A Short History of Israeli Impunity
The Pariah State
by EVAN JONES
‘From abroad, we are accustomed to believe that Eretz Israel is presently
almost totally desolate, an uncultivated desert, and that anyone wishing to
buy land there can come and buy all he wants. But in truth it is not so …
[Our brethren in Eretz Israel] were slaves in their land of exile and they
suddenly find themselves with unlimited freedom … This sudden change has
engendered in them an impulse to despotism as always happens when “a slave
becomes king,” and behold they walk with the Arabs in hostility and
cruelty, unjustly encroaching on them.’
*Ahad Ha’am, 1891; cited in Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of
Israel, 2012.*
‘If Lord Shaftesbury was literally inexact in describing Palestine as a
country without a people, he was essentially correct, for there is no Arab
people living in intimate fusion with the country, utilizing its resources
and stamping it with a characteristic impress; there is at best an Arab
encampment.’
*Israel Zangwill, 1920; cited in Naseer Aruri, ed., Palestinian Refugees,
2001.*
‘[the Haganah] should adopt the system of aggressive defence; during the
assault we must respond with a decisive blow: the destruction of the [Arab]
place or the expulsion of the residents along with the seizure of the
place.’ ‘The war will give us the land. The concept of ‘ours’ and ‘not
ours’ are peace concepts, only, and in war they lose their whole meaning.’
*David Ben-Gurion, December 1947, February 1948; cited in Aruri. *
‘The conquest [of Deir Yassin by Irgun and Stern Gang forces, supported by
Haganah operatives, in April 1948] was carried out with great cruelty.
Whole families – women, old people, children – were killed … Some of the
prisoners moved to places of detention, including women and children, were
murdered viciously by their captors.’
*Yitzhak Levy, Haganah Intelligence Service; cited in Benny Morris, The
Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2004.*
‘[Of the massacre at al-Daway(i)ma in May 1948] Cultured and well mannered
commanders who are considered good fellows … have turned into low
murderers, and this happened not in the storm of battle and blind passion,
but because of a system of expulsion and annihilation. The few Arabs remain
the better.’
*Account of a participant soldier who Morris claims ‘appears to have based
himself largely or completely on hearsay’ but who elsewhere is described as
an eyewitness; cited in Uri Davis, Apartheid Israel, 2003.*
‘One Friday night in September 1967 … we were left alone by our officers,
who drove into Jerusalem for their night off. An elderly Palestinian man,
who had been arrested on the road while carrying a large sum in American
dollars, was taken into the interrogation room. While standing outside the
building on security detail, I was startled by terrifying screams coming
from within. I ran inside, climbed onto a crate, and, through the window
observed the prisoner tied to a chair as my good friends beat him all over
his body and burned his arms with lit cigarettes. I climbed down from the
post, vomited, and returned to my post, frightening and shaking. About an
hour later, a pickup truck carrying the body of the “rich” old man pulled
out of the station, and my friends informed me they were driving to the
Jordan River to get rid of him.’
*Sand himself, in The Invention of the Land of Israel*
‘“We take the land first and the law comes after” [claimed Yehoshafat
Palmon, Arab affairs adviser to the Mayor of Jerusalem to the author]. ‘The
law comes after …’. In fact, for most Arabs it did not come at all.’
*David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch, 1977*
Let’s not mince words. Israel is an abomination. One is hard pressed to
find words in English powerful enough to describe the grotesqueries. There
are numerous bread-and-butter tyrannies – some of which (foremost, Saudi
Arabia), curiously, we have as friends. But Israel is unique. Israel was
conceived as necessitating ethnic cleansing, and was created and is
sustained by ethnic cleansing. Israel was created and is sustained by
terrorism. Israel is, sui generis, a force for terrorism and ethnic
cleansing.
There is the view, fashionable amongst middle-of-the-road optimists
harbouring a two-state solution pie-in-the-sky, that the problem is that
the state has been appropriated by the political Right and the Far Right.
The good Israel has been hijacked by the nasties. On the contrary. The
current Israel is the natural heir of its origins and subsequent
entrenchment of ethnically-based legal and cultural structures. Israel now
produces racists as a majority voice, with citizens imbued with
universalist values reduced to near powerlessness.
As a consequence, Palestinians, having been designated as without humanity,
can be deprived of their residual dogged hold on their existence, deprived
of their property and murdered at will. The current mass murder of Gazans
is merely par for the course. It has become a spectator sport. Sadism
against the non-people is a rite of passage.
Moshe Menuhin, famous by association as father of Yehudi and Hephzibah,
appears to be now neglected as a resolute anti-Zionist. His 1965/1969 *The
Decadence of Judaism in Our Time* explains why. His ‘almost preferred’
original title, *“Jewish” Nationalism: A Monstrous Historical Crime and
Curse*, better conveys the book’s contents. It retains its pertinence. In
*Decadence* we read:
‘As to Zionist Israel of the present day, I prefer the truth as fearlessly
told by one honest repentant Israeli, Nathan Chofshi, in reply to all the
sordid and revolting propaganda, brazenly and inhumanly and hypocritically
told by such tribalistic barbarians as Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Shimeon
Peres, Levi Eshkol, Abba Eban and the entire lot of the military gang that
runs poor misguided Israel. Said Nathan Chofshi [in 1959]: “We came and
turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we dare slander and
malign them, to besmirch their name; instead of being deeply ashamed of
what we did, and trying to undo some of the evil we committed, we justify
our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them …”.’
The ‘entire lot of the military gang’, now fronted by the sociopath
Benjamin Netanyahu, is still in charge.
*Nazi parallels*
It is forbidden by the censors who channel acceptable opinion to draw
parallels with the Nazis’ *modus operandi*. But if the shoe fits …
There is Israel’s Mengelian experimentation on caged Gazans, apart from
saturation bombing, with nerve gas, depleted uranium, white phosphorous and
flechette shells. More, the model of the Reichstag fire false flag has been
readily replicated, not least in the 1954 Lavon Affair and, most
spectacularly, in 9/11 (whence the five dancing Israelis at Liberty Park?).
Practice makes perfect with false flags. Add extra-judicial murders made to
order.
Then there is the collective punishment. In late 1966, three Israeli
soldiers died near the then Jordanian border when their vehicle ran over a
land mine. Menuhin summarizes the Israeli response:
‘The war [June 1967] actually began earlier, at Es Samu, on November 13,
1966. Like Deir Yassin before the big war in 1948, like the shelling of
Gaza in September 1955, the capture of El Auja Triangle in the Sinai
desert, and other “Small Wars,” Es Samu was a diversionary attack, a good
exercise for brave solider boys. Es Samu, a peaceful, undefended civilian
village in Jordan, was attacked at dawn on November 13, 1966 by twenty
Patton tanks, eighty armored half-track personnel carriers and jeeps with
4,000 Israeli troops, which rumbled across the frontier, overwhelmed an
eight-man police post, swept into Es Samu, demolished 125 houses, 15 stone
huts, destroyed the mosque, shops, an elementary school and a medical
clinic, killed 26 Jordanians, wounded 54, and captured three Jordanian
soldiers. Three tanks reduced the local mosque to rubble. It was wanton,
indiscriminate murder and destruction, just to teach the Arabs a
preliminary lesson about the real thing to come.’
And finally there is *lebensraum*, the *idée fixe*. Menuhin again:
‘The “fixed idea” – the “Ingathering of the Exiles” … became a Territorial
Imperative. The evolved idea of Prophetic Judaism that “God did ‘Tshakah’”
(justice, salvation, charity) to Israel (the Jews) by dispersing them among
the nations of the world and that the core of their religion was
universalism, humanity, ethics above all, was discarded in favor of a new
religion, newly learned from the European political nationalists, –
*Lebensraum*, statism, expansion, and thus a Greater Eretz Israel was what
the Shertocks[Sharretts], Ben Gurions, Moshe Dayans and the rest of the
military junta of Israel insisted on, cost what may to themselves and to
their victims, the Arabs of Palestine … All this will explain the Big Wars
(1948, 1956, 1967) and the many “Little Wars” which have taken place from
1948 to this day, wars of “Redemption” and Expansion to satisfy the demands
of the “fixed idea”.’
Menuhin provides a minor but telling case study under the heading ‘The
“Little Wars” in the Scheme of the Fixed Idea’. Citing General Carl von
Horn, UN Mediator, reflecting in a 1966 book:
‘[The Israelis] developed a habit of irrigating and plowing in stretches of
Arab-owned land nearby … Gradually, beneath the glowering eyes of the
Syrians, who held the high ground overlooking the zone, the area had become
a network of Israeli canals and irrigation channels edging up against and
always encroaching on Arab-owned property. This deliberate poaching was
bitterly resented by the Syrians …’
Menuhin expands on the outcome:
‘The time came to give the Syrians a typical “reprisal” attack. On February
1, 1962, the village of El-Tawafiq was razed to the ground. The Arab
farmers of the Lower and Upper Tawafiq used to [citing von Horn] “observe
with alarm the Israeli kibbutznik (cooperative farmers) tractor-drivers as
they speeded up on each turn at the eastern boundaries of their fields,
making the plows swerve out, thus slowly but surely extending their
previous cultivation eastwards into [very fertile] Arab land.” … by
destroying the Tawafiq villages, the Israelis got what they wanted, what
the “fixed idea” dictated.
And from Uri Davis (*Apartheid Israel*) citing an interview of a settler,
in response to the stance of Yeshaayahu Leibowitz, renowned Riga-born
Israeli academic, Orthodox in the necessity of state-religion separation
and opponent of the post-1967 Occupations:
‘Leibowitz is right. We are Judeo-Nazis, and why not? … Even today I am
willing to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as
necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them … Hang me if you want as
a war criminal … What you lot don’t understand is that the dirty work of
Zionism is not finished yet, far from it. True, it could have been finished
in 1948 …’
And Davis citing Leibowitz in 1982, echoing Israel Shahak:
‘If we must rule over another people, then it is impossible to avoid the
existence of Nazi methods. The [Shabra and Shatila] massacre was done by
us. The Phalange are our mercenaries, exactly as the Ukrainians and the
Croatians and the Slovakians were the mercenaries of Hitler, who organized
them as soldiers to do the work for him. Even so we have organized the
assassins in Lebanon in order to murder the Palestinians.’
*Israel and the United Nations*
The cheer squad makes much of Israel’s legitimation at the hands of the
United Nations, so why then has the UN been treated by Israel with
comprehensive contempt?
The initial Partition Plan of the special committee, apart from being
outrageously favourable to the Jewish community (envisaged to accommodate
refugee intake), was a dog’s breakfast – entirely predictable, given the
absurdity of the ambition. For example, Arab opponents claimed that, with
upward adjustment for the size of the Bedouin population, the proposed
Jewish state would have an Arab majority. A slightly modified plan passed
the General Assembly on 29 November 1947 with more than the needed
two-thirds majority.
The vote was devoid of principle – it relied on the US succumbing to the
seeming electoral advantages of garnering the domestic Jewish vote (and in
opposition to all but one of President Truman’s myriad Cabinet and
bureaucratic advisors), the Soviet Union (with its satellites in tow)
pursuing purely a *realpolitik* agenda, and other countries bribed or
threatened by Jewish lobbyists.
Menuhin evaluates the process thus:
‘Then came *Partition*, on November 29, 1947, the most illegal and inhuman
giving away to outsiders of land that belonged to the indigenous Christian
and Muslim Arab population, through political manipulation and pressure, as
well as through the Christian guilt complex vis-à-vis the Jewish people, –
all at the expense of the innocent Arabs.’
Alison Weir neatly summarizes the story in a *Counterpunch*
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/11/the-real-story-of-how-israel-was-created/>
article,
October 2011. The General Assembly recommendation was never implemented by
the UN Security Council. Rather Israel was established by means of terror
on 14 May 1948.
The notion, implicit in the cheer squad’s defense, that the Zionist leaders
would have been satisfied with the Partition Plan’s boundaries if the Arab
armies had not attacked is ludicrous. Jerusalem was to be governed by
international forces – out of the question for the Zionists. More, Israeli
leaders were having nothing to do with the General Assembly Resolution 194
(III), 11 November 1948, which ‘… Resolves that the refugees wishing to
return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be
permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date [etc.].’
UN Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, appointed immediately in May to sort
out the mess, was disbelieving (cited in Menuhin): “[The Israeli
government] had shown nothing but hardness and obduracy towards these
refugees. If instead of that it had shown a magnanimous spirit, if it had
declared that the Jewish people, which itself had suffered so much,
understood the feelings of the refugees and did not wish to treat them in
the same way as it itself had been treated, its prestige in the world at
large would have been immeasurably increased …” Moshe Shertock/Sharrett
replied to Bernadotte: “The Jewish government could under present
conditions in no circumstances permit the return of the Arabs who had fled
or been driven from their homes during the war …”.
(Shertock and Menuhin were contemporaries at the Zionist Jaffa-Tel Aviv
Gymnasia Herzlia during 1909-13. Shertok learned his lessons well; Menuhin
read the wind and immediately cleared off to the US, his own promised land.)
For his troubles, Bernadotte was assassinated – an event that Menuhin
recounts with the most profound disgust:
‘Bernadotte’s Peace Plan, as well as his recommendations to the Security
Council, made him a marked man in Israel. … We must now go on to the date
that will live for ever in infamy, September 17, 1948, when that incredible
crime was committed by militant, inhumane, insane, political nationalists
who worship a State that will expand their *Lebensraum*, in Nazi fashion. …
Murderer Nathan Friedman-Yellin was soon amnestied, and in 1950, the
Israeli Government allowed the murderer to stand for election to the
Israeli Knesset (Parliament) of which he became a member.’
The subsequent state of play is well summarized by Davis (*Apartheid Israel*,
p.63ff.):
‘The territory of pre-1967 Israel is classified by international law under
two categories:
1. the territory allocated for the Jewish state by the UN partition Plan
for Palestine;
2. the territory occupied illegally by the Israeli army in the 1948-49 war
beyond the boundaries of the 1947 UN Partition Plan.
Under the UN Charter and resolutions, Israel has no legitimate rule in
either category. Israeli rule over the territories allocated for the
‘Jewish state’ … was subject to a number of important conditions, notably
compliance with the terms of the steps preparatory to independence and
future constitution and government, none of which has been upheld by the
incumbent state.
Likewise, the Israeli occupation, in 1948-49, of territories beyond the
[1947 Plan] boundaries …, their colonization … and their subsequent
annexation to the State of Israel are in violation of both the UN Charter
and of international law, like all colonial occupation. From an
international legal point of view, Israeli claims to West Jerusalem, Safad
or Jaffa, occupied in 1948-49, are as thoroughly invalid as Israeli claims
to East Jerusalem, Hebron or Gaza, occupied in 1967. …
The State of Israel has chosen to violate the constitutional stipulation
posited by the United Nations General Assembly as a condition for its
legitimate establishment. …
… the elections for Israel’s Constituent Assembly, stipulated in the 1947
UN Partition Plan, were held in July 1949. The Constituent Assembly was
elected … for the explicit purpose of endorsing Israel’s constitution. …
Yet, when the Constituent Assembly convened, it became clear that an
agreement had been reached by the major political parties represented by
the Assembly to betray the mandate on which they had been elected … the
Constituent Assembly passed instead the Transition Law (1949) transforming
itself by fiat into the First Knesset [to which a delegate cried out: ‘This
is a political putsch!] …
But most significantly, the State of Israel is guilty of flagrant violation
of the constitutional principle regarding citizenship as stipulated by the
UN General Assembly in the 1947 Partition Plan for Palestine. There is no
question that under the stipulations of the said Plan all the 1948
Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants, by now some four million
people defined under Israeli law as ‘absentees’, are constitutionally
entitled without qualification to Israeli citizenship.’
Israel has since treated the significant number of UN Resolutions that are
adverse to its ongoing belligerence as of no consequence. And Israel has
cause, for it has been endowed with immunity by the Great Powers.
And to ram home the immunity, Israel bombs whenever appropriate (Lebanon,
Gaza) UN facilities. Old Testament stuff, with late modern weaponry.
*Apartheid Israel*
Is it or isn’t it? Regarding the Occupied Territories, the answer is
self-evident. Going where hair-splitters fear to tread, Davis goes to the
nub of the matter behind the ‘Green Line’ (p.36ff.; 82ff.):
Racism is not apartheid and apartheid is not racism. Apartheid is a
political system where racism is regulated in law through acts of
parliament. … In an apartheid state the state enforces racism through the
legal system, criminalizes expressions of humanitarian concern and
obligates the citizenry through acts of parliament to make racist choices
and conform to racist behaviour. …
Apartheid in Israel is an overarching legal reality that determines the
quality of everyday life and underpins the circumstances of living for all
the inhabitants of the State of Israel. … The introduction of [the] key
distinction of ‘Jew’ and ‘non-Jew’ into the foundation of Israeli law is,
however, accomplished as part of a two-tier structure. It is this structure
that has preserved the veil of ambiguity over Israeli apartheid legislation
for over half a century. …
The first tier, the level at which the key distinction between ‘Jew’ and
‘non-Jew’ is rendered openly and explicitly, is in the Constitutions and
Articles of Association of all the institutions of the Zionist movement and
in the first instance, the [World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency
and the Jewish National Fund]. The second tier is the level at which this
key distinction between ‘Jew’ and ‘non-Jew’ … is incorporated into the body
of the laws of the State of Israel, notably the body of strategic
legislation governing land tenure. …
The situation alters radically after the establishment of the State of
Israel, in that now the exclusivist constitutional stipulations of the WZO,
JA and JNF (for Jews only) are incorporated into the body of the laws of
the State of Israel through a detailed sequence of strategic Knesset
legislation … Thus organizations and bodies that, prior to the
establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, could credibly have claimed
to be voluntary have been incorporated … into the legal, compulsory,
judicial machinery of the state: …
* 1950: Absentees’ Property Law; Law or Return; Development Authority Law
* 1952: World Zionist Organization – Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel
(Status) Law
* 1953: Jewish National Fund Law; Land Acquisition (Validations of Acts and
Compensation) Law
* 1954: Covenant between the Government of Israel and the Zionist Executive
…
* 1958: Prescription Law
* 1960: Basic Law: Israel Lands; Israel Lands Law: Israel Lands
Administration Law
* 1961: Covenant between the Government of Israel and the Jewish National
Fund
In subsequent years this body of strategic legislation governing the terms
of tenure of 93 per cent of Israel lands was further refined in such pieces
of legislation as the Agricultural Settlement (Restriction on Use of
Agricultural Land and Water) of 1967 and the Lands (Allocation of Rights to
Foreigners) Law of 1980. The list above, however, represents the mainstay
of Israeli apartheid …
… it is through this two-tier mechanism that an all-encompassing apartheid
system could be legislated by the Israeli Knesset in all that pertains to
access to land under Israeli sovereignty and control without resorting to
explicit and frequent mention of ‘Jew’, as a legal category, versus
‘non-Jew’. …
In other words, in the critical areas of immigration, settlement and land
development the Israeli sovereign, the Knesset, which is formally
accountable to all citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, has formulated and
passed legislation ceding state sovereignty and entered into Covenants
vesting its responsibilities with organizations such as the WZO, the JA and
the JNF, which are constitutionally committed to the exclusive principle of
‘only for Jews’, that legal apartheid is regulated in Israel. And it is
through this mechanism of legal duplicity that the State of Israel has
successful veiled the reality of Zionist apartheid in the guise of legal
democracy since the establishment of the State of Israel to date. …
The same procedure has been applied by the Knesset in order to veil the
reality of clerical legislation in Israel. Israel is a theocracy in that
all domains pertaining to registration of marriage, divorce and death are
regulated under Israeli law by religious courts. …
The critical importance of these structures of veiling and obligation
cannot be sufficiently emphasized. They represent one of the primary
vehicles that made it possible for official representatives and various
apologists of the Zionist movement and the Government of the State of
Israel to deliver the claim that the State of Israel was a democracy akin
to western liberal democracies, the Palestinian *nakba *notwithstanding. …
Pointing to these facts alone [Arab Israelis having the vote, access to the
Knesset as members (in principle), and equal access to the Israeli courts
(in principle)] is tantamount to an exercise in misrepresentation,
manipulating these significant features in order to veil the fundamental
apartheid structures of the Israeli polity in all that pertains to the
right to inherit property; to access the material resources of the state
(notably, land and water); and to access the welfare resources of the state
(for example religious services and child benefits) such as fully justify
the classification of the State of Israel as an apartheid state. …
In all matters pertaining to the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
the conflict between a settler-colonial state and the native indigenous
population, namely, in all matters pertaining to the question of rights to
property, land tenure, settlement and development, Israeli apartheid
legislation is more radical than was South African apartheid legislation. …
Not insisting on petty apartheid has veiled Israeli apartheid from scrutiny
by the international community …
*The annihilation of identity*
Having denied the existence of a functioning Palestinian society before
expropriation, Israel’s founders of necessity confronted its existence.
Facts on the ground. The myth of the non-existent Palestinian society had
to be forged in reality. First, the population had to be cleared out,
fragmented – thus the *nakba*. The ensuing diaspora naturally precluded a
modicum of social and political integration. Next, the physical space had
to be furiously appropriated – the landscape destroyed, built over;
everything re-named.
In addition, pulverize the crucial intangible dimension – the cultural
landscape: memory, history, identity and its artefacts. Nur Masalha’s 2012 *The
Palestine Nakba* provides an accessible summary.
‘In 1948, the Israeli state appropriated for itself immovable Palestinian
assets and personal possessions, including schools, libraries, books,
pictures, private papers, historical documents and manuscripts [etc.]. …
several private collections of manuscripts and tens of thousands of books
were looted by the Haganah and never returned [citing John Rose]. Parts of
these private collections, including the diary and private papers of Khalil
al-Sakakini (1878-1953), ended up in the library of the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. Al-Sakakini was one of the country’s leading Palestinian
educators, linguists and authors. …
In 1958, a decade after the Nakba, the Israeli authorities destroyed 27,000
books, most of them Palestinian textbooks from the pre-1948 period,
claiming that they were either useless or threatened the state. The
authorities sold the books to a paper plant. …
For many years stateless and exiled Palestinians had to rely on the
Beirut-based Palestinian Research Centre [founded in 1965 on the initiative
of Dr Fayez Sayigh] and the Institute for Palestine Studies (also in
Beirut) to preserve their national heritage. … The resourcefulness and
popular success of the [PRC] were resented by the Israeli state and Israeli
academia. The Centre established and amassed Palestinian archives,
disseminated historical and scholarly research on Palestine and preserved
Palestinian popular culture and heritage. Before the Israeli invasion of
Beirut in September 1982, two attempts were made by Israel, in July and
August, to destroy the Centre completely [citing Cheryl Rubenberg].
In 1982, as the POL evacuated Beirut during the Israeli invasion,
Palestinian institutions in the city were destroyed. In the mid-September,
the Israeli army raided the [PRC] along with other Palestinian and Lebanese
institutions. Nearly all Palestinian cultural institutions in Beirut were
pillaged, including the Palestine Cinema Institute, the Samed Workshop and
the Palestinian Red Crescent clinic. The contents of the [PRC] were
systematically looted; its historical archives and a 25,000 volume library
and microfilm collection were looted and carted away by the Israeli army
[citing Rashid Khalidi]. … [The army appropriated] precious documents,
dating back centuries, that the Centre had purchased in Europe and restored
to the cultural custody of the Palestinians. … On 5 February 1983 the [PRC]
was destroyed by a bomb that killed 20 people …
In 2001 the Israeli government closed the Orient House (Bayt al-Sharq) in
East Jerusalem and confiscated its archive and the collections of the Arab
Studies Society housed in it. … The Arab Studies Society Library and the
archives of the Orient House were a piece of living history and a monument
to the long and continuing Palestinian struggle for survival in Jerusalem.
[From both the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference and the 1993 Oslo Accords]
Israel promised that it would not violate the right of the House to
continue to operate freely. …
In 1982, as the POL evacuated Beirut during the Israeli invasion,
Palestinian institutions in the city were destroyed. In the mid-September,
the Israeli army raided the [PRC] along with other Palestinian and Lebanese
institutions. Nearly all Palestinian cultural institutions in Beirut were
pillaged, including the Palestine Cinema Institute, the Samed Workshop and
the Palestinian Red Crescent clinic. The contents of the [PRC] were
systematically looted; its historical archives and a 25,000 volume library
and microfilm collection were looted and carted away by the Israeli army
[citing Rashid Khalidi]. … [The army appropriated] precious documents,
dating back centuries, that the Centre had purchased in Europe and restored
to the cultural custody of the Palestinians. … On 5 February 1983 the [PRC]
was destroyed by a bomb that killed 20 people …
In 2001 the Israeli government closed the Orient House (Bayt al-Sharq) in
East Jerusalem and confiscated its archive and the collections of the Arab
Studies Society housed in it. … The Arab Studies Society Library and the
archives of the Orient House were a piece of living history and a monument
to the long and continuing Palestinian struggle for survival in Jerusalem.
[From both the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference and the 1993 Oslo Accords]
Israel promised that it would not violate the right of the House to
continue to operate freely. …
… in the Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian cities and towns in the West
Bank in the spring of 2002, Israeli soldiers vandalized the Khalil Sakakini
Cultural Centre in Ramallah, which was set up to preserve Palestinians’
cultural heritage.’ in the Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian cities and
towns in the West Bank in the spring of 2002, Israeli soldiers vandalized
the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramallah, which was set up to
preserve Palestinians’ cultural heritage.’
Not only the latter, but at the same time, Israeli forces vandalized the
entire Palestinian governmental bureaucracy
<http://www.pitt.edu/~ttwiss/irtf/palestinlibsdmg.html>. This act was under
cover of ‘Operation Defensive Shield’, during the Second Intifada, as
revenge for the deaths of Israelis at Palestinian hands. The comprehensive
vandalization included the Finance Ministry and the Central Bureau of
Statistics. Israel knows more about Palestinians (regarding data, as
opposed to their mentality) than the Palestinian authorities themselves.
In July 2006, the IDF did it again in Nablus. Gael Toensing
<http://www.counterpunch.org/toensing07272006.html> recounts:
‘The site itself was a landscape of obliteration–the legacy of the Israeli
Occupation Forces’ three-day blitzkrieg on a complex of public buildings
that included the muqata’a–an enormous command and administrative structure
built in the 1920s by the British–a Palestinian security building, part of
a prison, and the ministries of agriculture and the interior. …
Buried and half buried in the ruins of the Ministry of the Interior were
hundreds of thousands of file cases and documents–birth and death
certificates, identification records, passports and other travel documents,
ledgers of hand written information–a heritage of historical information
about Nablus residents that covered more than 100 years of successive
Palestinian occupations under the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate, the
Jordanian kingdom, and the current Israeli regime.
“We offered to give the Israelis the keys of the building so they could
search it to make sure there was no one hiding there, but that was not good
enough for the Israelis, who insisted on demolishing everything,” said Abed
Al Illah Ateereh, the director of the Ministry of the Interior in Nablus. …
“There is 100 percent damage,” Ateereh said. “They destroyed the building
completely, but that wasn’t enough for the Israelis. They then used their
Caterpillar bulldozers to churn up everything and mix all the documents
with the soil so that nothing is able to be preserved,” Ateereh said.
The ministry had at least 175,000 individual case files each containing
multiple documents. It will be impossible to recover an entire case file,
Ateereh said. Some of the newer documents are backed up on a computer, but
the old historical records are priceless and irreplaceable. “Passports,
birth certificates, family information, identity records–all the kinds of
information that an interior ministry would keep are all gone. These
documents were used not only by Palestinians, but also by UNICEF and other
agencies and foreigners who came to the ministry to do research,” Ateereh
said.’
In short, the strategic and systematic annihilation of identity.
*The Hasbara*
We read that student groups have been rekindled in Israel to whitewash on
the netwaves the IDF’s latest mass murder. A spokesperson, Bar David, who
claimed “We want people abroad who don’t know our reality to understand
exactly what is going on here”, is reported by the *New York Times* (so it
must be true) as previously serving in the military spokesman’s unit of the
IDF.
Welcome to a microcosm of the Hasbara. The Hasbara would have to be the
most spectacular propaganda machine in modern history (i.e. in all
history). The legendary Goebbels (admittedly lacking latterday instruments)
was a comparative lightweight. The Soviet Union’s western defenders,
although numerous, were ghettoized and lacked access to the mainstream
media and officialdom.
The 2002 *Hasbara Handbook: Promoting Israel on Campus*
<http://www.sott.net/signs/hasbara.pdf> is an exemplary representative of
the art. It is a weighty 128 pages (including appendices). The Handbook was
funded by the ‘NGO’ Jewish Agency for Israel. The Handbook conflates the
criticism of Israel (‘the haven and sanctuary of the Jewish people’) with
the de-legitimization of ‘Jews everywhere’ and of Judaism. The Handbook
denies the Occupation; rather Gaza and the West Bank are ‘disputed
territories’. The Golan Heights and East Jerusalem have already been
silently appropriated.
The Handbook provides two Communication Styles – point scoring and genuine
debate.
‘Central to point scoring is the ability to disguise point scoring by
giving the impression of genuine debate. … To disguise point scoring,
comments need to seem to be logical, and to follow from what was said
before. Use phrases that subtly change the agenda or reframe the debate to
do this: “Well, that’s not really the right question …” [etc.]’
‘Genuine debate’ is reserved for those who know what’s going on (‘where
listeners are mature and interested’). Here the Handbook recommends an
element of subtlety – one is allowed to acknowledge that ‘Israel is an
imperfect country’. The object remains, however, to offer 100 per cent
support for this ‘imperfect’ Israel in the face of its many enemies. Notes
the Handbook, ‘In private conversation and in friendly settings, it is
reasonable to admit that Israel has made mistakes [‘policy errors’, never
instanced] that she attempts to learn from (sic), whilst pointing out that
other countries do this too.’
The Handbook also provides ‘two main approaches to Israel advocacy …
“neutralizing negativity” and “pushing positivity”’. A standard response in
the first category is ‘The action was justified because …’. Standard
responses in the second category are ‘Israel is a democracy’ and ‘Israel
wants peace’.
Democracy and peace – hello? In that regard, an integral component of the
Hasbara is the lie. Not so much a single Big Lie. Rather, multiple related
lies, that combine to a multi-component Big Lie. There’s the killing lies.
Israel left Gaza in 2005. The IDF targets only terrorists, and does so with
pinpoint accuracy. Hamas uses human shields. By using human shields, Hamas
forces us to kill children. And, by the way, Israel’s shelling of the USS
Liberty (in 1967) was an accident.
Then there’s the fundamental ‘existential’ lies. The land expropriated
awaited productive utilization. Israel is a democracy (read ethnocracy).
There is no such thing as Palestine. If the Arabs had accepted the UN
Partition Plan and the Arab states hadn’t gone to war against Israel there
would be a Palestinian state already. Israel has no partner for peace. We
were here first. It’s our land by historical right (variation on the theme:
God gave it to us). And so on.
Thanks to Shlomo Sand’s 2009 *The Invention of the Jewish People*, the
narrative of the indubitable historical lineage between then and now has
passed its use-by date. The ‘Diaspora’ is a misnomer. Mass conversions into
Jewry (and some out of it) puts the bulk of the Zionist migration and War
refugee settlement of Israel as interlopers.
Thanks to Sand’s 2012 *The Invention of the Land of Israel*, we learn that
the myriad attempts to claim a ‘natural and historical’ right to ‘the Land
of Israel’ (still ill-defined) are an incoherent and intellectually
embarrassing mess. The biblical references from which one seeks legitimacy
are inconsistent. The opportunist oil-and-water conflation of sacred and
secular arguments is instructive of the charade. Ultimately, the various
attempts to find legitimacy in historical right are all trumped by the
practical necessity to leave the boundaries of ‘the Land of Israel’
undefined (emphasized by Ben Gurion), open to extension as dictated by the
needs of a growing Jewish population.
But the Hasbara exists precisely to render testimony and scholarship like
Sand’s invisible. Who reads books, especially dense books on troublesome
subjects? The object is to dictate the agenda of the mainstream media.
More, the priorities of decision-makers and opinion-makers must be
channeled. Thus the perennial sponsoring of the white-washing trips to
Israel of elected national legislators and of journalists, who duly arrive
home as significant repositories and replicators of the myths and lies.
Right on cue, here is the witless Australian Minister for Education,
Christopher Pyne, the keynote speaker
<http://www.jwire.com.au/news/pyne-jerusalem/44886> at the third
Australia-Israel-UK leadership dialogue (sic) in Jerusalem. (Pyne is taking
a holiday from privatizing Australian higher education.)
‘Whenever there has been a congregation of freedom loving nations versus
non freedom loving nations, Australia has always been prepared to be in the
fight and always on the right side. And that’s how we view the State of
Israel that we are on the right side. … It shows that Israel has
existential threats that requires them to take firm action to protect those
freedoms, firmer actions than Australia has had to take to protect our own
existence [etc.].’
One of the commenters proposes: ‘I and many others would vote to make you
an Honorary Jew.’ Frankly, we Down Under would be thankful if you’d take
this wretched flunkey off our hands (take the whole Cabinet as a job lot
*gratis*) before he does further damage.
I first came to this troublesome arena belatedly and by accident. It was
the death of Arafat in November 2004. The Australian media went ballistic
with domestic and international players of the global Hasbara. Arafat as
the consummately evil terrorist. Who never missed an opportunity to make
peace. Arafat walked away from Barak’s magnanimous offer at Camp David in
2000, etc.
Now hang on a minute. Didn’t Arafat recognize ‘the right of the State of
Israel to exist in peace and security
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/01/the-pariah-state/right%2520of%2520the%2520State%2520of%2520Israel%2520to%2520exist%2520in%2520peace%2520and%2520security.>’
in September 1993 as a prelude to the Oslo Accords, and accept the 1967
boundaries? Isn’t it the case that Barak offered nothing at all at Camp
David (as meticulously laid out by the late Tanya Reinhart in her 2002
*Israel/Palestine*)?
So here was the Hasbara brigade, frothing at the mouth, lying through its
collective teeth. Uri Avnery, hardly an Arafat devotee, exclaimed at the
time:
‘The disgusting filth poured out over Yasser Arafat during the last few
days in practically all the Israeli media makes one ashamed to be an
Israeli. The demonization of the Palestinian national leader, which has
been the center-piece of Israeli propaganda for decades, continues even
after his death. It seems that 37 years as occupiers have bestialized our
society and left it bereft even of common decency. Ministers and
fishmongers, TV icons and university professors, “leftists” and outright
fascists tried to outdo each other in utter vulgarity.’
Thus was my initiation into the Hasbara phenomenon. I concluded*rationally*,
on the basis of the statements of the Hasbara crowd alone, that something
was substantially rotten in the state of Denmark. And thus it has proved
since that time.
If Israel is intrinsically ‘a light unto the nations’, why does it need the
Hasbara?
*The Triumph of Rambo Tribalism*
Israel has an enviable fan base from people and groups who are citizens of
other countries. It is most transparent in the groupings that percolate
into the hierarchies of the ‘representative’ bodies of national Jewry.
Without the support of these bodies, the ongoing barbarity of Israel
towards the subject Palestinian people would cease overnight.
But there is also a litany of subaltern foot soldiers who man the press
letters pages and the media comments sites in the defense of Holy Israel.
They are particularly unfriendly to the defectors of Jewish ethnicity. The
Australian noted anti-Zionist Antony Loewenstein is a case in point. His
own Damascus moment arrived when the usual suspects unleashed another
torrent of bile when Hanan Ashwari, senior Palestinian official, was
awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in 2003. For his courage and forthrightness,
Loewenstein has been perennially the recipient of odious abuse from the
Hasbara cheerleaders. Enter the ‘self-hating Jew’ epithet.
An extraordinary dimension of Rambo Tribalism has been the Zionist
simultaneous marginalization and appropriation of Judaism. Menuhin, in
distress, calls it ‘Napalm Judaism’. Menuhin’s *Decadence* is an extended
discourse, on precisely this issue:
‘Advancing, evolving, universal and spiritual Judaism, which was the core
of the Judeo-Christian code of ethics, is now becoming the tool, the
handmaiden, of “Jewish” nationalism, so that the ethical injunctions Thou
shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet have been
transformed into the unethical, primitive and tribalistic “Covenant of the
Chosen People” and “Israel First.” …
The parochialism, tribalism and jingoism of contemporary “Jewish”
nationalism, spawned and nursed by Ben Gurion and his junta, are one of the
great tragedies of the Jews and of Judaism of our time. Here is where the
real degeneration played havoc with an age-old civilized and ethical and
universal people.’
Menuhin completes his book with an extended *cri de coeur* regarding the
direction of his beloved American Council for Judaism. The ACJ was founded
by the German Reform-influenced Rabbi Elmer Berger in 1942 as an
anti-Zionist beachhead. In August 1968, several Directors of the ACJ
instigated the expulsion of Berger from the Council. A tidal wave of
muscular Zionism ensued from the easy Israeli victory in the June 1967 War,
and that was the effective end of the AJC as an anti-Zionist force in the
US. The current hegemony of AIPAC and like-minded Jewish organizations
relegates the AJC and its orientation to ancient history.
This experience of betrayal has most recently been expressed, rightly with
fury, by Norman Pollack, 24 July, on this site
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/24/political-bestiality/>:
‘… expressing my abhorrence to the war crimes committed by Israel, by
convention, in world Jewry, THE representative of the Jewish people and
religion, leading therefore to feelings of shame, alienation, and betrayal,
that my religion, ancestral heritage, upbringing, could so distort the
meaning of Judaism as I’ve known and loved it …’
Yet in this long process of debasing Judaism for reasons of state, Israel
is now seeking from the UN (similarly debased by Israeli contempt)
agreement for the recognition of Yom Kippur as a globally-oriented UN
holiday
<http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/1.608105?v=CF39F71F355A6589FD04A26C7C0C1660>!
Israel has raised the bar on Chutzpah.
A curious phenomenon of wanting a foot in both camps is the Jewish faith
school system in Australia (possibly elsewhere). In their mission
statements, it is not unusual to find a commitment to both the inculcation
of Judaic (read, universalist) moral values and to a (seemingly uncritical)
support of Israel. Some examples:
‘Our purpose is to cultivate in our students a passionate sense of Jewish
identity, a sense of belonging to the worldwide Jewish community with
special ties to the Australian Jewish community and the State of Israel. …
We build a sense of belonging and cooperation by promoting mutual respect,
in line with our belief in the ideals of freedom of religion, speech and
association, peace, openness, tolerance and social justice.’ (Sholem
Aleichem College, Melbourne)
‘We strive to foster critical thought, cultural interests, tolerance,
social responsibility and self-discipline. … Moriah not only aspires to
achieve excellence in academic standards, but maintains and promotes among
its students an awareness of and a feeling for Jewish traditions and
ethics, an understanding of and a positive commitment to Orthodox Judaism
and identification with and love for Israel.’ (Moriah College, Sydney)
Bialik College (Melbourne) is of particular interest. The first Jewish
school established in Australia, in 1942 (from *Wikipedia*) ‘… from its
beginning it was intended to be a Zionist school, with the establishment of
the State of Israel central to its identity.’ From its mission statement:
‘Centrality of Israel: We are a Zionist school that inculcates a love of
Israel. We recognise the centrality of Israel and Hebrew to the Jewish
people. We support Israel and are committed to its well-being.’
Bialik College is the school from which one Ben Zygier graduated as an
accomplished student. He evidently took the school’s values to heart – he
ended up moving to Israel and being employed in some capacity in Israeli
intelligence. Zygier died, in still murky circumstances, in a high security
cell in December 2010 – the unqualified love of Israel can have its down
side it appears. Bialik takes its entire Year 10 class to Israel for 6
weeks. This year, the class is travelling via China for a cross-cultural
experience. A visit to Gaza, as a potential location for ‘Bialik’s
inclusive cross-communality’ appears to be not on the itinerary.
Perhaps the saddest reflection of Rambo Tribalism is the impulsion of
Jewish people, citizens of various countries, to go and join the IDF, to
participate voluntarily in ongoing repression as an occupying force and in
mass murder of a subject people. Those who have left comfortable
environments to become jihadis for some murderous Islamist outfit in the
Middle East are (rightly) seen as unstable, perhaps deranged. Those who
become jihadis for Israel’s ethnic cleansing are labeled spirited,
courageous, ‘unsung heroes
<http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0%2c7340%2cL-4547373%2c00.html>’.
Tribalism involves the suppression of one’s moral compass and integrity
(abstract diffuse) for the close comforts of togetherness and acceptance.
One can understand how it happens, and is sustained. But at what cost?
Being a compulsive newspaper letters page reader, a particular letter, from
Ms X, in the Melbourne *Age,* 19 July 2005, remains a seminal experience:
‘Along with other progressive-minded Australians of Jewish descent, I
signed a petition of support for Palestinian self-determination in 2001.
Endorsing the petition is one of many endeavours to support any peoples,
regardless of race or religion, struggling against occupation,
dispossession and oppression. Such struggles include the Palestinian people
against the Israeli state, the Iraqi people against the US and its allies,
the Saharawi against Morocco and the East Timorese against Indonesia.
These state powers are from different religious traditions but are united
in using the politics of hegemony and state terrorism. In 2001 the petition
was published in both mainstream and Jewish newspapers. Only this week, I
was told not to attend the funeral of a great-aunt as my “name appeared in
the [*Australian*] *Jewish News* supporting Palestine”.
Now that I have the red star of Marx pinned to my breast, what does this
mean? Am I now a non-Jew or simply a self-hater? Or maybe my Jewish
heritage makes me more keenly appreciate the tragic consequences of racism
and oppression.’
Nine years down the track the stance of Ms X and her family relationships
remains unknown. A resolute handful of anti-Zionist Australian Jews
regularly front the social media (by default of exclusion from the MSM).
Meanwhile the myriad ‘official’ Jewish organizations in Australia remain
unrepentant functionaries for a foreign pathologically criminal state.
*Buying Governments, establishing Impunity*
Israel has an uncountable number of governments in tow. In the
‘democracies’ (U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, etc.) it
doesn’t matter which Party is in power, Israel has that country in tow.
Some countries (notably Australia) render themselves servile indirectly via
their servility to the U.S.
Israel owns the U.S., lock stock and barrel. On 17 July, all 100 Senators
voted for a resolution supporting Israel ‘as it defends itself against
unprovoked (sic) rocket attacks’. Beyond abject servility, it is a
treasonous and criminal act. Beyond the armaments flowing from the U.S. for
the continuation of the slaughter, mendicant Israel continues to enjoy
billions of dollars each year courtesy of the hapless U.S. taxpayer. Vocal
Congressional critics of Israel (Cynthia McKinney, Paul Findley, etc.) lose
office with the Lobby funding their opponents, providing a clear warning to
any hopeful seeking office to purportedly represent (a quaint idea) the
American public interest.
In spite of the annual payola, the U.S. gets nothing in return. Israel
treats the U.S. as its dogsbody. Thus Secretary of State John Kerry is
forced to leave empty-handed from attempts at a ‘peace settlement’, with
Israel subsequently belittling Kerry as weak. Which of course he is,
because product of an American political structure that will not pull the
plug.
Joel Kovel (*Overcoming Zionism,* 2007) lists some key events in which
Israel’s actions have significantly harmed U.S. interests. He continues:
‘Like the murder of Rachel Corrie, they manifest a self-reinforcing
circuit, which begins with wanton disregard for the ordinary principles of
humanity and ends with the granting of impunity for the “special” state,
which, emboldened, commences the circuit anew. The same pattern obtains
throughout the entire pattern of Israeli history, most notably in the
flouting of scores of UN resolutions pertaining to the Occupation of
Palestine.’
Remember that the University of Michigan Press went into meltdown with this
book, after attack from the Lobby, over its contract to distribute Pluto
Press publications in the U.S. And Kovel was subsequently sacked from his
teaching job at Bard College. Remember also Norman Finkelstein, sacked from
DePaul University for his forensic dismantling of the Hasbara narrative.
The necessary complement of the Hasbara is the attempted censorship and
silencing of its exposure as a fraudulent enterprise.
Kovel notes that the only occasion in which Israel has not got its way is
in the U.S.’ continuing incarceration of the spy for Israel, Jonathan
Pollard. Thus we have the squalid scenario of Israel attempting to blackmail
<http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-said-to-have-offered-lewinsky-tapes-for-pollard/#ixzz38Q8W4F7P>President
Clinton over its knowledge of the Lewinsky Affair to have Pollard released
to enjoy the comforts of a hero’s residency in Israel. (How many in
Congress are being similarly blackmailed?) This atypical recalcitrance from
the U.S. constitutes an intolerable affront to a state accustomed to
fulfilling its ambitions without exception.
Symptomatic of this mentality is the fact that Israel can steal or
counterfeit national passports for use in its espionage or false flag
activities. States remain craven in the face of this lawlessness.
*And the Future?*
While addressing the emasculation of the American ‘Left’ in particular,
Kovel articulates well the current impasse and its broader implications:
‘Acceptance of the “special” nature of Israel, often manifest in an appeal
to just how horribly Jews have suffered, goes hand in hand with devaluation
of Israel’s victims and minimization of its crimes. Given the indisputable
fact that Israel’s conquest of Palestine radiates across the world and sets
into motion so much hatred and disorder, the inability of progressives in
the global superpower to come to grips with Zionism drags down everything
they do, and makes it impossible to deal effectively with war and peace
alike.
One thing that is truly special about Israel is continual moral
embattlement. A seemingly eternal struggle over wrongdoing and
justification dogs its every step. This has inner ramifications that cut to
the heart of the Zionist project.’
The stark reality is that Israel’s ‘continuing moral embattlement’ is an
attribution only for those still possessing a morality gene and thus prone
to outrage. Israel holds all the aces. It possesses near absolute power,
for the reasons outlined above. None of the key pillars that underpin that
power – nation states, national lobbies – have cracked under the escalating
Gaza death count one iota. There have been no *mea culpa*s amongst longtime
supporters. The Hasbara is going full bore, with the mainstream media on
tap and the foot soldiers flooding social media.
Of significance, the situation in the Middle East has never been more
favorable to Israel’s regional hegemony. Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two
distinct tyrannies with their own agendas, are firmly allied with Israel.
Iraq has been conveniently dismembered – the process pursued by the U.S.
predominantly in Israel’s interests in the first place. Syria is in the
process of being dismembered. Ditto. The U.S.-induced chaos in Ukraine has
conveniently forced Russia’s attention away from Syria. Jordan is now a
U.S./Israeli satrap. Iran is hobbled by crippling sanctions, again for
Israeli interests. Only Hezbollah remains unchained – and that ‘impediment’
is currently being addressed.
Gaza is living, has been living, a nightmare. West Bank residents also, if
to a lesser extent. The diabolical reality is that at present the forces
capable of bringing Israel to heel lack the requisite morality gene in
their DNA.
Thus the overwhelming and urgent *de facto* responsibility of the street –
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Israel at present experiences no ‘moral
embattlement’. The effective embattlement has to come in a tangible form.
*Afterword: Saving the Language Itself*
Another casualty of the Israeli Hasbara machine has been language itself.
Of course, language is intrinsically a vehicle of manipulation for purposes
of persuasion – embodied in the personalized Rhetoric from the Classical
Age to the industrial strength propaganda techniques devised in the
hothouse of World War I and since imposed unstintingly on the hapless
populace (thank you Edward Bernays).
There is one dimension of the propagandized structuring of language that
has been brilliantly successful, because it has been applied in blanket
fashion and has been rendered subliminally. It has been in the linguistic
devices by which a dual world has been manufactured of ‘us’ versus ‘the
other’. War propaganda fits naturally into the medium.
It is in the arena of the creation of popular support for (or the deadening
of opposition to) Empire that the language of duality has been most
successful. Thus Britain, in its painting the globe red, was engaged in a
‘civilizing’ mission to the great unwashed. The U.S.’s imperial thrust,
massively assisted by the unprecedented propaganda machine of the Cold War,
was rather an exercise in exporting ‘freedom’ to the variously oppressed.
Thus did we imbibe with Mother’s milk the verities of good guys versus bad
guys, us versus them. This creed, instilled *a priori* and embedded in our
language, has dramatically undermined our capacity for the perception and
rational processing of information. Thus we might discover, no doubt by
accident, that U.S. governments have knocked off the odd government, here
there and everywhere, but such raw material is rendered as dissonance in
our inherited mental and linguistic tool kit, and is readily discarded as
unfathomable white noise. Ron Jacob’s recent piece, ‘US and Israeli
Exceptionalism
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/15/us-and-israeli-exceptionalism/>’,
15 July, highlights precisely this point.
With the good guys / bad guys duality hardwired, long impeding the critical
faculties, along comes the Hasbara, elevating the manipulation of language
to a new plateau. This is a qualitative leap. Moving beyond the difficulty
of seeing the stye in our own eye, the Hasbara upends linguistic
conventions. Black becomes white, evil is translated into righteousness.
Victims of murderous ethnic cleansing become terrorists.
The conventions of language go completely out the door. Mass murder is self
defense. The Great Wall is a barrier or a mere fence. Land grabs are
voluntary relocations into disputed territories. And as Master Spinmeister
for the Israeli mafia we have Mark Freiberg/Regev – unhappily an Australian
export. The head spins. It is near impossible to think clearly. The jaw
drops in disbelief.
When Israel is ultimately called to account, the optimists steeling the
resolve, and the Hasbara machine is interred, perhaps we might be able to
reclaim our language and to use it for purposes, albeit rusty for lack of
practice, propelled by both reason and morality.
*Evan Jones **is a retired political economist from the University of
Sydney. He can be reached at:**[log in to unmask]*
<[log in to unmask]>
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