. One settler rampage that began at 12.15am on December 12 lasted at least half an hour, the family said. The family - mother Khadra, father Ibrahim and their 6 children - said they thought they would die. Desperate calls to the Israeli Defence Forces, stationed just kilometres away, went unanswered as the group of at least 100 settlers surrounded them, throwing rocks and bricks at their house and banged on their walls with iron bars. 'You cannot imagine the fear', Khadra Maklouf said, 'The girls were screaming... I was terrified somebody would get shot and killed'. Ibrahim, her husband, said: 'Now the younger boys are too frightened to use the toilet, and the girls will not even go to the kitchen to get a glass of water. We are worried whenever they are playing outside that the settlers might harm them'." (ibid)

Finally, along with the stats and human interest material, but always in the next day's edition and on the letters page, there's your pop-up Zionist propagandist, with his grab-bag of bald assertions, half-truths and evasions, taking Pollard to task for alleged sins of omission, the purpose being, of course, to somehow blunt the impact of her report. And in this instance, you'll be surprised to know, it's Vic Alhadeff, CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies:

"Ruth Pollard tells only part of the story. The reported attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers are condemned unequivocally by the Israeli government and perpetrators are regularly prosecuted. As for the settlements, Israel has demonstrated repeatedly that settlements have never been an obstacle to peace. It has withdrawn from settlements in Gaza, Sinai and the West Bank itself. And the last 6 Israeli prime ministers, including the incumbent, are publicly committed to a two-state solution." (More to the story, 17/1/12)

Mind you, the pop-up propagandist is really only an integral component of fair dinkum news stories on Palestine/Israel. Search for him following an item on any other international issue and you'll search in vain. Interesting, eh?

Now lest anyone accuse me of a bald assertion of my own, to whit, that Alhadeff's peddling propaganda here, I offer the following thoughts on his letter:

1) Reported attacks! Why, reported attacks are hardly attacks at all, right?

2) The Israeli government condemns the attacks and 6 Israeli PMs are publicly committed to two states, but given such supposed striving for what is right and proper, isn't it amazing how the prospect of a Palestinian state, as Pollard's report indicates, is receding at a rate of knots as the years roll by? Unless, of course, Alhadeff's really talking about an Israeli state and an Israeli settler state but is simply too shy to let on.

3) The key to Israeli condemnations, public commitments and like blather was brought to us back in 2004 by Pollard's predecessor Ed O'Loughlin, who quoted Peace Now's Dror Etkes' classic advice: "We shouldn't believe in anything that is said. We should just monitor what happens on the ground." (Israel ploughs on with huge settlement, 14/8/04)

4) Ploughing on, what about those regularly prosecuted perpetrators? What's really going on there? Are Israeli jails filling with settler thugs and pogromists? Hardly: "According to OCHA, 80-90% of the files opened against Israeli settlers following attacks on Palestinians and their property are regularly closed by the Israeli police without prosecution." (Palestine Monitor Factsheet-Update, 15/3/10)

But, you might say, that was then, what about today? These days your Israeli settler pogromists even attack their IDF minders. Surely, you'd think, for that they'd be locked up and the key thrown away, right? Think again: "[Major General Avi Mizrahi] expressed frustration at the treatment of the settlers who commit violence. 'The entire circle has to be closed from the police to the prosecution... If yesterday I had arrested 20 people here, it is clear to you that they would have been released next morning'." (Jewish settlers storm Israeli base, John Lyons, The Australian, 15/12/11)

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Ashrawi Redux?

Remember how, back in 2003, Australia's Zionist lobby did its block over the Sydney Peace Foundation's award of its Peace Price to Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi, and how the resulting furore embroiled a host of prominent figures, including the Premier of NSW, Bob Carr, the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Lucy Turnbull, and Sydney City Councillor, Kathryn Greiner?

Unfortunately for the lobby, which naturally prefers night to day, the Ashrawi affair (if I may call it so) gained wide media coverage, including a remarkable full-page feature (in The Australian of all places) by journalist Elisabeth Wynhausen. Wynhausen's expose began thus:

"The 2003 Sydney Peace Prize fracas reveals how a powerful minority of Jews stifle debate." (Take the free out of speech, 4/11/03)

It ended with the clearly fed-up director of the Sydney Peace Foundation, Stuart Rees, saying:

"[However many times] I try to explain why we made the award to Ashrawi, our critics come back with the same questions: Am I an apologist for Palestine? Am I against the Jewish community? I've taken stands on issues before and got some static, but not this onslaught, bullying and intimidation."

That the firestorm whipped up by lobby bullying ended up singing the firebugs who started it was as good as admitted at the time by the then editor of The Australian Jewish News, Vic Alhadeff, who was quoted by Wynhausen as complaining that:

"The whole thing 'has spun out of contol. The Jewish community has become the focus of this issue rather than whether or not Dr Ashrawi is a worthy recipient. It looks like the Jewish community is anti-free speech when the reverse is true."

I recall here the Ashrawi affair because the latest outbreak of Zionist bullying and intimidation, centring on SBS's screening of The Promise, has today finally surfaced in the Fairfax press:

"Australia's peak Jewish body is seeking to halt promotion and DVD sales of the SBS series, The Promise, a dramatic portrayal set in Israel it has likened to Nazi propaganda. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) said the British-made drama, inspired by accounts of British soldiers who served in Palestine during the 1940s, was anti-Semitic and in direct violation of of the SBS code covering prejudice, racism and discrimination... In its 31-page complaint to the SBS ombudsman, the ECAJ said historical inaccuracies and 'consistently negative portrayals' of The Promise's central Jewish characters 'without any redeeming virtues' compared to the 1940 Nazi film Jud Suss, as well as Palestinian propaganda that 'all Jews are collectively guilty of the wanton shedding of innocent blood'. It contended that identifiably Muslim characters would not be similarly portrayed by SBS. In a letter to the broadcaster, ECAJ executive director, Peter Wertheim, said the complaint also related to any marketing, promotion or sale of the DVD, which would be 'inappropriate' while the determination was pending. 'Nothing should be done by SBS or SBS Shops which pre-empts or presumes the outcome of your final decision', he wrote." (SBS fields complaints over series set in Israel, Leesha McKenny, 17/1/12)

It will be interesting to see where this leads. Will it receive the media attention it deserves? Will it click with those who understand the vital importance in a free society of vigorously resisting attempts to undermine the right to freedom of speech? Or will McKenny's welcome report be it? A lot, of course, depends on whether or not SBS continues to show the kind of spine which led to the screening of The Promise in the first place. For the nonce, SBS appears to be playing a straight bat:

"An SBS spokeswoman said the broadcaster had received a high level of positive and negative viewer feedback to the series. She said that it was expected the ECAJ's complaint would be resolved well in advance of the February 8 DVD release, 'it is unnecessary to provide any undertaking regarding the DVD release. SBS will assess its position in relation to the sale of the DVDs once the complaint has been resolved', she said." (ibid)

Whatever the upshot, it is to be hoped that the ECAJ intervention will result in increased publicity and sales (even if online) for this most worthy DVD.

PS (18/1/12): Three letters in support of The Promise were published in today's Age. Curiously, no such letters appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.
PPS (19/1/12): One letter appeared in today's SMH.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Faulty Connection

Those of you - the vast majority - who would rather gouge your eyes out than read Murdoch's Australian will have remained blissfully unaware that Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, while on his latest Israeli rambamming with Albert and the lads (see my previous post), scored a one-on-one with Benjamin Netanyahu in his office:

"Benjamin Netanyahu is cast as the ultimate 'heavy' of the Middle East. But after a long discussion in this small office, a discussion sandwiched between the Indian foreign minister and a delegation of powerful US congressmen in the afternoon, Netanyahu extends our time together for a few minutes because there's one thing he likes to show visitors. He leads me over to his window. 'You see this', he points to a small collection of stones taken from an archaeological dig. The stones are dated from nearly 3000 years ago. This is the signet ring of a Jewish official of that time. And the official's name was Netanyahu'. The Israeli leader never misses an opportunity to emphasise the long, deep connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel." (Making his case on Iran's menace, 14/1/12)

Of course this huckster never misses an opportunity to hawk his version of 'the true cross' or 'the true shroud' by way of harping on the long, deep connection of your Danbys and your Dadons to the land of Israel. He probably does it in his sleep.

To what must have been squirming embarrassment for those present possessing critical faculties more advanced than that of a retarded chimp, 'Bibi' shamelessly invoked his 'sacred' relic before the UN General Assembly last September:

"In my office in Jerusalem, there's an ancient seal. It's a signet ring of a Jewish official from the time of the Bible. The seal was found right next door to the Wailing Wall, and it dates back 2,700 years, to the time of King Hezekiah. Now there's a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu. That's my last name. My first, Benjamin, dates back a thousand years to Benjamon - Binyamin - the son of Jacob who was also known as Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Samaria 4,000 years ago, and there's been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since."

To broadcast the fact that this faker's father was actually Benzion Mileikowsky* of Warsaw, that his grandfather, Nathan Mileikowsky, also of Warsaw, was a Zionist fanatic who used the name Netanyahu as his nom de plume, and that, in the Zionist fashion, Benzion jettisoned his Polish name on entering Mandate Palestine and replaced it with the Hebrew 'Netanyahu' is to assail Benjamin Netankowsky's mummery with inconvenient truths, no doubt anathema to the pious and gullible Sheridan, even assuming he'd heard them before. The truth is that Sheridan's as credulous as any gormless medieval pilgrim being shown a piece of 'the true cross' or a scrap of 'the true shroud'.

The most interesting aspect of Benjamin Netankowsky's performance, however, is not his 2,700 year-old signet ring, but that which it's supposed to signify - Sheridan's long, deep connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

Of course, this stock-in-trade of Zionist mumbo jumbo has about as much relationship with reality as Netankowsky with the ancient 'Netanyahu', or the rest of us with Adam and Eve. No matter, it's been around as long as political Zionism itself and even managed to find its way into the preamble of Britain's Mandate for Palestine, thus illustrating the fact that, for Zionists and many of their gentile supporters and dupes, incantatory versions of 'the true cross' are the real thing.

Our indispensible guide to the drafting of the Mandate is, of course, its pre-eminent historian, JMN Jeffries. Keeping in mind that it was drafted, as Jeffries puts it, "in the quiet between the Government and the Zionists, mostly by the Zionists, and then was issued under cover of the League of Nations, as though it were the result of the collected debates of the world's lawgivers," the 'historical connection' incantation first appeared in a June 1919 draft as "... recognized the historical connection of the Jews to Palestine and the claim which this gives them to find a national home in that country," suspected by Jeffries as coming from the pen of Lord Balfour. Typically, the Zionists, who, given the proverbial inch always reach for the mile, wanted the even stronger "historical title" substituted. What they got, in late 1919, was a reference to the recognition of "the historical connection with Palestine and the claim which this gives [the Jewish people] to reconstitute Palestine as their National Home (Erez Israel)." This had vanished by June 1920, with Jeffries suggesting, however, that it was more than made up for by the insertion in the draft-Treaty (with Turkey) of the Balfour Declaration, but was restored in August 1920. Following US State Department intervention, it vanished again in October, only to reappear the following month as: "Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." In December 1920, the final draft Mandate for Palestine appeared with the foregoing clause in its preamble and was published in The Times in February 1921. In August of that year it was tabled - but not debated - in parliament, and came into being by a resolution of the Council of the League of Nations in September 1923.

"The sincerity of the business," writes Jeffries, "and the extent of the belief of the Government in this 'historic connection' plea, can be gauged from the fashion in which the phrase appeared in one draft as the basis of everything, and in the next was removed as superfluous." (Palestine: The Reality, 1939, p 531)

As its appearance in Sheridan's interview with Netankowsky indicates, the long, deep connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel mantra remains, for Zionist deadenders such as the Israeli prime minister and his fawning Australian acolyte, the very bedrock of Zionist dogma, despite the devastating assaults on its fundamental premise by such scholars as Shlomo Sand, Keith W. Whitelam and others.

Surely, no belief in medieval religious relics could have been as strong.

[* See my 24/9/11 post Benzion, My Father.]

Friday, January 13, 2012

Ain't Love Grand?

Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, ace foreign editor of The Australian has just returned from a tryst with his beloved. Although he's still reeling from the encounter, and the sweat has hardly dried, it so rankles when everyone else reckons she's fugly as:

"I have been spending a week in Israel, and visiting some of the Palestinian territories, under the auspices of the Australia Israel United Kingdom Leadership Dialogue*. This quite unique private organisation is the creation of Melbourne businessman Albert Dadon. Remarkably, the dialogue met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and former British prime minister Tony Blair, although those meetings were off the record. Spending time in Israel is dangerous because it is impossible to reconcile the evidence of your eyes with the accepted international narrative about Israel. In the international media, Israel is presented as a militarist, right-wing, oppressive. In fact it is the only pluralist democracy in the Middle East, the only nation where women's rights - and gay rights - are protected. It has a vibrant Left wing, a cacophonous democracy and an innovative economy." (Territorial compromise loses ground in Arab Spring, 12/1/12)

It happened last time too. Same heart-thumping elation. Same eruptions from every nook and cranny. Same nagging thought: Why can't they see her as I do?:

"I have my very own Israel problem and it is this: the Israel I know... bears no relation to the Israel I see in most of the Western media. That Israel of the Western mind (and indeed of the Arab mind) is a hateful place: right-wing, militaristic, authoritarian, indifferent to world opinion, indifferent especially to Palestinian suffering. Yet the Israel I know is mostly secular, raucously, almost wildly democratic, has a vibrant left-wing, having founded in the kibbutz movement one of the only successful experiments in socialism in human history." (Israel still looks good, warts & all, The Australian Literary Review, 6/5/09)

Poor Greg. But, hey, that's love for you!

[14/1/12:* OK, Greg was there, naturally, and Michael Danby I hear, but why is it so difficult to get a list of these junketeers? As it happens, another journalist, the Herald's Asia-Pacific editor Hamish McDonald has just outed himself: Israel struggles with threat from Iran.]

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Secret White Mens Business at San Remo

I notice that one of the arms of the Zionist lobby, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), has formally complained to the SBS Ombudsman about the station's screening of The Promise, Peter Kosminsky's stunning dramatisation of the unfolding of the Palestinian nakba (catastrophe) in the late 1940s, intercut with the Palestine of 2005. One monster moan, it may be viewed in its entirety at the Australians for Palestine website.

Relying on the patently absurd pretence that the colonial Zionist project in Palestine of 'out with the indigenous Arabs & in with Jews from wherever they can be scrounged' - with the lavish assistance of first the British and now the Americans - is really little more than just a "conflict of narratives," the document wails that "The Jewish [not Zionist you'll note] narrative is either falsified or simply not told."

An example of this, we are informed, is that "no mention is made of... the fact that the international community, as early as 1920, recognised the legitimacy of the Jewish people's [Zionist movement's] aspirations to reconstitute their national home in Israel [Palestine] and obligated Britain, as the Mandatory power, to 'facilitate Jewish immigration... and close settlement by Jews on the land...'"

'Wow!' the SBS Ombudsman is expected to exclaim, '"the international community," even as far back as 1920, was clamouring for a Jewish state in Palestine!'

And to ponder thus: 'That settles it then. If it was good enough for "the international community" in 1920, then it's good enough for me now. Who could possibly go up against "the international community"? If they, in their infinite collective wisdom, said in 1920 that the Zionists could have Palestine, who am I, or the people who actually lived there at the time for that matter, to get sniffy?'

Well, hopefully the SBS Ombudsman wasn't born yesterday and will ask herself just who was this exalted "international community" of 1920?

Footnote 8 informs us that:

"In April, 1920, following the end of World War I, a Council of the victorious Allied and Associated Powers met at San Remo and granted Britain a mandate to govern Palestine, the terms of which were ratified by the League of Nations in July 1922 and included an obligation that Britain 'should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Brittanic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

So, it transpires that, according to the fine print, this august entity, "the international community," turns out to be merely "the victorious Allied and Associated Powers" (AAP).

But who am I, or the 90% of the Palestinian Arab population at the time who were distinctly leery at the prospect of having their newly liberated turf handed over to some mob from Europe, to question the AAP's authority to confer legitimacy on whomever it chose? I mean, weren't the AAP the very fount of wisdom and probity in the post-war world of 1920? Were not they, of all people, in a position to somehow channel the will of the world when it came to disposing of the former Turkish province of Palestine?

Well, before we go along with the ECAJ's little sleight of hand here, maybe we need to learn a little more (if this isn't getting a tad too contradictory) about the secret white men's business transacted at San Remo. And who better to guide us than our good friend, JMN Jeffries, whose eye is nothing if not forensic:

"The next day, the 25th, was a Sunday. Two communiques were issued that same evening... The first said: 'The Supreme Council met at 11 am today at the Villa Devachan. There were present Signori Nitti and Scialoja, MM. Millerand and Berthelot, Mr Lloyd George, Lord Curzon, M. Matsui and Mt Underwood Johnson. [Mr Johnson was the United States 'observer'. He did not take an active part in, nor have any responsibility for, the proceedings.] The question of the Mandate for Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia was discussed, and the question of the new Armenian State was settled. The Council finally discussed the resumption of commercial relations with Russia...' The second communique... dealt with the afternoon session, and held no reference to the Near Eastern countries, as the Adriatic question and Germany's attitude to the Treaty of Versailles were the subjects of debate.

"So that the sole official information given to the world upon what had happened at the morning session of the 25th, as far as the Near Eastern countries were concerned, was that 'the question of the Mandates for Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia were discussed'. Discussed, indeed! During that session, which lasted for 3 hours, the 'examination of the Palestine question' which had begun upon the Saturday had been concluded, and Britain had been granted, or awarded, or indemnified with the nomination as Mandatory. And at this session, the Balfour Declaration had been inserted into the draft-Mandate which was being prepared as part of the coming Treaty [with Turkey].

"In fine, Sunday the 25th was the fateful day, the day of days, and that particular session was of pre-eminent interest, was a moment when the destinies of the most sacred land on earth were determined for, at the very least, a long period. A type of government, too, never before essayed in human society was inaugurated, or was introduced after some fashion, and the countries which were to govern thus unprecedentedly were named.

"Yet no faintest suggestion of what had been done was vouchsafed by the Conference chiefs in their official report of their transactions. They said that the question of the Mandate for Palestine (and for the other Arab lands) had been discussed, as though there had been some talk about it, and then they had gone on to other matters. More than this they never disclosed. The nearest they reached to any sort of explanation of their business was the last sentence of the previous day's communique, stiff wth constraint and wariness.

"It is true that official communiques are noted for their reticence. It is also true that international Conferences are fatiguing affairs, and that at the end of a long day tired men may cut their labour by giving the shortest possible account of what has happened. But reticence, not saying much about the event of the day, is one thing, and concealing it altogether when it is a final decision is another. The crucial meeting in this case was held in the morning, and there was ample time to announce what had taken place during it. The news could have been given in less than 20 words, in as many words as were employed to obscure it.

"That 25th of April something of great moment had been accomplished, though the absolute character of the act remained undefined. It was, therefore, the duty of the Allied plenipotentiaries to make clear in an official statement what (in the current phrase) 'they thought they were doing'. That they made no such explanation shows how ill at ease they were about the character of the day's work.

"Babies born that April morning have become young men and women, and yet we are about as ignorant as they were in their mothers' arms of what occurred at the Villa Devachan. This only we know, that the Balfour Declaration was slipped into the Mandate, and that it was Signori Nitti and Scialoja, M. Matsui, Lord Curzon, Messrs. Berthelot, Millerand and Lloyd George between them who somehow nominated as Mandatories the countries represented by MM. Berthelot and Millerand and by Lord Curzon and Mr Lloyd George. It was a very intimate occasion, so intimate that 4 of those present suffered from ingrowing functions, nominating and being nominated at one and the same time. The sole clue to what a spectator might have witnessed of their proceedings from start to finish is to be found in the statement of a correspondent that 'One cheerful feature about the Conference so far is the progress made in settling the Turkish Treaty. Discussions have run on the most cordial lines'. Indeed they had done so.

"This is the most living account of what happened which we possess. The League of Nations' own account of the birth of Mandates is highly significant because, in an Irish way, there is no account. 'There is no record of the conversation by which Great Britain was selected as Mandatory for Palestine', confesses the League's official handbook.

"Under such circumstances, it is impossible to prevent imagination from playing with the scene at the Villa Devachan. One pictures the bustling but superfluous helpfulness of the other delegates as Mr Lloyd George efficiently levered the Balfour Declaration into the draft-Mandate. But the assumption of the draft-Mandate itself is not so easy to picture.

"Did Signori Nitti, Scialoja, Millerand and Berthelot segregate themselves and then propose Great Britain as Mandatory for Palestine? Did Mr Lloyd George simper and blush acceptance, or look sternly before him and say duty was duty? Did the French delegates then go to the chairs at the foot of the table? Did the British delegates take the vacated seats at its head, along with the Italians and the Japanese, meditate their choice with them for a pensive second, and then in chorus with them offer 'Syria' to France? Whereon did the French delegates, with national immunity from humbug, nod and thank the British for carrying out the arrangement of the previous September?

"Maybe it happened after this fashion: more probably it did not. Procedure demanded that all the Principal Allied Powers should nominate the Mandatory, so Mr Lloyd George and poor Lord Curzon, completely out of his element, one imagines, will, in some way that we cannot guess and upon which unhappily silence has been maintained, have taken part in nominating themselves.

I interrupt Jeffries' narrative flow at this point to remind you of ECAJ's characterisation of the San Remo cabal as "the international community." Well - surprise, surprise - where Zionist propaganda is concerned there is indeed 'nothing new under the sun':

"The official silence concerning the details of this odd performance has not prevented a hundred writers and orators in the service of the Zionist thesis from projecting ever since, through the best part of 2 decades, moving pictures of the moral glory which descended on the Villa Devachan that day. Mr Lloyd George has been presented, as upon the screen, in the role of the world's knight, bending a knee to receive Britain's obligations in Palestine. Like an accolade they were laid upon his shoulders by the incarnate kingly conscience of mankind.

"Whatever happened then, this did not. At San Remo the nomination of Mandatories, after the manner of the dubbing of knights, was not practicable, or rather was not picturable. Britain and France had long fixed their respective Mandatory spheres between them, and the story of their being 'chosen' now for these positions is only elaborate and disingenuous pretence. Mr Lansing, the American Secretary of State till that February, who knew all that was afoot, passed on these League and Mandate manoeuvres a judgment so apt that it must be quoted here. 'If the advocates of the [mandate] system', said he, 'intended to avoid through its operation the appearance of taking enemy territory as the spoils of war, it was a subterfuge which deceived no one. It seemed obvious from the very first that the Powers, which under the old practice would have obtained sovereignty over certain conquered territories, would not be denied mandates over these territories'.

"Pure clap-trap also is the story of the resigned acceptance by the Mandatories of their nominations, which in fact they 'accepted' with the resignation of stockbrokers accepting profits. Mr Lloyd George... already had blurted out in one of his unguarded moments that 'France would be compensated for the oil-wells of Irak by the Mandate for Syria'. As for what are called 'obligations', it would have been a rash statesman who would have dared to refuse a full load of them to Mr Lloyd George himself. That was the real situation. The chivalrous parties concerned were each responsible for his own knighthood, and even such a political gymnast as the same Lloyd George could hardly have laid his obligations upon his own shoulder and have bade himself to rise without throwing his frame and his features into contortions too unmannerly ever to be displayed to the public. Why, the secret of the scene could not even be risked by one word about it in a turgid little communique!" (Palestine: The Reality, 1939, pp 344-347)

Memo to the SBS Ombudsman: should an impeccably presented, high-falutin' document from any of the following outfits - ECAJ, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, the Zionist Council of Australia, or the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) - darken your doorstep, for God's sake, read the fine print.

Monday, January 9, 2012

What Gillard Will & Won't Be Learning from Her Holiday Reading

"But for the less sporty and more literarily inclined, here's a taste of what is on our MPs' reading lists this summer. Julia Gillard is reading Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse and Tony Bilson's memoir, Insatiable: My Life in the Kitchen. No comment on the remaining books on her list: Mighty Be Our Powers, by Nobel Prize winner Leymah Gbowee, A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, by Margaret Drabble, and David Lloyd George: The Great Outsider, by Roy Hattersley." (What can we read into our pollies' habits? Stephanie Peatling, The Sun-Herald, 8/1/12)*

Let me guess. Lloyd George, British Prime Minister, 1916-1922, was chosen because he's Welsh. And Roy Hattersley because he's Labor (specifically, Deputy Leader of the British Labor Party, 1983-1992).

Well, assuming she actually does gets around to reading David Lloyd George: The Great Outsider, what is Gillard going to learn from it?

Maybe she'll see herself, at least in part:

"[Lloyd George, said Keynes,] is rooted in nothing; he is void and without content; he lives and feeds on his immediate surroundings; he is an instrument and a player at the same time, which plays on the company and is played on by them too; he is a prism... which collects light and distorts it and is most brilliant if the light comes from many quarters at once; a vampire and a medium in one."/ "Hattersley... sees Lloyd George as essentially a destructive character... [with] a killer instinct... matched by an extraordinary ability to feed men lies, half truths and high-minded waffle, a capacity which brought short term triumphs and long-term distrust." (Welsh wizardry & venom, Paul Johnson reviews Roy Hattersley's life of David Lloyd George, The Spectator, 18/9/10)

No doubt, she'll marvel at Lloyd George's capacity for invective, thrill to his talk of raising 'the deserving poor', chuckle (with Timbo?) over his insatiable appetite for sex, and more besides - but, admittedly without having read the biography myself, I'm pretty sure, that with Hattersley as biographer, she'll unfortunately be spared an examination of the worst and most enduring of Lloyd George's legacies - laying the foundations for the creation of the State of Israel.

To begin with, not one of the half dozen reviews of Hattersley's book that I've read so much as mentions this grievous matter, which inclines me to believe that Hattersley himself has omitted any reference to the issue. Perhaps the following Q&As from House of Commons debates in 1976** demonstrate why:

Mr Walters: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that one of the main lessons to be learned from the tragic and horrid events in the Lebanon is that there will be no settlement but, rather, continuing instability, bloodshed and war until the rights of the Palestinians and the question of Palestinian statehood are resolved? They cannot be resolved without a peace settlement. Do not the Government intend to do something more active to try to break the present deadlock?

Mr Hattersley: The hon. Gentleman's question fell into two parts. On the first part, I agree substantially that there needs to be a recognition of the special problems of the Palestinians and an understanding that they must be accommodated within any lasting settlement. I cannot share the hon. Gentleman's view with regard to his second point. There is always a tendency in this House to expect Britain to take initiatives when they would not produce solutions but might actually complicate the prospects of success. Certainly the British Government are available to act if that seems right, but to take an ill-considered initiative is not the way in which the British Government should proceed."

Britain taking an ill-considered initiative in regard to Palestine? Who would have thought?

Mr Colin Jackson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many Arab nations are deeply disappointed about the supine attitude of the British Foreign Office towards the Middle East crisis? The fact that, apparently, our policy in the past [which] has been step by step behind Dr Kissinger may lose its validity as Dr Kissinger may take his final step out of office?

Mr Hattersley: I do not think that a policy based on our wish to do what we can as long as that is practical and right is properly to be described as 'supine'. I reiterate what I said earlier. There is a tendency to believe that any initiative is better than no initiative. I do not share that view.

Supine? Really, after our initial ill-considered initiative in Palestine back when, haven't we now a right to rest on our laurels?

Mr Robert Hughes: Will my right hon. Friend seek an early meeting with the Foreign Minister of Israel to express disquiet about reports that Rhodesian forces are at present training with and awaiting shipments of Israeli-made machine guns? Will he make it clear to the Foreign Minister of Israel that it would be a great disappointment to many of Israel's friends in Great Britain if Israel were to conclude an arms deal in respect of arms and equipment to South African forces?

Mr Hattersley: As I have not heard of such reports, I am reluctant to comment on them. I share my hon. Friend's view that, if such reports were proved to be accurate, they would represent a great mistake, and many of Israel's friends in this country, among whom I number myself, would be deeply grieved."

Say no more. Just your common and garden supine Labor friend of Israel.

No, we couldn't possibly expect a verdict on Lloyd George's most lasting and toxic legacy, the nightmare we all of us wake up to every morning, the apartheid state to die for, the Zionist project (because by no means complete), from an Israel-friendly hack such as Hattersley. No, for that we need someone with an unswerving commitment to truth and justice, someone with a real nose for the fuckwit(s) behind the clusterfuck. Someone, for example, like Lloyd George's contemporary, JMN Jeffries, war correspondent extraordinaire and historian of the tangled roots of Britain's disastrous Palestine Mandate:

"The probability... is that 'The Principal Allied Powers', the junta which, seated round a table at the San Remo Conference of 1920, introduced the establishment of the 'National Home' as an obligation of the Mandate, knew and cared nothing about any such [ancient Hebrew] phases [in Palestine]. I should not credit the Principal Allied Powers, as far as they found form in flesh and blood at San Remo, with much or any reading of the Scriptures, except indeed the important section of the Principal Allied Powers which came from Criccieth in North Wales. That body politic has stated in a speech, 'I was brought up in a school where I was taught far more about the history of the Jews than about the history of my own land. I could tell you all the kings of Israel but I doubt whether I could have named half a dozen of the kings of England... We were thoroughly imbued with the history of the Hebrew race in the days of its greatest glory'." (Palestine: The Reality, 1939, p 7)

And Jeffries' verdict? Deadly, damning, definitive:

"Such being the origin of the Mandate it is not strange that it was a document which broke every law and principle it was supposed to safeguard. But though the Zionists had drafted it a hundred times over, it is not upon them that the supreme censure for this must fall. They were drugged by a delusion, and they were pretty frank about what they were doing. It is the Government of the day, the Government of Mr Lloyd George which, to say nothing of its betrayal of national pledges, must bear once more the responsibility for deliberate violation in Palestine, through the imposition of such a Mandate, of the Covenant of the League [of Nations] which elsewhere it professed so glibly." (ibid p 559)

[*Mind you, it's just possible that this reading list, or at least the bit about Lloyd George, is an invention of Gillard's spinmeister. After all, this is how the subject of what she'd be doing during the break was first reported: "Julia Gillard has revealed she will eschew political tomes and spend her two-week Christmas holiday break reading chef Tony Bilson's memoir and catching up on episodes of Miss Marple." (Miss Marple, Socrates to engage rival leaders, Lauren Wilson, The Australian, 15/12/11); **hansard.millbanksystems.com]

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Looking For a Job? Try Politics

To all you bright young things out there, ever thought of a career in politics?

Just join one of Australia's two approved parties and, as you climb to the top of the party tree, you'll start to look so trim, taught and terrific the ABC'll be after you for a regular spot on Q&A!

But more than that, you'll acquire the kind of mental stamina that the rest of us can only dream about.

Take Minister for Whatever Tanya Plibersek, for instance. She was as raw and uncouth as any to begin with, a real wild child. Why, even as late as 2002, firmly ensconced in federal parliament, Tanya thought nothing of shooting her mouth off something terrible:

"I can think of a rogue state, which consistently ignores UN resolutions, whose ruler is a war criminal responsible for the massacres of civilians in refugee camps outside its borders. The US supports and funds this country. This year it gave it a blank cheque to continue its repression of its enemies. It uses US military hardware to bulldoze homes and kill civilians. It is called Israel and the war criminal is Ariel Sharon."

Forsooth she must blush at the very thought of it today!

But all that's in the past. The rough diamond of 2002 has been ground down to the photogenic perfection we see before us today. Now she's cool, calm, and collected, having finally acquired a most remarkable mental discipline and such a capacity for whispering sweet nothings you'd scarcely recognise in the Tanya of today the superbrat of yore:

"Dear ***,*

"Thankyou for your recent correspondence regarding Palestinian statehood. Australia strongly supports a negotiated two-state solution that allows a secure Israel to live side-by-side with a secure and independent future Palestinian state.

"The Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon Kevin Rudd MP, underlined to both sides Australia's strong support for a negotiated two-state solution during his visits to Israel and the Palestinian Territories in December 2010 and March and April 2011, and urged parties to return to negotiations.

"I have raised this issue with the Foreign Minister who assures me that Australia's decision to vote against the Palestinian resolution reflected Australia's strong concern that consideration of Palestinian membership in UNESCO was premature. The matter of Palestinian membership of the United Nations (UN) had only recently been placed before the UN Security Council (UNSC).

"Australia believed we should allow the process of UNSC consideration of Palestinian membership of the UN to run its course, rather than pre-empt it by seeking to address this question in different UN forums. The Foreign Minister assures me that if a Palestinian resolution is introduced to the UN General Assembly the Australian Government will consider it carefully before deciding how to vote.

"The Australian Government strongly supports the aspirations of the Palestinian people for their own state and is providing practical support for Palestinian institution-building in support of a future state"... yadda, yadda, yadda.

So come on boys and girls, whether it's Lab or Lib, why not consider a career in politics today? Oh, and our pollies have just had a wage rise! Tanya, who was getting $243,000 per annum is now getting $319,125 per annum! So there you go...

[* For the letter to which Tanya responded, and for that vital yadda, yadda, yadda, see This is how Australia handles Palestine: contempt with a smile, 6/1/12, antonyloewenstein.com.]