Showing posts with label Middle-East. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middle-East. Show all posts

Friday, January 09, 2009

Gaza and US

THE ABSURD TIMES

SPECIAL MIDEAST EDITION


Illustration: I have one of our loyal reader's to thank for this caption: "She's a real bitch and a half, the Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Hate to meet her in a
dark alley, or anywhere.....she looks like a bad mix of Hillary and Sarah, ugh."
I'll keep my own remarks short as I'm including articles by people much better able to speak on the issue than I.
Instead, notice how fast the Illinios legislature is moving to impeach Blagojevitch? And what did he do? Simply ask money for favors, all in 6 figures or less. Compare this to the U.S. Congress where impeachment was "off the table" concerning Bush and Cheney for lying to Congress, killing over 4,000 American soldiers, killing or dispalcing over 4 million Iraquis, rewarding Haliburton, and causing the impending Depression.
Anyway, I've noticed that only about 5 or ten minutes a day on all TV news outlets combined are devoted to the invasion of Gaza. Al-Jazeria covers it almost 24/7. You can get it online free, in English, at Al-Jazeria.com -- it runs at 50k, is in RealVideo, so you may have to download the player, which you can do for free.
Now on with some real information:

*********************************

In the US, Gaza is a different war

The images of two women on the front page of an edition of The Washington Post last week illustrates how mainstream US media has been reporting Israel's war on Gaza.

On the left was a Palestinian mother who had lost five children. On the right was a nearly equally sized picture of an Israeli woman who was distressed by the fighting, according to the caption.

As the Palestinian woman cradled the dead body of one child, another infant son, his face blackened and disfigured with bruises, cried beside her.

The Israeli woman did not appear to be wounded in any way but also wept.

Arab frustration

To understand the frustration often felt in the Arab world over US media coverage, one only needs to imagine the same front page had the situation been reversed.

If an Israeli woman had lost five daughters in a Palestinian attack, would The Washington Post run an equally sized photograph of a relatively unharmed Palestinian woman, who was merely distraught over Israeli missile fire?

When the front page photographs of the two women were published on December 30, over 350 Palestinians had reportedly been killed compared to just four Israelis.

What if 350 Israelis had been killed and only four Palestinians -- would the newspaper have run the stories side by side as if equal in news value?

Like many major news organisations in the US, The Washington Post has chosen to cover the conflict from a perspective that reflects the US government's relationship with Israel. This means prioritising Israel's version of events while underplaying the views of Palestinian groups.

For example, the newspaper's lead article on Tuesday, which was published above the mothers' photographs, quotes Israeli military and civilian sources nine times before quoting a single Palestinian. The first seven paragraphs explain Israel's military strategy. The ninth paragraph describes the anxiety among Israelis, spending evenings in bomb shelters. Ordinary Palestinians, who generally have no access to bomb shelters, do not make an appearance until the 23rd paragraph.

To balance this top story, The Washington Post published another article on the bottom half of the front page about the Palestinian mother and her children. But would the paper have ever considered balancing a story about a massive attack on Israelis with an in-depth lead piece on the strategy of Palestinian militants?

Context stripped

Major US television channels also adopted the equal time approach, despite the reality that Palestinian casualties exceeded Israeli ones by a hundred fold. However, such comparisons were rare because the scripts read by American correspondents often excluded the overall Palestinian death count.

By stripping the context, American viewers may have easily assumed a level playing field, rather than a case of disproportionate force.

Take the opening lines of a report filed by NBC's Martin Fletcher on December 30: "In Gaza two little girls were taking out the rubbish and killed by an Israeli rocket -- while in Israel, a woman had been driving home and was killed by a Hamas rocket. No let up today on either side on the fourth day of this battle."

Omitted from the report was the overall Palestinian death toll, dropped continuously in subsequent reports filed by NBC correspondents over the next several days.

When number of deaths did appear -- sometimes as a graphic at the bottom of the screen -- it was identified as the number of "people killed" rather than being attributed specifically to Palestinians.

No wonder the overwhelmingly asymmetrical bombardment of Gaza has been framed vaguely as "rising tensions in the Middle East" by news anchors.

With the lack of context, the power dynamic on the ground becomes unclear.

ABC news, for example, regularly introduced events in Gaza as "Mideast Violence". And Like NBC, reporters excluded the Palestinian death toll.

On December 31, when Palestinian deaths stood at almost 400, ABC correspondent Simon McGergor-Wood began a video package by describing damage to an Israeli school by Hamas rockets.

The reporter's script can be paraphrased as follows: Israel wanted a sustainable ceasefire; Israel needed to prevent Hamas from rearming; Hamas targets were hit; Israel was sending in aid and letting the injured out; Israel was doing "everything they can to alleviate the humanitarian crisis". And with that McGregor-Wood signed off.

Palestinian perspective missing

There was no parallel telling of the Palestinian perspective, and no mention of any damages to Palestinian lives, although news agencies that day had reported five Palestinians dead.

For the ABC correspondent, it seemed the Palestinian deaths contained less news value than damage to Israeli buildings. His narration of events, meanwhile, amounted to no less than a parroting of the official Israeli line.

In fact, the Israeli government view typically went unchallenged on major US networks.

Interviews with Israeli spokesmen and ambassadors were not juxtaposed with the voices of Palestinian leaders. Prominent American news anchors frequently adopted the Israeli viewpoint. In talk show discussions, instead of debating events on the ground, the pundits often reinforced each other's views.

Such an episode occurred on a December 30 broadcast of the MSNBC show, Morning Joe, during which host Joe Scarborough repeatedly insisted that Israel should not be judged.

Israel was defending itself just as the US had done throughout history. "How many people did we kill in Germany?" Scarborough posed.

The blame rested on the Palestinians, he concluded, connecting the Gaza attacks to the Camp David negotiations of 2000. "They gave the Palestinians everything they could ask for, and they walked away from the table," he said repeatedly.

Although this view was challenged once by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US official, who appeared briefly on the show, subsequent guests agreed incessantly with Scarborough's characterisation of the Palestinians as negligent, if not criminal in nature.

According to guest Dan Bartlett, a former White House counsel, the Palestinian leadership had made it "very clear" that they were uninterested in peace talks.

Another guest, NBC anchor David Gregory, began by noting that Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian president, "could not be trusted", according to Bill Clinton, the former US president.

Gregory then added that Hamas had "undercut the peace process" and actually welcomed the attacks.

"The reality is that Hamas wanted this, they didn't want the ceasefire," he said.

Columnist Margaret Carlson also joined the show, agreeing in principal that Hamas should be "crushed" but voicing concern over the cost of such action.

Thus the debate was not whether Israel was justified, but rather what Israel should do next. The Palestinian human tragedy received little to no attention.

Victim's perspective

Arab audiences saw a different picture altogether. Rather than mulling Israel's dilemma, the Arab news networks captured the air assault in chilling detail from the perspective of its victims. The divide in coverage was staggering.

For US networks, the bombing of Gaza has largely been limited to two-minute video packages or five minute talk show segments. This has usually meant a few snippets of jumbled video: explosions from a distance and a momentary glance at victims; barely enough time to remember a face, let alone a personality. Victims were rarely interviewed.

The availability of time and space, American broadcast executives might argue, were mitigating factors.

On MSNBC for example, Gaza competed for air time last week with stories about the economy, such as a hike in liquor sales, or celebrity news, such as speculation over the publishing of photographs of Sarah Palin's new grandchild.

On Arab TV, however, Gaza has been the only story.

For hours on end, live images from the streets of Gaza are beamed into Arab households.

Unlike the correspondents from ABC and NBC, who have filed their reports exclusively from Israeli cities, Arab crews are inside Gaza, with many correspondents native Gazans themselves.

The images they capture are often broadcast unedited, and over the last week, a grizzly news gathering routine has been established.

The cycle begins with rooftop-mounted cameras, capturing the air raids live. After moments of quiet, thunderous bombing commences and plumes of smoke rise over the skyline. Then, anguish on the streets. Panicked civilians run for cover as ambulances careen through narrow alleys. Rescue workers hurriedly pick through the rubble, often pulling out mangled bodies. Fathers with tears of rage hold dead children up to the cameras, vowing revenge. The wounded are carried out in stretchers, gushing with blood.

Later, local journalists visit the hospitals and more gruesome images, more dead children are broadcast. Doctors wrap up the tiny bodies and carry them into overflowing morgues. The survivors speak to reporters. Their distraught voices are heard around the region; the outflow of misery and destruction is constant.

Palestinian voices

The coverage extends beyond Gaza. Unlike the US networks, which are often limited to one or two correspondents in Israel, major Arab television channels maintain correspondents and bureaus throughout the region. As angry protests take place on a near daily basis, the crews are there to capture the action live.

Even in Israel, Arab reporters are employed, and Israeli politicians are regularly interviewed. But so are members of Hamas and the other Palestinian factions.

The inclusion of Palestinian voices is not unique to Arab media. On a number of international broadcasters, including BBC World and CNN International, Palestinian leaders and Gazans in particular are regularly heard. And the Palestinian death toll has been provided every day, in most broadcasts and by most correspondents on the ground. Reports are also filed from Arab capitals.

On some level, the relatively small American broadcasting output can be attributed to a general trend in downsizing foreign reporting. But had a bloodbath on this scale happened in Israel, would the networks not have sent in reinforcements?

For now, the Israeli viewpoint seems slated to continue to dominate Gaza coverage. The latest narrative comes from the White House, which has called for a "durable" ceasefire, preventing Hamas terrorists from launching more rockets.

Naturally the soundbites are parroted by US broadcasters throughout the day and then reinforced by pundits, fearing the dangerous Hamas.

Arab channels, however, see a different outcome. Many have begun referring to Hamas, once controversial, as simply "the Palestinian resistance".

While American analysts map out Israel's strategy, Arab broadcasters are drawing their own maps, plotting the expanding range of Hamas rockets, and predicting a strengthened hand for opposition to Israel, rather than a weakened one.


Habib Battah is a freelance journalist and media analyst based in Beirut and New York. The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.


From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20189
******************************

Inside Gaza

An Eyewitness Report
January 08, 2009 By *Ewa Jasiewicz*

Ewa Jasiewicz's ZSpace Page </zspace/ewajasiewicz>
WHEN I got there, the gates of Beit Hanoun hospital were shut, with
teenage men hanging off them. The mass of people striving to get inside
was a sign that there had been an attack. Inside the gates, the hospital
was full. Parents, wives, cousins, emotionally frayed and overwhelmed,
were leaning over injured loved ones.
The Israeli Apache helicopter had attacked at 3.15pm. Witnesses said
that two missiles had been fired into the street in Hay al Amel, east
Beit Hanoun, close to the border with Israel. With rumours of an
imminent invasion this empty scrubland is rapidly becoming a no-man's
land which people cross quickly, fearing attack by Israeli jets.
But the narrow, busy streets of the Boura area rarely escape the
intensifying airstrikes.
Eyewitnesses said children had been playing and waiting in the streets
there for their parents to finish praying at the nearby mosque. "We
could see it so clearly, it was so close, we looked up and everyone ran.
Those that couldn't were soon flat on the ground," said Khalil Abu
Naseer, who was lucky to have escaped the incoming missile.
"Look at this, take it," insisted men in the street, handing me pieces
of the missile the size of a fist, all with jagged edges.
"All the windows were blown out, our doors were blown in, there was
glass everywhere," explained a neighbour. It was these lumps of missile,
rock and flying glass that smashed into the legs, arms, stomachs, heads
and backs of 16 people, two of them children, who had been brought to
Beit Hanoun Hospital on Thursday afternoon.
Fadi Chabat, 24, was working in his shop, a small tin shack that was a
community hub selling sweets, cigarettes and chewing gum. When the
missile exploded, he suffered multiple injuries. He died on Friday
morning in Kamal Adwahn Hospital in Jabaliya. As women attended the
grieving room at Fadi Chabat's home yesterday to pay their respects,
Israeli F16 fighter jets tore through the skies overhead and blasted
four more bombs into the empty areas on the border. Two elderly women in
traditional embroidered red and black dresses carrying small black
plastic shopping bags moved as quickly as they could; others disappeared
behind the walls of their homes, into courtyards and off the streets.
At Fadi's house the grief was still fresh. Nearly all the women were
crying, a collective outpouring of grief and raw pain with free-flowing
tears.
"He prayed five times a day, he was a good Muslim, he wasn't part of any
group, not Fatah, not Hamas, not one, none of them, he was a good
student, and he was different," said one of his sisters. She took me to
see Fadi's younger brother, who had been wounded in the same airstrike.
Omar, eight, was sitting on his own in a darkened bedroom on a foam
mattress with gauze on his back covering his wounds.
"He witnessed everything, he saw it all," the sisters explained. "He
kept saying, I saw the missile, I saw it, Fadi's been hit by a missile'."
The memory sets Omar off into more tears, his sisters, mother and aunts
breaking down along with him.
Nine-year-old Ismaeel, who had been on the street with his sisters
Leema, four, and Haya, 12, had been taking out rubbish when they were
struck by the missiles.
Ismaeel had been brought into the hospital still breathing and doctors
at first though he would pull through, but in the end he died of
internal injuries.
Within the past six days in Beit Hanoun alone, according to hospital
records seven people have been killed, among them three children and a
mother of ten other youngsters. Another 75 people have been injured,
including 29 children and 17 women.
As well as the fatalities and wounded, hundreds of homes have had their
windows blown out and been damaged by flying debris and shrapnel. Two
homes have been totally destroyed. Nearby the premises of two
organisations have been reduced to rubble. One of them, the Sons of the
City Charity, associated with Hamas, was blasted with two Apache-fired
missiles, gutting a neighbouring apartment in the process and breaking
windows at Beit Hanoun Hospital. The Cultural Development Association
and the offices of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,
were levelled by bombs dropped from F16 jets.
It is hard to imagine what the Israeli pilots of these aircraft see from
so far up in the sky. Do they see people walking; standing around and
talking in the street; kids with sticks chasing each other in play? Or
are the figures digitised, micro-people, perhaps just blips on a screen?
Whatever is seen from the air, the victims are often ordinary people.
Last Thursday night saw volunteers from the Palestinian Red Crescent
Society in Beit Hanoun take to the streets in an effort to save lives.
Like all emergency medical staff in Gaza, they risk death working in the
maelstrom of every Israeli invasion, during curfews and night fighting.
In one of the ambulances during an evening of total darkness caused by
nightly power cuts, I meet Yusri, a veteran of more than 14 years of
Israeli incursions into the Beit Hanoun district of Gaza. Moustachioed,
energetic, and gregarious, Yusri is in his 40s and a local hero. Seen by
people within the community as a man who rarely sleeps, he is a
front-line paramedic who zooms through Gaza's streets to reach
casualties, ambulance horn blaring as he shouts through a loudhailer for
onlookers and the dazed to get out of the way.
"Where's the strike?" Yusri asks locals, as we pick our way through a
gutted charred charity office and the house of the Tarahan family. Their
home, on the buffer zone, has been reduced to a concrete sandwich. There
are six casualties, but miraculously none of them are serious.
Beit Hanoun Hospital is a simple, 48-bed local facility with no
intensive care unit, decrepit metal stretchers and rickety beds. I drink
tea in a simple office with a garrulous crowd of ear, nose and throat
specialists, surgeons and paediatricians. The talk is all about
politics: how the plan for Gaza is to merge it with Egypt; how Israel
doesn't want to liquidate Hamas as it serves their goal of a divided
Palestine to have a weak Hamas alienated from the West Bank.
The chat is interrupted by lulls of intent listening as news crackles
through on Sawt Al Shab ("The Voice Of The People"), Gaza's grassroots
news station. Almost everyone here is tuned in. It is listened to by
taxi drivers, families in their homes huddled around wood stoves or
under blankets and groups of men on street corners crouched beside
transistor radio sets.
It feeds live news on the latest resistance attacks, interspersed with
political speeches from various leaders, and fighter music - thoaty,
deep male voices united in buoyant battle songs about standing up,
reclaiming al-Quds (Jerusalem) avenging fresh martyrs, and staying
steadfast.
News is fed through on operations by armed wings of every political
group active in Gaza; the Qasam (Hamas), the Abu Ali Mustapha Martyrs
Brigade (PFLP), the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (which is affiliated with
Fatah) and Saraya al-Quds (Islamic Jihad). One thing is widely
recognised - the attack on Gaza has brought all armed resistance groups
together. However, everybody adds wryly that "once this is all over,
they'll all break apart again".
One of the surgeons asks me about whether I'm scared, and whether I
really think I have protection as a foreigner here. I talk in detail
about Israel's responsibility to protect emergency services; to cease
fire; to facilitate movement;, to respect the Geneva Conventions,
including protection of civilians and injured combatants. The surgeon
talking to me is an intelligent man, highly respected in the community,
in his late 40s. He takes his time, explaining to me in detail that all
the evidence from everything Gazans have experienced points to Israel
operating above the law - that there is no protection, that these laws,
these conventions, do not seem to apply to Israel, nor does it abide by
them, and that I should be afraid, very afraid, because Gazans are afraid.
He recounts a story from the November 2006 invasion which saw more than
60 people killed, one entire family in one day alone. About 100 tanks
invaded Beit Hanoun, with one blocking each entrance for six days. He
remembers how the Red Cross brought water and food and took away the
refuse. All co-ordination was cut off with the Palestinian Authority.
The same will happen this time, he insists. He remembers too how one
ambulance driver, Yusri, a maverick, a hero, loved by all the staff and
community, faced down the tanks to evacuate the injured. Yusri, the
surgeon says, just drove up to the tank and started shouting through his
loudhailer, telling them to move for the love of God because we had a
casualty, then just swerved round them and made off.
Yusri has carried the injured and dead in every invasion in the past 14
years. He shows me a leg injury sustained when a tank rammed into his
ambulance. The event was caught on camera by journalists, and a case
brought against the Israel Occupation Forces, but they ruled the army
had acted appropriately in self defence.
"Look in the back of the ambulance here, how many people do you think
can fit in here? I was carrying 10 corpses at a time after the invasion,
there was a man cut in two here in the back, it was horrific. But you
carry on. I want to serve my country," he says.
During a prolonged power cut in that six-day invasion there was no
electricity to power a ventilator, and doctors took turns hand pumping
oxygen to keep one casualty alive for four hours before they could be
transferred. Roads were bulldozed, ambulances were banned from moving,
dead people lay in their homes for days, and when permission was finally
given for the corpses' collection, medics had to carry them on
stretchers along the main street.
Today in Gaza everyone is terrified that such events are now repeating
themselves, only worse. Gazans now feel collectively abandoned. The past
week's massacres, indiscriminate attacks and overflowing hospitals, and
the fact that anyone can be hit at any time in any place, has left
people utterly terrorised. No-one dares think of what might become of
them in these difficult and unpredictable days. As they say in Gaza,
"Bein Allah" - "It's up to God".
Ewa Jasiewicz is a journalist and activist. She is currently the
co-ordinator for the Free Gaza movement and one of the only
international journalists on the ground in Gaza
**************************

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in
the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy.
But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating
conclusions
January 08, 2009 By *Avi Shlaim*
Source: Guardian
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine>
Avi Shlaim's ZSpace Page </zspace/avishlaim>
The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gaza> is through understanding the
historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948
involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials
bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state.
On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary,
Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a
gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I
used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious
assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity
in this assault, have reopened the question.
I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the
mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of
Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist
colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had
very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial
expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent
political, economic and military control over the Palestinian
territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and
brutal military occupations of modern times.
Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy
of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into
a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources,
Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case
of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate
de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of
Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of
cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of
local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the
Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the
economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.
Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial
era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and
an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of
exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish
settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local
residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the
arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by
jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population
lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them
still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip
remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to
resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.
In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a
unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and
destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic
resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the
Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli
Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza
as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the
year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further
reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing
and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it
chose land over peace.
The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders
of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West
Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude
to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further
Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move
undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli
national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the
Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a
long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent
political existence on their land.
Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to
control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was
converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the
Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make
sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to
terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.
Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of
authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done
anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal
to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with
reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite
all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only
genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of
Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative
Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led
government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically
elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist
organisation.
America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and
demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by
withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus
developed with a significant part of the international community
imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the
occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.
As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed
for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently
purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they
reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is
little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious
fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple
truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal
aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other
national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to
call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.
Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political
programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism
of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a
two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national
unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with
Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that
included Hamas.
It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival
Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the
nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement
led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and
pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and
recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in
the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling
was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and
in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah
coup.
The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination
of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In
a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian
people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared
aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until
its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared
aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world
simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for
independence and statehood.
The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general
election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the
election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to
prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit
to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on
their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon
in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and
impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from
President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush
readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas,
vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire
and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.
As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian
aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves
little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a
conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been
inverted -- a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily
armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute
military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of
victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness.
In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and
shooting".
To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict.
Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an
unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak --
terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam
rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza
until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused
by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is
immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government.
Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but
its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally
disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years
after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire.
On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in
Gaza, including 222 children.
Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to
Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of
unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza.
Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came
into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a
violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any
exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord,
leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1%
of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted
drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas
canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical
supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the
civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the
border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of
collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international
humanitarian law.
The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of
its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza,
Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages
of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire
agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population;
and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent
civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in
getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack
of lies.
A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric
of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire.
It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men.
Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the
eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people
against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians,
Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old
blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to
the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But
Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an
eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of
more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet
ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.
No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket
attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and
destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their
resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that
glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution
to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's
concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security
to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is
not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly
declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the
Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years.
Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab
League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves
concessions and compromises.
This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it
difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with
"an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually
violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and
practises terrorism -- the use of violence against civilians for
political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap
fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence
with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps
compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones.
Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies
and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.
Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University
of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and
of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace. This article
appeared in the Guardian on January 7, 2009.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday, May 14, 2007

MOTHER'S AND MEMORIAL DAY





Illustrations: In the early 90s I first head Rush on a trip across country. I honestly thought he was a comedian and a very funny one at that. It was only a short time later that I found out that he was the major source of information for many Americans. I haven’t heard him since.

Don Imus was a bit different. He could offend both the left and the right, interviewed intelligent and well-known journalists, and was often funny. His one remark that got him fired was offensive, but I have never heard him say things as stupid as Rush Limbaugh or a score of other right-wing radio people. As I mentioned, he is Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh with a GED.

Mother’s and Memorial Day

There is much to cover here, so this is a longer one. First, for those you you on the mailing list, I’m attatching a nice song about the flag and war.

Memorial Day is supposed to the day we honor those who died in combat for our ideals. After the Iraq war was voted on, Congress passed two bills on the same day. One was a statement of support for the troops. The other was a cut of 20 Billion dollars from the VA budget. I worked as an intern at the VA clinic for Alcohol and addiction for a short time, but it was long enough to not only satify residency, but also to learn a great deal about what war does to those who participate in it and “survive it”. There is a song by John Prine titled “Sam Stone” which describes very well about 70% of the patients there. And they were the lucky ones as those who had PTSD without narcotics and alcohol to help numb them seemed to suffer even more.

Mother’s Day fits right in here. While today it is an exercise in guilt for profit, it was introduced by Stowe in reaction to the Civil War as a call to mothers around the world to unite not to raise their children to slaughter one another. Capitalism took care of that unpatriotic idea.

Articles:

Tariq Ali is less known than Chomsky, but his mind is as clear and organized. He also get the facts right. I think this is the first time I’ve reprinted him and felt that he should be represented. Check some of the books he has written. Also, he is not Christian, Moslem, or Jewish, so no religious bias can possibly enter.

The second gives an insight into what the academic world is really like. I remember as an undergraduate looking at the professors and figuring they had a pretty good deal going. Show up 9 to 12 hours a week and spend the rest of the time reading and writing. Well, the truth is that is a bunch of nerds who always got picked last for baseball games, remain petty little anal-erotics, and are little more than glorified civil servants. I know because I’ve been there and was lucky to find one or two exceptions in any one institution. And I was in a less publicly known discipline. Imagine the problems in discussion the Middle East and being correct at the same time!

Finally, I’ve been asked to find something to support what I said about the world bank and Wolfowitz. Naiomi Klein provides that from the Nation Magazine.

1: British Author Tariq Ali on the Resignation of Tony Blair: “The Fact

That He’s Leaving is Because He’s So Hated?

2: "It Takes an Enormous Amount of Courage to Speak the Truth When No

One Else is Out There" -- World-Renowned Holocaust, Israel Scholars

Defend DePaul Professor Norman Finkelstein as He Fights for Tenure

3: *lookout* /by/ Naomi Klein

Sacrificial Wolfie

[from the May 14, 2007 issue]

Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org

British Author Tariq Ali on the Resignation of Tony Blair: ?The Fact

That He?s Leaving is Because He?s So Hated?

Friday, May 11th, 2007

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/11/1531215

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced his plans to resign next

month after more than a decade in power. British author Tariq Ali talks

about Blair?s legacy, his fatal decision to follow the Bush

administration into Iraq, and his likely successor, finance minister

Gordon Brown. [includes rush transcript]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blair made the announcement on Thursday in a speech to Labour Party

members in his Sedgefield constituency. He will stay on in Downing

Street until the Labour Party elects a new leader - widely expected to

be finance minister Gordon Brown. In his address, Blair defended his

decision to send British troops to war in Iraq.

* British Prime Minister Tony Blair*.

Blair, President Bush?s closest ally, invoked 9/11 to defend his staunch

backing of US foreign policy.

* British Prime Minister Tony Blair*.

Back in Washington, President Bush paid tribute to Tony Blair at a

Pentagon news conference.

* President Bush*.

We go to London to speak with British author Tariq Ali.

* * Tariq Ali*. Historian, one of the editors of the New Left Review

as well as the author of many books, including ?Rough Music: Blair

Bombs Baghdad London Terror.?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

/This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us

provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV

broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.

*Donate* - $25

,

$50

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$100

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*JUAN GONZALEZ: *We're going to move now to England, where British Prime

Minister Tony Blair has announced he plans to resign next month after

more than a decade in power.

*PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR: *Today, I announce my decision to

stand down from the leadership of the Labour Party. The party will

now select a new leader. On the 27th of June, I will tender my

resignation from the office of prime minister to the Queen.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Blair made the announcement on Thursday in a speech to

Labour Party members in his Sedgefield constituency. He will stay on in

Downing Street until the Labour Party elects a new leader, widely

expected to be Finance Minister Gordon Brown. In his address, Blair

defended his decision to send British troops to war in Iraq.

*PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR: *But I ask you to accept one thing:

hand on heart, I did what I thought was right.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Blair, President Bush?s closest ally, invoked 9/11 to

defend his staunch backing of US foreign policy.

*PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR: *And then came the utterly

unanticipated and dramatic September the 11th, 2001, and the death

of 3,000 or more on the streets of New York, and I decided we

should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our oldest ally, and I did

so out of belief. And so, Afghanistan and then Iraq, the latter

bitterly controversial. And removing Saddam and his sons from

power, as with removing the Taliban, was over with relative ease.

But the blowback since from global terrorism and those elements

that support it has been fierce and unrelenting and costly. And

for many, it simply isn't and can't be worth it. For me, I think

we must see it through. They, the terrorists who threaten us here

and around the world, will never give up, if we give up. It is a

test of will and of belief, and we can't fail it.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Back in Washington, President Bush paid tribute to Tony

Blair at a Pentagon news conference.

*PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: *First of all, I?ll miss Tony Blair. He

is a -- he is a political figure who is capable of thinking over

the horizon. He's a long-term thinker. I have found him to be a

man who has kept his word, which sometimes is rare in the

political circles I run in. When Tony Blair tells you something,

as we say in Texas, you can take it to the bank. We've got a

relationship, such that we can have really good discussions. And

so, I?m going to miss him. He's a remarkable person, and I

consider him a good friend.

*AMY GOODMAN: *We return now to London to Tariq Ali, historian and one

of the editors of the /New Left Review/, as well as author of many

books, including /Rough Music: Blair, Bombs, Baghdad, London, Terror/.

He joins us from a London studio. Welcome to /Democracy Now!/, Tariq.

*TARIQ ALI: *Hi, Amy. Good to be with you again.

*AMY GOODMAN: *It's good to have you with us. Talk about Blair resigning.

*TARIQ ALI: *Well, it was classic New Labour spin, well-orchestrated,

designed for the global media networks, a self-serving speech, a

carefully hand-picked audience so that there would be no trouble at all,

and, actually, for him, a very bad speech. I mean, and I?ve always

regarded Blair as a second-rate politician with a third-rate mind, but

he's had better speech writers than this, and I wondered whether he had

written it himself. I mean, it's sort of full of contradictions and

half-truths. I mean, if he was going to see the so-called war against

terror through, why quit?

We had no real accounting of why he's leaving as prime minister. And the

fact is he's leaving is, because he's hated. And the reason he?s hated

is because he joined the neocons in Washington and went to war against

Iraq, which now 78% of the population in this country oppose. And when

people are being asked what will Blair?s legacy be, a large majority is

saying Iraq. And I think that's what he will be remembered for, as a

prime minister who took a reluctant and skeptical country into a war

designed by Washington and its neoconservative strategists, all of whom

are in crisis.

And you listen to Blair now and his successor, Brown, and they sound

much worse than any Democrat in the Senate or the House, because they

realize the war's unpopular. These guys carry on living in a tiny

bubble, media bubble, which they construct. And I think the BBC's

sycophancy, the way in which they portrayed him yesterday as if he was a

sort of dead Princess Diana, doesn?t do them proud. It was a low point

in BBC journalism, with one of their political correspondents saying,

?Gosh, look at him. Isn't he a winner?? Well, he isn't a winner, which

is why he's leaving. And a reluctant party is saying farewell to him,

because they think they?ll lose the next election if he?s in charge.

That's what's going on.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *And, Tariq, he did try in his speech to point to the

continued prosperity, economic prosperity, of the British under his

tenure. Your response to that?

*TARIQ ALI: *Well, I mean, you know, it is prosperous for some people

and some regions of the country. But if you look, for instance, at

various regions in the north and northeast, you have a tiny proportion

of the population which is relatively well-off, and you have people who

are not so well-off, people who are dependent on social welfare, which

is constantly under attack. You have a two-tier health system now, which

you never used to, where if you have money, you can go in a hospital and

get treatment any minute, but if you don't, you have to stand in queues.

You have lots of hospitals who he sold to private finance initiatives,

which are now saying they can't fund their hospitals anymore. The

failures, the domestic failures, are not being talked about.

And you have large-scale corruption. I mean, recently a mega-scandal

with a British arms company, which had paid massive bribes to leading

Saudis, including probably members of the royal family. This came up.

Blair put a stop to it. His attorney general, not unlike Gonzales, said

we can?t sue, because the country?s future interests are at stake, so

corruption is fine. It's a total mess. Something is rotten in this

kingdom. And a very sycophantic media rarely talks about it. It's left

to small indie media outlets or satirical magazines like /Private Eye/,

basically, to carry on regular reporting of what is going on.

I don't think his legacy is anything new. He tried to carry on what

Margaret Thatcher did, and the results have not been too dissimilar.

He's had a bloodier reign than Thatcher. He has taken Britain into more

wars and actually antagonized, as I point out in a number of recent

articles, large swathes of the British establishment, who feel very

ashamed that they are being led by a leader who is so totally and

completely and a sort of favored attack dog in the imperial kennel.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Tariq Ali, President Bush in Washington, D.C., said he'll

miss Tony Blair and that he's ready to work with his presumed successor,

Gordon Brown, confident that he, quote, ?understands the consequences of

failure in Iraq.? Talk about that statement and also who Gordon Brown is.

*TARIQ ALI: *Well, I think Bush is right. He will miss Blair. I mean,

you can't have a more loyal politician in Europe than Blair. I mean,

he's done virtually everything the United States has asked for, and not

just after 9/11. Even prior to that, he was extremely pro-Washington in

everything. He never raised any questions. So I think Washington will

miss him. Mercifully, very few people in this country will.

Now, as to his successor, Gordon Brown, he backed the war in Iraq, as he

himself said yesterday, and it was felt it was necessary. He backed the

war in Afghanistan, felt that that was completely necessary -- and think

that they wiped out all the problems with this. But they're completely

wrong. On all the central issues of the day, there is no difference

between Blair and Brown. The tone Brown adopts will probably be

marginally less aggressive, but in terms of substance, there's nothing

to choose between them.

And this is essentially yet another New Labour trick: OK, we?ve got rid

of the big bad war monger, and we?ve got a decent prime minister again.

But this guy is also a war monger. The difference is he is more

intelligent than Blair. If I were to say that Blair is a second-rate

politician with a third-rate mind, I?d say Brown is a second-rate

politician with a second-rate mind, which makes him a bit better than

Blair. But he's no different, and he is going to carry on in Britain in

exactly the same old way. They've already lost Scotland, which is a

Labour stronghold. They are declining in Wales. And they will lose

England at the next election. So essentially they will hand the

countries back to the Tories, and that, too, will be no different. So

it's a grim prospect which faces us here.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Well, I wanted to ask you that: in terms of the

political prospects for progressive-thinking people within Britain, for

the labor movement, for the racial minorities that are increasingly

under attack in your country, what are the alternatives that those folks

have?

*TARIQ ALI: *Well, interestingly enough, you know, the Nationalist

parties in Scotland and Wales are the only alternatives in those

countries which are more progressive than Labour, Conservative or

Liberal. I mean, they're against nuclear weapons in Scotland, against

Trident missiles, against the war in Iraq, want more money spent on

public services, health, education, etc. So the progressive voices at

the moment exist only in Scotland and Wales. In England, which has the

bulk of the money and is the largest chunk of the country, there is no

real alternative, and that is a big tragedy.

Of course, there is Ken Livingston, the Mayor of London, who is probably

the only Labour politician respected by sections of the population. He

has been very, very strong in defending racial minorities, in attacking

Islamophobic trends in British culture, and in staunchly attacking the

war in Iraq. He came out very hard against that war when it first

started and warned prophetically that it would put the citizens of

London at risk. But he, after all, is a mayor of a large city -- that's

all. On a national level, the alternatives at the moment are very

limited. And I think we will likely -- we will carry on in this way ?til

New Labour is defeated, as it probably will be in the next elections,

which might then open up some possibilities of new forces emerging. But

at the moment, it's grim.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Finally, on a different issue, Tariq Ali, as we wrap up,

Alan Johnston, who has not been heard from since he was kidnapped in

Gaza, was just named Broadcasting Journalist of the Year at the annual

London Press Awards. The award was accepted by his father Graham

Johnston and the BBC Director-General Mark Thompson. Your comment.

*TARIQ ALI: *Well, you know, I feel for him, you know, and I feel for

all journalists in war zones who try and do their reporting and are

kidnapped. But, you know, that happens on the one hand, and on the other

hand what we have is, I mean, you know, one can sympathize with Johnston

and his family and hope that he is released. But on the other hand, Amy,

what is going on in this country is that whistleblowers are being

punished. Yesterday, a British civil servant who leaked information

regarding a secret memo was sentenced to six months in prison by an

incredibly unpleasant judge, who said ?You put our country at risk.? Put

our country at risk? By coming out with the truth? It?s just astonishing.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Tariq Ali, we?re going to go to break. When we come back,

we'll be joined by another guest in that London studio that you are

sitting in to talk about that very issue, about a memo that reportedly

says that President Bush asked Prime Minister Tony Blair to bomb the

Doha headquarters of Al Jazeera. I want to thank you for being with us.

And we'll be back in the London studio in a minute.

www.democracynow.org

Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org

"It Takes an Enormous Amount of Courage to Speak the Truth When No

One Else is Out There" -- World-Renowned Holocaust, Israel Scholars

Defend DePaul Professor Norman Finkelstein as He Fights for Tenure

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/09/1514221

The battle over political science professor Norman Finkelstein to

receive tenure at DePaul University is heating up. Finkelstein has

taught at DePaul for the past six years. Finkelstein?s two main topics

of focus over his career have been the Holocaust and Israeli policy. We

speak to two world-renowned scholars in these fields: Raul Hilberg,

considered the founder of Holocaust studies, and Avi Shlaim, a professor

of international relations at Oxford University and an expert on the

Arab-Israeli conflict. Shlaim calls Finkelstein a ?very impressive,

learned and careful scholar?, while Hilberg praises Finkelstein?s

?acuity of vision and analytical power.? Hilberg says: "It takes an

enormous amount of courage to speak the truth when no one else is out

there to support him." [includes rush transcript]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The battle over political science professor Norman Finkelstein to

receive tenure at DePaul University is heating up. Finkelstein - one of

the country?s foremost critics of Israeli policy - has taught at DePaul

for the past six years. His tenure has been overwhelmingly approved at

the departmental and college level, but the dean of the College of

Liberal Arts and Sciences has opposed it.

A final decision is expected to be made in the coming weeks. Finkelstein

has accused Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz of being responsible

for leading the effort to deny him tenure. In an interview with the

Harvard Crimson, Dershowitz admitted that he had sent a letter to DePaul

faculty members lobbying against Finkelstein?s tenure. Then last week

the Wall Street Journal published an article by Dershowitz titled

?Finkelstein?s Bigotry.? In it, Dershowitz accuses Finkelstein of being

an ?anti-Semite? and says that he ?does not do ?scholarship? in any

meaningful sense.?

Finkelstein?s two main topics of focus over his career have been the

Holocaust and Israeli policy. Today we are joined by two world-renowned

scholars in these fields:

* *Raul Hilberg*. One of the best-known and most distinguished of

Holocaust historians. He is author of the seminal three-volume

work ?The Destruction of the European Jews? and is considered the

founder of Holocaust studies. He joins us on the line from his

home in Vermont.

* *Avi Shlaim*. Professor of international relations at Oxford

University. He is the author of numerous books, most notably ?The

Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.? He is widely regarded as

one of the world?s leading authorities on the Israeli-Arab conflict.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

/This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us

provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV

broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.

*Donate* - $25

,

$50

,

$100

,

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/

*AMY GOODMAN: *The battle over political science professor Norman

Finkelstein to receive tenure at DePaul University in Chicago is heating

up. Finkelstein is one of the country?s foremost critics of Israeli

policy. He has taught at DePaul for the past six years. His tenure has

been overwhelmingly approved at the departmental and college level. A

college-wide faculty panel voted 5-0 to back his ten-year bid, but the

Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has opposed it. A final

decision is expected in the next few weeks.

Professor Finkelstein has accused Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz

of being responsible for leading the effort to deny him tenure. In an

interview with the /Harvard Crimson/, Dershowitz admitted he had sent a

letter to DePaul faculty members lobbying against Finkelstein?s tenure.

Then, last week the /Wall Street Journal/ published an article by

Dershowitz titled ?Finkelstein?s Bigotry.? In it, Dershowitz accuses

Finkelstein of being an anti-Semite and says he ?does not do scholarship

in any meaningful sense.? Professor Finkelstein's two main topics of

focus over his career have been the Holocaust and Israeli policy.

Today, we?re joined by two world-renowned scholars in these fields. Raul

Hilberg is one of the best known and most distinguished of Holocaust

historians. He is author of the seminal three-volume work, /The

Destruction of the European Jews/. He?s considered the founder of

Holocaust studies. He joins us from his home in Vermont. Avi Shlaim is a

professor of international relations at Oxford University in Britain. He

is the author of numerous books, most notably /The Iron Wall: Israel and

the Arab World/. He?s widely regarded as one of the world?s leading

authorities on the Israeli-Arab conflict.

We?ll begin in Vermont with Professor Hilberg. Can you talk about

Professor Finkelstein's contribution to Holocaust studies with his book,

/The Holocaust Industry/?

*RAUL HILBERG: *Yes. I read this book, which was published about seven

years ago, even as I, myself, was researching actions brought against

Swiss companies, notably banks, but also other enterprises in insurance

and in manufacturing. And the gist of all of these claims, all of these

actions, was that somehow the Swiss banks, in particular, and other

enterprises, as well, owed money to Jews or the survivors or the living

descendants of people who were victims. The actions were brought by

claims lawyers, by the World Jewish Congress, which joined them, and a

blitz was launched in the newspapers. Congressmen and senators were

mobilized, officials of regulatory agencies in New York and elsewhere.

Threats were issued in the nature of withdrawal of pension funds, of

boycotts, of bad publicity.

And I was struck by the fact, even as I, myself, was researching the

same territory that Professor Finkelstein was covering, that the Swiss

did not owe that money, that the $1,250,000,000 that were agreed as a

settlement to be paid to the claimants was something that in very plain

language was extorted from the Swiss. I had, in fact, relied upon the

same sources that Professor Finkelstein used, perhaps in addition some

Swiss items. I was in Switzerland at the height of the crisis, and I

heard from so-called forensic accountants about how totally surprised

the Swiss were by this outburst. There is no other word for it.

Now, Finkelstein was the first to publish what was happening in his book

/The Holocaust Industry/. And when I was asked to endorse the book, I

did so with specific reference to these claims. I felt that within the

Jewish community over the centuries, nothing like it had ever happened.

And even though these days a couple of billion dollars are sometimes

referred to as an accounting error and not worthy of discussion, there

is a psychological dimension here which not must be underestimated.

I was also struck by the fact that Finkelstein was being attacked over

and over. And granted, his style is a little different from mine, but I

was saying the same thing, and I had published my results in that

three-volume work, published in 2003 by Yale University Press, and I did

not hear from anybody a critical word about what I said, even though it

was the same substantive conclusion that Finkelstein had offered. So

that?s the gist of the matter right then and there.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Why do you think, Professor Hilberg, he was criticized

and you were not?

*RAUL HILBERG: *Well, Finkelstein -- I believe Finkelstein was

criticized mainly for the style that he employed. And he was vulnerable.

And it was clear to me already years ago that some campaigns were

launched -- from what sector, I didn't know -- to remove him from the

academic world. Years ago, I got a phone call from someone who was in

charge of a survivors' group in California who told me that Finkelstein

had been ousted from a job in New York City at a university -- actually,

a college there -- and this was done under pressure.

And then, again, I gave a lecture a year and a half ago in Chicago,

which is the place where Finkelstein had been employed at DePaul

University, and my lecture was about Auschwitz, and it was based on the

records, which we?ve now recovered from Moscow, about the history of

this camp. Not exactly a simple topic. But there was a question period,

and I awaited pertinent questions, when someone rose from his chair and

asked, ?Should Finkelstein be tenured?? Now, for heaven?s sake, I said

to myself, what is going on here?

And whether he?s being intimidated, whether he is in a situation where,

whatever else may be happening, the employers are being intimidated,

it?s hard for me to say, but there is very clearly a campaign, which was

made very obvious in the /Wall Street Journal/, when Professor

Dershowitz wrote in a style which is highly uncharacteristic of the

editorial page of this newspaper, which incidentally I read religiously.

So I, myself, cannot fully explain this outburst, but it clearly

emanates from the same anger, from the same revolt, that prompted the

whole action against the Swiss to begin with.

*AMY GOODMAN: *I wanted to bring Professor Avi Shlaim into this

discussion, a professor of international relations at Oxford University,

has written numerous books, including /The Iron Wall: Israel and the

Arab World/. Can you talk about the significance of Professor

Finkelstein's work?

*AVI SHLAIM: *Yes. I think very highly of Professor Finkelstein. I

regard him as a very able, very erudite and original scholar who has

made an important contribution to the study of Zionism, to the study of

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, in particular, to the study of

American attitudes towards Israel and towards the Middle East.

Professor Finkelstein specializes in exposing spurious scholarship on

the Arab-Israeli conflict. And he has a very impressive track record in

this respect. He was a very promising graduate student in history at

Princeton, when a book by Joan Peters appeared, called /From Time

Immemorial/, and he wrote the most savage exposition in critique of this

book. It was a systematic demolition of this book. The book argued,

incidentally, that Palestine was a land without a people for people

without a land. And Professor Finkelstein exposed it as a hoax, and he

showed how dishonest the scholarship or spurious scholarship was in the

entire book. And he paid the price for his courage, and he has been a

marked man, in a sense, in America ever since. His most recent book is

/Beyond Chutzpah/, follows in the same vein of criticizing and exposing

biases and distortions and falsifications in what Americans write about

Israel and about the Middle East. So I consider him to be a very

impressive and a very learned and careful scholar.

I would like to make one last point, which is that his style is very

polemical, and I don't particularly enjoy the strident polemical style

that he employs. On the other hand, what really matters in the final

analysis is the content, and the content of his books, in my judgment,

is of very high quality.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Professor Shlaim, what about the whole issue of when you

criticize the Israeli government, being charged with anti-Semitism? What

is your response to this? You were born in Iraq. You?re also an Israeli

citizen and then moved to Britain?

*AVI SHLAIM: *I am. I was born in Baghdad. I grew up in Israel. I served

in IDF. And for the last forty years, I have lived in Britain, and I

teach at Oxford. My academic discipline is international relations, and

I am a specialist in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

And I think that there is no -- that we must be very careful to separate

questions of anti-Semitism from critique of Israel. I am critical of

Israel as a scholar, and anti-Semitism just doesn't come into it. My

view is that the blind supporters of Israel -- and there are many of

them in America, in particular -- use the charge of anti-Semitism to try

and silence legitimate criticism of Israeli practices. I regard this as

moral blackmail. Israel has no immunity to criticism, moral immunity to

criticism, because of the Holocaust. Israel is a sovereign nation-state,

and it should be judged by the same standards as any other state. And

Norman Finkelstein is a very serious critic and a very well-informed

critic and hard-hitting critic of Israeli practices in the occupation

and dispossession of the Palestinians.

His last book, /Beyond Chutzpah/, is based on an amazing amount of

research. He seems to have read everything. He has gone through the

reports of Israeli groups, of human rights groups, Human Rights Watch

and Peace Now and B?Tselem, all of the reports of Amnesty International.

And he deploys all this evidence from Israeli and other sources in order

to sustain his critique of Israeli practices, Israeli violations of

human rights of the Palestinians, Israeli house demolitions, the

targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants, the cutting down of

trees, the building of the wall -- the security barrier on the West

Bank, which is illegal -- the restrictions imposed on the Palestinians

in the West Bank, and so on and so forth. I find his critique extremely

detailed, well-documented and accurate.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Professor Hilberg, like you, Norman Finkelstein is the

son of Holocaust victims, his mother and his father both in

concentration camps. Your final thoughts on this whole dispute and

whether Norman Finkelstein should get tenure at DePaul University in

Chicago?

*RAUL HILBERG: *Well, let me say at the outset, I would not, unasked,

offer advice to the university in which he now serves. Having been in a

university for thirty-five years myself and engaged in its politics, I

know that outside interferences are most unwelcome. I will say, however,

that I am impressed by the analytical abilities of Finkelstein. He is,

when all is said and done, a highly trained political scientist who was

given a PhD degree by a highly prestigious university. This should not

be overlooked. Granted, this, by itself, may not establish him as a

scholar.

However, leaving aside the question of style -- and here, I agree that

it?s not my style either -- the substance of the matter is most

important here, particularly because Finkelstein, when he published this

book, was alone. It takes an enormous amount of academic courage to

speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him. And so, I

think that given this acuity of vision and analytical power,

demonstrating that the Swiss banks did not owe the money, that even

though survivors were beneficiaries of the funds that were distributed,

they came, when all is said and done, from places that were not

obligated to pay that money. That takes a great amount of courage in and

of itself. So I would say that his place in the whole history of writing

history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right

triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it

so seems, at great cost.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Well, Professor Raul Hilberg and Professor Avi Shlaim, I

want to thank you both very much for being with us. Raul Hilberg,

speaking to us from his home in Vermont, one of the best-known and most

distinguished of Holocaust historians, his three-volume work is /The

Destruction of the European Jews/. Avi Shlaim, professor of

international relations at Oxford University in Britain, his book, his

latest, /The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World/. Thank you very much

for joining us.

www.democracynow.org

*lookout* /by/ Naomi Klein

Sacrificial Wolfie

[from the May 14, 2007 issue]

It's not the act itself, it's the hypocrisy. That's the line on Paul

Wolfowitz, coming from editorial pages around the world. It's neither:

not the act (disregarding the rules to get his girlfriend a pay raise)

nor the hypocrisy (the fact that Wolfowitz's mission as World Bank

president is fighting for "good governance").

First, let's dispense with the supposed hypocrisy problem. "Who wants to

be lectured on corruption by someone telling them to 'do as I say, not

as I do'?" asked one journalist. No one, of course. But that's a pretty

good description of the game of one-way strip poker that is our global

trade system, in which the United States and Europe--via the World Bank,

the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization--tell

the developing world, "You take down your trade barriers and we'll keep

ours up." From farm subsidies to the Dubai Ports World scandal,

hypocrisy is our economic order's guiding principle.

Wolfowitz's only crime was taking his institution's international

posture to heart. The fact that he has responded to the scandal by

hiring a celebrity lawyer and shopping for a leadership "coach" is just

more evidence that he has fully absorbed the World Bank way: When in

doubt, blow the budget on overpriced consultants and call it aid.

The more serious lie at the center of the controversy is the implication

that the World Bank was an institution with impeccable ethical

credentials--until, according to forty-two former Bank executives, its

credibility was "fatally compromised" by Wolfowitz. (Many American

liberals have seized on this fairy tale, addicted to the fleeting rush

that comes from forcing neocons to resign.) The truth is that the bank's

credibility was fatally compromised when it forced school fees on

students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; when it demanded that Tanzania

privatize its water system; when it made telecom privatization a

condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; when it demanded labor

"flexibility" in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in Sri Lanka; when

it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post-invasion Iraq.

Ecuadoreans care little about Wolfowitz's girlfriend; more pressing is

that in 2005, the Bank withheld a promised $100 million after the

country dared to spend a portion of its oil revenues on health and

education. Some antipoverty organization.

But the area where the World Bank has the most tenuous claim to moral

authority is in the fight against corruption. Almost everywhere that

mass state pillage has taken place over the past four decades, the Bank

and the IMF have been first on the scene of the crime. And no, they have

not been looking the other way as the locals lined their pockets; they

have been writing the ground rules for the theft and yelling, "Faster,

please!"--a process known as rapid-fire shock therapy.

Russia under the leadership of the recently departed Boris Yeltsin was a

case in point. Beginning in 1990, the Bank led the charge for the former

Soviet Union to impose immediately what it called "radical reform." When

Mikhail Gorbachev refused to go along, Yeltsin stepped up. This

bulldozer of a man would not let anything or anyone stand in the way of

the Washington-authored program, including Russia's elected politicians.

After he ordered army tanks to open fire on demonstrators in October

1993, killing hundreds and leaving the Parliament blackened by flames,

the stage was set for the fire-sale privatizations of Russia's most

precious state assets to the so-called oligarchs. Of course, the Bank

was there. Of the democracy-free lawmaking frenzy that followed

Yeltsin's coup, Charles Blitzer, the World Bank's chief economist on

Russia, told the /Wall Street Journal/, "I've never had so much fun in

my life."

When Yeltsin left office, his family had become inexplicably wealthy,

while several of his deputies were enmeshed in bribery scandals. These

incidents were reported on in the West, as they always are, as

unfortunate local embellishments on an otherwise ethical economic

modernization project. In fact, corruption was embedded in the very idea

of shock therapy. The whirlwind speed of change was crucial to

overcoming the widespread rejection of the reforms, but it also meant

that by definition there could be no oversight. Moreover, the payoffs

for local officials were an indispensable incentive for Russia's

apparatchiks to create the wide-open market Washington was demanding.

The bottom line is that there is good reason that corruption has never

been a high priority for the Bank and the IMF: Its officials understand

that when enlisting politicians to advance an economic agenda guaranteed

to win them furious enemies at home, there generally has to be a little

in it for those politicians in bank accounts abroad.

Russia is far from unique: From Chile's dictator Augusto Pinochet, who

accumulated more than 125 bank accounts while building the first

neoliberal state, to Argentine President Carlos Menem, who drove a

bright red Ferrari Testarossa while he liquidated his country, to Iraq's

"missing billions" today, there is, in every country, a class of

ambitious, bloody-minded politicians who are willing to act as Western

subcontractors. They will take a fee, and that fee is called

corruption--the silent but ever-present partner in the crusade to

privatize the developing world.

The three main institutions at the heart of that crusade are in

crisis--not because of the small hypocrisies but because of the big

ones. The WTO cannot get back on track, the IMF is going broke,

displaced by Venezuela and China. And now the Bank is going down.

The /Financial Times/ reports that when World Bank managers dispensed

advice, "they were now laughed at." Perhaps we should all laugh at the

Bank. What we should absolutely not do, however, is participate in the

effort to cleanse the Bank's ruinous history by repeating the absurd

narrative that the reputation of an otherwise laudable antipoverty

organization has been sullied by one man. The Bank understandably wants

to throw Wolfowitz overboard. I say, Let the ship go down with the captain.