The (Kosher) Axis Rides Again

This time with Israel's approval, of course:

"Support for Europe's right-wing populist parties, and their response to the challenges caused by the refugee/migrant wave, is rising... Last week, the German, Austrian and Italian ministers of the interior initiated an 'axis' of states aiming at stopping immigration to Europe, confirming their commitments to an already thriving reactionary nationalistic trend in both eastern as well as western Europe. Israel is in effect a silent partner to this 'axis': it is doing its utmost not only to prevent what its government terms 'infiltrators' from entering Israel, but also to get rid of those who were able to cross the Egyptian/Israeli border in the past.

"It was the Austrian Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, who after his short visit to Israel last week (re) coined the term 'Axis' for the Berlin-Vienna-Rome anti-immigrant alliance, a term which even people with relatively crude historical antennae will recognize for its historical resonances. That was straight after getting an enthusiastic 'kosher certification' from Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thanks to Kurz's speech in Jerusalem, in which he admitted that Austrians were not only victims but also perpetrators during WWII...

"It would be no surprise if he interpreted his warm welcome in Israel as a laissez passer for his far right populist coalition partner, euphemistically called the 'Freedom Party,' whom Israel, until now, still officially boycotts on account of its neo-Nazi roots...

"The Austrian Freedom Party is attempting - like other European populist parties - to use Israel as a springboard for international legitimization. The first tactical step of such parties is to demonstrate support for Israel's nationalist government policy, in order to get that coveted so-called kosher certificate. Then, they move on to the second step: They proclaim their aversion to anti-Semitism, past and present... " (Israel: the one place Europe's anti-Semitic far right wins the Jewish vote, Shimon Stein, Haaretz, 20/6/18)

One wonders why all of this should come as a bit of a surprise to Stein, a former Israeli ambassador to Germany (2001-07). After all, didn't political Zionism's founding father, Theodor Herzl, predict that "The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies"? And isn't it typical of liberal Zionists like Stein to raise the issue of Israel's anti-African refugee policies, but remain silent when it comes to those other, Palestinian, refugees?

Radio National's Clueless Fran Kelly

Radio National's Fran Kelly interviews Robbie Sabel, an Israeli professor of international law at the Hebrew University and - ahem - former adviser to the Israeli foreign affairs ministry (Israel issues deportation notices for African migrants, 7/2/18).

Throughout the entire interview,  Kelly makes no reference whatever to Israel's expulsion of Palestinian refugees, driven out of their homeland in 1948, and again in 1967, for one reason and one reason only: they were not Jews. Nor does she pick up on the word 'infiltrator', introduced by Sabel. Kelly clearly has no idea that any Palestinian refugee who tried to return was shot on sight as an 'infiltrator'. She is clearly clueless that African refugees, for Sabel and most other Israelis, Africans are simply non-Jews and therefore unwelcome in a Zionist, Jews-only state. Zionism's been around for over 100 years but this simple fact hasn't registered with Fran Kelly:

Fran Kelly: Uganda is denying reports that it's done a deal with Israeli PM Netanyahu to accept thousands more refugees from Sudan and Eritrea who are facing deportation from Israel... Robbie Sabel, why has Israel decided to deport thousands of men, Eritreans and Sudanese, many of whom have been seeking asylum... in Israel for some years now?

Robbie Sabel: Well, these people are not political refugees... Israel is a tiny country which can't absorb large numbers of these people.

FK: Robbie, can I just clarify... when you say they're not political refugees have they been assessed as genuine political refugees?

RS: Everybody who requests political asylum we assess and do not deport until the assessment is finished.

FK: So some have been living there for years. How long have they had their assessment done and have they been deemed to be genuine refugees?

RS: Most of them haven't been given but those who have requested political asylum. there's a backlog and it takes a long time but we do asses them... BTW, even political refugees can be deported but not to a country where they're liable to be persecuted.

FK: So why is Israel doing this now? You say it's about the numbers. How many are we talking about?

RS: Twenty thousand.

FK: That's not very many, is it?

RS: But we're allowing people with families and children to stay. We're talking only about single men and they've moved into the poorer parts of Tel Aviv and it's causing social unrest... And there has been political pressure in Israel to refuse to allow these people to stay permanently.

FK: Where's this pressure coming from?

RS: From the population of Tel Aviv... They say tiny little Israel can't solve the problems of the terrible situation in some African countries.

FK: Nevertheless it does seem there is something else going on here rather than just worrying about the numbers. The language being used. The government is describing some of these people as infiltrators. What is that supposed to mean?

RS: Well, legally they are. They entered the country illegally. In other words, they didn't request visas. They passed into Israel illegally. So legally they are infiltrators... But we don't deport them to countries where they're likely to be persecuted, like Sudan and Eritrea. However, African countries where there's no danger of persecution and they're wanting to go and the countries will accept them we do so.

FK: The countries you're talking about, I've heard Rwanda, Uganda, these are poor countries. Why would other African countries accept these people?

RS: Well, Rwanda had accepted nearly 180 000... These people come with a small sum and Israel is very happy to find a country. Presumably, if Canada or Australia is willing to accept them, we might support them there. 

FK: Is this a bit of a moral dilemma for many in Israel [!!!], a state founded as a safe haven for Jews fleeing from persecution [!!!]... And here is it chucking out people who come seeking sanctuary. Is that causing a moral debate within your country?

RS: It is causing a moral debate, although these people are not political refugees. They're economic refugees but the mere fact of expelling people is not pleasant... But when it becomes large numbers, 50,000, we have a problem. This is not people being sent to concentration camps. People come here seeking work and they're leaving with a small sum.

FK: I understand there is resistance from some in the community. People are offering to take in migrants.

RS: There is. In fact, as an Israeli I am proud of the people of Israel. Israel is an open, democratic society but logically and economically Israel can't absorb enormous amounts of people who would prefer to work in a prosperous Israel.

FK: What is the population of Israel?

RS: It's about 8m now.

FK: So twenty thousand in 8m, is that really such a threat?

RS: No it's not, but if 50,000 is already a problem and we continue to allow them to come in it would be a problem.

FK: But it's already slowing. Israel built a fence over the past few years on the border with Egypt.

RS: The fence is just the border. If Sinai becomes peaceful again, we might see this issue. Israel can't absorb enormous numbers of refugees.

The Guardian: What Palestinian Refugees?

In the face of an ailing Fairfax press, a tepid, harassed and self-censoring ABC, and a ferociously zioconservative Murdoch press, I assume that some (how many?) Australians are turning to the online Guardian website as a news source. Few, I imagine, are aware that, with Jonathan Freedland at the helm, the Guardian is virtually a no-go zone for critical commentary on the subject of Palestine/Israel.

It should come as no surprise then to find there Guardian columnist Giles Fraser's warm and fuzzy, Israel-you're-better-than-this rubbish: You'd think that Israel, of all places, would respect its refugees: Africans facing genocide are making a modern-day Exodus, fleeing through the Sinai. But the Israeli government has no time for non-Jewish asylum seekers (17/6/16).

An extract:

"At the [Tel Aviv] bus station, I meet up with Mutasim Ali. who runs an advice centre for African refugees. He tells me that as legitimate refugees the state cannot deport them. Instead, the government is 'making conditions so hopeless that asylum seekers feel they have no choice but to leave'. Officially classed as 'infiltrators', they are subject to daily racism and harassment, being taken to the miserable Holot detention centre in the Negev, for no other reason, he says, than to 'break your spirit' and 'stop you integrating into Israeli society'. Some are offered cash sums of up to $3,500 to get on a flight to Rwanda or Uganda and basically bugger off. All of which is massively disappointing from the government of a country that inspired the first international agreement protecting the rights of refugees."

The problem here, of course, is a complete absence of context. The entire piece makes no reference whatever to Israel as a nation founded on the forced deportation of up to a million Palestinian Arabs in 1948.

Any who tried to return were shot out of hand as infiltrators.

Those Palestinians now under occupation, many of them the descendants of 1948 refugees, are subject to daily racism, harassment and worse designed to break both their spirit and their bodies.

The blockaded inhabitants of the Gaza ghetto, most of whom are also the descendants of 1948 refugees, are serially bombed and shelled, with the same aim of breaking both their spirit and their bodies.

And yes, the idea of throwing money at Palestinian refugees to basically bugger off has, from time to time, been mooted by Israeli officials.

The assertion that Israel has inspired anything even remotely humane with respect to the treatment of refugees is an obscene distortion of the truth. What dishonest, shoddy journalism this is.

First Blacktown, Then Hatikvah 2

Under Vic's expert guidance, "an inspirational corps of representatives dedicated to figuring out how best to engage their youth..." has at last emerged in Blacktown, and at the top of their wish-list, says Vic, is a "community centre." (A community shift takes shape out west, Vic Alhadeff, Sydney Morning Herald, 14/3/14)

Well done, Vic! I'm sure it'll be up and running before you can say 'If you will it, it is no dream'.

A community centre for African refugees in Hatikvah, however, seems to be the last thing on the minds of Israel's movers and shakers:

"At 1am on January 10, 2012, the Knesset passed an amendment to the 1954 Prevention of Infiltration Law, a bill originally authorized to consolidate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that began in 1947. The new law authorized the government to arrest and hold anyone the government deemed an 'infiltrator' - namely, non-Jewish asylum seekers and migrants - in internment camps for a period as long as 3 years and without being charged or receiving trial. Even the handful of Africans who managed to garner refugee status or permanent residency from the Israel government would now be labeled criminal 'infiltrators'. The bill passed by whopping majority of 37-8... The anti-migrant bill included substantial funding for the expansion of the Saharonim facility at Ketziot, a Negev Desert mega-prison that once held thousands of Palestinians detained during the First Intifada, and which was due to be renovated to hold around 8,000 Africans fleeing persecution - 'infiltrators' - for an indefinite period... The Independent, a British newspaper, wrote that Ketziot would amount to 'the world's biggest detention center.' Reuven Rivlin, the speaker of the Knesset, described the planned center in much starker terms. 'As a democrat and a Jew, I have a hard time with concentration camps where people are warehoused,' he remarked. But Netanyahu countered the critics by arguing that the desert prison was a 'humanitarian solution' that would prevent non-Jewish Africans from 'chang[ing] the character of the state'." (Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel, Max Blumenthal, 2013, p 336)

Still, it's never too late! In the land where the sword was once beaten into a ploughshare, I'm confidant that if he ever gets over there, Vic will set about beating the Ketziot concentration camp into a community centre.

But hey, I've got an even bigger job for this miracle worker.

When he noted in his Herald piece that "some immigrants [to Australia] have arrived from countries where men in uniform are to be feared," that got me thinking. Israel's probably got more scary, trigger-happy men in uniform in the West Bank than is good for its fabled soul, right? So while he's over there beating concentration camps into community centres, why can't he also work his considerable magic and have them removed from the West Bank at the same time?

Just think of the applause, Vic. The Nobel Peace Prize. Even better, the Sydney Peace Prize!

C'mon, Vic, if anyone can end the occupation - although you probably wouldn't call it that - you can!

First Blacktown, Then Hatikvah 1

Where would Blacktown be without our new Baruch O'Farrell-appointed NSW Community Relations Commissioner (and CEO of the NSW Zionist - sorry, Jewish - Board of Deputies) Vic Alhadeff:

"The most poignant moment at a recent meeting of community leaders in Blacktown occurred towards the conclusion of the robust 2-hour exchange. A representative of the African Communities Council got to his feet and with more than a hint of angst and despair in his tone, pleaded: 'How do we get the rest of Australia to hear us? How do we get them to hear our voice?... The meeting was one of several that the NSW Community Relations Commission has convened in Blacktown in recent weeks following the alleged gang-rape of a 14-year-old girl in the area."  (A community shift takes shape out west, Vic Alhadeff, Sydney Morning Herald, 14/3/14)

Marvel as he talks the talk:

"As for the appeal of the African representative, if our various communities are to be the best they can, they need to - while proudly celebrating that culture - embrace equally their acquired Australian identity in as many forms as possible: respect for others, a fair go for all, equality of men and women, learning Australian history, familiarising themselves with the Anzac legend, volunteering and always acting within the law."

Now join in the applause: 

"When I put this to the most recent meeting, it was met with enthusiastic applause. Yet the appeal from the African representative hung in the air."

Right, now that Vic's managed to sort out Western Sydney's Blacktown (and said African and other representatives are busy brushing up on Australian history and Anzac), maybe it's time he moved on to bigger things in Israel - in South Tel Aviv's Hatikvah Quarter, to be specific. I hear the locals are also a tad toey there too:

"Throughout May 2012, a gang of about a dozen youths terrorized Africans in Tel Aviv, attacking then with clubs and iron chains, while robbing their stores... Their motive, the youths confessed after they were finally arrested at the end of the month, was to exact revenge for the horrible crimes the Israeli media claimed the foreigners had committed against the Jewish public. On May 22, following weeks of high-level government incitement, [Kahanist MK] Michael Ben-Ari and his minions returned to south Tel Aviv to arouse the angry, left-behind community with the message that the time for action had begun.

"The demonstrations began with Ben-Ari standing before a crowd of fifty at the front door of a small community center that provided services to asylum seekers, claiming without any evidence that Sudanese migrants had urinated on synagogues, desecrating the holiest sites of the 'Jewish people'. Another speaker declared that the greatest threat to Israel was African refugees, claiming they had been shepherded into Israel by the Arab states in a devious plot to upend the Jewish demographic majority. A young woman in the crowd sported a gold Star of David necklace and a white T-shirt emblazoned with the hand-scrawled phrase, 'Death to Sudanese'.

"With Ben-Ari standing a few meters away, a middle-aged man in the crowd took the megaphone and addressed a small group of leftists staging a counterprotest nearby: 'We want to remind you of the new protocol regarding women. If you are pretty, don't leave your home! You'll get fucked in the ass at night by a Sudanese man.'

"A woman in her 30s who was well known in the neighborhood for her activism against Africans charged across the street... There, they confronted two leftists sitting at the door of the community center. 'May you all get cancer! May the cancer spread!' the woman screamed at the two young women... 'May your entire family die in a car accident tomorrow! With the help of God, you piece of garbage! You spawn of Amalek!'

"When the demonstration ended, the protesters set themselves on Yossi Gurvitz, a widely read, left-wing blogger, and his girlfriend, Galina, who had dared to shout back at Ben-Ari. Comprised mostly of women, the crowd hectored Galina with graphic sexual and racial slurs... With Border Police standing by and doing absolutely nothing, an elderly man barked at Galina, 'Who are you married to? You're married to a nigger!'

"'A Sudanese man will rape you and then you'll cry,' said a bald man wearing aviator sunglasses... 'A Sudanese mam will rape you in the ass! May your mother be raped! A Sudanese man will fuck you! Then you will cry out in pain!

"'She wants some nigger dick. She's not getting any from her husband,' said an old woman with bright yellow hair, gesticulating wildly just inches from Galina's face. 'You know why she wants them here?' the old woman continued. 'She wants a man!'

"A young woman from the neighborhood added, 'What Israeli would want her? She wants a nigger!'" (Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel, Max Blumenthal, 2013, pp 342-43)

Of course, sorting that out should be a piece of cake for a man of Vic's talents. But that's just a start. I've got an even bigger job coming up for him! Tune in to First Blacktown, Then Hatikvah 2 tomorrow...

Updating Shmaryahu Levin

I'm sure you've all heard Shmaryahu Levin's witty definition of a Zionist as a Jew who gives money to another Jew to send a third Jew to Palestine.

Well, in light of the following two news items, it's pretty obvious that matters have become a tad more complicated since Levin's day (1867-1935) - along the lines of the proverbial left hand having absolutely no bloody idea whatever what the right's doing:

"United Israel Appeal (UIA) continues to fund aliyah flights and assistance for Jews fleeing countries of distress. There are currently over 3,000 Ethiopians waiting to come to Israel and UIA is dedicated to completing this operation by October 2013. The smooth integration of these Olim into Israeli society through absorption centres is a paramount task. These centres provide critical initial housing, intensive educational programs and the cultural tools for them to become independent and contributing members of mainstream Israeli society." (The final Ethiopian aliyah, UIA 2013 Campaign Focus, The Australian Jewish News, 25/1/13)

"Israel has admitted for the first time that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent. The government had previously denied the practice but the Israeli Health Ministry's director-general has now ordered gynaecologists to stop administering the drugs. According to a report in Haaretz, suspicions were first raised by an investigative journalist, Gal Gabbay, who interviewed more than 30 women from Ethiopia in an attempt to discover why birth rates in the community had fallen dramatically." (Israel gave birth control to Ethiopian Jews without their consent, Alistair Dawber, The Independent, 27/1/13)

This somewhat surreal state of affairs suggests that it's time we updated Levin's definition with a view to factoring in some of the latest twists and turns in what it means to be a Zionist today, twists and turns which Levin himself couldn't possibly have foreseen - or even imagined in his wildest dreams. So here goes:

These days a Zionist is a white Jew who gives tax-exempt money to a 'charity' such as the UIA, which funds another white Jew to discover 'lost tribes', some of whom are black, uproot them, and send them  to occupied Palestine. Once there they are subjected to racist abuse  - Go home Cushi! - and their women injected with drugs to stop them from having any more black babies.

OK, so it's clunkier than Levin's original, but how else is one to capture the above nuances?

Fairfax Is All Yours, Gina 2

Further to my previous post, it doesn't get much worse than this:

Fairfax journalist, Jonathan Swan, writes an astonishingly puerile opinion piece which lashes Israel with a limp lettuce leaf over its treatment of African refugees (while failing completely to reference its prior creation and treatment of Palestinian refugees) and comprehensively misrepresents the Zionist entity's  founding by portraying it as some kind of humanitarian rescue mission. Added to this folderol are quotes from Israel lobbyist, Vic Alhadeff, and a Canadian bozo who can still, in the first decade of the 21st century, without a blush, write a book with the title Why I am a Zionist. (Opening sentence: "I am a Zionist because I am a Jew and without recognising a national component in Judaism, I cannot explain its unique character as a National Liberation movement for the Jewish people.") Swan's pathetic piece, in short, is Zionist to its bootstraps.

Yet, despite conveying the impression throughout that butter hadn't melted in Israel's mouth until the African refugee issue came along, he came under attack on the letters page in the following issue of the Sydney Morning Herald, not from anyone with a real knowledge of Palestinian history, but  from two diehard defenders of Israel for whom any criticism of their home-away-from-home is anathema. 

Presumably, no letters were received from readers pointing out the bleeding obvious, namely,  that Israel was founded on Palestinian dispossession, statelessness and exile, stemming from the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist forces in 1948.

So then, why did no one among the paper's readership bother to write in with this kind of critique? 

Simple. This is knowledge from which Herald readers have been shielded by decades of Zionist propaganda pieces; a corresponding dearth of anything in any way critical of the Zionist project and its bloody record in Palestine and surrounds; vacuous, always Israel-friendly, editorials; reliably lame cartoons on the Middle East conflict (G'day, Moir); and red-carpet treatment onto the letters page by legions of Israel lobbyists and apologists (Greetings, George Fishman).

Fairfax Is All Yours, Gina

That's it! One read of the 'opinion piece' by Fairfax journalist Jonathan Swan, Once a refuge, Israel ignores its real origins (22/6/12), and I frankly couldn't give a toss whether Fairfax gets snapped up by mining magnate Gina Rinehart or not.

If Swan's extraordinary naivete and mind-blowing ignorance is supposed to be a sparkling example of Fairfax's 'quality journalism', vis-a-vis News Limited's relentless, ideologically-driven poison, the field may as well be abandoned to the likes of Rinehart and Murdoch. Too harsh? I don't think so:

With its ridiculous assertion that the creation of Israel was fundamentally about catering for refugees, the very title encapsulates the abysmal ignorance of the piece. Let me make this crystal clear: the political Zionism of Herzl, Wiezmann and Ben-Gurion was first and foremost about the procrustean task of transforming a religious grouping - Jews, in all their diversity - into a racialised, nationalistic entity known as 'the Jewish people' at a time (roughly from the Napoleonic era through to the end of World War II) when ethnically-based nationalism was all the go. Zionism was, like all such European nationalisms of the time, chauvinistic at best, toxic at worst (Nazism). To mistake the rhetoric of 'refuge' and 'rescue' for the substance of the Zionist project, which focused solely on carving out, and shoring up, an ethnically homogeneous Jewish state in Palestine for 'the Jewish people' at the expense of its indigenous inhabitants, is to indicate that you have zero idea of what you're talking about:

"In a museum that exhibits dead children's shoes and photographs of skeletons piled in holes, it was an Australian that angered me most. Printed on a wall inside Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's Holocaust museum, is a quote by the Australian diplomat Thomas W. White, dated 1938. 'As we have no racial problems,' White told a conference of world leaders, 'we are not desirous of importing one.' And with that, Australia joined the United States and almost every wealthy nation in rejecting Jewish refugees who were fleeing the Nazis."

The conference referred to here is the Evian Conference of 1938, about which Swan has obviously not taken the trouble to learn, being content with a mere statement (the propaganda value of which escapes him) tacked on the wall of Israel's pre-eminent Holocaust memorial (the propaganda use of which also escapes him). If he had done a little research, he would be aware that neither the Zionists in Palestine nor those elsewhere supported the wholesale rescue of German Jewry; the former because they wanted only the fit Zionist youth among them as potential Arab fighters; the latter for much the same reasons, paradoxically, as White.

In the words of US scholar, Lenni Brenner: "Since [Palestine's Zionists] did not want the bulk of German Jewry in Palestine, it might be assumed that the Zionist movement, at least in America, tried to find other havens for their brethren, but this is not so. Throughout the world, the Jewish bourgeoisie acted timidly out of fear that 'too many' refugees in any country would unleash local anti-Semitism. Sending the refugees to Palestine seemed to be the perfect answer..." (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, 1983, p 146).

Nor does the United States, which initiated the Evian Conference and the Rublee rescue plan which emerged from it, deserve Swan's stick, given that it was deliberately boycotted and sabotaged by the Zionists who preferred instead to work with the Gestapo to channel into Palestine only youthful German Zionists, as recruits for the coming move against Palestine's majority Arab population. (See my 21/11/11 post Laying Siege to German Jews.)

"White's quote is a reminder of Israel's founding purpose: to be a haven for refugees. Israeli leaders have long said with pride that they have reached out, not only to Holocaust survivors, but to desperate people from places such as Vietnam, Kosovo and Darfur."

Swan seems to be confusing Israel with the Statue of Liberty's famous words: Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to be free;/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore..." If he wishes to establish what it is exactly that constitutes Israel's founding purpose, he should try looking up its Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, May 14, 1948. If he did, he'd find that Israel's founding purpose is first and foremost about the supposed "right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country," and that the closest it ever gets to his haven for refugees nonsense is this: "The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations." One wonders, what part of for Jews only doesn't Swan understand?

As to Israel's taking aboard Vietnamese, Kosovan and Darfuri refugees, let's look at the facts:

1) Vietnamese: In 1977, 65 Vietnamese boat people were picked up by an Israeli vessel off the Vietnamese coast: "Begin's decision [to admit these people into Israel] was in a way pure theater. Sixty-six Vietnamese were hardly a burden, and in terms of the hundreds of thousands who had fled Vietnam and were looking for a new home, they were less than a drop in a bucket. Nor was Israel threatened with the arrival of more Vietnamese once a first group of them was accepted. The South China seas were far away and their waves were not about to sweep up more boats on Israel's shores." (A shame on Israel, Hillel Halkin, nysun.com, 10/7/07)

2) Kosovans: In 1999, 217 Kosovans received temporary shelter in Israel. (140 Kosovar refugees leave Israel for home, Gil Sedan, jweekly.com, 30/7/99)

3) Darfuris: "Several hundred were granted official refugee status, and with it the right to work." (An open letter to Israel from a Darfur refugee in Tel Aviv, Hamed Sadinden, fugeefridays.blogspot.com, 13/4/09) As for the rest: "[A]ll we ask is the right to live and work in Israel and take care of ourselves while we are here." (ibid)

Whence this feeling of being underwhelmed?

"What to make, then, of the recent vow by Israel's Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, to rid the country of all illegal immigrants within 3 years? Or of the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has branded illegal immigrants 'infiltrators' and said he plans to build 'holding facilities' to store tens of thousands of aliens 'until they can be sent out of the country'?"

What to make? Simple: these illegal immigrants aren't Jews and so can't be tolerated in a Jewish state. What part of Jewish State does Swan not understand?

"The most toxic migrants, we are told, come from Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2005, about 60,000 have crossed the Sinai Desert and through the Egyptian border into Israel. Yishai says these Sudanese and Eritrean immigrants are raising Israel's crime levels, and that their numbers need to be quelled. Netanyahu argues that illegal immigrants burden Israel's economy and threaten its Jewish character. Then there are last month's south Tel Aviv protests. Haaretz reported a crowd of residents waving placards and chanting 'the people want the Sudanese deported' and 'infiltrators, get out of our home.' The Likud politician Miri Regev participated in the protest and said that 'the Sudanese were a cancer in our body'. Africans' shops and apartments were attacked. It's this last image, of broken store-fronts and glass, that will knock the wind out of many Holocaust survivors, some of whom fled Europe after Kristallnact - the Night of Broken Glass - where Nazis ran a series of co-ordinated attacks on Jewish homes, shops and synagogues throughout Germany and parts of Austria. At a park in Neve Shaanan, an area of Tel Aviv inflamed by 'infiltrators', a daughter of Holocaust survivors, Orly Feldheim, told a New York Times reporter: 'I feel I am in a movie in Germany, circa 1933 or 1936.' Netanyahu should be chilled by what Feldheim said. Now that the Prime Minister's word - 'infiltrators' - has reached the mouths of violent xenophobes, he has attached himself to scenes that could alienate even his most rusted-on supporters. Netanyahu knows better than most that the Holocaust is never very far from an Israeli's mind. He should also know that many Israelis believe their country has a special responsibility to help those in need, given it was founded as a refuge for survivors."

Notice here how the link between Israel's exalted Jewish character and Netanyahu, the ideological heir of the Irgun terrorists whose bloody hands and knives* were instrumental in creating that Jewish character (of which more later), is missing? It's as though a hitherto fine and upstanding member of the international community had suddenly, inexplicably, become possessed and begun foaming at the mouth and spitting forth racist curses. Then there's the ludicrous suggestion that this uncharacteristic behaviour will only alienate his hordes of prim and proper supporters who are, of course, gobsmacked at the spectacle. The naivete here is nothing short of astonishing. What part of Benjamin Netanyahu does Swan not understand?

"Such faith has been drained by the Palestinian occupation, and Netanyahu's latest announcements may have turned off life support. He has also crushed a key source of pride for liberal Zionists. Like many moderates, Gil Troy, a history professor at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada, and author of Why I am a Zionist, counts Israel's compassion towards refugees as one of the country's greatest achievements. 'To Israel, today's refugee is tomorrow's citizen,' Troy wrote in a Jerusalem post blog. 'In a clear repudiation of the accusation that Zionism is in any way racist, Israel has accepted black, brown, and white refugees... with nearly 80,000 Ethiopian refugees constituting the only welcome migration I know of involving black Africans to a mostly white country.'"

Incredibly, despite Swan's subject, Israel and its treatment of refugees, this is the first time the word Palestinian has cropped up. But only, you'll note, in reference to the occupation. The standout feature of Swan's vacuous opinion piece is that, in an article about Israel and refugees, he makes no mention whatever of the existence, let alone the history and circumstances, of millions of Palestinian REFUGEES, driven out of their ancestral homeland in 1948 to create the Zionist movement's Holy Grail, a Jewish majority in Palestine. This enables him to suggest, through the example of Gil Troy, that Israel's origins were as pure as the proverbial driven snow. Troy is apparently the kind of bloke who can say without blushing that Israel's compassion towards refugees is one of its greatest achievements; and Swan is the kind of bloke who, again, without blushing, believes and reproduces every word. The man reveals himself here as either a complete ignoramus or a shameless propagandist. Whichever shoe fits, it's a mystery how can he be allowed to get away with this.

It's perhaps instructive at this point to compare Swan's performance with a recent piece by an Israeli journalist commemorating Israel's Vietnamese refugees. While Shoshana Bryen deploys a similar propaganda trope to Swan's - "The experience of Jewish refugees and the hopelessness of statelessness made Israel sensitive to the hopelessness of people from another place, another culture, another war, giving the Vietnamese a place to start over" (Israel & the boat people, timesofisrael.com, 6/6/12) - she is only too aware of Israel's original sin, hurrying to add, parenthetically, "(For those rolling their eyes on behalf of stateless Palestinian refugees..," before attempting to cover up this inconvenient truth by trotting out yet another Zionist talking point: "It is precisely the Jewish experience with statelessness that impels Israel to continue to seek a mechanism by which Palestinians can achieve the state the Arabs declined on their behalf in 1948 - without losing the state of Israel.)" No rolling of the eyes on behalf of stateless Palestinian refugees for Swan, the issue is simply dropped down Orwell's memory hole quicker than you can say, But what about the Palestinian refugees?

"But can Israel still claim this self-image? Vic Alhadaff, the chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, believes it can. Alhadeff defends Israel's immigration policies, arguing that the country has 'absorbed thousands of refugees from Vietnam, Albania, Kosovo and Darfur, and hosts 120,000 illegal foreign workers. Like Australia,' Alhadeff says, 'Israel is attempting to balance humanitarian needs with the need to protect its borders from waves of illegal immigration.'"

Almost 65 years of Palestinians rotting in refugee camps** and Swan is asking, Can Israel still claim this self image? The mind boggles.

"But if Israel genuinely wishes to strike such a balance, it has done a good job in hiding it. It is one thing to have a prime minister who calls illegal migrants 'infiltrators'; it is quite another to have a 'Prevention of Infiltration Law', recently amended to allow Israeli authorities to detain 'infiltrators' for up to 3 years."

OMG! Israel passes laws which discriminate against refugees! Who would have thought?

"While Netanyahu ponders his next assault on illegal immigrants, I hope he pays a visit to Yad Vashem. After he reads the quote by Thomas W. White, Netanyahu will find outside rows of trees honouring the 'righteous among the nations' - those brave souls, Oskar Schindler included, who risked their lives to rescue Jewish refugees."

Oh yes, a simple visit to Yad Vashem (led by Swan?) and Netanyahu will be so overcome by remorse that he'll rush back to the Knesset and deliver a historic and heartfelt speech, softie that he really is, beginning with the words, I don't know what came over me...

Seriously now, could Ms Rinehart do any worse?

[*See my 9/4/12 post Zionism Red in Tooth & Claw; **Take a look at the latest ANERA report (6/12) on Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon.]

Spilling the Cannellini Beans

Hm...

"Wearing her much-scrutinised prime ministerial white jacket, Julia Gillard fitted right in with the chefs in the kitchen of Bakini in St Kilda Road on Saturday night. The besieged leader had dinner in the Italian restaurant owned by Albert Dadon, the property developer and chairman of Ubertus who used to employ Gillard's partner, Tim Mathieson, before she ascended the Canberra throne. Gillard rubbed her white shoulders with the whites of chef Simone Righetto and chatted with kitchen staff. Dadon posted a snap of Gillard on Twitter but when asked to spill the cannellini beans on the visit, he said: 'The dinner was of private nature and I am not at liberty to disclose anything'. If the PM was sounding out Dadon for a job for herself, post-politics, or for Mathieson, he won't say." (Gillard jazzes up dinner with Dadon, Suzanne Carbone, watoday.com.au, 5/6/12)

Sounding out Albert for jobs, Suzanne? That's certainly one possibility. But Albert is so much more than just a property developer. He also runs a shuttle service for Australian politicians and their entourages to Israel called the Australia Israel Leadership Forum. And he's a good mate of Michael Danby, Labor's Mr Israel. Quite clearly Susan, Albert does have more on his mind than just rearranging the cityscape and Italian tucker. Instead of sounding out Albert for a job, could Albert perhaps be sounding out Julia to do a little job... for Israel? His reluctance to spill the cannellini beans, as you put it, certainly invites such speculation. Could the conversation have gone something like this, for example:

To cut to the chase, Julia, what with Israel forever on the cusp of being driven into the sea by massed Palestinian panzer divisions, and more recently, on the cusp of being toasted by Iran's non-existent nuclear arsenal, it really doesn't need yet another headache on its hands, know what I mean? But damn it, that's exactly what it has right now: thousands of African infiltrators are currently on the cusp of turning Israel's fabulous white Jewish Majority into a besieged minority!

And no, it's not just baseless paranoia! I'm talking existential threat here. Israelis know what these infiltrators are up to. After all, they themselves were once a fabulous white Jewish minority who had to work overtime - know what I mean? - turning Palestine's then brown Muslim Majority into the besieged  minority you see today, OK? You do understand, don't you?

So how about it, Julia? If you could help us out here, like Howard did with those South Lebanon Army dudes back in 2000, we'd be eternally grateful. And if he ever needs it, I could put Tim back on the payroll as a waiter here at at Bakini's, not to mention throw a couple of those lucrative pre-poll breakfasts with the Jewish community at my Toorak mansion* come election time. What do you say? Is it a deal?

Now lest such speculation be dismissed as idle, read the following item, coupled with my 4/9/11 post, Israel's Australia Solution, and you'll see what I mean:

"MK Danny Danon (Likud) asked Australian MP Michael Danby on Wednesday to propose, in parliament in Canberra, sending African migrants from Israel to Australia. Danon and Danby discussed the issue during the Australian politician's visit to Israel for the World Jewish Congress's International Conference of Jewish Parliamentarians. 'The arrival of thousands of [African] Muslim infiltrators to Israeli territory is a clear threat to [Israel's] Jewish identity', Danon told The Jerusalem Post. 'The refugees' place is not among us, and the initiative to transfer them to Australia is the right and just solution. On the one hand, it treats the refugees and migrants in a humane way. On the other hand, it does not threaten Israel's future and our goal to maintain a clear and solid Jewish majority', he explained. Danon said Danby enthusiastically agreed to present the idea to the Australian Parliament." (Danny Danon: Send African migrants to Australia, Lahav Harkov, 30/6/11)

Watch this space.

 [*See my 20/8/12 post A Pre-Poll Breakfast Tradition.]

Israel: Jewish, Democratic... & White

Anti-African pogrom in Israel? What anti-African pogrom? To my knowledge, the only Australian ms media reference to Tel Aviv's anti-African refugee pogrom of May 23 came on SBS' World News program.

Briefly, after attending a rally in south Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighbourhood addressed by Likud MKs, one of whom described Israel's African refugees as a 'cancer in our society', a Jewish mob went on the rampage, smashing shop and car windows, and beating up any Africans they could find.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier set the scene by referring, at a cabinet meeting, to the refugees as "illegal infiltrators flooding the country," and adding that, "[i]f we don't stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state." (Israel PM: illegal African immigrants threaten identity of Jewish state, Harriet Sherwood, guardian.co.uk, 20/5/12)

After viewing some of the video footage of the pogrom, I couldn't help but notice that the most frequent insult on the lips of the mob was the word kushi, generally translated from the Hebrew as 'nigger'. Written, web-based accounts, corroborate this:

"I went to a demonstration led by MK Michael Ben-Ari 2 days ago... and was joined by my girlfriend, Galina. Ben-Ari, a Kahanist, was inciting the crowd against the African refugees in a distinctly anti-Semitic manner, peppering his talk with incessant references to excrement and urine. At some point, Galina couldn't take it any longer, and shouted something back. Within minutes we were surrounded by an angry mob of about 20 people, composed mostly of women, who hurled curses at her. Someone pulled out a tear gas canister and waved it at her face. Racist and sexual slurs filled the air repeatedly. Time and time again, people expressed the wish she would be raped by Sudanese, and asked her if she was bedding them. A boy, between 10 and 11 years old, screamed at her point blank that what she needs is a 'nigger's cock'..." (Thoughts on an attack by a Jewish mob, Yossi Gurvitz, 972mag.com, 24/5/12)

Gurvitz reflects on the experience:

"And after the shock and fear, an attempt at understanding what took place. The legend that African refugees turned the paradise that was south Tel Aviv into a terrorized crime zone has to be rejected... Statistics proved time and time again the crime wave exists mostly in the minds of the politicians stoking the hatred, of which Ben-Ari is an ambitious competitor. I lived in Hatikva for 2 years; I've seen the people, the despair, the fear at nights, the absence of infrastructure, the flooding every winter when the sewage system collapsed - with my own eyes. Spare me the bullshit about a quiet neighborhood of happy poor workers. First there's the economic hardship, which prevents people from getting an education and getting the hell out of there. Above it, we find Jewish supemacism, the concept of a Chosen People, 'every Jew is the son of a King'. Proud Jews are often people whose Jewishness is the only thing they can be proud of. The blow I received came after I was asked if I am a Jew, and replied in the negative." (ibid)

The 'n' word is apparently in such frequent use that it (and worse) has even been internalised by the refugees themselves:

"I accompanied a group of asylum-seeking children to their homes tonight, as we also do on the days of protests with potential racist developments. As usual we got barraged with swearwords, but policemen advised us about safer routes. The kids sang along the way: 'I'm a nigger, I'm a nigger, nigger, and I clean Israeli homes'. ('What, you don't know it, Rami? Look it up on Youtube'.) Two 12-year-old girls asked me if I know that pretty soon the Sudanese will suffer the same fate as Jews did in Germany. One asked the other to tell her about that man, Korczak, who saved children. They asked if he was Jewish and if he would have saved all the children. One girl asked me: 'What's the opposite of free?' I had trouble finding the word: imprisoned? shackled? She said: 'OK, whatever it is, say shackled, we were born shackled and we'll die shackled'. The girls asked me why the Israelis want to deport them. I asked them: If the streets in your country would suddenly fill up with white people that speak a different language you don't understand, what would you feel? One girl said: 'I'd become a teacher and teach them my language!' Toward the end two 12-year-old girls asked me: 'Say, Rami, if you were in our place, what would you have done?'" (African kids in Tel Aviv: They'll do to us what they did to Jews in Germany, Dimi Reider, 972mag.com, 23/5/12)

Another Israeli, Uri Horesh, explains:

"When I was growing up, kushi was a perfectly neutral term for 'black person', more like 'negro' in the 1960s than 'nigger' ever was. However, nowadays, since more Hebrew speakers in Israel actually know black people, and there are indeed black people living in Israel who speak Hebrew (including migrant African laborers, but of course, Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia), the connotations of kushi have shifted towards the negative - perhaps not to the degree of the taboo that is associated with 'nigger' in the American context, but it is gradually moving in that direction." (Kushi didn't always mean 'nigger', tlvphl.blogspot.com.au, 23/5/12)

One might assume from the testimony above that the kind of anti-black/white supremacist racism, which finds vivid expression in the use of the word 'nigger' on the streets of south Tel Aviv today, is a relatively recent development in Zionist history. Not so, apparently. Given that political Zionism is primarily a European settler-colonial power-trip, it should come as no surprise to find that earlier  generations of Zionists were far from immune to an obsession with European 'whiteness'.

Here, for example, British Jew and Zionist, Redcliffe Salaman, Regimental Medical Officer to the 39th Royal Fusiliers, 2nd Judean Battalion, writes of the arrival in Cairo on July 13, 1918 of the Jewish Battalions' latest batch of volunteers from Palestine's pre-World War I Jewish colonies. Salaman refers to them as "the Palestinians":

"The moment they rolled into the station I spotted a nigger amongst them, and before the train stopped I cleared that question up - his mother was a negress, his father a Sephardi (these Sephardim are a fearfully mixed lot; give me Ashkenazim for blue blood!). Then the types varied from blue-eyed handsome pseudo-Gentiles to dark, purely semitic Yemenites - and scattered between were a dozen, perhaps, of semi-negroid but often very handsome Moroccan Jews." (Palestine Reclaimed: Letters from a Jewish Officer in Palestine, 1920, pp 24-25)

Salaman adds, some pages later, that:

"The Yemenites are for the most part undersized and rather poor-spirited natives. They are not racially Jews. They are black, long-headed, hybrid Arabs. Last Saturday I worked with J. M. in the library and we got hold of every authority we could, and, from the historical evidence, it is at once clear that they have but a trace of Jewish blood in them though they probably have rather more than the Falashas. The real Jew is the European Ashkenazi, and I back him against all-comers." (ibid, p 28)

The irony of the Hatikva pogrom is that many of the participants may well have been the descendants of the very Yemeni Jews that Salaman scorned as insufficiently white to be really Jewish.

Israel's Australian Solution

Breaking through the Great Fire Wall of self-censorship ringing the ABC, comes this rarest of insights* into the racist ideology and legislation that underpins Israeli apartheid: Israeli politician pushes to offload refugees, 7pm ABCTV news 3/7/11:

"An Israeli politician is calling on Australia to take the country's African refugees. Danny Danon says the arrival of thousands of Muslim and Christian refugees is a threat to the state's Jewish identity and he says they'd have a better life in countries like Australia. ABC Middle East correspondent Ben Knight reports:

BK: Each year thousands of Muslim and Christian refugees walk into Israel from Eritrea and Sudan seeking asylum. Many of them end up here in south Tel Aviv. Now a member of Israel's right-wing Likud Party wants them to keep moving: 'Israel is a very small country. We have a lot of security expenses'.
BK: Danny Dannon wants the Australian government to include them in its annual refugee quota and take them off Israel's hands.
DD: We know that every year thousands of people are being accepted by Canada, Australia and other strong Western societies.
BK: It's certainly an unusual idea. Some Israelis though are appalled by it: 'It's verging on racism'.
BK: Yael Dayan is a member of the Tel Aviv City Council with the portfolio for refugees.
YD: It's not his business really to send them to either Australia or Canada. It's his business to take care of Israeli commitments having signed the refugee covenant [sic].
BK: There are around 20,000 Eritrean and 6,000 Sudanese refugees currently in Israel. It's not many in a country of 7.5 million but this is a country with an immigration policy that's unique in the world. Under Israel's Law of Return any Jew anywhere in the world has the right to migrate to this country and each year thousands do, particulatly from Ethiopia, and Israel spends millions of dollars helping them.
DD: Israel is a Jewish state and the only Jewish state. You have 22 Arab countries. You have lots of spaces for other people to live. We have to invest in the Jews who want to come to Israel.
BK: And that he says is Israel's unashamed priority."

Legal eagles out there might benefit from the following more technical rendering of Israel's "unique" immigration policy by Israeli academics, Tally Kritzman-Amir and Yonotan Berman (Responsibility sharing & the rights of refugees: The case of Israel, The George Washington International Law Review, 6/1/11):

"While Israel has been a signatory to the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees for many decades (since 1951) the Israeli asylum system only started functioning in 2002. Most of the asylum seekers were coming from relatively nearby African countries such as Sudan, Eritrea and Ivory Coast. Of these asylum seekers, most have crossed one or more intermediate states to get to Israel. In other words, since 2005, Israel has started to shoulder the burden of the refugee problems resulting from the turbulences in the region in which it is located.

"To understand Israel's policy towards asylum seekers, one must evaluate it in light of the state's general immigration regime. As a Jewish democratic state, Israel's immigration and citizenship regime is based on a Jewish/other distinction. Israel has jus sanguinis ('according to blood') citizenship norms, which display a significant preference for providing citizenship to Jews and their relatives. Israel's immigration policy, therefore, almost exclusively allows for the immigration of Jews and their relatives to Israel. The few exceptions to this rule are typically made for workers, migrating for employment, a process that is heavily governed and restricted by a guest-worker program. Conversely, different policies provide the Israeli government with the power to annul the status of Palestinian residents as well as to deny immigration requests by Palestinians and citizens of several other Arab countries almost categorically.

"The recently developed asylum system in Israel follows the same norms central to Israel's citizenship and immigration process. As the statistical information makes obvious, Israel has long demonstrated a general reluctance to grant refugees protection. To maintain this policy, Israel has resorted to complementary protection mechanisms to the refugee convention such as (formal or informal) temporary protection. Additionally, Israel has made it difficult for asylum seekers to live within the nation after entering. Asylum seekers have been, to a large extent, denied access to the Israeli welfare state; many have also been prohibited from staying or working within the country's urban centres. Furthermore, Israel has chosen to interpret its obligation to accept immigrants restrictively. Having adopted a narrow reading of Article 1(D) of the Refugee Convention, Israel has determined that all Palestinians are ineligible to be given asylum (forcing Palestinians either to stay in the Palestinian territories or to seek asylum in other countries, mostly the neighboring Egypt, Lebanon or Jordan)."

Got the picture? If you're black, get back; if you're Palestinian, piss off. Unless of course you've got a Jewish mummy, which, face it, not many Africans or Palestinians have handy.

Of course, it's not as if the idea of shipping Israel's rejects off to Australia sprang fully-formed from Danon's brain. No, we've been there before, 2001 to be exact. Here's the ABC TV's 7.30 Report of 2/4/2001:

Kerry O'Brien: "Now to the fuss over [Howard government] Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock's decision to accept up to 200 people associated with the South Lebanese Army, or SLA, into Australia. The SLA was a militia force comprising mostly Maronite Christians sponsored and trained by Israel to police Israel's security zone in occupied southern Lebanon. But international watchdogs have accused the SLA of committing numerous human rights abuses against Palestinians and Lebanese civilians. The SLA members fled across the border to Israel when the Israelis withdrew from Lebanon without warning 10 months ago and are too afraid to return to their homeland. Israel has asked other countries to accept the refugees. But, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, which has obtained documents on the issue, apart from Germany, only Australia has agreed, a move that has triggered an angry reaction from various ethnic groups in the Arabic community." (Controversy over Ruddock's acceptance of Lebanese militiamen)

So, even if you've murdered and tortured for Israel, so long as you've entered this world from a non-Jewish womb, there's no place for you in the Jewish state. But fear not - Israel has a fond and foolish friend downunder.

[* In fact this is the only reference I've ever come across in the Australian ms media to Israel's bedrock apartheid Law of Return.]

First Order of Business

Unaccustomed as I am to recognising, let alone granting, independence...

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday Israel's official recognition of South Sudan as an independent state. 'I announce here that Israel recognizes South Sudan', Netanyahu told his cabinet in broadcast remarks. 'We wish it success. It is a peace-seeking country and we would be happy to cooperate with it in order to ensure its development and prosperity'." (Netanyahu: Israel recognizes South Sudan as independent state, Barak Ravid, Haaretz, 10/7/11)

However...

"Interior Minister Eli Yishai called on Israel to immediately begin negotiations with South Sudan in order to return the thousands of Sudanese and migrant workers who had crossed into Israel illegally in the past several years." (ibid)

It's the Demography Stupid!

Nobody does demographics quite like Israel.

Hispanics? No way, Jose - not even in the US of A:

"NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (NSWJBD) chief executive Vic Alhadaff... reported on his trip to America for the AIPAC conference. He said the increasing Latin-American population in the US could potentially have a negative impact on Israel's security. 'In 1960, there were 900,000 Hispanics in the US or 9% of foreign born residents. Today, the number of Hispanics in the US is 55 million, 16% of the nation's total population', Alhadeff said. 'The significance of this is that historically, support for Israel has been sharply lacking in some key nations in the Latin American world'. He said there had been 122 resolutions against Israel at the United Nations in the past 7 years and Brazil and Chile had supported all of them. 'This sector is beginning to make itself heard in the corridors of power in the US, not to mention in business and key NGO sectors. US Jewish leaders have been talking up the Latin American influence in the US body politic for years now and that issue was driven home during this trip'." (A helping hand, Australian Jewish News, 24/6/11)

Darfuris? Fine - just not in Israel, OK?:

"AJN: After an approach by the Darfuri community, the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) has asked the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Israel embassy to look into the resettlement of some 1500 Israel-based Darfuri refugees in Australia. Abdelhadi Matar, board member of Darfur Australia Network: I need to emphasise that the main issue is not resettling those Darfuris in Australia but finding safe countries around the world where they can be resettled. Our aim [with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] is to find a lasting solution. There's some improvement now for those Darfuris living in Israel. They've now granted them work permits. But these are temporary solutions. As the Jewish state, Israel has its own challenges, and as Darfuris, we don't want to add more problems. If we can find a lasting solution, that would be great." (A chat with Abdelhadi Matar, AJN, 24/6/11)

Palestinian refugees? F**k off!:

"[Palestinians] must abandon their demand to settle the descendents of Palestinian refugees in Israel and gradually 'eat away' at the State of Israel..." (Netanyahu: Palestinian refugees must never return to their homes, maannews.net, 13/7/09)

Lost Jewish tribes? The more the merrier!:

"The Ministerial Committee on Immigrant Absorption, led by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman... has reached a historic decision in principle: To bring to Israel the 7,300 members of Bnei Menashe - a north-eastern Indian community claiming decent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel." (Aliyah approved for Bnei Menashe, AJN, 1/7/11)

Why We Need an Academic Boycott of Israel

In their ongoing effort to cement Australia-Israel relations, Zionist lobbyists have been quite creative with Australian history, portraying, for example, Australia's Light Horse, part of the British campaign to oust the Ottoman Turks from Palestine in 1917-18, as proto-Zionists fighting for a future Jewish state in Palestine (See my 1/5/08 post Myth In-formation) or seizing on Labor foreign minister H V Evatt's shameful role in the partition of Palestine in 1947 to suggest some kind of binding tie between the two countries (See my 8/12/09 post Doctor Who?).

More generally, Zionist propagandists would have us believe that Israel, like Australia, is a rolled-gold parliamentary democracy and an open, pluralistic society based on mass immigration from every corner of the globe. Whatever the wording, the message is always that Israel is just like us.

Naomi Levin's review, in The Australian Jewish News of 6/5/11, of Immigration & Nation Building: Australia & Israel Compared, edited by Monash University's Professor Andrew Markus and Tel Aviv University's Professor Moshe Semyenov, carries just this message:

"Young people, couples, carrying a battered suitcase, disembarking down a ship's rickety gangplank or stepping off an old aeroplane, squinting into the sunlight at their new home - it is a historic image of migrants arriving in Australia, and also in Israel. Thousands of displaced people and refugees sought salvation and a safer, more comfortable life. For many, Australia or Israel was the promised land." (Australia & Israel's asylum appeal)

You get the picture?

Levin homes in on the chapter by Israeli and Australian academics Na'ama Carmi and Susan Kneebone, which examines both countries' handling of the vexed issue of asylum seekers, with a view to suggesting a common concern. Although Levin doesn't spell this out, the clear and obvious difference between the two countries' approach to asylum seekers in particular and immigration in general, soon emerges.

Those seeking asylum in Israel are largely non-Jews from Africa, and, as non-Jews seeking entry to and acceptance in a self-declared Jewish state, they must inevitably come up against the brick wall of Israel's discriminatory Law of Return (1950). As Levin puts it, "[Carmi and Kneebone] contend that when Israel drafted its Law of Return - the legislation that gives all Jewish people and their descendents the right to settle in Israel - it did not forsee the challenge of large numbers of non-Jewish people seeking entry."

Didn't forsee the challenge of large numbers of non-Jews seeking entry, eh?

What Levin (and presumably those associated with the book, both Israeli and Australian) ignores here is the fact that, while the Law of Return was designed to encourage and facilitate immigration by Jews the world over in accordance with Zionist ideology, it also served to prevent over 750,000 non-Jewish Palestinian refugees, ethnically cleansed from their homes and lands in 1948, from returning to those homes and lands. Typically, Levin admits the dual (include/exclude) function of this fundamentally apartheid law elsewhere in her review, but without specifying those excluded: "According to Markus and Semyonov's book, [the Law of Return] was intended as an express link to Zionism and designed as a tool of inclusion or exclusion. The aim was to include as many Jews seeking to settle in the Jewish state."

By ignoring completely the glaring difference between Australia's non-discriminatory and inclusive immigration policy and Israel's polar opposite, and focusing only on the immediate response of both countries to asylum seekers - Israel is in the process of introducing legislation allowing for the imprisonment of what it calls 'infiltrators' while Australia is proposing to "tighten the character test for those applying for refugee status" - Levin is able to conclude, incredibly: "It seems on another level - migration - Israel and Australia might have a lot in common."

The fact, studiously avoided by both Levin and, presumably, the books authors, is that the only way that Australia and Israel could possibly have anything in common in the area of immigration law and policy would be for Australia to expel the majority of its indigenous aboriginal population to surrounding countries such as New Zealand and Papua New Guinea and keep them from returning with a law allowing only for immigration into the country by non-indigenes of its choosing.

Without having read the book reviewed (I'm assuming that Levin's review accurately reflects its contents), I can only conclude that if Israeli/Australian academic cooperation results in studies which fudge the vast difference between Israel's and Australia's society and polity and con us into believing that Israel is merely another Australia on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, then it's time our academic institutions adopted the BDS strategy.

Cognitive Dissonance

Jerusalem Post journalist Ron Friedman writes about the proposed deportation of some 1200 children born to illegal foreign workers in Israel: "In a country where the word 'deportation' is laden with emotional baggage, the Israeli government is grappling with the dilemma of whether to deport the children of illegal foreign workers, ahead of a self-imposed November 1 deadline." ( jpost.com, republished in The Australian Jewish News, 23/10/09, as Labour Pains)

He quotes Ze'ev Factor from the Centre of Organisations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel: "[Israel has] a moral obligation especially in light of what happened to the Jewish people. We are talking about children who only know our country and only speak our language, and children must not be allowed to experience expulsion from their country of birth, just because of their ethnic origin. It is a lesson that is carved in our flesh."

Well said, Ze'ev. I assume that noble sentiment extends to all those Palestinian kids (and their descendents) expelled from their homeland just because of their ethnic origin in 1948?

Truthfulness?

Flicking through Falun Gong (?) fishwrapper The Epoch Times (8-21/5/09) recently, I came upon a curious article titled Foreigners in a foreign land - refugees in Israel by one, Ben Kaminsky.

It was about African refugees (Sudanese, Eritrean, Congolese etc) supposedly trying to enter Israel via Egypt because, according to the author, "Israel for them is a promised land, the only land in the area in which they feel they can be saved." Blimey! To reach said "promised land," these refugees are described as having run a gauntlet of bullets, beatings and arrests (followed by repatriation to their countries of origin) courtesy of the Egyptian police. And those that actually made it to the "promised land"? Well, Kaminsky's a little more cryptic here: "The Israeli authorities seemingly fear a rising tide of asylum seekers getting into Israel and therefore are making things hard on the refugees." Seemingly fear? At which point, nagging questions start to intrude: Assuming the allegations made about the Egyptian police are true, has Israel worked out some sort of hard cop/soft cop routine with the Egyptians? And what, exactly, is meant by the statement that Israeli authorities are "making things hard on" the refugees?

Kaminsky goes on to describe "a special event that took place in a Tel Aviv Park," where "human rights activists held a holiday feast for the African refugees and used this opportunity to show their support and to raise awareness of the refugees' situation." Hm, this is getting decidedly surreal. The human and political rights of Palestinians are being trampled on a daily basis, but Israeli "human rights activists" are flocking to a park to "support" and "raise awareness" of the situation of African refugees in Israel.

And who are these "human rights activists"? Well, there's Yael Dayan, the "head of the Tel Aviv City Council... in charge of the refugees issue in the municipality." Correct - daughter of Moshe (Mad Dog*) Dayan. She's quoted as saying that the goal of the event is to "show the love we have also to people who are not Jewish and not Israeli, and it is kind of embracing the thoughts of freedom and liberty which this holiday [Passover] represents." There are "volunteers" from something described as "the Israel Activists movement," comprised of young Jews from abroad come "to learn about Israel and to volunteer." One such is even reported to have made a movie about the refugees. He says, "Without the respect for human rights, Zionism has the potential of being an evil ideology." Hello? Human rights? Zionism has always been about asserting alleged Jewish tribal rights at the expense of Palestinian human and political rights. Given that, its full potential for evil was realised back in 1948 and has been in our faces ever since. Another "activist," David Davies of London, waxes lyrical: "Human rights are the most imortant. I think this is the obligation of Israel as a country, which is virtually composed of refugees, to stand for the rights of refugees and support them in the international community - both for these refugees and for the refugees in the entire world." This is gob-smacking stuff. Israel, creator of a nation of refugees scattered throughout the Middle East and around the world, is now to be the champion of all refugees?

["Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." - Moshe Dayan]

Who are these guys? What is this "Israel Activists movement"? Have sufficient numbers of young Jews, both Israeli and non-Israeli, removed their Zionist blinkers and begun gravitating towards the genuine activism of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to warrant a Zionist response dubbed the 'Israel Activism movement'? Or is Mr Kaminsky just being creative? Google 'Israel Activists movement' and you draw a blank - except in relation to two sites: theepochtimes.com, where the Kaminsky piece surfaces with the date April 16 and Kaminsky is described as "Epoch Times Staff;" and zionism-israel.com (described as the weblog of the Zionism-Israel Center), which has posted the Kaminsky article. At theepochtimes.com you can view some shots of the Tel Aviv "holiday feast," including one of Yael Dayan and a blue banner with the words Out of Egypt, A Seder for Refugee Rights, Happy Pesach, Holiday of Freedom.

Is the Israel Activists movement merely Zionist astroturf? Are the Africans in the photos merely extras in an Israeli PR stunt? What's really going on with African refugees in Israel? A little googling reveals a starkly different picture to Kaminsky's rosy sketch:

Here's part of a Haaretz report from October 2007: "Concern is growing about the well-being of the 48 African refugees, most of them Sudanese, who have been unaccounted for since they were detained by Egyptian security forces more than 2 months ago after being deported by the IDF to Sinai." (UN official: 48 African refugees missing since deported by IDF, Ben Lynfield, 28/10/07) Deported by Israel, the Promised Land? Blimey! And we'd been led to believe that only the Egyptians did that? "Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said repeatedly that he has assurances from Mubarak that deportees would not be mistreated or sent back to Sudan... Olmert has not provided proof of this and Egypt has not confirmed the existance of such an agreement." (ibid) What, the Promised Land of the refugees conniving with the Egyptian devil to get rid of them? Who'd have thought? But it gets worse.

In March 2008, Lynfield reported that Olmert "suggested... that the army open fire on African refugees crossing into Israel to stem what he depicted as a 'tsunami' of asylum seekers threatening the Jewish state's future." (Refugees & the Jewish question, southjerusalem.com, 25/3/08) Oh dear! How could Kaminsky have missed that?

And here's Lynfield in September 2008 quoting a Reuters report: "Israel has forcibly returned to Egypt dozens of African migrants who had slipped into the Jewish state, and rights activists say they fear some are refugees who risk torture if Egypt sends them home as expected... The Israeli returns come as Egypt is under scrutiny by rights groups over its deportations of up to 1,200 Eritrean asylum seekers in June. 'It's clearly a flagrant violation of international law', Hossam Bahgat, head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said of the Israeli move... Egypt for years tolerated tens of thousands of Africans migrants on its territory, but its attitude soured in recent months after it came under pressure to halt a rising flow of Africans across the sensitive Sinai border with Israel." (Throwing refugees to the sharks, selfidemocracy.org, 14/9/08) Under pressure? From whom? Ay, that's the question.

And what's Falun Gong's motto? Ah, yes, Truthfulness, Benevolence & Forbearance.