One-Finger Salute

Where is this "Palestine"?

US President GEORGE W. BUSH has publicly expressed support for an independent and, more interestingly, "viable and democratic" Palestine. He is thus the first president to do so. Yet at the same time, Bush has begun to shift American policy on the issue of illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in Gaza. In this new view, the settlements are no longer seen as an "obstacle" to peace. This is also a break with previous US policy and a direct contradiction to other parts of the speech in which he mentioned an independent Palestine.

What gives here? How do we reconcile these two apparently contradictory positions? On the one hand, Bush has seemingly committed US policy to the establishment of a Palestinian state. On the other hand, he has removed opposition to the unimpeded Israeli colonization of the very lands on which the Palestinians are supposed to build their state. Does Bush realize that expanding these colonies will further erode the already seriously compromised "viability" of a Palestinian state based in the West Bank and Gaza? Is the commander-in-chief simply floating propaganda about a Palestinian state for the ever-hopeful Arab states ahead of the upcoming invasion of Iraq? Or is Bush simply as dim-witted as many independent observers believe him to be?

It should be noted that in his speech, Bush never gets around to saying exactly where this "Palestine" should be located. Most people might assume, with good reason, that it would be located in the West Bank and Gaza. But others more familiar with contemporary Middle Eastern history and politics, when weighing these two new policies, will undoubtedly be reminded of a long-standing Israeli idea on Palestinians and states: the "Jordanian option".

Under this conception, Jordan is seen as "Palestine", due to the high percentage of the Jordanian population (figures range between 50% and 70%; getting accurate data from dictatorial regimes is notoriously difficult) that is of Palestinian descent. Thus, according to the idea's proponents, there is no need to establish "another" Palestinian state. Since one such state already exists, they argue, all Palestinians currently living in historic Palestine, which is actually Israel, should move to Jordan, which is actually Palestine.

Sound farfetched? It isn't. There are a number of currents in Israeli society pointing in this direction:

Current Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has had long-standing dreams of completing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine begun in 1947-48. Sharon has argued that Israel should have deposed King Hussein during the 1970 "Black September" massacres (in which the monarch had between 5,000 and 10,000 Palestinians killed) and set up a Palestinian state at that time in Jordan.

Ethnic cleansing, a term that has itself been cleansed when applied to the Palestinians and assigned the traditional Zionist euphemism "transfer", is becoming more acceptable within Israeli political discourse. A poll carried out in March 2002 showed that 46% of Israelis favor expelling the Palestinians from the West Bank.

Numerous voices from diverese backgrounds within Israel have started seriously discussing the possibility of mass expulsion. These aren't fringe lunatics - they include one of Israel's most noted military historians, an award-winning journalist, and a former MK.

Of course, other scenarios not involving mass expulsion of Palestinians are possible when we consider Bush's "vision" of an independent Palestine, on the one hand, and his new level of support for the settlements, on the other. The most likely of these is the continued strengthening of the Israeli apartheid system, based closely on the former South African model, in the occupied territories. This course of action is certainly the easiest to pursue; Israel, in colonizing the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, has been following it since 1967. Under Sharon, however, the process is being greatly accelerated: more and more Palestinians will be concentrated in less and less space (essentially the larger towns on the West Bank - Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin), leaving the best land and water resources for full Israeli use and the Palestinians with nothing but miserable, disconnected Bantustans.

Nevertheless, for a number of reasons, Sharon and his government prefer to see as few Palestinians remaining in historic Palestine as possible. It is certain that he has not given up on the "Jordanian option" and that this little idea is still burning bright in his aged mind. Has Bush signed on? Let's just hope he's being dim-witted.

Posted by Manumission @ 18:49 -- Link

Journalism, Berkeley Style

The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley's student press rag, continues to delay in responding to allegations that it is shielding a recent columnist, ROBERT ENAYATI (editor-in-chief of the even raggier Berkeley Jewish Journal) from being publicly exposed as a liar, plagiarist, and practitioner of Orwellian historiography. These charges and the Daily Cal's ongoing coverup of them were first made public by UC Berkeley's only blog that matters, the Progressive at Cal. Enayati had already revealed himself as a butcherer of the English language in the column that started it all, which he used to launch a laughable attack against Edward Said prior to his talk on the Berkeley campus on 19 Feb 03. Just one example of Enayati-speak: the phrase "inarguable incongruity" - what the hell does it mean? A search using Google could not find this phrase used in any of the 3,083,324,652 web pages it has catalogued.

Anyway, according to our sources, the "Daily Cal" has refused so far to publicly admit that it was party to the following journalistic failures in Enayati's column:

• Lies:Eyanati claims to disprove Said's arguments in his "new work", The New Intifada - Resisting Israel's Apartheid. Here's the problem: it's not even Said's book. Instead, it is a collection of essays edited by someone else (Roane Carey of The Nation) entirely. Neither of Said's two essays attempt any kind of in-depth comparison of Israel to apartheid South Africa. Since Enayati did not even know who edited the book, much less its contents, it is clear that he lied about this point in order to provide a fig leaf to his ad hominem against Said.
  
• Plagiarism:Our wannabe editor rips off two paragraphs from a press release dated to August 1999 from the group CAMERA which, coincidentally, was also dedicated to attacking Said. CAMERA, by the way, is a rabid pro-Israel organization which conducts intimidation campaigns against journalists and others who do not toe their anti-historical line on Israel. Compare the following offerings from Enayati and CAMERA:
  
  Eyanati - "For example, the Israeli government leases land to Israeli Arabs at subsidized rates unavailable to Israeli Jews. While the government charged Israeli Bedouins $150 for a long-term lease on a quarter of an acre of land in the residential community of Rahat, Israeli Jews were charged $24,000 for a comparable size of the same land."
  
  CAMERA - "...the Israeli government has sometimes leased residential land to Israeli Arabs at subsidized rates unavailable to Israeli Jews. For example, while the government charged Israeli Bedouins just $150 for a long-term lease on a quarter of an acre of residential land in the southern community of Rahat, Israeli Jews were charged $24,000 to lease similarly sized plots in neighboring areas."
  Coincidence?
  
• Rewriting History:Enayati attributes a quote to Hizbollah's "head cleric" supposedly made in the presence of Israeli Arab MK Azmi Bishara. He doesn't say when this meeting took place, but it must have been during a memorial for former Syrian dictator Hafez Assad held in Syria in June 2001. Hizbollah chief Sheikh Nasrallah did make a statement similar to that Enayati attributes to him - but nearly one-and-a-half years later, in October 2002, and not in the presence of Bishara. Hey, what the hell? Who needs concepts like history and journalistic integrity, when we're propagandizing for the good cause?

Based on these egregious journalistic and, for anyone even remotely connected to the academic or intellectual worlds, ethical failures, it is clear that Enayati isn't qualified to edit a children's coloring book, much less a college journal devoted to Judaica. His failures, though, are his own. The real question is this: why is the Daily Cal covering for this incompetent and deceitful commentator? Does the Daily Cal care at all that it has been used as a platform for launching one-sided and error-filled propaganda? Do the Daily Cal staff have any pride in their work and in the journalistic ideals of fairness and balance, or are they content with being the yes-people for partisan causes? The question remains open.