Scott Morrison has done us no favours

October 17, 2018 by Clive Kessler
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I am angry. Scott Morrison has done us no favours…writes Clive Kessler.

Clive Kessler

He has probably hurt, not helped, Dave Sharma’s chances.

And, worse, his sudden pre-election lunge has hurt and damaged us, by playing into the hands of “the coalition of the evil and stupid” that we face on ever and increasingly adverse terms.

Jerusalem, Israel’s capital?

Yes, there is an argument, a good argument, for moving foreign embassies, including ours, in Israel to Jerusalem.

It is an argument that I do not merely concede, quietly and hypothetically.

It is an argument that —— unlike all the “stay-at-home armchair giborim/heroes” —— I made early this year, to considerable local consternation, at a public forum in Kuala Lumpur, in the midst of a powerfully promoted paroxysm of rage at Donald Trump over his announcement of his support for such a move.

That said, what of the widely proffered argument against doing so?

That counter-argument rests largely on the claim that it will be bad for “the peace process”.

Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s seat of government, that its capital is located in West Jerusalem, goes against and imperils —— or so we are told —— “the peace process” and its prospects for success.

What “peace process”?

There is none.

There is no peace process.  There has not been any peace process following the Palestinian rejection of all efforts to produce a mutually accepted two-state solution that was made in the decade between the Oslo Agreement and the rejection of the Taba proposals.

“Peace process”?

A peace process is what you have when you do not have peace.

It is what you keep invoking when you do not really want peace, to pursue and work for peace. When you want a screen or deceiving facade behind which you can try to manoeuvre for other things while you avoid making peace, avoid facing its requirements, avoid addressing any peace proposals that may be on offer.

To understand this, one has to understand the origins of the term and its initially intended use.

One has to go back to Kissinger’s artful coining —— for Nixon’s benefit in 1968 —— of this expression as a way of neutralizing, heading off and deflecting powerful calls for “peace” from the anti-Vietnam war peace movement. And, in that way, to serve as an artifice permitting Nixon under the name of pursuing a “peace process” to continue to bomb and make war on Vietnam for another four years and more:

Just to show USA power and to drag things out (or so they hoped) to a better position where an enduring stalemate favourable to their own side might perhaps be achieved.

This, of course, was a plan which with the sudden collapse of South Vietnam under enormous military pressure and the ignominious and decisive fall of Saigon came to naught anyway.

And similarly now in the Middle East.

Similar but worse. Nixon and Kissinger wanted just a “decent interval”, as they put it, of several years. Drawing on an old history, the Palestinian strategy looks forward a century or two beyond the present and the horizon of the immediate future.

In the Middle East today as with Nixon and Kissinger in Washington and Vietnam in 1968-1975, “peace process” is a policy, unacknowledged and disguised, of continuing, unremitting war —— of a defining commitment substantively to “anything but peace now”.

I want “peace”, not a “peace process”.

For their part, the Palestinian leadership is not interested in negotiating any “peace” so long as they can play a “long game” —— one just like seeing off the Crusaders after a couple of centuries, as they see it —— to get what they want in its entirety behind the facade of a hypocritically invoked “peace process”.

The “peace process” to which they feign allegiance is really something else entirely.

Their endless contentless bleating about “the peace process” is a way, their way, of blocking one course of action —— while claiming to believe in and uphold it —— and while pursuing, in a bloody-minded fashion, a completely different game-plan and “total victory” strategy. Over the very long haul.

The rest of the world are fools to fall in with this deceiving pretence.

Some do it out of ignorance, some from habitual prejudice or a reflex failure of thinking or sheer thoughtlessness, and some from a fine, cynical or “realistic” calculation of their imagined interests.

These days, so far as the Israel and Palestine issue is concerned, the idea of a “peace process” is a device to tie well-meaning idiots in knots, to disable and incapacitate them politically with their own consent and help.

Clive Kessler is an Emeritus Professor, Sociology & Anthropology SoSS: School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales.

Comments

3 Responses to “Scott Morrison has done us no favours”
  1. Liat Kirby says:

    I agree with you entirely, Bella Ceruza. And for Scott Morrison to have set this debacle in motion is morally reprehensible. Like so many who use their religion to feel smugly good about themselves and their values, his behaviour is completely at odds with the illusion he must have of himself, the image that no doubt makes him comfortable. ‘I’m just a Sydney boy,’ he says, as he reaches out with the recently constructed persona of egalitarian Australian male. Well, he’s a narcissistic Sydney boy and should stay right away from stirring the pot in matters he’s too superficial to comprehend adequately.

  2. Bella Ceruza says:

    I am more than merely angry!! – furious and terrified might come closer.

    Morrison’s pathetic pre-election ploy will only lead to increasing Jew hatred, which is already being whipped up by ‘our ABC’ stooping to parroting Arab/Muslim nonsense about peace process and Muslim retaliation to Australia (eg via affecting Oz’ relationship with our nearest neighbour).

    From now on in this game, it’s lose-lose for Jews.

    ie .. if Morrison proceeds to move the embassy (which I doubt) ANY trouble from Muslims will be the fault of the Jews. In other words, ANY terror attack/ violence / bullying from Arab/Muslim quarters will be the blamed on Jews because it will be attributed to the embassy move to Jlm.

    …. ‘on the other hand’ if Morrison caves in to Muslim votes and does not move the embassy – the which I see is inevitable as Muslims outnumber us 3:1, then the same result will be the same as always happens when one succumbs to bullies – they bully further and their demands grow in the knowledge that their bullying works.

    Australians are already dhimmis in our own land / culture – to mention anything merely slightly critical of M’s or Islam is a crime; to not want a mosque with loud chanting at odd hours in your close vicinity is considered racism ..and the list goes on. After caving in to Muslim demands about the embassy, Morrison will have shown his dependence on the M community and that they own him.

    He’s a bloody clever politician and I doubt he set this up accidentally. If he were serious about the move, he would have gone about setting it up instead of saying he was ‘open’ to it.

    Australian Jews beware…the threats to our community are growing.

  3. Erica Edelman says:

    What you put forward is this: 1. Dave Sharma’s chances are “harmed”. 2. There’s no peace process – it’s a big con – vacuous and non-persuasive (which I agree with ) 3. There are some good arguments why the embassy should/could be moved to Jerusalem.
    Can you make your point a bit clearer? But more to the point – can you tell us something we don’t already
    Know – like why moving the embassy in any case is not a good idea?
    If the Pals under Hamas are feigning legitimacy of intent (which I concede is the case) why not just get
    Along with life despite them?

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