UN Santa Claus: Here you go Occupied Palestinians, here's your Christmas prezzie:
"Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;"
Occupied Palestinians (deflated): But UN Santa, we've got stacks of these already. How about something new for a change?
UN Santa Claus: Listen up, you ingrates, you're damn lucky. You only got this because the US finally coughed up for it! Now STFU, or I'll sool the PA dogs onto you:
"Recalling also the obligation under the Quartet Roadmap for the Palestinian Authority Security Forces to maintain effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantling terrorist capabilities, including the confiscation of illegal weapons,"
UN Santa Claus: Oh, and give poor old Israel a break from your constant whining, OK?
"Calls upon both parties to act on the basis of international law, including international humanitarian law, and their previous agreements and obligations, to observe calm and restraint, and to refrain from provocative actions, incitement and inflammatory rhetoric, with the aim, inter alia, of de-escalating the situation on the ground, rebuilding trust and confidence, demonstrating through policies and actions a genuine commitment to the two-State solution, and creating the conditions necessary for promoting peace;"
Showing posts with label Palestine/UN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palestine/UN. Show all posts
Sunday, December 25, 2016
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Israel's Pacific Island Sock-Puppet Sues... Israel
In his Diary of a Foreign Minister, Bob Carr wrote of his victory over the Israel first government of former prime minister Julia Gillard to register an Australia first vote in support of enhanced Palestinian status in the UN:
"The column of ten nations, die-hards, glued on Israel supporters - Micronesia and the Marshall Islands - had just been reduced by one. A message to the settlers and fanatics in Israel..." (See my 20/4/14 post The Carr Diary 12)
The other 9 die-hards for Netanyahu's Israel at the time (29/11/12) were, of course, Israel itself, the United States, Canada, Palau, Nauru, the Czech Republic and Panama.
While there's an implied swipe here by the Americanophile Carr at the US, it was obviously the absurdity (not to mention the ignominy) of Australia lining up yet again with Israel's Pacific Island sock-puppets that got to our former foreign minister.
That absurdity is underlined by the following news:
"The Marshall Islands is suing the nine countries with nuclear weapons at the International Court of Justice at the Hague, arguing they have violated their legal obligation to disarm... It argues it is justified in taking the action because of the harm it suffered as a result of the nuclear arms race. The Pacific chain of islands, including Bikini Atoll and Enewetak, was the site of 67 nuclear tests from 1946 to 1958... The Marshallese Islanders say they have been suffering serious health and environmental effects ever since. The Island republic is suing the five 'established' nuclear weapons states recognised in the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) - the US, Russia (which inherited the Soviet arsenal), China, France and the UK - as well as the three countries outside the NPT who have declared nuclear arsenals - India, Pakistan and North Korea, and the one undeclared nuclear weapons state, Israel." (Marshall Islands sues nine nuclear powers over failure to disarm, Julian Borger, theguardian.com, 24/4/14)
It'll be interesting to see how the Marshall Islands votes in the UN on Palestine/Israel-related issues from now on.
"The column of ten nations, die-hards, glued on Israel supporters - Micronesia and the Marshall Islands - had just been reduced by one. A message to the settlers and fanatics in Israel..." (See my 20/4/14 post The Carr Diary 12)
The other 9 die-hards for Netanyahu's Israel at the time (29/11/12) were, of course, Israel itself, the United States, Canada, Palau, Nauru, the Czech Republic and Panama.
While there's an implied swipe here by the Americanophile Carr at the US, it was obviously the absurdity (not to mention the ignominy) of Australia lining up yet again with Israel's Pacific Island sock-puppets that got to our former foreign minister.
That absurdity is underlined by the following news:
"The Marshall Islands is suing the nine countries with nuclear weapons at the International Court of Justice at the Hague, arguing they have violated their legal obligation to disarm... It argues it is justified in taking the action because of the harm it suffered as a result of the nuclear arms race. The Pacific chain of islands, including Bikini Atoll and Enewetak, was the site of 67 nuclear tests from 1946 to 1958... The Marshallese Islanders say they have been suffering serious health and environmental effects ever since. The Island republic is suing the five 'established' nuclear weapons states recognised in the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) - the US, Russia (which inherited the Soviet arsenal), China, France and the UK - as well as the three countries outside the NPT who have declared nuclear arsenals - India, Pakistan and North Korea, and the one undeclared nuclear weapons state, Israel." (Marshall Islands sues nine nuclear powers over failure to disarm, Julian Borger, theguardian.com, 24/4/14)
It'll be interesting to see how the Marshall Islands votes in the UN on Palestine/Israel-related issues from now on.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
The Prisoner of Zion
Two items appearing recently in the print media speak to the peculiar rigidity of the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, when it comes to the Middle East conflict, the second, significantly, composed (or approved) by Gillard herself exclusively for inclusion in the Australian Jewish News:
"Even if Gillard's forced capitulation on the UN vote on Palestine does not change votes in caucus, it will go down as a seminal episode in her prime ministership. Sources describe the cabinet discussion on the Monday night, when 10 of her cabinet ministers spoke against her position of a no vote against Palestine, as respectful. They were gobsmacked when at the end of it Gillard summed up by telling them that even though what they said was fair enough, this was not an issue for cabinet to decide, it was a question of prime ministerial prerogative. She told them she would exercise that prerogative to deliver Australia's vote against Palestine. Ministers were appalled, first, because she had failed to listen; second, that she was seemingly oblivious to the danger she faced; and, third, that there was only one view that mattered: hers." (PM's Praetorian Guards are revolting, Niki Savva, The Australian, 6/12/12)
"It's widely known that the debate within the Labor Party on how Australia should vote was a vigorous one - befitting the significance of the issue pending before the world. But it is important to distinguish between what was debated within the Labor Party and what is always accepted without debate. I am proud of my party's historic friendship with Israel. Nothing will ever change that and we will be proud and firm friends of Israel in the future." ('Our friendship with Israel is beyond debate', Julia Gillard, AJN, 7/12/12)
Is this not one of the great mysteries of Australian political life? Here is the leader of a party that has jettisoned just about every conceivable principle it ever stood for, to the extent that no one knows anymore quite what it stands for, telling two in-group audiences - not the rest of us note - that a supposed friendship with a foreign power, and not just any foreign power but a vicious, occupying apartheid state, is beyond debate.
Why this extraordinary degree of dogma, reminiscent of nothing so much as the doctrine of papal infallibility, this adamantine refusal to openly debate without fear or favour? Did Gillard climb into this ideological straitjacket unaided? What is the nature of its ties and clasps that none of our so-called intellectuals dare mention? Where is Australia's John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt?
"Even if Gillard's forced capitulation on the UN vote on Palestine does not change votes in caucus, it will go down as a seminal episode in her prime ministership. Sources describe the cabinet discussion on the Monday night, when 10 of her cabinet ministers spoke against her position of a no vote against Palestine, as respectful. They were gobsmacked when at the end of it Gillard summed up by telling them that even though what they said was fair enough, this was not an issue for cabinet to decide, it was a question of prime ministerial prerogative. She told them she would exercise that prerogative to deliver Australia's vote against Palestine. Ministers were appalled, first, because she had failed to listen; second, that she was seemingly oblivious to the danger she faced; and, third, that there was only one view that mattered: hers." (PM's Praetorian Guards are revolting, Niki Savva, The Australian, 6/12/12)
"It's widely known that the debate within the Labor Party on how Australia should vote was a vigorous one - befitting the significance of the issue pending before the world. But it is important to distinguish between what was debated within the Labor Party and what is always accepted without debate. I am proud of my party's historic friendship with Israel. Nothing will ever change that and we will be proud and firm friends of Israel in the future." ('Our friendship with Israel is beyond debate', Julia Gillard, AJN, 7/12/12)
Is this not one of the great mysteries of Australian political life? Here is the leader of a party that has jettisoned just about every conceivable principle it ever stood for, to the extent that no one knows anymore quite what it stands for, telling two in-group audiences - not the rest of us note - that a supposed friendship with a foreign power, and not just any foreign power but a vicious, occupying apartheid state, is beyond debate.
Why this extraordinary degree of dogma, reminiscent of nothing so much as the doctrine of papal infallibility, this adamantine refusal to openly debate without fear or favour? Did Gillard climb into this ideological straitjacket unaided? What is the nature of its ties and clasps that none of our so-called intellectuals dare mention? Where is Australia's John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt?
Saturday, December 8, 2012
The Fur's Flying
The Australian Government's support for the Palestinian Authority's successful push for observer status in the UNGA sure has the fur flying on the editorial/letters page of this week's Australian Jewish News (7/112/12). And it's not just the government that's come under attack:
Is this, for example, the first ever criticism of an Israeli government by the AJN's editorialist?:
"Following Israel's response [ie, more settlement building] to the Palestinian statehood bid is like watching a person cut off his nose to spite his face... Israel's response has been childish and ill thought out." (The wrong response)
And even the AJN itself is copping stick. Here, Ameinu president Johnny Baker takes umbrage at last week's front cover which featured a photograph of foreign and defence ministers Bob Carr and Stephen Smith and the 'proceed-to-the-naughty-corner-IMMEDIATELY' accusation: You've let us down:
"The provocative and ill-conceived 'You've let us down' front cover of last week's AJN will do very little to enhance the standing of the Jewish community in the public arena. It is a classic case of how not to win friends and influence people. By pointing an accusing finger at politicians who have been consistent friends and whose cardinal sin was to advocate a stance taken by many prominent Israelis, The AJN has outflanked our communal leadership in expressing its outrage... Sorry AJN, but this time you have let us down."
Of course, Terry Davis of Lindfield, NSW isn't having any of this. He's gunning instead for Bob Carr, the bloke who dared to move the ALP from blind to tough love of Israel, and, in so doing, is apparently now up there in the ZDI (Zionist Demonology Index) with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hasan Nasrallah:
"One has to admire Bob Carr's ambition. In my view, as premier, he wrecked NSW, and now he's trying to do the same to the whole of the Middle East."
But my favourite letter has to be this touching tribute to mateship from Michael Danby MP, Labor's unofficial Minister for Israel, lamenting the lack of media limelight accorded his tag-team buddy, Clanking Colonel* Mike Kelly, who, Danby assures us, fought valiantly in the ranks of the blind luvvies** against Carr's yea-saying and abstaining tough luvvies:
"In the rush of events last week, mention that my parliamentary colleague, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Dr Mike Kelly AM, was one of the key stalwarts in defence of the pro-Israel position was overlooked. In fact Mike Kelly, Senator Glen Sterle and myself, were appointed by the right faction of the ALP Caucus to put proposals to Senator Carr. Unfortunately, Senator Carr would not agree to our suggestions. Dr Kelly was at every meeting with me, strongly arguing the case. I will never forget his steadfastness."
Shows you how clueless the 'right faction of the ALP Caucus' must be, pitting the 'Clanking Colonel' against Carr. Labor history - let alone history - is obviously not their strong point.
Actually, it doesn't look as though Danby's exactly flavour of the month at the AJN these days. How else to explain why his letter was immediately followed on the page by the following kick-arse correspondence from David Rosenberg, South Caulfield, Vic.:
"Labor and its leaders have now lost the plot in the foreign affairs department. Julia Gillard hasn't the courage of her own convictions to stand up for Israel in her left-dominated cabinet. As Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr swirls his way around the world, he has certainly picked up some communicable communication diseases from the United Nations, denigrating Israel at every opportunity. As John Faulkner has recently called for Labor parliamentarians to try to at least pretend to be ethical and to appear honest, Michael Danby sitting member for Melbourne Ports now has to ask himself: As the point man for Jewish representation, has he the courage of his own convictions? The party has left you, Michael; if you stand for anything, it's time to make a stand for the Jewish community at large. Leave the party, it's time."
Et tu, David?
[*On Carr and Kelly, see my 9/9/11 post The Pits; **On Labor's blind love (or 'falafel') faction, see my 30/11/12 post Pro-Israel Deadenders in Federal Labor. ]
Is this, for example, the first ever criticism of an Israeli government by the AJN's editorialist?:
"Following Israel's response [ie, more settlement building] to the Palestinian statehood bid is like watching a person cut off his nose to spite his face... Israel's response has been childish and ill thought out." (The wrong response)
And even the AJN itself is copping stick. Here, Ameinu president Johnny Baker takes umbrage at last week's front cover which featured a photograph of foreign and defence ministers Bob Carr and Stephen Smith and the 'proceed-to-the-naughty-corner-IMMEDIATELY' accusation: You've let us down:
"The provocative and ill-conceived 'You've let us down' front cover of last week's AJN will do very little to enhance the standing of the Jewish community in the public arena. It is a classic case of how not to win friends and influence people. By pointing an accusing finger at politicians who have been consistent friends and whose cardinal sin was to advocate a stance taken by many prominent Israelis, The AJN has outflanked our communal leadership in expressing its outrage... Sorry AJN, but this time you have let us down."
Of course, Terry Davis of Lindfield, NSW isn't having any of this. He's gunning instead for Bob Carr, the bloke who dared to move the ALP from blind to tough love of Israel, and, in so doing, is apparently now up there in the ZDI (Zionist Demonology Index) with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hasan Nasrallah:
"One has to admire Bob Carr's ambition. In my view, as premier, he wrecked NSW, and now he's trying to do the same to the whole of the Middle East."
But my favourite letter has to be this touching tribute to mateship from Michael Danby MP, Labor's unofficial Minister for Israel, lamenting the lack of media limelight accorded his tag-team buddy, Clanking Colonel* Mike Kelly, who, Danby assures us, fought valiantly in the ranks of the blind luvvies** against Carr's yea-saying and abstaining tough luvvies:
"In the rush of events last week, mention that my parliamentary colleague, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Dr Mike Kelly AM, was one of the key stalwarts in defence of the pro-Israel position was overlooked. In fact Mike Kelly, Senator Glen Sterle and myself, were appointed by the right faction of the ALP Caucus to put proposals to Senator Carr. Unfortunately, Senator Carr would not agree to our suggestions. Dr Kelly was at every meeting with me, strongly arguing the case. I will never forget his steadfastness."
Shows you how clueless the 'right faction of the ALP Caucus' must be, pitting the 'Clanking Colonel' against Carr. Labor history - let alone history - is obviously not their strong point.
Actually, it doesn't look as though Danby's exactly flavour of the month at the AJN these days. How else to explain why his letter was immediately followed on the page by the following kick-arse correspondence from David Rosenberg, South Caulfield, Vic.:
"Labor and its leaders have now lost the plot in the foreign affairs department. Julia Gillard hasn't the courage of her own convictions to stand up for Israel in her left-dominated cabinet. As Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr swirls his way around the world, he has certainly picked up some communicable communication diseases from the United Nations, denigrating Israel at every opportunity. As John Faulkner has recently called for Labor parliamentarians to try to at least pretend to be ethical and to appear honest, Michael Danby sitting member for Melbourne Ports now has to ask himself: As the point man for Jewish representation, has he the courage of his own convictions? The party has left you, Michael; if you stand for anything, it's time to make a stand for the Jewish community at large. Leave the party, it's time."
Et tu, David?
[*On Carr and Kelly, see my 9/9/11 post The Pits; **On Labor's blind love (or 'falafel') faction, see my 30/11/12 post Pro-Israel Deadenders in Federal Labor. ]
Friday, December 7, 2012
Bob Carr & His Imaginary Friend
"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."
Bertrand Russell
Welcome though the leadership and common sense shown by Foreign Minister Bob Carr in saving the Prime Minister from herself and heading off a foreign policy disaster in the UN General Assembly is, it should in no way blind us to the frankly risible simple-mindedness of his position on the Middle East conflict:
"'No, it doesn't change things,' an insouciant Foreign Minister Bob Carr told the Weekend Financial Review after he led a successful revolt against Prime Minister Julia Gillard's insistence that Australia vote against upgrading the status of Palestinians at the UN. 'Australia is, and always will be, a friend of Israel. They have their own democracy. They have a system that enables them to throw out prime ministers and ruling parties. They have the rule of law and their Supreme Court can overrule the government of the day on difficult issues.' However, 'good friends speak the truth to one another and, as a friend of Israel, we have a duty to highlight our concern about the settlement activity which is illegal under international law.'" (A loss for the Jewish lobby, Andrew Clark, 1/12/12)
Where to begin with this pollyanna-ish guff?
Israel is not a democracy. Only when the 5 million Palestinian refugees, who were disenfranchised (and so much more) in 1948, return to their homeland and get to vote in Palestine's first post-apartheid election will 'Israel' be a genuine democracy.
Now apart from that little caveat, the other slight problem I have with Carr's position is that, while he's now speaking out about Israeli settlements, he's never once mentioned, so far as I'm aware, the occupation itself - the trigger-happy troops, the land-grabbing Wall, the checkpoints and roadblocks, the closures and curfews, the arrests, imprisonments and torture, and the home invasions and demolitions; or Israel's Gaza blockade or killing sprees; or its apartheid laws; or its history of ethnic cleansing, wholesale theft and dispossession; or its serial aggressions and invasions of neighbouring lands (annexation optional). Presumably, all that's just water under the bridge for Carr.
As for Carr's delusional nonsense about Australia being a 'good friend' of Israel, don't even get me started.
The origin of his Israel fantasy - and this probably applies to many others in the Labor party - is of interest here. In establishing his credentials as a long-time Israel luvvie during an interview with Richard Glover on the latter's Drive program yesterday afternoon, Carr mentioned he'd read some pro-Israel pamphlet or other written by former Prime Minister and Labor elder Bob Hawke back in the 70s, and that, as they say, was that. Sort of, 'If it was good enough for Hawkie, it was good enough for me.'
Talk about the blind leading the blind. Here's where the credulous Hawke was coming from back then:
"[Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir] showed [Hawke, soon after the Arab-Israeli war of 1973] photographs of 18-year-old Israeli kids whose hands had been tied behind their backs and who had been shot in the back of the head. Mrs Meir wept with Hawke over the pictures. 'She said she felt guilty about it because if she had taken a pre-emptive strike [presumably on Damascus] those kids would not have been dead.' Hawke took the pictures back to Australia and showed them on television. He told the story about Golda Meir's agony again and again, and every time he did it, he wept. 'I came away from that,' he said four years later, his voice breaking, 'in an intellectual position which was incapable of change.'" (Bob Hawke: A Portrait, Robert Pullan, 1980, p 158)
If Carr has read a serious book on the subject of Palestine/Israel since then, I'd like to know about it.
Bertrand Russell
Welcome though the leadership and common sense shown by Foreign Minister Bob Carr in saving the Prime Minister from herself and heading off a foreign policy disaster in the UN General Assembly is, it should in no way blind us to the frankly risible simple-mindedness of his position on the Middle East conflict:
"'No, it doesn't change things,' an insouciant Foreign Minister Bob Carr told the Weekend Financial Review after he led a successful revolt against Prime Minister Julia Gillard's insistence that Australia vote against upgrading the status of Palestinians at the UN. 'Australia is, and always will be, a friend of Israel. They have their own democracy. They have a system that enables them to throw out prime ministers and ruling parties. They have the rule of law and their Supreme Court can overrule the government of the day on difficult issues.' However, 'good friends speak the truth to one another and, as a friend of Israel, we have a duty to highlight our concern about the settlement activity which is illegal under international law.'" (A loss for the Jewish lobby, Andrew Clark, 1/12/12)
Where to begin with this pollyanna-ish guff?
Israel is not a democracy. Only when the 5 million Palestinian refugees, who were disenfranchised (and so much more) in 1948, return to their homeland and get to vote in Palestine's first post-apartheid election will 'Israel' be a genuine democracy.
Now apart from that little caveat, the other slight problem I have with Carr's position is that, while he's now speaking out about Israeli settlements, he's never once mentioned, so far as I'm aware, the occupation itself - the trigger-happy troops, the land-grabbing Wall, the checkpoints and roadblocks, the closures and curfews, the arrests, imprisonments and torture, and the home invasions and demolitions; or Israel's Gaza blockade or killing sprees; or its apartheid laws; or its history of ethnic cleansing, wholesale theft and dispossession; or its serial aggressions and invasions of neighbouring lands (annexation optional). Presumably, all that's just water under the bridge for Carr.
As for Carr's delusional nonsense about Australia being a 'good friend' of Israel, don't even get me started.
The origin of his Israel fantasy - and this probably applies to many others in the Labor party - is of interest here. In establishing his credentials as a long-time Israel luvvie during an interview with Richard Glover on the latter's Drive program yesterday afternoon, Carr mentioned he'd read some pro-Israel pamphlet or other written by former Prime Minister and Labor elder Bob Hawke back in the 70s, and that, as they say, was that. Sort of, 'If it was good enough for Hawkie, it was good enough for me.'
Talk about the blind leading the blind. Here's where the credulous Hawke was coming from back then:
"[Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir] showed [Hawke, soon after the Arab-Israeli war of 1973] photographs of 18-year-old Israeli kids whose hands had been tied behind their backs and who had been shot in the back of the head. Mrs Meir wept with Hawke over the pictures. 'She said she felt guilty about it because if she had taken a pre-emptive strike [presumably on Damascus] those kids would not have been dead.' Hawke took the pictures back to Australia and showed them on television. He told the story about Golda Meir's agony again and again, and every time he did it, he wept. 'I came away from that,' he said four years later, his voice breaking, 'in an intellectual position which was incapable of change.'" (Bob Hawke: A Portrait, Robert Pullan, 1980, p 158)
If Carr has read a serious book on the subject of Palestine/Israel since then, I'd like to know about it.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Julia the Downhearted
Cry me a river:
"One of the things that I suppose has made it very difficult for me is that I am just so downhearted about the absence of any progress towards peace... Whether it [the UN resolution] was carried or whether it was lost, nothing is going to change on the ground and nothing is going to change in the peace process and that is what is so downheartening about it all... Have a look at the Congress legislation and what is self-actuating out of this... It's not President Obama's choice. What happened in UNESCO when they passed the Palestinian resolution [last year] was that they [the US] stopped funding UNESCO... That is why I actually think that this doesn't strengthen the hands of the moderate Palestinians. I actually think it will do the complete reverse which is why I am kind of downcast about it." (Quoted in Defiant PM digs in on Palestine, Geoff Kitney & John Kerin, The Australian Financial Review, 30/11/12)
Downhearted? What bullshit! A person with no heart describing herself as downhearted? Give me a break: "Julia Gillard has declared the best way to help people on Newstart was to provide a strong economy after 2 Labor senators broke ranks with a majority Senate report and called for a boost to the single rate of the dole." (PM dodges commitment to Newstart boost, Lanai Vasek, The Australian, 3/12/12) [On the subject of Gillard's 'heart' see my 16/10/11 post What You See Is What You Get.]
Nothing is going to change on the ground? If only! Surely, as Prime Minister, Gillard cannot possibly be unaware that her soulmate in Jerusalem gave the thumbs up to another 3,000 settler homes in and around the city in retaliation for the UN vote. Or that prior to that "the [Israeli] government had issued tenders for the construction of 2366 units in 2012, more than twice the number built in the previous 3 years combined."* (See Israel's growing settlements are fast approaching 'point of no return', Jodi Rudoren, New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 3/3/12)
And if, solely for the sake of argument mind you, Gillard was really so downcast about events on the ground in occupied Palestine, did she ever speak to any of her Zionist soulmates about the matter? Did she, for example, have a word with Albert Dadon while supping with him in his flash new Italian restaurant in St Kilda in June?* Or take it up with Netanyahu minister Avi Dichter, while dancing the Hora with him in Sydney in December 2009, when he told there was no way, Jose, Israel was returning to the 1967 borders?** Or with the organisers of the Jewish National Fund Gala(h) Dinner that she attended in Melbourne in June 2008?*** Or...
Have a look at Congress? Can she be serious? Does Gillard really not understand what drives the US Congress in this matter? Such ignorance alone would be enough to render her unfit for leadership. The only other interpretation possible is that she's playing dumb, an equally damning state of affairs for a prime minister. Whichever direction she's coming from - sheer stupidity or guile or both - we're presented here with the incredible spectacle of a politician who is as putty in the hands of Australia's Israel lobby (her claim of coming to this matter "with my own perspective" notwithstanding) telling the public to look at another bunch of politicians who are as putty in the hands of their own Israel lobby - as Mearsheimer & Walt's classic, The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy makes clear:
"Not only does [the Israel lobby] exert significant influence over the policy process in Democratic and Republican administrations alike, but it is even more powerful on Capitol Hill. The journalist Michael Massing reports that a congressional staffer sympathetic to Israel told him, 'We can count on well over half the House - 250 to 300 members - to do reflexively whatever AIPAC wants.' Similarly, Steven Rosen, the former AIPAC official who has been indicted for allegedly passing classified government documents to Israel, illustrated AIPAC's power for the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg by putting a napkin in front of him and saying, 'In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin.' These are not idle boasts. As will become clear, when issues relating to Israel come to the fore, Congress almost always votes to endorse the lobby's positions, and usually in overwhelming numbers."
No, she can't possibly go there for obvious reasons. And so she blames the Palestinians instead: "I actually think the adoption of this resolution will create further problems in terms of the peace process."
Allow me to conclude by drawing your attention to the following highly perceptive letter in Monday's Sydney Morning Herald. It encapsulates beautifully the mess that a leader can get herself into when, for whatever reason, she subordinates her country's interests to those of an apartheid state in full swing:
"So the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, averted a 'public humiliation' by abandoning her position on the Palestinian Authority's application for observer state status at the UN, demonstrating her 'poor judgment and feeble authority' within her party ('PM lives to fight another day', December 1-2). If this circumstance was a 'rare and real humiliation' for the Prime Minister, imagine then the scale of her humiliation and that of our government had they opposed the Palestinian proposal, only to wake-up to Saturday's announcement by Israel that it is proceeding with the expansion of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank with the construction of another 3000 housing units. It would seem that the Prime Minister should not only be eternally grateful to the Labor caucus for having saved her from being on the wrong side of history, but also for having prevented her further humiliation at the hands of Israel, as a result of its latest attack on the Palestinian people's struggle for self-determination and the so-called 'peace process'." John Richardson, Wallagoot
[*See my 7/6/12 post Spilling the Cannellini Beans; **See my 11/12/09 post Just Do It, Bitch!; ***See my 29/6/08 post Soft on Israel]
"One of the things that I suppose has made it very difficult for me is that I am just so downhearted about the absence of any progress towards peace... Whether it [the UN resolution] was carried or whether it was lost, nothing is going to change on the ground and nothing is going to change in the peace process and that is what is so downheartening about it all... Have a look at the Congress legislation and what is self-actuating out of this... It's not President Obama's choice. What happened in UNESCO when they passed the Palestinian resolution [last year] was that they [the US] stopped funding UNESCO... That is why I actually think that this doesn't strengthen the hands of the moderate Palestinians. I actually think it will do the complete reverse which is why I am kind of downcast about it." (Quoted in Defiant PM digs in on Palestine, Geoff Kitney & John Kerin, The Australian Financial Review, 30/11/12)
Downhearted? What bullshit! A person with no heart describing herself as downhearted? Give me a break: "Julia Gillard has declared the best way to help people on Newstart was to provide a strong economy after 2 Labor senators broke ranks with a majority Senate report and called for a boost to the single rate of the dole." (PM dodges commitment to Newstart boost, Lanai Vasek, The Australian, 3/12/12) [On the subject of Gillard's 'heart' see my 16/10/11 post What You See Is What You Get.]
Nothing is going to change on the ground? If only! Surely, as Prime Minister, Gillard cannot possibly be unaware that her soulmate in Jerusalem gave the thumbs up to another 3,000 settler homes in and around the city in retaliation for the UN vote. Or that prior to that "the [Israeli] government had issued tenders for the construction of 2366 units in 2012, more than twice the number built in the previous 3 years combined."* (See Israel's growing settlements are fast approaching 'point of no return', Jodi Rudoren, New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 3/3/12)
And if, solely for the sake of argument mind you, Gillard was really so downcast about events on the ground in occupied Palestine, did she ever speak to any of her Zionist soulmates about the matter? Did she, for example, have a word with Albert Dadon while supping with him in his flash new Italian restaurant in St Kilda in June?* Or take it up with Netanyahu minister Avi Dichter, while dancing the Hora with him in Sydney in December 2009, when he told there was no way, Jose, Israel was returning to the 1967 borders?** Or with the organisers of the Jewish National Fund Gala(h) Dinner that she attended in Melbourne in June 2008?*** Or...
Have a look at Congress? Can she be serious? Does Gillard really not understand what drives the US Congress in this matter? Such ignorance alone would be enough to render her unfit for leadership. The only other interpretation possible is that she's playing dumb, an equally damning state of affairs for a prime minister. Whichever direction she's coming from - sheer stupidity or guile or both - we're presented here with the incredible spectacle of a politician who is as putty in the hands of Australia's Israel lobby (her claim of coming to this matter "with my own perspective" notwithstanding) telling the public to look at another bunch of politicians who are as putty in the hands of their own Israel lobby - as Mearsheimer & Walt's classic, The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy makes clear:
"Not only does [the Israel lobby] exert significant influence over the policy process in Democratic and Republican administrations alike, but it is even more powerful on Capitol Hill. The journalist Michael Massing reports that a congressional staffer sympathetic to Israel told him, 'We can count on well over half the House - 250 to 300 members - to do reflexively whatever AIPAC wants.' Similarly, Steven Rosen, the former AIPAC official who has been indicted for allegedly passing classified government documents to Israel, illustrated AIPAC's power for the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg by putting a napkin in front of him and saying, 'In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin.' These are not idle boasts. As will become clear, when issues relating to Israel come to the fore, Congress almost always votes to endorse the lobby's positions, and usually in overwhelming numbers."
No, she can't possibly go there for obvious reasons. And so she blames the Palestinians instead: "I actually think the adoption of this resolution will create further problems in terms of the peace process."
Allow me to conclude by drawing your attention to the following highly perceptive letter in Monday's Sydney Morning Herald. It encapsulates beautifully the mess that a leader can get herself into when, for whatever reason, she subordinates her country's interests to those of an apartheid state in full swing:
"So the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, averted a 'public humiliation' by abandoning her position on the Palestinian Authority's application for observer state status at the UN, demonstrating her 'poor judgment and feeble authority' within her party ('PM lives to fight another day', December 1-2). If this circumstance was a 'rare and real humiliation' for the Prime Minister, imagine then the scale of her humiliation and that of our government had they opposed the Palestinian proposal, only to wake-up to Saturday's announcement by Israel that it is proceeding with the expansion of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank with the construction of another 3000 housing units. It would seem that the Prime Minister should not only be eternally grateful to the Labor caucus for having saved her from being on the wrong side of history, but also for having prevented her further humiliation at the hands of Israel, as a result of its latest attack on the Palestinian people's struggle for self-determination and the so-called 'peace process'." John Richardson, Wallagoot
[*See my 7/6/12 post Spilling the Cannellini Beans; **See my 11/12/09 post Just Do It, Bitch!; ***See my 29/6/08 post Soft on Israel]
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Under the Influence at The Australian
No one does Palestine/Israel editorials quite like Murdoch's Australian. Yesterday's editorial, After UN vote, Israel digs in: settlements are a provocative but predictable response, is a case in point.
Far out, man, you reflect, after imbibing, no reefer madness was ever quite like this. If altered states are your thing, Zionism beats psychedelics out of the proverbial strawberry fields... forever.
"It is all very well for Foreign Minister Bob Carr to join others across the world in denouncing Israel for pressing ahead with more Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, but they all would have done better to realise this is one of the consequences of the vote in the UNGA that granted non-member statehood to the Palestine Authority."
Right, so Carr and the rest of the world are responsible for Israeli settlements. Pretty trippy, eh?
"Certainly, the Israeli move appears short-sided and potentially self-defeating."
But not, apparently, when you're snorting Zionism:
"But, if it does nothing else, it underscores the foolishness of the Palestinian ploy in trying to achieve statehood through the back door at the UN rather than in negotiations with Israel."
Wow, the Israelis achieved statehood through the same back door at the UN in 1947, rather than in negotiations with the Palestinians, but far from underscoring their foolishness, that just underscores their brilliance, right?
Right... Did I not intimate that Zionism was pretty potent stuff?
Another thing it does is make you see double. For example, no sooner had I taken on board the current American foreign policy wisdom that there is no daylight between Israel and the US than I'm reading here in the Australian about two quite separate entities:
"The announcement of the new settlements is just the start of a range of retaliatory measures that the Palestinians now face, and not all from Israel. In the US Senate, for example, moves have begun to cut American funding to the PA by 50%, something that would cripple the Palestinian administration."
Now one of the downsides of inhaling Zionism is that the user can become markedly paranoid when contemplating even the most mundane of human activities, such as voting in the UNGA for example:
"A majority of the 138 'yes' votes came from countries who crowded into Tehran in August to acclaim Holocaust-denying Iran's accession to leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement."
Another is that the user loses all grip on reality, even projecting his own strange Herzlian life history - If you will it, it is no dream - onto those of other people:
"The UN vote has only served to encourage the PA in its adherence to a make-believe world in which it can achieve statehood through a so-called UN 'birth-certificate'."
But don't think that this kind of substance abuse is confined to just a few bad apples over at the Australian. No, the fish, as they say, stinks from the head down. That's right, Rupert Murdoch himself, who's been tripping out on Zionism for yonks, recently tripped up big-time over this particularly mind-bending little tweet: 'Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?' (See Murdoch sorry for 'Jewish owned press' tweet, The Australian Jewish News, 30/11/12)
Better to stay well away from the stuff I reckon.
Far out, man, you reflect, after imbibing, no reefer madness was ever quite like this. If altered states are your thing, Zionism beats psychedelics out of the proverbial strawberry fields... forever.
"It is all very well for Foreign Minister Bob Carr to join others across the world in denouncing Israel for pressing ahead with more Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, but they all would have done better to realise this is one of the consequences of the vote in the UNGA that granted non-member statehood to the Palestine Authority."
Right, so Carr and the rest of the world are responsible for Israeli settlements. Pretty trippy, eh?
"Certainly, the Israeli move appears short-sided and potentially self-defeating."
But not, apparently, when you're snorting Zionism:
"But, if it does nothing else, it underscores the foolishness of the Palestinian ploy in trying to achieve statehood through the back door at the UN rather than in negotiations with Israel."
Wow, the Israelis achieved statehood through the same back door at the UN in 1947, rather than in negotiations with the Palestinians, but far from underscoring their foolishness, that just underscores their brilliance, right?
Right... Did I not intimate that Zionism was pretty potent stuff?
Another thing it does is make you see double. For example, no sooner had I taken on board the current American foreign policy wisdom that there is no daylight between Israel and the US than I'm reading here in the Australian about two quite separate entities:
"The announcement of the new settlements is just the start of a range of retaliatory measures that the Palestinians now face, and not all from Israel. In the US Senate, for example, moves have begun to cut American funding to the PA by 50%, something that would cripple the Palestinian administration."
Now one of the downsides of inhaling Zionism is that the user can become markedly paranoid when contemplating even the most mundane of human activities, such as voting in the UNGA for example:
"A majority of the 138 'yes' votes came from countries who crowded into Tehran in August to acclaim Holocaust-denying Iran's accession to leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement."
Another is that the user loses all grip on reality, even projecting his own strange Herzlian life history - If you will it, it is no dream - onto those of other people:
"The UN vote has only served to encourage the PA in its adherence to a make-believe world in which it can achieve statehood through a so-called UN 'birth-certificate'."
But don't think that this kind of substance abuse is confined to just a few bad apples over at the Australian. No, the fish, as they say, stinks from the head down. That's right, Rupert Murdoch himself, who's been tripping out on Zionism for yonks, recently tripped up big-time over this particularly mind-bending little tweet: 'Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?' (See Murdoch sorry for 'Jewish owned press' tweet, The Australian Jewish News, 30/11/12)
Better to stay well away from the stuff I reckon.
Monday, December 3, 2012
While You Weren't Looking 2
Further to my post on December 1, While You Weren't Looking, new details have emerged in the extraordinary story of how the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was effectively dragged, kicking and screaming, from the clutches of the Israel lobby by leading members of her own party and forced to see reason, or at least some measure of same, on the Palestinian bid for observer status in the UN.
These are contained in the following report by Dennis Shanahan & Joe Kelly, Fears PM isolated on UN vote, in the December 1 issue of the Australian. The highlightings (and interleaved commentary) are, of course, my own :
"After Julia Gillard announced on Tuesday afternoon that Australia would abstain from a UNGA vote on state observer status for the Palestinians, two things happened. Our most important ally, the US, decided to make its 'disappointment' clear to the Australian ambassador in Washington, Kim Beazley, and the Prime Minister's 'special emissary to the Jewish community', Bruce Wolpe, was fingered as having an inordinate influence on Ms Gillard, who had intended to vote against the UN motion."
Yes, you heard correctly: the PM's special emissary to the Jewish community...
"During the previous 48 hours Gillard had been defied by her cabinet, rolled by caucus, abandoned by key supporters in the NSW ALP Right, put her leadership on the line and was accused of giving too much access and influence to Melbourne Jewish business leaders through Wolpe, a Jew, a former Fairfax executive and US Democrat adviser, and her special business and Jewish affairs adviser. It was no small matter for Gillard to defy advice from the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade, the strongly held view of Foreign Minister Bob Carr, previous policy positions, lobbying from Bob Hawke and his foreign minister Gareth Evans, most of her backbench colleagues and the 'demographically challenged' NSW Right, including her staunchest cabinet supporter from that faction, Water Minister Tony Burke. As one cabinet source told The Weekend Ausralian last night: 'The Prime Minister turned this into a leadership issue herself by demanding cabinet follow her and a failure of process and consultation beforehand'. The opposition to Gillard cut across factional boundaries and went beyond supporters of former prime minister Kevin Rudd. The success of the party in rolling the Prime minister will have reverberations into the election year and has diminished her authority.
"While it should have been apparent for months - indeed it was a year since Rudd, then foreign minister, wrote suggesting an abstention on the Palestine issue, that now Labor overwhelmingly favoured a less dogmatic approach to Israel - Gillard insisted Australia oppose the move for Palestinian observer status, which was carried at the UN yesterday. On Monday evening, cabinet convened for what was to become an exceptional meeting and an eventual decision that may set various benchmarks in Australian political history. It changed a basic tenet of Australian foreign policy, it broke longstanding bipartisanship on Israel, it ditched a tradition as old as 'Doc' Evatt, disappointed the US, Israel and the local Jewish community and may yet prove to be a more potent leadership issue for Gillard than the Australian Workers Union affair."
Shanahan and Kelly could well be correct here, although the idea that uncritical bipartisan support for Israel and all its works has been a tenet of Australian foreign policy since the days of Evatt completely overlooks the era of Australia's 'even-handed' approach to the Middle East conflict. As former Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam said in 1973: "Australia has a bi-partisan policy, a policy of neutrality in the Middle East. The ALP policy is substantially the policy which governments have pursued for the last quarter of a century in Australia." (Quoted in Bob Hawke: A Portrait, Robert Pullan, 1980, p 159)
"Before Monday's meeting DFAT and Prime Minister and Cabinet prepared an options paper - not a cabinet submission - which set out the pros and cons of the 3 UN vote choices for Australia; a vote against with the US, Israel and half a dozen small states, abstain on the basis of a principled position to get Israel to negotiate, or vote for Palestinian state observer status. Carr's position, spelt out to the Prime Minister, was to abstain at least, as was the majority position in cabinet, the outer ministry and the Labor backbench. Carr committed to Gillard before the meeting that he would not speak because it would be obvious the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister were at odds. After the cabinet meeting began and Gillard made it clear she intended to go for the minority position all hell broke loose in the windowless room opposite her office suite in parliament. Minister after minister lined up to tell her - some forcibly - her position was wrong on policy and political grounds. The opposition included Burke and fellow NSW Right minister Chris Bowen, with Burke's contribution particularly significant as the last of the NSW faction's cabinet ministers supporting Gillard's leadership. Even Trade Minister Craig Emerson, derided for his public loyalty to Gillard, was opposed. Only Victorian Right Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, later backed by fellow Victorian right-winger Bill Shorten, spoke up for Gillard's position. Carr couldn't contain himself after 10 ministers had spoken in his portfolio area and made it clear he was at odds with his leader.
"Carr's opposition was significant not only because he was Foreign Minister but also because he had been hand-picked by the NSW Right to replace Rudd in the ministry and will always be seen as a safe fallback as leader should Gillard fail. What's more, Carr, who founded the NSW Labor Friends of Israel, has assiduously worked with Palestinian groups for 17 years and is aware of the plight of Christian groups throughout the Middle East who want peace. After Gillard insisted the cabinet had to agree to her minority position and demanded 'cabinet solidarity', there was a bemused and sullen response, with Carr ringing backbenchers to foment rebellion and government whip Joel Fitzgibbon defying the Prime Minister's request to lock in the Right behind her. Fitzgibbon yesterday said that if Australia had adopted the Prime minister's initial position it would have looked like Australia was acting as a puppet of the US.
"Carr informed Gillard minutes before Tuesday's Labor caucus meeting that she needed to change her position or face a humiliating defeat that would undermine her authority. Gillard conceded and backed a compromise of abstention. In the face of Gillard's initial demand for support, cabinet ministers began to complain there was no real explanation for the position, arguing the US was not overly exercised, many Labor seats were affected by Middle Eastern populations, Christian and Muslim, and there was a policy argument for sending Israel a message 'as a friend'.
"Ministers believed Wolpe was providing 'inordinate access' to the hardline pro-Israeli elements of the Melbourne Jewish community who were having an undue influence on Gillard."
IOW, they felt that Australia's foreign policy stance on the Middle East conflict had effectively been contracted out to a bunch of apologists (as much by omission as commission) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose real goal, a Greater Israel covering the entirety of historic Palestine 'from the river to the sea', runs counter to the 'two-states for two peoples' solution espoused by Labor.
"As a hard left-winger in her younger days..."
A truer picture of Gillard the student politician may be found in my 25/7/10 post Me, A Zionist? How Very Dare You!
" ... Gillard was not seen as a natural supporter of Israel or the US, but has worked hard at links with both, and her partner, Tim Mathieson, worked for Jewish Melbourne developer and Labor benefactor Albert Dadon. As deputy prime minister, Gillard visited Israel and was feted by the Israeli leadership. In Perth last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had indicated to Gillard that the US would prefer a vote against the Palestinian UN motion. It is understood Gillard's decision was determined from her own views and that Wolpe hadn't arranged a prime ministerial meeting with the Melbourne Jewish community for some time. Labor MP Michael Danby, who in Melbourne Ports represents the biggest Jewish community in Australia, said yesterday: 'I hope I am wrong and the UN resolution turns out to give the Palestinian Authority the confidence to begin direct talks with their neighbours, the best outcome that may result.'"
Such is the surreal level of misrepresentation of the true nature of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians by Zionist apologists such as Danby that he can get away with spinning a dispossessing colonial power, engaged in a decades-old process of screwing a dispossessed and colonised people, as a neighbour with whom the dispossessed and colonised need only to sit and have a chat with for a satisfactory solution to their 'differences' to emerge.
Just as you cannot, so the adage goes, fool all of the people all of the time, could it be that the reality of Israel's relentless colonisation drive in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem (indeed, a new round of settlement construction has just been announced in retaliation for the Palestinians' upgraded status in the UN) is beginning at last to dawn on Labor politicians? Hard to believe, I know, but I'd like to think that the cabinet/caucus revolt against Gillard, described here and in the Australian's earlier report, reflects, at least in part, a more realistic understanding by the ALP of what is actually taking place on the ground in occupied Palestine.
These are contained in the following report by Dennis Shanahan & Joe Kelly, Fears PM isolated on UN vote, in the December 1 issue of the Australian. The highlightings (and interleaved commentary) are, of course, my own :
"After Julia Gillard announced on Tuesday afternoon that Australia would abstain from a UNGA vote on state observer status for the Palestinians, two things happened. Our most important ally, the US, decided to make its 'disappointment' clear to the Australian ambassador in Washington, Kim Beazley, and the Prime Minister's 'special emissary to the Jewish community', Bruce Wolpe, was fingered as having an inordinate influence on Ms Gillard, who had intended to vote against the UN motion."
Yes, you heard correctly: the PM's special emissary to the Jewish community...
"During the previous 48 hours Gillard had been defied by her cabinet, rolled by caucus, abandoned by key supporters in the NSW ALP Right, put her leadership on the line and was accused of giving too much access and influence to Melbourne Jewish business leaders through Wolpe, a Jew, a former Fairfax executive and US Democrat adviser, and her special business and Jewish affairs adviser. It was no small matter for Gillard to defy advice from the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade, the strongly held view of Foreign Minister Bob Carr, previous policy positions, lobbying from Bob Hawke and his foreign minister Gareth Evans, most of her backbench colleagues and the 'demographically challenged' NSW Right, including her staunchest cabinet supporter from that faction, Water Minister Tony Burke. As one cabinet source told The Weekend Ausralian last night: 'The Prime Minister turned this into a leadership issue herself by demanding cabinet follow her and a failure of process and consultation beforehand'. The opposition to Gillard cut across factional boundaries and went beyond supporters of former prime minister Kevin Rudd. The success of the party in rolling the Prime minister will have reverberations into the election year and has diminished her authority.
"While it should have been apparent for months - indeed it was a year since Rudd, then foreign minister, wrote suggesting an abstention on the Palestine issue, that now Labor overwhelmingly favoured a less dogmatic approach to Israel - Gillard insisted Australia oppose the move for Palestinian observer status, which was carried at the UN yesterday. On Monday evening, cabinet convened for what was to become an exceptional meeting and an eventual decision that may set various benchmarks in Australian political history. It changed a basic tenet of Australian foreign policy, it broke longstanding bipartisanship on Israel, it ditched a tradition as old as 'Doc' Evatt, disappointed the US, Israel and the local Jewish community and may yet prove to be a more potent leadership issue for Gillard than the Australian Workers Union affair."
Shanahan and Kelly could well be correct here, although the idea that uncritical bipartisan support for Israel and all its works has been a tenet of Australian foreign policy since the days of Evatt completely overlooks the era of Australia's 'even-handed' approach to the Middle East conflict. As former Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam said in 1973: "Australia has a bi-partisan policy, a policy of neutrality in the Middle East. The ALP policy is substantially the policy which governments have pursued for the last quarter of a century in Australia." (Quoted in Bob Hawke: A Portrait, Robert Pullan, 1980, p 159)
"Before Monday's meeting DFAT and Prime Minister and Cabinet prepared an options paper - not a cabinet submission - which set out the pros and cons of the 3 UN vote choices for Australia; a vote against with the US, Israel and half a dozen small states, abstain on the basis of a principled position to get Israel to negotiate, or vote for Palestinian state observer status. Carr's position, spelt out to the Prime Minister, was to abstain at least, as was the majority position in cabinet, the outer ministry and the Labor backbench. Carr committed to Gillard before the meeting that he would not speak because it would be obvious the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister were at odds. After the cabinet meeting began and Gillard made it clear she intended to go for the minority position all hell broke loose in the windowless room opposite her office suite in parliament. Minister after minister lined up to tell her - some forcibly - her position was wrong on policy and political grounds. The opposition included Burke and fellow NSW Right minister Chris Bowen, with Burke's contribution particularly significant as the last of the NSW faction's cabinet ministers supporting Gillard's leadership. Even Trade Minister Craig Emerson, derided for his public loyalty to Gillard, was opposed. Only Victorian Right Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, later backed by fellow Victorian right-winger Bill Shorten, spoke up for Gillard's position. Carr couldn't contain himself after 10 ministers had spoken in his portfolio area and made it clear he was at odds with his leader.
"Carr's opposition was significant not only because he was Foreign Minister but also because he had been hand-picked by the NSW Right to replace Rudd in the ministry and will always be seen as a safe fallback as leader should Gillard fail. What's more, Carr, who founded the NSW Labor Friends of Israel, has assiduously worked with Palestinian groups for 17 years and is aware of the plight of Christian groups throughout the Middle East who want peace. After Gillard insisted the cabinet had to agree to her minority position and demanded 'cabinet solidarity', there was a bemused and sullen response, with Carr ringing backbenchers to foment rebellion and government whip Joel Fitzgibbon defying the Prime Minister's request to lock in the Right behind her. Fitzgibbon yesterday said that if Australia had adopted the Prime minister's initial position it would have looked like Australia was acting as a puppet of the US.
"Carr informed Gillard minutes before Tuesday's Labor caucus meeting that she needed to change her position or face a humiliating defeat that would undermine her authority. Gillard conceded and backed a compromise of abstention. In the face of Gillard's initial demand for support, cabinet ministers began to complain there was no real explanation for the position, arguing the US was not overly exercised, many Labor seats were affected by Middle Eastern populations, Christian and Muslim, and there was a policy argument for sending Israel a message 'as a friend'.
"Ministers believed Wolpe was providing 'inordinate access' to the hardline pro-Israeli elements of the Melbourne Jewish community who were having an undue influence on Gillard."
IOW, they felt that Australia's foreign policy stance on the Middle East conflict had effectively been contracted out to a bunch of apologists (as much by omission as commission) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose real goal, a Greater Israel covering the entirety of historic Palestine 'from the river to the sea', runs counter to the 'two-states for two peoples' solution espoused by Labor.
"As a hard left-winger in her younger days..."
A truer picture of Gillard the student politician may be found in my 25/7/10 post Me, A Zionist? How Very Dare You!
" ... Gillard was not seen as a natural supporter of Israel or the US, but has worked hard at links with both, and her partner, Tim Mathieson, worked for Jewish Melbourne developer and Labor benefactor Albert Dadon. As deputy prime minister, Gillard visited Israel and was feted by the Israeli leadership. In Perth last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had indicated to Gillard that the US would prefer a vote against the Palestinian UN motion. It is understood Gillard's decision was determined from her own views and that Wolpe hadn't arranged a prime ministerial meeting with the Melbourne Jewish community for some time. Labor MP Michael Danby, who in Melbourne Ports represents the biggest Jewish community in Australia, said yesterday: 'I hope I am wrong and the UN resolution turns out to give the Palestinian Authority the confidence to begin direct talks with their neighbours, the best outcome that may result.'"
Such is the surreal level of misrepresentation of the true nature of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians by Zionist apologists such as Danby that he can get away with spinning a dispossessing colonial power, engaged in a decades-old process of screwing a dispossessed and colonised people, as a neighbour with whom the dispossessed and colonised need only to sit and have a chat with for a satisfactory solution to their 'differences' to emerge.
Just as you cannot, so the adage goes, fool all of the people all of the time, could it be that the reality of Israel's relentless colonisation drive in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem (indeed, a new round of settlement construction has just been announced in retaliation for the Palestinians' upgraded status in the UN) is beginning at last to dawn on Labor politicians? Hard to believe, I know, but I'd like to think that the cabinet/caucus revolt against Gillard, described here and in the Australian's earlier report, reflects, at least in part, a more realistic understanding by the ALP of what is actually taking place on the ground in occupied Palestine.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
While You Weren't Looking
A 29 November report by the Australian's Troy Bramston, The day Carr won Mid-East conflict, tells the incredible story of how Australia's sitting prime minister came close to becoming a political casualty of the world's longest-running colonial saga, the Middle East conflict.
While the pundits and the public have been lately diverted by allegations stemming from Julia Gillard's past associations and dealings with the Australian Workers Union, something more subterranean, maybe even seismic, was taking place inside her party.
Bramston's report tells a number of stories.
There's the story of how an Australian prime minister's blind devotion to the state of Israel almost cost her the prime ministership.
There's the story of how her party, hitherto seemingly just as blindly devoted as their leader to the apartheid state, seems (apart from the diehards listed in my previous post) to have finally lost patience with it and revolted at the acutely embarrassing prospect of being seen on the international stage in the company of Israel and its gang of eight - the United States, Stephen Harper's seriously weird Canada, a collection of coconut palms, a clapped-out phosphate mine-cum prison camp for refugees, and two insignificant others.* Or, as ex-Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans put it pithily and persuasively, being seen 'on the wrong side of history'.
There's the story of how Foreign Minister Bob Carr, aided by party elders Evans and Hawke (a story in itself), managed at long last to loosen the Israel lobby's grip on the party's balls and, in doing so, wipe the smug grin off its face.**
And there's the story of how, just maybe, second generation Arab constituents are at last making their views known to the politicians who ostensibly represent them at a time when no Australian politician dares risk taking his constituents for granted.
Given that all the data is not yet in, one hesitates to draw too long a bow here. However, one thing seems certain, namely that something rather unusual has just occurred in the ranks of the ruling Labor government: a recognition, albeit hesitant, that Australia's and USrael's interests are not one and the same, the relentless propaganda of the Israel lobby to the contrary notwithstanding.
Given its importance, I've decided to reproduce Bramston's report in full. The highlights are, of course, my own:
"Julia Gillard's prime ministership must have flashed before her eyes in the early hours of Tuesday morning. In a night of high drama, she came dangerously close to precipitating a full-blown crisis that could have brought her leadership to a premature end.
"The Gillard government was pushed to the brink over the Prime Minister's insistence that Australia vote against Palestine's bid to upgrade its status at the UN. Just minutes before the caucus meeting, Foreign Minister Bob Carr stood in Gillard's office and told her, eyeball to eyeball, to change her mind or she faced a humiliating defeat. He pleaded with her to back an abstention on the UNGA motion to recognise Palestine as a non-member state observer. In the end, Gillard relented and a crisis was averted, but only narrowly.
"It came after a series of dramatic meetings that tested loyalties and long-standing fealty to Gillard's embattled leadership. At one point, sources suggest, Gillard considered the unprecedented step of calling a meeting of the full ministry and parliamentary secretaries - 42 MPs and Senators - to bind them to her position in a full meeting of 102 caucus members. Even the attempt to coral [sic] the executive into supporting a view an overwhelming number of the cabinet and caucus opposed would have finished Gillard's prime ministership.
"Several ministers and backbenchers had been warning Gillard for weeks that the position on the UN vote, slated for Friday, needed to be finalised in order to instruct the ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan, on what to do. They were seized by the dramatic change in the caucus on the Israel-Palestine issue, with several factors that had been slowly building within Labor - Israel's settlement policy, increasing violence by settlers against Palestinians, and a right-wing Israeli prime minister who backed Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. There is concern both Israel and the Palestinian Authority are stalling on a two-state solution and that the outcome of the UN vote could positively energise those discussions. And, critically, there is the growing Muslim and Christian make-up of several key Western Sydney seats which have exposed MPs to different points of view on the Middle East. Some sections of the party suggest Victorian Labor is too close to the Israel lobby and does not fully understand the underlying changes in Sydney's outer suburbs. However, one Victorian minister said: 'How are we going to solve Labor's challenges in western Sydney by the way we vote at the UN?'
"Before the cabinet meeting late on Monday, Gillard met with senior ministers for two hours to discuss the UN vote. Carr sketched out the foreign policy argument for not opposing the Palestinian motion that he believed was in Australia's interests. Environment Minister Tony Burke, holding a seat in southwest Sydney, explained the shift in the community he had been feeling on this issue for a long time. Wayne Swan, Defence Minister Stephen Smith, Communications Minister Steven Conroy and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese also attended.
"Before this meeting, Gillard made an extraordinary request to the NSW Right faction convener and chief government whip, Joel Fitzgibbon. She wanted him to bind the Right behind her position. Fitzgibbon refused.
"Meanwhile, former prime minister Bob Hawke, a long-time ardent supporter of Israel, was arguing behind the scenes for Australia not to oppose the motion on Palestine. So had his foreign minister, Gareth Evans, who warned Labor MPs and senators not to be 'on the wrong side of history'.
"In cabinet, Gillard introduced the topic and stated her position. Albanese, Burke, Trade Minister Craig Emerson, Arts Minister Simon Crean, Resources Minister Martin Ferguson, Industry Minister Greg Combet, School Eduction Minister Peter Garrett and Immigration Minister Chris Bowen all spoke against it. Conroy and Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten, both of the Victorian Right, indicated support for Gillard's position. Carr also spoke, and made the case for not opposing the UN motion. Some ministers regard this as breaking his word to Gillard not to speak. Others say he had no choice but to offer his view, given the spirited debate.
"At the end of the meeting, Gillard summed up the debate and cabinet agreed to back her judgement, given she is Prime Minister. After what one minister described as 'a barrage of opposition', the meeting broke up in stunned amazement. Gillard remained steadfast. Few can understand why she so trenchantly held the view that it must be a no vote. Even her closest supporters were telling her it was a lost cause in caucus.
"After cabinet finished, a cabal of ministers met to discuss strategy and started contacting caucus members. The details of the cabinet meeting quickly reverberated around Parliament House. A motion to support the Palestinian bid was on the agenda for caucus the next morning and was likely to be supported. Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change Mark Dreyfus, from the Victorian Right, urged Fitzgibbon to have the national Right bind its MPs and senators in support of Gillard's position. Fitzgibbon rebuffed Dreyfus several times on Monday and again on Tuesday.
"Gillard met with key members of the left and right separately before the caucus meeting on Tuesday morning. She also met again with several ministers. The Treasurer alerted her to the dangers that lay ahead. Sources say it was not until then that Gillard was fully cognisant of the weight of numbers against her. Until then, one observer says, 'Gillard was all at sea'.
"Backbench MP Andrew Leigh had before parliament a motion urging a yes vote, to recognise Palestine as a non-member state observer at the UN. Leigh was reluctant to back away from it. Part of the deal reached with Gillard to support an abstention vote required Leigh to withdraw the motion, which he did. This was not a secret back-door attempt to white-ant a prime minister, it was conducted in full view to get Gillard to make what MPs believe is the right policy decision in Australia's interests. Carr worked as craftily as he had ever done as NSW premier to see his view prevail. Some say the vigour with which he pursued this has put him offside with some in the party. Others say it marks his arrival as a serious political player in Canberra. Carr will not be critical of Gillard's leadership. He believes she made the right call in the end. Moreover, along with eight other ministers, he saved Gillard's neck. As one familiar with the discussion said yesterday: 'If the caucus resolution on abstention didn't go under her feet, she would have gone under the ice'."
Watch this space!
[*Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Nauru, Czech Republic, Panama; **The front page of this week's Australian Jewish News, for example, features a photo of Carr and Defence Minister Stephen Smith with the header You've let us down and the following text: "Bob Carr and Stephen Smith were among the senior ministers who this week forced Australia to abstain on a crucial UN vote that helps hand the Palestinians a state via the backdoor rather than through negotiations with Israel."]
While the pundits and the public have been lately diverted by allegations stemming from Julia Gillard's past associations and dealings with the Australian Workers Union, something more subterranean, maybe even seismic, was taking place inside her party.
Bramston's report tells a number of stories.
There's the story of how an Australian prime minister's blind devotion to the state of Israel almost cost her the prime ministership.
There's the story of how her party, hitherto seemingly just as blindly devoted as their leader to the apartheid state, seems (apart from the diehards listed in my previous post) to have finally lost patience with it and revolted at the acutely embarrassing prospect of being seen on the international stage in the company of Israel and its gang of eight - the United States, Stephen Harper's seriously weird Canada, a collection of coconut palms, a clapped-out phosphate mine-cum prison camp for refugees, and two insignificant others.* Or, as ex-Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans put it pithily and persuasively, being seen 'on the wrong side of history'.
There's the story of how Foreign Minister Bob Carr, aided by party elders Evans and Hawke (a story in itself), managed at long last to loosen the Israel lobby's grip on the party's balls and, in doing so, wipe the smug grin off its face.**
And there's the story of how, just maybe, second generation Arab constituents are at last making their views known to the politicians who ostensibly represent them at a time when no Australian politician dares risk taking his constituents for granted.
Given that all the data is not yet in, one hesitates to draw too long a bow here. However, one thing seems certain, namely that something rather unusual has just occurred in the ranks of the ruling Labor government: a recognition, albeit hesitant, that Australia's and USrael's interests are not one and the same, the relentless propaganda of the Israel lobby to the contrary notwithstanding.
Given its importance, I've decided to reproduce Bramston's report in full. The highlights are, of course, my own:
"Julia Gillard's prime ministership must have flashed before her eyes in the early hours of Tuesday morning. In a night of high drama, she came dangerously close to precipitating a full-blown crisis that could have brought her leadership to a premature end.
"The Gillard government was pushed to the brink over the Prime Minister's insistence that Australia vote against Palestine's bid to upgrade its status at the UN. Just minutes before the caucus meeting, Foreign Minister Bob Carr stood in Gillard's office and told her, eyeball to eyeball, to change her mind or she faced a humiliating defeat. He pleaded with her to back an abstention on the UNGA motion to recognise Palestine as a non-member state observer. In the end, Gillard relented and a crisis was averted, but only narrowly.
"It came after a series of dramatic meetings that tested loyalties and long-standing fealty to Gillard's embattled leadership. At one point, sources suggest, Gillard considered the unprecedented step of calling a meeting of the full ministry and parliamentary secretaries - 42 MPs and Senators - to bind them to her position in a full meeting of 102 caucus members. Even the attempt to coral [sic] the executive into supporting a view an overwhelming number of the cabinet and caucus opposed would have finished Gillard's prime ministership.
"Several ministers and backbenchers had been warning Gillard for weeks that the position on the UN vote, slated for Friday, needed to be finalised in order to instruct the ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan, on what to do. They were seized by the dramatic change in the caucus on the Israel-Palestine issue, with several factors that had been slowly building within Labor - Israel's settlement policy, increasing violence by settlers against Palestinians, and a right-wing Israeli prime minister who backed Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. There is concern both Israel and the Palestinian Authority are stalling on a two-state solution and that the outcome of the UN vote could positively energise those discussions. And, critically, there is the growing Muslim and Christian make-up of several key Western Sydney seats which have exposed MPs to different points of view on the Middle East. Some sections of the party suggest Victorian Labor is too close to the Israel lobby and does not fully understand the underlying changes in Sydney's outer suburbs. However, one Victorian minister said: 'How are we going to solve Labor's challenges in western Sydney by the way we vote at the UN?'
"Before the cabinet meeting late on Monday, Gillard met with senior ministers for two hours to discuss the UN vote. Carr sketched out the foreign policy argument for not opposing the Palestinian motion that he believed was in Australia's interests. Environment Minister Tony Burke, holding a seat in southwest Sydney, explained the shift in the community he had been feeling on this issue for a long time. Wayne Swan, Defence Minister Stephen Smith, Communications Minister Steven Conroy and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese also attended.
"Before this meeting, Gillard made an extraordinary request to the NSW Right faction convener and chief government whip, Joel Fitzgibbon. She wanted him to bind the Right behind her position. Fitzgibbon refused.
"Meanwhile, former prime minister Bob Hawke, a long-time ardent supporter of Israel, was arguing behind the scenes for Australia not to oppose the motion on Palestine. So had his foreign minister, Gareth Evans, who warned Labor MPs and senators not to be 'on the wrong side of history'.
"In cabinet, Gillard introduced the topic and stated her position. Albanese, Burke, Trade Minister Craig Emerson, Arts Minister Simon Crean, Resources Minister Martin Ferguson, Industry Minister Greg Combet, School Eduction Minister Peter Garrett and Immigration Minister Chris Bowen all spoke against it. Conroy and Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten, both of the Victorian Right, indicated support for Gillard's position. Carr also spoke, and made the case for not opposing the UN motion. Some ministers regard this as breaking his word to Gillard not to speak. Others say he had no choice but to offer his view, given the spirited debate.
"At the end of the meeting, Gillard summed up the debate and cabinet agreed to back her judgement, given she is Prime Minister. After what one minister described as 'a barrage of opposition', the meeting broke up in stunned amazement. Gillard remained steadfast. Few can understand why she so trenchantly held the view that it must be a no vote. Even her closest supporters were telling her it was a lost cause in caucus.
"After cabinet finished, a cabal of ministers met to discuss strategy and started contacting caucus members. The details of the cabinet meeting quickly reverberated around Parliament House. A motion to support the Palestinian bid was on the agenda for caucus the next morning and was likely to be supported. Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change Mark Dreyfus, from the Victorian Right, urged Fitzgibbon to have the national Right bind its MPs and senators in support of Gillard's position. Fitzgibbon rebuffed Dreyfus several times on Monday and again on Tuesday.
"Gillard met with key members of the left and right separately before the caucus meeting on Tuesday morning. She also met again with several ministers. The Treasurer alerted her to the dangers that lay ahead. Sources say it was not until then that Gillard was fully cognisant of the weight of numbers against her. Until then, one observer says, 'Gillard was all at sea'.
"Backbench MP Andrew Leigh had before parliament a motion urging a yes vote, to recognise Palestine as a non-member state observer at the UN. Leigh was reluctant to back away from it. Part of the deal reached with Gillard to support an abstention vote required Leigh to withdraw the motion, which he did. This was not a secret back-door attempt to white-ant a prime minister, it was conducted in full view to get Gillard to make what MPs believe is the right policy decision in Australia's interests. Carr worked as craftily as he had ever done as NSW premier to see his view prevail. Some say the vigour with which he pursued this has put him offside with some in the party. Others say it marks his arrival as a serious political player in Canberra. Carr will not be critical of Gillard's leadership. He believes she made the right call in the end. Moreover, along with eight other ministers, he saved Gillard's neck. As one familiar with the discussion said yesterday: 'If the caucus resolution on abstention didn't go under her feet, she would have gone under the ice'."
Watch this space!
[*Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Nauru, Czech Republic, Panama; **The front page of this week's Australian Jewish News, for example, features a photo of Carr and Defence Minister Stephen Smith with the header You've let us down and the following text: "Bob Carr and Stephen Smith were among the senior ministers who this week forced Australia to abstain on a crucial UN vote that helps hand the Palestinians a state via the backdoor rather than through negotiations with Israel."]
Friday, November 30, 2012
Pro-Israel Deadenders in Federal Labor
You might like to know just which Labor politicians, apart from ministers Stephen Conroy and Bill Shorten (see my 28/11/12 post The Powerlessness of One), supported Prime Minister Julia Gillard in advocating a NO vote for Palestine's application for observer status at the UN. I'm not sure whether the list is complete or not, so will add names if and when I become aware of them:
Michael Danby, MP for Melbourne Ports (VIC)
Mark Dreyfus, MP for Isaacs (VIC), Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change & Energy Efficiency
David Feeney, Victorian Senator, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence
Don Farrell, South Australian Senator, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability & Urban Water
Bernie Ripoli, MP for Oxley (QLD), Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer
Michael Danby, MP for Melbourne Ports (VIC)
Mark Dreyfus, MP for Isaacs (VIC), Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change & Energy Efficiency
David Feeney, Victorian Senator, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence
Don Farrell, South Australian Senator, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability & Urban Water
Bernie Ripoli, MP for Oxley (QLD), Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Flogging Rubbish at The Age
Far out! The opinion editor of today's Age seems to think that Jeffrey Goldberg's latest bout of Zionist flatulence is just what those seeking enlightened opinion on Palestine's bid for observer status in the UN need to make sense of it all. Actually, I doubt the silly bugger even bothered reading it first.
How else to explain why a piece, originally titled How Palestinians can finally achieve independence, was retitled in the Age Palestinians doomed by intransigence when the only intransigence referred to in the text is Israeli intransigence?
Any masochist bothering to sniff Goldberg's emission at once enters that strange parallel world of the Zionist propagandist, where words you thought you knew the meaning of take on a whole new meaning, and history is replaced by mythistory, the reverse of what actually happened.
Did you know for example that the word resistance means indiscriminate murder? No? Read on:
"The Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza said, in a televised speech last week, that his group remained committed to a policy of indiscriminate murder. He gave the policy a different name, of course. 'Resistance,' he said, 'is the shortest way to liberate Palestine.'"
Did you know that "Arab nations... invaded the nascent state of Israel"?
He's referring, of course, to Palestine in 1948, but what he asserts happened there at the time bears not the slightest resemblance to historical fact. Far from invading 'Israel' Arab forces were engaged in resisting - in the usual sense of the word - an attempt by Zionist forces to overrun as much of the country as possible, regardless of who was assigned what by the UN.
Here, for example, is the testimony of the man who commanded the most effective of the Arab forces engaged in trying to stem the Zionist offensive, the Arab Legion's John Bagot Glubb:
"The claim that, on 15th May, 1948, the Arab states attacked Israel has already been disproved. We have seen that the Zionists attacked the area allotted by the UN to the proposed Arab state several weeks before the 'Arab Invasion'. Apart, however, from the time factor, no Arab army attacked Israel, except the Egyptian, which crossed from Sinai into an area allotted to the Jewish state in the partition plan. The Jordanians only entered the Arab state, which they found had already been invaded by the Israelis. All the battles fought between the Arab Legion and the Israeli army took place on the territory of the Arab state or in the Jerusalem international area, both of which had been attacked by the Israelis before the Arab Legion arrived. Jordan never, on any occasion, attacked Israel. Of the other Arab states, Lebanon took no part in 1948. Syria fought one border action at Samakh and then withdrew. She did not invade Israel. The Iraqi army sent a token force of 3,000 men, which engaged the Israelis across the Jordan at Jisr al Mejama. It then withdrew through Amman and joined the Arab Legion in defending the Arab state in the Nablus-Jenin-Tulkarm triangle. When holding Jenin, it was attacked by an Israeli force which tried to seize Jenin (a town allotted to the Arab state) but was repulsed. The Iraqis, throughout all the fighting, remained on the defensive inside the Arab state. They also did not attack Israel." (Peace in the Holy Land, 1971, p 309)
Then there are the ludicrous premises that underpin Goldberg's proposed 'strategy' for Palestinians wishing to acquire an independent state of their own. These are:
a) American Jews are so enamoured of civil rights in the US that they would clasp the Palestinians to their bosoms if only they'd drop both their guns and their demand for independence and call instead for the right to vote in the Knesset;
b) Given a), Israeli Jews would be so terrified of Israel being called an apartheid state, and so eager to avoid the attendant pariahdom, that they'd present an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza ("with security caveats," of course) to the Palestinians on a platter. In which case, problem solved, the Palestinians would have a state of their own!
What a genius!
Frankly, any opinion editor who thinks that kind of nonsense suitable fare for readers deserves nothing less than a public flogging with rolled-up copies of his paper.
How else to explain why a piece, originally titled How Palestinians can finally achieve independence, was retitled in the Age Palestinians doomed by intransigence when the only intransigence referred to in the text is Israeli intransigence?
Any masochist bothering to sniff Goldberg's emission at once enters that strange parallel world of the Zionist propagandist, where words you thought you knew the meaning of take on a whole new meaning, and history is replaced by mythistory, the reverse of what actually happened.
Did you know for example that the word resistance means indiscriminate murder? No? Read on:
"The Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza said, in a televised speech last week, that his group remained committed to a policy of indiscriminate murder. He gave the policy a different name, of course. 'Resistance,' he said, 'is the shortest way to liberate Palestine.'"
Did you know that "Arab nations... invaded the nascent state of Israel"?
He's referring, of course, to Palestine in 1948, but what he asserts happened there at the time bears not the slightest resemblance to historical fact. Far from invading 'Israel' Arab forces were engaged in resisting - in the usual sense of the word - an attempt by Zionist forces to overrun as much of the country as possible, regardless of who was assigned what by the UN.
Here, for example, is the testimony of the man who commanded the most effective of the Arab forces engaged in trying to stem the Zionist offensive, the Arab Legion's John Bagot Glubb:
"The claim that, on 15th May, 1948, the Arab states attacked Israel has already been disproved. We have seen that the Zionists attacked the area allotted by the UN to the proposed Arab state several weeks before the 'Arab Invasion'. Apart, however, from the time factor, no Arab army attacked Israel, except the Egyptian, which crossed from Sinai into an area allotted to the Jewish state in the partition plan. The Jordanians only entered the Arab state, which they found had already been invaded by the Israelis. All the battles fought between the Arab Legion and the Israeli army took place on the territory of the Arab state or in the Jerusalem international area, both of which had been attacked by the Israelis before the Arab Legion arrived. Jordan never, on any occasion, attacked Israel. Of the other Arab states, Lebanon took no part in 1948. Syria fought one border action at Samakh and then withdrew. She did not invade Israel. The Iraqi army sent a token force of 3,000 men, which engaged the Israelis across the Jordan at Jisr al Mejama. It then withdrew through Amman and joined the Arab Legion in defending the Arab state in the Nablus-Jenin-Tulkarm triangle. When holding Jenin, it was attacked by an Israeli force which tried to seize Jenin (a town allotted to the Arab state) but was repulsed. The Iraqis, throughout all the fighting, remained on the defensive inside the Arab state. They also did not attack Israel." (Peace in the Holy Land, 1971, p 309)
Then there are the ludicrous premises that underpin Goldberg's proposed 'strategy' for Palestinians wishing to acquire an independent state of their own. These are:
a) American Jews are so enamoured of civil rights in the US that they would clasp the Palestinians to their bosoms if only they'd drop both their guns and their demand for independence and call instead for the right to vote in the Knesset;
b) Given a), Israeli Jews would be so terrified of Israel being called an apartheid state, and so eager to avoid the attendant pariahdom, that they'd present an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza ("with security caveats," of course) to the Palestinians on a platter. In which case, problem solved, the Palestinians would have a state of their own!
What a genius!
Frankly, any opinion editor who thinks that kind of nonsense suitable fare for readers deserves nothing less than a public flogging with rolled-up copies of his paper.
The Good Old Cold Shoulder
"It wouldn't matter whether it was John Howard or Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott in the prime minister's chair... [the Israelis] know they've got us by the balls... partly because of the strength of the Israel lobby..." (Unnamed "Australian official" in the wake of the 2010 Mossad passport affair. Quoted in Betrayed PM should not be taken for granted by Israel, Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald, 26/2/10)
"A prominent Jewish community leader will seek an urgent meeting with Prime Minister Julia Gillard with the hope Australia will yet oppose a Palestinian seat in the United Nations. Philip Chester, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, said time was of the essence before the Palestinian bid is put to the vote in New York on Thursday (around 7.30 am Friday). 'We're exploring that right now,' Mr Chester said. 'Our aim is to talk to the Prime Minister at the first instance, others we have to think about.'... Mr Chester was at pains to emphasise his organisation would not make threats..." (Gillard under Jewish pressure over Palestine, Daniel Flitton, The Age, 28/11/12)
Threats? Was at pains to emphasise? How interesting! Now where did that suggestion come from? Daniel? Philip?
Perish the thought that the Israel lobby would ever actually threaten an Australian Prime Minister.
OK, well, there's always the good old reciprocal cold shoulder:
"Australia had long been one of Israel's 3 most supportive friends, along with the US and Canada. But now there were troubling signs that Rudd had decided to distance Australia from the Jewish state and himself from the Australian Jews he had called friends. It started in February [2010] with the Government's angry reaction to news that assassins with the Israeli intelligence service Mossad had forged 3 Australian passports to enter the United Arab Emirates to kill a Hamas military commander... in his hotel room... It sharpened a week later when Australia switched its vote in the UN to signal a weakening of support for Israel... The concern intensified last month when the government expelled an Israeli diplomat as a punishment for the passports abuse... All through this, the Israeli ambassador to Australia and some members of the Jewish community felt a chill in their dealings with the government Phone calls went unreturned, normal dealings seemed to be suspended. The Jewish community reciprocated. When Labor approached key groups to hold fund-raising events for the coming election, they feigned busyness, but it was deliberate and unmistakeable retaliation. The Jewish community was an important source of Labor funds for the 2007 election. A single lunch in Sydney raised $100,000. A Toorak tennis court for 200, attended by Rudd and Julia Gillard, raised more. But as this year has unfolded, it became increasingly clear such effort would not be repeated." (What am I, chopped liver? How Rudd dived into schmooze mode, Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald, 22/6/10)*
FYI: The Age has just concluded a 7,144 reader poll on the question: How should Australia vote on a bid to give Palestinians UN observer status? The results are as follows:
Yes: 60%; No: 31%; Abstain: 9%
[*For the full story on the night Philip and his mates had dinner with Rudd at The Lodge, see my 22/6/10 post The Best Israel Policy Money Can Buy. Just click on the 'Rudd government' label below.]
"A prominent Jewish community leader will seek an urgent meeting with Prime Minister Julia Gillard with the hope Australia will yet oppose a Palestinian seat in the United Nations. Philip Chester, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, said time was of the essence before the Palestinian bid is put to the vote in New York on Thursday (around 7.30 am Friday). 'We're exploring that right now,' Mr Chester said. 'Our aim is to talk to the Prime Minister at the first instance, others we have to think about.'... Mr Chester was at pains to emphasise his organisation would not make threats..." (Gillard under Jewish pressure over Palestine, Daniel Flitton, The Age, 28/11/12)
Threats? Was at pains to emphasise? How interesting! Now where did that suggestion come from? Daniel? Philip?
Perish the thought that the Israel lobby would ever actually threaten an Australian Prime Minister.
OK, well, there's always the good old reciprocal cold shoulder:
"Australia had long been one of Israel's 3 most supportive friends, along with the US and Canada. But now there were troubling signs that Rudd had decided to distance Australia from the Jewish state and himself from the Australian Jews he had called friends. It started in February [2010] with the Government's angry reaction to news that assassins with the Israeli intelligence service Mossad had forged 3 Australian passports to enter the United Arab Emirates to kill a Hamas military commander... in his hotel room... It sharpened a week later when Australia switched its vote in the UN to signal a weakening of support for Israel... The concern intensified last month when the government expelled an Israeli diplomat as a punishment for the passports abuse... All through this, the Israeli ambassador to Australia and some members of the Jewish community felt a chill in their dealings with the government Phone calls went unreturned, normal dealings seemed to be suspended. The Jewish community reciprocated. When Labor approached key groups to hold fund-raising events for the coming election, they feigned busyness, but it was deliberate and unmistakeable retaliation. The Jewish community was an important source of Labor funds for the 2007 election. A single lunch in Sydney raised $100,000. A Toorak tennis court for 200, attended by Rudd and Julia Gillard, raised more. But as this year has unfolded, it became increasingly clear such effort would not be repeated." (What am I, chopped liver? How Rudd dived into schmooze mode, Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald, 22/6/10)*
FYI: The Age has just concluded a 7,144 reader poll on the question: How should Australia vote on a bid to give Palestinians UN observer status? The results are as follows:
Yes: 60%; No: 31%; Abstain: 9%
[*For the full story on the night Philip and his mates had dinner with Rudd at The Lodge, see my 22/6/10 post The Best Israel Policy Money Can Buy. Just click on the 'Rudd government' label below.]
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
The Powerlessness of One
These two quotes were made for each other:
"Cabinet sources told The Australian yesterday that at least 9 ministers spoke against Ms Gillard's 'personal decision' to have Australia vote against the resolution to give Palestine observer status at the UN. The torrid meeting was described as 'vigorous' and 'willing' with only one minister, Senator [Stephen] Conroy, prepared to speak on Ms Gillard's side and only one other Minister, another Victorian, Bill Shorten, prepared to vote with the Prime Minister." (PM facing rebellion in the ranks, Dennis Shanahan & David Crowe, The Australian, 28/11/12)
"Bob Brown is killing us on this issue through the power of a simple, commonsense message: Bush is an imbecile and Australia should not be a part of his war. Mind you, our position could be worse - Conroy could be in charge. At today's Shadow Cabinet he formally moved that we endorse Howard's deployment of troops and an American invasion of Iraq, irrespective of the UN. Not even the other Big Macs - the US faction of Rudd, Smith and Swan - could support him. All he had was his own vote. Imagine that: the ALP supporting Bush and Howard in the invasion of a country on the other side of the world without UN approval. If we followed the Conroy doctrine, after the next election, Brown would be the Leader of the Opposition." (Mark Latham, The Latham Diaries, 2005, p 211)
"Cabinet sources told The Australian yesterday that at least 9 ministers spoke against Ms Gillard's 'personal decision' to have Australia vote against the resolution to give Palestine observer status at the UN. The torrid meeting was described as 'vigorous' and 'willing' with only one minister, Senator [Stephen] Conroy, prepared to speak on Ms Gillard's side and only one other Minister, another Victorian, Bill Shorten, prepared to vote with the Prime Minister." (PM facing rebellion in the ranks, Dennis Shanahan & David Crowe, The Australian, 28/11/12)
"Bob Brown is killing us on this issue through the power of a simple, commonsense message: Bush is an imbecile and Australia should not be a part of his war. Mind you, our position could be worse - Conroy could be in charge. At today's Shadow Cabinet he formally moved that we endorse Howard's deployment of troops and an American invasion of Iraq, irrespective of the UN. Not even the other Big Macs - the US faction of Rudd, Smith and Swan - could support him. All he had was his own vote. Imagine that: the ALP supporting Bush and Howard in the invasion of a country on the other side of the world without UN approval. If we followed the Conroy doctrine, after the next election, Brown would be the Leader of the Opposition." (Mark Latham, The Latham Diaries, 2005, p 211)
Australia's Foreign Policy Shame
What a bizarre, bottom-dwelling cult is the ALP these days.
And, as always, it's the party's stance on the question of Palestine, more than any other perhaps, that should strip away any lingering illusions we may have that it is anything more.
A simple, straightforward, morally correct decision to vote in favour of Palestine's cap-in-hand bid for observer status in the United Nations General Assembly is simply beyond it. Instead, in deciding to abstain, it's positioned itself, in cowardly fashion, on the fence.
In addition, but for what has been described in the ms press as cabinet and backbench revolts, its parliamentary leader and prime minister, Julia Gillard, in complete thrall to the planet's most deluded and psychotic national entity, would have had us alone and palely loitering on the international stage with naught but the US, its toxic brat, and maybe Canada, for company.
While one would think the ALP long past embarrassing, one gets the distinct impression that the aforementioned 'revolts' were really nothing more than a desire by ministers and MPs to avoid international ignominy. To hell with notions of elementary justice for the Palestinians, the governing party, warned by former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans, who had briefed Labor MPs on Monday, that "[it] would be on the wrong side of history if [it] stood with the US and Israel against the rest of the world," has merely recoiled from the idea of being shamed in such a public manner.
It goes without saying, of course, that the Abbott opposition is immune from any shame whatever, with its foreign affairs spokeswoman, Julie Bishop, quoted as saying the government's "decision to abstain was disappointing because the Coalition backed a no vote as 'the path to peace and reconciliation'," a position virtually indistinguishable from that of the Prime Minister's "personal view," which was that a vote in favour "would hurt the peace process because the US has threatened to withdraw funding for the Palestinian Authority."
Perhaps the only satisfaction to be gleaned from this whole sorry saga is that "the Israeli government is understood to be furious" and "seething," and the Government's 'Minister for Israel', Michael Danby, "is said to be heavily bruised by the stoush after pushing for Australia to reject the Palestinian bid."
[Quotes drawn from Backbench revolt forces PM to drop Israel support, Phillip Coorey, Sydney Morning Herald, 28/11/12; Gillard rolled on Palestine, The Age, Daniel Flitton, 28/11/12)]
And, as always, it's the party's stance on the question of Palestine, more than any other perhaps, that should strip away any lingering illusions we may have that it is anything more.
A simple, straightforward, morally correct decision to vote in favour of Palestine's cap-in-hand bid for observer status in the United Nations General Assembly is simply beyond it. Instead, in deciding to abstain, it's positioned itself, in cowardly fashion, on the fence.
In addition, but for what has been described in the ms press as cabinet and backbench revolts, its parliamentary leader and prime minister, Julia Gillard, in complete thrall to the planet's most deluded and psychotic national entity, would have had us alone and palely loitering on the international stage with naught but the US, its toxic brat, and maybe Canada, for company.
While one would think the ALP long past embarrassing, one gets the distinct impression that the aforementioned 'revolts' were really nothing more than a desire by ministers and MPs to avoid international ignominy. To hell with notions of elementary justice for the Palestinians, the governing party, warned by former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans, who had briefed Labor MPs on Monday, that "[it] would be on the wrong side of history if [it] stood with the US and Israel against the rest of the world," has merely recoiled from the idea of being shamed in such a public manner.
It goes without saying, of course, that the Abbott opposition is immune from any shame whatever, with its foreign affairs spokeswoman, Julie Bishop, quoted as saying the government's "decision to abstain was disappointing because the Coalition backed a no vote as 'the path to peace and reconciliation'," a position virtually indistinguishable from that of the Prime Minister's "personal view," which was that a vote in favour "would hurt the peace process because the US has threatened to withdraw funding for the Palestinian Authority."
Perhaps the only satisfaction to be gleaned from this whole sorry saga is that "the Israeli government is understood to be furious" and "seething," and the Government's 'Minister for Israel', Michael Danby, "is said to be heavily bruised by the stoush after pushing for Australia to reject the Palestinian bid."
[Quotes drawn from Backbench revolt forces PM to drop Israel support, Phillip Coorey, Sydney Morning Herald, 28/11/12; Gillard rolled on Palestine, The Age, Daniel Flitton, 28/11/12)]
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