"One afternoon in 1964 I was drinking coffee in the University of New England cafeteria with a bunch of young men from well-to-do grazing properties. They were rowdy and effortlessly good-natured. In those days Australia still rode on the sheep's back; they took for granted that they were the natural aristocrats of the campus and of the nation. We were laughing a lot that day. The conversation had turned to old family eccentrics; we'd been vying to cap each other's wacky stories.
"Then, a wealthy landowner's son took a turn. Sunday afternoons had been the fun time for his family, he announced. Presumably after church, and a good heavy Sunday dinner, his grandfather would go hunting on horseback with dogs and a posse of mates. Whooping. All armed with whips and guns. The quarry was Aborigines. They would be chased through the bush, cornered, then shot. Or driven over a mighty precipice to their death.
"Stunned silence fell around the table. The brutal declaration, so breezy and lighthearted, so shockingly new to my ears, threw us completely. I stared down into my coffee. Someone guffawed uneasily. I've often wondered why the young man blurted out those words. I remember he laughed as he spoke. Was it bravado to cover shame?
"The chilling thing was that, despite our shock, in the end the social niceties prevailed. We would ignore the faux pas. Besides, how many others among those young grandsons of squatters sitting around the table had similar secrets walled up behind their homestead facades?" (Who are we, really? Time to face the truth of the massacres of Aborigines, Frances Letters, Sydney Morning Herald, 7/7/17)
***
"Concerning Frances Letters' commentary, in the 1960s a family member born in the 1890s told me a similar story. I was about 14 at the time and I think the discussion touched on the Aboriginal referendum. He mentioned matter of factly that when he was a boy it was not uncommon for landowners to go on Aborigine shoots. I thought I had distorted my recollection, but after reading Frances's comments I now know it was true." (Letter to the SMH, 8/7/17)
Showing posts with label indigenous Australians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indigenous Australians. Show all posts
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
The Indigenous Pilgrims' Progress
October 31, 2017, of course, is the centenary of the much hyped charge of the Australian Light Horse at Turkish trenches defending the Palestinian town of Beersheba. The hype is largely due to the event's appropriation by Australia's Israel lobby, part of its ongoing effort to manufacture alleged historical links between Australia and Israel as part of the fiction that a 'unique relationship' exists between the two countries.
Although but one part of an Anglo-Arab thrust aimed at dislodging the Turks from the Levant in World War I, the victory of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba has been opportunistically appropriated by our Israel lobbyists and hyped as an integral component of the Zionist project in Palestine, on a par, almost, with the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917.
Of course, no such explicit linkage was ever made by Zionist spokesmen in the immediate post war years. Burnishing Israel's image in contemporary Australian domestic politics is what this blatant propaganda exercise is all about.
Here, for example, are some of the latest Zionist iterations of the linkage:
"On 31 October 1917 two events happened which shaped future world history. The first was the capture of Beersheba by British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers... The second was the decision by the British war cabinet to endorse the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home - the legal foundation of the future state of Israel." (The History, beersheba2017.com)
"The date of the Beersheba charge generally coincided with the Declaration by the British Government that led to the establishment of the modern State of Israel." (Connections to Indigenous Diggers of World War I, jwire.com.au, 23/2/17)
If we look back at earlier Zionist statements, part of the hype surrounding the construction at Beersheba of a 'Park of the Australian Soldier' by the Pratt Foundation in 2008,* the linkage rhetoric was far more explicit: the park was described as "a memorial to those who died in battle for the Jewish state"; "the result of the victory was the emergence of a thriving democratic and vibrant nation"; "the Australian victory... set in train... the establishment of the state of Israel"; and "the gallant 800 changed Jewish history, and the history of the Middle East." (See my 1/5/08 post Zionist Myth In-Formation by clicking on the AIF label below.)
Need I remind the informed reader that Allenby's Anglo-Arab campaign against the Turks, let alone its Beersheba component, was a purely military affair related to the stalemate on the Western Front, and not in any way a paving of the way for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, and that the British war cabinet decision to issue a declaration of support for the Zionist movement was made on the same day as the charge at Beersheba which could not, therefore, have influenced the decision one way or the other. (British attempts to enter Palestine had actually been underway since February 1917.) The Balfour Declaration, that is Balfour's infamous letter to Lord Rothschild, which gave voice to the decision, not unnaturally emerged soon after - as it happens, on November 2.
IOW, the timing was pure coincidence. If we bear in mind the Anglo-Zionist machinations which led up to the Balfour Declaration, the British decision to support Zionist aims could have been made as early as July 1917, long before Allenby's campaign. And as for the Ottoman Empire as a whole, the British had had designs on that stretching back at least to the De Bunsen Committee Report of June 1915, which made no mention whatever of Zionist aims.
Having clarified that, I will now move on to the latest, grotesque stage in this cheap Zionist production, already hinted at in the title of the jwire report, the appropriation of descendants of a claimed 100 Aboriginal Lighthorse soldiers, not merely for use as props in the coming centenary celebration in Israel, but to underscore Israel's bogus claim to indigeneity in Arab Palestine.
This was featured recently in Murdoch's Australian, in a front-page article headed, Remembering Beersheba's heroes, the Aborigines willing to die for their country. The article was accompanied by a photograph of Indigenous Australians, Ray Minniecon and Elsie Amamoo, kitted out as Light Horse troopers. Here's the propagandist core of the piece:
"The pilgrimage to Israel [by the descendants of Aboriginal Lighthorse soldiers next week] has been organised by the Rona Tranby Trust, with the support of the Pratt Foundation. Thomas and Eva Rona were Holocaust survivors who found sanctuary in Australia, and their trust specifically supports and preserves indigenous oral history. 'There are so many parallels between the Jewish people and indigenous Australians,' [Trust administrator Jennifer] Symonds says. 'They both understand dispossession from their lands, and the importance of oral histories - This project [the Rona Tranby Australian Light Horse Project] will enable descendants to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors, and when they return, they will record the stories, so the experience of those soldiers is not forgotten'." (Caroline Overington, 7/10/17)
The cynicism of this "pilgrimage to Israel" emerges only if we bear in mind the wider historical context.
Ostensibly, 'The Rona Tranby Australian Light Horse Project' is merely 'enabling' these descendants of Aboriginal victims of British settler-colonialism in Australia to "walk in the footsteps of their ancestors." The reality, however, is that they are being involved in a propaganda exercise designed to cement White Australia's connection with another settler-colonial state, one, moreover, which eschews any genuine reconciliation with its indigenous Palestinian Arab victims, having deluded itself into believing that its European Jewish colons, not the native Palestinians, are in fact the indigenous population of the land they now occupy, their 2,000-year spell in Europe notwithstanding.
Those post pilgrimage stories should indeed make interesting reading. As should the product outlined in the notice appended to Overington's article: "The Weekend Australian will publish a special magazine on October 28 commemorating the centenary of Beersheba."
[*The late Dick Pratt, in addition to being a cardboard tycoon (Visy), was a generous donor to both Israeli 'charities' and Australian mainstream political parties, a convicted price-fixer, and a key supporter of Bill Shorten.]
Although but one part of an Anglo-Arab thrust aimed at dislodging the Turks from the Levant in World War I, the victory of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba has been opportunistically appropriated by our Israel lobbyists and hyped as an integral component of the Zionist project in Palestine, on a par, almost, with the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917.
Of course, no such explicit linkage was ever made by Zionist spokesmen in the immediate post war years. Burnishing Israel's image in contemporary Australian domestic politics is what this blatant propaganda exercise is all about.
Here, for example, are some of the latest Zionist iterations of the linkage:
"On 31 October 1917 two events happened which shaped future world history. The first was the capture of Beersheba by British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers... The second was the decision by the British war cabinet to endorse the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home - the legal foundation of the future state of Israel." (The History, beersheba2017.com)
"The date of the Beersheba charge generally coincided with the Declaration by the British Government that led to the establishment of the modern State of Israel." (Connections to Indigenous Diggers of World War I, jwire.com.au, 23/2/17)
If we look back at earlier Zionist statements, part of the hype surrounding the construction at Beersheba of a 'Park of the Australian Soldier' by the Pratt Foundation in 2008,* the linkage rhetoric was far more explicit: the park was described as "a memorial to those who died in battle for the Jewish state"; "the result of the victory was the emergence of a thriving democratic and vibrant nation"; "the Australian victory... set in train... the establishment of the state of Israel"; and "the gallant 800 changed Jewish history, and the history of the Middle East." (See my 1/5/08 post Zionist Myth In-Formation by clicking on the AIF label below.)
Need I remind the informed reader that Allenby's Anglo-Arab campaign against the Turks, let alone its Beersheba component, was a purely military affair related to the stalemate on the Western Front, and not in any way a paving of the way for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, and that the British war cabinet decision to issue a declaration of support for the Zionist movement was made on the same day as the charge at Beersheba which could not, therefore, have influenced the decision one way or the other. (British attempts to enter Palestine had actually been underway since February 1917.) The Balfour Declaration, that is Balfour's infamous letter to Lord Rothschild, which gave voice to the decision, not unnaturally emerged soon after - as it happens, on November 2.
IOW, the timing was pure coincidence. If we bear in mind the Anglo-Zionist machinations which led up to the Balfour Declaration, the British decision to support Zionist aims could have been made as early as July 1917, long before Allenby's campaign. And as for the Ottoman Empire as a whole, the British had had designs on that stretching back at least to the De Bunsen Committee Report of June 1915, which made no mention whatever of Zionist aims.
Having clarified that, I will now move on to the latest, grotesque stage in this cheap Zionist production, already hinted at in the title of the jwire report, the appropriation of descendants of a claimed 100 Aboriginal Lighthorse soldiers, not merely for use as props in the coming centenary celebration in Israel, but to underscore Israel's bogus claim to indigeneity in Arab Palestine.
This was featured recently in Murdoch's Australian, in a front-page article headed, Remembering Beersheba's heroes, the Aborigines willing to die for their country. The article was accompanied by a photograph of Indigenous Australians, Ray Minniecon and Elsie Amamoo, kitted out as Light Horse troopers. Here's the propagandist core of the piece:
"The pilgrimage to Israel [by the descendants of Aboriginal Lighthorse soldiers next week] has been organised by the Rona Tranby Trust, with the support of the Pratt Foundation. Thomas and Eva Rona were Holocaust survivors who found sanctuary in Australia, and their trust specifically supports and preserves indigenous oral history. 'There are so many parallels between the Jewish people and indigenous Australians,' [Trust administrator Jennifer] Symonds says. 'They both understand dispossession from their lands, and the importance of oral histories - This project [the Rona Tranby Australian Light Horse Project] will enable descendants to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors, and when they return, they will record the stories, so the experience of those soldiers is not forgotten'." (Caroline Overington, 7/10/17)
The cynicism of this "pilgrimage to Israel" emerges only if we bear in mind the wider historical context.
Ostensibly, 'The Rona Tranby Australian Light Horse Project' is merely 'enabling' these descendants of Aboriginal victims of British settler-colonialism in Australia to "walk in the footsteps of their ancestors." The reality, however, is that they are being involved in a propaganda exercise designed to cement White Australia's connection with another settler-colonial state, one, moreover, which eschews any genuine reconciliation with its indigenous Palestinian Arab victims, having deluded itself into believing that its European Jewish colons, not the native Palestinians, are in fact the indigenous population of the land they now occupy, their 2,000-year spell in Europe notwithstanding.
Those post pilgrimage stories should indeed make interesting reading. As should the product outlined in the notice appended to Overington's article: "The Weekend Australian will publish a special magazine on October 28 commemorating the centenary of Beersheba."
[*The late Dick Pratt, in addition to being a cardboard tycoon (Visy), was a generous donor to both Israeli 'charities' and Australian mainstream political parties, a convicted price-fixer, and a key supporter of Bill Shorten.]
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Jaws
The Murdoch press is currently on a Captain Cook binge, with a 5-part series by journalist Trent Dalton, Cook Rediscovered. Today's essay, An Endeavour for the age, contains these words from Cook's journal: "... the natives... did not offer to touch any of our Casks that had been left ashore and in the after noon 16 or 18 of them came boldly up to within 100 yards of our people at the watering place and there made a stand - Mr Hicks who was the officer ashore did all in his power to entice them to him by offering them presents but it was to no purpose all they seem'd to want was for us to be gone... "
Quite. Cook read the Australians' body language correctly.
For these representatives of the original owners of this land, Cook and his men represented only one thing - trouble. They felt it first in their bones, before they felt it, as buckshot, on their bodies.
While they could not, of course, have known at the time of their coming dispossession at the hands of wave after wave of European settlers, their gut instinct told them that no good could possibly come of these invaders, and that only one response was required, namely, BUGGER OFF!
Another, far wordier Briton, the writer G.K. Chesterton, detected, in his fashion, a similar reaction on the part of the indigenous Arab inhabitants of Palestine to invading European Zionists in 1920:
"The Syrians and Arabs and all the agricultural and pastoral populations of Palestine are, rightly or wrongly, alarmed and angered at the advent of Jews to power... I will give one curious example from one of the best and most brilliant of the Zionists. Dr. Weizmann is a man of large mind and human sympathies; and it is difficult to believe that any one with so fine a sense of humanity can be entirely empty of anything like a sense of humour. Yet, in the middle of a very temperate and magnanimous address on 'Zionist Policy,' he can actually say a thing like this: 'The Arabs need us with our knowledge, and our experience and our money. If they do not have us they will fall among sharks.' One is tempted for the moment to doubt whether any one else in the world could have said that, except the Jew with his strange mixture of brilliancy and blindness, of subtlety and simplicity. It is much as if President Wilson were to say, 'Unless America deals with Mexico, it will be dealt with by some modern commercial power, that has trust-magnates and hustling millionaires.' But would President Wilson say it? It is as if the German Chancellor had said, 'We must rush to the rescue of the poor Belgians, or they may be put under some system with militarism and a bullying bureaucracy.' But would even a German Chancellor put it exactly that? Would anybody put it in the the exact order of words and structure of sentence in which Dr. Weizmann has put it?.. If the Zionists wish to quiet the fears of the Arabs, surely the first thing to do is to discover what the Arabs are afraid of. And very little investigation will reveal the simple truth that they are very much afraid of sharks; and that in their book of symbolic or heraldic zoology it is the Jew who is adorned with the dorsal fin and the crescent of cruel teeth... But the case is yet more curious than that. These simple tribes are afraid, not only of the dorsal fin and dental arrangements which Dr. Weizmann may say (with some justice) that he has not got; they are also afraid of the other things which he says he has got. They may be in error, at the first superficial glance, in mistaking a respectable professor for a shark. But they can hardly be mistaken in attributing to the respectable professor what he himself considers as his claims to respect. And as the imagery about the shark may be too metaphorical or almost mythological, there is not the smallest difficulty in stating in plain words what the Arabs fear in the Jews. They fear, in exact terms, their knowledge and their experience and their money. The Arabs fear exactly the three things which he says they need... " (The New Jerusalem (1920), pp 289-291)
Quite. Cook read the Australians' body language correctly.
For these representatives of the original owners of this land, Cook and his men represented only one thing - trouble. They felt it first in their bones, before they felt it, as buckshot, on their bodies.
While they could not, of course, have known at the time of their coming dispossession at the hands of wave after wave of European settlers, their gut instinct told them that no good could possibly come of these invaders, and that only one response was required, namely, BUGGER OFF!
Another, far wordier Briton, the writer G.K. Chesterton, detected, in his fashion, a similar reaction on the part of the indigenous Arab inhabitants of Palestine to invading European Zionists in 1920:
"The Syrians and Arabs and all the agricultural and pastoral populations of Palestine are, rightly or wrongly, alarmed and angered at the advent of Jews to power... I will give one curious example from one of the best and most brilliant of the Zionists. Dr. Weizmann is a man of large mind and human sympathies; and it is difficult to believe that any one with so fine a sense of humanity can be entirely empty of anything like a sense of humour. Yet, in the middle of a very temperate and magnanimous address on 'Zionist Policy,' he can actually say a thing like this: 'The Arabs need us with our knowledge, and our experience and our money. If they do not have us they will fall among sharks.' One is tempted for the moment to doubt whether any one else in the world could have said that, except the Jew with his strange mixture of brilliancy and blindness, of subtlety and simplicity. It is much as if President Wilson were to say, 'Unless America deals with Mexico, it will be dealt with by some modern commercial power, that has trust-magnates and hustling millionaires.' But would President Wilson say it? It is as if the German Chancellor had said, 'We must rush to the rescue of the poor Belgians, or they may be put under some system with militarism and a bullying bureaucracy.' But would even a German Chancellor put it exactly that? Would anybody put it in the the exact order of words and structure of sentence in which Dr. Weizmann has put it?.. If the Zionists wish to quiet the fears of the Arabs, surely the first thing to do is to discover what the Arabs are afraid of. And very little investigation will reveal the simple truth that they are very much afraid of sharks; and that in their book of symbolic or heraldic zoology it is the Jew who is adorned with the dorsal fin and the crescent of cruel teeth... But the case is yet more curious than that. These simple tribes are afraid, not only of the dorsal fin and dental arrangements which Dr. Weizmann may say (with some justice) that he has not got; they are also afraid of the other things which he says he has got. They may be in error, at the first superficial glance, in mistaking a respectable professor for a shark. But they can hardly be mistaken in attributing to the respectable professor what he himself considers as his claims to respect. And as the imagery about the shark may be too metaphorical or almost mythological, there is not the smallest difficulty in stating in plain words what the Arabs fear in the Jews. They fear, in exact terms, their knowledge and their experience and their money. The Arabs fear exactly the three things which he says they need... " (The New Jerusalem (1920), pp 289-291)
Sunday, July 9, 2017
In the Beginning Was the Word... 1
... and the word was - well, there were actually two - Bob Carr:
"The Indigenous Friends of Israel has been established to counter Bob Carr's anti-Israel comments and to maintain Australia's bipartisan support for Israel. Indigenous Friends of Israel spokesperson Munganbana Norman Miller..." (Indigenous Friends of Israel, j-wire.com, 6/7/17)
That's Pastor MNP, folks, but j-wire doesn't let on - but, we'll return to that in a follow-up post.
"... said the national organisation is concerned at the incendiary language of Bob Carr who is leading the Labor Party down a dangerous path in his attempt to get NSW and then federal Labor endorsement of a Palestinian state while Palestinian leaders do not accept the right of Israel to exist and support terrorism The new organisation has been founded in NAIDOC (National Aboriginal & Islander Day Observance Committee) Week.
Now just how cynical is that?!
"Mr Miller said today from Cairns, one of the higher population areas for Indigenous People, 'I support a two-state solution and Israel has offered it in 1947, 2000, 2008 and 2014 etc., but Arab leadership including Yasser Arafat and current Palestinian Authority Mamoud [sic] Abbas have rejected it. Also, Hamas who are in control of Gaza have vowed to annihilate Israel and drive every Jew into the sea. It is a terrorist organisation, recognised as such by the Australian and other governments. At this stage there is no viable Palestinian state...
And that's just the way we and our friends want it, eh Pastor?
"... until the government's of the West Bank and Gaza sort out their difficulties.
Those "difficulties" having nothing whatever to do, of course, with one of history's longest-ever occupations.
"Who will the Labor Party and possibly Labor in government recognise?
Oh yes, an absolutely burning question for all of Australia's Indigenous people, eh Pastor?
"Miller added: 'A unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state is likely to further discourage the Palestinians from coming to the negotiating table...
From which they're bound to walk away, past practice and all, eh Pastor?
"... for a peaceful settlement, something they have shown great reluctance to do already. Land swaps have been discussed to make a Palestinian state viable but such a state needs to recognize Israel as a Jewish state with secure borders and call off terrorism including spending millions of overseas aid money on payments to the families of terrorists and promoting hatred of Jews in its schoolchildren. It is simply untrue to maintain that Israel is an apartheid state. As Indigenous people, we know what apartheid is...
So Australia's an apartheid state, but Israel's not... right... So what's Israel then?
"Israel is a beacon of democracy in the Middle East and has Arab Members of the Knesset and has Arabs living peacefully and working in all walks of life enjoying their democratic freedoms. I want to finish with a well-known quote from Edmund Burke, 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do thing. Barbara Miller told J-Wire: 'We have ten initial members and growing. We'll make a real effort to build it with contacts we already have all round the nation."
Stay tuned for In the Beginning Was the Word... 2
"The Indigenous Friends of Israel has been established to counter Bob Carr's anti-Israel comments and to maintain Australia's bipartisan support for Israel. Indigenous Friends of Israel spokesperson Munganbana Norman Miller..." (Indigenous Friends of Israel, j-wire.com, 6/7/17)
That's Pastor MNP, folks, but j-wire doesn't let on - but, we'll return to that in a follow-up post.
"... said the national organisation is concerned at the incendiary language of Bob Carr who is leading the Labor Party down a dangerous path in his attempt to get NSW and then federal Labor endorsement of a Palestinian state while Palestinian leaders do not accept the right of Israel to exist and support terrorism The new organisation has been founded in NAIDOC (National Aboriginal & Islander Day Observance Committee) Week.
Now just how cynical is that?!
"Mr Miller said today from Cairns, one of the higher population areas for Indigenous People, 'I support a two-state solution and Israel has offered it in 1947, 2000, 2008 and 2014 etc., but Arab leadership including Yasser Arafat and current Palestinian Authority Mamoud [sic] Abbas have rejected it. Also, Hamas who are in control of Gaza have vowed to annihilate Israel and drive every Jew into the sea. It is a terrorist organisation, recognised as such by the Australian and other governments. At this stage there is no viable Palestinian state...
And that's just the way we and our friends want it, eh Pastor?
"... until the government's of the West Bank and Gaza sort out their difficulties.
Those "difficulties" having nothing whatever to do, of course, with one of history's longest-ever occupations.
"Who will the Labor Party and possibly Labor in government recognise?
Oh yes, an absolutely burning question for all of Australia's Indigenous people, eh Pastor?
"Miller added: 'A unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state is likely to further discourage the Palestinians from coming to the negotiating table...
From which they're bound to walk away, past practice and all, eh Pastor?
"... for a peaceful settlement, something they have shown great reluctance to do already. Land swaps have been discussed to make a Palestinian state viable but such a state needs to recognize Israel as a Jewish state with secure borders and call off terrorism including spending millions of overseas aid money on payments to the families of terrorists and promoting hatred of Jews in its schoolchildren. It is simply untrue to maintain that Israel is an apartheid state. As Indigenous people, we know what apartheid is...
So Australia's an apartheid state, but Israel's not... right... So what's Israel then?
"Israel is a beacon of democracy in the Middle East and has Arab Members of the Knesset and has Arabs living peacefully and working in all walks of life enjoying their democratic freedoms. I want to finish with a well-known quote from Edmund Burke, 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do thing. Barbara Miller told J-Wire: 'We have ten initial members and growing. We'll make a real effort to build it with contacts we already have all round the nation."
Stay tuned for In the Beginning Was the Word... 2
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Mundine of Zion
As we know, the Israel lobby in Australia spares no effort to win friends and influence people it regards as useful. Hence the interminable planeloads of Australian politicians (federal, state, and even student) and journalists, travelling to the Upstart Nation and returning, like so many Marco Polos from the court of Kublai Khan, with tales of the marvels witnessed thereat, and the bringing together of assorted Jewish millionaires and billionaires at election fundraisers for Lib and Lab.
One of their neatest tricks is to cultivate links with certain high-flyers in Australia's Indigenous community. Two names, in particular, spring to mind in this regard - Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine. I assume that, by rubbing shoulders with them, the lobby hopes to succeed in fooling some of the people, some of the time, into thinking that Zionism is not only a progressive force, but also that a construct known to Zionists as 'the Jewish people' is as indigenous to Palestine/Israel as Aboriginal Australians are indigenous to Australia. And if this 'Jewish people' thingy is perceived as somehow indigenous to Palestine/Israel, then some people, some of the time, may just be fooled into thinking that Israel is something other than just another - God forbid! - colonial-settler state.
I am led to reflect on these matters because of an opinion piece, Jews are the first peoples of Israel - with a right to exist, under the byline Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO (Chairman & Managing Director of Nyunggai Black Group'), which recently (6/3/17) appeared in Fairfax's Australian Financial Review.
Perhaps the most curious thing about it was its title. Was Mundine about to discourse on who was what in prehistoric Palestine? And what does he mean by "first peoples"? And why would anyone bother writing an opinion piece on the subject of Jews having "a right to exist"? I mean, come on, is that really in dispute?
On examination, the piece really had nothing to say on such matters. Mundine's rant turned out to be essentially a call for the Palestinians to pull their fingers out, now, and recognise Israel as a Jewish state. That, and the usual Zionist agitprop.
Of course, I won't waste your time or mine with the Zioprop, but OMFG, the irony of an Indigenous Australian telling Indigenous Palestinians to drop their claim to their ancestral homeland, and declare, hand on heart, that they acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land of Palestine, the people of the Jewish nation, and pay their respects to its Elders past and present, namely, Herzl, Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, Begin, Sharon and Netanyahu.
It's a batshit crazy world out there, and getting crazier by the day. We've just had Trump's Housing Secretary, Ben Carson, for example, a black, defy reality by referring to slaves brought from Africa to the US "in the bottom of slave ships" as "immigrants" with a "dream." And over here, in Little America, we've got Mundine, not only inverting reality by calling Palestinians "Arab colonisers" and Israeli Jews "first peoples," but demanding that the former acknowledge the inversion.
And another thing. What the hell possessed the AFR to publish this blatantly false and deeply offensive nonsense? Mundine's drivel should be chalked up as a new low in the sad, precipitous decline of the Fairfax press.
One of their neatest tricks is to cultivate links with certain high-flyers in Australia's Indigenous community. Two names, in particular, spring to mind in this regard - Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine. I assume that, by rubbing shoulders with them, the lobby hopes to succeed in fooling some of the people, some of the time, into thinking that Zionism is not only a progressive force, but also that a construct known to Zionists as 'the Jewish people' is as indigenous to Palestine/Israel as Aboriginal Australians are indigenous to Australia. And if this 'Jewish people' thingy is perceived as somehow indigenous to Palestine/Israel, then some people, some of the time, may just be fooled into thinking that Israel is something other than just another - God forbid! - colonial-settler state.
I am led to reflect on these matters because of an opinion piece, Jews are the first peoples of Israel - with a right to exist, under the byline Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO (Chairman & Managing Director of Nyunggai Black Group'), which recently (6/3/17) appeared in Fairfax's Australian Financial Review.
Perhaps the most curious thing about it was its title. Was Mundine about to discourse on who was what in prehistoric Palestine? And what does he mean by "first peoples"? And why would anyone bother writing an opinion piece on the subject of Jews having "a right to exist"? I mean, come on, is that really in dispute?
On examination, the piece really had nothing to say on such matters. Mundine's rant turned out to be essentially a call for the Palestinians to pull their fingers out, now, and recognise Israel as a Jewish state. That, and the usual Zionist agitprop.
Of course, I won't waste your time or mine with the Zioprop, but OMFG, the irony of an Indigenous Australian telling Indigenous Palestinians to drop their claim to their ancestral homeland, and declare, hand on heart, that they acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land of Palestine, the people of the Jewish nation, and pay their respects to its Elders past and present, namely, Herzl, Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, Begin, Sharon and Netanyahu.
It's a batshit crazy world out there, and getting crazier by the day. We've just had Trump's Housing Secretary, Ben Carson, for example, a black, defy reality by referring to slaves brought from Africa to the US "in the bottom of slave ships" as "immigrants" with a "dream." And over here, in Little America, we've got Mundine, not only inverting reality by calling Palestinians "Arab colonisers" and Israeli Jews "first peoples," but demanding that the former acknowledge the inversion.
And another thing. What the hell possessed the AFR to publish this blatantly false and deeply offensive nonsense? Mundine's drivel should be chalked up as a new low in the sad, precipitous decline of the Fairfax press.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Invasion Day 1917
"We ought to feel that we have invaded a domain from which our invasion has expelled those who were born, bred, and providentially supplied in it; that we have driven by our usurpation, families from their birth-place, and then completed our cruelty by destroying in sport, and consuming for profit, the principal means of their subsistence."
- Letter published in Hobart Town Gazette, 25 July 1824, quoted in This Whispering in Our Hearts, Henry Reynolds, 1998, p 7
- Letter published in Hobart Town Gazette, 25 July 1824, quoted in This Whispering in Our Hearts, Henry Reynolds, 1998, p 7
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
His Advice & Mine
"The advice I have is that out of the last 33 people who have been charged with terrorist-related offences in this country, 27 of those people are from second and third-generation Lebanese-Muslim background." Peter Dutton, Immigration Minister, 21/11/16
The advice I have is that of the unknown number of people who have been charged (or should have been charged) with terrorist-related offences against the indigenous inhabitants of this country, just about every one is from a first, second, third, fourth, and fifth--generation Anglo-Christian background.
The advice I have is that of the unknown number of people who have been charged (or should have been charged) with terrorist-related offences against the indigenous inhabitants of this country, just about every one is from a first, second, third, fourth, and fifth--generation Anglo-Christian background.
Saturday, November 19, 2016
My Problem with Stan Grant
"As a reporter I have seen the human debris from this clash of cultures, religions, civilisations and identities: think Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda; Sunni and Shia throughout the Middle East; Hindu and Muslim in India and Pakistan; and Israeli versus Palestinian." (The identity trap, Stan Grant, Sydney Morning Herald, 19/11/16)
This show pony has no idea if he thinks Palestine/Israel is all about identity politics.
Frankly, 'reporters' who swan around the planet, scribbling away, without first taking the trouble to read a few reputable histories of the people and places they're reporting on, are bad enough, but those who haven't got the wit to recognise a colonial dynamic when it's raging all around them really get me down.
This show pony has no idea if he thinks Palestine/Israel is all about identity politics.
Frankly, 'reporters' who swan around the planet, scribbling away, without first taking the trouble to read a few reputable histories of the people and places they're reporting on, are bad enough, but those who haven't got the wit to recognise a colonial dynamic when it's raging all around them really get me down.
Friday, June 17, 2016
Malcolm Turnbull's Moshe Dayan Moment
The truth, as they say, will out:
"Campaigning in Perth, [PM Malcolm] Turnbull agreed with the description of invasion for the first arrival of the First Fleet in 1788... 'Well, I think it can be fairly described as that and I've got no doubt... our first Aboriginal Australians describe it as an invasion... But, you know, you are talking about an historical argument about a word. The facts are very well-known. This country was Aboriginal land. It was occupied by Aboriginal people for tens of thousands of years - 40,000 years'." (PM faces renewed push for a treaty, Tom McIlroy, Sydney Morning Herald, 15/6/16)
And even, on the odd occasion, from a Zionist leader - in this case, the late Moshe Dayan:
"We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country [the total area was about 6%] we bought the lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built on the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal [Dayan's own village] arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat - in the place of Jibta, [Kibbutz] Said - in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua - in the place of Tell Shaman. There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population. [Ha-Aretz, April 4, 1969]"
Edward Said used that quote of Dayan's in his seminal work, The Question of Palestine (1979), but added, by way of explanation: "Even Dayan's terminology, frank as it is, is euphemistic. For what he means by 'the Arab villages are not there either' is that they were destroyed systematically." (p 14)
"Campaigning in Perth, [PM Malcolm] Turnbull agreed with the description of invasion for the first arrival of the First Fleet in 1788... 'Well, I think it can be fairly described as that and I've got no doubt... our first Aboriginal Australians describe it as an invasion... But, you know, you are talking about an historical argument about a word. The facts are very well-known. This country was Aboriginal land. It was occupied by Aboriginal people for tens of thousands of years - 40,000 years'." (PM faces renewed push for a treaty, Tom McIlroy, Sydney Morning Herald, 15/6/16)
And even, on the odd occasion, from a Zionist leader - in this case, the late Moshe Dayan:
"We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country [the total area was about 6%] we bought the lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built on the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal [Dayan's own village] arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat - in the place of Jibta, [Kibbutz] Said - in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua - in the place of Tell Shaman. There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population. [Ha-Aretz, April 4, 1969]"
Edward Said used that quote of Dayan's in his seminal work, The Question of Palestine (1979), but added, by way of explanation: "Even Dayan's terminology, frank as it is, is euphemistic. For what he means by 'the Arab villages are not there either' is that they were destroyed systematically." (p 14)
Saturday, April 2, 2016
Indigenous Terminology (Australia & Palestine)
AUSTRALIA - from the document Indigenous Terminology issued recently by the University of NSW (teaching.unsw.edu.au)
More appropriate
Invasion
Colonisation
Occupation
Australia was not settled peacefully, it was invaded, occupied and colonised. Describing the arrival of the Europeans as a 'settlement' attempts to view Australian history from the shores of England rather than the shores of Australia.
Less appropriate
Settlement
The use of the word 'settlement' ignores the reality of Indigenous Australian peoples' lands being stolen from them on the basis of the legal fiction of terra nullius and negates the resistance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The fact that most settlers did not see themselves as invading the country, and that convicts were transported against their will is beside the point. The effects were the same for Indigenous Australian peoples.
PALESTINE - suggested draft for the University of NSW's next Indigenous Terminology guideline
Appropriate
Invasion
Ethnic-cleansing
Colonisation
Occupation
Palestine was not settled peacefully. It was invaded, occupied, colonised, and ethnically-cleansed from 1918 to 1948 by Zionist immigrants under the protection of British bayonets and with the aim of carving out a Jewish state. Those remnants not ethnically cleansed in 1948 - the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - were invaded, ethnically-cleansed, occupied, and colonised from 1967 on.
Not at all appropriate
Return
Redemption
Land of Israel (Eretz Israel)
Terrorism (unless applied to the ethnic-cleansing operations of Zionist forces)
Describing the invasion of Zionist immigrants as a 'return' to, and 'redemption' of, the 'Land of Israel' (Eretz Israel) panders to political Zionist mythology and ignores the settler-colonial reality of the Zionist project in Palestine. Palestine was never, in Zionist terminology, 'a country without a people.' In 1918, 90% of its population were Arabs (Muslims and Christians), and, up to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist terrorists in 1948, they were still a two-thirds majority in their own land. The use of the terms 'return' and 'redemption' ignores the massive Zionist theft of Palestinian homes and lands which followed the ethnic cleansing of 1948, and the Zionist label 'terrorism,' used against the Palestinian Arab people, negates their resistance to Zionist colonisation, a resistance which began in earnest in 1920 and continues to this day. The fact that some Zionist immigrants left their European homes and invaded Palestine in response to anti-Semitic persecution in Europe is beside the point. The effects were the same for the Indigenous Palestinian Arab people.
More appropriate
Invasion
Colonisation
Occupation
Australia was not settled peacefully, it was invaded, occupied and colonised. Describing the arrival of the Europeans as a 'settlement' attempts to view Australian history from the shores of England rather than the shores of Australia.
Less appropriate
Settlement
The use of the word 'settlement' ignores the reality of Indigenous Australian peoples' lands being stolen from them on the basis of the legal fiction of terra nullius and negates the resistance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The fact that most settlers did not see themselves as invading the country, and that convicts were transported against their will is beside the point. The effects were the same for Indigenous Australian peoples.
PALESTINE - suggested draft for the University of NSW's next Indigenous Terminology guideline
Appropriate
Invasion
Ethnic-cleansing
Colonisation
Occupation
Palestine was not settled peacefully. It was invaded, occupied, colonised, and ethnically-cleansed from 1918 to 1948 by Zionist immigrants under the protection of British bayonets and with the aim of carving out a Jewish state. Those remnants not ethnically cleansed in 1948 - the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - were invaded, ethnically-cleansed, occupied, and colonised from 1967 on.
Not at all appropriate
Return
Redemption
Land of Israel (Eretz Israel)
Terrorism (unless applied to the ethnic-cleansing operations of Zionist forces)
Describing the invasion of Zionist immigrants as a 'return' to, and 'redemption' of, the 'Land of Israel' (Eretz Israel) panders to political Zionist mythology and ignores the settler-colonial reality of the Zionist project in Palestine. Palestine was never, in Zionist terminology, 'a country without a people.' In 1918, 90% of its population were Arabs (Muslims and Christians), and, up to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist terrorists in 1948, they were still a two-thirds majority in their own land. The use of the terms 'return' and 'redemption' ignores the massive Zionist theft of Palestinian homes and lands which followed the ethnic cleansing of 1948, and the Zionist label 'terrorism,' used against the Palestinian Arab people, negates their resistance to Zionist colonisation, a resistance which began in earnest in 1920 and continues to this day. The fact that some Zionist immigrants left their European homes and invaded Palestine in response to anti-Semitic persecution in Europe is beside the point. The effects were the same for the Indigenous Palestinian Arab people.
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Invasion Day: 26 January, 2016
A fitting time to recall what the Zionist hero, Winston Churchill, speaking before British Mandate Palestine's 1937 Peel Commission, had to say about Indigenous Palestinians & Australians:
"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."
"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Memo to Dr Sabri Saidam
"Dr Saidam said the group repeatedly asked questions about Palestinians naming schools and venues after people who had killed Israeli civilians. I said that one man's hero is another man's terrorist." (Delegation to West Bank led by Christopher Pyne 'not well educated', local minister says, Sophie McNeill, abc.net.au/news, 17/12/15)
Memo to Dr Saidam:
'One man's hero is another man's terrorist' is way too subtle for most Australian politicians on the Rambam, OK?
Next time some cocksure, know-nothing, Zionist dupes like this show up and hit you with this particular Zionist talking point, simply hand them the following - far from complete - list of Israeli terrorist commemoration sites, quizz the buggers on the glorious careers of those commemorated, and sit back in amazement at the 'Jeez, I dunnos':
David Ben-Gurion Airport
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Ben-Gurion planned and oversaw the ethnic cleansing of 1 million Palestinians and the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages from 1948 to 1949.
Menachem Begin Heritage Centre, Jerusalem
Menachem Begin St, Tel Aviv
Begin commanded the murderous Irgun terrorists who massacred Palestinians (and Britons) in the 30s and 40s. Einstein referred to him as a "fascist."
Ariel Sharon Park, Tel Aviv
Sharon was responsible for the massacres of Qibya (1953) and Sabra & Shatila (1982).
Moshe Dayan Boulevard, Occupied East Jerusalem/ Rishon LeZion/ Ashdod
Rishon LeZion Moshe Dayan Railway Station; Moshe Dayan Interchange
Dayan was involved in the Qibya (1953) and Rafah (1956) massacres, and was the architect, as Defence [sic] Minister, of Israel's 1967 East Jerusalem, West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai and Golan Heights land grabs and subsequent colonization thereof.
The Yitzhak Rabin Center, Tel Aviv
Rabin was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Lydda in 1948 and the 'break their bones' policy during the first intifada (1987-93).
The following comment by the indefatigable Vacy Vlazna on Guardian Australia's website, posted in response to Australian delegation asked 'rude' questions during 'explosive' West Bank meeting (Daniel Hurst, 16/12/15), could also be of use in creating cognitive dissonance in those bogans who insist on banging on about the matter:
"The bloody hide of a bunch of Liberals who flout international law, torture and detain innocent asylum seekers on offshore Guantanamos, quizzing the Palestinians for naming schools and venues after terrorists! What the ?????
"How about Macquarie University, Macquarie Park, Macquarie Bank etc, etc: Governor Lachlan Macquarie was a terrorist, not a freedom fighter like Palestinians defending their land and people: 'Governor Macquarie's response to the growing troubles was to set strict rules by proclamation as to how which Aborigines could interact with the colonial settlers. The Governor also launched 3 military excursions to punish the Aborigines. The soldiers were given directions that all Aborigines met with from Sydney onwards were to be made prisoners of war and that if they resisted they were to be shot and their bodies hung from trees in the most conspicuous places near where they fell, so as to strike terror into the hearts of the surviving natives. Many aboriginal women and children who had not been associated with any hostilities were killed.'
"Don't get me started on Governors Phillip, King, Stirling, Bourke, Gipps and so on."
Cheers.
Memo to Dr Saidam:
'One man's hero is another man's terrorist' is way too subtle for most Australian politicians on the Rambam, OK?
Next time some cocksure, know-nothing, Zionist dupes like this show up and hit you with this particular Zionist talking point, simply hand them the following - far from complete - list of Israeli terrorist commemoration sites, quizz the buggers on the glorious careers of those commemorated, and sit back in amazement at the 'Jeez, I dunnos':
David Ben-Gurion Airport
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Ben-Gurion planned and oversaw the ethnic cleansing of 1 million Palestinians and the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages from 1948 to 1949.
Menachem Begin Heritage Centre, Jerusalem
Menachem Begin St, Tel Aviv
Begin commanded the murderous Irgun terrorists who massacred Palestinians (and Britons) in the 30s and 40s. Einstein referred to him as a "fascist."
Ariel Sharon Park, Tel Aviv
Sharon was responsible for the massacres of Qibya (1953) and Sabra & Shatila (1982).
Moshe Dayan Boulevard, Occupied East Jerusalem/ Rishon LeZion/ Ashdod
Rishon LeZion Moshe Dayan Railway Station; Moshe Dayan Interchange
Dayan was involved in the Qibya (1953) and Rafah (1956) massacres, and was the architect, as Defence [sic] Minister, of Israel's 1967 East Jerusalem, West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai and Golan Heights land grabs and subsequent colonization thereof.
The Yitzhak Rabin Center, Tel Aviv
Rabin was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Lydda in 1948 and the 'break their bones' policy during the first intifada (1987-93).
The following comment by the indefatigable Vacy Vlazna on Guardian Australia's website, posted in response to Australian delegation asked 'rude' questions during 'explosive' West Bank meeting (Daniel Hurst, 16/12/15), could also be of use in creating cognitive dissonance in those bogans who insist on banging on about the matter:
"The bloody hide of a bunch of Liberals who flout international law, torture and detain innocent asylum seekers on offshore Guantanamos, quizzing the Palestinians for naming schools and venues after terrorists! What the ?????
"How about Macquarie University, Macquarie Park, Macquarie Bank etc, etc: Governor Lachlan Macquarie was a terrorist, not a freedom fighter like Palestinians defending their land and people: 'Governor Macquarie's response to the growing troubles was to set strict rules by proclamation as to how which Aborigines could interact with the colonial settlers. The Governor also launched 3 military excursions to punish the Aborigines. The soldiers were given directions that all Aborigines met with from Sydney onwards were to be made prisoners of war and that if they resisted they were to be shot and their bodies hung from trees in the most conspicuous places near where they fell, so as to strike terror into the hearts of the surviving natives. Many aboriginal women and children who had not been associated with any hostilities were killed.'
"Don't get me started on Governors Phillip, King, Stirling, Bourke, Gipps and so on."
Cheers.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
My Problem with Amira Hass
I thought I'd tune in to Phillip Adams' Late Night Live program on 22/4/15 to hear visiting Israeli journalist Amira Hass, "the only Jewish journalist who has lived among the Palestinians, both in Gaza and now full-time in the West Bank." (Amira Hass: An Israeli journalist living in Palestine)
Adams was, of course, his usual blunt self - 'blunt', that is, in the sense that his interviewing style, particularly with Jewish Zionists, totally contradicts the program's claim to be about "razor-sharp analysis of current events [which] puts you firmly in the big picture."
But it's mainly Hass (unexpectedly I might add) that I have the bigger problem with this time around. While sound on the occupation of 1967, I found the following words more than a little problematic:
"In my lectures here in Australia, I'm speaking to you as one settler to another. This institutionalisation of colonial times I see it everywhere here in Australia. Everywhere. And I also say different things to different audiences. So for people who tell me the solution is to dissolve Israel, I say 'Why don't you dissolve Australia?' And just because you got away with most of the indigenous people... and luckily and happily Israel and Zionism did not decimate the Palestinians. So... it's an extension of London. So I see the whites here and your colonialism is still fresh and the thing is how we look at the future and not the past. We cannot undo the past, but the future has to be worked on..."
Now, to take up my razor...
What does she mean by 'dissolve Israel/dissolve Australia'? Typically Adams didn't ask her.
Was this in response to a questioner who had suggested that Israel's apartheid structure be dismantled? That Israel be de-Zionised? That it become a state of its citizens, with equal rights for all, regardless of ethno-religious affiliation, rather than continue to be reserved as the exclusive domain of those Jews who see themselves as belonging to that entity, 'the Jewish people'? That Israel's outrageous, biology-based, apartheid Law of Return be scrapped? That the indigenous people of Palestine, ethnically cleansed in 1948 and 1967, be allowed to return to their homes and land?
Was she seriously suggesting that there are no differences between Israel and Australia? Typically, Adams didn't ask her whether she saw Australia as an apartheid state (that is, a state based, like former apartheid South Africa and today's Israel, on a raft of discriminatory legislation), and if so, which discriminatory laws made it so. Nor did he ask her whether indigenous Australians were languishing in exile in refugee camps in neighbouring countries, denied the right of return to Australia.
Why was she using the old Zionist whataboutery: You dare criticise Israel? What about Australia?
And when she said, Israel and Zionism (that is, almost 100 years of Zionist colonisation, dispossession, expulsion and occupation of Palestinians) did not decimate the Palestinians, what the hell was she on about? Typically, there was no response, razor-sharp or otherwise, from Adams.
Finally, in saying that we cannot undo the past, was she implying that Israel was set in concrete in 1948 and must forever remain a Jewish state, and that the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967 must therefore remain in exile?
Adams was, of course, his usual blunt self - 'blunt', that is, in the sense that his interviewing style, particularly with Jewish Zionists, totally contradicts the program's claim to be about "razor-sharp analysis of current events [which] puts you firmly in the big picture."
But it's mainly Hass (unexpectedly I might add) that I have the bigger problem with this time around. While sound on the occupation of 1967, I found the following words more than a little problematic:
"In my lectures here in Australia, I'm speaking to you as one settler to another. This institutionalisation of colonial times I see it everywhere here in Australia. Everywhere. And I also say different things to different audiences. So for people who tell me the solution is to dissolve Israel, I say 'Why don't you dissolve Australia?' And just because you got away with most of the indigenous people... and luckily and happily Israel and Zionism did not decimate the Palestinians. So... it's an extension of London. So I see the whites here and your colonialism is still fresh and the thing is how we look at the future and not the past. We cannot undo the past, but the future has to be worked on..."
Now, to take up my razor...
What does she mean by 'dissolve Israel/dissolve Australia'? Typically Adams didn't ask her.
Was this in response to a questioner who had suggested that Israel's apartheid structure be dismantled? That Israel be de-Zionised? That it become a state of its citizens, with equal rights for all, regardless of ethno-religious affiliation, rather than continue to be reserved as the exclusive domain of those Jews who see themselves as belonging to that entity, 'the Jewish people'? That Israel's outrageous, biology-based, apartheid Law of Return be scrapped? That the indigenous people of Palestine, ethnically cleansed in 1948 and 1967, be allowed to return to their homes and land?
Was she seriously suggesting that there are no differences between Israel and Australia? Typically, Adams didn't ask her whether she saw Australia as an apartheid state (that is, a state based, like former apartheid South Africa and today's Israel, on a raft of discriminatory legislation), and if so, which discriminatory laws made it so. Nor did he ask her whether indigenous Australians were languishing in exile in refugee camps in neighbouring countries, denied the right of return to Australia.
Why was she using the old Zionist whataboutery: You dare criticise Israel? What about Australia?
And when she said, Israel and Zionism (that is, almost 100 years of Zionist colonisation, dispossession, expulsion and occupation of Palestinians) did not decimate the Palestinians, what the hell was she on about? Typically, there was no response, razor-sharp or otherwise, from Adams.
Finally, in saying that we cannot undo the past, was she implying that Israel was set in concrete in 1948 and must forever remain a Jewish state, and that the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967 must therefore remain in exile?
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Unsentimental Israelis
Today is the 58th anniversary of Israel's infamous Kafr Qassem massacre. The following reference to it, in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, unfortunately hardly does justice to the gravity of the crime:
"Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has acknowledged past and present wrongdoings to his country's Arabs... Mr Rivlin spoke at a memorial ceremony for victims of the 1956 massacre at Kafr Qassem, where Israeli forces killed 47 residents of the Israeli Arab village for breaking a wartime curfew, becoming the first Israeli president to attend the event. 'A terrible crime was committed here,' he said. 'The brutal killings in Kafr Qassem are an anomalous [?!] and sorrowful chapter in the history of the relations between Arabs and Jews living here... Kafr Qassam is adjacent to the West Bank. In 1956, it was under [Israeli] military rule and, on October 29 - the first day of a war with Egypt - Israeli border policemen gunned down residents who were unaware a curfew had been imposed... The Kafr Qassem massacre is taught in the Israeli education system as a case of an illegal military order that must be refused by soldiers." (Killings were crime against Israeli Arabs, says president, AFP/Sydney Morning Herald, 28/10/14)
Notice how, in the ms media, Israel almost always manages to come up smelling like roses? Funny, that.
By way of contextualising the final sentence in the AFP report, I draw your attention to the following finding by Israeli educationist Nurit Peled-Elhanan:
"The Kaffer Kassem massacre is remembered in Jewish-Israeli consciousness mainly for being the source for the court's unprecedented ruling against compliance with 'manifestly unlawful orders' [but Israeli textbooks] failed to mention that the verdict was not carried out to its term and said nothing about the suffering of the villagers." (Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology & Propaganda in Education, 2012, p 172)
The following account of the massacre and its aftermath by British scholar David Hirst shows why:
"The Arabs remember Kafr Qasem as the Deir Yassin of the established State. Less revealing, perhaps, than the event itself was the reaction it generated. On 29 October 1956, on the eve of Israel's invasion of Egypt, a detachment of Frontier Guards imposed a curfew on villages near the Jordanian frontier. Among them was Kafr Qasem. The Mukhtar was informed of the curfew just half an hour before it was due to go into effect. It was therefore quite impossible for him to pass the message on to the villagers who would be returning, as dusk fell, from their various places of work. Major Shmuel Melinki, the detachment commander, had foreseen this eventuality, and he asked his superior, Brigadier Yshishkhar Shadmi, what should be done about anyone coming home in ignorance of the curfew. The Brigadier had replied: 'I don't want any sentimentality... that's just too bad for him.' And there was no sentimentality. In the first hour of the curfew, between 5 and 6 o'clock, the Frontier Guards killed 47 villagers. They had returned home individually or in batches. A few came on foot, but most travelled by bicycle, mule cart or lorry. They included women and children. But all the Frontier Guards wanted to know was whether they were from Kafr Qasem. For if they were, they shot them down at close range with automatic weapons. 'Of every group of returning workers, some were killed and others wounded; very few succeeded in escaping unhurt. The proportion of those killed increased, until, of the last group, which consisted of 14 women, a boy and 4 men, all were killed, except one girl, who was seriously wounded.' The slaughter might have gone on like this had not Lieutenant Gavriel Dahan, the officer on the spot '... informed the command several times over the radio apparatus in the jeep of the number killed. Opinions differ as to the figure he gave in his reports, but all are agreed that in his first report he said:
... 'one less', and in the next two reports: 'fifteen less' and 'many less - it is difficult to count them'. The last two reports, which followed each other in quick succession, were picked up by Captain Levy, who passed them on to Melinki. When he was informed that there were 'fifteen less' in Kafr Qasem, Melinki gave orders which he was unable to transmit to Dahan before the report arrived of 'many less - it is difficult to count them', for the firing to stop and for a more moderate procedure to be adopted in the whole area... This order finally ended the bloodshed at Qafr Qasem.'
"All this was established in the trial which, as the scandal slowly leaked out, the government was obliged to hold. The trial was a pro forma affair. There was little moral outrage in the courtroom, and, apart from a few lone voices, very little outside it. During the proceedings the leading newspaper Haaretz reported that 'the eleven officers and soldiers who are on trial for the massacre in Kafr Qasem have all received a 50% increase in their salaries. A special messenger was sent to Jerusalem to bring the cheques to the accused in time for Passover. A number of the accused had been given a vacation for the holiday... The accused mingle freely with the spectators; the officers smile at them and pat them on the back; some of them shake hands with them. It is obvious, that these people, whether they will be found innocent or guilty, are not treated as criminals, but as heroes.' One Private David Goldfield reportedly resigned from the Security Police in protest against the trial. According to the Jewish Newsletter, his testimony merely reflected what most Israelis thought: 'I feel that the Arabs are the enemies of our State... When I went to Kafr Qasem, I felt that I went against the enemy and I made no distinction between the Arabs in Israel and those outside its frontiers.' Asked what he would do if he met an Arab woman, in no sense a security threat, who was trying to reach her home, he replied: 'I would shoot her down, I would harbour no sentiments, because I received an order and I had to carry it out.' The sentences were pro forma too. Melinki and Dahan got jail terms of 17 and 15 years respectively, but it was a foregone conclusion that they would only serve a fraction of them. In response to appeals for a pardon, the Supreme Military Court decided to reduce the 'harsh' sentence; and, following this generous example, the Chief of Staff, then the Head of State, and finally a Committee for the Release of Prisoners all made contributions, so that within a year of their sentence Melinki and Dahan were free men. As for Brigadier Shadmi - the 'no sentimentality' senior officer - a Special Military Court found him guilty of a 'merely technical' error, reprimanded him and fined him one piastre. But the twist in the tail was yet to come. Nine months after his release from prison, Dahan, convicted of killing 43 Arabs in an hour, was appointed 'officer responsible for Arab affairs' in the town of Ramleh. And the last that has been heard of Major Melinki was that, through his influential connections in the army, he had secured a coveted permit, sought after by many an entrepreneur, to set up a tourist centre in southern Israel." (The Gun & The Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, 1977, pp 185-87)
By way of highlighting the obscenity of the judicial farce which followed the massacre (which, incidentally, was covered up for 6 weeks before the troops responsible were charged with murder), it's worth recalling colonial Australia's Myall Creek massacre. Here's the introduction to the Wikipedia entry on it:
'The Myall Creek massacre involved the killing of up to 30 unarmed Indigenous Australians by 10 white Europeans and one black African on 10 June 1838 at Myall Creek near Bingara in northern New South Wales. After two trials, seven of the 11 colonists involved in the killings were found guilty of murder and hanged."
That was 118 years before Kafr Qassem.
"Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has acknowledged past and present wrongdoings to his country's Arabs... Mr Rivlin spoke at a memorial ceremony for victims of the 1956 massacre at Kafr Qassem, where Israeli forces killed 47 residents of the Israeli Arab village for breaking a wartime curfew, becoming the first Israeli president to attend the event. 'A terrible crime was committed here,' he said. 'The brutal killings in Kafr Qassem are an anomalous [?!] and sorrowful chapter in the history of the relations between Arabs and Jews living here... Kafr Qassam is adjacent to the West Bank. In 1956, it was under [Israeli] military rule and, on October 29 - the first day of a war with Egypt - Israeli border policemen gunned down residents who were unaware a curfew had been imposed... The Kafr Qassem massacre is taught in the Israeli education system as a case of an illegal military order that must be refused by soldiers." (Killings were crime against Israeli Arabs, says president, AFP/Sydney Morning Herald, 28/10/14)
Notice how, in the ms media, Israel almost always manages to come up smelling like roses? Funny, that.
By way of contextualising the final sentence in the AFP report, I draw your attention to the following finding by Israeli educationist Nurit Peled-Elhanan:
"The Kaffer Kassem massacre is remembered in Jewish-Israeli consciousness mainly for being the source for the court's unprecedented ruling against compliance with 'manifestly unlawful orders' [but Israeli textbooks] failed to mention that the verdict was not carried out to its term and said nothing about the suffering of the villagers." (Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology & Propaganda in Education, 2012, p 172)
The following account of the massacre and its aftermath by British scholar David Hirst shows why:
"The Arabs remember Kafr Qasem as the Deir Yassin of the established State. Less revealing, perhaps, than the event itself was the reaction it generated. On 29 October 1956, on the eve of Israel's invasion of Egypt, a detachment of Frontier Guards imposed a curfew on villages near the Jordanian frontier. Among them was Kafr Qasem. The Mukhtar was informed of the curfew just half an hour before it was due to go into effect. It was therefore quite impossible for him to pass the message on to the villagers who would be returning, as dusk fell, from their various places of work. Major Shmuel Melinki, the detachment commander, had foreseen this eventuality, and he asked his superior, Brigadier Yshishkhar Shadmi, what should be done about anyone coming home in ignorance of the curfew. The Brigadier had replied: 'I don't want any sentimentality... that's just too bad for him.' And there was no sentimentality. In the first hour of the curfew, between 5 and 6 o'clock, the Frontier Guards killed 47 villagers. They had returned home individually or in batches. A few came on foot, but most travelled by bicycle, mule cart or lorry. They included women and children. But all the Frontier Guards wanted to know was whether they were from Kafr Qasem. For if they were, they shot them down at close range with automatic weapons. 'Of every group of returning workers, some were killed and others wounded; very few succeeded in escaping unhurt. The proportion of those killed increased, until, of the last group, which consisted of 14 women, a boy and 4 men, all were killed, except one girl, who was seriously wounded.' The slaughter might have gone on like this had not Lieutenant Gavriel Dahan, the officer on the spot '... informed the command several times over the radio apparatus in the jeep of the number killed. Opinions differ as to the figure he gave in his reports, but all are agreed that in his first report he said:
... 'one less', and in the next two reports: 'fifteen less' and 'many less - it is difficult to count them'. The last two reports, which followed each other in quick succession, were picked up by Captain Levy, who passed them on to Melinki. When he was informed that there were 'fifteen less' in Kafr Qasem, Melinki gave orders which he was unable to transmit to Dahan before the report arrived of 'many less - it is difficult to count them', for the firing to stop and for a more moderate procedure to be adopted in the whole area... This order finally ended the bloodshed at Qafr Qasem.'
"All this was established in the trial which, as the scandal slowly leaked out, the government was obliged to hold. The trial was a pro forma affair. There was little moral outrage in the courtroom, and, apart from a few lone voices, very little outside it. During the proceedings the leading newspaper Haaretz reported that 'the eleven officers and soldiers who are on trial for the massacre in Kafr Qasem have all received a 50% increase in their salaries. A special messenger was sent to Jerusalem to bring the cheques to the accused in time for Passover. A number of the accused had been given a vacation for the holiday... The accused mingle freely with the spectators; the officers smile at them and pat them on the back; some of them shake hands with them. It is obvious, that these people, whether they will be found innocent or guilty, are not treated as criminals, but as heroes.' One Private David Goldfield reportedly resigned from the Security Police in protest against the trial. According to the Jewish Newsletter, his testimony merely reflected what most Israelis thought: 'I feel that the Arabs are the enemies of our State... When I went to Kafr Qasem, I felt that I went against the enemy and I made no distinction between the Arabs in Israel and those outside its frontiers.' Asked what he would do if he met an Arab woman, in no sense a security threat, who was trying to reach her home, he replied: 'I would shoot her down, I would harbour no sentiments, because I received an order and I had to carry it out.' The sentences were pro forma too. Melinki and Dahan got jail terms of 17 and 15 years respectively, but it was a foregone conclusion that they would only serve a fraction of them. In response to appeals for a pardon, the Supreme Military Court decided to reduce the 'harsh' sentence; and, following this generous example, the Chief of Staff, then the Head of State, and finally a Committee for the Release of Prisoners all made contributions, so that within a year of their sentence Melinki and Dahan were free men. As for Brigadier Shadmi - the 'no sentimentality' senior officer - a Special Military Court found him guilty of a 'merely technical' error, reprimanded him and fined him one piastre. But the twist in the tail was yet to come. Nine months after his release from prison, Dahan, convicted of killing 43 Arabs in an hour, was appointed 'officer responsible for Arab affairs' in the town of Ramleh. And the last that has been heard of Major Melinki was that, through his influential connections in the army, he had secured a coveted permit, sought after by many an entrepreneur, to set up a tourist centre in southern Israel." (The Gun & The Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, 1977, pp 185-87)
By way of highlighting the obscenity of the judicial farce which followed the massacre (which, incidentally, was covered up for 6 weeks before the troops responsible were charged with murder), it's worth recalling colonial Australia's Myall Creek massacre. Here's the introduction to the Wikipedia entry on it:
'The Myall Creek massacre involved the killing of up to 30 unarmed Indigenous Australians by 10 white Europeans and one black African on 10 June 1838 at Myall Creek near Bingara in northern New South Wales. After two trials, seven of the 11 colonists involved in the killings were found guilty of murder and hanged."
That was 118 years before Kafr Qassem.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
The Native Police
Zionist propagandists today (it wasn't always the case) just hate being described as settler-colonialists.
They prefer to paint themselves as an indigenous 'people' or 'nation', who, having been evicted from their Palestinian homeland by the Romans nigh on 2000 years ago, just sat around moping until, under the banner of political Zionism, they were able to 'return'.
OK, it's a great yarn, but sadly, that's all it is.
As much as Zionists like to pretend that theirs is a movement for national self-determination, rather than its opposite, just another, albeit highly creative, white European colonizing movement, there are simply too many tell-tale signs for the settler-colonial reality to be glossed over.
Like this, for example:
"Known popularly as the Magav, the Israeli Border Police evolved in part from an army division created in the wake of the state's foundation for the explicit purpose of capturing and deporting Palestinian refugees who had slipped into their former villages to reunite with family and spouses. Named the Minorities Unit, the division was comprised mostly of deeply impoverished young men recruited from Druze villages in the north and Bedouin Arab enclaves in the south. Their recruitment of non-Palestinian Arab subgroups served David Ben Gurion's divide-and-conquer strategy, which he dubbed, 'fragmentation'. As one Israeli official said, the Minorities Unit formed 'the sharp blade of a knife to stab in the back of Arab unity'." (Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel, Max Blumenthal, 2013, p 255)
And here's the same phenomenon closer to home:
"The frontier violence inflicted upon Aboriginal people in Queensland was a refinement of practices in southern colonies and a tradition of violence migrated north with landseekers. Colonialism is inherently violent. Moreover, the concept of using Indigenous troops to further colonisation and suppress resistance was not new. Like the British, other conquerors had found that Native forces enjoyed a number of advantages as imperial soldiers and frontier guards. Indigenous people were familiar with local terrain, customs and languages, and they had an ability to survive off the land without the catastrophic medical problems that affected invading armies and expeditions... By the time the British colonised Australia, several practices were standard. The Native Police, like other armed colonial formations based on the use of Indigenous recruits, took advantage of the fact that Native people had no loyalties to other Indigenous groups. Indeed, in some cases they were sworn enemies, and fought as much in their own self-interest as for other reasons. It has been argued that the search for a Native power base is an essential step in many colonial annexations. The concept of divide and rule, implicit in the recruitment of Indigenous troopers, shows how the British had learned to adapt traditional Indigenous enmity to their advantage." (The Secret War: A True History of Queensland's Native Police, Jonathan Richards, 2008, p 10)
Same old, same old.
They prefer to paint themselves as an indigenous 'people' or 'nation', who, having been evicted from their Palestinian homeland by the Romans nigh on 2000 years ago, just sat around moping until, under the banner of political Zionism, they were able to 'return'.
OK, it's a great yarn, but sadly, that's all it is.
As much as Zionists like to pretend that theirs is a movement for national self-determination, rather than its opposite, just another, albeit highly creative, white European colonizing movement, there are simply too many tell-tale signs for the settler-colonial reality to be glossed over.
Like this, for example:
"Known popularly as the Magav, the Israeli Border Police evolved in part from an army division created in the wake of the state's foundation for the explicit purpose of capturing and deporting Palestinian refugees who had slipped into their former villages to reunite with family and spouses. Named the Minorities Unit, the division was comprised mostly of deeply impoverished young men recruited from Druze villages in the north and Bedouin Arab enclaves in the south. Their recruitment of non-Palestinian Arab subgroups served David Ben Gurion's divide-and-conquer strategy, which he dubbed, 'fragmentation'. As one Israeli official said, the Minorities Unit formed 'the sharp blade of a knife to stab in the back of Arab unity'." (Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel, Max Blumenthal, 2013, p 255)
And here's the same phenomenon closer to home:
"The frontier violence inflicted upon Aboriginal people in Queensland was a refinement of practices in southern colonies and a tradition of violence migrated north with landseekers. Colonialism is inherently violent. Moreover, the concept of using Indigenous troops to further colonisation and suppress resistance was not new. Like the British, other conquerors had found that Native forces enjoyed a number of advantages as imperial soldiers and frontier guards. Indigenous people were familiar with local terrain, customs and languages, and they had an ability to survive off the land without the catastrophic medical problems that affected invading armies and expeditions... By the time the British colonised Australia, several practices were standard. The Native Police, like other armed colonial formations based on the use of Indigenous recruits, took advantage of the fact that Native people had no loyalties to other Indigenous groups. Indeed, in some cases they were sworn enemies, and fought as much in their own self-interest as for other reasons. It has been argued that the search for a Native power base is an essential step in many colonial annexations. The concept of divide and rule, implicit in the recruitment of Indigenous troopers, shows how the British had learned to adapt traditional Indigenous enmity to their advantage." (The Secret War: A True History of Queensland's Native Police, Jonathan Richards, 2008, p 10)
Same old, same old.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
From Diversionary Programs to Diversionary Propaganda
In its never-ending quest to defend the indefensible, The Australian Jewish News, in its February 14 issue, launched no less than 5 attacks (+ editorial & front page) on Four Corners' recent exposure of Israel's mistreatment of Palestinian children, Stone Cold Justice. (See my 10/2/14 post Murdoch Beds Aunty.)
The grubbiest, for me at least, was that by lawyer George Newhouse. Billed as "the head of Shine Lawyers social justice department" and one-off "advocate for Aboriginal youth in detention in WA (Wilson v Francis [2013] WASC 157)," his was a cynical attempt to use an entirely unrelated issue - Aboriginal detention rates in Western Australia and the Northern Territory - in order to divert attention from Israel's "systematic abuse and torture"* of Palestinian youths:
"The Four Corners program highlighted the disgraceful treatment of Palestinian youth in the Israeli military youth justice system but they also reported the news that the Israeli government and its military has accepted that reform is required and will take steps to improve military youth justice and detention. That's more than can be said for the governments of Western Australia and the Northern Territory who refuse to address the problem. Things are so bad that the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Chairperson Warren Mundine called for a national summit on Aboriginal justice issues and the soaring incarceration levels... It's time for UNICEF and Four Corners to investigate the treatment of Aboriginal children in youth detention in WA. Until then one might take a jaundiced view about the ABC's internationalist position on this vital issue." (We need to look in our own backyard)
So that's it then. The trigger-happy lads of the WADF (Western Australia Defence Force) are running amok in Aboriginal communities, ripping kids from their beds in the dead of night and secreting them in detention centres, where they're subjected to abuse and torture designed to elicit false confessions of stone-throwing and/or agreement to act as spies and informers.
Well, no.
Since Warren Mundine is Newhouse's cited authority here, let's explore what Mundine has to say about the issue of Aboriginal youth in detention.
The following text, from ABC Radio National's The World Today (Jobs not jail for troubled Indigenous youths: Mundine, 9/1/13) appears to be the source for Newhouse's reference to Mundine but, as you'll see, beyond Newhouse's cherry-picked reference to "soaring incarceration levels," it has little or nothing to do with the content of the Four Corners program:
Samantha Donovan: One of Australia's most prominent Indigenous leaders is calling for a national summit on Aboriginal justice issues to reverse soaring incarceration levels...
Emily Bourke: What's driving this increase?
Warren Mundine: I'm critical of all governments over the years and critical of the Aboriginal leadership... We are looking at the wrong end. We're looking at the jail end of it... We are trying to make culturally appropriate prisons, you know... where people get in trouble, they go on the culture camps. What we should be doing is the complete opposite. We need to be putting diversionary programs in that focus on keeping kids in the classroom and getting into jobs.
Emily Bourke: Warren Mundine says going to jail is a badge of honour for some young Aboriginal men and he also concedes some find it easier and even more appealing to go to jail... Warren Mundine says police and magistrates are hamstrung.
Warren Mundine: I do feel for the legal and also for the policing end because there are not options or supports for them to actually do these diversionary programs. We've got these silly ideas of black prisons and culturally appropriate prisons... We've got to get away from that and we've got to say let's have black classrooms... black jobs... and lets have commercial activity happening in Aboriginal communities rather than the jails.
Clearly, this business resembles Israel's abuse of Palestinian kids about as much as the proverbial chalk resembles the proverbial cheese.
More recently, Mundine is quoted in The Australian as saying:
"What I discovered when I headed Generation One was that there's about 40-50,000 people not in the Centrelink system or in employment so what they're doing is they're living off their families and humbugging... They get into criminal situations. We don't just say 'no dole', we've got to put in place processes to make sure they don't go into criminal activity'." (Youth missing from system, says Warren Mundine, Patricia Karvelas, 15/2/14)
Nor, it seems, does Mundine have any issue with the West Australian government:
"Mr Mundine said he had secured the support of the West Australian Corrective Services Commissioner... and the state government to try out the diversionary plan to tackle the incarceration rate. 'Everyone supported it'... he said."
The lengths Zionists will go to shield the object of their devotion from justified criticism is quite extraordinary. This includes, as we see here, the cynical manipulation of one indigenous issue in order to distract us from paying attention to another.
[*See my 18/4/13 post The UN Goes to Water.]
The grubbiest, for me at least, was that by lawyer George Newhouse. Billed as "the head of Shine Lawyers social justice department" and one-off "advocate for Aboriginal youth in detention in WA (Wilson v Francis [2013] WASC 157)," his was a cynical attempt to use an entirely unrelated issue - Aboriginal detention rates in Western Australia and the Northern Territory - in order to divert attention from Israel's "systematic abuse and torture"* of Palestinian youths:
"The Four Corners program highlighted the disgraceful treatment of Palestinian youth in the Israeli military youth justice system but they also reported the news that the Israeli government and its military has accepted that reform is required and will take steps to improve military youth justice and detention. That's more than can be said for the governments of Western Australia and the Northern Territory who refuse to address the problem. Things are so bad that the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Chairperson Warren Mundine called for a national summit on Aboriginal justice issues and the soaring incarceration levels... It's time for UNICEF and Four Corners to investigate the treatment of Aboriginal children in youth detention in WA. Until then one might take a jaundiced view about the ABC's internationalist position on this vital issue." (We need to look in our own backyard)
So that's it then. The trigger-happy lads of the WADF (Western Australia Defence Force) are running amok in Aboriginal communities, ripping kids from their beds in the dead of night and secreting them in detention centres, where they're subjected to abuse and torture designed to elicit false confessions of stone-throwing and/or agreement to act as spies and informers.
Well, no.
Since Warren Mundine is Newhouse's cited authority here, let's explore what Mundine has to say about the issue of Aboriginal youth in detention.
The following text, from ABC Radio National's The World Today (Jobs not jail for troubled Indigenous youths: Mundine, 9/1/13) appears to be the source for Newhouse's reference to Mundine but, as you'll see, beyond Newhouse's cherry-picked reference to "soaring incarceration levels," it has little or nothing to do with the content of the Four Corners program:
Samantha Donovan: One of Australia's most prominent Indigenous leaders is calling for a national summit on Aboriginal justice issues to reverse soaring incarceration levels...
Emily Bourke: What's driving this increase?
Warren Mundine: I'm critical of all governments over the years and critical of the Aboriginal leadership... We are looking at the wrong end. We're looking at the jail end of it... We are trying to make culturally appropriate prisons, you know... where people get in trouble, they go on the culture camps. What we should be doing is the complete opposite. We need to be putting diversionary programs in that focus on keeping kids in the classroom and getting into jobs.
Emily Bourke: Warren Mundine says going to jail is a badge of honour for some young Aboriginal men and he also concedes some find it easier and even more appealing to go to jail... Warren Mundine says police and magistrates are hamstrung.
Warren Mundine: I do feel for the legal and also for the policing end because there are not options or supports for them to actually do these diversionary programs. We've got these silly ideas of black prisons and culturally appropriate prisons... We've got to get away from that and we've got to say let's have black classrooms... black jobs... and lets have commercial activity happening in Aboriginal communities rather than the jails.
Clearly, this business resembles Israel's abuse of Palestinian kids about as much as the proverbial chalk resembles the proverbial cheese.
More recently, Mundine is quoted in The Australian as saying:
"What I discovered when I headed Generation One was that there's about 40-50,000 people not in the Centrelink system or in employment so what they're doing is they're living off their families and humbugging... They get into criminal situations. We don't just say 'no dole', we've got to put in place processes to make sure they don't go into criminal activity'." (Youth missing from system, says Warren Mundine, Patricia Karvelas, 15/2/14)
Nor, it seems, does Mundine have any issue with the West Australian government:
"Mr Mundine said he had secured the support of the West Australian Corrective Services Commissioner... and the state government to try out the diversionary plan to tackle the incarceration rate. 'Everyone supported it'... he said."
The lengths Zionists will go to shield the object of their devotion from justified criticism is quite extraordinary. This includes, as we see here, the cynical manipulation of one indigenous issue in order to distract us from paying attention to another.
[*See my 18/4/13 post The UN Goes to Water.]
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Recognise
What a mess of contradictions is Murdoch's Australian.
On the one hand, it's solidly behind Reconciliation Australia's campaign - Recognise - to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution.
On the other, it's just as solidly behind the Israeli government campaign for Indigenous Palestinians to recognise Israel as "the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people*," as its columnist Janet Albrechtsen put it recently, which would effectively mean Palestinians abandoning their historic (and international law-backed) claims to Palestine, and giving the thumbs up to 65 years of Palestinian dispossession, exile and genocide.
To translate the latter into Australian terms, this would be tantamount to calling on Indigenous Australians to recognise non-Indigenous Australians - past, present and future - as the legitimate owners of this land and giving the thumbs up to over 200 years of Aboriginal dispossession and genocide.
[*Including Messrs Arnold Bloch and Mark Leibler of Arnold Bloch Leibler - Lawyers & Advisers, prominent Jewish supporters of Reconciliation Australia.]
On the one hand, it's solidly behind Reconciliation Australia's campaign - Recognise - to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution.
On the other, it's just as solidly behind the Israeli government campaign for Indigenous Palestinians to recognise Israel as "the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people*," as its columnist Janet Albrechtsen put it recently, which would effectively mean Palestinians abandoning their historic (and international law-backed) claims to Palestine, and giving the thumbs up to 65 years of Palestinian dispossession, exile and genocide.
To translate the latter into Australian terms, this would be tantamount to calling on Indigenous Australians to recognise non-Indigenous Australians - past, present and future - as the legitimate owners of this land and giving the thumbs up to over 200 years of Aboriginal dispossession and genocide.
[*Including Messrs Arnold Bloch and Mark Leibler of Arnold Bloch Leibler - Lawyers & Advisers, prominent Jewish supporters of Reconciliation Australia.]
Monday, January 27, 2014
Adam Goodes vs the IDF
According to our politicians, Abbottoir and Israel have heaps in common. Abbottoir's new Prime Headkicker, Tony Abbott, for example, has even declared that "Australians are all Israelis."
I simply cannot comprehend, therefore, how our two countries could have come up with such widely divergent choices as these:
The 2014 Australian of the Year is Indigenous man, Adam Goodes, who "wants to help break down the boundaries between races and won't rest until all Australians are treated as equals." (Goodes has racism in his sights, Adam Gartrell, au.news.yahoo.com, 25/1/14)
The 2014 Israeli Person of the Year, on the other hand, is the Israeli soldier "who protect(s) all of us 24/7 by fighting against terror." ('Jerusalem Post' Person of the Year: The Israeli soldier, jpost.com, 26/1/14)
Now if I may may be allowed, as an expert here, to translate the above from the Israeli language, Hasbara - a tongue notorious for veiling and obscuring reality - into plain English, it'd go something like this:
The 2014 Israeli Person of the Year is the Israeli soldier 'who protects our colonial-settler land-grab (1948-2014) by separating, confining, obstructing, intimidating, abusing, robbing, beating, arresting, gassing, shooting, shelling, and bombing the Indigenous Palestinian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories 24/7.' (For just some of the gory details see my 5/12/12 post As Though They Owned the Place.)
I simply cannot comprehend, therefore, how our two countries could have come up with such widely divergent choices as these:
The 2014 Australian of the Year is Indigenous man, Adam Goodes, who "wants to help break down the boundaries between races and won't rest until all Australians are treated as equals." (Goodes has racism in his sights, Adam Gartrell, au.news.yahoo.com, 25/1/14)
The 2014 Israeli Person of the Year, on the other hand, is the Israeli soldier "who protect(s) all of us 24/7 by fighting against terror." ('Jerusalem Post' Person of the Year: The Israeli soldier, jpost.com, 26/1/14)
Now if I may may be allowed, as an expert here, to translate the above from the Israeli language, Hasbara - a tongue notorious for veiling and obscuring reality - into plain English, it'd go something like this:
The 2014 Israeli Person of the Year is the Israeli soldier 'who protects our colonial-settler land-grab (1948-2014) by separating, confining, obstructing, intimidating, abusing, robbing, beating, arresting, gassing, shooting, shelling, and bombing the Indigenous Palestinian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories 24/7.' (For just some of the gory details see my 5/12/12 post As Though They Owned the Place.)
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Indians Dreaming of Cowboys
"Peace Now, an Israeli group that opposes settlements, released a report on Saturday saying that at least 44 new settlement sites had been established in the West Bank since Mr Sharon was elected prime minister in February 2001. The outpost settlements are most vulnerable to attack by Palestinian militants because they are often located outside perimeter fences. Their residents are considered the most ideological and radical of the settlers. 'They imitate the Wild West. They have horses. They have cattle. They have guns. They are playing cowboy and treating others, in this case the Palestinians, as though they are the Indians,' said Amiram Goldblum of Peace Now." (Israel orders removal of illegal settlements, Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 1/7/02)
"Itamar has a wild west feel to it and Hayman, who was born in Hollywood and left the US for Israel 15 years ago, sees himself as a modern John Wayne, pioneering settlement in a hostile land. 'I'd rather be making the news than watching it in television,' he says." (Settled in & staying put, Catherine Taylor, The Australian, 6/7/02)
Got the pic?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, two Australian 'Indians' are dreaming of cowboys:
Warren Mundine:
"Jewish people are a nation of people originating from a common geography, genealogy, language and religion. They were also dispossessed of land and sovereignty and dispersed over thousands of years, yet they maintain their identity as a people and nation." (Vilification law changes not about freedom but how we think about race, Sydney Morning Herald, 18/12/13)
Noel Pearson:
"In the legal world, Arnold Bloch Leibler is a force of nature, with clients including a disproportionate share of the country's wealthiest companies and families, and a vast pro bono practice stretching from the Yolngu of Arnhem Land to the Yorta Yorta of Victoria. During an articled clerkship at ABL's Collins Street headquarters I came to know the story of Australia's Jewish community and how a people endured oppression and discrimination through history; how they rose up from the ashes of the Holocaust." (Invaluable lessons in striving on behalf of one's community while serving humanity, The Australian, 21/12/13)
"Itamar has a wild west feel to it and Hayman, who was born in Hollywood and left the US for Israel 15 years ago, sees himself as a modern John Wayne, pioneering settlement in a hostile land. 'I'd rather be making the news than watching it in television,' he says." (Settled in & staying put, Catherine Taylor, The Australian, 6/7/02)
Got the pic?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, two Australian 'Indians' are dreaming of cowboys:
Warren Mundine:
"Jewish people are a nation of people originating from a common geography, genealogy, language and religion. They were also dispossessed of land and sovereignty and dispersed over thousands of years, yet they maintain their identity as a people and nation." (Vilification law changes not about freedom but how we think about race, Sydney Morning Herald, 18/12/13)
Noel Pearson:
"In the legal world, Arnold Bloch Leibler is a force of nature, with clients including a disproportionate share of the country's wealthiest companies and families, and a vast pro bono practice stretching from the Yolngu of Arnhem Land to the Yorta Yorta of Victoria. During an articled clerkship at ABL's Collins Street headquarters I came to know the story of Australia's Jewish community and how a people endured oppression and discrimination through history; how they rose up from the ashes of the Holocaust." (Invaluable lessons in striving on behalf of one's community while serving humanity, The Australian, 21/12/13)
Friday, December 20, 2013
The Adoration of the Sage
Meanwhile, raise a glass and drink in the following scene over at Melbourne's Grand Hyatt:
"A sixtieth anniversary calls for a pretty serious cocktail party, and so it was last night for law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler, which marked the occasion in style at the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne. Among those attending from the government were Tony Abbott, Bronwyn Bishop (no party is complete without her), Kevin Andrews, Arthur Sinodinos, Mitch Fifield and the evidently omnipresent Josh Frydenberg, with Bill Shorten and Mark Dreyfus among those doing the honour for Labor. Also on deck were Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle and Israeli ambassador Shmuel Ben-Shmuel. And in honour of ABL partner Mark Leibler, a giant in the reconciliation movement, some of the nation's leading indigenous figures on the guest list included Noel Pearson, and Djawa and Balupalu Yunupingu from East Arnhem Land. Leibler saved some special words for his guest of honour, the PM: 'On Israel especially you have always been prepared to support what is right and correct, as distinct from what may be 'politically correct'. I thank you for that commitment. And, like me, you understand that indigenous Australians are not only the country's most disadvantaged citizens, but the most discriminated against'." (Bottoms up, Strewth, The Australian, 19/12/13)
There is really only one way to do justice to such a scene: paint it in the style of some Italian Renaissance master. Something like this perhaps:
Mark Leibler, front and centre, sits on a throne elevated above the others, as befits a sage with a direct line to that which is eternally Right & Correct. High above, shining its light down on him, is an otherworldly Star of David.
A crowned and ermine-caped Tony Abbott kneels before him kissing his ring.
Shmuel Ben-Shmuel stands off to one side, a mysterious smile wreathing his face, his kippa, halo-like, floating ethereally only millimetres above his bald head.
Frydenberg stands opposite Abbott, his eyes fixed on the PM, unable to conceal his lust for crown and ermine.
Bishop, Andrews, Sinodinos, Fifield, Shorten, Dreyfus and Doyle, locked in poses of adoration and wonder, cocktail glasses raised high, gaze up at Sage Isi.
The Indigenous trio, in the bottom right hand corner of the painting, sprawl on the ground, looking every bit as though they have just been elbowed aside and trampled by Bishop, Andrews et al in the rush to hear Sage Mark's latest Dalai Lama-style pearl of wisdom.
Captured by the painter in a scroll at the very top of the painting, said pearl reads: 'O King Tony, on Israel you have always supported what is Right and Correct, and like me, you understand the plight of indigenous Australians.'
And there, in the bottom left hand corner of the work, lie a pile of torn and bleeding Palestinian bodies.
"A sixtieth anniversary calls for a pretty serious cocktail party, and so it was last night for law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler, which marked the occasion in style at the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne. Among those attending from the government were Tony Abbott, Bronwyn Bishop (no party is complete without her), Kevin Andrews, Arthur Sinodinos, Mitch Fifield and the evidently omnipresent Josh Frydenberg, with Bill Shorten and Mark Dreyfus among those doing the honour for Labor. Also on deck were Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle and Israeli ambassador Shmuel Ben-Shmuel. And in honour of ABL partner Mark Leibler, a giant in the reconciliation movement, some of the nation's leading indigenous figures on the guest list included Noel Pearson, and Djawa and Balupalu Yunupingu from East Arnhem Land. Leibler saved some special words for his guest of honour, the PM: 'On Israel especially you have always been prepared to support what is right and correct, as distinct from what may be 'politically correct'. I thank you for that commitment. And, like me, you understand that indigenous Australians are not only the country's most disadvantaged citizens, but the most discriminated against'." (Bottoms up, Strewth, The Australian, 19/12/13)
There is really only one way to do justice to such a scene: paint it in the style of some Italian Renaissance master. Something like this perhaps:
Mark Leibler, front and centre, sits on a throne elevated above the others, as befits a sage with a direct line to that which is eternally Right & Correct. High above, shining its light down on him, is an otherworldly Star of David.
A crowned and ermine-caped Tony Abbott kneels before him kissing his ring.
Shmuel Ben-Shmuel stands off to one side, a mysterious smile wreathing his face, his kippa, halo-like, floating ethereally only millimetres above his bald head.
Frydenberg stands opposite Abbott, his eyes fixed on the PM, unable to conceal his lust for crown and ermine.
Bishop, Andrews, Sinodinos, Fifield, Shorten, Dreyfus and Doyle, locked in poses of adoration and wonder, cocktail glasses raised high, gaze up at Sage Isi.
The Indigenous trio, in the bottom right hand corner of the painting, sprawl on the ground, looking every bit as though they have just been elbowed aside and trampled by Bishop, Andrews et al in the rush to hear Sage Mark's latest Dalai Lama-style pearl of wisdom.
Captured by the painter in a scroll at the very top of the painting, said pearl reads: 'O King Tony, on Israel you have always supported what is Right and Correct, and like me, you understand the plight of indigenous Australians.'
And there, in the bottom left hand corner of the work, lie a pile of torn and bleeding Palestinian bodies.
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