Semi-Propaganda Smoothtalk

Note this wishy-washy description:

Transjordan was one of the Arab states which moved to assist Palestinian nationalists opposed to the creation of Israel in May 1948, and took part in the warfare between the Arab states and the newly founded State of Israel.

To "assist" Arabs or to subvert a UN recommendation through violent aggression?

"Took part in the warfare" or did Jordan invade a neighboring state?

And who is the author of this semi-propaganda smoothtalk?

The United State Department of State, see under 'History'.

Hillary, that's history?


By the way, when Jordan requested to be accepted into the UN in 1946, you know what happened?

This from the UN protocol:

The representative of Poland questioned whether Trans-Jordan had de jure and de facto attained independence. He stated that he did not consider the way in which the British mandate was terminated to be in conformity with the procedure adopted by the Council of the League of Nations in regard to other mandates; nor had the requirements of the United Nations Charter been met when the mandate was terminated. The representative of Poland suggested that the application of Trans-Jordan be postponed for one year.

Review this blog post of mine

and this:

When the UK announced plans for Transjordanian independence, the final Assembly of the League of Nations and the General Assembly both adopted resolutions which indicated support for the proposal. However, the Jewish Agency and many legal scholars raised objections...the mandates could not be amended unilaterally...despite Transjordan's theoretical independence as conferred by the 1946 Treaty, the Arab Legion continued to be used, under nominal Transjordanian but actual British command, for police duties and for frontier control in Palestine.

The Jewish Agency spokesmen said that Transjordan was an integral part of Palestine, and that according to Article 80 of the UN Charter, the Jewish people had a secured interest in its territory.

The Anglo-American treaty, also known as the Palestine Mandate Convention, permitted the US to delay any unilateral British action to terminate the mandate...Members of the U.S. Congress introduced resolutions demanding that the U.S. Representative to the United Nations be instructed to seek postponement of any international determination of the status of Transjordan until the future status of Palestine as a whole was determined...US Secretary of State Byrnes had spoken out against premature recognition of Transjordan, and he added that the application should not be considered until the question of Palestine as a whole was addressed...At the 1947 Pentagon Conference, the USA advised the UK it was withholding recognition of Transjordan pending a decision on the Palestine question by the United Nations. During the General Assembly deliberations on Palestine, there were suggestions that it would be desirable to incorporate part of Transjordan's territory into the proposed Jewish state...

^

Mailer on Media

Yonatan Silverman sent mw this excerpt from Norman Mailer's, THE IDOL AND THE OCTOPUS

Pages 139-140

On Leaders and New Revolutionaries

Q. How do you sap the energy of bad leaders who are caught up in their own bad time?

A. In a modern state, the forces of propaganda control leaders as well as citizens, because the forces of propaganda are more complex than the leader. In a bad time, the war to be fought is in the mass media.

If anyone is a leftist, or a radical, if a man becomes a rebel, a wild reactionary, I don’t care what – if he’s somebody who’s got a sense that the world is wrong and he’s more or less right, then the thing to do, if he wants political action, is not to look for organizations which he can join, nor to look for long walks he can go on with other picketeers, but rather it is to devote his life to working subtly, silently, steelfully, against the state.

And there’s one best way he can do that. He can join the mass media. He can bore from within. He shouldn’t look to form a sect or a cell – he should do it alone. The moment he starts to form sects and cells, he’s beginning to create dissension and counterespionage agents.

The history of revolutionary movements is that they form cells, then defeat themselves. The worst and most paranoid kind of secret police – those split personalities who are half secret policemen and half revolutionaries (I’m talking of psychological types rather than of literal police agents) – enter these organizations and begin to manufacture them over and over again from within.

It’s better to work alone, trusting no one, just working, working, working not to sabotage so much as to shift and to turn and to confuse the mass media and hold the mirror to its guilt, keep the light in its eye, never, never, never oneself beginning to believe that the legitimate work one is doing in the mass media has some prior value to it; always knowing that the work no matter how well intentioned is likely to be subtly hideous work. The mass media does diabolically subtle things to the morale and life of the people who do their work; few of us are strong enough to live alone in enemy territory. But it’s work which must be done.

So long as the mass media are controlled completely by one’s enemies, the tender life of all of us is in danger. And the way to fight back is not to look to start a group or a cell or to write a program, but instead it is to look for a job in the heart of the enemy.

How To Propagandize, the Pal. Way

Tony Blair visited Bethlehem yesterday. You know, the Jewish city where David son of Jesse was born.

Anyway, see this bit from Steve Erlanger in his NYTimes report:-

When presented with a Bethlehem specialty, a nativity scene carved inside the root of an olive tree, Mr. Blair oohed in admiration. He barely blinked when Ms. Daibes told him that the gift was special, because it was fashioned from a 200-year-old tree “uprooted by the Israelis.”

Neat, that.

I guess we could tell him that he could visit a 2000-year old Jewish community that had been reestablished on land that had been uprooted by, amongst others, Arabs.

Did I Hear Some Whisper Goebbels?

Here's today's Peace Now ad in Haaretz:-

It translates:

The Opponents of Annapolis

The Coalition of Opposition to A Peace Agreement

A demonstration of the Right against Annapolis Conference at the Western Wall

A demonstration by Hamas against the Annapolis Conference in Khan Yunis

Presented by: Peace Now

Telemesser No. 1-700-70-1967

www.peacenow.org.il

And so wrote Joseph Goebbels, in Joachim Fest, The Face of the Third Reich (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1970, page 90:-

"That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result," he wrote. "It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success."

and

When a friend criticised him for denigrating Weiss, a man with an exemplary military record, "he explained cynically that he wasn’t in the least interested in Weiss, only in the propaganda effect."

and

the purpose of both art and propaganda was to bring about a spiritual mobilisation

and

"Aim — drive the Jews out of Berlin," he wrote in his diary in June 1938, "and without any sentimentality."

in Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, Allen Lane, 2005, p. 576

Peace Now is attempting to draw a unseemly and immoral parallel between violent and murderous terrorists, bloddthirsty, and Jews who are crying for security in the face of that terror as they expect that the government's acceptance of the new Annapolis peace process will cause more death. They are adopting anathemous methods.

Jews are praying peacefully at the Western Wall and Arabs are rampaging through the streets of Gaza shooting off guns but for Peace Now there is an equivalency.

This is horrific.

It must be combatted.