At Long Last, the West Wakes Up

OVER sixty years have passed since the so-called foundation of Israel, a country deliberately implanted right at the heart of the Arab region and the Middle East as an unusual entity or a strange bedfellow.

Auspiciously enough, we now sense some stirrings of an awakening in the West. At long last, the West seems to be waking up from a deep, long slumber that has lasted many years. A new wave of insightful writings has started to emerge in the Western media. Laudably, these writers have had the courage and conviction to speak out plain, unalloyed truth. Indeed, their forthrightness and boldness have saved them from the gyre of what may be termed the “Jewish intellectual terrorism”.

Towering over these writers is the brilliant British author, Robert Fisk, who resides in the Middle East and sees things with “unbiased eyes” and without the “Jewish lens” which a majority of the Western writers used to wear so they could see just what the Jews wanted them to see.

Those who follow and analyze the viewpoints of certain enlightened writers in the American and the British press must have observed signs of awakening in the Western media with regard to the crimes perpetrated by Israel against the Arabs, not least the latest wave of mayhem and massacre in the Gaza Strip.

Among those straight-thinking authors stands out Ms Daphna Baram who wrote in the Guardian a brilliant article on February 16 on the Israeli elections, titled ‘It’s time to rethink Zionism’.

She said: “In 1948, during its war of coming-to-be, Israel had driven out of its territory 750,000 Palestinians; another 250,000 were pushed out during the 1967 war. Ever since then, the Israeli left-right division has been marked by the desire for territorial expansion, promoted by the right, and the aspiration for ethnic purity, propagated, curiously, by the Zionist “left”.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft, the famous author of the book, The Controversy of Zion: Jewish Nationalism, the Jewish State, and the Unresolved Jewish Dilemma, wrote an article in the London-based Independent newspaper on January 11, 2009 headlined, “How Israel gets away with murder”.

He said: “It might be said that the underlying purpose of the Zionist project — which (Lewis) Namier (renowned historian of Georgian England) passionately supported — was to reject Jewish martyrology, and to turn the Jews from passive victims to active makers of their destiny”. He went on: “That has been accomplished to a fault, many would say as they watch the news from Gaza, where one image after another has caused deep revulsion … Israeli intransigence or indifference to outside opinion goes back before the birth of the state.

As it happens, Rahm Emanuel (US President Barack Obama’s chief-of-staff) has something in common with Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni: Their fathers all served in the Irgun. This was the intransigent Zionist militia — described as terrorists by Isaiah Berlin among others, and as fascists by Albert Einstein among others — which waged a campaign of violence against the British, and the Palestinian Arabs, in the last years of the British Mandate in 1946-48”.

The leader of the British Jews, Tony Bayfield, wrote in the Guardian on February 22, 2009: “The image that Israelis have of themselves — which owes something to their media, of course — is very different from the image portrayed in the British media. In Britain, Israelis and Jews are no longer seen as David but as Goliath. We are no longer seen as surviving remnant but as occupiers and oppressors. We are no longer led by heroes like Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin but by Ehud Olmert, Binyamin Netanyahu and even Avigdor Lieberman”.

On the Gaza offensive, Bruce Anderson wrote in the Independent on February 16, 2009: “Israel seems bent on a course which will lead to its eventual destruction. There is a hideous irony. The way that events are unfolding is a posthumous triumph for Adolf Hitler. With the winding-up of the Soviet Union, the last of the poisons created by the World War II could be eliminated from the European bloodstream. Not the Middle Eastern one. It is easy to understand why the Israelis reacted as they did. Once you have suffered the Holocaust at the hands of the race which produced Beethoven, Goethe and Mozart, you lose trust in mankind’s benevolence; lose faith in everything except your own soldiers and weaponry. It’s equally easy to understand why the Palestinians reacted as they did. Those who are driven to exile and refugeedom do not feel well-disposed towards their oppressors”.

The examples I have mentioned above are just a few of the flurry of articles being published in the leading Western newspapers written by well-known authors, including those of Jewish origin. Without doubt, these examples reflect partial, if not, full awakening in the West.

Much as such awakening has been delayed for several decades, it is vital and pertinent that it has occurred at a time when Israel is all set to have one of its most hardline governments. One also wonders what would happen when a new Israeli government led by right-wing leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman takes office. By the looks of it, the government of Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni can be said to be ‘dovish’ compared to the in-coming government which is expected to be ultra-radical in its approach to the Palestinian cause.