I am off to Baghdad on Sunday for an Arab League conference on Palestinian detainees held in Israel. This is part of my determination to devote more of my time to helping the Palestinian cause. It seems to me we are at a crucial point where the Palestinians are in genuine danger of an accelerated genocide, as Israeli intentions to annex Est Jerusalem and the West Bank become ever plainer.
In retrospect, my life has mostly been based on the idea that I may not be able to do much to help in a particular situation, but it is incumbent on me to try. So I am trying.
A “two state” solution has, from the start, been advanced in bad faith by promoters such as Blair and Bush, with the intention always that it would be a Bantustan solution. For those too young to recall, the grand plan of apartheid South Africa was that the black population would be corraled into a number of small regions which would become “independent states”.
I have said before that I am often pleasantly surprised by Sky News security correspondent Sam Kiley, who seems to get away with talking great sense by hiding behind a Ross Kemp style persona. A couple of days ago he reported from the West Bank that Israel was “moving towards an apartheid state”. There is no doubt that is true – even in Israel proper, there are over three hundred ethnically based Israeli laws prescribing different treatment for Jews and others, across almost every activity of the state. I fear Sam Kiley will not be on mainstream TV long – a tendency to tell the truth being career fatal.
Bibi’s desire to kill off the two state solution is a terrible, genocidal threat but strangely also an opportunity. Botha and De Klerk did not succeed, and Bibi may not either. I personally would have deplored a Bantustan based solution, with crammed and split Palestinian lands deprived of resources, water, communications and any hope of economic viability.
The ultimate solution must involve a proper single state in Israel/Palestine which is blind and fair in its laws to race and religion. That solution can ultimately bring security to the people of Israel, not based on their ability to kill or evict their neighbours and steal their land. The essentials of the agreement will have to be most people staying where they are – including most West Bank settlers – and very serious compensation to dispossessed Palestinians, with the settlements enlarged to become mixed communities.
On the Palestinian detainee question, for me it shows up yet again Israel’s extraordinary capacity for shameless sophistry in matters of international law. Israel justifies its naval blockade on the San Remo Convention, which is only applicable in times of armed conflict. Israel states that it is in a de facto permanent armed conflict. However it denies being in an armed conflict when it comes to its treatment of Palestinain detainees, captured outside Israel, who are not treated as prisoners of war. Both positions cannot be held simultaneously, but secure in the collusion of the West’s bought politicians, Israel does so.
Be safe in Baghdad, Craig. Hope whilst you are there you will have a chance at the Conference to also ask about the plight of the Palestinians of Iraq who have been safe there since the Israeli state was founded, but have been mercilessly persecuted since the invasion. Only 10% (off top of my head) remain of the 30,000-odd before 2003. They sat for years on the Syrian and Jordan borders in no man’s land. The remaining are displaced, persecuted imprisoned. Most now live in the same area in Baghdad in often utterly miserable circumstances.
All the best, f.
Phil,
How do you explain the subject passing a lie detector test “proving” he had no knowledge of a “shooting” with one of the best experts in the field as well as achieving a level of marksmanship while in the “target mode” trance which far exceeded his normal abilities?
Btw, you say “sub-conscious” – Another possibility is that properly performed hypnosis is perhaps more supra-conscioust
And even if he was at some level still aware he was in a tv show, don’t you see that that would also work as a way to program an assassin – Are you killing a Kennedy or just taking part in a tv show?
Anyway I’d put money on Derren Brown being able to hypnotise someone into genuinely assassinating anyone he chose.
“Kempe – you got any better ideas?”
To be honest, no. The middle east has resisted all attempts a lasting solution but that is no excuse to push forward with a plan which has no chance of support from either party and which wouldn’t work if it did. Do you honestly think the Israelis are ready for a power share?
“How do you explain the subject passing a lie detector test…”
Lie detectors are rubbish that’s how, independent tests have shown that they’re at best only 60% reliable which is little better than chance. A few years ago an innocent American defence scientist was persecuted after failing a lie detector test whilst three real spies went undetected.
@ Fred (10.18am) : thank you, but I disagree with your first sentence, which, by the way, seems to run counter to the third. If we agree that the FACTS are enough to prove that the Palestinians are being denied justice, etc.., then of course one is entitled to question the “what he is” of someone who persistently tries to deny those facts or otherwise invalidate them. And as far as the “character assassination point is concerned, why – save out of a misguided sense of ‘nobility’, perhaps, should one leave the monopoly of such tactics with the Zionists and hasbara-merchants? After all, the latter don’t hesitate to call anyone who questions any aspect of Zionist policy a ‘holocaust denier’ or, in the case of Jews, a ‘self-hating’ Jew. Is that not so?
@ Jon (10.00am) : re. your two questions : the answer to your first one is yes, I’m certainly willing to think about how to answer it. But I would point out that greater mind than ours probably know the answer and have got nowhere. Which is why, in the end, I believe that small, individual actions are likely to be more productive than postulating grand theories on this blog. Which leads me straight to your second question, to which the answer, of course, is yes.
By the way, you accuse me of more disruption and sock-puppeting than has come from Oniel (who is Oniel, by the way? Do you know?) There is, though, perhaps a slight difference : Oniel seeks to defend a great evil, whereas some (a minority) of my posts point to things like Mary’s negativism, Ben Franklin’s irritating obscurity and Karel’s linguistic lapses. I leave it to your appreciation (well, actually I don’t) which is worse.
Last point, if I may : a number of commenters make a great deal about the need to understand where both sides “are coming from” and the need for “painful concessions” from both. Since Zionists never fail to bring WW2 and the holocaust into play in this question, I might be forgiven for pointing out that the Allied powers, in WW2 did not, to my knowledge, apply such concepts when dealing with Nazi Germany.
Kempe,
es, I’m perfectly aware lie detector tests aren’t perfect. This one though was carried out with the best equipment and the best interpreters. It was about as good as you could get in looking for involuntary reaction.
Anybody here who has been hypnotised – not just played along? I know a dentist who had root canal work done on himself while under hypnosis with no anaesthetic . Neither of the other two practice dentists could believe what they were seeing (one was carrying out the dental procedure)
Habbabkuk
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Another BBC outrage in the style of their Ahmadinejad wiping Israel off the face of the earth stuff.
To BBC re Hamas charter
Posted by John Hilley on December 7, 2012, 12:46 pm
Please could you explain the imbalanced information contained in your article:
Palestinian Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal visits Gaza
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20636413
The piece notes, baldly:
‘Under its charter, Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel.’
As you are, no doubt, aware, this assertion is patently misleading and used to disguise the much more realistic truth of Hamas’s current political position, some interpretations of which are noted here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Charter
As cited, Meshaal himself has called the charter “a piece of history and no longer relevant”.
Why not include that kind of basic, balancing opinion in your report?
As brazenly stated, the BBC’s sentence looks like something straight from the Israeli hasbara handbook.
Would the BBC ever say anything like: ‘Netanyahu/Likud is committed to the destruction of Gaza’?
If the purpose of BBC news is to inform its viewers on the issue, this requires, at least, some basic context about the Hamas charter and how the words of a largely discredited document have been used for propaganda purposes.
Please correct this gross distortion with a balancing reference.
Sincerely
John Hilley
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1354884408.html
Anti Zionist protest outside the Israeli Embassy in London.
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2012/12/07/276621/uk-orthodox-jews-protest-zionism/
Habbabkuk I might be forgiven for pointing out that the Allied powers, in WW2 did not, to my knowledge, apply such concepts when dealing with Nazi Germany.
The Allied Powers were in the happy position of having beaten Nazi Germany, and could do what they damn well liked. Nazi Germany did not have a massive lobbying presence in the governments of the Allied Powers, either. There’s a lesson there somewhere…
Kempe: The middle east has resisted all attempts a lasting solution but that is no excuse to push forward with a plan which has no chance of support from either party and which wouldn’t work if it did.
And what is your excuse for pushing backward with a plan which demands that one side ignore international law and the other side gets bombed if it doesn’t suffer this in silence?
Do you honestly think the Israelis are ready for a power share?
Of course they’re bloody not. They’re on a roll, like Hitler after invading Austria. What was he after, I wonder? Ah, yes. Lebensraum. Sooner or later, the West will wake up to the idea that a bit of compulsion is in order. One way or, if that doesn’t work, the other.
Glad to see you don’t like the secular-state idea, btw. If a zionist doesn’t like it, it’s the one for me.
Jon
Ultimately Jews and Palestinians may live together side-by-side in peace, but that will only come through an exhaustion of that which divides them, a point indeed when many will wonder what it was all about. It won’t come through debate, and certainly not at this stage.
To some extent you seem to recognize this when you talk about a class analysis.
This is a power struggle. That’s what class is all about. In the case of Israel/Palestine their problems result from a dominant international (mostly US) class imposing its will upon the region.
So the people you need to deal with in the first instance are this international class. Debate and seeing the other chap’s point of view ain’t really their thing. All the techniques of class struggle are necessary there.
Of course this international class may collapse under the weight of its own avarice, but another will soon take its place.
In the meantime you can deal with the symptoms, in this case the plight of the Palestinians. This won’t involve debate either. It’s its own discursive power struggle. You don’t debate the man with his boot to your neck.
So, absent the fall of the dominant international class, you make it increasingly unnattractive for them to continue to impose their will upon the region. You may be assisted in this by changing alliances in the region. You will also be assisted by Jews in the US and elsewhere losing faith with Israel and of course Israelis within turning their backs on the Zionist project.
That’s mostly how it goes.
The main problem is that you have to be careful that the Palestinians have international protections in place for the time when the international class lose interest in propping up Israel.
I’ve been eating sardines so the quality of the guano in your eye will be more authentic. I wish Craig all good wishes in the world for going to Baghdad first, and then for presenting the Palestinians cause in his knowledgeable and quiet way. More power to your elbow, I say.
@Jon, here’s my problem with your red-carpet & kid’s gloves welcoming policy for all iro I/P;
How can anybody claim to care about about the I/P conflict but be apparently unaware of the basics issues involved, which leads them to not known for example, that Israel does indeed operate an apartheid state, that Hamas is willing to accept a solution based on the 1967 borders, that Jews are not on the brink of being wiped-off the earth due to rampant anti-Semitism, etc, etc
Am I being unreasonable & unfair to regard with suspicion all those that claim to want a just & fair solution, but keep repeating the above fantasies ?
Mr Mursi’s encounter with a genuine mob, whose genuine sense of grievance he was not able to comprehend except in political terms as the work of his predecessors, will shock him to the core.
Sitting in the US with Sahirah/Witch Clinton playing political games and seeing your people enraged by the callousness of your reckless ambition are two different things.
God willing/inshallah he will take these events through his bullet-proof vest which makes him look enourmous into his heart.
He is now dealing with Muslims, and it is not the time to carry on playing theoretical games.
Macky
Isn’t Oneil a Brit who only pops over to Tel Aviv for a holiday every so often?
All he needs to do is reflect on the fact that he, a here today gone tomorrow Brit, has more rights than the indigenous population.
He can either enjoy the colonial advantage a la between the wars colonials or he can recoil from the barbarity of it.
Fred : it’s easy to find a quotation to fit almost anything. If you want to answer, why don’t you try using your own words? Are you seriously trying to say that giving a hasbara-merchant a kick is as bad as hasbara itself? If so, no wonder the Zionists are winning the publicity war hands down.
Komodo : the Allies had no truck with such concepts right from the start and not just when it was clear who was going to win; cf. the western allies’ reaction to the various peace feelers put out by the Germans regarding the western front.
Macky, thanks.
With regards to the topic of Israel, I’d say it’s propaganda. For people inside Israel, I’d say that’s especially the case – the persistent brainwashing from a young age about “being a chosen people” who “the rest of the world hates” etc. is powerful stuff. It runs right through society and the media.
One of the things I notice when we examine the failings of people in the UK (say, the failure of the working classes to better organise themselves against exploitative capitalism, or for the TV-owners to all simultaneously dump Sky/BBC/whatever to protest their journalism, or whatever other thing) then progressive people immediately explain what keeps ordinary people in stasis. They cite propaganda, not wanting to be different or awkward, available time to organise etc.
But when we look at Israelis, it is easy to forget that their propaganda is worse (my finger-in-the-air sense is that it’s more pervasive and militarist than the media in the US, which most people are agreed is less informative and more unilateralist in its biases than most European reportage).
I watched the first fifteen minutes of the film Defamation recently, and keep meaning to find the time to watch the rest of it (thanks to whoever on this board recommended it). A Jewish film-maker interviews a some young teenage Israelis, who spout the “everyone hates the Jews, but we’re special” nonsense. You can see them learning it in special school classes. Terrifying, but illustrates my point well.
“Apology accepted. Assumption and dismissing what you don’t want to hear is not clear thinking.”
I was actually giving you the benefit of the doubt without clear evidence. Now that I see I was correct in your intent, apology rescinded.
“Anyway I’d put money on Derren Brown being able to hypnotise someone into genuinely assassinating anyone he chose.”
Anon; Returning to my original point about clinical/entertainment hypnotism, Monarch is hardly garden-variety hypnosis.
http://conspiracy.wikia.com/wiki/Monarch_Mind_Control
That’s a somewhat levitical point you’re making there, Habbabcuk. But I think (a) that the Allies understood perfectly where the Germans were coming from, and would rather they had stayed there. And (b) Hitler badly miscalculated the reaction of the Allies to his initial landgrabs, and further miscalculated the difficulties standing in the way of his Russian adventure. Had he been more understanding, it might be argued (tongue in cheek, admittedly) WW2 might never have happened. Or if the WW1 victors had been less demanding at Versailles…
The Allied approach – wartime thinking – worked in WW2. It took five years, but it worked. Since 1948, wartime thinking – might is right – has failed miserably to resolve anything in Palestine/Israel and only succeeded in polarising both sides further. It doesn’t pass the practical exam. I don’t think I’ll apologise for my views just yet.
Egypt has I understand been for a long time been refreshingly secular, educated and was enchanted at one time by idealistic socialism, benign religious traditions are respected and thankfully extremist religiousity is not ever likely to take the country backwards, though its economy is perilous. The impression I’ve gained from mostly alternative media is that Mursi is a western stooge and has made a most unhealthy seeming power grab.
In those post-48 years in Palestine the land was in sharp decline, it was reverting to blooming desert, almost untended and those with the skills, experience and knowledge, plus the will to work the land as they were born to and had always done, were dying of starvation and disease in refugee camps unassisted by anyone, so ineffectual or unformed or partial were the already ailing new UNs grand schemes and agencies for just such circumstances that they sat on their hands for several years before providing some basic aid to them, but never redress and return to their abodes, return of their dignity and means of living.
Visitors here from planet Zion, were keen to make the devious point that Gaza could be relieved simply by Egypt opening its border with it. This must be resisted as it is so similar to the immediate post 1948 Palestinian refugee crisis, with neighbouring countries unwilling to face the refugee burden or let Israeli consciences abdicate responsibility.
The Zionists plan then to try dump 1.5 million or so Gaza inmates on Egypt, which could never cope with such an influx, and the world and Egypt must say no, I know the UN is helping Gaza, but it is inadequate and Israel thwarts such efforts at every turn, the UN should face its responsibilities and past failures, relieve Gaza’s inmates fully with a vast coalition and aid flotilla with air cover to run any blockade, insist on their and the rest of the Palestinian people’s immediate succour, their full rights in time being upheld, injustices redressed, preferably with Israel’s guilty assistance in the matter, but with the will and force do so without their help quite splendidly if it comes to that.
I feel Gaza has been given somewhat false hopes with no real change or decisive action.
Jon
“One of the things I notice when we examine the failings of people in the UK (say, the failure of the working classes to better organise themselves against exploitative capitalism, or for the TV-owners to all simultaneously dump Sky/BBC/whatever to protest their journalism, or whatever other thing) then progressive people immediately explain what keeps ordinary people in stasis. They cite propaganda, not wanting to be different or awkward, available time to organise etc.”
Those are but superficial reasons for a lack of action. You only get such action when its in the dominant class’s interest.
The post war boom in working class power is one such case. The settlements in South Africa and N Ireland are others.
I agree, cryptonym, that refugee status in Egypt will not suffice. Palestinians want to be autonomous and have their own land. Jordan is full of Palestinians, and many (ex-pats from Jordan) have told me they are second-class citizens there, just as in Israel.
Habbabkuk
I choose for myself if I want to use my own words or if someone else has already said it better. I don’t think anyone should be kicking anyone, criticising others for doing what you do yourself only weakens your argument.
This is instructive of the nonsense debatey end of the game.
“US secretary of state Hillary Clinton urged an end to the new outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland today.
She said: “It is never an acceptable response to disagreements.””
Words and statements in this sense exist only in the service of power’s interest at the moment of utterance.
They don’t have meaning such that one could debate them, for example.
Craig; Iraq is still a major cluster***. Gird your loins, chap.
That doesn’t make sense. We’re talking about action from the oppressed class perspective, and it is a nonsense to say that action is always in the interests of the elite. Voting for the masses, voting for women, anti-racism struggles, union rights, safety legislation at work, maternity rights… the elite has always given way on small points rather than risk upsetting the capitalist project in a greater way.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on the question of whether propaganda is a major component of class inaction. My view is that it is extremely powerful, and operates at a deep psychological level. I find that it explains group behaviours in the case in hand, and “how can Jewish Israelis support Zionism”, very well indeed.
“I should make plain that I am going as a guest of the Arab League, but not being paid for my time.”
So they are paying for everything but you won’t be handing them an invoice at the end of it. Well, knowing the generous nature of the Gulf Arabs I’m sure they’ll have a little something lined up for you, just a little farewell ‘keepsake’.
Of course, the Arab League are not discussing the Palestinians (limited to those in Israeli prisons) to keep the Arab street quiet while they continue supporting terrorists abroad and the violent suppression of political dissent at home.
Maybe you can have a word with the Bahraini delegate about the medical workers being held in Bahrain’s prisons for treating peoples injuries? Or perhaps have a word with the Qatari delegate and ask him why his government is supplying weapons directly to western terrorist mercenary army Al Qaeda, who are killing civilians in Libya and Syria this very day?
Juan Cole;
“In a severe blow to Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Studies Academy of the prestigious al-Azhar Seminary (the closest thing Sunni Islam has to a Vatican) issued a statement calling for Morsi to shelve his draft constitution and his plans for a national referendum on it in only a week and a half. One of the things liberals don’t like about the draft constitution is that it puts a lot of law and practice under Islamic law, and then appoints the al-Azhar Seminary to interpret Islamic law as it applies to the constitution. It would be as though the US Constitution acknowledged that some prohibitions, such as murder, are biblical and then gave the authority to define murder to the Southern Baptist Convention.”
In this fragile evolution, there is always hope that the Secular forces for change will rise in the public awareness. Theocracy will lead to more division and bloodshed.
Jon 7 Dec, 2012 – 4:13 pm
“…on the question of whether propaganda is a major component of class inaction. My view is that it is extremely powerful, and operates at a deep psychological level.”
I agree. Propaganda is the way elites manage to run democracies in their interest. The majority of people eat it up. Jewish people included.
Is oniel a victim of propaganda, a propagandist or both? Just because he regurgitates propaganda and is jewish does not provide the answer.