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| Navigating War: Has the War in Syria also Destroyed Journalism? When a veteran war reporter like Robert Fisk constructs his argument regarding the siege of Aleppo based on 'watching' video footage, then one can truly comprehend the near impossibility of adequate media coverage on the war in Syria. In a recent article in the British 'Independent', Fisk reflects on the siege, uprising and atrocious Nazi massacres in Warsaw, Poland in 1944. The terribly high cost of that war leads him to reject the French assertion that the current siege in Aleppo is the 'worst massacre since World War Two.' "Why do we not see the defending fighters, as we do on the Warsaw films? Why are we not told about their political allegiance, as we most assuredly are on the Warsaw footage? Why do we not see 'rebel' military hardware - as well as civilian targets - being hit by artillery and air attack as we do on the Polish newsreels?," he asks, further demonstrating what he perceives to be the flaw of such a comparison. Not that Fisk doubts that pictures of the dead and wounded children in eastern Aleppo are real; his argument is largely against the one-sidedness of the coverage, of demonizing one party, while sparing another. Without reserve, I always find comparing massacres - to find out which is worse - tasteless, if not inhumane. What is the point in this, aside from mitigating the effect of a terrible tragedy, by comparing it to a hypothetically much greater tragedy? Or, as the French have done, perhaps exaggerating the human toll to create the type of fear that often leads to reckless political and military action? The French and other NATO countries have used this tactic repeatedly in the past. In fact, this is how the war on Libya was concocted, purportedly to stave off the imminent Tripoli 'genocide' and Benghazi 'bloodbath.' The Americans used it in Iraq, successfully. The Israelis have perfected it in Gaza. In fact, the United States' intervention in Iraq was always tied to some sort of imagined global threat that, unsurprisingly, was never proven. Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was so eager to take part in the conquest of Iraq in 2003 that he contrived intelligence alleging that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was able to deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes from the moment such an order was given. The US went even further: it was only recently revealed that the US had hired a London-based firm, Bell Pottinger, to create fake al-Qaeda videos and news reports that were designed to appear as if written by legitimate Arabic media. The propaganda videos were 'personally approved' by the commander of the US-led coalition forces in Iraq at the time, General David Petraeus, Salon and others reported. We still do not know the specific content of many of these videos and to what extent such material, which cost US tax payers $540 million dollars, influenced events on the ground and our understanding of these events. Considering the high financial cost and the fact that the company worked directly from inside Baghdad's 'Camp Victory', 'side-by-side' with high-ranking US officials, one can only imagine the degree of deceit imparted upon innocent viewers and readers for years. Compounded with the fact that the whole reason behind the war was a lie, the then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, had no intention of ever informing reporters of what was really transpiring on the ground, and that countless reporters agreed to be 'embedded' with US-British forces, thus further contributing to the one-sided narrative. One is left to wonder if any truth ever emerged from Iraq. Then, again, we know that hundreds of thousands have died in that catastrophic military adventure, that Iraq is not better off, and that thousands more are still being killed because this is what happens when countries are invaded, destabilized, hurriedly reassembled and then left to lick their wounds, alone. The chaotic violence and sectarianism in Iraq are the direct outcome of the US invasion and occupation, which were constructed on official lies and dishonest media reporting. Is it too much to ask, then, that we learn from those dreadful mistakes, to understand that when all is said and done, nothing will remain but mass graves and grieving nations? As for the lies that enable wars, and allow the various sides to clinch on their straw arguments of selected morality, few ever have the intellectual courage to take responsibility when they are proven wrong. We simply move on, uncaring for the victims of our intellectual squabbles. "The extreme bias shown in foreign media coverage of similar events in Iraq and Syria will be a rewarding subject for PhD students looking at the uses and abuses of propaganda down the ages," wrote war reporter, Patrick Cockburn. He is right, of course, but as soon as his report on media bias was published, he was attacked and dismissed by both sides on social media. From their perspective, a proper position would be for him to completely adopt the version of events as seen by one side, and totally ignore the other. Yet, with both sides of the war having no respect for media or journalists - the list of journalists killed in Syria keeps on growing - no impartial journalist is allowed to carry out his or her work in accordance with the minimum standards of reporting. Thus, the 'truth' can only be gleaned based on deductive reasoning - as many of us have successfully done, reporting on Iraq and Palestine. Of course, there will always been the self-tailored activist-journalist-propagandist variety who will continue to cheer for death and destruction in the name of whatever ideology they choose to follow. They abide by no reasoning, but their own convenient logic - that which is only capable of demonizing their enemies and lionizing their friends. Unfortunately, these media trolls are the ones shaping the debate on much of what is happening in the Middle East today. While the coverage of war in the past has given rise to many daring journalists - Seymour Hersh in Vietnam, Tariq Ayyoub in Iraq, photo-journalist Zoriah Miller, and hundreds more - the war in Syria is destroying journalistic integrity and, with it, our readers' ability to decipher one of the most convoluted conflicts of the modern era. In Syria, as in Iraq and other warring regions in the Middle East, the 'truth' is not shaped by facts, but opinions, themselves fashioned by blind allegiances, not truly humanistic principles or even simple common sense. "Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world - and never will," wrote Mark Twain many years ago. It was true then, as it is true in the Middle East today. - Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include "Searching Jenin", "The Second Palestinian Intifada" and his latest "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story". His website is www.ramzybaroud.net. |
| Israel's West Bank Tourism Drive Makes Palestinians Invisible At first glance, it looked like a generous promotional stunt by Israel to aid the Palestinians' struggling tourism industry. Israeli military authorities published this month a video on social media publicizing Palestinian attractions in the West Bank. Most are Christian, including Jesus's birthplace in Bethlehem - now the Church of the Nativity - and more obscure locations such as the monasteries of Mar Saba and Wadi Qelt, in mountainous desert terrain few pilgrim coaches ever reach. The video was produced by COGAT, the Israeli military body that rules over Palestinians. It appears to be the latest initiative in defense minister Avigdor Lieberman's so-called "carrot and stick" policy - a program that rewards and punishes Palestinians according to their behavior. Lieberman has vowed to bypass the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and deal with Palestinians directly. The head of COGAT, Yoav Mordechai, has become a familiar face to ordinary Palestinians. Last month, in his first live chat in Arabic on COGAT's Facebook page, he answered questions from Palestinians on how they could receive Israeli work permits or resolve other bureaucratic headaches his officials created for them. Even Palestinians in Gaza defied Hamas to contact him. The tourism video is similarly designed to reverse the Oslo accords, which held out a false promise two decades ago that the Palestinians would one day enjoy statehood and self-determination. Israel's micromanagement of the territories is now such that it is even taking responsibility for attracting visitors to Palestine. Except that is precisely not where COGAT's video invites them. Instead it beckons tourists to visit "Judea and Samaria", the Biblical names Israel uses to justify the illegal Jewish settlements that dominate much of the West Bank. What is going on? The deception at the campaign's heart operates on several levels - and reveals much about Israel's long-term policy towards the Palestinians. Lieberman wants Palestinians to view Mordechai's military administration as a benevolent father figure, the address for their problems, rather than Abbas. Who has the power to bring tourists to the territories and boost the Palestinian economy? COGAT, not the Palestinian Authority. But Israel's charity comes at a high price: Palestinians must jettison their national ambitions. The tourists can visit but Palestinians must first concede that these are Israeli sites. A similar message is directed at the tourists. Christian pilgrims with little understanding of the Palestinians' long history of dispossession are being encouraged to explore Greater Israel oblivious to which side of the Green Line they are on. The distinction between Nazareth and Bethlehem, in Israel and the occupied West Bank, respectively, is increasingly blurred. Palestinians themselves are all but invisible. The video at no point mentions that they even live in "Judea and Samaria". It shows buildings, not people. This rebranding process is already well under way in Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in violation of international law decades ago. Tourism maps are littered with Jewish settler sites, marked as prominently as important holy places such as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and Al Aqsa mosque. The latter is identified only by its Hebrew name, Temple Mount. But in truth the tourism video is even less generous than it appears. Israel controls all entry into the West Bank, meaning that it is impossible for pilgrims to visit without contributing to the Israeli economy. Israel announced in September a record budget for promoting tourism, a mainstay of its economy. The vast majority of visitors stay in Israeli hotels, are transported in Israeli coaches, eat in Israeli restaurants, visit Israeli gift shops to buy Israeli souvenirs using Israeli money. In fact, most of the sites visited in the West Bank are controlled by Israel - from the Dead Sea and Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque to Herod's acropolis near Bethlehem and the Baptism site on the River Jordan. Tourists absorb the Palestinian presence only as a distant menace, highlighted by the bright red traffic signs warning that it is "dangerous to your lives" to stray from major roads. Pilgrims dart into Bethlehem for a brief tour of the Church of the Nativity, passing through a checkpoint in the oppressive, prison-like wall, hinting that Israel has good reason to treat Palestinians like felons. If COGAT really wanted to change that impression, and help the Palestinian economy, it would encourage tourists to stay in Palestinian cities such as Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah and Jericho. And meet actual Palestinians. Last week the Israeli parliament passed the first reading of a so-called legalization bill, which will retroactively authorize the settlers' theft of land and property privately owned by Palestinians in the West Bank. The legislation extends to the settlers' criminal acts the same legal protection as the state's theft of Palestinian land. The privatization of the looting of Palestinian territory is intimately connected to the authorities' latest moves to plunder Palestine's tourism economy. The overarching goal in both is the "creeping annexation" of the Palestinians' homeland. Israel is ready to use any and every means at its disposal. (A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.) - Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilizations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit his website: www.jonathan-cook.net. |
| David Remnick Has Hysterics
David Remnick is editor of the New Yorker, a magazine renowned for its sophistication, its wit and the cuteness of its cartoons. Liberal elites like to brand themselves by reading the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, the Guardian and Le Monde and Le Monde Diplomatique,at least in the English translation, although the original French looks good tucked under the arm. Their consumption of these newspapers and journals establishes them as well-read and well-informed citizens of the world, so they might be inclined to think. Consequently, as those who live out there in the 'rust belt', terra incognitafor the inhabitants of the east coast, have no real place in their lives or in the pages of the journals and newspapers they read, beyond the occasional feature story that examines them much as an entomologist might examine a colony of ants, it is not surprising that they were caught short by the election of Donald Trump. The emergence of the slimy black beast from the depths could not have horrified Mr Remnick any more than the rise of Donald Trump. Overloaded with bile brought on by the Trump victory his spleen bursts and sprays muck over his cool New York manners like drunken vomit down an Armani suit. 'An American Tragedy' would have been more accurately entitled 'An American Tirade.' The subject matter could have been the layoffs, the loss of homes and suicides of those Americans who took out subprime loans and were caught when the financial institutions collapsed in 2007/2008.
The subject matter could have been the soldiers who lost their lives or their limbs during the invasion of Iraq. The subject matter could have been the first black man elected as president, promising change but refusing to close Guantanamo and signing off every Tuesday on the drone missile attacks that killed thousands of people in far-off lands during the eight years of his presidency. Included in this account would have been the war he launched on Libya, along with his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, ending in the destruction of the country and the killing of perhaps 40,000 people before both moved on to the destruction of another country, Syria. But 'An American Tragedy' was written about none of these things. It was written about Donald Trump and what he might do as president, not what Obama and Clinton actually did as president and secretary of state. For Mr Remnick the judgment is already in, ruling out any possibility that Mr Trump could change his views or modify them once he moves into the White House. 'An American Tragedy' is laden with pamphleteering invective. Trump's election is shocking and sickening, a grievous event, a tragedy of nativism, misogyny and racism, representing xenophobia and white racism and disdain for women and minorities. Trump represents unbounded vulgarity. He is knowledge-free, his election 'a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right.' His world is characterised by vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth and recklessness. He is a demagogue who utilises the 'populist rhetoric of blood and soil', a 'marginal self-promoting buffoon', a 'billionaire of low repute', cruel and retrograde, a human being of dismal qualities, gross, mendacious, bigoted, a cheat, hollow, a flim-flam man and egotistical to a degree rarely exhibited outside a clinical environment. There's not much left of him after this. This extraordinary cascade of hate is coupled with praise for the sainted Obama, a man of integrity, dignity and generous spirit, and praise for Hillary Clinton, 'a flawed candidate but a resilient, intelligent and competent leader, who never overcame her image among millions of voters as untrustworthy and entitled.' Well, perhaps this is because these and even more odious aspects of her character are not an image but the reality, certainly as perceived by millions in the US and around the world. The record unexamined by David Remnick or anyone else in the 'liberal' media shows that Clinton has a long record of deceit and chicanery going back to her time as the governor's wife in Arkansas, apart from her flawless record of warmongering. She supported her husband's war in the Balkans and the Bush wars on Iraq: she initiated the war on Libya and jump-started the war on Syria until she stepped down to contest the presidency. This woman, who seeks to make political capital out of her defence of the rights of women and children everywhere, is actually responsible for the death of untold numbers of them in various parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Feminists who support her overlook this rather basic point. Libya, the most advanced country in Africa, was destroyed because of a war launched by Obama and Clinton. Tens of thousands of Libyans were killed and Muammar al Qadhafi murdered in the most gruesome way, an event which amused Clinton greatly. None of these horrors have any place in the world view of David Remnick and other 'liberals' blubbering over Clinton's defeat. Trump will have to go a long way to surpass the crimes committed or sanctioned by Clinton and Obama in the Middle East and North Africa, yet in the view of David Remnick, it is Trump who is the repulsive, disgusting, sickening human being and not Obama and Clinton: they are decent, competent people of integrity. What the election showed is that a decisive number of American voters were not taken in by these two or the people who promote them. They were not prepared to trust them again.
Their indifference to the large-scale killing of brown people in far-off lands establishes certain truths about these 'liberals.' They have a conscience but only up to a certain point. They are liberals but only up to a certain point. They are outraged by affronts to gender and ethnicity but not outraged by the violent consequences of decisions taken by politicians they seem to idolise. Their indifference to the human consequences in the Middle East and North Africa of decisions taken by Obama and Clinton establishes them as closet racists. In Syria they are horrified by the excesses of the Islamic State while sucking up all the lies told by 'activists' embedded with dishonestly labelled 'moderate' groups supported by their government and other governments. These 'liberals' support justice and truth but only up to a certain point. It was David Remnick who refused to publish Seymour Hersh's account of the lies told about the (alleged) chemical weapons attack outside Damascus in August, 2013. Hersh is a truly heroic figure, a humble man but a great investigative journalist who has broken some of the biggest stories in the past half century, from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968 to the torture and killings at Abu Ghraib exposed in his New Yorkerarticle in 2004. The magazine was his home base until he submitted his article on the chemical weapons attack in the Ghouta district. In line with the New Yorker's propaganda output on Syria ('Syria's War on Doctors', 'Assad's War on Aleppo', 'Bashar al Assad's War Crimes Exposed'), Remnick refused to publish Hersh's evidence that it was 'rebels', backed by outside governments and even provided by them with the sarin they used, and not the Syrian government, who were responsible for this most appalling atrocity. Shown the material, the Washington Post also refused to publish. The relationship with the New Yorker had started to fall apart in 2011 when Remnick refused to publish a Hersh article debunking the official account of the killing of Osama bin Laden, suggesting that he write it as a blog instead. Both investigations were eventually published by the London Review of Books. The New Yorker's hostile line on Syria can be matched with its long-standing indulgence of Israel. In October 2013, Remnick published 'Lydda 1948', an excerpt from a recently published book by Ari Shavit, My Promised Land, which justifies the massacre of Palestinians by Zionist armed gangs.
In this excerpt, Shavit describes the Zionist assault on the Palestinian city of Lydda in July, 1948. The expulsion of the population was preceded by the gunning down of people in the street and a large-scale massacre inside the Dahmash mosque which, Shavit writes, 'may have been brought about by a tragic chain of accidental events.' In fact there was nothing tragic or 'accidental' about it. This was a deliberate massacre, in line with numerous other massacres carried out across Palestine. Hundreds of people had taken shelter inside the mosque when Zionist soldiers machine-gunned them. Of the 426 Palestinians murdered in Lydda that day, up to 176 were killed inside the Dahmash mosque. Here is Shavit's summary: 'Mula Cohen and Shmarya Gutman [the commanders of the operation but carrying out the orders of higher authorities stretching all the way up to David Ben-Gurion] were right to be angry with the critics of later years who condemned what they did in Lydda but enjoyed the fruits of their deeds. I will not damn the brigade commander and the military governor and the 3rd Battalion soldiers. On the contrary I'll stand by them because I know that if not for them the state of Israel would not have been born.' Well, is this not like standing by the German soldiers who massacred civilians in the Czech village of Lidice or in the French town of Oradur sur Glane? They also had their orders and their justification but no genuine liberal can possibly justify such behaviour and it is because Israeli 'liberals' like Ari Shavit and Benny Morris do, and because US 'liberals' like David Remnick go along with them, that Israel has been able to continue committing the most atrocious deeds for the past 70 years. Lydda was not acceptable, not justifiable for any reason and it is the capacity to justify the unjustifiable that is the sickness at the heart of Zionism. The neglected, ignored or justified suffering of the people of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine is only part of the great indifference of 'liberals' because in the US they are just as indifferent to the suffering of their own people. The rust belt towns might as well be as distant from East Coast liberals as the shattered towns of the Middle East. Their 'identity politics' do not extend to identification with these victims of government policies. Taken by surprise, the only way 'liberals' could explain the election result was to attribute the meanest motives to the people who live in these towns. Thus, they voted for Trump because they were resentful, maladjusted white middle-class males. They voted for Trump because they were racists or misogynists, a favorite line of befuddled feminist chatterers everywhere. They voted for Trump because they were 'deplorables.' The 'liberals' treated these people as if they did not have aspirations for themselves and their children and did not have the capacity to think rationally, above the prejudices the 'liberals' say determined their vote. This was arrogance on a grand scale. Not once were they prepared to concede that the reason these people turned on the political establishment was that it had failed them and that their idols - the sanctified Obama and the 'flawed' Hillary - were part of the failure. Consider these basic facts. In 2008 - the year Obama was voted into the White House - 3.1 million foreclosure notices were served on American homeowners. 861, 664 families lost their homes. Foreclosures were up 81 per cent in 2008 and up 225 per cent compared to 2006. Since 2000 alone five million manufacturing jobs have gone in the US, partly through technology and the introduction of robotics and partly as the result of the relocation of US corporations overseas. At the same time as this was happening, the government was bailing out the financial institutions responsible for the crash of 2007, largely triggered off by the collapse of predatory prime-mortgage based hedge funds. At least $700 billion was allocated to Wall Street alone, with the Government Accountability Office estimating in 2013 that the crash had cost the US economy more than $22 trillion. It estimated that the paper wealth lost by US homeowners had amounted to $9.1 billion. Do 'liberals' think that Americans who lost their houses and jobs and had to watch their tax money being given to Wall Street had forgotten all this by the time they voted in 2016? According to Mother Jones, the government bailout temporarily repaired the economic damage while worsening the underlying conditions that led to the collapse in the first place. According to Matt Taibbi ('Secrets and Lies of the Bailout', January 4, 2013), the bailout committed US taxpayers to 'permanent blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash ... the public has been lied to so shamelessly and so often in the course of the past four years that the failure to tell the truth to the general populace has become a kind of baked-in official feature of the financial regime.' And who was it who bailed out these institutions, by digging into tax revenue? Barack Obama. And who has a very close relationship with Wall Street, who takes its money and furthers its interests? Hillary Clinton. There are clear links here between the people of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Palestine and the US rust belt. What the US election seems to have forced into the open is a class war waged against any individual or social group that upsets a local and global order supported equally by sophisticated New Yorker reading 'liberals' as well as the neo-conservative right.
Trump is no more than the bell wether of millions of Americans whose interests cannot be allowed to prevail, hence the campaign to destroy his presidency even before he is inaugurated. Globally, the same liberal class supports war and/or the marginalisation, exclusion or demonization of all those who transgress the limits they allow. The list includes Palestinians who reject a collaborationist leadership, supporters of Chavism in Latin American and of Fidel Castro in Cuba and indeed anyone anywhere who dares to stand against an established economic and political order dictated from Washington but now challenged by Russia and China globally and by millions of Americans locally. The central problem for these 'liberals' and the political class they represent is that they are losing control of the narrative, and thus losing the power to control the course of events in their own country and beyond its borders. Hence the frustration, the rage, the abuse and the invective directed against Trump and his supporters. These thwarted 'liberals' are now clutching at any straw in their campaign of resentment and rejection. There is no evidence that Russia interfered in the elections but they keep repeating the lie, as Clinton did during the election campaign, in the apparent hope that people will finally believe them. They say Putin is the new Hitler, that Trump is his puppet, a smear taken further with Remnick's allusion to Trump's 'blood and soil' rhetoric. They plan to close down 'fake news' sites, when they themselves have promulgated the greatest catalogue of lies, over Iraq, Libya and Syria, we have seen in our modern history and when the 'fake news' sites they abuse have opened the eyes of millions of people to facts and interpretations they have suppressed. The hypocrisy and double standards, as usual, are massive. One does not have to like Trump to take the view that on balance he was a better option for many Americans than Hillary Clinton. This was certainly true for people of the Middle East. Neither are any good on the question of Palestine but whereas Clinton threatened more war, including the imposition of a no-fly zone over Syria which could have led to a direct confrontation with Russia, Trump promised to spend the money wasted on trying to overthrow other governments inside the US. Whereas Clinton threatened to stand up to Putin, resurrecting McCarthyism in her own political interests, Trump said he wanted to talk to him. There is much about Trump to dislike or to regard as threatening from a 'liberal' perspective. Where Trump will lead the US and the world remains to be seen but we have seen where the 'liberal' political and media establishment has led both in the past eight years, and whether inside the US or very far from its borders, especially in the Middle East, people want no more of it. David Remnick needs to unsaddle, get off his high horse, stop raving and ranting and do his best to understand why. - Jeremy Salt taught at the University of Melbourne, at Bosporus University in Istanbul and Bilkent University in Ankara for many years, specializing in the modern history of the Middle East. Among his recent publications is his 2008 book, The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. |
| Where is Fatah Headed after Its Seventh Congress? After years of holding the Palestinian struggle hostage to their factional-feud, the current enemy of Palestinian unity today is not just the Fatah-Hamas dispute. According to Mouin Rabbani, writing in Al Jazeera, another pressing problem is the power struggle within Fatah itself. It is unfortunate that the Palestinian leadership often substitutes its failure to address one problem by inviting another. When it comes to leadership, historically, the Palestinian people have always been ill-fated. Part of the reason is that Palestine was always an Arab question as much as it was a Palestinian question. While such solidarity had its own perks, it also meant Arab states have often tried to impose their own political agendas on Palestinians. In turn, many Palestinian leaders proved to be duly corruptible, resulting in factions and organisations striving to win Arab (and now western) support, rather than busy themselves with the question of liberation. Schisms within schisms is one way to describe the Palestinian body politic of today. While Hamas and other Palestinian groups bear a large share of responsibility for the crisis, Fatah - the oldest Palestinian faction - which dominates the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and is responsible for the Oslo Accords - carries greater responsibility. Worse, the Fatah leadership is demonstrating its inability to change course, despite the pressing need for new thinking, new blood and a new approach to the Palestinian struggle. The seventh Fatah congress held in Ramallah on November 29 was most expressive of the sad state of Fatah, a movement that is often credited for igniting the modern Palestinian revolt. The delegates were hand-picked from Mahmoud Abbas' political camp. Abbas, 81, was immediately re-elected to lead Fatah, and is now, once more, leader of the group, of the PNA and of the PLO. It was a six-day fest of continuous applause and display of political allegiances. By the end, no new faces were introduced. Results of the Fatah Central Committee (FCC) vote on the last day of the conference were hardly surprising as 16 of the 18 seats up for elections were claimed by supporters of Abbas. Abbas will also choose the remaining three seats himself. Seventeen of those voted in were men, all Muslims, all over 50 years of age. "Apathy seems widespread among educated Palestinians in their 20s and 30s," wrote Karin Laub for the Associated Press. "Many have given up on trying to break into what they see a closed political system, especially at a time when there's no realistic path to ending Israel's half-century-old occupation." But if such a 'realistic path' does in fact exist, it was hardly a subject of discussion in the Fatah congress, which divided its time between the empty rhetoric of Oslo, the peace process and the two-state solution on the one hand, and ensuring the dominance of Abbas' loyalists on the other. While past conferences, notably the congress of 2009, were designed to ensure that Fatah is fashioned in such a way to meet the expectations of its dominant members, this is the first time were consensus building was never intended. "In years past, Fatah's general conference served to negotiate consensus between the movement's various factions and power centres on issues such as its strategic orientation, political program and representation on its decision-making bodies," wrote Rabbani. That was a style tailored so cleverly by the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat - he successfully managed to keep his friends close and enemies even closer. Abbas lacks such a quality. Historically, Abbas has been the least popular among Fatah leaders - the likes of Abu Jihad, Abu Iyad, and Arafat himself. Yet, despite his unpopularity, Abbas has remained in one top position or another. The power struggle between him and Arafat which culminated in 2003, until Arafat's death in November 2004, hardly helped Abbas' insipid reputation among Palestinians. Nor is the ageing leader interested in revolutionizing his stagnant movement. Indeed, Abbas's long-drawn-out speech of nearly three hours on November 30th brought nothing new, rehashed slogans and subtle messages to the US and Israel that his 'revolution' shall remain subdued and non-violent. Considering this critical period in Palestine's history, Abbas' impractical rhetoric represents the depth of the crisis among Palestine's political elites. The numerous rounds of applause that Abbas' tedious, unimaginative speech received from the nearly 1,400 supporters who attended the conference is a reflection of the deep-seated political tribalism that now controls Fatah. The sad truth is that, regardless of who wins in the current power struggle, Fatah's descent is inexorable. According to a poll conducted in September 2015, the majority of Palestinians - 65 per cent - want Abbas to resign. The same poll indicated that his rival, Mohammad Dahlan wasn't nearly as popular (only 6 per cent supported him) and Abbas' allies, Saeb Erekat and former prime minister, Salam Fayyad, received 4 per cent and 3 per cent of the vote respectively. Indeed, there is a chasm between Palestinians and those who claim to represent them, and that rift is growing tremendously. The Fatah political theater in the West Bank seemed far removed from this reality. After Abbas - who was only elected to lead the PA once in 2005 for a period of four years - purged all of his opponents, he sought a new mandate from his supporters. Predictably, "everyone voted yes," Mahmoud Abu Al Hija, a spokesman for Fatah, told reporters in reference to the anonymous vote to re-elect Abbas. When 'everyone' in Fatah's top political circle votes for Abbas, while the majority of Palestinians reject him, this leads one to conclude that Fatah is neither a fair representation of the Palestinian people, nor is it remotely close to the pulse on Palestinian streets. Even if one is to ignore the 'yes-men' of Fatah, one cannot ignore the fact that the current fight among the Palestinian elites is almost entirely detached from the fight against Israel. Palestinians are victims of daily violence: illegal Jewish colonies are occupying Palestinian hills and are ever expanding, Israeli soldiers roam occupied Palestinian land, and Abbas, himself, is not allowed free movement without prior 'security coordination' with the Israeli army. Moreover, Palestinians are divided among factions, regions and clans; political favoritism, financial corruption and straight-out treason are eating the Palestinian body politic like an incurable cancer. Talk of 'unity', 'reconciliation' and 'state building' are just that - words - while Palestinians suffer their bitter existence under the boots of soldiers, behind checkpoints, and under the quiet - but maddening - humming of military drones. Still, the Fatah elites applauded Abbas nearly 300 times during his three hour speech. What were they applauding, exactly? What has been achieved? What vision did he put forth to end the Israeli occupation? Much Palestinian land has been lost between Fatah's sixth congress in 2009 and seventh congress. That is not an achievement but a cause for alarm. The sad truth is no self-respecting Palestinian should be applauding empty rhetoric. Instead, the respected Fatah members should urgently rethink this destructive course altogether. - Dr Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story. |
| British Citizen Tortured by Israel's Secret Police: Report Asa Winstanley, a London-based investigative journalist reported in Middle East Monitor today that a British citizen is being tortured in Israel to confess to apparently false charges. "Although Haaretz claimed last month that he had been released," Winstanley wrote, "it appears that Faiz Sherari remains in the custody of a 'military court' run by Israel's illegal occupation regime that rules the fate of all Palestinians in the West Bank." The MEMO report reads, "Israel's system of military 'justice' in the occupied Palestinian territories is, in fact, a farcical pretense, one which is applied on strictly apartheid lines. If they are ever accused of criminal acts by the Israeli state, the Jewish colonists who illegally occupy Palestinian land and properties in the West Bank get charged under Israel's civilian legal system. "For Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, though, there is a separate set of military laws, and a court system run directly by the same Israeli army thugs who hold the whip hand of the illegal occupation. The whole thing is nothing less than a kangaroo court. Underlining the racist nature of the regime, Palestinian citizens of Israel (supposedly equal with Israeli Jews according to pro-Israel propagandists) are often tried under military law too. " According to the Guardian, Sherari is a British citizen; although born in Lebanon, he has lived in the UK for almost a quarter of a century. The Shin Bet - Israel's secret police with a long and brutal record of torture, kidnapping and assassinations - accuses Sherari of "providing cash and mobile phones to Hamas" during a four-day trip to Palestine in September. However, even the Israeli "judge" (actually a high-ranking officer in the occupation army) admitted that Sherari had been tortured into confessing this "crime". "Lieutenant-Colonel Azriel Levy said that the confession, 'which was given an hour after the end of his Shin Bet interrogation... [was] dramatically influenced by the method of interrogation,' a euphemism for being tortured into giving a false confession. This so-called interrogation was, in fact, torture. According to Levy, it "included pained and prolonged shackling", threats and psychological pressure. "Sherari's lawyer, Ramzi Katilat, told the Guardian that, 'in the interrogation he made an admission. But what we are saying is that it is untrue. What he said was to satisfy the interrogator who used illegal pressure. He is saying he is not guilty.' "The court ordered Sherari's release at the end of October, but then apparently changed its mind. Sherari remains in an Israeli jail. "Despite Haaretz claiming at the start of November that the military court had 'released [Sherari] from custody last week,' a British government official stated more recently that 'our embassy in Tel Aviv has raised, and continues to raise, the detention of Mr Sherari with the Israeli authorities, most recently on 15 November.' "Asked on Friday for an update on the state of the case, the Foreign Office did not reply to my request."
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