October 7 Has a Prehistory
Efi Sharir / Photographer: Israel Press and Photo Agency (I.P.P.A.) / Dan Hadani collection, National Library of Israel – CC BY 4.0
In belatedly disposing of teaching materials long after retiring, I came across a cutting from the Guardian Weekly (that convenient pre-internet medium for far-flung colonials, comprising articles from the UK Guardian, the Le Monde and the Washington Post). The cutting was a review of David Montgomery’s The Fall of the House of Labor; the issue, 22 May 1988.
But wait, there’s something on the other side. The article, by Glenn Frenkel, is titled ‘Israel Turns to Detentions As Weapon Against Uprising; Critics Say System Is Harsh and Arbitrary’. It appeared in the Washington Post, on 13 May 1988.
There we read:
‘As the Israelis have sought to throttle the five-month-old Palestinian uprising, they have turned to a form of arrest that they call “administrative detention” as one of their prime weapons. Until December, Israel generally held about 50 Arabs under these regulations. Now Israeli officials say the number is at least 1,700, more than one-third of the total 5,000 Palestinians currently imprisoned for alleged involvement in the revolt.
‘To hold these new inmates, Israel has opened or converted five additional prison camps, including a massive facility in the Negev desert where prisoners say water supplies are short and conditions rugged. To make it easier to hold them, the Army has abolished the requirement that each case be subject to judicial review and has given senior military officers the power to order detentions. New restrictions have also been put on family visits.
‘The result, according to critics, including defense lawyers, human rights activists and diplomats, is an arbitrary and harsh system of secret justice that has few discernible rules or standards and that offers its victims no workable appeal. …
‘The net is a wide one. It encompasses activists, alleged instigators and a significant segment of the Palestinian elite. … Among those being held are doctors, lawyers, union leaders, university officials and students, including many student council chairmen. At least 20 journalists are in detention, including five of the nine officers of the Arab Journalists Association, according to a tally by western diplomats. Four of the five full-time field workers of Law in the Service of Man … are also on the list of prisoners.
‘These people comprise much of the local Palestinian leadership in the occupied territories, precisely the kind of people that Israeli officials, including Rabin, say they want to negotiate with over the future of the West Bank and Gaza. …
‘One of the most prominent prisoners is Nabil Jabari, 42, who is chairman of the board of trustees of Hebron University, a British-trained dental surgeon in East Jerusalem and the head of a charitable society. … The charges about him [said a Western diplomat who knows him well] organizing disturbances are totally false.”
Frenkel was the then WaPo Jerusalem correspondent, winning a Pulitzer prize for his contemporary reporting. What chance informative reporting from WaPo on Palestine/Israel these days?
Thus was Israel’s response to what became known as the First Intifada. The murder of Ismail Haniyeh on 31 July 2024 is merely more from the same mentality. Israel has no partner for peace, say the pundits – a very peculiar concept of what peace entails. That the Second Intifada was a violent affair was utterly predictable.
The event described in the Frenkel article is just a sliver in the history of Zionism, the logic of which leads inexorably to the current expulsion and genocide of the Palestinian population. The Western elite has been near universally complicit. Ditto the mainstream media so that the general public is deprived of knowing this history.
Meanwhile Down Under, the chief political correspondent for the ‘reputable’ Sydney Morning Herald feels compelled to perennially attach ‘terrorist’ as a descriptor for Hamas.
The Sydney Jewish Writers Festival was held in Sydney in August. We learn that ‘mental health is becoming a central theme in Jewish novels and memoirs’. We learn that Boston’s Rabbi Dr Ariel Burger ‘will discuss the importance of moral courage, empathy, and humility in navigating ethical dilemmas and fostering positive change’. And we confront that Vic Alhadeff, longtime CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and an implacable Israel-firster, is described as having ‘dedicated his career to championing human rights’. From the program, there was apparently no room for Israel (to which the elite of Australian Jewish society feel a passionate attachment), Gaza, the Occupied Territories and the whole catastrophe.
On 18 August, Australian pianist Jayson Gillham appeared with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He played Connor D’Netto’s Witness and noted that its playing was dedicated to ‘the journalists of Gaza’.
According to the Australian Jewish News:
‘Gillham introduced the music with an unverified (sic) claim that 113 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli strikes since the war began and “a number of these have been targeted assassinations”. …
‘For Jewish concert-goer Janette Fonda, her daughter’s gift of a ticket to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) became a nightmare when a pianist made public remarks to the audience about the Israel-Gaza war. … For Fonda, Gillham’s accusations were incendiary. “I was debating whether to stand up and scream and walk out, or stay there,” she told The AJN. “I decided to stay but … I was frightened, intimidated. I thought it was really inappropriate.”
‘After the concert, Fonda complained at the ticket desk, as did other audience members. Days later, the MSO deleted Gillham from its programming and apologised.’
It appears that the Hasbara has cancelled the prehistory of October 7. The lesson is: don’t throw out your bits of paper from the old days in the likelihood that the Zionists’ version of 1984 descends upon us all. Unhappily, it’s here already.
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