Opinions or debunks on this please...

[nekokate]

I am not educated on these issues enough to debunk this myself, so if anyone here is, and wants to, please step up to the plate...

[Salim201]

i don't think i'm that well informed but i try! answer to the first question though, is simply no.. Galloway keeps reiterating his condemnation of Saddams crushing of the Kurdish uprising and the democratic reformist movements, why doesn't hari make clear that US and UK support was critical in supporting Saddam against these internal uprisings. In fact the very reason the CIA supported Saddam and effectively put him in power, was precisely to keep those revolting forces in check!

(5) When told about Saddam Hussein's seven palaces in a country where people are "dropping like flies", would you respond by saying, "Our own head of state has a fair bit of real estate herself"?

again not relevant! Iraq had the highest standard of living in the middle east before 1991.. it was sanctions and bombing that ruined that country more than a plutocratic dictator ever could.

[faceless]

there's never been a doubt that Galloway recognises the need for a strong arm at times

[Mandy]

Article seems to be 2+ years old, and it is vague, e.g. talking about "fascist state" when they mean countries not controlled by the "Military Industrial Complex".

US & UK have many features of a fascist state (near 100% surveillance; politicians who put themselves above the law etc.)

If they meant Chavez, he was elected.

regarding "(14) Was the day the Soviet Union fell "the worst day of your life"?" if they meant the day the Kremlin being surrounded by tanks, controlled by people who wanted to steal Russia's assets, firing on elected politicians .. and which opened the way for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (by removing Russia's ability to block it), then the West has a lot to be sad about since what has happened since has been a disaster for the West. A lot of people at the time were saying that having a uni-polar world was BAD for the world.

regarding (15) Galloway has been forthright in his condemnation of Musharaf (recall the interview with Imran Khan), whilst the west is busy selling Musharaf arms (whilst ignoring Musharaf's nuclear weapons)

Also none of the quotes are referenced (to really see in what context the statements were made).

[mickyv]

I don't know anything about this Hari character, but just from the dishonest way he has deviously loaded his questions, I can tell that he is a morally bankrupt slimeball. After setting up a loaded proposition, he then pulls quotes out of the air and completely out of context, in a manner designed to legitimise his original loaded propositions and put GG in a bad light.

This Galloway Basher, unlike most of them, is intelligent enough to construct seemingly reasonably cases against Galloway, but if this is an example of the higher calibre critics that Galloway has to face, then don't worry, Galloway will wipe the floor with such cheap & dishonest pot-shots.

[luke]

[mickyv]

Thanks for the link Luke, but I logged off his Site just after a few minutes after discovering that he is the same Pro War "Left" as Nick Cohen & Christopher Hitchens. That he can write & actually seemingly believe the following without considering the bigger picture speaks volumes;

"It was his crimes against humanity that justified the dictator’s overthrow."

" Iraq is an immeasurably better place without Saddam Hussein".

" the overwhelming majority of Iraqis were thankful for his removal and anxious for the invasion to succeed"

[faceless]

I just read his first article about the protest at Heathrow and was more than impressed, even if it ended on too much of a sentimental note.

[Mandy]

I wonder if his views on Iraq have changed since 2005 ... If he was honest, he should admit he was wrong.

[mickyv]

Sorry Faceless, somebody could write the best article ever written, but if they supported the Crime against Humanity, which is the attack & occupation of Iraq, then I find it hard even giving them the courtesy of reading anything they wrote, nevermind the implied respect praising any of their work. The Iraq War is a defining issue for me on which I automatically find myself judging people, and I cannot feel anything but contempt for anybody who supported or tries to justify it, and for me knowledge of their pro-war flaw undermines & debases everything else about them.

[Mandy]

That article on his front page is about Global Warming, and he mentions "Bangladesh".

This plays into the neo-con agenda of global warming. If he cared so much about Bangladeshis, what did he write/do about FSMT collapse:
http://couchtripper.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?t=4795&highlight=money+transfer

Did he campaign to send money & resources to Bangladesh/Maldives, possibly to help pay for relocation or raising the level at which houses are built?

He looks like he is on a neo-con agenda ...

[mickyv]

I stumbled on this, which although is far from a perfect rebuttal, it does have some good points;


Quote:(1) Do you believe Saddam Hussein's genocidal assaults on the Kurds, democrats and Marsh Arabs in 1991 were "a civil war with massive violence on both sides"?

A twisted question. Galloway has never said that acts of genocide were a civil war. He said the acts of genecide (and he has condemned them) were parts of a wider civil war. The Kurdish Pesh Murgha attacked Iraq troops, they fough back. It was a civil war. Just like there was a civil war in some way between americans and native american indians. This doesn't excuse things like the Wa****a massacre though does it?

Quote:(2) Would you go on holiday with the foreign minister of a fascist state?

He didn't go on holiday with Tariq Aziz. He spent one Christmas at his home. Galloway obviously treats aziz in a different way to all other iraqi baathists for some reason. But he has always called the dictatorship asa whole 'bestial.'

Quote:(3) Would you go disco dancing with the foreign minister of a fascist state?

So when exactly was he supposed to have done this?

Quote:(4) Would you call for the release of the former foreign minister of a fascist state on the grounds that he is "an eminent diplomatic and intellectual person"?

Labour Members of Parliament have. Labour peers have. International dignatories have. Hans Von Sponeck of the UN has. They oobviously do not see Aziz as part of he mainstream evil of Saddam's regime and Galloway is not the only one as seemingly implied.

Quote:(5) Do you believe Iraqi trade unionists today are "quislings"? Would you dismiss their tearful recollections of torture at the hands of Ba'athists by calling it "a party trick"?

He and the StWC (organised biggest demos in UK history) described those trade unionists (most of whom are known primarily in Iraqi Politics for their membership of the Iraq Communist Party, as quislings as they collaborated with the occupiers and have little support among Iraqi workers. Many people the coalition have used are two faced traitors like Talebani who lament the loss suffered by their people, and then sell their people to the highest bidder. Also, the context of exactly who Galloway was talking about, is left out.

Quote:(6) When told about Saddam Hussein's seven palaces in a country where people are "dropping like flies", would you respond by saying, "Our own head of state has a fair bit of real estate herself"?

Saddam never saw the oil money. It was all controlled by the UN. He could not decide to buy more food if he wanted to. So he , in his boredom in between killing democrats, built some palaces. It had no impact on the lives of his people.

Quote:(7) Do you believe Saddam Hussein is "likely to have been the leader in history who came closest to creating a truly Iraqi national identity, and he developed Iraq and the living, health, social and education standards of his own people"?

Yes. He did create the first Iraqi national identity. He did create high living standards, a good health service, high literacy rates etc. This is a fact corroborated by UN stats. Does this excuse his acts of teror or cancel them out? No. And Galloway has never said so.

Quote:( Do you believe Fidel Castro is "not a dictator, not at all"?

He says this because he believe Castro is a popular leader. I would, to a large extent agree. Though I would call him a dictator and would like to see democratic evolution in Cuba, perhaps accelerated by the lifting of the embargo.

Quote:(9) Do you believe the Charity Commission leads "politically inspired witch-hunts"? Do you think it is reasonable that the Mariam Appeal documents have never been handed over for investigation, and are somewhere in an undisclosed location in Jordan where they cannot be viewed?

Yes. The Charity Commission of England and Wales shouldn't really beinvestigating political funds set up in Scotland and moved to Jordan. The Mariam Appeal was given a clear Bill of health and Galloway was cleared of all wrong doing. The CC had every penny in, in the form of a complete list of donations, as well as every penny out, with a complete set of bank statesments, cheques etc. What do accounts tell you that the aforementioned do not?

Quote:(10) Do you believe Tony Blair is "waging war on Muslims both at home and abroad", that he is " a crusader", and "he will burn in the hellfires for all eternity"? If so, would you say so in areas of extreme racial tension to audiences of young and angry Muslim men?

Tony Blair is waging war on muslims in Palestine Iraq and Afghanistan. His own minister said muslims should get used to being targetted by police. I do not think he will burn as I do not believe in heaven in hell, if I was a practicing Catholic like Galloway MP, I would agree with him. Why is Bethnal Green and Bow an area of racial tension? What unit is this measured in? Young muslims men were angry because of the war on muslims they can see all around them. Not because Galloway said so.

Quote:(11) Do you believe the Shi'ites Saddam murdered in the 1980s were often "a fifth column" who "actively undermined the Iraqi war effort in the interests of
their country's enemy"?

If he's talking about Marsh Arabs then they actively worked with Britain (but this doesn't excuse their removal and suppression and Galloway ha never said so) If Hari is denying that many shias are close to Iran and that the Iranian regime worked with Iraqi traitors then he lives on anothe planet. Again, Hari fails to specify which shiites Galloway was talking about. Galloway is not ignorant and knows the diversity f the shia community in Iraq and would therefore be unlikely to describe them all as a fifth column.

Quote:(12) Do you think it is "unreasonable" to ask a member of parliament to live on less than £150,000 a year?

Another twist of Galloway's words. He said he could not FUNCTION IN POLITICS on less than 150k pa. This is because he pays for all his own ransport to events as well as his accomodation and he also employs twice the amount of staff parliament will pay for.

Quote:(13) Would you describe yourself as "a Stalinist" if it didn't "make a rod for my own back"?

More twisting. He did not say he was a Stalinistor imply he ever would in any context. The point he was making was that he supported the USSR during the stalin period as Tony Benn supports the Labour Party during the Blair period. Is Benn a Blairite?

(Quote:14) Was the day the Soviet Union fell "the worst day of your life"?

No, I disagree with him on this. I don't think State Capitalist Imperialism acting as a counterweight to liberal capitalist Imperialism is any better than allowing liberal capitalist imperialists a free reign.

Quote:(15) When you found out there had been a coup in Pakistan, was your response to declare, "In poor third world countries like Pakistan, politics is too important to be left to petty squabbling politicians. Pakistan is always on the brink of breaking apart into its widely disparate components. Only the armed forces can really be counted on to hold such a country together ... Democracy is a means, not an end in itself"?

Ever since it became clear that democracy was not on Musharrafs agends at all, Galloway has condemned the military dictatorship and continues to do so.

From: http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=113717&page=3

[mickyv]

And yet another debunking:-


What are those criticisms? Predictably, Hari retells a few tired old stories pertaining to George Galloway. Here’s one of them:

When the military staged an anti-democratic coup in Pakistan in 1999, Galloway wrote in his weekly column for the Tory newspaper the Mail on Sunday, “In poor third world countries like Pakistan, politics is too important to be left to petty squabbling politicians. Pakistan is always on the brink of breaking apart into its widely disparate components. Only the armed forces can really be counted on to hold such a country together... Democracy is a means, not an end in itself."



This is really quite amusing. Strip away his inimitable phrasing, allow for Hari’s selective editing, and Galloway’s position on Musharraf’s coup was damn near identical to that of the UK government at the time. Galloway was a loyal Labour Party member, loyally sticking to the party line. Hari may disagree with that party line, but these are hardly grounds to argue for a Labour vote. Still worse, whilst Galloway has been awarded a civilian honour for services to democracy in Pakistan, Blair has thanked the military dictator Hari apparently so despises for his “strong, courageous support” in the “war on terror”. Take your pick: Galloway merely wanted a country to avoid falling apart; Blair actively welcomes the strategic support of a dictator in committing an act of aggression.

Hari then rehashes his atrocious “review” of Galloway’s book, I’m Not the Only One. Lenin of Tomb infamy obliterated Hari’s hopeless mash of half-truths, misquotes, and outright falsifications shortly after it was first printed. Hari chooses just one near-slander this time round, claiming that Galloway ‘…even described Saddam’s genocide of the Kurds as “a civil war” that “involved massive violence on both sides.’ This description was applied by Galloway to the 1991 uprising, not (as Hari implies) Saddam’s earlier genocidal assault on the Kurds – a fact noted in Hari’s original piece. Galloway, for the record, was amongst the few Labour MPs protesting the Halabja attack at the time. For some reason, Hari fails both here and in his earlier “review” to inform us of the context, which – as Lenin says – is of Galloway’s support for the 1991 uprising and the overthrow of Saddam by the Iraqi people.

A few minor points: Galloway opposes capital punishment, and supports a woman’s right to choose. It is strange that journalists who we might presume have some concern for the truth have been unable to carry out the basic fact-checking that would have made this clear. (This evangelical Christian website inadvertently reveals Galloway’s commendably liberal voting record.)

On to Yvonne Ridley. It is only a decidedly ill-framed mind who can see Ridley’s comments on the Taliban as announcing her support for the regime. Expressions of empathy for one’s kidnappers are not unknown – Terry Waite and Brian Keenan have made similar remarks in the past, though I very much doubt that either support the establishment of an Islamic Republic in Palestine. I don’t support the Taliban, Yvonne Ridley does not support the Taliban, Respect does not support the Taliban. Hope that’s clear.

Finally, the SWP, a major player within Respect, at which point Hari entirely changes tack:


Nor is the SWP in any sense a democratic organisation. They aim to create a society modelled on Lenin’s Soviet Union – a bloodthirsty dictatorship that slaughtered democrats and liberals. They claim the Soviet Union only went awry with Stalin, and that Lenin provided a “model for the world”. Yet their hero Lenin set up Russia’s secret police and ordered countless executions and massacres. He argued that “the foundation of socialism calls for absolute and strict unity of will... How can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will of one." As the academic Neil Harding has written, “Leninism would have found its Stalin sooner or later.”



For someone who becomes so upset by Stalinism, Hari accepts their interpretation of history: that Lenin lead to Stalin. Ignoring all historical experience, ignoring everything Lenin and Trotsky wrote on the subject of the revolution and its degeneration – bar a few lines, wrenched from context – Hari buys the Stalinist lie wholesale: that Stalin was the heir of the October Revolution, not its bloody murderer. (Those wanting to pursue this discussion could do worse than to glance at the excellent polemic on “What Is To Be Done?” from US socialist Hal Draper.)

Whatever your views on the SWP, however, it is clearly illogical for Hari to simultaneously claim that the SWP is necessarily anti-democratic, over-centralised, and thus imparts this character to Respect at the same time as criticising Respect for holding a plurality of views in the form of George Galloway, various left-wing Muslims and Yvonne Ridley.

Hari concludes:

The RESPECT Coalition might dupe some decent left-wing people, but Labour activists should not be mistaken: this is - to a significant degree - a party of the totalitarian-right.



I absolutely defy anyone – anyone at all – to search through Respect’s founding declaration, its conference resolutions, its public policy announcements and its campaigning activity over the year of its existence and draw that conclusion. It is ludicrous nonsense that only even approaches credibility when buttressed by an unsightly confection of half-truths and smears; but no doubt anti-war, anti-Blair Labour supporters will have more sense that to believe pro-war, pro-Blair Hari. Respect is a principled party of the left of which I am very proud to be a member.

http://deadmenleft.blogspot.com/2005/03/johann-hari-and-his-incoherent-rant.html

[mickyv]

Best debunk yet;

Johann Hari on George Galloway

In a recent review of George Galloway's new book, Johann Hari has resorted to dissembling, distortion and extreme Zionist propaganda to produce an incoherent, childish rant. How come?

There could hardly be a more fair-minded commentator on Harry's Place than Johann Hari. Not to damn him with faint praise, then, I'll also add that he is one of the more intelligent supporters of the war - and, let's be honest, the pro-war camp desperately needs intelligent support. However, having read his venomous review of George Galloway's book I'm Not the Only One, I remember that everyone's political honesty has limits. Wish fulfillment abounds in most political analysis, and you could hardly find a more compelling example of this than in Johann's review. Having peremptorily dismissed 90% of the book's content as "unconvincing", "hazy Lennonist idealism" etc., Hari gets to the business of his review. Galloway is guilty of "Ba'athist propaganda", the extent of which is "staggering":

All those who, in the past, have denied that Galloway has mutated into a Saddamist will simply have to recant when they read this book. For example, Galloway actually refers to the Shi'ites Saddam murdered in the 1980s as "a fifth column" who actively undermined the Iraqi war effort in the interests of their countryís enemy." Nobody outside Saddamís squalid regime used this terminology; it was purely a justification for the mass slaughter of the dictator's enemies. It has been extensively documented that very few Iraqis supported Iran. They were killed because they opposed Saddam, not because they backed Iran, and Galloway must know it.

Now, before I proceed to deconstruct this breathtaking misrepresentation, I'll give you Galloway's quote in full: "Iraqi society remained remarkably solid during the eight long years of war with Iran. The Shi'ite majority in Iraq proved that they were Arabs and Iraqis first and co-religionists of Khomeini second. But there was a fifth column, Shi'ite elements who actively undermined the Iraqi war effort in the interests of the country's enemy. As in all authoritarian regmes, this fifth column was ruthlessly annihilated wherever it was found." (Page 114).

So, before we're even off the ground, Hari's penultimate sentence is confirmed. Galloway is indeed aware that "very few Iraqis supported Iran" because he specifically says so. And what of the "fifth column"? Galloway nowhere denies that many Iraqis were killed simply for opposing the regime. In fact, he specifically says so: "Saddam was a ruthless and cruel man who thought little about signing death warrants of even close comrades, and still less about ordering the merciless crushing of potential threats to his regime." (Page 126).

Hari is fully aware of this, since he later (mis)quotes precisely this passage. Nevertheless, in describing those in sympathy with Iran as a "fifth column", you might think Galloway was trying to impugn their motives or imply that they deserved what they got. In fact, Galloway both opposed Saddam's brutal assault on Iran, and supported an Iraqi overthrow of their regime: "Saddam could have had no legitimate complaint if living by the sword - ruthlessly cutting down any and all opposition - he had died by the sword (or rope) at the hands of the Iraqis." (Page 103).

Galloway is accused, then, of saying something he hasn't said. He has not said that all the Shi'tes Saddam murdered in the 1980s were a fifth column - merely that such a faction existed. And he notes it was a minority. And, given his hostility to the regime and to its war with Iran, he cannot even be accused of opposing this "fifth column". But Hari has more: "How about the passage where Galloway defends Saddam's claim to Kuwait, describing the province as "clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion"?

This is a blatant - and I must conclude intentional - misrepresentation. Here is Galloway's actual quote: "For Iraqis of all political persuasions, Kuwait had been stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion - Great Britain, the former colonial power." (Page 42).

He does not describe "the province" thus - he describes Iraqis as having that perception. Galloway could be wrong in this assessment, but that is immaterial since he did not say what Hari says he did. In fact, Hari seems to be the one in doubt of Kuwait's legitimacy as a nation, since he is the one who describes it as a "province". (Province: "A territory governed as an administrative or political unit of a country or empire." ) What can Johann mean?

Additionally, Galloway specifically rejects Saddam's right to invade Kuwait: "In 1990 I was an enemy of the Iraqi regime and had, purposely, never visited the country. The sympathy I had for former colonies undoing the fake boundaries of colonialism could not support the naked aggression committed against Kuwait. That action copied elsewhere in the developing world would be a recipe for endless chaos and bloodshed." (Page 45).

You could make excuses for Hari. Perhaps he didn't see this passage, perhaps he read the book in a hurry, racing toward the salacious Saddamism he hoped to find. But such a conclusion is annihilated by Hari's next move: "For example, he says that in the First Gulf War, "I made my stand with Iraq." No you didn't, George. You stood with Saddam; conscript Iraqis - most in their teens - were being sent to be slaughtered in the name of an invasion they did not support."

That quote is the sentence immediately following the cited passage on Page 45. It is even in the same paragraph. Hari even uses the statement to imply that George Galloway "stood with Saddam" in his invasion of Kuwait while "conscript Iraqis" were being forced to die in an invasion they didn't support. I don't know about you, but I would think that - since it is logically impossible that George both supported and opposed the invasion of Kuwait - he was referring to his opposition to US planes pounding Iraqi cities and killing as many as 200,000 people. Hari continues:

Or how about Galloway's claim that Saddam's mass murder of democrats, Kurds and other anti-Saddam forces in 1991 was a "civil war" that "involved massive violence on both sides"? Again, only Ba'athists have ever used this language or narrative. The reality is very different. In 1991, a vicious tyranny exterminated its enemies. For Galloway to claim that two morally equivalent sides were simply fighting it out is staggering: he is equidistant between a poisoner and the medical crew waving an antidote.

I see no reason to revisit Galloway's position on the ouster of Saddam by Iraqis. Just scroll up if your mind has gone blank all of a sudden. But to describe the 1991 uprising as a "civil war" is no more apologetic than it is to describe the Nepalese uprising as a civil war, or the Kosovar uprising as a civil war. And did the Iraqi uprising not involve "massive violence on both sides"? Of course, describing facts is rarely neutral - context is all. But as I have already indicated, the context in which Galloway is writing is one in which he considers an Iraqi uprising just. Galloway nevertheless stands accused or "relativising" Saddam's crimes:

The most bizarre example of Galloway's moral relativism is when he says, "Saddam was a ruthless and cruel man who thought little of signing the death warrants of even close comrades. In this regard he was little different to the leaders of most regimes: we just don't know it in our own countries yet." As if Tony Blair is about to start gassing the SWP and the Tories. As if George Bush is going to start building mass graves in California.

Do you know, I don't think George Galloway is actually saying that? It may in fact be that Hari has mis-quoted Galloway again: "In this regard he is little different to the leaders of most regimes; regime survival is the ultimate priority of most systems - we just don't know it in our own countries, yet." (Page 126).

Okay, so Hari has left out a subclause and a comma. No big deal. I'm not saying he is a sloppy reviewer, because the phrase "sloppy reviewer" is a tautology when it comes to the press. However, the misrepresentation is so comically obvious that I merely wish to point it out, then move on - Galloway is saying that most regimes in the world, if threatened with revolution, will react with extreme violence. He is not justifying such actions, but rather using broadening the net of his critique to include nations beyond a relatively small corner of the Arab world. Everyone clear? Need I underline it any further?

Galloway dares to criticise Christopher Hitchens as an "apostate", when in fact he has consistently been opposed to Saddam and in favour of getting rid of him.

But that is precisely what Galloway cannot stand. There are even large slabs of praise for Saddam in this rancid book. "Just as Stalin industrialized the Soviet Union, so on a different scale Saddam plotted Iraqís own Great Leap Forward," he says, and amazingly, this isn't a criticism. "He managed to keep his country together until 1991. Indeed, he is likely to have been the leader in history who came closest to creating a truly Iraqi national identity, and he developed Iraq and the living, health, social and education standards of his own people."



Hari would be well-advised to consult Hitchens' 1991 writings if he thinks the latter has been "consistently" in favour of regime-change. He adamantly, and eloquently, opposed the first Gulf War, and was even vague on the most recent Gulf War until late 2002, telling Salon that he did not support an invasion of Iraq, although he did support a "confrontation". But when Hari claims that Galloway's comparison of Hussein with Stalin "isn't a criticism", I feel bound to inform you that once again he s mangling his quotes. Saddam, says Galloway, resembles Stalin inasmuchas

"Both were determined to industrialize their countries, whatever the cost. Both had chips on ther shoulders. Both built police states believing the ends justified the means. Both ruthlessly suppressed all tendencies toward the break-up of their country, believing in a strong central authority (themselves) ... And, of course, both could be murderous in pursuit of their goals". (Page 111).

The next part of Hari's quote comes on Page 128, where Galloway notes that Saddam:

"[D]eveloped Iraq and the living, health, social and educational standards of his people. But the brutality of his regime and the sheer lack of democracy meant tha he could in the end be isolated and defeated."

Hari, suffice to say, does not include the last sentence. Nor does he note the sentence, "Stalin gave his factional opponents a show-trial and then killed them. Saddam just killed them." (Page 111). What an apologist! Hari proceeds: "Perhaps the most obscene statement of all come when Galloway libels the Arabs he claims to love. "A majority of Arabs and Muslims [believe] the good Saddam did was more important than the many debits."

That's from Page 129. I better add that Galloway's final sentence on that subject is "For them, in the land of the blind the one-eyed mand is king". This is not an unusual judgment. Take this , for example: "Hussein is also one of the few Arab leaders to have been able to stand up to the West on a regular basis, asserting Iraqi and Arab independence from Western interests and power. This, rather than the brutal repression of his own people, has become the point upon which many Arabs and Muslims have focused the most. In a region which has had few powerful leaders to whom people could point with pride, Saddam Hussein has become something of a folk hero. As poor of a hero as he is, the lack of any better candidates has assured him a position of respect and honor for Arabs and Muslims for generations to come."

Or consider the fact that most Arabs told pollsters , before the assault on Iraq, that a US invasion would bring less democracy. I am not endorsing such views, any more than Galloway is, but it is a simple matter of fact that most of the Arab world feels this way.

Hari is also incensed at Galloway's attitude to Israel. Unsurprisingly, the views he adduces are not those to be located in the book. For instance: "Galloway is too cowardly to explicitly oppose a two-state solution, but his wild rhetoric suggests he seeks the very opposite of peace - the destruction of Israel itself, an impossible, loathsome aspiration that is condemning both Palestinians and Israelis to eternal war. For example, he describes the whole of Israel - not just the illegal outposts on the Occupied Territories - as "the West's settler-state sentinel"; how could such a state ever be acceptable? How could it ever deserve to exist? He never mentions the ideal of two states in this book - not once.

Galloway won't say he opposes the two-state solution, but he must mean it. And why? Because he describes Israel, accurately, as "the West's settler-state sentinel". He could have done better than this, actually. One propagandist for British imperialism described Israel as "a loyal little Jewish Ulster" . (Coming from Northern Ireland, I can only say that this rings a bell or two.) How could such a state be acceptable? Hari seems oblivious to the fact that most Palestinians also think of Israel in such terms, yet support a two-state solution. Still, since I'm not "cowardly", I'd just like to affirm my opposition to a two-state solution and indicate that Israel is emphatically not acceptable in its present form. And I will just note in passing that Galloway does, in fact, mention "the ideal of two states" in his book (Page 34) - once.

Hari continues that Galloway "even skirts very close to praising the tactic of suicide bombing". How close? He says that "Saddam's endless protestations of fidelity to the Palestinian cause were sincere and, as the families of the martyred and wounded know, he put Iraq's money where his mouth was."

How this syllogism is supposed to work, I have no idea. Hari continues: "Galloway pointedly evades the main reasons why the state of Israel was created - or the 800,000 Jews ethnically cleansed from Arab countries in the years that followed."

Hari combines two outlandish assertions in a single sentence, then. Galloway, in fact, does discuss why Zionists set out to create Israel. On Page 31, he specifically tags European anti-Semitism as the culprit. He also notes that anti-Semites like Arthur Balfour had reasons to do with imperial prerogatives in supporting the existence of a "Jewish Homeland". (Hari presumably wants Galloway to say that the Holocaust is the reason why Israel was created. It may in fact be the reason why Israel gained the support of Jews worldwide, but it is not the reason Israel was created. The movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine was up and running long before the 1930s, and in fact the Zionist Federation of Germany sought to take advantage of Hitler's anti-Semitism, entreating him to help them build the Jewish state outside Europe). The second outlandish assertion is that 800,000 Jews were "ethnically cleansed" from Arab countries after 1948. Only the most ardent Zionists actually proclaim this to be the case. The Sephardic Jews of Arab countries migrated to Israel in waves , doubtless because of Arab repression and discrimination in many cases. (Click here for instance.)

Further, and more importantly, why does this count as "the other side"? Are Palestinians responsible for this? Is Galloway obliged to stipulate, every time he expresses support for the Palestinians or denounces Israel's actions, that he also has enormous sympathy for the plight of Sephardic Jews and the hardships they endured in the Arab world? Could we not take this axiomatic and move on?

Hari issues, suffice to say, a profusion of inaccurate and incredible charges against Galloway. He accuses him of wanting to see global capitalism replaced by "a proliferation of neo-Stalinist dictators". Unsurprisingly, Hari keeps the evidence on that one to himself. He avers: "Lawrence stood with Arab tyrants too, arguing that Arabs were too stupid and culturally backward to govern themselves, and were temperamentally suited to "strong men". So does Galloway.

Strange to relate, Galloway spends much of his book attacking racist notions about the Arabs, arguing that they are perfectly capable of governing themselves without the help of Western bombs, and attacking the Arab regimes, including Saddam Hussein's. But in Hari's world... and the sad thing is, he's not the only one.

http://medialies.blogspot.com/2004_05_01_medialies_archive.html

[faceless]

nice one micky - I tidied it up a bit...