Sisters and power

Some light exchanges from the previous Zenpolitics posting has me reflecting on the varying motivations of women in political life.

As intimated, geneticist Steve Jones has already documented the gathering 'redundancy' facing the male of the species, an outlook which, alongside the apparent soaring of girls' academic performance over boys', suggests a gloomy prognosis for the male power-seeker.

Ergo, for all of us other over-inflated male egos. Ah, well, if any other woman tells me I'm useless, I can always just blame it on evolution.

But while the 'glass ceiling' for women in politics may have been 'shattered', the recent record and current prospects of a female-led politics of humanity is despairingly bleak.

With Hillary Clinton promising to re-cast the US of Amnesia as a more caring, sharing land for the forgotten poor, we can be reasonably sure that, as with her spouse's past promises, any 'new female deal' won't be at the expense of the private health insurance companies or the corporate beneficiaries of America's war economy.

Ascendancy to the Oval Office carries hopes for many of a new politics in the making. But, of whose making? Beyond the symbolic novelty of the White House's first lady not to be just the First Lady, are we persuaded by the suggestion that "change" means anything other than a moderated version of corporate-ordered 'democracy'? Are we really to believe, beyond the glaring fascinations of our slavish media, that this 'sister' is remotely intent on changing anything?

Whether elected or not, Clinton's political rise has been assumed as a defining statement of 'woman power'. It's part of the same bourgeois conceit that 'career fulfilment' and 'market success' represent the pinnacle of female liberation.

In fact, while more women are, thankfully, making greater headway in public and political life, the unthankful truth for the vast majority of women is a lifetime of service-sector wage slavery as well as all the perennial bonds of domestic 'duty'. In short, most women are worse-off in the great gender re-division of labour with all its promised liberations and remunerations.

Maggie and the clones

And, here in Britannia modernica, we have our former dear leaderene to thank for much of that. It's a cruel irony that Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in actually setting women back so much.

Thatcher infamously asserted that there is "no such thing as society". Need we recall the brutalisation of the society she presided over?

Actually, yes, for it reminds us very starkly that the present generation of defeated youngsters and the brutalised locales they inhabit owes much to the inhuman philosophy of selfish individualism she idealised. And if that's not a central issue for how we advance a more caring (female?) politics, I don't know what is.

While many, male and female, from all classes, recorded their outright or sneaking admiration for this 'game woman in a man's world', the neoliberal policies Thatcher enacted were laying the blueprint not just for the destruction of whole communities but for the Blairite development of that amoral project, with all the widening inequalities we see today.

It's notable that one of the first Downing Street guests of the man responsible for mass crimes in Iraq was none other than the Iron Lady. Blair, no doubt, wanted his own 'Falklands legacy'. Perhaps Iraq was the Thatcherite realisation of his 'female side'.

In desperate need of a politics that cares about how to redress such social breakdown, we see nothing but vacuity in the current crop of female notables. From Harriet Harman, Jacqui Smith, Wendy Alexander and other New Labour she-clones to erstwhile Thatcherites lke Ann Widdecombe, the female parliamentariat has failed to offer the first inkling of how a compassionate politics might be constituted.

Wedded to power

We need, of course, little reminding that men have been responsible for the vast proportion of wars, genocides and atrocities in this world. Yet, we are all, male and female, capable of being co-opted and corrupted by power. Lynndie England, who eagerly participated in the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, is a frightening case in point.

I've witnessed female Israeli soldiers and border officers act as if they took their cues from the Gestapo handbook. From the standard uniform to the power suits and dresses of high political office, a disturbing transformation seems to takes place when men or women secure even a modicum of authority.

And, on the big political stage, that usually coincides with a basic adherence to dominant interests. Again, Hillary might represent for many, men and women, that longing, liberal hope of a 'more feeling' 'female America'. But, of course, like Obama, she wouldn't even be in the running if she harboured the slightest threat to corporate America and the Wall Street mandarins who really run the country.

As the ever-cogent Pilger puts it:

"That the leading Democratic candidates are a woman and a black man is of supreme irrelevance; the fanatical Condoleezza Rice is both female and black. Look into the murky world behind Hillary Clinton and you find the likes of Monsanto, a company that produced Agent Orange, the war chemical that continues to destroy Vietnam. One of Barack Obama’s chief whisperers is Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan, which spawned jihadism, al-Qaeda and 9/11."

Clinton has always proclaimed an independent spirit, showing her 'I'm no Tammy Wynette' fortitude during the Lewinsky saga. But where was her (and America's) indignant hurt or human outrage over Bill's order to drop Cruise missiles on an aspirin factory in Sudan on the spurious pretext that it was procuring weapons? More appallingly, where was her (or America's) shame over the president's direct part in the sanctions policy that, by all official UN accounts, saw the deaths of at least half a million Iraqi children? Like Cherie with Tony, Hillary has 'stood by her man' in basic denial of her partner's crimes against humanity.

Recall, also, that it fell to another female Clintonite, Madeleine Albright, to state the immortal words when asked by CBS reporter Lesley Stahl if the deaths through sanctions of half a million Iraqi children was a price worth paying. Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it." Despite later expressing regrets over the utterance, she remains convinced of the case for the sanctions that caused those deaths.

Female icons

Among the now-expanding list of female prime ministers and presidents, iconic political women have nurtured the hopes and devotional support of third world nations. But, few were radically concerned with replacing their internal systems of privilege. Indira and Sonia Gandhi's National Congress may have defended a secular politics for India, but it spawned and continued a party nepotism more concerned with political security and pandering to Western capitalism than addressing the country's vast caste and class inequalities.

More 'romantically', Eva Peron advanced female suffrage and welfare gains for the poor in Argentina. But Peronism was always a cult conservative politics of top-down 'reform' with neo-fascist leanings, not a movement to revolutionise the society.

Indonesia's Megawati Sukarnoputri, likewise, lived-off her father's reputation rather than challenge the ruthless IMF neoliberalism that has ravaged her country.

The recently-assassinated Benazir Bhutto maintained a loyal populist following. But she also presided over a corrupt and venal regime, paying the ultimate price in the latest contest to become Washington's favoured proxy over Musharaff.

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir - who held the "Iron Lady" epithet long before Thatcher - is a more fearsome example of the emboldened female blind to the injustices of the system she lovingly upheld. Here's how Meir neatly rationalised the ethnic cleansing of Palestine:

"There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? ... It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist."

From the "they did not exist" 'logic', it was an easy step for Meir to the corollary that Israel could not return what it had appropriated:

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."

"Arab sovereignty in Jerusalem just cannot be. This city will not be divided—not half and half, not 60-40, not 75-25, nothing."

A denial of existence typifying the zero-sum bluntness we see today over Israel's 'final status' demands.

Like Mrs T, Meir wasn't just being 'a female in a man's world'. Both, like their male peers, were knowing and willing players in a politics of naked aggression, greed and self-preservation - in sum, a politics of inhumanity.

This week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stood at a joint press conference with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert reaffirming her unwavering support for Israel. One might, of course, recognise the sensitive implications of such a 'special alliance'. But why should that preclude Merkel from condemning the state of Israel for persecuting the Palestinians? Where, in short, is Merkel's concern for the ongoing victims of the Holocaust?

Adherence to neoliberal orthodoxy is, likewise, consistent across the spectrum of female leaders. From the disastrous privatisation policies of Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark in New Zealand to Merkel's welfare cuts and right-wing economics in Germany, there's been no serious deviation from the standard text.

Sisters in strength

And yet, and yet.

I reserve this deep inclination that a 'female politics' can be a force for radical change. Indeed, I'd go further and suggest that it won't happen without that female lead.

For most politicians, male and female, the prime motivation is a desire for office, not a commitment to liberation politics or humanitarian policies. There are, of course, honourable exceptions, as in the brave political leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma.

But it's actually away from the public glare that we see a true female politics in action. In contrast to Clinton's money-driven electioneering, women are taking an emerging role in real political life through NGOs and grassroots organisations, building, albeit incrementally, the kind of lasting communal projects that don't depend on party machines and neoliberal relations.

This is apparent in those parts of the impoverished world the media rarely see fit to mention. For example, the Grameen microcredit Bank in Bangladesh was founded very specifically on the allocation of loans and control to women.

In Venezuela, women are at the heart of the Bolivarian revolution to bring real participatory democracy to the barrios.

Peace movements are also being driven by female influences. At Faslane and other nuclear bases there's a much higher proportion of women demonstrating and being arrested in opposition to Britain's WMD.

While none of this necessarily excludes men, it does suggest a female understanding of power more attuned to the root causes of oppression.

The international network Women in Black, for example, view war and injustice as particular expressions of male power. Founded in defence of Palestinian rights, WiB:

"have a feminist understanding: that male violence against women in domestic life and in the community, in times of peace and in times of war, are interrelated. Violence is used as a means of controlling women. In some regions, men who share this analysis support and help WiB, and WiB are supporting men who refuse to fight. Women-only peace activism does not suggest that women, any more than men, are ‘natural born peace-makers’. But women often inhabit different cultures from men, and are disproportionately involved in caring work. We know what justice and oppression mean, because we experience them as women. Most women have a different experience of war from that of most men. All women in war fear rape. Women are the majority of refugees. A feminist view sees masculine cultures as specially prone to violence, and so feminist women tend to have a particular perspective on security and something unique to say about war."

Unlike Hillary and the mainstream, there's been no shortage of notable radical women throughout history, from Rosa Luxemburg to Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein, articulating a politics of serious change, the kind of change which requires a proven political understanding and concern for how people suffer through brute force and corporate life.

Challenges to that hegemony are particularly evident in the political actions of women running anti-nuclear protests, Palestinian human rights groups, stop-the-war campaigns and multiple other actions concerned with the preservation, rather than elimination, of life. Beyond the adulatory politics around Condi and Hillary, this form of female action at least has the merit of caring about whether people live or die in Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine.

Most men, I suspect, will never really understand the deep and, I would venture, more advanced, 'mindset' of women. I gave up a long time ago, happy just to ponder and appreciate the enigma. But beyond the special intuitions and sometimes (with a nod to Kipling) 'deadly wiles' that seemingly drive the female of the species, female liberation of the political, economic and social kind is a process that requires unity of, not a battle between, the sexes.

Sisters and brothers together.

John

Demystifying the Palestinian issue

Resolving the Palestinian issue? It's as simple as one, two, three.

Well, relatively simple when we strip-away Israeli rhetoric and look clearly at the key legalities of the situation.

Israel cynically portrays the issues as being deeply complex, part of its long game of evading international criticism while trying to break the Palestinians. Alongside the perpetuated myths of 'Palestinian intransigence' that followed Oslo, Olmert and his predecessors have sought to foster the notion of fiendishly difficult peace details bogging-down negotiations, requiring some kind of Olympian effort on their part to resolve it.

Not so, according to the esteemed US academic Norman Finkelstein. In contrast to many of the seriously intractable conflicts around the world, potential resolution of this one, he believes, is strikingly straightforward. Indeed, it's remarkable "how uncomplicated it is".

In his recent lecture at LSE, Finkelstein stressed this central fact: that all the key legal arguments over Palestinian rights have already been adjudicated in their favour by the International Court of Justice, or World Court. These, of course, stand alongside the multiple UN resolutions clearly condemning Israel's Occupation and aggressions.

Finkelstein is particularly keen to emphasise the significance of the ICJ ruling (9 July 2004). And with good reason, when we look closely not just at the ruling, but in how it was interpreted. In its deliberations over the "separation" wall, the Court had to consider not just the wall itself, but the core legalities surrounding the case. On three central points, which coincide with the three main "final status" issues, it found Israel to be in gross violation of international accords, which view as illegal the appropriation of land through aggression. As Finkelstein outlines, Israel was deemed to have acted illegally with regard to the 1967 borders, the West Bank settlements and annexation of East Jerusalem.

The UN Charter holds clear that it is "inadmissable to acquire territory by war", rendering Israel's 1967 land seizure, including East Jerusalem, illegal. Article 49 of the Geneva Convention, likewise, renders all Israeli settlements contrary to international law. All these violations clearly informed the actual ruling on the wall.

Following judicial application of these three legal points, the court came down in favour of the Palestinians, declaring, 14-1, that the wall is unlawful and should be dismantled, with appropriate compensation paid to those whose land has been encroached upon. As Finkelstein reiterates: "There is no ambiguity whatsoever" about the rulings. "The highest judicial court in the world has resolved these issues."

The right of return for Palestinian refugees has also been made specific by UN declarations. However, Finkelstein also notes that while remaining a legitimate negotiating point, there is ample room for conciliation, involving compensation for those dispossessed, a point consistently intimated by the Palestinians themselves.

Thus, on all the crucial issues, there is clear evidence of a linear formula to resolve the conflict. So, when people say the Palestinian issue is complex, long-standing and intractable, it's worth remembering Finkelstein's assertion that once we demystify the politics, it's actually very straightforward.

If Israel complies with international law and standing judgments over borders, settlements and East Jerusalem, there will be an end of the Occupation. The Occupied Palestinian Territories - the official UN-designated title of this land - will become a viable state. In time, with a fair settlement of the refugee issue and appropriate efforts to rebuild the devastated Palestinian economy, people across this land could, with reasonable expectation, begin to live in peace.

Clear refusal

The relative simplicity of the outstanding issues here, however, highlights the zero-sum game Israel is playing in refusing to comply with international law, thus fostering ongoing conflict across the Middle East and beyond.

Israel, in short, is simply unwilling to give up what it has stolen. And neither, it seems, is Washington ready or willing to exert the necessary pressure on its favoured-client state to enforce a change of mind. Yet, while much of this can be attributed to the influential Israeli Lobby in the US, it doesn't follow that the US is simply beholden to Israel.

As Finkelstein argues (contra Mearsheimer and Walt), the Israeli Lobby may be powerful and share core goals with the neoconservatives - as in their common belligerent intentions towards Iran - but immediate US interests, rather than Israeli ones, will always have primacy in determining policy in the region. Any incoming US administration will, likewise, maintain support for Israel on that basis.

Yet, the terms of that support may be subject to change where the Occupation becomes an increasing liability for US interests, regional and domestic. In the latter regard, Finkelstein cites recent studies showing that support for Israel is diminishing among American Jews, the mainstay of its foreign political support. Identification with Israel among American Jews is waning, particularly within the younger demographic who don't share the same affinity as previous generations. Jews in the US are also, in general, liberal by inclination. And they're seeing more clearly, and with increasing embarrassment, the gross illegality and injustice taking place 'in their names'.

The situation is also unravelling from within the Israeli state. This week's report from the Winograd Commission, criticising Olmert's 'failed war' on Lebanon in 2006 (no mention, of course, of Israel's actual war crimes here), illustrates how the Israeli elite are now turning-in on themselves, seeking scapegoats and struggling to maintain the notion of Zionist invincibility.

Factor in Hamas's bravura blasting of the Egyptian-Gaza border defences, and we see a state increasingly struggling to comprehend and deal with its political and diplomatic weaknesses.

In sum, Israel's apartheid policies are approaching a state of hegemonic crisis. There's a growing awareness, domestic and foreign, of its oppressions and military limitations. And, as shown, it doesn't have a legal leg to stand on within the major international courts and assemblies. Beyond the confident posturing, these are all worrying concerns for the Israeli establishment.

In the final Q&A section of the lecture, Finkelstein takes-up the 'one-or-two-state' issue, arguing that the former only detracts from what is realistically achievable. He is also "agnostic" on the question of boycotting Israeli academia, supporting it in principle if shown to be having an impact, yet reticent about allowing Israel the space to shout about "academic freedom" rather than face the central issues.

Yet, beyond these tactical differences, the main issues and tasks remain clearly evident.

It's abundantly clear what has to be done by Israel to reach a just settlement. Its depressingly clear that it has no intention of pursuing one. Yet, it's reassuringly clear that, with all the key legal arguments on their side, the Palestinian case is gaining ground. It's also clear, for Finkelstein, that justice for the Palestinians must involve individual and collective mobilisation akin to the pressure brought to bear on apartheid South Africa.

As Finkelstein says, there's no need to mystify the conflict or complicate the practical actions needed to resolve it. "It's not rocket science". It's simple, really.

John

Music matters

Ah, the joys of the blogosphere where, despite the troubles of the big round, one can always take a mood-moment to muse and meander in a little off-the-wallness, sometimes in flighty epiphany or keyboard frippery, sometimes on the wave of a poetic note or, in this case, musical whimsy.

For all those who stood up and were counted
For all those for whom money was no motive
For all those for whom music was a message
I want to thank you for making me
A little more sure
A little more wise
And courageous

So goes the wonderful opening lyrics to Music Matters, by Faithless.

I'm kind of lost in the ethereal beauty of this piece, featuring Cass Fox's soaring, sensuous vocals, alongside Maxi Jazz's dub-rap poetry which runs through the second pumped-up section like a grooving incantation.

It sits smilingly in my head as one of the tracks that accompany a body balance class I partake in, a little oasis of good feeling and peaceful meditation, caringly overseen by our talented instructor. Why are the 'simple' things in life always the most rewarding?

Cultivating physical and emotional harmony is something of an artful endeavour. And music matters as spiritual stimuli to those vibrant feelings and the pursuit of balanced contentment. It can also charge our cerebral impulses and well-being, potentially encouraging, in turn, our capacity for human empathy.

We are what we hear.
We are what we say.
We are what we read.
We are what we feel.

So, if we feel and hold hate and anger within, we become hate and anger personified, with all the consequential negatives that suggests.

In a recent docu-film of Faithless performing in Moscow alongside a Russian orchestra, Maxi sagely observes that, by the same logic, if we "feel amazing", we must "be amazing". I rather like that little zen-type coda.

Those quintessential Faithless lyrics and haunting beats track a darker furrow of human existence in Bombs:

We think we're heroes, we think we're kings
We plan all kinds of fabulous things
Oh look how great we have become

One bomb, the whole block gone
Can't find me children and dust covers the sun
Everywhere is noise, panic and confusion
But to some another fun day in Babylon
I'm gonna bury my wife and dig up my gun
My life is done so now
I got to kill someone

So much heaven, so much hell
So much love, so much pain
So much more than I thought this world could ever contain
So much war, so much soul
Moments lost, moments go
So much more than I thought this world could ever hold

The words and video images here register a chilling message of how tenderly human life clings-on amid the spectacle of war and violence; how terrifyingly invasive power and brute force can be when it bursts into our lives.

More often, it's 'their' lives at stake, the lives of 'others' in 'foreign' places, whose suffering through war and occupation 'our' politicians prefer us not to think too hard about. And the calculated indifference of 'our' political, military and corporate elite reminds us of the stark uselessness of hate, anger and greed, the usual motivations for mercenary taking of life through war.

The primary reference in Bombs is to the wanton Western crime being perpetrated in Iraq. But it serves as a wider allusion to violent behaviour in general and how we need - contra the warmongers and their delusional accomplices - to act in a spirit of true human consideration.

Bombs is a challenging love song, no-less, with its sumptuous, soulful voices urging a politics of care and compassion. It's notable that MTV refused to air the video to this track, with its juxtaposed scenes of happy family life and elite-sponsored war.

This is a music that faithfully engages such matters. A music for all those for whom money, profit and violence is "no motive". A music for mind, body and soul. A music for those trying to keep a little faith in our common ability to care.

Hey, so much for the 'escapist' muse....

Anyway, check out these great live renditions of Bombs and Music Matters.

Peace and love.

John

Israel's friendly network

As we approach the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, with the West Bank demoralised and Gaza subject to a feudal-like siege, there's an historical continuity to how the Palestinians' plight is being willfully ignored by the 'international community' and a servile media.

Gaza has been bombed again today, bringing this week's murder count to 37 civilians. But, it's treated as a sideshow by politicians and media in the West, with no serious effort to call Israel to account for its despicable actions.

In 1948, Western governments also stood idly-by while David Ben-Gurion's Zionist forces systematically murdered a population, forcing no less than eighty-five per cent of Palestinians to flee their towns and villages as refugees. (1)

The savage truth of this barbarous programme has been brilliantly documented by the Jewish historian Ilan Pappe in his latest book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Two recent lectures given by Pappe at Oxford provide additional verbal testimony on how that ethnic cleansing unfolded:

Pappe notes here how Palestinians who tried to raise awareness of the disaster at the time were treated as liars and propagandists. Instead, a contrived Israeli narrative became accepted in the West, promoting, among other distortions, the peculiar notion that the Palestinians had 'voluntarily' left their own homes to make way for supporting Arab armies. No serious questioning of such a claim came from the British state or its 'critical' media. Indeed, this fictional narrative remains largely unchallenged even today.

60 years on, the same complicit denial can be seen in the West's failure to highlight and denounce the starvation siege of Gaza. As in 1948, the bearers of uncomfortable truths about Zionist crimes are being marginalised or ignored. Predictably, mainstream Western reaction has been to portray the US/EU-backed sanctions policy as a 'reactive' punishing of Hamas 'terrorism'.

There's a similar indifference towards Israel's de facto 'transfer' policy, an ongoing ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Israel which most Western governments and media seem to regard as a 'practical state solution' to an 'internal civil problem'. Israeli and other Jews opposing these kind of apartheid policies are treated, more particularly, as 'self-haters' prepared to compromise Israel's national 'security'.

In Pappe's case, this comes with added vilification from within the Israeli establishment. But the demonisation of Pappe as a traitorous recalcitrant cannot be so-easily defended by his accusers. Unlike the shunning of those who told the world about the ethnic cleansing in 1948, Pappe has a wider and more informed global audience. And his message about the present Occupation comes with this vital and uncomfortable truth: that in order to understand the current apartheid and transfer policies of the Israeli state, one has to recognise its roots in the formative ethnic cleansing.

Pappe's book is more than a piece of 'revisionist history'. It's a forensic documentation of systematic killing and expulsions. Indeed, Pappe has 'borrowed' the considered legal and moral definitions of ethnic cleansing employed by the US State Department to show how they fit like a "hand to a glove" in the case of Palestine. (2) Except, of course, that the State Department singularly refrains from including Palestine on its actual list of ethnically-cleansed people.

As Israel celebrates six decades of its founding, it must live with the dark truth of how it murdered and cleansed so many human beings in order to make that state possible. And it must live with how it did so just three years after the discovered horrors of six million Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust.

In his talks, Pappe acknowledges that the early 19th century Zionist movement contained honourable elements intent on sheltering and saving the Jewish people from European persecution. He also notes how the Holocaust gave new impetus to the Zionist project's selection of Palestine as a homeland. But, with that fateful choice came ideological presumptions about a Jewish ethnic state and ruthless decisions about how to effect it.

Friend or foe

That Zionist agenda has been consistently denounced by Orthodox Neturei Karta Jews. Following one of this week's IDF operations in Gaza, in which 20 Palestinians were killed, a spokesman for the religious grouping said:

"We are appalled by the terrorist massacre performed by the Zionists in Gaza. This ferocious act is just one in a long line of oppressive acts of ethnic cleansing performed against the Palestinian people since 1948 by the evil Zionist movement".

The statement goes on:

"The anti-Zionist Jews denounce the violent, bloodthirsty actions made in the name of the Jewish people and the Jewish religion...We fail to understand why the world powers allow the Zionists to commit such crimes against the Palestinian people, by using F-16 warplanes, battleships and tanks...When will the world finally control the Zionists and give the Palestinians in historic Palestine their rights back?"

This is a savage indictment from 'within'. As Jews for Justice in Palestine also assert, Israel does not speak for many Jews appalled at what Olmert and his predecessors have done 'in their names'.

Despite all this condemnation, internal and external, the ethnic purging of Palestine is still widely rationalised within Israel as an exercise in necessary survival. There's also the related charge of 'anti-Semitism' commonly levelled at those questioning this Zionist logic - an argument which has been ably exposed by Chomsky and significant others. A further aspect of the Zionist-exploited discourse is the defensive deceit that one is either a friend or foe of Israel as it struggles to fend-off Hamas and the 'Muslim menace'.

The main articulation of this comes from the Jewish lobby in the US (AIPAC et al), who work assiduously to maintain the 'good reputation' of Israel as a country 'threatened on all sides'. The US-sided version of the lobby encapsulates elite interests across the political establishment (liberal and conservative), corporate sector and the nascent Christian-Zionist alliance, a 'defensive offensive' giving Bush and his cabal a cover role as 'peace-maker friends' seeking 'fair resolutions' to the conflict.

But, the 'friendship network' is also underpinned by an assertive Israeli lobby here in Britain, perhaps most decisively by Labour Friends of Israel, a grouping of parliamentary notables, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and elite business-connected donors like Lord Sainsbury and the controversial David Abrahams.

A Labour advert in the Jewish Chronicle notes that:

"Since 1997 a record 57 Labour MPs have visited Israel, mostly with Labour Friends of Israel, swelling the number of MPS willing to ensure balance on the Middle East in the House of Commons. More Labour MPs have visited Israel than from any other party."

A less 'respectable', but significant, part of that network is also engaged in more subversive activity against academic and media critics of Israel, as in the attempt to smear the campaigning journalist Jonathan Cook.

Concerned at growing international awareness of its crimes, the recently-appointed Israeli Ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, has adopted a more campaigning role, seeking-out 'unfriendly' university venues and any other available public platforms to proselytise his 'firm-but-friendly' Zionism.

Israel's friendship network extends, likewise, across a large swath of media and cultural life, the Daily Mail's Melanie Phillips being, perhaps, the most notable, and virulent, journalist speaking in Zionism's intellectual defence.

But she's far from alone in serving to popularise Israel's 'good-standing' and special friendship with Washington. The Mail's City Editor, Alex Brummer, also lauded Bush as "a true friend of Israel" during his recent trip to the region, a sentiment based on the zero-sum logic that anyone protecting Israel's gains, even those acquired through land theft and murderous ethnic cleansing, must be worth applauding.

Of course, Brummer clearly sees, like those who oppose his self-serving views, that Bush and Blair can, indeed, be relied upon to act as dependable, last-resort friends of Israel as it seeks a 'peace deal' that secures everything it has stolen from the Palestinians.

With similar intent to courting MPs, senior British journalists and editors are being taken on all-expenses PR trips to Israel, ensuring that Tel Aviv's 'side' of things is being 'fairly aired':

"A UK-based pro-Israel lobby will bring a delegation of senior journalists from major media outlets to Israel on Sunday. Fourteen editors and senior journalists will visit for six days - including senior editorial staff from the Times, Independent and Sun newspapers and broadcasters from the BBC and Sky News, in a trip organized by the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) to show them events from Israel's point of view. Many of the journalists have written on the Middle East for years, but are visiting Israel for the first time. All play a large part in determining the editorial policy at their respective organizations."

Meanwhile, the true victims of this prolonged injustice are still being, effectively, airbrushed from serious view. The typical media response to this week's killing and ethnic cleansing in Gaza is one of 'unfortunate escalation' as Israel 'retaliates' against Hamas 'militants'. The symmetry of words from journalists and politicians is despairingly obvious.

In that vein, here's a copy of the letter I've sent to Charles Ramsden, Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee on Standards in Public Life, in response to a heartfelt appeal for just recognition of the crisis in Gaza:

Mr Charles Ramsden
Secretary to the Committee
Committee on Standards in Public Life
35 Great Smith Street
London SW1P 3BQ
email: public@standards.x.gsi.gov.uk


Dear Mr Ramsden,


As Secretary to the Standards Committee, you will, I hope, be alert to the formal and not-so-formal ways in which political lobbying helps shape government policy.

You will also, I trust, be fully aware of the illegality of Israel's Occupation of the Palestinian Territories, as defined under multiple UN resolutions. There is, in addition, the illegal construction of the 'security' wall, as judged by the International Court of Justice in 2004, and the daily abuses of Palestinian human rights, contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Geneva Convention.

As eminent figures like Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter have stated, the situation in the Occupied Territories is closely akin to the evil of apartheid South Africa. I have been to the West Bank in recent months (with fellow-members of Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign) and witnessed some of the daily suffering and humiliation of Palestinian civilians at the hands of Israeli forces.

With all those international statements and opinions well-documented, one is inclined to ask why the UK government has failed to act decisively against Israel? More immediately, why is it standing idly-by while a crisis siege in Gaza continues to inflict death and suffering on innocent people?

You may respond that these are Foreign Policy issues. However, at the heart of this lies a more particular question for the Standards Committee itself:

Has the lobbying influence of groups like Labour Friends of Israel helped limit proper Parliamentary scrutiny of these issues?

While perhaps not the immediate job of the Committee to recommend direct action against Israel (though, members can always still personally support the current call for boycott, divestment and sanctions) it is very much within its remit to ask probing questions about leading parliamentarians' political and social affiliations with Labour Friends of Israel and other such bodies and to what extent this is inhibiting due discussion of, and action on, the crisis in Gaza.

I'm most keen to hear your thoughts on whether the Seven Principles of Public Life, promoted by the Standards Committee, are being upheld in this case.

I look forward to your considered thoughts on the matter.

Best wishes,

John Hilley

Gentlemanly friendship

One can but speculate as to how far Friends of Israel 'reaches into' the Committee itself. Parliamentary Committees often like to 'demonstrate' their nominal 'autonomy' and prescribed powers of scrutiny, a usually delusional, if not always insincere, belief in serving members' desire to hold ministers and senior executives to account. In practice, this is just a very gentlemanly way of challenging without intent, a kind of 'probing inaction', which helps keep any criticism moderate, muted and safely distanced from the actual policy-forming process.

Whatever the reluctance of Parliament to act morally in opposing Israel's apartheid policies, there's a growing need to recognise how these friendship linkages are keeping Britain's Zionist connections safely intact, thus serving to maintain the UK's shameful part in the persecution of Gaza.

John

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1. Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p 179.
2. Pappe speeches at Oxford.

Great expectations - and utopian dreams

So, the 'festive' period is, thankfully, over.

It's all been said before, of course, about the season of 'merry' exhortation: the financial stresses and emotional strains of Christmas; an event supposed to be about religious, rather than commercial, deliverance.

I try to maintain a kind of 'convivial detachment' from it all - a more balanced 'participation' laced with rejection of the High Street madness. Maybe it's my low expectation of the event which makes it seem manageable.

My lovely wife and friend, whom I lost to cancer just over two Christmases ago, used to delight in the present-wrapping ritual around the tree. For her, it wasn't about crass consumerism, but the simple art of making others feel nice; that more human little act of giving and receiving we can all still partake in without resorting to craven materialism. A gift in itself, which she had in happy abundance.

In that life-affirming spirit, I note a pleasing number of more maternal expectations this coming year among family and friends. Maybe it's the greater appreciation of life one sometimes gains through personal loss, but I rather delight these days in news of imminent bambinos. I also recently learned of an old, lost friend who has just become a mum. And it lifted my heart to think of her happiness at the lovely event and of all her experiences of parenthood to come.

Sadly, safe and happy delivery are much less likely for expectant mums in places like Gaza and the West Bank, many having miscarried after being detained at checkpoints and refused timely medical attention. Things that are expected and taken-for-granted in the affluent West are never so certain for women living under oppressive occupation.

Yet, whatever the difficulty, there's something quite wonderful about the untainted arrival of innocent life and observation of infant development. I witness it in my own little grand-daughter as she surveys the world of a five-year-old, from the simplicities of painting happy flowers at her easel to the complexities of market life around her.

I also hear of other parental expectations seemingly sullied by disappointment and concerns over the behaviour of kids. Much of this is typical fare; all those little life 'crises' where parental anxieties and youthful delusions often collide in a kind of emotional explosion - usually without too much 'collateral' damage. An ongoing learning curve for all concerned. When all said and done, nothing, from my experience, at least, is a better lesson than experience itself.

And yet, what a challenging set of market-driven pressures and competitive social messages our kids have to negotiate these days. The pressure to 'excel' at school. The pressure to be an early-teenage 'adult'. The pressure to binge drink and do other narcotics in search of confidence, escape and kicks. The peer and media pressure to be attractive and desired. The pressures to attain economic 'status' and be 'successful', increasingly measured, for many, by the 'high-peak' of 'celebrity'. And, overarching it all, the pressure to 'realise' that most elusive of life goals: 'happiness' itself; a state of being increasingly conditional on 'securing' much of the above.

These kind of pressures have always been around in one form or another. But there's a deepening intensity to which people, and young people in particular, are feeling the harsh, stressful pressures of what Oliver James calls "Selfish Capitalism".

Of course, capitalism is, by its very 'logic', driven by selfish impulses. The market system prevails not just as a mechanism of competition and profit, but elimination and greed. Which is why even Adam Smith's notional "invisible hand" of 'market efficiency' has been appropriated by arch free-marketeers as the leitmotif of unrestrained capitalism.

Yet, while James rather-too-simply idealises those countries he sees as preserving a kind of "Unselfish Capitalism," he is correct in identifying Selfish Capitalism's (read, neoliberalism's) more corrosive effects on society. Selfish Capitalism, for James:

"stokes up relative materialism: unrealistic aspirations and the expectation that they can be fulfilled. It does so to stimulate consumerism in order to increase profits and promote short-term economic growth. Indeed, I maintain that high levels of mental illness are essential to Selfish Capitalism, because needy, miserable people make greedy consumers and can be more easily suckered into perfectionist, competitive workaholism."

From middle class insecurities to underclass despair, economic hope and expectation plays an obvious part in how able we are to lead relatively happy lives. Anyone who claims otherwise is negating the most standard evidence correlating poverty with poor health, mental illness and early mortality. But, as James also asserts, this is quite distinct from the delusional promise of material happiness and the 'failure' of individuals to realise it:

With overstimulated aspirations and expectations, the entrepreneurial fantasy society fosters the delusion that anyone can be Alan Sugar or Bill Gates, never mind that the actual likelihood of this occurring has diminished since the 1970s. A Briton turning 20 in 1978 was more likely than one doing so in 1990 to achieve upward mobility through education. Nonetheless, in the Big Brother/ It Could Be You society, great swaths of the population believe they can become rich and famous, and that it is highly desirable. This is most damaging of all - the ideology that material affluence is the key to fulfilment and open to anyone willing to work hard enough. If you don't succeed, there is only one person to blame - never mind that it couldn't be clearer that it's the system's fault, not yours." (Ibid)

Here, in stark, yet incisive, contrast, is how Matthieu Ricard seeks to understand happiness:

By happiness I mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it." (1)

Yet, all that can seem such an idealistic indulgence when we're busy negotiating the 'real' world of market-inspired living.

And hyperbolic marketing knows no limits in that process of expectant dreams. Thus, a housing development on the south side of Glasgow invites prospective buyers to come live in 'luxury' apartments built by Utopia. Maybe one of Thomas More's relatives will be the first to snap-up a set of penthouse keys.

Nothing, these days, is regarded as pristine or off-limits by developers and the politicians who follow them as market visionaries. To object is to be seen as some kind of time-warped recalcitrant, resistant to that most standard private sector expectation: that everyone, from governments to town councils, be 'open for business'.

This 'promise' of developmental nirvana can be seen in Donald Trump's current plans to build a billion dollar elite golf course and hotel complex on a protected beach area in Aberdeenshire. Overturning the regional department's legitimate planning refusal (with it's honourable vote-casting chairman sacked, in the process), the Scottish Government has "called-in" the Trump Corporation's application for 'closer inspection', claiming that it's potential economic 'benefits' are too large and important for it to be 'judged locally'. In short, big money talks - and it expects to be listened to.

In similar vein, take a close look behind the 'shimmering vista' the market seers have in mind for Penang.

This is the ideology of growth which automatically equates market opportunities with social and economic improvement. And it's propagated as the societal norm against which we're encouraged and expected to understand and pursue personal economic 'well-being', or, to borrow from our 'visionary' builders, 'Utopian happiness'.

The selling of branded lifestyle is, of course, the very stuff of corporate psychology. But the more predictable outcome is dystopian unhappiness, a state of mental delusion and disillusion, a constant cycle of expectation and dejection as we seek and fail to find that notional happy state.

For Ricard and other Buddhists, the principal reason for that despondency and disappointment lies in our conditioned inability to recognise, accept and embrace all emotions and life experiences:

"There exists a way of being that underlies and suffuses all emotional states, that embraces all the joys and sorrows that comes to us...The Sanskrit word for this state of being is sukha [which] manifests itself when we have freed ourselves of mental blindness and afflictive emotions." (2)

This, as Ricard reminds us, is the cultivation of an inner mindfulness that vastly surpasses ephemeral moments and passing pleasures:

"Genuine happiness - as opposed to contrived euphoria - endures through life's ups and downs." (3)

Ricard offers this useful Tibetan proverb to simplify the point:

"To know how to be satisfied is to hold a treasure in the palm of one's hand."(4)

Encouragingly, we are hearing kids talk in more informed and earnest ways these days about environmental calamity, the desperate problems of the third world and the West's crimes against humanity in places like Iraq. And it suggests very strongly that while we have become browbeaten and inured to the 'reality' of market relations at every level of our lives, we still retain the capacity to reject its delusional language and promises of happy deliverance.

Maybe 2008 will see a gathering expectation and relative realisation of peace, justice and inner contentment for more in our war-torn, greed-ridden world. Always, as they say, expect the 'unexpected'.

Happy new year to all.

John
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1. Matthieu Ricard, Happiness (2007: Atlantic Books), p 19.
2. Ibid, p 25.
3. Ibid, p 163.
4. Ibid, p 174.

Bethlehem blues

Aside from hopes of yuletide snow and Wii computer games - climate change and looming recession, notwithstanding - Christmas, for many western kids, is still somewhat synonymous with the Little Town of Bethlehem.

Well, it was for me. And, even as I grew older and shed those infant - and most of my religious - illusions, that charming little association held. Perhaps it was the pleasing memory of getting a part in the Nativity play at primary school - alright, so I was 'just' a shepherd, but carried the role, I thought, with a certain 'pastoral presence' - yes, another happy childhood - or, maybe still, adult -illusion.

How odd, this Christmas, to reflect on my recent visit to the Little Town, and for the now predominant association to be the monstrous Apartheid Wall surrounding it. Not Manger Square. Not even the intimate Church of the Nativity, with its special symbolism. Just that faceless expanse of concrete inhumanity. How the Israeli Occupation deprives us even of our childish reverie.

Indeed, most of my mental images of Bethlehem are now of jarring, oppressive things: the queues of humiliated Palestinians lined-up beneath the towering wall waiting to be processed; the brutal checkpoint installation with its panopticon surveillance; the anonymous poverty just a few minutes walk from Manger Square; the sight of a nearby Israeli settlement, all affluent, coy and self-contained while the besieged Palestinains struggle to maintain essential services.

Palestinian existence. A people walled-in, their history and landmarks stolen. A topography of hidden, shameful purges and cultural vandalism which, as Ilan Pappe reminds us, extends across this Zionist-cleansed land:

"All over Israel many new settlements and national parks have become part of the country's collective memory without any reference to the Palestinian villages that once stood there, even where there are vestiges, such as an isolated house or a mosque, which visibly attest to the fact that people used to live there as recently as 1948." (1)

And shamefully hidden, too, by Zionist historiography, the crushing truth of how that erasure of people and their ordinary, simple lives came about.

Pappe describes in vivid and forensic detail how Ben-Gurion's Consultancy - the inner cabal of Zionist elites - met, planned and approved their own version of a final solution for the mass removal and murder of the Palestinian population. With the British Mandate coming to a close, Hagana, Irgun and Stern Gang forces had already used multiple "retaliatory" pretexts for extinguishing Palestinian villages. And from the infamous Long Seminar (31 January 1948) came Ben-Gurion's "green light" and execution of a policy intended to "cause optimal damage and kill as many villagers as possible." (2).

Under Plan Dalet, villages like Deir Yassin witnessed the ruthless reality of the Consultancy's ethnic cleansing policy, as recounted here by Fahim Zaydan, a twelve year old Palestinian at the time, who saw his entire family murdered before his eyes:

"They took us out one after the other, shot an old man and when one of his daughters cried, she was shot too. Then they called my brother Muhammad, and shot him in front of us, and when my mother yelled, bending over him - carrying my little sister Hudra in her hands, still breastfeeding her - they shot her too." (3)

The pain of such experiences are written on every Palestinian face. And that daily pain goes on. In the ritual humiliation of the West Bank people. In the wicked Israeli and international starvation of Gaza, a siege the 'civilized' European Union has wilfully served to enforce while knowing all-too-well the extent of Israel's own terrorist agenda and extra-judicial murder of Palestinians.

Exiled Palestinians, the world over, are also marked by the ongoing catastrophe. At our Palestinian support stall, some ethnic Palestinians, their families now many-generational parts of the mass exclusion, cannot even bear to look at the piles of photos we keep of the West Bank. One fine man, whose family fled in '48, recently stood reflecting with us, his quiet, dignified eyes filling-up as we talked of our own time in the refugee camps, of the routine dehumanisation and how he and his family remain lost among that discarded diaspora.

Up the street, amid the festive shoppers, a Salvation Army band played Oh Little Town of Bethlehem. And it occurred to me that no amount of Western refuge, new-land 'belonging' or consumer 'well-being' can compensate for the loss of one's home and right of return to that homeland. And I understood how only the exiled can understand the psychology and pain of exile.

And, again, those lingering thoughts and images of Bethlehem. Of oppressive security towers and trapped people. Little Town. Enclosed and humbled. Dusty, sad streets. Ragged kids kicking around, their tiny frames and paltry lives dwarfed by the wall.

Yet, something else. Something very particular and much more redeeming, a somehow defining association of resistance and hope: the wonderful spirit and generosity of those people we met and spent our time with in the town's Azeh and Aida Refugee Camps. Of all those smiling children. Of all those parents struggling, quietly, valiantly, to raise and protect them. Of our resilient friends running the little projects helping to keep their hopes alive. And of a kind man and his family who took us into his and other homes in one of the camps, to witness and share, in happy empathy, a little part of their lives.

To them and all our other Palestinian friends this Eid-ul-Adha and Christmas, my own humblest expressions of thanks and love.

John

1. Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld: 2006), p 89.

2. Ibid, p 64.

3. Ibid, p 90.

Courting defiance: defending Aamer Anwar

Glasgow Sheriff Court (an apparent exchange)

Sheriff: Have you anything to say before sentencing?
Accused: As sure as God's my judge, your honour, I'm not guilty.
Sheriff: He's not, I am, you are, six months.

An amusing line, if I recall, from the fine film on Jimmy Boyle, A Sense of Freedom, no doubt typical of the many theatrical exchanges that have graced Scotland's courtrooms. Maybe the guy in the dock just needed a decent lawyer.

The Scottish judiciary have shown little hesitation over the years in locking-up the 'men of violence' - with little social regard for how such violence comes about. These days, they seem as efficient in curbing the freedoms of not only those who merely imagine acts of violence, but also their legal representatives.

An impressive campaign is presently underway to defend Glasgow-based human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar, who is facing a serious contempt of court action following post-trial comments he made on the conviction of his client Mohammed Atif Siddiqui. Jailed for eight years, Atif is the first person to be convicted in Scotland under the Terrorism Act 2006.

The severity of the sentence handed-down in this case is ready-evidence of how the Muslim community in the UK is being monitored and demonised. Atif was punished for accessing 'subversive' internet sites, illustrating the state's new understanding and application of 'thought control'. Now the establishment is going after those who defend those 'errant' surfers.

But the effort to silence Aamer has only heightened his political and legal profile. During a recent meeting (on Palestine and Resistance) at Glasgow University, Aamer recounted the time when, as a student there, he had his mouth kicked-in by police in nearby Ashton Lane after being chased for putting up campaign flyposters. When a bloodied Aamer asked one of the officers why they had resorted to such brutality, he replied: "That's what happens to black boys with big mouths".

As a fellow Glasgow student at the time, I recall the subsequent meeting, with Aamer, broken teeth in hand, declaring that he wouldn't be silenced. Aamer and campus others had organised a large occupation of the Principal's office (which, with limited persuasion, I found myself part of) in protest at the incoming abolition of student grants. The boot in Aamer's mouth was, no doubt, meant as a timely warning to this up-and-coming activist.

Sixteen years later, a more 'respectable' boot is being used to effect Aamer's 'compliance'. But, as with the cruder methods noted, the present efforts of the state have only served to embolden Aamer, while giving voice to an expansive network of support, now including leading lawyers, MPs and MSPs.

Listening to Aamer speak made me reflect on just how more focused those forces of compliance have become in seeking to punish the "black boys with big mouths" - or, "Muslims and others with legitimate political concerns", as we may more reasonably call them.

As ever, populist media demonology has played its dutiful part. The Daily Record, for example - Scotland's 'very own' exponent of homely, dumb-the-mind hubris - predictably had Aamer down as an "out of order" "firebrand lawyer" daring to question the tariff handed-down on this "wanabee suicide bomber".

This ugly branding of lawyers as 'friends of terrorists' is being conflated - again, through perverse media language - with the growing vilification of immigrants. The assaults on asylum seekers' rights is consistent with the government's push-and-shove determination to secure increased emergency powers of arrest and detention.

The ongoing Home Office persecution of Palestinian refugee and political activist Fatima Helow here in Glasgow is one such disturbing example of the 'asylum-seeker-terrorist-suspect' agenda. Fatima is currently living in a state of demeaning limbo after losing her leave-to-stay appeal. Witness to the brutal massacre at Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, Fatima has also seen a contentious judicial review of her case refused.

The attack on Aamer Anwar is an evident part of that same process: in this case, a denial of the right to speak on behalf of Atif and his family; a creeping erosion of the lawyer-client relationship.

This mood of state-judicial intolerance is apparent elsewhere, too. In Ireland, the government is trying to pass legislation making lawyers financially liable for the court costs of failed immigration cases undertaken, thus undermining the fundamental rights of non-nationals to legal representation.

These attacks are a new front in the climate of state-imposed fear, a way of warning human-rights-minded lawyers like Aamer Anwar to 'consider their careers' before 'opening their mouths'.

Meanwhile, as Aamer awaits a date for the contempt hearing, he has accepted a well-backed nomination to run for Rector of Glasgow University. A nice irony - and indication of a principled lawyer unlikely to keep his mouth shut.

John