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This essay was written by Hadar Sela, and published at The Propagandist.
The broadcast and publishing of the leaked ‘Palestine papers’ by Al Jazeera and the Guardian puts a spotlight on some issues which are actually much more interesting and far-reaching than the papers themselves. After all, it is only those who hold completely unrealistic ideas about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict who could claim to be surprised by their content; the rest of us know that in the end, the 2008 Olmert offer is more or less how the future will look because it represents the most Israel can give and the least that the Palestinians can accept.
Nevertheless, we have witnessed waves of selective outrage from foreign journalists and commentators – their words conveying a deep sense of betrayal. Horrified by the Palestinian negotiators’ pragmatism, indignant at the very idea of compromise, they rushed to brand them as traitors and sellers-out of the Palestinian cause.
What is interesting is that these voices are for the most part not coming from the people who would actually be affected by a Palestinian/Israeli agreement. They are coming from those who sit high up in the seats of the amphitheatre, demanding loudly that their favourite gladiator below carry on the fight, despite the fact that he is already wounded, bloody and exhausted.
There is nothing new about this, of course; for many years now certain far-Left journalists, academics, politicians and other ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists who have no physical link to the conflict have displayed much more extreme and uncompromising views than the people who actually live in this region. Every time I encountered the virulent bile and blind hatred spewed by ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists during my recent years spent in the United Kingdom, I would thank my lucky stars that here in the Middle East I get to live with the Palestinian people themselves who are, in general, considerably less extreme than their foreign advocates.
Others who cheer-lead the rejection of compromise from the safety and comfort include the often foreign-born people of Palestinian descent who have made careers out of the prolonged Palestinian struggle. Most of them tend to be ideologically aligned with Hamas, such as electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah or ISM founder Huweida Arraf. In addition, there are foreign actors such as Iran, Syria and Qatar for whom the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is a mere side-show in a much bigger spectacle and who shore up the Hamas regime financially and militarily, ensuring that reconciliation with other Palestinians remains just as remote as compromise with Israel.
Courtesy of our friend – and fellow conspirator – Elder of Ziyon.
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. So, as of today, 130,000 photos from Yad Vashem’s archive will be viewable in full resolution online – a project which represents the first step in the Jerusalem-based museum’s efforts to bring their entire collection online. Click here to visit the site.
Image from site of Yad Vashem
The following is Yad Vashem’s YouTube channel, which will allow you to view a series of videos of Holocaust survivor testimonials.
A Guest Post by AKUS
What I think of as the Pallypapers Affair has had the remarkable effect of bursting the bubble of fantasies that so many outside Israel have clung to regarding the prospect of a future Palestinian state. Our friends at the Guardian have been reduced to desperation as evidenced in an editorial headlined with the words: The Palestine Papers: Despair. But we still need a deal.
Yes – the world as the Guardianistas knew it has come to the end. Their awakening from the dream of a Palestinian state, an impossible fantasy nurtured since 1967, is a catastrophe only to be ranked, perhaps, with the fall of the Berlin Wall or the failure of global Communism.
Although I was initially inclined to believe the Pallypapers are forgeries, the furious denunciations by Saeb Erekat have persuaded me that they are very, if not completely, accurate records. Erekat is such a congenital liar that if he says something is false, it is extremely likely that it is true. I cannot recall an accurate statement the man has ever made.
The Guardian is twisting and turning in the wind like an evil dream catcher – not sure who to blame more. If the Pallypapers are actually true records of the talks, should the Guardian excoriate one set of its former pets, the PLO and Fatah in the guise of the Palestinian Authority, whose entire history of negotiations over the period since Camp David is revealed, as a tissue of lies and taqqiyah directed at its own people as much as the outside world? Should it, as always, just blame Israel – but how can it when it is clear that it is the Palestinians – or at least, that group of West Bank Arabs claiming to represent a non-existent Palestine – have been quietly agreeing to most of Israel’s negotiating positions?
Where the Guardian seems to be settling on developing a four pronged defensive position aimed at rescuing what little remains of its tattered fantasies about a Palestinian state and its credibility on the issue:
1. The Guardian believes that there are good Palestinian leaders and bad Palestinian leaders. The good Palestinian leaders are in Gaza, leading the terrorist group, Hamas. If there was ever any doubt, it is clear now that the Guardian is a supporter of a recognized terror group, in defiance of its own government’s stand (a child-like defiance that no doubt thrills the juveniles who appear to have taken control of the paper). In fact, by electing to publish the following letter, the Guardian has apparently taken the stance of that terrorism, not negotiation, is the answer (“Terrorism, as in this case, can as exactly be self-defence”):
(The source is found on a page of letters that appears under Ian McEwan’s letter)
One of the more telling aspects of the way the Guardian covered the shooting in Arizona – which targeted congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and left six dead – was the way in which they used the deadly attack to demonize their political opponents. Like much of the American hard left, the Guardian concluded that the attack was motivated by “inflammatory right-wing rhetoric”, without the slightest evidence that the shooter, Jared Loughner, was a fan of the conservative talk show hosts and politicians being mentioned. Of course the mere death of evidence wouldn’t stop CiF’s Michael Tomasky from assigning such blame, acknowledging that “it can’t really and truly be proved”, before insisting, “but everyone knows.”
Those who read this blog regularly are fully aware of the time we spend documenting the hate and vitriol directed against Jews and Israel in the comment section of CiF which is unleashed by Guardian stories even tangentially related to Israel. As we’ve noted previously, the Community Security Trust has named the Guardian as a major purveyor of antisemitic rhetoric in the British mainstream media in their 2007 and 2008 reports.
As CiF Watch actually takes empirical evidence seriously, we’ve taken the time to document “what everyone knows”: that the Guardian’s recent PaliLeaks reports have unleashed a wave of hate – towards Jews and Israel – below the the line that reaches new depths.
As you read the comments below, elicited from the Jan. 24 Guardian piece “Papers reveal how Palestinian leaders gave up fight over refugees,” please also note how many fellow Guardian readers recommend the remarks.
We posted previously on this comment about Israel’s unique evil, which still hasn’t been deleted, and has now garnered 870 Recommends:
Accusation that Israel is engaged in Ethnic Cleansing (506 Recommends)
Israel and the U.S. are the true rogue states in the world (484 Recommends). Also, see our posts (here, here, and here) on John Whitbeck’s CiF piece, “On Palestine, the U.S. is a rogue state.”
Pro-Hamas comment (261 Recommends):
This is cross posted by Emanuele Ottolenghi at the blog, Contentions.
When the Guardian launched its “Palestine Papers” on Sunday, the sensational leak was accompanied by an editorial, which was sensationally titled “Pleading for a fig leaf” and just as sensationally subtitled “The secret notes suggest one requires Panglossian optimism to believe that these negotiations can one day be resurrected.”
The editorial went on to accuse the Palestinian leadership of being a bunch of collaborators — it described them as “weak” and “craven” — a mixture of poodles and quislings. It decried their humiliating readiness “to flog the family silver” in order to get “a puppet state.” It then proclaimed: “The Palestinian Authority may continue as an employer but, as of today, its legitimacy as negotiators will have all but ended on the Palestinian street.”
So, on January 23, the peace process is dead, unless you are a “Panglossian optimist.”
This was not just an isolated 0pinion piece — this was an opening salvo from the editor. Somehow, it looks like someone may have regretted going so far, because just two days later, a new editorial with a contrary headline appeared — “Despair. But we still need a deal” — with a subtitle that was also the opposite of that of the January 23 editorial: “A two-state solution remains the only show in town.”
The Guardian now says it wants the two-state solution back — two days after it inaugurated the latest effort to sabotage it and a day before the head of Hamas’s international-relations department was given a prominent platform in the paper.
Nice try, but this does not in any way match the impact of the avalanche of op-eds, news coverage, and profiles the Guardian provided and continues to provide in order to support the perception that the Palestinian leadership betrayed their people.
In other words, the Guardian believes in the two-state solution, just not the one that could be realistically negotiated, because that constitutes a betrayal of the Palestinian cause; and not one under U.S. auspices, because the Americans are not honest brokers; and not one where Israel gets its way on settlements, Jerusalem, or refugees, because that is “craven.”
In short, the Guardian is for a two-state solution where Israel, not the Palestinians, surrenders.
The Guardian has always taken the Palestinian narrative as the truth. The leaks, accompanied by an accusing finger pointed at the Palestinian negotiators, is a cry of “betrayal” of the Palestinian cause. They are more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves.
Just consider the Guardian’s wise counsel on how successfully negotiate:
[T]alks succeed only when each side can put itself in the shoes of the other. To imagine that Abu Mazen could put to a referendum a deal in which Israel got its way on all the core issues – settlements, Jerusalem, the return of refugees – and to imagine that such a deal would be durable, is the ultimate failure of a negotiator’s imagination.
There. The Guardian can only put itself in the shoes of the Palestinians — but no word of Israeli and Jewish pain, when Israel’s leaders would have to relinquish Hebron, the second holiest place for Judaism; or Bethlehem, where one of four matriarchs of Israel, Rachel, is buried; or Nablus, where Jacob’s son Joseph is buried; or the entire biblical heartland, which, more than Tel Aviv and the entire coastline of Israel, is filled with longing and memories of Jewish identity.
No pain is registered, because the Guardian, in its cravenness, sees Israel as the Palestinians see it — a colonialist, European implant, based on a racist and imperialist ideology that crafted an imagined past fed by religious superstition and devoid of the authenticity of the indigenous culture.
Their leaks may be a treasure trove for the impatient historian who won’t need to wait 30 years to access classified material. It may be a golden opportunity to undermine the Palestinian Authority and poke Israel in the eye in the process. And it is no doubt great for Internet traffic. But it has no value whatsoever in terms of advancing the cause the Guardian pretends to support.
That plea for a two-state solution is just their fig leaf — a convenient cover before they charge ahead.
This is cross posted by Pesach Benson at Honest Reporting.
Our new Question of the Week asks:
Why might Al Jazeera have chosen The Guardian over larger Western news services to partner in the Palestine Papers leak?
Here are my four reasons why The Guardian made the most sense for Al Jazeera:
- The paper demonstrated during Wikileaks that it knows how to distill and present a large volume of documents.
- The Guardian can spin anything against Israel.
- The nature of the paper’s Comment is Free section (and commenters) guarantees to keep the topic alive longer than any other newspaper.
- Perhaps the NY Times will be an exception, but I don’t see leakers with an agenda giving documents to newspapers with paywalls.
Other factors are involved, of course. See what readers are saying and post your thoughts on the weekly question.
“[Ken Livingstone is] the man who hugged [leading ideologue of Islamist terror and an avowed anti-Semite] Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim cleric who justifies attacks on Israeli civilians; who told the [Jewish] Reuben brothers to go back where they came from; who heard a Jewish reporter say he was offended to be compared to a concentration camp guard and didnt care; and who, most recently, wrongly claimed that former Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits had declared the creation of the state of Israel a mistake.”
Thus begins Jonathan Freedland’s rejection ENDORSEMENT of Ken Livingstone for Mayor in 2008.
The rest of Freedland’s endorsement should be read to get a fuller sense of the stunning rhetorical contortions necessary to make such a radical pivot, and to provide some context for his recent PaliLeaks defense published in the Guardian.
Freedland responds to criticism of his paper’s decision to publish the “Palestine Papers” by reducing the Guardian’s decision down to this:
“It is that once an organisation has been handed information like this, it either publishes it or it suppresses it.”
Well, no. Other options include waiting for additional information before publishing the selected documents – including notes from Olmert and his negotiating team, or the additional Palestinian documents that the Guardian didn’t receive, information that could corroborate or contradict the report.
Indeed, Freedland himself acknowledged that the papers are “not exhaustive and may have been leaked selectively; other documents might provide a rather different impression” (while simultaneously concluding that the papers proved that Israel had a partner for peace). A contradiction? Well, he’s just a journalist.
Freedland then responds to criticism that the publication may have killed the peace process, or may even incite violence:
“The consequences are for others to manage…journalists shouldn’t be expected to weigh all the possible consequences of publication.”
Yes, he’s just a journalist after all, thus free of the quotidian concerns of us mere citizens.
He then adds:
“Only in the rarest exceptions – where there is a direct risk to a named individual’s life – should journalists withhold such information from their readers or viewers.”
Now this is interesting. He’s willing to acknowledge that journalistic discretion may be used, but only when there was a direct risk to a “named” individual.
Those of us living in the region who may be directly harmed as the result of the the carnage caused by another violent intifada don’t count because we are nameless, detached from his every day life – a mere abstraction in his ideological paradigm.
Now, returning to where we began, Freedland’s 2008 endorsement for mayor rested on arguing that, despite Livingstone’s endorsement of known hate preachers such as al-Qaradawi, Jews, in the end, shouldn’t vote based on such narrow concerns. Of greater concern for Jews, according to Freedland, is that Livingstone, after all, would be a better manager, would make the trains run on time.
Freedland concluded his apologia for Livingstone by attacking his opponent in the race, Boris Johnson, for being backed by the BNP as their second preference. That’s right. Freedland never claimed that Johnson supported the BNP or any other extremist group, merely that the BNP placed Johnson somewhere between their preferred candidate and Livingstone.
The mind spins at the thought that Freedland failed to note the stunning failure of his logic: being critical of Jews who would dare vote out of concern that a candidate for political office is openly anti-Semitic, while urging those same Jews to vote against another candidate merely because he wasn’t completely rejected by a party which engages in anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic bigotry – the former (fear of anti-Semitism) representing antiquated Jewish parochialism, the latter (concern for bigotry against other minorities), of course, enlightened Jewish progressivism.
But, maybe I’m being too hard on Freedland. He is, after all, just a journalist.
A guest post by AKUS
In all the excitement over the Pallypapers, the events in Lebanon are getting less attention than they deserve, even though vastly more significant.
The state of play at the moment is that results of the UN Hariri assassination investigation have not yet been released. In the meantime, Hezbollah has managed to depose Hariri as Prime Minister through a parliamentary coup and the incomprehensible support of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. One can only assume that Jumblatt hopes avoid conflict by siding with Hezbollah – a vain hope at best as the country falls further and further into the hands of these theocratic thugs. A new Prime Minister – yet another Lebanese billionaire – Najib Mikati, has been selected by Hezbollah to put a moderate face on things, but clearly will be no more than a puppet in a Hezbollah dominated government.
The pro-Western elements in Lebanon are now urging sit-ins against Hezbollah, something that no doubt amuses that heavily armed group. The Sunnis have rioted futilely because Hezbollah are Shiites (standard operating procedure for Islamic factions). The Saudis are backing their Sunni Muslims against Iran’s Shiite Hezbollah. According to the Washington Post article, “Hariri has insisted he will not join a government led by a Hezbollah pick”. The US has rather feebly said it would “reconsider” its aid to Lebanon if Mikati forms of a government dominated by Hezbollah. But that, of course, is exactly what is about to happen. One can only wonder, in retrospect, why America ever provided any aid to Lebanon rather than joining with Israel to destroy Hezbollah.
So we now have what amounts to the world’s first terrorist state – a country headed by the selected puppet of a terrorist group. At the next session of the United Nations, will we have the edifying spectacle of Ahmadinajad once more representing Iran and a person representing its terrorist client state, Lebanon, denouncing Israel and the United States? Will Hezbollah be asked, perhaps, to provide one of its thugs to chair the UN Human Rights Council?
Fascinating stuff, and a testament to the increasing wimpish nature of the West.
H/T Just Journalism
Today’s Guardian “Palestine Papers” update included the following illustration by one of the most prolific anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic cartoonists, Carlos Latuff – depicting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as a sinister looking (gun wielding) Orthodox Jew. (The Guardian casually referred to Latuff as “a Brazilian based cartoonist.”)
As I noted previously (in a piece for the JCPA, as well as a guest post for Elder of Ziyon), Latuff is a Brazilian political “activist” and cartoonist with an impressively large portfolio of work – much of which openly express anti-Semitic themes. Some of his caricatures seem to suggest that Israel is a unique and immutable evil in the world. His work includes imagery frequently suggesting a moral equivalence between Israel and Nazi Germany – and he has explicitly acknowledged that this is indeed his political view.
Latuff’s work has been posted on various radical left websites and blogs, as well as several terrorist affiliated websites such as ‘The Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance’ (JAMI) magazine. Norman Finkelstein’s official website has also featured Latuff cartoons. As I noted in my Elder of Ziyon post, a blogger at the site, Mondoweiss, made use of one of Latuff’s cartoons during the flotilla incident. (Scroll down to bottom to see link to Latuff‘s cartoon)
Latuff’s notoriety includes his participation in the 2006 Iranian International Holocaust Cartoon Competition – for his cartoon comparing the Israeli West Bank security barrier with the Nazi concentration camps. Latuff placed second in the contest.
In their 2003 Annual Report, the Stephen Roth Institute compared Latuff’s cartoons of Ariel Sharon to the antisemitic caricatures of Philipp Rupprecht in Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer.
Even the Guardian’s Ian Black noted that Latuff was among those cartoonists “drawing, without inhibition, on judeophobic stereotypes in the service of the anti-globalisation movement.”
Latuff also has employed racist themes in service of his critiques of President Barack Obama.
Here is some of Latuff’s work:
The Latuff cartoon above, showing Sharon kissing Hitler, appeared on the (Washington) DC Indymedia site.
In an earlier post, Tom Wilson asked if Guardian columnist Karma Nabulsi was implicitly calling for the Palestinians to reject negotiations and return to another violent intifada.
However, the commentary (by Ted Honderich, a professor of philosophy at University College London) published in today’s Guardian “Letters” section, represents something more than merely an implicit justification of killing Israeli civilians.
It should be noted that this is not a reader comment below the line, which could be characterized as merely a failure by CiF moderators. The above letter represents a decision by Guardian editors to publish, and therefore give license to, an explicit justification of terrorism – a call to violence against Israeli men, women, and children.
As Israelinurse noted in her previous post, the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland dismissed concerns about the potential injurious effects of publishing the “Palestine Papers” by stating, “The consequences are for others to manage.”
However, those of us who actually live in the region and don’t have the luxury of seeing the Israeli-Palestinian (and Israeli-Islamist) conflict as a mere abstraction – those who must, and will, bear the burden of such toxic ideas – simply can not afford to be as flippant as Freedland.
The justification of terrorism found on the pages of the Guardian is quite simply incompatible with even the broadest definition of progressive thought – something editors may wish to consider as they continue to express their increasingly ludicrous aim to be the world’s leading liberal voice.
Jonathan Freedland was sent out on January 25th to man the barricades against the rising tide of criticism over the Guardian’s decision to publish the leaked ‘Palestine papers’.
It has to be said that he did his best; invoking fine principles such as the readers’ right to know and opposition to the suppression of information, as well as disconnecting journalistic obligations from the management of their aftermath.
“Of course publication will have political consequences, even awkward ones. But that cannot be for journalists and editors to decide: their job is to find out what is happening and report it, as best they can. The consequences are for others to manage.”
He even appears to have convinced himself to a certain extent that the Guardian is to be congratulated for playing the catalyst in the recent uprising in Tunisia by publishing the Wikileaks cables, although it may be prudent to wait and see how that pans out before handing out the bouquets. Should the Islamists gain power, the general population may yet prove to be no better off than before.
“The point here is that journalists shouldn’t be expected to weigh all the possible consequences of publication because the most important can – as in the Tunisia case – be unforeseen. Already there are signs of that with the Palestine papers.”
Loyalty, such as that displayed by Mr. Freedland to his paper and to his profession, is in general a fine thing, but only when the recipient of that loyalty has proved itself to be deserving of it. Freedland admits that he does not know the source of the leaked papers and is apparently unconcerned by that fact.
“ I don’t know the identity of the source for the Palestine papers, but I’d be pretty surprised if they didn’t have a purpose for their actions. That is true of every leak through recorded time.”
We must therefore presume that Freedland blindly places his trust in ‘those in the know’ at the Guardian. He must trust them to have ensured that the documents are in fact genuine, because all his fine claims regarding the journalist’s role in helping the public gain access to information only hold water if that information is true. He must trust that that the ‘purpose for their actions’ is a laudable and decent one because otherwise he may well find himself complicit in enabling processes which contradict his principles.
It is therefore crucial that honest brokers such as Jonathan Freedland do not balk at asking some of the more difficult and possibly complex questions surrounding the ‘Palestine papers’ leaks.
Do the Guardian’s claims to have authenticated the papers hold water? How and by whom was that process carried out?
How did the Guardian become involved in the publication of the leaked papers? Did Al Jazeera approach the Guardian, or the other way round?
Were financial transactions involved and if so, did they include Qatari government or Hamas money?
Did the source of the leaks approach Al Jazeera and/or the Guardian, or was the initiative to get hold of the papers born before the source was located?
What is the nature –if any – of connections between the source of the leaks and the British Government and/or the Adam Smith Institute?
What – if any – is the significance of the fact that the Guardian’s Seumas Milne attended a conference organized and hosted by Al Jazeera in Qatar in May 2010? Is there relevance in the fact that Azmi Bishara also attended that conference and that a member of his family who worked at the NSU has been suggested as a possible source of the leaks?
Does the fact that yet another participant in that conference – Osama Hamdan of the Hamas political bureau – had an article on the subject of the leaked papers published in the Guardian on January 26th indicate more than mere cordial journalistic connections between certain employees of the Guardian and the Hamas leadership?
Does Jonathan Freedland condone the Guardian’s provision of a platform to a man who has expressed specific support for suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and who states his aim as being “to wipe that entity [Israel] off the face of the earth”?
These may not be easy questions to ask, but they are essential ones if Jonathan Freedland wishes to ensure that his integrity is not being exploited and he himself taken for a ride by others less principled than he.
Like this:
A guest post by Tom Wilson
The leaking of over 1000 confidential Palestinian documents pertaining to negotiations with Israel could and indeed have been interpreted in a wide variety of ways. The most optimistic have pointed to the revelations as a sign of how possible a negotiated two state solution could be considering how tantalisingly close it seems the two sides have already come. They show quite clearly that both sides are capable of accepting the notion that real concessions will need to be made if peace is to be achieved. Yet such positivity is not the order of the day for the Guardian’s Karma Nabulsi who has taken a rather different perspective on the matter.
For Nabulsi it seems as if the very fact that the Palestinian Authority would even contemplate reciprocating Israel’s concessions by making similar moves of their own is nothing short of an act of treason against the Palestinian people.
Outdoing the finest spokespeople and propagandists of Hamas, Nabulsi wastes no time in pouncing on the opportunity to both condemn the Palestinian Authority and triumphantly declare that what she describes as the ‘seemingly endless and ugly game of the peace process’ is over. But if peace talks are over then what exactly does that leave in their place? A return to the dark days of suicide bombings and the street to street gun battles of the Intifada? Nabulsi doesn’t say, but nor does she initially suggest any other alternatives for the Palestinians either.
Nabulsi is quite open about claiming that the negotiated peace process was at odds with what Palestinians actually desired, stating boldly:
‘For the overwhelming majority of Palestinians, official Palestinian policy over these past decades has been the antithesis of a legitimate, or representative, or even coherent strategy to obtain our long-denied freedom’.
Again the question has to be asked; if the route of non-violence and negotiations are not the way forward for Palestinians then are we left to assume that the uncompromising violence championed by Hamas is? After all Nabulsi, lambasts the Palestinian negotiators readiness to make concessions as:
‘[the] surrender of every one of our core rights under international law’.
Almost as startling is the way in which she goes onto condemn British and US state building efforts, the attempts to build the institutions of Palestinian statehood from the ground up, as ‘colonial’ and assistance for ‘Israeli military expansion’.
It’s no great secret that the Fatah led Palestinian Authority has been guilty of both corruption and serious human rights abuses but Nabulsi goes so far as to seriously claim that the entirety of the Palestinian Authority is nothing more than a ‘racket’ engaged in a ‘brutal process of subjugating an entire people’. Nabulsi argues that they have become such because of what she calls ‘terrifying coercion’ from western governments.
While Nabulsi can find no words of praise for the attempts for peace made by the Palestinian leadership she does however seem to look rather more favorably upon the methods of the Marxist Revolutionary and Viet Cong leader Ho Chi Minh. Indeed ultimately Nabulsi advocates for what she refers to as the ‘unassailable strength of a popular mandate’ and yet given the above example that she cites it would seem that Nabulsi is not in fact referring to democratic elections at all. Rather she concludes her piece by calling for the restoration of the ‘Palestinian Revolution’.
Can she really be referring to the carnage of Intifada?
(Tom Wilson is studying for a PhD in Israeli politics at London’s UCL. As well as being Co-Chair of the UCL Jewish Society, Tom is also a researcher for Beyond Images and is the London representative for the conflict resolution and democracy promotion group StandforPeace.)
This is cross posted by Emanuele Ottolenghi at Contentions, the blog of Commentary Magazine.
As Alana noted yesterday, the extent of Palestinian concessions during peace talks, once made public, has seriously damaged PA leaders — and the State Department has weighed, noting that things are now going to be even harder than they were already.
The immediate fallout from the leaks should raise a number of important questions for the Guardian, but judging by the way it is spinning the story, it is hard to believe introspection is coming.
First, the Guardian appears shocked and angered by the extent of Palestinian concessions on settlements and yet blames Israel for the subsequent impasse on account of … settlements!
As Noah pointed out, if the main cause for lack of progress in the past 24 months was Palestinian insistence on an Israeli settlement freeze, one that included Jerusalem, as a precondition for talks — and this, thanks to U.S. backing — the papers reveal that it was merely a cynical pretext for the Palestinians’ not resuming talks once Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu took power. Otherwise, why make a sacred cow of something they had already conceded before? The answer may be that the Palestinians neither accepted nor rejected the Olmert offer but, rather, regarded it as still on the table, allowing them time to see if Olmert was going to survive politically. With Olmert (and Livni) out and Obama in, then, the Palestinians may have concluded that a better deal could be had with a more sympathetic U.S. administration in place. This is consistent with Palestinian behavior historically and a tried-and-tested recipe for disaster for their aspirations.
In his Guardian op-ed on the leaks, Jonathan Freedland wrote that:
Surely international opinion will see concrete proof of how far the Palestinians have been willing to go, ready to move up to and beyond their “red lines,” conceding ground that would once have been unthinkable — none more so than on Jerusalem. In the blame game that has long attended Middle East diplomacy, this could see a shift in the Palestinians’ favour. The effect of these papers on Israel will be the reverse.
What Freedland is telling us is not what might happen but rather what he ardently wishes would happen. He may be right, of course — but it is not like Israel was basking in the light of international favor before the leaks!
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Seumas in Wonderland
January 27, 2011 in Uncategorized | Tags: Comment is Free, Guardian, Lewis Carroll, Palestine Papers, Palestinian National Authority, Seumas Milne, Yasser Arafat | by Israelinurse | 5 comments
With uncanny resemblance to Lewis Carroll’s character, Milne’s ‘Trials by Journalism’ are inevitably conducted according to notions dictated by – and convenient to – him. ‘Sentence first….Verdict afterwards’.
The headline to his article proclaims that “Only authentic leaders can deliver a Middle East peace” but of course it is Milne and he alone who gets to define ‘authentic’ – not the people whom these leaders represent. Apparently Milne also fails to see the irony in his strapline – “This week’s leaks have exposed the dangerous folly of US and British attempts to control and divide the Palestinians”. Errm….isn’t that exactly what the Guardian and its Muslim Brotherhood-influenced partner Al Jazeera have been trying to facilitate all week?
From then on it is downhill all the way as Milne contorts fact and truth according to his whim.
That statement is only true if one believes – as Milne apparently does – that the Palestinian people’s ‘cause’ is continued belligerence, violence, suffering and lack of permanent status. Like too many foreign supporters of the Palestinian ‘cause’, Milne would rather condemn the Palestinians to perpetual misery than see them achieve peace and prosperity if that necessitates compromise, as it so clearly does. It is not the people themselves who are important to him, but the principle. For him, the all-important goal is that his ideology should triumph over any other, so he continues to prod and goad from the sidelines, in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of those who organize dog fights.
The next paragraph, however, is that which reveals most about the disturbing way in which Milne’s mind works.
Milne doesn’t want his boyhood heroes to grow old. He is angry and reproachful when they abandon the – to him – glamorous apparel of a ‘resistance movement’ for the drab and familiar garb of the ordinary politicians with which he is familiar in his own far less exciting and exotic milieu. He wants flags and AK47s, danger and death – not budgets and legislations, meetings and reports.
His glamorization of ‘Yasser Arafat’s heyday’ (there’s that word ‘authentic’ again: now we know what Milne really means when he talks of ‘leadership’) shows the extent to which Milne is capable of deluding himself. Most of the world knows full well that Arafat’s main achievement was to both escalate and prolong the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Incapable of making the move from terrorist to statesman, Arafat’s ‘parachuted’ dictatorship meant that no system of democratic leadership from the grassroots was allowed to evolve within Palestinian society – an affliction which ails it to this day. He ruled his own people by means of force and intimidation – yet another malaise which Palestinian society has yet to shake off. He sabotaged any and every opportunity to bring an end to the conflict precisely because, like Seumas Milne, he was incapable of letting go of ‘liberation’ and the ‘armed struggle’ in favour of the tedious nitty-gritty of state building. He stole $900 million from his own people and used that money to fund the terror attacks which plunged the Palestinians even further into poverty, mourning and despair.
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