Propaganda, Palestine and the Information War. (Part I)

The PSC (Palestine Solidarity Campaign) holds an annual stall in Richmond, South London and it spreads propaganda against Jews and Israelis.  I joined a group of people, Jews and Christians who have decided to take a stand against the lies disseminated by the PSC.  Richmond is the former constituency of the notorious anti-Zionist Jenny Tonge.

From this event I took away four tactics that are practiced by our enemies:  incitement, denial, emotive concealment of intent and the diplomacy of betrayal.

First, the truly committed antisemite does not care what they say and therefore as offensive as their narrative may be, one cannot argue with them, or even, as I did, use shock tactics to encourage them to confront their own statements.  Generalized assertions that are facile, provocative and weighed down with bile are intended for vilification, not dialogue; for propaganda not reconciliation.   By hammering home their message, making false connections and being selective about the truth, the Palestine Propaganda Campaign has the power to persuade even the most reasonable people that day is night and night is day.

Second, the Israeli side will always be willing to admit past wrongs and shared failure however, the Palestinian narrative is wholly based on denial. They deny the cultural and religious diversity of the geographical arena by expressly minimizing or denying any Jewish relevance to the area; they ignore many centuries of persecution throughout the Arab world by the Arabs against the indigenous Jewish population (which clearly was the contributory factor in Jewish demands for self-determination).

The Muslim Arab world has always been guilty of grossly abusing its minorities.  That is proven by history.  Rarely though, has this Islamic militancy, missionary zeal and an unquenchable thirst for conquest been investigated even as we place our own statecraft under the microscope of world opinion.  The Arab world feels no shame but instead it accuses its victims of implementing the same policies of which it is guilty.  We may label it transference of guilt but it is also a remorseless and cynical act of contempt for formerly persecuted, victim populations. It is hardly surprising that this should be the case.  For over 1,300 years Islam was the master of its own aggressive and acquisitive colonial triumphs.   To this day, the Arab and greater Muslim world remains in a state of mourning for the loss of Christian Spain 500 years earlier and Christian Greece almost 200 years ago.  After barely 70 years Jewish Israel cannot realistically expect that being freed from its Muslim colonial aggressor will be accepted, or forgiven, any time soon.

But while a theological pathology may explain denial, a deliberate campaign of lies is harder to combat.  And relearning a civil discourse (as I recently read) will only happen when the other side understands that it has something worse to lose.

Palestinian propaganda is anodyne; it is built on dissimulation and disinformation.  Their leaflets often portray the Arabs as victims of Western aggression.  Jews are portrayed as quintessentially foreign, which dovetails exquisitely with European antisemitic memes.

What truly disgusts me, and always will, is that the Nazis used the term “Judaisation” to describe the alleged Jewish conquest (cultural or financial) of Christian Europe.  It denoted a meme by which racial and religious fear was instilled in an already xenophobic and antisemitic population. This was an essential element of racial propaganda which fascism fed to a receptive population, a population that had already been primed by centuries of religiously inspired incitement and pious hypocrisy.   It should come as no surprise then, that the Palestinians and their supporters are such enthusiastic proponents of the same tactics, the same language.  But it does.  And tactics reflect aims.  It is for this reason I am filled with despair for the Palestinian bigots and their British fascist supporters because tactics clearly demonstrate that they are not interested in either reconciliation, or peace.

The late twentieth century was unique in the colossal sense of guilt and shame felt in the Western world for the commission of slavery, for racial prejudice and its inevitably nefarious outcomes, for Western imperialism and for genocide.  No other civilization has had to deal with such huge levels of guilt.   While we lash ourselves in self-righteous dishonor we remain blissfully ignorant of the inhumanity that non-Western nations were (and are) capable of committing.  This has been painfully demonstrated by Muslim slavers dressed in the theocratic insularity of Jihad. Once more they are reasserting their influence over the Nigerian faithful.  The Islamic world has the Koran and its commentaries to justify every activity for which we in the West now feel nothing but shame and guilt.  And they have 1,300 years of Islamic precedent to support their cause.  We already have conspiracy theorists blaming a shadowy non-Muslim ‘Other’ for the crimes of the faith community in Nigeria.

In the USA the apologists for the gun lobby state that guns do not kill people, people kill people. In the Muslim world the mantra for every unpalatable crime for which we in the West take exception is that “the true Muslim” is blameless.  And in our inverted moral universe we accept their excuses for every unimaginable crime against humanity committed by them.   Instead we should be demanding parity, the same high minded ethical conduct, regardless of race, creed or color.

So when the Muslim world and its Western acolytes lecture me on the Judaisation of Jerusalem or any other part of Israel I want to scream in rage at the injustice that despoils our historical memory, at the cynical abuse of language and at the willingness with which sympathizers on a Liberal-Left fascist continuum so readily collaborate in this Muslim-Arab war against “the Jews” (even when they call us Zionists).

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I began this piece by referring to four tactics practiced by our enemies:  incitement, denial, emotive concealment of intent and the diplomacy of betrayal.   The fourth and final cog in the machinery of disenfranchisement and delegitimization, diplomacy, I will analyse in the next piece.

Israel and the War of Ideas

In an article that was published by Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth (“A Light Intifada” by Alex Fishman) on the 1st of May it was written that the Palestinian Authority government is following a new aggressive strategy of a “light Intifada”: a series of graduated steps the intent of which is to keep the pressure on Israel while for now it refrains from hard violence. To paraphrase Fishman, the PA strategy is to hold talks as if there is no “Light Intifada” and to conduct a “Light Intifada” as if there are no talks.  Everything happens according to Palestinians’ terms. The reconciliation with Hamas, the delegitimization campaign against Israel, participation in various international organizations, popular resistance against Israel; these are all tactics in the new Intifada. And carrots? Abu Mazen’s statement about the Holocaust and the declaration that the unity government will act in the spirit of the PA (a two faced ‘concession’ if there ever was one) are all part of the new/old war being waged against us.

Alex Fishman concludes that Israel faces this onslaught in a confused and passive state.

Herein is Israel’s greatest challenge. When Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005 it was in pursuance of a proactive strategy. Israel disengaged from a hostile neighbor, building a security fence decreased the security threat that Gaza posed to its soldiers and in an increasingly antagonistic diplomatic environment Israel demonstrated a second time that strategic depth (the first was when Israel returned Sinai to Egypt) was less important than normalizing its relationship with its Arab neighbors.

How successful this strategy was may be open to debate but in the aftermath of its perceived failure Israel’s actions have been primarily reactive.  And that is diplomatically damaging to Israel.  If the purpose of Jewish self-determination (or independence) is to reassert a positive Jewish identity then the diplomatic battle being waged across the globe against Israel impacts not just Israel but all of its supporters.

The negotiations for a two state solution to the Israel – Palestine conflict have ground to a halt.  Mutual recriminations beset the principal protagonists. Each one asserts the claim that the other is one hundred percent to blame for obstructing the path to a credible solution. Courage is a pivotal requirement for both sides and peace will not be achievable without it. But what drives the breakdown in negotiating resolution is incitement – it demonstrates a lack of imagination – it shows a failure of nerve.

Israel is an island of ordered chaos in an ocean of instability. It must make allowances for its environment if it is to survive the violent storms that batter its defenses. That can only happen if it pays close attention to its neighbors.

For instance: Eighty three per cent of Egyptian women have experienced sexual harassment, 98% of foreign female visitors have suffered a worse fate if, they stupidly assume a right to appear in public. In Tahrir Square, in January 2011, after the revolution that brought Morsi to power (and before his subsequent overthrow), organized rape of women became common place and this was justified through the accusation that the ‘accused’ women were Coptic Christians, or Foreigners.  Egypt is the land of the pharaohs and the pyramids.  It also gave the world the Muslim Brotherhood, the institution that has spread like a contagion across the globe. It is a cross between the institution of the Inquisition and the Knights Templar.

Egypt is a deeply misogynistic and racist society.  In a country without Jews to blame, Christianity is given as the reason for any failures that cannot be placed on the Zionists. Churches are burned to the ground, libraries and ancient artifacts are destroyed because they are a blemish on the perfect Islamic landscape.

It could as easily be reminiscent of Israel’s experience of the Palestinians.

The Arab Aghlabid regime was the first, in history, to force Jews to wear the Star of David as a visible means of identification, over eleven-hundred years ago (in the 9th Century AD/CE).  President Mahmoud Abbas was awarded his doctorate for writing a thesis that questioned the extent of the Shoah and by associating Zionism with Nazism.  Mahmoud Abbas justified his bigotry with reference to the ongoing state of war between Jews and Muslims but as recently as 2013 he reaffirmed the veracity of his thesis and he sated that there was so much more he could write on the subject of collusion.

Israel’s critics may declare that it is counterproductive to obsess over the past but only a fool fails to internalise how earlier periods are viewed, from the battlements of history.

Since the election of Mahmoud Abbas to the office of President on January 15, 2005 corruption has been the only true growth industry in the PA, restricted only by the uncritical largess of donor nations. Palestinian society has been fed an unrestricted diet of incitement against Israel’s Jewish population while the PA only ever promotes its maximalist demands.  Mr. Abbas tells the world that his country will be Judenrein (Clean of Jews).  At the end of July 2013 he reiterated this point (according to Reuters) in a briefing he gave to (mostly) Egyptian journalists.

Such tactics are not intended to encourage trust or good faith negotiations. Fatah honored its jailed leader, Marwan Barghouti because “he had killed 61 Zionists”.  Quite simply a Zionist is any person of any faith who believes that Jews have a right to self-determination.  If an emphasis is placed on the man as murderer rather than any other quality he may possess then there is a difference between the General (who may have killed many more people) and the guerrilla leader who washes his hands in the blood of his victims.  Glorifying killers sends out a message.  A military leader can sue for peace but a killer, recognising the value of violence only, knows only how to celebrate the murders he or she has committed for the cause.   It is not a word game but a philosophical construct, a state of mind.

Sticks and stones may break your bones but with words begin the slaughter. It has always been so.

By demonising Israelis and portraying them as killers, thieves and liars, Abbas is using the language of the Koran and utilising religious dogma to entrench a mindset of war among his people. But equally he supports a creed that explains the inherent superiority of the Arab nation over “the other” which creates an expectation that the faithful will inevitably triumph over their enemy.   No room exists for compromise or co-existence.

“Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”  Baruch Spinoza, (Theological-Political treatise 1670)

In the past, wars were usually fought between States of equal strength. Most contemporary conflicts are between asymmetric forces with the weaker side using non-state players (terrorists/freedom fighters) to rebalance the diplomatic and military equation.  If, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, war is diplomacy by other means, then the reverse can also apply (as Alex Fishman demonstrated).

If that is the case it follows that Israel is to blame for the poor state of negotiations.  And the reason is that in the war of words it has allowed itself to appear passive; it has permitted the Palestinian negotiators to define the debate.   Many commentators remind us that nations make peace with their enemies.  And this argument has once more been brought into focus with the reported reconciliation between HAMAS and the Palestinian Authority.  But in order for warring nations to negotiate towards peace two things must happen.   First, both sides must make compromises. Second, the dominant player must impose their will on the negotiations. Israel has not done this.  It has failed to view a propaganda war as equal to a hot war.

Israel was not founded in sin. Its birth was a triumph of the downtrodden against an Arab enemy that was taught to honour violence, to seek out conquest and to belittle the aspirations of the minority within its borders (unless as an expedient, sharing power furthers the aims of the Arab ruler).  But we never hear this in any debate with our opponents.

In contrast to Pan-Arab nationalism, Turkish neo-Ottomanism and Iranian theocratic imperialism Zionism demands equality as a birthright for all the states inhabitants. 

In an article that appeared in Ynet on the 1st of May Bibi Netanyahu announced his intention to enshrine, by formal legislation, the status of the State of Israel as a nation-state of the Jewish people. As a cultural cornerstone of the state it makes it clear to Israel’s neighbours that any successful negotiation between Israel and Palestine will be dependent on maintaining the centrality of a Jewish national character within the State of Israel.  “A new Basic Law declaring Israel a Jewish state would largely be symbolic, an Israeli official said.  "It is a declaration to show that this is part of our national ethos."”

There should be no conflict between Jewish and democratic values.  Treating the stranger amongst us as equal to us is a key plank of Jewish religious (and Jewish secular) dogma, even if, within the heat of building the nation, there are far too many people who appear to have forgotten this crucial biblical injunction.

Zionism created a Utopian vision which was later expressed in Israel’s Declaration of Independence and which in turn forms the inspiration for Israel’s Basic (constitutional) laws.   It is worthwhile to repeat part of that founding Declaration:

“The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture…”

In Israel, equality exists in law.  Like elsewhere within the non-Muslim world it remains an aspiration that must guide its legislators towards the ethical development of the state.

Margaret Nevinson, wife of the British artist Richard Nevinson, writing in 1926 about the aftershocks from World War One stated the everywhere there is “callousness produced by the long spectacle of pain and suffering.”  If it exists here too, perhaps it is because we can no longer see an end to our conflict with our enemy.   If only to be in a position to make concessions, Israel has to negotiate from strength, not weakness.   Because the nations of the world have learned to ignore the history of the conflict, Israel, when confronted with a war of ideas appears to be weak and therefore, guilty as charged.  In order to win the peace every opportunity must be made for Israel’s truths to be repeated. It must demonstrate that the Arab world and as part of the Arab World, the Palestinian Authority has no interest in real peace, no interest in conflict resolution, and no interest in religious reconciliation.  Only then will we make progress towards resolution.

For those who think that the war is lost, "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

BDS and Israel, a study in Hypocrisy

We are always being asked why this noxious poison of antisemitism refuses to wither?  The commitment within Liberal and Socialist traditions of adherence to human rights and ‘equality’ has always carried within this promise the germ of antisemitism. Though antisemitism transmogrified into anti-Zionism a denial of the connection between the two ideologies was always an essential element of the propaganda war against the Jews both as an identifiable religious group and as individuals that enabled the racist to exist so comfortably within a human rights skin.

The reason is an original sin of prejudice born out of a time of radical change that engendered fear and a search for the comfort of familiarity.  Acquaintance with chauvinism and narrow-mindedness encouraged the inclusion of a prejudiced narrative in the founding traditions of the radical movements. It was simple and when required it explained away the failure to attract sufficient followers needed to seize power.  Marx would have made a good Nazi.  Much of what he wrote was a new way of thinking but he peppered his narratives with bigotry and prejudice so that his acolytes could take comfort from the familiarity offered by the poisoned pen of other nineteenth century writings.  Some of the most prominent and enthusiastic supporters of twentieth century liberal tradition lacked the intuitive abhorrence of violence which their desire for liberal Nazism quite unsurprisingly failed to inoculate them against.

Both pre-Shoah Christianity and Islam were founded on a mission to conquer the globe for their adherents and history has shown us that unfortunately, people in power will justify any atrocity and every abomination if provided with the excuse.  Civilizing the world pacified the heretofore unconquered natives but it allowed those who controlled the forces of conquest and colonization to reap enormous profits from the suffering of those same natives. And Islam was no different to Christianity in this respect, in many ways it was far worse because it provided the means by which the international slave trade prospered.  While Christianity continues to grapple with its malevolent past, Islam has not even recognized that its past is toxic. Theologically, it is not possible for it to even begin on that journey.

There are those within the Muslim world such as Omar Barghouti who are intellectually as well as emotionally incapable of granting Jews equality of any kind.  I will return to him later. A hate industry from which the intellectual bully and the thug profit equally is seductive to the thinking hypocrite because it mobilizes militant foot soldiers as well as some within the academic community.  We live in a world that is divided between western civilization and the rest. The “West” has deified freedom of speech (even when it only selectively applies it in Europe) while those that oppose Western civilization worship selective censorship. There is no middle ground to protect all communities from its abusers.

It is a simple issue that far too many people are happy to ignore. Israel is a state that would have come into existence as a predominantly Jewish state without the added burden of European history because it was an act of self determination made inevitable by historic Arab persecution against non-Arabs, and by Muslims maltreatment of non-Muslims. The denial of a Jewish right to self-determination is therefore an act of racism.

And Israel is a state like any other state. It has a Right of Return; so do at least 37 other nations in the world. No one judges that right, or declares that it is racism, except when Israel practices that sovereign right.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13 is controversially recognized as referring to the Right of Return. Repatriation is viewed internationally as creating a safe haven for Diaspora populations living under threat. We in Britain also have such an Act of Sanctuary which was enacted to protect “our own” from the threat of persecution.

Any nation or organization or individual working to overturn that right must prove it does so with equal vigour against all other political, racial, religious or national entities. Otherwise it is antisemitic.  It really is that simple. Israel has allowed its enemies to hijack the debate over the nature of the conflict.

There can be no resolution of the conflict while the Arab and greater Muslim world views the right to rule over and to terrorize ‘its’ Jews as theological or racial holy writ. The same applies to Christians who throughout the Muslim world are a persecuted minority but who continue to support a Muslim-Arab anti-Jewish narrative.

Christians no longer fulfill the ethnic cleansers dictum “First the Saturday people (Jews) and then the Sunday people (Christians)” uttered by Yasser Arafat.  Before the Arab Spring it was easy to blame persecution of Christians on Israel because a willing Western audience would accept whatever lies were easiest to understand. It is much easier than an alternative explanation that we are at war with Islamists who happily torture and murder adults as well as children, for their faith. But al Qaeda and Salafist groups everywhere have rarely hidden their animosity towards Christians as well as Jews and everyone else not like them.  That includes the wrong kind of Muslim. They have hurt far more Muslims than they have infidels.  This prejudice is why President Abbas of the Palestinian National Authority will not recognize the validity of a Jewish state even as he creates one more Muslim state based on Arab apartheid principles.

The global Muslim nation has attempted on numerous occasions to criminalise the defamation of religion. But to be more specific, the ‘legitimate’ criticism they attempt to outlaw applies only to Islam. When Muslims refer to the pantheism of Hinduism as abomination, or the Christian trinity as idolatry, or to Judaism as corrupted by interpretation, their derision may be theological but scorn remains abusive and it leads to incitement. Intellectual or academic debate must be without limits or those limits must be equally, tenaciously applied, or it is no more than selective censorship harnessed as targeted provocation.  It is the responsibility of society to manage what is permissible because without restriction, society will fall. But equally dangerous is discrimination. It erodes the law.  The Islamic faithful call this subversion of debate ‘justified’ criticism but selective bigotry is a weapon of cultural conquest.  By owning or controlling the narrative, history becomes no more than strings of words subject to manipulation by those willing to abuse it.  In the attempt to stifle debate it is cultural colonialism and it is as dangerous as any physical act of conquest enacted in the past. It represents the slavery of the mind - as pernicious as any physical act of slavery because without the former the latter is not possible.

Like all conflicts, there are conflicting truths and conflicting narratives. And here is the problem. To the racist, conflict resolution is an exercise in futility unless the inherent superiority of one side over the other is acknowledged and therefore there can only ever be one truth and one narrative (or set of truths).

Omar Barghouti is one of the leaders of BDS (the Movement for the Boycott, Divestment and Slander [Sanction] of Israel).  As explained by The Institute for National Security Studies (TAU) the BDS campaign was initiated at the First Durban Conference (the "World Conference against Racism"), held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. BDS is an integral part of the global campaign to delegitimize Israel currently being waged (mainly in the West) and led by networks and activists affiliated with the far left and radical Islam. The ultimate goal of BDS is to cause the collapse of the State of Israel.

Omar Barghouti is very eloquent, so much so, his anti-Zionism sounds rational. His honeyed tongue and unassuming personal demeanour does not however, hide an uncompromising antipathy towards Jewish rights in the greater (fascist) Arab world.   

I have taken a section of speech by Omar Barghouti in which he sets out his vision for a post-Jewish Palestine and rephrased it to express the only possible hope for a future unencumbered by conflict and strife.

Please emphasise that it is in the spirit of our non-violent response to BDS that we borrow Omar’s finely crafted words (and re-craft them to express the Jewish vision for a peaceful Middle East):

“The post oppression identity of the indigenous Israelis and the indigenized Arab settlers who have acquired rights by their conquest over time must be rebalanced through a process of ethical decolonisation also known as de-Arabisation. All Arab colonial privileges must be abolished.  Not just in Israel, but also across the Near-East, where the regions legitimate refugees have lost their  ancestral homes to the racist Arab colonialist entity, ethical co-existence has to be re-established with all the  marginalised non-Arab nations.”

Israeli Sovereignty and the Three Noes

Sovereignty gives a nation supreme power within its borders.  It involves: independence of action, control over borders and the right to enact legislation that affects the people residing within those borders. It is the renunciation of those rights that we find difficult to accept and sometimes it is with good reason, because the laws that are made represent a standard that is far too often abused. For example, the European Union defines human rights as a standard and it does create issues of gross abuse.

Racists too often aspire to deny those of us who disagree with them our rights to defend ourselves against them. Too many Muslim preachers have disproportionate influence and use that influence to peddle their hate and to incite their followers to commit murder on their behalf.

Violence is a legitimate instrument of intimidation both for the fascist who believes in divine right and, to their political acolytes on the extremes of left and right.

The prerogative to commit violence (up to and including the taking of life) is the prerogative of the state. It is the ultimate symbol of the abuse of sovereign power for those that oppose its use.  But we inadvertently (perhaps) assign that right to groups and individuals when we fail to protect other groups and other individuals from those that knowingly choose to abuse our laws.

Example: it took eleven years for the Muslim Nazi Abu Qatada to be deported back to Jordan during which time he was able to continue to spread the cancer of his ideas far and wide. “According to the British case against him, in October 1999 he made a speech in which "he effectively issued a fatwa authorizing the killing of Jews, including Jewish children". He told his congregation that Americans should be attacked, wherever they were; that in his view they were no better than Jews; and that there was no difference between English, Jewish and American people."   (Robert Booth, Prosecutor)

Freedom of speech is not an absolute unless we provide the legal instrument for the ordinary citizen who feels threatened by that speech to fight back with equal ferocity. If physical violence is a blunt tool for the everyman or woman, then we must question the academic justification for verbal and written incitement which is far more damaging to the fabric of society.  It is meant to intimidate and by its coercive nature its intent is to instill fear and through dread to create a regime of manipulation and control.

The Abu Qatada’s of this world, through their foul and poisonous words encourage those people who see nothing inherently immoral in slitting the throats of children, flying airplanes into buildings or torturing their enemies.  Where is the duty to protect their victims?  Abu Qatada described the 9/11 attacks as part of a wider battle between Christianity and Islam while Osama bin-Laden was only expressing what many ordinary folk in the West felt about the attacks and that was that the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11 was a divine celebration of sovereign Islamic power.

Sovereignty.  The Islamic republic of Turkey exercised its sovereign right to determine who and what could enter and leave from its borders when it permitted the Mavi Marmara to sail from Antalya Port in May 2010. The IHH is an Islamist and therefore religiously racist organization that is banned in Holland and Germany. It is now under investigation in Turkey also. Key members of its board were supporters of the Turkish government at the time of the Mavi Marmara incident.  The Islamist government of Turkey needed a provocation by a local group against the State of Israel as a means of repudiating Jewish sovereignty. At best, Turkey, by permitting the Mavi Marmara to sail from its shores was dictating to Israel that its right to self-defense was circumscribed by Turkey.  This is consistent with statements made by Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu warning Turks against integration into European society and, statements he has made on Israel. Simply stated, a nation either has the right to defend its borders, to identify hostile elements and either silence or remove any threats to its security or it consciously acquiesces to a diminution of its sovereign status.

Another example of sovereignty is that the State determines the laws of the land.  A person who spies for another nation must bear the consequences of their actions.  Israel would like to see Jonathon Pollard freed from his 28 year incarceration, however many Americans would take comfort from his death in prison. American law will decide Pollard’s fate when he becomes eligible for parole towards the end of 2015.   Israel may be unhappy with his long years in solitary confinement and compare his punishment unfavorably to those of Robert Hanssen, Aldrich Ames, Jerry Whitworth, and John Walker but so what? He broke the law and he was caught doing it.  This finally, leads us neatly into the 3 Noes of Mahmoud Abbas.

But first, let us begin with a brief history of genocide.  Prior to World War 2 a states citizens were the property of the state.  Post 1945 the world recognized, largely as a result of the work of one man, Raphael Lemkin, that the world could no longer be governed by the existing paradigm of the state verses the individual where the fate of the individual was solely determined by the state.  This shift in political will involved a lessening of national sovereignty for the greater good. People retained individual rights as an absolute (at least in the Western World they did).

If sovereignty is the ability to determine the fate of ones own citizens then those that commit murder are legally and morally the responsibility of the State.  Any crime may be labeled a ‘political’ crime.  There can be no ethical justification for differentiating between a crime committed from political belief and any other crime.

But something else unwelcome also changed.

For a brief period the dividing line between what constituted terrorist and freedom fighter was that the latter attacked agents of government such as the police and the military while the former sowed fear in the population in order to force them to submit to their will.  The terrorist did this by committing ‘random’ terror against civilians.  It was an interpretation by the extreme Left that all people in society were agents of society (i.e. there were no innocents in a revolutionary struggle) that returned us to an age of fear. This once more redefined the concept of warfare. In less than a single generation, post World War 2, we returned to the barbarism of pre-1945 concepts of human conflict.  Except of course that where a political struggle is defined as ‘just’ the right to commit any atrocity is justified while the target of the struggle is constrained by legal virtue to uphold the ‘rules of war.’ But this requires control of both the media and the narrative as an essential tool in the propagandist’s arsenal of weapons because without both there can be no justification for terrorism.

Mahmoud Abbas has stated his three noes as follows:

1)       He rejects Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that

Palestine recognizes Israel as a Jewish state.

2)       He refuses to abandon the Palestinian “right of return” for millions of descendants of those who lived in Israel prior to June 1948. The unique definition of a Palestinian “refugee” is any one who resided in Palestine during a two year period that encompassed the years 1946 to 1948.

3)       He refused to commit to an “end of conflict” under which a peace deal would represent the termination of any further Palestinian demands on Israel.  Without it there would never be a peace treaty but a series of escalating demands, any of which, the failure to achieve, would result in the abrogation of the period of ‘peaceful co-existence’ between the two states.  This is an Islamic concept and it refers to a staged conquest.  It is called “Dar al-Hudna” and its sole purpose is to serve as a respite between wars.  Early Islamic jurists created different categories of interaction in order to legally justify Islamic conquest.

The Palestinian Authority Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud al-Habbash stated towards the end of March 2014 that the Western Wall was part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and that Jews had no right to pray there.  Again, this is an issue of sovereignty.

But more than that, if I am denied my own history then I can be erased from history.

Having erased Jewish history in East Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967 the Palestinian leadership continues to insist, as a matter of political strategy and religious theology that East Jerusalem, is in its entirety, the capital of the Palestinian state.  History as propaganda and narrative justification for the armed struggle against every man, woman and child in the Yishuv (The State of Israel) begins, but does not end with Jerusalem. But if history teaches us anything, it is that cultural genocide is a common weapon within Muslim colonial enterprises.

And last, if the fourth phase of the prisoner release, consisting of 26 long term prisoners (all of them with murder convictions) was agreed by Israel, the release is unacceptable, only, if among that number are Israeli Arabs.  We are told that 14 of them were Israeli Arabs. We are being told that Secretary of State Kerry agreed this arrangement with Mahmoud Abbas without consulting Prime Minister Netanyahu.  It is unbelievable if it is true and I have not read any Western account that disputes this.

As an issue of national sovereignty Israeli Arabs are not and can never be subject to negotiation.  Unless of course. President Abbas wants to swap land and Israeli Arabs as part of any final status peace deal. Separate sovereignty between warring nations is inviolate. A person from within the nation who kills for the other side is a traitor.  Their beliefs are their personal identity but they live under the laws of the State. It is not possible that Kerry was unaware of this fact – it is of enormous concern that he could assume anything else. If it is correct, it creates huge issues of trust.

There is no debate that the issue of prisoner releases is emotive for Israel but it is also an inseparable part of the Palestinian ethos. This is the problem. If the murderer has social status, financial benefit and a guaranteed “get out of jail ‘free’ card” then violence rather than a path to reconciliation becomes a perverse expression of Palestinian sovereignty and one that will always take precedence over Jewish (Israeli) rights. The idea that Palestinians have control over Israeli citizens is to imply that Israel has limited sovereign rights.

Could anyone imagine the President of France demanding a declaration of war by French Canadians on the USA? Or as a consequence, that the “revolutionaries” be granted immunity from prosecution for any crimes they committed against either the USA or Canada?

If there is to be any chance of a peace settlement then Israel must declare its red lines in terms of its sovereignty. The strength of the Palestinian National Movement is in its Arab-Muslim narrative that defines the absolute rights of Palestinians in contradistinction to the obligations of Jews (Israelis).  Consistent with this Palestinian-Arab colonialist movement is an idea that has plagued the Near-East for far too many centuries. It is inherent within Muslim theology that non-Muslims cannot be other than second class citizens, inferior in law and society, dependent always on the good will of Muslim ‘munificence’.

Simon Shiffer in Ynet news on the 3^rd of March 2014 (Proposed Pollard deal: The victory of reason) stated that “the possible release of an Israeli spy in exchange for Israeli Arab murderers proves there are no sacred  principles binding decision makers….but it appears that Abbas himself will not budge on his ‘principles’ and yes, that is the problem.” Israel must thank Mahmoud Abbas for reminding us that principles are important for us also.  Israel has disregarded too many sacred truths for no reciprocal benefit.  It is time that Israel’s diplomats pushed back.

Russian Sovereignty and the Fearful Nation

All nations have red lines which must be respected.  When nations fail to respect the integrity (whether historical memory or physical borders) of nations then we have conflict and inevitably it is this failure to appreciate red lines that escalates past the point of confrontation into military conflict.

In Western Europe and the USA we have failed to acknowledge Russian history and it is this failure of ours that has created the latest crisis in Crimea.

Sevastopol has been the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet since 1783. We study history to understand and we would hope, to learn from the past. When Hitler invaded Russia in Operation Barbarossa he opened up an Eastern Front that stretched from Estonia in the North down to Crimea in the South. That invasion was along the entire borderline of Western Russia – a distance of some 2,000 kilometers.  According to Nazi Germany’s “Generalplan Ost” or the “Master Plan for the East” first the Slav’s deemed racially ‘acceptable’ were destined for enslavement (Germanic people would colonize the Central and Eastern European territories) and the rest would be murdered.  So nearly all Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Serbs, and Croats – in fact most of Central and Eastern Europe, was to be ‘cleared’ of what the Nazis called “Untermenschen” or sub-humans.

Russia has a long history of conflict, war and conquest.  If this is viewed as expansionism then Napoleons’ invasion of Russia, the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Civil War and the Second World War are all poignant reminders that even if Russia wins, in terms of casualties it always loses.

When empires collapse they usually leave the centre intact. The mother (or father) land retains its sovereign, national home.  Russia’s fatherland is a multi-ethnic federation.  When we disregard history, for whatever reason, we fail to appreciate that even a nuclear armed Russia can be vulnerable and therefore can fear for its safety.  With the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia has seen its empire disintegrate and its closest allies defect to the European Union.  Why then do we ignore the Russian suspicion that both the Western world and Islamic forces desire the disintegration of the Russian Federation?

Again, I do not understand why we in the West assumed that the coup d’état against the legitimately elected ruler of Ukraine would be acceptable to Vladimir Putin?  Diplomatic intimidation has never worked with Russia.  It is only the perception that Russia was and is weak that could have tempted the West to support the Ukrainian coup.   The choice for the West was understandably going to be Yulia Tymoshenko.  She served as Prime Minster in 2005 and again from December 2007 until March 2010.  She not only wanted to join the EU but also NATO. Statements she made indicated her wish to abrogate treaties the Ukraine had with Russia.  The Russian Black Sea Fleet would no longer enjoy access to Ukrainian port facilities and security protocols would be drawn up to both guarantee Ukrainian independence and to block “Russian Expansionism” – as Tymoshenko saw it.

The journalist Nahum Barnea wrote that “Ukraine is a failed state, slowly, inextricably crumbling due to rampant corruption and ethnic and religious tension.” Former President Viktor Yanukovych was elected president in 2010, defeating Yulia Tymoshenko. Yanukovych rejected a proposed agreement for closer ties with the EU (in November 2013) and what followed were protests that were centered on Kiev. As the civil unrest spread across the Ukraine the specter of civil war grew with the casualties. President Yanukovych fled to Russia in late February 2014. He left behind a 340 acre Estate with its own palace that was packed with priceless treasures.  So he was a gold plated thief who seems to have stolen wholesale from his people. But he was Putin’s gold plated thief and he opposed whatever Tymoshenko the Capitalist believed in.

If we truly understood Russia then the best case scenario is Ukrainian neutrality and Russian indirect authority over its neighbours.  The USA and Europe can continue to confront Russian power or they can engage in and create a practical compromise by which all parties gain confidence and long term security through military de-escalation and economic and social integration. But this will only occur if a buffer is created between Russia and its perceived antagonists.

We cannot continue to seek to contain Russia as if the Cold War had moved eastward into the Russian Federation itself because it is clear that under those conditions Russia will fight back. The only beneficiary in this latest conflict is going to be the world’s other superpower, China, which can happily watch as Europe, America and Central Asia descend into another bleak period of uncertainty and instability.

Global economic dislocation has created opportunities to realign superpower interests. After the fall of the Soviet Empire the world was briefly held together by US unipolarity.  It may not be a bad thing if Russian intervention in Ukraine has forced the EU to re-consider its role in global affairs.  It has rarely demonstrated a position that differed from the USA because its economic and political interests were congruent with American interests. And Europe would have been the primary beneficiary in any diminution of Russian economic power because of its proximity to and its geographical accessibility to Eastern Europe.

In “Syria, a Russian–American failure” (29/6/2013) I wrote that “Big Power cooperation would cause others to pause before interfering militarily, and may even constrain the colonial ambitions of other nations.” My criticism was then, and is now that “this is an area where America has failed to grasp an historic opportunity to create a strategic partnership with Russia ….. Cooperation rather than competition (between the USA and Russia) is the only way to defuse tensions….”

Détente between the two great nations could mark the next transformative stage in global international diplomacy.  It would lead to peaceful cooperation between former enemies and it could lead to less robust Chinese expansionism in the South East Asian region.

Crimea a Game of Lost Opportunities

I attended the debate in the House of Commons (the British Lower House of Parliament) on 18^th March 2014 as the honorable members debated the Russian Anschluss. Technically, the political union between the Crimea and Russia is a work in progress but with the issuance of passports for Crimean citizens already talking place the administrative protocols are no more than an ongoing technicality.

It might sound from the above that I am against this unilateral move by President Putin and I am, but only because of the unilateralism of the current Russian machinations. They neither encourage détente (perhaps they were never meant to) nor do they bode well for future pan European relations which must put Russia at its centre stage in spite of it being geographically peripheral.

In fact geography is the only means by which we can afford to describe Russia as somehow peripheral! Russia is central to Europe and Asia. It is the largest country in the world, (considerably more than double the size of contiguous USA), it is the world’s 9^th most populous nation (143 million people), and the 8^th largest economy in the world (2 trillion dollars). Militarily it is the world’s 3^rd largest defense spender ($91 Billion in 2012) which even so, amounts to 4.4% of its GDP. It retains the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

I provide the above because on a superficial level we cannot ignore Russia or feign concern for its difficulties or its history. And yet, the British debate on the Russia – Ukraine crisis has been facile, shallow, and insincere. If it was possible to do so, it has created greater animus between Russia and its acolytes on the one side and the Western World, on the other side. And while the incipient nature of this reinvigorated Cold War should not deter us from trying to find a way out of the mess that has been created, it is truly frightening to observe the pack mentality displayed by the press, by Western governments and by our British parliamentarians. 

That debate I witnessed in London displayed near unanimity of condemnation accompanied by bluster and threats of sanctions against Russian interests in the UK “Let him (Putin) feel the cold wind of isolation” said Ben Wallace MP. Future historians will refer to those parliamentary deliberations as borderline racist incitement.  Almost every speaker referred to the “Russians in our schools” and “the Russians buying up our London properties” etc.  This came from British MP’s, both Left wing and Right wing.  The Shadow Leader of the House, Angela Eagle threatened to “hit the oligarchs in their pockets” and opined that “Russia is acting out of weakness”.  It took a conservative member of parliament to be the sole voice of verbal restraint. Sir Edward Leigh MP first explained that he was not a disinterested party, that his wife is Russian Orthodox.  Nevertheless he reminded his fellow MPs that the Ukraine is “an extraordinarily divided country.”

The President of Russia is portrayed as a caricature.  Vladimir Putin, the former KGB colonel is portrayed by the media as the neighborhood bully, an uncivilized street thug and either dismissed as a joke to be deprived (unsuccessfully) of media attention, or feared like a lunatic.

Russia is a country with a complex identity and I identify three principal attributes to that identity: nationalism, orthodoxy and autocracy.  Religious identity (orthodox) has never returned to its 1917, pre revolutionary popularity. If Marxism-Leninism was the new orthodoxy post 1917 then what may have replaced it post 1991 was alcoholism and loss of national status.  Alcoholism is Russia’s biggest killer. The world is in a process of rejecting internationalism even as we embrace the global economy. So nationalism is increasing, which as a source of identity is problematic but only if it becomes jingoism.  And global identity politics are going to be the source of increasing international tensions as the global economy expands. Russia has rarely if ever known anything aside from autocratic government.   The threat of conflict is used to consolidate national identity and to suppress opposition to unpopular policies that are not in the interests of a free economy, free speech or political and social pluralism.

So why would we think that abusing the leader of the Russian Federation is the right way to encourage dialogue with that leader?  Russia does have legitimate national interests in Ukraine even if its recent conduct over Crimea is regarded as revanchist and therefore illegal. People are comparing Putin to Hitler and Crimea to Czechoslovakia in 1938.  This is wrong.  The Sudetenland is neither Crimea nor is it Sevastopol. Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolph Hitler did not bring “Peace in our time”, nor will all the bluster from President Obama for the USA and the European Union’s foreign policy leaders.

I am not condoning Russian misbehavior in the Ukraine nor its nuclear threats against the USA.  But we are not offering anything like a realistic path to future peace, or even an opening gambit to engagement.  Our response is panicked, ill conceived and ill thought out.  That should worry us all.

With instability in the Near East creating the potential loss of Russia’s naval facilities at Tartus (due to the ongoing Syrian civil war), Russia may potentially lose its only military facility outside of the former Soviet Union. Tartus is Russia’s only Mediterranean facility. Therefore Sevastopol takes on greater significance as the only other stock and repair base on its Southern flank.

The possibility, even suggestion, that Ukraine could join NATO or become part of the European Union was never going to sit well with Russia. Memories of war may  have receded into the distant past for us in Western Europe and for the USA but those memories inform Russian thinking and therefore remain central to its geomilitary strategic policy.  Just as the US would not tolerate missiles on Cuban territory in 1962 so it is infantile to consider that Russia would happily embrace a potential Western military presence in its strategically important underbelly.

Instead of wooing Russia and nurturing the relationship we have jumped in without considering that Russia is still a superpower. We neither appreciated Russian history nor offered any alternative to the threatening scenarios that were on offer.  If we anticipated compliance we returned instead to insecurity and fear.

In a world of increasing tensions based on irreconcilable but competing, too often clashing community interests, we have also alienation and unemployment.  And they breed twin demons of xenophobia and hate, chaos and despair.

Instead of economic assistance to Western Ukraine (in terms of sheer size Ukraine is huge) I would offer both Western and Eastern Ukraine a free-trade Zone following Hong Kong’s example.  Sevastopol is the home to both the Russian and Ukrainian Black Sea Naval Fleet. It is Russia’s only warm water port. (Odessa, while part of the former Imperial Russian State, is now part of Ukraine and Yalta is not a naval base).  While the example of the sovereign city-state of Singapore is a poor example of a possible solution for Sevastopol, it is possible for two nations to share the administration of an autonomous city particularly one that is both strategically and geopolitically so important to Russia.

Suspicion and mistrust are byproducts of bad faith initiatives.

Instead of intelligence our leaders have fallen back on old world rancor. It seems that strategic policy initiatives are an ‘after-the-fact’ crisis management tool. My fear is that we seem to have reverted to pre-21^st Century methods of dealing with international conflict as if nothing that happened in the last century taught us anything.

Education and Pop Culture

News reporting is usually politically subjective and rarely does it convey any depth of information. It should not be a surprise to anyone that we then discuss current events without possessing either knowledge or familiarity, except perhaps through popular cultural references.

One of the issues that society faces is the competition between ‘high-culture’ and what is derogatorily referred to as ‘low-culture’ in what is traditionally viewed as two opposing sides to the class war.  What is problematic is that Pop-culture legitimises a reductive approach to everything.  It decomplexifies the irreducible to a sound bite. When an English rose twittered that Barraco Barner was our President (the UK has a Prime Minister and his name is David Cameron) and asked why we were getting involved with Russia (!) she was simply demonstrating her lack of knowledge.  Ignorance has an appeal to many. If we discount the trolls that abused our internet lass, we truly live in a world that celebrates it. To many people the claim that we are ‘dumbing’ down society is contentious because it assumes a judgment on taste that remains relatively static or is complex. To the critic of high culture the simplification of cultural values nullifies class distinction.  My fear is that if you give em what they want and they are happy with what they have, ‘doing’ it cheap is fine, except that ‘cheap’ is too often a by-product of exploitation.  In a degraded society people who are easily satisfied are as easily controlled by government.

We are living in an age of unparalleled communications and this excited mass of electrons surging around us soaks us with a shower of enormous amounts of knowledge. That knowledge floats around us, through us and over us without really giving us any insight into its significance. And here is the problem. Without a basic grounding in history and geography the world truly is just around the corner and over the next hill. 

Unless we are grounded in knowledge of our past we cannot understand  the present and because we live in a world of transparent borders there are multiple ‘presents’ from which to choose.  It is part of the reason that our contemporary identities are diverse but for many people, fractured.  People who believe themselves to be above history have no identity to define them and will seek out a new one. Often it is they who are vulnerable to extremism because the ‘soul’ is a book whose blank pages we may choose to drench in wisdom or soak in poison. Too often, it is those people who have an opinion and given the opportunity to spread knowledge, subvert knowledge instead with their sullied enthusiasm and their bullying tactics.

Knowing history is the key to unlocking the reason behind events as they unfold.  Understanding the geography behind the development of societies and nations creates the background for understanding history.

But we live in a world of some 200 countries and each has its own story. It does not mean that we cannot try to understand but if a lifetime does not prepare us for knowing everything there is to know then certainly twelve years allocated to our full time education must be treated with care and respect. And yet, education is something that we abuse constantly – we use our children as objects of experimentation; we study them as much as we study the subject matter to be taught.  A change in the education system creates a generation of children whose education is disrupted.  Systems regularly change.  New books are not the result of greater knowledge but too often the result of political interference. And they cost tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds in publishing costs, the cost of withdrawing text books, and training because often the teachers must be taught a new truth.

If our education system is an exercise in Social Darwinism then logically, private schools will always win out over state schools if only because they have reduced class sizes. This enables greater focus on creating understanding.  State schools are temples to mass-production and so, they will always fail the majority of their students. Education is Darwinian competition in which case, perhaps we are phrasing the debate badly.  Society has become such an expensive beast to maintain we inevitably defer consideration of the outcome of the education debate to a mythical future time where resources may magically become available and meanwhile, we experiment with our children’s future.

From time to time we ‘go back to basics’ which means we strip off the accumulation of current social fashion that surrounds our education system, we endeavor to teach our children in a way that actually makes sense and delivers results that benefit both our children and society.  It is when we add layers of complexity that we lose sight of the child we are meant to be educating.  Part of that process seems to have been lost so long ago that I do not know if we can ever regain it.

We teach history and geography, the two cannot be separated; geography defines us and it is the bedrock onto which our history is built. For instance the major economic powers of the modern era have all been served by extensive water based transport systems.  The ‘Cradle of (Western) Civilization’ arose within the perimeters of the Fertile Crescent, an area of rivers and marshlands.

But what we teach is suitably banal – it does not assist us in understanding our world better or prepare us for future confrontations.  The enormous diversity that is the source of so much of our inspiration as well as our conflict can teach us greater tolerance but only if that knowledge is taught without censorship.  It is not possible to appreciate even a basic understanding of the world around us if we have only partial familiarity with the facts.  But this is the way that propaganda is delivered.  Why do we fail in our responsibility to educate? In part it is fear.  What history should we teach and why? Do we teach about Mohammed the predatory prophet and his legacy of conquest? Is King David’s adultery relevant? How do we teach the sexual oppression of women throughout history? Why do we not teach that slavery was a global institution and that almost thirty million people are enslaved even now? At what age do we teach children about war, and which ones? Define a moral war, in which case, who defines an immoral war?

Our history frames our identity. If we have a secure identity then no question will be so difficult we cannot respond to it.  We create a human encyclopaedia by building layers of understanding and not by throwing thousands of pages of unrelated garbage together and then expecting the child to sort through mountains of detritus.

Our education system has provided us with a generation that idolises inanity; that worships the mundane.  ‘Hello Magazine’ and the latest batch of reality TV shows are what drive society.  And that is a frightening fact.  It is frightening because it leaves the management of people in society to those who manipulate reality: entertainers, journalists and politicians, media managers all.

We as a species are supposed to continuously develop as human beings.  But this generation has given us insights into the cosmos without progressing in our understanding of humanity. The education system is failing society. Knowledge and understanding should give us purpose, and with purpose, hope for a better future. Here, overwhelmingly, lies our present failure.  We continue as if the last few centuries were not numerically, the bloodiest in human history.  If our education system does not help us to understand why things happen in the world how can we avoid further human conflict?