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159 comments from readers

Krisco
13 November 2008 at 10:15

Thank you Mr Pilger for yet another insightful piece on the machinations of a military-industrial complex, a phrase coined by Eisenhower. As USA’s stooge, Blair lied to the UK Parliament and the world and WMDs which ot only resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis but also hundeds of British soldiers and cost us 10s of billions of pounds. That has led us all into the current state of our bankrupt economies and this clearly demonstrated the need for us all to be vigilant. It is the modus operandi of the US establishment which led me to suspect the endorsement Colin Powell a Republican, gave to Obama. It is worth remembering, Powell also lied to the UN about the WMDs thereby precipitating the Iraq war by terror [yes, I do mean ‘by’, not ‘on’] and ‘shock and awe’ that engulfed the Iraqi population and destroyed its infrastructure. I still wonder what the quid pro quo might be as I watched the ‘warm’ welcome Bush extended to Obama at the White House to make sure that Bush and his other cronies are not indicted for war crimes I Iraq/Afganistan under Obama’s watch.

Krisco

alexweir1949
13 November 2008 at 14:03

Good stuff pilger. Have a look at my fraud proof voting system for the third world and guess how far britain and china will go to stop it. Alex weir. Harare

Carl Jones
13 November 2008 at 14:13

Will Hutton`s "Here come the Liberals" leads this weeks NS, of course, this is likely to change when the comments are read.

Today Pilger is almost angry in "Don`t believe the hype" and its better for it....another excellent disection of the NWO as it morphs behind a liberal illusion.

Of course, Pilger must be careful with his pen, so I should encourage readers to research the MSM, who owns it, who controls it? B ecause you should remember all the NWO lies illustrated so well by Pilger, were peddled by the MSM following the "establishment consensus".

Rahm Emanuel served in the Israeli military, I would add thar he is a Mossad agent and therefore, a puppet of MI6.

You should read my comment to Will Hutton.

Remember "Madeleine Albright"? Well, see is also making a return to the Whitehouse fold. The US/UK sanctions forced through the UN which murdered 1,000,000 Iraqis, of which 500,000 were children under 5, she said "it will be worth it"!!

Again Pilger gets as close as he can to outing the reallity of Amerika today with "corporate dictatorship", well I can go further, the US is sinking into a Fascist dictatorship....and to quote Obama "I`ll nuke Pakistan, if it makes Americans feel safe" and remember what Joe Biden said in a closed Dem meeting and was reported by Paxman on BBC Newsight, that Obama will face a major "constructed" crisis in the openning months of his presidency and that his crisis will involve all the NWO states, by that, I mean what is considered the free (lol) world.

writeon
13 November 2008 at 14:21

Putting aside the hype that's surrounded him in the media, which can't really be taken seriously, what's incredibly positive and uplifting about Obama's election victory is that he's obviously riding on a wave of popular sentiment that desparately desires and hopes for change and progress. And this wave isn't just confined to the United States. It's manifest around the world. Not only a vast majority of Americans, but hundreds of millions all over the world, understand that we have been moving in the wrong direction for far too long, and something has to be done, something has to change.

It's just a tragedy that we'll be sliding into a truly terrible economic depression when Obama takes office. This will severely limit his reform programme, if he really has one. Of course he might be forced by circumstances to introduce more than merely superficial 'reforms' by dire economic circumstances and popular discontent. However, I'm not sure that Obama is that kind of politician at all, but time will tell I suppose.

Unfortunately, history shows has taught us that presidents seldom fulfil their promise, realistically I imagine the most we can hope for is a marginally better version of Bill Clinton. But he virtually destroyed what was left of the New Deal, deregulated the financial sector, and in many ways was worse than Reagan. Clinton though popular in Europe was a weak and not singularly effective president domestically. Let's hope Obama doesn't suffer the same fate, but as he seems to be surrounding himself with Clintonites, I wouldn't bet on him.

13 November 2008 at 15:25

Well Mr Pilger, you are entilttle to your opinon but it is not one that I agree with. talking about the 1960's are gone but we can learn from the histories.

thegonzokid
13 November 2008 at 15:42

It would be lovely if Obama staffed his administration with Marxists like Pilger wants, but the reality of modern governance wouldn't countenance it.

Also, the idea that Obama wants to start a war with Pakistan is hysterical hyperbole.

America has given itself a kick up the arse by electing Obama and this is to be welcomed.

Cybertiger
13 November 2008 at 16:02

"Remember "Madeleine Albright"? Well, see is also making a return to the Whitehouse fold."

Jonesy, you CAN'T be serious!!! That puffed up pigeon of a woman is evil! The 'Termite Terminator' is back? Don't tell me it's true!

writeon
13 November 2008 at 16:03

Mike,

I agree with you. Obama doesn't want to start a war with Pakistan, that would be madness.

Unfortunately escalating the war in Afghanistan and winning it, whatever that really means, is going to be very difficult indeed without going over the border and taking on the Pastun resistance in Pakistan. The border is a Western construct and really doesn't mean much to the Pastuns on both sides of it.

Crushing a growing Pastun 'national liberation struggle' by military means is going to destabilize Pakistan as well. If the West isn't careful the war in Afghanistan is going to spread and become even worse and unwinable. Wars seem to have their own logic and momentum, so Obama may find himself dragged into something really terrible unless he's very careful.

Stephen
13 November 2008 at 17:15

Ha ha trust John Pilger to find negative things to say about Obama in the week most of us are still feeling euphoric about his victory. If Jesus Christ came back to earth promising eternal life and world peace JP would find somthing bad to say about him!

Alun W
13 November 2008 at 17:35

Thanks John, for helping us to see beyond the received text !

Gideon Polya
13 November 2008 at 18:56

Excellent analysis by John Pilger. Like 90% of the World but only 53% of American voters I too desperately wanted Obama to win but with no illusions about his extreme rightist, militarist and exceptionalist agenda.

Obama's true agenda was evident before he was elected with Biden's call for war on Sudan in the West and Obama's repeated calls for war on Pakistan in the East.

Obama's first act was to appoint as Chief of Staff an Israeli-American, dual citizen (?), Zionist extremist son of a former member of the Irgun terrorist organization that bombed, murdered and massacred (a major reason there are now over 7 million Palestinian refugees and 4 million Occupied Palestinians - half children, three quarters women and children - abusively imprisoned still after over 40 years in what outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Noam Chomsky of MIT calls a "huge Prison") (see: http://gpolya.newsvine.com/_news/2008/11/07/2086111-daily-ko...)..

A key pointer to Obama's allegiance to the neocon Establishment and what is described by academic sociologists as the American "Whiteness Culture" is steadfast refusal of this "half-Kenyan" to acknowledge the British atrocity of the Kenyan Holocaust, the Kenyan Genocide associated with 1.1 million excess Kenyan deaths in the period 1952-1960 (for a recent history read Harvard professor Caroline Elkins' "Britain's Gulag. The brutal end of Empire in Kenya", Pimlico, London, 2005; for the excess mortality see “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ).

What sort of person resolutely ignores the genocidal slaughter of his own people?

The liberal Avaaz organization has organized global support for a letter to Obama urging action on the climate emergency, torture, poverty , war and occupation. We'll believe it when we see it.

Julian
13 November 2008 at 19:12

I quote Norman Geras:

'We already knew, before November 4, what John Pilger was going to make of an Obama victory, because he'd told us. After the event he's telling us again, but in the course of doing so he reveals one or two things about his political philosophy. He writes:

Obama's first two crucial appointments represent a denial of the wishes of his supporters on the principal issues on which they voted. The vice-president-elect, Joe Biden, is a proud warmaker and Zionist. Rahm Emanuel, who is to be the all-important White House chief of staff, is a fervent "neoliberal" devoted to the doctrine that led to the present economic collapse and impoverishment of millions. He is also an "Israel-first" Zionist who served in the Israeli army and opposes meaningful justice for the Palestinians - an injustice that is at the root of Muslim people's loathing of the US and the spawning of jihadism.

John Pilger, it seems, has access to what those who voted for Obama think about issues of war and peace and to what they think about Israel - they must all be anti-Zionists, evidently. Though the voters voted on the basis of the public campaigns of the candidates, Pilger somehow intuits that what they were really voting for was the sort of thing that he would be in favour of. In this piece as in the pre-election one he emphasizes his attachment to democracy - true democracy rather than the 'pretensions' of 'a corporate dictatorship'. It's a shame his concept of democracy entails knowing the wishes of the electorate, however it is that they actually vote.'

Says it all. If you're JP, the peeps come and talk to you when you're asleep, particularly the 5-foot tall brown peeps. They whisper in your wizened ear, their loves, their hopes, their fears, their hunger for justice, their hatred for the MIC, and above all their love for JP, the Great Consul, the Leading Comrade.

So of course JP knows better than all those peeps who went out and actually VOTED...

scott63
13 November 2008 at 19:50

Not one post here leaves me to the belief that any of you knows anything about America or American politics. Your stunning remarks that tout Barack Obama as a war "mongering liberal " (An OXYmoron in American circles),are laughable, trust me as a American Repulican the thought of anybody in the democratic party as pro military is fantasy. They are with few exceptions deeply mistrusting and fearful of the US military establishment, and completely adverse to excersising any real military power in the world, they will rattle their sabers abit but when American blood begins to spill there knees go limp. Obama, Biden, and your Israeli super agent lol Rahm, will gut the US military to make extra cash available for domestic spending for low income blacks and illeagel immigrants to keep the black and hispanic vote in there back pockets, and as far as coorperations running everything what bullcrap, they are on there knees at this very moment begging for any scraps the government can toss them. For 8yrs now the world has complained about American power inserting itself where it doesn't belong, those days are over, thank god, America is about to embark on alittle bit of navel gazing we are sick of worrying about the rest of the world while are own country goes to shit, so isolationism here we come and I for one welcome it let someone else step up for awhile, maybe the UK or France or Germany, they can shoulder the worlds burdens for the next generation, we Americans need a break, we over reached and are now paying a heavy price.

writeon
13 November 2008 at 20:09

Julian,

I'm probably wasting my time, but I don't think you are being fair to John Pilger. By all means criticize him and his politics, but surely one should do this on the basis of what he actually writes and means?

Wilfully choosing to minunderstand what he wrote is a form of distortion which is unworthy. Why try to put words in his mouth?

What John Pilger means, and I think this is pretty obvious, is that the two appoinments Obama's made seem to fly in the face of wishes of many of his suppporters and the entire change agenda. That's it. This interpretation of these appointments, is by no means confined to John Piliger alone.

Joe Biden doesn't represent change, he's the consumate Washington insider. It's more of the same. Emanuel, is arguably a neo-con and someone who has profitted enormously from the financial Ponzi scam that's led to the economic disaster we all face. Both of them have made very warlike statements.

None of this shows that Obama seriously wants to change anything substantially. Certainly not American attitudes to the conflict in the Middle East, the cause of so much resentment. It's a slap in the face to Arabs, not an outstretched hand, no change there.

These two appointments are clearly to very conservative choices designed to placate and reasure powerful conservative interests, at home and abroad, no change there.

These choice signal more 'business as usual' than change you can believe in, which doesn't really seem in keeping with the change agenda most people seem to think Obama stands for.

This is the gist of what Pilger wrote. One can agree with him or not, but I don't see why one needs to misrepresent his views, unless one does this simply to discredit him and attack him for ulterior motives.

Pilger isn't a fool, or maybe you think he is? He knows the Middle East and Zionism played virtually no part in the way people voted, or in the election, apart from the candidates swearing undying loyality to Israel and it's policies.

Toby
14 November 2008 at 00:28

"The fact that Toby`s only defence of Raham, is the fact that his father and brother are first rate physicians. I doubt their good work will make up the loss of life that WILL be lost, because a Mossad agent in in the Whitehouse."

Carl Jones like most hysterical Jew haters has to resort to predictions of what will happen rather than what is happening in order to satisfy his blood libel accusations against Jews.

You jew haters have been predicting ganocide against Palestinians for over half a century. The demographics sure doesn't support your fantasies, does it.

No person or people should be condemned for what might happen.

Yes, I defended the Rahms because the vile Pilger attacked and smeared an innocent family.

These attacks on Obama are motivated by racism and antisemitism, make no mistake about it. It doesn't matter if they come from the left or from the right.

bodek_tzitziyot
14 November 2008 at 01:00

Since when has the word Zionist been a term of abuse in the pages of the New Statesman? And in the taxonomy of bile that passes for political comment here nowadays, what is the difference between a "Zionist" and an "Israel-first Zionist" ?

In its heyday, when the magazine was a leader of thought and political action for the left in Britain, the New Statesman hosted many committed Zionists of the left and supporters of Israel. Figures such as Sidney Silverman, Brigid Brophy, Paul Johnson, Ian Mikardo, Richard Crossman and others were all pro-Jewish and pro-Israel. Today, the socialism espoused in these pages resembles National Socialism more and more. Jews are abused for defending Israel from physical attack, while those who kill Israelis are admired and given aid and succour. In parallel, the history of Israel and the Jewish people is distorted, and our character is perversely inverted with fanatical hatred and malice by the likes of Pilger and his friends.

Meanwhile the Palestinian rejectionists, who continue to try to defeat Israel by violence and wipe it out, are given encouragement, as if their failure to do so up to now needs to be rectified.

Jane2
14 November 2008 at 01:05

Mr. Pilger knows about as much about Americans as I know about physics which is absolutely nothing other than how to spell the word.

Obama wanting to war against Pakistan is hysterical nonsense. His ugly comments about Biden and Rahm are not worth defending against.

Frankly, by my reading Mr. Pilger's article, I have wasted both time and brain cells, and I will immediately promise myself NEVER to do it again.

explodingbadger
14 November 2008 at 01:08

Just because someone criticizes Israel or an Israeli or a black man doesn't make them a Jew hater or racist or Marxist. Throwing around empty insults like that doesn't get us anywhere. Its a waste of time and distraction from the truth. But I suspect that's the required effect of those writing such garbage because they don't have any real argument.

I pray Obama will change things for the better things for example end the brutal occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, or introduce universal welfare But I can't see it happening. Also if he IS keeping these extreme right wing people in office it does not bode well.

Many people had many hopes when Blair came to power and he became a worse demon than Thatcher ever was.

explodingbadger
14 November 2008 at 01:59

Interesting analysis on media lens:

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php

Jonathan B
14 November 2008 at 03:39

I'm with Toby on this one. This is a clasic case of intellectual subjectivity and racism - it doesn't matter that its dressed up in a tawdry NS blog. Ask yourself this you extremists - who SHOULD the US people have voted into their presidency this time around? Got any suggestions?

lavinia moore
14 November 2008 at 04:40

John Pilger has for years shown all of us that what we are told about what is going on often has very little to do with what is actually going on.

The history of the USA over the last fifty or so years demonstrates that while the American system may undergo what appear to be ideological shifts, at its base it stays pretty much the same. The unfortunate thing is that whoever is president or whichever party rules, the system and those who control it continue to shape and direct US policy and governmental practice.

I am glad that Obama was elected over McCain. But that does not mean that I have no doubts that he will shift the USA towards a purely multilateralist position insofar as military intervention and geopolitics is concerned. Or that he will be more consultative in matters of trade and the world's economy . Or that he will act in the world's best interests, regarding the future health of the planet, above and beyond parochial concerns or short-term policies aimed at mollifying potential critics and adversaries from amongst the powerful conglomerate US corporations.

I expect he will do some things and not other things that I think he ought. While I do not expect miracles, I am expecting is some shift in US politics that will improve some things for Americans and for the rest of the world.

However, although we non-Americans are impacted on by what the US does, we don't get a vote. All we have is our voice and our pen.We can be active and hope that someone as intelligent as Obama will heed our voices and on occasions consider that what we are wanting is something that in the long run may be in America's interests too.

If McCain had been elected I would not have any such hopes.

With Obama I do.

And as i said, where I dont agree, and particularly where I disagree strongly, I will do what I can to speak up.

My first comment for example will be for him to reconsider the Palestine question and ask him to consider Kenya as an occupied country in 2008.

Digital Commuter
14 November 2008 at 05:10

This is along reply to Pilger’s hatefilled screed and will post it in a few parts.

“This was journalism as it had been before corporate journalism was invented, before the first schools of journalism were set up and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around those whose "professionalism" and "objectivity" carried an unspoken obligation to ensure that news and opinion were in tune with an establishment consensus, regardless of the truth.”

If Pilger’s journalism isn’t journalism it’s temper tantrums disguised as journalism.

Imagine a journalist raging against objectivity. It’s like a scientist attacking the scientific method.

“Read American Dreams: Lost and Found by the masterly Studs Terkel…”

Studs wasn’t a reporter or journalist he was a radio interviewer for most of his life.

“Two years ago, this anti-war vote installed a Democratic majority in Congress, only to watch the Democrats hand over more money to George W Bush to continue his blood-fest. For his part, the "anti-war" Obama voted to give Bush what he wanted.”

This is crap. Pilger is adept at taking complex issues and simplifying them to the point of inanity. The Democratic win in Congress was a matter of changing a few seats. People here voter for Congress for local reasons and not for national much less for such abstractions as “anti war” sentiments.

“Yes, Obama's election is historic, a symbol of great change to many. But it is equally true that the American elite has grown adept at using the black middle and management class.”

This is insulting to the Black middle class. Pilger makes it seems that Black people can decide for themselves what their interests are.

Interesting this kind of language used to thrown around by white supremacist organization like the KKK and the American Nazi party who used to say that Jews dominated the civil rights movement.

Pilger is coming close to articulating the same views.

Digital Commuter
14 November 2008 at 05:11

“The courageous Martin Luther King recognised this when he linked the human rights of black Americans with the human rights of the Vietnamese,…”

MLK was indeed towards the end of his life opposed to the Vietnam War. However, everything else PIlger says is nonsense. Dr. King was shot by a white racist for his demand for equal rights and not because he was opposed to the Vietnam War.

Moreover Martin Luther King like Biden was a friend and supporter of Israel who understood that people who opposed the Jewish State tended to be antisemitic.

Here is what King said about anti-Zionism:

"Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism"

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

". . . You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely 'anti-Zionist.' And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--this is God's own truth.

"Antisemitism, the hatred of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind. In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionist is inherently antisemitic, and ever will be so. “

“From M.L. King Jr., "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend," Saturday Review_XLVII (Aug. 1967), p. 76.”

“Reprinted in M.L. King Jr., "This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."”

Pilger’s fulminations go on:

“then being slaughtered by a "liberal" Democratic administration. And he was shot.”

To blame the death of Martin King on the Johnsons administration is beyond disgusting it’s a blood libel accusation. I hope someone sues over your intemperate and racist outburst.

“In striking contrast, a young black major serving in Vietnam, Colin Powell, was used to "investigate" and whitewash the infamous My Lai massacre.””

So this is what you mean by partisan journalism: defamation of character. This too is actionable, Pilger.

Aside form shooting of your BIG mouth do you have any evidence to support such hideous claims?

Digital Commuter
14 November 2008 at 05:11

Now he goes after Condi:

“ Condaleezza Rice, lauded as a successful black woman, has worked assiduously to deny the Palestinians justice.”

Creep she has been spending all her time trying to bring about and end to the conflict. It’s your friends Hamas and Hizbollah who have been working against peace.

Now comes his open antisemitism:

“Obama's first two crucial appointments represent a denial of the wishes of his supporters on the principal issues on which they voted.”

Really, what evidence do you have? Have you done any polling to see how Americans feel about support for Israel? The data I have seen shows that such support is widespread and deep.

In any case, Biden as well as Obama said that they supported Israel (as did McCain and Palin) and most people voted for them.

The one candidate who didn’t support Israel your antisemitic and racist friend Ralph Nader didn’t get enough votes to fill a stadium. Obviously the American people supported the candidates who support Israel.

“The vice-president-elect, Joe Biden, is a proud warmaker and Zionist.”

Stop, reader and think what the great PIlger just wrote. “proud warmaker and zionist”: this could have been written by David Duke.

This is naked Jew hatred.

“Rahm Emanuel, who is to be the all-important White House chief of staff, is a fervent "neoliberal" devoted to the doctrine that led to the present economic collapse and impoverishment of millions.”

Does he? Where is your proof you are just making phrases. “Neo-liberal” has no replaced neoconservative as the term of choice by antisemites.

“He is also an "Israel-first" Zionist…”

“Israel-first Zionist” another phrase he plagiarized from David Duke and the stormfront website.

“…who served in the Israeli army and opposes meaningful justice for the Palestinians - an injustice that is at the root of Muslim people's loathing of the US and the spawning of jihadism.”

Nonsense, it’s the hatred of Israel by people like you that is blocking a real end to the conflict.

Pilger likes to call his opponents Neo this or New-that.

I will call Pilger a Neo-leftist-Fascist a sobriquet that fits him very well as I showed above.

writeon
14 November 2008 at 07:16

It's funny in grotesque sort of way. From my perspective I've always thought of John Pilger as a rather moderate, old-fashioned, middle-of-the-road, social-democrat! I didn't real seen him as a Marxist at all, or as someone on the extreme left-wing. I must have been missing something over the years!

To call his article 'anti-semetic' is stretching things. Using the word 'Zionist' isn't racist is it? Joe Biden has termed himself a Zionist. It isn't something Pilger invented, it's just a fact, but perhaps they don't matter very much anymore? Emanuel is a Zionist too. There's nothing remotely controversial about calling him one. These two men aren't ashamed of being Zionists and supporters of Israel, so why should anyone take offence when Pilger calls them Zionists?

What is Pilger's real 'crime' then? It's simply that he's an influential and famous journalist who supports justice for the Palestinians and that he's critical of many aspects of Israeli policy, and what's wrong with that? Being critical of Israel isn't a crime in itself is it? One can also be anti-Israel if one chooses. There surely can't exist an absolute demand that one simply has to support Israel without question, or be called anti-semetic or racist?

Most of the above criticisms of Pilger are purely destructive and so over-the-top, they are ridiculous. It's like there's a posse waiting for anything that Pilger writes, and they charge forward and attack what he's written regardless of the subject matter or the actual content. It's like clockwork, a very brutal and ignorant clockwork machine, designed to destroy and not debate.

Of course it's not about rational or civilized debate at all. It's a form of warfare using words as weapons on the battlefield. Destroy Pilger, the ends justify the means, no matter what defend Israel and smash those who criticize her!

Toby
14 November 2008 at 07:50

"What is Pilger's real 'crime' then? It's simply that he's an influential and famous journalist who supports justice for the Palestinians and that he's critical of many aspects of Israeli policy, and what's wrong with that?"

Bull, you don't know how to read "write on."

Blaiming Israel for JIhadist terrorism is wrong and it is antisemitic.

So he conjuring up a Zionist conspiracy in the US.

Most Americans support Israel. There is no consipiracy there.

Then there is the blatant anti-Black racism in his article.

His pretenence that Martin Luther King would have supported his views on Israel is also wrong.

One could go on.

Pilger's article is a pack of lies from beginning to end.

Claddach
14 November 2008 at 08:00

John Pilger describes the 1960's Kennedy assassination writing of Penn Jones Jnr editor of the Midlothian Mirror as " journalism as it had been before corporate journalism" and he goes on to say that Penn Jones Jnr "Week after week, painstakingly assembled evidence that all but demolished the official version of Kennedy's murder." Really. Penn Jones was one of the first crackpots who felt the United States government was behind the assassination - probably a conspiracy involving military intelligence. He always thought LBJ and the CIA was behind it somehow. No evidence of course. Somewhat similar to Pilger's own work. I suppose that's why it takes one crackpot conspiracy theorist to recognise and praise another crackpot conspiracy theorist. What next John. Who shot Martin Luther King? Bobby Kennedy? JR?

writeon
14 November 2008 at 08:52

Using 'anit-Semtic' as a smear tactic everytime Pilger writes something critical about Israel, is monotonous and loses its effect after a while. It's so tiresome.

Pilger didn't say that Israel is responsible for Jihadists terrorism, and even if he had, it wouldn't be anti-Semetic. He wrote that the US support for Israel and the denial of justice for the Palestinians is the root cause of the problem. One can choose to disagree with him, but his opinion, and he isn't alone in this, cannot be classified as anti-Semetic.

Pilger isn't keen on Colin Powell, or large sections of the black middle-class who've 'joined the system', that doesn't mean one is 'racist' or 'anit-black'. It isn't a criticism of a 'race' but of a class. Surely one is allowed to criticise Black politicians without being smeared with the label of racist?

One of my friends teaches history in Israel in Tel Aviv. He expresses views pretty much in line with Pilger's. Granted he is a 'Marxist', but I find it difficult to think of him as 'anti-semtic', he's just a professional historian. When other Jews/Israelies call him 'a self-loathing Jew' and a traitor, it hurts him everytime, even though he's used to it by now. He's concerned that the extreme right-wing in Israel is becoming 'unhinged' and moving closer towards using violence against those who disagree with them and the direction Israel is moving in. This fear is justified.

Dissent and criticism are part of what makes democracy healthy and helps it work properly. In a democracy one can criticise individuals and individual countries as much as one likes. No politicians are out-of-bounds. No country is 'holy' and untouchable. This absurd idea, that any criticism of Israel is, per definition, anti-Semetic, is ridiculous in the extreme.

It's an attempt to crush debate, undemocratic and at root, fundamentally totalitarian in nature, and only illustrates why my Israeli friend is so fearful about the right-wing threat to Israel's future.

Dragon
14 November 2008 at 08:56

The Jews make up just 2% of the US population, yet two thirds of the Democrat Party funding and one third of Republican Party funding is provided by them.

The above is fact, however whenever it is mentioned Jewish groups start accusing people of being anti-semitic, and websites like this one start deleting the posts.

Unfortunatley the situation in the UK is worse, where the majority of MP across all three main parties and the PM are members of the Zionist Friends of Israel group. It is widely accepted within political circles that unless you join or bow to this group you will be blocked from holding any meaningful ministerial post.

No doubt this post will be moved shortly by Martin Bright and his fellow Zionists.

explodingbadger
14 November 2008 at 08:59

"“Just because someone criticizes Israel or an Israeli or a black man doesn't make them a Jew hater or racist or Marxist.”

In the case of PIlger it makes him all of the above. "

But there is no logic in that and to anyone with half a brain its obvious he is not.

I may as well say toby is a Maoist. just saying it doesn't make it so you have to have some logic behind it.

"Blaming Israel for JIhadist terrorism is wrong and it is antisemitic. "

No its obviously not antisemitic. Merely criticizing Israel doesn't make someone antisemitic. Its total BS with no logic behind it.

You are just throwing around insults and to be honest its childish. If you dont have some logical argument why bother.

explodingbadger
14 November 2008 at 09:03

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2356.shtml

"Claiming that all critiques of Zionism are anti-Semitic based on the force Martin Luther King Jr.'s words on the matter fails as an argument on many different levels. "

Krisco
14 November 2008 at 11:08

For those who do not share Plger's pessimism about the "change" Obama & the Democrats were talking about the (il)legality of Bush's 'bailout plan', see Naomi Klein's comment in todays Guardian here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/14/obama-wh...

Plus ca change!

Krisco..

Flat Eric
14 November 2008 at 12:36

I don't think John Pilger is anti-semitic. But his ‘journalism’ is descending into an increasingly incoherent set of rants that deny the legitimacy of any political opinions other than his own.

Lots of people would see Penn Jones as a slightly nutty conspiracy theorist: he published six volumes of his book on the JFK assassination, accusing the establishment of around 150 murders relating to it. I support his right to think and publish these things (as he did) but they’re not necessarily true.

Does Pilger believe both that the assassination of JFK was a security establishment plot, as Penn does, and that JFK was a warmonger, as Pilger has said? I can't help feeling that if Obama were assassinated, John Pilger would see another establishment conspiracy, despite lambasting Obama as a creature of that establishment.

And how can Americans be brainwashed into voting for the corporate state, but somehow lose that brainwashed state in all these surveys he cites? Who conducts all these surveys anyway, in the supposedly conformist corporate state that suppresses dissent? Pilger is always doing this: he claims that the truth cannot be published, then cites published examples.

Still, at least this time John Pilger has not allowed his fury that black people might have the temerity not to share his political opinions to push him over into explicitly racist abuse. As far as I know, he has never expressed the slightest remorse for his ‘Uncle Tom’ article during the presidential race. But of course, when Pilger uses racially charged epithets, it’s not racist because he’s a “good person”, not like when “bad people” use them.

I probably share a lot of John Pilger’s opinions about public policy, domestic and foreign. But I do think that others have legitimate opinions too, and hold them sincerely. That’s a wishy-washy liberal position, I know, but it’s democratic. Pilger’s attitude seems to me to be essentially totalitarian.

Toby
14 November 2008 at 14:07

explodingbadger

"But there is no logic in that and to anyone with half a brain its obvious he is not.

I may as well say toby is a Maoist. just saying it doesn't make it so you have to have some logic behind it."

Your post is incoherent. The use of logic can't cover up falsehoods.

There is a difference between logic and truth and if you can't tell the difference you don't know what logic is.

As for me being a Maoist that's a dumb invention of your own.

I despise all leftist Marxists as well as well as right wing fascists.

I am if anything a liberal and yes a proud Zionist. Holding these two ideals would make a mortal enemy of Pilger and his cronies.

Tant pire!

Toby
14 November 2008 at 14:08

Naomi Klein is another lefty loony without any knowledge of economics.

Lile Pilger and his ilk all she does is rant.

writeon
14 November 2008 at 15:48

Toby,

Why are you so angry? Why do you think insulting people is an effective debating technique? Why do you live in a world of absolutes? Naomi Kein doesn't 'rant' by any commonly accepted definition of the word. Or maybe this comment is a 'rant' in your world?

You seem so emotional and agressive, why? Isn't Pilger allowed to dissent from your world view at all? It's not as if he's particularly influential compared to the great mass of Western journalists who promote the establishment line about a whole range of subjects.

What does he get here in the NS, a column every few weeks, surely an alternative view is acceptable? He's almost a token. The last of a dying breed. There are things about his writing style that I don't like, but I don't feel threatened by him or his views. They seem quite moderate to me, fairly middle-of-the-road.

I'd like a public apology from you please for calling me a liar. Show me where I've 'lied' if you be so kind. I'm unaware where I've 'lied' in my comments about Pilger. If I have 'lied' due to ignorance or by mistake, please show me where. Surely just calling me a liar is grossly unfair and defamation without evidence or examples?

You state that I can't read. This is patently untrue. I may not read the way you want me to read. I may not read what you want me to read. I may not understand what I read the way you think I should, but I can asure you, I can read.

I'm being very gentle with you here, despite your obvious contempt for me and seemingly anyone who doesn't share your way of looking at the world. If you think that anger, and insults make your writing style and arguments better, you are sadly mistaken.

I could choose to reply to you in your own style, using your crude insults and methods. I toyed with the idea, but what would be the point of me destroying you with words? It would be silly and a not particularly positive use of my time. When you calmed down, I look forward to reading your apology.

Carl Jones
14 November 2008 at 16:07

The reason why Toby is so angry, is that he`s working to a quota.:)

gaza_child
14 November 2008 at 16:13

toby

please read 'A ttime to speak out' from independent jewish voices edited by Anne Karpf et al..verso press

and then take another look at yourself.....

Digital Commuter
14 November 2008 at 18:15

In my earlier post I alluded to a letter supposedly written by Dr. King about anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

I have since been told that the letter though not the views were fraudulent.

In the interest of accuracy I am posting this information here.

Dr. King did believe and express his view that anti-Zionism was antisemitism but he did not write that letter.

Camera.org has posted a description of the hoax:

“Hoax: Martin Luther King's "Letter to an anti-Zionist Friend"”

More form Camera.org

“FACT:

“CAMERA's research indicates that the “Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend” allegedly written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is a hoax, although the basic message of the letter indeed reflects the sentiments of Dr. King. For example, in a 1968 appearance at Harvard, Dr. King said: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews, you are talking anti-Semitism.” [ from “The Socialism of Fools: The Left, the Jews and Israel” by Seymour Martin Lipset; Encounter magazine, December 1969, p. 24. ].”

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=21&x_art...

I am strong believer in the verification of all claims and it would have been wrong of me not to mention my own mistake.

Toby
14 November 2008 at 18:19

gaza_child “please read 'A ttime to speak out' from independent jewish voices edited by Anne Karpf et al..verso press

and then take another look at yourself.....”

You take a good long look at yourself “gaza child.”

“Independent Jewish voices” are only independent of Judaism. They are not independent of the left not its antisemitism which they seem to endorse.

The truth about Gaza can be found in the Hamas antisemitic covenant. Read it and then take a longer look at yourself.

Toby
14 November 2008 at 18:40

writeon “Why are you so angry? Why do you think insulting people is an effective debating technique? Why do you live in a world of absolutes?”

You crude use of leading and rhetorical questions notwithstanding, “writeon” it is you lives in a world of “absolutes!”

You and Pilger and people who think that the Jews are the cause of jihadist terrorism in the world; people who think that Israel is responsible for the problems in the Middle East are the angry people who think in absolutes.

Pilger hasn’t backed up any one of his accusations against Americans, against Jews against African Americans with facts. None!

Care do so for him?

gaza_child
14 November 2008 at 19:03

Toby

Please read 'A time to speak out' from 'Independent Jewish Voices'

Edited by Anne Karpf et al... Veso Press

and look at yourself again.....

writeon
14 November 2008 at 19:22

Toby,

You are very angry, bordering on... on what, that's the question. I simply don't understand why your so angry and use such agressive and intemperate language. Or maybe you'll accuse me of 'lying' again about this. You often sound like a hysterical teenager.

My questions to you are not rhetorical. They are straightforward questions. What's rhetorical about asking you why your so angry, when you so clearly are very, very, angry with me and Pilger?

You don't really seem to fully understand the words you use. It isn't a leading question when I say that you insult people. Calling someone a liar is an insult, especially when you don't provide a shred of evidence for your accusation. Surely this is obvious?

The you say it's I that live in a world of absolutes. Once again this is patently and demonstrably incorrect. It's just you calling names like a child in the playground.

Then you lump me in with Pilger and put words in my mouth which I haven't said. You invent false arguments, which I haven't used, so you can demolish them, very impressive! That's me being ironic.

Let's get this straight. I'll use very simple language, so you won't be able to distort what I say.

I don't think that 'the Jews' are responsible for all the trouble in the Middle East or the world. Jews are not resonsible for terrorism directed at Israel. The Jews aren't collectively guilty for anything, collectively they are just like any other people, good and bad, not better, no worse. I am not anti-Semetic, given my family background, which contains Austrian Jews, that would not be possible.

However, there are central aspects of Israeli policy which are incredibly dangerous, short-sighted, counter-productive, cynical, violent, ultra-nationalist, disasterous, vicious, discriminatory, and if pursued appear to be leading the entire country towards disaster. Views which are held by many of my Israeli friends and aquaintances.

Be more specific about Pilger's accusations and I'll answer them.

writeon
14 November 2008 at 20:01

When I was in Israel, we talked a lot about the conflict between the two peoples, Palestinians and Jews. It was a long an complex discussion. There was a lot of nuance, at least among the Jewish intellectuals I talked to.

One thing we talked about a lot, was the desire of some Jews, both inside and more often outside Israel, to take out a 'patent' on what it means to be 'really Jewish' or an Israeli. It seemed that some groups want to define what it means to be an Israeli Jew and force others to accept their narrow view. Mostly these people are right-wing nationalists.

The people I met didn't want to be told how to live or what to think, or about what it means to be an Israeli, or a Jew, or what to think about Palestinians, or anything else. They wanted the freedom to be individual human beings first, and 'Jews' second. At least that's the impression I got.

There's a terrible, tragic, perverse irony here. The Nazies invented the racial myth that there was a 'Jewish Race' and a stereotypical Jewish type, it was in their blood, all that kind of nonsense. Nonsense that led to savagry and barbarism and slaughter of the innocent. Yet, the ultra-nationalists in Israel appear, in some strange way to agree with Hitler, that the Jewish people are 'special and different' and are a 'chosen people' and apart from others, with specific rights denied to others. This is very strange and disturbing. As we weren't really sure there were a people one could meaningfully call 'the Jews'. In the same way as it's difficult to talk about 'the British', or 'the Americans'. Obviosly the ultra-nationalist have inverted or reversed Nazi racial mythology and turn it into something positive and not negative. This is perfectly understandable, but it still makes me uneasy because of the European example of what happens when ultra-nationalism goes completely crazy.

I should add that this idea isn't all mine, but came up in conversation with my Israeli, historian, friend.

writeon
14 November 2008 at 22:12

Toby,

I suppose you do realize that you are going over the top, don't you? But then, again probably not.

Granted Carl can seem a bit 'ecentric' at times, lol, but I'm not convinced he's really anti-semetic, not really. I believe he just has thing about a conspiracy involving Jewish bankers who want to rule the world! I'm not sure one can say he hates all Jews because he dislikes Jewish bankers, lots of people dislike bankers these days don't they?

But I imagine Carl is capable of defending himself. What concerns me most is your continual assertions with no evidence that I am 'Jewhating liar' and 'anti-semetic' when I have continually told you I'm not. Why do you insist on repeating this calumny?

I don't hate Jews or Israelies. I don't hate Israel. I have Jewish friends in England and several other countries and in Israel. Granted they aren't exactly your style, but I can live with that. Why do you keep saying I hate Jew when I don't and there is not a shred of evidence that I do? I challenge you, Toby. Find some place where I've said something anit-semetic or hateful about Jews, do it, or retract and apologize, isn't that fair?

If you accuse someone surely they are allowed to defend themselves and know what precisely they done or said that can be defined as 'jewhating' and lies?

Anyway, if I was anti-semetic or a vile jewhater, why would I not say it out loud? What would be the point of lying here? After all we are all hinding behind tags aren't we? I could say anything about Israel or Jewish people and get away with it. Why would I choose to hide my anti-semetism or hatred of Jews. Wouldn't I be as proud of it as you are of being a Zionist, whatever that really means in your case.

My wife is half-Jewish, not that it's really relevant. My great grandmother was partly Jewish and lived in Vienna. I've had girlfriends who were Jewish, but definitely not like you, if you really are Jewish at all. You don't seem like the Jewish people I've come into contact with.

writeon
14 November 2008 at 22:43

toby,

I just getting really curious about you. Are you really, honestly, Jewish, as much as I am even? We had a joke at home that I'd probably have ended in a camp if I'd been born in Austria in the thirties, even though in my younger days I looked like an Aryan poster boy.

Have you ever been to Israel? Do you have any Jewish friends? What about Israelies? Do you live in Israel? If you don't, why not, given your views? Don't you want to defend Israel in more than words?

What's wrong with asking these questions? There is nothing to be ashamed of. I'm not ashamed that I've been to Israel three times and have friends there,why should I be? I liked most of the people I met, but then I suppose I was spoiled. I met educated, sophisticated and intelliegent people, pretty much like all my friends who don't live in Israel.

Your tactic seems to be to scream and label people 'liars' and 'jewhaters' who have the audacity not to agree with you or what you think about Israel. This is a very bad tactic if you want people to take your arguments and views seriously. It's surprising you don't appriciate this. The viciousness of your attacks on me, the anger, the totalitarian sureness that you are right, undermines your credibility in my view, and illustrates how wary and concerned one should be about people who hold your views, which seem rather extreme to me.

In a way you seem like a parody of a paranoid Zionist who sees anti-semites everywhere and Jewhaters where they don't really exist, like with me. You're so extreme in your choice of language that you actually damage the cause of Israel and the concept of Zionism, which you don't have a patent on and cannot control and mold to your will. Thankfully not all Jews or Israelies are like you. You are in a minority of one, in my opinion.

But Is this in fact your true goal, to damage the image of Israel by taking on an exteme 'Jewish' persona, a ghastly stereotype of a radical Zionist, when in reality your are something else?

writeon
14 November 2008 at 22:57

Toby,

I write for a living. I am a writer. It's as easy for me as breathing. I can't stop. I do it all the time. I'm curious about you as a character. I'm fishing for more information so I can use bits of you in a novel about the Middle East and spies. They may only be spy stories, but they sell well, even in Israel!

I don't know any Hebrew, you caught me out, I admit it! Though, of course, I never said I did. It's difficult to learn Hebrew after a couple of trips to Israel, even for someone like me!

I'm just waiting for you to retract your 'lie' that I'm a Jewhater and anti-semetic, hurry up, man. You actually remind me of a German I once heard about. They asked him to define what a Jew was. This was difficult because the rules were both absurd and very complex. Finally he replied, 'A Jew is what I say he is'. And this seems to be pretty much the kind of logic you use when you smear me with the label anti-semetic - pathetic really.

Gideon Polya
14 November 2008 at 23:45

I signed the Avaaz.org congratulatory letter to President-elect Barack Obama with its modest humanitarian wish list (see: http://gpolya.newsvine.com/_news/2008/11/13/2106200-global-a... ) .

However there was space on the Avaaz.org form for ones OWN personal wish list (see: http://www.avaaz.org/en/million_messages_to_obama/ ) and this was MINE: The US under an Obama Administration should urgently institute Nobel Laureate Al Gore's demand for 100% renewable energy within 10 years; urgently provide Health Care security for 45 million Americans lacking medical insurance; adopt the call of top US climate scientists such as NASA's Dr James Hansen for urgent reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide to less than 350 parts per million; stop the global avoidable mortality holocaust involving 16 million avoidable deaths each year due to poverty; and, with its associates, should withdraw immediately, with fully costed Reparations, from all Occupied Territories, including Occupied Haiti, Occupied Somalia, Occupied Syria, Occupied Diego Garcia and from the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories where post-invasion excess deaths total 0.3 million, 2 million and 4-6 million, respectively; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million, 0.6 million and 2.1 million, respectively; and refugees total 7 million, 6 million and 4 million, respectively - genocides as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention.

Re “anti-Semitism” and the criminal, racist occupation of Semitic countries (such as Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and Palestine), I take my cue from outstanding, anti-racist, humanitarian Jewish scholars such as Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT) who has described the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a “Prison” and the abusive Occupation as “just the murder of a nation, the end of Palestine“ (see: http://www.democracynow.org/2006/7/14/noam_chomsky_u_s_backe... ) .

Gideon Polya
15 November 2008 at 00:35

Of course one notes that Occupied Afghans are "culturally" Semitic. Further outstanding Jewish American scholars who have commented on the immorality of invasion and occupation of foreign countries include Professor Bertell Ollman (New York University) who has stated that “the Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis” (see: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/resignation.php ) and Professor Jared Diamond, who in his exceptional book “Collapse” (Prologue, p10, Penguin 2007 edition), unequivocally refers to the “moral principle, namely that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate, or exterminate another people.”

It is glaringly obvious that fanatical Zionist justification of invasion, occupation, devastation and ethnic cleansing of the Holy Land is at variance with the views of many outstanding anti-racist, humanitarian Jewish scholars around the world e.g. Professors Chomsky, Ollman, Finkelstein, Pappe, Reinhart, Singer, Rose etc - as well as violating International Laws and Humanitarian conventions.

Given that Barack Obama is a creature of the right-wing US Establishment one seriously doubts that his policies will depart from over 2 centuries of violent and racist American traditions and suddenly become consistent with such fundamental laws and norms.

jimdenham
15 November 2008 at 02:57

Why not just repeat your racist description of Obama as a "glossy uncle Tom", Pilger?

Shriber
15 November 2008 at 03:16

An analysis of Pilger’s attack on Obama “Don't believe the hype”

It begin with an attack on “objective journalism” which he sees as fostering “mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around those whose "professionalism" and "objectivity" carried an unspoken obligation to ensure that news and opinion were in tune with an establishment consensus, regardless of the truth.”

For Pilger objectivity is not the same as “truth,” he further sees its professional pursuit as being in the service of the liberal power structure in America.

He offers as an example of the kind of engaged journalism he admires the work of Penn Jones Jr who “was the antithesis of the Texas stereotype. Having exposed the racists of the John Birch Society, his printing press had been repeatedly firebombed. Week after week, he painstakingly assembled evidence that all but demolished the official version of Kennedy's murder.”

Hence Pilger form the beginning sets up a binary dichotomy between good journalism which goes against the powers that be and institutional journalism which looks for objectivity but doesn’t investigate stories that challenge the liberal power structure in America.

Pilger is very good at setting up dichotomies of the good guys and the bad guys and his article is replete with such binarism.

A quick look at the objective facts, though will flatten his binary house of cards:

Penn Jones not only wrote about the Kennedy assassination he was obsessed with it. He wrote that a government conspiracy was behind the killing of the former President. From 1967 till 1980 he wrote “Forgive My Grief” parts 1, (1967) 2 (1967) and 3 1967) and then in 1980 “Continuing Inquiry.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Jones,_Jr.

In this he was not alone, of course, there are dozens of “journalist” and writers obsessed with the assassination. None of their efforts have yielded any concrete proof that anyone but Oswald murdered John F Kennedy.

While it may seem curious that Pilger would fixate on a minor Kennedy assassination buff the reasons become pretty obvious when we read that Pilger himself seems to blame the Johnson administration for his murder and not only his death, but the death of Martin Luther King also:

“The courageous Martin Luther King recognised this when he linked the human rights of black Americans with the human rights of the Vietnamese, then being slaughtered by a "liberal" Democratic administration.”

Pilger’s aim then is to indict liberalism which he sees as being as much responsible for the war in Iraq as George W Bush.

Pilger also mentions Studs Terkel as a journalist he admires but “the Jewish” Terkel, a radio personality and writer rather than a journalist is there to acquit Pilger of the charge of antisemitism when he will later on offer his intemperate attacks on Rahm Emmanuel and Vice President elect Joe Biden:

“The vice-president-elect, Joe Biden, is a proud warmaker and Zionist. Rahm Emanuel, who is to be the all-important White House chief of staff, is a fervent "neoliberal" devoted to the doctrine that led to the present economic collapse and impoverishment of millions. He is also an "Israel-first" Zionist who served in the Israeli army and opposes meaningful justice for the Palestinians - an injustice that is at the root of Muslim people's loathing of the US and the spawning of jihadism.”

This intemperate and yes antisemitic outburst is of a piece with his indictment of liberalism.

Liberalism one would guess is an evil because it doesn’t deal in binary dichotomies. Liberals tend to see the in-between in moral issues. Pilger’s mode of thinking is then not that different from those right wing extremist who also divide the world into us and them, good and bad.

Against Pilger it can be pointed out that not Penn Jones but Robert Upshur Woodward and Carl Bernstein whose objective and professional reporting brought down a corrupt President Nixon offers the example of professional journalism at its best.

Pilger also gets both Martin Luther King and General Powell. They are not opposing figures but people who worked for both the betterment of the lives of African Americans and reconciliation between the races and they did it out of love for their country. Neither of them embraced the dead-endedness of dichotomous thinking.

M. L. King’s message is lost on Pilger: for he was above a liberal thinker imbued with enlightenment values and he believed that those values could best be fulfilled through the strengthening of liberal institutions not their abolition.

King’s tragic death hastened the day when these values became tangible. Ironically, it was the liberal Johnson administration (which Pilger wildly and without proof blamed for the death Of Dr King) that helped enact civil rights legislation which made the election of an Obama Presidency possible.

This too is a reason why Pilger hates Obama and has to take refuge behind vile and conspiratorial accusations: he is the symbol of the triumph of liberalism.

Gideon Polya
15 November 2008 at 05:30

Why do Zionists so typically descend to false ad hominem abuse? I am an economically conservative, humanist, anti-racist, anti-totalitarian democrat and accordingly the Stalinist jibe above is utterly false, offensive and defamatory.

Indeed after our homes were emptied by the Nazis in Hungary in1944-1945, they were appropriated by the Stalinist Communists post-war, this specifically anti-Semitic seizure being recently endorsed by the pro-Zionist EU to permit Hungarian entry to the EU. Further my grandmother's cousin Dr Edith Bone, a British citizen, medical doctor and journalist was imprisoned by the Stalinists in abusive solitary confinement conditions for 7 years without trial or British intervention (see her remarkable book "Seven Years Solitary").

The unsubstantiated diminution and slagging of the outstanding anti-racist, humanitarian Jewish scholars named above is extremely offensive, and done with the courage of anonymity. Such false and offensive slagging of outstanding Jewish scholars was in the past the typical behaviour of people described as anti-Semites but is now the regular behaviour of Zionist extremists.

Understanding the Other and defending the Other are implicit in the core messages of "zero tolerance for racism", "never again to anyone" and "bear witness" from the Jewish Holocaust (6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation), the World War 2 Western Theatre Holocaust in general (30 million Slav, Jewish and Roma dead) and the World War 2 Eastern Theatre Holocaust (35 million Chinese dead under the Japanese, 1937-1945 and 6-7 million Indian dead from the man-made Bengali Holocaust in British India) (see: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/bengalfamine_programme.h... ).

Unfortunately these core injunctions from the WW2 Holocausts are grossly violated by the warmongering Bush-ites, neo-Bush-ites and Zionists complicit in anti-Semitic genocides in the American Empire.

Will Obama violate these scared injunctions too?

FreedomLand
15 November 2008 at 05:37

"Powell..... was considered ideal to lie to the United Nations about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Condaleezza Rice..... has worked assiduously to deny the Palestinians justice..."

Yes, lets get this straight, John Pilger, black Americans are now interested in POWER, not human rights. The current generations have become like the oppressed working class whites of the 1930's. That is, they see themselves as the same as whites but mostly without the economic priveleges. Interesting things could happen when they start wielding that power.

Thus things will not and cannot work out well and the uSA is now utterly divided - again on racial lines. But the "Obama mania" had more in common with the horror movie "The Ring" as with his campaign logo and was odiously politically correct as regards color but not sex. As we know, there is nothing new about any of these people in Washington. They are the same old ghouls dressed up in fresh outfits.

FreedomLand
15 November 2008 at 07:02

Poor Toby. The blacks in the USA don't love what the whites dished out and they are sick of their self-righteousness. What IS happening, though, is that the whites will become an ethnic minority in the next 40 years or so anyway. In other words, it will be Latinos, Africans and Asians who will run the country.

That IS the future for past white "settler societies" and will happen eventually in Australia too despite their pretentious illusions of a white mans' wonderland in the SW Pacific. Lets leave the Jews out of it, though, as they have been manipulated intentionally since the 1940's to wedge the Arabs, Turks and Persians.

Gideon Polya
15 November 2008 at 07:11

More Zionist obfuscation, defamation, name-calling and offensive abuse.

By way of a reductio ad absurdum, let us suppose that Zionists decided that Britain was the Promised Land. Thus outstanding Jewish History expert Professor Sir Martin Gilbert lists 20 places suggested as potential sites for a Jewish Settlement (see "Other Zions", p95, "Jewish History Atlas", Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1969).

Indeed for founder of racist Zionism, Theodor Herzl, in his seminal 1896 book "The Jewish State" it was a toss up between Palestine and Argentina (the Indigenous inhabitants of which had been brutally exterminated in the 19th century holocaust witnessed in part by Charles Darwin).

One would suppose that such a proposed "British Israelite" Zionist invasion, occupation, devastation of Britain and ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous Anglo-Celtic inhabitants of Britain would not go down too well with these Indigenous Inhabitants, the ICC, the UN, the ICJ, outstanding anti-racist, humanitarian Jewish scholars around the world (e.g. Professors Chomsky, Ollman, Finkelstein, Pappe, Reinhart, Singer, Rose etc) nor indeed with ANY decent human beings around the World.

Pro-Zionist warmonger and Kenyan Holocaust ignorer Obama could well consider the implications of this reductio ad absurdum.

writeon
15 November 2008 at 09:14

What's telling and very revealing, in my opinion, is that Israeli and Jewish academics and intellectuals that don't subscribe to a very narrow set of nationalist parameters, and criticize aspects of Israeli soiceity, are routinely characterized as 'mad' 'insane' 'liars' and worse, just because they hold different views and don't support the central tenets of ultra-nationalist, Zionism. Especially its 'foundation myths' which are common to all countries and these kinds of movements. But questioning these 'myths' is a characteristic of almost all mature societies.

Ultra-nationalist Zionists seem incredibly intolerant of anybody who questions their world view, especially if they are other Jews, they even begin to question and imply that these people aren't really proper Jews at all, only the nationalists are.

Toby
15 November 2008 at 10:00

Gideon Polya "By way of a reductio ad absurdum, let us suppose that Zionists decided that Britain was the Promised Land."

The ignorant Polya is now showing his true colors as well as his ignorance.

There was only one land in which Jews wanted to settle their historic homeland.

No matter how many places in the world were offered to them they would not have accepted any of them.

"Pro-Zionist warmonger and Kenyan Holocaust ignorer Obama could well consider the implications of this reductio ad absurdum."

You are beyond pathetic. You are indecent.

All you fancy talk about the other was just so much hot air to a Stalinist antisemite like you.

Which is what I thought in the first place.

Pencils
15 November 2008 at 10:44

Is Toby 'NadavKatz''s very young daughter/grand-daughter?

Anyway, ignore it and it might go away.

writeon
15 November 2008 at 12:22

Toby,

I think people like you have to be opposed and shown for what they are, foul-mouthed fanatics, who conveniently and cynically misuse words like 'Jewhater' and 'anit-semetic' in the service of a right-wing political ideology that's got precious little to do with Zionism, Israel or what it really means to be Jewish.

What exactly entitles you to speak for all Jews? What give you the right to judge who or who isn't a true Israeli or Jew? Who do you think you are?

Do you even live in Israel? Have you ever been there? Are you in fact a fake Jew paid, paid by some Arab organiszation to bring Israel and Jews into disripute and ridicule, by chargining and smearing anyone who questions your world view, as a 'jewhater' and 'anti-semite.

I think you use of language to describe other people is sinking lower and lower, down into the gutter. All the people I know in Israel spoke english and several other languages, why is my knowlegde of Hebrew or Yiddish important or relevant? My father spoke Yiddish what does that prove about him? My wife doesn't speak any Hebrew or Yiddish, so what?

You invent catagories which you imbue with importance, yet without saying why they are important, only implying that because one doesn't comply with them, this has significance and means something.

This makes no sense at all and doesn't seem to contain any logic that gives any meaning. Do you have any idea what you are talking about, in your calmer moments?

So now I'm a 'Jew obsessed, Jew hating bigot, with a hard on for Jews' ! Don't you have any idea at all of how this makes you sound? What it tells people about your level of education and intelligence, and how you were raised? Do you think this kind of intemperate language makes your 'arguments' sound more ratioonal, cogent and impressive? Do you think your slide into the language of the gutter is pursuasive on a site like this?

I'm not going to attempt to reason with you anymore. It's impossible. A waste of time and breath.

olching
15 November 2008 at 13:36

Excellent article, John. Much appreciated. You

articulate how many of us have felt amidst the cacophony of Obamania. Thanks.

BitterGrace
15 November 2008 at 17:15

It should be obvious to anyone who's paying attention that John Pilger's assessment of Obama is accurate. The president-elect hasn't done or said one thing to suggest he plans to upset the status quo to any great degree. Most of his supporters (including me) know that he's no "epoch-changer," as the BBC called him. Starry-eyed Obamamania is primarily an affliction suffered by very young voters and non-Americans.

Most people voted for Obama for two reasons: He seems far more competent to deal with the economic crisis than McCain, and he represents a rejection of the bullheaded incompetence and post-9/11 hysteria of the Bush administration.

That said, I do think a lot of Americans will be very disappointed when they realize that there's not going to be a real withdrawal from Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan is going to escalate. Electing a guy named Barack Hussein Obama was our national flip of the finger to "War on Terror" propaganda. It'll be interesting to see how the slaughter is marketed after he takes office.

Whatever happens, I look forward to Mr. Pilger's analysis of events. I am grateful he keeps writing in spite of the sort of idiotic abuse found in many of the comments here.

Carl Jones
15 November 2008 at 17:23

Gideon; Chomsky is dangerous.

writeon; I have no intention of defending myself from the demented. Toby believes hisa heart is in the right place, as many have pointed out.

I am amazed that no one has ever blamed Churchill for not ending the war in 1941 when Rudolf Hess fkew to Scotland, with the backing of most of the German military.... of course, this view was censored the other day, by the dark forces.

MBP17
15 November 2008 at 18:43

Unfortunately ageing leftists like Pilger are just completely out of touch. Obama hasn't even taken office yet, and Pilger is dismissing him as just a continuation of the Bush Administration. But, of course Pilger couldn't burnish his hyper-negative lefty credentials if he didn't immediately attack Obama.

Most real progressives in the US aren't under any illusions about Obama, we're willing to give the man a chance and we're going to actively engage his administration and demand the changes he promised. We're not going to be like Pilger, Nader, Chomsky types and just squawk from sidelines lamely and demand perfection. The President of the United States carries the hopes of the world on his shoulders and one can't reasonably expect him to be perfect, or at least exactly like we'd want him to be, but using our democratic voice we can let our feelings be known and possibly help direct the President's policies.

There is also an underlying racism to Pilger's remarks, as if Obama, or any other minority person, can't be a free thinking individual. The minority has to be a tool of the "white elite". He can't have a mind of his own. It's kind of the attitude one takes with a child. It is a creepy kind of leftist racism that's all too common among the Pilger's of the world. Perhaps Mr. Pilger would be happier in the 1960s? He's clearly uncomfortable with independent-minded minority people who disagree with him.

Julian
15 November 2008 at 19:13

Again, here's someone who says it better than I can:

http://ollysonions.blogspot.com/2008/11/journalist-permitted...

writeon
15 November 2008 at 19:53

MBP17,

I don't agree with Pilger on lots of things, or his language at all times. As I earn my living as a moderately successful writer, I always think I could have said it better!

But are you really sure he's a racist? Isn't calling someone a racist a pretty serious charge? In this article he criticizes Obama, not *all* minority persons, just one individual. He doesn't write that *all* people of colour are subservient to the dominant, white, political establishment, does he? Of course he doesn't. He didn't say that anywhere. At least I can't find it in this article. Did he even imply such an attitude?

Did he write that any other minority person, can't be a thinking individual? He didn't write this. Did he state that Obama, or any other minority person, can't be a free thinking individual? No he didn't. You wrote that, but you say this is what he means, this is what he thinks, what underlies his statements, and not just about Obama, but about all minority people!

Is this fair to Pilger? To not just put words in his mouth, but thoughts in his head, and vile ones, without any real, concrete evidence, based on the words contained in his article. I mean, I can't find these words in his article anywhere. Aren't you on very shaky ground here, 'interpreting' his words to mean something else that what is actually written?

Clearly, obviously, from what he's written, Pilger is critical and quite angry about a handful of black politicians who he believes have sold-out to the White political establishment and Wall Street. One can find this repeatedly in his pieces, isn't that enough for you? One can agree or disagree with him on this complex issue, but does this attitude towards named Black political leaders, allow one to assert that this is his attitude to all Blacks?

If he wrote the things you allege, I would agree with you, he would be, both very stupid and a racist, attacking a whole people, blaming them all for the 'sins' of their leaders, only he doesn't.

writeon
15 November 2008 at 20:12

Julian,

I just popped over to the site you linked to. What a surprise I got. It was pure rubbish, if that's not being too harsh.

Once again it wilfully distorts what Pilger's actually written, turning his words on their head and inverting them in an outrageous fashion. It's not even effective propaganda because any half-educated and half-sentient person can see through it for what it really is, a politically motivate smear.

What's the matter with you people? You must think everybody is both stupid and credulous as hell, to think this stuff is effective, anti-Pilger propagada. You're simply amateurs at it. Propaganda has to have some elements of truth in it and it can't be all lies. Also it shouldn't reek of propaganda, people smell a rat really quickly. I wonder if I should write some anti-Pilger propaganda to show you how it's really done?

writeon
15 November 2008 at 20:51

From many of the absurd, unfair, dishonest and, frankly, juvenile comments relating to Pilger's article about Obama and who he's chosen to fill places in his administration, a distinct pattern is discernable.

Criticism of individual politicians, their policies and aspects of their countries, are inflated maliciously from the particular to the general, in an effort to 'prove' the charge of 'racism' with no concrete evidence to back these claims up.

It's petty one can't sue people for being incompetent and unintelligent and not just slanderers!

Specific criticism of named politicians is twisted in a vain attempt to show racism for an entire people where their is none. How easy it is to expose such rubbish for what it is. Criticism of Black politicians is racist. Criticism of Israeli politicians is racist. Criticism of the USA is anti-American. Criticism of Israel is anti-semetic. Aren't you ashamed, don't you have any honour at all? Misusing and abusing these concepts? And if that smear doesn't work, there's always the memory of the Holocaust to drag out and prostitute for base political purposes and with total cynicism. Don't you have concept of decency? Using the dead, the innocent, to make cheap political points in a vicious propaganda war? How truly pathetic!

It's truly hard for me to understand why on earth you bother with this kind of useless propaganda when you are so bad at it. All you succeed in doing is make yourself look ridiculous and without ability in a field which is so obviously beyond you, both intellectually and creatively. Why not leave it to the professionals? There's enough of them after all.

Carl Jones
15 November 2008 at 23:23

writeon, sorry old mate, but is the last paragaph aimes at me? I need an answer before I decide to LOL.

elmadre
16 November 2008 at 06:11

People claim to want peace....but how can there be peace without financial equality?

money is power

peace is equality of power!

nawawimohamad
16 November 2008 at 08:52

No matter what, the US will always be the same, being the most hated nation on earth.

Mr Danger
16 November 2008 at 11:25

Pilger, who busily damned the US throughout the Vietnam war, still decided it was best to jump on the last US Army helicopter out of Saigon when his communist heroes arrived. Since then he hasn't said a bad word about them. You see Pilger knows what's best for brown people, and that's for them to be ruled by a communist dictatorship. Speaking truth to power? Not a coward like Pilger.

That's why he's so upset when Obama steps out of line. Pilger will decide what Obama is allowed and not allowed to think , and, unashamed racist that he is, will immediately call him a "glossy Uncle Tom" if he dares try anything else.

Call Pilger what you want, just don't call him a journalist.

Carl Jones
16 November 2008 at 12:21

The level of censorship is staggering. I wonder, what do THEY have planned?lol

FRANKSPANGLE
16 November 2008 at 18:03

COMPLETELY agree with writeon here. Julian please do not link to Zionist PROPOGANDA which is rubbish.

a.m.r.
16 November 2008 at 19:17

How can anyone who has sufficient knowledge of history and the world take PIlger seriously?

He presents an extremely one-sided view of the world. He clearly lies, distorts and ignores facts that do not suit him.

Michael Green, chairman of Carlton Television, which broadcast Pilger's documentary "Palestine Is Sill The Issue": "factually incorrect, historically incorrect," and a "tragedy for Israel so far as accuracy is concerned.".

An essay "The lies and hypocrisy of the America-hating John Pilger" :

http://www.brookesnews.com/061704pilger.html

TerryB
16 November 2008 at 19:34

Hmm AMR.

Has Pilger been successfully sued when he "lies, distorts and ignores facts"""..."?

No I thought not - so he knows what he's writing/talking about.

Now, Pilger has every right to be cynical about Obama, based on recent US Democrats' history and looking at the team that surrounds him.

However, I am willing to suspend my own cynicism and believe the hype.

Why? I believe Obama is as left-wing as your ever likely to get in modern America, and that he has cleverly done whatever is necessary to get elected - and unfortunately that means sometimes playing to the powerful Christian right & Zionist elements.

But I don't believe he will allow himself to be manipulated by them now he's in.I don't know why I believe that, I just do.

But I can fully understand the cynicism and just hope for once that Pilger et al are wrong.

jimdenham
16 November 2008 at 22:25

Pilger is simply factually wrong about Emanuel having served in the IDF: he didn't. So much for Pilgers' alleged research and accuracy. But, anyway, if Emanuel *had* served in the IDF...so what? Or are all you "anti-imperialist" internationists concerned all of a sudden about "dual loyalties"?

a.m.r.
16 November 2008 at 23:20

Hi TerryB

Except for cases of slander etc., I'm not aware of any journalist ever being sued for lying. Pilger's usual targets, the US and Israel, are unlikely themselves to sue.

Whether he was sued or not, the articlle I linked to seems to demonstrate duplicity on his part.

If you are interested, more posts re: Pilger:

http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2007/12/14/

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/hafa3/iraq.htm

Pilger supported the communist North Vietnamese regime during the Vietnam war.

In the words of journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto :

"Having covered the Viet Nam war over a period of five years for West German publications, I am now haunted by the role we journalists have played over there. Those of us who had wanted to find out knew of the evil nature of the Hanoi regime. We knew that, in 1956, close to 50,000 peasants were executed in North Vietnam. [As Nguyen Manh Tuong stated at the 1956 National Congress in Hanoi: ‘It is better to kill 10 innocent people then let one enemy escape.’] We knew that after the division of the country nearly 1 million North Vietnamese had fled to the South.

Many of us have seen the tortured and carved-up bodies of men, women and children executed by the Viet Cong in the early phases of the war. And many of us saw, in 1968, the mass graves of Hue, saw the corpses of thousands of civilians still festively dressed for Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. Why, for Heavens sake, did we not report these expressions of deliberate North Vietnamese strategy at least as extensively as of the Mai Lai massacre and other such isolated incidents that were definitely not part of the U.S. policy in Viet Nam? " ...

"Are we journalists not in part responsible for the death of the tens of thousands who drowned? [...] Did we not turn public opinion against them, portraying them, as one singularly ignoble cartoon did in the United States, as a bunch of pimps, whores, war profiteers, corrupt generals or, at best, outright reactionaries?"

v.b., amr

writeon
16 November 2008 at 23:23

The 'problem' with Pilger is that he writes about the Palestinians with a lot of sympathy and understanding, and he's openly critical of the policies of successive Israeli governments in occupying so much of Palestine so brutally and for so long, gradually expanding Israel to strangle and destroy the hopes and ligitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people to reæbuild their shattered homeland.

This is his 'crime' and major 'fault'. If only he'd toe the party line and shut up about Palestine he'd have a far easier time and arguably would have been far more successful in his career. He's no marginalized, yet even this isn't enough for his politically and idelogically motivated enemies, ideally they like to see him silenced for good. And for what exactly? For daring to question, dissenting and providing an alternative view of the Middle East. What's wrong with that? Only a tiny handful of Western journalists dare to question the 'realities' of the Middle East, the vast majority conform to the reasoned, establishment view of the conflict.

Considering how few people hear Pilger's voice it's extraordinary how much time the apologists for the subdugation of the Palestinians devote to attacking Pilger. It's as if they simply cannot abide even the least bit of criticism and dissent. It's amazing, considering how successful, rich, powerful and dominant Israel objectively is, that they even bother to see Pilger as 'threat' and wait like a posse ready to savage virtually everything he writes.

And they are so desparate to find fault with him that they almost become hysterical, thereby undermining the effectiveness of their unsubtle and cheap propaganda. Their anger and emotionalism, the use of insults and abuse, gross distortions, and wildly inaccurate interpretations of his writings, is mostly beneath contempt.

It's a form of warfare with words, and Pilger is the enemy, he's seen to be on the wrong side in the conflict. It's really that simple.

a.m.r.
16 November 2008 at 23:39

( In my previous post at 23:20, Uwe Siemon-Netto's words are from the magazine Encounter in 1979, via http://www.brookesnews.com/061704pilger.html. )

jimdenham
16 November 2008 at 23:40

I for one don't fault Pilger for writing about the Palestinians with "a lot of sympathy", or for being critical of "successive Israeli governments".

Both of these things need to be done by any decent journalist worthu of the name.

My ctiticism of Pilger is his obessive anti-Americanism, his "absolute" anti-Zionism that seems to call into question Israel's right to exist even within pre-1967 borders, and his softness on clerical fascism.

His present rabt about Obama seems to come down to the fact that Obama has some sympathy with Israel and has appointedc a Jewish chief of staff. I'd call Pilger's response in his 'New Statesman' article close to anti-semitism.

writeon
16 November 2008 at 23:50

Anyone who looks at the history of the Middle East over the last one hundred years cannot but be struck by its incredible complexity, especially if one begins to examine the explosive, contradictory and controversial history of Palestine/Israel.

Only a brave or foolish person dares enter this historical minefield, few emerge without being hurt.

Their are two parallel, yet interwined histories involved here. Two people's who both claim a ligitimate, moral and historical right to the same small piece of land. Two people's who have suffered and bled.

History has become a battleground in a war over truth and right and justice. Clearly there are two competing histories fighting one another for dominance, and each side has their own champions. Yet the two sides are not equal. One side is vastly stronger than the other and their version of history and justice is by far the most widespread and accepted. There's nothing odious about this it's perfectly understandable. Might makes right. That's just the way the world is.

Yet the weak, the Palestinians, despite the odds against them, refuse to disappear and accept their fate as a totally vanquished and defeated people. Though crushed militarily they haven't been anihilated morally or culturally. They exist and their existance reminds people of what happened to their country. It was wiped off the map by superior force. The country may have been destroyed, but the people still exist and that's a problem.

History is full of migrations, when a people moved into another area and took it for their own from someone else. History is full of little else. So one can hardly criticise Israel for being strong, better organised militarily and taking over territory they believe they have a special right to. It's happened for thousands of years, it's still happening and it'll happen again. But facts on the ground and military success, doesn't mean that one should accept this conquest as morally just or right, surely that's asking a lot?

a.m.r.
17 November 2008 at 00:20

writeon, what I find puzzling is that few writers (apart from Israeli commentators and sympathisers, obviously) care to remind their readers that the Palestinians, along with the neighboring Arab states, in 1948 declared and launched a war of annihilation (the first of several) against the newly-created Israeli state , with the stated purpose of taking all the land purchased by Jewish settlers, and either preferablly killing or otherwise driving all the Jews from the land. The ideological basis for this violence has roots both in imported Nazi ideas (in the 1930's) and particular readings of Islam.

All of this is extensively documents by an overwhelming number of independent sources, and cannot be denied. And it paints a very different picture of the plight of the Palestinians, tragic though it may be.

writeon
17 November 2008 at 00:21

Jimdenham,

I am trying to be as balanced and neutral as I can be about Pilger's article. I don't like all of his words and I don't, I would not have used some of them myself. I don't approve of the phrase 'glossy Uncle Tom' for example. Though Uncle Tom was a fictional character in a novel and Black radicals have used this term for decades to discribe politicians who have 'sold out' to the 'White' system, but I suppose they have right to use this term which others don't have? I think Bill Clinton could probably be decribed as an 'uncle Tom' along with Hilary, but I'm not sure I'd do it.

I don't think Pilger is anti-American. He adores America and it's people, it's culture, the landscape. However, he is, clearly very critical of the 'ruling class'. He virtually thinks their a bunch of bloodthirsty murderers! That's his opinion, but that doesn't translate into a blanket hatred for all Americans, just some of them, can that specific aversion really be inflated to cover all Americans? Surely that is unfair and clearly an inaccurate representation of his views?

I despise and have contempt for German neo-Nazies, but that doesn't mean I'm anti-German. There's a difference between an antipathy towards a group within a country and an entire people isn't there?

You say he's anti-Zionist, absolutely, but is he? I can't find these words in his writings, will you tell me where they are? If he wrote somewhere, I hate all Jews, I hate Israel and want to see it destroyed, then I'd agree with you and he obviously be a dreadful racist. Only he doesn't as far as I can see, say these things.

One can argue that he's simply too clever and subtle to say what he means, that he's trying to trick people into supporting a hidden agenda, hiding his lies, untruths and distortions, yet is this really what's going on? Doesn't that sound like a conspiracy theory? Doesn't that overestimate his abilities, considering he's so full of shit, and underestimate the intelligence of his readers?

writeon
17 November 2008 at 00:49

amr,

Thanks for not abusing me from the start. I feel like I'm in a war!

History is an ideological and ethnic battleground in the Middle East, not just in Palestine/Israel.

Historians and writers who are sympathetic to, or are Israelis, do emphasize parts of the history of the region that are wildly at odds with the Arab/Palestinian viewpoint, this is hardly surprising.

Wow, I've suddenly realized that you seem to be refering to me, when you express puzzlement as to why writers ignore aspects of the regions history!

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but you appear to imply that I'm deliberately ignoring the Israeli experience and viewpoint in order to present a biased story.

I don't think I am actually. I'm well aware of how many Israeli and others have written about the history of the conflict. The short version you related is rather typical of the origional, foundation, story, I used to learn in school. I think it's a highly partisan, establishment, Israeli view.

I read nearly everything that the Israeli 'alternative historians' have written and they present a very different story, which contradicts the 'foundation myth' on a number of key points. So, objectively, there are nuaces and radically different perspectives in Israel too, no? One can call these historians names and slander them, but can one dismiss them that easily?

History is complex and I don't believe everything I read, but I do find it interesting. Your own version of the historical 'truth' about Israel's birth, is just that, a version, open to question and examination. That's what historians do all the time all over the world, only in Israel this is incredibly and understandably filled with danger and controversy. Especially if that history was shown to be 'victors history' and not the absolute truth, what would happen to ligitimacy and right? Theoretically one might just end with 'might is right' and conquest trumps truth!

It's not just Israel. The established history of most nations is 'lies'.

writeon
17 November 2008 at 01:11

a.m.r.

I believe I may have misjudged you. Not that it matters.

You've articulated the official Israeli historical view very well in your summary. No room for doubt or nuance there. Gosh I really wish I believe History, of all things was so clear and simple and easy to understand. I must have been missing something. All those years were wasted. I could have done it all in a mere fraction of the time and understood so much more. I envy you!

At the risk of being tarred with the vile brush of anti-Semetism again, how about, if just for the sake of balance and fairness, I present the opposite view of the history of the conflict, surely that's harmless?

Palestine invaded by European refugee army determined to take over country and keep it for themselves. Attacked weaker, divided and disorganised neighbours with superior force. Used terror and ethnically cleansed thousands of Palestinian towns and villages. Slaughtering thousands who refused to leave; men, women and children. Creating millions of refugees who were illegally stopped from returning to their homes. Created official historical myth to justify blatant war of agression, bordering on 'genocide', to grap another tribes land and wealth!

Now, that's pretty harsh, and it's not necessrily true, or what I really believe. It's a version from the other side, an alternative history. One could call it lies or even propaganda. But what strikes me, putting one my 'objective' historians hat, is how close it is to your, official, Israeli version of the history. The two versions are like perverse, distorted, images in a black mirror.

a.m.r.
17 November 2008 at 02:01

writeon, thanks for responding.

Firstly, I'm not sure where in my post I called you anti-Semitic? I just mentioned that Palestine's wars of agression against Israel, and the violent anti-semitic rhetoric with which they were presented, are rarely discussed in news articles concerning the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In fact, even bringing up the subject has me being accused of regurgitating Israeli 'propaganda' by you.

The 1948 war that ended with the expulsion of the majority of Palestinians from what is now Israel, was started by the Palestinians & neighboring Arab states, as they themselves admitted on numerous public occasions.

I'm not sure whether you're aware that Benny Morris, the founder of the 'alternative' 'new historian' view, has since admitted that his thinking on the Palestinian refugee problem was wrong. He didn't have much choice, as he had shown to be not entirely honest in his presentation of material. If you are interested, please do read Efraim Karsh's book 'The New Historians' - it's slightly dry but correct in essence, that the New Historians - Benny Morris was unable to even partly refute it, and was forced to concede. I think he just had a natural change of heart (from an Israeli viewpoint, the book did a lot of damage and was used as justification for further attacks against Israel).

You may be

a.m.r.
17 November 2008 at 02:06

My apologies to anyone who had to unpick some half-edited sentences in the previous post.

gnuneo
17 November 2008 at 05:31

there is much demand for change in America, and a younger generation of politically activated citizens, who will be keeping a beady eye upon Obama's Admin. Plus, the net-savviness of Obama's campaign has very much pushed forward the idea that citizens CAN influence policy makers, and citizens are more likely - and able - to have their voices heard in the political arena.

it is doubtful that Obama really will bring as much change as the most-exuberant Obama-worshippers believe he will, but these essential changes in American society mean he will be under greater scrutiny than any previous Presidency.

writeon
17 November 2008 at 08:47

a.m.r.

You seem to be a polite, normal, rational, civilized, educated, intelligent, human being. I wasn't refering to you directly when I said I expecting to be called, or labelled, 'anti-Semetic' . I am not. I can not be that. It would make no sense. I am proud of the Austrian Jewish members of my family. I respect and admire their history and culture.

I'm sorry, but I still think that your version of the history of the foundation of the state of Israel, is highly problematic and an over-simplification. I don't say this to offend you, that isn't my point, or my desire.

On this crucial and central issue, who started the war, I just don't agree that Israel was attacked first and was only reacting to an attempt by the Palesinians and Arab armies to wipe it off the map. I am not saying this version is a total lie, seen from an Israeli prespective I can understand why one would choose to see things that way. It's perfectly natural, nothing particularly odious about it. Countries do this kind of thing all the time to justify their acts and condemn the actions of their enemies.

But what if the official Israeli version isn't 'true'? What if Israel started the war against the Palestinians in order to drive them out and take the land for themselves? What if it was a war of agression and conquest and not initially about survival? What if the Palestinian version is closer to the 'truth'?

This may be esoteric, but how and when do wars start? Is the answer simple or complex. Do the parties involved usually agree about who started the conflict or not? I have difficulty with these questions. I'm not sure who started the Napoleonic Wars, or the Thirty Years War, or the English Civil War, or the Korean War. Are you as sure about these wars as you are about the Israel/Palestine war?

Couldn't one describe it more accurately as a civil war, fought over Palestine, by two rival ethnic groups? Aren't the causes of civil wars even harder to pin down, or is that just me being obtuse

Pencils
17 November 2008 at 09:15

a.m.r. reads like yet another paid zionist propagandist.. His posts above are full of deliberate lies and deceptions - banking, of course, on the expectation that most readers will not have read the writers he quotes.

" I'm not sure whether you're aware that Benny Morris, the founder of the 'alternative' 'new historian' view, has since admitted that his thinking on the Palestinian refugee problem was wrong.

Morris originally expressed some regret for Israeli behaviour, He has said that he thinks the zionists should have 'finished the job' i.e. completed the work of expulsion started by the genocidal Israeli massacres whose verity he proved. I believe he says this not out of belief that the massacres, like Deir Yassin, were justified or acceptable, but because he feels that the current situation is an even worse outcome for all parties, including the Palestinians.

" He didn't have much choice, as he had shown to be not entirely honest in his presentation of material. If you are interested, please do read Efraim Karsh's book 'The New Historians' - it's slightly dry but correct in essence, that the New Historians - Benny Morris was unable to even partly refute it, and was forced to concede..."

Can a.m.r give us a reference to any writing where Morris 'concedes' to Efraim Karsh? Karsh's work is a dishonest, shameless propaganda piece, which is so shoddy it should lead to him being sacked from his position at London's King's College. His book 'the New Historians' contains no original research; it just references the previous propaganda which Morris's work refutes. Can you tell us where Morris has been "...shown to be not entirely honest in his presentation of material", This would be a VERY serious charge against Israel's most distinguished historian. Note that Morris is greatly respected by even the most extreme zionists, probably because he is one himself. In other words, your statement here is a SERIOUS LIBEL against Morris!

Pencils
17 November 2008 at 09:42

As to the Arab/Palestinian 'genocidal assault on the Israelis' in 1948: the facts are well known and indisputable now. The UN's recognition of Israel was not complete; Israel was bound, by a UN resolution, not to do anything to prejudice the outcome of the final negotiations; Israel breached the UN resolution by declaring independence unilaterally and initiating massacres and expulsions of the Palestinians; the Arab nations were obliged by treaty to intervene if the UN resolution was breached. The Arab nations had only been free from colonial occupation for three years; their armies were badly equipped, totally inexperienced, and with totally inexperienced commanders excepting the British-trained, Jordanian-based Arab Legion; the Israeli army had trained for a long time, was led by commanders who had considerable experience, and had the most modern equipment supplied by the zionist-friendly Czech communist party. So the Arab assault was little more than a token gesture.

The partition of Palestine was illegal under the UN's rules at the time - the UN had no right to agree even to discuss this. And Israel's UDI compounded the criminality. Israel has no legal validity whatever. Israel is, by definition, a jewish state i.e. a racist state, or a theocratic state like Iran or Saudi Arabia. Whatever, no -one with any humane instinct can countenance the continuance of Israel as the state of anyone but ALL the people who live there, AND of those who were expelled in 1948 and their descendants; NOT of all jews worldwide whether or not they have ever set foot there.

writeon
17 November 2008 at 10:09

oh dear, we are getting into deep and very hot water here, and Obama has been pushed to one side at the beginning of this epic struggle. I suppose it's my fault for 'defending' Pilger and taking up the gauntlet of the charge of being a 'Jewhater' and 'anti-Semetic'. This vile charge would amuse my Israeli and Jewish friends, in grotesque sort of way.

I think, or believe, I'm unsure, but this whole conflict, which gives such exaggerated prominance to the Palestinians and the Jews, over their rival claims to 'Israel', is fading into 'insignificance', if it ever really was that important. The wars and conflict are really just about Power, who has it and who doesn't. Who can fight and take what they want, using force and war as a method. Israel had the power and took what it wanted. The Palestinians didn't and they lost, driven out more or less. The winner took all and calls the shots. In this sense there's precious little 'right' or 'wrong' involved, but unquestionably a lot of might and power. One ethinic group was simply more powerful than the other and they won. Of course this precludes the idea of 'justice' entering the conflict. Is war ever really just? Does one really expect the losers to agree and sanctify their own exclusion and defeat? Isn't this what lies at the heart of the demand that the Palestinians accept Israel's 'right' to exist? Doesn't Palestine have a 'right' to exist as well? Or does this 'right' only apply to one people exclusively?

writeon
17 November 2008 at 10:23

Of course Israel exists. I've been there and talked to Israelis, but of course they were a lot like me. They were somewhat wary when I suggested we visit a few colonies/settlements in the occupied territories. I can see their point.

One of the Iraelis I wanted to meet, but didn't, was Zeev Sterhell, an Israeli historian. He writes for Haaretz and is an expert on the history of European Facism. He's also very critical of the colonists on the West Bank. Last September, terrorists made an attempt on his life, using a pipe-bomb. In the surrounding area fliers were found offering a million shekels, around 320,000 dollars, to anyone willing to murder Sternhell or other members of the Peace Now group or other left-wingers.

So history/politics is a very explosive issue in Israel. But in fairness, this attack was roundly condemned by most leading politicians in Israel as a cowardly attempt not just on the life of leading Jewish historian but on democracy itself. The 'struggle' here, is nothing compared to the struggle inside Israel over competing versions of history, right, justice and power.

a.m.r.
17 November 2008 at 17:11

Pencils: "Can a.m.r give us a reference to any writing where Morris 'concedes' to Efraim Karsh?"

Sure. The reference you ask for, via Wikipedia's article on Efraim Karsh:

"In reviews of Fabricating Israeli History, Benny Morris was forced to concede certain refutations made by Karsh:

"Karsh has a point. My treatment of transfer thinking before 1948 was, indeed, superficial...He is probably right in rejecting the transfer interpretation I suggested in The Birth to a sentence in [a speech by Ben-Gurion on December 3, 1947]." (from The Times Literary Supplement, November 28, 1997)

"Karsh appears to be correct in charging that I stretched the evidence to make my point.". (from Refabricating 1948 p. 83)

This is quite important - if Karsh's book is dishonest propaganda, why is Benny Morris conceding anything at all? Why isn't he suing instead?

Karsh demonstrated in his book how Benny Morris, Pappe and others had dishonestly presented material. If you do not have access to the book, you may at least want to read two articles by him on the same topic :

http://www.meforum.org/article/466

http://www.meforum.org/article/711

Whilst Karsh has been criticised as being polemical, distorting, not a real historian, and so forth, no-one has actually been able to refute his work. Hence Morris' concession.

a.m.r.
17 November 2008 at 17:43

Pencils: "The partition of Palestine was illegal under the UN's rules at the time [...] Israel has no legal validity whatever."

Are you able to give us a reference to support this assertion?

Pencils
17 November 2008 at 19:13

I intended to include a ' since' in this passage in my first post above, which should have read " Morris originally expressed some regret for Israeli behaviour, He has SINCE said that he thinks the zionists should have 'finished the job'..."

The above was my acknowledgement that Morris had indeed backtracked to an extent. But I can't comment on the examples a.m.r. sites without the context e.g. " "Karsh appears to be correct in charging that I stretched the evidence to make my point.". Which point? Is it a substantial point?

or " My treatment of transfer thinking before 1948 was, indeed, superficial...He is probably right in rejecting the transfer interpretation I suggested in The Birth to a sentence in [a speech by Ben-Gurion on December 3, 1947]."

He acknowledges that a couple of things could do with some second thoughts; that's hardly the same as being " less than honest in his presentation of materials".. No historian or writer could fail to have second thoughts about something, somewhere in their work.

Furthermore, I'm not going to take anything from wikipedia as gospel; concerted zionist manipulation of wiki is well known - google 'slim virgin' for some case studies.

Morris may have backtracked on his attitude to what his work showed, but he has not backtracked on the substance to any significant degree. I've read Karsh's ' New Historians' , and stick to my assessment: nobody needs to refute him, because the works and documents on which he bases his position have all been thoroughly refuted.

As to a reference for the partition of Palestine being illegal: the UN charter did not award it power to allocate or partition land. I know you're well aware of that, so I'm not going to look for the resoluiton or article.

a.m.r.
17 November 2008 at 20:47

Pencils: the "Refabricating 1948" article by Benny Morris can be found on-line at http://www.palestine-studies.org/enakba/debates/Morris,%20Re... - there's no need to second-guess Wikipedia's reliability .

You say: "I've read Karsh's ' New Historians' , and stick to my assessment: nobody needs to refute him, because the works and documents on which he bases his position have all been thoroughly refuted. "

I thought Karsh based most of his work on the same archival documents that the New Historian's used. If there are specific documents and works

re: the legality of the U.N. partition

The League of Nations and its successor organisation, the U.N., were responsible for the formation of the border-drawing and partitions of Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine. Why was it only illegal in the case of Palestine?

a.m.r.
17 November 2008 at 20:49

(again, sorry, the sentence should read : "If there are specific documents and works that have been refuted, I'd appreciate it if you could point me towards the refutations.")

a.m.r.
17 November 2008 at 21:22

"Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts, Who knows what facts are? We [ie. the 'new historians'] try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers," Illan Pappe, interview with Le Soir, Nov. 29, 1999

I would say John Pilger does the same.

a.m.r.
17 November 2008 at 22:37

Pencils, I've read a bit more about the U.N., and you're right, it doesn't have the right to draw borders - what it can do is to recognise sovereign national authorities as member states. This is what it did with Israel, which had earlier declared itself an independent state.

The earlier UN-recommended partition plan (resolution 181) had been rejected by the Arabs, and was completely legal. In it, the UN "recommends to the United Kingdom, as the Mandatory Power for Palestine, a Partition Plan..".

Therefore you are wrong in stating that the U.N. acted illegally , and stating that Israel has no legal validity.

I initially took your word for it instead of the reference I'd hoped for, but I'm glad I followed it up by a little bit of reading. No wonder you didn't provide any reference.

So, you accuse me of writing a purposefully dishonest post, then when I provide the reference you requested and ask for one in return on your UN illegality assertion, you decline. And it turns out that you are, shall we say, innocently wrong - please be more careful with your accusations.

writeon
17 November 2008 at 22:54

a.m.r.

As much as I'm tempted to join Pencils and you this increasingly detailed and interesting battle of quotations; I believe one risks falling into the trap of not being able to see the wood for the trees.

The debate becomes incredibly narrowly focused and arkane, myopic, swamped by layers of 'facts' and interpretations. Is a site like this really the place to conduct such a debate? It's an odd place for proper peer revue in my opinion.

And now, in contradiction of everything I've just said, and because Pappe isn't exactly as important as the fate of an entire people or country, I can't resist delving into the passage from Pappe you've presented and used in your 'ideological' struggle with Pilger.

The quote from Illan Pappe is interesting and confusing, at least for me. I'm not really sure what he's saying or refering to. What is the context of these sentences? What comes before and afterwards? I'm also curious about what language the interview was conducted in. Le Soir is a French publication, this quote is in english. Who did the translation? It seems a bit stiff to me, a bit odd. I'd like to see it in the origional French as well, before I'd make a judgement about what Pappe is saying. Was Pappe speaking in French during the interview or English or Hebrew?

In such circumstances, translating from one language to a second and then to a third, it's notoriously easily to compound mistakes or interpretations, translations of key words. I used to do this kind of work years ago and I found it rather difficult.

What's Pappe really saying here? What do you think or mean he's saying? You don't actually say you know. You imply that he's saying that he twists the historical facts to suit his ideological perspective and he's not interested in the truth, but propaganda, just like Pilger is. Is that close to what you mean?

writeon
17 November 2008 at 23:30

a.m.r.

You seem to imply that Pappe has openly admitted that he's 'dishonest' and plays fast and loose with historical facts to suit his ideology and Pilger does the same.Pappe is hoisted on his own petard, and you've used him to skewer Pilger. Two birds with one stone!

But isn't this precisel what I've complained about, that people extrapolate from the particular to the general to 'prove' something in relation to Pilger, which is not supported by the facts? And her we go a stage further, one is using, I won't say manipulating, one persons views, a historian, to criticise another person, a journalist. Two different people, experts in two different fields. Is this fair. Personally I don't think this kind of thing would pass peer review in one of my history classes, but maybe I'm being a tad too strict?

How do you interpret what Pappe is saying? Clearly not very positively, otherwise you wouldn't use it to make, what you believe is an important point relating to Pilger. What do you think he means? Because I'm not sure myself.

"We try to convince as many people as possible that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one"

Aren't these the central and most meaningful words? Obviously I've selected what I thinks is important, just like you did. Don't all historians do this, interpret the facts from an idelogical perspective, just like you have done?

Pappe also seems to say that the facts are debatable, because it's history, the past, we're dealing with, but from our ideological perspective we do the best we can to convince people.

I think my interpretation, is, actually more 'truthful' than your implied interpretation, but were dealing with history here and language,so it's a bit difficult to know with perfedt accuracy, but we do the best we can!

In a way, compared to the destruction of whole towns and villages and their people in warfare, the plight of millions of refugees, the wiping out of an entire country, this is strange debate, almost tasteless.

a.m.r.
17 November 2008 at 23:33

Pencils, indeed, and thank you for your moderation.( And thanks to any reading website moderators for their toleration).

The article "Professor Ilan Pappé: When Ideology Trumps Scholarship" ( http://camera.org/index.asp?x_context=8&x_nameinnews=122&x_a... ) quotes two addition excerpts from the Le Soir interview with Pappé :

"There is no historian in the world who is objective. I am not as interested in what happened as in how people see what's happened."

"I admit that my ideology influences my historical writings..."

And Benny Morris (same article) on Illan Pappe's 2004 book:

"..Unfortunately, much of what Pappé tries to sell his readers is complete fabrication..."

"...In Pappé's account, there is no faulting the Palestinians for regularly assaulting the Zionist enterprise...The Palestinians are forever victims, the Zionists are forever "brutal colonizers"...

"...The multiplicity of mistakes on each page is a product of both Pappé's historical methodology and his political proclivities... "

a.m.r.
17 November 2008 at 23:35

(post above should be addressed to writeon, not Pencils .. I will learn to check before posting, sorry).

a.m.r.
17 November 2008 at 23:40

writeon, no, I wasn't using Illan Pappe's example to prove something about Pilger, I just said that I think that Pilger does the same thing. The reasons for thinking that are contained in the three links I cited earlier, and which I repost here:

http://www.brookesnews.com/061704pilger.html (re: Vietnam)

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/hafa3/iraq.htm (re: Iraq)

http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2007/12/14/ (re: Serbia)

writeon
18 November 2008 at 00:08

a.m.r.

Thanks for replying so quickly, don't you ever sleep?

Anyway, I have no idea who you are, where you are, or what you do professionally, but university professors, especially 'rivals' in the same fields of study, are famous, and I know this from experience, infamous for their fueds and lack of modration and viciousness in public debates with each other. The abilities are often far, far, smaller than their egoes! They fight like cats in a sack over tiny things, worse than children really, I know people who haven't spoken for years to each other.

What I'm saying is, one has to take academic fueds and disagreements with a pinch of salt, they get carried away, poor things.

Actually, I'm not an enormous and uncritical fan of the Israeli 'New Historians', though I find their work interesting, but not definitive. I don't think that exists in history, everything is part of the moving historical process. In fact, I'm not sure that 'history' exists in absolute terms. I'm leaning towards the idea that perhaps only the present is relevant in 'history' and we fit the past into our present for 'ideological' reasons. I also think, by way of clarification, that economics is also primarily about ideoglogy!

And suddenly, in my view, perhaps Pappe's perspective on history becomes clearer. If he agrees with me, then mere 'facts' which we clearly don't agree on, like who fired the first shot in the 'civil war' in Palestine/Israel, aren't as 'important' as how one sees them and interacts with them from one's personal 'ideological' perspective. Granted this is a controversial and 'radical' perspective on history, but I'm not sure it's invalid, or 'wronger' than a more traditional 'facts' based perpective/interpretation of history.

Palestinians and Israelis don't agree on the facts of history. Who is 'right' doesn't seem to matter very much, compared to who is the strongest militarily. If the Palestinians were 'right' what good would it do them?

Pencils
18 November 2008 at 00:33

a.m.r. You've got to be having a laugh, mate, as they say. Anyway, you've given me a good laugh; and if anyone else wants a laugh, I recommend you follow the link he provided in his post at 20.47, and compare what Benny Morris says, to what a.m.r reports. At least the piece shows why Morris is Israel's most celebrated historian and Karsh is very far from it.

http://www.palestine-studies.org/enakba/debates/Morris,%20Re...

I notice that you haven't attempted to deny that Israel broke the terms of the UN resolution which bound it not to do anything to prejudice the outcome of final negotiations, by declaring independence unilaterally.

As to the other questions about the UN's authority: no, I've not been avoiding the subject, but I'm tired - I'll get back to you on that, if this thread stays live.

a.m.r.
18 November 2008 at 00:53

Yes, there were always going to problems with creating the Jewish state. Some population transfer was always going to be likely to be involved in the process. The Palestinian choice to settle things by violence was their decision - and I don't think that they dispute that by the way. so writeon's earlier attempt to posit a possible secret Israeli desire for the war seems a bit wayward.

And is it wrong to mention that:

- Palestinians had a choice of a partitioned state (with land areas in proportion to the two populations), and choose war instead, in 1948.

- They had the choice again in 2000, and rejected it once more, this time launching the Intifada.

- Until Arafat started the Intifada, necessitating a tightening of borders, Gaza and the West Bank had been enjoying great economic growth (with its associated health and social benefits). This growth started with Israeli's assumption of government of the areas post-1967, and placed both regions in the top 5 fastest growing economies in the world.

MBP17
18 November 2008 at 00:54

In responding to Write On's critique of my posting from a few days ago I can only say: "So what."

Write On obviously didn't read the posting because he or she says I put words in Pilger's mouth. Go back and read it WO. I didn't. If you can find any place where I wrote Pilger says Quote, blah, blah, I'd love to see it. If I refer directly to anything he said and then put it in quotes, I'd love to see that too.

My posting was a critique of his piece and it is a telling of what I took away from it. It's kind of difficult for me to see how you don't get that.

On the issue of the racism of his piece, again go back and read Pilger. Why did HE, not I, HE even bring up the issue of Obama's ethnicity anyway. He's perfectly welcome to criticize Obama's or anyone else's policies or positions as individuals. Why the comparisons to other prominent people in the US who happen to be black. Colin Powell, Secretary Rice and the others he mentioned are individual people with unique points of view. Why lump them in together? Why didn't Pilger compare his viewpoints with Gordon Brown's, or George W. Bush's. I mean after all they're all white guys, YES?

The point is Pilger is a member of the dusty old 60s left that is stuck in the old race feedback loop. Listen to his language, quoting here: "adept at using black management and middle classes." or "Colin Powell was used". Colin Powell is a grown man with an independent mind. Any non-racist person can see he's capable of reaching decisions on his own without being manipulated by an all-powerful white ruler directing him. Criticize him if you wish, but by all means leave the man's external appearance out of it.

It appears, Write On, that you and Pilger can't judge people's actions without taking into account meaningless externalities like the amount of melanin content in an individuals skin. That is kind of the definition of racism, is it not?

a.m.r.
18 November 2008 at 01:39

Pencils, I found Morris' piece highly unpersuasive next to Karsh's .

The Times Literary Supplement, after Morris' dismissal of Karsh's claims, apparently printed another article demonstrating some of Morris' falsehoods to which he had to also concede. I haven't read said article though - perhaps it's one you or writeon may wish to look up, as I seem to have done all the fetching of documents in this conversation.

You say: "I notice that you haven't attempted to deny that Israel broke the terms of the UN resolution which bound it not to do anything to prejudice the outcome of final negotiations, by declaring independence unilaterally."

They needed to lift the siege as a matter of existential necessity - they had no choice (as Benny Morris admits in that same article). Do you really believe this voids Israel's legality, as you were arguing when you first mentioned this?

a.m.r.
18 November 2008 at 02:23

writeon, you write : "What I'm saying is, one has to take academic fueds and disagreements with a pinch of salt, they get carried away, poor things."

You didn't have any trouble accepting Benny Morris' words on Efraim Karsh. You are quite selective?

I'm sorry to hear that you favour a post-modern approach.

May I strongly recommend reading the biography of the illustrious (and Jewish) Nobel-Prize winning Richard Feynman ? V. funny and quite pertinent to the discussion re: truth . It's on-line at http://www.vidyaonline.net/arvindgupta/surelyjoking.pdf , although I'm not sure whether it is under copyright so please consider buying a copy if you like it.

a.m.r.
18 November 2008 at 02:27

biography=autobiography in previous post.

writeon
18 November 2008 at 07:51

MbP,

It's sterling attempt, but I believe it fails on serveral levels, in the particular and the general.

I don't accept your definition of what it means to be racist, and I don't accept that it conforms to any gererally accepted defintion to the term or ideology of racism. Neither do I accept that this smear applies to me or Pilger. I think your perspecitve on what I've written or Pilger has written is primarily as a form of propaganda designed to undermine a person's credibility for ideological reasons. It's a fake dialogue.

I and Pilger are not criticising these people because of their skin colour, that's not relevant, that would be incredibly stupid and superficial, do you really think that we are that obvious, clearly you do, or rather I'm not sure you do in reality. Either you choose to deliberately misunderstand what's been written, and cynically go after the man, or you don't understand what's been written. I don't know what's worse.

This idea that Colin Powell is 'his own man' when he worked in the White House is ridiculous, he was a loyal servant of Bush and prostituted his name and prestige, when he appeared at the UN and delivered a catalogue of lies and distortions designed to justify an illegal attack on Iraq. This willingness to serve has characterized his career for decades, right the way back to Vietnam when he was involved in the attempt by the military to cover up the Mai Lai massacre.

You oversimplify the entire subject of 'race' in the United States to an extraordinary degree. It's mind-numbingly complex and way too big to get into here. I'll only say that Obama has used his ethnic background subtlely and selectively from the start of his campaign and before. Obama, his campaign team, the people who voted for him, didn't think his background was meaningless at all, it was a central part of his platform of change and hope, progress and uniqueness.

Pilger's criticism isn't based on race, but class.

K.L. Scott
18 November 2008 at 08:08

“Save for his drawl and fine boots, everything about Penn was the antithesis of the Texas stereotype.”

That’s quit a statement. Unfortunately it says a good deal more about Mr. Pilger than his editor friend from Midlothian. While various twangs and bits of frontier gibberish are easily over heard in most parts of the state, drawls and fine boots are decidedly more common to Los Angeles or Washington D.C. than to Texas. The point being it reveals, at the most charitable, a certain laziness that leads to absurdities like-

“No serious scrutiny of this is permitted within the histrionics of Obama mania…”

As we say here in Texas, throw your hats in the trees boys; it’s too late to save your boots. However, I must say it’s impossible to completely dismiss any admirer of the late Studs Terkel.

K.L. Scott

Princeton, Texas

writeon
18 November 2008 at 08:20

a.m.r.

You're subtle. Which is meant as a compliment. But I'm wary of becoming involved in an incredibly detailed and esoteric debate about 'facts', on site like this. I'm not sure there's time and space to do it justice. Pencils and you can try, but I don't want to. I don't think it's productive, result orientated. Actually I think it's a diversion from examination of the larger picture.

You imply a lot when you comment, yet you don't seem to want to answer very direct and simple questions, you prefer to embroil yourself in detail, which is your right, I just not sure why you take this approach.

I don't recall support Benny Morris anywhere, did I?

I don't follow a post-modern approach. My approach changes from day to day, I'm very selective.

Anyway this is very academic isn't it? You cannot mean this thread is the place for such a discussion? Obviously you feel 'safer' on this kind of ground in this kind of debate, there's nothing wrong with that.

You also imply that your documentation is better than Pencils and truer. I don't agree that it is necessarily. The Palestinians don't agree with your version of history and never will I imagine. I think your version is highly contentious and partisan. You support one side in the conflict against the other, why? Is it purley because they are 'right' and 'just', or is it because you're and Israeli or Jewish? Are you not 'neutral', but in fact biased against the Palestinian version of history? Don't you conceed, even in theory, that you might be colouring your 'objectivity' because you chosen sides in the conflict? Surely this is part of Pappe's thesis, that we all do this?

I don't think you are as 'balanced' as you think you are, who is? I don't accept that your partisan version is more correct than the Palestinian view.

I have difficulty comparing the 'relative weights' of rival attemps at ethnic cleansing, pogroms, or tit-for-tat massacres.

I have difficulty with political rhetoric taken out of context as well

writeon
18 November 2008 at 08:45

a.m.r.

We seem to be going around in circles, is that the point? What's it for? Does it really prove anything? Do you reall want me to start coming here with a long list of books for you to read and then we can debate them here? What would that prove exactly? Who would care who was right. The strongest side won and got most of the land, the weaker one lost and is subjugated. War is horrible and people get killed, and some win and some lose, it's the attempt to justify and sanctify, slaughter, barbarism and murder, that I don't like. I think war is literally Hell on Earth.

After the first few million casualties in WW2 who the hell cared or remembered who started the whole miserable business or who fired the first shot? Isn't concentrating on this kind of 'minutia' somewhat bizarre in the ghastly, horrible, wider context of barbaric warefare? Don't we have to keep some kind of perspective here?

I'm more interested in what you think, what motivates you to bother with all this?

I have sympathy for the Palestinians, rather like my interest in the American Indians, because they lost I suppose, and they are so obviously less powerful than the side that won, Israel. It seems to me that it's difficult to argue that Israel hasn't been vastly more successful than the other side, and good luck to them, get it while you can, the first rule of history.

I just can't and don't see why I should swallow the 'myth' that usually goes with military conquest and nation-building. I think it's mostly nationalist bull and this isn't confined to Israel, British 'history' , American 'history', Arab 'history', et al, is bursting with it.

This sounds like I'm an exteme relatvist and nothing matters, nothing is true. I don't agree. It's far more complex than that, too complex to get into here. It's about competing 'truths' which are virtually 'lost' in the fog of war and the mists of time.

a.m.r.
18 November 2008 at 11:05

writeon, I'm not sure if you're aware of your hypocrisy (but of course you are).

You write : "I think war is literally Hell on Earth. "

So, from your own words, one would assume you would be very critical of anyone who starts a war, no?

Yet when I attempt to point out that the 1948 war was started by the Palestinian and Arab side, and with much preceding Arab-on-Jew violence (and deeply anti-semitic rhetoric and exhortation), you are not interested. Yet I'm not aware of any historian who deny this, even the 'new historians'.

The 1930's, and 1940's are not lost in the "mists of time" - they're quite recent, and there are many contemporary reports.

You write:

"After the first few million casualties in WW2 who the hell cared or remembered who started the whole miserable business or who fired the first shot?"

For a start, perhaps the victims of the war and those who were forced to defend themselves care who fired the first shot? Your relativism is quite sickening. The horror of war makes it all the more important who decided to start it, not less.

MBP17
18 November 2008 at 14:56

Give us a break, WO. I mean really. You never answered why Pilger felt the need to bring Obama's ethnicity or anyone else's race into the discussion. Why was it relevant? Colin Powell is his own man, just as Donald Rumsfeld was, or any other person who works for a living and has to answer to a superior. Again, I feel I'm repeating myself here, but I suppose I must to let it sink in. Ethnicity has nothing to do with it. Racism will never go away until people like Pilger and yourself let it, until you stop obsessing on it. If constantly calling attention to someone's skin color or eye shape or any other outside characteristic isn't racism, then for christ's sake what is? Grab a dictionary, look up racism, then get back to me on that.

And what are talking about Obama used his ethnicity in his campaign? Are you mad? He wouldn't have been elected dog catcher if he'd run as the "black" or "biracial" candidate. He's in the White House for the very opposite reason. He ran as just another candidate, who happens to be black. People of all ethnicities voted for him because he ran the superior campaign. My god man, your understanding of US politics is shockingly ignorant. Do you really think if he'd gone around saying "vote for me I'm browner than those other guys", he would have gotten elected? Really?

It's you who are falling back on propaganda. You appear to be a somewhat young person, studying some humanities courses at University and now because you've read a little Marx, or Trotsky or whatever, now you've got the world figured out. Let me tell you, you don't. Why don't you try actually talking to minority people sometime, not as minorities but as people just like you. Relate to them as individuals instead of members of a group, then you might actually begin to learn something about how the world works. You know what you'll learn by reading guys like Pilger all the time? PROPAGANDA.

writeon
18 November 2008 at 16:15

a.m.r.

Now, after I've been so restrained, pulling my punches so to speak, giving you the benefit of the doubt; you launch into me with accusations and barely concealed anger, why? I could use lots of abusive words to describe you, but would that be especially intelligent or smart? I've been holding back, I'm not sure why really.

Your legalistic approach to history isn't mine. You make it sound like something that can somehow be decided in some kind of court. Where you calmly, or not, present the 'facts' to a jury, your evidence, and then a they 'vote' and a balanced, concensus about right and wrong and what happened is agreed opon.

Unfortunately, reality isn't like that. History isn't even like that. It's always full of holes and contradictions, and it's partial, biased, full of falsehoods, myths, and unbalanced. In other words extremely complex.

I actually meant to write WW1instead of WW2, but I'm not sure that matters, as WW2 was really only the second round of WW1, which means that WW2 started not in 1939, but in 1914, and what is more, seen from a wider perspective, arguably continued on a smaller scale, in a different fashion, throughout the intervening years.

I don't accept most of your premises, or your version of the history of the etnic civil war in Palesine, isn't it enough that Israel won and destoyed Palestine and took it over, what more do you want?

I don't no why you seem so elated to have 'caught me out' in some form of 'hypocracy' some obvious 'falsehood'. I've chosen to overlook many of the inconsistancies in your approach, because I don't want to appear too pedantic and arrogant. I've given you the benefit of the doubt. I was being charitable. But it's like you been waiting and lulling me into a false sense of security, and now, with a flourish and fanfare, you attack me, congratulations! I was fooled

writeon
18 November 2008 at 16:34

a.m.r.

Why aren't you just satisfied that Israel won, occupied vertually all of Palestine and is mater of the region?

You seem to want me and others to not only accept reality on the ground, but that the war of conquest and the ethnic cleansing that occured, was right and just and lawful, that's why you are so pedantic and interested in the fine detail of the conflict, especially who is the unlawful, outlaw and agressive party in the conflict. This attitude makes it seem like an agressive war of conquest was justified and lawful, and not a crime or disaster, as it's seen from a Palestinian perspective.

Here's an alternative perspective. In a nutshell, official Israel needs convincing narrative that can be used to sanctify and justify conquest, making what many would describe as a typical, imperialist and colonialist war, seem like something else, a war of defence and liberation. The myth of little, weak, David, facing mighty Goliath, and even though he puts out his hand in friendship, ready to share, evil Goliath, spurns this offer and picks up his mighty sword, determined in his blood rage to drive plucky little David into the sea!

It's an interesting story/history, but I don't buy it. It's a little too much like a b-movie script to ring true, a little too much like propaganda, which one could argue all history is, in a way. The winner writes the hisory books and decides who the good guys and the bad guys are and who fired the first shot, and God, if only things were really that simple!

aflatoon
18 November 2008 at 17:34

the truth bites.it will go on biting those who do not possess the freedom of spirit n those who dont treat all equally.after all what is the use of being civilized if one does not believe in the basic ethics.john pilger will conninue to be hated by those consienceless persons who think of enslaving others in the name of globalisation n free market. aflatoon india

a.m.r.
18 November 2008 at 18:15

I apologise if I offended you, writeon - and there was no 'elation' in that post, just frustration.

writeon
18 November 2008 at 18:45

a.m.r.

Finally, I don't know why you are so biased and in favour of Israel's version of it's history. Your view isn't especially nuanced is it, or maybe you honestly believe it is?

I'm afraid I can't acept the nationalist Israeli view, it really reminds me too much of 'histories' of other nations when they needed to justify their conquests and expansionism. It's not that Israel is unique in this respect, on the contrary, it's following a pattern which has been repeated over and over again, under similiar circumstances.

One area of study I specialised in was the history of European nationalism, which is, of course where Jewish Nationalism or Zionism, originated. It was interesting, especially to encounter many of the same patterns and mythologies and attitudes to the 'natives' repeated in Israel. This isn't meant as a criticism of Israel in particular. I don't mean that Israel should be judged differently or absolutely compared to other nations, the opposite in fact, I was surprised at how similar Israel was to other naitions in it's nationalism.

What I don't really understand, or perhaps I do, is why you insist that Israel's version of it's history, it's foundtion mythology, should be any 'truer' or 'correct' than the stories and myths of other, comparable countries?

Probably the opposite is the case; simply because of circumstances, eternal war, the trauma of occupation, colonization, isolation, fear, terror, the need to weld a country almost out of nothing; this makes the need for a plausable foundation mythology even greater.

I've finished now, and I don't intend to be draw into any more 'debates' with you. Thanks, goodbye and good luck.

a.m.r.
18 November 2008 at 18:55

writeon, so mentioning Palestinian violence and anti-semitism is accepting the Israeli founding myth? But focusing only on Israeli wrong-doings is being fair?

Did you try applying your area of study re: nationalistic myths to the Palestinian narrative, by the way ?

Anyway, all the best, and have a good day.

writeon
18 November 2008 at 19:16

MBP17,

Nice try! This is my last comment on this post, because I think it's futile trying to debate with members of what appears to be members of a defacto posse who aren't interested in debate, but rather, destruction.

I find your remarks about Powell and Rumsfeld, being their own men, quite extraordinary, clearly you're not joking and I don't really know what to say in reply.

Of course Obama's ethnicity is relevant, look at the reactions to his election around the world, what people believe the election of a Black man supposedly signifies about the New America. Obama is accutely aware of his 'ethnicity'. The very idea that he didn't or the campaign around him didn't use his ethnicity is bizarre. It's part of the symbolism of his newness and reflection of change.

I haven't continually mentioned Obama's ethnicity in the way you say I have, in racist terms. I don't care about his race, or Powell's or Rice's. I am not criticising them because of what race they are, but primarily because of their politics. I think there skin colour is incidental. I haven't made any 'racist' remarks about any of them at all. I regard your characterisation of me as a smear and a calumny.

I don't know why your so abusive and angry, why can't you calm down and think? You can't have it both ways when you make arguments and make sense. On the one hand you state that Obama's ethnicity had no importance, he supposedly never used it, and then you list the reasons why his ethnicity is important engough for him not to have stood a chance of election if he had appeared too Black. Your clearly very confused here. I think Obama ran a very clever campaign, but then he had a weak and unlucky opponent.

It's interesting that you clearly read my other comments studiously, cherry-picked the best lines and arguments and have re-used them against me, well done, I'm rather flattered. I'm amused by the bit about my obvious age and how I'm at university and have read a little Marx ect., how very droll.

nationalbankuganda
18 November 2008 at 21:49

You're preaching to the converted here, Pilger. Since his 4 November election I've constantly argued on NS and Guardian CIF websites about the illusions of meritocracy and back-slapping eminating from lib dem elites across the Republican-Democrat, and Tory-NuLab divides. 'Their' system appears vindicated. But if there's a blessing from this, it is that should Obama inevitably disappoint, the otherwise passive masses will have no alternative but to confront some inconvenient truths about power and the many contradictions of capitalist liberal democracy.

gnuneo
18 November 2008 at 22:13

amr: i'm not sure you get writeon/pencils point yet - which is that digging through reams of academic historical material, to find out 'who' was 'first at fault', which will then supposedly justify all the other's own aggression, murder and attempted ethnic cleansing because they are then the 'victims', is a completely and useless activity, at least in terms of ending the current conflict.

a conflict, btw, that has every potential of dragging in the entire world and crashing the entire global infrastructure Mankind has so laboriously and painfully built.

do you imagine that the Palestinians are going to stop fighting for their Sovereignty because you could show that a Palestinian first punched a Jewish Settler in 1904? Utterly ridiculous. Equally ridiculous is the notion that Israel will just pack up, because the settler who was punched first said some bad things about the Palestinians mother.

do you HONESTLY not see how mindbogglingly STUPID and IRRELEVANT such discussions are?

their only *real* purpose is to create long, tedious and meaningless 'discussions' that can 'muddy the waters', preventing serious discussions about what is happening *NOW*, and how to end the conflict equitably, and with security for all.

now, i wouldn't claim that you know this, or are doing this deliberately, its possible its simply how you were taught about it, and you are just following the programming. Surely no-one could be so barbarous as to deliberately end discussion on how to end this conflict, because their own 'side' has the current military advantage, and every year that passes more land is stolen from the Occupied Territories?

alas, i wish that i still had that much faith in Mankind. I don't.

writeon
18 November 2008 at 22:29

I beleive MBP17 and Leftout, sorry, it's hard to be serious - I mean the mighty, so well educated, so articulate, so intelligent, so Anti-Left; are one and the same person. Imagine going to so much trouble to get me to 'debate' with you, bizarre. Poor thing. Or perhaps these totalitarian nationalists, on some level, all share the same brain?

MBP17
18 November 2008 at 22:51

You’re the one that’s confused. You keep repeating that Obama used his race as part of his campaign. That’s demonstrably false. If you can show me where he ever made an appeal to voters based on his ethnicity, again I’d love to see it.

Glad to see you’ve finally come around to see that constant harping on someone’s ethnicity is indeed a form of racism, albeit the lefty/liberal sort, which has been my point since the beginning. My point about his not using his ethnicity as an election ploy does not contradict my argument. It is a response to your statement that he used it as part of his election strategy. I’ve demonstrated that, that is completely false. Pointing out that a candidate using race as an election ploy is a losing strategy is exactly my argument and it’s why Obama is now President-elect. I’m saying the opposite of what you say, I’m saying his ethnicity had nothing to do with his campaign or his win because most people are just over the race thing already. He ran for President of the USA, not President of the black USA. It isn’t a question of his being too black, his ethnicity was irrelevant. My point all along. If someone had run as a Freemason, instead of on the issues, he would have lost as well. Why? Because that stuff just doesn’t matter anymore to anyone except people like Pilger. You know the guy you’ve been defending. I’m not accusing you of anything, I’m calling you on your defense of Pilger, whose outdated focus on race has no place in criticisms of Obama or any other candidate. McCain ran as a change candidate. They all do. Obama never used his ethnicity to push his change message he used his position as the candidate from the opposition political party. You’re attempt to say you’ve been arguing that race has no importance is wrong on it’s face. You’ve been arguing the opposite and defending Pilger.

And no I’m not angry, a little frustrated that you keep refusing to see the obvious, but not angry or abusive. I’ve kept the debate about your positions. My observation that you’re a humanities student enamored of Marx is just an observation. It could be totally false, but that’s how you’re coming off, you know kind of arrogant like you’ve got everything to teach and nothing to learn. I was that way too when I was younger, I’ve grown up a bit.

a.m.r.
18 November 2008 at 23:01

gruneo, why is it irrelevant to point out that the Palestinians had had their own attempts at "aggression, murder and attempted ethnic cleansing" long before any retaliation from the Jewish people? It doesn't justify anything - it's just a fact (that seems to be airbrushed out of these discussions). I never said that determining the who the initial aggressor was would end the conflict - that was your addition.

If the Palestinians were just concerned about their Sovereignty, they could have accepted the 1947 partition plan, or the 2000 peace offer..They want more than that though - they want all of Israel destroyed. (see the current government Hamas' charter).

By the way, I feel the Palestinians have been badly betrayed by their leaders (al-Husseini, Arafat and now Hamas) and the neighboring Arab states, who have never had the Palestinians interests at heart. Why did Jordan keep control of the West Bank, and Egypt of Gaza, after the 1948 war?

a.m.r.
19 November 2008 at 00:45

Pilger took the side of the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam war.

When the US, even as it was in a position to go on and win the war (as confirmed by the US and N.Vietnamese military afterwards), withdrew due to collapsing domestic support for the war, the North Vietnamese triumphed and went on to execute tens of thousands of Vietnamese civilians. Up to a million died fleeing the North Vietnamese by sea. At the same time, in neighboring Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge took power and went on to murder two million Cambodian civilians.

As I said earlier, the journalists in Vietnam knew about huge systematic massacres of civilians already carried out about the communist North Vietnamese, but they chose to keep quite until later.

Could these facts have changed public opinion at home? May they have led to a decision to stay and win, like they had helped the S. Koreans against the communist North Koreans (or rather, win enough to establish stable borders)?

Look at what happened in the case of Korea, at the contrast between the fates of those two countries - US-assisted south Korea, one of the most advanced, wealthy and healthy countries in Asia, and Chinese-assisted North Korea, where 400,000 have been killed in gulags in the past three decades, 2 million dead in concentration camps and Party purges since 1948.

Yet Pilger doesn't acknowledge this - that US power abroad can be a force for good (fancy that), and that the side he backed commited genocide against its own people.

In Iraq, Pilger backed the Iraqi 'insurgency' against the Us (and GB), despite the fact that the insurgents were mostly killing fellow Iraqi's (most of the Iraqi death toll comes from the insurgents). "You can't be too choosy." he said. ( http://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2007/08/28/pilger-passe... )

gnuneo
19 November 2008 at 01:05

"why is it irrelevant to point out that the Palestinians had had their own attempts at "aggression, murder and attempted ethnic cleansing" long before any retaliation from the Jewish people? It doesn't justify anything - it's just a fact"

i see... so why was there no conflict in Palestine/Israel in 1805? Why were the native Palestinian inhabitants not fighting Jewish SETTLERS back then?

such an easy question really, odd how often this is "airbrushed" out.

you want to start apportioning blame? Lets go back even further shall we? Bet you change topics now, that's your method.

"I never said that determining the who the initial aggressor was would end the conflict - that was your addition. "

[sighs].

right. I made 1 post mentioning that, and it was in response to YOUR continued emphasis upon it through your posts. If you regard it as also irrelevant - except in some weird 'lets pin the blame on the donkey' fetish - then WTF were you focussing so much about it for? Or did i already answer that...

"Surely no-one could be so barbarous as to deliberately end discussion on how to end this conflict, because their own 'side' has the current military advantage, and every year that passes more land is stolen from the Occupied Territories? "

"If the Palestinians were just concerned about their Sovereignty, they could have accepted the 1947 partition plan, or the 2000 peace offer..They want more than that though - they want all of Israel destroyed. (see the current government Hamas' charter)."

why am i bothering... oh yess, in the small case you MIGHT be genuine. Getting rather tired of wasting so much time on you 'serial zionists' though, you change your names and your opinions stay the same, and you never answer the questions that hurt.

but - lets continue...

how many Palestinians today were even alive back in 1947? How can any moral person justify the continued conflict between these two groups upon a botched deal well over half a CENTURY ago?

as for Hamas...

gnuneo
19 November 2008 at 01:15

as for Hamas wanting all of Israel destroyed...

http://www.utopia-politics.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=32...

and

http://www.utopia-politics.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=32...

"By the way, I feel the Palestinians have been badly betrayed by their leaders (al-Husseini, Arafat and now Hamas) and the neighboring Arab states, who have never had the Palestinians interests at heart. Why did Jordan keep control of the West Bank, and Egypt of Gaza, after the 1948 war?"

oh, i completely agree. I have absolutely NO problems in critiquing the neighbouring Muslim States, or indeed the errors and corruption of various Palestinian leaderships as well. And now you have found that out, you will change this topic too.

doesn't really matter to you, does it? As long as the argument can be dragged out, and you can throw some unfounded media-clichés around for those who don't have any historical perspective, you really don't care what is said. You certainly have no interest in finding a conclusion to this whole mess.

and not only is that unarguable, but it also says everything we all need to know about you, and your role in this debate.

a.m.r.
19 November 2008 at 02:14

gnuneo: "i see... so why was there no conflict in Palestine/Israel in 1805? Why were the native Palestinian inhabitants not fighting Jewish SETTLERS back then? "

Short answer : because they weren't in the process of building a Jewish state, and there was no imported European anti-semtism of the viurlent Nazi strain at the time.

Longer answer : there's an extensive history of massacres of Jews in the Middle East, including in the 19th century. (see Bernard Lewis, David Litmann, Nartin Gilbert). There are none of Jews massacaring others, that I'm aware of.

gnuneuo: "how many Palestinians today were even alive back in 1947? How can any moral person justify the continued conflict between these two groups upon a botched deal well over half a CENTURY ago?"

There was also the rejected deal of 2000. Good question though, why are the Palestinians still fighting and trying to destroy Israel and kill Jews? It's a pity they've set up such a strong indoctrination of their young to murderously hate Jews.

gnuneo: "as for Hamas wanting all of Israel destroyed..."

You then link to a couple of articles about the National Conciliation Agreement of 2006 (the 'prisoner's document'). The articles, like many others, interpret the document as an implicit recognition of Israel's right to exist.

And yet, despite some of the media's claims, and your claim, in fact, none of the 18 points of the document recognise Israel's right to exist, even implicitly. Which is why the Israeli government rejected it (along with the fact that it calls for violence and the 'right of return').

Here's a link to an English translation, please point out where the implicit recognition of the right to exist is alluded to? http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=10371&CategoryId=32

a.m.r.
19 November 2008 at 02:40

gnuneo: "serial zionists"

As in "serial killers" ?

From the ShirazSocialist blog linked earlier:

"In the course of his New Statesman piece [on the "boycott Israel" campaign], Pilger appears to question the truth of the well-documented fact that Arab leaders called for Jews to be “thrown into the sea”, appears to blame Israel for the ‘war on terror’ (I say “appears” because Pilger’s latter-day prose style is far from clear), dismisses the “premises of Zionism” as “racist” and those who oppose the boycott as “Zionist fanatics”, seems to dismiss anti-semistism as a “mere threat” and backs the “courageous Israeli historian” Iian Pappe’s call for ”a single democratic state to which Palestinians are given the right to return”, as the “only feasible and just solution”.

It’s a filthy piece of work that marks a new low in the degeneration of this once respect-worthy journalist."

To which I add: and some of Pilger's followers are also quite hair-raising as well.

gnuneo
19 November 2008 at 03:50

"Short answer : because they weren't in the process of building a Jewish state, and there was no imported European anti-semtism of the viurlent Nazi strain at the time. "

ignoring the stupidity of the latter, the former is surprisingly accurate.

there were very few Jewish people living here, and they were NOT creating an exclusionist State based upon religious and racial heritage.

lets ponder that.

in 1808, there was no Palestinian/Jew murders, massacres, or other Terrorism from either side. That there were occasional such pogroms etc in other countries is like saying Estonians can be found guilty by Australian Aboriginals for what the English settlers did in Australia. You cannot blame the Pals for that, no matter how much you try.

so 200yrs ago, there was no 'Middle East conflict'. Equally, 200yrs ago, there was also no conflict between Switzerland and Canada.

Lets jump forward 150yrs, and suddenly there's conflict in the Middle East. But still no conflict between Switzerland and Canada, oddly.

what has changed? You said it yourself - the people living in the region called Palestine, were being expelled from their ancestral lands, which for feudal-age land-locked peasants - as the Palestinians were at that time - was a sentence of extreme hardship and/or death.

what has not changed between Switzerland and Canada? Why are they still at peace? Well, Switzerland has not sent settlers to colonise Canada, to create a Nation State that regards the Canadians as a lesser Culture & People. Funnily enough, if it did, i suspect relations would drop dramatically, wouldn't you?

now, if one were looking to apportion blame, if there had been an conflict between Switzerland and Canada, by what mental effort of will could you manage to blame the Canadians for the conflict?

or would you argue that the invaders were at fault for causing the conflict?

gosh, that would be radical, definitely "anti-Swissistic" racism!

writeon
19 November 2008 at 08:39

the doggeral baby spun his head around

made an vain attempt a wit

hopped, flapped and squawked a bit

then settled down once more on solid ground

he built himself a scarecrow

and filled it's head with sand

its mighty body made of straw

cut with his own stronger hand

with silver buttons for eyes

his own zipper for its mouth

he knew he'd found a friend at last

who wouldn't leave, ever - or tell him lies

He taught it how to read 'n' write

to juggle thoughts around

always willing, never too pert

it bowed its head down low and was contrite

he tested his creation this way and that

with the thougts he'd carefully stuffed inside its head

sometimes he had to slap it hard

just to prove who was the master and wore the biggest hat

proud of his deception, he'd gaze in admiration

knowing he'd found a friend for life

respectful, slow, and always ready to defer

easy on the eye and ear, never a source of strife

think! a giant built merely with straw and sand

standing tall, but with a weak, weak, hand

in its shiny eyes a small reflection of his own glory

back 'n' forth in glee, until the crow began its own sad story

a.m.r.
19 November 2008 at 09:29

Indeed gnuneol, and when there were no Jews living in Germania, there were no Jewish slaughters.

You say : "You said it yourself - the people living in the region called Palestine, were being expelled from their ancestral lands, which for feudal-age land-locked peasants - as the Palestinians were at that time - was a sentence of extreme hardship and/or death. "

This is whole point, and why history and facts matters, despite your sputterings: the Jews were buying land, and furthermore, not onlywere they not expelling the previous peasants, they were paying them (in many cases) as well as absentee landlords for the land, and continuing to employ them on the land once ownership changed hands. See the Simpson report.

The explulsions happened after the violence against the Jews - for once in the last two millenia, they were able to prevent their own slaughter, defend themselves and be victorious. It seems that you find the fact that they survived this time quite unacceptable.

a.m.r.
19 November 2008 at 09:39

And I see you are silent about your deceptive attempt to portray Hamas as recognizing Israel and no longer aiming for its destruction.

Do you not have any shame?

ektope
19 November 2008 at 09:50

We have to thank God that there are journalists like Mr Pilger who I believe is the best western world journalist and might the best in the world. He is very honest and reports the " real" world not the dream world that the majority of the western journalists make it out to be. I cannot forget his documentary "The war on Democracy" his great article on Henry Kissinger " The fastest gun of the west" and many others on which he stated the realities and the role of the US in the destruction of many countries and the killing of thousands of people on the name of "liberty and democracy" but in reality in the name of the USA vested interests.Once more a great report which I believe tells the truth about Obama. I was suspicious on the amount of money ($ 600+ dollars) and Macain only $ 80 million dollars !!!. I was wondering who was behind this huge amound of fund raising , obviously it is now clear the Jewich lobby in the US for their own reasons and vested interests. I do not know what Obama will do , but having Blair -who was promoted as a liberal as an example -I really fear for this world. A weak US president who willl be manipulated by vested interests is worst than having someone like Bush .Because people know Bush and his policies .

a.m.r.
19 November 2008 at 09:53

And re: your point about Canada and Switzerland :

Israel is the ancient ancestral home of the Jewish people.

a.m.r.
19 November 2008 at 11:11

ektope: McCain only raised $80 million because that's the amount allocated to those who choose public financing for the presidential campaign (I think it's actually something like $82 million).

But you know, why not blame the Jewish lobby !!11!

Good job JP, another one in the bag.

jimdenham
19 November 2008 at 22:39

Pappe is a sick man and should not be taken too seriously. I (and Dave Hirsch) confronted him at a debate in Birmingham a couple of years ago and he was inhoherant and quite pathetic. I think Pappe's problems are those of mental health rather than politics: certainly, when presented with strong. leftist opposition, he collapses.

a.m.r.
19 November 2008 at 23:56

And it's quite cheeky to ask for it back.

mightymark
20 November 2008 at 15:35

Phew - thanks John. I feel so much better about him knowing that you don't.

writeon
20 November 2008 at 16:01

I wonder why my last, tiny comment was removed? It was so mild and short, so apt, so obviously true, so much a recognition of how the pendulum of history swings to and fro regardless of our efforts. It wasn't meant as prophecy, but rather was a simple observation that force begets force. Surely no one could take offence at that?

Pierre
20 November 2008 at 18:01

To serve in the Israeli army an oath of allegiance must be taken to Israel,

At the very least Emanuel serves two masters.............

Carl Jones
20 November 2008 at 21:13

writeon, THEY are very sensitive. The slightest nuance will seem threatening to their agenda.

antileft
02 December 2008 at 04:25

I too wrote a poem:

Oh writeon writeon writing poetry like youre saying something

You spend many hours trying to impress.

repeat and repeat but are you actually saying something?

You spend many hours trying to impress.

No, youre saying just nothing.

You spend many hours trying to impress.

Doesnt impress me because youre not saying anything.

And who cares if this rhymes or not?

antileft
02 December 2008 at 04:27

What kind of a geek writes political poetry on the new statesman website anyway?!

gnuneo
03 December 2008 at 02:27

...you?

antileft
03 December 2008 at 07:46

Yes, me when Im immitating writeon. And writeon himself when hes trying to sound more intelligent than he is with his chirac-like endless rambles in which he doesnt say anything at all in order to avoid making errors or offend anyone.

gnuneo
03 December 2008 at 23:16

anti-left - writeon is currently one of the most profound political writers of his generation, and his prose is magnificent. There are many journalists and writers on the NS who admire him, trust me on that.

although he a liberal, and liberal, and speaks gently, do not mistake that for saying nothing, nor is there anything wrong in trying not to offend anybody - indeed, it would be a pleasanter world if more copied that trait. You, and I, are not so inoffensive, but that does not make us superior, or more honest, its just another way of speaking truth, we are 'plain speakers', and i suspect we both enjoy a good clean argument from time to time. ;)

there are other people, maybe equally smart, who try not too argue? ...Isn't life interesting? LOL!! 8)

ghrog
04 December 2008 at 00:36

Mr. Pulger,

An intersting piece, which has helped create an even more interesting thread of comments. Yes, the Republocrats still rule here in the U.S. of A.

Be that as it may, the reason for my comment is to say that, for me, Obama has already delivered on his promise to bring change. What change? (you might ask). Just this: for the first time in many hears, it feels good to be an American.

For now, that's change enough for me.

antileft
04 December 2008 at 05:33

"although he a liberal, and liberal, and speaks gently, do not mistake that for saying nothing, nor is there anything wrong in trying not to offend anybody - indeed, it would be a pleasanter world if more copied that trait."

I dont have any issue with him being a liberal. What I have an issue with is people who need 12 paragraphs to say something quite simple. Its not needed- and frankly its a bit of a bore. Why use poetry here?! Why not just say what you think so that we can debate it seriously? How is one supposed to discuss what is being said in a mature manner when it rhymes?!

And it is like Chirac- and indeed Obama. Its the kind of tripe politicians use to fill the air when theyre saying nothing at all. "Hope!" "Change!" "Yes We Can....." One second, yes we can what?? TRIPE!

(I am very pro obama though)

Jonny Mac
04 December 2008 at 09:46

Yawn. John 'Uncle Tom' Pilger on autopilot. Again. Ralph Nader could have been elected President with Cynthia McKinnon as his VP and he'd still get a kicking from JP.

gnuneo
04 December 2008 at 21:51

"What I have an issue with is people who need 12 paragraphs to say something quite simple. Its not needed- and frankly its a bit of a bore. Why use poetry here?! Why not just say what you think so that we can debate it seriously? How is one supposed to discuss what is being said in a mature manner when it rhymes?!"

don't be so judgemental! :P

better for someone to say something worthwhile in 12 paragraphs, than the thousands who say nothing *ever* - or are paid to lie, spin-doctors and the like.

remember, he is not being paid to write his comments here, unlike the journalists (or if he is then i have an invoice here as well... LOL 8) ), and you can always just skim over them if you don't want to read them.

"And it is like Chirac- and indeed Obama. Its the kind of tripe politicians use to fill the air when theyre saying nothing at all. "Hope!" "Change!" "Yes We Can....." One second, yes we can what?? TRIPE!"

see there - excellent! :) Get some more political depth and experience behind you, and i can see avenues of political media before you. If you would want them, considering the kicking journalists and politicos are now starting to get with this growth in Media-Democracy!! ;D

"(I am very pro obama though)"

i'm not. He is better than Billary or McCain though. Although maybe he'll offer McCain the position of NSA Secretary, and Palin 'Environmentalism, Religious Freedom and Homeland Security Office', and make it as obviously irrelevant an election as it was to those few who follow long-term political trends. Although its always nice to have hope that for ONCE...!

Lyon30
08 December 2008 at 17:00

Mr Pilger is obviously wrong about Obama. Next he will be trying to tell us that Mr Obama will be keeping a hard nosed, war mongering neo-con who helped set up the database known as Al-Qaeda, at the helm inside the Pentagon, to reign more terror upon the middle east and wherever the 'war on/of terror' may lead next.........

boing3887
08 December 2008 at 22:20

guys like scott63 (or whatever) show the profound ignorance of americans. how about judging american politics by international standards rather than juding the world by american political standards? so if you look at america from europe, yes, liberal warmongers can exist. only the most ignorant and secluded person can think that there is supposed to be some significant difference between the two parties and that the democrats are 'liberal left' while the republicans are 'conservative' (even though that category, in any meaningful sense, doesn't exist anymore).

the history of the american presidency, and of governments in general, shows that we have the RIGHT to consider leaders as evil until proven otherwise! if anyone wants to dispute this, remember how people saw bush before he was elected for the first time - people saw him as fairly moderate and reasonable! rhetoric is MEANINGLESS until it is backed up by action. considering that obama had to work hard to distinguish himself from mccain in any meaningful sense and that the democratic congress has been yessing bush these past 2 years, we have all the information we need to evaluate whether the rhetoric has any meaning.

idiots