Gaza Slaughter: Australia's Response

She does us proud, doesn't she? She of the mind- numbing nasal monotone, which always has me lunging for the radio's off switch whenever she pops up on air. I speak, of course, of Julia Gillard (or DPM as she's known in the parliamentary corridors of power) who's currently filling in for our peripatetic Prime Minister.

Here are DPM's first words on the hell, fire & brimstone unleashed by her Israeli mates on the defenceless people of Gaza: "'Israel's air strikes were a response to an 'act of aggression' by Hamas which had broken the ceasefire.* 'We are saying to Hamas that they should cease any further action'." (A time for fighting, Jason Koutsoukis, Sydney Morning Herald, 29/12/08) Tzipi Livni couldn't have said it better herself. That rambamming she had back in 2005 (see my 12/6/08 post Pemulwuy in Palestine) sure has paid off. Oh, sorry, there's an afterthought. Blink, and you might have missed it: "We are saying to the Israelis that all care should be taken to avoid injuring civilians." (ibid) Now don't you worry about that, DPM, Israel has always singled Palestinian civilians out for special treatment.

[*On the ceasefire see my post before last (Rockets/Militants/Rockets/Militants). To which should now be added the following revelation: "Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over 6 months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas." (Disinformation, secrecy & lies: How the Gaza offensive came about, Barak Ravid, Haaretz, 28/12/08)]

DPM, who seems to get her cues from Murdoch these days (she thinks Rupert's right on the money in calling Australia's education system a "disgrace") probably had her beak buried in the editorial pages of Murdoch prawn wrapper yesterday. What, pray tell, did she see? "HAMAS BETRAYS THE PALESTINIANS: The deaths of hundreds in the Gaza airstrikes at the weekend are a further cost of implacable militancy."

Yep, The Australian (The Israelian?) just loves the 'B' word. In fact, its last editorial on the Middle East - "AN IDEAL BETRAYED: The UN has failed to protect human rights" (10/12/08), portrayed the United Nations as a trasher of human rights because its draft 'Durban II' declaration dared to condemn Israel's behaviour towards the Palestinians (whose every human and political right has been trashed by Israel) as " 'a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide and a serious threat to international peace and security'."* Now we have The Israelian portraying the democratically elected Hamas government, a government which, whatever its faults, refuses to sell out Palestinian rights to the Americans and their Israeli overlords and upholds the Palestinians' right to resist a crippling Israeli siege of their land, as responsible for the carnage perpetrated by Israel. In a typical Zionist sleight of hand, Hamas becomes the perpetrator. Hamas, not Israel, is murdering its own people. But no, there's a further twist, the murdered really have no one but themselves to blame: "The Gazans have been on the path to worsening strife since many of them... elected Hamas to power... in early 2006." Hey, the murdered got the murderer they deserve!

[*See my 10/12/08 post Betraying the UDHR.]

Of course, crocodile tears aside ("piteous images of the dead and wounded"), "[t]he suffering of the Gazans... must end" because it will "inflame opponents of Israel and the West, especially in Muslim countries," whose real beef with Israel is not its off-&-on slaughter of Palestinians, but the fact that it is "a democracy espousing liberal values, including religious tolerance."

Enough already of these diversions and cliches, it's what Israel does that counts. Its current genocidal rampage in Gaza yet again marks it out as a terrorist state hell-bent on completing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine begun in 1948, just as its 2006 genocidal rampage in Lebanon yet again showed it up as a regional bully who does not hesitate to lash out anywhere in the Middle East.