Lesley Stahl and the 7 pillars of conventional wisdom
By Joseph Glatzer | Mondoweiss | October 19, 2010
Lesley Stahl’s report from Sunday’s “60 Minutes” about the illegal Israeli colony “the City of David” is an unadulterated, albeit very sophisticated, piece of Peace Industry propaganda. It is a case study for how the media sets the “appropriate” parameters of debate according to “conventional wisdom” of “serious people”.
She starts off the show with a cute intro about the holiness of Jerusalem:
Jerusalem is one of the holiest cities on Earth, for Jews, for Muslims and for Christians. It is also one of the most difficult issues at the negotiating table as Palestinians and Israelis struggle to continue the peace talks.
Conventional Wisdom #1: the current discussions between various members of the Peace Industry are a sincere/heart warming/Hallmark channel effort for peace.
What’s the challenge Lesley?
“The challenge is how to divide the city between the two sides. Back in 2000, then-President Clinton came up with some parameters for how to do it: areas populated mostly by Jews would remain Israeli; those populated mostly by Arabs would become the new Palestinian capital. That meant that for the most part East Jerusalem would go to the Arabs.”
Convention Wisdom #2: The challenge to peace is dividing Jerusalem between Palestinians and Israelis, and Clinton’s 2000 plan was the reasonable way to solve this challenge.
Conventional Wisdom #3: Acquisition of territory by aggressive force and settling a civilian population in occupied territory are OK if the US backs you. Only those who are un-serious outsiders could possibly expect the Geneva Conventions to be enforced.
Throughout the segment, Palestinians of Jerusalem are referred to as “Arabs” except when it is in reference to the Palestinian state. What’s insidious about the report is that even when seemingly criticizing Israel, the criticisms are only around the edges and they only serve to reinforce Peace Industry propaganda.
This brings in Conventional Wisdom #4: Palestinians are “Arabs” until they are lifted up as Proud Palestinians upon peacefully negotiating their way to their glorious state of Palestine.
Another problem is an inconvenient truth: that biblical Jerusalem is not located in the western half of the city. It’s right under the densely populated Arab neighborhood of Silwan.
Silwan isn’t a Palestinian neighborhood, it’s an “Arab neighborhood”. Just like Baghdad, Beirut, and Amman are Arab neighborhoods. Who can tell the difference these days?
But, when referencing a future Palestinian state, Palestinians get to be called Palestinians:
Palestinian Jawad Siyam was born in this “very, very special place” and says he can trace his roots there back 930 years. He’s pessimistic about the Palestinians ever having their own state. “What will happen to this village if there’s a two-state solution?” Stahl asked
Conventional Wisdom #5: Palestinians have an ancient heritage in East Jerusalem. As far as West Jerusalem goes, that’s the Israeli side, and Palestinians have absolutely no claims or rights on that land.
Here’s another passage loaded with conventional wisdom and brainwashing:
The Arabs say it’s a provocative thing to do. Devout Jews Yonatan and Devorah Adler live in one of the houses El’Ad bought. El’Ad has raised tens of millions of dollars, half from the United States, and buys the homes on land the Palestinians claim for a future state.
Conventional Wisdom #6: Palestinian land isn’t really Palestinian land. It’s only a “claim” among many competing claims. To assert that one claim has more validity than another is “biased” and must never be spoken of.
Here’s Lesley Stahl talking to religious settlers living in the City of David colony:
“And yet, when you see those maps, it’s over in the Palestinian side,” Stahl pointed out.
“Yeah, well, maps are written on paper. This is written on our hearts,” he replied.
To the untrained eye, Stahl seems to be doing a good job of reflecting the insanity of the Zionist project. But take a second look. Criticism of Israel is allowed only if the underlying premise reinforces Peace Industry conventional wisdom. In this case it’s that East Jerusalem is the “Palestinian side” (the as yet uncolonized parts) and West Jerusalem is the Israeli side.
“The government pays for the gun guards?” Stahl asked.
“It’s tax money. It’s, I pay it. Everyone who is paying taxes is paying it,” Jawad Siyam replied.
“You pay taxes and that money goes to pay for the guards to guard the settlers,” she remarked.
“Yes, of course,” Jawad said.
“So you’re helping guard the settlers,” Stahl remarked.
“Yeah, I’m a fan of the settlers and the gun guards,” he replied sarcastically.
Another seemingly positive exchange which shows that Palestinians of Jerusalem pay for their own oppression through their taxes. But, look closer. Are the Palestinians Israeli citizens? Then why do they pay taxes to the Israeli government? Was there some sort of illegal unrecognized annexation of East Jerusalem? Not for “60 Minutes” to say.
The implication given is that Palestinians living under the Israeli government is the natural state of affairs. It’s timeless and just is. It would of course be biased to point out that East Jerusalem Palestinians have no political rights to vote in the governmen that they pay taxes to.
More he said/she said “journalism” comin atcha!
That feeling of Jewish encroachment has been heightened by the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, who is doing all he can to make sure East Jerusalem remains under Israeli sovereignty. He wants to create a Bible-themed garden and turn it into a tourist park adjacent to the City of David. But as with the dig, the local Arabs see this as another attempt to gobble up their side of Jerusalem.
Remember, it’s “Jewish encroachment” not land theft by a government which happens to call itself the “Jewish State”. The legitimate “Jewish-ness” of that State behind the green line is thus reinforced, yet again.
“Local Arabs” “see” a plan to build a tourist park right on top of their heads as an attempt to “encroach” upon their rightful and legitimate part of Jerusalem (and only that part, shut up about the parts your grandparents were kicked out of). Who are these “local Arabs”? Are there also “local Jews”? Who knows if this is really a land grab.
“Building the mayor’s park requires demolishing 22 Arab homes in Silwan.”
Presumably “local” Arabs. Is there any context to the situation? Has the Israeli government demolished any Palestinian homes in the past? Not sure. Although it would be helpful in evaluating the validity of Israeli claims, context is biased so it mustn’t be spoken of. That would be taking a “side”.
“The mayor says that area is a slum in which the houses were built illegally and his plan will fix that. But the locals want to stay in their homes.” (pictures flash on the screen of Palestinian slums).
How did these areas get to be slums? Was it the result of extreme racism in allocating development funds for everything from trash collection to school buses? That’s a secret. Again with the “locals”. How local are they? Where are they locally from? Is this the locals’ indigenous “locale”? I told you I don’t know, stop asking me silly questions.
Here comes my favorite part:
“The European Union, the United Nations has criticized this plan to get rid of these 22 homes. Public opinion, especially while the peace talks are underway, is looking at this and saying you’re trying to get rid, move Arabs out of Jerusalem,” Stahl said.
Is this plan illegal? Is it a war crime? Has it been Israeli policy for decades? What does the law say? I don’t know about that, but all I know is the EU and the UN “criticized” the plan during “peace talks”.
“But that’s the way it looks. And my question is, why not wait until the peace talks are settled?” Stahl asked.
Is this really a plan to “move out the locals”, or is it just the way “it looks” to Lesley Stahl? This is clearly not a relevant question. The only relevant question here is: WHY CAN’T HE JUST WAIT!?
Asked what she meant by “why now,” Stahl said, “Because it’s on the table at the peace talks. That’s why now.”
Does this mean Lesley Stahl believes it’s best to wait to wait and steal more Palestinian land til Abu Mazen formally surrenders Silwan to Israel in the fake state solution? And here comes the money shot:
“Settlements have been a stumbling block in peace negotiations of the past. And what your organization is dedicated to doing could become the stumbling block again,” Stahl told Doron Spielman.
Conventional Wisdom #7: Settlements are the obstacle to peace. It’s nothing else. Not refugees’ unrealistic expectation to return, not discrimination against Palestinians inside Israel, and not babies born stillborn at checkpoints. The only obstacle to peace is a few religious crazies in Jerusalem screwing it up for everyone.
“We are looking, Lesley, to go down and uncover history,” he replied. “If coming back to my home after 3,000 years is a stumbling block to peace then I think that that is not a very good peace.”
If given the chance, a Palestinian would say, “If coming back to my home after 60 years is a stumbling block to peace then I think that that is not a very good peace.”
Why weren’t these dueling “rights of return” contrasted against each other? More importantly, why don’t I see the segment as a step forward for explaining the Palestinian plight, and why do I have to keep ruining the fun? I guess I’m just a hopeless cynic.
The Evil of Madeleine Albright
“Could you have one of our U-2s shot down?”
By Gary Leup – October 18, 2010
Madeleine Albright is infamous for her reply to the question posed by 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl about the sanctions against Iraq in May 1996.
“We have heard that a half million children have died,” stated Stahl. “I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
“I think this is a very hard choice,” replied Albright, “but the price–we think the price is worth it.”
Albright, who served as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001, had a cruel disregard for the lives of Iraqis, Serbs, and others. But she apparently had a callous attitude towards the lives of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen too. In his new memoir, General Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001, writes about a White House breakfast in late 1997. (The account is cited by Justin Elliott in Salon.)
Early on in my days as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we had small, weekly White House breakfasts in National Security Advisor Sandy Berger’s office that included me, Sandy, Bill Cohen (Secretary of Defense), Madeleine Albright (Secretary of State), George Tenet (head of the CIA), Leon Firth (VP chief of staff for security), Bill Richardson (ambassador to the U.N.), and a few other senior administration officials. These were informal sessions where we would gather around Berger’s table and talk about concerns over coffee and breakfast served by the White House dining facility. It was a comfortable setting that encouraged brainstorming of potential options on a variety of issues of the day.
During that time we had U-2 aircraft on reconnaissance sorties over Iraq. These planes were designed to fly at extremely high speeds and altitudes (over seventy thousand feet) both for pilot safety and to avoid detection.
At one of my very first breakfasts, while Berger and Cohen were engaged in a sidebar discussion down at one end of the table and Tenet and Richardson were preoccupied in another, one of the Cabinet members present leaned over to me and said, “Hugh, I know I shouldn’t even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough — and slow enough — so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?”
The hair on the back of my neck bristled, my teeth clenched, and my fists tightened. I was so mad I was about to explode. I looked across the table, thinking about the pilot in the U-2 and responded, “Of course we can …” which prompted a big smile on the official’s face.
“You can?” was the excited reply.
“Why, of course we can,” I countered. “Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go.”
The official reeled back and immediately the smile disappeared. “I knew I should not have asked that….”
“No, you should not have,” I strongly agreed, still shocked at the disrespect and sheer audacity of the question. “Remember, there is one of our great Americans flying that U-2, and you are asking me to intentionally send him or her to their death for an opportunity to kick Saddam. The last time I checked, we don’t operate like that here in America.”
Imagine that! A Cabinet official suggesting a deliberate provocation endangering a military pilot’s life in order to justify a war: “…but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world.” Is this mere amoral pragmatism? Machiavellian? It is in any case evil.
(I’m reminded of how the key neocon text “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” authored by Paul Wolfowitz for the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) “thinktank” in Sept. 2000, states that the “process of transformation” to the kind of super-militarized aggressive state the neocons hoped for “will be a long one absent some catastrophic event like a new Pearl Harbor.” And as the Deputy Secretary of Defense he warned of another Pearl Harbor in his speech at West Point in June 2001. After 9-11, widely compared in the media to the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941, he immediately set about preparations for war with Iraq.)
On January 31, 2003 President George W. Bush in a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair seriously proposed provoking Saddam to shoot down a U.S. aircraft. According to notes taken by Blair advisor David Manning (the accuracy of which has never been challenged), Bush suggested “flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted with UN colors. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach” of UN resolutions. Maybe then the UN, which had refused to endorse the plan to attack Iraq and was sceptical about the justifications given by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, would endorse war. (Perhaps the military brass opposed the plan, which was never carried out.)
At the Clinton White House breakfast described by Gen. Shelton, Berger, Cohen, Tenet and Richardson were involved in separate conversations. The other cabinet members were Robert E. Rubin (Treasury), Janet Reno (Attorney General), Bruce Babbit (Interior), Dan Glickman (Agriculture), Mickey Kantor (Commerce), Alexis Herman (Labor), Donna E. Shalala (Health and Human Services), Andrew M. Cuomo (Housing and Urban Development), Rodney Slater (Transportation), Richard W. Riley (Education), Jesse Brown (Veteran’s Affairs), Federico F. Pena (Energy), and Albright.
Out the 14 members of the Cabinet, there were four women. The fact that Shelton deliberately avoids indicating the gender of his interlocutor may hint that it was one of them. It is hard to believe that Attorney General Reno would suggest sacrificing an airman to the head of the Joint Chiefs at a White House breakfast. Or the Secretary of Labor, or Secretary of Health and Human Services. It’s hard to believe anyone on the above list would so–except Albright.
Albright in her memoirs expresses regret for her “it was worth it” statement in the 1996 interview. And she told Newsweek in 2006, “I’m afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy—worse than Vietnam.” But she bears partial responsibility for the December 1998 bombing of Iraq (“Operation Desert Fox”), a prelude to the 2003 invasion. She helped produce the disaster.
And she helped produce disaster in the former Yugoslavia. As violence rose in the Serbian province of Kosovo, between the Kosovo Liberation Army and security forces, she (and Cohen) deliberately exaggerated the Kosovar Albanian death toll and demanded the U.S. right to intervene. She arranged the de facto alliance with the KLA, earlier labelled “terrorist” by U.S. officials. In March 1999 at the Rambouillet talks between Serbia and the Kosovar rebels, along with the U.S., its European allies and Russia, the U.S. demanded that the whole of Serbia (and other states within what was left of Yugoslavia) submit to virtual occupation by NATO. Yugoslavia had proudly remained outside the Warsaw Pact and had prided itself on participation in the Non-Aligned Movement. No government in Belgrade could have complied with Albright’s demands.
The so-called Rambouillet Agreement was rejected outright by the Serbs as well as their Russian allies. But Albright immediately stated, “We accept the agreement”–as though there was any agreement. The bullying was conducted in such a smug fashion that the French Foreign minister accused the U.S. of becoming a hyperpuissance–not a mere superpower but a “hyperpower.”
John Pilger wrote, “Anyone scrutinizing the Rambouillet document is left with little doubt that the excuses given for the subsequent bombing were fabricated. The peace negotiations were stage managed and the Serbs were told: surrender and be occupied, or don’t surrender and be destroyed.”
This was indeed Albright’s plan (and that of Bill Clinton, egged on by Hillary, who has confessed, “I urged him to bomb”), resulting in the deployment of NATO to bomb a European capital for the first time since 1945, killing at least 500 civilians (Human Rights Watch) and maybe ten times that number.
A Republican official later told a think tank that a certain “top official” had told him: ” We intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing, and that’s what they are going to get.” Don’t we see a pattern here?
Throughout the last decade the neoconservatives have been the leading warmongers. But they have no monopoly on imperialist arrogance, contempt for truth and indifference to human life. Madeleine Albright is proof of that.
Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history.
Liberal American magazine says lowering ‘Arab’ birthrate inside Israel is hunky-dory
By Philip Weiss on October 17, 2010
This is what I don’t understand. Jonathan Tepperman of the “Eurasia group, a global political risk consulting firm,” is I’m guessing Jewish and is doing fine here in the U.S. So for him personally, as for me, the conceptual basis of Zionism– that Jews are endangered in the west– is probably meaningless; and I bet he likes living in a country where a member of a minority gets to be president. But here he is given a platform at the Atlantic to say that Israel is the “refuge for the Jews” and therefore it’s legitimate that it act to limit the population growth of Israeli Palestinians so they don’t threaten the Jewish majority–of a country he has the freedom to move to tomorrow and doesn’t want to.
Yes historically, that was the basis of Israel’s founding. Does it make sense today?
Notice too that throughout this argument, Tepperman speaks of “Israelis” and means Jews, and speaks of Palestinian Israelis as “Arabs.” And Israel is for those Jews “their own land.” Not the Arabs’ land. That seems implicitly racist. Those Palestinians are actually Israelis! Those Palestinians may not be represented in the government, because of racism, but they’re Israeli citizens. Just as many blacks and Jews are Americans and many of us would resent it if, say, we were excluded from higher office in the U.S. As I say, I just don’t get this.
Also note Tepperman’s argument that Israel must preserve its majority because Jews in Arab countries have been oppressed. Interesting realist argument, a two-wrongs argument. Jeffrey Goldberg makes it too. I’ve been in the neighboring Arab countries and he’s right, their governments aren’t pretty, but I don’t see why this should check democratic reform in Israel and Palestine. Tepperman:
Due to a birthrate much higher than Israel’s Jewish population, it was only a matter of time before Jews ceased to be a numerical majority in the territory they controlled. Sure enough: In 1970, Jews represented about 70% of the population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. But by 1995 that figure had fallen to 56% and by 2005 (just before the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza) to 51%.
These numbers forced successive Israeli leaders to face the fact that if they were determined to hold on to the Occupied Territories, they would soon become outnumbered in their own lands. At that point, Israel would have to choose between being Jewish or democratic, but it couldn’t be both. It was this hard logic that pushed such unsentimental men as Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert to eventually accept the logic of withdrawing from Gaza.
But as Lieberman has highlighted, the territories only represent part of the problem. Even if Israel were to shed itself completely of the West Bank today, the issue wouldn’t go away. For Israel proper–as defined by its 1967 borders–also has a sizable Arab population, and that population is also growing fast (or so it is commonly believed), again thanks to a birthrate higher than that of the Jews. The rate of increase is far too fast for the likes of people like Lieberman–but also too fast for many secular Israeli Jews, who worry that once again they risk being outnumbered in their own land.
This fear has merit. By the end of 2008 (the last date for which numbers are available), Israeli Arabs represented fully 20% of country’s population (excluding the territories), according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. This percentage has steadily risen over the years.
Now, those Israelis who worry about this, and dread being outnumbered by Arabs in their own country, aren’t necessarily racists. The two sides of Israel’s nature–its Jewish and democratic soul–have always coexisted uneasily, and would be quickly upset by a demographic shift. Israel was founded and internationally recognized as a refuge for Jews, and it is legitimate that modern Israelis are determined to keep it so. Given the way Jews have been treated in Arab lands, moreover, they have grounds to fear life under an Arab majority.
For all these reasons, a little demographic-induced panic is understandable.
Michael Oren’s Rhetorical Erasure of 1948 Palestinians
By Alex Kane | October 14, 2010
Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren’s column in today’s New York Times is part of what the Zionist project has attempted to do for the last 60-plus years: erase the Palestinian narrative out of existence and deny that the Nakba ever occured.
Oren’s Op-Ed piece urges the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people” because affirming Israel’s “Jewishness” is the “very foundation of peace, its DNA. Just as Israel recognizes the existence of a Palestinian people with an inalienable right to self-determination in its homeland, so, too, must the Palestinians accede to the Jewish people’s 3,000-year connection to our homeland and our right to sovereignty there.”
The ambassador states that Palestinians won’t do that because “Palestinian identity as a people has coalesced” around denying Israel’s rightful place as Jewish state, and that it would mean throwing away the Palestinian right of return. Oren is right about the Palestinians not wanting to recognize Israel as a Jewish state because it would negate the right of return, but he’s silent about the other core reason: Israel is emphatically not a Jewish state, because twenty percent of their population are Palestinian citizens of Israel, survivors or descendants of survivors of the Nakba, or the catastrophe, which refers to the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians from their land during the fighting that began in 1947.
Oren’s rhetorical erasure of the existence of Palestinian citizens of Israel is purposeful, because bringing their existence up would demolish any exclusive Jewish claim to the land of Israel. It would also bring up uncomfortable questions like: If Israel is a Jewish state, how come there are 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel who are not Jewish? Where did they come from? What would declaring Israel as a Jewish state mean to them? Were they there before Israel was created? What happened to them?
Answering those questions truthfully would blow a giant hole through the Zionist narrative of denying the Nakba ever occurred and affirming Israel’s exclusive Jewish character. Oren’s job is to further that narrative.
Groundwork Laid for Media Narrative of Failed Peace Talks: It’s the Palestinians’ Fault
October 13, 2010 by Alex Kane
With direct “peace talks” between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government headed nowhere fast after the Netanyahu government let the so-called “settlement freeze” lapse, the groundwork for the media narrative on who to blame if the “peace talks” officially break off is being laid. Predictably, it will be, and already is, a narrative of Palestinian rejectionism versus Israeli generosity.
Matt Duss, a must-read blogger on Middle East issues over at Think Progress’ Wonk Room, picks up on this, pointing to the headlines written after the Palestinian Authority pointedly said “no” to Netanyahu’s “offer” of a partial extension of the “settlement freeze” in exchange for the Palestinians recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinians recognizing Israel as such would effectively sign away the Palestinian right of return and relegate once and for all Palestinian citizens of Israel to institutionalized and official second-class status (which is the case already.)
Duss writes:
As opposed to a settlement freeze, the demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish State is an entirely new one. What Netanyahu is essentially saying to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, then, is that, in return for Abbas meeting this new demand, Netanyahu generously offers to partially, temporarily meet one of Israel’s already existing obligations.
Of course the Palestinian Authority has refused this “offer.” Is it really unclear why? Now let’s look at some of the headlines:
The Washington Post: “Israeli prime minister offers conditional settlements freeze”
Associated Press: “Israeli PM offers conditional settlements freeze”
Ha’aretz: “Netanyahu pleads to save talks as Palestinians threaten walkout”
Jerusalem Post: “PA quashes PM’s offer for renewed building freeze”
And thus, magically, the Palestinians have threatened the talks by rejecting yet another generous Israeli offer.
Here’s some more headlines on that theme:
–Palestinians Reject Israel’s Offer on Settlement Freeze, Voice of America News
–Palestinians Reject Israel Offer, Wall Street Journal
-Palestinians reject Israeli offer on settlement freeze, BBC News
–Palestinians reject Israeli demand, Reuters
You get the picture. Israel is now essentially saying: we will partially obey international law for 60 days (and then go back to violating it), as long as you sign away basic human rights–refugees and their descendants returning to homes they were expelled from and equality for all–forever. And media, both in the U.S., in Israel and around the world, are adopting Israel’s framing of the issue.
The media narrative of Israeli generosity and Palestinian rejectionism is an old one that was prominently displayed in the aftermath of the collapsed Camp David peace talks in 2000.
Seth Ackerman, writing for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Extra! magazine in July/August 2002, documented the U.S. media’s telling of the Camp David story in an excellent article:
The seemingly endless volleys of attack and retaliation in the Middle East leave many people wondering why the two sides can’t reach an agreement. The answer is simple, according to numerous commentators: At the Camp David meeting in July 2000, Israel “offered extraordinary concessions” (Michael Kelly, Washington Post, 3/13/02), “far-reaching concessions” (Boston Globe, 12/30/01), “unprecedented concessions” (E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 12/4/01). Israel’s “generous peace terms” (L.A. Times editorial, 3/15/02) constituted “the most far-reaching offer ever” (Chicago Tribune editorial, 6/6/01) to create a Palestinian state. In short, Camp David was “an unprecedented concession” to the Palestinians (Time, 12/25/00).
But due to “Arafat’s recalcitrance” (L.A. Times editorial, 4/9/02) and “Palestinian rejectionism” (Mortimer Zuckerman, U.S. News & World Report, 3/22/02), “Arafat walked away from generous Israeli peacemaking proposals without even making a counteroffer” (Salon, 3/8/01). Yes, Arafat “walked away without making a counteroffer” (Samuel G. Freedman, USA Today, 6/18/01). Israel “offered peace terms more generous than ever before and Arafat did not even make a counteroffer” (Chicago Sun-Times editorial, 11/10/00). In case the point isn’t clear: “At Camp David, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an astonishingly generous peace with dignity and statehood. Arafat not only turned it down, he refused to make a counteroffer!” (Charles Krauthammer, Seattle Times, 10/16/00).
This account is one of the most tenacious myths of the conflict. Its implications are obvious: There is nothing Israel can do to make peace with its Palestinian neighbors. The Israeli army’s increasingly deadly attacks, in this version, can be seen purely as self-defense against Palestinian aggression that is motivated by little more than blind hatred.
As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
British aid worker killed by Americans, not by Afghan “suicide bomber”
Poseidon’s Blog | October 12, 2010
According to the original story, British aid worker Linda Norgrove was killed by one of her Afghan captors, who detonated an explosive vest seconds before US forces got to her in a bungled rescue attempt. For example, the BBC reported on October 10:
US troops in Afghanistan were seconds from rescuing a UK hostage when she was killed by a vest bomb held or worn by a kidnapper, the BBC understands.
They reached the building where Linda Norgrove, 36, was held and were “very, very close” to her, the BBC was told.
It is understood tribal elders negotiating her release asked Nato not to intervene so they had more time.
David Cameron has said it was right for the special forces to try to rescue the aid worker, from Lewis, Western Isles.
The prime minister said: “Decisions on operations to free hostages are always difficult, but where a British life is in such danger, and where we and our allies can act, I believe it is right to try.”
‘Grave danger’
BBC correspondent Nicholas Witchell said officials had confirmed Ms Norgrove was killed by an explosion, almost certainly a suicide vest, detonated by one of her captors.
Source
So David Cameron thinks “it was right”, rather like Tony Blair thinks “it was right” to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dead Muslims, thousands of troops dead and tens of thousands injured, and a cost to the U.S. alone of well over a trillion dollars when all is taken into account. What would be “right”, would be to get the $&!% out of there, and quit screwing around with other people’s countries.
It subsequently emerged that the “explosive vest” story was a lie, eagerly propagated by a compliant media.
The death of British aid worker Linda Norgrove was caught on helmet-mounted cameras worn by the officers who mistakenly killed her with a grenade, it has emerged.
It comes as Miss Norgrove’s parents last night demanded to know how the elite U.S. troops sent in to rescue her apparently ended up killing their daughter in the botched Afghanistan rescue bid.
The U.S. yesterday issued an extraordinary apology to Britain over the doomed mission to free the aid worker from the clutches of the Taliban.
American officials initially claimed Miss Norgrove had been killed when one of her captors detonated a suicide vest. But a review of footage taken by helmet cameras raised suspicions that in fact, it was a U.S. grenade which killed Miss Norgrove.
An ashen-faced David Cameron yesterday revealed the tragedy a few hours after General David Petraeus, the American commander of the Nato-led force in Afghanistan, telephoned Downing Street to express ‘deep regret’ about the operation.
But last night urgent questions were already being raised about the true independence of an inquiry into 36-year-old Miss Norgrove’s killing.
It had been billed as a joint U.S.-UK investigation, but will be run by U.S. Central Command ‘in close co-operation with UK authorities’.
Which is rather like having Henry Kissinger or Philip Zelikow in charge of the 9/11 Commission.
Military sources raised particular concern about the training the team had for hostage situations.
There were also questions over why they used lethal fragmentation grenades in a rescue bid – and why they used helicopters which would be heard and alert the gunmen.
[…]
‘The last thing we wanted was for her to be passed into the hands of Al Qaeda.
What “Al Qaeda”, this “Al Qaeda”? Or this guy, whose grandfather was on the board of directors of the ADL?
Despite the fierce Taliban resistance, the Seals managed to fight their way towards the Miss Norgrove’s building. And then, with six Taliban gunmen already dead, one of the Seals threw a grenade through the door.
When the Seals entered the room, they found Linda Norgrove. She was still alive, but had terrible injuries caused by the grenade blast.
To cries of ‘medic! medic!’, doctors rushed to the scene. But it was too late. She succumbed to her injuries as she was being airlifted to hospital – the third British civilian to die in Afghanistan in the last three months.
Yet, inexplicably, the U.S. and Nato both claimed that she had died at the hands of a suicide bomber, who had apparently detonated his vest as he stood beside her when the Seals were closing in.
The official statement released on Saturday by Nato, was unequivocal about the cause of death: the blast that killed Miss Norgrove occurred ‘seconds before rescuers arrived. [U.S. special forces] had entered the compound … [but] an insurgent detonated an explosive device that was attached to his person. He was in close enough proximity to Miss Norgrove. She was wounded.’
That statement, we now know, was inaccurate. For three days, the special forces failed to reveal the fact that one of them had apparently thrown a grenade that exploded close to where she was being held, bursting into razor-sharp steel shrapnel.
It was only yesterday morning when their commanding officer reviewed audio and video footage from their helmet cameras that he ‘saw an arm throw a hand grenade’ and confronted his troops.
[…]
The report that Miss Norgrove had been ‘killed by an insurgent’ who had detonated his suicide vest as the Seals closed in, was officially announced within hours of the operation taken place. The same information was relayed to Miss Norgrove’s parents – John, 60, a retired civil engineer, and her 62-year-old mother, Lorna.
But in the early hours of yesterday morning, David Petraeus, the U.S. chief of coalition forces in Afghanistan, made a personal call to Downing Street, leaving a message for Mr Cameron to phone him immediately. He had grim news. In military jargon, it was clearly a friendly fire killing.
While shocked, Mr Cameron does not believe the Americans lied. ‘It was wrong information in the fog of war,’ said a source. ‘General Petraeus cleared up the facts as soon as they became clear. It is a tragedy, but tragedies can happen.’
Source
The New York Times smooths the path to the next Lebanon war
By David Samel | Mondoweiss | October 8, 2010
Should another war break out between Israel and Lebanon, who would be at fault: the nation that actually commences bombing and invasion, backed by the full diplomatic and military support of the most powerful country in the world? Or the country that is bombed and invaded, along with its quasi-ally that provides a small fraction of such assistance?
An article in Wednesday’s New York Times answers that question in typical fashion. The guilty party would be Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah party, and its main offense would be Hezbollah’s supposedly provocative preparation of a Lebanese defense to an Israeli attack. The article, authored by Thanassis Cambanis, is written as if the reporter were “embedded” with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In July, 2006, Israel launched a bombing campaign and invasion against Lebanon that caused widespread destruction and loss of life similar in scale to its subsequent attack on Gaza. More than 1000 Lebanese lost their lives and whole villages and neighborhoods were destroyed. Yet many Israelis considered the “war” a failure, since Hezbollah not only survived the conflict but also inflicted enough damage on the invading Israeli Army and on communities in northern Israel to force withdrawal before Israel had accomplished its objective, presumably the destruction of Hezbollah. Since then, many Israelis have been itching to resume the fight, just as they were for six war-free years after Israel finally ended its two-decade long occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000.
Now, the Times reports that Hezbollah is provoking the Israelis by preparing for the possibility, or likelihood, of the next Israeli war. It is precisely this defensive buildup that Israel is using as a potential casus belli to justify a new war.
Amazingly, the argument that a military attack is necessary to defeat those who are preparing to defend themselves from that military attack is not dismissed as a transparent absurdity. (In fact, it is the general assumption underlying all the war talk about Iran as well.)
From the very start, Cambanis uses loaded language to convey his message. “Hezbollah instigated its war with Israel in 2006.” It is true that a border raid on an IDF position was the catalyst for the Israeli attack, but the word “instigate” implies that Hezbollah intentionally provoked the “war.” Israel’s war preparations already were in full swing, and the decision to respond with a full-scale bombing and ground invasion was purely Israel’s.
Subsequently, Hezbollah chief Nasrallah has claimed, quite credibly, that he would not have launched this border operation had he known the Israelis would use it as an excuse to retaliate so destructively. Saying that Hezbollah “instigated its war” is similar to saying that Herschel Grynszpan “instigated” Kristallnacht, or that Princip & co. “instigated” World War I.
Similarly, Hezbollah is cast as the aggressor in the next war: “Hezbollah appears to be, if not bristling for a fight with Israel, then coolly prepared for one. It seems to be calculating either that an aggressive military posture might deter another war, as its own officials and Lebanese analysts say, or that a conflict, should it come, would on balance fortify its domestic political standing.”
In other words, while Hezbollah may say that its arms buildup is for deterrent purposes, Times reporter Cambanis knows better, and suspects that Hezbollah actually hopes to provoke a war for craven political purposes.
And wait. Let’s not depict Hezbollah as the sole villain here, when we can blame Iran as well. The Times: “because of the party’s ties to Iran and its powerful militia, Hezbollah officials say they are ready to fight even if a war would do widespread damage.”
In addition to implicating bete noire Iran, the article suggests that Hezbollah’s vow to resist a foreign military invasion is responsible for the destruction Israel would wreak; if only Hezbollah declared it was unwilling to repel an Israeli attack, the danger of “widespread damage” would dissipate.
Continuing with the Iranian theme: Hezbollah is “emboldened” because its “patrons in Iran appear to have regained control” after post-election challenges to its authority. The article also lays the groundwork for Israel’s inevitable wholesale attacks on civilian areas that characterized its previous attacks on Lebanon and Gaza:
“Hezbollah appears to have retained the support of the Shiite Muslims in southern Lebanon. ‘Hezbollah is not a foreign body. It is an organic, natural part of every house, village,’ said Hussein Rumeiti, an official in Burj Qalaouay.”
The message is clear: If Israel should again decimate entire villages and neighborhoods, we should not weep for the civilians killed in the rubble. They are inextricably intertwined with Hezbollah and therefore appropriate targets for Israeli attack.
In reality, Israel will bomb and invade Lebanon if it feels like it. As in 2006 and 2008-2009, its indiscriminate death machine will receive the full backing of its American sponsors, regardless of who is the dog and who is the tail. Israel requires no provocation by Hezbollah, and if ready to go, it will invent an excuse, or magnify a relatively minor incident.
In 1982, Israel’s pretext was the assassination attempt on its ambassador in London, and in 2006, it was the border raid. For the next round, it appears to be Hezbollah’s stockpiling of missiles to use in case of an Israeli attack that perversely justifies that attack, and don’t forget Iran pulling the strings behind the scene.
The Times article does not mean war is inevitable, but it does construct a framework to justify military action by Israel. Does the Israeli government bestow honors upon foreign reporters? If so, Thanassis Cambanis deserves top awards.
Travel alert to Americans in Europe: Learn how to use pay phones
By Belén Fernández | Pulse Media | October 4, 2010
As if color-coded domestic terror advisories were not vague enough, the U.S. State Department has now issued a travel alert, set to expire on Jan. 31, 2011, for Americans in Europe. According to The New York Times, “The decision to warn travelers came as officials in Europe and the United States were assessing possible plots originating in Pakistan and North Africa, aimed at Britain, France and Germany.” The Christian Science Monitor notes: “Media reports have linked the plot to US drone strikes in Pakistan. But it is unclear whether the Al Qaeda plot was an attempt to respond to the drone strikes, or whether the strikes were intended to disrupt the plot – or both.”
Following are a few excerpts from the State Department teleconference briefing yesterday with Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, who does not discuss drone attacks on Pakistan but does discuss how important it is, in light of the travel alert, that Americans know how to operate foreign pay phones. Why the Pakistani government does not issue terror advisories of its own is meanwhile called into question by headlines like this one.
…
UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: … [O]ne has to understand how I guess we get to a Travel Alert. It is a cumulative process. The State Department, every day, has personnel who monitor the world, looking at conditions that might have an impact on American citizens, and as information comes on, there could be a eureka moment where there is information that comes to our attention that – bingo, that’s it, we issue the – an alert immediately.
Other situations are cumulative. Bits and pieces of information come together; the State Department is in constant contact with colleagues in the other elements of the United States Government, the intelligence and law enforcement communities, and with allies and friends throughout the world. And as information comes in, it can reach the point where the cumulative effect says: Now is the time to issue a Travel Alert, and the situation, I think, can be really summed up by what Secretary Clinton said as – a couple of days ago, I mean, the – which is that we all know that al-Qaida and its networks of terrorists wish to attack both European and American targets.
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QUESTION: … [D]o you remember if there was one country-specific or even continent-specific alert like this after either the London or Madrid bombings?
UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: Let’s see, I am trying to remember back that far and I’m not sure if there was one after either London or Madrid. Let me flip through my notes here and I promise to announce that in a couple of seconds.
QUESTION: Okay. If there’s just – if there’s a way that someone could check, because on the website, you can’t really find the archive of the –
UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: Right.
QUESTION: The new ones supersede the old ones and so it’s hard to tell –
UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: Yes.
QUESTION: — from the website if there was one. If someone – it doesn’t have to be you. If someone could just check and –
UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: Certainly, absolutely.
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UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: We are not, repeat not, advising Americans not to go to Europe…
Now, we tell them that – basically, to use common sense if they see unattended packages or they hear loud noises or they see something beginning to happen that they should quickly move away from them. These are common sense precautions that people ought to take – don’t have lots of baggage tags on your luggage that directly identify you as an American, know how to use the pay telephone, know how to contact the American embassy if you need help.
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QUESTION: …One, is there something you guys know that we don’t that prompted this? Is this based on something that – I think a lot of people are wondering, is – does the government know something that we don’t or is this based on the fact that the Eiffel Tower has been evacuated a couple times and stuff like that. And secondly, are you asking airlines to do something in particular?
UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: Well, first, we don’t – we never discuss intelligence information that has come to our attention. I mean, you can certainly understand that. We certainly don’t want to tip our hand. I again refer to the fact that when we take these steps, which we take very seriously because of the importance of our assisting American citizens, it is a cumulative effect of all types of information that comes to our attention. And so I can’t comment upon any specific piece of intelligence. That would be inappropriate.
On your – and your second question was?
QUESTION: Just are you asking airlines or study abroad programs or anything to do something in particular?
UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: No. We are not asking Americans or even – we’re not –we’re not recommending, that American citizens of any kind – business, tourism, study abroad – we are not – we are not, not, not saying that they should defer travel to Europe at this time, absolutely not.
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UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: [W]e’re not saying don’t travel to Europe. We’re not saying don’t visit tourist — major tourist attractions or historic sites or monuments. In the State Department website we offer some very practical situations. Make sure that you’ve registered with the American embassy. If you — avoid public demonstrations, avoid civil disturbances. Don’t discuss your travel plans or where you’re going with others or where others may overhear them. Know what you’re doing, be aware of your circumstances around you. If you see something that looks untoward, move away from it and inform law enforcement personnel. If you see unattended packages, or such, move away from them and inform law enforcement.
ABC’s 20/20 Broadcast on Islam, Delivered Blurred Vision of Reality
By Roqayah Chamseddine | Al-Manar | October 2, 2010
Diane Sawyer, Bill Weir and Lama Hasan attempted to answer a variety of dynamic questions about Islam during an ABC broadcast on Friday called“Islam – Questions & Answers.” The programme aspired to respond to five questions American viewers submitted via comments, email and video submissions: What is Islam? Why Do Radicals Feel Violence is Justified? Is Western Culture at Odds with Islam? Where is the Moderate Muslim Voice? How Can We All Get Along?
The premise of the broadcast, to explain away misconceptions in respect to Islam and Muslims in America, sounds plausible – commendable even; ABC is touted as ‘America’s News Service’ and their tagline heralds that “…more Americans get their news from ABC News than from any other source“. The delivery of the ABC ‘Islam’ special solidified many contentions, one of the most pivotal being that of the anatomy of American ignorance.
Diane Sawyer’s voice lulled viewers through a barrage of images and videos, including that of Osama Bin Laden and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
It is a simple technique used by even the most liberal of media orthodoxy; them and us, extremists versus moderates, radicals against pacifists. The clip of Osama Bin Laden was inaudible but Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s was not, a few seconds were played wherein he was heard saying ‘Al Mawt La Amreeka’ – ‘Death to America’ and then, of course, there was nothing more given. The video ABC stripped was from a speech by Hezb’Allah Secretary General, in it we can see that his statement was blatantly taken out of context.
“…I must clarify that when I say “America” I do not mean the American people, most of whom are distant and ignorant of what is going on in the world, and of what its government and army are doing in the world. Nevertheless, we consider the current administration an enemy of our nation and of the peoples of our nation, because it has always taken a position of aggression, of occupation, and of supporting Israel with weapons, airplanes, tanks, money, as well as political support, and full and unlimited protection. We consider it to be an enemy because it wants to humiliate our governments, our regimes and our peoples […] This American administration is an enemy […] If America stops interfering in our countries’ and nation’s affairs, stops its aggression, stops its occupation, stops its plundering of our resources and treasures, we will have no problem with it…,” Sayyed Nasrallah said.
When it came to interviewing Muslims and non Muslims it did not get any better; Pamella Geller, poster-child of mainstream Islamophobia, was sandwiched between ‘Bin Laden’s worst nightmare’ Irshad Manji and the self-proclaimed ‘Infidel’ Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Three convenient feminists discussing Muslim radicals, oppression of women and how moderates play a role in the religious divide. There was no robust intellectual argument, no cogent analysis, no valuable premise; it was pure celebrity glitter being flung in the faces of those less fortunate in terms of rational capability.
By giving Geller, Manji and Ali a platform to spread anti-Muslim vitriol in the shape and form of a liberated female refusenik ABC introduced them as being sources, credible or not, on Islam.
The 20/20 special on Islam in America pitched a slew of statistics including, on at least two occasions, the numbers of Muslims serving in the United States Military: “…at least 7,000 American-Muslims serve in the Armed Forces…” This venomous detail falls back into the ‘them verses us’ narrative that much of the mainstream media rehearses time and time again.
It was as if Sawyers voice-over wished to tell Americans, ‘see – they play a role in the occupation, just like us’.
There were sentimental points used as bridges between a variety of hypocritical lunacy and at times one might have considered the program genuinely aware and concerned for the plight of American-Muslims but collectively it was an unimpressive, clichéd broadcast.
Diane Sawyer was seen asking an interviewee where the ‘Muslim Ghandi’ was and to that there was no vehement reply, no defiant lambasting of such mindless drivel. “…Muslims do not have one individual who speaks on their behalf…” was the reply. Such a weak and asinine answer to Sawyers fully loaded question. And while American-Muslims put on their best suits, made-up their faces in a sea of kohl and rouge in order to present the Western world with what “moderates” look like our brothers and sisters in Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, Pakistan and Afghanistan are asking where the American Ghandi is.
Time and time again we hear the incessant harping of the ignorant West, crying out for Muslims to lash out against radicals and denounce the acts of extremists, yet Americans do not ask the same of each other.
While the United States of America plays imperialist Twister, its colonialist hand in every occupation and coup d’état, it is American-Muslims who must continuously submit themselves before their Western-masters and kiss the hand that feeds them.
Lest we forget Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo: Where men, women and children were raped and tortured in ways which even the pen’s ink feels ashamed to document; such brutal perversities can only be inscribed in the blood of their martyrs and screams of their victims.
Lest we forget the slaughter of innocent Afghans and Iraqi’s for sport; US Occupation Forces collecting skulls and dismembered body parts to bring back as souvenirs, as if they had been on holiday all these countless years.
Lest we forget the cries of our beloved Jerusalem, her soil saturated in the tears of a trail of Palestinian refugees who refuse to call their luggage ‘home’; The olive trees remain tightly bound around their hands whilst they defend themselves against US endorsed ethnic cleansing and Uncle Sam approved pillage.
But, unlike the intellectually inept, we do not want an apology – we demand prosecution. The United States Administration must face its own slew of Nuremberg Trials; it must be forced to see the Iraqi Holocaust and the Palestinian Ghetto’s.
The unimpressive broadcast by 20/20 displayed nothing more than complete and unashamed blindness towards reality.
The orthodox media narrative was played out once more; while a cluster-bomb detonates in South Lebanon, a white-phosphorus shell rains across the Gaza Strip and another body is buried in Baghdad. And they ask us where our Ghandi is?
There is no ‘Muslim Ghandi’ just as there is no Palestinian Ghandi or Iraqi Ghandi or Afghan Ghandi or Lebanese Ghandi because you’ve buried them all, dead – ‘Made In America’ etched across their flesh.
Israel’s Political Firewall against the Truth
By George Polley | Palestine Chronicle | September 28, 2010
In an article published in the September 6th edition of The Palestine Chronicle (“Imagining Palestinians as Equal”) I began with this quote from novelist Aldous Huxley: “The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” It is the key to separating out what is blatant propaganda and what is fair and honest communication.
The purpose of Israel’s political firewall is blocking out and discrediting the testimony of the people it abuses on a daily basis and their supporters, through using high level elites.
In my mental health career working with abusive systems was a main interest, and this is classic abusive system behavior. The example I used in the article was The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), formed earlier this year. Billing itself as dedicated to the scholarly research of the manifestations of antisemitism globally, as well as other forms of prejudice, it fits snugly into the propaganda format promoted by Israel’s Reut Institute.
The Friends of Israel Initiative (FII) led by former Spanish PM José María Aznar and directed by Rafael Bardaji, Sr. Aznar’s former national security advisor is a second example. Founded in May of this year, it is made up of a group of high level personalities supported by a large network of influential opinion formers such as William Kristol, Dore Gold, Alan Mendoza, Joao Spada, Eliot Abrams, Allen Roth, Pablo Kleinman, Jeffrey Gedmin, Robin Shepherd, among many others.
Where does FII’s support come from? That is difficult to say, as donors are not listed on their website, and I’ve unable to locate any information about them on the internet, other than they are a dozen private donors from Spain, America, Israel, France, Italy and Britain, and provide the FII with a working budget of almost £1 million a year, which translates to over $1,550,000 US dollars (Source: The Jewish Chronicle Online, July 22, 2010).
FII’s declared purpose is a familiar one if you are familiar with Israel’s propaganda initiatives: Combating “the deligitimization of the State of Israel at home, abroad and inside the institutions of the international community”; publicly showing solidarity with Israel’s democratic institutions which are “the legitimate expression of the Jewish people’s millennial aspiration to live in peace and freedom in its national homeland (emphasis added); supporting Israel’s inalienable right to secure borders “so that its citizens can continue living with the same guarantees that our own societies enjoy; consistently and firmly opposing the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran; working to ensure that Israel is fully accepted as a normal Western country, which they see as “an essential and indivisible part of the Western world to which we belong (emphasis added)”; and “reaffirm[ing] the value of the religious, moral, and cultural Judeo-Christian heritage as the main source of the liberal and democratic Western societies.”
Not one word about the Palestinian people and what has happened to them from 1948 to the present day. Not a single word or syllable anywhere on FII’s website. The clear message is that the Palestinian people do not exist except as terrorists and delegitimizers who refuse to accept Israel’s continued stealing of their lands, murdering their people and treating them like dogs. The sole purpose of the FII is to delegitimize Israel’s critics and dismiss the Palestinians as dogs.
Is this a bit harsh? When the Palestinian people are ignored to this degree, I don’t think it is. The message of The Friends of Israel Initiative is a message that Israel’s propaganda machine very much wants everyone, especially the power brokers in the West to hear … and believe. What the rest of us believe is irrelevant, because to the propaganda machine and power brokers, “the people” do not count. By now that should be eminently clear to anyone who follows the daily news. Am I being needlessly cynical? Sadly, I don’t believe I am.
There is more. Marcello Perla, former president of the Italian Senate remarked at the launch of the FII that Israel was viewed “as the father of human rights”, and that “attacking Israel is attacking the culture of human rights” (The Jewish Chronicle Online, 22 July 2010). (It took me a minute after reading that before I could say “You have got to be joking!”) On FII’s website’s home page, Mr. Perla is quoted as saying that “The campaign of demonization against the State of Israel must stop. All men and women of goodwill should join together to say that enough is enough” (almost a word-for-word quote from the Reut Institute’s report “Building a Political Firewall Against Israel’s Delegitimization”).
On the same date, former Spanish PM José María Aznar published an article in The Jewish Chronicle Online titled “We in the West need to regain moral clarity, complete with a head shot of Sr. Aznar looking very serious and morally clear. Claiming that Israel is an integral part of the West, he makes this astonishing claim: “The one thing setting it apart from the rest of us is its status as the only democracy whose existence has been questioned since inception.” He then makes this incredible, whiplash-inducing statement: “[I]f Israel fell into the hands of its enemies, the West as we know it would cease to exist.” Say what?
Take a moment to sit back and take three deep, slow breaths to clear your mind and unclench your jaw. Go to this link and read the article for yourself, take three deeper, slower breaths to calm the hysterical laughter or rage that’s beginning to well up inside and overwhelm your thinking mind, refocus your eyes and move on.
What Mr. Aznar has done is declare war against Israel’s enemies whom he declares are enemies of the West. Worse, he uses the rhetoric of cultural warfare, a “clash of cultures” between the virtuous West and the evil and cynical Muslim world. This is so bizarre that it makes my hair stand on end. Does he really not see how dangerous this Reut-think is? Are he and his friends fools, or just suicidal idiots bent on dragging all of us into a neocon war to defend a state that, from its inception has been morally indefensible?
We in the west do need to regain moral clarity, which is the point the growing legions of Israel’s critics are making eminently clear. But refusing to even mention the Palestinian people is morally reprehensible to all men and women of good will, to say nothing at all about good sense.
Mahmoud El-Yousseph said it best in a recent article in The Palestinian Chronicle titled “The Hesder Quiz: Where is Israel?”. “‘Where is Israel’?” he asks. “The more accurate answer would be: It is located in the heart of the Arab world. It was built illegally in 1948 on stolen Palestinian land and on the ruin of hundreds of towns and villages that have been erased from the face of the earth so the native inhabitants will never have a chance to return back home and to what is rightfully theirs.”
Until Sr. Aznar and his friends understand that, the West has no moral clarity at all. Moral clarity comes to us courtesy of people like Mahmoud El-Yousseph and others who call Israel out on its racism and violence toward the Palestinian people. To quote from a recent article by Gilad Atzmon, Israeli expatriate, jazz musician and activist, “reconciliation is the surest way to peace.” And this is true wherever injustice exists, which is to say wherever one group of people treat another group or groups of people as if they are nothing at all.
I will say this for Sr. Aznar and his friends: They do know how to parrot their lines. Wouldn’t you love to know who their financial backers are? Now that is a worthy subject for someone to research and publish at least one article on.
– George Polley is a Japan-based writer.
NPR ombud says Israel lobby was ’successful’ in changing coverage
By Susie Kneedler | Mondoweiss | September 27, 2010
Last week on a local call-in show on WOSU, Ohio, NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard virtually boasted about NPR’s giving into “pro-Israeli” pressure: “NPR is not as much criticized for its Middle East coverage as it was back in 2002, which it was attacked quite strongly by a pro-Israeli group. And that group was in many ways successful, and as a result NPR went back and re-evaluated the coverage and how things are handled and started doing things a little differently….”
One collapse leads to another. I called in and thanked Shepard for her previous stance of asking that reporters describe Israeli colonies–built on stolen land–as violations of International Law, rather than use the Israeli term “disputed.” I told her, though, that reporters continue to say “disputed.” In a flip-flop, Shepard said, “The reason that it would be ‘disputed’ is that Israelis may feel that this is their land, and they got it fair and square during the war, and then the Palestinians would say, No, this land was stolen from them, –so in that sense, it’s ‘disputed’” (10:26).
The arbiter of ethical reporting violated fairness in her about-face: Donating all of Palestine to Israel—Greater Israel accomplished… . No country can legally win land “fair and square [through] war” ….“Disputed” isn’t a disinterested label, but the Israeli government’s…. Israel’s violation of International Law is crucial context listeners deserve. And Shepard herself had bragged that “rich” “context” is “NPR’s signature” of “good journalism.”
So Shepard reversed her answer to me from an April 1 call. At that time she said: “The story about Israel intending to build 1600 housing units in East Jerusalem is a big story. Susie, I’ve brought that up about: ‘Let’s not use the term ‘disputed.’”
I wanted to probe Shepard’s turnabout last week, but WOSU host Ann Fisher again shielded the ombud by putting me on hold, and Shepard shifted from defense to offense: NPR’s job “isn’t to advocate. Maybe you have more of a vested interest or a personal interest in the story,” she told me, “so you listen to it in a way where you’re picking up on a key word.” Exactly. NPR’s job isn’t to advocate Israel’s interest, which it does when it uses Israeli-government terms like “disputed.”
Shepard asserted that “An NPR story may be fair, but it is also in many ways neutral.” Would NPR give equal time to segregationists applauding Bull Connor’s hoses and dogs? Would NPR suppress news of Rev. Martin Luther King and the marches for Civil Rights? Why not? Because to do so would deceive a 1960s audience about liberation from injustice.
Both times I talked with Shepard, she referred to the evaluations made by hired assessor John Felton; but the problem with his reports is precisely that they merely count how many Israeli and Palestinian stories and spokespeople appear. http://www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/statements/Mideast_Q2_2010.pdf, http://www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/statements/Mideast_Q4_2009.pdf
Such tallies are easy, and not journalism. Felton neglects the hard work of comparing the assertions to reality: how much land Israelis steal, how many more people they kill and injure than casualties they suffer, how many children’s growth they stunt through malnourishment. The coverage is reduced to the dreadful idea of “competing narratives,” with no referee. Shepard can only proclaim, “bias is in the eye of the beholder,” when NPR discards facts like International Law.
George Orwell warned that “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” http://orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit. Orwell’s “The Road to Wigan Pier,” say, doesn’t give equal time to the mine owners, but simply depicts miners’ terrible suffering.
NPR functionaries like Alicia Shepard and Ann Fisher are gatekeepers at the U.S. checkpoints: keeping Americans in ignorance.
Later Gabrielle, another caller to the Ann Fisher, showed how NPR responds to some progressive demands (26:10). First, a compliment about what an admirable job Shepard is doing. Then, the suggestion of a “tiny… constructive criticism” that Fisher supports: removing sexist terms like ombudsman from NPR. Hilariously, Shepard at first brushed off the request. The caller responded that language like “fireman” and “firefighter” limits children’s aspirations. Fisher chimed in. Gabrielle spoke of the subtlety of saying “one man’s x.” Shepard agreed it’s an important topic–“This is something that I do care very much about”–and the disparity of male and female voices is an issue she’s studied.
Then she summed up: “How will we ever move on, if we don’t address it?”
How, indeed?
Centrist Central: How Stewart and Colbert are Selling the Neocon Agenda to the Left
By Scott Creighton | American Everyman | September 25, 2010
I just have to ask, is there anything, anything, that billionaire Sumner Redstone’s progressive propaganda tag-team of Jon Stewart & Steven Colbert won’t do to help turn the supposed left 180 degrees from positions they held during the previous administration?
I have written several times about Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert turning into blatant propagandists since the Chosen One took office.
For example: there’s the time Jon Stewart played the MEMRI TV video demonizing Palestinians, Steven Colbert’s recent revolting sucking-up to globalist Joe Biden, there was Stewart’s story about the South Park episode psyop involving Revolution Muslim which turns out to be run by a “converted” jewish ex-settler from the West Bank, Steven’s sycophantic groveling and rebranding the Afghan occupation just after Obama took office, and then of course Stewart’s ambushing of Rod Blagojevich which I thought was a pretty funny position for a “progressive” to take after he practically gave back rubs and “happy endings” to each and every neocon that has come on his set to pimp their new books or try to re-brand themselves as anything but the war criminals they are. That list includes but is not limited to Bill Kristol, Ari Fleischer, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Thomas Friedman, Tom Ridge, and John Yoo. Each and every one of the previously named neocons and or war criminals, Jon Stewart treated with more respect than he did Rod Blagojevich who’s only crime was to threaten Bank of America if they didn’t live up to the conditions of the banker bailout bill.
Recently these two progressive shills have each taken on a new directive which certainly lives up to their pathetic performances in the past.
Jon Stewart is now involved in what he calls the “Million Moderates March” and the premise of this is that everyone who is anyone in America these days is a “centrist” or a “moderate” and that only the “fringe” are getting any attention.
Centrism i,s of course, just another name for the Washington Consensus, which is neoliberal/DLC “New Dem” corporatist fiscal ideology.
I seriously doubt that Stewart is correct in that assumption considering so many people are suffering under this economy, but since he recently had to grovel at the ultimate neoliberal’s feet (Bill Clinton), its not surprising that he would come out with this “move to the center” propaganda. Also interesting to note that he announced this new propaganda effort the same day he had Clinton on his show.
What is surprising is that Stewart chastised the radical left for holding such beliefs as “George Bush is a war criminal” and called to “restore sanity” on Oct. 30th 2010.
He later labeled it a “Million Moderate March.” The purpose, he said, is to counter what he called a minority of 15 percent or 20 percent of the country that has dominated the national political discussion with extreme rhetoric. He tarred both parties with that charge, mentioning both the attacks on the right against President Obama for being everything from a socialist to un-American and on the left against former President Bush for being a war criminal. Glenn Greenwald
Greenwald also noted Stewart’s history of aiding neocons with their image rebranding and book sales, though he doesn’t draw any conclusions about it like I do. Very polite of him if you ask me.
… but far more important than tone, in my view, is content. For instance, Bill Kristol, a repeated guest on The Daily Show, is invariably polite on television, yet uses his soft-spoken demeanor to propagate repellent, destructive ideas. The same is true for war criminal John Yoo, who also appeared, with great politeness, on The Daily Show. Moreover, some acts are so destructive and wrong that they merit extreme condemnation (such as Bush’s war crimes). Glenn Greenwald
Personally, I have to agree with Mr. Greenwald in that certain actions merit extreme condemnation (like impeachment and imprisonment) and to that list I would like to toss out 1. lying 935 times to justify an illegal war which has killed over a million Iraqi people and dislocated about 4 million others, 2. creating false documents (Niger Yellow Cake) like the neocons at the Office of Special Plans did to justify an illegal war, 3. torture, 4. rendition, 5. secret prisons, 6. CIA backed mercenary death squads 7. depleted uranium spread across Iraq … I mean, if these actions don’t merit calling George W. Bush (and several of Jon Stewart’s recent guests) a war criminal, what does?
Is turning a blind eye to such atrocities and war crimes really “sanity” or is it something else?
“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” Glenn Greenwald
It’s clear that Stewart is doing his part to help the globalist regime in charge whitewash the past 10 years. He’s actually helping to rewrite our collective history on these matters and turn “moderate” progressives, those with their heads buried in the sand, against those “fringe” elements who tried to demand justice and accountability from the previous administration. If anything proves Jon Stewart’s complicity in the globalist criminal actions, this is certainly it.
Colbert is certainly not being left out in the cold either. He just recently “testified” before a congressional sub-committee in congress speaking out in favor of the precursor to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill being pushed by the Obama/Clinton regime but it was actually a holdover from the George Bush administration, that little tidbit they don’t like to mention too much these days. They also don’t like to hear the word “amnesty” tossed out in these congressional hearings, judging from a Democrat’s behavior.
Colbert’s presence at the hearing was insulting to say the least.
His presence was insulting to the congress members who were there and insulting to any intellectually honest American who would be offended that a paid comedian who has been shilling for his globalist boss would actually be asked to join in on any part of a serious discussion of the matter.
John Conyers, to his credit, asked Colbert to submit his “testimony” for the record and excuse himself before the hearing took place. He politely reminded Steven he had nothing of value to add to the discussion, but Colbert couldn’t resist the spotlight and all the play he could get out of the stunt, so he remained but he was clearly shaken that someone there reminded him in public that his presence was nothing more than a PR stunt. He felt foolish and it showed. It was an embarrassing thing to watch, and if you absolutely have to, here it is.
Colbert’s qualifications for being at the hearing was apparently centered around the fact that his film crew and he went out to an upstate New York farm where they filmed him acting like a completely spoiled, lazy American who couldn’t do the work a 65-year-old man sitting on his ass and picking beans in the field could do. Of course, the 65 year old man is here illegally so somehow that makes him capable of doing something a 30-year-old unemployed American can’t do. That’s pretty much the sum total of Stephen Colbert contribution to the discussion.
unemployed Americans can’t do the work this 65-year-old Mexican can do while sitting on his ass in a field
The Ag Jobs Bill this committee is discussing is an effort supported by big US agriculture and other major corporations and in essence it would create an official 2nd class citizen status in America for these seasonal migrant workers and give them credit for the years they have worked in the agricultural industry toward a “path toward citizenship” (in short – coming to America illegally to work for slave-wages for 3 years would put them ahead of Mexicans who apply for citizenship legally and have to wait for 6 to 8 years for a green card) . It would also help create an increase in surplus labor which would certainly only serve to drive wages in the agricultural sector to near record lows. But it’s not only the agriculture industry that would be effected as Dr. Carol Swain pointed out during the committee hearing since many of the illegals once here, migrate out of the fields and into other, low skilled jobs, which only serves again to create a labor surplus in those fields and thus even more reductions in pay. The bill will give these slave-citizens the right to organize, a right they actually already have, but since the head of the UFW is clearly in bed with big agriculture here in America, that is like giving autoworkers the “right” to be represented by the UAW… and we all know what that has been good for recently.
Colbert’s testimony has been widely panned and with good reason.
Colbert’s “testimony” was painful to watch and adding insult to injury were his two staff members sitting behind him who clearly understood their little stunt wasn’t going as well as they had imagined it would. Life’s a little harder when you don’t have a studio audience being prompted by electric signs to laugh and applaud when they are told to. It’s also harder when your boss is sitting in front of you pretending like he had something to add to the hearing when he didn’t.
“Maybe this Ag Jobs bill would help. I don’t know. Like most members of congress, I haven’t read it. But maybe we could offer more visas to the immigrants, who, let’s face it, will probably be doing these jobs anyway. And this improved legal status might allow immigrants recourse if they’re abused. And it just stands to reason to me that if your co-worker can’t be exploited then you are less likely to be exploited and that itself might improve pay and working conditions on these farms and eventually Americans may consider taking these jobs again.” Stephen Colbert
In the history of convoluted logic, this stands in a seminal position in our recent congressional record, right up there with the healthcare bill being called the best thing for Americans since the New Deal, I suppose.
The Ag Jobs bill is easy to find so there is no excuse for Stephen Colbert not to have read it, since it is the subject of his “testimony” before congress. The man had zero qualifications for being there and the least he could have done is read the bill. But he didn’t.
Basically, the bill itself is a holdover from the Bush administration that was tweaked and then submitted in May of 2009 just after the new neoliberal regime took office. It establishes a legal 2nd class citizen role by handing out what they call “blue cards” to certain migrant agricultural workers which locks them into a subservient role similar to the old feudal state. They basically have to take what they are given and STFU because if they get tossed out of the program, fired from the job, they get deported back to Mexico with nothing.
And it’s not just them. The bill creates a “derivative” legal status for the “blue card” worker’s wife and children which essentially means they can’t be deported even if they are here illegally, just so long as the worker behaves himself. Imagine the threat of having yourself and your entire family deported simply because you speak up for better working conditions or more pay. Quite a threat to be leveled at the worker, quite an incentive to take what he is given and shut up… and this is what the “progressive” left and Stephen Colbert are fighting for?
That’s neoliberalism folks.
This country has struggled for 200 years to earn the rights of each and every human being; to end the idea that there is a second class citizen status in America. People have marched, protested, fought and died for that principle. And here we have the “progressive” champion Stephen Colbert arguing for the creation of a second class citizenship of slave workers in America.
If you really want to understand what this is all about, you should have a listen to the testimony of Dr. Carol Swain from Vanderbilt University, a labor rights expert and activist of over 20 years. She used to be considered a hero on the left when she was railing against the injustices of the Bush administration but now that the Obama/Clinton neoliberal regime has taken office, she is vilified on the right AND left for fighting the same good fight.
Unlike Colbert, Dr. Swain has earned her right to testify before congress on this subject and her words prove it.
“I contend that America does not have a shortage of agricultural workers, instead we have a manufactured crisis by some who would like to ensure a steady supply of cheap labor and in some cases labor that bi-passes the H2A and H2B visa programs. … these unemployment numbers indicate there are native agricultural workers actively seeking employment in the sector… America cannot continue to bring in low skilled workers to compete with the most disadvantaged Americans…. nor can it continue to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration. Often surplus labor that starts in the fields migrates into other industries. Without surplus labor, employers would be forced to pay higher wages and many would be forced to improve substandard working conditions… the UFW ‘Take Our Jobs” initiative has not, in my opinion, made a serious effort to recruit American workers, this is a publicity stunt…. the rapid influx of cheap labor from foreign countries creates an over-supply of labor that works against the interests of native workers, it depresses their wages, it reduces their opportunities, and it deters employers from investing in native human capital…. this is a disgrace. Congress needs to reform immigration and they need to protect the most disadvantaged Americans.” Dr. Carol Swain
Once this bill is passed, and it will be, it’s impact on the already suffering disadvantaged in America will be staggering. There is also nothing that states that other industries won’t push for a similar bill regarding the H2B workers. The bill calls for the agricultural workers to put in 150 days per year and that of course frees them up to work in other industries the remaining 200+. The spouses of these workers will also be free to work in the country under their “derivative” status, which of course will only help to further undermine native workers wage structure even more.
There is nothing humanitarian or “progressive” about this bill, yet that won’t stop the “moderates” on the left from getting behind it simply because Stephen Colbert showed up at congress and made a fool out of himself. And that of course was the whole point.
As the neocon/neoliberal agenda moves on, shills like Stewart and Colbert are doing their part to re-brand the cruelty and inhumanity of their corporatist agenda to make it palatable to their audience; the left. These two recent propaganda efforts only prove how tightly the threads of “centrism” are woven in our dominating culture.
But they also show something else. That it only takes a few minutes, a little research and effort, to expose the fraudulent nature of their work. The emptiness that fills their words. While Stewart argues for the whitewashing of the Bush regime’s history and Colbert clowns for the creation of an indentured servant class of slave labor, each and every remaining liberal gets a little closer to seeing them for what they are; a clearer picture of the puppets and their masters.
We won’t be fooled again.
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How Ukraine Tortured and Slaughtered Donbass
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 11, 2024
Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.
On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown. … continue
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