Liberal Priorities

Washington Examiner @dcexaminer
Alan Dershowitz on defending Trump: "My liberal friends don't invite me to dinner anymore." washex.am/2CcMPr

Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal Dec 27
Calling for shoving needles under the fingernails of crime suspects and razing entire Palestinian villages never cost him a liberal dinner invite. Only defending Trump did. #resist

First the Massacre, Then the Lies

"Initial autopsy findings showed a Palestinian boy [Mohammed Khadeir] found dead after being kidnapped in East Jerusalem was burned alive... Mohammed's cousin Tariq Khadeir... was savagely beaten on Thursday by what human rights groups said were undercover Israeli officers... Spokesman for the Israel police Micky Rosenfeld said a video circulated by the rights group was 'edited and biased'... he said Tariq was one of 6 Palestinians arrested - three of them carrying knives - after a clash in which 15 officers were injured when 'hundreds of rioters, many of them masked, hurled at the forces pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, fireworks and stones'." (Palestinian boy was burned alive, autopsy suggests, Jodi Rudoren, New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 6/7/14)

Alert readers will find Rosenfeld's lies here familiar.

That's because they come from the same Israeli lie machine wheeled out when another group of uniformed Israeli thugs swung into action on the night of May 30, 2010, shooting up those on board the Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship Mavi Marmara.

Some extracts from Max Blumenthal's account of how the Israelis spun that massacre, from his must-read book Goliath: Fear & Loathing in Greater Israel (2013):

"As soon as the Israelis gained control of the Marmara, they rushed to the ship's kitchen and gathered all the knives they could find. Then they laid them out beside keffiyehs, Qurans, and any object that might convince the average Western news consumer that the flotilla was in fact a covert terrorist convoy...

"Having stockaded the flotilla activists, the Israelis proceeded to the next phase of their mission, robbing passengers - including credentialed journalists - of their cameras, laptops, and recording equipment... The Israelis intended to exploit the footage they had seized in order to establish a narrative that portrayed themselves as the true victims. SD cards and videotapes containing footage shot by passengers... were thrown in a giant junk heap, ensuring that the most damning and disturbing records of the attack would never see the light of day... The 5-second clip of what Israelis came to refer to simply as 'The Lynch' was culled from the trove of footage the IDF had stolen from the flotilla activists and journalists. Heavily edited over the course of 2 days, the clip was the only piece of footage that seemed to support the army's line. It was broadcast around the clock on the country's 3 main news channels, branding into the Israeli public's mind a sense that the commandos who stormed the MM had been unfairly and savagely abused by a band of terrorists and were forced to open fire just to survive.

"To complement this clip, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit pumped out buckshot of unsourced press releases to the national press corps insinuating that the flotilla was in fact an al-Qaeda-linked armada captained by anti-Semites. In almost every case, reputable military correspondents and network anchors diligently reproduced the press releases as news with only the most minor alterations...

"Two days later, the Spokesperson's Unit released an audio clip purporting to consist of transmissions between the MM and a naval warship. 'Go back to Auschwitz!' a Marmara passenger shouted to the Israeli naval captain, according to the IDF. YNet and Haaretz reported on and reproduced the audio clip without investigating its authenticity. Not only did the anti-Semitic slur sound like a mentally disturbed teenager making a prank call, but had reporters performed a cursory search of the IDF Spokesperson's Unit website they would have found a longer clip released on May 31 that featured a dramatically different exchange between the Israeli Navy and the MM with no mention of Auschwitz. Further, the voice of flotilla organizer Huwaida Arraf was featured in the 'Auschwitz' clip, yet Arraf was not aboard the Marmara... It seemed the army had fabricated the clip in order to inject the Holocaust into coverage of the flotilla raid, thereby inflaming the Israeli public with the notion that the whole world was indeed against them - and through no fault of their government.

"On my blog, I pointed out the discrepancies in the IDF's footage and raised the question of doctoring. The next day, the IDF conceded that it had, in fact, doctored the footage, releasing a 'clarification' and a new clip claiming to consist of the 'full' exchange between the navy and the flotilla..." (pp 105-10)

There's more in Goliathon the above, but I'm sure you've got the idea. (I might add, while I'm at it, that if you're interested in the psychopathology behind Mohammed Khadeir's immolation while still alive, and the radical re-arranging of his cousin Tariq's face, then Goliath's the book for you.)

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...

The Native Police

Zionist propagandists today (it wasn't always the case) just hate being described as settler-colonialists.

They prefer to paint themselves as an indigenous 'people' or 'nation', who, having been evicted from their Palestinian homeland by the Romans nigh on 2000 years ago, just sat around moping until, under the banner of political Zionism, they were able to 'return'.

OK, it's a great yarn, but sadly, that's all it is.

As much as Zionists like to pretend that theirs is a movement for national self-determination, rather than its opposite, just another, albeit highly creative, white European colonizing movement, there are simply too many tell-tale signs for the settler-colonial reality to be glossed over.

Like this, for example:

"Known popularly as the Magav, the Israeli Border Police evolved in part from an army division created in the wake of the state's foundation for the explicit purpose of capturing and deporting Palestinian refugees who had slipped into their former villages to reunite with family and spouses. Named the Minorities Unit, the division was comprised mostly of deeply impoverished young men recruited from Druze villages in the north and Bedouin Arab enclaves in the south. Their recruitment of non-Palestinian Arab subgroups served David Ben Gurion's divide-and-conquer strategy, which he dubbed, 'fragmentation'. As one Israeli official said, the Minorities Unit formed 'the sharp blade of a knife to stab in the back of Arab unity'." (Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel, Max Blumenthal, 2013, p 255)

And here's the same phenomenon closer to home:

"The frontier violence inflicted upon Aboriginal people in Queensland was a refinement of practices in southern colonies and a tradition of violence migrated north with landseekers. Colonialism is inherently violent. Moreover, the concept of using Indigenous troops to further colonisation and suppress resistance was not new. Like the British, other conquerors had found that Native forces enjoyed a number of advantages as imperial soldiers and frontier guards. Indigenous people were familiar with local terrain, customs and languages, and they had an ability to survive off the land without the catastrophic medical problems that affected invading armies and expeditions... By the time the British colonised Australia, several practices were standard. The Native Police, like other armed colonial formations based on the use of Indigenous recruits, took advantage of the fact that Native people had no loyalties to other Indigenous groups. Indeed, in some cases they were sworn enemies, and fought as much in their own self-interest as for other reasons. It has been argued that the search for a Native power base is an essential step in many colonial annexations. The concept of divide and rule, implicit in the recruitment of Indigenous troopers, shows how the British had learned to adapt traditional Indigenous enmity to their advantage." (The Secret War: A True History of Queensland's Native Police, Jonathan Richards, 2008, p 10)

Same old, same old.

'Improving the Lives of All Israelis, Jewish or Not'

"While not without fault, Israel has proven its long-term commitment to democracy and liberty and to improving the lives of all Israelis, whether Jewish or not." (Janet Albrechtsen, It is time for Middle East to police its own region, The Australian, 29/1/14)

Not!

Clearly, Planet Janet hasn't read Max Blumenthal's must-read Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel (2013):

"In the eyes of Palestinians, there are few symbols of Israel's occupation more recognizable than the Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer. Custom-fitted with explosive-resistant armor, the 49-ton tractor was the instrument responsible for Rachel Corrie's death and the demolition of more than 1500 civilian homes in Rafah between the years 2000 and 2005. Since the dawn of the occupation in 1967, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), the State of Israel has destroyed well over 26,000 Palestinian homes. Most of these demolitions occurred in and around occupied East Jerusalem and in the Gaza Strip, but also in places such as the Jenin Refugee Camp, where a drunken bulldozer pilot nicknamed 'Kurdi Bear' reduced densely populated neighborhoods to a canyon of doom, boasting that he 'left [Jenin's] residents with a football stadium so they could play.'

"As the state stepped up its campaign of 'Judaization' under the watch of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian neighborhoods in mixed Israeli cities were becoming acquainted with the US-manufactured Caterpillar-D9 as well. Fifteen minutes east of Tel Aviv, in the Lod Ghetto, where Palestinian citizens lived surrounded by lower-class Jewish communities, I visited a de facto refugee camp filled with the residents of an entire neighborhood that had been leveled to the ground the night before.

"On December 13, 2010, 17-year-old Hamza Abu Eid was taken out of class at his high school in Lod and summoned to the principal's office. 'The Israelis are destroying your house right now,' the principal told him. 'It is best that you remain here. The last thing we want is for you to have a confrontation with a police officer.'

"But Abu Eid could not stay. He rushed to his family's house, hoping to salvage whatever belongings he could before the bulldozers from the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) rumbled through. When he arrived it was too late. The bulldozers had destroyed virtually everything - all seven homes belonging to the Abu Eid family were reduced to rubble. A black-masked Israeli riot police officer grabbed Hamza, restraining him while the bulldozers finished their work and preventing him from attempting to save his belongings. Three refrigerators and a TV set were among the appliances that Hamza's family lost in the destruction.

"In the end, 74 people were left homeless - including 54 children - and were forced to sleep under the open sky during the coldest period of the year. No government social worker arrived with assistance, nor did the state offer any temporary aid. The families gathered whatever belongings they could, pitching tents like so many Palestinian refugees have done in the past, and placing a sign over their land plot. It read, 'Abu Eid Refugee Camp.'

"When I arrived at the encampment, the area looked like Rafah after Israeli operations during the Second Intifada, or the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza after Operation Cast Lead. Unlike these occupied areas, however, the Abu Eid camp was located only 15 kilometers from Tel Aviv in the Abu Toq neighborhood of Lod. All of Lod's Palestinian residents are citizens of Israel, but they are treated by the state like foreign aliens, or worse, as an existential threat to the survival of Zionism.

"For years, the Abu Eid family applied for permits to allow them to renovate their homes to accommodate their growing family. But the state zoned their neighborhood as agricultural land and refused their requests (applications for renovation and building permits are almost always denied to the Arabs inside Israel). Finally, the state ordered them to seek residency elsewhere because their homes were slated for demolition.

"Directly beside the Abu Eid refugee camp, building has begun on a yeshiva directed by an Orthodox rabbi from the United States named Yaakov Saban. And plans were authorized to build a road directly through the center of the neighborhood. Pressure on the Palestinian Israelis of Lod to leave intensified day by day, thanks to the far-right takeover of the city.

"Widespread corruption had prompted the collapse of the elected municipality, enabling the Israeli Ministry of the Interior to install an emergency government consisting of hand-picked military officials. With the Ministry of the Interior under the control of Eli Yishai, who led the right-wing religious Shas Party, the new municipality became a means for meting out the wrath of anti-Arab populists against the local Arab population. 'They are poor in culture, poor in behavior. No ambition,' the mayor of Ramle, a neighboring city, said of the Palestinians of Lod.

"By the time the Abu Eid family's homes were demolished, as many as 30 demolition orders hovered over the Arab residents of Lod. The Arabs of Lod were not only denied the right to renovate their own houses, they also claimed they were forbidden as Arabs from living in a giant, new public housing complex built in the heart of the city. Thus they were confined to an overcrowded ghetto doomed by state plans that prioritized Judaization.

"I arrived at the Abu Eid camp on January 25, 2010, to observe a protest by Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity, a national movement that grew out of the protests against East Jerusalem evictions of Palestinian families, and which was establishing a presence in mixed cities around Israel, as well as in the most threatened areas of the West Bank. Amiel Vardi, a veteran activist, explained to me, 'For years I've been trying to say, 'Don't think the occupation will stop at the Green Line.' Now we see it's not stopping. They're using the same methods with the settlements, with the courts, and with the Shabak [Shin Bet] on both sides of the Green Line. Go to the Abu Eid camp in Lod or to Al-Arakib [a repeatedly demolished Bedouin village in the Negev], and there's absolutely no difference from what I see in the Hebron Hills.'

"I entered the remains of the Abu Eid family dwellings at the end of Lod's Helen Keller Boulevard, finding small groups of grizzled men seated around open fires and sipping tea, while small children clambered in and out of tents erected beside piles of rubble, debris, and shattered home appliances. A forlorn-looking middle-aged man named Riyadh Abu Eid met me at the entrance and took me into the makeshift camp.

"'This place was here before 1948,' he said. 'They destroyed it because they said we had no permit. But we can't get permits because we are '48 Arabs. We asked many times and were denied every time. They say we are terrorists. But look around - this is the real terror. Throwing children into the street on the coldest day of the year - that is terror.'

"According to Riyadh Abu Eid, many children from camp were unable to attend school because they could not concentrate. A 9-year-old girl who was especially traumatized had refused to leave her bed for days. Riyadh did not try to conceal his desperation. 'We do not feel safe here,' he said. 'We want to ask the United nations and Obama for international protection from a fascist government that has proven capable of massacring the unarmed.' He added, 'The days of 1948 have come again'." (pp 165-67)

Buy This 'Vicious Anti-Israel Screed' NOW!

To warm you up here's Australia's leading Zionist comedian, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan:

"[T]he Israel I know is mostly secular, raucously, almost wildly democratic, has a vibrant left wing, having founded in the kibbutz movement one of the only successful experiments in socialism in human history. It is intellectually disputatious; any two Israelis will have three opinions and be happy to argue them to a lamp post. It is multi-ethnic, there is a great stress on human solidarity, there is due process. And I've never heard an Israeli speak casually about the value of Palestinian life." (Israel still looks good, warts & all, The Australian Literary Review, 6/5/09)

Now once you've picked yourself up off the floor, read this extract from Chapter 13 - Cut Off from the Tribe - of Max Blumenthal's new book Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel. The usual suspects are describing it as a "vicious anti-Israel screed" so you know it's good value:

"Over a plate of surprisingly decent bean curd sauce at the Chinese restaurant - one of only a handful I knew in [Tel Aviv] - [David] Sheen recalled how he arrived in Israel in 1999 from a solidly middle class, ultra-Zionist family from Toronto, Canada. At age 25, he was brimming with excitement about the earthy communal dream that awaited him: 'I saw Israel entirely through the frame of a Zionist education. I grew up in a very heavily Jewish environment, in a Jewish neighborhood, a Jewish school, synagogue - everything. The school was Zionist, and I was heavily immersed in the idea that we need Israel so there won't be another Holocaust, and that Israel needs us because it needs to be built up - it's surrounded with enemies so it needs our help to build itself. So when I first arrived in Israel I was thinking about the collective, and the concept of the Jewish people represented the strongest collective.'

"Though Sheen was heavily immersed in the tribalistic culture of Zionism, he had also cultivated strong leftist views through his participation in anti-globalization protests in Toronto. 'With every other issue besides Israel, I was on the left side of the spectrum,' he said. 'I was a PEP - a Progressive Except for Palestine.' Within a month of arriving in Israel, that began to change. He realized that everything he had known about Israelis and Palestinians was a fantasy cultivated through years of heavy indoctrination. His view of the occupation as a necessary, albeit unpleasant security measure was shattered after he spent long hours chatting with Palestinian workers who woke up at 4am each morning to slip into Israel from Nablus to work construction jobs for meager pay. 'Once I saw how the occupation created a permanent underclass and that it existed to promote exploitation - just by realizing that I broke with the PEP mentality.'

"Sheen's contact with actual Israelis undermined his idealized vision of the Zionist collective. 'Israelis were not exactly trying to pull together in the name of the Jewish people like I thought,' he said. 'It's a dog-eat-dog shark pool where you've got to swim to survive, and nobody has any idea of what civility means. People are manipulative and exploitative without any moral compunction or sense that there's anything wrong with that. They're not embarrassed about taking advantage of other people.'

"Alienated by the aggressive capitalism that was consuming urban life in Israel, Sheen retreated to a kibbutz in the Negev Desert called Kibbutz Samar. At first he thought he had finally found the slow-paced communal lifestyle he had been seeking. But then he peered beneath the kibbutz's socialist veneer: 'What broke me was they got workers from Thailand to work on the kibbutz for next to nothing,' Sheen recounted. 'I realized it wasn't really socialism they were practicing. It was socialism for Jews only. I grew up in multicultural Toronto where diversity was a positive thing. So it went against my values, and I tried to convince the kibbutz not to do this, to let the Thai workers live in normal apartments like everyone else - don't stick 6 of them in a fucking closet. Treat them like normal humans. Very few people even saw it as an issue worth discussing, let alone dealing with. They didn't see them as deserving of basic standards of living. They said, 'They're making more here than they would back in their country.' So that makes it okay? I wanted to get away from capitalism and away from exploitation, but I saw that kibbutz life was just that - it was segregationist Zionism. So I left.'

"In 2006, Israeli forces simultaneously carpet-bombed the Gaza Strip and Southern Lebanon. Israel blanketed the Strip with more than 6,000 artillery shells and missiles, deliberately destroyed Gaza's main power plant, then bombed the access roads to prevent the plant from being repaired. Within the span of about two months, the army had killed at least 202 civilians including 44 children in an operation billed to Israelis as a search for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. In Southern Lebanon, Israeli bombing turned 800,000 Lebanese citizens - over a quarter of the country's population - into refugees while killing more than 1,100 civilians, including at least 300 children. Summarizing the views of the Israeli military leadership at the time, columnist Yaron London, one of the most prominent television journalists in the country, wrote, 'There is no longer any need for complicated distinctions... In practical terms, the Palestinians in Gaza are all [Hamas leader] Khaled Meshal, the Lebanese are all [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah, and the Iranians are all [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad.'

"Indignant at the disproportionate violence Israel had unleashed against civilians, Sheen joined up with the small but feisty bands of Israeli radical leftists who had dedicated themselves to direct action against their country's militaristic policies. During a gay pride rally in Tel Aviv called 'Queeruption', Sheen and a group of friends held signs reading, 'Stop the bombing.' They were immediately set upon by riot police who beat them with billyclubs before dragging them away.

"'I was shocked,' Sheen remarked. 'Nowadays everyone knows the police are brutal, but at the time I still couldn't believe that Israeli police would attack other Jews - and for simply holding signs.' At another anti-war protest in Tel Aviv, a prim-looking waitress burst through the door of a nearby restaurant and hurled a glass at the protesters. 'I watched that glass hit the ground and shatter. I can still hear the sound. It was when I realized that even in the heart of liberal Tel Aviv there is a seething hatred for anyone with humanistic values,' Sheen said.

"At the time, Sheen was living on a moshav (a collective farm) near the Gaza border. From his home, he listened to the thundering sound of bombs falling on Gaza all day and all night. 'The ground was literally shaking underneath my feet,' he recalled. Sheen ventured into town filled with revulsion at the shelling of Gaza. 'When I told people at the supermarket what I thought of the bombing, they would all say, 'What do you care? It's not going to hit you, it's hitting them.' I said back, 'It's hitting actual people. Doesn't that matter to you?' And they would get enraged and say, 'What are you, a fucking leftist? You don't care about the Jews.' That's when I realized that in Israel, you're either in favor of any level of violence unleashed on those people, no matter who they were, or if you're against it, you're with the terrorists. I was shocked that that attitude was so mainstream.'

"Sheen went on: 'To come out against these wars on civilians - you were cut off. You were not part of the tribe. You were not part of the Jewish people. You were alone. Once you have a personal experience like that, it etches those beliefs into your soul'." (pp 66-68)

Now do yourself a favour and go out and buy it!

The New Face of Multiculturalism in NSW

Meet the new chairman of the NSW Community Relations Commission, the state's promoter of multiculturalism:

"Mr [Vic] Alhadeff said he felt he had 'graduated' to the chairmanship after spending his formative years in Africa. 'I would have swastikas painted on my locker as a Jewish kid at school in Zimbabwe," he said. Mr Alhadeff said schoolyard racism, the death of his grandparents in the Holocaust and his work as a newspaperman in apartheid-era South Africa helped shape his view of multiculturalism. 'To this day I have this passion to promote respect for every person irrespective of the colour of their skin, the accent they may have, the language they speak, the faith they belong to, the culture which they represent,' he said." (Multicultural body gets new chairman, The Australian, 18/12/13)

On the face of it, no one could possibly quarrel with such an appointment. Judging from the above, Alhadeff appears eminently qualified to step into the shoes of his predecessor, Stepan Kerkyasharian.

The problem is that we're not getting the full story here. And that's because Alhadeff has neglected to mention that he's also a political Zionist, indeed arguably Australia's most active Israel lobbyist.

As such he's a vigorous defender of an exclusive, Jews-only ethnocracy predicated on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's indigenous Arab majority in 1948 - the very antithesis of an inclusive, non-discriminatory multiculturalism where neither ethnicity nor creed are allowed to stand in the way of citizenship.

Putting it even more simply, Alhadeff supports the reservation of Israel for Jews the world over, including himself, while millions of Palestinian refugees are prohibited from returning to their homes and lands there, forever condemned to statelessness and exile in squalid refugee camps scattered about the Middle East - for no other reason than that they are not Jewish.

Just to demonstrate how alien this concept of a Jewish ethnocracy is to multicultural societies such as the United States and Australia, consider the following revealing extract from Max Blumenthal's absolutely must-read book on contemporary Israel Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel* (2013):

"In a 2008 meeting with then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, [Tzipi] Livni emphasized Israel's rejection of the Palestinian refugees' right to return to their confiscated land and property inside Israel on the grounds that the refugees threatened Israel's Jewish character. Rice, an African-American raised in the Jim Crow American South by a pro-civil rights Baptist preacher, shuddered at the implications of Livni's statement. 'I must admit that though I understood her argument intellectually,' Rice reflected, 'it struck me as a harsh defense of the ethnic purity of the Israeli state when Tzipi said it. It was one of those conversations that shocked my sensibilities as an American. After all, the very concept of 'American' rejects ethnic or religious definitions of citizenship." (pp 25-26)

It's hard to believe, I know, but even as rabid a Zionist as our own Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan once recoiled, even if only momentarily, when faced with the stark racism of another Israeli leader:

"What makes [Avigdor] Lieberman controversial, and unacceptable to many, is his view that as well as territory, Israel should give away people, too, in particular its Muslim Arab citizens. He doesn't want to expel them exactly, just redraw some borders so that some Arab towns and villages move into a new Palestinian state nextdoor, thus making Israel a more Jewish state. The idea of excluding people on the basis of their ethnicity or religion is anathema to every liberal principle... Yet it conforms to the reality of the Middle East." (Israeli right-winger redraws the battle lines**, The Australian, 17/12/07)

The bottom line is that Alhadeff's Zionism and the mission of the CRC to promote multiculturalism in NSW are clearly incompatible. NSW Premier Baruch O'Farrell has a case to answer here.

[*Go and buy Blumenthal's new book. In fact, why not buy several copies? It'd make a great Xmas present for anyone with a brain; **How interesting that a simple Google search for this particular column of Sheridan's yields only the reference in this blog. Has it been pulled, I wonder?]