In Australia, the campaign first emerged in the press with a report in The Australian Jewish News of June 1, Carr, Danby at odds over Palestinian aid:
"Foreign Minister Bob Carr's announcement that Australia will boost aid to a controversial United Nations organisation for Palestinian refugees..."
(Controversial is a code word for anything, or anyone, that Zionists don't like.)
"... has raised the ire of Labor Party colleague and chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence & Trade, Michael Danby."
Is there any initiative in support of the Palestinians that wouldn't raise Michael Danby's ire, I wonder?
Danby, of course, is Israel's principal enforcer of the Zionist line in the federal Australian Labor Party. A 2009 profile in The AJN suggests that, in his zeal, he's part cattle-dog, part yapping terrier: "Jewish voters concluded they... need[ed] a Jewish MP... to keep in line a Labor opposition... and after November 2007 to act as a watchdog within the new Rudd Government... He corrals his parliamentary colleagues and forces them to think long, hard and seriously about matters that often conjure knee-jerk reactions." (A decade of Danby, 27/2/09: See my 1/3/09 post Nipping at their Heels.)
"'I don't support it. Aid could certainly be more appropriately targeted', the Melbourne Ports MP told The AJN after Carr's office announced the $90 million worth of funding for the United Nations Relief & Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA)."
The chutzpah is obvious.
Let me spell it out for you: Israel expels the Palestinians from their homeland in 1948, confiscates their homes, lands and other assets, and refuses to allow them to return despite a UN resolution calling on it to do so... but should an Australian Labor foreign minister see fit to lift a finger on their behalf, even if at one remove, through a UN agency, he risks being bailed up in the corridors of federal parliament by a certain pampered ($185,000 base salary) parliamentary pooch and subjected to a furious yapping.
"Danby slammed UNRWA for its ballooning definition of Palestinian refugees, which includes not only those who lived in Palestine in 1946-48 and lost homes and livelihoods in the 1948 war..."
The klutzes! Always losing things!
And that ballooning definition - I like that! Wouldn't be anything like Zionism's ballooning definition of anti-Semitism, would it? Here's the latest in that department: "All criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic because of the specific historical circumstances under which we currently live. That is to say, the historical circumstances under which Israel and the Jews exist in the world today render any non-anti-Semitic criticism of Israel impossible." (Yes, all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic!, Benjamin Kerstein, The Jerusalem Post, 20/5/12)
"... but their descendants..."
How dare these refugees have kids! The nerve! Actually, they only have the little buggers for one reason:
"... noting Palestinian supporters use these figures to pressure Israel."
Unsurprisingly, the real centre of the Zionist campaign to disappear the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees, however, is in the United States:
"Palestinians in the occupied territories, the diaspora and in refugee camps protested earlier this month on the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, commemorating the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians by nascent Israeli forces in the late 1940s. Palestinians were sending a message to the world that the right to return to their homes would not be forgotten, and that millions of refugees are awaiting a solution. One senator from Illinois, though, wants to write off those millions and change who is classified as a Palestinian refugee. Mark Kirk, a hawkish Repblican whose political career has been boosted by right-wing Israel advocates, is leading a drive to fundamentally redefine who a Palestinian refugee is in the eyes of the United States. Critics see the move as just one step in a larger strategy to take the issue of refugee rights for Palestinians off the negotiating table, and to cut funding from UNRWA, the UN agency that assists Palestinians... On Thursday May 24, a senate committee passed an amendment by unanimous voice vote that would require the State Department to differentiate between Palestinian refugees who were displaced first-hand and those born after to families who were refugees. The senator behind the amendment was Kirk, who is close to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and has received over a million dollars from Israel-oriented political action committees during his political career." (How the Israel Lobby's favorite senator is trying to erase Palestinian refugees, Alex Cane, alternet.org, 2/6/12)
And if you thought Danby was rich, here's Kirk's statement following the passing of his amendment: "With US taxpayers providing more than $4 billion to UNRWA since 1950, the watershed reporting requirement will help taxpayers better understand whether UNRWA truly remains a refugee assistance organization or has become a welfare agency for low-income residents of the Levant." (ibid)
This, from a Zionist stooge, advocating for a foreign power - an apartheid state, in fact - that has bilked the US taxpayer of $103.6 billion in military aid from 1949 to 2008, with a further $30 billion promised between 2007 and 2018.*
[*See US military aid to Israel, aidtoisrael.org]
Danby, of course, is Israel's principal enforcer of the Zionist line in the federal Australian Labor Party. A 2009 profile in The AJN suggests that, in his zeal, he's part cattle-dog, part yapping terrier: "Jewish voters concluded they... need[ed] a Jewish MP... to keep in line a Labor opposition... and after November 2007 to act as a watchdog within the new Rudd Government... He corrals his parliamentary colleagues and forces them to think long, hard and seriously about matters that often conjure knee-jerk reactions." (A decade of Danby, 27/2/09: See my 1/3/09 post Nipping at their Heels.)
"'I don't support it. Aid could certainly be more appropriately targeted', the Melbourne Ports MP told The AJN after Carr's office announced the $90 million worth of funding for the United Nations Relief & Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA)."
The chutzpah is obvious.
Let me spell it out for you: Israel expels the Palestinians from their homeland in 1948, confiscates their homes, lands and other assets, and refuses to allow them to return despite a UN resolution calling on it to do so... but should an Australian Labor foreign minister see fit to lift a finger on their behalf, even if at one remove, through a UN agency, he risks being bailed up in the corridors of federal parliament by a certain pampered ($185,000 base salary) parliamentary pooch and subjected to a furious yapping.
"Danby slammed UNRWA for its ballooning definition of Palestinian refugees, which includes not only those who lived in Palestine in 1946-48 and lost homes and livelihoods in the 1948 war..."
The klutzes! Always losing things!
And that ballooning definition - I like that! Wouldn't be anything like Zionism's ballooning definition of anti-Semitism, would it? Here's the latest in that department: "All criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic because of the specific historical circumstances under which we currently live. That is to say, the historical circumstances under which Israel and the Jews exist in the world today render any non-anti-Semitic criticism of Israel impossible." (Yes, all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic!, Benjamin Kerstein, The Jerusalem Post, 20/5/12)
"... but their descendants..."
How dare these refugees have kids! The nerve! Actually, they only have the little buggers for one reason:
"... noting Palestinian supporters use these figures to pressure Israel."
Unsurprisingly, the real centre of the Zionist campaign to disappear the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees, however, is in the United States:
"Palestinians in the occupied territories, the diaspora and in refugee camps protested earlier this month on the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, commemorating the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians by nascent Israeli forces in the late 1940s. Palestinians were sending a message to the world that the right to return to their homes would not be forgotten, and that millions of refugees are awaiting a solution. One senator from Illinois, though, wants to write off those millions and change who is classified as a Palestinian refugee. Mark Kirk, a hawkish Repblican whose political career has been boosted by right-wing Israel advocates, is leading a drive to fundamentally redefine who a Palestinian refugee is in the eyes of the United States. Critics see the move as just one step in a larger strategy to take the issue of refugee rights for Palestinians off the negotiating table, and to cut funding from UNRWA, the UN agency that assists Palestinians... On Thursday May 24, a senate committee passed an amendment by unanimous voice vote that would require the State Department to differentiate between Palestinian refugees who were displaced first-hand and those born after to families who were refugees. The senator behind the amendment was Kirk, who is close to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and has received over a million dollars from Israel-oriented political action committees during his political career." (How the Israel Lobby's favorite senator is trying to erase Palestinian refugees, Alex Cane, alternet.org, 2/6/12)
And if you thought Danby was rich, here's Kirk's statement following the passing of his amendment: "With US taxpayers providing more than $4 billion to UNRWA since 1950, the watershed reporting requirement will help taxpayers better understand whether UNRWA truly remains a refugee assistance organization or has become a welfare agency for low-income residents of the Levant." (ibid)
This, from a Zionist stooge, advocating for a foreign power - an apartheid state, in fact - that has bilked the US taxpayer of $103.6 billion in military aid from 1949 to 2008, with a further $30 billion promised between 2007 and 2018.*
[*See US military aid to Israel, aidtoisrael.org]
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