FACTS

If you find this worthwhile, please include in your distribution lists. Note the new Quote du Jour from Yvonne Green

It's been a bit of a break what with photography, kids and grandkids, renovations (slight) and the general inescapable trivia of life.

BUT I have been following the goings-on, local and general and have downloaded some of the more interesting stuff to my "archives" where they gather cobwebs till I delete in dispair. Nine downloads in the past week and 42 in the past month. But in a recent "delete frenzy" I accidently knocked off my accumulated Newsletter postings over the past year or so. Luckily most of these are preserved in my website at Solar Plexus (http://froggyfarm.blogspot.com).

I also submitted a couple of pieces to the Jewish Report, both of which were rejected - because of space and other considerations the editor assures me. We'll see! Here is the shorter of the two submissions entitled "Incredulity", for your consideration (but I want to expand on a couple of themes thereafter - so please keep reading):

"I read the letters in the previous few issues of the JR and elsewhere in this country with a mounting sense of incredulity. It seems that a significant proportion of the Jewish elite, including its legal luminaries, and non-Jews like Edwin Cameron, have entered a never-never world entirely disconnected from any discernable reality.

Concerned above all to maintain their self-perceived halo of moral rectitude they happily sign documents decrying Israel's "disproportionate" response in a world baying for Israel's blood using self-justifying terms like "slaughter", "murder", "massacre" and "Nazi" as a thin veneer to cover the hatred let loose by decades of systematic propaganda and Jewish complicity in its own demonisation.

Iran is making a mad dash for a nuclear weapon while acquiring air-defense systems from Russia to mitigate counter-measures. In the never-never land in which our luminaries and their hangers-on have taken refuge, Israel should treat annihilationist rhetoric, demonisation as "the sons of apes and pigs" (to repeat the more printable terms) and the constant flight of erratic but lethal rockets into its civilian population as "manageable irritants".

They find time to threaten critics with legal action and to write letters defending themselves and their accomplices in a nauseating ritual of self-sanctification, but not one moment to demand an end to the madness engulfing not only the extremist groups infesting the backward and dysfunctional Middle East but much of the rest of the world besides - including South Africa. They use words like "negotiation", "human rights" and "peace" as religious mantras without the slightest effort to provide credible contextualisations to such noble admonitions.

Indeed it is probably true that those whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad, but that requires the willing acquiescence of the fantasists themselves. For this they cannot be forgiven by the rest of us."

Strong language, but the propaganda trenches are not really conducive towards great nuance (a much abused word in any case which makes me reach for my verbal shotgun). Nevertheless, I stand by what I say in that submission. Direct speech is better than vague waffle designed to obscure dubious logic and even more dubious agendas.

But it is interesting to explore what constitutes "FACTS" in the Great Middle Eastern debate. The saying has it (roughly) that "comment/interpretation is personal but facts are sacred". Well be that as it may, but the way you FRAME "facts" has an enormous influence on how they are perceived.

Most people are aware of optical illusions in which perceived size and colour is a function of the context in which the object is presented. It is precisely the same with facts. The context or frame provides the cues to interpretation: "Man shoots 17year-old kid in the back" is interpreted differently to "man shoots 17 year-old youth caught raping his daughter, in the back".

So much is obvious, but usually forgotten. But even more basic, "is what are the facts?"

On the one hand we have Operation Cast Lead as a "disproportionate/indiscriminate", "slaughter/massacre/ bloodbath" in which hundreds of children died, the infrastructure of Gaza destroyed, white phosphorus was used as an instrument of war and schools/mosques/hospitals were flattened - all depicted in endless technicolour gore by Al-Jazeera or in more tasteful, aesthetic tableaux by our very own Times.

Here is a statement from a doughy warrior of the Left (MJ Rosenberg of the Israeli Policy Forum): "Much of Gaza was destroyed and now resembles Warsaw after World War II."

Yet on more information some of these "FACTS" melt away like summer snow. The wholesale destruction of infrastructure becomes essentially limited to pinpoint elimination of weapons storage depots and Hamas headquarters, while most of Gaza goes about its daily business - if not in great comfort then in relative safety. The wholesale massacre of civilians reduces to about a third of the total mortality - an extraordinarily low figure given the nature of the terrain and the Hamas policy of "human shields". The white phosphorus attacks beccome the normal military use for illumination purposes. The 40+ dead from an attack on a UN school becomes 12 dead (at most) in a strike outside the school which remained wholly intact. And so on...

Here is a couple of extracts from a report in the J Post 03-03-09 written by Yvonne Green (a poet, English Jew and frequent vistor to Israel - to use her words):

"From the mansions of the Abu Ayida family at Jebala Rayes to Tallel Howa (Gaza City's densest residential area), Gazans contradicted allegations that Israel had murderously attacked civilians. They told me again and again that both civilians and Hamas fighters had evacuated safely from areas of Hamas activity in response to Israeli telephone calls, leaflets and megaphone warnings."... "THE GAZA I saw was societally intact. There were no homeless, walking wounded, hungry or underdressed people. The streets were busy, shops were hung with embroidered dresses and gigantic cooking pots, the markets were full of fresh meat and beautiful produce - the red radishes were bigger than grapefruits. Mothers accompanied by a 13-year-old boy told me they were bored of leaving home to sit on rubble all day to tell the press how they'd survived. Women graduates I met in Shijaya spoke of education as power as old men watched over them."

So the question becomes "what are the facts"? And just as important: what conditions the unquestioning acceptance of the most extreme and bloody facts regarding Israeli actions by the media and some of the public (including parts of the Jewish community) when it is known that the "manufacture" of facts for propaganda purposes is a thriving cottage industry in the Middle East and amongst their Western allies?

Part of it is simply commercial. There are vast media profits in sensationalist reporting, and the Middle East is the mother of all "hot topics". It is the rare editor indeed who is likely to insist on "real" proof when there is the whiff of a juicy massacre in the air.

But much of the explanation lies in the psychology of prior expectation.

For considerable proportion of the anti-Zionist brigade, Israel is - by definition - an evil, brutal, colonial settler state, and thus any "fact" which reinforces this prior assumption is taken without question as additional confirmatory evidence . Few committed ideologues indeed are prepared to suffer the cognitive discomfort of seriously questioning such "evidence" unless compelled to do so.

Even those who claim to be "pro-Zionist", when pushed, reveal that buried within their readings of the creation of Israel, are strongly held beliefs about Zionist duplicity, brutality and territorial ambition. In short they have thoroughly internalised a whole set of ideas around Western (especially Zionist) evil along with a corresponding set of opposing ideas surrounding the "oppressed" and "victims" of colonialist aggression..

Now some of these ideas are true enough, but taken as a whole they create a mythic psychological frame in which even the most obviously atavistic, corrupt and violent movements take on the halo of sanctification. For this crowd too, "facts" depicting Israeli sins are simply grist to a perceptual mill already saturated with negative imagery. A good example of this mind-set can be found at Support Human Rights in Israel and Palestine (http://www.sashrip.org/).

Does this mean that no Israeli duplicity, insensitivity, brutality, sadism, simple stupidity or bigotry exists? It would be a ludicrous proposition and there is plenty of credible direct evidence for such Israeli culpability. Should such failings be ignored or glossed over? Given our expectations for Israel as an essentially moral and democratic state, we should (and I do) expect it to apply its laws fairly and impartially, to use the democratic mechanisms at its disposal to interrogate its conduct and to adopt remedial policies to rectify such deviations from its own ideals and those we hold for it.

BUT that does not entitle us to sit as a kind of Diasporean Jewsih Inquisition on our distant kin living under constant existential threat, minutely examining their conduct for deviations from perfection, ready to believe any and all incriminating evidence while ignoring, condoning or faintly damning the transgressions of its enemies. To do so smacks of deep hypocrisy. And, within the current context in which an overt propaganda war is being waged against Israel - within a larger context of a resurgent totalitarian Islamist doctrine within which the Jews are eminantly dispensible - such behaviour is understandably seen as betrayal.

If you want to play an active role in Israeli politics, get your butt over there; just don't sit here and moralise.

There is far too much sycophancy within our Jewish community. We suck up to our elites in the hope that some of their reflected glory will rub off on our humble selves. Let us respect their achievements in their own spheres without imagining for one instant that grants them greater wisdom, integrity or credibility in world affairs. We need to bear in mind Kipling's comment regarding "failure" and "success" as those two imposters.

Finally, what does the ordinary, warm-hearted, tolerant Western democrat make of all this? There is evidence, that under the deluge of selectively anti-Israeli commentary and the moral imperative of multi-culturalism, they are increasingly predisposed to see Israel as culpable of all the sins being attributed to her. Or, if not in the more extreme terms of the anti-semite, but at least as a kind of nationalistic anachronism in the brave new world of global tolerance - especially towards those non-Western elements busy painting themselves as the victims of Western cultural arrogance and domination.

Of course, this is not a one-way street. Such people are hardly blind to Islamist extremism or the hard facts of cultural invasion or to African dictators and disasters, but the need to explain these as aberrations within a natural response to Western (and Israeli) aggression, weakens their clarity of vision and firmness of purpose.

But I am not a prophet of doom and gloom. Many strong Jewish and non-Jewish voices are speaking out on behalf of the Jewish community and the excesses of those who wish to destroy Israel will in all likelihood be their own undoing - in much the same way as in all the great totalitarian movements of the past. But this will not happen without clear and determined resistence to the forces of violence, hatred and despotism and their apologists.

Mike Berger

The Darkling Plain

I've been off-air for a while but not dormant (from "dormir" to sleep (French) see also dormitory etc). The title of this post is taken, as many of you will know, from Matthew Arnold's famous poem "Dover Beach" written in 1867. The final stanza is reproduced in the Quotes du Jour alongside.
They are amongst the most intense and moving lines of poetry that I know and perhaps the most painful part is that in considerable measure they are as true today as they were nearly century and a half ago. Of course, they have been widely used by others and readers may find the following Wiki link interesting - click here.

Before I go further click here for a short but excellent summary of some of the implications of the Hamas-Israel truce and related negotiations. At the end of this blog I list further sites where good information and analysis can be found.

Part of the last week I've spent dealing with one of the issues raised by the poem; namely, the relationship between personal and political truth. This question has always resided in my semiconscious and was sparked into activity by the book entitled “The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture and Politics in the Middle East” by Shulamith Hareven written way back in 1995. The author was both a Zionist and a universalist but, above all, a powerful and poetic writer widely recognised in Israel and abroad. She died in 2004 aged 73 years. Her voice is that of the Israeli liberal left but is much more grounded in experienced realities than the more ideological and fanatic members of the Peace Now movement and other similar organisations.

Nevertheless, despite my respect and admiration for her book I felt it failed to recognise the gap between the personal and political and thus failed to do justice to the multi-dimensionality of the Middle East reality. I have written an article entitled "The darkling plain" to explore further my thoughts on these issues and have submitted it to Ferial Haffejee of the Mail and Guardian. Her response has been positive and without an absolute commitment at this stage, the paper is seriously considering publication. I won't post it on this blog before I have a clear answer but in time it will appear.

As an "activist writer" in defense of Israel in the the local media I am the recipient (sought and unsought) of numerous items relating broadly to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and related political questions. I find much - certainly not all - on both sides of the fence to be shrill, selective, and often just banal. Some of it is counterproductive (at least as far as I am concerned). Excessive negative rhetoric prompts me to question the motives and judgement of the writer.

The "big issue" for many supporters of Israel is: how does one retain one's humanity while at the same time acknowledging political realities and remaining commited to a cause? I

I cannot give a formulaic answer to the question but believe that Israel will be better served by honesty and even criticism (especially if informed and thoughtful) than blind idolatry. I would be interested in the views of others.

Nevertheless, we simply cannot turn a blind eye to the hatred that is being disseminated by the Islamist camp - to see a recent article by Matthias Kuntzel on the phenomenon click here. Is this part of Islam in general? I don't know the answer but do accept that elements within Islam can be used by extremist groups to justify hatred. However, I see little to be gained by making the whole of Islam (with its 1.5 billion adherents) our inevitable enemies. Rather focus on the extremists, isolate them from the body of Islam and encourage the religion to move toward greater enlightenment and tolerance.

For the more scholarly readers I recommend the following items

The New Post-Zionist Historians by Yoav Gelber published by the AJC in 2007. It is a substantial (36 pages), critical but scholarly look at the writings and assumptions of a number of post-Zionist (anti-Zionist would be more accurate) historians. Those interested can write to me directly and I will send them the pdf file. I suggest you have broadband.

An interview with RS Wistrich on Antisemitism Embedded in British Culture published by the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs in July 2008. For the internet version click here.

In addition, I strongly recommend the following sites to keep yourself informed on Jewish-Israeli-Palestinian affairs on an on-going basis:

Daily Alert

British Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM)

Jewish Israel News Service (JTA)

In addition to these sites one can directly log into the Israeli media which generally have good on-line publications. I would also draw your attention to a new UK publication with a conservative bent, Standpoint. It would be interesting to compare this with Commentary (USA mainly Jewish in orientation), The New Republic (USA, general) and Prospect (UK, general).

Finally, I would be interested in reviews or suggestions regarding other material (books, articles etc) that move beyond propaganda to deal in a non-academic but intelligent way with Israel and the Middle East. Please send in your contributions.

Mike Berger

Posttravel Reflections

Travel they say “broadens the mind”. That may well be true but it also empties the wallet and exhausts the body.

These reflections are prompted by our return from a family trip to the USA, including a visit to Arizona and the Grand Canyon and, on the way back, a two day stopover in that bizarre and fascinating desert experiment – Dubai.

In our relatively brief absence major natural disasters befell China and Myanmar, the xenophobic pogroms in South Africa gained high-profile treatment in major world news, Hiliary Clinton put her foot in it with a reference to the Robert Kennedy assassination, Bush visited Israel, talks between Israel and Syria (and even Hezbollah) were pursued further and pressure on Olmert continued to mount from all sides.

I missed the past 3 weeks of the debate within South Africa surrounding Israel’s 60^th anniversary, but just before I left Johann Hari’s poisonous piece of political pornography (originally published in the UK Independent) was published in The Star. In response to a request by Bev Goldman, I hurriedly wrote an article in response which apparently never saw the light of day. Nevertheless, it can be found on my blog (Solar Plexus) and can be distributed to all who are interested.

Postmodern conflict is as much psychological as economic or military. Lies, distortions and selective simplifications are the tools of this devious craft whose objective to is weaken the enemy and gain popular support. Ugly though it is it must be fought. In so doing it poses its own ethical dilemmas similar to those confronted by conventional military conflict.

We all know the world seldom divides itself neatly into the categories depicted in political propaganda. Even those with right on their side make mistakes and commit sins. How do we defend ourselves against those without scruples or who are so caught up in the fervour of their cause that such considerations never cross their minds?

For myself I try to stick to the truth as far as I can perceive it at a given moment while bearing in mind the deeper and often unstated ramifications of the “debate”. One point which arises again and again are the “settlements” in the West Bank and continued construction therein. Seldom does one see reasoned debate around this issue which is assiduously exploited by those opposed to Israel’s existence and, to a more limited extent, those opposed to Israeli strategy and tactics.

In the best of all worlds, one would hope to see Israel as an inclusive “Jewish State” with a contented Arab minority enjoying all the rights and dignities of full citizenship alongside a Palestinian-Jordanian entity which is the mirror image of the Israeli situation. In this imagined world, the precise boundaries would not assume great significance, since the minorities in the two neighbouring states would enjoy all the rights and privileges of citizenship, including ease of travel and communication.

In reality, hostility, mistrust and hidden agendas make such a solution extremely difficult to attain. Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis have any overwhelming moral right to some clearly defined portion of the Middle East. Thus any solution is a pragmatic-moral balance between two claimants with some, but not definitive, arguments to support them, though I believe that Israel has the stronger arguments on its side.

But, under current political conditions, no resolution will satisfy everyone. Every group on both sides will calculate where the line between advantage and loss is drawn and will try to achieve the best possible outcome for itself. All this is caught up in greater battles both regional and global. Neither we nor the experts can find any simple solutions to these intertwined conflicts. The best we can be do is to remain on guard against those seeking maximal advantage for their side and, simultaneously, open to opportunity for peaceful resolution – a tricky balancing act.

Yet this is the uncertain and precarious path whereby we humans eventually reach resolution of seemingly intractable conflicts.

Mike Berger

To see Dubai Images as slideshow click here

Political Pornography Updated

I have written here before about anti-Zionist propaganda. A recent article by Johann Hari, an award-winning, celebrity journalist for the Independent in the UK, goes beyond propaganda to pornography (click here for article). This piece caters for the obsessive anti-Zionist anti-Semitism which has become a feature of the so-called progressive press.

Despite denials, this campaign - which closely resembles the vicious European anti-Semitism of the pre-Nazi era - caters for the semi-psychotic addicted crazies which infect every strata of society and need only some form of legitimation to give expression to their fantasies. The following quote from comments in response to the article(one example amongst many on the 'net) gives some idea of the thought processes underlying these obsessions:

“The next Anti-Christ will be jew..... Take a LOOK at a youtube video called The Esoteric Agenda....a real eye opener Explains how these jew bastards like Rockefellers, Rothchilds, Morgans etc. need to rule the planet by famine and disease....”

Hari knows about this trend. Previously he wrote

“And, yes, the debate about Israel is being infected with anti-Semitism. I passionately support the creation of a Palestinian state…But why the constant rhetorical inflation of Israel's crimes to put them on a par with Nazi Germany?” He went on to say, “more people died in one afternoon in Bergen-Belsen than have been killed in twenty years of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.” He could equally have said “or killed in one night’s British bombing of German cities”.

But that did not stop Hari from writing his latest vicious piece of pornography. We must answer this campaign of defamation but we must also seek ways of carrying the fight to our enemies. I was told that Hari's article has been or is going to be published in The Star. I am unable to locate it on the Internet and have not been sent a hard copy, but was asked by Bev Goldman, Media Team leader for the SAJBOD, to write an op-ed piece in response.

Despite this uncertainty, I drafted a reply published below in full. It may yet appear in The Star, but you have it here in unexpurgated and unedited form. (Has Hari's original piece been blocked by objections to its publication of the Internet??)

I will be away for 3 weeks so don't expect anything from me for the next month. All the best and lets keep the responses coming.

Political Pornography

Everyone knows it is easier to throw mud than to wipe it off, and Johann Hari in the Star (…) comes armed with something much more smelly than mud. He builds his article, to use his words, around Jewish filth being flung at a “cowering Palestinian population”.

Now Mr Hari is himself a shit-thrower of considerable note; he is the 2008 winner of the Orwell Prize for Journalism amongst other awards. His descriptions are thus suitably vivid: “long stinking rivers of waste” and “…one of them burst drowning a nine-month-old baby and his elderly grandmother in a tsunami of human waste”. Being a celebrity journalist, apparently excuses Hari from the boring stuff like verifying the accuracy of his claims or contextualising them.

It seems almost petty to ask whether the Intifada launched in 2000, when Palestinian economic and population growth were at a peak and Arafat had been offered 95% of the West Bank and the opportunity to build a Palestinian state, may have dented the rehabilitation of the sewerage system in the West Bank and Gaza. Or whether the sewer pipes are blocked because they are used for Quassam rockets or because Hamas is targeting the Israel-Gaza crossings to prevent material getting through so as to increase political pressure on Israel.

Perhaps Hari could have mentioned that significant Israeli-Palestinian cooperation is on-going to address the complex, emotive and longterm issues around water and waste as evidenced by a recent publication entitled “Water Resources in the Middle East: Israel-Palestinian Water Issues From Conflict to Cooperation” edited by Hillel Shuval and Hassan Dweik.

But none of this is pertinent to Hari’s true mission which is not to critique Israel’s attitude towards Palestinian welfare but to delegitimise the Israeli state. Excrement is really just the hors d’oevres.

Using Ilan Pappe as his historical witness, Hari quotes Ben Gurion as saying “The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war”. (Ben Gurion was that dumb?) This was accomplished by Plan Dalit. “In 1948, before the Arab armies invaded,…some 800 000 people were ethnically cleansed and Israel was built on the ruins”.

All this, along with the “cowering Palestinians” is simply propaganda. The cowering Palestinians, aided by Iran and Syria, have launched thousands of rockets and mortars at southern Israel, have murdered and kidnapped Israeli soldiers and civilians and openly declare their intention to “liberate” the whole of Palestine from the Jordan to the Mediterranean with the help of arms smuggled through Egypt.

Pappe, Hari’s source and apparent inspiration and a member of the Israeli Communist Party before emigrating in 2007, regards facts as irrelevant. A few direct quotes provides the flavour: “My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the "truth" when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous”. “Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are?”

So it is hardly surprising that the “facts” used by Hari to support his case against Israel are nothing but fiction. The quote attributed to Ben Gurion has been dismissed by genuine historians (that is, those who believe that facts matter) as “pure invention”. Similarly, rather than Jews driving out helpless Palestinians, local Arab attacks starting in 1947 killed over 1000 Jews by March 1948 before the invasion of six Arab armies.

Now Hari is more than a crusading celebrity journalist: for instance he obtained a double first at Cambridge. So when he compares Israel in the Middle East with 30 million Kurds taking over most of Britain, he knows its bullshit. In case some of our readers have to be be told why, here goes:

Because Jews became a nation for the first time in “Palestine” about 3000 years ago and have had a presence there ever since. Because a pitiful couple of hundred thousand not 30 million Jews “invaded” the Middle East, many the remnants of slaughtered European communities. Because there was no Palestinian state for the Jews to invade, only a relatively minor province of the huge and failing Ottoman Empire occupied by about 30 000 Jews and 600 000 Arabs, many scattered as impoverished tenant farmers subject to the depredations of Bedouin raiders, plus a much smaller Arab middle and wealthy class. Jerusalem was already mainly Jewish. And, finally, because Israel does not occupy most of Arab land but less than one five hundredth. Palestinian Arabs share ethnicity, history, language and religion with around 300 million near neighbours.

It is easy enough to discredit Hari’s accusations since he hardly gets a single fact right. But that doesn’t get to the root of the issue. After all, no-one is claiming that Israel is a country of saints or that its creation was a kind of immaculate conception. For yardsticks of comparison just look at the history of the USA, Mexico, Britain, and so on down the list.

In reality Hari’s article goes beyond ordinary propaganda, it is anti-Zionist pornography; the kosher version of Holocaust denial. It arises from and caters to obsessive anti-Zionist, anti-Semitism, the bastard offspring of pre-Nazi anti-Semitism which has been resurrected globally by a sytematic media campaign over decades.

I exaggerate? Well here’s one comment following on Hari’s original article in the UK Independent from Laurie Smith: “The next Anti-Christ will be jew..... Take a LOOK at a youtube video called The Esoteric Agenda....a real eye opener Explains how these jew bastards like Rockefellers, Rothchilds, Morgans etc. need to rule the planet by famine and disease....” There are many more like that in the crevices of the Internet.

Hari knows of this psychotic underworld. In 2006 he wrote “And, yes, the debate about Israel is being infected with anti-Semitism. I passionately support the creation of a Palestinian state…But why the constant rhetorical inflation of Israel's crimes to put them on a par with Nazi Germany?” He went on to say, “more people died in one afternoon in Bergen-Belsen than have been killed in twenty years of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.” He could equally have said “or killed in one night’s British bombing of German cities”.

We have laws against gross sexual pornography in our media. Perhaps we need to apply some of the same standards to political pornography. It seems a much greater threat to a sane and decent society than the former kind.

Mike Berger

Mud and the Media

A casual reader opening the Cape Times today (28 May) will find a prominent letter entitled “Israel must reach out” by Mr Jazbhay in which he dissociates himself from any celebration of Israel’s 60^th anniversary.

As far as I know, Mr Jazbhay has not been invited to join in these celebrations, nor has the Cape Times associated itself with Israel’s remarkable accomplishments. Thus, a casual reader may wonder why Jazbhay felt impelled to write such a letter or, indeed, why the Cape Times consented to publish it.

The reader will find in Jazbhay’s letter the usual litany of complaints against Israel: brutality, expropriation, “the wall”, discrimination against Israeli Arabs and so on and on. Needless to say there is no mention of the on-going terrorist incursions against Israel with resultant deaths and injuries, the rocket attacks, the inflammatory behaviour of many (by no means all) Israeli Arabs who demand the full rights of Israeli citizens while undermining Israel abroad and at home or, indeed, the circumstances which led to the expensive and politically costly construction of the security barrier in the first place.

In fact, the reader would be astonished by any attempt at a contextualised or informative letter since this would be contrary to the objective of the game which, as even the most casual reader understands, is to throw as much mud as possible at Israel in the reasonable belief that some of it will stick.

A slightly less casual reader will have noticed by now some clear patterns within the South African media. Firstly, an obsessive concern with a highly complex conflict far outside South Africa’s domain of interest. Secondly, the gross preponderance of anti-Israel comment, images, reportage and analysis generally without even token attempts at “balance” or contextualisation. Thirdly, the reader will have noted that such exchanges invariably start with some anti-Israel piece followed by (in the interests of fairness of course) responses from those like me attempting to wipe some of the sticky stuff off.

What the ordinary reader will not know (but may guess) is the most of the “accusations” are endlessly recycled half-truths, distortions or outright lies. What the ordinary reader will not know is who and what is driving this campaign of nasty anti-Semitism or political propaganda under the guise of moral indignation. But, once again, it is not too difficult to surmise.

But in reply to Jazbhay and his ilk, Israel’s behaviour and accomplishments are one of the remarkable stories of the modern age and I and thousands of Jews and non-Jews celebrate its 60th anniversary with unmitigated pride. I challenge the Cape Times and the rest of the South African media to tell the true story.

Mike Berger

Propaganda

Wars are fought in the minds of men at least as much as on the battlefield. Great military leaders have been able to inspire their men to incredible feats against huge odds.

One of the famous examples is the defeat of the powerful French army at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 by an exhausted, depleted British force, a victory attributed to Henry V’s gift of oratory. This was immortalised by Shakespeare 200 years later.

Henry:

“…But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,…"

But the battlefield today involves whole populations, indeed the global population, as wars are fought out in the minds of civilians as much as in the minds of soldiers. The name of this is PROPAGANDA.

It is important today because the willing consent of civilian populations is required to bear the economic and personal sacrifices of military operations. It is also important because the technological means is available to spread images and words across the world at the speed of light.

We in South Africa are the target of an unremitting stream of anti-Israel propaganda. We need to understand its context, its purpose and its methods to develop the essential antibodies to its insidious poison. This is not simple since propaganda has many guises and disguises. It can aim to inspire and to denigrate and demonise. It can do both. It can be subtle or blatant, honest or dishonest. It can be used offensively or defensively – or both.

Let’s get down to brass tacks. The war against Israel did not end in 1948 or in 1967; it is being vigorously pursued by different groups using different means, but its objective remains the destruction of Israel.

This is not debatable. Despite the work of apologists for Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and others in the ME and beyond, they make their intentions quite clear. None of this has anything to do with Israel’s behaviour. It is a primal battle to replace the Jewish state with an Islamic, Arab entity within an area of the globe which they regard as the domain of Islam and Arabia in its broadest sense.

But why South Africa? Why direct propaganda so far afield to the West? The reasons are relatively simple: Israel is a study in contradictions. It has an immensely powerful and efficient army, at least relative to its local opponents. It has been amazingly successful in economic terms and is thus able to support ongoing military action and preparedness. It has nuclear weapons as a last resort.

But, at the same time, its Jewish population is less than 7 million and its surface area is miniscule relative to its enemies. Israel has no vital resources with which to bargain and it has a restive democratic ethos which makes sustained action difficult to maintain.

Israel thus depends on a measure of international goodwill and legitimacy to continue the battle: to keep the economic engine running and to keep its civilian population willing to sacrifice for the Zionist ideal when other options beckon, including emigration or surrender, in one form or another. Israel desperately needs the support of the Diaspora. These are the chinks in Israel’s armour against which the weapons of propaganda are deployed.

The propaganda need not be sophisticated; that may indeed be a disadvantage. Kasrils and others specialise in the crudest of lies and distortions in order to dirty Israel’s name. But there are somewhat more sophisticated methods and the Jewish population needs to be forewarned.

An Israeli Palestinian rights NGO, called Adalah, has recently landed in South Africa with the purported intent of soliciting international support for its allegations of Israeli brutality at the start of the Intifada. It may well have good reason for at least some of its accusations, but there is equally no doubt that it is knowingly lending itself to the international campaign of anti-Israel demonisation.

Adalah, together with the District 6 Museum Foundation and the Palestine Solidarity Group, will publically present a film and oral testimonies from the family members of the 13 killed in the Intifada riots on Wednesday afternoon, the eve of Yom HaShoah. By such actions Adalah has ceased being a legitimate human rights NGO but is an active fifth column in the war aginst Israel.

This is a propaganda battle Israel cannot win in the short-term. Unlike the Battle of Agincourt, Israel is engaged in a protracted, multi-dimensional, vicious struggle for survival. Those of us who support the basic justice of its cause will need all our courage and clarity to see it through.

Part of this will require us to remain steadfast in our core beliefs while at the same time remaining alive to defects in our own position and responsive to opportunities for progress. Thus the high-profile approach of Carter to Hamas is clearly counterproductive, but in the end Israel will need to reach peace with its enemies, not with its friends. This balance between openness on the one hand and resistance on the other is much more challenging than simple obstinacy.

One catchphrase I've always regarded with suspicion, is that "Israel must take risks for peace". It is usually said in contexts where Israel is giving up quite a lot for little return; given her position that is plain silly. But "settlement building" hands propaganda material to Israel's enemies and makes peace more difficult to achieve. Thus substantial sensitivity needs to be shown in this area, unless the real objective is to scuttle any chance of any realistic two-state solution.

This takes us into quite controversial territory which is not suitable at the end of a post. In the meantime we need to recognise the Adalah cavalcade as part of an orchestrated campaign of denigration and delegitimisation with clear political ends in view - whatever the underlying psychological motivations may be.

Mike Berger

Links to "Propaganda"...

• Did Hamas agree to accept a two-state solution?
• I and my brother against my cousin
• Into the Lions Den

Propaganda, Ideology and Reality

In reality there is no "reality". All views of the world, especially our political views, are constructed through our early socialisation and on-going experiences, sifted through our individual minds.

Propaganda is the deliberate attempt to steer that process in a particular direction. When propaganda is infused with an ideology (that is, a systematic world-view whether religious or secular - like communism, liberalism, conservatism) that tendency is amplified and reinforced.

Even without deliberate propaganda and ideology, social forces and individual psychology tend to maintain a consistent set of beliefs and perceptions in individuals and groups. That is probably to the good, up to a point, since a wildly fluctuating set of perceptions is hardly an effective way to confront the challenges of the world.

But, in the ideal modern democratic state, the individual is (or can be) exposed to new information and different views which allow that person to alter his or her positions in the light of these new experiences. In fact this is one of the fundamental reasons why democracies are generally so much more effective (in both war and peace) than despotisms. The ability to adjust one's view of the world to take into account changing or hitherto novel information is probably a necessary precondition of personal and collective growth.

Propaganda, especially when linked to ideology, is an attempt to prevent such growth and reorientation. In an open and free society such efforts can usually be effectively combated. Where social and political factors limit choice, the re-orientation process is curtailed and constrained.

These general ideas are especially relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab-Muslim conflict. Israel has been so effective largely because of her democratic institutions, imperfect though they are. For those living outside the focal point of the conflict, our views are shaped by the information which comes to us indirectly through the media, through friends, acquaintances and through the occasional visit. Where the media is one-sided, especially through the deliberate use of propaganda, the perceptions of the ordinary person is is distorted.

This is happening in South Africa where both the Independent group and the Mail & Guardian have taken on the role of pro-Palestinian propagandists. Whether this is cynical and conscious or simply the consequence of closed minds and prejudice, the outcome is to limit and distort the perceptions of South Africans fed a steady diet of one-sided information and analysis.

The Pilger article in the M & G of 14 March 2008 is a prime example of outright and extremely cynical propaganda. My letter in response (reproduced below) has been sent to the M & G but remains to be published as of this writing. Besides this, the general tenor of discourse in the post-Apartheid South Africa tends towards a facile comparison of Israel-Palestine with apartheid and anti-colonialism in general. This fallacy has been widely critiqued and exposed (see previous post on this blog referring to the Kadalie, Bertelsmann article "Franchising Apartheid" on Z-word), but one doubts that these contrarian voices are reaching many of the opinion makers, never mind the general population. Besides crusading media and biased public discourse, there clearly exist Muslim groups and their non-Muslim supporters actively disseminating anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda.

This blog is one response to this onslaught. We live in a free though imperfect society and we have the tools to counter these distortions and outright lies. Despite the existence of "media teams", staffed by committed and able people (many of them volunteers), the response of the major communal Jewish organisations is still inadequate. The offending newspapers and media are reluctant to publish views which oppose their own perspectives, or do so in such a way that their impact is minimised.

Rather than pollute the public space with more propaganda from the other (pro-Zionist) side, we need to bring higher quality information and analysis to the attention of the wider, interested community. This requires due space and prominence in the conventional media and the use of unofficial channels. I would like to see the SAJBD and the SAZF take up this challenge more seriously and creatively. Our cause will not be advanced by talking to ourselves.

Letter sent to Mail and Guardian:

So, according to John Pilger, 6.5 million Jews on a tiny piece of semi-desert set amongst 300 million hostile Arab-Muslims is the 4^th largest military power in the world (M & G, 14 March). I suppose it all depends on how one defines military power, but Pilger in full propaganda mode couldn’t be bothered with such niceties.

Nevertheless, taking Pilger at face value and that, according to him, "(Israel) used satellite-guided American aircraft and missiles against a population of largely children, most of them malnourished", it is amazing that the Israeli Defence Force only managed to kill 120 Gazans over the course of a week - most of them militants. As we know a single decent car bomb in Baghdad or a crowded Pakistani street market can accomplish that.

Such paltry results implies either extraordinary levels of Israeli incompetence, which makes their standing as any sort of military power absurd or, as Pilger is well aware, it reflects extraordinary skill and a determination to minimise civilian casualties despite every attempt by Hamas to provide a respectable body count for people like himself to exploit.

Contrary to Pilger’s idiotic suggestion that Israel has an interest in the destruction of Gazan society and the creation of more violent militants on its borders, as any sane person knows Israel wants nothing more than to be left alone. For this reason it withdrew fully from Gaza in the hope that the Gazan population would create a viable and peaceful state.

The plain fact is that Israel is constantly goaded and threatened by suicide bombers, rockets and mortars directed indiscriminately at its civilian population by Hamas, Hezbollah and the other terror groups flourishing in that region. Simply stated Israel is at war with people, with significant support in the West as well as locally, who have never accepted the presence of a Jewish state in the Middle East and who are dedicated to its destruction by any means possible - preferably by violence. This is openly stated, and Pilger's role is to contribute to the propaganda arm of this war. This situation also suits some of the states in the region who play the dangerous but profitable game of keeping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the boil in pursuit of their own regional and global ambitions and to mollify their own restive populations reared on a toxic diet of anti-semitism and anti-Zionism.

But Israel will persist, despite its enemies and despite the fears, doubts and imperfections of its own people, partly because decent people everywhere will eventually turn against the purveyors of hatred and death.

Mike Berger

Pilgerian propaganda

So, according to John Pilger, 6.5 million Jews on a tiny piece of semi-desert set amongst 300 million Arab-Muslims is the 4^th largest military power in the world (M & G, 14 March). I suppose it all depends on how one defines military power, but Pilger in full propaganda mode couldn’t be bothered with such niceties.

Nevertheless, given the undoubted punch of Israel’s military hardware the death of 120 Gazans (mainly terrorists to give them their proper name) following years of rocket and mortar attacks, represents a triumph of almost inhuman restraint, skill and grim determination to minimise civilian casualties.

Why a single decent car bomb in Baghdad or a crowded Pakistani street market exceeds that. Imagine what Israel could do if it wanted to.

But of course, as any sane person knows, Israel wants nothing more than to be left alone. Contrary to Pilger’s idiotic suggestion that Israel has an interest in the destruction of Palestinian society and the creation of more violent militants on its borders, it prays only for simple normality.

For this reason it withdrew fully from Gaza handing over a host of functional facilities as inducement to the Gazan population to create a viable state. These were promptly destroyed by fanatics and thugs to ensure that such sanity would never emerge to mitigate their apocalyptic vision of endless war until Israel itself was destroyed.

Thus, Israel is constantly goaded and threatened by suicide bombers, rockets and mortars directed indiscriminately at its civilian population so that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the other terror groups flourishing in that benighted region, can present their Western allies and their own population with the necessary civilian casualties for propaganda purposes.

This strategy also suits some of the states in the region who play the dangerous but profitable game of keeping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the boil in pursuit of their own regional and global ambitions.

And the surviving remnants of the Stalinist Left in the West have a new cause: to reverse the hundred years of heroic Zionist struggle culminating in the creation of a tiny democratic oasis in the Middle East and the recognition of Israel as an independent state by the United Nations. What a glorious victory that would be.

There is little doubt that history will see the systematic demonisation of Israel as a yet another chapter in the long history of anti-semitism, fully consonant with the vile lies and myths preceeding the Holocaust.

But there is one thing that has changed; Jews will never again go quietly to their destruction. Israel will persist despite its enemies and despite the fears, doubts and imperfections of its own people. It will also persist because decent people everywhere will eventually turn against the purveyors of hatred and death.

Mike Berger