The powerful prey mercilessly on the vulnerable and the mainstream media let them get away with it.
Understanding of foreign policies can be affected by who tells the best stories, hence the US/Israel promotion of narratives that usually dramatise Israel’s virtues and demonise Palestinians.
The most recent controversy affecting a future for Palestinians concerns support for the US-crafted agreement between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain. In reaction to this deal, the former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, has chimed in with an opinion (Australian Financial Review of 21/9) in which he congratulates President Trump.
Peppered with false claims, Downer presents his AFR piece as though no one should doubt what he says, hence my perception that the lineage of the former minister is inseparable from what he construes as policy.
In political analysis it is seldom wise to comment on the traits of an individual, but I make an exception in the case of Downer. I do so because he has a habit of allowing style to dominate substance, to develop opinion via an apparent impatience with facts. It is a process that the American sociologist Erving Goffman described as a preoccupation with The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which he subtitled ‘image management’.
Downer’s judgments emerge from his confidence in sources hidden somewhere in his trove of uncontested assumptions. Concerning the international status of Jerusalem, he ignores UN and diplomatic judgments and confidently declares, ‘Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.’ He bases this claim on President Trump’s May 2018 transfer of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Downer’s declaration about Jerusalem is followed by his offer of knowledge as a privileged insider, ‘Even the Australian government boldly considered moving its embassy to Jerusalem.’
With a pause for reflection he might have thought of the macabre events occurring at the time of the US Embassy opening. Against the rules of international law, against opposition from most UN members, a Dallas pastor Robert Jeffers gave the opening prayer, the same man who had once claimed that all religions other than Christianity lead to a separation from God. An American end-of-time preacher, John Hagel, gave the closing benediction, the same man who had once said that ‘Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to their ancestral homeland’.
US and Israeli dignitaries’ celebration of an illegality coincided with Israeli snipers being placed at the Gaza border to deter March of Return protesters within Gaza.
Kilometres away from drinks and toasts in Jerusalem, thousands of Gazans were shot, many maimed for life. By March 2019, the UN confirmed that 189 Gazans had been killed, including 35 children, clearly identifiable paramedics and journalists. While praising the Embassy extravaganza, Downer overlooks the grotesque events on the Gaza border.
Siding with bullies and blaming victims may derive from condescension to those considered as lesser mortals, people who should be told what to do, hence Downer’s reference to ‘a Palestinian population not willing to engage constructively in negotiations with Israel’.
To further disparage Palestinians, and to continue his version of reality, Downer perpetuates a myth that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was to blame for the failure of the July 2000 Camp David peace talks. He announces that the Palestinian leader told President Clinton that he had no proposals. In consequence Downer gives his latest verdict, ‘So the talks collapsed.’
A more nuanced appraisal of events at Camp David comes from Israel’s former acting foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami who, unlike Downer, participated in the negotiations. In his 2007 analysis Scars of War, Wounds of Peace, Ben-Ami said, ‘If I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David as well.’
In his article Subordinating Palestinian rights to Israeli needs, Professor Norman Finkelstein says of the Camp David outcome, ‘All the concessions came from the Palestinian side, none from the Israeli side.’ Even the Israeli Human Rights organisation Gush Shalom concluded that what offers Israel did make were ‘a pretense of generosity for the benefit of the media’.
Nevertheless, and from on high, Downer repeats the lazy line that it was all the Palestinians’ fault.
As if humiliation of Palestinians is insufficient, he endorses the US arms deal with Bahrain. Never far from hyperbole, he describes the Trump bargain with the UAE and Bahrain as ‘an extraordinary feat’.
Unpalatable facts must not hinder his confidence. The alleged peace between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain is a business arrangement to sell arms to two brutal Middle East dictatorships. Together with their Saudi Arabian patron, these human rights abusing states have been partners in a vicious war against Yemenis, albeit as a way to oppose the influence of Iran.
Gaining kudos from being with winners seems to hinder the former foreign minister’s capacity for reflection. Instead, he resorts to a Lord of the Manor role and declares, ‘It is time the Palestinians came up with their own peace plan.’ There’s no reference to refugees, to the 14 years of Gaza siege, let alone to the Israel’s military, economic, diplomatic supremacy, or to its commercial success in selling arms and surveillance equipment to abusive regimes around the globe.
A question also needs to be raised about the responsibility of the Australian Financial Review. Are they bothered by a Downer style divorced from consideration of complexity and tragedy? Why does an article displaying indifference to the cruelties meted out by this Israeli/US/UAE/Bahrain alliance merit publication?
A privileged individual is apparently entitled to push an alternative fact narrative. Such conduct is a reminder of Seymour Hersh’s conclusions in his 2018 Memoir, that the powerful prey mercilessly on the vulnerable and the mainstream media let them get away with it.
Stuart Rees OAM is Professor Emeritus, University of Sydney, and recipient of the Jerusalem (al Quds) Peace Prize
Stuart Rees AM is Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney & recipient of the Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize.
Comments
13 responses to “Downer on Palestine: to the Manor Born”
Prof. Rees has forensically demonstrated here that Downer’s presumed self-importance has run out of puff as his opinions are now relegated to diplomatic fiction,
“In political analysis it is seldom wise to comment on the traits of an individual, but I make an exception in the case of Downer. I do so because he has a habit of allowing style to dominate substance, to develop opinion via an apparent impatience with facts”… my feelings exactly (also regarding the smug Gareth Evans but I digress)…
Rees exposes that Downer is a cliche of sycophancy and not a nice one. “Gaining kudos from being with winners seems to hinder the former foreign minister’s capacity for reflection.” . . and I add capacity for decency. But then he’s had practice with throwing the people of East Timor under the brutal bus of Indonesian occupation and now throwing the people of Palestine under the brutal bus of the Jewish state’s occupation is a breeze.
I am to the manor bored.
Downer seems to have a way of ingratiating himself to the powerful. His $25 mil donation to the Clinton Foundation while foreign minister way back in Feb 2006 began a $130 million splurge by the Australian tax payers. Ten years later in May 2016 his meeting with Papadopoulos allegedly suggested by the Israeli Embassy in London helped, conveniently, kick off the whole fake Russiagate and the campaign by the Obama administration to undermine Trump and his potential Presidency.
On the AFR’s capacity to print drivel, this would be hard to beat: https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/why-low-key-biden-may-be-what-america-yearns-for-20200819-p55n9c
I suspect RBG would happily share a platform with Downer
There must be some irony intended here but I can’t quite see it…?
no irony intended. Both devalued Palestinians.
Thanks for an excellent article. Downer’s unctuous self-congratulation can be experienced each week through their father and daughter GEOPOD podcast (name changed from Tenji). The Saudi role in the middle east and in particular in Yemen is brilliantly described in this discussion with Isa Blumi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_eBVhWTzyw
Every time that DOWNER name crops up I recollect the Guardian Australia’s First Dog cartoon response to the “entitled” one’s claims that he was of “the Nation-builder Downer Family”. And within the First Dog panel something of the truth behind that man’s claims – his grand-father John Downer (erstwhile variously Attorney-General of South Australia and the colony’s Premier) – and dark deeds in the north – what is now known as the Northern Territory – but back then under the control of South Australia – massacres and vast land-grabs galore one might suggest – including the wiping out of the Wulwulam/Woolwonga people (The Copper Mine massacres 1882-1884 era – a memorial set up 2014 at Burrundie south- south-west from Darwin) apart from one young lass – Jennie – who in 1889 had a child – May Crawford – to South Australian Lindsay Crawford (Maintenance Manager of the Overland Telegraph and first manager of the vast Victoria Rover Downs (1884-1894) died of dysentery in 1901 (?) at Newcastle Waters. I have kinship connections – involving as well a Stolen Generations Gurindji lad born c 1925 at Wave Hill… The ugliness of that “Nation-building” family into the 21st century – and their interference with moulding a new false version of the theft of Palestine knows no bounds – it would appear.
What was the phrase: “Airs of antipodean aristocracy”!
Perhaps the bloke is trying to be awarded some British honour; perhaps Tony Abbott is doing likewise. That is what you have to do when the malady you are suffering from is extreme irrelevance. Of course, once you are Lord Abbott or Sir Lexy Downer in the British firmament, you are permanently relevant, at least on one’s own eyes.
Thanks, Stuart. There is still the settling up to be done about East Timor – fancy the whistleblowers, of all people, being criminally charged and in secret. Bernard Collaery’s book is not an easy read but thoroughly worth it.
It seems clear Alexander Downer has passed his use-by-date. Already tainted by his apparent involvement of the illegal East Timor listening device scandal, he now seems to think that his out-dated and reactionary views on world politics are welcome. I’d say to him: “Mr Downer, the less heard and seen of you in public these days, the better.”
Brilliant as ever, thank you Stuart, I have to say having read the Downer piece I was left wondering if I had ever read anything as sycophantic and so devoid of any sense of humanity and reality.
It runs in the family too, it seems.
Beginning with the British settlement of South Australia where his direct ancestor disobeyed the Kings orders to ‘…treat with the native population…” and instead reigned over massacres of and dispossession of the indiginous tribes.
Thanks Nigel – confirming what I have just written above – not having first read other responses!