Video: Voices of the Palestinian youth rebellion
The convenient lie that helps many Israelis and their friends avoid facing the truth
There’s a common deceit that individuals and groups of people have employed throughout history as a way of avoiding accepting responsibility for their own actions. Here’s how it works and it’s amazingly simple:
If you do things that offend others, you can ignore their complaints by insisting that their grievance is based, not on what you have done, but on who you are.
By claiming that you are a victim of animosity based on your identity, you instantly become blameless.
Following Benjamin Netanyahu’s absurd claim that a Palestinian inspired the Holocaust, Jay Michaelson writes: comments like Netanyahu’s are made all the time on the Israeli Right. They’re meant for domestic consumption, to inspire the nationalist base. The Arabs hate us, anti-Zionism is just anti-Semitism, and most importantly, the Intifada is about Jew-hatred, not resistance to the occupation.
Such claims may seem controversial to outsiders. But they are all catnip to the American and Israeli Right, and to most of Netanyahu’s audience at the World Zionist Congress. (The congress was established by the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, in 1897. Nowadays it is mostly ceremonial, but millions of philanthropic dollars are at stake.)
These claims are central to the ultra-nationalist narrative. Palestinian violence isn’t resistance—it’s bigotry. Thus, peace is not the answer, because it won’t eradicate the Jew-hatred. Only Jewish strength is the answer. (Of course, blaming Palestinian violence on anti-Semitism also stokes deep Jewish fears, and collective trauma about the Holocaust.)
This was the ideology of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of revisionist Zionism (and the fan of Jewish fascism) as well as Netanyahu’s own father. Force is all the Arabs understand, because they hate Jews and will keep hating Jews no matter what. [Continue reading…]
After Netanyahu claims Hitler didn’t want to kill the Jews, Germany insists it holds full responsibility for the Holocaust
Reuters reports: The German government said on Wednesday that responsibility for the Holocaust lay with the Germans, after Israel’s prime minister sparked controversy before a visit to Berlin by saying a Muslim elder had convinced Adolf Hitler to exterminate Jews.
“All Germans know the history of the murderous race mania of the Nazis that led to the break with civilisation that was the Holocaust,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said when asked about Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks.
“This is taught in German schools for good reason, it must never be forgotten. And I see no reason to change our view of history in any way. We know that responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own.” [Continue reading…]
‘Netanyahu joins a long line of people that we would call Holocaust deniers’
The New York Times reports: Israeli historians and opposition politicians on Wednesday joined Palestinians in denouncing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for saying it was a Palestinian, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who gave Hitler the idea of annihilating European Jews during World War II.
Mr. Netanyahu said in a speech to the Zionist Congress on Tuesday night that “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews.” The prime minister said that the mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, had protested to Hitler that “they’ll all come here,” referring to Palestine.
“ ‘So what should I do with them?’ ” Mr. Netanyahu quoted Hitler as asking Mr. Husseini. “He said, ‘Burn them.’ ”
Prof. Meir Litvak, a historian at Tel Aviv University, called the speech “a lie” and “a disgrace.” Prof. Moshe Zimmermann, a specialist of German history at Hebrew University, said, “With this, Netanyahu joins a long line of people that we would call Holocaust deniers.”
Isaac Herzog, leader of the opposition in the Israeli Parliament, said the accusation was “a dangerous historical distortion,” and he demanded that Mr. Netanyahu “correct it immediately.” [Continue reading…]
Exxon sowed doubt about climate science for decades by stressing uncertainty
InsideClimate News reports: As he wrapped up nine years as the federal government’s chief scientist for global warming research, Michael MacCracken lashed out at ExxonMobil for opposing the advance of climate science.
His own great-grandfather, he told the Exxon board, had been John D. Rockefeller’s legal counsel a century earlier. “What I rather imagine he would say is that you are on the wrong side of history, and you need to find a way to change your position,” he wrote.
Addressed to chairman Lee Raymond on the letterhead of the United States Global Change Research Program, his September 2002 letter was not just forceful, but unusually personal.
No wonder: in the opening days of the oil-friendly Bush-Cheney administration, Exxon’s chief lobbyist had written the new head of the White House environmental council demanding that MacCracken be fired for “political and scientific bias.”
Exxon was also attacking other officials in the U.S. government and at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), MacCracken wrote, interfering with their work behind the scenes and distorting it in public.
Exxon wanted scientists who disputed the mainstream science on climate change to oversee Washington’s work with the IPCC, the authoritative body that defines the scientific consensus on global warming, documents written by an Exxon lobbyist and one of its scientists show. The company persuaded the White House to block the reappointment of the IPCC chairman, a World Bank scientist. Exxon’s top climate researcher, Brian Flannery, was pushing the White House for a wholesale revision of federal climate science. The company wanted a new strategy to focus on the uncertainties. [Continue reading…]
U.S. gun addicts: Average gun-owning home now houses more guns than people
The Washington Post reports: There are nearly twice as many guns in the average gun-owning household today as there were 20 years ago, according to new Wonkblog estimates based data from surveys and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In 2013, there were an estimated 8.1 firearms in the typical gun-owning household, according to these data. In 1994, the average gun-owning household owned 4.2 guns.
These numbers comport with what survey research has shown for several years now: the share of gun-owning households has been declining over the past 20 years and possibly more, according to numbers from Gallup and the General Social Survey. On the other hand, domestic firearm production and imports of firearms have risen sharply, particularly in recent years. If those numbers are correct, it follows that increasing gun purchases are being driven primarily by existing owners stocking up rather than first-time buyers. [Continue reading…]
Einstein was wrong. ‘Spooky action’ is real
Delft University of Technology reports: In 1935, Einstein asked a profound question about our understanding of Nature: are objects only influenced by their nearby environment? Or could, as predicted by quantum theory, looking at one object sometimes instantaneously affect another far-away object? Einstein did not believe in quantum theory’s prediction, famously calling it “spooky action”.
Exactly 80 years later, a team of scientists led by professor Ronald Hanson from Delft University of Technology finally performed what is seen as the ultimate test against Einstein’s worldview: the loophole-free Bell test. The scientists found that two electrons, separated 1.3 km from each other on the Delft University campus, can indeed have an invisible and instantaneous connection: the spooky action is real.
The experiment, published in Nature today, breaks the last standing defence of Einstein’s iconic 1935 paper: it closes all the loopholes present in earlier experiments. The Delft experiment not only closes a chapter in one of the most intriguing debates in science, it may also enable a radically new form of secure communications that is fundamentally impossible to ‘eavesdrop’ into.
“Quantum mechanics states that a particle such as an electron can be in two different states at the same time, and even in two different places, as long as it is not observed. This is called ‘superposition’ and it is a very counter-intuitive concept”, says lead scientist Professor Ronald Hanson. Hanson’s group works with trapped electrons, which have a tiny magnetic effect known as a “spin” that can be pointing up, or down, or – when in superposition – up and down at the same time. “Things get really interesting when two electrons become entangled. Both are then up and down at the same time, but when observed one will always be down and the other one up. They are perfectly correlated, when you observe one, the other one will always be opposite. That effect is instantaneous, even if the other electron is in a rocket at the other end of the galaxy”, says Hanson. [Continue reading…]
Saudis risk draining financial assets in 5 years, IMF says
Bloomberg reports: Saudi Arabia may run out of financial assets needed to support spending within five years if the government maintains current policies, the International Monetary Fund said, underscoring the need of measures to shore up public finances amid the drop in oil prices.
The same is true of Bahrain and Oman in the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, the IMF said in a report on Wednesday. Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have relatively more financial assets that could support them for more than 20 years, the Washington-based lender said.
Saudi authorities are already planning spending cuts as the world’s biggest oil exporter seeks to cut its budget deficit. Officials have repeatedly said that the kingdom’s economy, the Arab world’s biggest, is strong enough to weather the plunge in crude prices as it did in similar crises, when its finances were under more strain. [Continue reading…]
Music: Andy Irvine & Davy Spillane — ‘Dance of Suleiman’
Putin’s partition plan for Syria
Hussein Ibish writes: Russia’s unspoken but unmistakable message is that Moscow is trying one — and perhaps the only — way of ending the conflict by means of a Lebanese-style segregation of Syria into zones controlled by rival militias. To Washington’s perennial concern in any Middle Eastern imbroglio, “Tell me how this ends,” Moscow responds: The Syrian conflict will be “resolved” on Russia’s terms, even if Mr. Assad proves dispensable to the Kremlin in the long run.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s desire to see the conflict end without actually doing anything itself means that, as Bloomberg View suggested recently, there is a group of senior American officials prepared to go along with the Russian plan. After all, America’s own policy in Syria has rapidly moved from tragedy to farce. The latest fiasco was the cancellation of the $500 million military training program for anti-Islamic State rebels that produced barely a handful of fighters on the ground.
So if Moscow has a policy, and Washington doesn’t, why not just support that?
Beyond the fact that it’s absurd to hope that Mr. Putin’s approach is likely to benefit American interests, giving way to Russia’s policy would, in effect, entail abandoning the fight against the Islamic State in Syria. And the militants cannot be effectively countered in Iraq alone. So what this final, ignominious capitulation would really mean is that not only would Mr. Assad (or some Russian-appointed successor) menace Syrians for the foreseeable future, but so too would the Islamic State. [Continue reading…]
We break it, you own it: Russia’s logic in Syria
Thomas Pierret writes: Some Western observers of Russia’s recent intervention in Syria are convinced President Vladimir Putin is making a mistake — and, following wisdom often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, one should never interrupt an enemy while they are making a mistake. By committing its own forces to the defense of beleaguered dictator Bashar al-Assad, some believe that Moscow is about to bog itself down in Syria the same way Washington got stuck in Iraq. However, proponents of this view should be wary the joke might well be on them.
First, although difficult times certainly lie ahead for Russia in Syria, Putin’s intervention will make the conflict more destructive, destabilizing, and intractable, hence more detrimental to all parties. Second, the way Moscow defines success in Syria is hardly comparable to the stabilization-oriented approach adopted by the United States-led coalition in Iraq. Instead, by trying to destroy mainstream insurgents, Putin aims to reshape the Syrian war in a way that would leave Western countries with no other option than to supplement Russia as the protector of Assad.
Russian intervention in Syria will make the war deadlier and heighten the refugee crisis spreading across the region into Europe and beyond. Although they have carried out some precision airstrikes against rebel headquarters, Russian forces have made a greater use of unguided ammunitions, including cluster bombs designed to wreak havoc over vast swaths of territory. As scores of these fail to explode, they will continue to kill civilians who will accidentally set them off years after the end of Russian operations. Russian attacks are not more discriminate than Assad’s, but they are far more powerful. Consequently, they have provoked new displacements of populations in regions whose inhabitants were already used to intensive shelling and bombing, such as the northern countryside of Hama province. [Continue reading…]
Haunting images from the Syrian crisis tell only half the story
Susie Linfield writes: In early September, Nilüfer Demir’s photographs of Aylan Kurdi, the drowned Kurdish-Syrian three-year-old boy who washed up on a Turkish beach in his family’s desperate attempt to escape the Syrian war, appeared on the front pages of major newspapers throughout the world. The photographs immediately ricocheted across the globe, became instant icons, and inspired an outpouring of outrage, empathy, urgency, and shame. The Guardian‘s headline — “Shocking Images of Drowned Syrian Boy Show Tragic Plight of Refugees” — was echoed by countless others. (The photographs also inspired a somewhat pointless social-media debate about whether they injured young Aylan’s dignity — apparently forgetting that it was Assad, Hezbollah, ISIS, et. al. who had done that.)
This image-inspired concern may be too glib and the resulting donations to humanitarian organizations short-lived; it’s easy to disparage all this as the self-congratulatory pity that the comfortable feel for the afflicted. Such disparagement has a respectable intellectual lineage. The political philosopher Judith Shklar regarded pity as an essentially negative reaction that can even be “mean-spirited,” while French philosopher and human-rights activist Pascal Bruckner argues that it encompasses “sadism” and “an ostentatious pleasure…derived from the pain of others.” I am deeply sympathetic to their critique. And yet the Syrian war also illuminates, with brutal clarity, what a world without pity looks like. In this case, I am inclined to think that a bit of pity — a desire by onlookers, however superficial, to alleviate even a modicum of suffering — is a good thing. [Continue reading…]
Netanyahu provokes uproar in Israel by linking Palestinians to Holocaust
The Associated Press reports: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sparked an uproar in Israel on Wednesday for suggesting that a World War II-era Palestinian leader convinced the Nazis to adopt their Final Solution to exterminate 6 million Jews.
Holocaust experts and survivors slammed Netanyahu’s comments as historically inaccurate and serving the interests of Holocaust deniers by lessening the responsibility of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Critics also said the statement amounts to incitement against modern-day Palestinians in the midst of a wave of violent unrest and high tensions.
Speaking to a group of Jewish leaders Tuesday, Netanyahu tried to use a historical anecdote to illustrate his claim that Palestinian incitement surrounding Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site goes back decades. He has repeatedly claimed that a wave of Palestinian attacks in recent weeks is the result of decades of hatred, and not connected to Israel’s 48-year occupation of lands claimed by the Palestinians, as the Palestinians have claimed.
Netanyahu said the World War II-era grand mufti of Jerusalem, Nazi sympathizer Haj Amin al-Husseini, also instigated Palestinian attacks on Jews over lies that they planned to destroy the Temple Mount, known to Muslims at the Noble Sanctuary.
Netanyahu said al-Husseini played a “central role in fomenting the final solution” by trying to convince Hitler to destroy the Jews during a November 1941 meeting in Berlin.
“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews,” Netanyahu told the group. “And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’ ‘So what should I do with them?’ he asked. He said, ‘Burn them.’”
Details of the meeting between al-Husseini and Hitler are sketchy. The Nazis released a grainy propaganda video showing the mufti making a Nazi salute before a warm handshake. The official record from the meeting says Hitler pledged “the annihilation of Jewry living in Arab space.”
While the Nazis’ official endorsement of the Final Solution came months after the meeting, historians note that the Nazis’ mass killing of Jews was already well underway.
Several concentration camps were up and running, and Hitler had previously repeatedly declared his lethal intentions for the Jews. If anything, they said it was the Nazis who were trying to use al-Husseini for their own propaganda interests and that Hitler didn’t need any outside inspiration. When Hitler did consider deporting Jews, it was in the context of sending them to countries like Ukraine and Lithuania where they would face persecution or death. [Continue reading…]
Iraq: How Iranian-backed militias have become stronger than the government
Reuters reports: The Shi’ite militias, which dominate most frontlines, say they support the government and pose no threat to Iraq’s minority Sunni sect. The Popular Mobilisation Committee, or Hashid Shaabi, as the militias are collectively known, belongs “to the Iraqi government,” said Naim al-Aboudi, a spokesman for the Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia. “The Hashid doesn’t represent a sect. It represents all Iraqis.”
But the militias make no secret of their independence from Baghdad. Militia leader Amiri warned in a televised interview last month that if the Shi’ite groups did not approve of U.S. military operations in Iraq, “We can go to Abadi and the government and … pressure them: ‘Either you will do this, or we will do that.’” Amiri did not specify what action his group would take.
A senior Iraqi government official close to the prime minister said the militias operate independently. He said their objectives only sometimes align with Abadi’s: They concentrate on defending areas that are strategically important for their sect.
“If they are not paid by the prime minister,” this official said, “they can do what they want.” [Continue reading…]
Russian-led offensive in Syria triggers new wave of refugees fleeing to Turkey
VOA reports: Turkish officials say 50,000 refugees have left the Syrian city of Aleppo and are heading to the border, but it remains unclear whether they will be allowed to enter Turkey after a hazardous journey dodging airstrikes and negotiating checkpoints manned by disparate rebel militias, including al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria.
For months now border gates have been officially closed to new refugees, and those fleeing are forced to pay smugglers to enter illegally – sometimes using tunnels to escape the killing fields.
The rich can bribe border-gate guards — the going rate is $700 per person — the poor may get across after paying smugglers $50 to $100 per person to sneak past Turkish border guards patrolling farm-fields and olive-tree orchards adjacent to the border.
Russian airstrikes and a Syrian army ground offensive mainly in the countryside to the south and east of the city of Aleppo have triggered the surge in Syrians heading for the border. Syria Turkmen Council President Abdurrahman Mustafa said he also estimates about 50,000 people have left the city and are picking their way down pot-holed roads, through checkpoints and past ruined villages to Turkey. [Continue reading…]
Assad goes to Moscow to thank Putin for bombing Syria
The Associated Press reports: President Bashar Assad has traveled to Moscow in his first known trip abroad since war broke out in Syria in 2011, meeting his strongest ally Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The two leaders stressed that military operations in Syria— in which Moscow is the latest and most powerful addition— must lead to a political process.
The surprise visit Tuesday reflects renewed confidence from the embattled Syrian president after Russia and Iran, another staunch ally, dramatically escalated their support recently as Moscow began carrying out airstrikes on Syrian insurgents and Tehran sent hundreds of ground forces.
A Syrian official confirmed Wednesday that Assad had returned to Damascus. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Putin said he had invited Assad, thanking him for “coming to Moscow despite a tragic situation in your country.”
Assad flashed wide smiles as he shook hands with Putin and other officials. “We thank you for standing by Syria’s territorial integrity and its independence,” Assad told Putin. [Continue reading…]
While in Moscow, Assad received tips on the opportunities Russia has to offer for former presidents in exile.
During the official visit of Assad, a lively and legitimate Yanukovych, spoke about advantages of living in Russia pic.twitter.com/36kQjyYt8n
— ИванИванычИванов (@inaninanich2) October 21, 2015
One in three people killed by Russian airstrikes in Syria are civilians
Adam Chandler writes: Exactly three weeks after Russia decided to launch airstrikes in Syria, the country’s campaign has already been criticized for hitting non-ISIS targets, its violations of Turkish airspace, and allowing its planes to fly too close to American ones, as well as a misfiring of cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea that mistakenly landed in Iran.
On Tuesday, some light was shed on the civilian toll of Russia’s bombing campaign. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 370 people have been killed by Russian warplanes since September 30. Of that number, 34 percent have been civilians—127 people, including 36 children and 34 women.
When held against one assessment of the airstrikes by the American-led coalition, which started in September 2014, the Russian numbers come more clearly into view. Back in June, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights noted that of 3,000 people who had been killed by coalition airstrikes in Syria, 162 were civilians. (At the time, the British-based monitoring organization “re-expressed its strong condemnation” of the United States and its international partners.) [Continue reading…]
Three Russians killed in Syria: pro-government source
Reuters reports: At least three Russians fighting alongside Syrian government forces were killed and several more wounded when a shell hit their position in the coastal province of Latakia, a senior pro-government military source said on Tuesday.
If confirmed, the deaths which occurred on Monday night would be the first known incidence of Russians being killed in Syria since Moscow began air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad on September 30.
RIA news agency quoted the Russian embassy in Damascus as saying it had no information about the reported deaths. Syrian officials could not be reached for comment. [Continue reading…]