The Alan Johnston Syndrome

As an anthropologist, I find the emerging social phenomenon of British anti-Semitism to be an interesting and ironic twist on one of the world's oldest irrational hatreds. Unlike past manifestations of this scourge, which emanated from religious myths surrounding the death of Christ and represented the lowest of the social classes, this is being lead by the well-educated British intellegentsia.

Here is a must read article by Bradley Burston on the decision yesterday by the British Academic Union to boycott Israeli academics.

"Just for the sake of argument, let's suppose that you're a British academic. You believe strongly that the occupation must end, that the Palestinians should have an independent state, that Israel's military and diplomatic policies are wrongheaded to the point of immorality.

What to do? Simple. Find the one group within Israeli society which has consistently, vigorously and courageously campaigned against the occupation since its inception.

Then attack them.

Single them out for professional ruin. Do your best to get as many of their colleagues around the world to shun them. Yes, just as if you were in seventh grade and had decided to alleviate your own feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, panic and lack of requisite cool by cutting another victim from the middle school herd and lobbying your equally insecure colleagues to abuse the chosen victim.

Choose your victim with care.

Select the one group in Israel which has taken substantive physical, professional, legal and personal risks, which has defied the spirit of Israeli nationalism and the letter of Israeli law, in order to seek out Palestinians to search for equitable solutions.

Select the one group which has, from the very beginning, spoken out eloquently for the rights of the Palestinians to self-determination, to freedom from Israeli domination, to freedom from disproportionate and often indiscriminate use of force, to freedom from social injustice.

Then denounce them. Decide that your moral vision fully empowers you to declare Israeli professors and other university and college faculty to be unworthy of practicing their calling.

All of them.

That is, perhaps, the real beauty of the British campaign to declare a quarantine over Israeli academics. You really must envy the U.K. far-left for its blindness. Its consummate inability to see more than one side, which is to say, its demonstrated refusal to see Jews as fellow human beings, is only exceeded by its exquisite sense of timing.

No matter that in the whole of the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam Hussein managed to
hit all of Israel with a total of 39 missiles, and that two weeks ago, Hamas sent 40 rockets into the Sderot area in the space of a single day.

No matter that Sapir College, Israel's largest public college, has for years been a primary target of Qassam crews.

No matter that in boycotting all Israeli academics on the basis of their being Israelis, the measure is patently racist, a grotesque reprise of the history of curbing academic freedom.

No matter that Israeli Arab academics who are staunchly opposed to the occupation are vehement opponents of the boycott as well.

No matter, even, that opposition to the boycott runs strong within the British University and College Union itself.

In fact, all the more reason to press on. For the genuine elitist, the unpopularity of an opinion is the best assurance of its real value.

Perhaps this is why the whole boycott campaign smacks of a uniquely far-left British brand of moral masturbation, a desperate, delusional, sterile, supremely self-contained form of non-activism that risks nothing even as it changes nothing.

There must be some reason why no one in this world does condescension better than the British far-left.

There must be some reason why the British far-left manages to satisfy itself with a uniquely public, uniquely self-congratulatory form of ideological self-abuse.

Leftists abroad would do well to respect their Israeli counterparts for defying societal norms to work for the rights of people with whom their nation is at war.

Perhaps the Israeli left deserves respect, as well, for having to do this while enduring the racist abuse of leftists abroad."

Read the original article and comments here.

The only thing I would add is that the British academics are taking one from the Palestinian playbook. Find someone (or a group) that unabashedly and openly supports your cause and then attack and alienate them because you are blinded by an essentialist racism. Can anyone say Alan Johnston?

Viva al Nakba!

Although this time of the year should arguably be a time of reflection for what the Palestinians call al Nakba or "The Catastrophe" (i.e. the day on which the State of Israel was created), the Palestinians have once again shown their political maturity by killing at least 40 of their compatriots in the last four days. In running street battles that would not be out of place in Baghdad or war-torn Beirut, Fatah and Hamas are squaring off for the second time in less than a year.

Once again we are witnessing the complete dissolution of law and order in the Gaza Strip. As I have pointed out in other posts, this has been going on for some time now, but has only been sparsely covered by the media because most reporters have shied away following Alan Johnson's abduction back in March. With the resignation of Hani Qawasmeh, the Interior Minister, one can be assured that this situation will only continue to deteriorate.

I find it is interesting then that one would never know that all this chaos was going judging by the websites of such perennial whistle blowers as the International Solidarity Movement for Palestine (ISM) or Human Rights Watch (HRW). Of course this is not to say that these organizations have forgotten Israel/Palestine, rather that their attention is clearly elsewhere.

For example, the ISM is an organization noted for its history of using "human shields" to prevent activities that they oppose. In the past this has meant concerted efforts to prevent the bombing of Iraq and the positioning of activists in the path of backhoes laying the groundwork for the Israeli security fence. In fact, it was this type of activism that led to the death of Rachel Corrie, the American martyr and patron saint of the anti-Israel leftist movement in the United States.

So I find it interesting that the ISM website sees fit to decry the situation at Bir Zeit University, which is suffering under "...the full weight of Israel’s occupation" which has:

"...brought down on it intermittent months-long closures and restrictions that still threaten its existence today. Other Palestinian universities also face continual punitive action from the Israeli military, all deliberately designed to create fear and uncertainty in the students and academics in order to undermine the universities themselves." (See here)

Apparently it is irrelevant that Bir Zeit has long been a stronghold for radicalism that counts Marwan Barghouti and the Hamas bomb maker Yahya Ayash as graduates or that the list of Palestinian universities they are refering to includes An-Najah University. An-Najah, which claims to be "the largest, oldest, and most prestigious university in Palestine" famously distinguished itself as the place where students took time out of their busy class schedules to memorialize the horrific Sbarro restaurant bombing. But this is ancient history and does not address the charge that Israel is "deliberately" creating "fear and uncertainty" to "undermine the universities".

Of course what the ISM fails to mention is that on Sunday, the same day that they issued this repudiation of Israel, Ali Sharif, a religious studies professor from Gaza, was kidnapped from his home and beaten up by masked gunmen who took him and drove off. As he was a Hamas supporter, it is assumed that those kidnapping him were from the Fatah or PLO. In fact, the ISM also fails to mention that all the universities in the Gaza strip have been closed down since the fighting started.

Human Rights Watch, which also has a checkered history with regards to both Israel and Jews (see for example) has usually been quick to expose what it has called Israel's "war crimes" or to condemn it for being on the wrong side of international law. For example, when Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader and co-founder of the Hamas terrorist organization, was assassinated in 2004, HRW chose to focus on the bystanders (some of which were his bodyguards) that were killed rather than the fact that he was basically using the civilian population as human shields. At the time, the head of HRW, Kenneth Roth decried, "Israeli indifference to the same body of international human rights and humanitarian law that prohibits deliberate attacks on civilians."

Yet now that Gaza has unravelled and mortars are flying in civilian areas, there seems to be no outrage and certainly no expectation that either Hamas or Fatah show restraint. It used to be said that higher standards were expected of Israel because it controlled the Gaza Strip and was a government and thus bound by international agreements. Well, Israel is long gone from the streets of Gaza and both Hamas and Fatah are the government yet the double standard continues.

So I will wait to see if either the ISM or Human Rights Watch bother to mention the shooting of an ambulance today that led to the brain death of the paramedic. Will they send out action alerts to their members to serve as human shields between Fatah and Hamas? And will they campaign against the numerous checkpoints set up in Gaza by the opposing sides on the grounds that they limit the movement of the Palestinian public and thus amounts to collective punishment?

Unfortunately, condemning Palestinians for the widespread and systemic human rights abuses does little for your "street creds" in the liberal "progressive" movement. Even worse, it could cost you your friends and funding. No, it is much better to close an eye to the catastrophe that is Gaza and blame Israel for everything. Viva al Nakba!

Biladi, Biladi!

Clearly the exodus of reporters following Alan Johnston's kidnapping in Gaza has benefitted those who prefer to sow mischief away from the limelight. Here is an article from Haaretz that demonstrates that if it is not being reported for all intents and purposes it is not happening. In general, the fact that the media does not feel it necessary to relate this story conveys the casual racism that I have referred to previously - that Palestinians (or people of color) killing Palestinians is no more interesting than "dog bites man".

What is even more disturbing however, is that for some reason not even the human rights organizations seem particularly bothered by it. Could this be because it is bad for business?

Reporting this widely makes the Palestinians look violent and this means that they lose the mantle of victimhood and the cherished position of underdog. What bleeding heart will shell out money for a group that they see as aggressors?

Besides, shining a light on the tribal warfare that is going on at present risks being banned from the area. Since organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and UNRWA are already heavily invested and plan campaigns around the terrible suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israelis, this is a non-starter. It effectively becomes an internal matter.

Of course, if one were to borrow the relativist logic that is so often yet selectively used by the Left, then one might ask what difference it makes if a Palestinian child is killed by a bullet fired from an M-16 or one fired from an Ak-47? Apparently it matters to some.

Here are some examples:

Several weeks now the Gaza Strip has been burning. This is not a matter of fighting between Hamas and Fatah activists or actions by the Israel Defense Forces, but battles between armed groups that for the most part are identified with large clans. Nearly every day for the past two weeks ,men, women and children have been killed in Gaza. Every day civilians are being wounded by deliberate or stray gunfire, the result of the unrestrained use of weapons. The number of armed men in the Gaza Strip, according to various estimates, is greater than 100,000. These men belong to security mechanisms, political organizations and above all to clans, and are trying to ensure the economic interests of their kinfolk. There is a tremendous amount of weaponry in the inhabitants' homes, the entire purpose of which is a potential quarrel with a neighbor, an acquaintance or a driver on the road.

In recent weeks attacks on Western and Christian targets in the West Bank have also become common. Members of terror cells identified with Al-Qaida-type organizations - compared to whom Hamas people look like boy scouts - are blowing up and destroying institutions linked to Western culture such as the American School, a church library and dozens of Internet cafes.

But the world is ignoring this. The media in Israel and the West, which reported on every person killed or wounded in the conflicts between Fatah and Hamas or because of "the Israeli occupation," are not taking any interest in Gaza. Even before the release of the Winograd report, the television news broadcasts and the major newspapers focused on trivial matters and chose not to deal with the danger to the lives of every Palestinian living in Gaza.

(For those who are unfamiliar with Haaretz or think that this is just self-serving Israeli propoganda, I would point out that this is the most left-wing of the mainstream Israeli newspapers and has a long track record of favorable reporting of the Palestinian cause.)

The Pravda Moment - Lifting the Veil of Objectivity

For several days now I have been meaning to blog about the recent decision by the British National Union of Broadcast Journalists that voted 66 to 54 to boycott Israeli products. Since this makes Israel the only country in the world that is being boycotted, it has been getting a lot of press, almost all of it bad.

While some prominent British journalists have publicly renounced their membership in the union, the Foreign Press Association in Israel has officially slammed the decision as, "counter to core journalistic values." Some have angrily called on Israel to respect the boycott by imposing one of their own on British journalists who want access to the story.

Most of those commenting on this episode have marvelled that the motion condemns Israel for the "savage, pre-planned attack on Lebanon" and calls for the end of Israeli "aggression in Gaza and other occupied territories". Aside from clearly being tendentious, it seems to willfully overlook the fact that Israel is was provoked by the kidnapping of its soldiers in the case of Lebanon and has been out of Gaza since 2005.

Others have questioned the timing of this decision, especially considering the fact that BBC reporter Alan Johnston has been held captive in Gaza for over 40 days and the motion does not even refer to his abduction. And this only days after the unsubstantiated report that he was beheaded by his captors!

In fact, the motion not only fails to mention Johnston's ordeal but refrains from censuring the Palestinians in any way. Perhaps this is for the best since it was the Palestinian government of Haniyeh and Abbas that were quick to announce that Johnston was safe and sound, quelling the rumors of his death.

For now, no one seems to want to ask the difficult question of how or why the government knows anything about Johnston's status and why they do not put an end to his captivity if they have access to his captors. Perhaps it is in bad taste to bring up such details when the Palestinians have undertaken such "concerted efforts" to have him released.

In any case, and in what must certainly constitute a first, even the hardly fair and mostly imbalanced Guardian felt obliged this week to publish a critical op-ed leader opposing the NUBJ decision. The author of the piece was perspicacious enough to note that the problem with the motion was that it oozes exceptionalism and has, "troubling editorial aspects" since it strays, "beyond the reasonable and traditional concerns of a journalists' union."

Yet a closer read of this article reveals that the Guardian's sudden change of heart has much more to do with the understanding that such a provocative act is counterproductive because it removes what may be termed the "veil of objectivity". Referring to journalists who cover the Arab-Israeli conflict, the article notes:

"It is doubtful that many of them will have welcomed a motion which will inevitably be seen by some as casting doubts on whether they can truly approach their work in a spirit of fairness and disinterested inquiry."

In other words, if it becomes clear that those who are reporting the news are really members of a bigoted, callous and editorializing organization that passes one-sided anti-Israel motions on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, then they will lose their ability to influence public opinion with the air of authority and pretense of neutrality.

This reminds me of a conversation I once had with an Armenian Jew who had recently arrived in Tel Aviv from Baku. After our conversation began touching on world politics, I teased him by saying that it would be difficult to have an intelligent conversation with someone who grew up brainwashed by the Communist propaganda of Pravda and Izvestiya.

Unfazed by my harsh words, he proceeded to tell me that the difference he noticed between former Soviet citizens and all the Westerners he had met since emigrating was that, growing up in Azerbaijan, everyone knew without a doubt that the media was lying. This forced them to seek out other sources of information and led them to develop their own critical judgment on world affairs. Westerners, on the other hand, had an abiding belief in a "free press" and uncritically swallowed pretty much everything that they were told.

Hostage Aftermath

Between preparing for Passover and celebrating the holiday, the last few weeks have been hectic and I have not had the time to sit down and blog. I have been meaning to write about the Iran standoff and the hostages, but the truth is that there was not much to actually write about. Clearly the "press conferences" and "heartfelt" letters from Seaman Turney fooled absolutely no one in the West and for that reason I did not feel like perpetuating the farce by writing about it. And then, in what many took as a complete surprise, Ahmadinejad released the hapless Brits from their captivity with a well-timed, "Open Sesame!"

I have already spoken about the background to this entire episode in my last post, so I thought I would provide a summation in five parts in this one:

I. Iranian Actions

Personally, I found it interesting that from the first televised clip that was aired by Iran on their Arabic language TV station Al Alam, they focused in on the only female among the 15 hostages, seaman Faye Turney. Clearly, this was a bid for sympathy and an attempt at leverage in the negotiations with the British. No doubt the Iranians thought that spotlighting the lone female would pressure the British government to make concessions and apologize. No doubt they calculated that the British public would not be able to withstand either the humiliation that was being meted out to her nor would they have the stomach to stand tough when a woman was involved.

Basically, Turney became an Iranian weapon that was supposed to soften up the Brits. I think that this was a miscalculation on their part, because it only angered the Brits more and provided the sailors with more sympathy than they would have had otherwise. In effect, she became the poster child for this incident. That she was the centerpiece of the Iranian propaganda effort is evidenced by the fact that she was paraded in a headscarf and wearing baggy Iranian clothing. If ever there was proof needed that the wearing of the veil is a coercive act, then this was certainly it. The fact that she was presented with a chador was clearly the Iranian way of showing that she had been truly captured and was under their control ("domesticated").

It demonstrated that, like a bird being banded by biologists, she was the object of Iranian control fantasies and being used to send the message that the Iranians were calling the shots. This was further reinforced when she appeared the following day donning a Palestinian style headscarf - a potent symbol of the political theater that was being played out and representative of the degree to which the Iranians felt she was their most central propaganda tool.

Unfortunately for the Iranians their desire to show that they were in control backfired and came across as both heavy-handed and creepy. As an aside, I think that the fact that she was always shown with a lit cigarette in hand belies a desire to repulse the Iranian (and Middle East) people and to prevent them from overly identifying or sympathizing with her. One can only imagine how a male, let alone a female viewer in a place like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan digested those images. Perhaps as a morality tale of what happens to women when they occupy traditionally male roles?

II. British Reaction

It was as a Jew that I was particularly interested in what the British public's reaction to this entire episode would be. I say this because I believe that the British, perhaps more than any other group in Europe, have so completely turned their backs on their colonialist era and its legacy and embraced the notions of multiculturalism and the political correctness that goes hand in hand with it that they have became the epicenter - if not the source of - anti-Israel sentiment among the Left in Europe.

While Blair may have maintained the "special relationship" between Britain and the US, the British public has abandoned this path and are more likely to count Israel and the US as the source of all the world's evils than Iran. Unfortunately, the British public did not fail to disappoint. In editorial after editorial, the public and the media's ire was directed squarely at the Blair government and its "overly cozy" relationship with the Bush administration. As more than one British paper noted, none of this would have ever happened if the British had not gotten themselves involved in the "illegal" Iraq war and that no matter what the British hostages were going through it would most certainly never be half as bad as either Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.

Clearly it was too much to expect that the reader’s comments to these articles would espouse British pride and patriotism while addressing the manifold inaccuracies of moral equivalency and false comparisons. After all, those serving time in Guantanamo were not carrying out a UN mandated mission, nor were they even in uniforms, for the most part (and thus not covered by the Geneva conventions). Based on the many anti-British comments written by ordinary Brits, it did not even seem to matter that the British soldiers were forcibly abducted from Iraqi waters. This simple fact is far less surprising if you believe that all "truth" is relative or that all governments lie and therefore the actual facts of the matter are irrelevant.

In the end the British proved no better than the Spanish, who allowed a terrorist act to affect the outcome of their national elections or the Italians, who have proven that they will unreservedly negotiate with terrorists and pay handsome ransoms to release their captured citizens. Actually, in some ways the British were far worse, because they could not even muster a wee bit of indignation.

As an aside: None of this bodes well for Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter who now has the dubious distinction of being the journalist who has been held hostage for longer than any other foreigner in Gaza. That he lived in Gaza and supplied the West with unabashedly favorable reports about the Palestinians does not seem to have inured him from this sort of treatment. The fact the British public could care less about their kidnapped soldiers, would seem to imply that journalists should go at their own peril. Apparently the message has been assimilated by the press corps and they are no longer venturing into Gaza.

Latest reports state that Johnston may already be dead – a fact that would fly in the face of countless news reports and op ed pieces that attempted to downplay this incident as an attempt to obtain government jobs or loot. While one might think that such a kidnapping would turn British public opinion against the Palestinians, I will certainly not be surprised if in the end it will all be either Israel's or America's fault. Almost on cue, the British National Union of Journalists voted today to boycott Israel!

III. Diplomacy

More than anything else, the Bush administration is routinely accused of being incapable of conducting diplomacy. I think that this is a gross overstatement and over-simplification of how diplomacy works. Certainly, this administration does not engage in the kind of “feel good” diplomacy that was common of the Clinton era, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that there is no give and take in all of these crises. I also would point out that although the Clinton diplomatic style was more camera friendly and photogenic, it was no more effective at achieving its goals than the Bush method. Besides, Clinton was also not averse to committing ground troops or lobbing missiles across the world when deemed necessary.

In the case of the British hostages, there are clear signs that the Bush administration played the cards that it was dealt with a relative degree of aplomb. For starters, the US administration provided its British ally strong verbal support, yet the President said absolutely nothing until a week had gone by. If nothing else, this shows some discipline and an understanding that words could escalate matters precipitously. When the President did speak, it was at the point where the British had decided to ratchet up the pressure a bit. Perhaps for this reason it is unsurprising that he call the British soldiers by the politically charged term “hostages”.

Lest you think that I am giving Bush way too much credit for NOT saying something or for using the word that everyone was thinking, I think we should look at what was happening on the ground at the same time. First off, the Iraqi government suddenly chose to release the sole Iranian in its possession. While the Iraqis claimed that this had nothing to do with the ongoing crisis, this seems more than a little disingenuous. The timing was more than a little suspect and there was no reason that this person could not have been released at a later time. That the Iraqis were the ones to announce this provided the British and the Americans with the cover (plausible deniability) they needed to maintain that they were not negotiating with the Iranians on this matter. Together with an unwritten promise that the Iranians in American custody would receive consular visitation rights, this was the carrot.

At the same time, the US ordered the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf from the Eastern Mediterranean. For those unfamiliar with the Nimitz, it is the flagship of a class of supercarriers that are the largest warships ever built in history. Moreover, these ships do not just travel along alone with their airplanes, but are accompanied by a large armada of ships called a “strike group”. The announcement that the Nimitz would join two other supercarrier fleets in the Persian Gulf should clearly be seen as a message to the Iranian establishment that there was a time limit to their shenanigans. Clearly, this was the stick.

I would like to point out that this is not the first time that this type of dynamic has played out. One of Al Qaeda’s most consistent demands in the run up to 9-11 was that the United States needed to remove its troops from the Arabian Peninsula. For years the Saudis and Americans said that they would do this and that the US troops were only there to protect the Saudis from the Iraqis. Yet, on the cusp of the Second Iraq War the US moved its Central Command to Qatar – farther from the fighting. The only reason that I can think of is that this was meant to be a concession to Al Qaeda meant to undercut the argument that they were only acting out of defense of Mecca and Medina.

Incidentally, the British were also willing to play a bit of hard ball with the Iranians as was evidenced by the firefight that took place in the shadow of the Iranian consulate in Basra. The subsequent Iranian use of firecrackers in front of the British embassy in Tehran should also be seen as part of this same tango.

IV. Aftermath

Now that some time has passed between the benevolent “gifting” of the British hostages by Ahmadinejad, two things have become clear – this episode was meant to send a chill down the spine of the Western powers and that the stakes in any future confrontation are much higher.

Only days after the release, the Iranians cemented their position by stating that they had initiated large-scale uranium enrichment in defiance of the international community. Clearly the purpose of the hostage-taking was meant to serve as a reminder that if the West wants to confront Iran on the nuclear issue through international bodies such as the UN, that there will be a price to pay. I find it hard to believe that the Iranians were unaware that the British would undertake the revolving presidency over the Security Council that began on April 1 and that this will be immediately followed by the US presidency starting in May.

In terms of future confrontations, the death of several British soldiers in Basra on the day that the hostages were released was doubtlessly meant primarily to reinforce this point to those in decision-making posts while further undermining British resolve. Since then, it seems that both sides are happy to continue this covert war and both the actions and allegations streaming across both sides seem to indicate that we are closer to the beginning than to the end. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I think that events as disparate as the continued unraveling of Gaza, Hizbollah bravado, Syrian preparations for a summer war, protests in Basra and Moqtada al Sadr’s pressure on the Iraqi government all have many causes but primarily one root.

V. Philosophizing

I think that the Iranian willingness to once again take hostages can only be understood as representative of a worldview that is based on philosophical perspectives that Westerners find completely foreign. This is not meant to imply that Westerners or Western powers have not or would not be able to take hostages, but it does imply that hostage-taking has become the signature Iranian tactic and together with suicide bombing has become identified with the Middle East.

If anything underlines the difference between Western philosophic thought and non-Western philosophies, it has to do with ideas of liberty and the notion of individualism. Whereas in the West personal freedom is a value that needs to be cultivated and protected, in non-Western countries like Iran and much of the rest of the World, the individual’s desires are subsumed by the needs of the group. In fact, Mohammad Khatami, the former President of Iran has identified this distinction in his writings on political philosophy and criticized what he identified as the Western “unbridled individualism” and the, “belief that humans and their needs and desires are of central importance at all times.” From Khatami’s perspective, the very real threat of this philosophy lies in, turning “human beings into a new religion”.

Yet the danger inherent in the loss of individuality can most clearly be seen in the case of suicide bombers, who literally negate the individual for the sake of their societies in the way that certain species of ants and bees sacrifice themselves to protect the hill or hive. The taking of hostages actually accomplishes two interrelated goals – effacing the individual while using the individual as a weapon.

The former is the result of the hostage taking and effectively denies each individual their identity as they become subsumed to the group and are reconfigured as “hostages”, or the “the Americans”, or whatever tag their captors decide to pin on them. The latter results when the hostages are paraded before the "neutral gaze" of the cameras. Westerners watching on TV intrinsically identify with the hostages, imagine in their minds what they must be going through and feel empathy. For non-Western people who think in essentialist terms, the differences are chasms that far outweigh the similarities. Basically, tribalism trumps humanism.

From a strictly tactical point of view, the Western preoccupation with the well-being of individuals is a liability in a time of war. From a strategic perspective, it is the Western focus on each and every individual that is the source of its strength and innovation. After all, it is individuals unfettered by custom and tradition who will not only fight but also innovate to preserve their freedom.

Iranian Deja Vu?

The L.A. Times ran an article yesterday about the recent capture of British troops in the Shatt-al-Arab titled, "Capture of British sailors is all too Familiar" that starts with the words: "A disconcerting sense of deja vu surrounds Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines on smuggling patrol Friday in the Persian Gulf." Of course, the only deja vu that the article relates has to do with the capture and detention of British soldiers in 2004. As the article goes on to explain:

Three years ago, eight British servicemen traveling in small boats up the Shatt al Arab waterway near the Iranian border with Iraq found themselves surrounded by members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard, arrested and subjected to a three-day ordeal that included mock executions and a visit to what they thought would be their graves. After a few days, they were released.

Well, it's been three days and the 15 Brits are still in Iranian custody. If anything, it looks like the Iranians are not stepping back and the latest development involved the Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki claiming their illegal entry into Iranian waters and the possibility of trying them for espionage in Iran. So far the British have not been granted access to their soldiers (as would be expected in the case of POWs) and it is not at all clear that they will be released anytime soon.

It will be interesting to see how Great Britain will deal with this crisis. So far, Prime Minister Blair has convened his COBRA team (an acronym for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A) and has told the Iranians that, "there is no doubt at all that these people were taken from a boat in Iraqi waters" and that he wants the Iranians to understand that the Iranian actions were, "unjustified and wrong".

There is plenty of deja vu in the recent events, but it has little to do with the capture of British soldiers three years ago. Three years ago, the Iranians were in a far weaker position strategically and were quite happy to assist the US and UK in making Iraq safe for Shias. Three years ago discussions on Iran's nuclear ambitions had started, but it was clear that after the fiasco of Iraqi WMDs everyone was going to play the Iranian round "by the book" - even if it means years of cat and mouse games and IAEA inspections. Three years ago Mohammed Khatami, the Iranian reformer was in power and now the hard-line Ahmadinejad is the President of Iran.

No, the deja vu stems not from 2003, but rather from last summer's kidnapping of Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border by Hezbollah. Like last summer, this recent kidnapping came on the eve of a United Nations vote for sanctions on Iran with regard to their non-compliance to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (of which they are signatories). Of course in the case of Israel, Hezbollah also managed to kill a few soldiers while lobbing a few katyushas into Israel. In both cases, Hezbollah and Iran crossed internationally recognized lines and captured soldiers in uniform. At the time Israel was roundly accused of over-reacting and using disproportionate force. It will be interesting to see how the British and the international community decide to handle this crisis.

In any case, I have no doubt that this accounts for the recent Iranian histrionics surrounding President Ahmadinejad's visa to attend the UN sanctions vote in New York. By blaming the US for being slow in getting his visa processed he has an excellent excuse for not going abroad at a time when he needs to be in Tehran to manage this crisis and leverage these British pawns into tangible concessions for Iran. No doubt the Iranians are sending a message with regards to the recent disappearance of former Iranian Deputy Minister of Defense, Alireza Asgari in Ankara or the detention and arrest of five Iranian mission staffers in Erbil for allegedly aiding Iraqi insurgents.

The decision to target Britain and not the United States is also hardly arbitrary. At this point the Iranians are still trying to avoid a confrontation with the US while at the same time demonstrating their military capabilities. Because the British are militarily stretched to the limit, it means that they have few choices but diplomacy. Moreover, the Iranians have probably rightly interpreted the British as the weaker link in the trans-Atlantic alliance. It is no secret that the British people have no stomach for war and are already finding ways to blame all of this on Bush and the "American embrace". On the other hand, it will be interesting to see if, together with the kidnapping of BBC reported Alan Johnston in Gaza on March 12, will initiate a sea change in British public opinion regarding the Middle East.

Then again, who knows? Maybe "Bush's poodle" can bite!

"In Beeb we Trust"

The BBC is apparently so worried that a report on it's coverage of the Middle East conflict will be made public, that it has reportedly spent between ₤200,000 and ₤300,000 on legal fees to prevent it's release! The Balen Report, which was commissioned by the BBC in 2004 and written by a senior BBC editorial advisor (!) allegedly demonstrates that the BBC's coverage in recent years has been anti-Israeli.

BBC bosses have faced repeated claims that is coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been skewed by a pro-Palestinian bias.

The corporation famously came under fire after middle-east correspondent Barbara Plett revealed that she had cried at the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004.

If the BBC were not publicly funded and did not claim to be unbiased and independent, then it would not matter, but the fact remains that the BBC claims that it is impartial and therefore it's impact is greater than it would be otherwise. As the Beeb's own website states: "Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest".

While I find it interesting (and slightly Orwellian) that a news agency would value "trust" above "truth", this is consistent with Gramsci's brilliant analysis of how groups dominate in society without the need to resort to the threat of force. He called this "hegemony" and argued that it, "describes the process whereby ideas, structures, and actions come to be seen by the majority of people as wholly natural, preordained, and working for their own good, when in fact they are constructed and transmitted by powerful minority interests to protect the status quo that serves those interests." Basically, it "controls the way new ideas are rejected or become naturalized in a process that subtly alters notions of common sense in a given society." [My Italics]

A prerequisite for hegemony to have an impact on society is trust. Without trust, people reject what they are being told, seek other sources of information and threaten the status quo. While Gramsci's critique was directed against the Italian Fascists that had imprisoned him, he would have had a field day with the BBC, a "quasi-autonomous public corporation" owned by the British government, run by a board appointed by the Queen (on the advice of the government) and paid for by taxes (license fees) collected from the public.

To understand how hegemony works in practice, one need only compare the BBC to such documentary films as Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine or Fahrenheit 9/11. Most people are media savvy enough to realise that even though they are watching a documentary, it is being edited to present a particular viewpoint. This does not mean to suggest that Moore fabricated any of the footage in these films, rather that both the juxtaposition of images and what he chose NOT to present is as important as what he does present to the viewer. Most people realize this because they know they are watching a "movie" and not witnessing real life.

In the case of the BBC, people are much more likely to suspend their disbelief, because news footage is often so raw. If you add in the element of trust, then people begin to confuse what they are seeing on their TVs as "reality". If the only footage of Africa that people see is one of famine, poverty and war and the only Middle East coverage always centers on Israel and never about the serious social problems of the other states of the region, then it is not surprising if one's attitude towards Africa is one of pity and dismay while Israel is perceived as the biggest threat to peace in the world. That the media could have such a profound effect was succinctly explained by Marshall McLuhan as the phenomenon commonly known as "The medium is the message." As McLuhan pointed out, crime reporting does not necessarily change the amount of crime, but it does change our attitude toward crime and even contribute to a culture of fear (a point well made in Bowling for Columbine.)

I think that there is another reason why the BBC pundits chose "trust" over "truth". It reflects a post-modern sensibility that eschews "simplistic" notions such as "truth" for the supposed "nuance" of relativism. The problem with this is that it is really a disarming technique that causes the reader to "trust" the reportage. What this supposedly nuanced approach accomplished is the illusion of balance. After all, how can the BBC be accused of "taking sides" if it does not believe that there really are "sides"?

Interestingly, in all my years of writing complaints to the BBC about their skewed and partial coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, I have only received one e-mail in response. When I complained that an IRA "militant" was termed a "terrorist" and a PLO "terrorist" a "militant", I was told that this was not accidental. In fact, I was informed that the official BBC policy was that only members of the IRA were considered terrorists while everyone else were "just" militants! While this exchange pre-dated September 11, it certainly does not appear that the events of that tragic day have changed much at the Beeb. It also shows that there are more sides to the BBC than appear at first glance.

Cultural Relativism and Liberal Universalism

Phyllis Chesler, an Emeritus Professor in Psychology and Women's Studies from City University New York has written a critical piece in the Times Online that questions the cherished Anthropological notions surrounding imperialism (e.g. "Dependency Theory" and Orientalism) as well as cultural and moral relativism. She writes this article from the personal experience of having lived in purdah during her marriage to an Afghan in the early 1960s. In the article she uses very un-PC words such as "barbarism", "evil" and "feudal" to make her point. For example:

Individual Afghans were enchantingly courteous — but the Afghanistan I knew was a bastion of illiteracy, poverty, treachery and preventable diseases. It was also a police state, a feudal monarchy and a theocracy, rank with fear and paranoia. Afghanistan had never been colonised. My relatives said: “Not even the British could occupy us.” Thus I was forced to conclude that Afghan barbarism was of their own making and could not be attributed to Western imperialism.

Long before the rise of the Taleban, I learnt not to romanticise Third World countries or to confuse their hideous tyrants with liberators. I also learnt that sexual and religious apartheid in Muslim countries is indigenous and not the result of Western crimes — and that such “colourful tribal customs” are absolutely, not relatively, evil.

Although Anthropology emerged as an Imperial endeavor - as an attempt by the conquering powers to better understand and rule their new subjects - the field has long ago turned its back on Empire and any ideological encumbrances it may have once had in this regard. If anything, the Anthropology of the post-WWII era has been the font of some of the most scathing critiques of the colonial imperative and a champion of national rights for those who were once colonized. Based on anti-essentialist notions that undermined the worldview of those who believed in the "White Man's Burden", anthropology (as a field) was supportive of and deeply invested in the liberation movements of the 1950s and 60s.

Unfortunately, as self-rule spread from country to country throughout the developing world, these new states miserably failed at bettering the lives of their citizens and often descended into civil war and anarchy. To account for this unanticipated turn of events, anthropologists and other social scientists put forward explanations such as "Dependency Theory" and Orientalism. The former blamed the recently departed colonizers for economic and political emasculation of these societies and the latter argued that this behavior stemmed from, "old-fashioned and prejudiced outsider interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples."1

According to Dependency Theory, the colonizers may have left, but what they left behind were nation-states that were either not viable states (because their borders did not take into account underlying ethnic rivalries) or so economically dependent on the departing imperial power that independence was effectively a ruse designed to benefit only a tiny comprador group serving external interests. This viewpoint, which stemmed primarily from communist and structuralist analyses became the accepted wisdom in the the 1970s, especially among liberals and academics. That these ideas are still quite potent is clearly exemplified by the anti-globalization movement, the modern-day inheritor of the anti-neocolonialist mantle.

That most of these colonies were pre-modern societies that suffered from long-standing social and economic issues prior to the advent of the first European is apparently irrelevant and does not fit the model of a "lost Eden". At the same time, it is apparently irrelevant that some of these former colonies have now been independent states for longer than they were subjugated to foreign rule. Even in places like India, where Empire stretched to almost 400 years, the fact that well over one billion people have been born since British Raj is discounted as irrelevant. As Chesler rightly points out, these theories do not account for failed states such as Afghanistan which were never colonized, yet have been unable to provide their citizens with basic necessities or a modicum of human rights. However, the notion that there may be something indigenous to these cultures that is disadvantageous or detrimental to development has been repeatedly rejected as racist.

I suspect that this actually stems from the wide-ranging philosophical impact of Anthropology's most cherished notion, "cultural relativism". This posits that the differences between people are just a question of custom à la "You say to-may-toe and I say toe-mah-toe." No doubt Franz Boas, who spent his life combating essentialist notions of race and hierarchical notions of superiority would be both pleased and chagrined at his legacy. The smug certainty of Western civilization or White superiority has been vanquished, yet Boas - who was well-known for his scientific temperament and an unwavering moral compass - would undoubtedly balk at the populist interpretation that everything is relative.

Boas clearly recognized the existence of evil and regularly spoke out against both racism and Nazism. Indeed, "When the Nazi Party in Germany denounced "Jewish science" (which included not only Boasian Anthropology but Freudian psychoanalysis and Einsteinian physics), Boas responded with a public statement signed by over 8,000 other scientists, declaring that there is only one science, to which race and religion are irrelevant."2 Scientists are supposed to base their conclusions on facts and not on ideology. Unfortunately , what started as a healthy corrective against prejudice and racism has morphed into an ideological albatross that effectively blinds us to the essentializing of our adversaries.

Unfortunately, many anthropologists confuse their role as ethnographers and become anthro-apologists. While it is certainly the role of an anthropologist to understand and explain other cultures, it has become the custom among anthropologists to explain away the excesses of all cultures but their own. Rare is the anthropologist who can explain without condoning. While anthropology emerged as the science which embraced the "exotic" and rightly called into question the civilized nature of the industrial or "developed" world, it has too often taken sides while suffering from a bad case of the Stockholm syndrome.

Moreover, an unforeseen outcome of these critiques and "deconstruction" is that they have intellectually undermined the foundational notions of Western civilization. Frankly, if this were aimed against other cultures it would be considered "politically incorrect" and run the risk of being seen as bordering ethnocide. This begs the question of why the same person who will travel half way around the world to experience a "colorful tribal custom" has only scorn for the long-standing traditions of their own culture? Why is it that the same person will eloquently defend the "right" of cannibalism, wearing of the burqa or female genital mutilation but bristle at Western hegemony when equality, human rights and democracy are suggested? This is because cultural relativism is often confused with moral relativism. If every culture is "adaptive" in its own way, then who are we to judge which one is better?

Chesler rejects this view and instead proposes:

Now is the time for Western intellectuals who claim to be antiracists and committed to human rights to stand with these dissidents. To do so requires that we adopt a universal standard of human rights and abandon our loyalty to multicultural relativism, which justifies, even romanticises, indigenous Islamist barbarism, totalitarian terrorism and the persecution of women, religious minorities, homosexuals and intellectuals. Our abject refusal to judge between civilisation and barbarism, and between enlightened rationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, endangers and condemns the victims of Islamic tyranny.

I share Chesler's wish that those Western intellectuals who support tyrants and murderers would no longer be so blinded by ideology that they embrace anyone professing anti-Western or anti-capitalists rhetoric as a "progressive". I am old enough to remember that at one time Pol Pot was the cause célèbre of the Left and I will not be terribly surprised in the future if people start disappearing and concentration camps are uncovered in Chavez's Venezuela. No doubt, twenty years from now legions of university professors will make their careers arguing that the Bush administration really should have invaded Venezuela instead of searching for WMDs in Iraq. Somehow the fact that the same people would be the most vocal opponents of any such action today does not seem to be a contradiction. After all, if all truth is relative, then one can certainly advocate one thing today and something else tomorrow.

The problem with Chesler's neat "solution" of a "universal standard of human rights" stems from the same totalizing place that it opposes. Chesler is basically proposing a liberal universalism that is the opposite pole of ethnocentrism and xenophobia. In my opinion, it is a morbid fear of liberal universalism, more than the existence of American bases in Saudi Arabia, that causes Bin Laden to wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. As globalization continues to extend it's inexorable grip on the planet, more and more cultures and customs will bump up against each other with all the potential for conflict that this entails. It is precisely for this reason that "minimum" if not "universal" standards of human rights should be adopted.

The Basis for Hope

In his most recent dispatch, "A Country Called Hope", Daniel Gordis reflects on Last Summer's war with Hizballah, the sense in Israel that the country is rudderless at present while another war is brewing for the not too distant future. Gordis correctly recognizes the malaise as greater than a simple reaction to Israel's poor performance in the war or the loss of faith in the country's leaders and public institutions. I think he is correct in saying that the root of this unease stems from a loss of faith in Zionism - the country's stated raison d'etre. As he notes:

I was speaking with an Israeli Army general the other day and our conversation turned to the recent government scandals.

“How do you explain this country?” the general asked me. “In any normal country, people would be in the streets, burning tires, protesting by the thousands. But here, nothing happens. People are going on as if there’s nothing to get worked up about.”

Maybe, I said, but I look at it differently. Burning tires would suggest that a change in the government would be enough. But that would be delusional. The reason Israelis aren’t protesting, I think, is that they understand this problem is much deeper than the government or the corruption. It’s Zionism. No one frames it that way, but that’s the real issue. One hundred and ten years after the First Zionist Congress, people are beginning to wonder if Zionism hasn’t begun to fail.

As he rightly points out, this is not meant to imply that Israel as a State has been a failure. If anything, the State has prospered and has proven itself viable in more ways than one. To take only the Israeli economy as an example, Israel's GDP is greater than that of it's neighbors combined and the standard of living that it's citizens enjoy is unmatched by its neighbors. In fact, the economic opportunities are such that over 100,000 Palestinians have made their way into Israel since 1994 either through marriage or illegal immigration (If you don't believe me, check it out). Rather:

But Israel is not doing for the Jews what the original Zionists had hoped for. And that’s what accounts for the national funk.

A century ago, the early Zionist ideologues promised that if a Jewish state were created, there would finally be one place on earth where Jews would be safe. It might not be big, it might not be beautiful, but it would be safe. In Israel, it was said, Jews would be able to defend themselves. In Israel, it was said, they would be spared the capriciousness of the world.

While I do not disagree with Gordis that this was the goal of early Zionists and of Herzl in particular, I think it is long past due for Israelis and Jews to question the assumptions under which these hopes were formulated. Zionism developed as a political philosophy in Europe during the rise of the European nation states and is a product of that historical cauldron. The majority of Europe's Jews were living in close proximity with neighbors who strived for their own imagined states. In Europe of the 1880s there was no Poland or Hungary, no Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania nor Serbia, Slovakia or many other of the nations we presently take for granted.

To be fair, the modern world has not been terribly kind to tribal peoples - whether Gypsies in Europe or Native Americans in the New World. The Jewish people have long seen themselves as a "Tribe" and combined with a sense of chosenness, there is perhaps nothing that has infuriated our detractors more than this fact. The creation of a modern nation-state, was supposed to resolve this "problem" by leading the Jews into modernity and acceptance. Once the Jews had their own country, the Jews living in the diaspora would finally have a country of their own that would be responsible for them. Zionist Jews believed that if they could get the world community to agree to let the Jews have a state of their own, the Jews could finally be masters of their own fate and become "normal" in the eyes of their neighbors. As Herzl stated, "The resolution of the Jewish difficulty is the recognition of Jews as a people and the finding by them of a legally recognized home to which Jews in those parts of the world in which they are oppressed would naturally migrate". Zionism was conceived as the antidote to European Anti-Semitism.

With the birth of the State of Israel, Jews did finally have a say in the making of laws and governance that affected them and others. Yet the notion that this would spare the Jews from, "the capriciousness of the world" was unrealistic and I suspect that stems from a millenial mindset that confused the beginning with the end. I am not suggesting, as some have, that Zionism was a messianic movement - rather that the founding of the State of Israel following the horrors of the Holocaust, Israel's unexpected military victory in the '48 War after 2000 years of exile and oppresion seemed so unexpected and unreal - that the Jewish people can be excused for confusing this with the "birth pangs" of the Messianic age.

Actually, I think that the early Zionists knew that to truly be a master of your own destiny, you had to be able to grapple with capriciousness. Unfortunately, they failed to pass this knowledge onto their children. Instead they sold them false hopes of an imagined time when there would be no more need to struggle and suffer or of a time in the future when the Jewish "problem" would be resolved. It is hardly a wonder that so many Israelis have sought out normalcy elsewhere - moving to the United States, Australia and Europe when the capriciousness proved to be too much for them.

Unfortunately, the "capriciousness of the world" does not spare anyone and normalcy has always been an ephemera. The root of the problem actually lies in an approach that treats the Jewish people as a "problem" that needs to be resolved. The founding of the State of Israel should not be in order to solve some "problem", but rather because of Jewish self-determination and a historic right to a homeland - to their own homeland. If you make the raison d'etre of the Jewish state contingent on the resolution of a problem, then you get what we have today - either despair that the problem has not been "solved" or emigration to countries where Anti-Semitism is not tolerated and Jewish safety is no longer seen as a problem.

At a time when the State of Israel has been singled out among the nations and publicly villified to the point that the right of the State to exist is constantly being called into question, it is time that we reject the Zionist approach that seeks to solve the "Jewish Question". We should stop worrying about what our patrons might think and we should definitely not expect guarantees, approval or legitimacy from the international community. As long as we think of this as a "problem", we delude ourselves into thinking that if only we did this differently or conceded that point we would finally have the "solution". Let us publicly reject an approach that makes Jews a problem that needs to be "solved" and instead demand what are our natural rights as human beings.

To insist on Jewish rights implies that we are clear-headed and have the knowledge and conviction to demand sovereignty in our historic homeland with neither guilt nor hand-wringing. This is precisely what most of the world's nation states have done and no one questions their right to exist. Our enemies do not doubt that they have rights and are willing to unapologetically fight for these rights. It is time we abandoned the naive dreams of a bygone era, truly accept that we also have inherent rights while demonstrating our willingness to vigorously claim those rights. Frankly, this is the only basis for hope.

The Holocaust-Israel Non-Link

The recent "Review of the Holocaust" conference held in Iran (12/11/06) was a shameful attempt at holocaust denial that is symbolic of the growing union of Islam and fascism. To their credit, even the Iranian leadership realized that this conference and the loonies that it attracted hurt their cause and made them look like unreasonable and unlettered fools. It was at this point that they adopted the insidious "fallback" position that they were not actually questioning the existence of the Holocaust, but rather pointing out the use of the Holocaust to justify the establishment of the State of Israel. Perhaps because this was the position presented by the anti-Israel and ultra-Orthodox Jews who shamefully attended the conference, the Iranian hosts hoped that this would provide them with a stamp of authenticity.

The reality is that the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the area of the British Mandate was agreed upon in 1922 by the international community through the League of Nations. That this was 17 years before World War II started and was 23 years before the full extent of the Holocaust was known, demonstrates how chronologically challenged this contention is. Yet this does not address the underlying implication that in 1947, when the United Nations voted on Resolution 181 and the partition of Israel into a Jewish and Arab state, that the Jews were "given" a state because of European guilt regarding the Holocaust.

A recent translation by David Aisner of, “Hama’avak al Eretz-Yisrael” (“Struggle for Palestine”), by Shmuel Dotan (Published by Israel’s Ministry of Defense, 1973. 7th Edition 1988) uses primary source material to definitively prove that this linkage did not exist at the time that the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) made the recommendations that led to UN Resolution 181. Here is an excerpt from pp 370-1:

The UN decision [of November 29th 1947] provided international sanction to the idea of a Jewish state and aided in the complete victory of the Jewish people in that endeavor. The decision encouraged the Yishuv (Jewish settlement) to remain strong in the face of an impending war, and spared her from having to wage a long struggle with Britain. It was a victory of at least one, perhaps two elements of the Zionist information campaign to influence the UN – “need” and “ability”.

Proponents of partition generally believed that it was within their power to prevent a bloodbath in Palestine and save the small developed Jewish Yishuv from the hands of an underdeveloped and hostile Arab majority. They were convinced that the small Jewish state would provide a haven for a few hundred thousand displaced Jews, thereby solving the “Jewish problem”. The Jewish demand for recognition of Jewish historical rights to Palestine was not authorized in the decision; the results of this refusal on the part of the UN will surface in future UN-Israel relations, especially after 1967. The UN also refused to adopt the Zionist claim that there is a permanent link between the “Jewish problem” around the world and the Palestine question. To the contrary, it turns out that the Holocaust of European Jews had very little influence on the members of the UN, and was almost never mentioned during deliberations on the Palestine question, save for the representatives of the Soviet Union and Poland, whose primary motivation was their desire to distance Britain from Palestine.

Of course, the Holocaust provided an easier “climate” for the Zionist information campaign to try to influence the UN, but it did not succeed in influencing the considerations taken into account by UN statesmen. In the end, it was the Latin American block of the UN that was the overriding factor in securing the results of the UN vote of 1947. This UN block did not view itself responsible in anyway for the tragedy of Europe’s Jews. It seems then, that the extra emphasis found in literature regarding the supposed link between the Holocaust and the renewal of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine, is an attempt to create a myth and the results of that myth.

This attempt flows from the difficulties endured by the generation that witnessed the Holocaust, and that generation’s inability to examine this traumatic event in its entirety. This is especially the case when considering how that generation bore witness to the very weak condition of the Jewish people before and during the Holocaust and how difficult it was for that generation to then recognize that they now posses some measure of strength to be considered or reckoned with by other nations. Support for Zionist interests by the “world’s nations” after WWII has been naturally described, and with great exaggeration, as a type “compensation”. In truth, the Holocaust did not advance the Zionist cause, but rather it undermined one of its core philosophical arguments – its right to speak on behalf of Jewish millions who either wanted to or were being forced to leave their countries of origin due to anti-Semitism.

The Holocaust weakened the Jewish state which arose after termination of the British mandate and reinforced the Zionist decision to relinquish claims to a larger territory in order to save the Jewish people, since the vast majority of potential Jewish immigrants were murdered. The Jewish refugee question did not play a major role in the decision making process at the UN as thought by some researchers. The countries in which Jewish refugees were located and which sought to have them removed, were not members of the UN. The role of the United States in the UN vote has always been greatly exaggerated.

In 1947, the US had already been “entangled” in what was transpiring in Palestine and was subjected to internal political pressure from American Jewish groups influenced by the Yishuv’s struggle against the British. At the same time, a political vacuum formed in the international community due to a feeling of doubt as to whether or not the UN can actually resolve international issues of the day. Under these circumstances, UNSCOP took upon itself a far more decisive historic role than was intended with its inception. Among the considerations of whether or not to support UNSCOP’s recommendation, was the desire to stand behind a successful
international resolution that would strengthen the UN’s integrity.

UNSCOP recommended partition, which under the circumstances of 1947 was a pro-Zionist solution, because it evaluated that Britain was failing in its ability to govern the region and also because it considered the Yishuv ripe for independence and that it would be wrong to place it under the rule of a hostile and underdeveloped Arab majority. The collaboration between the Arab leadership and Nazi Germany during WWII was also considered in the decision and proved to impact the Arab interest negatively. But this consideration was related specifically to WWII, not the Holocaust. The fact that Yugoslavia did not support the pro-Zionist plan, even though Haj-Amin Al-Husseini tried to enlist the Muslim minority there at the time to assist the Nazis, shed light on how difficult it was to try and link WWII to the Palestine question after the war.

The Jewish refugee issue did influence the United States, but primarily between 1945-1946 during the first winter after the war. It also influenced the Anglo-American committee after its visit to the displaced persons camps. Even so, the refugee situation was prevented from being used as a reason to adopt a clear pro-Zionist position to the point of recommending the rise of a Jewish state. UNSCOP was influenced very little by the Jewish refugee situation.

In the mean time, the refugee situation underwent significant changes. Many of the refugees scattered or left the displace persons camps to illegally immigrate to Palestine. In 1947, generally speaking, the camps were populated with new displaced persons, most of which were “escapees” from Eastern Europe. These refugees were in better physical condition and more resilient than their predecessors. UNSCOP was influenced by the illegal immigration phenomenon. But it was justly viewed by the committee (UNSCOP) first and foremost as a revelation of the Jewish struggle for independence, not as a derivative of the Holocaust. A number of witnesses claimed to UNSCOP, and very convincingly so, that illegal immigration to Palestine would have been even stronger if not for WWII or the Holocaust, because in their opinion there was no doubt that the distressful condition of Europe’s Jews in the 1930s would have only worsened in the 1940s even had the attempt to genocide or WWII not occurred.

Under these circumstances, it would seem that the reservoir of candidates to attempt illegal immigration to Palestine would have been far greater in number and in strength than what it was after the war. More than that, in 1947 the Holocaust was far less needed by the Zionist information campaign to make its case to the UN, than just one or two years prior. Conciseness of the Holocaust among the Jewish people and worry expressed by the “nations of the world” over the fate of the Jewish state will only arise in the 1960s. Even the Zionist push for statehood did not “need” the Holocaust. In fact, the push for statehood was sufficiently strong in 1937 and even more solidified in 1941, in essence before the Holocaust even began.

Putin's Path

The Washington Times in a James Zumwalt opinion piece has raised the heat in the debate started by Putin in the recent Munich security forum. At the forum, Putin stated that,

"almost uncontained use of [U.S.] military force" is causing other nations to seek out nuclear weapons to defend themselves.

This is a bit ironic if you consider the fact that Russian nuclear scientists have been instrumental in helping Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and North Korea develop the necessary technology to make weapons-grade uranium while the Russian government has kept these countries supplied in the scud missiles that could be used to deliver their payload. This too at a time when the Russian government has all but announced its intention to opt out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) so that it can once again threaten Central Europe in a balance of power game that directly threatens American interests.

As Zumwalt rightly points out:

Turning to the substance of Mr. Putin's charge, it is clear he is uninhibited by facts. His suggestion that nuclear weapon-seeking countries like Iran have felt intimidated by U.S. use of force ignores an issue of timing. Iran's quest for this capability was ongoing for 18 years before we knew about it -- when there was no basis for such intimidation. Despite Islamic extremists having taken U.S. diplomats hostage in Tehran, America's sword of retribution was never unsheathed. Similarly, there was an absence of intimidation when North Korea mounted its latest nuclear push years earlier as the United States failed to even bare its teeth.

Iran certainly has not suddenly developed the urge for nuclear technology - it has been playing cat and mouse with the IAEA for the better part of a decade. The fact that it's research facilities are scattered and buried deep underground and far from prying eyes, is a testament to the fact that the Iranians learned the lessons of the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq. The US was unable to prevent Pakistan and India from developing nuclear arsenals and was systematically duped by the North Koreans who were clearly working on their own timetable all along.

If anything, it seems that the world is heading into a period of instability as America's misteps in Iraq and the War on terror catch up with an American public clearly lacking a desire to continue the fight. This not only emboldens America's enemies to start acting out in new new and frightening way, but creates bedfellows and threatens to solidify the international system. The outline of these emerging fault lines are becoming clear, but only time will tell how seismically destabilizing they will be.

As for the article's contention that Russia will soon be overun by Muslims, I completely disagree with the author because, for starters, I don't believe that Islam is any more monolithic than Communism was. There are definitely many Muslims in Russia, but they are the type that can be found drinking vodka and enjoying sala (fatback) with their Russian neighbors. If anything, Chechnya has proven the futility of Muslim "resistance" in Russia and clearly demonstrates that "even Muslims" have a pain threshold. It also shows that Russians are more determined and are far less inhibited than Western Europeans and Americans when confronted with existential threats.

Peace at all Costs?

So it took a little while for the actual outlines of this deceit to come through, but here is how the Palestinian spinmeisters have decided to try to get around thew incontrovertible fact that the Hamas government has not met the minimum requirements of the international community or the Quartet.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat noted that Abbas, not the Palestinian government, would lead negotiations with Israel. In asking Haniyeh to form a new government earlier this week, Abbas reiterated his commitment to all agreements signed with Israel, including the pact of mutual recognition, Erekat said.

"Since the negotiations ... are under the jurisdiction of the president and the PLO, it should be noted that the president reiterated the commitment to these principles," he said. (See here)

So, as I predicted here, Abbas would, "run cover for Hamas". Is there anyone who is fooled by this in any way. Hamas has reiterated that it will never recognize Israel's right to exist or cease from the murderous activities they call "resistance". And, just in case anyone doubted that Hamas was going soft, the recent homicide bombing in Eilat showed their commitment to this type of dialogue. Sure, the act was carried out by Islamic Jihad and the Fatah spin-off Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, yet it was denounced by Abbas and lauded by the Hamas government.

"So long as there is occupation, resistance is legitimate," said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza.

In case you have not been following closely, the Eilat bombing happened in a local bakery during regular work hours - hardly a military target. Eilat has never been "occupied territory" and to be frank, it can hardly have ever been considered "Palestinian". Yet this is what falls under the category of "legitimate resistance" the kind which Hamas is loathe to abandon for the sake of peace.

The conventional wisdom was that if only Israel left the territories, then it would be possible to sit down with the Palestinians and reach an agreement. Finally, Israel said let's test this premise and leave part of the territories - the Gaza strip. The Palestinian response to this overture has been the election of Hamas, rocket attacks, weapons tunnels and incitement to violence. Worse, they have made it clear that they would not be satisfied with anything less than ALL of the territory that presently comprises Israel. If the Eilat attacks are not a definitive proof of this mindset, then I don't know what is.

If the world community accepts the new Palestinian coalition government without agreement to "honor" (and not just "respect") former agreements, without recognition of the right of the State of Israel to Exist and without any renunciation of terrorist violence, then those Israelis who have all along said that it was foolish to trust the International community were right. Though I personally hope these naysayers will be proven wrong, yet for some reason I am beginning to suspect that they won't.