Harry’s Place

David Aaronovitch in The Times today on the shameful act of historical twinning engaged in by various figures on the left as they insist on comparing Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto.

George Galloway and Ken Livingstone have both been at it with the former pronouncing: “Those murdering them [the occupants of Gaza] are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw in 1942″ and the latter calling Gaza a ghetto “in exactly the same way that the Warsaw Ghetto was”.

It’s easy to gloss over history, but apparently when it comes to holocaust it is absolutely required. The situation in Gaza is bad, but the population of the Warsaw Ghetto was reduced by 380,000 through starvation, mass deportations and extermination.

“Busy people sometimes hurry their reading. Mr Galloway, for example, may only have skimmed the day-by-day reports made by SS Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop on the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. On the third day of the operation Stroop tells how ‘large numbers of Jews - entire families - already on fire, jumped from the windows. We made sure that these, as well as the other Jews, were liquidated immediately”.”

Elsewhere in The Times today Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar warned that the Islamists would kill Jewish children anywhere in the world.

“They have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine,” Mahmoud Zahar said in a televised broadcast recorded at a secret location. “They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.”

This as the paper also reported that Jewish groups said yesterday that the invasion of Gaza had provoked a surge in anti-Semitic intimidation and violence in London and Manchester. Jewish charity, the Community Security Trust said that the threat had increased after comments by Hamas leaders calling for attacks on Jewish people. On Saturday when three youths tried to set fire to Brondesbury Park Synagogue in northwest London.

Last night British viewers had the chance to watch the first part of novelist Deborah Moggach’s television drama about a Dutch teenager who was killed in 1945 because of her race.

Spread over consecutive nights in five half- hour episodes, this adaptation of her timeless Second World War masterpiece doesn’t put a foot wrong. Ellie Kendrick as Anne captures her lively, girlish spirit to perfection - writing down her feelings and observations without a hint of self-pity, always striving to look for the best in a world turned upside down. Aren’t we lucky to be together, she writes, at least we’ve got each other. “It’s like being on holiday in some strange boarding house.”

This morning Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar boasted that Anne wouldn’t be the last Jewish child to be hunted down and murdered for the same reason.

Speaking from a secret location he warned that Islamists would kill Jewish children anywhere in the world in revenge for Israel’s devastating assault in Gaza:

“They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.”

What a tough guy. What a fighter. What a ‘militant’.

Sadly so long as such repulsive tactics have a sufficient ‘anti-imperialist’ gloss applied to them I fear there will always be British leftists who will seek to ‘understand’ and ‘explain’ such barbarism. Prove me wrong in the comments box.

After a long, bitterly-contested recount process, the Minnesota State Canvassing Board has certified Democrat Al Franken as the winner of last November’s Senate election against Republican incumbent Norm Coleman.

Although Coleman’s attorney vows to challenge the decision, I think the odds are pretty solid that Franken will end up taking Coleman’s place in the Senate.

Franken is a former “Saturday Night Live” comedian and the author of several books, including the very funny “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot.”

Because the margin (225 votes) is so small, I’ve decided that the reason for Franken’s victory is the botch that Coleman made of questioning George Galloway when he testified before a Senate subcommittee investigating the corrupt Iraqi “oil-for-food” program in 2005. The sadly no-longer-blogging Douglas at Last of the Famous International Playboys got it about right at the time.

Go ahead, prove otherwise.

This is a guest post by Ben Cohen of Z Word

Before today, I hadn’t come across the name of Brian Cloughley. But he’s writing for online rag Counterpunch  - which stubbornly insists upon its leftist credentials despite being a fount of antisemitism - in terms that are indistinguishable from Klansman David Duke.

In defending his nationalist friends in Serbia, Duke has written of “the cadre of Jewish globalists who control American foreign policy.” Spurred to anger by the voice of a British rabbi, whom he doesn’t name but who defended Israel’s operation in Gaza in a BBC interview, Cloughley sounds just like Duke when he declares: “There are thousands like him in the UK and the US. They unconditionally promote Tel Aviv’s plans and policy and wield amazing influence over politicians and businesses. Killing Palestinians is Israeli policy, and these people spare no effort to justify it.”

That final flourish - “these people” - could have been written just as easily by someone satirizing antisemitism as by someone promoting it. At any rate, Cloughley couldn’t be clearer: the US and the UK are littered with wealthy Jews peddling influence on behalf of Israel.

These rootless cosmopolitans cannot be expected to be loyal citizens of the motherland. The offending rabbi, says Cloughley, “isn’t really British. He is an Israeli religious propagandist of British citizenship whose main allegiance is to Israel.” Just as the Soviet Communist newspaper Pravda, in 1949, railed against “profiteers with no roots and no conscience…non-indigenous nationals without a motherland.”

Soviet propagandists became experts in conjuring up euphemisms for the term “Jew.” So, in its own modest way, has Counterpunch. With both, the point is the same: Jews aren’t really like other people. They are disloyal, slippery and much too powerful.

When it comes to their own history, Jews are forever learning the wrong lessons. Elsewhere on Counterpunch, the musician and producer Brian Eno asserts: “By creating a Middle Eastern version of the Warsaw ghetto they are recapitulating their own history as though they’ve forgotten it.”

The “Jews-should-know-better” line is one we come across frequently. In terms of the tropes available to anti-Zionists, it is becoming more unoriginal with every passing day. Which is why it’s a shame to see someone like Eno, who has created music of stunning originality, sounding tiresomely like your average concerned celeb. And doing so in a journal that hates Jews to boot.

“Our position is clear. We insist all aggressive military actions against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip stop, we demand all the troops be pulled back, the lifting of the siege and the opening of all crossings, with Rafah first. This is the basic equation. This is our position and we hope the Egyptians will have a positive message. Israel has found that it cannot eliminate the resistance. Israel cannot stop the rocket fire, even after 10 days of aerial assaults, navy fire and attacks on the ground – the rocket fire has not stopped. On the contrary, the resistance is now targeting strategic places in Israel.”

This is what Osama Hamdan, a Hamas spokesperson, speaking from Lebanon, told al-Jazeera, according to Ynet News.

So, given that Hamas, the democratically elected and popularly mandated government of Gaza - as we are constantly reminded - is not seeking a ceasefire with Israel and, on the contrary, is threatening both to continue firing rockets and to seek other strategic targets, why should Israel call off it’s military campaign?

Hamas’s hostile intentions towards Israel were not a secret when they were apparently, we are told, selected to lead in a transparent and democratic fashion by the people of Gaza.  The conflict we are watching unfold is a consequence of that decision. Of all the voices calling for a ceasefire, the leadership of Gaza is not one of them. On the contrary, they are taunting the Israelis towards greater violence. News reports ceaselessy report that Israel is rejecting calls for a ceasefire, but rarely do they mention the fact that so is Hamas!

I find it astounding then that people who claim to have the best interests of the people of Gaza at heart simultaneously defend and promote  Hamas.

Those who march for “peace” should reflect on two things. Firstly, where were you when Hamas thumbed its nose up at threats of Israeli retaliation to its constant rocket barrage? Did you give them moral aid and comfort or did you seek to promote peace then? Secondly, are you not shocked and horrified that you are calling for peace on behalf of a group who categorically reject that call themselves?

Who in the “peace movement” sought to persuade Hamas that their grievances - the security wall and the blockade - were all in place because of their attempts to bomb Israelis and could thus likely be addressed if they stopped bombing? None, I’d guess, because it’s easier to chant slogans about the “apartheid wall” than to acknowledge that Israelis had a genuine fear of suicide bombers. When rockets are not raining down on your cities, it’s easy to ignore and dismiss, isn’t it?

The failure of the suddenly mobilised “peace movement” has been a failure to acknowledge that Israelhas legitimate concerns over the safety of its citizens. Perhaps because it looks cool and radical, it has instead bigged-up Hamas, a thuggish group of clerical fascists, and in consequence has amplified the fears of the Israelis, not diminished them. And thus, it has made war inevitable.

There has been speculation - reasonable, in my view - that Hamas actually relish the death and destruction. They perceive this a victory in a propaganda war fought in the arena of public opinion. That is why they incite more violence. Sane and moral people are always saddened and horrified by the death of civilians. I hope therefore that those in the PSC and the StWC who wave flags for Hamas are not colluding in their sick strategy. I hope the tears they shed for the innocent are real and not crocodile tears.

I hope that is the case. But I regret that I am not persuaded. The call for “peace” - it seems to me - is just another cynical tool used by people who actually have little committment to it. It is deployed strategically but its damage is collatoral and just as deadly.

Over at The Guardian, Sunny Hundal is somewhat disappointed by aspects of the weekend’s Gaza rally in London:

I had an uncomfortable feeling I couldn’t articulate until I was leaving via Charing Cross tube. It was crowded inside as we made our way to the trains. Two girls started to chant “We are Hamas” (I’m not, thank you very much) but were almost immediately drowned out by “Free free Palestine” before I had the chance to get annoyed. And then it came: Allah hu Akbar, Allah hu Akbar on repeat. Our fellow white travellers said little.

And therein lies my problem. I came to the march to express solidarity with Palestinians and express my anger at Israel’s bombings. I didn’t come to express solidarity with Hamas, nor want to come to a religious march. If I wanted to hear “God is Great” I could have gone to a mosque or a gurudwara. But I didn’t. People can say what they want – freedom of speech etc – but I think this encapsulates a broader problem.

[...]

Most non-Muslims who go to such marches don’t really have an interest in exploring Islam: they care about human rights. Religious chants merely end up alienating the very people Palestinians need the support of – a wide swathe of the population.

But many Britons, despite their sympathies, won’t I suspect because they feel such events are dominated by religious types who like to shout Allah hu Akbar, and rudeboys with kaffiyeh bandanas who like to prance around in front of the television. Let me tell it to you straight: it doesn’t help the cause.

No, it doesn’t, but the significant problem here is a widespread misunderstanding of what the Islamist wing of the ‘anti-imperialist’ movement is actually fighting for. With groups like the Hamas-promoting British Muslim Initiative getting involved in the protests, this kind of behaviour was entirely to be expected, as I warned here.

For Islamists, the Palestine question is primarily religious in nature. Take Hamas, the group which Operation Cast Lead is directed at crippling. Their founding document makes the nature of the conflict crystal clear:

The Islamic Resistance Movement maintains that the land of Palestine is Waqf land given as endowment for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection … [I]t is like any other land that the Muslims have conquered by force, because the Muslims consecrated it at the time of the conquest as religious endowment for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection … This Waqf will exist as long as the heaven and earth exist. Any measure which does not conform to this Islamic law regarding Palestine is null and void.

As well as:

The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinct Palestinian movement that is loyal to Allah, adopts Islam as a way of life and works to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.

For Hamas and its Islamist supporters, the problem is not ‘imperialism’ as such, but what is seen as a non-Muslim occupation of ‘Muslim’ land that has been religiously inalienable since the time it was ‘conquered by force’ and consequently given by Allah ‘for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection’. This is why Hamas consistently refuses to engage meaningfully in the peace process and continues to lob rockets at Israel. Hamas doesn’t want a two-state solution, nor a single state in which all are equal. Hamas demands nothing less than the dismantling of Israel and for ‘every inch of Palestine’ to be re-dedicated to Muslim rule.

British Islamists share this same worldview. This is why secular protestors who seek human rights for Palestinians will find themselves side by side with people chanting ‘Allah hu Akbar!’ and in the company of kaffiyeh wearing loudmouths for as long as those secular protestors continue to allow Islamists to co-organise these events.

Central to this problem is the involvement of far-left sects such as the Socialist Workers Party in the Palestinian rights campaign. The SWP, as Hundal notes, lacks ‘political maturity’. In seeking to show support for the Palestinian people, the SWP has indulged in a ridiculous pandering to Islamist groups and tends to simplistically assume that the religious rhetoric is simply an alternative cultural mode of expressing the same concerns it has.

At times, the level of pandering has been utterly bizarre. Take this Workers’ Liberty report of a 2002 picket of the Israeli embassy in London:

I had been there about half an hour when a woman from the SWP asked me if I would like to buy a scarf. I said simply, “no thank you”. I began looking around and saw that the majority of the women on the picket had their heads covered. I thought little of this as I expected there to be a lot of British and Palestinian muslim women on the picket. However, many other women who did not appear to be muslim and who appeared to be members of the SWP also had their heads covered, with the “intifada scarf”.

The SWP woman I had spoken to earlier then said to me, ‘Don’t you think you should at least cover your head as a mark of respect, this is a mainly Muslim protest?”. I was too shocked to give much of an intelligent reply, and it was only a little while later that I left.

Since when did supporting the rights of Palestinians and expressing solidarity with them involve something as silly as non-Muslims playing Muslim dress-up for the day?

The SWP has pretensions of being some kind of revolutionary vanguard in waiting, and presumably playing at being Islamists is a bit of fun to pass the boredom of being little more than a politically irrelevant cult. It also seems that for some people there’s something a bit ’sexy’ about treating a murderous Islamist group as ‘the resistance’ and donning an ‘intifada scarf’ in ’solidarity’.

But back in the real world, the consequences of an alliance of Islamists and SWP types are that protests organised in the name of peace in the Middle East will continue to attract chanting ‘rudeboys with kaffiyeh bandanas who like to prance around in front of the television’. And as Hundal rightly states, it doesn’t help the cause. Not one bit.

James Harkin, writing in The Financial Times delivers a most interesting and entertaining article on Alistair Crooke of Conflicts Forum.

You have to register to read the full article, but it’s free and worth the trouble. Here’s an extract:

One of Crooke’s first postings was to Ireland, in the chaos of the early 1970s, where he cultivated a range of contacts in and around the IRA. One former high-ranking MI6 agent told me that the Secret Intelligence Service strategy was to build discreet long-term relationships with reasonable people within radical movements and then, over a long period, use those relationships to separate moderates from extremists and thus “influence the situation”. Crooke confirmed that this was indeed the general approach, though he feared that patience was increasingly being sacrificed for expediency. “You can lose a relationship in a day and it might take you 20 years to repair it,” he said. In postings to Pakistan during the Afghan war and to South Africa in the years leading to the end of apartheid, it was a lesson that Crooke took to heart. “The point is to understand the people who it is hardest to understand,” he said. “It is easy to talk to people who you might want to have around your dinner table.”

Could he imagine negotiating with al-Qaeda, I wondered? “Never say never,” he replied, though he couldn’t really see the point. Groups such as al-Qaeda only get a hearing, he said, because of the failure of more mainstream political Islamism to speak to the Muslim world.

Though proud of his work for the British government, Crooke admits to a period of reassessment after he was sacked. His views appear to have undergone something of a sea-change. Unusually for a former British spy, Crooke sprinkles his lectures with references, for example, to the work of Marxist postcolonial thinker Frantz Fanon. He believes that Hizbollah is a key factor in the renaissance of Islam - particularly its Shia variant - in the Middle East. The fact he remained in Beirut throughout the Israeli bombing might have stoked his sympathetic approach to Israel’s enemies. From his balcony he pointed out where some bombs fell, even criticising the Israeli Air Force for poor targeting and outdated intelligence.

His sympathy for Islamism extends beyond the political. Islam, he believes, has a valuable “imaginative, intuitive” approach to the individual that has been lost in the west. He views the 1979 Iranian revolution as progressive and enthusiastically explained obscure theological differences between its main Islamic protagonists. In the past two years he has visited Iran regularly - at one point he said “our view”, before correcting himself: “the Iranian view, I mean”.

At the end of the conference Crooke held a dinner at a restaurant for a few friends. He was on playful form, pretending to feed Amistis, his daughter, some alcohol. Sitting opposite me was Tom Clark, a gruff, bearish man who seemed dissatisfied with the seminar’s direction. There was, he felt, too much talk of theology and “the other”, and not enough about the politics of who should meet whom and what could be done. Clark is a financial supporter of Conflicts Forum’s work, and so his opinion matters. (He is a member of the extended family that owns the bulk of the shoemaker Clarks.) Long sympathetic to the Palestinians, his peace activism got him thrown out of Israel a few years ago. Shortly afterwards, he heard Crooke talking on the BBC’s Newsnight about the Middle East peace process. The first time he met Crooke, he said: “He was wearing a plaid shirt, a jacket with arm-patches and a stringy tie. He looked like a geography teacher from Chipping Norton.” It wasn’t long before Crooke invited him to Beirut. The first Hamas officials he met told him, “Any friend of Alastair is a friend of ours.” And that was it, he said. “I became one of his groupies.”

The question dangling in the air, of course, is whether Crooke is still a Bristish spy playing a version of ‘The Great Game’, or has he just become an Islamist shill?

Oh, dear. It seems that a little plant photography is required In the Night Garden.

Which unfortunate group of people are being described in the Independent this morning?

Self pitying,

Always-wretched and complaining,

Stupid, and

Vicious.

Give up?

They also engage in boring monologues, envy others, start riots and vote for demagogues.

Still don’t know?

The answer: members of the white working-class - at least according to columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

I’m forced to wonder just how many members of the working-class the double-barrelled, Oxford-educated OBE recipient has actually met, if these pejorative adjectives accurately sum up her feelings.

This blog does have a tendency to dwell on the views of minor UK leftist sects at times. What about minor US leftist sects? Change.org has a round-up of their important views. It is hardly impressive material. The typical knee-jerk boilerplate found elsewhere. It is the lingua franca of that part of the left. Here is Socialist Action News:

Since it withdrew its occupation of Gaza, the Zionist rulers of Israel have maintained it as an open-air prison and most of the time as a shooting gallery. Now they have made it an extermination camp. The December 27-29 premeditated slaughter of almost 300 Palestinians, with another 1,000 wounded, has horrified the world, and especially the Arab masses, who sympathize with the Palestinians.

The Palestinian people have been relegated to the status of vermin in their own land by the Zionist colonizers and their U.S. imperialist backers.
[...]
Socialist Action has never recognized the legitimacy of the Zionist State of Israel just we reject extending any legitimacy to nations conquered and occupied by imperialist colonizers anywhere in the world, past and present.

We unconditionally support the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, that is, to a democratic secular Palestine to be re-constituted on the original Palestine lands and with the right of all Palestinians to return.

So, no two-state solution then. I’m also slightly perplexed how Socialist Action think Hamas (who by extension they seem to be supporting unconditionally) might bring about a democratic secular Palestine.

Exactly how many nations could Socialist Action extend any legitimacy to if they discount those that involved the odd bit of conquering and occupation (past and present)? Presumably, that extends to the Roman Empire and Arab conquests in the 7th century? Or does it go further?

Gaza for the Canaanites?