Israel's fear of history

Many thanks to johng for pointing this article in today's Independent to me.

For the Palestinian citizens of Israel, life is becoming a collective Kafkaesque experience. For years, their state has been determined to buttress its Jewish identity by legal, constitutional, cultural, and political means, in spite of the fact that one in five of its residents is an Arab. This latest series of bills is just another part of that effort. In addition to the discrimination they already face in all walks of life, Palestinians will not be able to mourn the Nakba, the loss of their homeland, or express their opposition to Israel as a Jewish state.

It is not only that they have been excluded from belonging to their homeland, which has been claimed by people who immigrated there and made exclusively Jewish; it is not only that their people have been expelled, occupied or dispersed to all corners of the world; it is not only that they are legally unequal citizens and even treated as enemies in many areas of life by the very state in which they are citizens. They also have to accept this reality: express loyalty, show no opposition, and even refrain from mourning their loss in public.

The expression of the natural feelings of losing their people and homeland, the yearning to rectify injustice, and the quest to transform Israel into a democratic state will be criminalised and punishable by law if the bills are enacted. The Arab citizens have to accept Jewish superiority anchored in constitution and law, accept that their homeland is not really theirs. They have to stop being themselves if they are to avoid being punished by the Jewish state; they have to stop being human altogether.

People are short of words to describe what is happening in Israel. It is becoming clear that Israel is fearful not only about the future, it is most fearful about history – and for a reason. Israel can suppress among its Jewish citizens – those who enjoy the privileges of superiority and of taking over a whole homeland – the history of the Nakba and the reality of its continuation for every Palestinian. But Israel must believe that Palestinians are subhuman if it thinks that it can suppress their feelings about the Nakba and their desire for democracy and equality and the yearning for the return of their people. For Israel to face its fear of the future it must first face history. Instead, in defiance of human nature, it is hopelessly seeking to suppress it.

The author is the director of the Arab Centre for Applied Social Research in Haifa, Israel, and a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Boston

I lifted the whole article from the Independent. There are also two more related articles:

• Threat of the 'thought police' alarms Israel's Arab minority
• Leading article: Thought crimes in Israel

It's certainly good news that there are three articles in the paper that criticise Israel but see this in the editorial:

The Nakba bill, which was approved by the ministerial committee on legislation this week, is bad enough. But the bill for a compulsory oath, which is also due to go before the committee, would be a disaster. It would require anyone seeking citizenship to "make a declaration in which they commit to being loyal to the State of Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state, to its symbols and values and to serve the state as much as required through military or alternative service". Arab citizens at the moment are not required to do military service given the sensitivities of their situation.There are many in the British National Party who would no doubt like a similar oath over here. But any democracy committed to freedom of expression knows that the road to oppression lies though just such attempts to control the thoughts of its people.

Oh no! Israel might be on the road to oppression.

That's not all. Check out the "thought police" article by Donald Macintyre:

The bill's promoter, Zevulun Orlev, a Knesset member in the right-wing Jewish Home party, cited the case of Azmi Bishara, a Christian Arab who resigned his Knesset seat in 2007 and fled Israel, where he was facing charges of treason and espionage. Mr Bishara was heavily criticised for trips to Syria and Lebanon, where he reportedly praised Hizbollah. Mr Orlev claimed during the debate that Mr Bishara's case showed that what begins with words "very quickly leads to actions".

Actions? What actions? Or is praising Hizbullah an action?

The other Herzl

Philip Weiss is in Cairo doing the right thing, putting in his bit to break the siege of Gaza. Bless his heart! His mind however, is sometimes all over the place. Recently he penned an ode to Herzl that ignored everything that matter about the latter except his purported "success." Weiss even compares Herzl to Frederic Douglass. That to me is a symptom of a deeper deficiency, a deficiency that also manifests itself in Weiss's tolerance for the sewage that often accumulates in his comment section.

To clarify what it is exactly that Weiss fails to understand, let me engage in a little flight of fancy and describe an alternative universe. I am not claiming that this alternative universe could have existed as described, as too much that is different I intentionally ignored. But I do believe that things could always have been different than what they were, although not in ways we can imagine. In our alternative universe, a Black American preacher, Martin Luther Herzl, did not lead a mass movement for civil rights, but instead asked for a private audience with the President of the U.S. He spoke to the President in the latter's office with the following words:

When I was growing up I had many dreams. I dreamed of being an astronaut, a king, a U.S. President, the President of Harvard, I dreamed of being Cecil B. DeMille, and many other dreams. But as I grew up I realized that these dreams were impossible. Because I am black. And because you, white people, will never accept us as equal to yourselves. You can deal with one or two black people, but put three of us in a room and you become nervous. Deep down, the idea of us rising up and succeeding in society on our merit appalls you.

Some of my people urge me to fight this racism, but this is to me akin to fighting gravity. Racism is natural and human. We will never get rid of it. I come to you therefore with a bold proposition. Help me help you get rid of us!

Our ancestors were brought to this place from Africa in chains. But in these two centuries that we were here we learned your ways and acquired your culture and your habits of mind. We are in fact closer to you than we are to the people that remained behind. Africa is a forgotten place, a miserable wasteland, backward, sick and destroyed by war. Let us Black Americans, with our Western genius, habits and know-how, make that wasteland bloom. Help us take over a country there that is in the worse of conditions, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, or the Congo. We don't really care which one. With your assistance, we will expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Thus, we will become the rampart of the West against the spread of communism, an outpost of civilization against barbarism. As a side benefit, we will also rid you of our crazy revolutionaries, the communists, the rabble rousers, the malcontents and the criminals. We will take them with us, refashion them and plant them in a soil where they can become productive members of society again, a win for both our people. This is what I propose, instead of fighting, a mutually beneficial alliance between black liberation and white racism.

In our alternative universe, another man, a young Jewish journalist called Theodor King, did not seek private audiences with emperors, but led a million Jews to Paris in the wake of the indictment of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. There on the podium, he addressed Europe:

A century ago, in this city, a new dawn for humanity was declared. It is from here that the dramatic call for "liberty, equality, fraternity" intoned all over Europe. It is here that a nation first wrote into its laws that "All the citizens, being equal, are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents."

Yet a hundred years later, Jews are still treated as foreigners in their native countries. All across Europe, we are still held in ghettos, denied freedom of movement and employment, impovrished, beaten and murdered, and in the most "advanced" places branded as traitors to our countries.

We have come here to the cradle of the Rights of the Citizen to cash a check. When the architects of modern Europe wrote the Declaration of the Rights of man and of the Citizen, they were signing a promissory note. But you have given us a bad check, a check which has come back to us marked "insufficient funds". We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this continent. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

This is not of course how it happened. Martin Luther King chose the path of struggle, of principles and of dignity. Theodor Herzl chose the path of collaboration and opportunism. What was done cannot be undone. We must grapple with the world as it was left to us by these different choices. But we cannot do that without first recognizing that there is a fundamental choice to be made every time anew: when I pursue my self-interest, my dignity and my liberation, on the basis of what principles and what vision am I doing it?

Weiss doesn't seem to understand this question nor see the difference between these two performances. What makes Herzl a hero for him is the "success" of Zionism, principles be damned. But can there be freedom without a commitment to freedom? Can there be equality without a commitment to equality? Weiss describes Herzl's obsession with bourgeois decorum, sense of social inferiority and status consciousness as a quest for dignity. He confuses dignity and status seeking. Dignity is getting from others recognition of our self-worth. Kissing up in return for conferred benefits is the very definition of an indignity. Besides, what dignity did Herzl achieve for Jews? Herzl was ashamed of being Jewish for all the wrong reasons. His "success" is that a hundred years later we can finally be ashamed of being Jewish for all the right reasons.

And is there really a success? Israel is the largest Jewish ghetto on earth, a doomed state that will either commit genocide or go down in flame or both unless we defuse it first. To be described as a success, Zionism will either have to kill all Palestinians or get Palestinians and neighboring Arabs in general to accept forever being dominated by Jews. Place your bets.

Weiss describes how Herzl "wears a stiff smile as the Kaiser and his aides crack anti-Semitic jokes." It would be a fine example of discipline and self-restraint if Herzl went to these meetings with the goal of undoing his enemies. But he did not. On the contrary, he sat and listened placidly while plotting how he could join their smelly ranks, how he could become one of them, he plotted stratagems in order to help these men maintain their power while becoming their obedient servant. He plotted with them how to betray the Jews of Eastern Europe, who wanted westward and threatened the interests of wealthy assimilated Jews in the West. And he plotted with them how to betray the people of Palestine (or Asia, as he referred to them). This is where Zionism succeeded, as an example of betrayal and collaboration with one's oppressors. where is dignity in that?

That for the last 60 years Israel has been at the forefront of promoting antisemitism is not an accident, but a reflection of the deep affinity between antisemitism and the political Zionism that Herzl introduced.

Weiss should figure out what his politics are. It's good to have a heart, but it isn't enough. He can follow Herzl and Herzl's status obsessed opportunism, but then he'd better not mention Fredrick Douglass at all. Here is a passage about dignity from Frederick Douglass's autobiography, My Bondage and my Freedom. Measure the distance between Douglass's struggle for dignity and Herzl's anxiety over glove etiquette:

this battle with Mr. Covey--undignified as it was, and as I fear my narration of it is--was the turning point in my "life as a slave." It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty; it brought up my Baltimore dreams, and revived a sense of my own manhood. I was a changed being after that fight. I was nothing before; I WAS A MAN NOW. It recalled to life my crushed self-respect and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to be A FREEMAN. A man, without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him; and even this it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise.

He can only understand the effect of this combat on my spirit, who has himself incurred something, hazarded something, in repelling the unjust and cruel aggressions of a tyrant. Covey was a tyrant, and a cowardly one, withal. After resisting him, I felt as I had never felt before. It was a resurrection from the dark and pestiferous tomb of slavery, to the heaven of comparative freedom. I was no longer a servile coward, trembling under the frown of a brother worm of the dust, but, my long-cowed spirit was roused to an attitude of manly independence. I had reached the point, at which I was "not afraid to die".

Can you imagine Douglass offering to help Covey capture a running slave in return for his freedom?

Why does Weiss suggest we need to be so generous to Herzl? Because

No movement to change U.S. policy in the Middle East is going to work without including Jews, to a greater or lesser extent. To capture Jews, you cannot just batter Zionism. You can’t go around with a big anti-Zionist button--as I generally do.

Of course, Jews should not be excluded. But who is excluding them? If you put a large tent and write in big letters on its entrance: equality, justice, liberty, human rights, civil rights, economic rights for all, which means all, including Palestinians, does that exclude Jews? If you demand full justice for Palestinian refugees, does that exclude Jews? If you condemn Israeli apartheid, does that exclude Jews?

No. There is nothing in any of that that is against Jews. But let us recognize that some Jews have constructed their identity on legal and material privileges taken at the expense of Palestinians. These Jews, upon seeing these platforms, chose to exclude themselves, because they cannot square that platform with who they are. We don't exclude them. they exclude themselves.

Should we run after them and ask begging "just how much should we water down the demand for justice and equality so that you can feel comfortable here?"

I don't think so.

Karmi, Simons and Strawson on Ahmadinejad

Sorry to return to this but I just noticed yet another bit of weirdness on the Engage site. What was I doing there? Well I was looking to see if they had any condemnation of the Anti-Defamation League for harassing that academic I did the previous post on but there was nothing. Scrolling down I noticed John Strawson had been enlisted to rubbish two letters that had appeared in the Guardian in response to Ahmadinejad denouncing zionism at the Durban II conference.

Dr Hirsh heads the piece ""Anti-racists" think Ahmadinejad was right" and tries to create the impression that the "anti-racists" he has in mind are agreeing with Ahmadinejad's holocaust denial. The video clip beneath his headline is itself headed, "Iran's Ahmadinejad on the Holocaust". Beneath that are quotes drawn from the letters of Gharda Karmi and Geoff Simons that the Guardian published on Saturday just gone, 25th April 2009.

“…Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s UN speech on 21 April struck many as obnoxious, but in terms of understanding the 1948 roots of the Middle East conflict he was spot on. Vilifying him may feel good, but it is a diversion form the real issue.”

Ghada Karmi, Author, Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine

“However we may deplore the tone of President Ahmadinejad’s speech at the UN conference on racism, it is difficult to deny the principal facts that he presented…”

Geoff Simons, Author, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Karmi thinks Ahmadinejad was “spot on” in his understanding of the roots of the Middle East conflict.

Simons agrees with the “principal facts” that he presented.

Neither stops to wonder why it is they agree with a genocidal anti-Jewish racist on the central question concerning Jews in the contemporary world. Perhaps it is just a coincidence? A stopped clock is right twice a day?

But perhaps there are other lessons to be learnt from the fact that they agree with Ahmadinejad.

And why is the Guardian printing this support for the understanding and analysis of the world’s most powerful antisemite on its letters page?

What happened was that Ahmadinejad had brought up the issue of the zionists' colonisation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. He actually vented the bad analysis that it all happened or at least the west supported it on account of the holocaust. Now as far as that goes, Engage can't complain because David Hirsh also says that Israel exists because of the holocaust and he has even justified the UK Labour Party's call for the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Palestine back in 1944 on account of the holocaust. So Hirsh might just as well ask himself how it is that he is in agreement with Ahmadinejad but I won't hold my breath and wait for that admission.

But look at the extracts from Karmi and Simons's letters or read the letters in full which Hirsh does link to, they're not saying that the holocaust has anything to do with the establishment of the State of Israel and they're certainly not saying that the holocaust didn't happen. They are saying that the root of the problem goes back to the founding of Israel and not its expansion into what we now call the "occupied territories" of Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem.

So why does Hirsh go on to say this?

If people don’t understand what is racist about holocaust denial then they should make use of Deborah Lipstadt’s magnificent website, which is an excellent resource, Holocaust Denial On Trial. http://www.hdot.org/

Holocaust denial is antisemitic firstly because denial was part of the crime itself. Those who were murdered were told that nobody would ever believe that this happened and that nobody would ever know that they even existed. Denial is not a response to the Holocaust but it is part of the Holocaust.

Secondly because Holocaust denial necessarily assumes that the Jews are sufficiently powerful and sufficiently evil to have invented such a horrible lie and to have made believing it a precondition for acceptability in public life. It is antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Hmm, thank you Doctor, but what has that to do with what Karmi and Simons wrote?

So what's John Strawon's beef here?

UPDATE - John Strawson adds:

Karmi and Simons rely on ignorance of history in order to make their case: a case that Ahmadnejad is able to trade on.

“Their” history is that Western guilt for the Holocaust meant that the Jews were given Palestine in order to make amends. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reading the United Nations documents that led to the partition plan – debate in the General Assembly May through November 1947 and the report of United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) – there are no Western expression of guilt whatsoever. The only speeches that linked the creation of a Jewish State to the Holocaust were from the Soviet Union and Poland.

Indeed what is striking is that despite many anti-Semitic remarks, not one Western country rises to object. The partition plan itself explicitly stated that it was plan for the future of government of Palestine and not a solution to the “Jewish question” - the latter formulation being a reference to the survivors of the Holocaust in displaced peoples’ camps. Far from guilt there is indifference bordering on callousness. The Jewish population of between 600,00-650,000 (and 18,000 in detention in in Cyprus) [UN figures]) were of course in Palestine in 1947.

They constituted a clearly constituted a national community. It is this national identity that the Karmi et al wish to deny. Modern anti-Semitism mainly takes the form of discrimination against Jews as national community - something that the Durban II statement reinforces when it places anti-Semitism between “Islamaphobia” and “Christianophobia.” (draft article 10)

There is no ignorance of history betrayed in their letters. Both of them argue that the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict go back to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

As it happens, having falsely accused two people of ignorance of history by falsely accusing them of invoking the idea that the holocaust was the motivation for Israel's existence, Strawson does steer his comment back to something close to the crux of the matter.

See this again:

They [presumably Jews in Palestine] constituted a clearly constituted a national community. It is this national identity that the Karmi et al wish to deny. Modern anti-Semitism mainly takes the form of discrimination against Jews as national community

This mealy mouthed statement is saying that Jews in most of Palestine had a perfect right to carry out an ethnic cleansing campaign against the native predominantly Arab population. There is no other interpetation since Gharda Karmi probably doesn't care one way or another if Jews are a national community or not. The issue is that Jews in Palestine carried out an ethnic cleansing campaign to establish a state specifically for Jews at the expense of Palestine's natives. Gharda Karmi is a victim of the ethnic cleansing but for Strawson she is being antisemitic for objecting to it.

For John Strawson, it would appear that a national community is not a civic affair but an ethnic one and once it is decided that a community is national then that community has a perfect right to carry out an ethnic cleansing campaign against those that do not belong to the national ethnicity. And to object, even as a victim, is to be racist against the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing.

But Strawson has a strange relationship with Engage and Engage is a strange animal anyway. During "Operation Cast Lead" aka, the assault on Gaza, Strawson co-signed a letter to the Times castigating Israel for its war crimes. At the time, David Hirsh, or you might say Engage itself, was supporting what Israel was doing in/to Gaza. Last I checked, Strawson was on the "editorial board" of Engage and yet his co-signing of a letter to the Times was reckoned by one commenter to be a contradiction of the Engage position on "cast lead".

The letter to the Times noted that Hamas's rocket attacks were illegal acts warranting a "reasonable and proportionate" response from Israel but went on to say:

As things stand, its invasion and bombardment of Gaza amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s 1.5m inhabitants contrary to international humanitarian and human rights law. In addition, the blockade of humanitarian relief, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and preventing access to basic necessities such as food and fuel, are prima facie war crimes.

Any casual observer familiar with Engage will see this as quite a profound departure from the usual fare and as I said, one commenter (Keith P) did notice this. It was in a thread to a post where Dr Hirsh had graphically compared a call by Naomi Klein for a boycott of Israel to the nazi boycott of Jewish shops back in the 1930s:

This analysis seems inconsistent in tone, content, and logic to all that presented here and advanced by David in the name of Engage. Are we to assume that Engage’s editorial board is fundamentally divided as to whether what we are witnessing and have been witnessing in Gaza is a war crime or a justifiable act of defence against an existential threat to the lives of Jews?

Now this is where we get an insight into the relationship of Hirsh and Engage's collective existence, if indeed it has a collective existence. Here's Hirsh:

Engage has no collective position on “whether what we are witnessing and have been witnessing in Gaza is a war crime or a justifiable act of defence against an existential threat to the lives of Jews?”

Engage is a campaign against antisemitism, not an Israel/Palestine campaign or discussion group.

I tried to sum up what I feel are some of the central ideas of Engage, but it is only my attempt. Here http://engageonline.wordpress.com/about-engage/

John Strawson is one of the most incisive and committed campaigners against antisemitism that I know. I’m proud that he thinks of himself as being part of Engage.

Well something gave this fellow the impression that the Engage position on "cast lead" was that it was "a justifiable act of defence against an existential threat to the lives of Jews" and that Strawson was bucking what must have been the position of most of the other Engage associates that Hirsh had been linking to at that time. But within a minute of Hirsh's disclaimer, Strawson was on the thread:

Kieth P should read the letter more carefully. It is making a certain legal point - which I have made in comments here. The letter in addition to making it clear that Hamas’s rockets and suicide attacks are war crimes ends by saying

“We condemn the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel and suicide bombings which are also contrary to international humanitarian law and are war crimes. Israel has a right to take reasonable and proportionate means to protect its civilian population from such attacks. However, the manner and scale of its operations in Gaza amount to an act of aggression and is contrary to international law, notwithstanding the rocket attacks by Hamas. “

Keith P had clearly read the letter and linked to it so the admonition suggesting he hadn't was purely gratuitous if not downright dishonest.

Hirsh then (two minutes later) provides another insight correctly stating that:

Incidentally Keith, I don’t think I’ve written anything at all on the current conflict in Gaza.

That was true at the time. All Hirsh had done was link to various articles supporting Israel in Gaza and denouncing Israel's critics as antisemitic. And he didn't link to the Times letter that Strawson had co-signed.

Well now Keith is very confused and so am I and so must you be, dear reader:

Thanks for your replies, David, John.

I did read the letter carefully. I understand that it includes the condemnation of Hamas’s actions as contrary to international law, and i did not for a second mean to imply John had meant to entirely absolve Hamas and entirely fix blame on Israel.

What I was surprised about was the fact that this letter includes clear and unequivocal statements describing the PAST year (+)’s “siege” of Gaza and the CURRENT/RECENT attacks on the Gaza Strip as war crimes. This may or may not be the case - i am not arguing against this on a legal basis (I am unqualified to do so) or suggesting it is false.

But I do think it departs from Engage’s previous posts and comments concerning both the “siege” and the conflict in content and tone. David, I know you say that Engage has shifted its concerns over the years and is less attentive to points on the conflict than it used to be perhaps, but you’ve also conceded that “Engage business overlaps with wider political issues in Israel and in Palestine - so these are editorial decisions and not clear and automatic rules.” (http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/comment.php?id=1551) and I think that its clear from your covererage of both Lebanon 2006 and the current violence, that the posts on Engage are either themselves concerned with the conflicts or are selected as ways of directing readers to sources selected from amongst many possibilities; it therefore follows that there is some position being articulated and not a random or ambivalent approach to the way the conflict is parsed here at Engage.

This brings me back to my original comment/question, which is whether or not Engage’s (and if its easier to answer David I would understand if you’d prefer to answer as an individual rather than for the whole campaign) position (unavoidable and implicit in the selection and recommendation of sources on the conflict) is also that the Israeli government and military are presently comitting war crimes and that they have been doing so for at least the last year in the form of the “siege” of Gaza.

I am not suggesting that there needs to be uniformity on the subject across your editorial board, but I am aware of and puzzled by the following:

1. Falk (a co-signatory of John’s) has been condemned quite harshly for “israel-hatred” and in particular for making Nazi-Zionism analogies that Engage has criticised very forcefully. David, I think you have yourself charged him with”being used by antisemites as cover” (http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1806) and have reproduced a “Flesh Is Grass” commentary where he Falk is charged with “publicity-seeking exaggerations and falsehoods” (again I’m for or against Falk - just observing that this appears to indicate a position which departs from the co-signing of statements with someone quite a bit) (http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/flesh-is-grass-on-richard-falks-exclusion-from-israel/)

2. If Engage does agree with the statement a member of its editorial board has signed on the current conflict - then surely it makes sense for it to be reproduced here or linked to in the way some dozens of external reports and commentaries on the current conflict have been linked to over the past fortnight.

3. If Engage does not agree with the statement made by its editorial board, how does it situate this statement published in the mainstream UK press that Israel is, and long has been, engaged in war crimes within its overall context of “defining and defending” the limits of “legitimate criticism” - is John, like Falk, not preparing the ground for demonization? is he lending credence to the arguments as well as the vocabularies of co-signers like Falk? Or is the attribition of war crimes to the Israeli state and armed forces unproblematic in this scheme?

Oh look at the time. I need to set myself a time limit. It's so easy to get carried away. Anyway, no further response from either Hirsh or Strawson was forthcoming.

So what have we learned here? Engage appears to be Dr David Hirsh with people described as contributing editors and editorial board members who are simply well wishers that agree with the central motive of Engage to try to set parameters as to what is permissible in criticising Israel. You might say that the mission is simply to protect Israel and especially zionism from serious criticism. But what of Strawson? He has clearly hooked up with people considered by Hirsh to be beyond the pale and yet Hirsh is proud if Strawson wants to consider himself an Engagenik even though that might not actually mean anything at all in terms of what you do for Engage or what you think about Israel, Jews, zionism, war crimes, Palestinians, Arabs or indeed, er, anything at all.

Is Engage a collective or is it Hirsh with a list of people saying "we like Hirsh, er, broadly speaking"?

And what of Strawson? What's he playing at? He has clearly misrepresented what Dr Karmi and Geoff Simons had to say in their letters, that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine explains the conflict over Palestine but then he comes close to misrepresenting a letter he signed himself when he pretends that it does significantly differ from condemning Israel's war crimes in Gaza during "cast lead" and the on-going war crime over the siege of Gaza.

But on the matter of whether or not Israel's existence is explained by reference to the holocaust, Hirsh's view is a little closer to Ahmadinejad's than the view expressed by Karmi and Simons. That could be better illustrated by the old Engage website but that is down at the moment unless it has been disappeared as happens with Engage posts sometimes.

Wiping Palestine from the map?

The Guardian has been running these fact files setting out some stats and what have you about the member states of the United Nations plus Kosovo, Taiwan and the Vatican. I wouldn't have notice but for mild mannered complaint about the omission of Palestine in today's Guardian:

Your Fact Files are interesting and informative, but I was dismayed to discover that Palestine is subsumed under Israel. The page "Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories" shows only the Israeli flag and quotes only the Israeli anthem. Why not a page each to Israel and to the Palestinian territories?
Jill Osman
Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire

But Palestine is subsumed under Israel and hiving off the occupied territories won't change that.

Not the Financial Times?

Here's my favourite article from a very convincing mock up of the Financial Times dated April 1, 2020:

Anti-Semitism on decline since Israel wiped off map

Anti-Semitic behaviour has dropped off sharply since the new state of Kanaan came into being on 14 May 2018, according to a United Nations study.

The world’s newest independent country, Kanaan incorporates all of the territory formerly known as Israel, as well as the territories that Israel illegally occupied.

Although many feared a Middle Eastern Holocaust after the disuniting of the American states, and despite threats of terrorism by the Provisional Stern Gang and the Ariel Sharon Memorial League, the transition of the highly militarised Jewish state into a modern secular democracy has been remarkably smooth.

Pockets of prejudice persist, the study found, but their influence on popular opinion is now marginal.

Formal recognition of the right of return of all Palestinians forced into exile, and of Jerusalem’s status as an international city, have together had “a significant positive impact” on the incidence of anti-Jewish feeling around the world, the UN researchers say.

Kanaan’s new government stoked controversy last year when it admitted to possession of an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Successive Israeli administrations had refused to confirm or deny the weapons’ existence, in the interests of maintaining regional stability.

In a wide-ranging series of proclamations, Kanaan also condemned suicide bombings, and issued a formal acknowledgement of the “many crimes and injustices” which took place during Israel’s birth.

It also caused indignation in parts of North America by stating that occurrences recounted in scripture “are not considered an appropriate foundation for national policy in the present day”.

And here's the home page for the Financial Times 2020 website.

Palestine film festival

This is a bit of a grab from the Palestine Film Festival site so you can see it before the zios hack it down from the web. Now read on.....

THE 10TH LONDON PALESTINE FILM FESTIVAL

April 24th - May 8th 2009, Barbican Cinema & SOAS

Click on the logo for full details and downloadable programme:

THE ANNUAL PFF PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION

April 24th - May 8th, Barbican Centre

Click on the picture for details:

REFUGE IN WORDS: VOICES FROM GAZA

May 22nd, Brunei Gallery, SOAS

The PFF, with English PEN, The London Middle East Institute (SOAS), and The Poetry Translation Centre, is organising an evening of poetry readings by Gaza-based Palestinian writers in May 2009: "Refuge in Words: Voices From Gaza" - more information and advance registration details HERE..

SUPPORT THE PFF
The PFF is run entirely voluntarily and depends on donations and partnerships to maintain the Festival. Information on how to support the PFF can be obtained by contacting us on info@palestinefilm.org

Those pictures aligned to the left are supposed to be aligned to the centre like I told them. Any geeks out there want to suggest how to centre two recalcitrant left aligned pics, please leave suggestions in the comments.

Thanks

Seven deadly sins?

You'd think so with the ruckus it caused. Apparently saying "Jewish" in a sentence is now antisemitic. Try it in a sentence. Seven Jewish children. Hmm. Let's look at the play itself and check out all the rights stuff at the bottom and how you might donate to Medical Aid for Palestinians. Also check out Israel apologist (his expression, I prefer zionist) Norman Geras's review of the play which is what prompted me to post the script here. Anyway, now read on:

SEVEN
JEWISH
CHILDREN
a play for Gaza

Caryl Churchill

No children appear in the play. The speakers are adults, the parents and if you
like other relations of the children. The lines can be shared out in any way you
like among those characters. The characters are different in each small scene as
the time and child are different. They may be played by any number of actors.

1
Tell her it’s a game
Tell her it’s serious
But don’t frighten her
Don’t tell her they’ll kill her
Tell her it’s important to be quiet
Tell her she’ll have cake if she’s good
Tell her to curl up as if she’s in bed
But not to sing.
Tell her not to come out
Tell her not to come out even if she hears shouting
Don’t frighten her
Tell her not to come out even if she hears nothing for a long time
Tell her we’ll come and find her
Tell her we’ll be here all the time.
Tell her something about the men
Tell her they’re bad in the game
Tell her it’s a story
Tell her they’ll go away
Tell her she can make them go away if she keeps still
By magic
But not to sing.


2
Tell her this is a photograph of her grandmother, her uncles and
me
Tell her her uncles died
Don’t tell her they were killed
Tell her they were killed
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her her grandmother was clever
Don’t tell her what they did
Tell her she was brave
Tell her she taught me how to make cakes
Don’t tell her what they did
Tell her something
Tell her more when she’s older.
Tell her there were people who hated Jews
Don’t tell her
Tell her it’s over now
Tell her there are still people who hate Jews
Tell her there are people who love Jews
Don’t tell her to think Jews or not Jews
Tell her more when she’s older
Tell her how many when she’s older
Tell her it was before she was born and she’s not in danger
Don’t tell her there’s any question of danger.
Tell her we love her
Tell her dead or alive her family all love her
Tell her her grandmother would be proud of her.


3
Don’t tell her we’re going for ever
Tell her she can write to her friends, tell her her friends can maybe
come and visit
Tell her it’s sunny there
Tell her we’re going home
Tell her it’s the land God gave us
Don’t tell her religion
Tell her her great great great great lots of greats grandad lived
there
Don’t tell her he was driven out
Tell her, of course tell her, tell her everyone was driven out and
the country is waiting for us to come home
Don’t tell her she doesn’t belong here
Tell her of course she likes it here but she’ll like it there even
more.
Tell her it’s an adventure
Tell her no one will tease her
Tell her she’ll have new friends
Tell her she can take her toys
Don’t tell her she can take all her toys
Tell her she’s a special girl
Tell her about Jerusalem.


4
Don’t tell her who they are
Tell her something
Tell her they’re Bedouin, they travel about
Tell her about camels in the desert and dates
Tell her they live in tents
Tell her this wasn’t their home
Don’t tell her home, not home, tell her they’re going away
Don’t tell her they don’t like her
Tell her to be careful.
Don’t tell her who used to live in this house
No but don’t tell her her great great grandfather used to live in
this house
No but don’t tell her Arabs used to sleep in her bedroom.
Tell her not to be rude to them
Tell her not to be frightened
Don’t tell her she can’t play with the children
Don’t tell her she can have them in the house.
Tell her they have plenty of friends and family
Tell her for miles and miles all round they have lands of their own
Tell her again this is our promised land.
Don’t tell her they said it was a land without people
Don’t tell her I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.
Tell her maybe we can share.
Don’t tell her that.


5
Tell her we won
Tell her her brother’s a hero
Tell her how big their armies are
Tell her we turned them back
Tell her we’re fighters
Tell her we’ve got new land.


6
Don’t tell her
Don’t tell her the trouble about the swimming pool
Tell her it’s our water, we have the right
Tell her it’s not the water for their fields
Don’t tell her anything about water.
Don’t tell her about the bulldozer
Don’t tell her not to look at the bulldozer
Don’t tell her it was knocking the house down
Tell her it’s a building site
Don’t tell her anything about bulldozers.
Don’t tell her about the queues at the checkpoint
Tell her we’ll be there in no time
Don’t tell her anything she doesn’t ask
Don’t tell her the boy was shot
Don’t tell her anything.
Tell her we’re making new farms in the desert
Don’t tell her about the olive trees
Tell her we’re building new towns in the wilderness.
Don’t tell her they throw stones
Tell her they’re not much good against tanks
Don’t tell her that.
Don’t tell her they set off bombs in cafés
Tell her, tell her they set off bombs in cafés
Tell her to be careful
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her we need the wall to keep us safe
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea
Tell her they don’t
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea.
Tell her we kill far more of them
Don’t tell her that
Tell her that
Tell her we’re stronger
Tell her we’re entitled
Tell her they don’t understand anything except violence
Tell her we want peace
Tell her we’re going swimming.


7
Tell her she can’t watch the news
Tell her she can watch cartoons
Tell her she can stay up late and watch Friends.
Tell her they’re attacking with rockets
Don’t frighten her
Tell her only a few of us have been killed
Tell her the army has come to our defence
Don’t tell her her cousin refused to serve in the army.
Don’t tell her how many of them have been killed
Tell her the Hamas fighters have been killed
Tell her they’re terrorists
Tell her they’re filth
Don’t
Don’t tell her about the family of dead girls
Tell her you can’t believe what you see on television
Tell her we killed the babies by mistake
Don’t tell her anything about the army
Tell her, tell her about the army, tell her to be proud of the army.
Tell her about the family of dead girls, tell her their names why
not, tell her the whole world knows why shouldn’t she know? tell
her there’s dead babies, did she see babies? tell her she’s got
nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell
her they want their children killed to make people sorry for them,
tell her I’m not sorry for them, tell her not to be sorry for them,
tell her we’re the ones to be sorry for, tell her they can’t talk
suffering to us. Tell her we’re the iron fist now, tell her it’s the fog
of war, tell her we won’t stop killing them till we’re safe, tell her I
laughed when I saw the dead policemen, tell her they’re animals
living in rubble now, tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out,
the world would hate us is the only thing, tell her I don’t care if
the world hates us, tell her we’re better haters, tell her we’re
chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in
blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her.
Don’t tell her that.
Tell her we love her.
Don’t frighten her.



Seven Jewish Children is Caryl Churchill’s
response to the situation in Gaza in January
2009, when the play was written.
Seven Jewish Children first published in Great Britain in 2009 by
Nick Hern Books Limited, 14 Larden Road, London, W3 7ST,
in association with the Royal Court Theatre, London
Seven Jewish Children copyright © 2009 Caryl Churchill Limited
Caryl Churchill has asserted her moral right to be identified as
the author of this work
Typeset by Nick Hern Books, London
ISBN 978 1 84842 047 2

Performing Rights
Seven Jewish Children was first performed at the Royal Court
Theatre, London, on 6 February 2009.
The play can be read or performed anywhere, by any number
of people. Anyone who wishes to do it should contact the
author’s agent (details below), who will license performances
free of charge provided that no admission fee is charged and
that a collection is taken at each performance for Medical Aid
for Palestinians (MAP), 33a Islington Park Street, London
N1 1QB, tel +44 (0)20 7226 4114, e-mail info@map-uk.org,
web www.map-uk.org

Author’s agent: Casarotto Ramsay and Associates Ltd,
Waverley House, 7-12 Noel Street, London W1F 8GQ,
fax +44 (0)20 7287 9128, e-mail agents@casarotto.co.uk

This text can be downloaded free of charge from the
following websites:
Casarotto Ramsay, www.casarotto.co.uk/page/sjc
Nick Hern Books, www.nickhernbooks.co.uk
Royal Court Theatre, www.royalcourttheatre.com
Printed copies can be obtained, while stocks last, with all
proceeds going to Medical Aid for Palestinians, from Nick
Hern Books, address as above.

I find it quite fascinating that the writer does manage to cram a lot of zionist myth-making into the thing that takes about 10 minutes to perform. I noticed on the internet, usual places, Harry's Place, Engage, etc, that the zios are making an issue out of this one line:

Don’t tell her they said it was a land without people

According to some zionists, the first person to say that wasn't Jewish. I swear some zios have said that. (I'll look for links in a bit). I thought the relevance was bound up with whether it's true or not, not the ethnicity or religion of who said it. Actually Israel Zangwill is most often credited with having described Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land" though his daughter said that he never said it. Elsewhere zionists have Mark Twain saying that he visited Palestine and that there was no one home at the time. I'm not sure if the lights were on or not. More notoriously, I always confuse Joan Rivers with Joan Peters, Joan Peters said that Palestine was empty on the eve of zionist colonisation and Professor Alan Dershowitz, ahem, "agreed" with her. The difference between Joan Peters and Joan Rivers is that the latter is a joker, the former just a joke.

But again I say, it's the truth that counts and can the zios, collective hand on collective heart, honestly say that no Jewish child ever gets told the fiction that Palestine was empty on the eve of zionist colonisation? If so they're lucky because everyone else has been told it. Oh no!!!!! I've put my foot in it now. If everyone gets treated to zionist propaganda why single out Jewish children? Well perhaps it's because when it's Jews and when it's children, zionist propaganda becomes zionist indoctrination and children are rather susceptible to that and Jews receive that propaganda from more sources and from an earlier age than the population at large.

Greenstein on histadrut

Tony Greenstein has a great and useful indictment of the Histadrut, the Israeli "trade union" federation, on Electronic Intifada.

Histadrut was formed in 1920 as the General Confederation of Hebrew Labor by the two main labor Zionist parties, Hapoel Hatzair (Young Workers) and Achdut Ha'Avodah (Union of Labor). From its inception it excluded Arab labor and thus rejected worker solidarity in favor of national exclusivism.

Histadrut's primary role was not the defense of its members' wages and conditions but the colonization of Palestine. In the absence of a Jewish bourgeoisie, it had to become that bourgeoisie. As the late William Frankel, editor of The Jewish Chronicle (London), described it, Histadrut was a capitalist union. [12]

Its enterprises included Tnuva (dairy products), Solel Boneh (building and construction), Koor (manufacturing), Hamashbir (food co-operative) and Bank Hapoalim. It established a holding company, Hevrat Ovdim, to manage these enterprises and even after 1966, it remained 100 percent Jewish-controlled.

s unemployment grew in the Zionist economy in Palestine in the 1920s, Histadrut launched a campaign to promote Jewish labor (Avodat Ivrit) and Jewish produce (Totzeret Haaretz), which was essentially a boycott of Arab labor and produce. David HaCohen, former managing director of Solel Boneh, described what this meant:

"I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my trade union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they should not buy at Arab stores; to defend the fact that we stood guard at orchards to prevent Arab workers from getting jobs there ... to pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash Arab eggs they had bought ... to buy dozens of dunums [of land] from an Arab is permitted but to sell God forbid one Jewish dunum to an Arab is prohibited; to take Rothschild the incarnation of capitalism as a socialist and to name him the 'benefactor' -- to do all that was not easy." [13]

...
Class struggle was always anathema to Histadrut, before and after Israel was formed. In the seamen's strike of 1951, strikers were drafted into the army with Histadrut support. Like their predecessors in the Gdud Avodah workers brigades in the 1920s, some of the most militant workers did break from Zionism. Gdud Avodah were starved into submission by Ben-Gurion in the 1920s. [33] But this was the exception, not the rule. The seamens' strike was the most violent strike of its kind in Israel, with ships being commandeered and used against the forces of the state.

In the 1969 Ashdod port workers' strike, the Histadrut accused the Jewish strikers of being equivalent to agents of Fatah, the main faction in the PLO, i.e. "terrorists" and "saboteurs." But the trial of the militants in a Histadrut tribunal backfired and it was terminated without reaching a verdict.

In February 1976, thousands of Arab citizens of the Galilee demonstrated for their rights to the land and against confiscations. In March 1976, the Arab leadership called for a general strike. In response, Histadrut's Labor Council in Haifa actively opposed the strike. Six Palestinians were shot and killed by the police and army, an event marked each 30 March by Palestinians as Land Day. (EI, March 10, 2009)

Read the whole thing, and send to your unionized friends.

Durban II - this time it's practical

This Durban II took place in Durban itself and it involved more than just denunciations of the zionist regime, project and ideology. Dockworkers in the South African port refused to handle Israeli goods. Here's Mike Marqusee in The Hindu:

Photo: Reuters

Learning from the past: South Africans protesting Israel’s blockade of
Gaza.

Immediately and concretely, the dockworkers were responding to Israel’s three-week attack on Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead, including 431 children, as well as 5,300 injured, including 1,870 children and 1,600 permanently disabled. Israel’s losses were of a different order: three civilians and 10 soldiers killed, 113 soldiers and 84 civilians injured. Gaza’s infrastructure was battered. 120,000 houses were damaged and 4,000 demolished. In the course of the operation, the Israelis are said to have dropped 1.5 million tons of explosives on Gaza — one ton for each inhabitant.

The dockworkers were also responding to — and respecting — the call and lesson of their own history. They remembered the importance of international support in the battle against apartheid. Initially, the international campaign had been little more than a small-scale irritant, reliant on the patient, sometimes lonely labours of grass-roots activists. An early success came when dock workers in various countries refused to unload South African goods. In time, the boycott grew and took a material toll on the apartheid regime.

South African trade unionists know this history well. That was seen last year when they turned away a Chinese ship carrying arms to the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.

Lovely stuff. I remember zionists complaining about Ronnie Kasrils condemning Israel and not saying anything about Zimbabwe. They don't have that singling out complaint in this case, not that it was or is ever valid. Another thing, back in the day, when goods from apartheid South Africa were being boycotted, South African businesses used to get their not so pariah chum, Israel, to re-label the goods and sell them on. Israel must have been very disappointed when that nice little earner closed down. But where do you re-route and re-label your goods when the people are sanctioning Israel, historically the worst of the sanction busters?

Mike Marqusee's own website is here.

Welcome to Najd!

I just got notified of a new Facebook group being established to whinge about the sufferings of the people of Sderot and it occurred to me that there's not much info to be had about the Palestinian village that was ethnically cleansed to make way for the Jewish town of Sderot.

So here's Palestine Remembered on Najd, the Palestinian village razed so that zionists could make the desert green again.

See it? Not much really. It was occupied by the zionist forces on May 13, 1948. That was a day before official histories of Israel begin. According to history books that school students in the UK, I think up to age 18 and 19, are given, nothing happened in Palestine on that day. Nothing happened until the next day or the day after. It had a population of over 700 before they were ethnically cleansed.

So, spare a little thought for Najd and its people and one thousand times that many people that were ethnically cleansed round about the same time.

Hasbara Panic or HP for short

I have to question the Hasbara Buster's judgement going into the belly of the beast to do a satirical post on the similarities between zionist and apartheid apologetics. He has done a typically wonderful post but why he should waste it on a bunch of Eustonistas I don't know.

What am I talking about? See the post on the HB blog. Seasoned serious Israel critics will be familiar with the similarity between Israel apologetics and the old apartheid apologetics so I don't have to replicate HB's post here. The title of the post is On how Apartheid South Africa was unfairly demonized -- like Israel. His main point is that whilst there were worse human rights abuses in the world, in Africa even, than those committed by South Africa, it was South Africa that was uniquely demonised, ostracised and quarantined. That's his point. That's the height and size of his point.

The first thing to amuse me about the post on Harrys Place but not on the Hasbara Buster site was the "Editor's note":

Editor’s note: this piece is tongue in cheek. The Hasbara Buster is not supporting apartheid South Africa. Rather, he is making a point by analogy. I mention this because I expect that some people will be confused, otherwise.

In fairness, it could have been the Hasbara Buster himself that wrote that but it's certainly more than a passing possibility that since Harrys Place is a hasbara space, a lot of people may well think that a post "defending" apartheid was serious rather than satirical which is probably a good reason for principled anti-racists, like HB, not to post there.

But having satirically laid out the similarities between Israel's propaganda and that of the old apartheid South Africa a Harrys Place regular, or "Editor" even, decided to pretend that it wasn't satire at all.

Here's HP's Brett:

After taking in his article (below this one), I have to say that The Hasbara Buster is one of the sloppiest historians I have ever encountered.

If his grasp of South African history is as shonky as his grasp of Israel’s history, it is little wonder that this stretched and laboured ‘apartheid’ analogy falls so flat. His bubblegum wrapper master-class in South African history gets it wrong from the get go.

I’d like to deal with some substantive errors, so let’s dispense with those nickpicking points first and get them out of the way. HB says.....

But it doesn't matter what HB says. The point is, as the "Editor" noted, it was "tongue in cheek". He was likening the propaganda of the old South Africa to that of the State of Israel. He was deliberately falsely stating South Africa's history just as zionists falsely render Israel's history.

Funnier still is the fact that whilst the panic was apparent among some of the HP faithful, the "Editors" didn't dare tackle this in the comments to the original, and it was original, post. Nope, in their panic, the "Editors" had to speedily arrange, hot on the heels of HB's post and linked at the bottom of it, a very detailed post on South Africa's history right down to the names of the different groups of natives, discriminated against by the white settlers, whose language was an esperanto only "formally recognised in 1925". HB's satirical history, rendered in the style of an apartheid/zionist apologist was "laughable" or even "more laughable still". Careful Brett, you nearly got the point.