West Australian Labor MP Melissa Parke (Fremantle) courageously tabled Wollongong University political scientist Marcelo Svirsky's pro-Palestine BDS petition in federal parliament last Monday. (See my 1/10/14 post Marcelo Svirsky's Long Walk for Palestine.)
In doing so, she has distinguished herself as the only Australian parliamentarian - Liberal, Labor, Greens or independent - with the guts to speak out plainly in this setting on the subject of Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people. The last federal politician to do so, need I remind you, was the redoubtable Labor MP Julia Irwin, who retired in 2010. (See my 11/8/10 post Julia Irwin Spills the Beans.)
Contrast this abject state of affairs with the recent House of Commons debate, which resulted in British MPs from all parties slamming Israeli criminality and intransigence, and voting 274-12 in support of a Palestinian state. (See my 17/10 post Britain's Responsibility for Palestine.)
In her speech, Parke noted, in a statement of the bleeding obvious:
"I do wish to dispel some of the misunderstandings around the official BDS campaign, including that its supporters are anti-Semitic and intent on the destruction of Israel... It is not anti-Semitic to protest injustice."
Such expressions of the bleeding obvious, however, are intolerable to the Israel lobby. This explains the following riposte from Labor's Glenn Sterle in the Senate on Thursday:
"It is time that the member for Fremantle stopped spouting propaganda that comes directly from organisations and groups that are devoted to genocidal ideologies." (BDS comments 'ill-informed', Dennis Shanahan, The Australian, 1/11/14)
Talk about projection!
Sterle, needless to say, was rambammed in 2007.
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Congratulations to Melissa Parke,who has a good track record for informed independent judgement based on real knowledge of international law.
But I wonder if Melissa Parke would really rock the boat?
And win plaudits for herself and her party at the same time?
Would Melissa Parke M.P. call out Senator Brandis [A.B.C.--Q&A 3/11/14] for CLAIMING that Australians of "DUAL NATIONALITY"[aka Australians fighting for Israel in the IDF] are somehow exempt from prosecutions under the provisions of the [Crimes] Foreign Incursions Act 1978 simply by claiming "DUAL NATIONALITY." This is Brandis, preposterous.
The act itself [Google] makes no mention of dual nationality and in fact even foreign nationals merely passing through Australia on a visit, en rout to the foreign incursion, "serving in any capacity" can be prosecuted.
Read the Act, it is a 'catch all'
This Act is the real reason for the new terrorism laws.The government knows they would be required to enforce the Foreign Incursions Act across the board once it started making prosecutions of just Muslims had they used the old Act, or be accused of double standards and hypocracy.
Australian hellicopter pilots flying for the [friendly] P.N.G. government were reguired to obtain special permission, published in advance in the Government Gazette, to operate in warlike operations in Bougainville. It was irrelevant, under the Act, if they were dual nationals, good, bad, right or wrong.
You know a country is in decline when the state and its 'critics' refuse to enforce their own laws.
Over to you Melissa and al you wannabe upholders of the Law.
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