The Irish Times and BDS – the Story of Why.

On Tuesday 7th May, BRICUP (British Committee for the Universities of Palestine) posted on their website and tweeted that Professor Stephen Hawking had declined an invitation to a conference in Jerusalem, to be hosted by war criminal Shimon Peres – he had joined the academic boycott of the apartheid styate. The story went around the world and was all over mainstream and social media on Tuesday evening.  My account is here.

By Wednesday there was some confusion with Zionist sources claiming that Professor Hawking was not going purely for health reasons, that he had not joined the boycott. Much of this stemmed from Cambridge University whose spokesman Tim Holt put that misinformation out, the issue was however clarified by Wednesday afternoon when said spokesman had to admit that Hawking had sent a letter to the conference organisers stating that he was declining to attend because he was respecting the Palestinian call to boycott, nothing to do with health grounds.

Hawking’s Letter: “I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a Peace Settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank. “However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”

Mathew Kalman wrote up the account here which vindicated his story and that of BRICUP who held the line throughout.

Even Zionist sources such as CiF Watch and much of the Israeli press had the story CLARIFIED as to Hawking supporting the boycott by Wednesday afternoon. It was also all over Facebook and Twitter.

So basically what happened here is that everyone interested and even some not interested in this knew the real story by Wednesday afternoon… EXCEPT that is Mark Weiss, the Irish Times correspondent from occupied Palestine (not that he seems to know that either…)

On Thursday his piece in the Irish Times he characterised the idea that Hawking might have been boycotting as a claim coming from “Pro-Palestinian groups” and followed it up by stating:  “However, Cambridge university spokesman Tim Holt said Prof Hawking’s decision was based strictly on health concerns. “For health reasons, his doctors said he should not be flying at the moment so he’s decided not to attend.”

Weiss then devotes most of the rest of his piece to Israeli concerns about the boycott and reports one especially vile suggestion that Hawking decommission his means of communication as it was supposedly designed in Israel. Note, this is written as if it were a normal suggestion, so the Irish Times runs a bigoted cut at Stephen Hawking’s disability with no disassociating comment or disclaimer. In Haaretz, this was actually described as “obscene”. It is outrageous that the Irish times should just publish such abelist hate speech without acknowledging it as such.

Apart from this being Weiss’s usual style of writing purely from the Israeli perspective, it is simply astonishing that there was no fact checking done on story of this significance concerning such an eminent person. As I said above, this information was ALL OVER THE INTERNET from Wednesday afternoon. The Irish Times has positioned itself as a voice of authority in Ireland and the self-satisfaction of the majority of its writers is difficult to stomach. While hating their opinions and agenda is one thing, for the facts to be so wrong is truly dreadful.

This annoyed me more than their usual schtick and I have some (Irish) time on my hands so I called the foreign editor and pointed out the inaccuracies and errors in the piece and let him know that the correct information had been widely available since the previous afternoon. He was pretty sniffy with me and when I asked would they clarify/correct, he told me he would “examine” the evidence first. Unable to fit back in my box, I mailed the information on to him – our exchange is below:

Dear     ,

I just spoke to you  on the phone about the erroneous information in the Mark Weiss piece on Stephen Hawking joining academic boycott of Israel.

In the IT piece, Weiss says: “However, Cambridge university spokesman Tim Holt said Prof Hawking’s decision was based strictly on health concerns. “For health reasons, his doctors said he should not be flying at the moment so he’s decided not to attend.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/stephen-hawking-pulls-out-of-major-presidential-conference-in-jerusalem-1.1386618

However, since yesterday afternoon, the clarification from Cambridge has been in the public domain, on twitter, Facebook etc.
This is the journalist’s account of the trajectory of the story:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/08/a-brief-history-of-stephen-hawking-s-boycott.html

This is the Guardian updated today, this was available from yesterday: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/08/hawking-israel-boycott-furore

Electronic Intifada yesterday afternoon:
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/stephen-hawking-confirms-he-pulled-out-israel-conference-due-boycott-not-health

I wrote this myself last night, so there was no shortage of sources for either the IT or Weiss to verify the claims in the piece.
In fact a Google search for “Stephen Hawking boycott Israel” throws up 325,000 at the time of writing (Wed eve).

“There was an email exchange showing quite clearly that Hawking’s personal assistant and Tim Holt had both approved the BRICUP announcement that sparked my interest on Tuesday night. And there was Hawking’s letter, sent to the conference organizers on May 3 on Cambridge University letterhead, setting out clearly his reasons for pulling out: no health issues, all boycott. It had been copied to several other people. One of them was kind enough to share it with me.

“I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a Peace Settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank,” wrote Hawking. “However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”

To be honest, it is astonishing that the Irish Times would publish a piece such as Weiss’s without at least fact checking, especially when the person in question is so eminent and the issue so important.

———————————————————————

His reply:

Thanks for this. We were clearly behind events on this one and were not aware of Holt/Cambridge’s change. Will report the accurate situation asap.

———————————————————————

My response:

That’s good to hear. It strains credibility however, that Mark Weiss was ‘behind events’ on this given that even the Israeli press was reporting the correct version yesterday.

I would hope the Irish Times would give some coverage to the vile abuse that has been directed Stephen Hawking’s way by Israel supporters as reported by the Daily Express among other publications.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/397945/Outrage-over-disgusting-cripple-Stephen-Hawking-jokes-after-he-joins-boycott-of-Israel

He is also being subjected to much name calling and venom on his Facebook page from anti-Palestinian posters
https://www.facebook.com/iloveu.stephen?fref=ts

———————————————————————

 But the piece was not corrected that day, that evening,  nor has it been since.   In Friday’s edition, in a Weiss piece on Israel’s illegal settlement building, this is tacked on at the end:  “In a separate development, Cambridge university spokesman Tim Holt has confirmed that renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking did in fact decide to cancel his participation in next month’s president’s conference in Jerusalem due to the Israel boycott. Mr Holt had earlier released a statement claiming Mr Hawking decided not to travel for health reasons.”

That’s it,that’s the ‘correction’. That’s the standard we can expect from the Irish Times. So anyone who read the original piece on Hawking and who didn’t read the settlement piece the next day would still be MISinformed by the Irish Times.  Unless they read it elsewhere, they would believe that, as reported by the Irish Times,  Stephen Hawking had pulled it of a conference in Jerusalem for health reasons. They would be unaware of the immense boost given to the BDS campaign by someone of Hawking’s stature joining it. The online version still retains the original,  massive error.

The Irish Times has serious form for misreporting the cultural boycott of Israel and indeed launching a sustained attack on the IPSC (Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign), Raymond Deane in particular. Harry Browne documented it brilliantly here and it is worthy of re-reading as a reminder of how power misrepresents and distorts truth.  My own thoughts on that representation and attempts to dictate resistance are here too.

The reason I mentioned “venom” in my mail to the foreign editor is that the IPSC was consistently and wrongly accused of directing it at Irish band Dervish in order to get them to cancel playing Israel. Despite considerable evidence to the contrary not only being freely available on Facebook and being sent to them, they never retracted nor corrected this mischaracterisation of Irish BDS campaigners. Of course we can be absolutely sure that the Irish Times won’t look at any of the abuse directed at Hawking by supporters of apartheid, preferring to deal only in imagined venom. Indeed, they quoted one of the most egregious suggestions as if it were part of a normal discourse between human beings.

Their coverage of Palestine is risible and always, always through the prism of Israel’s rights/security, through that of orientalism and dehumanisation and othering, through racism.  Trying to get pieces by Palestinians into the paper is vnext to impossible, their voices surplus to requirements.

The question is WHY? Laziness, ineptitude, agenda? The lethal combination of all three?

The Irish Times,  the Story of Why – the end result “behind the events”.

The free availability of alternative media which is not only reliable and up to date, but not agenda driven, should push publications in the mainstream media to raise their standards, in this case it seems to push it to ditch them.

BDS apartheid until it ends.

There’s a Facebook page here to like: Stephen Hawking: Thank You for Supporting the Academic Boycott of Israel

Imagining Death – RTÉ and its coverage of Gaza

Imagining Death – RTÉ and its coverage of Gaza

The media reporting on Israel’s latest deadly attack on Gaza has been appalling. I’m not sure if it is worse than usual but it is certainly dreadful. Irish media has tended to report from the Israeli perspective more or less constantly. The news bulletins lead with Israeli government or military statements, they focus on rocket attacks from Gaza, they refer to Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants. They describe Hamas targets being hit. They rarely talk of the Palestinian people in terms of our shared humanity, they don’t have names, jobs, lives – they are numbers, and inaccurate ones at that – “around 140 Palestinians”. “….in what Israel says is a response to rockets….the Israeli military says….the Israeli cabinet today…”

Friday 23^rd November on RTÉ radio 1, Pat Kenny said the number of dead Palestinians in Gaza after Israel’s murderous assault (my words) is “over a hundred”. That’s 62 “over a hundred” Pat, that’s 162 people – that’s a lot more than a hundred. That’s people, you know – human beings.

On Sunday 18^th November an entire family, the Al-Dalou family was murdered by Israeli bombs, four children, five women and two men were killed. There were other atrocities that day, in two separate missile attacks, two fathers and their young sons were killed, they were distributing water and maintaining the water service.

I was in Dublin that day where we had a report from a friend just back from Gaza. Among the many harrowing things he described was the strain that the hospitals are under due to the siege. I got into my car that night, turned on the radio to hear the news and listened to Richard Crowley’s report. Having described the deaths of the family, he then went on to imagine Israeli deaths – he said “They’ll increase the aerial bombardment, they’ve done that today.  The hope is to destroy as many Hamas targets as possible before any ceasefire and the danger of course is as they do that is that the civilian casualties in Gaza will rise and we saw evidence of that today with the death of about ten members of one family including several children. Now equally civilian deaths on that scale on the Israeli side could equally collapse the talks. Remember the Israelis have been very lucky so far with very few deaths, so really what the Israelis are hoping to do is to force Hamas to keep their heads down and reduce the numbers of rockets…”

So, instead of for once focusing on the actual Palestinians killed, Crowley hypothesised about the consequences of imagined Israeli deaths. We know that in the orientalist prism that these journalists operate, Israelis have primacy over Palestinians but for imagined deaths to take precedence over real deaths is astonishing.

The RTÉ Six One News that Crowley’s report comes from gave us this analysis: “11 people thought to be civilians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza apartment building. At least four children are reported to have been among the dead. It’s now thought that the Palestinian death toll has climbed to 65 but the Israeli president says that a supreme effort is being made to avoid civilian deaths.” Now this report was accompanied by footage of dead children being taken from the rubble of their home so either RTÉ is disputing that those children are civilians or the editor isn’t even listening to the script.

The next day, when twin babies and their parents had been killed (they had named one of the boys, Mohammed after his brother who they lost in Israel’s twenty-two day assault on Gaza in 2008/09) and in the wake of the Al Dalou family massacre, the RTÉ news website report on its front page had a picture of Israelis running ‘for cover’ in a shopping mall in Tel Aviv, this is incredible. There is obviously an element of laziness, of incompetence but there is also a clear agenda being operated here. Editorial decisions are obviously being taken to give the Israeli narrative of victimhood and to depict the Palestinians as violent and terroristic.

As well as increasing amounts of journalistic fallacy and inaccuracy, there is an utter lack of both empathy and context. Why are Palestinian voices not heard? Why are the numbers of their dead irrelevant? Why are they not at the forefront of reporting when they are the victims of overwhelming Israeli aggression?

Where is the context? Gaza is under illegal siege, the people there have nowhere to go to, they have rights as an occupied people, they don’t have an army, an airforce, there are no bomb shelters for people to go to. The people of Gaza are mostly refugees from Israel’s ethnic cleansing. Collective punishment is illegal under international law. These are not opinions, these are facts yet they are not mentioned by journalists ‘covering’ this.

It must be noted that until the ceasefire Crowley reported from Jerusalem, we are not told why he wasn’t in Gaza. Although he was able to interview Israelis there and in Tel Aviv and worry about the tourist industry, he never managed to report about the three Palestinians murdered in the West Bank by the IOF as they protested the massacre in Gaza. Conclusions. Draw them.

Among the many warcrimes committed by Israel in this attack, the targeting and murder of three journalists chimes. The apartheid state has long tried to eliminate those who would expose their crimes, they allowed no journalists into Gaza in 08/09. There has been almost no mention of the murder of colleagues by the Irish media.

On 19^th November on the news, Richard Crowley says that Israel’s “targeted assassinations can go horribly wrong”. To anyone, journalists especially, it should be obvious that bombing one of the most densely populated places on the planet can ONLY have the result of mass murder. This IS Israel – it is going horribly right. While we hear constantly about Hamas targeting civilian populations, or firing ‘indiscriminate’ rockets, we never hear this about Israel’s war crimes.

Tuesday 20^th November, RTÉ finally get around to interviewing a Palestinian woman living in Ireland. Fatin Al Tamimi’s sister lives in Gaza with her family. In order to provide the dreaded B.A.L.A.N.C.E that only seems to be required when Palestinians are finally given a voice, an Israeli woman who has nephews called up into the army was on too. Fatin’s segment was also heavily edited, leaving out much of her main points.

I am focusing on RTÉ as it is the state broadcaster, by far the most influential broadcast media in Ireland and is publicly funded and supposed to have a public service remit. There are huge issues with the print media and other radio and television outlets too, they are for another day.

Tuesday 20th on the Mary Wilson presented Drivetime, she interviewed Gisela Schmidt Martinin Gaza, working for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Martin gave a very articulate interview which conveyed the horror the people of Gaza were being subjected to and then Mary Wilson put the Israeli side to her, she said that the Israelis would say they were responding to rockets. Not only was it unnecessary for Wilson to give the Israeli perspective, it is hardly off the airwaves, but she had just interviewed an equally articulate Israeli professor and at no point did she feel compelled to present him with the Palestinian narrative. This is constant.

Turned over to Matt Cooper on Today FM who was interviewing an Israeli whose mother had to move to another room because of rockets from Gaza. Now there are two things here: obviously I don’t want anyone afraid or threatened, but she has another room to move into and her government is the aggressor. I can bet everything I have that Matt Cooper would never interview a Palestinian with family in Gaza in such a sympathetic fashion. He would not allow them to assert, as he did this guest, that the Irish media is biased against his ‘side’ and that his government is not effective at getting the story of their victimhood across. Then I went to a vigil for Gaza.

On Friday 23^rd the RTÉ news carried a report from Gaza where Crowley said this: “Yesterday evening the bodies of two more members of the Dalou family were found  in the rubble of their home bombed in error by the Israelis four days ago.”

 IN ERROR? In fucking ERROR?

The Israelis have already stated that they wanted to kill a Hamas member in that building, that they targeted it deliberately. As Palestinian life is of no consequence to the Israeli war machine, they don’t make mistake, they just kill – sometimes it’s the ‘right’ person, sometimes not – whatever. But we hear all the time from our media about Palestinian indiscriminate rocket fire, but the few times they kill people are not referred to as ‘errors’.

Photo AP/Bernat Armangue

Why are these journalists so desensitised to the Palestinian people? Why do they refuse their humanness? Why don’t they look, really look at the facts? It’s an agenda, but is it that they have been pressured by the Israeli embassy? The government? What is it? Because it’s either incompetence or some form of extreme bias, or a lethal combination of the two.

While Hamas are demonised and depicted as unreconstructed terrorists who wish for the destruction of Israel, the truth of negotiations, of efforts to create and maintain ceasefires are ignored. Al Jabari’s role in the release of Shalit? His work on negotiating a ceasefire? Doesn’t fit the agenda, doesn’t get reported.

The filthy, racist rhetoric coming from within the Israeli far right never reaches the Irish airwaves. We don’t hear about the MKs calling fro Gaza to be crushed into dust, turned into a stone age. War criminal Sharon’s son’s vile calls to flatten Gaza, to unleash a Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the people there isn’t discussed, it doesn’t fit the narrative.

There are brilliant and unbelievably brave Palestinians blogging and reporting from Gaza, even CNN manages to put them on occasionally. You will not see them in the Irish media. Why not? Our media would have us believe that the world’s fourth largest military power, a nuclear armed state backed to the hilt by the US and the EU is under attack from besieged Gaza. Pillars of propaganda.

I might never finish writing this piece, it might go on forever as the media bias accelerates. I’ll stop here, for now – but this will continue. We have to keep challenging them, insisting they report both facts and context. No ‘side’ will be required then, the truth speaks for itself – that’s why we don’t hear it on our airwaves.

To close, Friday 23^rd, Richard Crowley, finally in Gaza asked a cousin of the Al Dalou family, as they pulled more of their dead from their bombed home: “Do you think you could ever forgive and make peace with the Israelis?” That was his question. In that context.

The prism? Israelis. The Palestinians? Ignored, dehumanised.

Pillars of Cloud, pillars of death, pillars of society, pillars of lies.

End the siege, free Gaza, free Palestine and BDS every minute until it happens.

Appropriating a Culture to Whitewash Apartheid

It’s a hard sell you know, the ol’ apartheid. It’s not easy to market a huge, illegal wall, checkpoints, soldiers everywhere, guarded colonies, segregation. Israel has managed to do it to a degree and there are thousands of visitors who go there and keep their eyes shut to the oppression of the Palestinians. Many of them have ideological blinkers and many of them have their wallets fattened and egos stroked sufficiently by the apartheid state so as to ignore its reality.

But it is becoming increasingly difficult to market apartheid Israel both for the tourism market and, more importantly,  abroad as the image of Israel internationally is very tainted – that would be the war crimes….

Because of its own crimes against the Palestinian people, the growing racism within Israeli society and the success of the BDS movement,’ brand Israel’ is taking a hammering and moves are constantly underway to rectify this.  Bringing artists to play there is a major part of this attempt to normalise apartheid and sending Israeli artists abroad to represent the brand and create “a positive image for Israel”  is the ‘export’ end of the process.

Much of the strategy to whitewash apartheid is dependent on compliant media and this is bolstered by government funded trips where journalists are wined, dined and shown around. When I say ‘shown around’ I’m lying as we can be guaranteed that these guided tours will absolutely avoid the reality of Israel and will be hasbara fests par extraordinaire, perhaps with some ‘peace groups’ thrown in for authenticity. They are certainly reaping the fruits in the Irish press where hardly a week goes by in the Sunday Independent without some eulogy to Israel’s democracy appearing.

The latest target of the Tourism Ministry is the foodie world, specifically food bloggers, who are brought on paid trips to Israel where their senses are dulled by stolen hummus and they go home and gush appropriately about what they have seen.  Indeed, “David Lebovitz, an American writer and pastry chef living in Paris whose food-centric personal website receives nearly 2 million unique visitors per month, wrote seven posts about the trip, all of which presented Israel (and its cuisine ) in a positive light.”  How’jya like them apples BDSers?

It’s hard to keep up with all the initiatives the hasbara brains trust is developing to try to market apartheid. From whitewashing to pinkwashing to musicwashing to this. When I’m feeling optimistic, I see it as desperation in the face of the strength of Palestinian resistance and international solidarity. When I’m feeling pessimistic…. well I rant on a blog…!

This food one has me floored though,it’s like The Gathering and Bord Fáilte on acid. Scatter gun…what can we sell? How can we sanitise? Where’s the latest whitewashing going to come from?

The cynicism of inviting food bloggers to a state which has put the people of Gaza on carefully calibrated rationed ‘diets’ to ensure they remain above starvation level is staggering.  While Palestinian prisoners undertake hunger strikes to fight for their most basic rights, imprisoned as many of them are without charge, food bloggers will be feasting on hasbara. While Gaza remains under illegal siege with freedom of movement extremely restricted, the message of Israel as a tourist destination for foodies, musos etc is  being pushed. These attempts to attract travellers to apartheid Israel are transparent and cynical in the extreme, let’s hope people stop falling for it.

Hey world, want a gay friendly destination? Want a gay friendly destination with good music? Want a gay friendly destination with good music and great food? Want a gay friendly destination with good music and great food where you can practise your shooting skills? We got it ALL here in apartheid Israel. It’s hasbara central.*

*Sentient beings need not apply.

 

 

RTÉ – Through an Orientalist Prism

“…..neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other. That these supreme fictions lend themselves easily to manipulation and the organization of collective passion has never been more evident than in our time, when mobilizations of fear, hatred, disgust and resurgent self- pride and arrogance- much of it having to do with Islam and the Arabs on one side, “we” Westerners on the other – are very large scale enterprises.” Edward Said, 2003

Due to factors outside my control and to be discussed soon, I’ve been sitting at home, hugging my laptop for the last week. During that week I’ve had lots of time to listen to the radio,  our national broadcaster RTÉ radio one and in particular the Pat Kenny show, presented by Myles Dungan.

On Thursday 16th August Palestinian Raja Shehadeh was interviewed about his book Occupation Diaries. From the outset Dungan frames the interview in terms of negativity, stating that Shehadeh has said he is “angry” and that anger is generally seen as a negative emotion. In the usual Irish journalistic obsession with discussing personal relationships between occupied and occupier, Dungan asks Shehadeh to describe his friendships with Israelis. Why does this constantly happen in such interviews? I don’t think it’s a genuine interest in how people relate to each other, I think it’s orientalism – we will tell your story, partly, but we want the Israeli narrative in there too…your own is not adequate.

When Shehadeh has described his and his father’s friendships with Palestinian Jews and the current situation whereby Israelis are prevented by that state’s law from visiting Palestinian neighbourhoods, Dungan segues into the next section with this: “Now, not all Israelis see you as some sort of potential terrorist”. Why would he say that? Shehadeh at this point has not mentioned the perception Israelis have of him or of other Palestinians, it comes out of nowhere in relation to the interview but it definitely comes out of somewhere deepseated when analysing journalistic depiction of Palestinians in the Irish mainstream media.

Dungan then describes how Shehadeh writes of the way he is viewed as a threat or a non-person by Israeli “border guards” and asks him: “Can you not see it from the point of view of, say for example, an Israeli border guard, some of their comrades perhaps have died as a result of terrorist activity?” This is an astonishing question to ask, especially in the context of zero empathy displayed by Dungan for either his interviewee or the people subjected to military occupation by said “border guards”. He doesn’t wonder how a Palestinian must feel having seen thousands of his sisters and brothers murdered, imprisoned and oppressed by the Israeli state.

For Dungan’s final flourish he asks: “Is Palestine itself, it is blessed or is it cursed by its own political leadership?” Now there are very valid questions to be asked about the Palestinian political leadership, as there are about the Irish one etc, but they have to be contextualised and they are not here, they rarely are in such programmes – Palestine is portrayed as a lawless, violent place with ineffectual at best leadership, absolutely without context, with no situating of it within the reality of the Nakba of 1948, the further occupation of 1967 and the fracturing of Palestinian society by Israeli apartheid.

While querying whether things have improved since the days of Arafat,  Dungan then goes on to ask this astounding question: “But did Arafat himself, did he not play into Israeli hands by creating the impression of a corrupt state which was undeserving of independence?” What? – “a corrupt state which was undeserving of independence” – who decides whether states are worthy of independence? Is Ireland? The US? This question encapsulates Dungan’s patronising opinion of the Palestinian people and the orientalist prism through which he conducted this interview. It is depressing that on one of the rare occasions we get to hear Palestinian voices on our airwaves, that they are subjected to this type of interview.

The next morning on the same show, American writer Karl Marlantes was interviewed about his book: What It Is Like To Go To War. Marlantes was a marine in the US war against Vietnam and has written this book on how those who become soldiers are, in the main, unprepared for war. By contrast with the interview with Raja Shehadeh, Dungan, while mentioning that Marlantes had seen his fellow soldiers commit “acts of savagery”,  never asks him whether he could see the perspective of the Vietnamese people who had seen their people slaughtered by the US army. He never asks this man who was part of an occupying force about his relationships with the Vietnamese people, or about whether he could understand their point of view.

The previous day he asked a man living as part of an occupied population to see the perspective of the occupier but in this instance he does not pose similar questions, even when Marlantes is describing how soldiers dehumanise their ‘enemy’ in order to kill them better. He does ask Marlantes about an occasion when he was “forced to kill”, as the ‘enemy’ would have killed him. Can you imagine a situation where he calmly would ask a Palestinian about such a scenario? I cannot and it would not happen because, looking through the orientalist prism, it is ok for US or Israeli soldiers to kill, we must understand their motivation, realise they have no choice and that anyone who resists that is a terrorist.

It’s just one week, our journalist, one broadcaster but it is typical of the way occupation is depicted in our complicit media. While such journalism pervades, governments find it easier to murder people as we are rarely reminded of our shared humanity with all people, just a manufactured one with some.

A tale of two Independents, reporting on Palestine and BDS

Today the Independent on Sunday (UK) published an excellent article titled: “Israel is new South Africa as boycott calls increase.” The article reports on Madonna’s concert for “peace” in Tel Aviv and on the growing movement for BDS against apartheid Israel. After consultation with PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) and various other groups involved in the BDS campaign, Jonathan Owen wrote a comprehensive and informed piece which makes a clear correlation between South Africa and Israel.

The article quotes Omar Barghouti from PACBI and also Saeed Amireh, a peace activist from Nilin in the West Bank: “We don’t have freedom of movement. They don’t want peace; they just want us to disappear. They are suppressing our very existence.” Saeed and his brother made this excellent video showing how they couldn’t get to Madonna’s concert because of Israel’s discrimination against them as Palestinians.

Owen’s piece has been shared widely on social media and is one of the most viewed, shared and commented on pieces in that newspaper. It is indicative of BDS becoming increasingly mainstream. That the article is unusual for actually consulting with Palestinians and listening to their voices is an indictment of media in general. In the recent media storm in Ireland about the Dervish cancellation and the BDS camapign, Palestinian voices were absent, and the fake Israeli narrative about boycotts harming people was privileged.

I have no doubt that the Zionists will attack the Independent on Sunday and the journalist but their hysteria will only vindicate the campaign and the piece. If BDS was as ineffective as they keep telling us, they wouldn’t go to such great lengths to try to thwart it.

In stark contrast to the London Independent piece, the Irish Sunday Independent appears to have a concerted agenda to support Israeli apartheid, vilify BDS supporters and either dismiss or tell outright lies about the Palestinian people. There have been numerous articles attacking the IPSC and BDS, as well as gushing opinion pieces on the wonders of Israel. There have also been personal attacks on IPSC Cultural Liaison Boycott officer Raymond Deane, such pieces are  badly written drivel and beneath contempt.

The ‘Sindo’ agenda is clear but it has taken a step up with today’s review of Madonna’s concert in Tel Aviv. Is it usual for the Independent to send one of its top columnists abroad to review gigs? Well, Barry Egan was sent to apartheid Israel to attend the Material One’s travesty against peace.

His piece manages to stick rigidly to his paper’s policy of totally bypassing the Palestinian people and ignoring their BDS call, they are not mentioned once. Did Barry not realise that this was a concert for “peace”?? He also manages the impressive feat of being both sycophantic and insulting to Madonna with misogynistic comments about her bum. Oh, the Sindo – racism, sexism…. they’ve got the lot.

As Israel, through its racism and increasingly fascist behaviour, exposes itself, the BDS campaign will become more successful and Palestinian voices will be heard more often. The apartheid analogy has moved into the mainstream and is used more and more often to refer to Israel, truth will always out.

What artists will want to be associated with such a vile regime when they could align themselves with the vibrant, positive, rights-based Palestinian BDS campaign? Those that do will join the roll of shame of those who played in apartheid South Africa and newspapers like the Irish Independent will go down as having actively supported Israeli apartheid.

Israel is the new South Africa? Damn right it is, and just as that apartheid fell, so will this. Free Palestine, BDS is unstoppable!

Dictating Resistance, the Irish media war on BDS

Reading the commentary in the Irish media following Dervish’s cancellation of their concerts in Israel, one is struck by the contortions journalists go through to condemn the cultural boycott of the apartheid state. (Some of the mistruths and smears are covered here.)

Two aspects of the narrative really jar with me. The first is the obvious, how come these pundits are so concerned with the perceived collective punishment of Israelis not being able to see artists yet are unmoved about the real and brutal collective punishment that Israel subjects the Palestinians to?

Where is their condemnation when Palestinians are murdered, when their houses are demolished, when their rights are trampled on, when they are subjected to apartheid and occupation? Where is their denunciation of Israel’s war crimes and breaches of international law? Where were their columns when over 2,000 Palestinian prisoners recently went on hunger strike to protest against the barbaric conditions they are held in, many of them without charge?

As Israelis marched through Jerusalem on Sunday chanting  “Death to all Arabs”, were they busy writing articles damning such racism? Were there handwringing pieces about this  from any of the Sunday Independent ‘columnists’? The answer to these questions is, of course, no. The agenda is so firmly skewed towards the oppressor as to almost completely obscure the oppressed and those who are in solidarity with them.

The other point is that the commentary, very strangely, elevates art and artists to a level whereby they are apparently more sensitive than the average human being and are somehow exempt from the same moral code as the rest of us. The erroneous and lazy claim that Dervish, among other artists, were ‘bullied’ into cancelling deprives them of agency and free thought, and in fact is insulting to them.

Is it credible to suggest that raising awareness of the plight of the Palestinian people and one of their chosen tactics in their struggle against apartheid constitutes bullying? Is the premise that presenting this case and asking artists to make a principled decision is intimidation to be taken seriously? Hardly.

I wonder about many of these columnists, did they support the boycott of South Africa? Do they disagree with Mandela and Tutu? There have been many articles and opinion pieces since Dervish cancelled and they have all come from this same angle.

Fintan O’Toole, a respected Irish Times columnist, last week derided the cultural boycott as “a blunt and backward instrument” and wrongly conflates this form of opposition to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians with anti-Semitism, writing: “Boycotts will always be interpreted as an expression of anti-Semitism and as a prelude to worse attacks.” Really? They will always be interpreted as an expression of anti-Semitism? By whom? Millions of people all over the world who boycott Israeli apartheid in some manner are in no way motivated by such base racism, the very claim is a gross insult to the Palestinian BNC which has called for BDS and to all of those who have signed on to support it.

In the previous line O’Toole says: “In the case of South Africa, the idea was that boycotts might induce shame in white South Africans, causing them to question their support for the system. In the case of Israel, Jewish history means that this effect is impossible.”  Are we to understand by this that the history of the Jewish people precludes Israelis from holding up a mirror to their state’s behaviour?  That a boycott campaign will be less effective than it was against South African apartheid because of history? Are Israelis, like artists,  deprived of agency in this bizarre narrative where boycotts are characterised as weapons and real weapons are ignored? And what of the Israelis who work for BDS, those who stand with their Palestinian sisters and brothers in their struggle? Are they ahistorical?

In Ireland, the anti-apartheid struggle is generally held up as a positive and worthy struggle for rights yet this BDS campaign is currently being vilified in the media here. Indeed, O’Toole opens his column by saying that he supported the cultural boycott of South Africa and goes on to state that boycotts can be problematic, but any engagement with the Palestinian BDS call would demonstrate that it is a tactic to be used strategically and flexibly, he makes no reference to it.

In his tribute to anti-apartheid activist Kader Asmal in 2011, O’Toole wrote: “The anti-apartheid cause to which he devoted his life was one of the great moral crusades of the second half of the 20th century. It was concerned with the obscenity of biologically-based power, of the idea that a few tiny genetic quirks entitled one group of people to rule and condemned others to be subservient.”  I agree wholeheartedly with this, as I do with Asmal’s words in the Phoenix magazine supplement “War Crimes in Apartheid Israel” of May 2010: “To have law on our side was to legitimise our struggle in South Africa and begin the long push to delegitimise the apartheid regime. We succeeded and, with Israel, we shall succeed if we have the same determination and pertinacity…It is time to delegitimise this entity that perpetrates nightmarish control over other people.” I believe that anyone honouring Kader Asmal and the anti-apartheid activists should also take the Palestinian BDS campaign seriously.

I cannot understand the cognitive dissonance of supporting the boycott of South African apartheid but railing against the boycott of Israeli apartheid, it is hypocrisy and laziness of thought.

The findings of the Cape Town Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine are never mentioned, I’m sure most who dismiss the connection between the two apartheid states have neither heard of nor read them.

Why do these commentators never listen to Palestinian voices which are mostly absent even from articles prescribing how they should behave?  What would they have Palestinians do to resist apartheid? They condemn physical struggle, they ignore non-violent struggle such as the hunger strikes and demonstrations against the wall, they condemn the cultural boycott.

It seems that all of those who ignore the Palestinians except to censure their modes of resistance ultimately  want them to shut up and accept everything Israel throws at them while waiting for the utterly pointless peace process to get them precisely nowhere.  They won’t and the BDS campaign, among other strands of struggle, will play a part in ending Israeli apartheid and winning justice for the Palestinian people. None of these journalists will be able to say they contributed when that happens.

I’ll end with a quote I read the other day from Frederick Douglass, the anti-slavery activist, that is relevant to all struggle, not least this one. “Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle….If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will….”

BDS apartheid until it ends.

Lying About a Rights Based Campaign – Smearing BDS in Ireland

In the wake of Irish traditional band Dervish’s cancellation of their dates in apartheid Israel, an astonishing campaign of lies and smears has played out in the Irish press- mainly in the Sunday Independent – and has had substantial and deeply worrying contributions from the Irish Minister for Justice and Defence, Alan Shatter.

When the Dervish dates in Israel became known to Palestine solidarity campaigners, DPAI set up a Facebook page, Dervish, Don’t Bring Your Travelling Show to Apartheid Israel,  the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) wrote an open letter to the group, musicians supportive of BDS contacted the band and people posted on the band’s Facebook page.  There was no abuse of the band, no ‘venom’ directed at them (there never is), there was a concerted campaign to give Dervish information about the terrible situation of the Palestinian people, to tell them about their call for solidarity in the form of BDS and to ask them to join other artists of conscience in refusing to play in Israel.  When Dervish cancelled, stating that they had been unaware of the cultural boycott of Israel: “At the time we agreed to these performances we were unaware there was a cultural boycott in place.  We now feel that we do not wish to break this boycott.  Our decision to withdraw from the concerts reflects our wish to neither endorse nor criticise anyone’s political views in this situation.”  (Official Facebook page here), they were congratulated by the IPSC, DPAI, who wrote a letter of thanks,  and many other supporters of the Palestinian people. The cancellation, of course, sparked the usual hate-filled posts from  zionists and that’s where the ‘venom’ referred to in Dervish’s second statement came from.

Here are some examples of the positive statements made by BDS advocates:

“Respect and thanks for having the courage to refuse breaching the Palestinian call for boycott.”

Raymond Deane, Cultural Liaison Officer IPSC: “Dervish – I salute you for this courageous and morally correct decision. You will now be subject to massive defamation from Zionists and their fellow-travellers – you should see this as proof that you have made the correct decision, because it will reveal to you the viciousness and mendacity of Israel’s apologists.”

Mine: “Well done and thanks Dervish. You have joined a growing list of artists refusing to play for apartheid. You are on the right side of history and with the Palestinian people in their struggle for justice. Respect.”

“Thank you so much for refusing to support apartheid, history will remember artists like you. It is not always easy to do what is right. You are not alone, Nelson Mandela and many other peacemakers have said they themselves cannot feel free until there is an end to the brutal occupation and colonisation of Palestine.”

“This cannot have been an easy time for any of you. I hope one day you play Tel Aviv again with laughter and lightness and when this difficult week is just a dim bad memory. Thank you for not breaking the boycott… you paid a much higher price than most people ever have to. Respect !”

Martin O’ Quigley, IPSC Chair: “Thanks Dervish for not playing to Apartheid. Supporting Human Rights is not expressing hate; supporters of the South African boycott didn’t hate white South Africans, just the policies of the Apartheid regime.”

Some of the negative comments by supporters of Israeli apartheid:

“LMAO at this band attempting to sit on the fence while simultaniously boycotting a country surrounded by a bunch of Arabs that want to see it destroyed. Israel has been at war with the savages that refuse to tollerate Israels existence, yet the world is siding with the intollerant Muslims while demonizing Israel. The world turning against Israel, now was this not prophesied to happen. Everything is right on schedule thanks for doing your part in satans agenda you bunch of lunatics.”

“Congratulations! You are now part of a cynical negative political campaign promoting nothing but hatred. Shame on you.”

“let it be kbown that i have heard that the bds uses some pretty shady tactics to threaten artists to cancel shows in the name of peace. oddly, much like hamas.”

“Wow Dervish! UNLIKE! Once again proving how anti-Semitic the Irish are! Please do not come back to Montana, we prefer real world music! I will do my best Not to promote you at every opportunity. Booooo Hisssss…get off the Stage!!!”

” white liberals. jeeeesus. take care all. i dont even like Dervish”

“For shame, Dervish, for so ignorantly taking a side in this misguided movement. Your statement that “Our decision to withdraw from the concerts reflects our wish to neither endorse nor criticise anyone’s political views in this situation” is so absurd as to be comical. How, by joining a boycott, are you not endorsing a position? Way to land on the wrong side of history. Pathetic.”

“this is the day the nusic of dervish die for me”

The posts above are representative of the reaction on the Dervish page and absolutely refute any smears against IPSC members and those standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people.  They make Alan Shatter’s press release of 4th May look even more baseless when the evidence is there for anyone to see on the Internet. Instead of doing this and working on the basis of  factual information, Shatter instead chose to write an outrageous press release accusing the IPSC (erroneously referred to as the IPSG) of “cyber bullying” and infringing on Irish citizens’ rights to travel. He also makes a link between Al Quaeda and the IPSC that is so ridiculous as to be laughable, except that this is a minister,  in our government, paid for by our taxes, charged with upholding justice and protecting Irish citizens, IPSC members included. The statement defies belief and has been reported as fact in Irish newspapers, their journalists too lazy to actually investigate and report properly and accurately. The Irish Times and Independent are guilty of this and also claiming that there is no ‘official’ boycott of Israel, thereby displaying the usual orientalism of completely ignoring Palestinian voices.  Meanwhile Shatter employs the all too familiar and predictable zionist tactic of mentioning Syria, demonstrating a profound inability to comprehend the simple tenet that the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign is just that, a campaign in solidarity with PALESTINE, not Syria…… rocket science and all that. By the way, his concern for Syria doesn’t extend to the Golan Heights….

While Palestinians live under occupation, oppression, siege, are frequent victims of Israeli war crimes and while over 2,000 of them are currently on hunger strike to protest the illegal practice of detention without charge or trial, Shatter has been silent. Could it be that the Minister for Justice has no sense of justice when it comes to Palestinians?

In the wake of the Dervish cancellation, there has been much hysteria in the Irish media, accompanied by increasingly poor standards of journalism – even journalists with no apparent pro-Israel agenda have managed to mischaracterise both BDS and the campaign around the Dervish tour.  Above all else, they keep spectacularly missing the bloody point. Palestinians living through their 64th year of brutal occupation, betrayed by the so-called international community, have called for a comprehensive boycott of Israel – that’s their call, that’s one of the means by which they choose to resist the apartheid imposed on them.  Solidarity groups support that call, that’s what solidarity means.

Raymond Deane,  IPSC Cultural Liaison Officer, was interviewed by the ignorant and boorish Marc Colman on Newstalk radio (about 20 mins in) and subjected to personal attack by the uninformed and rude Eamon Delaney, both of whom trotted out the usual zionist cliches, familiar to any observer of the defenders of Israel and rehearsed mutliple times on this blog. He was ‘accused’ of calling for the boycott himself, then it was claimed that it was a Hamas led boycott. Delaney even said that Israel shouldn’t be ‘picked on’ as it is a country made up of people who are white and European originally, very telling.

The thing about democracy is that, of course, everyone is entitled to an opinion but let’s make them based on knowledge not empty rhetoric or lazy thinking. If you’re going to be against the cultural boycott, at least be informed as to where it came from, what it entails, how it fits into the struggle, the truth about Israel’s constant repression of Palestinian culture. What we have seen here is the usual knee-jerk reaction of Israel’s supporters, who often don’t know what it is exactly they are against, all they know is that they will defend the apartheid state no matter what.

As with all the BDS campaigns I have seen, there is no harrassment of those who would cross the picket line, there is however a sincere and very urgent campaign to educate them and try to persuade them not to endorse apartheid.  This is what campaigning for justice and human rights looks like, it’s what it looked like in the campaign agaisnt South African apartheid. That the Irish Minister for Justice either cannot or refuses to see this is disturbing. That journalists can produce copy based on lies, inaccuracies and mistruths is worrying.

This is the IPSC’s official response to Minister Shatter.

The Palestinian led cultural boycott  is growing every year, more and more artists are choosing not to perform for apartheid Israel. It is an honourable campaign and one I am proud to be part of, as should all involved especially the artists who make the decision to join.

BDS until apartheid ends – if you don’t like it, then let’s see your work to end injustice.

Media Bias. Labour Party Conference: “Violence, What Violence?” – Galway Peace Group

Yesterday, 14th April 2012, thousands of people protested at the Labour Party Conference in NUIG. Though the protesters were a diverse group, representing many different causes and campaigns, they were all united in their disgust at this government’s, in which the Labour party is a partner, selling out of Ireland and the Irish citizenry.

At the protest Galway Alliance Against War held a symbolic funeral for Irish neutrality which has been sold to the US imperialist war machine by successive governments since the beginning of the ‘war on terror’. Since then, millions of US troops have passed through Shannon airport on their way to and from the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. People have also been transported through Shannon airport to be tortured at Guantanamo prison camp and other torture sites.

While a largely corporate and compliant media consistently ignores the illegal use of Shannon airport for such crimes against humanity and the actual and terrible violence being visited on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, it reported erroneously today on violence from the GAAW, among others, at the Labour conference protest.  Indeed John Drennan in the Sunday Independent is quite hysterical: “Over 1,000 protesters, using a mock coffin as a weapon, breached the garda cordon surrounding the conference on the campus of NUI Galway and protesters made it to the doors of the hall.” That bears repeating: “using a mock coffin as a weapon” – really? What? The violence on the day was the use of pepper spray by the Gardaí. This kind of reporting is typical of the mainstream media in Ireland, the actual brutal and terrifying  violence employed against innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan is largely ignored and an anti-war group characterised as violent.   Such rhetoric is constantly used so as to legitimise war and those who wage it while simultaneously demonising those who protest it, who refuse to accept the casual slaughter of people with our complicity. I seem to remember that some prominent Labour party people once shared such views….politics…..

The GAAW has made a statement on this reportage and it is reposted in full below.

The majority of the commentary around the protest, is as usual, skewed in favour of the establishment and ultimately has little respect for people’s democratic right to protest and to resist injustice.  Labour party members also called us “bullies” and “scumbags”, confirming that they too merely pay lip service to true democracy.

I have stood with these good people in Shannon warport many times, and am proud to do so. Equally, I am proud of all the people who protested yesterday and delighted to have been among them. One of the chants on the day was :”This is what democracy looks like” – perhaps that’s why the government and the media get so nervous and hysterical about it.  One day we may have a society founded in equality and fairness and we won’t be governed by those who think that bombing people in distant lands is alright but that protesting it is not.

GALWAY ALLIANCE AGAINST WAR

Labour Party Conference: “Violence, What Violence?” – Galway Peace Group

In reaction to press reports of violence during the protests at the Labour Party conference at NUI Galway, Galway’s local peace group, the Galway Alliance Against War, has issued the following statement.

“GAAW’s symbolic funeral for Irish neutrality was at the head of Saturday’s protest march to the Labour Party conference. The tricolour-draped coffin carried by four pallbearers dressed as Guantanamo prisoners was a poignant image with a strong message: Irish neutrality is dead since consecutive Irish governments – including the FG-Labour coalition – have colluded with Washington’s disastrous “war on terror”, which has turned Shannon airport into a US warport.

“ In response to the sensational media reports of violence, we would ask, what violence? Apart from the unnecessary use of pepper spray by the Gardaí there was nothing other than some pushing and shoving. It has to be said that the Gardaí were quite restrained. This reflects the disaffection of the Gardaí with the policies that are impacting on the vast majority of Irish citizens, including members of the Gardaí. But perhaps the most ludicrous media report was that our coffin was used as a “battering ram”. The fact that nobody was hurt by the coffin – only by pepper spray – shows that report to be nonsense.

“If the Irish media wants to know about violence then perhaps it should turn its attention to the military hardware including chemical weapons that have travelled through Shannon warport en route to Iraq and Afghanistan. Take a look at the reports of the US attack on Fallujah in 2004 and its aftermath, where white phosphorous was used that came via Shannon.

“Or maybe the Irish media should read the testimony of “extraordinary rendition” victim Binyam Mohamad. His CIA kidnappers and torturers travelled through Shannon warport on two occasions and even stayed overnight en route to bring Mr Mohamad to torture. Now there is real violence. The Irish state was in breach of international law. And the present government is also in breach, as Gilmore has refused to search any of the US warplanes travelling through Shannon, preferring to accept the highly unreliable assurances of his confidant the US ambassador.

“And if the Irish media has still not got an understanding about what violence is, then maybe they should look at the body count from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. So far more than 1.5 million people have been killed. And Irish governments under Fianna Fail, the PDs, the Greens, Fine Gael and Labour have been accessories to these killings. Yes, they have blood on their hands and so has the Irish people because we have failed to prevent our airports and air space to be used by the US warmongers.

“Indeed, Eamon Gilmore in his speech to conference hailed his government’s collusion in the “war on terror” in Afghanistan as something to be proud of: ‘I want to pay tribute tonight to …the members of our Defence Forces and Gardaí serving in … Afghanistan…They all represent the best of what it is to be Irish.’

“By bringing Irish neutrality’s coffin to the conference hall door we wanted to raise the real issues of violence that Ireland is involved in and which the powers-that-be and the media prefer to ignore.”
ENDS

For your information:    Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah ‘worse than Hiroshima’

More information on the US military use of Shannon airport here at Shannonwatch