How Israel defends genocide and apartheid 101

So I have to admit: I haven’t properly read an issue of Newsweek since they did that infamous ‘The Most Dangerous Nation in the World isn’t Iraq. Its Pakistan’ cover. The only other feature I actually remember reading in recent years was their seven-part series on the Obama and McCain campaigns after the US election.

But this coup is brilliant: they’ve run a leaked document created by The Israel Project – a Washington based group – which outlines how advocates of Israel should communicate messages about the country to Americans. The document made me want to throw up my dinner, but it does serve as a great eye-opener for those who don’t believe the machinery that operates behind Israel. Perfect timing though – today’s other big Israel story is about the Israeli soldiers who have broken rank to talk about the atrocities committed in Gaza last year.

Excerpts from the 116-page report are available on KABOBfest here – via whom I was alerted to the story. Here are some choice bile-inducing excerpts that I’ve culled from the ‘manual’:

Start with positive themes like peace, mutual respect, empathy for the plight of Palestinians and their children, and the like.

“Come to Jerusalem to work for peace”: The visual symbolism isn’t lost on American ears. It’s an active challenge to turn words into deeds.

“Militant Islam”: This is the best term to describe the terrorist movement. Avoid Bush era sounding terms like “Islamo-fascism.”

When talking about a Palestinian partner, it is essential to distinguish between Hamas and everyone else.

Continually establish the connection between Iran and “Iran-backed Hamas” and “Iran-backed Hezbollah.” Doing so will help you continually remind the audience of the threat presented by Iran – a reminder they need.

Americans and Europeans are aware that Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons is a problem, but they are largely unaware of just how great and immediate a problem it really is. Americans have a President who is conducting YouTube diplomacy with Iran, sending holiday greetings and signaling to the world that Iran can be wooed out of its weapons

A five-step approach to talking about “civilian casualties in Gaza”: Empathy-Admission-Effort-Examples-Turn tables

Peace is the word.
The world wants and needs to hear that the terror can be stopped. They have to believe that at some point, the sides can come together and find common ground. You may not want to hear this but the side that seems to want peace more will win the support of the non-aligned public. This is exactly why the Palestinian spokespeople are repeating the word “peace” again and again. Unless this explicit desire for peace is conveyed in Israeli communication efforts, Israeli support will erode.

The arguments about demolishing Palestinian homes because they are not within the Jerusalem building code tested SO badly that we are not even going to dignify them with a Word’s That Don’t Work box. Americans hate their own local planning boards for telling them where they can and can’t put swimming pools or build fences. You don’t need to import that animosity into your own credibility issues.

Worse yet, talking about “violations of building codes” when a TV station is showing the removal of a house that looks older than the modern state of Israel is simply catastrophic.

Whenever “right of return is raised,” we must immediately respond with “No, you are talking about the right of confiscation. This is not about returning, it is about taking away and we will not accept it.”

President Obama’s language is so similar to what we have recommended you say for years that he could easily be stealing straight from our playbook.

Post-Netanyahu speech aka huge waste of time.

Have just spent the better part of an hour watching Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech in Israel. Full of recycled rhetoric (invoking Arab leaders, praising Egypt and Jordan et al) and a continuing stance to not engage Hamas (cannot have a Hamastan, said Bibi) and to only allow the Palestinians any concessions if they agreed to become an entirely demilitarized state.  As with Zardari’s ridiculous 6:49 minute speech, I wonder why exactly I spend my time waiting for speeches and having to tolerate CNN’s commentary. (Though watching Zardari’s speech was worth it for Haroon Rashid’s brilliant takedown of him afterwards)

Netanyahu’s speech just serves to remind one that the rise of the right-wing- anywhere in the world -  just has disaster written all over it.  Moreover, trying to leave Hamas out of the equation and forge ahead with the existing parties will not work, not anymore, particularly after the Gaza war last year. I cannot think of a single positive thing to say about the speech – except that only a really major divine miracle can save Palestine now.

Meanwhile, you should all be wishing Obama’s administration the best of luck in his attempt to work with Netanyahu’s government in achieving a Palestinian state. They’ll need it.

The Cairo Speech – III

The overwhelming mood in the air is dismissive of Obama’s 55 minute speech in Cairo yesterday. While the words may have been a far cry from some of the rhetoric and fear-mongering of the decade past, it really will be actions that count at the end of the day. And unfortunately, that still is a pipe dream. Presenting the links of this morning on the Cairo speech:

Firstly, no wonder the Israelis haven’t lost their cool yet. According to the New York Daily News:

The White House tried to ease Israeli concerns over President Obama’s fence-mending speech Thursday to the Muslim world, insisting he remains loyal to the strong U.S. relationship with the Jewish state.

In an e-mail sent to some Jewish groups and the U.S.-based lobby for Israel, the White House insisted Obama’s outreach to the mainstream Muslim majority is no threat to relations with its key Mideast ally.

“The President’s commitment to Israel’s security is as firm as ever, which he has emphasized many times,” the e-mail said.

There was also a late afternoon secret White House conference call with some Jewish leaders Wednesday to quell any concerns that the Cairo University speech signals a souring of U.S.-Israeli relations.

Helena Cobban interviewed Hamas’ Khaled Meshaal - his take on the Cairo speech:

We want to see practical steps by the United States such as ending Israel’s settlement activity, putting an end to Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian and its campaign to Judaize Jerusalem; and end to its demolitions of Palestinian homes; and the removal of the 600 checkpoints that are stifling normal life in the West Bank.

Rather than sweet words from President Obama on democratization, we’d rather see the United States start to respect the results of democratic elections that have already been held. And rather than talk about democratization and human rights in the Arab world, we’d rather see the removal of General Dayton, who’s building a police state there in the West Bank.

And Robert Fisk on the speech:

There was no mention – during or after his kindly excoriation of Iran – of Israel’s estimated 264 nuclear warheads. He admonished the Palestinians for their violence – for “shooting rockets at sleeping children or blowing up old women in a bus”. But there was no mention of Israel’s violence in Gaza, just of the “continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza”. Nor was there a mention of Israel’s bombing of civilians in Lebanon, of its repeated invasions of Lebanon (17,500 dead in the 1982 invasion alone). Obama told Muslims not to live in the past, but cut the Israelis out of this. The Holocaust loomed out of his speech and he reminded us that he was going to the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp today.

For a man who is sending thousands more US troops into Afghanistan – a certain disaster-to-come in the eyes of Arabs and Westerners – there was something brazen about all this. When he talked about the debt that all Westerners owed to Islam – the “light of learning” in Andalusia, algebra, the magnetic compass, religious tolerance, it was like a cat being gently stroked before a visit to the vet. And the vet, of course, lectured the Muslims on the dangers of extremism, on “cycles of suspicion and discord” – even if America and Islam shared “common principles” which turned out to be “justice, progress and the dignity of all human beings”.

Sunday viewing: back to the future in the Middle East

I finally got around to watching Waltz With  Bashir today – the film that made headlines for the latter part of 2008  – won several awards and managed to be privately screened in Beirut. More thoughts on the film later – I feel like I need more time to digest it before I make sweeping statements.

But with creepily perfect timing, Syria News Wire just posted about an Al Jazeera mention of Closed Zone,  a short film made by Yoni Goodman, the director of animation for Waltz With Bashir. Closed Zone is an apt description of life in Gaza – the world’s largest open-air prison.

Weekend reading

Hussain Dada aptly points out the hypocrisy of ignoring Swat and crusading for Gaza:

The moribund civil society has sprung into action, expressing clamorous solidarity with the people of Palestine.

The modest turnouts at the demonstrations is a reflection of the penetration of the electronic medium – the organisers relied on Facebook, mass e-mailing and sms messages to gather support.

Human rights activists, political party and trade union leaders, lawyers, doctors, journalists, show-business personalities, students and teachers of both genders and all age groups are out carrying Palestinian flags and banners.

Of late, Pakistanis have shown a tremendous spirit for exhibiting a global conscience, and exposing double standards which is the flipside of international diplomacy. However, it is in the denial of their own glaring double-standards that they manifest a hitherto unknown spirit. A catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude is unfolding in Gaza, but the atrocities being perpetuated in Pakistan’s north-west, particularly in Swat, don’t seem to prick the conscience of our concerned gentry.

Swat appears to have been consciously expunged from their memory. It figures in op-ed pieces, but has vanished completely from their drawing-room discourse, barring a digression on those rare occasions when wall graffiti threatening Talibanisation are spotted. Swat does not even have a functioning online petition on the famous website of the same name.

I leave to the more learned the utility of protesting against Israeli, but why do these protestors remain unperturbed by the atrocities committed in our own backyard? While Kashmir was up in arms and street protests routine, there was merely a sound from these self-proclaimed practitioners of universal rights.

They protest because protests are going on the world over. It fits into their philosophy of jumping on the bandwagon of popular dissent.

Ayaz Amir hits the right note again this week, talking about the futility that will entail the upcoming lawyers’ march, rounding it up with pointing out the short-sightedness and idiocy of those who rule the land of the pure:

Our political class refuses to learn from history. At a time when national unity should be the most precious commodity of all, knives are being sharpened for a fresh round of political confrontation, the PML-N talking in terms of popular mobilization and the PPP fishing for trouble in Punjab. Pakistan is facing serious threats, perhaps to its very existence, because of the fallout from America’s war in Afghanistan and the growing Taliban threat in Swat and FATA. But the political class, not for the first time, is demonstrating its incapacity to see beyond its short-term interests.

Obama can pronounce Pakistan in a non-annoying way.

Just watching the announcement of Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell as envoys to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Middle East. While ME does not seem to be anything groundbreaking so far, I liked how Holbrooke was quick to not pigeonhole Pakistan, saying that what one sees of the tribal areas is not the same for the entire country.

And surprisingly, Obama is actually prononuncing Pakistan as PA-kistan, not Paykistan! Perhaps his memory of his Pakistani friends and his visit to Pakistan has actually helped him recall how its pronounced.

Robert Fisk’s contradictions

Robert Fisk’s opinion piece today is a pile of contradictions. He talks about the label of Holocaust that has been attached to the war on Gaza, yet rebukes himself and wonders if it isn’t anti-Semitic, as many (and he says as well)

Yes, I know what all these people are trying to do: make a direct connection between Israel and Hitler’s Germany. And in several radio interviews this past week, I’ve heard a good deal of condemnation about such comparisons. How do Holocaust survivors in Israel feel about being called Nazis? How can anyone compare the Israeli army to the Wehrmacht? Merely to make such a parallel is an act of anti-Semitism.

Having come under fire from the Israeli army on many occasions, I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. I’ve never understood why strafing the roads of northern France in 1940 was a war crime while strafing the roads of southern Lebanon is not a war crime. The massacre of up to 1,700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila camps – perpetrated by Israel’s Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli soldiers watched and did nothing – falls pretty much into the Second World War bracket. Israel’s own estimate of the dead – a paltry 460 – was only nine fewer than the Nazi massacre at the Czech village of Lidice in 1942 when almost 300 women and children were also sent to Ravensbrück (a real concentration camp). Lidice was destroyed in revenge for the murder by Allied agents of Reinhard Heydrich. The Palestinians were slaughtered after Ariel Sharon told the world – untruthfully – that a Palestinian had murdered the Lebanese Phalangist leader Bashir Gemayel.

–

No, the real reason why “Gaza-Genocide” is a dangerous parallel is because it is not true. Gaza’s one and a half million refugees are treated outrageously enough, but they are not being herded into gas chambers or forced on death marches. That the Israeli army is a rabble is not in question – though I was amused to read one of Newsweek’s regular correspondents calling it “splendid” last week – but that does not mean they are all war criminals. The issue, surely, is that war crimes do appear to have been committed in Gaza. Firing at UN schools is a criminal act. It breaks every International Red Cross protocol. There is no excuse for the killing of so many women and children.

I should add that I had a sneaking sympathy for the Syrian foreign minister who this week asked why a whole international tribunal has been set up in the Hague to investigate the murder of one man – Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri – while no such tribunal is set up to investigate the deaths of more than 1,000 Palestinians.

I should add, however, that the Hague tribunal may well be pointing the finger at Syria and I would still like to see a tribunal set up into the Syrian massacre at Hama in 1982 when thousands of civilians were shot at the hands of Rifaat al-Assad’s special forces. The aforesaid Rifaat, I should add, today lives safely within the European Union. And how about a trial for the Israeli artillerymen who massacred 106 civilians – more than half of them children – at the UN base at Qana in 1996?

Not just coffee – your food is made of blood too.

It ain’t just Starbucks. Jordanian activists are calling for a ban on Nestle, McDonalds and Coca-Cola as well.

From The Jordan Times:

Dozens of youth activists held a sit-in on Thursday in front of an American fast-food restaurant in the capital calling for a nationwide boycott of US companies that they claim are financially supporting Israel.

Gathering in front of the McDonald’s branch on University Street yesterday, participants raised pictures of Gaza victims and banners urging people not to buy US and Israeli commodities and distributed flyers listing several companies’ alleged links to Israel.

“We will boycott, we don’t care… your food is full of blood,” they chanted, in reference to the more than 1,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military offensive in Gaza over the last 20 days.

The protest was part of the newly formed “Move” campaign, which aims at promoting the boycott of US and Israeli products in Jordan upon allegations that company revenues go to support the Israeli military.

Organisers said the campaign aims at reviving a similar initiative that was taken in Jordan and neighbouring countries during the last Palestinian Intifada, or uprising against the Israeli occupation in 2000.

Then, Syrian colas and Arab food products gained popularity among young people in the country, replacing American items, activist Fakher Daas told The Jordan Times.

Lebanon and the mystery of the rocket attacks

Robert Fisk solves the mystery of the rockets landing in Israel from Lebanon:

The “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command” – the quotation marks are necessary since this outfit controls at most 500 cadres – is responsible for all the tin-pot rockets fired into Israel from Lebanon this past week.

It is not the next “front”. It is not the beginning of the “northern front”. No one was injured when three rockets fired from southern Lebanon fell in open areas near the Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona yesterday. A blaze of outdated rockets on northern Israel – “about 1944, I date them”, as one Palestinian put it in Beirut – is not going to ignite another conflict for Hamas in Gaza. In Lebanon, the guns are silent – and when they are not, the world will know about it.

He also delivers a rather ominous warning at the end, one I suspect the Obama administration will look at as a clear sign that their Middle East agenda will be chock full in the next four years. Though the events of Gaza, with over a 1000 people dead, do point to the IDF as a hub of terror.

The Israelis do not want a second war right now. It’s not the moment to claim that the PFLP-GC, with its nests around Sidon, is the “centre of world terror”. That will be a surprise for the West’s “analysts” – and for the Obama administration – in due course.

Your coffee is made of blood.

I don’t know if this actually happened – and if it did, it would be truly ironic (for a number of very obvious reasons) and makes me wonder if it happened at that mammoth Starbucks outlet in Abdoun, but an acquaintance had this as his Facebook status yesterday:

Jordanian protesters are gathering infront of Starbucks calling for boycotting companies that support Israel, and shouting “your coffee is made of blood”.

Clearly, not what anyone would like to hear as they sip their lattes. But apparently there was a protest in Beirut yesterday that caused latte-drinkers to flee. From the AP report:

About one hundred demonstrators angry with Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip shut down a Starbucks store Tuesday, shouting anti-Israel slogans and causing customers inside to flee.
The protesters said they targeted the store because they claim that Howard Schultz, the company’s CEO, chairman and president, donates money to the Israeli military. A spokeswoman for the Seattle, Washington-based conglomerate called accusations Starbucks supports Israel “false” and said the political preferences of one of its employees has no bearing on the company’s policies.

The demonstrators hung several banners on the shop’s window and used white tape to paste a Star of David over the green-and-white Starbucks sign.

The protesters also distributed a letter saying Schultz “is one of the pillars of the American Jewish lobby and the owner of the Starbucks,” which they said donates money to the Israeli military.

AP also quotes from a statement released by Starbucks earlier this month,

Rumors that Starbucks Coffee Company and its management support Israel are unequivocally false. Starbucks is a non-political organization and does not support political causes. Further, the political preferences of a Starbucks partner (employee) at any level have absolutely no bearing on Starbucks company policies.

AP photo – the defaced Starbucks logo