"My experience of extremists in Australia's Israel lobby summed up in two words: attempted bullying." - Bob Carr tweet, 21/7/18
"Former foreign minister turned political memoirist Gareth Evans has threatened to boycott the Brisbane Writers Festival after organisers decided to remove Bob Carr and Germaine Greer from the program. Mr Evans, who was due to speak about his new book, Incorrigible Optimist, at the festival... said he was 'gob-smacked' by the move. 'This a fundamental freedom-of-speech issue,' he told The Australian. 'I haven't decided yet whether to withdraw from the festival or to take part and tell them, on stage, in no uncertain terms, how stupid it is'." (Evans threatens writers festival boycott to back Carr, Greer, Stephen Romei, The Australian, 26/7/18)
Damn right!
"He said he would wait for a full response from BWF acting chief executive Ann McLean. In a detailed letter to her yesterday, he said the ban on Mr Carr and Dr Greer was 'utterly unworthy of any literary festival that wants to be taken seriously. What on earth can you guys be thinking? Have you even begun to think about the reputational damage this will do, here and internationally, to your festival and your capacity to attract participants in the future? Please think again'."
The answers to those questions is: OBVIOUSLY NOT.
"In response, Dr McLean said the festival decided in early June not to proceed with Mr Carr due to 'the need to provide engaging choices for our audience'."
What bullshit this is!
"Earlier, she told The Australian Mr Carr would 'just talk about his book' rather than the selected topic, 'What the World Needs Now'."
OFFS! You're kidding me!
"Dr McLean acknowledged there were concerns the media interest in Dr Greer and Mr Carr would 'overshadow' other writers at the festival."
By which she means, in fluent schmaltz: What the world needs now is love, sweet love... lalalalala...
"Their 'controversial' nature was also a concern."
At last we're getting to the NUB of the matter!
"Mr Carr's new book, the political memoir Run for Your Life, includes his thoughts on the US, China and the Israel lobby."
BINGO!
"In a letter to MUP (Melbourne University Publishing), Dr McLean noted BWF had to consider the 'brand alignment of several sponsors we are securing for the festival'. In response, Mr Evans outlined six questions he would like answered, including: 'Are you able to say which sponsors you had in mind, and precisely how you - or they - saw Carr as affecting their 'brand alignment'? Did it have anything to do with his well-known positions on Palestine-Israel and China?'"
You've nailed it, Gareth!
Showing posts with label Gareth Evans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gareth Evans. Show all posts
Thursday, July 26, 2018
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Auntie Poppy Syndrome
If you were an aging baby boomer and, while still young and tender, had the misfortune to have in the family a dotty old aunt who had one too many bees in her bonnet for her own or your good, and who repeated, mantra-fashion, in year ear, the injunction to never forget that the Jews are God's chosen people, you may - perish the thought - contingent on the onset of some kind of developmental delay, have ended up as the foreign editor of Murdoch's Australian, projectile-vomiting such dark green prose as the following:
"What a caterwauling coven of craven zeitgeist whisperers they are - Bob Hawke, Kevin Rudd and Gareth Evans - calling for Australia to formally recognise a Palestinian state, the three of them like the witches of Macbeth intoning sterile incantations; in this case not with the purpose of affecting reality but rather to signal once again their sublime and ineffable virtue." (ALP's three amigos only invite ridicule by maligning Israel, Greg Sheridan, 25/2/17)
I, therefore, nominate what I call 'Auntie Poppy Syndrome' (after Sheridan's Auntie Poppy, as described on page 22 of his 2015 memoir When We Were Young & Foolish: A Memoir of My Misguided Youth with Tony Abbott, Bob Carr, Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd & Other Reprobates) for inclusion in the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
"What a caterwauling coven of craven zeitgeist whisperers they are - Bob Hawke, Kevin Rudd and Gareth Evans - calling for Australia to formally recognise a Palestinian state, the three of them like the witches of Macbeth intoning sterile incantations; in this case not with the purpose of affecting reality but rather to signal once again their sublime and ineffable virtue." (ALP's three amigos only invite ridicule by maligning Israel, Greg Sheridan, 25/2/17)
I, therefore, nominate what I call 'Auntie Poppy Syndrome' (after Sheridan's Auntie Poppy, as described on page 22 of his 2015 memoir When We Were Young & Foolish: A Memoir of My Misguided Youth with Tony Abbott, Bob Carr, Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd & Other Reprobates) for inclusion in the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Memo to Bob Carr: Israel is Occupied Palestine
In an opinion piece in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, former Labor foreign ministers, Bob Carr and Gareth Evans, slammed "Australia's new policy of refusing to describe East Jerusalem as 'occupied'":
"If East Jerusalem is not to be referred to as 'occupied', why not Nablus or Bethlehem? If the Australian government can say 'occupied East Jerusalem' is fraught with 'pejorative implications' what is to stop Ms Bishop applying this to the occupied West Bank as a whole?" (East Jerusalem stance will not aid peace process)
Point well taken, but perhaps it's time to broaden the discussion:
If East Jerusalem is to be referred to as occupied (which, if course, it certainly is), why not West Jerusalem?
If Nablus and Bethlehem are to be referred to as occupied (which, of course, they certainly are), why not Jaffa and Haifa?
The simple fact of the matter is that today's 'Israel' - taken by brute force force and ethnic cleansing in 1948 - is just as much occupied Palestine as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - taken by brute force and ethnic cleansing in 1967.
Do Carr and Evans need to consult the shades of the Zionist architects of Israeli-occupied Palestine - from the River to the Sea - to understand the bleeding obvious? Namely, that every inch of Palestine is stolen land? That just about every Jewish Israeli is either a settler or the son and daughter of a settler or the grandson or granddaughter of a settler? That yesterday's kibbutzim and moshavim are today's West Bank settlements? That Israel is because Palestine isn't?
So be it then:
David Ben-Gurion: "If I was an Arab leader, I should never make terms with Israel. That is natural; we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but that was two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"
Vladimir Jabotinsky: "Any native people... views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs... They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervour that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon the prairie..."
Moshe Dayan: "Let us not today fling accusations at the murderers. Who are we that we should argue against their hatred? For eight years now they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their very eyes, we turn into our homestead the land and the villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the cannon we cannot plant a tree and build a home... Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You don't even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahlul, Gvat in the place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Haneifa, and Kfar-Yehoshua in the place of Tel-Shaman. There is not one single place in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
Carr and Evans also wrote:
"Israeli realists know indefinite occupation of the West Bank will degrade their own country, maintaining its Jewish identity only at the price of compromising its democracy."
Can they tell us how maintaining the "Jewish identity" of Israel - at the expense of the non-Jewish Palestinians - is not as racist a project as that of White South Africans maintaining the White identity of South Africa - at the expense of non-White South Africans?
Maybe they need to sit down and listen, really listen, to the unashamedly Zionist, and hence unashamedly racist, Israeli mayor of Upper Nazareth, Shimon Gapso:
"I'm not afraid to say it out loud... Upper Nazareth is a Jewish city and it's important that it remain so. If that makes me a racist, then I'm a proud offshoot of a glorious dynasty of 'racists' that started with the 'Covenant of the Pieces' [that God made with Abraham, recounted in Genesis 15:1-15] and the explicitly racist promise: 'To your seed have I given this land' [Genesis 15:38]...
"The racist Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, not The State of All Its Citizens). Lord Balfour recommended the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Arlosoroff, Moshe Sharett and other racists established the Jewish Agency, and the racist UN decided to establish a Jewish state - in other words, a state for Jews. The racist Ben-Gurion announced the establishment of the Jewish State in the Land of Israel, and during the War of Independence even made sure to bring in hundreds of thousands of Jews and drive out hundreds of thousands of Arabs who had been living here - all to enable it to be founded with the desired racist character.
"Since then, racially pure kibbutzim without a single Arab member and an army that protects a certain racial strain have been established, as have political parties that proudly bear racist names such as Habayit Hayehudi - 'The Jewish Home'. Even our racist national anthem ignores the existence of the Arab minority - in other words, the people Ben-Gurion did not manage to expel in the 1948 war. If not for all that 'racism' it's doubtful we could live here, and doubtful we could live at all.
"In these times of hypocrisy and bleeding-heart sanctimoniousness, of the proliferation of flaky types who are disconnected from reality, in the relative security that causes us to forget the dangers we face, we can sit in north Tel Aviv and cry 'racism' to seem enlightened and good-hearted in our own eyes. We can be shocked at a mayor who prefers that his city, which is right next to the largest Arab city in Israel, retain a Jewish majority and not be swallowed up in the Arab area that surrounds it. There will not be a single Jew in the future Palestinian state, but that's all right. That isn't racism." ('If you think I'm a racist, then Israel is a racist state', Haaretz, 7/8/13)
"If East Jerusalem is not to be referred to as 'occupied', why not Nablus or Bethlehem? If the Australian government can say 'occupied East Jerusalem' is fraught with 'pejorative implications' what is to stop Ms Bishop applying this to the occupied West Bank as a whole?" (East Jerusalem stance will not aid peace process)
Point well taken, but perhaps it's time to broaden the discussion:
If East Jerusalem is to be referred to as occupied (which, if course, it certainly is), why not West Jerusalem?
If Nablus and Bethlehem are to be referred to as occupied (which, of course, they certainly are), why not Jaffa and Haifa?
The simple fact of the matter is that today's 'Israel' - taken by brute force force and ethnic cleansing in 1948 - is just as much occupied Palestine as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - taken by brute force and ethnic cleansing in 1967.
Do Carr and Evans need to consult the shades of the Zionist architects of Israeli-occupied Palestine - from the River to the Sea - to understand the bleeding obvious? Namely, that every inch of Palestine is stolen land? That just about every Jewish Israeli is either a settler or the son and daughter of a settler or the grandson or granddaughter of a settler? That yesterday's kibbutzim and moshavim are today's West Bank settlements? That Israel is because Palestine isn't?
So be it then:
David Ben-Gurion: "If I was an Arab leader, I should never make terms with Israel. That is natural; we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but that was two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"
Vladimir Jabotinsky: "Any native people... views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs... They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervour that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon the prairie..."
Moshe Dayan: "Let us not today fling accusations at the murderers. Who are we that we should argue against their hatred? For eight years now they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their very eyes, we turn into our homestead the land and the villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the cannon we cannot plant a tree and build a home... Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You don't even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahlul, Gvat in the place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Haneifa, and Kfar-Yehoshua in the place of Tel-Shaman. There is not one single place in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
Carr and Evans also wrote:
"Israeli realists know indefinite occupation of the West Bank will degrade their own country, maintaining its Jewish identity only at the price of compromising its democracy."
Can they tell us how maintaining the "Jewish identity" of Israel - at the expense of the non-Jewish Palestinians - is not as racist a project as that of White South Africans maintaining the White identity of South Africa - at the expense of non-White South Africans?
Maybe they need to sit down and listen, really listen, to the unashamedly Zionist, and hence unashamedly racist, Israeli mayor of Upper Nazareth, Shimon Gapso:
"I'm not afraid to say it out loud... Upper Nazareth is a Jewish city and it's important that it remain so. If that makes me a racist, then I'm a proud offshoot of a glorious dynasty of 'racists' that started with the 'Covenant of the Pieces' [that God made with Abraham, recounted in Genesis 15:1-15] and the explicitly racist promise: 'To your seed have I given this land' [Genesis 15:38]...
"The racist Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, not The State of All Its Citizens). Lord Balfour recommended the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Arlosoroff, Moshe Sharett and other racists established the Jewish Agency, and the racist UN decided to establish a Jewish state - in other words, a state for Jews. The racist Ben-Gurion announced the establishment of the Jewish State in the Land of Israel, and during the War of Independence even made sure to bring in hundreds of thousands of Jews and drive out hundreds of thousands of Arabs who had been living here - all to enable it to be founded with the desired racist character.
"Since then, racially pure kibbutzim without a single Arab member and an army that protects a certain racial strain have been established, as have political parties that proudly bear racist names such as Habayit Hayehudi - 'The Jewish Home'. Even our racist national anthem ignores the existence of the Arab minority - in other words, the people Ben-Gurion did not manage to expel in the 1948 war. If not for all that 'racism' it's doubtful we could live here, and doubtful we could live at all.
"In these times of hypocrisy and bleeding-heart sanctimoniousness, of the proliferation of flaky types who are disconnected from reality, in the relative security that causes us to forget the dangers we face, we can sit in north Tel Aviv and cry 'racism' to seem enlightened and good-hearted in our own eyes. We can be shocked at a mayor who prefers that his city, which is right next to the largest Arab city in Israel, retain a Jewish majority and not be swallowed up in the Arab area that surrounds it. There will not be a single Jew in the future Palestinian state, but that's all right. That isn't racism." ('If you think I'm a racist, then Israel is a racist state', Haaretz, 7/8/13)
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
The Grooming of Gareth Evans & Pat Moynihan
"It took the UN far too long to realize that Zionism is a form of racism, representing a blatant violation of the norms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the standards of international law. It was only in the wake of the 1967 war and the consequent war crimes perpetrated by the Israeli occupation forces, challenged by the renewed resistance of the Palestinian Arab people led by the PLO, that the UN corrected its record and passed General Assembly Resolution 3379 of November 1975 determining that 'Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination'. And it is, indeed, most regrettable that in the wake of the Middle East Peace Conference convened in Madrid in October 1991, co-sponsored by the USA and the former USSR, the General Assembly muddied its record again by passing Resolution 46/86 of December 1991, revoking Resolution 3379." (Uri Davis, Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 3)
Gareth Evans, Australia's foreign minister (ALP) from 1988 to 1996, was a recruit/dupe in the Zionist campaign to have UNGA Resolution 3379 revoked, and is today President of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. An ally of Bob Carr's in the revelatory events of November 2012, chronicled in Carr's Diary of a Foreign Minister, Evans launched the book earlier this month. The following report on that occasion intriguingly harks back to Evans' participation in the 18-year Zionist assault on Resolution 3379:
"Mr Evans, an informal sounding board for Mr Carr during his stint as foreign minister... said lobbyists from the Victorian Jewish community had influenced him to campaign against the 'Zionism as Racism' resolution when he was foreign minister - and he was proud to do so because the cause was just. 'But it also lost me... when it lost its way, as it continues to do to this day, on the larger Palestinian issue'." (Gillard cloth-eared on Israel, says Evans, Brad Norington, The Australian, 15/4/14)
Isn't it amazing, the almost mesmeric sway these Zionist lobbyists seem to exercise over our politicians? Here's the even more opaque Zionist version of Evan's falling under the influence:
"Australia will back an attempt to seek support among Asian-Pacific nations to have the iniquitous United Nations Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism rescinded. Foreign Minister Gareth Evans gave this undertaking to a joint delegation from the Zionist Federation of Australia and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry in Canberra last week." (Australia will back move to rescind 'Zionism - racism', Australian Jewish News, 13/4/90)
You will not, of course, be surprised to know that Mark Leibler (now of AIJAC, then of the ZFA) was as integral to the process of grooming (or influencing if you prefer) Evans in 1990 as he was of grooming Gillard in 2012. Now while we know that Evans' was groomed by Leibler and Co, neither Evans' reference, nor the Zionist report of 1990, sheds any real light on the details.
We do though have details of the grooming of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003), the US Ambassador to the United Nations (1975-76) and the spearhead of USrael's opposition to Resolution 3379 in the UN, by Ziocon Godfather and editor of the influential US magazine Commentary, Norman Podhoretz (1930-).
It is tempting to see in Leibler's grooming of Evans in 1990 a parallel with Podhoretz's grooming of Moynihan in 1975. The following account of the latter comes from Norman Podhoretz: A Biography by Thomas L. Jeffers (2010)
"On July 9, 1975, Barbara M. White cabled the American Mission a euphoric report on the UN-sponsored International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City. Moynihan's initial reaction was happy: the United States could at last get on the side of the LDCs and, under the banner of feminism, pull some of them away from the Soviet lodestone. There were poisoned dregs at the bottom of the cup, however. With Israel and America voting no, the Conference had also called for the 'elimination of... Zionism, apartheid, [and] racial discrimination.' It was what Garment later named 'the thing from 20,000 Leagues Below the Sea.' He and Weaver told Moynihan that 'this is trouble, Zionism as a form of racism.' And Pat, leaning in, said, 'Well, isn't it?' Knowing next to nothing about the origins of Zionism or the subtler permutations of anti-Semitism, Moynihan didn't, Garment remembered, think it 'unreasonable for an ethicist to say that this is a Jewish people just taking the land from Palestinian people and declaring 'you're not going to come here, we're here'.'
"Bringing Moynihan up to speed, Garment and Weaver called on their 'biggest gun,' Podhoretz, more knowledgeable and more intimate with Moynihan than they were, to conduct dinner-table seminars. Podhoretz himself had learned a great deal about the history of the Zionism-as-racism calumny from the English-born Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis and got Moynihan to read him, too. Garment, 'though Jewish, was only just getting interested' in Israel, Podhoretz recalled: 'What Pat and Len together didn't know could, as the cliche goes, fill an encyclopedia.' But they soon caught on, Moynihan being 'a quick study, as intelligent a person as you could ever meet in higher walks of life, and he rigorously cross-examined me.' He also invited Podhoretz to compose most of the speech, especially the first paragraph, that he would give in the General Assembly when a UN resolution defining and denouncing Zionism as 'a form of racism and racial discrimination' came up for a vote - and passed." (p 182)
How utterly grotesque that a man like Moynihan, who started out with a perfectly accurate understanding of the dynamics of the Zionist project, should go on to became a mere mouthpiece for Podhoretz.
Here, BTW, is the opening paragraph of his aforementioned speech, assumed in his Wikipedia entry to be all his own work. It's Zionist hysteria and bombast at its best? worst?
"The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act. Not three weeks ago, the United States representative in the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee pleaded in measured and fully considered terms for the United Nations not to do this thing. It was, he said, 'obscene.' It is something more today, for the furtiveness with which this obscenity first appeared among us has been replaced by a shameless openness. There will be time enough to contemplate the harm this act will have done the United Nations. Historians will do that for us, and it is sufficient for the moment only to note the foreboding fact. A great evil has been loosed upon the world. The abomination of anti-semitism - as this year's Nobel Peace Laureate Andrei Sakharov observed in Moscow just a few days ago - the abomination of anti-semitism has been given the appearance of international sanction.. The General Assembly today grants symbolic amnesty - and more to the murderers of the six million European Jews. Evil enough in itself, but more ominous by far is the realization that now presses upon us - the realization that if there were no General Assembly, this could never have happened."
It'd be interesting to know whether Gareth Evans' promise to "back an attempt to seek support among Asian-Pacific nations," as the AJN put it, involved him in Australian taxpayer-funded travel to the region on Israel's behalf, and if it did, what exactly his talking points were. Did he too play the anti-Semitism and Holocaust cards I wonder?
Gareth Evans, Australia's foreign minister (ALP) from 1988 to 1996, was a recruit/dupe in the Zionist campaign to have UNGA Resolution 3379 revoked, and is today President of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. An ally of Bob Carr's in the revelatory events of November 2012, chronicled in Carr's Diary of a Foreign Minister, Evans launched the book earlier this month. The following report on that occasion intriguingly harks back to Evans' participation in the 18-year Zionist assault on Resolution 3379:
"Mr Evans, an informal sounding board for Mr Carr during his stint as foreign minister... said lobbyists from the Victorian Jewish community had influenced him to campaign against the 'Zionism as Racism' resolution when he was foreign minister - and he was proud to do so because the cause was just. 'But it also lost me... when it lost its way, as it continues to do to this day, on the larger Palestinian issue'." (Gillard cloth-eared on Israel, says Evans, Brad Norington, The Australian, 15/4/14)
Isn't it amazing, the almost mesmeric sway these Zionist lobbyists seem to exercise over our politicians? Here's the even more opaque Zionist version of Evan's falling under the influence:
"Australia will back an attempt to seek support among Asian-Pacific nations to have the iniquitous United Nations Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism rescinded. Foreign Minister Gareth Evans gave this undertaking to a joint delegation from the Zionist Federation of Australia and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry in Canberra last week." (Australia will back move to rescind 'Zionism - racism', Australian Jewish News, 13/4/90)
You will not, of course, be surprised to know that Mark Leibler (now of AIJAC, then of the ZFA) was as integral to the process of grooming (or influencing if you prefer) Evans in 1990 as he was of grooming Gillard in 2012. Now while we know that Evans' was groomed by Leibler and Co, neither Evans' reference, nor the Zionist report of 1990, sheds any real light on the details.
We do though have details of the grooming of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003), the US Ambassador to the United Nations (1975-76) and the spearhead of USrael's opposition to Resolution 3379 in the UN, by Ziocon Godfather and editor of the influential US magazine Commentary, Norman Podhoretz (1930-).
It is tempting to see in Leibler's grooming of Evans in 1990 a parallel with Podhoretz's grooming of Moynihan in 1975. The following account of the latter comes from Norman Podhoretz: A Biography by Thomas L. Jeffers (2010)
"On July 9, 1975, Barbara M. White cabled the American Mission a euphoric report on the UN-sponsored International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City. Moynihan's initial reaction was happy: the United States could at last get on the side of the LDCs and, under the banner of feminism, pull some of them away from the Soviet lodestone. There were poisoned dregs at the bottom of the cup, however. With Israel and America voting no, the Conference had also called for the 'elimination of... Zionism, apartheid, [and] racial discrimination.' It was what Garment later named 'the thing from 20,000 Leagues Below the Sea.' He and Weaver told Moynihan that 'this is trouble, Zionism as a form of racism.' And Pat, leaning in, said, 'Well, isn't it?' Knowing next to nothing about the origins of Zionism or the subtler permutations of anti-Semitism, Moynihan didn't, Garment remembered, think it 'unreasonable for an ethicist to say that this is a Jewish people just taking the land from Palestinian people and declaring 'you're not going to come here, we're here'.'
"Bringing Moynihan up to speed, Garment and Weaver called on their 'biggest gun,' Podhoretz, more knowledgeable and more intimate with Moynihan than they were, to conduct dinner-table seminars. Podhoretz himself had learned a great deal about the history of the Zionism-as-racism calumny from the English-born Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis and got Moynihan to read him, too. Garment, 'though Jewish, was only just getting interested' in Israel, Podhoretz recalled: 'What Pat and Len together didn't know could, as the cliche goes, fill an encyclopedia.' But they soon caught on, Moynihan being 'a quick study, as intelligent a person as you could ever meet in higher walks of life, and he rigorously cross-examined me.' He also invited Podhoretz to compose most of the speech, especially the first paragraph, that he would give in the General Assembly when a UN resolution defining and denouncing Zionism as 'a form of racism and racial discrimination' came up for a vote - and passed." (p 182)
How utterly grotesque that a man like Moynihan, who started out with a perfectly accurate understanding of the dynamics of the Zionist project, should go on to became a mere mouthpiece for Podhoretz.
Here, BTW, is the opening paragraph of his aforementioned speech, assumed in his Wikipedia entry to be all his own work. It's Zionist hysteria and bombast at its best? worst?
"The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act. Not three weeks ago, the United States representative in the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee pleaded in measured and fully considered terms for the United Nations not to do this thing. It was, he said, 'obscene.' It is something more today, for the furtiveness with which this obscenity first appeared among us has been replaced by a shameless openness. There will be time enough to contemplate the harm this act will have done the United Nations. Historians will do that for us, and it is sufficient for the moment only to note the foreboding fact. A great evil has been loosed upon the world. The abomination of anti-semitism - as this year's Nobel Peace Laureate Andrei Sakharov observed in Moscow just a few days ago - the abomination of anti-semitism has been given the appearance of international sanction.. The General Assembly today grants symbolic amnesty - and more to the murderers of the six million European Jews. Evil enough in itself, but more ominous by far is the realization that now presses upon us - the realization that if there were no General Assembly, this could never have happened."
It'd be interesting to know whether Gareth Evans' promise to "back an attempt to seek support among Asian-Pacific nations," as the AJN put it, involved him in Australian taxpayer-funded travel to the region on Israel's behalf, and if it did, what exactly his talking points were. Did he too play the anti-Semitism and Holocaust cards I wonder?
Saturday, April 19, 2014
The Carr Diary 11: Reflections 5
November 20, 2012 sees another 'Australian' vote in the UN, another day of shame in the UN:
"To feed my gloomy irritation I sustain another defeat at the hands of the Likudniks. This is over how we vote in the UN in a dispute between Israel and Lebanon. When I met the Lebanese Foreign Minister in Cairo in September I told him we would be more sympathetic than we'd been in the past on the annual General Assembly motion that deals with the 2006 destruction by the Israeli air force of the oil-storage tanks in the Jiyeh Power Plant in Lebanon. This caused an oil slick along the Lebanese and Syrian coasts. This motion calls on Israel to provide compensation to Lebanon and Syria. We had voted against the resolution on the grounds that we do not consider the General Assembly the appropriate forum. But this implies we are unsympathetic and in my view Lebanon is a country with which we have friendly relations. Moreover, we have over 181,000 people of Lebanese ancestry living in Australia. I wanted to abstain. For some reason this motion got threaded through the Prime minister's office - even though it doesn't deal with Palestinian status or the Israel-Palestine dispute - and today I got a message that we were not to shift our vote to an abstention but were to continue to vote against this resolution. This would place us with only seven nations." (pp 223-24)
In a series of text message exchanges between Carr and the PM, Gillard asserts that she alone has the final word on all UN resolutions. Carr, less than impressed, turns to former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans:
"I rang Gareth Evans and he said a 'no' vote by us would be the worst Australian foreign- policy decision in a generation. He told me to fight all the way." (p 226)
The November 22 vote on Lebanon's Israeli-generated oil slick is the last straw:
"[T]oday... I get the report from the UN mission: 152 nations voted yes, a few abstained, seven voted no. In this last category: the US, Canada, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Micronesia, Israel and - disgracefully, shamefully - us. The shame." (p 227)
A call to the PM on the fast-approaching Palestinian status vote elicits this:
"She tells me the Jewish community remains very important and they won't settle for anything other than a 'no' vote, that they figure prominently in fundraising and they're big in Victoria." (p 229)
IOW, bend the knee and kiss the ring, Bob, just like I do.
The fight is on.
To be continued...
"To feed my gloomy irritation I sustain another defeat at the hands of the Likudniks. This is over how we vote in the UN in a dispute between Israel and Lebanon. When I met the Lebanese Foreign Minister in Cairo in September I told him we would be more sympathetic than we'd been in the past on the annual General Assembly motion that deals with the 2006 destruction by the Israeli air force of the oil-storage tanks in the Jiyeh Power Plant in Lebanon. This caused an oil slick along the Lebanese and Syrian coasts. This motion calls on Israel to provide compensation to Lebanon and Syria. We had voted against the resolution on the grounds that we do not consider the General Assembly the appropriate forum. But this implies we are unsympathetic and in my view Lebanon is a country with which we have friendly relations. Moreover, we have over 181,000 people of Lebanese ancestry living in Australia. I wanted to abstain. For some reason this motion got threaded through the Prime minister's office - even though it doesn't deal with Palestinian status or the Israel-Palestine dispute - and today I got a message that we were not to shift our vote to an abstention but were to continue to vote against this resolution. This would place us with only seven nations." (pp 223-24)
In a series of text message exchanges between Carr and the PM, Gillard asserts that she alone has the final word on all UN resolutions. Carr, less than impressed, turns to former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans:
"I rang Gareth Evans and he said a 'no' vote by us would be the worst Australian foreign- policy decision in a generation. He told me to fight all the way." (p 226)
The November 22 vote on Lebanon's Israeli-generated oil slick is the last straw:
"[T]oday... I get the report from the UN mission: 152 nations voted yes, a few abstained, seven voted no. In this last category: the US, Canada, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Micronesia, Israel and - disgracefully, shamefully - us. The shame." (p 227)
A call to the PM on the fast-approaching Palestinian status vote elicits this:
"She tells me the Jewish community remains very important and they won't settle for anything other than a 'no' vote, that they figure prominently in fundraising and they're big in Victoria." (p 229)
IOW, bend the knee and kiss the ring, Bob, just like I do.
The fight is on.
To be continued...
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Labor's Zeitgeist Error & Other Bruises
Labor has got Israel all wrong, contends Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan in his latest opinion piece in The Weekend Australian, Carr and Rudd completely wrong on Israel (9/3/13).
"The sad case of Ben Zygier, the Mossad agent who committed suicide... brings to the fore the strange pathologies in Australian opinion concerning Israel [and] also underlines just how badly the Labor government has gone off course in its conception of Israel, and Israel's place in the world... the whole case has been used, characteristically, to paint Israel as a secretive, militaristic, national security state."
Israel militaristic - no way! A national security state - perish the thought!
Ah, but as much as I read and savour every word that Greg writes, nay because I read and savour same, I have to point out that he did write last month that "Mossad secrets, including secrets involving Australians, are very hard to crack." (Mystique of Mossad its greatest weapon, 14/2/13)
Still, are such contradictions not a sign of the man's greatness? Greg need only quote the very great Walt Whitman here: "Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself/(I am large, I contain multitudes)"
Now just because Ozraeli Ben Zygier worked for Mossad and had a rather unusual hobby - collecting Australian passports - that certainly doesn't justify Labor's "two dominant foreign policy figures, Kevin Rudd and Bob Carr" dumping on Israel thus: "This week Rudd demanded that Israel say what Zygier was charged with" and Carr proclaimed that if Israel had used Australian passports for intelligence purposes "Australia would be outraged and, absurdly, Australians would be put at risk."
Admonished Greg wisely: "When dealing with a friendly nation surely it is reasonable to wait for evidence of an offence before throwing the switch to outrage."
Now I agree wholeheartedly with him here. It's called the presumption of innocence. After all, some people collect stamps and others passports, OK? It's called FREEDOM and if you don't like it, you can bloody well bugger off to North Korea!
How, wonders Greg, has it come to this? (Parenthetically, need I remind you that it wasn't always so. Try to remember the kind of September... sorry, I got carried away there for a moment. Remember the good old days, when Kevin had support for Israel in his DNA and Israel's 60th was celebrated in federal parliament? Remember the fabulous Kevin Rudd Roadshow to Israel and back? Remember when Julia, Tim and Albert were an awesome threesome? All but a passing memory now I'm afraid.)
"Beyond Zygier," writes Greg as he chugs upstream into Labor's heart of foreign policy darkness, "let me offer some examples of where Labor has got it so wrong on Israel and then suggest the analytical mistake at the root of these missteps."
And there, lurking in the rank, tangled undergrowth, what does he see? Why it's the very spawn of Bill Hartley himself - Gareth Evans!
"Under the baleful influence of Gareth Evans, a tremendously negative force on on contemporary Labor foreign policy who offers only a bureaucratic version of conventional wisdom (and conventional wisdom is often wrong)," Canberra not only abstained on the vote to elevate the status of Palestinian Authority to observer status at the UN but showered it with "millions of dollars" of aid money.
And this, of course, has taught those layabout Palestinians - the Middle Eastern equivalent of our dole bludgers - that they can get "something for nothing," that they don't need to compromise or negotiate with Israel because "the international community will do their job for them."
Too right, Greg! If only these bludgers would give a little. Take Jerusalem for example. Let the Israelis have East Jerusalem - all of it. They're beautiful. They deserve it. What's wrong with Ramallah for a Palestinian capital? Or, better still, Amman? Baghdad even! Or Lakemba? Why not? Think Israelaterally for a change.
But that shameful Australian abstention in the UN, which had the PA popping Australian-funded champagne corks, isn't all. Did you know that "in the Australia-UK Ministerial Meeting in January, Carr ratcheted up Australia's rhetoric on Israel"? 'Fraid so. "For the first time, [Carr's] office was describing all Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal."
Just imagine, describing illegal settlements as illegal! Next thing you know he'll be calling the West Bank occupied Israeli territory. And Gaza a concentration camp!
"To simply call all Israeli settlements illegal," declared Greg, "is simplistic, reductionist, almost childish."
Absolutely! After all, just because a "Jewish suburb" of East Jerusalem is full of illegal Jewish settlers doesn't mean you can call it a 'settlement', right? And if those PA hens have been dumb enough to let "large settlement blocks [sic]" slip through in their 'negotiations' with Israeli foxes, so can the rest of us, right?
Now in addition to that, "Australia's position is also wrong in international law [because] Jordan, which formerly controlled the territory, is not the sovereign power..."
Yes, just because Israel is the only country in the world which reckons the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit an Occupying Power from transferring its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, don't apply to it because Jordan's claim to the West Bank (1948-1967) was dodgy anyway, doesn't mean it isn't right, right? After all, hasn't Greg already declared that "conventional wisdom is often wrong"?
Devastating, eh? But Greg's only just getting started. Here's our bronzed ANZAC kicking sand in Nancy boy Carr's eyes:
"But why take this position at all, except to kick sand in the Israelis' eyes? China claims all of the South China Sea almost right up to the Philippines shore, yet Canberra maintains a strict neutrality. If Israel is a friend why the gratuitous aggro?"
Brilliant analogy! As Jimmie de Rothschild told another Gentile Zionist's Zionist (Blanche Dugdale if you really must know), back in '41: "I had lived so much among Jews that I was taking a Jewish point of view, and could not see things in proportion."*
But there's more! Greg's like a demon dentist whose root canal treatments just go on and on:
"The demand that Obama urgently seek a peace settlement betrays the deeper analytical flaw by Carr and Rudd."
And here's the proof: Syria's finito. Egypt's kaput. The Palestinians are hopelessly divided. How therefore can Israel - which is to peace what a heat-seeking missile is to heat - possibly be expected to make peace under such circumstances?
But all of the above is merely symptomatic of a deeper malaise according to Greg:
"Underlying this is the cardinal doctrine of conventional wisdom among Guardian readers, UN habitues, European think tank staff and the like, and that is the implausible notion Israel is at the heart of Middle East disputes and the West's trouble with Islam."
Now welcome as this news was to me, I must admit to wondering whether or not we have a bit of a 'one hand/other hand' problem here. I mean, on the one hand Israel can't possibly be expected to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians because Syria and Egypt and the rest are exploding all around it, but on the other the Palestinians' trials and tribulations have got nothing whatever to do with the rest of the Middle East or the wider Muslim world. But hey, Greg hasn't been well of late what with his bypasses and all, so we'll cut him some slack, OK? And anyway, he's got lovely quote from "the respected Jeffrey Goldberg, a senior editor at The Atlantic" to back him up, so there.
Lay back, relax, open your mouth wide, just a little bit more:
"Carr, Rudd and Evans add to this zeitgeist error the subsidiary error that Australia seriously damages its reputation by supporting Israel at the UN, a proposition for which there is no evidence. But even if it were true, this would be a price worth paying [because] Israel is Australia's friend and ally."
Yes, Australia, all of Australia, every man, woman and child, should wear it as a badge of pride that, of all the world's passports at its disposal, Israel should choose ours to help it do what all right-thinking people agree had to be done in Dubai. Right-thinking people like union supremo Paul Howes for example, who once wrote: "I'm proud that our nation has played a small and accidental role in the removal of the terrorist al-Mabhouh from the planet."** Any Australian tourists or travellers in the Middle East who come to grief because they're suspected by the locals of being Mossad agents can just be written off as collateral damage, OK?
[*Baffy: The Diaries of Blanche Dugdale, 1936-1947, 1973, p 183; **See my 8/5/10 post Zionism Red in Tooth & Claw.]
"The sad case of Ben Zygier, the Mossad agent who committed suicide... brings to the fore the strange pathologies in Australian opinion concerning Israel [and] also underlines just how badly the Labor government has gone off course in its conception of Israel, and Israel's place in the world... the whole case has been used, characteristically, to paint Israel as a secretive, militaristic, national security state."
Israel militaristic - no way! A national security state - perish the thought!
Ah, but as much as I read and savour every word that Greg writes, nay because I read and savour same, I have to point out that he did write last month that "Mossad secrets, including secrets involving Australians, are very hard to crack." (Mystique of Mossad its greatest weapon, 14/2/13)
Still, are such contradictions not a sign of the man's greatness? Greg need only quote the very great Walt Whitman here: "Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself/(I am large, I contain multitudes)"
Now just because Ozraeli Ben Zygier worked for Mossad and had a rather unusual hobby - collecting Australian passports - that certainly doesn't justify Labor's "two dominant foreign policy figures, Kevin Rudd and Bob Carr" dumping on Israel thus: "This week Rudd demanded that Israel say what Zygier was charged with" and Carr proclaimed that if Israel had used Australian passports for intelligence purposes "Australia would be outraged and, absurdly, Australians would be put at risk."
Admonished Greg wisely: "When dealing with a friendly nation surely it is reasonable to wait for evidence of an offence before throwing the switch to outrage."
Now I agree wholeheartedly with him here. It's called the presumption of innocence. After all, some people collect stamps and others passports, OK? It's called FREEDOM and if you don't like it, you can bloody well bugger off to North Korea!
How, wonders Greg, has it come to this? (Parenthetically, need I remind you that it wasn't always so. Try to remember the kind of September... sorry, I got carried away there for a moment. Remember the good old days, when Kevin had support for Israel in his DNA and Israel's 60th was celebrated in federal parliament? Remember the fabulous Kevin Rudd Roadshow to Israel and back? Remember when Julia, Tim and Albert were an awesome threesome? All but a passing memory now I'm afraid.)
"Beyond Zygier," writes Greg as he chugs upstream into Labor's heart of foreign policy darkness, "let me offer some examples of where Labor has got it so wrong on Israel and then suggest the analytical mistake at the root of these missteps."
And there, lurking in the rank, tangled undergrowth, what does he see? Why it's the very spawn of Bill Hartley himself - Gareth Evans!
"Under the baleful influence of Gareth Evans, a tremendously negative force on on contemporary Labor foreign policy who offers only a bureaucratic version of conventional wisdom (and conventional wisdom is often wrong)," Canberra not only abstained on the vote to elevate the status of Palestinian Authority to observer status at the UN but showered it with "millions of dollars" of aid money.
And this, of course, has taught those layabout Palestinians - the Middle Eastern equivalent of our dole bludgers - that they can get "something for nothing," that they don't need to compromise or negotiate with Israel because "the international community will do their job for them."
Too right, Greg! If only these bludgers would give a little. Take Jerusalem for example. Let the Israelis have East Jerusalem - all of it. They're beautiful. They deserve it. What's wrong with Ramallah for a Palestinian capital? Or, better still, Amman? Baghdad even! Or Lakemba? Why not? Think Israelaterally for a change.
But that shameful Australian abstention in the UN, which had the PA popping Australian-funded champagne corks, isn't all. Did you know that "in the Australia-UK Ministerial Meeting in January, Carr ratcheted up Australia's rhetoric on Israel"? 'Fraid so. "For the first time, [Carr's] office was describing all Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal."
Just imagine, describing illegal settlements as illegal! Next thing you know he'll be calling the West Bank occupied Israeli territory. And Gaza a concentration camp!
"To simply call all Israeli settlements illegal," declared Greg, "is simplistic, reductionist, almost childish."
Absolutely! After all, just because a "Jewish suburb" of East Jerusalem is full of illegal Jewish settlers doesn't mean you can call it a 'settlement', right? And if those PA hens have been dumb enough to let "large settlement blocks [sic]" slip through in their 'negotiations' with Israeli foxes, so can the rest of us, right?
Now in addition to that, "Australia's position is also wrong in international law [because] Jordan, which formerly controlled the territory, is not the sovereign power..."
Yes, just because Israel is the only country in the world which reckons the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit an Occupying Power from transferring its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, don't apply to it because Jordan's claim to the West Bank (1948-1967) was dodgy anyway, doesn't mean it isn't right, right? After all, hasn't Greg already declared that "conventional wisdom is often wrong"?
Devastating, eh? But Greg's only just getting started. Here's our bronzed ANZAC kicking sand in Nancy boy Carr's eyes:
"But why take this position at all, except to kick sand in the Israelis' eyes? China claims all of the South China Sea almost right up to the Philippines shore, yet Canberra maintains a strict neutrality. If Israel is a friend why the gratuitous aggro?"
Brilliant analogy! As Jimmie de Rothschild told another Gentile Zionist's Zionist (Blanche Dugdale if you really must know), back in '41: "I had lived so much among Jews that I was taking a Jewish point of view, and could not see things in proportion."*
But there's more! Greg's like a demon dentist whose root canal treatments just go on and on:
"The demand that Obama urgently seek a peace settlement betrays the deeper analytical flaw by Carr and Rudd."
And here's the proof: Syria's finito. Egypt's kaput. The Palestinians are hopelessly divided. How therefore can Israel - which is to peace what a heat-seeking missile is to heat - possibly be expected to make peace under such circumstances?
But all of the above is merely symptomatic of a deeper malaise according to Greg:
"Underlying this is the cardinal doctrine of conventional wisdom among Guardian readers, UN habitues, European think tank staff and the like, and that is the implausible notion Israel is at the heart of Middle East disputes and the West's trouble with Islam."
Now welcome as this news was to me, I must admit to wondering whether or not we have a bit of a 'one hand/other hand' problem here. I mean, on the one hand Israel can't possibly be expected to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians because Syria and Egypt and the rest are exploding all around it, but on the other the Palestinians' trials and tribulations have got nothing whatever to do with the rest of the Middle East or the wider Muslim world. But hey, Greg hasn't been well of late what with his bypasses and all, so we'll cut him some slack, OK? And anyway, he's got lovely quote from "the respected Jeffrey Goldberg, a senior editor at The Atlantic" to back him up, so there.
Lay back, relax, open your mouth wide, just a little bit more:
"Carr, Rudd and Evans add to this zeitgeist error the subsidiary error that Australia seriously damages its reputation by supporting Israel at the UN, a proposition for which there is no evidence. But even if it were true, this would be a price worth paying [because] Israel is Australia's friend and ally."
Yes, Australia, all of Australia, every man, woman and child, should wear it as a badge of pride that, of all the world's passports at its disposal, Israel should choose ours to help it do what all right-thinking people agree had to be done in Dubai. Right-thinking people like union supremo Paul Howes for example, who once wrote: "I'm proud that our nation has played a small and accidental role in the removal of the terrorist al-Mabhouh from the planet."** Any Australian tourists or travellers in the Middle East who come to grief because they're suspected by the locals of being Mossad agents can just be written off as collateral damage, OK?
[*Baffy: The Diaries of Blanche Dugdale, 1936-1947, 1973, p 183; **See my 8/5/10 post Zionism Red in Tooth & Claw.]
Saturday, December 1, 2012
While You Weren't Looking
A 29 November report by the Australian's Troy Bramston, The day Carr won Mid-East conflict, tells the incredible story of how Australia's sitting prime minister came close to becoming a political casualty of the world's longest-running colonial saga, the Middle East conflict.
While the pundits and the public have been lately diverted by allegations stemming from Julia Gillard's past associations and dealings with the Australian Workers Union, something more subterranean, maybe even seismic, was taking place inside her party.
Bramston's report tells a number of stories.
There's the story of how an Australian prime minister's blind devotion to the state of Israel almost cost her the prime ministership.
There's the story of how her party, hitherto seemingly just as blindly devoted as their leader to the apartheid state, seems (apart from the diehards listed in my previous post) to have finally lost patience with it and revolted at the acutely embarrassing prospect of being seen on the international stage in the company of Israel and its gang of eight - the United States, Stephen Harper's seriously weird Canada, a collection of coconut palms, a clapped-out phosphate mine-cum prison camp for refugees, and two insignificant others.* Or, as ex-Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans put it pithily and persuasively, being seen 'on the wrong side of history'.
There's the story of how Foreign Minister Bob Carr, aided by party elders Evans and Hawke (a story in itself), managed at long last to loosen the Israel lobby's grip on the party's balls and, in doing so, wipe the smug grin off its face.**
And there's the story of how, just maybe, second generation Arab constituents are at last making their views known to the politicians who ostensibly represent them at a time when no Australian politician dares risk taking his constituents for granted.
Given that all the data is not yet in, one hesitates to draw too long a bow here. However, one thing seems certain, namely that something rather unusual has just occurred in the ranks of the ruling Labor government: a recognition, albeit hesitant, that Australia's and USrael's interests are not one and the same, the relentless propaganda of the Israel lobby to the contrary notwithstanding.
Given its importance, I've decided to reproduce Bramston's report in full. The highlights are, of course, my own:
"Julia Gillard's prime ministership must have flashed before her eyes in the early hours of Tuesday morning. In a night of high drama, she came dangerously close to precipitating a full-blown crisis that could have brought her leadership to a premature end.
"The Gillard government was pushed to the brink over the Prime Minister's insistence that Australia vote against Palestine's bid to upgrade its status at the UN. Just minutes before the caucus meeting, Foreign Minister Bob Carr stood in Gillard's office and told her, eyeball to eyeball, to change her mind or she faced a humiliating defeat. He pleaded with her to back an abstention on the UNGA motion to recognise Palestine as a non-member state observer. In the end, Gillard relented and a crisis was averted, but only narrowly.
"It came after a series of dramatic meetings that tested loyalties and long-standing fealty to Gillard's embattled leadership. At one point, sources suggest, Gillard considered the unprecedented step of calling a meeting of the full ministry and parliamentary secretaries - 42 MPs and Senators - to bind them to her position in a full meeting of 102 caucus members. Even the attempt to coral [sic] the executive into supporting a view an overwhelming number of the cabinet and caucus opposed would have finished Gillard's prime ministership.
"Several ministers and backbenchers had been warning Gillard for weeks that the position on the UN vote, slated for Friday, needed to be finalised in order to instruct the ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan, on what to do. They were seized by the dramatic change in the caucus on the Israel-Palestine issue, with several factors that had been slowly building within Labor - Israel's settlement policy, increasing violence by settlers against Palestinians, and a right-wing Israeli prime minister who backed Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. There is concern both Israel and the Palestinian Authority are stalling on a two-state solution and that the outcome of the UN vote could positively energise those discussions. And, critically, there is the growing Muslim and Christian make-up of several key Western Sydney seats which have exposed MPs to different points of view on the Middle East. Some sections of the party suggest Victorian Labor is too close to the Israel lobby and does not fully understand the underlying changes in Sydney's outer suburbs. However, one Victorian minister said: 'How are we going to solve Labor's challenges in western Sydney by the way we vote at the UN?'
"Before the cabinet meeting late on Monday, Gillard met with senior ministers for two hours to discuss the UN vote. Carr sketched out the foreign policy argument for not opposing the Palestinian motion that he believed was in Australia's interests. Environment Minister Tony Burke, holding a seat in southwest Sydney, explained the shift in the community he had been feeling on this issue for a long time. Wayne Swan, Defence Minister Stephen Smith, Communications Minister Steven Conroy and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese also attended.
"Before this meeting, Gillard made an extraordinary request to the NSW Right faction convener and chief government whip, Joel Fitzgibbon. She wanted him to bind the Right behind her position. Fitzgibbon refused.
"Meanwhile, former prime minister Bob Hawke, a long-time ardent supporter of Israel, was arguing behind the scenes for Australia not to oppose the motion on Palestine. So had his foreign minister, Gareth Evans, who warned Labor MPs and senators not to be 'on the wrong side of history'.
"In cabinet, Gillard introduced the topic and stated her position. Albanese, Burke, Trade Minister Craig Emerson, Arts Minister Simon Crean, Resources Minister Martin Ferguson, Industry Minister Greg Combet, School Eduction Minister Peter Garrett and Immigration Minister Chris Bowen all spoke against it. Conroy and Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten, both of the Victorian Right, indicated support for Gillard's position. Carr also spoke, and made the case for not opposing the UN motion. Some ministers regard this as breaking his word to Gillard not to speak. Others say he had no choice but to offer his view, given the spirited debate.
"At the end of the meeting, Gillard summed up the debate and cabinet agreed to back her judgement, given she is Prime Minister. After what one minister described as 'a barrage of opposition', the meeting broke up in stunned amazement. Gillard remained steadfast. Few can understand why she so trenchantly held the view that it must be a no vote. Even her closest supporters were telling her it was a lost cause in caucus.
"After cabinet finished, a cabal of ministers met to discuss strategy and started contacting caucus members. The details of the cabinet meeting quickly reverberated around Parliament House. A motion to support the Palestinian bid was on the agenda for caucus the next morning and was likely to be supported. Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change Mark Dreyfus, from the Victorian Right, urged Fitzgibbon to have the national Right bind its MPs and senators in support of Gillard's position. Fitzgibbon rebuffed Dreyfus several times on Monday and again on Tuesday.
"Gillard met with key members of the left and right separately before the caucus meeting on Tuesday morning. She also met again with several ministers. The Treasurer alerted her to the dangers that lay ahead. Sources say it was not until then that Gillard was fully cognisant of the weight of numbers against her. Until then, one observer says, 'Gillard was all at sea'.
"Backbench MP Andrew Leigh had before parliament a motion urging a yes vote, to recognise Palestine as a non-member state observer at the UN. Leigh was reluctant to back away from it. Part of the deal reached with Gillard to support an abstention vote required Leigh to withdraw the motion, which he did. This was not a secret back-door attempt to white-ant a prime minister, it was conducted in full view to get Gillard to make what MPs believe is the right policy decision in Australia's interests. Carr worked as craftily as he had ever done as NSW premier to see his view prevail. Some say the vigour with which he pursued this has put him offside with some in the party. Others say it marks his arrival as a serious political player in Canberra. Carr will not be critical of Gillard's leadership. He believes she made the right call in the end. Moreover, along with eight other ministers, he saved Gillard's neck. As one familiar with the discussion said yesterday: 'If the caucus resolution on abstention didn't go under her feet, she would have gone under the ice'."
Watch this space!
[*Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Nauru, Czech Republic, Panama; **The front page of this week's Australian Jewish News, for example, features a photo of Carr and Defence Minister Stephen Smith with the header You've let us down and the following text: "Bob Carr and Stephen Smith were among the senior ministers who this week forced Australia to abstain on a crucial UN vote that helps hand the Palestinians a state via the backdoor rather than through negotiations with Israel."]
While the pundits and the public have been lately diverted by allegations stemming from Julia Gillard's past associations and dealings with the Australian Workers Union, something more subterranean, maybe even seismic, was taking place inside her party.
Bramston's report tells a number of stories.
There's the story of how an Australian prime minister's blind devotion to the state of Israel almost cost her the prime ministership.
There's the story of how her party, hitherto seemingly just as blindly devoted as their leader to the apartheid state, seems (apart from the diehards listed in my previous post) to have finally lost patience with it and revolted at the acutely embarrassing prospect of being seen on the international stage in the company of Israel and its gang of eight - the United States, Stephen Harper's seriously weird Canada, a collection of coconut palms, a clapped-out phosphate mine-cum prison camp for refugees, and two insignificant others.* Or, as ex-Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans put it pithily and persuasively, being seen 'on the wrong side of history'.
There's the story of how Foreign Minister Bob Carr, aided by party elders Evans and Hawke (a story in itself), managed at long last to loosen the Israel lobby's grip on the party's balls and, in doing so, wipe the smug grin off its face.**
And there's the story of how, just maybe, second generation Arab constituents are at last making their views known to the politicians who ostensibly represent them at a time when no Australian politician dares risk taking his constituents for granted.
Given that all the data is not yet in, one hesitates to draw too long a bow here. However, one thing seems certain, namely that something rather unusual has just occurred in the ranks of the ruling Labor government: a recognition, albeit hesitant, that Australia's and USrael's interests are not one and the same, the relentless propaganda of the Israel lobby to the contrary notwithstanding.
Given its importance, I've decided to reproduce Bramston's report in full. The highlights are, of course, my own:
"Julia Gillard's prime ministership must have flashed before her eyes in the early hours of Tuesday morning. In a night of high drama, she came dangerously close to precipitating a full-blown crisis that could have brought her leadership to a premature end.
"The Gillard government was pushed to the brink over the Prime Minister's insistence that Australia vote against Palestine's bid to upgrade its status at the UN. Just minutes before the caucus meeting, Foreign Minister Bob Carr stood in Gillard's office and told her, eyeball to eyeball, to change her mind or she faced a humiliating defeat. He pleaded with her to back an abstention on the UNGA motion to recognise Palestine as a non-member state observer. In the end, Gillard relented and a crisis was averted, but only narrowly.
"It came after a series of dramatic meetings that tested loyalties and long-standing fealty to Gillard's embattled leadership. At one point, sources suggest, Gillard considered the unprecedented step of calling a meeting of the full ministry and parliamentary secretaries - 42 MPs and Senators - to bind them to her position in a full meeting of 102 caucus members. Even the attempt to coral [sic] the executive into supporting a view an overwhelming number of the cabinet and caucus opposed would have finished Gillard's prime ministership.
"Several ministers and backbenchers had been warning Gillard for weeks that the position on the UN vote, slated for Friday, needed to be finalised in order to instruct the ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan, on what to do. They were seized by the dramatic change in the caucus on the Israel-Palestine issue, with several factors that had been slowly building within Labor - Israel's settlement policy, increasing violence by settlers against Palestinians, and a right-wing Israeli prime minister who backed Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. There is concern both Israel and the Palestinian Authority are stalling on a two-state solution and that the outcome of the UN vote could positively energise those discussions. And, critically, there is the growing Muslim and Christian make-up of several key Western Sydney seats which have exposed MPs to different points of view on the Middle East. Some sections of the party suggest Victorian Labor is too close to the Israel lobby and does not fully understand the underlying changes in Sydney's outer suburbs. However, one Victorian minister said: 'How are we going to solve Labor's challenges in western Sydney by the way we vote at the UN?'
"Before the cabinet meeting late on Monday, Gillard met with senior ministers for two hours to discuss the UN vote. Carr sketched out the foreign policy argument for not opposing the Palestinian motion that he believed was in Australia's interests. Environment Minister Tony Burke, holding a seat in southwest Sydney, explained the shift in the community he had been feeling on this issue for a long time. Wayne Swan, Defence Minister Stephen Smith, Communications Minister Steven Conroy and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese also attended.
"Before this meeting, Gillard made an extraordinary request to the NSW Right faction convener and chief government whip, Joel Fitzgibbon. She wanted him to bind the Right behind her position. Fitzgibbon refused.
"Meanwhile, former prime minister Bob Hawke, a long-time ardent supporter of Israel, was arguing behind the scenes for Australia not to oppose the motion on Palestine. So had his foreign minister, Gareth Evans, who warned Labor MPs and senators not to be 'on the wrong side of history'.
"In cabinet, Gillard introduced the topic and stated her position. Albanese, Burke, Trade Minister Craig Emerson, Arts Minister Simon Crean, Resources Minister Martin Ferguson, Industry Minister Greg Combet, School Eduction Minister Peter Garrett and Immigration Minister Chris Bowen all spoke against it. Conroy and Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten, both of the Victorian Right, indicated support for Gillard's position. Carr also spoke, and made the case for not opposing the UN motion. Some ministers regard this as breaking his word to Gillard not to speak. Others say he had no choice but to offer his view, given the spirited debate.
"At the end of the meeting, Gillard summed up the debate and cabinet agreed to back her judgement, given she is Prime Minister. After what one minister described as 'a barrage of opposition', the meeting broke up in stunned amazement. Gillard remained steadfast. Few can understand why she so trenchantly held the view that it must be a no vote. Even her closest supporters were telling her it was a lost cause in caucus.
"After cabinet finished, a cabal of ministers met to discuss strategy and started contacting caucus members. The details of the cabinet meeting quickly reverberated around Parliament House. A motion to support the Palestinian bid was on the agenda for caucus the next morning and was likely to be supported. Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change Mark Dreyfus, from the Victorian Right, urged Fitzgibbon to have the national Right bind its MPs and senators in support of Gillard's position. Fitzgibbon rebuffed Dreyfus several times on Monday and again on Tuesday.
"Gillard met with key members of the left and right separately before the caucus meeting on Tuesday morning. She also met again with several ministers. The Treasurer alerted her to the dangers that lay ahead. Sources say it was not until then that Gillard was fully cognisant of the weight of numbers against her. Until then, one observer says, 'Gillard was all at sea'.
"Backbench MP Andrew Leigh had before parliament a motion urging a yes vote, to recognise Palestine as a non-member state observer at the UN. Leigh was reluctant to back away from it. Part of the deal reached with Gillard to support an abstention vote required Leigh to withdraw the motion, which he did. This was not a secret back-door attempt to white-ant a prime minister, it was conducted in full view to get Gillard to make what MPs believe is the right policy decision in Australia's interests. Carr worked as craftily as he had ever done as NSW premier to see his view prevail. Some say the vigour with which he pursued this has put him offside with some in the party. Others say it marks his arrival as a serious political player in Canberra. Carr will not be critical of Gillard's leadership. He believes she made the right call in the end. Moreover, along with eight other ministers, he saved Gillard's neck. As one familiar with the discussion said yesterday: 'If the caucus resolution on abstention didn't go under her feet, she would have gone under the ice'."
Watch this space!
[*Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Nauru, Czech Republic, Panama; **The front page of this week's Australian Jewish News, for example, features a photo of Carr and Defence Minister Stephen Smith with the header You've let us down and the following text: "Bob Carr and Stephen Smith were among the senior ministers who this week forced Australia to abstain on a crucial UN vote that helps hand the Palestinians a state via the backdoor rather than through negotiations with Israel."]
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Australia's Foreign Policy Shame
What a bizarre, bottom-dwelling cult is the ALP these days.
And, as always, it's the party's stance on the question of Palestine, more than any other perhaps, that should strip away any lingering illusions we may have that it is anything more.
A simple, straightforward, morally correct decision to vote in favour of Palestine's cap-in-hand bid for observer status in the United Nations General Assembly is simply beyond it. Instead, in deciding to abstain, it's positioned itself, in cowardly fashion, on the fence.
In addition, but for what has been described in the ms press as cabinet and backbench revolts, its parliamentary leader and prime minister, Julia Gillard, in complete thrall to the planet's most deluded and psychotic national entity, would have had us alone and palely loitering on the international stage with naught but the US, its toxic brat, and maybe Canada, for company.
While one would think the ALP long past embarrassing, one gets the distinct impression that the aforementioned 'revolts' were really nothing more than a desire by ministers and MPs to avoid international ignominy. To hell with notions of elementary justice for the Palestinians, the governing party, warned by former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans, who had briefed Labor MPs on Monday, that "[it] would be on the wrong side of history if [it] stood with the US and Israel against the rest of the world," has merely recoiled from the idea of being shamed in such a public manner.
It goes without saying, of course, that the Abbott opposition is immune from any shame whatever, with its foreign affairs spokeswoman, Julie Bishop, quoted as saying the government's "decision to abstain was disappointing because the Coalition backed a no vote as 'the path to peace and reconciliation'," a position virtually indistinguishable from that of the Prime Minister's "personal view," which was that a vote in favour "would hurt the peace process because the US has threatened to withdraw funding for the Palestinian Authority."
Perhaps the only satisfaction to be gleaned from this whole sorry saga is that "the Israeli government is understood to be furious" and "seething," and the Government's 'Minister for Israel', Michael Danby, "is said to be heavily bruised by the stoush after pushing for Australia to reject the Palestinian bid."
[Quotes drawn from Backbench revolt forces PM to drop Israel support, Phillip Coorey, Sydney Morning Herald, 28/11/12; Gillard rolled on Palestine, The Age, Daniel Flitton, 28/11/12)]
And, as always, it's the party's stance on the question of Palestine, more than any other perhaps, that should strip away any lingering illusions we may have that it is anything more.
A simple, straightforward, morally correct decision to vote in favour of Palestine's cap-in-hand bid for observer status in the United Nations General Assembly is simply beyond it. Instead, in deciding to abstain, it's positioned itself, in cowardly fashion, on the fence.
In addition, but for what has been described in the ms press as cabinet and backbench revolts, its parliamentary leader and prime minister, Julia Gillard, in complete thrall to the planet's most deluded and psychotic national entity, would have had us alone and palely loitering on the international stage with naught but the US, its toxic brat, and maybe Canada, for company.
While one would think the ALP long past embarrassing, one gets the distinct impression that the aforementioned 'revolts' were really nothing more than a desire by ministers and MPs to avoid international ignominy. To hell with notions of elementary justice for the Palestinians, the governing party, warned by former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans, who had briefed Labor MPs on Monday, that "[it] would be on the wrong side of history if [it] stood with the US and Israel against the rest of the world," has merely recoiled from the idea of being shamed in such a public manner.
It goes without saying, of course, that the Abbott opposition is immune from any shame whatever, with its foreign affairs spokeswoman, Julie Bishop, quoted as saying the government's "decision to abstain was disappointing because the Coalition backed a no vote as 'the path to peace and reconciliation'," a position virtually indistinguishable from that of the Prime Minister's "personal view," which was that a vote in favour "would hurt the peace process because the US has threatened to withdraw funding for the Palestinian Authority."
Perhaps the only satisfaction to be gleaned from this whole sorry saga is that "the Israeli government is understood to be furious" and "seething," and the Government's 'Minister for Israel', Michael Danby, "is said to be heavily bruised by the stoush after pushing for Australia to reject the Palestinian bid."
[Quotes drawn from Backbench revolt forces PM to drop Israel support, Phillip Coorey, Sydney Morning Herald, 28/11/12; Gillard rolled on Palestine, The Age, Daniel Flitton, 28/11/12)]
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Israeli Pheromone Madness
I guess addiction is something we all have to struggle with in one form or another. Take Israeli pheromone abuse, for example.
Apparently, once and future (?) prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who once admitted mainlining this most addictive of substances - 'Support for Israel is in my DNA' - is struggling with the habit, albeit with little success so far:
"Mr Rudd, the current Foreign Minister, split with the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, over Palestinian efforts to win membership of the key United Nations cultural body, UNESCO, recommending that Australia abstain in the vote, only to be overruled. Professor Evans will argue [in an Australia Day speech] Mr Rudd has made a 'so far not completely successful' effort to recalibrate Australia's total support for Israel's security while at the same time encouraging a breakthrough in the peace process." (Rudd aims worthy of support, says Evans, Daniel Flitton, Sydney Morning Herald, 26/1/12)
Alas, present prime minister Julia Gillard shows no such inclination. In fact, far from kicking the habit, this sad, drug-addled creature is actually stocking up on supplies:
"Julia Gillard has moved to strengthen her already close relations with the Jewish community by giving her new business liaison adviser, Bruce Wolpe, the specific task of liaising with it. Some caucus colleagues think treating the Jewish community in this special way is unwise, even weird. One called it 'a curious decision'. Another said: 'This is amateurish. Singling out the Jewish community when there are so many other components of Australian society is hard to comprehend'. A third said that the level and quality of access for the Jewish community was already superior to that of others and this could further that perception." (PM's Jewish move queried, Michelle Grattan, The Age, 25/1/12)
Unfortunately, we never seem to learn from the American example. Over there, Congress has become a virtual Israeli pheromone den, and US presidents can be heard abjectly babbling about the 'unbreakable bond' which is the bane of their lives and reduces them to the pitiful wrecks we see before us on news bulletins. Is this really what we want here in Australia?
Apparently, once and future (?) prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who once admitted mainlining this most addictive of substances - 'Support for Israel is in my DNA' - is struggling with the habit, albeit with little success so far:
"Mr Rudd, the current Foreign Minister, split with the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, over Palestinian efforts to win membership of the key United Nations cultural body, UNESCO, recommending that Australia abstain in the vote, only to be overruled. Professor Evans will argue [in an Australia Day speech] Mr Rudd has made a 'so far not completely successful' effort to recalibrate Australia's total support for Israel's security while at the same time encouraging a breakthrough in the peace process." (Rudd aims worthy of support, says Evans, Daniel Flitton, Sydney Morning Herald, 26/1/12)
Alas, present prime minister Julia Gillard shows no such inclination. In fact, far from kicking the habit, this sad, drug-addled creature is actually stocking up on supplies:
"Julia Gillard has moved to strengthen her already close relations with the Jewish community by giving her new business liaison adviser, Bruce Wolpe, the specific task of liaising with it. Some caucus colleagues think treating the Jewish community in this special way is unwise, even weird. One called it 'a curious decision'. Another said: 'This is amateurish. Singling out the Jewish community when there are so many other components of Australian society is hard to comprehend'. A third said that the level and quality of access for the Jewish community was already superior to that of others and this could further that perception." (PM's Jewish move queried, Michelle Grattan, The Age, 25/1/12)
Unfortunately, we never seem to learn from the American example. Over there, Congress has become a virtual Israeli pheromone den, and US presidents can be heard abjectly babbling about the 'unbreakable bond' which is the bane of their lives and reduces them to the pitiful wrecks we see before us on news bulletins. Is this really what we want here in Australia?
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Will Someone Please Tell Gareth?
In today's Murdoch fishwrapper: "The world was headed for another Hiroshima or worse because of the risk of miscalculation or accident, the head of Kevin Rudd's new Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament said yesterday. Gareth Evans, the commission's co-chair, said inadequate controls applied to at least 16,000 atomic warheads actively deployed around the world... he said the main obstacle to disarmament remained complacency by the US and Russia, which had lost interest since the end of the Cold War. Difficulties ahead included how to prevent nations developing nuclear weapons after India and Pakistan, claiming their own different needs, had joined Israel outside the international treaty arrangements*. Mr Evans said he supported the recent downgrading of North Korea's status as a danger to nuclear proliferation. But Mr Evans rated Iran's program for the development of nuclear weapons under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a high-risk category. 'Iran is a hell of a lot different', he said." (Risk of new Hiroshima: Evans, Brad Norington, The Australian, 21/10/08)
[*Hm, surely logic dictates that if Israel's choosing to remain "outside the international treaty arrangements" is leading the likes of India and Pakistan astray - which seems to be what Evans is on about here - then shouldn't the first priority of Rudd's shiny new Commission be to tackle the Israelis over this? Just a pigs-will-fly thought.]
Not in today's Murdoch fishwrapper: "In an interview today, UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohammed ElBaradei said that Iran would be lacking key components for the production of a nuclear weapon even if they chose to do so. According to ElBaradei 'they do not have even the nuclear material, the raw unenriched uranium to develop one nuclear weapon if they decide to do so'." (ElBaradei: Iran nowhere near acquiring nuclear weapons, antiwar.com, 20/10/08)
[*Hm, surely logic dictates that if Israel's choosing to remain "outside the international treaty arrangements" is leading the likes of India and Pakistan astray - which seems to be what Evans is on about here - then shouldn't the first priority of Rudd's shiny new Commission be to tackle the Israelis over this? Just a pigs-will-fly thought.]
Not in today's Murdoch fishwrapper: "In an interview today, UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohammed ElBaradei said that Iran would be lacking key components for the production of a nuclear weapon even if they chose to do so. According to ElBaradei 'they do not have even the nuclear material, the raw unenriched uranium to develop one nuclear weapon if they decide to do so'." (ElBaradei: Iran nowhere near acquiring nuclear weapons, antiwar.com, 20/10/08)
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Talk to the hand 'cause the face ain't listening, Gareth!
"If the Israelis have ever managed to convince American administrations about anything, it is that anyone connected with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is certainly not human, is almost certainly a total psychopath and is also very likely to be so contaminated with communicable diseases that standing downwind from one of these monsters when he exhales is certain to lead to the clap, palsy and yaws. Begin was able to draw out his extermination campaign in west Beirut by insisting that Philip Habib [Reagan's special Middle East envoy] should not be allowed to talk to the Palestinians; Phil talked to Saeb Salam, the grand old man of orthodox Lebanese Muslim politics...and Saeb, immunized by years of mixing with the terrorists, passed on Phil's thoughts to one of Arafat's men...who asked Arafat what he thought; then Arafat passed on the message to Saeb who - presumably after having his hands washed by a security man and a careful gargle to remove the contamination - talked to Phil, who passed on the thought to Begin's men. This system won whole days for the Israelis to knock off hundreds more civilians - far more than they could have blown away if Phil had simply called up Arafat and said, 'Yasser, this is what we've got for you today'. " (God Cried, Tony Clifton, 1983, p 132)
Free at last from the constraints of toeing the party line (increasingly dictated so far as the Middle East conflict is concerned by the Israel lobby), former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans, now president of the International Crisis Group, has argued sensibly in The Christian Science Monitor (27/3/08) that "The policy of isolating Hamas and applying sanctions to Gaza has been a predictable failure. Violence to both Gazans and Israelis is rising. Economic conditions are ruinous...The credibility of PA President Mahmoud Abbas...has been grievously damaged. The peace process is in tatters. It's time to stop digging this hole. Maintaining extreme pressure on Hamas in the hope of undermining its rule or stopping the rockets has gone nowhere. A new direction is needed, one that attempts to stabilise the situation by engaging the movement with the immediate goal of reaching a mutual ceasefire and the opening of Gaza's border crossings...the ceasefire should entail reciprocal commitments to stop all attacks, an opening of the crossings that recognises Hamas' role while restoring a PA presence in Gaza...The status quo is untenable. Israel cannot be expected to accept rockets targeting its civilians. Hamas will not sit idly by as Gaza is choked." You can read it all at http://www.crisisgroup.org/
Help! Ceasefire! The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) executive director, Dr Colin Rubenstein, predictably followed Israel's grand tradition of saying Lo! (Hebrew 'no') to Palestinians, even those as supine and collaborative as PA President Abbas (Israeli Infrastructure Minister Ben-Eliezer has described current negotiations between Israel and the PA as "only virtual negotiations." Haaretz, 5/4/08). Col, in his alarm, reeled off the familiar talking points: Hamas is "firmly committed to Israel's destruction" [While Israel is actually engaged in throttling Gaza and colonizing the West Bank]; "negotiating with Hamas 'rewards violence' " [Where are the pacifist PA's rewards?]; a ceasefire "will allow [Hamas] to rearm" [While the latest American weaponry continues to flood into Israel]. (AIJAC denounces call to re-engage Hamas, AJN, 4/4/08). What's more, Col, always more Zionist than the Zionists, maintained his knee-jerk rejectionism despite a recent Haaretz poll "showing that 64% of Israelis want their government to negotiate with Hamas to broker a ceasefire" (Talk to Hamas, Israelis tell government as attacks continue, Toni O'Loughlin, The Guardian, 28/2/08).
Equally predictably, the Rudd government took a head-in-the-sand approach at Evans' outrageous suggestion. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith "would not comment...saying he had not seen the article" (Labor snubs call to engage Hamas, The Australian, 1/4/08). The Australian's report went on to remind us that "Hamas' military wing has been designated as a terrorist organisation since 2003 under Australia's Criminal Code Act" and that "guidelines on official contact with Palestinian representatives advise that contact with Hamas or affiliated people should be avoided."
On the eve of last year's federal election, the then opposition leader Kevin Rudd said: "Tomorrow Australians face a stark choice - a choice between the future and the past. Between a Government that has sat on its hands for 11 years and doesn't understand the new challenges we face - or a new leader with fresh ideas...Australia needs a newleadership with fresh ideas. That is what Labor government will be all about." And what happens post-election? Not only does Foreign Minister Smith not come up with a fresh idea about Middle East peace, but, when a former Labor foreign minister does, he doesn't want to know about it lest Col get cross with him. As far as Middle East policy is concerned, it looks like the Rudd government will hypocritically continue the Howard government's practice of "sitting on its hands."
In the unlikely event that Rudd or Smith ever do get off their hands on this one, they will of course need to acknowledge the real reasons why the Israeli government doesn't want a ceasefire with Hamas: not only because the pressure would then be on for Israel to curtail its settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and even, God forbid! end its 40 year long occupation, but also because there's gold (& even more valuable PR) in them thar rockets: "Like the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Sderot is now a must-see stop for those who support Israel or are being urged to do so [my italics]. Several groups have set up offices to arrange visits to a damaged home or a trauma center. Foreign diplomats have been bused here by the government; a UN officer says he has brought top officials here 5 times; Senator John McCain came last month; Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, residents say, cannot be far behind. Israelis and their supporters are lining up to volunteer. Money is pouring in for bomb shelters, social services and an Orthodox religious seminary" (A town under fire becomes a symbol for Israel, Ethan Bronner, NYT, 5/4/08).
So it's 'Talk to the hand, 'cause the face ain't listening', Gareth!
Free at last from the constraints of toeing the party line (increasingly dictated so far as the Middle East conflict is concerned by the Israel lobby), former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans, now president of the International Crisis Group, has argued sensibly in The Christian Science Monitor (27/3/08) that "The policy of isolating Hamas and applying sanctions to Gaza has been a predictable failure. Violence to both Gazans and Israelis is rising. Economic conditions are ruinous...The credibility of PA President Mahmoud Abbas...has been grievously damaged. The peace process is in tatters. It's time to stop digging this hole. Maintaining extreme pressure on Hamas in the hope of undermining its rule or stopping the rockets has gone nowhere. A new direction is needed, one that attempts to stabilise the situation by engaging the movement with the immediate goal of reaching a mutual ceasefire and the opening of Gaza's border crossings...the ceasefire should entail reciprocal commitments to stop all attacks, an opening of the crossings that recognises Hamas' role while restoring a PA presence in Gaza...The status quo is untenable. Israel cannot be expected to accept rockets targeting its civilians. Hamas will not sit idly by as Gaza is choked." You can read it all at http://www.crisisgroup.org/
Help! Ceasefire! The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) executive director, Dr Colin Rubenstein, predictably followed Israel's grand tradition of saying Lo! (Hebrew 'no') to Palestinians, even those as supine and collaborative as PA President Abbas (Israeli Infrastructure Minister Ben-Eliezer has described current negotiations between Israel and the PA as "only virtual negotiations." Haaretz, 5/4/08). Col, in his alarm, reeled off the familiar talking points: Hamas is "firmly committed to Israel's destruction" [While Israel is actually engaged in throttling Gaza and colonizing the West Bank]; "negotiating with Hamas 'rewards violence' " [Where are the pacifist PA's rewards?]; a ceasefire "will allow [Hamas] to rearm" [While the latest American weaponry continues to flood into Israel]. (AIJAC denounces call to re-engage Hamas, AJN, 4/4/08). What's more, Col, always more Zionist than the Zionists, maintained his knee-jerk rejectionism despite a recent Haaretz poll "showing that 64% of Israelis want their government to negotiate with Hamas to broker a ceasefire" (Talk to Hamas, Israelis tell government as attacks continue, Toni O'Loughlin, The Guardian, 28/2/08).
Equally predictably, the Rudd government took a head-in-the-sand approach at Evans' outrageous suggestion. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith "would not comment...saying he had not seen the article" (Labor snubs call to engage Hamas, The Australian, 1/4/08). The Australian's report went on to remind us that "Hamas' military wing has been designated as a terrorist organisation since 2003 under Australia's Criminal Code Act" and that "guidelines on official contact with Palestinian representatives advise that contact with Hamas or affiliated people should be avoided."
On the eve of last year's federal election, the then opposition leader Kevin Rudd said: "Tomorrow Australians face a stark choice - a choice between the future and the past. Between a Government that has sat on its hands for 11 years and doesn't understand the new challenges we face - or a new leader with fresh ideas...Australia needs a newleadership with fresh ideas. That is what Labor government will be all about." And what happens post-election? Not only does Foreign Minister Smith not come up with a fresh idea about Middle East peace, but, when a former Labor foreign minister does, he doesn't want to know about it lest Col get cross with him. As far as Middle East policy is concerned, it looks like the Rudd government will hypocritically continue the Howard government's practice of "sitting on its hands."
In the unlikely event that Rudd or Smith ever do get off their hands on this one, they will of course need to acknowledge the real reasons why the Israeli government doesn't want a ceasefire with Hamas: not only because the pressure would then be on for Israel to curtail its settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and even, God forbid! end its 40 year long occupation, but also because there's gold (& even more valuable PR) in them thar rockets: "Like the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Sderot is now a must-see stop for those who support Israel or are being urged to do so [my italics]. Several groups have set up offices to arrange visits to a damaged home or a trauma center. Foreign diplomats have been bused here by the government; a UN officer says he has brought top officials here 5 times; Senator John McCain came last month; Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, residents say, cannot be far behind. Israelis and their supporters are lining up to volunteer. Money is pouring in for bomb shelters, social services and an Orthodox religious seminary" (A town under fire becomes a symbol for Israel, Ethan Bronner, NYT, 5/4/08).
So it's 'Talk to the hand, 'cause the face ain't listening', Gareth!
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