Copyright B Purkayastha 2015
Saturday, 16 May 2015
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Gatekeeper: The Case of Uri Avnery
The internet is awash with propaganda.
I think we all know, actually, that the
internet is awash with propaganda, and those of us with two brain cells to rub
together have more or less got to the point where we can easily identify propaganda. And most propaganda
is pretty crude, so crude that it’s either preaching to the converted or – as
in the case of Supreme Warmonger Barack Hussein Obama’s constant, endless
stream of lies – no longer gives a damn whether it’s got anything to do with
facts or not.
But there’s another kind of propaganda
which is old, and insidious, and very, very effective, if you only know what to
look out for.
I’m talking about the gatekeepers.
Now, to understand what I mean by this term,
let’s go over the standard form of propaganda. I couldn’t do better than
repeat, say, the standard Hasbara line on Palestinians, for instance: “Palestine
never existed. It was a made-up country. Israel is the only democracy in the
Middle East, and the land it occupies was given it by divine decree. When it
bombs and massacres the (nonexistent) Palestinians in Gaza, it’s only
exercising its right to self defence.”
I think I’ve more or less presented the
usual Zionist line of propaganda, haven’t I?
Of course, this type of lying is not just
an insult to the reader’s intelligence, it’s not conducive to gaining new
converts to one’s side. All it does is attempt to stonewall criticism, and not
successfully at that. In order to achieve real propaganda success, you need to
be much cleverer than that.
That’s where the gatekeepers come in.
This is what the gatekeeper does: instead
of presenting his side as the embodiment of light and truth, which can do no
wrong, he readily admits faults and mistakes. In fact, he stridently joins in
criticism of his side, and indeed exposes “embarrassing facts” which one would
otherwise probably not get to know. But in all this barrage of criticism, it’s
easy to miss the two most important things he does:
First, all
the criticism is directed into safe channels, away from anything that
really matters. For instance, a gatekeeper can call his king a drunkard and
womaniser who cheats at cards and takes a cut of all government contracts. All
of this will probably be perfectly valid and correct criticism, but he will
carefully omit the fact that the same king is getting ready to tax the poorest
of the poor, invade a neighbouring country, enslave the population, and sell
off all the resources to his cronies.
Secondly, he will carefully and insidiously promote the agenda while allegedly
opposing it. For example, in the instance I just mentioned, he’ll go on at
length exposing the king’s philandering and cheating. But when it comes to taxing
the poor, he’ll say how the government lacks funds owing to the fact that the
nobility hoards its money, and the slums are horrible, not fit for humans to
inhabit. So in order to turn them into places humans can inhabit, finances have
to be arranged somehow, and for that – since the poor can’t be left to live in
such squalor, it would be inhuman – they should be allowed to contribute for their own betterment. And as for the
neighbouring country, it’s ruled by a cruel tyrant who abuses his people, and a
better regime there would mean strong bonds of friendship between the two
peoples. So while an imperialist invasion of that nation would be unthinkable,
a humanitarian war would make things so much better that it’s not only thinkable, it’s the only reasonable
thing to do.
I’m now going to provide for you the
perfect example of a gatekeeper, and show you how the technique works.
Those of us who are familiar with the affairs
of the Zionist entity will probably have come across the name of the "peace activist" Uri Avnery.
Now well over ninety years of age, Avnery (born Helmut Ostermann) is one of the
very few original Zionists still alive, and was a self-confessed Irgun member –
one of those who, in his own words, hid
weapons in synagogues and hospitals[1], committed terrorist
acts, and was responsible for forcing the Palestinians from their homes.
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At first sight, in fact, Avnery is a great
source of information about the Zionist entity, one of those sources who can be
readily cited to demolish the Hasbara hordes. From his writing, one can learn,
for example, that the Founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, actually despised the Jews and held views which
were frankly anti-Semitic[2]. One can also learn from his writings
that the Zionist enterprise was always totally racist in origin, and that the
aim was to set up a “villa in the jungle”, a “wall of civilisation against
Asiatic barbarism”[3]; that Binyamin Netanyahu is a corrupt
demagogue overcompensating for a cold childhood family atmosphere with a domineering
father[4,5]; and that the current state of Israel is a racist[6]
theocracy[7] married to
militarism[2,8]. All quite true, and all excellent antiHasbara
ammunition, and at first sight one could be forgiven for imagining that Avnery
was one of the good guys.
But that’s only at first sight. A little
deeper reading of Avnery, and one discovers these interesting nuggets:
One of Avnery’s repeated demands is that
the Palestinians be given a state of their own. Good, right? Only if you ignore
the subtext, which is his equally repeated mantra that the Palestinians be
given a state of their own because peoples
of different ethnicities cannot possibly coexist in the same nation. No, I’m
not making this up – he really said that, over and over. I’m sure this will
come as news to multiethnic nations across the planet, from India to Indonesia,
from Nigeria to China, from South Africa to Surinam. And in the establishment
of this two-state solution, he advocates the exchange of territories between
the two sides, so that Zionist settlements in most of the West Bank would be
left in “Israel” while the Palestinian state would be compensated by parts of “Israeli”
territory.
As I said in an article I wrote about the
two-state solution[9] :
If these settlements are not withdrawn back into the
Zionist entity, they will remain a permanent knife in the heart of the
Palestinian state. They already occupy the best water sources, the best arable
land, and sit astride natural communication routes...(i)t would also turn the
Palestinian state into a Bantustan, with no way to sustain itself economically,
with its people entirely dependent on handouts from abroad and remittances from
those who migrate to work in the Zionist Entity and to Jordan. In other words,
it will be a gigantic labour camp, no more... giving the Palestinians a
separate state will only embolden the Zionist ultra-right who want the Arabs
cleansed from the Holy Land of Eretz Israel. They have a country of their own,
these people will argue – why should they be allowed to remain in the homeland,
breathing Jewish air?
Can anyone explain
exactly how Avnery’s stance, in its actual effects, varies from that of the
right wing religious-military establishment he allegedly opposes with all his
heart and soul? Either way, you get a Zionistan purged of its Arab population,
and in possession of all the best parts of the territory of the former
Palestine, don’t you?
Avnery isn’t
actually particularly subtle about his enduring commitment to the Zionist
project. His fear is that a unitary state would no longer be a Zionist one
because, of course, the Jewish part of the population – whether religious or
otherwise – would be a minority in a sea of Arab-speakers. That would be the
end of Zionistan, and Avnery is committed to preventing that.
To this end he is
perfectly able to bend his energies to fighting the illegal West Bank
settlements[10,11], whose products he supports boycotting (but not, let’s be clear about this, the
products of the so-called state of Israel itself). The settlements, to his line
of thinking, are a massive, huge, enormous liability – they focus unwelcome
attention to the continuing racist fascist imperialism of Zionistan, and
thereby make it more likely that there will be at some point action against all the Zionist entity – not just
against the settlements. So, from his gatekeeper PoV, it’s much safer to direct
criticism to the settlements, not the core “homeland”.
That extends to Gaza
as well, where – though he allows that the (evil) settlers were responsible for
the chain of events that triggered the war:
The war itself is an act of terror. Neither side has
a strategy other than terrorizing (sic) the civilian population of the other side.
The Palestinian fighting organizations (sic)
in Gaza try to impose their will by launching rockets at Israeli towns and
villages, hoping that this will break the morale of the population and compel
it to end the blockade that turns the Gaza Strip into an "open-air
prison".[12]
So it’s not the
(simple and provable) fact that HAMAS and other Palestinian resistance factions
were fighting Zionist bombing, which started first, after years of enduring continuous
blockade and aggression without retaliation[13].
They were trying to “break the morale” of the (Zionist) population as part of
an “act of terror”.
Not that his
efforts are confined to the domestic scene and the settlements.
Internationally, Avnery’s stance is extremely interesting – so much so that if
there was any doubt about his gatekeeping, his own pronouncements dispel them
like the morning mist.
Therefore, about
the vicious war waged by Obama’s cannibal headhunters against the people of
Syria, Avnery had this to say in March 2012[14]:
IF I were to follow the call of my heart, I would appeal to
our government to send the Israeli army into Syria, drive the Assad gang from
Damascus, turn the country over to the Syrian opposition or the UN, and go home.That
wouldn’t even be very difficult. Damascus is just a few dozen kilometers
(sic) from the positions of the
Israeli army on the Golan Heights.The Syrian army is busy fighting
against their own people. If they turn around to fight against us, the
insurgents would sweep into Damascus and finish the job themselves. Either
way, the monster would be gone...No major forces are needed in Syria.
Egyptian and Turkish troops, in combination with the Free Syrian Army, should
be sufficient...Bashar is no lion. He is more like a hyena - an animal
called in Yiddish “the laughing beast”.
Again, in August
2012[15]:
There seems to be a kind of
leftist monsterphilia around. The same people who embraced Slobodan Milošević,
Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Qaddafi now embrace Bashar al-Assad, again loudly
protesting against American imperialist designs against this public benefactor…the
character and actions of Bashar, following those of his father, leave nothing
to doubt. He is a monster butchering his people, and must be removed as quickly
as possible, preferably under UN leadership. If that is impossible, owing to
the Russian and Chinese veto – why, for God’s sake?! – then the Syrian rebels
must be supported as much as possible.
I’m sure the tens
of thousands murdered by Obama’s “Free Syrian Army” cannibals and their
jihadist headhunter comrades would appreciate Avnery’s views on that.
Of course, Avnery
had no problem with the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi in Libya either – an overthrow
based on the lie that he was “planning a massacre” in Benghazi. Over Libya, in
fact, his gatekeeping went so overt that he actually accused the opponents of
the imperialist Amerikastani, Brutish and NATO vassal aggression against that
country of being “colonialists”[16]. And:
GADDAFI’S
DEMISE puts an end to the debate that started months ago. There can be no doubt
any more that the vast majority of the Libyan people detested Gaddafi and
welcomed the NATO campaign that helped to remove him. It was an important
contribution, but the actual heavy fighting was done by the ragtag people’s
army. Libya liberated itself. Even in Tripoli, it was the people who put an end
to the tyranny.I was sharply attacked by some well-meaning European leftists
for blessing the awful monster called NATO. Now, in retrospect, it is quite
obvious that the overwhelming – if not unanimous – opinion of the Libyans
themselves welcomed the intervention.[3]
You won’t be
surprised to know that Avnery’s silence over Libya is now no less than
deafening.
Then there is
Iran. To appearances, Avnery is a friend of rapprochement with Iran[17],
and he has predicted many times (an argument that I agree with) that there will
never be a Zionistani aggression against Iran because of the latter’s immense
geographical positional advantage, being able to easily close off the Straits
of Hormuz. But at the same time, Avnery increasingly celebrates the increasing de facto alliance between “Israel” and
Arab countries[17].
What is this
alliance all about? Allegedly, it opposes the threat posed by ISIS – the same
ISIS which has never, ever, attacked either the Zionists or those Arab “allies”,
but which aggressively opposes both the pro-Iran government of Iraq and the
Iranian-allied government of Syria. The same “alliance” openly arms and trains
Obama’s jihadist cannibal headhunters in camps in Turkey and Jordan, while the
Zionists equally openly offer them sanctuary and hospital treatment in Occupied
Golan[18,19]. And the same “alliance” is bombing the people of Yemen
to fragments, allegedly to repulse the Houthis – the same Houthis who are the
only force in Yemen who are Shia (and therefore “pro-Iran”) and who are fighting al Qaeda
and ISIS[20].
And this is
supposed to be a peace activist.
I could go on at
further length about Avnery, but there’s a limit to how much I can tolerate the stomach-churning
disgust he inspires in me. One could see this article[16] for
further information.
Ironically, Avnery
himself suggested once that the word “Zionism” could be used as the last refuge
of a scoundrel[21]. Perhaps he would admit the irony.
But I don’t think
so.
Sources:
Copyright B Purkayastha 2015
Monday, 11 May 2015
Attack of the Ten-Ton Jellyfish From Outer Space Which Lost Its Way While Looking to Invade the (Cats Fighting In A Hailstorm) People
Jack and
Jill went up the hill to the Well, dragging along the bucket, and bickering all
the way.
“I’m sick and tired of going to the Well,”
Jill moaned. “All those drunks hanging around leering at me make me
uncomfortable.”
“Well, you don’t have to look at them,”
Jack snapped. “And if we don’t go get him his bucket of ale, he’ll take the
strap to us...again.”
“Wish we could do something about him,”
Jill said. “I wish mum had never married him.”
“Well, she did, and what can we do about
it?” Jack argued. “Run away?”
“That’s no good. Mum would be left all
alone and...”
“Look,” Jack interrupted, “there’s that
Jack Horner, with a pie as usual. I can’t stand him.”
“Yes, him and his plummy accent,” Jill
agreed, momentarily forgetting her grievance. “If I have to hear one more of
his smug, self-congratulatory declarations of what a good boy he is,
I’ll...I’ll...”
Muttering balefully, she followed her
brother the long way round behind the wood so they wouldn’t have to pass Jack
Horner, who had sat down under a tree and was digging into his pie.
Unfortunately, this brought them close to little Miss Muffet, who saw them and
immediately stopped stuffing her face with curds and whey to begin shrieking
theatrically.
“What are you screaming about?” Jill asked, clapping her free hand over one
ear. “We haven’t done anything to you.”
“It’s the spider,” Miss Muffet quit
screaming long enough to explain. “The damn spider just scared me again.”
“Where’s the spider, then?” Jack looked
around. “I don’t see the spider.”
“Oh. Um.” Little Miss Muffet blushed
suddenly. “She’s on leave today. I forgot.”
“Let’s go, Jack,” Jill said. “Let’s not
waste time on this flake.”
“Who’re you calling a flake?” Miss Muffet
responded belligerently. “I’ll have you know that I’m a bona fide tourist
attraction. I’ll have my own show, Tuffet Talks, on TV while you two are still
going to the pub for ale every day for that drunken old sot of yours.”
Jill considered replying to this, but she
couldn’t really think of a way to counter the contention that their stepfather
was a “drunken old sot,” so she went on without a further word. They passed
Humpty Dumpty, who was putting down mattresses before climbing on to his wall,
and he didn’t even deign to glare at them as he usually did.
“So,” Jill said, returning to her theme, “I
wish we could stop him from sending us up to the Well every day, to get his
ale.”
“How could we do that? At least try not to
fall down this time. I don’t want my crown broken again.”
“Then you shouldn’t wear the silly thing.
It makes you look stupid anyway. Not even princes
wear crowns these days, and you –”
“And if I don’t wear it, we wouldn’t fall,
is that what you’re saying?” Jack turned angrily to his sister. “Look, even if
a ten-ton alien jellyfish from outer space came down here right now it wouldn’t
stop you from being the clumsiest girl this side of Little Bo Peep. You –“
There was a soft, immensely heavy thump
behind them, exactly as might be made by a ten-ton alien jellyfish from outer
space landing on the hill. They were both almost knocked out of their shoes,
and dropped the bucket. Fortunately, since they hadn’t been up to the Well yet,
it was empty.
The creature behind them wasn’t quite a jellyfish. It was an immense,
trembling, translucent mass of something that might have been jelly or might
have been something else. It looked as though someone had taken the slime
produced by ten million billion snails and put it all together. Ten short limbs
poked out of it at various angles, and from somewhere deep inside a pair of
huge violet eyes regarded Jack and Jill doubtfully.
“Excuse me,” the thing said. It had a very
nice voice, rather like Mistress Mary’s when she was in a good mood. “Is
this...I mean to say, are you...” It made a noise like c. “You don’t look like
them, though. But I suppose you must be.”
“Uh...” Jack said, when he’d somewhat
recovered the power of speech. “No, we aren’t – that noise you made. We’re a
boy and a girl.”
“And this is Earth,” Jill, who was a little
quicker on the uptake, added.
“Oh
dear, oh dear,” the thing sighed. “We were supposed to be invading” (it made a
noise like a hyena laughing at an angry pig) “but I lost my way. As usual. I’m
always getting lost, and the others will have to launch the invasion without
me. Whatever shall I do?”
“Find your way to wherever it is,” Jack
said promptly.
“If only it were that easy,” the thing
sighed, quivering all over. “You say this is Earth? I’m afraid I have not the
faintest idea where that is, you see.”
“Oh,” Jill said. “So you can’t go there
because you’re so lost that you don’t know where you are and you don’t know
where to go.”
“That’s it exactly,” the thing said eagerly.
“You see the problem.”
“Sort of,” Jack responded. “But why do you
want to invade the whatever you called them?”
“I’m a ten-ton space jelly,” the thing
said. “What else can a ten-ton space jelly do except invade some planet or
other? It’s expected of us.”
“Can’t you do something else instead?”
The thing attempted a shrug and almost
rolled off downhill. “I don’t know, I never thought of it.” It paused a moment.
“My name,” it offered, “is Rose Petal Plum. And you are?”
“Rose Petal Plum?” Jack repeated
incredulously. “Rose Petal Plum?”
“Why shouldn’t its name be Rose Petal Plum?”
Jill snapped, kicking Jack on the ankle. “I’m Jill,” she told the thing. “And
this is Jack. Please excuse his lack of manners. It’s the stupid crown he’s
wearing.”
“The crown,” the thing repeated. “Of
course. It makes sense now.”
“Does it?” Jack and Jill exchanged glances.
“Er...” Jack ventured, “why would the crown have anything to do with it?”
“Except for sucking out his brains, it
doesn’t do anything,” Jill said. “So I don’t follow –”
“You see,” the jelly said, “the (cats and
hailstorm) look a lot like crowns. So I must have accidentally homed in on your
crown instead.”
“So what can you do now?” Jack asked. “I
don’t suppose that helps you get back to where you came from, does it?”
“No,” Rose Petal Plum admitted sadly. “If
only I could find my way back home, though, I’d be all right.”
“How would you find your way home?” Jill
wondered. “Is it far?”
“It must be,” the jelly agreed. “But there
are gateways, and all I need is to find a gateway. But how can I do that up on
this mountain?”
“What do these gateways look like?”
“There are many sorts,” the jelly said. “It
could be a hole in time and space, or a bump in the fabric of reality, or
something quite simple, like, oh, a volcano, or a well...”
“A well,” Jack and Jill said together. “Did
you say a well?”
“Why, yes. But where would one find a well
up here on this mountain, and, moreover, one lage enough for me, I don’t know –“
“We can take you to a well,” Jill told it. “At
least,” she amended, “it’s called a Well. But if we do...”
“Yes?” the jelly asked. “Whatever you say,
I’ll do it. Just get me home.”
“All you have to do,” Jill told it, “is to
promise never to invade us.”
“Or to invade anybody,” Jack added. “Find some other way to pass the time.”
“Take up collecting, I don’t know,
asteroids or something.”
“And if you go anywhere, go as tourists.”
“Yes, I’ll do that,” Rose Petal Plum said. “I’m
not really cut out for this invading thing anyway. I keep getting lost.”
“Well then, Rose Petal Plum,” Jill told it,
“let’s get you to the Well.”
***********************************
“I’m glad that’s over,” Jack
said, as he and Jill carried the bucket down the slope.
“How’s it over?” Jill asked, shifting her
grip on the pail handle. “He’s not
going to be happy we didn’t get his ale, just water.”
“He can’t do anything about it,” Jack
argued. “It’s not our fault that when Rose Petal Plum jumped on to the Well it
disappeared under the ground and became a real well.”
“He can come up and see for himself if he doesn’t
believe us,” Jill said. “Jack?”
“Mmm?” Jack was looking across the slope,
towards where Polly Flinders was gathering firewood for the night so she could
sit warming her pretty little toes by the cinders. “What?”
“Look out, or you’ll...”
It was too late. Jack’s foot caught on a
root, and he went head over heels. Jill, pulled off balance, went tumbling
right after.
“Ooh,” Jack said, picking himself up and
rubbing his head.
“Ouch,” Jill agreed, rubbing her head. “Now
we’ve fallen down again. And dropped the water too.”
“It’s worse than that,” Jack said gloomily.
“Worse? How could it be worse?”
“Look,” Jack said, holding something up. “Just
look!”
It was his crown. He’d broken it.
Again.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2015
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