Everything to Hide

Back in 2011, Labor's Shadow Minister for CIA (Covering Israel's Arse) moved a motion in federal parliament:

"Amid all the rancor of that final sitting last week, Labor's Michael Danby introduced to the House of Representatives a motion that highlighted the best in public debate. He called on Parliament to recognise each July 11 as Srebrenica Remembrance Day, as a reminder of the evil that led to the genocide of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys at the hands of the rebel Serb forces of Ratko Mladic in Bosnia in 1995. 'It was,' Danby said, 'what the Russians would call an act of pamyat - memory'." (Rising from the mire, Paul Daley, The Sun-Herald, 27/11/11) [See my 28/11/11 post Fine & Danby.]

I wonder if Danby, who'll happily discourse on every human rights abuse under the sun, unless of course it occurs between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, would have moved his motion if he'd known about this:

"Israel's Supreme Court last month rejected a petition to reveal details of Israeli defense exports to the former Yugoslavia during the genocide in Bosnia in the 1990s. The court ruled that exposing Israeli involvement in genocide would damage the country's foreign relations to such an extent that it would outweigh the public interest in knowing that information, and [lead to] the possible prosecution of those involved. The petitioners, Attorney Itay Mack and professor Yair Oron, presented the court with concrete evidence of Israeli defense exports to Serbian forces at the time, including training as well as ammunition and rifles. Among other things, they presented the personal journal of General Ratko Mladic, currently on trial at the International Court of Justice for committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Mladic's journal explicitly mentions Sebia's ample arms ties with Israel at the time. The exports took place long after the UN Security Council placed an arms embargo on various parts of the former Yugoslavia, and after the publication of a series of testimonies exposing genocide and the creation of concentration camps. The Israeli State Attorney's reply and the court's rejection of the petition are a de facto admission by Israel that it cooperated with the Bosnian genocide: if the government had nothing to hide, the documents under discussion would not pose any threat to foreign relations." (Supreme Court rules against exposing Israel's role in Bosnian genocide, John Brown*, 972mag.com, 5/12/16) [*The pseudonym of an Israel academic and blogger.]

And will he, I wonder, have anything to say from now on about the following nasties?:

"Earlier this year, the same Supreme Court rejected a similar claim regarding defense exports during the Rwandan genocide... The state faces a series of similar requests regarding its collaboration with the murderers of the Argentinian Junta, Pinochet's regime in Chile, and Sri Lanka." (ibid)

At any rate, it looks as though we're going to be hearing a lot more of this sentence: "The court ruled that exposing Israeli involvement in genocide would damage the country's foreign relations to such an extent that it would outweigh the public interest in knowing that information, and [lead to] the possible prosecution of those involved."