Still shameless after all these years

Britain's standing is now at a nadir in the Middle East, proclaims Seamus Milne in today's Guardian. And guess what? He blames it on the supposed collusion of the British for the Israeli raid which led to their rounding up of the PFLP prisoners responsible for the assassination of Israeli government minister Rehavam Ze'evi.

Noticed any British embassies being torched across the Middle East? Street protests from Beirut to Bahrain? Burning flags from Damascus to Riyadh? Ambassadors being withdrawn? No, I don't mean over the cartoons. I mean over the British and US withdrawal of their monitors from Jericho jail, or the Israeli raid.

No, I didn't either.

Well, sure, Palestinian gunmen in Gaza torched the British Council offices. But then the Palestinian gun gangs of Gaza have a long and unfortunate record of wrecking newly acquired and established Palestinian property, and threatening, kidnap and murder of Palestinian individuals they feel aren't doing what they want. And they are just as likely to kidnap French, Swiss, South Korean and Norwegian nationals as Brits and Americans.

Milne paints a picture of British policy as uniformly craven and driven by what he sees as "Americanization"

Britain's strategic support for Israel while claiming to be even-handed in the Middle East conflict is nothing new: recent revelations of the UK's secret supply of nuclear materials to Israel in the 50s and 60s are a reminder of that. But there are also clear signs that the Blair government has recently tilted even further towards Israel in what appears to be a growing Americanisation of British policy in the region. Palestinians who deal regularly with British officials report an unmistakable shift in attitudes towards the conflict, now increasingly seen through the US prism of the war on terror, Iran and Iraq.

Here is a summary, from the UK's Department for International Development of how since 2001 (when the current Intifada began), it's spent £147 million to help the Palestinians:

• £11 million on developing new water and sanitation systems for poor communities in Anabta, Dura, Jabalia and Yatta.
• £7 million on providing basic education and health materials.
• £6 million on helping to develop better health facilities, particularly for women and children
• £5 million on restructuring and streamlining the Palestinian Authority so that it meets the needs of a modern democratic state.
• £2 million on supporting the design of a future Palestinian economic and trade policy.
• £2 million on refugee schools, including the training of head teachers to help tackle child trauma and malnutrition.
• £1.6 million on funding an MA course in Gender and Law at Birzeit University.
• £1 million on managing the re-building of 435 demolished refugee homes in Jenin.
• £0.7 million on 54 police cars to help improve security for ordinary Palestinians

Oh, obviously Americanization, wouldn't you say?

And Milne describes Sa'adat, the lead prisoner the Israelis captured as:

an elected political leader regarded by many Palestinians as a national hero.

As far as he's concerned, the captured prisoners are simply accused by Israel of responsibility for the killing of the racist cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi in 2001, carried out in retaliation for the assassination of Sa'adat's predecessor, Abu Ali Mustafa

But the PFLP on their own website celebrate the role of Sa'adat and his henchmen in murdering Ze'evi, and promise "our brigades will continue to destroy your project" (That's the project of Israel's existence, by the way).

According to Palestinian Media Watch, the inscription on what's meant to look like Ze'evi's coffin reads:

The fate of your leaders.

It's hardly surprising that Milne paints Sa'adat as such an admired political figure. Sa'adat talks like the sort of hard left spouter of Marxist rant-speak that Milne grew to love in his own years in Straight Left, before he burrowed into the Labour Party:

Although nationalist sentiments and hatred towards the occupation were the overriding motives to join any nationalist organization, my social class as a refugee who suffered the consequences of the Palestinian Catastrophe, Al Nakba [the founding of the state of Israel and the exile of 750,000 Palestinians], and being the son of a poor worker led me to the socialist, Marxist thoughts that were spreading throughout the PFLP's mass organizations. This spread of Marxist thought was a step forward, a progressive development of ANM [Arab Nationalist Movement] theories, and a consequence of the Israeli defeat of Arab nationalist, bourgeois forces in the 1967 war......

Although the first step in the scheme was to provide political cover and international support for Sharon and Israel's criminal war against the Palestinian people, the central target was always Iraq. Powell's declaration provided the political framework for the scheme, uncovering the American program to 'democratize' the Arab region and 'protect human rights' in the Middle East in general, and the Arab region in particular. The American imperialist scheme is not simply based on politics, economy, or military strength. Even culturally and ideologically, the U.S. intends to control nd re-shape the region, with Israeli partnership, to acquire long-term security for its imperialist interests.

(Sa'adat, 2003)

The claim that democracy is on the march in the Middle East is a fraud. It is not democracy, but the US military, that is on the march. The Palestinian elections in January took place because of the death of Yasser Arafat - they would have taken place earlier if the US and Israel hadn't known that Arafat was certain to win them - and followed a 1996 precedent. The Iraqi elections may have looked good on TV and allowed Kurdish and Shia parties to improve their bargaining power, but millions of Iraqis were unable or unwilling to vote, key political forces were excluded, candidates' names were secret, alleged fraud widespread, the entire system designed to maintain US control and Iraqis unable to vote to end the occupation. They have no more brought democracy to Iraq than US-orchestrated elections did to south Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s. As for the cosmetic adjustments by regimes such as Egypt's and Saudi Arabia's, there is not the slightest sign that they will lead to free elections, which would be expected to bring anti-western governments to power.

What has actually taken place since 9/11 and the Iraq war is a relentless expansion of US control of the Middle East, of which the threats to Syria are a part. The Americans now have a military presence in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar - and in not one of those countries did an elected government invite them in. Of course Arabs want an end to tyrannical regimes, most of which have been supported over the years by the US, Britain and France: that is the source of much anti-western Muslim anger. The dictators remain in place by US licence, which can be revoked at any time - and managed elections are being used as another mechanism for maintaining pro-western regimes rather than spreading democracy.

Milne, March 10th 2005

In today's article, Milne claims that there was no real reason for withdrawing the British and US monitors, and the PFLP prisoners were doing nothing worse to break the terms of their imprisonment than getting and using mobile phones.

The Times tells us quite a different story. And one which fits rather oddly with the portrayal of Sa'adat and his fellow terrorists as radical but humble men of the people:

Monitors complained that Saadat, Shobaki and the four other “special” prisoners were given the run of the compound by Palestinian guards

They were not “locked down” at night

They were never separated from the 300 other prisoners

They had mobile phones and computers; Shobaki ordered the monitors’ phone jammers to be turned off

They had up to 90 visitors a week and used other prisoners “as domestic staff”

Saadat kept birds and had a big book collection

Inmates and guards referred to Shobaki as “brigadier”. He smoked up to five Cuban cigars a day

Then there's the Foreign Office letter, sent to the PA on March 8th, a good week before they withdrew. It made clear that the US and UK monitors would withdraw immediately unless both the PA and Hamas stuck to the original agreement, which they had never done.

the Foreign Office released the letter sent by John Jenkins, the UK consul general in Jerusalem, and Jake Walles, his US counterpart, to Mr Abbas on March 8.

The letter says the Palestinian Authority has "never fully complied" with the agreement that established the mission.

"While the six detainees - Fuad Shobaki, Ahmad Sa'adat, Iyad Gholmi, Hamdi Qur'an, Majdi Rimawi and Basel al-Asmar - are held in continuous custody at the Jericho prison, the Palestinian Authority has consistently failed to comply with core provisions of the Jericho monitoring arrangements regarding visitors, cell searches, telephone access and correspondence," it said.

"Furthermore, the Palestinian Authority has failed to provide secure conditions for the US and UK personnel working at the Jericho Prison. Repeated demarches by our governments to the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority have not resulted in improved compliance with the Jericho monitoring arrangements."

And in a reference to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, the letter added: "The pending handover of governmental power to a political party that has repeatedly called for the release of the Jericho detainees also calls into question the political sustainability of the monitoring mission."

The letter added that, if the mission was to continue, conditions at the prison must either be brought into line with the arrangements, or the Palestinian Authority must establish a new arrangement for the detainees with the Israeli government.

If neither happened, the letter warned that "we will have to terminate our involvement with the Jericho monitoring arrangements and withdraw our monitors with immediate effect".

There are so many egregious statements in Milne's article that it's hard to know how to write a post which is of a publishable length

The two I'll finish with are one about Sharon, who according to Milne

oversaw the massacre of 2,000 Palestinian refugees by Lebanese Phalangists in 1982

Well, no. The Kahan Commission found he was responsible for allowing the Phalangists to enter the camps and failing to take adequate measures to ensure that a massacre didn't happen

Then there's the breathless Milne claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most inflammatory conflict on the planet. Let's just remember the continuing fallout of the Iran-Iraq war, (casualties, over 1,000,000) which continues to be played out in the current murderous assaults of the Iran backed Shiite militias.

And there are the enormous casualties in Darfur.

And of course Seamus Milne, so aptly nicknamed Shameless, is never going to mention the inflammatory transworld conflict set in motion and maintained by one of his very own invited columnists.

Comments

[Rick]

The World Bank states that the Palestinian economy will contract by 27% if international aid is stopped and that 30% GDP depends on such aid.........................well if they cannot behave themselves - The Times reports that this jail in Jericho was a real Club Fed.........so I think it is time to show these welfare dependants the facts of life and cut off all aid.

Seamus Milne is a Class A Twerp

[Judy]

Yes, but he's a class A twerp who's Commentary Editor of the Guardian and uses his position to give platforms to members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas fans, Hiz ut Tahrir and Islamists of even harder persuasion.

As for the funding, don't count on the EU withdrawing it any time soon.

[Neal]

This is yet another argument for the proposition that British papers are really political opinion journals, not purveyors of news.

[Dr.D.]

2000 will always be the number murdered in the refugee camps by the Phalangists because that's the biggest number the lefties can get away with.The Lebanese Army investigation thought 460 and the Israelis themselves who one would have thought might prefer as low a figure as possible nevertheless came up with their own estimate of 700-800. Guardian readers prefer 2000, personally supervised by Sharon just like they have to believe in the 'massacre' at Jenin which didn't happen and the shooting of Mohamed Al-durah which it seems was staged.

[Lynne]

I would not deny that there has been a bit of a shift away from the Palestinians, but it's not confined to the Brits and it may have started several months before Arafat's death, when the buzz was that EU officials in Ramallah were sending PA flacks away with fleas in their ears when they came to cry about house demolitions. One report had a French official quoted as saying that they should come back to complain when they stopped murdering babies in carriages.

Milne: it's about the [highly orchestrated] Intifida, Stupid!

[Venichka]

With respect, Neal, it isn't that.

It is perhaps less obvious in the on-line presentation, I agree (and I know the Guardian specifically have had quite an open, public, debate about the challenges of running a dual-media operation) , but in the print form it is quite clear that Milne's musings (if they are worthy of being called such) are an opinion piece, clearly bylined as such. These columns are set apart, physically and in their appearance, from the news sections of the paper. Of course that isn't to say that there aren't valid criticisms to be made of the Grauniad's news coverage, as that of any other organ, but opinion and news are generally kept quite distinct.

[Neal]

Venichka,

Privyat. Long time since we have conversed.

My read of the British paper is different from yours. I take the newsreports as editorials. In this, I am comparing the British papers to the somewhat, in my view, more careful journalism of the US and Indian papers.

It was, after all, the British (and European) papers which thought there was a massacre at Jenin. That position was seen for what it was in major US papers, namely, an accusation which, as was reported from day one of that "massacre," had no corroboration.

To me, that event distinguished real papers from the editorial rags. The Guardian, which saw only war crimes, not a battle and the other British propaganda papers, such as The Independent and The Times, which saw a massacre. The reporter at the Independent, Phil Reeves, at least had the courtesy of admitting after the fact that he had be in error but even then, his admission was grudging, falling in line with the "war crimes" nonsense.

In the US, it was dutifully reported that militaries around the world (including, so far as I know, in Britain) saw the Israelis action at Jenin as the paradigm for how correctly and morally to conduct a battle in a civilian area. In fact, the battle is taught in the US as exemplery of urban warfare fought honorably.