THE MARKET BOYS

This Israeli documentary about the plight of young Palestinian men trying to cope by having to find menial work in an Israeli market is, I suppose, well meant. But it also displays that curiously gentle and evasive tone that supposedly sympathetic Israelis seem to possess. While sympathising with the Palestinian youths there is never any criticism of the Israeli government policy dictating their plight.

I appreciate the glimpse into this sordid world. The young men affect a jauntiness, which is the right of all young people, but there is a long silent moment when we see in the eyes and visage of the main protagonist his deep and utter despair. It is the still centre of the entire documentary.

The Israeli employer of this young man is decent enough in his way. He pretends a father/son relation. He feels for him. He has wife trouble and apparently no children and this young man means something to him. When the authorities make it impossible for the Palestinian to work in Israel, the employer shows human sympathy. But not once does he criticise his government. Instead the usual blurring of the truth by wishing for peace without acknowledging that Israel holds 95% of the power to make it. This wilful act of innocence.

A KIWI VOICE: ROGER FOWLER

I've been in many campaigns at a community level. We had a picket of probably 200 people and Muldoon came out and I happened to be in the way and he threw a punch at me and I can still picture him standing in the middle of Queen Street yelling out: I'll take you on one at a time! Yeah, I've been involved in some pretty hairy events over the years.

It was certainly a tragic stand-off in the last peace flotilla, but our hope is that there be so many people involved the Israelis would be extremely stupid to do anything outlandish. It's pretty scarey, yeah, and it just shows you the desperation that the Israeli military sometimes will descend to.

We weighed up the pros and the cons, and the pro was here were one and a half million people in a desperate situation. On the other hand were the big cons, a whole lot of reasons, really good reasons why we shouldn't go or shouldn't do anything about it. Of course, we come down on the side, yes, we have to go.

This is going to be an international convoy and it's important that Kiwis are part of that. I was very apprehensive [when my son wanted to join up] but I respect his wishes and, yes, I'm extremely proud of him.

My personal feelings and anxiety don't even come into the picture compared to the desperation of the people of Gaza. There's one and a half million people there living in a tiny sliver of land which is as big as East Coast Bays here in Auckland, up to Browns Bay. That's how big it is. Everywhere you look it's completely desperate.

Some consumable items are allowed in. It takes a long time for them to get in and they're only dribbling in. The people of Gaza now have the luxury of being able to get chocolates and mayonnaise and things of that nature, but I'm sorry, their need is much more desperate than that. I mean, the country's been bombed to shreds. They can't get building material to rebuild their houses. They can't even get a bag of cement.

It's one of many [pressing issues the world faces] but the main thing that differentiates this issue from everything else is that it's a man-made issue. The people of Gaza are suffering, and suffering every day, 24x7, as a direct result of Israeli government policy, and that can be changed.

It is definitely a stand. We also know about our peace flotilla in Auckland which changed the situation where we were having unwanted nuclear warships visiting our harbours and we were able to turn that around.

All packed and ready to go. I would hope that one day if my grandchildren ever ask me what did you do Poppy to try and stop the wars in this world, that I'm not going to be stumped for an answer.

A KIWI VOICE: NICOLA ENCHMARCH

I'm not used to the sound of gunfire and I hope I don't hear it again. As a New Zealander and coming from a peaceful country and not being exposed to such violence you go back and think wow actually that was all a bit crazy being up on the upper deck with the bullets flying around everywhere.

There was nothing in our planning that involved any form of defence or violence. We knew something was going to happen. We thought they may have just tried to block us. [Israeli boats were] chasing. It is one memory that I probably won't forget and stands in my mind is the sound of the engine of the Mavi Marmara accelerating before I even reached up to the upper deck. At the same time the helicoptor started hovering over the roof of the boat.

[The sound of weapons] penetrates into your hearing so deep. You're trying to work out what's going on. It's very disorientating. It's very hard to tell where it's coming from. I know it's coming from the zodiacs and I know it's coming from up in the roof and it's coming down the starboard side of the boat which I was standing on. There was so much noise. They were landing everywhere.

I thought I had [taken cover] by going near the top of the boat so the helicoptor was obscured behind it. I'm automatically thinking there's no way they would attack this flotilla using live ammunition. It just doesn't even enter the head that they would use live ammunition. I'm thinking rubber bullets.

The first fatality was a photographer. He was holding his camera up to take photographs up on the roof and he received a bullet in the forehead. So I knelt down next to him, put my hand under his head, not thinking, and then I realised the extent of his injuries. This was the realisation that things had got crazy. He was still breathing. I understood the sound of the breathing from when my grandfather died. So I knew he didn't have long. I just held his hand. I just thought his family wasn't there. I thought this brave man, who was only taking a photograph, is alone and it's his last moments.

What we went through on that flotilla, from being shot at, killed, bound for long lengths of time, this is what the Palestinians live with every day. Every day.

This blockade has to stop. It can't go on. These people have the right to rebuild their lives, rebuild Gaza.

I can speak for myself, and I can speak for my colleagues, and I can speak for the people who were also part of the Viva Palestina convoy, is that you are fixed on that goal, that's all you think about, breaking that siege and getting into Gaza and delivering humanitarian aid, having the world understand that this is not acceptable.

I find it very difficult to rationalise how you can be self-defending when you are the one that's committing the attack. So the Mavi Marmara and the other boats in the flotilla were on course. They were in international waters. There were no arms in these boats.

I have seen the images that the Israelis have put out of knives. Those knives came from the kitchen of the boat. They've sticks. Every passenger is part of the instruction, quite categorically were told under no circumstances must they take on board anything that is remotely conceived as a weapon.

I was searched and then I was handcuffed and then I was taken up to the upper deck. Already outside on their knees, hands bound behind were two rows of men that were already bound. Some were blindfolded. So the decks started to fill up with all of these people, all bound, were yelled at, told to shut up, we have the guns pointed at us. We were detained outside the boat, on the decks, in that position, for several hours. As the sun came up, while we were out there, they were trashing the inside of the boat. So everyone's luggage was opened, cameras, money. We saw possessions being taken out, video footage, everything.

[Then] to be shoved into the prison van that can only hold three people, and being locked in there and not being able to do anything about it.

It was horrendous that nine had to die on a humanitarian flotilla. They were aid workers, humanitarian aid workers. There was a boy of nineteen years old, he was at the beginning of his life, he was shot five times.

I don't look [to die for this cause]. I don't think my mother would appreciate it! I would give the most that I can. I believe that you don't stop trying. You've got to keep trying with this.

I get a lot of lectures when I go home. Don't do it again. But we are. We're doing another land convoy.

I'm just committed to believing that the Palestinians have a right to exist as you and I do.

TROUBLED WATERS

Troubled waters. A rather whimsical title for the content it heads up. Almost romantic. Mills and Boon. Gentle and evasive. The title for an Israeli documentary about two of eighteen Jewish families who live on Palestinian land in Gaza around 2000, and who fish from the same beach as Palestinians.

These Israeli settlers are not fanatics, one father is a professed left-winger, but nevertheless the parents possess this gentle and evasive self-centredness. A quiet will to dominate. If the fact of illegal settlement is completely overlooked it is so easy to blame the Arabs. Superficially there is this hail fellow well met friendship with the Palestinian fisherman. They sit on the beach and eat together. But it is all completely phoney.

The larger political scene brings into being the second Intifada. Immediately one father demands of the military that they destroy Palestinian crops. Those bastards want to harm innocent children. If they take something of ours, we will take something of theirs. If they harm us we will harm them 10 times over.

Meanwhile aerial bombardment of Gaza is compared to Palestinian gunfire. When they shoot at night and the kids are terrified we don't feel safe. Meanwhile there is devastation in Gaza following helicopter assault. With satisfied looks they watch TV showing terrified Palestinian children and learning that there is one dead and over fifty wounded. Let them fear a bit.

Then one of the women phones a Palestinian fisherman. Why? Is it some undetected need to fraternise? Is it a hidden wish to hear that the other suffers? The Palestinian gives nothing away. The woman then applies guilt. You have turned us into paupers, we have no money. Things could be better you know.

That war criminal Sharon comes into office and these few settlers are given increased security, funding and flasher homes with swimming pools. Still they complain while Palestinian agriculture remains erased from the land. Having just made them comfortable Sharon then decides to embark upon his scheme to lock up Gaza and focus on the West Bank. The settlers have to leave. They wallow in increased self-pity.

An unmarried man lives with one of the families. He us quite glad to be moving into Israel. Why? Apparently more chance to get married. Picking grapes with one of the children he asks: You know whose vines these are? Arabs who used to live here. Their homes were demolished. They had the cream of the land out here. Now it's ours. Is he teaching the child to pity or to gloat? The ambiguity encompasses both possibilities at the same time, resulting in moral stultification.

But a ray of hope. One of the daughters tells her father that she has no problem with the Arabs. When she was younger she saw more of them than Grandma. Left-wing father says to her: This is Israel. She replies: No it is not. He responds: This is Greater Israel. May that young woman retain her genuine integrity and not be smothered by national conditioning.

At the very end as they leave one of the women declare: All of this goes to the Arabs. As if it was not theirs before and should not be theirs in the future.

THE ISRAELI TAKE

The Israeli Take was an imported "in-depth" news item shown last night on NZTV Sunday programme. Previously we had had a home-grown item interviewing Nicola Enchmarch, a real Kiwi hero, who had been on the Mavi Marmara. She had attended to a dying man who had been shot numerous times, including the head. She did not hide down below with other women, she was obviously not an extremist, and she had important things to say about what happened. But she had a wonderful Michaelic will and focus for what had to be done for the people of Gaza.

The Israeli Take threatened to be a complete excuse for the Israeli military, but surprisingly the voices from two or three persons on board the Mavi Marmara were included. Perhaps in the interest of "balance", for the whole item was the usual ambiguous establishment news item in which no firm journalistic stance was taken. It was an essentially disgraceful piece of work which chose not to deal with the relevant issue of the blockade. Instead time was wasted on wondering who started the hostility, as though - yet again - we are dealing with two equal and morally equivalent forces.

If I put aside the fact that the Israelis have no right to own a good deal of the eastern Mediterranean and do just what they like there, and were therefore "starting" the "fight" - having already started it by setting up Gaza as a concentration camp - if I put these facts aside, the programme itself seemed to answer this question for me. The Israeli commander was heard to warn the Mavi Marmara that it was entering an area of hostility - that is, an area made hostile by the presence and intentions of Israeli forces. But the programme makers chose not to notice this.

Instead I think we were shown men on the Mavi Marmara sawing lengths of metal from the railings, as if this was the moment which started the fight. It was also the moment at which the programme makers seriously took the side of the Israelis by implying that it is not OK to take steps to defend yourself from a pirate in uniform. As if it is not quite the done thing to actually be serious about the objective of the flotilla. As if it was indeed just a stunt. The Israelis - and presumably the British programme makers - do not accept the right of others to resist.

When I see men making weapons out of a ship's railing I draw the conclusion that essentially they did not have weapons. When I realise that not a single Israeli soldier was killed this conclusion is reinforced. When I learn that firearms taken from Israeli soldiers were not used against them, even the moral standing of the flotilla is reinforced.

This was a programme which enabled the Israeli perspective to be given. What did we get? Surprisingly little. We saw flotilla men justifiably manhandling - but not killing - soldiers who assumed they had a right to board a vessel. We saw men making those metal bars. We saw - note this well - Muslim men having an anti-Israeli meeting. Surprise, surprise. With an adversary capable of any crime it would have been just one way to bolster courage. We heard Israeli soldiers claiming they were being shot at. Did any of them receive gunshot wounds? The Israelis and the programme failed to say.

We were told that the Israeli commandos fired paint-ball guns, as though they were carrying out an exercise in benevolence. An example of Israeli humour perhaps? The programme told us that the very first person shot was shot by a paint-ball. He was one of the persons from the Mavi Marmara who was interviewed, but curiously he was not asked - for the viewer anyway - to confirm that his seeming agony on the ground and the red patch on his body was due to a paint-ball. It would have been so easy to have cleared this matter up.

Having been thumped by establishment media for presuming to resist tyranny, the flotilla was then trounced with the accusation that they were not so much humanitarian, as political. How dare they also presume to take part in the political process. The writer William Trevor was once asked if he was a political person. He replied that he took a concerned interest in matters that occurred in the world, but this did not make him political. I take this as a starting point and from this one's concern is made to be political by others who really are political. If you are concerned and do nothing about it you are not political. If you do something about it you are forced to be political. Yet you have as much right to be political as any other human being set up as an agent of state.

Once again time was wasted on the intentions of the flotilla, rather than the obscenity of people in a concentration camp. There is absolutely no shame in saying that the flotilla was both humanitarian and political. The people of Gaza needed to be strengthened and the state of Israel needed to be weakened.

This accusation of political action was reinforced by the programme makers by making fun of some of the items eventually delivered to Gaza. Wheelchairs which appeared to have been damaged in transit from helpful Israel, and out of date medicines. The programme did not wonder why so many wheelchairs were in bad condition. It did not imagine that perhaps any medicine is better than none and that only the comfortable worry about expiry dates. No, these two amusing items reinforced the supposed hypocrisy of the flotilla mission, rather than perhaps its ability to do the best it could with the resources available.

AMERICAN TALK

I confess that apart from three exceptions my view of American talk is dictated by on-screen programmes and their participants. Americans talk a lot. Any one of their documentaries can be exhausting in its verbiage without being exhaustive in its incisiveness. American talk appears to be designed to conceal rather than to discover the truth. It seems very difficult to call a spade a spade.

An example recently was an American television documentary on the fiery deaths of seven American astronauts. The programme was designed to show what happened and what was done about it. Within the space of 60 seconds somewhere in the programme it became very obvious that what happened was a piece of foam coming off and ripping a hole in one wing. You could see the hole and it was significant. Upon re-entry this hole allowed the fire to begin.

However, the programme and its participants spent the entire time showing how heroic the leader of the ground team was, how they went through all the planned procedures with strength and courage - and yet how they had to suffer failure at the end. It became very apparent that the ground team and the programme pretended that the hole in the wing was not significant. There was a wish to blank out the implications. This may have been due to the fact that in their arrogant planning failure was not an option, and there was nothing to be done. But American talk can be based upon such spurious assumptions and shortcomings.

Then the inquiry into the disaster by yet another American hero, while blaming organisational failure, failed in itself to be specific with the public. Or perhaps it was the programme makers who had to be non-specific with us, so that a spade could not be called a spade and the wooden-jawed leader of ground crew kept his job. But we can be assured that there was much talk analysing and explaining irrelevant factors.

As for the three Americans who visited me, I had been warned in advance not to speak about American political matters with them. He was Republican, she was Democrat, and the daughter was apolitical, but it made no difference. After all the tears of joy and hullabaloo about Obama he was beginning to show what a flop he was, but we had to close our eyes to this unwelcome fact and not talk about it. Just as the ground team had closed their eyes and not talked about the hole in the wing.

KIA ORA GAZA

Six New Zealanders - Kia Ora Gaza - will be taking part sometime in September 2010 in another movement by land to subvert Israel's illegal and medieval blockade of Gaza. They have my full support. They are far more true heroes than the first New Zealand fatality in Afghanistan whose body has arrived back amid a sickening political and media hype. He was merely doing a job he loved and was paid for which potentially if not really involved killing civilians.

Presumably after Israel played its passport game in New Zealand some years ago we have been blessed with the absence of an Israeli embassy. Now it is back. The very evening Kia Ora Gaza was announced on New Zealand establishment television news we had to put up with the sight and sound of the Israeli ambassador being allowed to comment. He had the temerity to say that Kia Ora Gaza is not the Kiwi way. This is from a person who comes from a country which does not share the same values as Kiwis, who wish others well, are tolerant of people of other cultures, religions and governments, and who hate bullies.

Israel cannot continue to keep playing the same card. More people see that it is a domineering, trouble-making bully, with one set of rules for everyone else and none for itself. Without the United States it would disintegrate, having brought this on itself.

Does Israel imagine that it can continue on its current path indefinitely? It has become the most despicable nation on earth. Why? Because it should know better. But it is as if the state of Israel has been established and led by low class thugs. Israel has little to do with the best in Jewish culture, thought and activity. It actually represents the worst - that tendency to materialism, spitefulness and lack of compassion.

NEW WORLD OF INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE

Noam Chomsky and voices from North, South and Central America. There are four interviews with Chomsky in which he infects the reader with a sense of optimism. He quotes Gramsci: we should live by pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. This has to be the right stance in which to live in these times.

Chomsky refers to optimism of the will in local communal activity in South America, as well as in national political behaviour. He pays tribute to it and conveys hope.

Unfortunately, the voices representing optimistic activity are deadeningly sociological and anthropological. No passion, no direct description of activity, just dead intellectuality. Perhaps these voices do not belong to the people doing the actual work. Chomsky has very little comment to make on these contributions, the bulk of the book.

Hope is dashed by those who are meant to exemplify it, creating a dysfunctional book.

Rating: Fair

ATWOOD, MARGARET. THE SHADOW OVER ISRAEL

This article appeared in Haaretz to mark Israel's book week. She is refreshing in her no-nonsense descriptions of the Israeli "situation". She speaks without baggage, ethnic or religious. Just a straight seeing novelist and poet with an independent mind.

The Shadow over Israel is not the Palestinians. It is Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, and the fear and self-pity this engenders in many Israelis. It is tempting to think Wow! There is some awareness here. But ten minutes later it hits home Oops! Hang on a minute. Does this not sound like a Woody Allen movie?

There is no motivation or impulse to go beyond the personal angst, apparently. We do not hear or see significant demonstrations by Israelis against the apartheid nature of their state, or the atrocious behaviour of their army. The appalling power of their state mechanisms deters them, as it does not deter Free Gaza flotilla humanitarians.

There are no American Jewish activists in large numbers as there were during the Vietnam War, or on any issue then and now besides the issue of Israel. The Shadow that is Israel. There are just a few brave and wonderful Jewish individuals in and out of Israel who are beacons of humanity in the world.

Margaret Atwood spoke of a country in trouble when it feels the need to ban the likes of Noam Chomsky. She spoke to my heart when she referred to the vindictive pettiness of Israeli domination over the Palestinians. On the one hand killing children in Gaza and aid-bringers on boats, but on the other forbidding writing paper or pizza.

TRUE HEROES

I know that the people of Gaza will honour those international citizens who took part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla May 2010, and in particular those who have lost their lives. Beneath the sorrow there will be a kind of joy that others in the world care enough to be injured or to lose their lives for them, out of love and concern for them.

You have the unreal heroes of Hollywood, but the real hero is physically helpless against evil and yet steps forward and lays his/her life on the line regardless. Jesus Christ is the epitomy of the true hero. He was oppressed both by the power of empire and by the corruption of the Jewish establishment yet courted their violence by having another vision.

Whatever the ethnicity and religion of those on the Flotilla they have all acted in a Christian way, some laying down their lives for others. The true hero is a true Christian.

There would have been those on the Flotilla who knew very well that Israel was capable of anything and yet they did not allow their sense of foreboding and vulnerability to deter them. This is true heroism. When you know that you are up against implacable power and refuse to back down you are among the best that the world can produce.

The foreign minister of a nation which is a master at provocation described the Flotilla as a provocation. The foreign minister of a nation which is supreme at manipulating public perception described the Flotilla as a publicity stunt. Yet for a mere provocation and publicity stunt this sick nation of Israel determines that at least 9 international unarmed civilians must be killed and at least 50 injured.

If this is a picture of Israeli behaviour toward the citizens of other countries only God knows how the people of Gaza manage to cope. There must be many true heroes among them.

BAROUD, RAMZY. MY FATHER WAS A FREEDOM FIGHTER: GAZA'S UNTOLD STORY

Like Abdel Bari Atwan, Ramzy Baroud was born and lived in an Israeli concentration camp in Gaza, from where with the selfless effort of his father he also has managed to breath and write about his people and the Middle East. He is editor of PalestineChronicle.com

What is plain enough for me for the first time is that the state of Israel was already well on the way to being established regardless of the holocaust. The Zionists had been intent upon this for decades while the British and others allowed the terrorism to happen. Zionism is to the Jew as Nazism is to the German. They are both race-based, hate-filled ideologies. The Palestinians were set down for catastrophe long before any holocaust in Europe.

Baroud draws a loving picture of his father and gives an understanding of Palestinian and Israeli politics. As with any society, the elite were always essentially corrupt and collaborated with the occupiers. When a real democratic election occurred in 2006, a real choice, for which Baroud's father with a sense of liberation voted for Hamas because they were decent people, the United States and Israel were incapable of any action other than vengeful and immoral blockade.

Rating: Very good.

ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA

It is heartening to find one's own insights given expression by prominent commentators one respects, but it is somewhat disconcerting to find that there are those in the establishment media who are also perfectly aware. So here in New Zealand John Campbell who normally twitters on in a most irritating fashion suddenly shows a genuine knowledge and admiration in an interview with Robert Fisk. Or some right-wing morning radio journalist switches to a real knowledge and appreciation in an interview with Dahr Jamail. They are living a double life, normally happy to espouse an antithetical establishment viewpoint.

The election of Obama was a good example which showed that members of the establishment media know the truth perfectly well. In New Zealand they decided to awake from their cowardice and begin to express hopes for necessary change in the world. Suddenly it was OK to publicly hope that the United States would be more reasonable in the world, that it would take Israel by the nose and force it to behave decently. Statements mildly critical of Israel surfaced; sympathetic items about Gaza and the Palestinians occurred. Iran or Venezuela or you name it escaped irrational villification.

However, the media establishment manoeuvres ponderously. The Gaza war crime had already occurred. It was already too late. The real nature of the new man was revealed in one telling scenario, but the media wanted to miss it. In the midst of the international crime, Obama was shown playing golf, a vision horribly reminiscent of his predecessor. He said not a word then on the subject nor thereafter.

But now the establishment media has rushed back into obedient silence and untruth. It has seen again that the truth cannot be revealed and will not be acted upon by this unsavoury new president.

A HOUSE WITH A VIEW

In 1970 we moved into our house in a street of group housing. In those days (in any days?) everyone was expected to be the same. If you did not like noisy vehicles or parties, or having your privacy invaded in any way, you were uppity and peculiar and subject to harassment. As a result we built a six foot fence and within the fence we grew small trees which blocked the environment.

Decades have passed, some have moved, others have aged and there now exists a kind of truce, even neighbourliness. We decided to replace some trees with sunshine and having removed them discovered what we had been missing all these years: a view. Or to put it more correctly a view truncated by the roof-line of the house next door below. What an imposition and an aggravation!

If this were Israel - God forbid - and I was an Israeli Jew and my neighbour a Palestinian, I could probably go to the local authorities and get something done about my lack of a full view. I know that we could trump up some story about the illegality of my neighbour's dwelling, how it does not conform to this or that. How he did not do the right thing when he moved in to it.

Now I am a reasonable man and I would be willing to compromise even though I know my neighbour would not possess the qualities necessary to appreciate my humanity. I would not require that his house be completely bulldozed - after all we are civilised people - but just that his peaked roof be sliced off and replaced with a flat one. Then everyone has to be happy; he has a house and I have an uninterrupted 180 degree view.

There is just one small added benefit in that I could save on rubbish disposal costs, for his flat roof below me would be an ideal spot for me to deposit all my rubbish.

WENDELL BERRY AND ME

I have just read some more essays by Wendell Berry (The Gift of Good Land). This extraordinary ordinary man, an academic who farms in Kentucky, grapples with the problems facing family farming and what we like to call subsistence farming elsewhere in the world. These problems are primarily caused by agribusiness and its governmental allies. Berry is concerned with agricultural and horticultural health. Ecology is long-term economics: farming and gardening based only upon economics can be short-sighted and destructive. A previous generation had fine individuals like Sir Albert Howard and Friend Sykes, leaders of a movement involving healthy farming, composting and soil associations. We have Wendell Berry.

I marvel at the fact that I enjoy reading Wendell Berry so much, a practical intelligent man who works in a way that I do not. Although I have had a persistent relation to working with the soil that is greater than the majority of people in my society it has also been a strange relation. I have done the work with enjoyment but also as if under duress. It is good work to think about other things when doing, whereas my inclination to plan and think about the soil work itself is weak. Men like Howard and Berry are philosophical toward working with the soil, whereas I shirk and try to be philosophical about other things.

Why have I been so involved with working with the soil? I remember helping my father with potatoes on his allotment. You planted them a certain way and then you dug them up and enjoyed eating them. He also grew berry bushes as well as other vegetables. Even in his day, although he belonged to an association of allotment growers, he was unusual in his application. Before him his father was an agricultural labourer before he married and had a large family and worked in a factory (although he then spent his evenings gardening), and before him my great-grandfather was an agricultural labourer.

At the age of about eleven I became employed on a local small-holding on Saturdays and during school holidays. It took only five minutes to walk from my Council house to what I experienced as countryside where this small-holding was situated. Here I worked very hard picking fruit, cleaning out the hen barn and pig styes, building the manure heap, watering the seedlings and tending to the vegetable plants (celery on frozen mornings), working in the glass-houses, sterilising soil with wood-fired steam, plucking chickens. Then close by there seemed to me to be an enormous field in which long rows of planted brassica had to be hoed in teams. This was all naturally organic. There was the camaraderie of work-mates but there was also the ability to think about other things, about the latest TV adaptation of a literary classic, and to foster my interest in literature.

Then there was New Zealand and choosing to leave university and work in Wellington parks and reserves department, tending to flowers and flower-beds in various parts of the city. Why I did this I cannot remember.

Then there was marriage and finishing university, Jacqueline and I wanting to have a garden, to compost and to grow our own vegetables, joining the local soil association and overseas research associations, subscribing to Rodale journals, visiting organic and bio-dynamic farms, meeting with other individuals, and reading, reading, reading. We kept bees and hens, which involved the whole paraphernalia of honey extraction in the kitchen, and an interest in and knowledge of the various hens. There were the truckloads of commercial compost delivered steaming on the front path, the trailer-loads of various manures - chicken, cow, horse and goat, the bales of hay or straw for mulching and the continual collection of firewood for the open fire-place in the living room. All this on a suburban section of one sixth of an acre. Jacqueline had even less previous experience but 100% motivation.

Now that we have fed our family and they have grown up physically healthy I take some pride in what Jacqueline and I have spent our time doing. We have been doing work that Wendell Berry advocates with such cogency. It is work that is becoming trendy, although often on a small and impractical scale, almost like a life-style accessory rather than a really necessary alternative life-style. It requires a certain philosophical input, lots of hard work and bears a certain spiritual fruit, regardless of the worker's personal qualities.

This way of living has felt like a compulsory training for me. It does not require the profit motive. It is no guarantee of a good or happy life, but it is perhaps legitimate to say that it has been a decent way of life.

ERASMUS. PRAISE OF FOLLY

I am going to be really childish and say that if there be any person in history I would have wished to have been in a previous life the primary candidate would have to be Erasmus. He possesses those qualities I wish I had, or more correctly which I believe are important in life. He is an independent thinker. He is a humanitarian Christian who is free of Christian institutions. He is a Christian humanist who places absolute emphasis upon the Gospels. He is respected on the European intellectual scene and has like-minded friends such as Thomas More and John Colet. He is civilised in the sense that he is moderate and middle-of-the-road, upsetting the Catholic hierarchy on the one hand and the crude Lutheran protestantism on the other. He is sharp and witty, honest and clear-sighted. The message of Christ is essentially a call for a charitable outlook and behaviour. We must act according to the spirit of the Gospels. To act according to the letter of the Law Erasmus terms Judaism.

I want to be childish again and say that if I had to choose one book to keep with me that book would be Praise of Folly. It is relevant for all times and places and circumstances where there is society. Folly makes the world go round. Sometimes it is wicked, sometimes it is charitable. A thoughtful person sees the folly that most others are subject to, but recognises also that it is very easy and disagreeable to be a wise fool. There is magnificent and justified satirical treatment of obvious targets such as rulers, politicians, lawyers, theologians and churchmen, including monks. Yet folly enables the world to go round, whereas intellectualism can be devastating.

The thinking of Erasmus is flexible and unconditioned, the language sophisticated yet clear and uncluttered. His expression is remarkably timeless, unlike other writers of his period (early 16th century). Here in a short and unique satirical work of literature is the essence of how life works.

BECKETT, SAMUEL. MURPHY. WATT.

I am trying to give Beckett another go and read all his novels. As a young man I could read Patrick White even though I thought he put the reader in a coffin, leaving the lid open. But I could not read Beckett because he put you in a coffin and nailed the lid down. Now that decades have passed perhaps I am old enough to appreciate him.

Well I have read Murphy and most of Watt and I am beginning to founder. It does not appear to be a matter of the reader's age at all. Indeed for me there is something of the precocious adolescent in Beckett. (I find the same in Joyce).

There are some laugh out loud remarks in these novels and in Murphy some valuable comment upon establishment psychiatry and its practices, but what I can only describe as computer language takes over and swamps Watt.

Here is a sample taken at random: "With regard to the so important matter of Mr. Knott's physical appearance, Watt had unfortunately little or nothing to say. For one day Mr. Knott would be tall, fat, pale and dark, and the next thin, small, flushed and fair, and the next sturdy, middlesized, yellow and ginger, and the next small, fat, pale and fair, and the next middlesized, flushed, thin and ginger, and the next tall, yellow, dark and sturdy, and the next fat, middlesized, ginger and pale, and the next tall, thin, dark and flushed, and the next small, fair, sturdy and yellow, and the next tall, ginger, pale and fat, and the next thin, flushed, small and dark, and the next fair, sturdy, middlesized and yellow, and the next dark, small, fat and pale, and the next fair, middlesized, flushed and thin, and the next sturdy, ginger, tall and yellow, and the next pale, fat, middlesized and fair, and the next flushed, tall, thin and ginger, and the next yellow, small, dark and sturdy, and the next fat, flushed, ginger and tall, and the next dark, thin, yellow and small, and the next fair, pale, sturdy and middlesized, and the next dark, flushed, small and fat, etc." This is about a quarter of the sample. The infinite computations presumably involved in one person's perception of another is interesting, ho-hum.

If anyone thinks they suffer from depression, just read Beckett, and if you can read passages like this without skipping them, you are in a bad way. Just one of them may seem amusing, or clever, but this sample is one of very many, and they become overwhelmingly tiresome. If they make any point it is lost in the technique. In fact I would claim that this technique is the basic feature of Beckett's writing.

I hope to have the strength to keep reading Beckett in order to appreciate the fact that he received the Nobel prize for literature. Obviously I realise that he could be said to be giving expression to the nature of our civilization, a civilization which is in deep shit without a shovel, but strangely even a melancholic depressive like me cannot take it. Am I meant to thank Beckett for his awful honesty and to put him on the shelf like a picture on the wall? Books that I will never want to open. And is not an unopened and unread book like a festering evil?

DONNE, JOHN. NO MAN IS AN ISLAND : A SELECTION FROM THE PROSE

Unlike Seneca, John Donne appears to be subject to no controversy about his honesty and integrity. This could be due to the fact that he patently is a hypocrite. Or it could be because very few would be interested in his prose nowadays. It is shite. He is very lucky indeed that without his knowledge and consent someone published the verse of his earlier years for which he is now justifiably known.

When he was down on his luck, having misjudged the reaction of his rich father-in-law to his secret marriage, he wrote abject prose for about fifteen years to those who could help him. When he was given a job in the Anglican Church he becomes somewhat unctuous. Reading his letters it becomes obvious when this job occurs because they suddenly become full of holy sentiments and references to God and Our Saviour.

The tortuous turn of phrase which is an asset in his poetry is diabolical in his prose. He uses many tortured phrases to say very little. He invents arguments which have no cogency. He is a boring clever-dick.

As he rises in the Anglican Church and becomes known for his public sermons the reader gets a sense of the showmanship and grandstanding implicit in the performance, while the substance of the sermons can be trite and common-place. There is absolutely no originality of thought. Given that he is now a leading figure in a Christian church, the references to Christ are few and far between and when they occur there is a complete lack of grappling with the meaning of this spiritual individuality. It is all God and the Old Testament, fearfulness and death. His sermons, which are fearfully dated to death now, have no timeless value whatsoever.

Donne is the archetype for all mountebank preachers. From young man to elder church-man who staged his own funeral, from first to last, he is a complete tosser and toady.

SENECA. LETTERS FROM A STOIC

Seneca has a bit of a mixed press. Some of it brands him a hypocrite. Here we have a millionaire talking of the value of simplicity and poverty. How did he amass his wealth? Individuals I respect, such as Coleridge and Milton, do not think much of him. Others equally eminent throughout history look back to him with respect.

I can only think that if a hypocrite writes as much as Seneca he ought to be found out in his writings. All the hypocrites of our contemporary political life can be found out in their writings in a moment or two, quite apart from the fact that they would be incapable of even beginning to write with the cogent thoughtfulness of Seneca. Can you get hypocrites of a deeply philosophical nature? Would they exist more in the religious or esoteric arena?

In one letter Seneca arrives home to his country estate unannounced and the servants have not made preparations for him. He stoically maintains his equilibrium until they can attend to him. He does not criticise them. This is an uncomfortable example. Quite clearly if he maintains a spare diet and lives simply it is within a setting of material comfort.

On the other hand, when Seneca effectively ruled Rome for five years during Nero's childhood, it has been described as one of the finest periods in Rome's history. Perhaps he made his money because of his position in a way considered appropriate. Then he retires to lead a philosophical life.

Do I have to know whether or not Seneca was a hypocrite, whether or not I like him, in order to appreciate the thoughts he expresses? These thoughts fail to be self-serving or inhumane. I am left with the impression that the individuality which incarnated as Seneca around the time of the birth of Jesus is one of the most significant in the history of humanity. And this is despite the fact that for Seneca the emerging Christians were just one of a number of foreign religious cults. They meant nothing to him.

His significance is reinforced when I read his plays, which are so powerful and unique they seem to point to a future theatrical art form which in part finds its expression in Shakespeare and other Elizabethans. It seems inconceivable that Shakespeare did not know Seneca's work, there is just too much corresponding resonance. Then in the modern era Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, in part, seems to pick up on Seneca's techniques although full development still awaits some knowledgeable and able esoteric dramatist.

GOSPEL HALL

From the ages of 3-13 I was sent to Sunday School by my parents so that they could have Sunday afternoon to themselves. The walk from Council house to Gospel Hall would have been a good mile which included crossing a main arterial road. The Gospel Hall was in no way evangelical. Its superindendent was a caricature of a Church of England Sunday School superintendent: benevolent, elderly, white-haired and kindly Mr Fryor. His 2IC was a large rotund man who fittingly arrived in a Humber. We called him Jumbo. Both men in their ways were well-intentioned comfortable middle class administrants to the children, some of whom came from the wrong side of the arterial road.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. If anyone should believe in Me he shall have eternal Life.

I learned two things from this benevolent Sunday education, despite my rebellion. I came to know the Bible stories inside out and probably still remember them. And I learned that Christian life was all about the New Testament. The stories of the New Testament are completely different in tone from those in the Old.

The Old Testament stories formed an historical context only to the coming of the Son of God in the New Testament. The values of the New Testament given through Jesus Christ were an advance and improvement on the values of the Old Testament. A studious Christian can live without reference to the Old Testament but of course cannot do so without the New.

So when I hear high profile Christian leaders emphasising God and the Old Testament in the content of their sermons I believe that I am listening to someone who should belong to another religion. Literature of the 19th century, especially Dickens, is littered with cold and loveless individuals who in the name of God insist they are Christians performing some form of necessary tyranny against others. If they are not self-professed Christians they are rank materialists who believe in the over-riding power of mechanical science and industry. The segue between the two is minimal.

So long as Bishop Tamaki of Destiny Church spouts the Old Testament he can justify his tyranny and his materialistic success. He can think he deserves to become comfortable after all his industry. But he has to steer clear of the Spiritual Being Who after His hard work was very uncomfortably nailed to a Cross for His pains.

In the Gospel Jesus Christ comes incognito, isolated and homeless into Galilee and begins gathering His disciples. I can assure Bishop Tamaki that if He came today He would not arrive on a Harley Davidson taken from the garage of His material mansion. The unpretentious education of the Gospel Hall fifty years ago allows me to guess that the man Jesus would come from the nondescript people, and that his non-violent radicalism would be too much for the Tamakis and politicians of this world. He would be seen as a troublemaker, a dangerous loner gathering together a dangerous group, leading to only one inevitable outcome.

I thank the humble Gospel Hall for helping me to see clearly without effort the false prophets of our times, whether they come from within the Christian establishment, or from some supposed alternative, or from political circles. What allows Blair of the maniac glare to consciously carry out a crusade and criminally invade other countries belongs to the medieval Catholic Church just as much as to any petty Tamaki tyrant. And they all belong to the ethos of the Old Testament.

It is when I see odd individuals - and some of them may be odd - carrying out loving actions without beating any drum that I feel myself in the presence of the New Testament, in the presence of a true Christian.

JEWS FOR JESUS

I recently made the mistake of purchasing a DVD entitled 'Dylan: Busy Being Born Again - inside Bob Dylan's Jesus years. Dylan is neither a contributor nor a feature. Instead, a number of individuals chunder on about the topic, talking as much about themselves as the supposed feature, and presumably making money out of associating themselves with Dylan.

Most of the contributors appear to be Jewish, including Mitch Glaser who speaks for Jews for Jesus. On the face of it I assumed I was going to hear Jews indicate how they came to Christianity in some form, including their associate Bob Dylan, because it enhanced the limitations of Judaism. Not a bit of it. Their emphasis was on the fact that Jesus and his disciples were Jewish and that therefore it was not they who needed converting but the Gentiles.

What can I say? Without appearing anti-Semitic?

When the man Jesus was baptised in the Jordan something important happened. The spirit of the Christ descended into him. From that moment for the next three years of his life (and his mission) he was no longer Jewish Jesus but the universal Christ on earth. And it showed. The Jewish establishment did not like what he said and what he did at all and became the primary instruments of his crucifixion. They and their followers and descendants certainly needed conversion.

Paul began taking the universal Christ to the world which also needed conversion, and Christianity ceased to be a Jewish cult.

By concentrating on the man Jesus, Jews for Jesus and others are taking a superficial and materialistic view of Christ. The spiritual Christ is non-personal, but so long as you emphasise Jesus you can talk to him with closed eyes as if he is listening in the room next door ready to respond to all your ridiculous and ambitious expectations. To emphasise Jesus rather than the Christ is to emphasise the subjective feeling life of the soul instead of the objective thought-filled life of the spirit.

I can fully understand the wish not to be involved in Christian institutions and the Christian establishment, but this is not solved by ditching Christ.

Update. I have since found in the local library a new book on Dylan by a Jewish-American academic which is yet another fanciful manipulation of the subject in the author's own image. This one is a bit too distasteful. The author is intent upon turning Dylan into a fanatic orthodox Jew conversant with the mysteries of Judaism. Is there a movement to claim him before the man dies? The book is not worth reading in full, but on the principle of a drop giving a taste of the whole ocean, there is a wilful manipulation of complex facts to produce a limited ideological purpose and consciousness in the artist. So despite Dylan writing and speaking of his significant connection to Woody Guthrie, for example, who must not be Jewish, the Jewish academic sets out to destroy this fact with absurd and superficial argument. Gentile that I am, I like and admire Dylan on the basis of his being an unpredictable and independent artist whose stature in modern life is truly outstanding. Behind ethnicity, or nationality, or gender, or religion, or culture stands the individual human spirit and the true artist works from this and the individuality of the other responds. If either Dylan or any other wants to see his work in the conditioned terms of religion, etc. then the work will be rendered barren.

ORWELL IN TRIBUNE

'As I Please' and other writings 1943-7. I know that Orwell is the independent journalist that all contemporary independent journalists look up to. Even people who have no right to quote him do so. Here he is performing the luxury of writing an uncensored column. The range of his subject matter and the depth of his insight are impressive. What is an insight? In Orwell's case it seems to be extreme common sense and logic. With these he makes many an uncanny prediction.

What is actually most remarkable about Orwell's journalism for me is the complete lack of egoism. This absence produces the impression that he has rather a lacklustre style. He writes his perceptive comments in a matter-of-fact and unemphatic manner. His style does not button-hole you, hold you by the collar, or grab you by the throat. You are fully responsible for your attention.

Orwell comes across as a thoroughly decent and civilised man, and also perhaps as a somewhat reserved Englishman concerned with particulars. He is an undoctrinaire socialist. Statements he makes during these years on topics such as world peace and international affairs turn out to be completely valid and relevant today. They turn out to be true.

Rating: Very good

THE ROLL CALL

An extract from Drinking the Sea at Gaza : Days and Nights in a Land under Siege, by Amira Hass appears in Tell Me No Lies : Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs, edited by John Pilger. Amira Hass is an Israeli correspondent regarded as the most courageous reporter of occupied Palestine. The injustices she reports in Gaza in the 1990s literally take your breath away.

Why should I be so concerned? Why cannot I be like most of Hass's Israeli readers, among the best of them, who read one of her items, have their breath taken away, but then put the knowledge aside and get on with their lives? Of course we do get on with our lives, we have to, but surely the putting aside is a consciously wilful action. We are choosing not to have a response. We are choosing to be an unresponsive bystander. This is the role the New Zealand media plays in relation to Gaza.

Amira learned from her mother the evil of the unresponsive bystander when being transferred from cattle truck to concentration camp German women stood on the side just looking. (Her father and mother survived, went to Israel where they refused to accept a house offered them which had been taken from Palestinians).

I am afflicted with an inner compulsion to react to injustice, to bullies. It is involuntary and I cannot put it aside. I do not know why injustice in the Middle East affects me more than in other parts of the world. I fully realise that the victim in this life may be the bully in the next. So why can I not say to myself: why worry? I wish I could. I dare say all those magnificent investigative journalists wish they could. All those people involved with human rights.

Amira Hass, choosing to live among the Palestinians, details the military and bureacratic inhumanity and torment they are subjected to. They are unable to live normally. Suffice to say that in the 10 - 15 years since it has become abundantly clear that Israel intends giving the Palestinians nothing and the only reason it insists upon a moderate Palestinian leader is because he will be amenable to management and the perpetuation of occupation and oppression.

The life of Gazans states Hass is synonymous with mass internment and suffocating constriction. One Gazan joke is that you can get an exit permit if you are about to die. Another joke is that only the roll call is missing. (The point of this latter not seen or appreciated by many Jewish Israelis). Another piece of humour: It's a good thing the roads are in such bad shape - it takes a whole hour to get from one end of the Strip to the other and you don't notice how small it is. If you drive really slowly, say fifteen miles an hour, you can pretend that you're actually going a very long way".

Here I am standing on the sideline wondering what on earth can the Gazans do to have some notice taken of them. They are concentrated into a sealed camp and that mythical international community does not give a damn. What if they adopted a measure of mass demonstration by secretly making or having made a concentration camp uniform? And everyone, literally everyone, began walking about their daily business in these camp clothes?

In what way would Israel go ballistic? Would it mow everyone down with machine guns? Would it put everyone into prison? Would it drive them into the sea? Would it turn the level of deprivation from malnutrition to mass starvation? Would we see the Israeli army back in Gaza full-time administering every neighbourhood and instituting a morning roll call?

Would we international bystanders find ourselves looking into the Gaza camp at skeletons in camp uniforms, some crawling, some dying, some dead? The question has to be asked: does Israel actually know to what depth of fascism it is prepared to sink? Would it even see the irony?

Or would the real international community get the point and refuse to cooperate with the United States, which would of course be blaming the victims for their outrageous bad taste.

LAOR, YITZHAK. THE MYTHS OF ZIONISM

There is a sense of spontaneity about the writing of this work, of creative insight and courage which gives it its form, and I respond to the challenge to the best of my ability.

I approached this work hoping that it would give me better understanding about why Israel is the way it is, and why it behaves the way it does. I remain uncertain, but the exercise has been very worthwhile.

Some of the myths, which appear to be held by all Israelis and not just liberal Zionists, are as follows. The vulnerable child soldier who, no matter what atrocities he/she may commit, requires the protective excuses of the population. The besieged few surrounded by the inveterately hostile many. The victimising victim, from father to son, from Israel to its perceived enemies. The weak merciless father figure or authority figure for whose actions God will take responsibility. (Has Zionism replaced God with the United States for this role?) The learnt cruelty from past history and generations. The 'native' Jewish pioneer, pre-World War II, who has replaced the real native Palestinian. The European Israeli, the modern Jew, who requires the Arab Jew (and the Arab) to put off "backward' culture.

Such myths are in many instances interesting and helpful, but the question remains: why? Why, for example, does Israeli society continue to exemplify the story of Abraham who is prepared to bind and sacrifice his son unless a more caring God intervenes? Why is there so much emotional blackmail in the Israeli (Jewish) family and in Israel's approach to other nations of the world? Why do the sons and daughters conform to the blackmail and carry it on in their own later lives? (This must make the few young men and women who refuse to serve in the military among the bravest individuals in Israel). Why, for example, does the poor East European forebear (and holocaust victim) have to fill the modern Israeli with shame? Why not just have an interest in one's forebears without judgement?

Having carelessly misread the title of this work I began reading as if about the myth of liberal Zionism, but in a way the book is also very much about this topic. The author is to be commended for trying to crack a formidable nut, the liberal Zionist who passes himself off as a member of the Israeli peace camp. He illustrates the hypocrisy of three such high profile persons in David Grossman, Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua. These persons exhibit not only a lack of liberalism, if by this we mean civilised tolerance and compassion, but also subscribe to all the myths of the modern Israeli. The fear and hatred of Arabs - and the threat of their return - is self-induced and pathological.

These liberal Zionists, pretending peace, are the most difficult enemies of truth. They appeal to the same sort of pretenders in the West. The author indicates for me that the Left of the 1960s and 1970s who supported the Palestinian cause have been replaced by the Greens, who are pro-Israel. Even though in New Zealand we have a Green foreign spokesman who happens to be very good on the Middle East, I believe there is general truth in what the author says. For the Greens are essentially not an alternative radical party, but an alternative establishment party. Its followers tend to be comfortable people, more or less content with privatisation, tasteful and even precious in their brand of self-preservation.

The author indicates that The Holocaust remembrance is a recent development which allows Israel to take a seat among the world's elite nations, while allowing the Western world to put all the emphasis upon the victims of this one event and forget about the conditions and crimes within their own societies which allowed this and many other events, then and now, to happen. The Holocaust, besides being the only allowable holocaust to be remembered internationally and officially, is also the only allowable definition of evil. This allows the West and Israel to carry out contemporary evil unchecked.

Once again, how does it come about that the countries of the West fall over themselves to act in the same way toward Israel and holocaust remembrance? I can only think that it is a bit like all the copy-cat behaviour to implement unrestrained capitalism in the 1980s. The behaviour of mediocre minds all over the world, or minds with a low cunning rather than a decent intelligence. Or, worse still, are these negative changes, like supposedly positive ones, simply blowing in the wind? Does this then degenerate into believing that whatever will be, will be?

Having divested themselves more or less honourably of colonialist status the West now allows colonialist Israel to tap into this historical mind-set and find affinity there. The West and its establishment intellectuals are now able to turn their hate from the 20th century Jews toward the 21st century Muslims. Apparently for mediocre minds there always has to be a segment of humanity on the outer which can be treated as non-human.

A thought-provoking book.

Rating: Very good

INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST DAY

The way the state of Israel makes use of and is allowed to hijack International Holocaust Day is an absolute disgrace. A Catholic priest somewhere has caused a stir because he apparently said that Israel uses the holocaust as a propaganda tool. I hope he said it because he is spot on.

That scumbag Netanyahu supposedly remembers those who died at Auschwitz by making anti-Iranian statements and comparing that nation to Nazi Germany. If it was not Iran it would be some other nation. What respect does this really show to victims of the holocaust by making outrageous political point-scoring which could just lead to the destruction of yet another of Israel's unfortunate neighbours.

As for the survivors of the holocaust, I do not believe Netanyahu or the state of Israel really gives a damn about them. They are just useful.

Israel is a nation which strictly speaking should not exist. It forced itself into existence by terrorism. This is a simple fact. However, having done so, it is accepted by the so-called United Nations, including the Arab countries and the Palestinians. Furthermore, I think it is probably the case that any claim that Iran wants to wipe out Israel is a wilful manipulation of the truth. Although why any Arab or Persian country would want to wipe out Israel is perfectly understandable to me. It is completely focussed on wiping out them.

Meanwhile are there independent Jewish voices expressing dismay at Israel's misuse of the holocaust? I am sure there are but they certainly are not allowed into the news. Nor is Israel's bestial treatment of Palestinians allowed to spoil International Holocaust Day. The holocaust survivors who were part of the Free Gaza convoy were not news either.

I quote that wonderful American Jewish journalist I.F.Stone back in 1971: "While the Palestinian Arabs are beginning in their homelessness to talk like Jews in a new Diaspora, the Israeli leadership is beginning to sound more and more like unfeeling goyim. This reversal of roles is the cruellest prank God ever played on His Chosen People."

And if that sounds a little too much like an ambiguous self-indulgent Jewish joke how about the Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibovitz who in 1969 anticipated that in the occupied territories " concentration camps would be erected by the Israeli rulers......Israel would be a state that would not deserve to exist, and it will not be worthwhile to preserve it". We are way past that date.

GAZA: A GIRL CALLED ALMAZA (JEWEL)

I am Almaza Ibraheem Helml Mahmoud Samouni. I'm in the seventh grade. I am thirteen years old. In the future, when I become a politician, I can work on children's rights for those who have been deprived of their families and were brought up as orphans

Every minute I remember my family. Every minute I remember when they were martyred in front of my eyes. I looked at my nephew, I saw that he was martyred. Also, I looked the other way, I saw all my family martyred. They were dead, lying together, one on top of the other. Really, it was a scene I couldn't believe.

All my family is gone at once. Thirty of my tribe was killed. It is completely unjust. Now, when Eid comes, I won't see my uncles. On the day of Eid I used to visit my uncles, go to uncle Talal's home, go to Rashad's home and go to Atia's home. What have I done to be deprived of my family, to be deprived of my uncles and my mother?

I was at home. We were unaware of anything. In the early morning about 6am the Israeli's started invading. First they invaded with planes and when they knew the area was safe for them the tanks and bulldozers followed after. About four o'clock at night there were suddenly shells and bullets coming inside our house. We went into the living room. We were very close to my uncle Talal's house. There's only a narrow pathway between us. They started firing shells that made a very loud noise and gave off a strong smell. Eventually we couldn't hear or breathe. We were suffocating. We were about to die and then suddenly the Israelis blew a hole in the wall and pointed their weapons at us. The look of them frightened me of course. If they're coming at night, how would you know who they were? You could not even see their shadow. They kicked us out of the house and sent us to Wael Samouni's house. We stayed there for three days without food, without water. Even the little children who wanted to drink - and some were about six months old - there was not even anything for them.

We stayed there for three days. My brother went to get some wood but when he was about to leave the house they fired a missile at him and he was martyred. So we had to go inside. I was left with my sister-in-law and her nine month old baby. They executed the baby. They opened fire on him. The little boy was martyred in front of her eyes, while he was in his mother's arms, cradled by his mother. He was executed right after they executed his father.

I went inside where I found them all martyred. I saw three missiles in the house. All of them were martyred. All of them were bleeding and they were in a pile, one on top of the other. A lot of bleeding, bleeding over each other.

We used to study here. We used to play here. This was my brother's room, here's my mother's room and here are my siblings' room who were all martyred. May Allah bless their souls. This is where my books were and I used to put my satchel here. I have a lot of memories.

This was mine when I was little. This was my mother's, may Allah bless her soul. This belonged to my brother Nassar, may Allah bless his soul. This is mine, I used to wear it when I went to the mosque. This is also mine. And this was my nephew Mo'tasem's, may Allah bless his soul. This is my mother's robe, may Allah bless her soul. This is my brother Ismail's, he was martyred.

Here is my uncle's house. We used to bake here. Here we used to play 'Idreas' with stones. Here is the mosque. Here we used to learn the Quran, pray and have lessons in Quran verses. Here, of course, was the praying place for men and upstairs there was a floor for the women.

Here you can see the martyrs. There is my brother Mohammad Ibraheem Samouni, and that is my cousin Walid. Here is the dome of the mosque where a crow used to stand. The dome was so high. This is the dome. We used to study here. Our teacher used to sit over here. It was a sitting room with the breeze blowing through. We used to come to study here and learn the Quran. Here, we used to have our meetings, bring the chairs and sit. The sheikh would sit here. This was a room where we used to sit and study.

Here we used to raise a lot of chickens. A lot. The Israelis bulldozed it and killed them all. Here there were olive trees from which we used to get olive oil and store olives to keep. Here was a pomegranate tree which we used to make the famous local dish 'Rummaniyya'. I used to love pomegranate, I used to love 'Rummaniyya' as its called. This is also where my uncle's wife's house was, my uncle who was martyred. My uncle Atia, he was her husband. My cousin was also martyred. Also, there were lots of orange trees here, there were citrus trees. Lots of trees.

This is the school, the destroyed school. They targetted the school with burning phosphorus bombs. They burned the school. The lab that we used to go to, it was also burned. We had drawn a map. Even that was destroyed, as you can see. They didn't leave anything untouched. This was the lab I used to go to and do everything. It was bombed as well. Here was the library where we used to borrow storybooks and sit and write. They've all been destroyed too. We used to go to a morning school then this was switched to the afternoon.

Now there are about sixty orphans, maybe more, they are all orphans. What have they done? A girl of two and a half who's now an orphan. Who will play with her, who's going to teach her? Her mother, father and elder brothers are all martyrs. Can a girl who's twelve or thirteen years old raise an eighteen month or two year old girl?

(ALMAZA'S FRIEND): No, because she doesn't ask or respond. When my mother was martyred, she was in her arms. We asked her: "Do you want to go to see your mother?" She said: "No, because mum is dead, she was shot by the plane. I don't want to go to her. There was so much bleeding from here and here, I don't want to go there". She refused because when my mother was martyred, she was in her arms and with my father. When they were putting the bandage on my father, when he was injured, she wouldn't ask about her or about anything else. She just keeps on screaming.)

We used to play here. The place was an empty yard. It was bulldozed.

I have the right to claim my rights because they deprived me of my mother and my sisters, deprived me of living in a good home and in a safe place. They took it all away and destroyed everything. This area was pretty, full of everything, trees, it was a nice green area. You can imagine what it looked like. When the Israelis came in, the left nothing.

We will never leave our place here. We will remain in it and Allah, please God, may make it easy for us, to help us rebuild our homes and live in them - Allah willing.

HAITI

We all want to see international support for a people suffering a catastrophe, do we not? The sudden outburst of sympathetic promises for Haiti after its earthquake is, however, extraordinary. There is a positively orgiastic international outpouring, led by the United States, for a poor little shit country nobody knows anything about. The spectacle of the last three U.S. presidents spear-heading a fundraising campaign is strange indeed. What is going on? What we are told is that Haiti is the poorest nation in the region, but at the same time it is a special little friend of the United States. How can a nation be both these things at the same time? Not a case of child abuse?

Omnipotent Obama has declared many a thing for Haiti but especially a contingent of paratroopers to protect Haitians from their own natural propensity for criminality. He is acting to protect Haiti in the awesome image of its big special friend. He has commissioned his special envoys, the Celestial Clintons, to do what has to be done. Indeed Beelzebub Bill has a personal interest in Haiti, He sent in the United States military when He was Himself the Omnipotent One, and did what had to be done when an elected government threatened to go astray. He is personally affronted that God should visit such a catastrophe upon His own Haiti. He takes it very personally.

I cannot say it any better than Carl Dix: "The United States has promised $100 million, sounds like a lot, but that is about 1% of the US military budget for occupying Iraq and Afghanistan for one month. What have they done so far? What they have mainly brought in are paratroopers to help secure the situation and to control things as opposed to focussing on what people really need which is food, water, access to healthcare and relief operations. I think about Afghanistan where they have helicopter gunships going around firing missiles at villages, think about what those helicoptors could do if they had been deployed to Haiti where they are talking about how the roads are down and nobody can get supplies through, well a helicoptor could airlift rescuers, airlift food or water or doctors.
So there is a question of what the priorities are here, as well as the history of US-Haitian relations. The problem is when you talk about Haiti's lack of infrastructure you have to talk about the political and economic strangulation of Haiti historically by the US going all the way back to the founding of Haiti. The US and France attempted to isolate and blockade Haiti when the Haitian slaves rose up and chased the French out because the US felt it would be a very bad example for all the African slaves in the US to hear that the slaves in a neighbouring country had gotten free.
You need a rescue and supply effort that doesn't suppress the Haitian people but actually unleashes and helps them in doing this because there has been a portrayal of Haitians as thugs and criminals just as the way they tried to portray the people in New Orleans after Katrina as criminals who were looting and killing everything, when people were actually saving themselves because the government at all levels, local, federal and state had refused to do that, people were stealing food to get something to eat, taking boats to save other people.
You need a relief effort that is backing up the Haitian people and doing that, not one that is suppressing them in order to maintain Haiti as a low wage area where people can be paid starvation wages to produce goods for export, and not an area where globalisation can destroy the domestic agriculture as US efforts have done in Haiti since the 1980s."

I just know that this analysis is going to be proven correct. Already the US is a military presence controlling who else can land in Haiti. Just today two aircraft carrying medical equipment were turned away by the US military whose helicoptors appear to patrol the skies not to be helpful but to survey the country for trouble, which given the US approach is almost guaranteed to occur.

Update: As the hysterical goodwill towards poor little obedient Haiti continues, one has to wonder when comparing this to the complete indifference toward Gaza which was hit in similar fashion not by an act of God, but by an act of fascist man. I realise that the world's establishment media is comfortable expressing compassion for Haiti and indifference for Gaza but what about the people of the world? Do they really have compassion for one set of people and indifference for another set? because if they do, then the compassion has to be completely phoney. Pretty scarey.

GAZA: A CRIME OF WAR

Rawhiya was a 37 year old wife and mother, a native of Gaza, who was murdered on the 13 January 2009.

IMAN AL NAJAR (Rawhiya's neighbour): For 2 or 3 days before that day they had been firing phosphorus bombs randomly, but they weren't targetting our neighbourhood, they were actually firing from here, so we could see the bombs flying over our heads and falling in different areas.

We thought at first it was the usual firing of bombs overhead but then my neighbour Rawhiya started calling me. She was shouting to us that our homes were burning. We went out, the smoke was like fog covering everything. Every house received their share of phosphorus bombs. Rawhiya was trying to put out the fire at her house and other neighbours were doing the same. Then she told me hurry up your house is on fire. I ran to the house but it was all on fire.

The special forces had taken the high building and alleyway while we were putting out the fires. They later told the prisoners that they took that we saw you trying to put out the fire but we didn't see you carrying any weapons. They told them that if you had been carrying weapons we would have wiped you out.

The sun had not yet come up, it was still early, when we heard our neighbours scream. So I shouted What's wrong? and she said they're demolishing the house from the front while we are still inside.

They were destroying them like you crush a matchbox and we stood there watching. The soldier that was in the bulldozer was laughing, he was chewing gum and laughing. He turned the head of the bulldozer towards us in a playful manner as though he was telling us you are all going to die.

Nawhiya was leading them. She said if all the women and children start moving out then everyone else could follow afterwards. So she distributed white flags and led them out. She walked at the front carrying a white flag, followed by other women carrying their children.

A couple of radio stations called and we tried to echo our voice and call upon the world to find a solution for us, ar at least save Rawhiya. We didn't know at this point if she was still alive or dead.

No-one answered our call for help. At the end we decided to go out together and face the bombardment. The way we saw it was that it was better to walk into the fire than stay here and die under the rubble. If we went out some of us might get hit and some of us might die but at least someone would make it out alive to tell our story to the outside world.

I used to believe that there are international laws and that there are international courts that prevent Israel from abusing the rights of humans. I have learnt that Israel can do anything it wants without being punished, without anyone stopping it, or even asking it why. Israel can kill, demolish houses, destroy trees and wreck not only a small neighourhood or village but an entire country without anyone stepping in. The Security Council can't stop it, nor can international organisations. That's what I learnt.


NASSAR AL NAJAR (Rawhiya's husband): We used to think that this area was safe because there were no resistance fighters here. They used to bulldoze farms and agricultural lands and then leave. We didn't expect them to demolish houses. We didn't expect this extent of criminality.

At Khuza'a the villagers were used to living under the guns of the Israeli watch-towers and in the first two weeks of the war I'd become accustomed to the artillery and air-strikes but the night before Rawhiya's murder it became clear that this was something different.

She said she didn't want to leave her house and that if she was going to die, they were going to kill her, she would rather die in her own house. She said the white flags [?] so they wouldn't harm them, but they didn't respect the white flag.

My heart is wounded. It fills me with sorrow to look at the place where she died. We spent a lifetime together. She was my friend and companion since I was just 17 years old. What can I say?


HIBA AL NAJAR (Rawhiya's daughter): When they were putting out the fire the neighbour started coughing because phosporus emissions were suffocating him, so my Mum grabbed a towel and soaked it with water because we had been told that water helps.

I was right next to her, a centimetre away. My neighbour was also walking next to her. She was holding up her child as though a flag. Then he shot her. He shot her and she immediately fell to the ground.

I immediately knew that she died. I told the women she's gone. My mother died. They were trying to comfort me by saying she's going to be fine, but I shouted at them She's gone, she's dead, I know she's dead.

We were screaming and holding our white flags so they would see us and not demolish the house with us inside, but they didn't care, it made no difference to them, they started collapsing the walls with us inside.

(Crying) Whenever there's bombardment or gunfire starts we stay inside our houses. We can't go out. It is not fair what they are doing to us. We are imprisoned in our homes. We go from home to school, from school to home. What did we do wrong?


YASMINE AL NAJAR (Rawhiya's neighbour): And then they breached the wall of our house, so we tried to escape through the window. We all escaped and gathered in this empty square behind me.

We all gathered here and then the bulldozer breached the walls of the house here which was right next to us, so we started to escape. Just before that the Israelis had gathered the men and told them that we had to evacuate the area within half an hour. But it seem like they hadn't spoken with the special forces.

When we reached the top of the road the special forces were positioned in the house right opposite to us that took us by surprise.

A bullet hit Rawhiya in the head, It entered through one side and went out through the other. I was so close to her, but there were special forces in front of me. They started shooting at me again and the bullets were passing over my head, but they didn't get me this time, only a small splinter of metal that stuck in my arm.

We went through that alleyway but just as I was about to pass and cross an exit in the road, followed by most of the neighbourhood, they started shooting at us again, so everyone went in one of the houses on the street and were stuck there, but I kept running for about 300 metres until I reached an ambulance and paramedics who were waiting for us.


MOHAMMAD AL NAJAR (Rawhiya's neighbour): The place where you are sitting now was a staircase but they levelled it and placed a mattress on it. Then a soldier lay down on his stomach here. I was hearing everything that was happening and when they were taking me to the toilet they took off the blind-fold and untied my hands, so I could see a few things.

They asked me to sing along with them but I refused. They were still talking to me and one of them was translating. He said to me that if I don't do what they ask they will kill me, so I did what they asked, I started to sing with them until they retreated.

I was really scared. I was worried that something was going to happen to my family. I heard the shots being fired at Rawhiya and I heard her scream God is great. Well that scared me more because it meant that they were killing people and I thought that they were going to kill me when they started pulling out.

They were starting to pull out of the area and so they told us when you hear a few gunshots being fired you can leave. They didn't want anyone to see them, they didn't want to draw attention to themselves.

MARWAN ABU RAIDA (Paramedic): I drove straight there, I was still 60 -70 metres away from the body when what I think were Israeli special forces started shooting at me. I felt powerless, there was nothing I could do for her. My understanding was that medical teams were protected under international law and ethics. Medical teams should be protected, they should have freedom of movement and work because they are emergency services.

I ran out of the ambulance and headed toward the body of the martyr who was dead by then. She bled to death after she was lying there for about 12 hours. I took the body which was in horrible condition and headed for hospital in Khan Younis. You could tell she was killed intentionally because she received only one shot straight to the head. It was obvious that the sniper meant to kill her. I wish the International Court of Justice would take action against those who committed these crimes, because what we witnessed here is unbelievable terror.

EDWARDS, DAVID & CROMWELL, DAVID. NEWSPEAK IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The authors are co-editors of Media Lens (http://www.medialens.org/) a website devoted to challenging how British newspapers and broadcasters report the news. We discover as a result of detailed evidence provided, that there are no sources of news which are reliably independent of power and establishment, of the government, owners and advertisors, not even the so-called liberal newspapers such as the Guardian or Independent. All we have in print are independent commentators who can be named on one hand: Chomsky, Pilger, Fisk, perhaps Seamus Milne. Chomsky and Pilger in particular are subject to the resentment of hacks who yap at them from the end of their corporate leashes. No sense of admiration for a better workman in the world of media.

The point is made that for those of us who wish to think for ourselves, rather than to sit back and receive the supposed knowledge of establishment journalists, we have only the internet. It is also the internet which allows freedom of speech and dialogue, whereas the newspaper editor deletes contributions.

There is no such thing as neutral reporting, there is either indifference or compassion. We are either honest or bent. Many of us of course cannot decide which. If we are a human being another's pain must be felt as our own, otherwise what real value is there in what we have to say? We would only be contributing to the power of Newspeak. "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?" - George Orwell.

One hack is quoted equating thoughtful and honest language and presentation as boring, indicating that we have in journalism persons who have no wish to read. This attitude leads to an atrophy of thought and language. "In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it" - George Orwell.

There are chapters on the BBC and on the British media's complicity in refusing to speak the truth on topics such as climate change, the Blair government's duplicity and criminality in invading Iraq, the Iraqi death count, Israel and Palestine, Iran, and Venezuela.
Rating: Very good.