Palestine Think Tank

WRITTEN BY IBRAHIM TURNER
Do we carry our prejudices with us wherever we go?

When I see Gaza being bombed or the settlers beating up old Palestinian women on their own land, I feel outraged.

When I see Israelis lamenting about the homemade rockets hitting their houses and a child loses a leg, I feel outraged, but do I harbour a suspicion that 'they had it coming?' Often on camera there are Palestinians who shout 'Why? What have we done to deserve this?' And conversely there are again on camera Israelis shouting, 'They are animals and should be exterminated!'

Now I do not wish to belittle the Palestinian suffering, after all the fourth (or is it the third?) most powerful army in the world against defenceless, for the most part, Palestinians seems like a no win situation for the Palestinians.

You can find credible articles all over the Internet about the connivance and deceit of the Israelis in negotiating for peace, building more settlements on Palestinian land while the talks go on. But all these details, if you will pardon my use of that word for horrific deaths and injuries, are mostly irrelevant.

What is really going on here?  Is every Israeli a Zionist settler wielding baseball bats at old ladies, chopping down the olive trees, serving in the IDF and humiliating pregnant Palestinian women at check points?

I've seen documentaries on Al Jazeera and short films on You Tube that say otherwise. One particularly revealing documentary some time ago was where the 'wall' was low, and had small spaces and there was a gas station owner and a man who made tea for businesses, as is common in the Middle East where I have had first hand experience – when you stop to look in a shop and browse, the owner quickly gets the local 'chaigee' to bring tea, so you stay longer and feel obliged to buy something.

Also in this film was an Israeli woman who spoke Arabic and English and conversed with the Palestinians and the Israeli soldiers who were turning a blind eye to the men, women and children climbing over and through the wall. The end of the documentary unfortunately saw the arrival of the big trucks with the 15 foot cement building blocks of the replacement wall, The gas station owner was already poor because of the original wall, laying off two workers, and the final wall meant he walked away from his business, because nobody could access it.

One of the soldiers who accompanied the new wall, and other Israeli taxi drivers had various things to say about it all, mostly regurgitated propaganda about Palestinians not wanting peace, but the fairest remark I heard was that both sides need to understand the position of the other.

The Palestinians are undoubtedly hard done by; the international press ignores or suppresses everything that goes on in the West Bank and Gaza. The refugees in other countries like Jordan and Lebanon are not in the news. The only time I've heard the refugees mentioned by Israelis is on the Haaretz comment section below an article. Usually the most common reference is that the Arabs in general do not care for the Palestinians otherwise they would have accommodated and integrated them into their societies, and by the way they (the Palestinians) are not the problem of the Israelis but the problem should be solved by the other Arabian countries. This is always accompanied by the right wing idea that Israel is only 1/100th of the land and the Arabs have 99/100ths and the dastardly Arabs want all the land. This seems to me, an untrained but an 'interested in psychology' person, a classic transference syndrome, i.e., what you are, you accuse others of. It can be seen in almost everything said about the Middle East, the Terrorist States of Israel, Britain and America accuse others of terrorism or harbouring and training and funding terrorists. It is all part of the 'we have to fight them over there or we will have to fight them over here' propaganda.

Which brings me to the real point of the article and that is, are the Israelis brainwashed? Are the Arabs fed the same kind but opposite disinformation as we are?

Remembering a particular vicious statement by an Israeli woman and statements from a Knesset member that 'we should raze Gaza to the ground' in retaliation of the rockets. The hatred on both sides is endemic, but where does it come from?

Everyone into Internet news knows the lies and omissions of the mainstream media in the west; it has become almost a mantra, but what about the other side, or multiple sides? Is Chinese propaganda benign? Is Russian news helpful to the Russian populations? And what about the Arab press, do they publish their government's indiscretions and atrocities? I don't speak much Arabic so I cannot judge. But I do have time on my hands and regularly watch Russian TV in English, Chinese, French, Spanish TV, CNN and Fox News, (when I can stand it) and have made some poor attempts to find out about Iran and so on. My overall impression is that there is propaganda on all of them, including the celebrated 'impartial' BBC.

So why is there no mention of the Israeli propaganda on their own people on the Internet? Classic mantras spouted on right wing web sites tell everyone who cares to read it, 'a people without a land for a land without people', 'Palestine never existed', 'Israelis made the desert bloom' and on and on.  Where does all this obvious fraud come from? Not having any Hebrew I cannot judge, but what I can find out in English about the right wing propaganda echoes the more subtle right wing propaganda in England and America, France, Germany etc.

It is said on the internet many times that the Jews control the media so there is no bad press ever published about Israel, and there are numerous instances where this can be shown to be true. I imagine that the Arab speaking world has a similar blockage about its own shortcomings and show all the atrocities of the Israelis and the imperial west in lurid detail. Are there two sides of this same coin?

The laughable 'fair and balanced' and 'we report, you decide' mantra of Fox News is known to most people, and rightly so, but is the Arab, Chinese, Russian and other eastern block countries any different? My impression of Chinese TV during the earthquake was that they were coping very well with a horrendous amount of damage – soldiers bringing injured down the mountains – one soldier hero carrying stretchers for three days with a hernia, and heavy equipment working on the 'earthquake lakes' and feeding people and putting up tents and temporary housing with days, in stark contrast to the Katrina New Orleans victims, by the way. But it was all too pat and 'managed' for my liking, political leaders visiting earthquake zones with no sign of hundreds of secret service types guarding them, talking to the people, listening to their troubles and urging everyone to help each other and the army to even greater efforts. And now in the run up to the Olympics the beautiful China theme is at full blast. There is one particular segment that is repeated hourly which concludes with a man saying 'happy China' which grates on my ears so much that I've thought of writing to them to point out that it doesn't work in English.

So, the Israelis and their media – can anyone enlighten me about the propaganda in Hebrew publications? Are the comments in English on the blogs typical, which are so full of hatred, and misinformation? They are almost a carbon copy of the right wing blogs in America and the BNP in England.

Are we all being taken for suckers?

Neocons and secret societies

Are the leaders that want perpetual war doing it for the love of power and money or is there another agenda? You can find such things on the web, which stretch credibility with international Jewish bankers, (my favourite) to depopulating the world for the elites, with man made viruses, terminator seeds, Jewish Ashkenazi cabals who want to rule the world, Rich Rockefaller families with a plan that has been going on for centuries, and on an on. What is the real truth behind all that historical research and the exposing of the current crop of dissemblers?

Many have remarked that they are now coming out of the woodwork and are blatantly publishing their plans for all to see, (New World Order, etc)because they think that they have such control of the levers of power that they are immune to revolution, overthrow and justice. That may be true in America, which seems to have opted out of the 'international community' never having been abroad to see how the natives live, gives rise to protesters giving more weight to American dead in Iraq than the huge numbers of dead Iraqis and Afghanis.

All is not revealed to the people

It is easy to see the propaganda of the George Bush Regime; total control of the media by the Military, especially with no pictures from Iraq – no photos of returning body bags, Generals who toe the party line, cover ups of atrocities by soldiers, both British and American, lots of 'reporting' on the situation from Israel Firsters in the press, who clearly have a different agenda to true Americans, generals employed by the Pentagon to �catapult the propaganda, as 'independent observers', Cheney, Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and many others caught in lies, unfortunately too late to prevent the illegal wars. Propaganda against Iran ongoing, pushed by right wing Israeli politicians and Generals, the list is practically endless. And the same is true of the west Bank and Gaza operations; there is never any publicity about that, except a small amount on the Internet.

But what do the Arabs and in particular, the current 'Hitlerites', the Iranians and their leaders think about all this? Apart from belligerent statements from Iran's leaders being highlighted, can you find any reporting in the media that is not calling for bombing them before they 'become a danger to the whole world', which is the theme of most Israeli statements, equating 'their' problem with America and the West.

If the media is so obviously controlled in the West, isn't it likely that it is in Israel and in Arab countries and elsewhere? You can see the blatant propaganda in America, but what about in one's own country, if you are a westerner? Being English I have a built in 'Britain can do no wrong' since birth, growing up through WWII and the 'rationing' of food and supplies after the war.

It is worth repeating two experiences of mine. When I was a young man in the Royal Navy, one of my colleagues was reading a book about the German concentration camps full of lurid pictures of survivors. He exclaimed repeatedly that the Germans were all bastards and should be exterminated and the like. This went on to everyone's annoyance until I remarked that, given the same circumstances, the English were just as capable of that as the Germans. Of course he exploded and attacked me, and everyone had to pull us apart. He had to be calmed down by older and wiser men and told that I was right, even citing an atrocity in India where people were rounded up into a square and machine gunned in the hundreds during the uprising against the British Raj. The moral of this story is that I was not an enlightened being who saw everything clearly; it was probably just a reaction to his over the top rhetoric about the Germans.

The second anecdote is about the time, again in the Royal Navy learning Russian for radio spying. There was a visit by a Bishop who lamented that the British press were in the pay of the Russians, because John Pilger, (god bless him) had reported in the Telegraph or the Express that British submarines were in the Baltic Sea watching the Russian fleet in their manoeuvres. He was outraged, but for me it was a dash of cold water in my face. A man of God doing politics! And lecturing sailors about what he saw as traitors in the press!

Hidden xenophobia?

Now these two incidents probably shaped the rest of my life in many subtle ways. But what if I had been the one reading the Holocaust book and what if I had been a non-disillusioned Christian? I would be a Zionist, a Holocaust denier hater and a Republican! Small incidents can have a profound effect on our lives, which dictate our politics, our opinions, especially if you have not gone through something like a Palestinian family having your house demolished and your family jailed or murdered. And everywhere you see people – sincerely – pontificating from their 'positions' who have never experienced such things, have never lost a brother, son or father in these wars, or even had the misfortune to suffer a loss of someone to disease like cancer. What do they know about it? Can they walk in others' shoes?

So how many of us 'awake' Internet bloggers carry around our own prejudices about our own countries and races? 'The sun never sets on the British Empire' used to be said with pride when I was a boy and there were maps that showed the empire in pink – about two thirds of the world! And the beginning of the trouble with Iran started way back in the 50's when British oil companies lost their monopoly of Iran's oil, when it was nationalised. The democratic government of Iran was overthrown by propaganda and covert action and funding from the CIA leading to the installation of the Shah, another Saddam Hussein type. With such a long history of interference in their country, is it any wonder that they chant, 'Death to America'?

The same thing happened with Colonel Nasser of Egypt, when he nationalised the Suez Canal, it led to a simultaneous attack from three countries, Britain, France and Israel. It was only America that put a stop to it then, the six day war, because back then, America was not ruled by Israel. And there is no doubt that many historical incidents would be revealed with a little research about the British Empire, and yes they were even in Afghanistan years ago.

It is so obvious when Bush calls Syrians and Iranians 'terrorists' (as they did with the Iraqis and the Taliban)  – ignoring the terrorism he ordered in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Somalia, as if it never happened.

And with all the 'anti-Israeli' and 'anti-American' sentiment that you find everywhere, what would be your reaction if the miracle happens that the Israelis and the Palestinians actually make peace, that Iran doesn't get bombed, doesn't develop a nuclear weapon – America, Nato and Britain withdraw completely from Iraq and Afghanistan – Lebanon, Syria and Israel agree to leave each other alone and Obama confounds everyone by sending Bush to the International Court?

Could you possibly accept any of that, or would you still be depressed?

A Sufi story

A man having grown up, founded a business, raised his family, decided one day that he had to find out who he really was, he had to find his real self.

He travelled the world, seeking out Gurus Pashas, Yogis, Llamas, Saadus, Shamans, Sufis, Imams and Priests, Buddhists, Philosophers and enlightened men and women. They all gave him theories of spiritual development, methods for overcoming ego, rules for following the path to enlightenment. None of it answered his question. Finally he visited a 147-year-old man in the Shivapuri Mountains of India. This old man, who had travelled the world, met the Queen of England and many other leaders in his travels, said to him. 'You want to know who you are? Go home and look in the mirror.'