"The news [that Anthony Pratt is the richest man in the country] comes after a big week for the Visy executive chairman and Pratt Industries owner who, though he is a supporter of US President Donald Trump, hosted a $5,000-a-head fundraising function for Bill Shorten at his Raheen mansion in Melbourne mid-week. A Liberal Party fundraiser was held two weeks earlier at Raheen." (Pratt sails to top - and happiness, John Stensholt, The Australian, 30/3/19)
So Anthony Pratt supports Trump, Shorten and Morrison.
Dumb question: What could these three possibly have in common?
And far from Palestine:
"The pair [Pratt and Gina Rinehart, the second richest person in the country] reveal that Mr Pratt likes to sing the Beatles song Oh! Darling from the seminal Abbey Road album to Mrs Rinehart and flew to Cambodia to support her Cambodian Children's Fund earlier this year." (ibid)
Meanwhile, in Palestine:
"Israeli forces have killed three Palestinians, including two teenagers, and shot 46 others at gatherings on the Gaza frontier marking the anniversary of the demonstration movement, the territory's ministry of health said." (Israeli fire kills four Palestinians says Gaza health ministry, Oliver Holmes and Hazem Balousha, theguardian.com, 31/3/19)
Showing posts with label Right of Return. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Right of Return. Show all posts
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Sunday, March 3, 2019
'A Call for Help from a Population in Despair'
When you hear Australia's shambolic Christian Zionist prime minister Scott Morrison prating that "[t]he UN General Assembly is now the place where Israel is bullied and where anti-Semitism is cloaked in the language of human rights... This year the Human Rights Council passed 6 motions condemning Israel compared to a total of 14 across the rest of the world" (70th Anniversary of Australia's formal diplomatic relationship with the State of Israel, aph.gov.au, 19/2/19), consider it a salutary reminder of just how vital and necessary is the work of the UNGA in general, and the HRC in particular, in documenting and calling out the serial crimes of the apartheid state. Crimes such as those outlined in this press release from The UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Gaza protests, for example:
"The United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory today presented its findings. The report focuses on the demonstrations in the Gaza Strip, referred to as the 'Great March of Return and the Breaking of the Siege'.
"The Commission has reasonable grounds to believe that during the Great March of Return, Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity, and must be immediately investigated by Israel,' said the Chair of the Commission, Santiago Canton of Argentina.
"The Commission was mandated by the Human Rights Council in May 2018 to investigate all alleged violations and abuses of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in the context of the large-scale protests that began in Gaza on 30 March 2018. The Commission comprises Santiago Canton of Argentina (Chair), Sara Hossain of Bangladesh and Betty Murungi of Kenya.
"More than 6,000 unarmed demonstrators were shot by military snipers, week after week at the protest sites by the separation fence.
"The Commission investigated every killing at the designated demonstration sites by the Gaza separation fence on official protest days. The investigation covered the period from the start of the protests until 31 December 2018. 189 Palestinians were killed during the demonstrations inside this period. The Commission found that Israeli Security Forces killed 183 of these protesters with live ammunition. Thirty-five of these fatalities were children, while three were clearly marked paramedics, and two were clearly marked journalists.
"According to the the Commission's data analysis, the Israeli Security Forces injured 6,106 with live ammunition at the protest sites during the period. Another 3,098 Palestinians were injured by bullet fragmentation, rubber-coated metal bullets or by hits from tear gas canisters. Four Israeli soldiers were injured at the demonstrations. One Israeli soldier was killed on a protest day but outside the protest sites.
"'There can be no justification for killing and injuring journalists, medics, and persons who pose no imminent threat of death or serious injury to those around them. Particularly alarming is the targeting of children and persons with disabilities,' said Sarah Hossain. 'Many young persons' lives have been altered forever. 122 people have had a limb amputated since 30 March last year. Twenty of these amputees are children.'
"The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities knowing they were clearly recognizable as such.
"Unless undertaken lawfully in self-defence, intentionally shooting a civilian not directly participating in hostilities is a war crime. The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that individual members of the Israeli Security Forces, in the course of their response to the demonstrations, killed and injured civilians who were neither directly participating in hostilities, nor posing an imminent threat. These serious human rights and humanitarian law violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.
"The Commission took note of the Israeli claim that the protests by the separation fence masked 'terror activities' by Palestinian armed groups. The Commission found however that the demonstrations were civilian in nature, with clearly stated political aims. Despite some acts of significant violence, the Commission found that the demonstrations did not constitute combat or military campaigns.
"The applicable legal framework was thus based in international human rights law. This assessment did not change even though the Commission's investigation revealed that some demonstrators were members of organized armed groups. Others were members of political parties. International human rights law prohibits the use of force based solely on a person's actual or alleged affiliation to any group, rather than their conduct.
"The Commission found that some members of the Higher National Committee organising the protests, which includes Hamas representatives, encouraged or defended demonstators' use of indiscriminate incendiary kites and balloons, causing fear among civilians and significant damage to property in southern Israel. The Commission concluded that Hamas, as the de facto authority in Gaza, failed to prevent these acts.
"The Commission conducted 325 interviews with victims, witnesses and sources, and gathered more than 8,000 documents. An integral part of the investigation was comprehensive analysis of social media, and of vast amounts of audio-visual material showing incidents, including drone footage.
"The Commission was mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to focus on accountability and identify those responsible for violations and alleged international crimes.
"'The Commission will place the relevant information in a confidential file to be handed over to the High Commissioner of Human Rights, to provide access to this information to national and international justice mechanisms. The International Criminal Court is already concerned with this situation,' said Betty Murungi. [...]
"'The onus is now on Israel to investigate every protest-related killing and injury, promptly, impartially and independently in accordance with international standards, to determine whether war crimes or crimes against humanity were committed, with a view to holding accountable those found responsible,' said Santiago Canton... 'The Commission finds that these protests were a call for help from a population in despair', Santiago Canton reminded. 'Not only Israel but also the de facto authorities led by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have responsibilities towards them. The Commission calls on Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza, and on all three duty bearers to comply with their responsibilities and improve the living situation in Gaza.'
"The Israeli authorities did not respond to repeated requests by the Commission for information and access to Israel and to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
"A fuller report, containing detailed factual and contextual information and legal analysis will be published and presented to the Human Rights Council on 18 March 2019 in Geneva." (No justification for Israel to shoot protesters with live ammunition, 28/2/19)
"The United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory today presented its findings. The report focuses on the demonstrations in the Gaza Strip, referred to as the 'Great March of Return and the Breaking of the Siege'.
"The Commission has reasonable grounds to believe that during the Great March of Return, Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity, and must be immediately investigated by Israel,' said the Chair of the Commission, Santiago Canton of Argentina.
"The Commission was mandated by the Human Rights Council in May 2018 to investigate all alleged violations and abuses of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in the context of the large-scale protests that began in Gaza on 30 March 2018. The Commission comprises Santiago Canton of Argentina (Chair), Sara Hossain of Bangladesh and Betty Murungi of Kenya.
"More than 6,000 unarmed demonstrators were shot by military snipers, week after week at the protest sites by the separation fence.
"The Commission investigated every killing at the designated demonstration sites by the Gaza separation fence on official protest days. The investigation covered the period from the start of the protests until 31 December 2018. 189 Palestinians were killed during the demonstrations inside this period. The Commission found that Israeli Security Forces killed 183 of these protesters with live ammunition. Thirty-five of these fatalities were children, while three were clearly marked paramedics, and two were clearly marked journalists.
"According to the the Commission's data analysis, the Israeli Security Forces injured 6,106 with live ammunition at the protest sites during the period. Another 3,098 Palestinians were injured by bullet fragmentation, rubber-coated metal bullets or by hits from tear gas canisters. Four Israeli soldiers were injured at the demonstrations. One Israeli soldier was killed on a protest day but outside the protest sites.
"'There can be no justification for killing and injuring journalists, medics, and persons who pose no imminent threat of death or serious injury to those around them. Particularly alarming is the targeting of children and persons with disabilities,' said Sarah Hossain. 'Many young persons' lives have been altered forever. 122 people have had a limb amputated since 30 March last year. Twenty of these amputees are children.'
"The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities knowing they were clearly recognizable as such.
"Unless undertaken lawfully in self-defence, intentionally shooting a civilian not directly participating in hostilities is a war crime. The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that individual members of the Israeli Security Forces, in the course of their response to the demonstrations, killed and injured civilians who were neither directly participating in hostilities, nor posing an imminent threat. These serious human rights and humanitarian law violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.
"The Commission took note of the Israeli claim that the protests by the separation fence masked 'terror activities' by Palestinian armed groups. The Commission found however that the demonstrations were civilian in nature, with clearly stated political aims. Despite some acts of significant violence, the Commission found that the demonstrations did not constitute combat or military campaigns.
"The applicable legal framework was thus based in international human rights law. This assessment did not change even though the Commission's investigation revealed that some demonstrators were members of organized armed groups. Others were members of political parties. International human rights law prohibits the use of force based solely on a person's actual or alleged affiliation to any group, rather than their conduct.
"The Commission found that some members of the Higher National Committee organising the protests, which includes Hamas representatives, encouraged or defended demonstators' use of indiscriminate incendiary kites and balloons, causing fear among civilians and significant damage to property in southern Israel. The Commission concluded that Hamas, as the de facto authority in Gaza, failed to prevent these acts.
"The Commission conducted 325 interviews with victims, witnesses and sources, and gathered more than 8,000 documents. An integral part of the investigation was comprehensive analysis of social media, and of vast amounts of audio-visual material showing incidents, including drone footage.
"The Commission was mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to focus on accountability and identify those responsible for violations and alleged international crimes.
"'The Commission will place the relevant information in a confidential file to be handed over to the High Commissioner of Human Rights, to provide access to this information to national and international justice mechanisms. The International Criminal Court is already concerned with this situation,' said Betty Murungi. [...]
"'The onus is now on Israel to investigate every protest-related killing and injury, promptly, impartially and independently in accordance with international standards, to determine whether war crimes or crimes against humanity were committed, with a view to holding accountable those found responsible,' said Santiago Canton... 'The Commission finds that these protests were a call for help from a population in despair', Santiago Canton reminded. 'Not only Israel but also the de facto authorities led by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have responsibilities towards them. The Commission calls on Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza, and on all three duty bearers to comply with their responsibilities and improve the living situation in Gaza.'
"The Israeli authorities did not respond to repeated requests by the Commission for information and access to Israel and to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
"A fuller report, containing detailed factual and contextual information and legal analysis will be published and presented to the Human Rights Council on 18 March 2019 in Geneva." (No justification for Israel to shoot protesters with live ammunition, 28/2/19)
Friday, January 11, 2019
Zionist Hypocrisy Alert
As rich as Zionist pontification and bombast is in chutzpah, hypocrisy and insufferable arrogance, I dare anyone to top this example:
"The Australian Labor Party recently passed a motion at the national conference that 'calls on the next Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state'... the motion provides much-coveted Western legitimacy for the Palestinian Authority, a non-state entity whose value system is at odds with that of Australia and indeed the entire liberal democratic world. As the international community marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the PA's state-in-waiting is a brazen violator of the declaration's most basic principles yet is being pre-emptively endorsed by Labor." (Palestine policy is a real killer, Danny Eisen & Sheryl Saperia*, The Australian, 8/1/19)
So, a Canadian and an American Zionist team up to condemn the policy of an Australian political party on behalf of a terrorist entity, currently in occupation of the ancestral homeland of the Palestinian people.
Now, if you think that's rich, there's more. There always is with these bullshitters.
For a Zionist to speak of an "entity whose value system is at odds with Australia," is to raise the obvious question as to whether the practises of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, occupation, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, which define the Zionist entity in Palestine, and which have been perpetrated by it on a daily basis ever since its misconception 70 years ago, are compatible with contemporary "Australian values."
What other mob would have the hide to assert an equivalence between an apartheid state and a liberal democracy?
But the piece de resistance, the very pinnacle of Zionist chutzpah, hypocrisy and arrogance must surely be the propagandists' accusation that the Palestinian Authority is a "brazen violator of the UDHR's most basic principles." Truly, is there anything more nauseating than a Zionist orating on the subject of human rights?
One of those "basic principles" can be found in the UDHR's Article 13: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Ever since Zionist terror gangs ethnically cleansed most of Palestine in 1948, their upstart entity has rejected the inalienable right of Palestinian refugees - enshrined in Article 13 - to return to their homeland. And this, solely in the interests of maintaining a Jews-only state so that the likes of Eisen and Saperia can go and live there - if they wish.
Need more be said?
[*Danny Eisen is co-founder of the Canadian Coalition Against terror. Sheryl Saperia is a director of policy at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.]
"The Australian Labor Party recently passed a motion at the national conference that 'calls on the next Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state'... the motion provides much-coveted Western legitimacy for the Palestinian Authority, a non-state entity whose value system is at odds with that of Australia and indeed the entire liberal democratic world. As the international community marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the PA's state-in-waiting is a brazen violator of the declaration's most basic principles yet is being pre-emptively endorsed by Labor." (Palestine policy is a real killer, Danny Eisen & Sheryl Saperia*, The Australian, 8/1/19)
So, a Canadian and an American Zionist team up to condemn the policy of an Australian political party on behalf of a terrorist entity, currently in occupation of the ancestral homeland of the Palestinian people.
Now, if you think that's rich, there's more. There always is with these bullshitters.
For a Zionist to speak of an "entity whose value system is at odds with Australia," is to raise the obvious question as to whether the practises of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, occupation, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, which define the Zionist entity in Palestine, and which have been perpetrated by it on a daily basis ever since its misconception 70 years ago, are compatible with contemporary "Australian values."
What other mob would have the hide to assert an equivalence between an apartheid state and a liberal democracy?
But the piece de resistance, the very pinnacle of Zionist chutzpah, hypocrisy and arrogance must surely be the propagandists' accusation that the Palestinian Authority is a "brazen violator of the UDHR's most basic principles." Truly, is there anything more nauseating than a Zionist orating on the subject of human rights?
One of those "basic principles" can be found in the UDHR's Article 13: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Ever since Zionist terror gangs ethnically cleansed most of Palestine in 1948, their upstart entity has rejected the inalienable right of Palestinian refugees - enshrined in Article 13 - to return to their homeland. And this, solely in the interests of maintaining a Jews-only state so that the likes of Eisen and Saperia can go and live there - if they wish.
Need more be said?
[*Danny Eisen is co-founder of the Canadian Coalition Against terror. Sheryl Saperia is a director of policy at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.]
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Martyrs of the Third Intifada
"One of the most enduring popular movements of 2018 has been the ongoing Great March of Return in the besieged Gaza Strip. Since 30 March, thousands of Palestinians in the small coastal territory have demonstrated along the boundary with Israel, demanding the implementation of Palestinian refugees' right of return and an end to the crippling 11-year siege of Gaza.
"But such high-scale mobilisation has come at a high cost: according to Middle East Eye's calculations, 190 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces within the scope of the demonstrations between 30 march and 30 November - equivalent to one Palestinian killed every 31 hours in eight months. The numbers exclude more than 50 victims of air strikes or other Israeli military actions when demonstrations were not taking place.The death toll peaked on 14 May - the day the US opened its embassy in Jerusalem - when 68 people were killed.
"During that same time frame, more than 25,000 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. One Israeli soldier was killed within the context of the March." (from Gaza: The Palestinians who died during the Great March of Return, Ahmad Nafi and Chloe Benoist, middleeasteye.net, 28/12/18)
"But such high-scale mobilisation has come at a high cost: according to Middle East Eye's calculations, 190 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces within the scope of the demonstrations between 30 march and 30 November - equivalent to one Palestinian killed every 31 hours in eight months. The numbers exclude more than 50 victims of air strikes or other Israeli military actions when demonstrations were not taking place.The death toll peaked on 14 May - the day the US opened its embassy in Jerusalem - when 68 people were killed.
"During that same time frame, more than 25,000 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. One Israeli soldier was killed within the context of the March." (from Gaza: The Palestinians who died during the Great March of Return, Ahmad Nafi and Chloe Benoist, middleeasteye.net, 28/12/18)
Sunday, September 30, 2018
The Great March of Return
"Israeli forces have killed 7 Palestinians, two of them children, and shot more than 90 others in one of the bloodiest days of a six-month protest movement along the frontier, the Gaza health ministry said." (Two children among seven people shot dead by Israel, say officials, Oliver Holmes, theguardian.com, 30/9/18)
"... one of the bloodiest days of a six-month protest... "
Think about that. Six months! 180 people dead so far. Thousands more maimed and wounded. And why? Because they simply want to exercise their inalienable right as refugees to return home.
If anyone can point me to a more sustained and heroic display of bodies-on-the-line under fire, I'd like to know about it.
Then there are their serial killers.
If anyone can point me to a more sustained, more mechanical response to unarmed protesters than that of Israel's snipers, I'd like to hear about it.
And while I'm at it, if anyone can point me to a more sustained silence on the subject of what have been weekly massacres of defenceless civilians in Gaza than that displayed by the Australian msm....
"... one of the bloodiest days of a six-month protest... "
Think about that. Six months! 180 people dead so far. Thousands more maimed and wounded. And why? Because they simply want to exercise their inalienable right as refugees to return home.
If anyone can point me to a more sustained and heroic display of bodies-on-the-line under fire, I'd like to know about it.
Then there are their serial killers.
If anyone can point me to a more sustained, more mechanical response to unarmed protesters than that of Israel's snipers, I'd like to hear about it.
And while I'm at it, if anyone can point me to a more sustained silence on the subject of what have been weekly massacres of defenceless civilians in Gaza than that displayed by the Australian msm....
Sunday, June 3, 2018
Razan an-Najjar in a Nutshell
Razan an-Najjar, a 21-year-old mother, nurse, and 3rd (or maybe 4th) generation Palestinian refugee incarcerated in Israel's Gaza Ghetto, was murdered by an Israeli sniper on Friday while treating the wounds of her fellow refugees - who were demonstrating for the elementary right to return to their ancestral homes and lands, from which their forebears were ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948, and which lie on the other side of the Ghetto wire.
RIP, Razan.
RIP, Razan.
Friday, May 18, 2018
Meanwhile, Back in the Sheridan Bubble
The Australian's foreign editor (and Tony Abbott's childhood bestie), Greg Sheridan, knows what "most people" don't:
"Donald Trump's move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is right in principle and will contribute to the cause of peace in the Middle East, though not in the way that most people think." (Trump injects some realism into Middle East, The Australian, 17/5/18)
(Err... so "most people" think it "right in principle" and that it "will contribute to the cause of peace"? OH, REALLY?)
But moving right along, the answer is:
"... because it recognises reality and communicates an important message to the Palestinian leadership - that they do not have a veto over any aspect of the US relationship with Israel, or of international moves generally relating to Israel."
Damn! And we (like the Palestinians of course) have been labouring under the illusion that they did have such a veto! Who'd have thought?
But those revelations from the Sheridan bubble are not what I wanted to highlight today. It's this one:
"No one thinks they can reverse the population movements that took place between India and Pakistan 70 years ago." Ergo, the Palestinian right of return is simply unrealistic.
First, the clear differences between the two events. All Indian parties (Nehru's Congress Party most reluctantly and Jinnah's Muslim League enthusiastically) consented to partition. The Palestinians did not. It was imposed on them by a UNGA bullied by the US into voting for it. Moreover, in India at the time both Hindus and Muslims were indigenous to the country, while in Palestine the indigenous population were facing a takeover of their homeland by a settler-colonial minority.
But the big problem with Sheridan's assertion is that, unlike India, Israel encourages immigration. Of Jews only, of course. Ergo, if it can find room for more and more Jews from wherever (not to mention 'lost tribes' from India, no less!), it's got no excuse for excluding indigenous Palestinian refugees. Other than racism, that is.
Bubble popped.
"Donald Trump's move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is right in principle and will contribute to the cause of peace in the Middle East, though not in the way that most people think." (Trump injects some realism into Middle East, The Australian, 17/5/18)
(Err... so "most people" think it "right in principle" and that it "will contribute to the cause of peace"? OH, REALLY?)
But moving right along, the answer is:
"... because it recognises reality and communicates an important message to the Palestinian leadership - that they do not have a veto over any aspect of the US relationship with Israel, or of international moves generally relating to Israel."
Damn! And we (like the Palestinians of course) have been labouring under the illusion that they did have such a veto! Who'd have thought?
But those revelations from the Sheridan bubble are not what I wanted to highlight today. It's this one:
"No one thinks they can reverse the population movements that took place between India and Pakistan 70 years ago." Ergo, the Palestinian right of return is simply unrealistic.
First, the clear differences between the two events. All Indian parties (Nehru's Congress Party most reluctantly and Jinnah's Muslim League enthusiastically) consented to partition. The Palestinians did not. It was imposed on them by a UNGA bullied by the US into voting for it. Moreover, in India at the time both Hindus and Muslims were indigenous to the country, while in Palestine the indigenous population were facing a takeover of their homeland by a settler-colonial minority.
But the big problem with Sheridan's assertion is that, unlike India, Israel encourages immigration. Of Jews only, of course. Ergo, if it can find room for more and more Jews from wherever (not to mention 'lost tribes' from India, no less!), it's got no excuse for excluding indigenous Palestinian refugees. Other than racism, that is.
Bubble popped.
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Today's Australian Protests for Palestine
60 defenceless Palestinian protesters were martyred yesterday, and 2,771 wounded, in Israel's 70-year-old Gaza Ghetto by US-backed, -financed, and -armed Zionist fanatics.
Why?
For simply upholding Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
PROTEST this latest Israeli massacre today.
Adelaide: Parliament House steps 5pm
Brisbane: King George Square 5.30pm
Hobart: Parliamentary Lawns 5.30pm
Melbourne: State Library 9.30am-1.30pm
Sydney: Sydney Town Hall 6.30pm
Why?
For simply upholding Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
PROTEST this latest Israeli massacre today.
Adelaide: Parliament House steps 5pm
Brisbane: King George Square 5.30pm
Hobart: Parliamentary Lawns 5.30pm
Melbourne: State Library 9.30am-1.30pm
Sydney: Sydney Town Hall 6.30pm
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Give Us a Break, Guardian!
Another Israeli bloodletting in Gaza. Another lame Guardian editorial:
"The soldiers use of live ammunition against unarmed demonstrators is an affront; but it is in line with the brutal attitudes towards Palestinians that have been normalised by Israeli politicians." (The Guardian view on the Gaza protests: a new challenge to Israel's blockade, 23/4/18)
It's not an "affront," it's a fucking war crime!
That aside, if the Guardian's editor, Jonathan Freedland, is so bloody ignorant that he seriously thinks that Israeli brutality towards Palestinians is something new, then he doesn't deserve editorial space on a news website, let alone the job of boss cocky.
I mean, how far back do we have to go to understand that anti-Palestinian brutality is in the Zionist DNA?
1967?
"[Israeli Prime Minister Levi] Eshkol had already had reason to be worried about the Gaza refugees roughly two years before the Six-Day War [of 1967]. The refugees were multiplying, and when their numbers reached half a million, he feared the situation would become explosive. Once, he asked the chief of staff what would happen if the Egyptians [who then controlled the Gaza Strip] simply marched the refugees - women and children in the vanguard - towards the border with Israel. [Yitzhak] Rabin said they would not do that, and if they did, as soon as the IDF had killed the first 100, the rest would go back to Gaza." (1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev, 2007, p 524)
1949?
"Altogether between 2,700 and 5,000 infiltrators were killed in the period 1949-1956, the great majority of whom were unarmed." (Avi Shlaim, reviewing Benny Morris' Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation & the Countdown to the Suez War, 1993)
"The soldiers use of live ammunition against unarmed demonstrators is an affront; but it is in line with the brutal attitudes towards Palestinians that have been normalised by Israeli politicians." (The Guardian view on the Gaza protests: a new challenge to Israel's blockade, 23/4/18)
It's not an "affront," it's a fucking war crime!
That aside, if the Guardian's editor, Jonathan Freedland, is so bloody ignorant that he seriously thinks that Israeli brutality towards Palestinians is something new, then he doesn't deserve editorial space on a news website, let alone the job of boss cocky.
I mean, how far back do we have to go to understand that anti-Palestinian brutality is in the Zionist DNA?
1967?
"[Israeli Prime Minister Levi] Eshkol had already had reason to be worried about the Gaza refugees roughly two years before the Six-Day War [of 1967]. The refugees were multiplying, and when their numbers reached half a million, he feared the situation would become explosive. Once, he asked the chief of staff what would happen if the Egyptians [who then controlled the Gaza Strip] simply marched the refugees - women and children in the vanguard - towards the border with Israel. [Yitzhak] Rabin said they would not do that, and if they did, as soon as the IDF had killed the first 100, the rest would go back to Gaza." (1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev, 2007, p 524)
1949?
"Altogether between 2,700 and 5,000 infiltrators were killed in the period 1949-1956, the great majority of whom were unarmed." (Avi Shlaim, reviewing Benny Morris' Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation & the Countdown to the Suez War, 1993)
Saturday, April 21, 2018
Circle the Wagons!
The 70th anniversary of the ill-conceived, apartheid state of Israel is looming, and Murdoch's Australian is literally salivating at the prospect.
On Thursday, we had a 6-page supplement - INNOVATION NATION - "Seventy years ago on May 14, David Ben-Gurion read the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the state of Israel. In an arid landscape, the nation has succeeded through ingenuity in endeavours including agriculture and, more recently, hi-tech centred on Tel Aviv and its Silicon Wadi" (19/4/18) - and a lead article by Bruce Loudon, A miracle shaped from the desert, in which he amusingly confuses Israel's apartheid Law of Return with the Palestinians' international law-backed right of return:
"The 'right of return' has attracted migrants with a commitment to the future of Israel."
"And then there is the upsurge of violence in Gaza. Hamas terrorists are inciting impoverished Gazans into defiant protests under the banner of a 'Great March of Return' aimed at reclaiming Palestine, to coincide with Israel's 70th anniversary."
But for me the highlight of Loudon's leader was his resurrection of the hysterical words of Israel's first ambassador to the UN, Abba Eban (who, btw, once cynically quipped that "Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what one does not believe oneself"):
"Surrounded by hostile armies on all its land frontiers, subjected to savage and relentless hostility, exposed to penetration raids and assaults by day and by night, suffering a constant toll of life among its citizens, bombarded by threats of neighbouring governments to accomplish its extinction by armed force - embattled, blockaded, besieged, Israel alone among the nations faces a battle for its security anew with every approaching nightfall and every rising dawn."
An oldie but a goldie. Made my day.
On Thursday, we had a 6-page supplement - INNOVATION NATION - "Seventy years ago on May 14, David Ben-Gurion read the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the state of Israel. In an arid landscape, the nation has succeeded through ingenuity in endeavours including agriculture and, more recently, hi-tech centred on Tel Aviv and its Silicon Wadi" (19/4/18) - and a lead article by Bruce Loudon, A miracle shaped from the desert, in which he amusingly confuses Israel's apartheid Law of Return with the Palestinians' international law-backed right of return:
"The 'right of return' has attracted migrants with a commitment to the future of Israel."
"And then there is the upsurge of violence in Gaza. Hamas terrorists are inciting impoverished Gazans into defiant protests under the banner of a 'Great March of Return' aimed at reclaiming Palestine, to coincide with Israel's 70th anniversary."
But for me the highlight of Loudon's leader was his resurrection of the hysterical words of Israel's first ambassador to the UN, Abba Eban (who, btw, once cynically quipped that "Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what one does not believe oneself"):
"Surrounded by hostile armies on all its land frontiers, subjected to savage and relentless hostility, exposed to penetration raids and assaults by day and by night, suffering a constant toll of life among its citizens, bombarded by threats of neighbouring governments to accomplish its extinction by armed force - embattled, blockaded, besieged, Israel alone among the nations faces a battle for its security anew with every approaching nightfall and every rising dawn."
An oldie but a goldie. Made my day.
Sunday, April 1, 2018
So You Think the Murdoch Press is the Only MSM Problem?
As unarmed Palestinian refugees, demonstrating behind the wire of their Gaza Ghetto for the right to return to the homes and lands from which they were ethnically cleansed by Israeli terror gangs in 1948, were being callously gunned down - 17 dead and over 1,500 wounded is the current Al-Jazeera count - by Israeli troops terror gangs, sniping from behind protective earthworks* on Good Friday, all the PEP (Progressive Except Palestine) Guardian editor, Jonathan Freedland, could reflect on this Easter is this:
"'Easter? The very word gives me a migraine.' Not my view, but that of an old family friend who couldn't shake the folk memory of Easter as pogrom season, a time of anti-Jewish attacks as Christians resurrected the libel that it was the Jews, rather than the Romans who killed Jesus. [FFS, that was in Tsarist Russia!] But this weekend is also Passover, when Jews retell the story that defines them as a people [Note, not 'as a faith community,' but "as a people," a tell-tale Zionist construct], sitting around a Seder table and recalling through words, song, and crucially, food their exodus from slavery in Egypt. [See my 29-30/12/14 posts The Exodus Master Narrative, 1 & 2.]
"The Easter/Passover combination means that at this time every year Jews are reminded of two core facts about themselves. The first is that they are raised, from the start, to remember that their place is with the oppressed and against injustice because, were it not for the exodus, they would still be slaves today. [So why then, despite this "core fact," inculcated "from the start," do the majority of Jews today see themselves as Zionists?] The second is that, from the start, they have been hated.
"Both of these messages feel timely this weekend, as Jews reflect on the way a movement that they long saw as their natural home - on the left, fighting oppression and injustice - has been rocked by the question of anti-Jewish hatred... " [Hello? So British Zionists are one and all leftist progressives - just not in Palestine?] (Antisemitism matters: Jews are the canary in the coalmine, 31/3/18)
Those, of course, are just the opening paragraphs. But the piece as a whole has bugger-all to do with genuine anti-Semitism, it's just another part of the witch-hunt currently being directed against Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is seen as having strayed too far from the Zionist narrative.
The simple fact of the matter is that for Freedland and his PEP Zionist mates, no matter how many Palestinians are murdered and maimed in Israeli pogroms, all that really matters is Israel.
Or, to put it in his own morally repugnant words: "[The Zionist movement] had the right to act, even though the cost for another people, the Palestinians, was immense." (Quoted in my 24/5/14 post Orwell Turns in His Grave.)
[*In addition, the Guardian's accompanying Associated Press report on Israel's latest bloody massacre of Palestinians typically obfuscates the reality with its talk of "deadly clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops," and features this predictable dollop churned out by the Israeli army's propaganda mill: "The Israeli military said thousands of Palestinians threw stones and rolled burning tires towards troops, Palestinian gunmen fired toward soldiers in one incident and militants were trying to conduct attacks under the cover of protests." (Gaza deaths: UN secretary general calls for 'transparent' investigation, 31/3/18). Now go to the Electronic Intifada website and compare this Guardian shite with EI's report, Israel admits, then deletes, responsibility for Gaza killing, 31/3/18.]
"'Easter? The very word gives me a migraine.' Not my view, but that of an old family friend who couldn't shake the folk memory of Easter as pogrom season, a time of anti-Jewish attacks as Christians resurrected the libel that it was the Jews, rather than the Romans who killed Jesus. [FFS, that was in Tsarist Russia!] But this weekend is also Passover, when Jews retell the story that defines them as a people [Note, not 'as a faith community,' but "as a people," a tell-tale Zionist construct], sitting around a Seder table and recalling through words, song, and crucially, food their exodus from slavery in Egypt. [See my 29-30/12/14 posts The Exodus Master Narrative, 1 & 2.]
"The Easter/Passover combination means that at this time every year Jews are reminded of two core facts about themselves. The first is that they are raised, from the start, to remember that their place is with the oppressed and against injustice because, were it not for the exodus, they would still be slaves today. [So why then, despite this "core fact," inculcated "from the start," do the majority of Jews today see themselves as Zionists?] The second is that, from the start, they have been hated.
"Both of these messages feel timely this weekend, as Jews reflect on the way a movement that they long saw as their natural home - on the left, fighting oppression and injustice - has been rocked by the question of anti-Jewish hatred... " [Hello? So British Zionists are one and all leftist progressives - just not in Palestine?] (Antisemitism matters: Jews are the canary in the coalmine, 31/3/18)
Those, of course, are just the opening paragraphs. But the piece as a whole has bugger-all to do with genuine anti-Semitism, it's just another part of the witch-hunt currently being directed against Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is seen as having strayed too far from the Zionist narrative.
The simple fact of the matter is that for Freedland and his PEP Zionist mates, no matter how many Palestinians are murdered and maimed in Israeli pogroms, all that really matters is Israel.
Or, to put it in his own morally repugnant words: "[The Zionist movement] had the right to act, even though the cost for another people, the Palestinians, was immense." (Quoted in my 24/5/14 post Orwell Turns in His Grave.)
[*In addition, the Guardian's accompanying Associated Press report on Israel's latest bloody massacre of Palestinians typically obfuscates the reality with its talk of "deadly clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops," and features this predictable dollop churned out by the Israeli army's propaganda mill: "The Israeli military said thousands of Palestinians threw stones and rolled burning tires towards troops, Palestinian gunmen fired toward soldiers in one incident and militants were trying to conduct attacks under the cover of protests." (Gaza deaths: UN secretary general calls for 'transparent' investigation, 31/3/18). Now go to the Electronic Intifada website and compare this Guardian shite with EI's report, Israel admits, then deletes, responsibility for Gaza killing, 31/3/18.]
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Blown Away by Labor's Advance on Palestine/Israel?
Before anyone gets too carried away by the latest glacial advance in the ALP's Palestine policy, please remember that Israel's illegal post-67 West Bank settlement project, which Bob Carr in particular opposes as standing in the way of a two-state solution to the Palestine/Israel project, is, in all its essentials, no different to Israel's pre-67 settlement project.
Every square inch of historic Palestine from the river to the sea is occupied and colonised Arab land.
It matters not whether the occupation and colonisation took place before 1967, or after.
Whether it takes the form of a Balfour Declaration or a United Nations partition plan, no imperial power, or collection thereof, had, or has, the right to dispose of one square centimetre of Arab Palestinian land.
It's Hebron today - but before that it was Haifa. It's Jerusalem today - but before that it was Jaffa.
After 1967, the Zionist land thieves were called settlers - before that kibbutzniks. Same colonial smell, same...
The Zionist settler-colonial, apartheid project called Israel has no right, God-given or otherwise, to one square centimetre of Arab Palestine.
Please keep this in mind before you get too excited about NSW Labor's 'secure and recognised borders,' or anything else to do with Palestine.
And take this ice cold shower:
"Israel fears 'delegitimization' more than anything else. Behind the velvet curtain lies a state built on myths and narratives, protected only by a military behemoth, billions of dollars in US assistance and a lone UN Security Council veto. Nothing else stands between the state and its dismantlement. Without these three things, Israelis would not live in an entity that has come to be known as the 'least safe place for Jews in the world.'
"Strip away the spin and the gloss, and you quickly realize that Israel doesn't even have the basics of a normal state. After 64 years, it doesn't have borders. After six decades, it has never been more isolated. Over half a century later, and it needs a gargantuan military just to stop Palestinians from walking home.
"Israel is a failed experiment. It is on life-support - pull those three plugs and it is a cadaver, living only in the minds of some seriously deluded foreigners who thought they could pull off the heist of the century.
"The most important thing we can do as we hover over the horizon of One State is to shed the old language rapidly. None of it was real anyway - it was just the parlance of that particular 'game'. Grow a new vocabulary of possibilities - the new state will be the dawn of humanity's great reconciliation. Muslims, Christians and Jews living together in Palestine as they once did.
"Naysayers can take a hike. Our patience is wearing thinner than the walls of the hovels that Palestinian refugees have called 'home' for three generations in their purgatory camps.
"These universally exploited refugees are entitled to nice apartments - the ones that have pools and a grove of palm trees outside the lobby. Because the kind of compensation owed for this failed Western experiment will never be enough.
"And no, nobody hates Jews. That is the fallback argument screeched in our ears - the one 'firewall' remaining to protect this Israeli Frankenstein. I don't even care enough to insert the caveats that are supposed to prove I don't hate Jews. It is not a provable point, and frankly, it is a straw man of an argument. If Jews who didn't live through the Holocaust still feel the pain of it, then take that up with the Germans. Demand a sizeable plot of land in Germany - and good luck to you.
"For anti-Semites salivating over an article that slams Israel, ply your trade elsewhere - you are part of the reason this problem exists.
"Israelis who don't want to share Palestine as equal citizens with the indigenous Palestinian population - the ones who don't want to relinquish that which they demanded Palestinians relinquish 64 years ago - can take their second passports and go back home. Those remaining had better find a positive attitude - Palestinians have shown themselves to be a forgiving lot. The amount of carnage they have experienced at the hands of their oppressors - without proportional response - shows remarkable restraint and faith.
"This is less the death of a Jewish state than it is the demise of the last remnants of modern-day colonialism. It is a rite of passage - we will get through it just fine. At this particular precipice in the 21st century, we are all, universally Palestinian - undoing this wrong is a test of our collective humanity, and nobody has the right to sit this one out.
"Israel has no right to exist. Break that mental barrier and just say it: 'Israel has no right to exist.' Roll it around your tongue, tweet it, post it as your Facebook status update - do it before you think twice. Delegitimization is here - have no fear. Palestine will be less painful than Israel ever was." (Excuse me, but Israel has no right to exist, Sharmine Narwani, english.al-akhbar.com, 17/5/12)
Every square inch of historic Palestine from the river to the sea is occupied and colonised Arab land.
It matters not whether the occupation and colonisation took place before 1967, or after.
Whether it takes the form of a Balfour Declaration or a United Nations partition plan, no imperial power, or collection thereof, had, or has, the right to dispose of one square centimetre of Arab Palestinian land.
It's Hebron today - but before that it was Haifa. It's Jerusalem today - but before that it was Jaffa.
After 1967, the Zionist land thieves were called settlers - before that kibbutzniks. Same colonial smell, same...
The Zionist settler-colonial, apartheid project called Israel has no right, God-given or otherwise, to one square centimetre of Arab Palestine.
Please keep this in mind before you get too excited about NSW Labor's 'secure and recognised borders,' or anything else to do with Palestine.
And take this ice cold shower:
"Israel fears 'delegitimization' more than anything else. Behind the velvet curtain lies a state built on myths and narratives, protected only by a military behemoth, billions of dollars in US assistance and a lone UN Security Council veto. Nothing else stands between the state and its dismantlement. Without these three things, Israelis would not live in an entity that has come to be known as the 'least safe place for Jews in the world.'
"Strip away the spin and the gloss, and you quickly realize that Israel doesn't even have the basics of a normal state. After 64 years, it doesn't have borders. After six decades, it has never been more isolated. Over half a century later, and it needs a gargantuan military just to stop Palestinians from walking home.
"Israel is a failed experiment. It is on life-support - pull those three plugs and it is a cadaver, living only in the minds of some seriously deluded foreigners who thought they could pull off the heist of the century.
"The most important thing we can do as we hover over the horizon of One State is to shed the old language rapidly. None of it was real anyway - it was just the parlance of that particular 'game'. Grow a new vocabulary of possibilities - the new state will be the dawn of humanity's great reconciliation. Muslims, Christians and Jews living together in Palestine as they once did.
"Naysayers can take a hike. Our patience is wearing thinner than the walls of the hovels that Palestinian refugees have called 'home' for three generations in their purgatory camps.
"These universally exploited refugees are entitled to nice apartments - the ones that have pools and a grove of palm trees outside the lobby. Because the kind of compensation owed for this failed Western experiment will never be enough.
"And no, nobody hates Jews. That is the fallback argument screeched in our ears - the one 'firewall' remaining to protect this Israeli Frankenstein. I don't even care enough to insert the caveats that are supposed to prove I don't hate Jews. It is not a provable point, and frankly, it is a straw man of an argument. If Jews who didn't live through the Holocaust still feel the pain of it, then take that up with the Germans. Demand a sizeable plot of land in Germany - and good luck to you.
"For anti-Semites salivating over an article that slams Israel, ply your trade elsewhere - you are part of the reason this problem exists.
"Israelis who don't want to share Palestine as equal citizens with the indigenous Palestinian population - the ones who don't want to relinquish that which they demanded Palestinians relinquish 64 years ago - can take their second passports and go back home. Those remaining had better find a positive attitude - Palestinians have shown themselves to be a forgiving lot. The amount of carnage they have experienced at the hands of their oppressors - without proportional response - shows remarkable restraint and faith.
"This is less the death of a Jewish state than it is the demise of the last remnants of modern-day colonialism. It is a rite of passage - we will get through it just fine. At this particular precipice in the 21st century, we are all, universally Palestinian - undoing this wrong is a test of our collective humanity, and nobody has the right to sit this one out.
"Israel has no right to exist. Break that mental barrier and just say it: 'Israel has no right to exist.' Roll it around your tongue, tweet it, post it as your Facebook status update - do it before you think twice. Delegitimization is here - have no fear. Palestine will be less painful than Israel ever was." (Excuse me, but Israel has no right to exist, Sharmine Narwani, english.al-akhbar.com, 17/5/12)
Monday, May 15, 2017
You Can Run, But You Can't Hide 2
Israelis say NO...
Uri replies to Salman in his weekly column, 17/5/14:
Dear Salman,
I was profoundly moved by this letter. It took me days to find the courage to answer. I try to do so as sincerely as possible.
I also vividly remember our conversation in Paris, and wrote about it in the second part of my memoirs, which will appear in the course of this year. It may be interesting for the readers to compare our two descriptions of the same conversation. About the scene near Hulayqat I have written in the first part, which has already appeared in Hebrew.
When I was wounded in the 1948 war, I decided that it would be my life's mission to work for peace between our two peoples. I hope that I have been true to that promise.
Making peace after such a long and bitter conflict is both a moral and a political endeavor. There is often a contradiction between the two aspects.
I respect the few people in Israel who, like Tikva, completely devote themselves to the moral side of the refugees' tragedy, whatever the consequence for the chances of peace. My own moral outlook tells me that peace must be the first aim, before and above everything else.
The war of 1948 was a terrible human tragedy. Both sides believed that it was an existential battle. that their very life was hanging in the balance. It is often forgotten that ethnic cleansing (not a familiar expression in those days) was practiced by both sides. Our side occupied large territories, creating a huge refugee problem, while the Palestinian side succeeded in occupying only small Jewish areas, like the Old City of Jerusalem and the Etzion settlement bloc south of Bethlehem. But not a single Jew remained there.
The war, like the later Bosnian war, was an ethnic war, in which both sides tried to conquer as large a part of the country as possible - EMPTY of the other population.
As an eyewitness and participant, I can testify to the fact that the origins of the refugee problem are extremely complex. During the first seven months of the war, the attacks on the Arab villages were an absolute military necessity. At that time, we were the weaker side. After a number of very cruel battles, the wheel turned and I believe that a deliberate policy of expulsion was adopted by the Zionist leadership.
But the real question is: Why were the 750,000 refugees not allowed home after the end of the hostilities?
One has to remember the situation. It was three years after the smokestacks of Auschwitz and the other camps had gone cold. Hundreds of thousands of wretched survivors crowded the refugee camps in Europe and had nowhere to go but to the new Israel. They were brought here and hastily put into the homes of the Palestinian refugees.
All this did not obliterate our moral obligation to put an end to the terrible tragedy of the Palestinian refugees. In 1953 I published in my magazine, Haolem Hazeh, a detailed plan for for the solution of the refugee problem. It included (a) an apology to the refugees and the acknowledgment in principle of the right to return, (b) the return and resettlement of a substantial number, (c) generous compensation to all the rest. Since the Israeli government refused to consider the possibility of the return of a single individual, the plan was not even discussed.
Why do I not stand on a hilltop and cry out for the return of all refugees?
Peace is made between consenting parties. There is absolutely no chance that the vast majority of Israelis would freely agree to the return of all the refugees and their descendants, who amount to six or seven million people - the same number as Israel's Jewish citizens. This would be the end of the 'Jewish state' and the beginning of a 'bi-national state', to which 99% of Israelis strenuously object. It can be imposed only by a crushing military defeat, which is currently impossible because of Israel's infinite military superiority, including nuclear arms.
I can stand on the hilltops and shout - but it would not bring peace (and a solution) one step closer.
To my mind, waiting for a solution in a hundred years, while the conflict and the misery continue, is not really moral.
Dear Salman, I have listened attentively to your presentation.
You say that Israel could easily absorb all the refugees by putting them into the Negev, which is almost empty. That is quite true.
The vast majority of Israelis would reject that, because they are fiercely resolved to have a large Jewish majority in Israel. But I also ask myself: What is the logic of that?
When I met with Yassar Arafat in Beirut during the war of 1982, I also visited several Palestinian refugee camps. I asked many refugees whether they wanted to return to Israel. Most said that they wanted to return to their villages (which were eradicated long ago) but not anywhere else in Israel.
What is the sense of putting them into the harsh conditions of the desert in a Zionist-dominated and Hebrew-speaking country, far from their original homes? Would they want that?
Arafat and his successors limit their aim to a 'just and AGREED solution', giving the Israeli government a veto right. That means, in practice, at most the return of a symbolic number.
My latest proposal is for the Israeli president to apolpgize and express the profound regret of the Israeli people for its part in the creation and prolongation of the tragedy.
The Israeli government must recognize the moral right of the refugees to return.
Israel should organize the return of 50,000 refugees every year for 10 years. (I am almost alone in Israel in demanding this number. Most peace groups would reduce that to 100,000 altogether.)
All the other refugees should receive compensation on the lines of the compensation paid by Germany to the Jewish victims. (no comparison, of course.)
With the foundation of the State of Palestine, they would receive Palestinian passports and be able to settle there, in their country.
In the not too distant future, when the two states, Israel and Palestine, shall be finally living side by side, with open borders and with their capitals in Jerusalem, perhaps within a region-wide framework, the problem will lose it sting.
It hurts me to write this letter. For me, the refugees are no abstract 'problem', but human beings with human faces. But I will not lie to you.
I would be honored to live next door to you (even in the Negev Desert).
Salamat,
Uri
TBC...
Uri replies to Salman in his weekly column, 17/5/14:
Dear Salman,
I was profoundly moved by this letter. It took me days to find the courage to answer. I try to do so as sincerely as possible.
I also vividly remember our conversation in Paris, and wrote about it in the second part of my memoirs, which will appear in the course of this year. It may be interesting for the readers to compare our two descriptions of the same conversation. About the scene near Hulayqat I have written in the first part, which has already appeared in Hebrew.
When I was wounded in the 1948 war, I decided that it would be my life's mission to work for peace between our two peoples. I hope that I have been true to that promise.
Making peace after such a long and bitter conflict is both a moral and a political endeavor. There is often a contradiction between the two aspects.
I respect the few people in Israel who, like Tikva, completely devote themselves to the moral side of the refugees' tragedy, whatever the consequence for the chances of peace. My own moral outlook tells me that peace must be the first aim, before and above everything else.
The war of 1948 was a terrible human tragedy. Both sides believed that it was an existential battle. that their very life was hanging in the balance. It is often forgotten that ethnic cleansing (not a familiar expression in those days) was practiced by both sides. Our side occupied large territories, creating a huge refugee problem, while the Palestinian side succeeded in occupying only small Jewish areas, like the Old City of Jerusalem and the Etzion settlement bloc south of Bethlehem. But not a single Jew remained there.
The war, like the later Bosnian war, was an ethnic war, in which both sides tried to conquer as large a part of the country as possible - EMPTY of the other population.
As an eyewitness and participant, I can testify to the fact that the origins of the refugee problem are extremely complex. During the first seven months of the war, the attacks on the Arab villages were an absolute military necessity. At that time, we were the weaker side. After a number of very cruel battles, the wheel turned and I believe that a deliberate policy of expulsion was adopted by the Zionist leadership.
But the real question is: Why were the 750,000 refugees not allowed home after the end of the hostilities?
One has to remember the situation. It was three years after the smokestacks of Auschwitz and the other camps had gone cold. Hundreds of thousands of wretched survivors crowded the refugee camps in Europe and had nowhere to go but to the new Israel. They were brought here and hastily put into the homes of the Palestinian refugees.
All this did not obliterate our moral obligation to put an end to the terrible tragedy of the Palestinian refugees. In 1953 I published in my magazine, Haolem Hazeh, a detailed plan for for the solution of the refugee problem. It included (a) an apology to the refugees and the acknowledgment in principle of the right to return, (b) the return and resettlement of a substantial number, (c) generous compensation to all the rest. Since the Israeli government refused to consider the possibility of the return of a single individual, the plan was not even discussed.
Why do I not stand on a hilltop and cry out for the return of all refugees?
Peace is made between consenting parties. There is absolutely no chance that the vast majority of Israelis would freely agree to the return of all the refugees and their descendants, who amount to six or seven million people - the same number as Israel's Jewish citizens. This would be the end of the 'Jewish state' and the beginning of a 'bi-national state', to which 99% of Israelis strenuously object. It can be imposed only by a crushing military defeat, which is currently impossible because of Israel's infinite military superiority, including nuclear arms.
I can stand on the hilltops and shout - but it would not bring peace (and a solution) one step closer.
To my mind, waiting for a solution in a hundred years, while the conflict and the misery continue, is not really moral.
Dear Salman, I have listened attentively to your presentation.
You say that Israel could easily absorb all the refugees by putting them into the Negev, which is almost empty. That is quite true.
The vast majority of Israelis would reject that, because they are fiercely resolved to have a large Jewish majority in Israel. But I also ask myself: What is the logic of that?
When I met with Yassar Arafat in Beirut during the war of 1982, I also visited several Palestinian refugee camps. I asked many refugees whether they wanted to return to Israel. Most said that they wanted to return to their villages (which were eradicated long ago) but not anywhere else in Israel.
What is the sense of putting them into the harsh conditions of the desert in a Zionist-dominated and Hebrew-speaking country, far from their original homes? Would they want that?
Arafat and his successors limit their aim to a 'just and AGREED solution', giving the Israeli government a veto right. That means, in practice, at most the return of a symbolic number.
My latest proposal is for the Israeli president to apolpgize and express the profound regret of the Israeli people for its part in the creation and prolongation of the tragedy.
The Israeli government must recognize the moral right of the refugees to return.
Israel should organize the return of 50,000 refugees every year for 10 years. (I am almost alone in Israel in demanding this number. Most peace groups would reduce that to 100,000 altogether.)
All the other refugees should receive compensation on the lines of the compensation paid by Germany to the Jewish victims. (no comparison, of course.)
With the foundation of the State of Palestine, they would receive Palestinian passports and be able to settle there, in their country.
In the not too distant future, when the two states, Israel and Palestine, shall be finally living side by side, with open borders and with their capitals in Jerusalem, perhaps within a region-wide framework, the problem will lose it sting.
It hurts me to write this letter. For me, the refugees are no abstract 'problem', but human beings with human faces. But I will not lie to you.
I would be honored to live next door to you (even in the Negev Desert).
Salamat,
Uri
TBC...
Sunday, May 14, 2017
You Can Run, But You Can't Hide 1
Tomorrow is Nakba Day, marking 69 years since Israeli terror gangs ethnically cleansed 78% of Palestine in 1948, creating, in the process, the Palestinian refugee problem.
Uri Avnery, is a leader of Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc), a former member of the Knesset, a journalist, and, as a member of Menachem Begin's terrorist Irgun in 1948, a creator of the Palestinian refugee problem.
Salman Abu Sitta is a founder of the Palestine Land Society (an organisation concerned with the implementation of the Palestinian Right of Return), and the seminal website palestineremembered.com. He is a Palestinian refugee.
What follows is a 2014-17 correspondence between the two. It was given by Abu Sitta to the Mondoweiss website and posted there on 22/4/17 under the heading 'Why do I not cry out for the right of return?' - an exchange between Uri Avnery and Salman Abu Sitta.
ESSENTIAL READING, I re-post it here in four parts over the next four days:
Salman to Uri 7/5/14:
Dear Uri,
I read with great interest your interview in Haaretz about your rich and eventful life. You have stuck to your principles since the early 50s when you found that the old doctrine was neither workable nor moral.
I remember vividly our chat over dinner in Paris with your kind wife Rachel, bless her soul [at a UN conference on the Palestinian refugees]. You described your early days as a young German by the name of Helmut, when you joined the terrorist organization, the Irgun, and when you, carrying a machine gun on a hilltop at Huleigat (where there is now a war memorial to 'honour' those soldiers) watched the sea of humanity of expelled refugees march towards Gaza by the seashore.
I also told you my story; how I became a refugee without ever seeing a Jew in my life and how I spent years trying to find out who was responsible for my becoming a refugee, by name, face and battalion.
I remember asking you, 'Would you agree to my return to my house if it were up to you?'
You said, emphatically, NO.
I wrote all about this in my memoirs to be published this year in Europe and USA.
I am reminded of a similar story but with a different ending. I refer to Reflections of a Daughter of the '48 Generation' by Dr Tikva Honig-Parnass. It is a moving account of how truth and reality faced her, as a Palmach soldier, with the grave injustice done to Palestinians. Since then she has spent her energy defending their rights, including the Right of Return.
I saw no trace or hint of retraction in your interview of the kind I had hoped for, namely your recognition of the Right of Return, or any atonement for the great sin: the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Would it not be a fitting last station of a long life (and I wish you more of it) for you to stand on hilltops (again) and shout for all to hear, summing up all your life experiences: the refugees must return, we must repent the sin of ethnic cleansing?
Is this too much to ask of a principled man like you to do this? I am not asking on behalf of the Palestinians, because no doubt they WILL return. I am hoping that it will be a crown to your life's achievements in the Israeli milieu.
As I have written repeatedly: The history of the Jews will not be marked any more by the killing of Christ or the Nazi atrocities of WWII, but indelibly by what they have done to the Palestinians, deliberately and constantly, without remorse, regret or remedy, thus reflecting that side of the human spirit which does not learn from history and voids itself of any moral posture.
Best regards,
Salman Abu Sitta
TBC...
Uri Avnery, is a leader of Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc), a former member of the Knesset, a journalist, and, as a member of Menachem Begin's terrorist Irgun in 1948, a creator of the Palestinian refugee problem.
Salman Abu Sitta is a founder of the Palestine Land Society (an organisation concerned with the implementation of the Palestinian Right of Return), and the seminal website palestineremembered.com. He is a Palestinian refugee.
What follows is a 2014-17 correspondence between the two. It was given by Abu Sitta to the Mondoweiss website and posted there on 22/4/17 under the heading 'Why do I not cry out for the right of return?' - an exchange between Uri Avnery and Salman Abu Sitta.
ESSENTIAL READING, I re-post it here in four parts over the next four days:
Salman to Uri 7/5/14:
Dear Uri,
I read with great interest your interview in Haaretz about your rich and eventful life. You have stuck to your principles since the early 50s when you found that the old doctrine was neither workable nor moral.
I remember vividly our chat over dinner in Paris with your kind wife Rachel, bless her soul [at a UN conference on the Palestinian refugees]. You described your early days as a young German by the name of Helmut, when you joined the terrorist organization, the Irgun, and when you, carrying a machine gun on a hilltop at Huleigat (where there is now a war memorial to 'honour' those soldiers) watched the sea of humanity of expelled refugees march towards Gaza by the seashore.
I also told you my story; how I became a refugee without ever seeing a Jew in my life and how I spent years trying to find out who was responsible for my becoming a refugee, by name, face and battalion.
I remember asking you, 'Would you agree to my return to my house if it were up to you?'
You said, emphatically, NO.
I wrote all about this in my memoirs to be published this year in Europe and USA.
I am reminded of a similar story but with a different ending. I refer to Reflections of a Daughter of the '48 Generation' by Dr Tikva Honig-Parnass. It is a moving account of how truth and reality faced her, as a Palmach soldier, with the grave injustice done to Palestinians. Since then she has spent her energy defending their rights, including the Right of Return.
I saw no trace or hint of retraction in your interview of the kind I had hoped for, namely your recognition of the Right of Return, or any atonement for the great sin: the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Would it not be a fitting last station of a long life (and I wish you more of it) for you to stand on hilltops (again) and shout for all to hear, summing up all your life experiences: the refugees must return, we must repent the sin of ethnic cleansing?
Is this too much to ask of a principled man like you to do this? I am not asking on behalf of the Palestinians, because no doubt they WILL return. I am hoping that it will be a crown to your life's achievements in the Israeli milieu.
As I have written repeatedly: The history of the Jews will not be marked any more by the killing of Christ or the Nazi atrocities of WWII, but indelibly by what they have done to the Palestinians, deliberately and constantly, without remorse, regret or remedy, thus reflecting that side of the human spirit which does not learn from history and voids itself of any moral posture.
Best regards,
Salman Abu Sitta
TBC...
Friday, March 3, 2017
Phillip Adams: And the Answer Is?
ABC Radio National personality, Phillip Adams, never ceases to amaze. Here he is introducing a segment on his Late Night Live program called World's largest refugee camp (27/2/17):
"My excuse for retelling the story that I was radicalised at the age of 12 by reading The Grapes of Wrath is simply this - the book we're about to discuss [City of Thorns] begins with 3 sentences from that book. Let me read them. 'There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolise. There is a failure here that topples all our success.' John Steinbeck. And I hope the book we're about to discuss will radicalise another generation. If you look at the collection of Palestinian refugee camps in the world, in Jordan, Lebanon, in the West Bank, Gaza, and formerly in Syria, the numbers are shocking, they're beyond shocking, they're numbing, and the world's sensibility seems to be appropriately numbed. An estimated 5 million Palestinians are living throughout the region, but the world's largest refugee camp, called Dadaab is situated in the desert of Kenya, and has over half a million inhabitants, just like the camps housing generations of Palestinians... "
Let me sum that up for you. Adams is professedly NUMBED by the existence of permanent Palestinian refugee camps in the Middle East, that is, camps that date back to the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 when the ancestors of these refugees were driven out of their Palestinian homeland by Zionist terror gangs.
My reaction: WOW!
To my knowledge this is an Adams first. Here he is, 77 years old; a veteran commentator on, and explorer of, the issues of today, yesterday and tomorrow; a public intellectual; almost, if not already, an Australian icon; and, importantly, an avowed man of the Left; and he's only now discovered something of the significance of the daddy-of-all contemporary refugee problems, the Palestinian refugee problem.
The standout instance of his failure on this issue for me was a 2009 LNL interview with the American-Palestinian writer Saree Makdisi. When Makdisi called for an end to Israel as a Jewish state and the creation of one state for Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, including, by implication, those in refugee exile, Adams worriedly asked how long it would take before Jewish Israelis were a minority in Israel. Makdisi, puzzled, replied, "I don't know. I don't even know that that question matters." At which Adams snapped: "It sure as hell matters to them." (For the all important context, see my 19/9/09 post He Just Doesn't Get It.)
If anyone out there is in a position to raise the issue with Adams, the obvious question to put to him now would be this: you recently indicated that you were numbed by the scale and time of Palestinian refugeedom. But are you sufficiently numbed to support the return of today's Palestinian refugees - from Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere in the Palestinian diaspora - to their former homes and lands in Israel, along with all that that entails by way of equal rights for all, regardless of sectarian affiliation, between the the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea?
"My excuse for retelling the story that I was radicalised at the age of 12 by reading The Grapes of Wrath is simply this - the book we're about to discuss [City of Thorns] begins with 3 sentences from that book. Let me read them. 'There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolise. There is a failure here that topples all our success.' John Steinbeck. And I hope the book we're about to discuss will radicalise another generation. If you look at the collection of Palestinian refugee camps in the world, in Jordan, Lebanon, in the West Bank, Gaza, and formerly in Syria, the numbers are shocking, they're beyond shocking, they're numbing, and the world's sensibility seems to be appropriately numbed. An estimated 5 million Palestinians are living throughout the region, but the world's largest refugee camp, called Dadaab is situated in the desert of Kenya, and has over half a million inhabitants, just like the camps housing generations of Palestinians... "
Let me sum that up for you. Adams is professedly NUMBED by the existence of permanent Palestinian refugee camps in the Middle East, that is, camps that date back to the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 when the ancestors of these refugees were driven out of their Palestinian homeland by Zionist terror gangs.
My reaction: WOW!
To my knowledge this is an Adams first. Here he is, 77 years old; a veteran commentator on, and explorer of, the issues of today, yesterday and tomorrow; a public intellectual; almost, if not already, an Australian icon; and, importantly, an avowed man of the Left; and he's only now discovered something of the significance of the daddy-of-all contemporary refugee problems, the Palestinian refugee problem.
The standout instance of his failure on this issue for me was a 2009 LNL interview with the American-Palestinian writer Saree Makdisi. When Makdisi called for an end to Israel as a Jewish state and the creation of one state for Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, including, by implication, those in refugee exile, Adams worriedly asked how long it would take before Jewish Israelis were a minority in Israel. Makdisi, puzzled, replied, "I don't know. I don't even know that that question matters." At which Adams snapped: "It sure as hell matters to them." (For the all important context, see my 19/9/09 post He Just Doesn't Get It.)
If anyone out there is in a position to raise the issue with Adams, the obvious question to put to him now would be this: you recently indicated that you were numbed by the scale and time of Palestinian refugeedom. But are you sufficiently numbed to support the return of today's Palestinian refugees - from Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere in the Palestinian diaspora - to their former homes and lands in Israel, along with all that that entails by way of equal rights for all, regardless of sectarian affiliation, between the the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea?
Monday, January 2, 2017
John Kerry's Israeli-Occupied Mind
In my last post, I listed US Secretary of State John Kerry's terms of endearment for the genocidal colonial-settler state of Israel (Remarks on Middle East Peace, 28/12/16). I turn now to what he had to say about the brutalised indigenous, occupied/exiled inhabitants of Palestine.
There's barely a word, phrase, sentiment, misrepresentation or outright lie in it that hasn't been borrowed from some Zionist propaganda tract or talking point.
In a very long speech, there are only two points where Kerry actually touches on the devastating impact of Israel's military occupation on the Palestinian people - but in neither does he come anywhere close to doing it justice:
"I have also often visited West Bank communities, where I met Palestinians struggling for basic freedom and dignity amidst the occupation, passed by military checkpoints that can make even the most routine daily trips to work or school an ordeal, and heard from business leaders who could not get the permits that they needed to get their products to the market and families who have struggled to secure permission just to travel for needed medical care."
"I've also seen the devastation of war in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian girls in Izbet Abed Rabo played in the rubble of a bombed-out building."
The idea that desperate acts of resistance are an inevitable consequence of a grinding, never-ending military occupation/colonisation process is nowhere to be found. Instead, we get this:
"There is absolutely no justification for terrorism, and there never will be. The most recent wave of Palestinian violence has included hundreds of terrorist attacks in the past year, including stabbings, shootings, vehicular attacks and bombings, many by individuals who have been radicalized by social media. Yet the murderers of innocents are still glorified on Fatah websites, including showing attackers next to Palestinian leaders following attacks. And despite statements by President Abbas and his party's leaders making clear their opposition to violence, too often they send a different message by failing to condemn specific terrorist attacks and naming public squares, streets and schools after terrorists. President Obama and I have made it clear to the Palestinian leadership countless times, publicly and privately, that all incitement to violence must stop. We have consequently condemned violence and terrorism, and even condemned the Palestinian leadership for not condemning it."
Incredibly, even seeking redress in international fora is verboten:
"Far too often, the Palestinians have pursued efforts to delegitimize Israel in international fora. We have strongly opposed these initiatives..."
Apparently, occupied/colonised Palestinians are supposed to just sit on their hands as the Israelis, with the connivance of the Americans, pull the rug out from under them. And God forbid that any Palestinians should want all of their homeland back:
"Most troubling of all, Hamas continues to pursue an extreme agenda: they refuse to accept Israel's very right to exist. They have a one-state vision of their own: all of the land of Palestine."
Then, FFS, we have the naked Israeli virgin encircled by swarthy, hirsute bikies, drooling at the prospect of violating her sweet innocence as they close in:
"And we all understand that Israel faces very serious threats in a very tough neighborhood. Israelis are rightfully concerned about making sure that there is not a new terrorist haven right next door to them."
Here it is, 2016/2017, and Kerry's still trotting out the Leon Uris version of 1948:
"The United States recognized Israel seven minutes after its creation. But the Palestinians and the Arab world did not, and from its birth, Israel had to fight for its life. Palestinians also suffered terribly in the 1948 war, including many who had lived for generations in a land that had long been their home too."
The Palestinian presence in Palestine goes back to the Canaanites but for Kerry it has long been their home too!
As for 1967, he peddles the same, tired myth we've been hearing now for almost 50 years:
"Next year will also mark 50 years since the end of the Six-Day War, when Israel fought for its survival."
Finally, here's Kerry's 'solution' to the Palestinian refugee problem:
"Provide for a just, agreed, fair, and realistic solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, with international assistance, that includes compensation, options and assistance in finding permanent homes, acknowledgment of suffering, and other measures necessary for a comprehensive resolution consistent with two states for two peoples."
This of course has nothing whatever to do with justice, fairness or realism. It is nothing more than a transparent attempt to skirt the requirements of UNGA resolution 194 (1948): "... refugees willing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so..."
Kerry's speech is nothing but the delusional product of an Israeli-occupied mind.
There's barely a word, phrase, sentiment, misrepresentation or outright lie in it that hasn't been borrowed from some Zionist propaganda tract or talking point.
In a very long speech, there are only two points where Kerry actually touches on the devastating impact of Israel's military occupation on the Palestinian people - but in neither does he come anywhere close to doing it justice:
"I have also often visited West Bank communities, where I met Palestinians struggling for basic freedom and dignity amidst the occupation, passed by military checkpoints that can make even the most routine daily trips to work or school an ordeal, and heard from business leaders who could not get the permits that they needed to get their products to the market and families who have struggled to secure permission just to travel for needed medical care."
"I've also seen the devastation of war in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian girls in Izbet Abed Rabo played in the rubble of a bombed-out building."
The idea that desperate acts of resistance are an inevitable consequence of a grinding, never-ending military occupation/colonisation process is nowhere to be found. Instead, we get this:
"There is absolutely no justification for terrorism, and there never will be. The most recent wave of Palestinian violence has included hundreds of terrorist attacks in the past year, including stabbings, shootings, vehicular attacks and bombings, many by individuals who have been radicalized by social media. Yet the murderers of innocents are still glorified on Fatah websites, including showing attackers next to Palestinian leaders following attacks. And despite statements by President Abbas and his party's leaders making clear their opposition to violence, too often they send a different message by failing to condemn specific terrorist attacks and naming public squares, streets and schools after terrorists. President Obama and I have made it clear to the Palestinian leadership countless times, publicly and privately, that all incitement to violence must stop. We have consequently condemned violence and terrorism, and even condemned the Palestinian leadership for not condemning it."
Incredibly, even seeking redress in international fora is verboten:
"Far too often, the Palestinians have pursued efforts to delegitimize Israel in international fora. We have strongly opposed these initiatives..."
Apparently, occupied/colonised Palestinians are supposed to just sit on their hands as the Israelis, with the connivance of the Americans, pull the rug out from under them. And God forbid that any Palestinians should want all of their homeland back:
"Most troubling of all, Hamas continues to pursue an extreme agenda: they refuse to accept Israel's very right to exist. They have a one-state vision of their own: all of the land of Palestine."
Then, FFS, we have the naked Israeli virgin encircled by swarthy, hirsute bikies, drooling at the prospect of violating her sweet innocence as they close in:
"And we all understand that Israel faces very serious threats in a very tough neighborhood. Israelis are rightfully concerned about making sure that there is not a new terrorist haven right next door to them."
Here it is, 2016/2017, and Kerry's still trotting out the Leon Uris version of 1948:
"The United States recognized Israel seven minutes after its creation. But the Palestinians and the Arab world did not, and from its birth, Israel had to fight for its life. Palestinians also suffered terribly in the 1948 war, including many who had lived for generations in a land that had long been their home too."
The Palestinian presence in Palestine goes back to the Canaanites but for Kerry it has long been their home too!
As for 1967, he peddles the same, tired myth we've been hearing now for almost 50 years:
"Next year will also mark 50 years since the end of the Six-Day War, when Israel fought for its survival."
Finally, here's Kerry's 'solution' to the Palestinian refugee problem:
"Provide for a just, agreed, fair, and realistic solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, with international assistance, that includes compensation, options and assistance in finding permanent homes, acknowledgment of suffering, and other measures necessary for a comprehensive resolution consistent with two states for two peoples."
This of course has nothing whatever to do with justice, fairness or realism. It is nothing more than a transparent attempt to skirt the requirements of UNGA resolution 194 (1948): "... refugees willing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so..."
Kerry's speech is nothing but the delusional product of an Israeli-occupied mind.
Sunday, October 2, 2016
What a Croc(k)!
That old Zionist crocodile, Shimon Peres, could sure cry a river over the Palestinians when it suited him:
"It is hard to separate the miserable plight of the Palestinian refugees from the claim to the 'right of return.' For the first generation of refugees, the experience of being a refugee and the culture that grew up around it served as a basis for the consciousness of exile from the land of their birth - the loss of the country, house, lands, landscapes familiar from childhood, and family graves - alongside the hope of returning to their homes. The second and third generations have inherited this experience, a powerful emotive load that grows ever stronger amid crushing poverty and degrading conditions in the refugee camps. The claim to the 'right of return' has to be seen against this complex historical background." (The New Middle East, Shimon Peres, 1993, p 189)
Then, just as all and sundry (ie, politicians, journalists and the like) are sucked in by these tears, those cruel jaws snap shut:
"However, it is a maximal claim; if accepted, it would wipe out the national character of the State of Israel, making the Jewish majority into a minority. Consequently, there is no chance it will be accepted, either now or in the future."
Don't be fooled by Zionists' crocodile tears. Its the snap of their jaws you've got to concentrate on.
"It is hard to separate the miserable plight of the Palestinian refugees from the claim to the 'right of return.' For the first generation of refugees, the experience of being a refugee and the culture that grew up around it served as a basis for the consciousness of exile from the land of their birth - the loss of the country, house, lands, landscapes familiar from childhood, and family graves - alongside the hope of returning to their homes. The second and third generations have inherited this experience, a powerful emotive load that grows ever stronger amid crushing poverty and degrading conditions in the refugee camps. The claim to the 'right of return' has to be seen against this complex historical background." (The New Middle East, Shimon Peres, 1993, p 189)
Then, just as all and sundry (ie, politicians, journalists and the like) are sucked in by these tears, those cruel jaws snap shut:
"However, it is a maximal claim; if accepted, it would wipe out the national character of the State of Israel, making the Jewish majority into a minority. Consequently, there is no chance it will be accepted, either now or in the future."
Don't be fooled by Zionists' crocodile tears. Its the snap of their jaws you've got to concentrate on.
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
The Appalling David Feeney MP
Well, well, well:
"Labor frontbencher David Feeney owns an undeclared $2.31 million property, potentially placing him in 'serious contempt' of the Parliament. And the ALP power broker said he didn't know if the house was negatively geared* - despite Labor's proposed changes to property tax rules being a key election issue... [Feeney, BTW, lives in a $2.875 million pad East Melbourne and also owns an investment property in Seddon purchased for $380,000 in 2004.] Mr Feeney has not declared the $2.31 million Northcote property, purchased on December 24, 2013, more than two years after the parliamentary deadline [for disclosure]. The rules around what MPs must declare are quite strict and require that all property, shares and gifts worth more than $300 be reported within 28 days. Although Mr Feeney updated his register twice in 2015, on neither occasion did he declare the Northcote house." (Election 2016: David Feeney didn't declare $2.3m house and 'doesn't know' if it's negatively geared, Massola/Willingham/Hunter, The Age, 17/5/16)
OK, I can understand why Mr Feeney twice overlooked updating his register of interests last year. He was busy... scribbling pro-Israel propaganda pieces for Melbourne's Age.
In a piece he wrote back then called Empty symbolic gestures of recognition will not help the Palestinian people, he declared, among other things, that:
"The Palestinians should abandon their campaign to destroy Israel [by] abandoning the so-called 'right of return' for the descendants of the 1948 refugees." (22/7/15)
Now just so we're clear here, our 3-property portfolio politician's "so-called 'right of return'" just happens to be enshrined in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) - the right of people to leave and return to their country (not to mention UN Resolution 194 which calls on Israel to permit the return of Palestinian refugees driven out of their homes by Zionist forces in 1948).
So, this padded, 3-property (and counting?) right-wing ALP power broker, who blithely prattled on in his 2008 maiden speech about believing in "the fundamental human rights of us all and the need to eliminate discrimination wherever it is found," is calling on Palestinians to give up their fundamental, inalienable, international law-guarenteed right to return to the homes from which they were driven by his Israeli heroes in 1948.
What an appalling hypocrite! No wonder Labor's losing ground to the Greens.
[*"#Election2016 - #negative gearing costs every taxpayer $310 per year smh.com.au..." Feeney tweet, 12/5/16]
"Labor frontbencher David Feeney owns an undeclared $2.31 million property, potentially placing him in 'serious contempt' of the Parliament. And the ALP power broker said he didn't know if the house was negatively geared* - despite Labor's proposed changes to property tax rules being a key election issue... [Feeney, BTW, lives in a $2.875 million pad East Melbourne and also owns an investment property in Seddon purchased for $380,000 in 2004.] Mr Feeney has not declared the $2.31 million Northcote property, purchased on December 24, 2013, more than two years after the parliamentary deadline [for disclosure]. The rules around what MPs must declare are quite strict and require that all property, shares and gifts worth more than $300 be reported within 28 days. Although Mr Feeney updated his register twice in 2015, on neither occasion did he declare the Northcote house." (Election 2016: David Feeney didn't declare $2.3m house and 'doesn't know' if it's negatively geared, Massola/Willingham/Hunter, The Age, 17/5/16)
OK, I can understand why Mr Feeney twice overlooked updating his register of interests last year. He was busy... scribbling pro-Israel propaganda pieces for Melbourne's Age.
In a piece he wrote back then called Empty symbolic gestures of recognition will not help the Palestinian people, he declared, among other things, that:
"The Palestinians should abandon their campaign to destroy Israel [by] abandoning the so-called 'right of return' for the descendants of the 1948 refugees." (22/7/15)
Now just so we're clear here, our 3-property portfolio politician's "so-called 'right of return'" just happens to be enshrined in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) - the right of people to leave and return to their country (not to mention UN Resolution 194 which calls on Israel to permit the return of Palestinian refugees driven out of their homes by Zionist forces in 1948).
So, this padded, 3-property (and counting?) right-wing ALP power broker, who blithely prattled on in his 2008 maiden speech about believing in "the fundamental human rights of us all and the need to eliminate discrimination wherever it is found," is calling on Palestinians to give up their fundamental, inalienable, international law-guarenteed right to return to the homes from which they were driven by his Israeli heroes in 1948.
What an appalling hypocrite! No wonder Labor's losing ground to the Greens.
[*"#Election2016 - #negative gearing costs every taxpayer $310 per year smh.com.au..." Feeney tweet, 12/5/16]
Monday, March 21, 2016
Born More Equal
Jennifer Oriel, writing in today's Australian:
"The greatest erosion of human potential arises from the belief that some of us are born more equal than others." (White, male & increasingly discriminated against, 21/3/16)
But what about the bizarre belief that a certain strip of land in the Middle East lying between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan really belongs to Jennifer Oriel and friendz, who not only have Australian citizenship, homes and jobs, but can migrate to said strip of land any time they choose and call it home, while those who were ethnically cleansed from it in 1948 and 1967- to make way for the Jennifer Orielz of this world - are not allowed to return there?
Looks like Jennifer Oriel and friendz were born more equal than they.
"The greatest erosion of human potential arises from the belief that some of us are born more equal than others." (White, male & increasingly discriminated against, 21/3/16)
But what about the bizarre belief that a certain strip of land in the Middle East lying between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan really belongs to Jennifer Oriel and friendz, who not only have Australian citizenship, homes and jobs, but can migrate to said strip of land any time they choose and call it home, while those who were ethnically cleansed from it in 1948 and 1967- to make way for the Jennifer Orielz of this world - are not allowed to return there?
Looks like Jennifer Oriel and friendz were born more equal than they.
Monday, December 28, 2015
And When I Knock on the Door...
I love this:
"As a Palestinian, whether I live 'here' or 'there,' I live in an existential homeland. Since my childhood I have known no other. But I have not yet wanted to reconcile myself to the notion that my history should be deflected from its preordained course and that I should be robbed of my patrimony. I still consider the punishment meted out to us to be unspeakable. To be punished beyond the call of our guilt is a terrible front to our sensibility and sense of justice. To be punished with no implication of guilt is to be brought to the edge of hysteria, a clamour to prove to one's self that our account with men and their gods do not balance.
"And the accounts do not balance, and they have never balanced.
"For the Palestinian, just to explain himself, 'here' as well as 'there,' he has to exert torrential energies.
"In Long Island, I gave a talk to a predominantly Jewish audience. I speak about Palestine and the Palestinians. Mine is a narrative, not a lecture, that I deliver without cant. I am not a threatening figure. I have a beard and long hair. I have Semitic features. I am wearing a corduroy suit. I am at home in English and its nuances. When I finish, in this stark surrounding of upper middle class affluence, I know my tale has a tone, a presence, a spell and a desperate integrity to it. I know its honesty has played on the nerves with disquietening intimacy, making such immediate, such urgent claims on the intellect and on emotions. But this audience does not flinch.
"Instead, I hear this: You people have never had it so good under occupation, now you're looked after medically and educationally, and have the highest standard of living among all Arabs. Palestine was desert before the Jews went there. The 'Arab refugees' left Palestine voluntarily. If it were not for the Arab governments, you people would have been resettled a long time ago. If we granted you a separate state, you people would be at the gates of Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa.
"Yes. Yes. Yes, that is where I want to Return. Where I want to be. At the gates of Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa. And when I knock on the door, I shall be there listing every blade of grass, every grain of sand, every floor, every shadow of every olive tree that I had left behind." (Fawaz Turki, The Future of a Past: Fragments from the Palestinian Dream, Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring, 1977, p 69)
"As a Palestinian, whether I live 'here' or 'there,' I live in an existential homeland. Since my childhood I have known no other. But I have not yet wanted to reconcile myself to the notion that my history should be deflected from its preordained course and that I should be robbed of my patrimony. I still consider the punishment meted out to us to be unspeakable. To be punished beyond the call of our guilt is a terrible front to our sensibility and sense of justice. To be punished with no implication of guilt is to be brought to the edge of hysteria, a clamour to prove to one's self that our account with men and their gods do not balance.
"And the accounts do not balance, and they have never balanced.
"For the Palestinian, just to explain himself, 'here' as well as 'there,' he has to exert torrential energies.
"In Long Island, I gave a talk to a predominantly Jewish audience. I speak about Palestine and the Palestinians. Mine is a narrative, not a lecture, that I deliver without cant. I am not a threatening figure. I have a beard and long hair. I have Semitic features. I am wearing a corduroy suit. I am at home in English and its nuances. When I finish, in this stark surrounding of upper middle class affluence, I know my tale has a tone, a presence, a spell and a desperate integrity to it. I know its honesty has played on the nerves with disquietening intimacy, making such immediate, such urgent claims on the intellect and on emotions. But this audience does not flinch.
"Instead, I hear this: You people have never had it so good under occupation, now you're looked after medically and educationally, and have the highest standard of living among all Arabs. Palestine was desert before the Jews went there. The 'Arab refugees' left Palestine voluntarily. If it were not for the Arab governments, you people would have been resettled a long time ago. If we granted you a separate state, you people would be at the gates of Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa.
"Yes. Yes. Yes, that is where I want to Return. Where I want to be. At the gates of Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa. And when I knock on the door, I shall be there listing every blade of grass, every grain of sand, every floor, every shadow of every olive tree that I had left behind." (Fawaz Turki, The Future of a Past: Fragments from the Palestinian Dream, Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring, 1977, p 69)
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