My 19 June post - Australia Post Issues Israeli Propaganda Stamps - seems to have gained some media attention since being posted on the Australians For Palestine (AFP) website. As a result, a News.com.au journalist, Daniel Piotrowski, has written a report, Australia Post 60c stamp accused of being 'disgraceful' attack on racial group. Unfortunately it contains several errors and other problems:
1) The headline is quite misleading. More accurate renderings would have been: AP stamp accused of insulting Palestinians/ appropriating Palestinian history/ appropriating Palestinian-Australian history.
2) Piotrowski incorrectly attributed this blog to the AFP's Sonja Karkar. A simple read of the post on the AFP website would've cleared the matter up had he bothered to access it.
3) If this isn't a sentence on the run, I don't know what is: "The stamps feature World War I near the town of Beersheba where Australians fought the Turkish."
4) Piotrowski concludes: "An Australia Post spokeswoman said it received its information from sources including the Australian War Memorial. And the facts were fact-checked by war historian Peter Stanley."
Yes, Beersheba, in 1917 an Arab town in Ottoman Turkish Palestine, fell to Australian troops after a famous mounted charge.
This fact, however, has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the creation of Israel decades later in 1948 as Mr Stanley would be the first to confirm.
If the stamp had been a purely Australian issue, no one could possibly have objected. But it wasn't. It was a joint issue with a country that simply did not exist in 1917, which raises the question of why it was issued if not to suggest that Australian troops somehow had a role in the creation of Israel. This view is corroborated on the card which accompanied the stamp, the text of which Piotrowski could have read in my post: "... a chain of events which eventually culminated in the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948."
This last is not an historically neutral statement. For it to have been so, it would have to have been written as follows: '... a chain of events which eventually culminated in the the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and the ethnic cleansing and exile of the Palestinian people.'
The simple fact of the matter is that Australian troops did what they did for king and country, most emphatically not for a future Jewish state of which they could not possibly have been aware and quite possibly not have approved.
Australia Post owes the Australian public a full and frank explanation of how these two stamps (yes, there's a second $2.60 international version which should go down a treat in the Arab/Muslim world especially) came into being and why.
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This type of historical distortion is a familiar theme. An article in 'The Drum' ABC Online, 1 March 2013 by Phillip Chester, President of the Zionist Federation of Australia contained the following gem.
"Australia and Israel are strong allies and relationships built on the battlegrounds of two world wars underscore the enduring nature of the friendship and shared values."
Perhaps the Israel Defence Force has access to time travel?
Australia Post is a dishonest and deceitful bunch of ratbags.
We have been fighting a battle with them for years simply to have our mail delivered.
Australia Post are obliged by the Postal Act to deliver mail, even to the Cocos-Keeling Islands, however they fabricate a variety of pathetic excuses to force people to rent a Post Office box. They then circumvent and pervert the act with lies and deceit. This is why they have a government guaranteed monopoly of letter services.
That is not the end of their malfeasance.
Having no mail delivery entitles the poor unfortunate victim to a rebate of about $76 per year, in theory.
Obtaining this rebate is another matter. Australia Post staff also have a variety of pathetic excuses to not allow the rebate and it is nowhere to be found on the Australia Post web site. This industrial strength fraud has generated hundreds of millions of dollars for this crooked bunch of thieves.Time for a class action.
If they were a private company they would be prosecuted for unconsionable behaviour by the ACCC.
No wonder they have so much in common with the Bandit State of Israel.
My grandfathers first cousin died on Anzac day at Gallipoli as a member of the A.I.F. and my father prosecuted war criminals at the end of WW2 as an Australian Army officer, now we celebrate war criminals with a commemorative joint postage stamp issue.
This is gross disrespect for fallen Australian servicemen and a fabrication of history.
Dale said...
My grand uncle Sonny [Hercules] Peisley and his brother Pos [Prosper] Peisley,direct descendants of the "wild colonial boy", both served with the Australian [all volunteer] Army in World War one.
Both served in the Middle East and Europe. Sonny lost his life in Europe fighting on the Western Front. It was a great loss for the family and is still remembered.
Pos served with the Light Horse Brigade and lived to an old age.
I too am disgusted with Australia Post for treating my relatives with such disrespect and co-opting them into a shabby propaganda exercise in which they played no part.
Australia Post also subvert their obligations to deliver the mail by conducting bogus and self serving elections in new sub divisions asking if residents actually want their mail delivered!
The scam works like this;
Australia Post purports to circulate the new residents of the development.
Of course not all residents have moved in and not all residents receive the ballot papers.
Australia Post then purports to count the so called "votes".
All people who fail to respond to this scam are then counted as not actually wanting a street mail delivery.
At best Australia Post then demands that the disaffected residents erect a "cluster Box" arrangement, convenient only for Australia Post.
These "cluster boxes" are not council approved unless they are erected on private land and are not covered by householder public liability insurance.
If someone is injured by the boxes, for example a car accident, Australia Post then say that it is not their problem.
Both the responsible Minister, Senator Conroy, and the shadow Minister,Turnbull,are fervent grovelers to Zionism and allow Australia Post to flout its obligations, not only to the act of parliament but its obligations to the International Postal Union, the second oldest international organisation.
The trouble with propaganda stunts of this kind is they rely on sloppy historical research at best and downright blatant distortion, as is so often the case with clumsy Zionist dishonesty, in this instance.
Examine the actual stamp and the words Tel el Saba feature below the proverbial horses mouth.
A simple internet search will reveal that Tel el Saba was in fact captured by the New Zealand Mounted Rifles. A full account can be obtained on the web site of the N.Z. Mounted Rifles Association website.
Lt. Col. C.G. Powles and Maj. A. Wilkie wrote the N.Z. official history, The New Zealanders in Sinai and PALESTINE,1922.
The full book can be downloaded from the website and chapter five, How The Turkish Line was Broken at Beersheba, is also published on the website of the Australian Light Horse Association.
There were also British and Italian soldiers at Beersheba.
The Italian contingent were called the Distaccamento Italiano di Palestina or Palestine Italian Detachment.
I cant find any mention of the word "Israel" on either of these websites or the numerous links to official histories, diaries, corespondents reports and various books.
The importance of the battle of Beersheba is best summed up by Sir Basil Liddle Hart in his book, History of the First World War, first published in 1934.
"Meanwhile, as a necessary preliminary to the real blow, the inland bastion of Beersheba was seized by a convergent manoeuvre on October 31st, a prelude to the decisive attack on November 6th, which broke through the enemy's weakened centre and into the plain of Philistia". p398, [1982 edition].
As to the identity of the Desert Mounted Corps "real allies" Sir Basil writes, "In this pursuit the Desert Mounted Corps co-operated with and for the first time met, their real desert allies, hitherto an invisible and intangible factor.Their presence, and identity, was disclosed when a messenger reported-- 'There's an Arab on the top of the hill over there in a Rolls-Royce; talks English perfectly and in a hell of a rage!' For no pursuit could be fast enough to satisfy Lawrence's ardent spirit as he urged his ARABS on towards the city of desire". pp. 560-561.
The New Zealanders are a notable omission from this joint stamp circus, after all they were an essential part of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
Did the New Zealand government decline to participate for obvious reasons, the same reasons that are clear enough for anyone to perceive who is not willfully blind? Like Australia Post.
Perhaps we would be better informed if we just asked the horse.
Many thanks for shedding some scholarly light on this subject, anon. Even without the milking of the Charge of the Light Horse for its Israeli propaganda value, isolating it from its British, New Zealand, Italian and Arab context as a stand-alone event does a huge disservice to the actual historical record.
I took your advice and "asked the horse" and this is straight from the horses mouth.
The horse said, "my old mate Phar Lap was actually a Kiwi horse and the Australians have misappropriated him and now say he is an Australian horse!"
This deceitful activity can be seen by a Google search for "Famous New Zealanders Claimed By Australians".
The list is too exhaustive to publish, however Russell Crowe, Split Enz, [get it ENZ as in NZ?] and Pamela Stephenson come to mind.
I wont't mention the sheep or the famous underarm incident as an example of bad sportsmanship.
But this misappropriation of of the famous Kiwi feat of arms at Tel el Saba by the Australians and now the Israelis is just about as underarm as you can get!!!! To put it on an Australian/Israeli Postage Stamp as a fact is just typical.
Just because Australia is hijacked by a self hating Arab, Ahmed Fahour, for contemporary propaganda purposes, for the benefit of a state that did't exist in 1917 and air-brush the Kiwis out of the picture, just like the Palestinians are always air-brushed out of the picture, is a scandal. I looked at the websites in question and while there were many thousands of entries for Australia, New Zealand and Palestine there were none for Israel.
Australia might like to allow Israel to misappropriate history but take Tel el Saba of your bloody stamp.
It is time to end Closer Economic Relations with Australia. Australia won't take beautiful Kiwi apples anyway.Who is the sheep shagger now?
How about Australia Post having a joint issue with Azerbaijan commemorating the great Australian victory at Waterloo, defeating Napoleon, and creating modern Azerbaijan?
Great idea! If only there were an Azerbaijani lobby here to get the ball rolling.
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