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.]

SMH: Lightweight. Increasingly.

As the Sydney Morning Herald shrinks, almost too light now to even reach one's front lawn, so too does the quality of its editorials. For example:

"Back decades... Labor foreign minister, attorney-general and eventually leader H.V. (Bert) Evatt played a key role in establishing the UN... He helped develop the Universal Declaration of Human Rights* and counted the creation of Israel among his greatest contributions at the UN." (Turnbull makes serious blunder rejecting Rudd, 30/7/16)

IOW, our Bert created Israel.

OFFS!

Here is what actually happened at the time:

In 1947, Evatt was chair of the UN's Ad hoc Committee on Palestine. When, on 25 November 1947, the Committee voted to recommend to the UN General Assembly that Palestine be partitioned into Jewish and Arab states, Australia/Evatt voted for partition. The final Committee vote was 25 for, 13 against with 17 abstentions. That is, of the 55 votes cast only 25 favoured partition.

Some arm-twisting of UN member states (by the US at the behest of the Zionists) had, therefore, to be undertaken in order to line up the required majority of votes for partition before the UNGA met to decide on the matter on 29 November. I have dealt with this thuggery in several posts, accessible under the label 'Palestine partition'. The point I wish to make here, however, is that the Herald's ZIONIST hyping of Evatt's role in the sordid affair of partitioning Palestine over the heads of its people cannot be allowed to stand.

To put Evatt's role in perspective, I offer this summation by one of Australia's leading Zionists of the time, Max Freilich:

"On 18th December the Zionist Federation gave a dinner reception to Dr. Evatt paying tribute to him for the skilful way in which he had conducted the meetings of the Ad hoc Committee on Palestine so that it was made possible for the United Nations Assembly to arrive at the decision for the partitioning of Palestine into Jewish and Arab States." (Zion in Our Time, 1967, p 199)

So much for Evett creating Israel.

Having said that, Evatt still needs a retrospective caning for, in Freilich's words, "conducting the meetings of the Ad hoc Committee on Palestine so that it was possible for the United Nations Assembly to arrive at the decision for the partitioning of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states."

[*There is no mention of Evatt's name in relation to the development of the UDHR in the Wikipedia entry for this subject. More hype?]

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]

A Question for Reza Aslan

Another speaker on matters Middle Eastern slated for the Sydney Writers Festival next month is the Iranian-American scholar of religion, Reza Aslan.

Judging by the video clips I've seen, if Aslan broaches the subject of Palestine/Israel, he's probably going to be telling us that the two-state solution is dead and that we're heading for a de facto binational state (from the River to the Sea), based either on South-African style apartheid, where a Jewish minority rules over a disenfranchised Palestinian majority, or something more accommodating of the interests of both groups.

So far so good, analytically speaking at any rate.

Where I part company with Aslan is in relation to what he calls the "sacrifices" both sides will have to make were the second of the above two scenarios to prevail.

While he thinks it "sad" that Israeli Jews will have to give up their "dream" of a Jewish majority state, the Palestinians, he says, will have to give up their "impossible notion of the right of return."

IOW, the Israeli sacrifice involves merely giving up a very bad idea, while the Palestinian sacrifice involves giving up a very good idea (so good in fact that it's enshrined in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), namely the right of people to leave and return to their own country.

Not to mention the fact that giving up that very good idea would condemn millions of living, breathing Palestinians to a permanent exile.

Does Aslan seriously believe this, or is it that he just hasn't thought this one through?

Refugees

To rephrase Orwell: All refugees are equal, but some refugees are more equal than others:

Paul Howes, AWU national secretary, anti-Rudd conspirator, Murdoch columnist, and Israel luvvie, believes, correctly, that Australia's refugee policy should conform strictly to the requirements of international law, it being crystal clear on the subject:

"I have always been a strident (some would say overly strident) believer in our responsibility to welcome refugees, regardless of how they arrive in this country. I don't hold this belief because I'm some bleeding-heart lefty. I believe this because I feel it is our responsibility, as human beings, to demonstrate compassion to the most vulnerable people on the planet. But I'm in the minority on this. Most Australians, if we look at the polls, want to take a firm stance against those refugees arriving by boat. Most people, despite international law being crystal clear on the subject, still incorrectly believe that if you arrive by boat, you are an illegal immigrant. In my opinion, I think it's sad that we, as a nation of immigrants, are unable to feel more compassion and be more welcoming to those who arrive here after us." (Our sad boat policy, The Sunday Telegraph, 11/7/10)

International law, as our learned friend (we are talking law here) says, is crystal clear on the subject of refugees. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), for example, says unambiguously: "Article 14 (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."

Now I'm assuming that Article 13 (2) is equally crystal clear to our learned friend: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."

At the risk of giving my learned friend a bad dose of cognitive dissonance, can I therefore assume that he supports the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands in what is today known as Israel, but was then (1948) known as Palestine?

Orwell again: All refugees are equal, but some refugees aren't even refugees:

Interestingly, Julia Gillard made her first official statement on the issue of refugees on July 6 at Frank Lowy 's think tank, the Lowy Institute. Of Mr Lowy, Australia's second richest man, she had this to say:

"I am very thankful to the Lowy Institute for hosting me today. This Institute has established a reputation for independent, robust and forceful analysis of our nation's place in the world. It is exactly the right place to make today's address: Moving Australia Forward. I first would like to acknowledge the enormous contribution of the Institute's benefactor, Frank Lowy. Frank Lowy is a great Australian. He was a refugee who escaped to Israel after World War II in a crowded boat full of asylum seekers. After fighting for Israel, he arrived on our shores as a very determined 21 year old. He worked hard and went from factory worker to milk bar owner to Blacktown shopping centre developer and, in time, to the largest retail property group in the world - truly great achievements, and what a remarkable story... But moving forward means we must agree on the organising principles for developing policy, and believe we can agree on most principles. That we should be prepared to accept people in legitimate need just as a young Frank Lowy was accepted 60 years ago." (From the Prime Minister's speech Moving Australia Forward)

So, according to Gillard, Lowy was a refugee who escaped to Israel after World War II in a boat crowded with asylum seekers, and in legitimate need when he later reached Australia.

A refugee? Escaping to Israel? After the war was over? Really?

The 16-year old Frank Lowy left Hungary in 1946 and boarded the Mossad* vessel Yagur in France, part of a Mossad people smuggling racket (to use the term much beloved of our polly-waffles these days) to transfer as many displaced European Jews to Palestine as possible, despite the British Mandate blockade on illegal Jewish immigration. The Yagur was intercepted by the British and its passengers detained in Cyprus, before being moved to a detention camp in northern Palestine.

Lowy eventually ended up in the Haganah's Golani Brigade which played an integral role in the ethnic cleansing of the Galilee area in 1948.

Israeli historian Ilan Pappe affords us a taste of what the Golanis got up to: "The first targets of the Israeli forces in the 10 days between the two truces were the pockets within the Galilee around Acre, and Nazareth. 'Cleanse totally the enemy from the villages' was the order that 3 brigades received on July 6, two days before the Israeli troops - straining at their leashes to continue the cleansing operations - were ordered to violate the first truce. Jewish soldiers automatically understood that 'enemy' meant defenceless Palestinian villagers and their families. The brigades they belonged to were the Carmeli, the Golani and Brigade Seven, the 3 brigades of the north that would also be responsible for the final cleansing operations in the upper Galilee in October. The inventive people whose job it was to come up with the names for operations of this kind had now switched from 'cleansing' synonyms ('Broom', 'Scissors') to trees: 'Palm' (Dekel) for the Nazareth area and 'Cypress' (Brosh) for the Jordan Valley area." (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006, p 158)

After fighting for Israel, as Gillard spins it, Lowy migrated to Australia in 1952. How he could be described, as Gillard does, as being in legitimate need at this time is beyond me.

[*Yes, a Mossad vessel. See Idith Zertal's From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel, 1998, p 237. See also my 17/6/10 post Cannon Fodder for Zion: Exodus 1947]

Returning...

"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." Article 13(2) "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property." Article 17(2) Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Good news on the refugee front: "The European Court of Justice has awarded a Greek Cypriot refugee the right to win back land he was forced to flee when war partitioned the island in 1974... About 200,000 Greek Cypriots were forcibly displaced when the Turkish army invaded the island and seized its northern third after an Athens-based coup aimed at uniting it with Greece. Historically inhabited by Greeks, northern Cyprus was home to very few Turkish Cypriots. Before the invasion prompted a population exchange on either side of the island's UN-patrolled ceasefire line, land registries show that about 82% of properties in the area belonged to Greeks." (Cyprus unity is all about real estate, Helena Smith, Guardian/Sydney Morning Herald, 30/4/09)

Meanwhile, in occupied Palestine aka Israel: "As Israel celebrated its 61st anniversary, some 2,000 people demonstrated on Wednesday for Arab-Israelis' right of return to the lands from which they were chased in 1948. The protest took place on the site of Al-Kafrayn, an Arab village among the more than 500 that were razed by Israeli forces at the time of the creation of the Jewish state in 1948... 'We have come to tell Israelis we will never forget', Fatima Chalabi, one of the protesters, told AFP. Israel has 1.2 million Arab citizens, the descendants of the 160,000 who remained after the creation of the Jewish state. On May 15, Palestinians and Arab-Israelis mark the anniversary of the Nakba - Catastrophe - the term they use to describe the creation of the state of Israel on three-quarters of the territory of historic Palestine. Some 760,000 Arabs were expelled or fled from their homes during the 1948 war, giving rise to a UN-registered refugee population scattered across the Middle East that today numbers more than 4.6 million." (Arab-Israelis march for right of return, AFP, 30/4/09)

And in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon, according to a poll of 500 Palestinian refugees conducted last month by Beirut's Center for Research & Information, 89% of respondents supported the right of return to their homes and lands in occupied Palestine aka Israel.

Breathtaking Zionist Arrogance

As part of its propaganda offensive, Israel's cheer squad have turned the opinion pages of The Australian into their own personal romper room. (I'm rephrasing Max Blumenthal here - see his 5/1/09 post Why aren't more Americans dancing to Israel's tune?, maxblumenthal.com.) To date we've had Israeli ambassador Yuval Rotem, Alan Dershowitz, Philip Mendes, Shmuel Rosner, Greg Sheridan, Colin Rubenstein, David Aaronovitch, Assa Doron, Martin Peretz, Bret Stephens and Melanie Phillips. In a tokenistic effort, only two - two! - critical voices, Amin Saikal and Sonja Karkar, managed a foot in the door. Today, I single out two of the cheer squad for comment:-

Philip Mendes is an Australian academic - a lecturer in social work at Monash University - who likes to think of himself as an even-handed progressive:

"My two-state position was based on moral and practical grounds for a Palestinian state. The moral case recognised that the creation of Israel in 1948 had inflicted an overwhelming injustice on the Palestinians. Yet, as a Jew, I believed the creation of Israel was a necessary act of affirmative action in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and had to take precedence over opposing claims. However, I also believed the Palestinians were entitled to at least partial compensation for the injustice of 1948 by securing a sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip." (Common ground riven by a cultural gulf, 3/1/09) That "had to take precedence over" is the essence of Zionist arrogance and moral corruption. It bespeaks the arrogance of nationalist zealots for whom the tragedy of European Jewry is nothing more than a convenient cover for their naked colonial land-grab in Palestine.

Having swallowed the 19th century Zionist ideological construct that Jews the world over, including himself, constitute an entity labelled 'the Jewish people', Mendes here asserts the incredible idea that that 'people', his people, have a superior right to the land of Palestine than its indigenous Arab inhabitants. Breathtaking!

But there's more from our social worker: formerly optimistic, he's now quite pessimistic about his preferred two-state solution because - wait for it - "the Palestinians view themselves as the victims of a historical wrong" (So this is merely the Palestinian view? The reality is otherwise? If so, how does Mendes explain his own acknowledgment above that "the creation of Israel in 1948 had inflicted an overwhelming injustice on the Palestinians"?).

And, get this, according to Mendes, the Palestinians believe that that historical wrong "can be resolved only by the implementation of a just solution. Justice is defined in absolute rather than relative terms and all other opposing narratives are unequivocally rejected." IOW, if you are to believe Mendes, the Palestinians are hung-up on absolute justice! (Could Mendes and his kind be said to have a Holocaust hang-up, I wonder?)

Exactly what this supposed Palestinian penchant for absolute justice comes down to emerges when he writes, "I do believe the dominant viewpoint within Palestinian society [evidence?] is unwilling to compromise on key symbolic issues such as the right of return, and that this viewpoint is likely to preclude a negotiated peace based on a midway point between the Israeli and Palestinian narratives." So, for Mendes and his mates, Article 13(2) (Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is merely a "symbolic issue," OK for everyone else maybe, but not for Palestinians. But why?

It's what Mendes doesn't spell out in his propaganda piece that matters: if the Palestinian refugees are allowed to return to what is left of their towns and villages in Israel (im)proper as full citizens, then we might end up with a situation where there are actually more non-Jews in Israel than Jews, and the whole concept of an ethno-religious Jewish state, based on a demographic majority of Jews, becomes problematic. So, in the Mendes/Zionist bubble, the maintenance of a sectarian Jewish state trumps the implementation of a universal right. And also, in the bubble, to uphold the demand for a sectarian state, which discriminates in law between Jews and non-Jews, makes one a relativist open to compromise, while arguing for the implementation of a universal right makes one an uncompromising absolutist.

Martin Peretz is the editor-in-chief of US rag The New Republic:

"The bitter fact is that, while the Jews prepared for a homeland state from the early 1920s until 1948... the Palestinians did almost nothing except resent and resist the future." (West must guarantee resolution with Gaza, 7/1/09) But of course, when a bunch of developers from Europe, backed by British bayonets, turn up in your green and pleasant land with the intention of turning it into their very own tar and cement strip-mall, what are you going to do, Marty, shower them with flowers then make yourself obligingly scarce?

"... Gaza Palestinians who... routinely shift in their own minds from armed killers to innocent victims." The Israeli pendulum exactly: IDF terrorists one minute, helpless, quivering in their bomb shelters the next.

"Maybe [statehood] can be devolved on the West Bank in short order rather than long, given especially an exchange of territory between Israel and the new Palestine... Some Israeli land with Palestinian inhabitants might be transferred [!!!] to the freshly independent entity, with the accumulated social benefits of the population transferred with them as well." IOW, while we're in the business of bestowing a fragmented statehood on the West Bank Palestinians, why can't we use the opportunity to hive off those fast-breeding, Bolshie Israeli Arabs whom we, to the extent possible with these untermenschen, have civilized, to the undoubted benefit of their backward West Bank cousins? Hey, it'd be a win-win! Ethnic cleansing - the quintessential Zionist modus operandi!

"It is Europe, hitherto feckless, that needs to guarantee the peace between the Israelis and the Gaza Palestinians. Europe has been Palestine's rhetorical patron. Now let it be Palestine's actual guarantor. That means ensuring the governors of Gaza not rule by the armed doctrine of fanatic and bloodthirsty Islam... With the Palestinian Authority... Europe (by which I mean Britain, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Poland, Canada, Australia [!!!] and a few others) holds the fate of Palestine in its hands." So Israel, having squeezed the Gaza lemon till the pips squeeked, can now drop the battered and bloody mess into Europe's lap. Hey, Marty, wouldn't it be easier and more cost-effective for Europe to squeeze the Israeli lemon, via a trade and diplomatic boycott, until it gets the f..k out of the Palestinian territories and stays out?

Betraying the UDHR

"For 60 years, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR] has been treated with contempt by tyrants from Pyongyang to Darfur... [T]he anniversary of its adoption by the United Nations on December 10, 1948, is an occasion to mourn the organization's many failures as much as a licence to celebrate... Sadly... the UN has been an irresponsible and careless steward of those fine ideals." (An ideal betrayed: The UN has failed to protect universal human rights, Editorial, The Australian, 10/12/08)

So, according to The Australian, the UN has betrayed the fine ideals of the UDHR. How? Read on: "In April, the UN Human Rights Council [which "has been hijacked by some of the world's most notorious human rights abusers"] will hold Durban II, its second World Conference against Racism in Geneva. Durban I, held in South Africa 7 years ago, was a festival of anti-Semitism... Durban II* promises more of the same with a draft declaration condemning Israel's Palestinian policy as 'a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide and a serious threat to international peace and security'." (ibid)

[*See my 18/1/08 post Working Out the Mechanics of Our Relationship.]

References to the UDHR and all points east and west notwithstanding, for The Australian it's always about Israel. Were it not for the UN Human Rights Council's true and accurate characterisation of the Jewish state, quoted above (and misconstrued as anti-Semitism), the 60th anniversary of the UDHR would most likely have gone unremarked in the paper's editorial column. In fact, the UDHR anniversary constitutes just another opportunity for the editorialist to smear the UN as it goes about its perfectly legitimate and necessary business of calling a spade a spade in preparation for Durban II. Zionist chutzpah at The Australian being what it is, the editorialist would have the reader believe, absent the knowledge that Zionist Israel "is an abomination in terms of the UDHR and a crime under the standards of international law" (Apartheid Israel, Uri Davis, 2003, p5), that the UDHR and Israel, like love and marriage, go together like the proverbial horse and carriage. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, as any objective analysis of the role of the UDHR in informing Palestinian rights will tell us:-

"The displaced [Palestinian Arab refugees of 1948] and their descendants claim a right to return to their home areas [in Israel]... Israel denies that a state in its situation is obliged to repatriate. In its view the displaced left voluntarily and thereby forfeited their rights. Moreover, Israel disputes that any right of repatriation for wartime displaced persons can be found in customary international law, in particular when a new state comes into being in the territory. Palestine argues for a right of repatriation for the wartime displaced, a right it finds in customary international law, applicable to the displaced Palestinians regardless of their reason for departing, although the voluntariness of their departure is denied. Israel's appearance as a new state does not in the Palestinian view negate a right of repatriation...

"The Palestinian view starts from the generally accepted proposition that a state may not exclude nationals who are, for whatever reason, resident abroad but who seek to return. Other states are under no obligation to accept a non-national permanently... Additionally, the displaced person has a claim for repatriation, as a matter of personal rights. 'Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own', proclaims the UDHR, 'and to return to his country'. When a treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, was drafted to implement the UDHR, comparable language was used: 'no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country'.

"Israel defined Israeli nationality in a way that excluded the Palestinians displaced in 1948. An Israeli lawyer has argued that since Israel doesn't recognize the nationality of these persons, they have no right to return; 'the right [of repatriation] probably belongs only to nationals of the State, and at most to permanent residents. The Palestinian Arab refugees have never been nationals or permanent residents of Israel'. The UDHR and International Covenant, however, both use the term 'country' rather than 'state of nationality' to make clear that the right of entry does not depend on whether the state holding the territory recognises the person as a national. Anyone who was a national or habitually resident before a change in sovereignty is entitled to the nationality of the successor state. A country's 'population follows the change of sovereignty in matters of nationality'." (The Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective, John Quigley, 1990, pp 230-231)

The editorialist's gripe is really that Palestinian rights have not yet completely dropped off the UN's agenda.

Evatt's Legacy

"Sixty years ago next Wednesday, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was born. Australia voted for it and an Australian, H.V. Evatt, was president of the United Nations General Assembly." This is how the Sydney Morning Herald kicked off its editorial on PM Rudd's proposal to canvass an Australian bill of rights (The right bill of rights, 4/12/08).

Rudd loves to invoke the memory of Evatt whenever he's sucking up to the Israel lobby. The last time (that I'm aware of) was when he moved his infamous 12 March 2008 parliamentary motion "celebrating and commending the achievements of the State of Israel in the 60 years since its inception" (see my 14/3/08 post The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament 3). Rudd said at the time: "Australia is proud to have played a significant part in the international process that led to the foundation of the state of Israel. Australia's then Minister for External Affairs, Dr Evatt, was part of the UN Special Committee on Palestine which recommended in August 1947 the termination of the Mandate for Palestine. And he was chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee meeting on the Palestine Question that proposed the partition of Palestine." IOW, Evatt was instrumental in laying the legal groundwork for the later creation of the Jewish state. IOW, Australia owes the Palestinian people big time. How can it discharge this debt? Simple - by basing its foreign policy squarely on the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Article 13 of the UDHR reads: "(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." That article applies to all refugees, including the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and their descendants.

Australia thus has a clear legal (through its vote for the UDHR) and moral ( through expiation for its historic role in the dismemberment of Palestine) duty to work in all international legal fora for the return of Palestinian refugees to the homeland from which they were ethnically cleansed by Zionist terrorists in 1948.

Working Out the Mechanics of Our Relationship

The Israel lobby in Australia has chalked up its first victory with the Rudd Government. In The Australian Jewish News (AJN) of 7/12/07, Robert Goot, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), was reported to have "spoken with representatives from the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade and hopes to meet [Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen] Smith as soon as possible. Goot said he would like to ask Smith about ways to prevent anti-Semitism at the World Conference Against Racism [WCAR] in Durban in 2009, and 'to work out the mechanics of our relationship in the future'."

In the AJN of 18/1/08, we read that "The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has praised the Rudd Government and its UN ambassador for voting against funding for the so-called UN Durban Review Conference, or 'Durban II'." AIJAC's Dr Colin Rubenstein griped that the WCAR held in 2001 "was hijacked and turned into a caricature of the very forces it was supposed to combat, even reviving the old canard that Zionism equals racism." He "commended" the Rudd Government for what he called its "principled stance."

41 (to 93) states, all European (apart from the US, Australia, Canada, Republic of Korea & Turkey - Israel does not vote on Shabbat) voted against funding Durban II. The US ambassador to the UN, Mark Wallace, even went on to vote "alone against the UN 2008-09 regular budget because money for hatemongering had been included." [www.eyeontheun.org Amusingly, Wallace is described on this neocon Hudson Institute website as "US Representative for United Nations Management & Reform."]

Let's get back to basics here. As Uri Davis, Israeli anti-Zionist activist and author, points out in his seminal 2003 work, Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, political Zionism is a political programme committed to the notion that it is a good idea to establish and consolidate in the country of Palestine a sovereign, Jewish state that attempts to guarantee in law (eg Absentees Property Law 1950) and in practice (via the mass expulsion of its indigenous Palestinian Arab people in 1948) a demographic majority of the Jewish tribes in the territories under its control, in other words a form of apartheid. Because, unlike western democratic political programmes, Zionism is not predicated on the principle of the separation of religion and tribalism from the state and violates the values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the standards of international law, it is a form of racism. The Israel lobby, of course, seeks always to blur the fundamental distinction between Judaism (a confessional statement belonging to the private realm of the individual) and Zionism (a political programme), and routinely smears anti-Zionism by linking it with anti-Semitism.

The Rudd Government's vote on Durban II cannot, therefore, be described as "principled," since Israel, as a Jewish state, is incompatible with the principles enshrined in the UDHR. Australia's vote is, in fact, a vote for racism and apartheid.

At the 2001 WCAR, most participants (but not Australia) supported a resolution equating Zionism with racism, prompting a walkout by Israel and the US. The final text of the resolution, while recognising the Palestinians' right to self-determination and expressing concern at their plight under foreign occupation, drops all criticism of Israel. The parallel WCAR NGO Forum, however, stuck with the original resolution, declaring Israel a "racist, apartheid state," and calling for the imposition of "a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state as in the case of South Africa, which means the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, the full cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, aid, military cooperation and training) between all states and Israel." [http://www.badil.org/e-library/NGO-excerpts.htm]

You can now see why the Israel lobby in Australia is busy "working out the mechanics of [its] relationship" with the Rudd Government.