Israel-Palestine: History Echoes At Us
Still waiting for the Messiah while babies die removed from incubators
[The ABC ‘Live Updates’ headline which brought back an old echo.]
Published: 2023-11-16
Introduction
The rhetoric coming out of Israel's War Cabinet and from the mouth of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu could only be described a biblical. The religious historic justification for the state of Israel has been used by the Zionists since they began their campaign in the 19th century (BCE). This type of rhetoric has become less vocal during the last half a century as it grates with the insertion of a "Human Rights" morality into the political language of the period.
There are echoes of history strewn through the language and wreckage of this latest version of the Palestinian people utilizing their right to rebel against an occupying power, that of the state of Israel, self declared by its Zionist founders in 1948.
On the Cold Hard Floor
One echo struck a particular resonance with this author for the event echoed came from my youth when I was just beginning to engage with an understanding of war as 'politics by other means'.
While the 9/11 crimes remain the media spectical of all time, the first few days of the second Iraq war in 2003 must be in the top few. It marked the beginning of 'embedding', the placement of journalists within the military to ensure that the information they were delivered was under the control of the military. Of course, the justification was safety and the journalists were happy to get their reports and the videographers and photographers their images. Be damned with the supposed independence of journalist, its war! and if there is anything which sells a newspaper, that is it.
The echo which struck was from the previous US/Iraq war of 1991, known very passively at 'The Gulf War' as though nobody fought in it. The headline image of this article instantly brought to mind the Nayirah testimony. A 15 year old girl gave tearful testimony to the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus on 1990-10-10. The key line was that Iraqi soldiers were taking babies from incubators and "leaving them to die on the cold hard floor".
[A user generated image from the C-SPAN recording of the tear filled lies delivered to the US Congress by the Kuwaiti ambassador’s Hill and Knowlton trained daughter.]
A friend of mine happened to be dating a Muslim man of Arab decent at the time. He and I sat up one evening as the reporting of the actual war got under way in January 1991. While not as graphic or 'live' as the 2003 version, the 1991 US-Iraqi war was the first war I'd seen reported. The man expressed an understanding of the conflict from a perspective of Arab Muslims, which back in 1991 I could not find in Australian media. I was sufficiently struck by his understanding that later that evening I wrote a song about the conflict. The chorus concludes "Who owns Palestine?"
During my first experience of the reporting of a war I had been provided with a perspective not from my culture, which was using its technology to kill, but from the cultural background of the region in which the killing was being done. It seriously muddied the waters of the propaganda in which I'd been swimming. I remain grateful to this man and for our conversation to this day. It continues to speak to me of the innocent people who die in war. They are innocent because they are not given any due process. They have no chance. The have no choice either. They are ripped into the maws of the technology of death being used by forces from far away which are blind to their lives, homes and families.
The Bird's Wing
The second echo is of biblical language. Alastair Crooke refers to it during his discussion with Napolitano. McGovern hints at it too. This Old Testament language has been scrubbed from modern media for it grates with the social sensitivities which were adopted during the era of Human Rights which have been repeatedly used to emotionally manipulate populations into accepting war.
In the Israeli, Lex Talionis-light, retributive, vengeful response to the Hamas attack the old language is breaking through their media narrative. The Zionists can't help themselves, so emotional is their response. Some of that is psychologically understandable. The promise of the state of Israel and particularly the political messaging of Netanyahu is about protection from the evil Arabs. That was shattered on October 7th.
The Jewish and particularly Zionist Jewish population of Israel are responding to this shattering of their trust and hope, reverting to their internal narrative of prophesy and the story of the chosen people. The current global political response to the ongoing tragedy hinges on the tragedies being deliberately delivered daily and on this language which is spewing forth from the mouths of the Jewish Zionists. Caitlin Johnstone captures this understanding beautifully in "Israelis Keep Hurting Their Own PR Interests By Talking".
A subscriber, Pietro Wislon, submitted in a recent comment a magnificent old reference to which I wish to draw your attention.
1964 was three years before the Israeli war against its neighbours in which it attacked Egypt, the stateless Palestinians, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon and stole the West Bank, parts of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Gaza and other areas on the coastal plane. In September '64 The Egyptian Gazette published Malcolm X's "Zionist Logic", five months before he was assassinated. Malcolm had not only left the Nation of Islam but was being persecuted by it. He had converted to Sunni Islam and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). He had abandoned his past rhetoric of violent protest to embrace transformation by peaceful means.
He remained a fierce intellectual. His extremely short piece for the Gazette lays out a simple and devastating attack on the biblical underpinnings of the Zionists' claim to the lands now called both Israel and Palestine. He draws from his African roots and the struggle for black American independence to engage with the Zionist project from an international perspective.
In his article for The Egyptian Gazette he situates the state of Israel as an extension of the activities by "the ever-scheming European imperialists". He identifies the financial nature of the European imperial projects by titling his second sub-section "Dollarism". He saw that in the post WWII moment of the creation of a whole collection of new independent nations that the existing nations with better connections to international finance could use this privilege to influence the direction of the new nations:
And the continued low standard of living in the Arab world has been skillfully used by the Zionist propagandists to make it appear to the Africans that the Arab leaders are not intellectually or technically qualified to lift the living standard of their people...thus, indirectly inducing Africans to turn away from the Arabs and towards the Israelis for teachers and technical assistance.
"They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they."
Malcolm X identifies the geographic positioning of the Israeli colonial project as significant in itself. One one side of Israel are the African nations which Malcolm was just touring and with which he feels kinship against continued racial oppression. On the other are their natural allies the Arab peoples who have also been subjugated due to both racial and religious prejudice. He generalizes the Arab peoples with the other non-European imperialist peoples of Asia.
Israel is:
placed where she could geographically divide the Arab world, infiltrate and sow the seed of dissension among African leaders and also divide the Africans against the Asians.
Being a religious scholar himself, Malcolm takes aim at the biblical underpinnings of the Zionist project, quoting their own messianic tradition at them and laying waste it.
If the "religious" claim of the Zionists is true that they were to be led to the promised land by their messiah, and Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine is the fulfillment of that prophesy: where is their messiah whom their prophets said would get the credit for leading them there? It was [United Nations mediator] Ralph Bunche who "negotiated" the Zionists into possession of Occupied Palestine! Is Ralph Bunche the messiah of Zionism? If Ralph Bunche is not their messiah, and their messiah has not yet come, then what are they doing in Palestine ahead of their messiah?
[the hyperlink is mine, the rest is verbatim.]
He compares the historically justified invasion of Palestine by the European Jews with the early expansion of the Muslim world when the "Moors" were a significant component of the population of the southern part of the Iberian peninsula (Spain). He throws the implications of the religious and quasi-legal justifications used to establish Israel straight back in the face of the European (and American) Imperialists:
Did the Zionists have the legal or moral right to invade Arab Palestine, uproot its Arab citizens from their homes and seize all Arab property for themselves just based on the "religious" claim that their forefathers lived there thousands of years ago? Only a thousand years ago the Moors lived in Spain. Would this give the Moors of today the legal and moral right to invade the Iberian Peninsula, drive out its Spanish citizens, and then set up a new Moroccan nation...where Spain used to be, as the European Zionists have done to our Arab brothers and sisters in Palestine?
He concludes that the whole justification for the state of Israel is without any intellectual rigor, and taunts the Zionists to produce their Messiah:
In short the Zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history...not even in their own religion. Where is their Messiah?
Recall
Given the current situation, if Malcolm X were with us today he may be re-issuing a similar article and concluding by asking the Zionists if the best they can do is Crazy Netanyahu?
It can be valuable to see the echoes of history. The 'babies and incubators' return is a reminder of the propaganda which always leads and then stays at the hip of war. As the current crop of Zionists reflexively roll out their revolting religious rhetoric, remember that leaders past have seen through it and informed us of its emptiness.
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Sources
Israelis Keep Hurting Their Own PR Interests By Talking, Caitlin Johnstone, Caitlin's Newsletter, 2023-11-14
Zionist Logic, Malcolm X, The Egyptian Gazette (republished at SocialistViewpoint May/June 2005 • Vol 4, No. 5), 1964-09-17
This was published 5 months prior to Malcolm X's assassination, after he head left the Nation of Islam and become a Sunni Muslim
A deep bow to subscriber Pietro Wislon. From the comments section of "Ukraine: The Truth Wins. The Proxy War Was and Is a Foreseeable Tragedy", YesXorNo, 2023-11-10
embedded journalism, Martin Löffelholz, Britannica, 2014 (and two edits)
Gulf War, Wikipedia
AKA the first US/Iraq war, or the US MIC’s opportunity to assert their dominance after the dissolution of the USSR and so attempt to consign to the dustbin of the history their ‘Vietnam Syndrom’. 8 years later was the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and its been all downhill from there.
Nayirah testimony, Wikipedia
It become known as a blatant case of emotional manipulation of not only the entire US, but the entire western audience. See also the recent podcast on emotional propaganda as a form of false flag attack [Day in Review: S1,E3, YesXorNo, 2023-10-19]
Human Rights Violations in Kuwait [Congressional Human Rights Caucus hearing], C-SPAN, recorded 1990-10-10
Jump to around 01:57:00 for the tearful lies
Good luck getting this to work. The video is there but I couldn't get it to play reliably.
Iraq Gulf War Desert Storm 1991 Testimony Of Lie Nayirah (Nijirah Al Sabah), Archive.org
Lessons in how to lie about Iraq, Brian Eno, The Guardian, 2003-08-17
Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome Narrative: Human Rights, the Nayirah Testimony, and the Gulf War [PDF], Joseph Darda, American Quarterly, Volume 69, Number 1, March 2017, pp. 71-92 (Article) [published by Johns Hopkins University Press], 2017-03
Timeline of Malcolm X's Life, American Experience, (US) Public Broadcasting Service, no date of publication [first seen by archive.org on 2019-01-24]
Ralph Bunche – Biographical, no author, Nobel Prize Outreach, no publication date
Architect of Peace: Dr. Ralph Bunche, People and Culture, CIA, 2023-12-09
Alastair Crooke： (fmr. British Diplomat) - What is Biden’s endgame in Gaza？, Napolitan interviews Crooke, Judging Freedom, 2023-11-14
Ray McGovern： (fmr CIA) - More Gazan genocide before any ceasefire., Napolitan interviews McGovern, Judging Freedom, 2023-11-14
Culture
Billy Bragg - Which Side Are You On?, uploaded by the very cool account name dprkspacemarine on 2010-02-09
Copyleft: CC0
