Independent and free at last!

There is, of course, no reason on earth why one should expect as a matter of principle to be able to read a newspaper without paying for it. So it's curious to note the strength of the irritation felt when the Indie's comment pages vanished behind a subscription wall. It wasn't so much the money - for a fiver you could have a day's access to the lot, archives and all. But somehow you just felt they shouldn't be encouraged. Well, I did, anyway.

So does the fall of the subscription wall feel like Christmas come early? Up to a point. The down side, of course, is that there is now a wider audience for pieces like this, in which the assassination of yet another Lebanese politician by Syrian spooks becomes a peg on which to hang an attack on... Israel and America, as if I needed to tell you. Pierre Gemayel: 'Another casualty of the Syrian-Israeli war'. Caught in the crossfire, you see, almost as if they got together and killed him jointly. Six of one and half a dozen of the other. The symmetry is perhaps slightly spoilt by the absence of attacks on Syria by Israeli-armed Lebanese forces committed to wiping the country off the map. But let's not nitpick.

And that's before we get started on the one and only accept-no-substitutes Fisk himself. I really haven't the heart to tackle him just now.

Let me instead remind you what the very best thing about free access to the Indie is: the magnificent, magisterial prose of Howard Jacobson. He doesn't just do Israel and anti-Semitism, naturally. He is the universal scourge of the fools, prigs, zealots, fashion victims and philistines of our age. Read him, for instance, on Richard Dawkins' rewrite of the Seventh Commandment.

But when he does turn to the contemporary Jew Question, a.k.a. Anti-Zionism... I don't think anyone else - notwithstanding honourable mentions for Melanie Phillips, David Aaronovitch and Jonathan Freedland - was more instrumental for me in crystallizing a vague unease into a conviction that the deafening silence of Gentile left/liberals must be broken. Hence this blog.

By way of a sample, here he is in July 2002, training his guns on Mona Baker after her remarks accusing Israel of 'some kind of Holocaust'. It would be nice to believe that the inanity of this sentiment had become more shockingly obvious over the last four years, but I fear that, at least for the average reader of the Independent, quite the opposite is true.

Whilst here he takes on fellow columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown:-

'The standard line all parties have tried to take is that it isn't anti-Semitic to criticise Israel. Nor is it. Nor should it be. Enough Jews criticise Israel, both within it and without. We look a little silly, though, we Jews of the new hard-skinned variety, being careful not to cry wolf – of course it isn't anti-Semitism, of course it isn't! – when substantial numbers of Muslims think otherwise. And not just in the mosques. In schools all over the Arab world anti-Semitic literature, some of it of Nazi origin, is required reading. Click on to the Radio Islam website and you will find that fraudulent exposé of Jewish world-domination, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which Egyptian television, too, has recently disinterred for the behoof of I do not know how many gullible viewers. But one would be too many.

'Thus have we adopted an ingenious quid pro quo of race relations: you don't like Jews, but we don't like saying you don't like Jews, therefore you do like Jews.'

- and again the passage of three and a half years has done nothing to diminish the urgent relevance of his words.

Finally here he is writing in August this year on the synergy between Western Islamists and Western media:-

'Myself, I think it is easy to show that they can get confirmation of their fantasies at far less expense from the front pages of our newspapers. If we are searching for a source of poisonous anti-western propaganda we need look no further than ourselves. It is we who peddle that "hegemonic single-narrative" which, for the politically naive and inflammable, explains history.

'There is hysteria abroad. That no experts on the psychology of extremism are putting their minds to this hysteria can only be explained by their not noticing it is there. And that is because it looks perfectly normal now to talk of Bush and Blair as though they are Stalin and Pol Pot. Iraq is no longer a tragic blunder, or even a cynical and selfish manipulation of truth; let any embryo terrorist see it as a wilful attempt to eviscerate Iraq of its Muslim population and there is nobody to tell him he is wrong. Afghanistan, as we narrate it, is going the same way.

'As for Israel and Lebanon, a new arrival from Mars would never guess that the conflict had causes which are at least open to conflicting interpretations. The front pages of our national newspapers depict sadism for the sake of it. Photographs show dead children. Reporters describe the slaughter of innocents as though their deaths were not only intentional but the sole purpose of the war. No context, no history, no intractable complexities. Just another story of obliteration to confirm the obliteration mindset of barely adult bombers who discern in us nothing but the same monster of solipsism that consumes them.'

(read it all)

Lebanon latest

Remember how stable and democratic Lebanon was before the wicked Israelis trampled on its sovereignty?

Cluster bombs

'Still, I cannot find a way of justifying Israel's widespread use of cluster bombs, especially in the final days of the war.'

- writes Gene of Harry's Place, who is no Israel-basher. I read this shortly after being challenged by Mrs Cyrus to post on this topic. So, very simply: I agree with this and with everything else in Gene's post. Defending Israel against unfair criticism does not entail denying that any criticism is ever justified.

Christians: Israel didn't finish the job

An Australian newspaper report offers a corrective to the claim (often made, one suspects, by people who really want it to be true) that the Israelis have succeeded in turning everyone in Lebanon into Hezbollah supporters. (via Stephen Pollard)

Three letters to the Guardian

'All democratically elected governments have both the right and the obligation to defend its citizens. At least one-third of Israel's citizens have lived in bomb shelters for more than three weeks and face the threat of indiscriminate rocket attack from Hizbullah. Many Israelis have died as a result of these attacks.

'Actions that may be justifiable, may not always be wise. We ask the government of Israel and the IDF to ensure that, in pursuit of the right to defend Israelis, the loss of innocent lives is truly kept to a minimum so there will be no repetition of the Qana disaster.

'We also urge the application of as much fervour and intensity to finding a diplomatic solution to the Lebanese crisis, if not even more so, as is being applied in the pursuit of a military one.'

- from Peace Now-UK's letter to the Guardian. Spot on. Compare and contrast with the preceding letter, with its revoltingly hypocritical victim pornography. Recall that the writers apparently had no problem with 'We are Hizbollah' placards being waved on the 'peace' march which they organized. 'We are Hizbollah' = 'We like to murder Jewish children'. It's not only Jews who agree with the writer of the third letter who are 'clear and very angry'.

Christian Aid and its strange bedfellows

Writing my last post, I had 31 July and 1 August in my head, and what came out was 31 August. One of those early warning signs of approaching senility, I expect. So anyway, normal service is resumed earlier than advertised.

I must say that I return to my topic with a heavy heart. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs, the death and destruction on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border is appalling (as, of course, it is in other conflicts of infinitely less interest to the media). There's fine writing at the usual locations on my blogroll: notably from Norman Geras, Harry's Place, Mick Hartley, Melanie Phillips and Stephen Pollard. Shuggy supports the charge that Israel's actions are disproportionate without giving any quarter to the Hezbollah apologists. Even if I don't wholly agree with him, it's a lucid and brave post. Engage, meanwhile, is keeping tabs on the global anti-Semitic backlash.

So there's plenty to read without my adding my contribution. A longer and more philosophical post is in the pipeline. For now, a word on Christian Aid.

CA have joined forces with other NGOs to demand an immediate ceasefire, i.e. for Hezbollah to hang on to both its illegally acquired hostages and its illegal apparatus of terror. That's not just my interpretation. An open letter to Tony Blair makes rather explicit the concern that Hezbollah should not lose the war it started:-

'The present policy looks in danger of placing the UK Government in the uncomfortable position of only calling for a ceasefire once one side in the conflict has achieved its military objectives.'

I don't imagine that it looks particularly uncomfortable viewed from Haifa.

It's curious that a 'call for an immediate ceasfire by all warring parties in the Middle East' makes no mention of Iraq - part of the Middle East, if my atlas is to be believed - where, of course, the insurgents have deliberately murdered not hundreds but many thousands of innocent civilians (and, yes, some of the occupying forces have done their bit too). Is the prospect of the insurgency being forestalled in achieving its military objectives perhaps rather less comforting than is the case where Israel is concerned?

CA's co-signatories include War On Want, once headed by George Galloway and still apparently dancing as much to the gorgeous one's political tune as their charitable status will allow (matches on 'Darfur' on WOW website: 1; matches on 'Palestine': 148). Also, remarkably, the Muslim Council of Britain. This 'moderate' outfit's equivocal (to put it kindly) line on terrorist attacks on Israel is by now notorious. Their website is currently headlining a statement by Salma Yaqoob who, when not busy on the MCB's Central Working Committee, is a leading light in Respect and thus committed to uncritical support for the Hezbollah 'resistance'. She is, I believe, tipped to succeed Respect's current leader (yes, him again), who has gone a step or two beyond uncritical:-

'I glorify the Hizbollah national resistance movement, and I glorify the leader of Hizbollah, Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah'

Can you imagine CA issuing a joint statement with a Jewish organization which had comparably extreme connections?

One other thought. Responding to a call from the Pope, the monks whose hospitality I was enjoying prayed for peace in the Middle East every day last week - and rightly so. They did not (at least not when I was around) pray for peace in Darfur, Kashmir, Chechnya, Sri Lanka or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I'm not for one moment suggesting any form of bad faith or prejudice on their part. The point is the media's power to shape our perception of reality, from which even their, dare I say cloistered, world is not exempt. Is Lebanon far and away the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today? Of course - for every reporter or cameraman in Darfur there are dozens, probably hundreds, covering Lebanon. I am on TV, therefore I am... As Hezbollah understand very well.

Don't mention the H-word

Of course it gets a lot worse than Rowan Williams. Like the World Alliance of Reformed Churches issuing a statement on Lebanon which doesn't mention Hezbollah at all.

The Archbishop speaks

In writing my last post I didn't particularly have the Archbishop of Canterbury in mind, but the statement he issued yesterday turns out to be a good example of what I was complaining about: the cheap occupation of the moral high ground without confronting the moral issues.

The fact that the conflict began with an unprovoked attack by one side on the other is apparently of no significance to the Archbishop at all. The basic moral questions are dodged. Does Israel have the right to defend itself? Is that right circumscribed by the imperative never to risk killing civilians? If so, does it meaningfully exist at all?

Critics of a different persuasion would doubtless object that he has dodged the issue of proportionality, and I think they would have a point too. If he would first say clearly that the Hezbollah attack was indefensible and that Israel has right on its side in seeking to remove a serious threat to its security (and ultimately its existence), he would then be fully entitled to express concern about the way the exercise of that right is working out in practice. But nothing rises above the easy platitude of 'six of one, half a dozen of the other'.

There's one passage in the Archbishop's meassage that particularly bothers me:-

'I offer you every support in your efforts to bring it to an end and allow Lebanon to be, once again, a living message of co-existence and solidarity between different religious communities.'

A living message of what? This about a society in which an organization committed to wiping out the Jewish state not only has seats in the government but is permitted to maintain a private army, equipped with missiles to fire at Israel courtesy of a state headed by a Holocaust denier.

And what about the place of Lebanese Jews in that 'living message'? Lebanon had an estimated 20,000 Jews in 1948. Now there are a handful of old ladies. One of the final nails in the coffin of the Jewish community was the kidnapping and murder of prominent Jews in the 1980s by... Hezbollah. (source here)

Of course Lebanon has suffered an appalling setback in the past few days, but the Archbishop's view of what came before is absurdly rose-tinted. To have earned his encomium, the country would need to have summoned up the will to confront Hezbollah. To offer it regardless to a nation in which anti-Semitic violence is institutionalized is insensitive, to say the least.

The pattern has become familiar to me. On Holocaust Memorial Day Dr Williams says all the right things. But then he turns to his big project of Christian-Muslim dialogue, and they seem to get forgotten. On the one hand he is happy to help the project on its way by liberal application of the airbrush to Islamic realities. And on the other hand Jews become invisible except when they are tiresomely getting in the way. I just wish Dr Williams would spend a bit more time trying to put himself in Jewish shoes.

PS There's some good sense on the ethical issues here. And a good fisk of some nonsense from someone who should know better here.

The right of Israel to self-defence

'No socialist group in Britain is saying what needs to be said today about the crisis in the Middle East. All the groups on the organised Left are busy denouncing Israel for its "aggression" against Gaza and Lebanon. Many are expressing their solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples. None are saying that Israel needs and deserves the support of the Left.'

Substitute 'liberal Christian' and 'Church' for 'socialist' and 'Left', and Eric Lee's post becomes one which I would be very happy to have written myself (see also his follow-up response to critics).

This is the point that can't be made to often:-

'Now image what happens if Hamas and Hizbollah win. They over-run the Jewish state, slaughtering and expelling its several million Jewish inhabitants. They create a reactionary theocratic dictatorship along the lines of their benefactor, Iran. No one benefits -- not the Jews, not the Arabs. This a result that only fascists could applaud.

'Some socialists are pacifists and oppose all wars. But most of us understand that sometimes a country has to fight. And sometimes two peoples go to war against each other, and we have to take sides. We look at the reasons behind the fighting and more important -- we look at the consequences of victory for one side or the other.'

The Israeli state is responsible for the security of its citizens. To deny this is to deny its legitimacy - which even Christian Aid officially do not do. Its exercise of this responsibility involves confronting organizations which do indeed deny its legitimacy and consider themselves justified in attacking it at any time in pursuit of its ultimate destruction. The issue is not just the kidnapping of a few soldiers, it is the attitudes and goals which motivate such actions. There is no basis for compromise with somebody who denies your right to exist. Whilst all states bear the same responsibility for their citizens, very few, if any, have to exercise it in anything like the same circumstances.

In these uniquely difficult circumstances, an important component of the Israeli government's responsibility is the need for wisdom in determining when restraint is called for, precisely because it best furthers the Israeli people's security. As Eric Lee notes, and many prefer to ignore, a great deal of restraint has indeed been exercised, but perhaps it has not been enough. It is vital that there is a debate both inside and outside Israel as to whether the Olmert administration has in fact acted wisely.

However, there should be no place in this debate for attitudes which blur or invert the moral responsibility for civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon. In achieving clarity on this, the first step is to acknowledge that Israel really, truly has suffered aggression. Once we have accepted that, three basic views on what Israel is or should be doing about it are available to us:-

1. Israel can and therefore should defend itself in ways that carry no risk of inflicting civilian casualties.

2. Israel has the right to defend itself even at the risk of inflicting civilian casualties.

3. Israel has no right to defend itself.

There is no fourth option. An illusion of a fourth position can, however, readily be created by not quite committing yourself to one of the three. Position 2 implies that you are prepared, in principle, to endorse the military actions which Israel is carrying out as I write - not very comfortable. Position 3 means you accept everything that Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, al Qaida and co. would do to a defenceless Israel - only comfortable for those incapable of imagining something they haven't seen on TV. Given the threat to Israel from armed organizations operating out of civilian population centres, the empirical plausibility of position 1 is not obvious. But if you decide that, because it would be nice if it were true, you will behave as if you believed it, you have given yourself the luxury of permanently occupying the moral high ground without ever having to dirty your hands with the choice between positions 2 and 3. This is a stance which seems irresistible to a certain kind of Christian. But, to make the point absolutely clear, it is morally dishonest.

Imagining massacres

'One might have thought Israel would have learned enough from history to know collective punishment is rarely effective. That was the lesson of the Second World War, when German attempts to cow the Czechs by the mass execution of the inhabitants of Lidice, for example, had the opposite effect.'

So begins a leader in today's Independent. If you fancy paying a quid to read the whole of it, the best of British to you.

Israeli forces have, as I write, killed five 'militants' and attacked infrastructure, the latter causing considerable hardship to Palestinian civilians, among whom are children and adults who do not condone terrorist murders of Israeli civilians. The wisdom and humanity of these actions is open to question, however sorely provoked Israel has been.

But since there has been nothing remotely resembling a mass execution, what purpose does the Lidice reference serve, other than to subliminally reinforce the 'Israelis are Nazis' equation?

Or maybe to express the unconscious wish that Israel should present its critics with a really juicy massacre. I've not forgotten how uncritically the Independent relayed reports of a massacre of (at least) Lidice proportions at Jenin, or how grudgingly it conceded that it had been feeding its readers propagandist lies. The incident was one of the key experiences that eventually led me to create this blog. [The BBC was no better: the day after the UN confirmed that the '500 killed' claim was fantasy, it quoted a Palestinian gunman who repeated the claim, without feeling it necessary to contest it.]

Actually, the Middle East did experience a mass execution over the weekend. Where are the indignant editorials in the Indie and the Grauniad, where are the tear-jerking accounts of shattered families from the BBC? Nowhere, of course. Wrong kind of massacre.