Anatomy of a Beat-Up

*Sigh* - yet another Christian Kerr EXCLUSIVE in the Australian:

The headline: ANU faces rage over conference

Really? It must be a pretty outrageous conference then:

"Australian National University officials have gone to ground in the face of Jewish community outrage for hosting Middle East hardliners at a Human Rights in Palestine conference this week."

Right.

So a conference on Palestinian rights is ipso facto "outrageous," and anyone speaking at it is ipso facto a "hardliner." (Definitions courtesy of the "Jewish community," aka the Executive Council of Australian Jewry's Peter Wertheim, and the Australian Union of Jewish Students' Dean Sherr.)

Now if the conference were about human rights in Burma or Tibet, say, it would no doubt be seen as being to the university's credit, but the very fact that the ANU is hosting a conference on Palestinian human rights apparently constitutes a damning indictment of the institution:

"The ANU was included in the international top 30 institutions in the QS World University Rankings released yesterday, but the conference has led to questions being asked about the university's credibility."

And who is asking the questions?

Now for those "hardliners" and their 'crimes'. (Beware, you are about to enter a Zionist twilight zone of false allegations, smear tactics and innuendo.):

There's Richard Falk, professor of international law at Princeton University and the UN's special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, "who was publicly rebuked by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon in 2011 for 'preposterous' remarks questioning whether the September 11 terror attacks were orchestrated by the US government."

Falk, of course, has made no such claim. His crime  - apart from standing up for Palestinian rights - seems to consist of being sufficiently open-minded to have once raised the idea of an independent investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

(Incidentally, if it's "preposterous" you want, look no further than Ban - Is anyone home? - Ki-moon: "United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with students at the UN headquarters in Jerusalem on Friday afternoon, and admitted that his organisation was biased against Israel. Responding to a student who said Israelis felt their country was discriminated against in the international organisation, Ban confirmed that there was a biased attitude towards the Israeli people and Israeli government, stressing that it was 'an unfortunate situation'." (UN chief admits bias against Israel, Omri Efraim, ynetnews.com, 16/8/13))

There's Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi of Sydney Peace Prize (2003) fame, "who was among a few PLO members who in 1996 voted not to remove clauses in the PLO charter calling for Israel's destruction." (That, BTW, is a Zionist distortion of the reference, in Article 15 of the now defunct 1968 Palestinian National Charter, to the need to "eliminate Zionism in Palestine." Eliminating Zionism means no more and no less than dismantling Israel's system of apartheid legislation, which condemns Israeli Palestinians to second class citizenship and Palestinian refugees to eternal exile.)

The simple fact of the matter here is that not one Israeli government has ever lifted a finger to amend any of Israel's discriminatory and exclusionary (that is, anti-Palestinian) laws and practices.

Finally, there's Israeli activist Jeff Halper, who allegedly "claimed in 2011 that Israel has developed 'spectral dust' it could spray over wide areas of land, every grain of which was a sensor programmed with a person's DNA to track, locate and kill that individual."

I'm sorry, I've given up on this one. Trying to track it down to any credible source is about as fruitful as the search for Saddam Hussein's mythical people-shredder.

Having marshaled the suspects and their alleged crimes, judge and jury in the form of Zionist apologist Wertheim and footie fanatic* Sherr (aka 'the Jewish community') are duly wheeled in to deliver the guilty verdict:

Wertheim: "A conference that features fringe conspiracy theorists and ideologues and omits recognised scholars in the field has no academic credibility. It is appalling that one of our top universities, the ANU, seems no longer to understand the difference between genuine scholarship and political advocacy."

Sherr: "It is highly concerning to see someone with such a history of anti-Semitic slurs invited on to [sic] Australian university campuses. We repeatedly come up against extreme anti-Israel groups on campus that blur the line between attacking Israel and attacking Jews. Our fear is Falk will only inflame this."

"Sigh" - only in Murdoch's Australian...

[*Check out his tweets.]

Sheridan in Love 2

"This question of language is of the first order of importance. The ancient Chinese sage Confucius, when asked what would be the main political reform he would carry out if he achieved state power, replied: 'It would certainly be to rectify the names'." (Israeli leaders mislabelled by foes, Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 9/4/09)

Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian and Israel's number one spruiker in the Australian mainstream media, is long on quoting Confucius, but short on following his advice. Sheridan is adamant that his beloved Israel, warts & all, is a 'democracy' as we know it: "The Israel I know is a Western democracy... Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East... the only society in the Middle East with all the institutions of democracy: a media that reveals all its secrets, a free parliament, independent courts, independent universities and the rest." (Israel still looks good, warts & all, The Australian Literary Review, 6/5/09)

Contemporary Israeli sage, Jeff Halper, begs to differ. Here's his rectification: "Israel presents itself as a Western democracy (the 'only democracy in the Middle East') and, on the surface, it resembles one. In fact, it is something quite different, an ethnocracy based on an Eastern European tribal nationalism. An ethnocracy is the opposite of a democracy, although it might incorporate some elements of democracy such as universal citizenship and elections. It arises when one particular group... seizes control of the government and armed forces in order to enforce a regime of exclusive privilege over other groups in what is in fact a multi-ethnic or multi-religious society. Ethnocracy, or ethno-nationalism, privileges ethnos over demos, whereby one's ethnic affiliation, be it defined by race, descent, religion, language or national origin, takes precedence over citizenship in determining to whom a country actually 'belongs'. Israel is referred to explicitly by its political leaders as a 'Jewish democracy'... If the dominant group constitutes as large a majority* as do the Jews of Israel (between 70% and 75%), there is little need for repressive measures to enforce ethnic domination, so a democratic facade can be maintained. Hence the formal rights of citizenship bestowed upon the 'Israeli Arabs'... But in every aspect of Israeli life, the ethnos takes precedence over the state or civil society. Most obvious are the symbols that represent the state. The very name of the country denotes its belonging to the Jews, as do the exclusively Jewish motifs on our flag and the exclusively Jewish content of our national anthem... The 'story' of Israel is that of the official Zionist narrative, with no other viewpoints permitted or legitimized... More serious, however, are the structural inequalities inherent in any ethnocracy. Arabs may sit in the parliament but no government decision is considered legitimate unless it enjoys a 'Jewish majority' - that is, the support of the majority of Jews in the Parliament rather than a parliamentary majority that requires Arab votes... The Law of Return that determines who can immigrate to Israel applies only to Jews. I immigrated from Minnesota and received citizenship automatically; a Palestinian who was born here but lived for an extensive time outside is denied citizenship and the right to return. And then there is the land issue**, discrimination in housing and education which are strictly segregated... There is not even a civil mechanism by which Jewish, Christian and Muslim citizens of Israel can marry each other, since personal staus - citizenship, marriage, death, inheritance - is regulated by religious and not civil law." (An Israeli in Palestine, 2008, pp 75-76)

[*As I've pointed out before, the only reason why Israel enjoys this large Jewish majority is because the then non-Jewish majority was driven out in 1948. Their return, resisted tooth and nail by all Israeli governments since, would create a whole new ball-game. **Israel's so-called Israeli Arabs, the remnant who managed to avoid being driven out in 1948, are denied access to the 93% of the land area of pre-67 Israel which is reserved exclusively for Israeli Jews.]

Stay tuned for Sheridan in Love 3.

The SMH Gets Real (At Last)

The Bulldozing Entity has been illegally bulldozing Palestinian homes for as long as I can remember. One hundred and seventy-nine allegedly 'illegally built' Palestinian homes are currently awaiting that fate in illegally BE-occupied & illegally BE- annexed Arab East Jerusalem. (See Ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem, Marcy Newman, electronicintifada.net, 10/3/09) We even have the case of a Palestinian resident who, in the certain knowledge that his home is about to be illegally bulldozed by the Bulldozing Entity, has asked a friend to do it for a fraction of the $20,000 demolition fee charged by the Entity. (See Facing Israeli demolition, Palestinian razes his home, Mohammad Assadi, wire.antiwar.com, 6/3/09)

Retired Israeli anthropology professor and co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) Jeff Halper is now in Sydney blowing the whistle on such, and related, bastardry. And the usual suspects are upset: Robert Magid, owner and publisher of The Australian Jewish News, has pulled an ad for a talk by Halper in a Sydney synagogue because "I don't like the crowd who are bringing him out... They use their Judaism to bash other Jews and issues associated with the Jewish community" (Academic's visit divides Jewish groups, Andrew West, Sydney Morning Herald, 12/3/09). The "crowd," being Jews Against the Occupation, Independent Australian Jewish Voices, and the Coalition for Justice & Peace in Palestine. And now it seems even the synagogue crowd have developed cold feet: "We have a deep committment to free speech... but [some] members were very worried about what the professor might say," said a synagogue source (ibid).

That Herald report was followed next day by a somewhat exasperated editorial (With friends like these...) which dared to cast doubt on Magid's motives in pulling the ad: "Maybe it's because criticism that can't be easily shrugged off as ill-informed or even as anti-Semitic is harder to answer." The editorial then topped that by linking Magid's move to the US Israel lobby's mugging of NIC nominee Chas Freeman and drawing a rare conclusion of some relevance:- "Unlike the previous failed Obama appointments, the problems with Mr Freeman clearly stem from his outspoken, independent views rather than tax arrears, suspected abuse of office or conflicts of interest. His withdrawal augurs badly for Mr Obama's administration as it shapes up to dealing with a new Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu. As Mr Freeman has bitterly pointed out, many of Israel's overseas supporters identify Israel with one faction of its politics, meaning Mr Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party. That hardly speaks to Israel's great strengths. It will only make many think twice about the shrill messages about Iran's nuclear threat, Shiite extremism or the danger of even attending the forthcoming Durban Review Conference on racism and discrimination... "

The carry-on over Jeff Halper's visit has been comprehensively dealt with by Australian Jewish anti-Zionist journalist and blogger Antony Loewenstein. Suffice it for me to focus in the rest of this post on just two matters arising: the Herald's flawed framing of its otherwise highly relevant editorial, and the issue of what's eating Robert Magid.

The Herald has adopted the pc convention that before you can venture a criticism of the Bulldozing Entity, you've first got to praise it to the skies. Hence the opening sentence: "Israel is a democracy." Bulldust! It's actually a country under the control of a minority Jewish supremacist regime. Think about it. Four to five million of its potential citizens, the descendents of Palestinian Arabs ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces under cover of war in 1948, live, disenfranchised and stateless, outside its borders. The Bulldozing Entity has defied international law now for over 60 years by vetoing their return. Over one million of the Entity's current population of around 7 million are Palestinian Arabs, the descendents of those who escaped the ethnic cleansing of 1948. When the Bulldozing Entity allows the 4-5 million Palestinian refugees to return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled in 1948, and grants them full citizenship rights, including the right to vote, then and only then will talk about the Entity being a democracy cease to ring hollow.

As for Mr Magid, remember the "crowd" he doesn't like? Jews in various stages of bucking Zionist orthodoxy? Those who "use their Judaism to bash other Jews"? Yes? Well, like all dyed in the wool Zionists, he can't bear Jews who don't swallow political Zionism hook, line & sinker, including, I've no doubt, Jeff Halper.

In an extraordinary obituary on the late British plawright Harold Pinter published in his paper on January 23, Magid vents his Zionist spleen at one of that 'dreadful' "crowd". The following extracts reveal infinitely more of the suffocating tribal madness which is Zionism than they do of Pinter:-

"Later in the [Charlie] Rose [2006] interview, Pinter stated: 'I am speaking as a Jew and I deplore what Israel is doing. I deplore the continual harassment of the Palestinians... who are stopped by Israeli soldiers, who are actually [he pauses and screws up his face] thugs'. Pinter should have applied his rich imagination to envisage his only son, straight out of high school, scared, stationed at a checkpoint, evaluating whether the woman before him was really pregnant, or wearing a suicide vest... [H]is website didn't contain a trace of his Jewishness, and this was reflected in Pinter's life - until it came to Israel-bashing. Then surprisingly, he found his Jewish soul. He joined Independent Jewish Voices and underwent a metamorphosis where he found a Jewish voice within a British gentleman's body. And with this voice, he proclaimed, 'Israel's injustice to the Palestinians was an outrage' and 'the central factor in world unrest'. What do we make of this man, who was born a Jew, yet only displayed hatred and contempt for his own?... The tragedy of Pinter's life was that he was a great talent who provided insights into human nature. But his final betrayal, after a life denying his Jewish ancestry, was to define himself as a Jew in order to attack his fellow Jews. This transformation from Lear to Iago is worthy of a play."

IOW, Jews who are not Zionists are traitors to the cause.