A moral inferiority complex

February 6th, 2009

Jordanian stamps memorializing Muhammad al-DuraYou will recall Philippe Karsenty, the man who was sued by the France 2 television network’s highly-regarded Jerusalem bureau chief Charles Enderlin for libel after he called  Enderlin’s report accusing Israel of murdering 12-year old Muhammad al-Dura in 2000 “a hoax”.

You will probably also recall that the al-Dura ‘death’ — at this time it seems most likely that he was not killed at all, and if he was hit it was  by Palestinian bullets — was a rallying cry for the intifada and for Israel-haters everywhere; indeed, the Palestinian mob that tore apart two Israeli reservists in Ramallah two weeks later shouted “al-Dura”.

The film of al-Dura cowering behind his father as ‘Israeli’ bullets supposedly struck around them was broadcast and rebroadcast around the world. France 2 even supplied it to its competitors CNN and Reuters.

Here is a video commentary by Richard Landes that includes the original film plus other footage from that day. You can see the power of the film, but the evidence is overwhelming that al-Dura was not killed by Israeli bullets. Karsenty has called this “the first blood libel of the 21st century”.

After Enderlin won his suit at a trial in which the only evidence taken seriously by the judge was a character reference for Enderlin from then-President Jacques Chirac, Karsenty appealed and the verdict was overthrown.

Now Karsenty has published a damning account of the lack of cooperation — he uses the word ‘sabotage’ — provided him by the Israeli government in his legal struggle with France 2. He writes,

During all those years, I got the cold shoulder from Israeli officials. With the exception of a few mavericks like Danny Seaman (director of the Government Press Office), Raanan Gissin (Spokesman, Prime Minister’s Office), Shlomi Amshalom, former deputy spokesperson for the IDF, or former ambassador Zvi Mazel, the vast majority of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs personnel treated me and others who pursued this case, as embarrassments – conspiracy nuts who they wished would just disappear…

In 2002, when it was still possible to do something immediate, Nissim Zvili was the Israeli ambassador to Paris. He listened courteously but explained to me that he was a friend of Charles Enderlin, the French journalist who narrated the al Dura hoax.

In 2006, Zvili was replaced by Daniel Shek, who refused to shake my hand, and later commented on a Jewish radio that I was defending “conspiracy theories.” When I asked his colleague in charge of communication at the embassy in Paris, Daniel Halevy Goitschel, why he never returned my phone calls, he responded: “the phone doesn’t work at the embassy”. We are not even dealing with a lack of support here. On the contrary, I was being sabotaged.

When I won the case in May 2008, Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said: “Karsenty is a private individual and no one in the Israeli government asked him to take on his battle against France 2. Karsenty had no right to demand that Israel come to his aid. All calls on the Israeli government to come and ‘save’ him are out of place. He was summoned to court because of a complaint of the French television channel. I don’t see where there is room for the Israeli government to get involved.”

Last December, I went over the evidence with Aviv Shir-On, who now claims to have helped me, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). After two hours he repeated the old MFA refrain, “I’m not convinced”. Let’s say, for the sake of generosity, that Shir-On is just one more timid defender of Israel, so afraid of what “others” might say, that even the judgment of an independent (and hardly well-disposed) French court in favor of his own country, does not give him the courage to speak. So even though I won the case, and the new evidence from France 2 sharpens our argument, I could not count on Israeli officials to help move into a counter-attack. Enderlin, humiliated by the court decision, was allowed to bluff his way back to prominence, and recently, in the Gaza war, lead the journalists’ attack on the Israeli government…

On January 2009, I met Tsipi Livni, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and asked her about the al Dura story and the lack of reaction of the Israeli officials. Why didn’t the State of Israel demand that France 2 admit their blood libel following the court decision? I was stunned by her answer: “Well, it happens that we kill kids sometimes. So, it’s not good for Israel to raise the subject again”. — Philippe Karsenty: Israel Losing the Media War: Wonder Why?

Now I am going to say something which I’ve said before, which has always annoyed people, but which I think is true:

Many important people in Israel have internalized the propaganda of Israel’s enemies. They are prepared to believe that IDF soldiers would continue to fire on a target like al-Dura and his father, who are obviously not firing back and not even armed, for 40 minutes. This is not the same as saying that ‘accidents happen’, it is agreeing that the IDF is either criminally negligent or deliberately murderous, which is what the Arab and European press constantly say.

It seems to me that some Israelis and Jews have a moral inferiority complex. Even though they would not admit this, deep down they are not sure that Israel has a right to exist. Although they understand intellectually that Israel is in a life and death struggle with the Arab world and Iran, emotionally there is a feeling that we are wrong.

I’ve often criticized people who seem prepared to believe anything bad about Israel, even if it doesn’t make sense, like the accusations that the IDF deliberately targeted civilians in Gaza.  Apparently many Israelis, even those that believe themselves to be Zionists, share this propensity.

Doubts were raised about the al-Dura affair from the very beginning. Yet Israel’s official approach was to accept responsibility, to believe Palestinian and European media without a serious investigation. And even after an IDF investigation showed that it was highly unlikely that the bullets could have been fired by Israeli soldiers, Karsenty’s efforts to bring out the rest of the evidence — to force France 2 to release the outtakes — were opposed. Officials still treated him as a “conspiracy nut” and accepted the Palestinian/European version of events.

How else can you explain this?

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Laundering bullshit

February 4th, 2009

In case you were wondering why so many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) concerned with human rights seem to spend so much time bashing Israel and ignore the multiple — and continuing — war crimes of  Hamas,

Human rights groups argued Wednesday that a detailed probe into Hamas’s firing of Kassam rockets at Israeli communities is not necessary, because it constitutes such a “blatant” war crime. By contrast, Israel’s actions are more complex, and therefore do require such investigation, they said.

War crimes, said Sarit Micha’eli of B’tselem, are those actions that violate Article III of the Geneva Convention, and it was clear that Hamas was in violation of the requirement of distinction between civilian and military targets.

“It makes it quite easy regarding Hamas. It is quite clear that they are attacking and targeting civilians. When someone straps a bomb on themselves or fire missiles at civilians, the details are less important. It is clearly a war crime without even looking at the details,” she said. “Even if they fired a Kassam missile as a military target, the fact that it is an inaccurate weapon, it would still count as an indiscriminate attack…”

“With Israel things are more complicated because Israel states it does not deliberately target civilians and that it safeguards them. With Israel, you have to investigate each specific incident because even if a civilian is killed in an attack, it doesn’t mean its necessarily a war crime. Targeting civilians is a war crime, but the damage to civilians in a given situation isn’t indicative of a war crime.”

“The Israeli authorities deny everything, so one has to prove what happened in a way that you don’t need to do with the Palestinian rockets,” said Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International. — Jerusalem Post (my emphasis)

In other words, “we know Israel is deliberately trying to kill civilians, but they lie about it.”

One might wonder how they know this, since it is manifestly not in Israel’s interest to kill civilians. The whole dynamic of the war was Israel trying to damage Hamas as severely as possible before international pressure forced an end to the fighting, while Hamas and friends tried their best to create outrage over Israeli ‘atrocities’. And as I’ve noted before, if Israel had wanted to kill Palestinians, it could have easily done it in the tens of thousands.

But the abovementioned Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International (AI) is quite prepared to bend logic when necessary. In a discussion with Alan Dershowitz in 2005, Rovera — AI’s researcher in the territories — defended an AI report which claimed that violence against Palestinian women by Palestinian men was actually Israel’s fault! Dershowitz wrote,

Here is AI’s conclusion, listing the causes of the violence directed against Palestinian women, presumably in the order of their importance: “Palestinian women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are victims of multiple violations as a result of the escalation of the conflict, Israel’s policies, and a system of norms, traditions and laws which treat women as unequal members of society.” The “escalation of the conflict” (which AI blames primarily on Israel) and “Israel’s policies” rank higher than the “norms, traditions and laws which treat women as unequal.” The report asserts that violence against women has “increased” dramatically during the Israeli occupation and has reached “an unprecedented level” as a result of the “increased militarization of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.” It is as if the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been violence free for Palestinian women until the Israeli Occupation.

On August 23, 2005, I spoke with Donatella Rovera, who is AI’s researcher on Israel and the Occupied Territories and asked her to provide the data on which she had based her conclusion that violence against women had escalated to an “unprecedented level” during the occupation, and especially during its most militarized phase. I also asked her whether AI had compared violence against women in the occupied West Bank and Gaza with violence against women in unoccupied Arab-Muslim areas that have comparable populations, such as Jordan. Rovera acknowledged that AI could provide no such comparative data and confirmed that the report was based on anecdotal information, primarily from Palestinian NGOs.

Rovera’s ‘research’ seems to follow the same pattern time and again (she’s frequently quoted in news reports accusing Israel of using white phosphorus shells against civilians, summary executions of Palestinian children, etc.): Palestinians tell her that thus-and-such happened, and she repeats it to reporters along with her judgment that whatever atrocity she is describing is a violation of international law.

Ms. Rovera and other NGO representatives serve an important function in the anti-Israel propaganda machine: they provide an aura of impartiality that makes it possible for the media to repeat unverified stories which would be less convincing in the mouths of Palestinians. Some observers call this the “NGO halo effect“; I prefer the expression “bullshit laundering”.

Donatella Rovera at work

Donatella Rovera at work

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No Jew in his right mind…

February 3rd, 2009

Embarrassing:

An official with a leading American Jewish organization told the The Jerusalem Post on Monday that a deterioration in Israel-Turkey relations might prompt his group and others to reconsider Armenian efforts to win recognition of the century-old Turkish massacres as genocide.

A bill that would ensure such recognition by the US, which was backed by Rep. Adam Schiff — a Jewish Democrat who represents a heavily Armenian area of Los Angeles – failed to make it to a Congressional vote in 2007. However, it sparked a row in the American Jewish community between those who sided with Turkey in an effort to protect Israel’s political interests, and those who argued that Jews were particularly responsible for helping other groups block the public denial of genocide.

“No Jew or Israeli in his right mind will insult Turkey,” the official told the Post. “But next time… they might not come to Turkey’s aid or equivocate quite so much on the issue.” — Jerusalem Post (my emphasis)

I have no idea who the un-named ‘official’ is, but his point of view is repugnant.

Does it even need to be said that it is everyone’s moral duty — not just Jews — to ensure that victims of genocide are remembered, so that present and future genocides can be stopped?

To suggest that recognition of historical events should be granted or withheld for political reasons is cynical; if the event in question is a genocide, it’s obscene.

I’ve written about this at least ten times, but it won’t go away. For example,

The Turkish government has its reasons for not admitting that the Young Turks, and later the Turkish Nationalists, murdered about a million and a half Armenians during and after World War I. The Israeli government also has its reasons for not wanting to irritate the Turks. Even the US [Bush] administration seems to feel that Turkey is too strategically important to annoy by using the word ‘genocide’ to describe the events. But the truth is the truth.

When I first came to Fresno in 1971, you could meet people in the supermarket who had been adult eyewitnesses to the murders, rapes, torture, dislocation, disease and  starvation that characterized the Armenian Genocide. Now it’s not so easy, even harder than finding Holocaust survivors.

Survivors sometimes feel that denial is the final stage of extermination. First the physical forms of the victims were destroyed, and then their memories are erased. Most Jews are familiar with the rage that comes over them when confronted with Holocaust denial. But — at least in the West, if not in Iran or the Arab world — deniers are marginal. After all, the present government of Germany has officially accepted responsibility for the Holocaust.

One can imagine how Armenians feel — actually, you don’t need to imagine, they will tell you — when, almost 100 years after the fact, the Turkish government still insists — against the huge preponderance of historical evidence — that while something happened to the Armenians, it wasn’t genocide, the Turks were not responsible, and it might even have been the Armenians’ fault. (“A little irony for the Turks“, 8/2008)

So let’s leave aside the facts that antisemitism in Turkey has reached new heights and Turkey’s Islamist government supports Hamas.

The reason for recognizing the Armenian Genocide is that it happened.

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Tunneling for peace

February 2nd, 2009

News item:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Monday proposed the construction of a 48-kilometer long tunnel that would connect the northern Gaza Strip with the southern West Bank, thus enabling freedom of movement between the two disjointed Palestinian territories.

While stumping on the campaign trail before students at Ben-Gurion University in Be’er Sheva, Barak said it was possible to dig the tunnel, which would remain under Israeli sovereignty while the Palestinians would maintain authority over the corridor’s traffic. The defense minister and Labor Party chairman said the project would cost between $2-3 billion, “a reasonable sum.”

This is the kind of thing one expects from Barak. A clever solution to the problem of providing the eagerly awaited Palestinian state with the ‘territorial contiguity’ promised by both Presidents Bush and Obama, without cutting Israel in two. As if this would satisfy any real Palestinians, most of whom have given up on a two-state solution! Although there is zero chance that this will actually happen, it does have a few positive features:

  • Many unemployed Gazans could find work digging it. May I mention that an experienced workforce already exists which could, in common parlance, ‘hit the ground running’?
  • The idea could serve as a template for another Gaza employment program: a Palestinian attempt to land a man on the moon. Don’t laugh; the US space program was started by another amateur rocketeer, Dr. Werner von Braun.

Meanwhile, the main obstacle to the two-state solution, Hamas, remains. Barak also said,

“All of these critics [his opponents in the forthcoming election] were in decision-making positions and Hamas never received such a blow as this. After eight years of [rocket] fire from the Strip, I arrived and gave the IDF an order to batter Hamas, with deeds and not words,” said Barak, referring to Israel’s recent offensive against Hamas in Gaza.

Given that Hamas — or its deniable surrogates — have resumed firing rockets, that despite additional bombing raids weapons are still being smuggled through the Sinai Subway, and that Hamas is still demanding thousands of prisoners in exchange for Gilad Schalit, Barak’s statement sounds somewhat hollow, even as election rhetoric.

A Gaza-West Bank tunnel would be pointless anyway as long as Hamas controls Gaza. Various parties think that a unity government between Hamas and Fatah is a good idea, but such an arrangement would certainly be unstable, and most likely result in a Hamas-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA). And Hamas is not going to quietly accept the authority of the despised Israeli-American puppet Fatah.

Maybe not so paradoxically, the best way to make a peace agreement between Israel and the PA possible, paving the way to a two-state solution, would have been for Israel to finish off Hamas. I assume that the US administration thinks that there is some other path, or they would not have forced Israel to stop fighting and get out before the inauguration, but I’m not able to imagine what this could be.

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The Two Hour Hate

February 1st, 2009

Part of a description of the daily “two-minute hate” from George Orwell’s 1984:

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other. But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were – in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State….

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen….In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic…

Do you have a sense of déja vu, as if you’ve recently experienced something similar? Probably you have, if you live in Fresno, where Amy Goodman’s radio program Democracy Now is heard every weekday morning for two hours on local station KFCF — rebroadcasting from KPFA in Berkeley — and the TV version is seen for an hour five days a week on KNXT, the TV station of the Catholic Diocese of Fresno.

Just for an almost-random example (h/t Charles Johnson, LGF),  the January 23 program featured an interview with the deranged linguist and extreme Israel-hater Noam Chomsky, today’s Jewish version of Julius Streicher. Asked about President Obama’s statement that “we will always support Israel’s right to defend itself”, he said:

[Obama] began by saying that Israel, like any democracy, has a right to defend itself. That’s true, but there’s a gap in the reasoning. It has a right to defend itself. It doesn’t follow that it has a right to defend itself by force. So we might agree, say, that, you know, the British army in the United States in the colonies in 1776 had a right to defend itself from the terror of George Washington’s armies, which was quite real, but it didn’t follow they had a right to defend themselves by force, because they had no right to be here. So, yes, they had a right to defend themselves, and they had a way to do it—namely, leave.

Interesting, I didn’t know Washington was firing rockets across the pond at innocent Brits living in Plymouth or Exeter. Too bad Chomsky wasn’t around in 1941; the decision to defend the US by force could have been avoided (we could have started by leaving Hawaii).

OK, what do you expect from Chomsky? But let’s look at how Democracy Now and Amy Goodman have covered the war during the past month:

  • January 27, 2009: Worse than an Earthquake: Peace Activist Kathy Kelly on the Destruction in Gaza
  • January 23, 2009: Noam Chomsky: Obama’s Stance on Gaza Crisis ‘Approximately the Bush Position’
  • January 22, 2009: Part II: Palestinian US College Grad Loses 2 Brothers in Israeli Shooting; Father Watched Son Bleed to Death After Israeli Troops Blocked Ambulances
  • January 22, 2009: Ex-Carter Admin Official: Israel Ignored Hamas Offer Days Before Attacking Gaza; Violated Ceasefire With Attacks, Blockade
  • January 21, 2009: Palestinian U.S. College Grad Loses 2 Brothers in Israeli Shooting; Father Watched Son Bleed to Death After Israeli Troops Bar Ambulances
  • January 16, 2009: Palestinian Astrophysicist in US Recounts How His 11-Year-Old Son Died When Israeli Warplanes Bombed His Family’s House
  • January 16, 2009: Bloody Israeli Assault on Gaza Enters Fourth Week, Palestinian Death Toll Tops 1,100
  • January 15, 2009: Israel Pounds Gaza: Shells Crowded Hospital, UN Compound and Building Housing Media Organizations
  • January 15, 2009: U.S. Rabbis Urge Obama to Push For Gaza Cease-Fire
  • January 14, 2009: Leading Israeli Scholar Avi Shlaim: Israel Committing ‘State Terror’ in Gaza Attack, Preventing Peace
  • January 14, 2009: White Phosphorous and Dense Inert Metal Explosives: Is Israel Using Banned and Experimental Munitions in Gaza?
  • January 13, 2009: Pro-Israel Supporters Praise Gaza Assault as Justified Despite Mounting Civilian Death Toll
  • January 13, 2009: ‘Catastrophically Misguided and Incomprehensible Policy’–Renowned Jewish Playwright Tony Kushner Speaks Out Against Israel’s Assault on Gaza
  • January 13, 2009: Gaza Suffers Most Intense Bombardment of 18-Day Israeli Assault
  • January 12, 2009: Kucinich Cites Arms Export and Control Act in Decision to Vote Against House Measure Supporting Israeli Offensive
  • January 12, 2009: Tens of Thousands Demonstrate Globally Against Israeli Actions, Jewish Women Among Those Leading Protests
  • January 12, 2009: Fmr. Clinton Special Counsel Lanny Davis vs. Israeli Professor Neve Gordon: A Debate on the Israeli Assault on Gaza
  • January 08, 2009: Former Amb. Martin Indyk vs. Author Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel’s Assault on Gaza and the US Role in the Conflict
  • January 07, 2009: 40+ Killed in Israeli Strike on Gaza School Sheltering Refugees
  • January 06, 2009: Israeli F-16 Attack Kills Father of Palestinian Journalist; Israel Bombs UN School, Killing Three
  • January 05, 2009: A Debate on Israel’s Invasion of Gaza: UNRWA’s Christopher Gunness v. Israel Project’s Meagan Buren
  • January 05, 2009: US Blocks UN Security Council Vote Calling for Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza
  • January 05, 2009: Israeli Professor Under Hamas Rocket Fire, Neve Gordon Condemns Israeli Invasion of Gaza
  • January 05, 2009: Report from Gaza City: Palestinian Journalist Sameh Habeeb on Gaza Under Siege
  • December 31, 2008: Israeli Lawmaker and Conscientious Objector Nephew of Ex-PM Benjamin Netanyahu Denounce Israeli Attack on Gaza Strip
  • December 29, 2008: Israeli Attacks Kill Over 310 in Gaza in One of Israel’s Bloodiest Attacks on Palestinians Since 1948

Chomsky, Shlaim, Finkelstein, Kushner, Gordon — a rogue’s gallery of extreme left-wing anti-Zionist Jews, interspersed with atrocity stories and stacked ‘debates’. This program is probably the most listened-to source of anti-Israel propaganda in our area.

KFCF and KPFA are listener-supported stations. KNXT is of course funded by the Diocese of Fresno.   I urge everyone to not contribute to KFCF or KPFA; and to express your opinion about KNXT (write to the Bishop, The Most Reverend John T. Steinbock, 1550 N. Fresno Street, Fresno, CA 93703-3788).

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