A campaign by elements of the Israel lobby to have the Jewish component of the Nazi genocide, aka 'The Holocaust'*, included in Australia's national history curriculum (see my 12/4/10 post Sam Lipski's National Curriculum) has finally borne fruit.
[* In his invaluable book, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000), Norman Finkelstein calls 'The Holocaust' "an ideological representation of the Nazi genocide."]
According to the Australian Jewish News: "The official inclusion of Holocaust studies in the new national curriculum has received a cautious welcome from community leaders and educators. The curriculum was approved by a Ministerial Council meeting in Canberra and endorsed by state and territory education ministers last week... Holocaust studies have been included in two areas of the history curriculum - as part of the Australian immigration story to be taught in year 6 and as part of World War II studies in year 10. Sydney Jewish Museum education director Avril Alba described the inclusion of Shoah studies in the new curriculum as 'a positive step forward... [I]t provides teachers and students with an excellent opportunity to study both the context within which the Holocaust took place and the radicalising effect of the war." (Green light for Shoah studies, 17/12/10)
A cautious welcome?
Ah, "[b]ut [Alba] voiced concern over the limited time the subject is given in the curriculum, saying 'the challenge for teachers will be to both contextualise the unfolding of the Holocaust within the broader context of World War II but also to point out its distinctive features'." (ibid)
OK, Avril, to accomodate your concern, we'll omit the bit in the WWII depth study which goes: "An overview of the causes and course of WWII."
Ah, but "[t]he Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) also expressed reservations. 'The revised content description appears to be an improvement on the original draft', said ECAJ executive director Peter Wertheim. 'One difficulty is that study of the Holocaust is limited to the years 1942-1945. This is inaccurate and omits the Nazi program of mass shootings and other atrocities between 1939 and 1941 in which 1.5 million Jews were systematically put to death'." (ibid)
OK, Peter, 1939 through to 1945 it is. We'll just drop the bit about the "use of the atomic bomb."
Ah, but "Pratt Foundation chief executive and AJN columnist Sam Lipski earlier this year cited concerns about how the syllabus might be delivered if the Shoah wasn't contextualised. 'Without also studying who the Jews were, how they began, and what they've had to say about themselves and to the world over 3 millennia, a generation of Australians will gain a misleading picture', Lipski wrote in an AJN column." (ibid)
OK, Sam, we fully understand your concern, and you'll be pleased to hear that we're seriously considering dropping the history syllabus altogether and replacing it with Jewish/Israel studies.
Seriously though, if dunum by dunum, goat by goat is your mantra and modus operandi, can enough ever really be enough?
Not that I'm the only one ever to have had reservations about The Holocaust being used to promote Israel. Even acclaimed Nazi hunter and Zionist Simon Wiesenthal, in Jerusalem for the 1961 trial of Eichmann, had initial misgivings: "Wiesenthal did not object to the tendency to present the extermination of the Jews as a vindication of Zionist ideology and as justification for the existence of the State of Israel. But Israel's goal of gaining a monopoly over the legacy of the Holocaust aroused a sense of discomfort in him." (Simon Wiesenthal: The Life & Legends, Tom Segev, 2010, p 153)
This discomfort, of course, didn't last long. When, in the wake of Israel's conquest of the West Bank in 1967, it was suggested to Wiesenthal that it was "tragic" that an attempt to redress the injustice to the Jews by creating Israel had given rise to a fresh injustice to the Palestinians, he was adamant: "No, it is not tragic. The creation of Israel was the only possible and the only correct reaction to Auschwitz. There had to be a country in the world where the Jews were the landlords instead of tolerated guests." (ibid, p 219)
If the Wiesenthal line on The Holocaust is the one advanced in our year 10 classrooms, Zionist propagandists will have achieved a significant victory. One can but wonder at the contents of any curriculum support material that might be sent by ECAJ to our schools. On the other hand, if classroom discussion of one terrible injustice turns to discussion of another... watch this space.
Anyway, for teachers of year 10 history out there who are serious about their subject and who may have been wondering just what the real significance of the Nazi genocide is, here's our big picture man, James Petras: "The Nazi genocide against the Jews is an example of the ruling elite victimizing a minority population to create cross-class cohesion, diverting the masses from internal labor-capital conflicts and the real or potential costs of imperialist policies. To deflect their focus on capitalist exploitation, the ruling elite directed worker and middle class discontent to Jewish bankers and capitalists. This propaganda was especially effective in professions like medicine and the retail trade in which competition for positions and market shares between Jews and non-Jews was especially intense. The transition from intensified exclusion and ethnic discrimination to the practice of genocide coincided with Germany's massive military, economic and political expansion and conquest of the late 1930s and early 1940s. As the costs of empire-building increased, so did the need to deflect the increasing anger and anxiety of the population by giving their ills a perpetrator's face (the Jews), and giving them lower ranking populations to despise (the Slavs). Parallel to the Jewish-Nazi Holocaust, the German imperial conquest of great swaths of Eastern Europe and especially Russia led to an even greater holocaust, the killing of some 9-10 million Slavs and the enslavement of many millions more to the imperial-capital war machine." (Genocides, Cohesion & Imperialism, in Rulers & Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants, James Petras, 2007, p 77)
Chew on that, Peter, Sam.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
Silenced Night
"America is not out to enslave the Iraqi people. It is not on a crusade against Islam. It is doing what it has always done: standing up for liberty and the rights of humankind to live unencumbered by the chains of beastly humanity. We are now at war. May it be sure but swift. May God protect our troops and bring them safely home. And may Iraq awake some morning soon to something it has not seen in generations: a new dawn of freedom." (New York Daily News, 20/3/03)
"A friend in Baghdad sent me the following: 'I don't know where to start. Not a day goes by without hearing about murders and assassinations. The silencer gun seems to be the preferred method. Just a few days ago, there was another murder just a few streets away from where we live. A guy was found dumped on the road! Again, a few days ago, another was murdered by silencer in the Yarmuk area. The body had no ID.
"I heard about these killings from friends, and every other day, it seems, a member of my family comes home and tells me someone has been killed. Murder takes place in broad daylight, even in busy areas. For instance, people are just going about their business when all of a sudden one of them drops, felled by a silencer gun. Some people are saying it reminds them of '05-'07 when they'd awake to find bodies in the street. Sometimes there are 2 or 3 assassinations a day, and many we don't even know about because we learn everything these days only by word of mouth.
"I heard that today there were HEAPS of silencer killings. In Mansour, the treasurer of Maliki's party and the director-general of the Electricity Ministry were assassinated. At least we know who they are. The rest are unknown. It's getting worse by the day. Some are saying it's a miracle they manage to avoid being murdered themselves. And, of course, there are the daily explosions.
"Freedom of speech is practically non-existent here. You don't dare express an opinion or speak out in any way. On December 5 a journalist was murdered in Mansour in broad daylight - probably by silencer gun. People were saying he was more or less outspoken, probably a critic of the government.
"Christian families are moving out of Baghdad and heading north before leaving Iraq altogether. One family I heard about returned to retrieve the remainder of their belongings. They were slaughtered outside their house." (Baghdad's bloody Xmas leaks..., Layla Anwar, arabwomanblues.blogspot.com, 25/12/10)
"A friend in Baghdad sent me the following: 'I don't know where to start. Not a day goes by without hearing about murders and assassinations. The silencer gun seems to be the preferred method. Just a few days ago, there was another murder just a few streets away from where we live. A guy was found dumped on the road! Again, a few days ago, another was murdered by silencer in the Yarmuk area. The body had no ID.
"I heard about these killings from friends, and every other day, it seems, a member of my family comes home and tells me someone has been killed. Murder takes place in broad daylight, even in busy areas. For instance, people are just going about their business when all of a sudden one of them drops, felled by a silencer gun. Some people are saying it reminds them of '05-'07 when they'd awake to find bodies in the street. Sometimes there are 2 or 3 assassinations a day, and many we don't even know about because we learn everything these days only by word of mouth.
"I heard that today there were HEAPS of silencer killings. In Mansour, the treasurer of Maliki's party and the director-general of the Electricity Ministry were assassinated. At least we know who they are. The rest are unknown. It's getting worse by the day. Some are saying it's a miracle they manage to avoid being murdered themselves. And, of course, there are the daily explosions.
"Freedom of speech is practically non-existent here. You don't dare express an opinion or speak out in any way. On December 5 a journalist was murdered in Mansour in broad daylight - probably by silencer gun. People were saying he was more or less outspoken, probably a critic of the government.
"Christian families are moving out of Baghdad and heading north before leaving Iraq altogether. One family I heard about returned to retrieve the remainder of their belongings. They were slaughtered outside their house." (Baghdad's bloody Xmas leaks..., Layla Anwar, arabwomanblues.blogspot.com, 25/12/10)
Foreign Correspondents: Then & Now
That was then:
"I read my father's conservative Daily Telegraph from cover to cover, always the foreign reports, lying on the floor beside the fire as my mother pleaded with me to drink my cocoa and go to bed. At school I studied The Times each afternoon. I ploughed through Khrushchev's entire speech denouncing Stalin's reign of terror. I won the school Current Affairs prize and never - ever - could anyone shake me from my determination to be a foreign correspondent. When my father suggested I should study law or medicine, I walked from the room. When he asked a family friend what I should do, the friend asked me to imagine I was in a courtroom. Would I want to be the lawyer or the reporter on the press bench, he asked me. I said I would be the reporter and he told my father: 'Robert is going to be a journalist'. I wanted to be one of the 'soldiers of the press'." (The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, Robert Fisk, 2005, p xix)
This is... *sigh* ... now:
"Ben Knight enjoyed a spectacularly unsuccessful academic career, spending several years working in bottle shops and supermarkets, before somehow landing a short-term job with the ABC in his hometown of Mildura as a radio producer. A few years later, he stopped worrying that someone was going to tap him on the shoulder and tell him there had been a horrible mistake, and moved to Melbourne to host the ABC's daily statewide morning show. Bouncing around jobs in radio current affairs, TV news, and The 7.30 Report - even presenting the weather in order to get his face on TV - he suddenly realised his long-repressed dream of a foreign correspondent's job might be within reach. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and two children, and is enjoying every minute of it." (Ben Knight, abc.net.au/profiles, 17/12/09)
Sometimes repression has a lot going for it.
"I read my father's conservative Daily Telegraph from cover to cover, always the foreign reports, lying on the floor beside the fire as my mother pleaded with me to drink my cocoa and go to bed. At school I studied The Times each afternoon. I ploughed through Khrushchev's entire speech denouncing Stalin's reign of terror. I won the school Current Affairs prize and never - ever - could anyone shake me from my determination to be a foreign correspondent. When my father suggested I should study law or medicine, I walked from the room. When he asked a family friend what I should do, the friend asked me to imagine I was in a courtroom. Would I want to be the lawyer or the reporter on the press bench, he asked me. I said I would be the reporter and he told my father: 'Robert is going to be a journalist'. I wanted to be one of the 'soldiers of the press'." (The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, Robert Fisk, 2005, p xix)
This is... *sigh* ... now:
"Ben Knight enjoyed a spectacularly unsuccessful academic career, spending several years working in bottle shops and supermarkets, before somehow landing a short-term job with the ABC in his hometown of Mildura as a radio producer. A few years later, he stopped worrying that someone was going to tap him on the shoulder and tell him there had been a horrible mistake, and moved to Melbourne to host the ABC's daily statewide morning show. Bouncing around jobs in radio current affairs, TV news, and The 7.30 Report - even presenting the weather in order to get his face on TV - he suddenly realised his long-repressed dream of a foreign correspondent's job might be within reach. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and two children, and is enjoying every minute of it." (Ben Knight, abc.net.au/profiles, 17/12/09)
Sometimes repression has a lot going for it.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
The Forgotten Faithful
After reading my last post, those interested in what's really behind the emigration of Palestinian Christians from their homeland should read my 25/12/09 post, A Not So Merry Palestinian Christmas. Don Belt's The Forgotten Faithful (National Geographic, June 2009) is also worth a read. Some (abridged) excerpts:
"Easter in Jerusalem is not for the faint of heart. The Old City, livid and chaotic in the calmest of times, seems to come completely unhinged in the days leading up to the holiday. By the tens of thousands, Christians from all over the world pour in like a conquering horde, surging down the Via Dolorosa's narrow streets and ancient alleyways... Every face on Earth seems to float through the streets during Easter, every possible combination of eye and hair and skin color, every costume and style of dress, from blue-black African Christians in eye-popping dashikis to pale Finnish Christians dressed as Jesus with a bloody crown of thorns to American Christians in sneakers and 'I [heart] Israel' caps, clearly stoked for the battle of Armageddon."
"In a small apartment on the outskirts of the city, a young Palestinian Christian couple I will call Lisa and Mark [and their two children, 18-month old Nadia and 3-year old Nate] are preparing to enter the fray... This is the first Easter, ever, that Mark has been allowed to spend with the family in Jerusalem. He is from Bethlehem, in the West Bank, so his ID papers are from the Palestinian Authority; he needs a permit from Israel to visit. Lisa, whose family lives in the Old City, holds an Israeli ID. So although they've been married for 5 years and rent this apartment in the Jerusalem suburbs, under Israeli law they can't reside under the same roof. Mark lives with his parents in Bethlehem, which is 6 miles away but might as well be a hundred, lying on the far side of an Israeli checkpoint and the 24-foot-high concrete barrier known as the Wall.
"Mark finds it depressing that '80% of the Christian guys I grew up with have left for another country to find work'. Yet he understands why. A trained social worker with a degree in sociology, Mark has been looking for a job, any job, for almost 2 years. 'You're surrounded by this giant wall, and there are no jobs', he says. 'It's like a science experiment. If you keep rats in an enclosed space and make it smaller and smaller every day and introduce new obstacles and constantly change the rules, after a while the rats go crazy and start eating each other. It's like that'.
"For anyone living in Israel or the Palestinian territories, stress is the norm. But the 196,500 Palestinian and Israeli Arab Christians, who dropped from 13% of the population in 1894 to less than 2% today, occupy a uniquely oxygen-starved space between traumatized Israeli Jews [! I know whose trauma I'd rather have: MERC] and traumatized Palestinian Muslims, whose militancy is tied to regional Islamist movements that sometimes target Arab Christians. In the past decade, 'the situation for Arab Christians has gone rapidly downhill', says Razek Siriani... who works for the Middle East Council of Churches in Aleppo, Syria. 'We're completely outnumbered and surrounded by angry voices', he says. Western Christians have made matters worse, he argues, echoing a sentiment expressed by many Arab Christians. 'It's because of what Christians in the West, led by the US, have been doing in the Middle East', he says, ticking off the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for Israel, and the threats of 'regime change' by the Bush administration. 'To many Muslims, especially the fanatics, , this looks like the Crusades all over again, a war against Islam waged by Christianity. Because we're Christians, they see us as the enemy too. It's guilt by association'."
"On Easter morning, Mark and Lisa make a handsome couple in their Sunday clothes, leading Nate and Nadia by the hand up the sidewalk to the family car... it's a proud moment, their first Easter together in the Holy Land, and Lisa, noticing the thick coat of dust on the car, asks Mark to give it a rinse. He fetches a hose and connects it to a faucet they share with their neighbors... In an animated voice, Lisa explains to the kids that Daddy's giving the car a bath for Easter. Right on cue, with a playful flourish, Mark squeezes the nozzle on the hose. Nothing comes out. He checks the faucet, squeezes again. Still nothing. So there he stands, empty hose in hand, in front of his kids, his neighbors, and a visitor from overseas. 'I guess they've opened the pipes to the settlements', he says, gesturing to the hundreds of new Israeli housing units climbing up the hills nearby. 'No more [water] for us'. Lisa is still trying to explain this to the kids as the car pulls away from the curb.
"'I hate the Israelis', Lisa says one day, out of the blue. 'I really hate them. We all hate them. I think even Nate's starting to hate them'."
"Easter in Jerusalem is not for the faint of heart. The Old City, livid and chaotic in the calmest of times, seems to come completely unhinged in the days leading up to the holiday. By the tens of thousands, Christians from all over the world pour in like a conquering horde, surging down the Via Dolorosa's narrow streets and ancient alleyways... Every face on Earth seems to float through the streets during Easter, every possible combination of eye and hair and skin color, every costume and style of dress, from blue-black African Christians in eye-popping dashikis to pale Finnish Christians dressed as Jesus with a bloody crown of thorns to American Christians in sneakers and 'I [heart] Israel' caps, clearly stoked for the battle of Armageddon."
"In a small apartment on the outskirts of the city, a young Palestinian Christian couple I will call Lisa and Mark [and their two children, 18-month old Nadia and 3-year old Nate] are preparing to enter the fray... This is the first Easter, ever, that Mark has been allowed to spend with the family in Jerusalem. He is from Bethlehem, in the West Bank, so his ID papers are from the Palestinian Authority; he needs a permit from Israel to visit. Lisa, whose family lives in the Old City, holds an Israeli ID. So although they've been married for 5 years and rent this apartment in the Jerusalem suburbs, under Israeli law they can't reside under the same roof. Mark lives with his parents in Bethlehem, which is 6 miles away but might as well be a hundred, lying on the far side of an Israeli checkpoint and the 24-foot-high concrete barrier known as the Wall.
"Mark finds it depressing that '80% of the Christian guys I grew up with have left for another country to find work'. Yet he understands why. A trained social worker with a degree in sociology, Mark has been looking for a job, any job, for almost 2 years. 'You're surrounded by this giant wall, and there are no jobs', he says. 'It's like a science experiment. If you keep rats in an enclosed space and make it smaller and smaller every day and introduce new obstacles and constantly change the rules, after a while the rats go crazy and start eating each other. It's like that'.
"For anyone living in Israel or the Palestinian territories, stress is the norm. But the 196,500 Palestinian and Israeli Arab Christians, who dropped from 13% of the population in 1894 to less than 2% today, occupy a uniquely oxygen-starved space between traumatized Israeli Jews [! I know whose trauma I'd rather have: MERC] and traumatized Palestinian Muslims, whose militancy is tied to regional Islamist movements that sometimes target Arab Christians. In the past decade, 'the situation for Arab Christians has gone rapidly downhill', says Razek Siriani... who works for the Middle East Council of Churches in Aleppo, Syria. 'We're completely outnumbered and surrounded by angry voices', he says. Western Christians have made matters worse, he argues, echoing a sentiment expressed by many Arab Christians. 'It's because of what Christians in the West, led by the US, have been doing in the Middle East', he says, ticking off the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for Israel, and the threats of 'regime change' by the Bush administration. 'To many Muslims, especially the fanatics, , this looks like the Crusades all over again, a war against Islam waged by Christianity. Because we're Christians, they see us as the enemy too. It's guilt by association'."
"On Easter morning, Mark and Lisa make a handsome couple in their Sunday clothes, leading Nate and Nadia by the hand up the sidewalk to the family car... it's a proud moment, their first Easter together in the Holy Land, and Lisa, noticing the thick coat of dust on the car, asks Mark to give it a rinse. He fetches a hose and connects it to a faucet they share with their neighbors... In an animated voice, Lisa explains to the kids that Daddy's giving the car a bath for Easter. Right on cue, with a playful flourish, Mark squeezes the nozzle on the hose. Nothing comes out. He checks the faucet, squeezes again. Still nothing. So there he stands, empty hose in hand, in front of his kids, his neighbors, and a visitor from overseas. 'I guess they've opened the pipes to the settlements', he says, gesturing to the hundreds of new Israeli housing units climbing up the hills nearby. 'No more [water] for us'. Lisa is still trying to explain this to the kids as the car pulls away from the curb.
"'I hate the Israelis', Lisa says one day, out of the blue. 'I really hate them. We all hate them. I think even Nate's starting to hate them'."
Saturday, December 25, 2010
The ABC of Zionist Propaganda 2
The 7.30 Report 0f 21 December does the plight of Middle Eastern Christians:
"Increasingly, Christians are feeling under siege in the territory they've called home for centuries, including the Holy Land - many are fleeing the region for good as they fear for their safety." (21/12/10)
From? "From Egypt to Iraq, they were the victims of violent attacks by Muslim extremists."
Ah yes, Muslim extremists. Egypt to Iraq. Wall-to-wall. And that includes the Occupied Palestinian Territories:
"BEN KNIGHT, REPORTER:... The Holy Land is watching its Christian population disappear."
"FATHER RAFIK KHOURY:.. I cannot imagine the Holy Land without Christians."
"SAMIR QUMSIEH*, CHRISTIAN BROADCASTER: I really fear that the Church of the Nativity and the Holy Sepulchre will be turned into museums."
Yikes! OK, so whether it's Egypt, Iraq or the OPT, your Muslim extremists have your (Arab) Christians on the run.
But wait, what's Father Khoury saying now? "[My congregations] say, Well we lived in that situation, OK for us, but for our children we would like to prepare a better future... That is why they leave."
OK for us? The Muslim knife's up against the Christian jugular, but it's... OK for us? What the... ?
And what's this? "PROFESSOR NABIB GHAYIT: Well they're cowards... you have to sacrifice in order to live, you know."
Cowards? What can he mean? Ben? Ben...?
Ah, but Knight's on a roll... on the Muslim track: "But the danger is real. In 2007, Christian pastor Rami Ayyad was murdered in Gaza. No one was ever charged. His family believes there was never any real investigation." Yep, Muslim extremists alright. Who else could it be?
"But it's not just violence," he presses on, "Some Christians say their Muslim neighbours are taking the land out from under them. SAMIR QUMSIEH: They take it by force, by forgery, by many ways and because many Bethlehem people are emigrating, their lands are done."
Funny that. Knight's been ABC TV's Middle East correspondent for years now, but we haven't heard a squeak from him about Israel's demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem (up 45% this year with 396 buildings razed compared with 275 last year), throwing 561 Palestinians, including 280 children, onto the street. "Out of the 250,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem... 60,000 are at risk of having their homes demolished by the Israeli authorities," claims UNRWA (UN agency condemns Arab home demolitions in Jerusalem, BBC News, 23/12/10), but hey, that hardly fits with Knight's Head for the hills! The Muslims are coming! agenda.
Samir Qumsieh tells us that he's "very angry with the Christian world." But not, you'll notice with Israel! Unless, of course, Knight's edited that bit out. Ditto for Father Khoury who laments that "They are forgetting their own roots to help others who have roots in the Holy Land."
Knight then introduces us to the kind of Christians Samir Qumsieh and Father Khoury are presumably angry with: "BRUCE GARBUTT, INTL CHRISTIAN EMBASSY OF JERUSALEM: We come as friends of Israel because Israel is God's chosen people, chosen for a purpose and not because they're different, not because they're better, chosen for a purpose and that's to bring salvation to the world. BEN KNIGHT: This is a messianic view of Christianity that believes when the Jews return to the land of Israel, the temple can be rebuilt and the final day of judgment will arrive. The Palestinian State doesn't fit into that plan. Glen and Marilyn Shaw here are doing missionary work in the West Bank and have seen the poverty there. BEN KNIGHT: You're here today with Israeli flags. GLEN SHAW: Yes. BEN KNIGHT: Who are obviously the occupying force - is that a conflict for you? GLEN SHAW: Not really. Not really. Because God commands us to bless the Jews. To bless Israel. Anybody who blesses Israel will get a blessing in return." Jesus, talk about giving Christians a bad name!
Now would it be too much to expect of a Middle East correspondent doing a piece largely on the plight of Palestinian Christians to ask the lovely Glen and his charming wife, Marilyn, whether they were aware just how pissed off the local Palestinian Christians were with their attitude? Apparently.
I suppose the closest Knight gets to the bleeding obviousness of It's the Occupation, stupid! is when he mentions a Vatican discussion paper on "the situation of Christians in the Middle East," which he says, "talks about some of the driving issues such as the Israeli occupation or the growing influence of extreme Islam right across the Middle East."
But you can't trust Knight as far as you can throw him. That bit about the growing influence of extreme Islam, that's just there to blur the bit about the Israeli occupation, the critical impact of which on Palestinian Christians he has no interest whatever in exploring. And what does that document actually says?: "The meeting document made clear that bishops in the Middle East believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be the root cause of several conflicts in the region. But it also singled out the growth of political Islam in countries like Egypt, and said the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict had been exploited by radical terrorism in recent years... It criticized the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, saying it had made life difficult both for daily life and religious life since access to holy places are restricted. Citing both the Israeli-Palestinian and Iraqi conflicts, it said: 'The solution to conflicts rests in the hands of the stronger country in its occupying and inflicting wars on another country." (Vatican memo: Mideast conflict driving Christians out of region, Haaretz/ AP, 19/10/10)
IOW, political Islam (or as Knight has it, Islamic extremism) is a response to the USraeli occupation of Arab lands, the driving issue behind the emigration of Arab Christians from the Middle East.
Knight's fleeting reference to the Israeli occupation is soon overtaken by Samir Qumsieh muttering darkly about a "Muslim state" in the West Bank and Knight proclaiming darkly that "In November, Al-Qaeda in Iraq declared open season on all Christians. After a siege at a Baghdad church ended in the deaths of more than 50 people, these Iraqi Christians fled to the relative safety of Jordan. But they're not staying there. They're looking for visas to Canada, the US and Australia. Yet another Christian community has decided it's time to leave the Middle East for good and they won't be the last."
Ooo... Al-Qaeda in Iraq? Is this the same Al-Qaeda in Iraq that used to be led by the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who became the subject of a US military propaganda campaign a few years back? "The Zarqawi PSYOP program," boasted one of its operatives, "is the most successful information campaign to date... Through aggressive Strategic Communications, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi now represents: Terrorism in Iraq/Foreign Fighters in Iraq/ Suffering of Iraqi People (Infrastructure Attacks)/ Denial of Iraqi Aspirations." (Military plays up role of Zarqawi: Jordanian painted as foreign threat to Iraq's stability, Thomas E Ricks, The Washington Post, 10/4/06)
Hm... has PSYOPs now come to 'Your' ABC?
[* On SQ see A tale of two Palestinians, Jerry Gordon, frontpagemag.com, 14/9/05]
"Increasingly, Christians are feeling under siege in the territory they've called home for centuries, including the Holy Land - many are fleeing the region for good as they fear for their safety." (21/12/10)
From? "From Egypt to Iraq, they were the victims of violent attacks by Muslim extremists."
Ah yes, Muslim extremists. Egypt to Iraq. Wall-to-wall. And that includes the Occupied Palestinian Territories:
"BEN KNIGHT, REPORTER:... The Holy Land is watching its Christian population disappear."
"FATHER RAFIK KHOURY:.. I cannot imagine the Holy Land without Christians."
"SAMIR QUMSIEH*, CHRISTIAN BROADCASTER: I really fear that the Church of the Nativity and the Holy Sepulchre will be turned into museums."
Yikes! OK, so whether it's Egypt, Iraq or the OPT, your Muslim extremists have your (Arab) Christians on the run.
But wait, what's Father Khoury saying now? "[My congregations] say, Well we lived in that situation, OK for us, but for our children we would like to prepare a better future... That is why they leave."
OK for us? The Muslim knife's up against the Christian jugular, but it's... OK for us? What the... ?
And what's this? "PROFESSOR NABIB GHAYIT: Well they're cowards... you have to sacrifice in order to live, you know."
Cowards? What can he mean? Ben? Ben...?
Ah, but Knight's on a roll... on the Muslim track: "But the danger is real. In 2007, Christian pastor Rami Ayyad was murdered in Gaza. No one was ever charged. His family believes there was never any real investigation." Yep, Muslim extremists alright. Who else could it be?
"But it's not just violence," he presses on, "Some Christians say their Muslim neighbours are taking the land out from under them. SAMIR QUMSIEH: They take it by force, by forgery, by many ways and because many Bethlehem people are emigrating, their lands are done."
Funny that. Knight's been ABC TV's Middle East correspondent for years now, but we haven't heard a squeak from him about Israel's demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem (up 45% this year with 396 buildings razed compared with 275 last year), throwing 561 Palestinians, including 280 children, onto the street. "Out of the 250,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem... 60,000 are at risk of having their homes demolished by the Israeli authorities," claims UNRWA (UN agency condemns Arab home demolitions in Jerusalem, BBC News, 23/12/10), but hey, that hardly fits with Knight's Head for the hills! The Muslims are coming! agenda.
Samir Qumsieh tells us that he's "very angry with the Christian world." But not, you'll notice with Israel! Unless, of course, Knight's edited that bit out. Ditto for Father Khoury who laments that "They are forgetting their own roots to help others who have roots in the Holy Land."
Knight then introduces us to the kind of Christians Samir Qumsieh and Father Khoury are presumably angry with: "BRUCE GARBUTT, INTL CHRISTIAN EMBASSY OF JERUSALEM: We come as friends of Israel because Israel is God's chosen people, chosen for a purpose and not because they're different, not because they're better, chosen for a purpose and that's to bring salvation to the world. BEN KNIGHT: This is a messianic view of Christianity that believes when the Jews return to the land of Israel, the temple can be rebuilt and the final day of judgment will arrive. The Palestinian State doesn't fit into that plan. Glen and Marilyn Shaw here are doing missionary work in the West Bank and have seen the poverty there. BEN KNIGHT: You're here today with Israeli flags. GLEN SHAW: Yes. BEN KNIGHT: Who are obviously the occupying force - is that a conflict for you? GLEN SHAW: Not really. Not really. Because God commands us to bless the Jews. To bless Israel. Anybody who blesses Israel will get a blessing in return." Jesus, talk about giving Christians a bad name!
Now would it be too much to expect of a Middle East correspondent doing a piece largely on the plight of Palestinian Christians to ask the lovely Glen and his charming wife, Marilyn, whether they were aware just how pissed off the local Palestinian Christians were with their attitude? Apparently.
I suppose the closest Knight gets to the bleeding obviousness of It's the Occupation, stupid! is when he mentions a Vatican discussion paper on "the situation of Christians in the Middle East," which he says, "talks about some of the driving issues such as the Israeli occupation or the growing influence of extreme Islam right across the Middle East."
But you can't trust Knight as far as you can throw him. That bit about the growing influence of extreme Islam, that's just there to blur the bit about the Israeli occupation, the critical impact of which on Palestinian Christians he has no interest whatever in exploring. And what does that document actually says?: "The meeting document made clear that bishops in the Middle East believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be the root cause of several conflicts in the region. But it also singled out the growth of political Islam in countries like Egypt, and said the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict had been exploited by radical terrorism in recent years... It criticized the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, saying it had made life difficult both for daily life and religious life since access to holy places are restricted. Citing both the Israeli-Palestinian and Iraqi conflicts, it said: 'The solution to conflicts rests in the hands of the stronger country in its occupying and inflicting wars on another country." (Vatican memo: Mideast conflict driving Christians out of region, Haaretz/ AP, 19/10/10)
IOW, political Islam (or as Knight has it, Islamic extremism) is a response to the USraeli occupation of Arab lands, the driving issue behind the emigration of Arab Christians from the Middle East.
Knight's fleeting reference to the Israeli occupation is soon overtaken by Samir Qumsieh muttering darkly about a "Muslim state" in the West Bank and Knight proclaiming darkly that "In November, Al-Qaeda in Iraq declared open season on all Christians. After a siege at a Baghdad church ended in the deaths of more than 50 people, these Iraqi Christians fled to the relative safety of Jordan. But they're not staying there. They're looking for visas to Canada, the US and Australia. Yet another Christian community has decided it's time to leave the Middle East for good and they won't be the last."
Ooo... Al-Qaeda in Iraq? Is this the same Al-Qaeda in Iraq that used to be led by the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who became the subject of a US military propaganda campaign a few years back? "The Zarqawi PSYOP program," boasted one of its operatives, "is the most successful information campaign to date... Through aggressive Strategic Communications, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi now represents: Terrorism in Iraq/Foreign Fighters in Iraq/ Suffering of Iraqi People (Infrastructure Attacks)/ Denial of Iraqi Aspirations." (Military plays up role of Zarqawi: Jordanian painted as foreign threat to Iraq's stability, Thomas E Ricks, The Washington Post, 10/4/06)
Hm... has PSYOPs now come to 'Your' ABC?
[* On SQ see A tale of two Palestinians, Jerry Gordon, frontpagemag.com, 14/9/05]
Friday, December 24, 2010
Ending a 'Diaspora'
"A State of seven hundred, eight hundred thousand Jews cannot be the climax of a vigil kept unbroken through generations and down the patient centuries... No! So empty a State would be little justified, for it would not change the destiny of Jewry, or fulfill our historic covenant. The duty of the State is to end Galut [exile of the Jews] at last. Perhaps our generation will not live to see a homecoming from the New World, or from Russia in the Old World, but, when the war is over and the State made strong, what let or hindrance will deny us early sight of the ending of the Diaspora in Moslem lands of North Africa and the Middle East, and in Western Europe no less!"
David Ben Gurion, 13/8/48 (Cited in his book, Rebirth & Destiny of Israel, 1954, pp 276-277)
Could Nassir Sharhoom be onto something here?: "A new wave of Iraqi Christians has fled to northern Iraq or abroad amid a campaign of violence against them and growing fear that the country's security forces are unable or, more ominously, unwilling to protect them. The flight - involving thousands of residents from Baghdad and Mosul, in particular - followed an October 31 siege at a church in Baghdad that killed 51 worshippers and two priests and a subsequent series of bombings and assassinations singling out Christians... Those who fled the latest violence - many in a panicked rush, with only the possessions they could pack in cars - warned the new violence presages the demise of the faith in Iraq. Several evoked the mass departure of Iraq's Jews after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. 'It's exactly what happened to the Jews', said Nassir Sharhoom, 47, who fled last month to the Kurdish capital, Erbil, with his family from Dora, a once-mixed neighbourhood in Baghdad. 'They want us all to go'." (Iraqi Christians flee violence, New York Times/ Sydney Morning Herald, 18/12/10)
If Nassir's correct, and what is happening to Iraqi Christians is exactly what happened to Iraqi Jews after 1948, then it's Zionist operatives who are behind this current exodus.
So what exactly happened to Iraqi Jews in the years immediately following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948? The incredible story of the dark force responsible for ending, to use Ben-Gurion's euphemism for 'uprooting', Iraqi Jewry is told by British historian David Hirst in his first-rate history of the Palestine problem, The Gun & the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East (1977). I present it here in abridged form:
"It was the last day of Passover, April 1950. In Baghdad, the Jews had spent it strolling along the banks of the Tigris in celebration of the Sea Song. This was an old custom of the oldest Jewish community in the world; the 130,000 Jews of Iraq attributed their origins to Nebuchadnezzar, the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile. A good 50,000 of them thronged the esplanade. By nine o'clock in the evening the crowds were thinning out. But on Abu Nawwas street young Jewish intellectuals were still gathered in the Dar al-Beida coffee-shop.
"Suddenly, the convivial atmosphere was shattered by an explosion. A small bomb, hurled from a passing car, had gone off on the pavement just outside. By chance no one was hurt. But the incident shook the Jewish community. They were convinced that Iraqi extremists wanted to kill them. The fainter-hearted began to murmur 'it is better to go to Israel'. The next day there was a rush to the offices where Jews wishing to renounce their Iraqi citizenship had to present themselves for registration. Their right to emigrate had been officially acknowledged by the government on the feast of Purim a month before. Its object was to prevent emigration by illegal means... In all, about 10,000 Jews signed up to leave after the bomb; the big Ezra Daud synagogue had to be set aside as a registration office... The panic did not last very long, however, and registration tapered off...
"Then there was another explosion. This time it was at the US Information Centre, where many young Jews used to come and read. Again the theory was that an extremist Iraqi organization had planted the bomb, which only by chance failed to hurt anyone. Once again, therefore, there was a rush on the Ezra Daud synagogue; only this time the panic - and the number of would-be emigrants - was less than before. The year ended, and March 1951, the time-limit set for the renunciation of citizenship, was approaching.
"The third time there were victims. It happened outside the Mas'uda Shemtov synagogue... That day in January the synagogue was full of Kurdish Jews from the northern city of Suleimaniyyah. Outside a Jewish boy was distributing sweetmeats to curious onlookers. When the bomb went off he was killed instantly and a man standing behind him was badly wounded in the eyes.
"And this time there was no longer any doubt in Jews' minds: an anti-Jewish organization was plotting against them. Better to leave Iraq while there was still time. The queues lengthened outside the Ezra Daud synagogue... A few days later the Iraqi parliament passed a law confiscating the property of all Jews who renounced their citizenship... The planes started arriving at a rate of 3 or 4 a day. At first the emigrants were flown to Nicosia accompanied by an Iraqi police officer. But after a while even that make-believe was dropped and they went directly to Israel's Lydda airport - the police officer returning alone in the empty plane. Before long all that was left of the 130,000, abandoning home, property and an ancient heritage, was a mere 5,000 souls.
"It was not long before a bombshell of a different kind hit the pathetic remnants of Iraqi Jewry. They learned that the 3 explosions were the work not of Arab extremists, but of the very people who sought to rescue them; of a clandestine organization called 'The Movement', whose leader, 'commander of the Jewish ghettoes [!] in Iraq', had received this letter from Yigal Allon, chief of the Palmach commandos, and subsequently Foreign Minister of Israel: 'Ramadan my brother... I was very satisfied in learning that you have succeeded in starting a group and that we were able to transfer at least some of the weapons intended for you. It is depressing to think that Jews may once again be slaughtered, our girls raped, that our nation's honour may again be smirched... should disturbances break out, you will be able to enlarge the choice of defenders and co-opt Jews who have as yet not been organized as members of the Underground. But be warned lest you do this prematurely, thereby endangering the security of your units which are, in fact, the only defence against a terrible pogrom'.
"The astonishing truth - that the bombs which terrorized the Jewish community had been Zionist bombs - was revealed when, in the summer of 1950, an elegantly dressed man entered Uruzdi Beg, the largest general store in Baghdad. One of the salesmen, a Palestinian refugee, turned white when he saw him. He left the counter and ran out into the street, where he told two policemen: 'I recognize the face of an Israeli'. He had been a coffee-boy in Acre, and he knew Yehudah Tajjar from there. Arrested, Tajjar confessed that he was indeed an Israeli, but explained that he had come to Baghdad to marry an Iraqi Jewish girl. His revelations led to more arrests, some 15 in all. Shalom Salih, a youngster in charge of Haganah arms caches, broke down during interrogation and took the police from synagogue to synagogue, showing them where the weapons, smuggled in since World War II, were hidden. During the trial, the prosecution charged that the accused were members of the Zionist underground. Their primary aim - to which the throwing of the three bombs had so devastatingly contributed - was to frighten the Jews into emigrating as soon as possible. Two were sentenced to death, the rest to long prison terms.
"It was Tajjar himself who first broke Jewish silence about this affair. Sentenced by the Baghdad court to life imprisonment, he was released after ten years and found his way to Israel. On 29 May 1966 the campaigning weekly magazine Ha'olam Hazeh published an account of the emigration of Iraqi Jews based on Tajjar's testimony. Then on 9 November 1972, the Black Panther, militant voice of Israel's Oriental Jews, published the full story...
"When Ben-Gurion made his impassioned pleas for immigrants to people of the new-born state of Israel, he was addressing European Jews (from both the New and the Old Worlds) in particular. Not only had European jury founded Zionism, it was the main source of that high- quality manpower, armed with the technical skills, the social and cultural attitudes which Israel needed. But with the Holocaust over, the source was tending to dry up. So the Zionists decided that 'Oriental' Jewry must be 'ingathered' as well. It is often forgotten that the safeguard clause of the Balfour Declaration - 'it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the exisiting non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in other countries - was designed to cover Diaspora Jews as well as native Arabs. But the uprooting of a million 'Oriental' Jews showed that, for the Zionists, it was a clause to be ignored in both its parts. Everywhere they applied the same essential techniques, but nowhere perhaps, with such thoroughness as they did in Iraq. 'Cruel Zionism', someone called it." (pp 155-160)
David Ben Gurion, 13/8/48 (Cited in his book, Rebirth & Destiny of Israel, 1954, pp 276-277)
Could Nassir Sharhoom be onto something here?: "A new wave of Iraqi Christians has fled to northern Iraq or abroad amid a campaign of violence against them and growing fear that the country's security forces are unable or, more ominously, unwilling to protect them. The flight - involving thousands of residents from Baghdad and Mosul, in particular - followed an October 31 siege at a church in Baghdad that killed 51 worshippers and two priests and a subsequent series of bombings and assassinations singling out Christians... Those who fled the latest violence - many in a panicked rush, with only the possessions they could pack in cars - warned the new violence presages the demise of the faith in Iraq. Several evoked the mass departure of Iraq's Jews after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. 'It's exactly what happened to the Jews', said Nassir Sharhoom, 47, who fled last month to the Kurdish capital, Erbil, with his family from Dora, a once-mixed neighbourhood in Baghdad. 'They want us all to go'." (Iraqi Christians flee violence, New York Times/ Sydney Morning Herald, 18/12/10)
If Nassir's correct, and what is happening to Iraqi Christians is exactly what happened to Iraqi Jews after 1948, then it's Zionist operatives who are behind this current exodus.
So what exactly happened to Iraqi Jews in the years immediately following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948? The incredible story of the dark force responsible for ending, to use Ben-Gurion's euphemism for 'uprooting', Iraqi Jewry is told by British historian David Hirst in his first-rate history of the Palestine problem, The Gun & the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East (1977). I present it here in abridged form:
"It was the last day of Passover, April 1950. In Baghdad, the Jews had spent it strolling along the banks of the Tigris in celebration of the Sea Song. This was an old custom of the oldest Jewish community in the world; the 130,000 Jews of Iraq attributed their origins to Nebuchadnezzar, the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile. A good 50,000 of them thronged the esplanade. By nine o'clock in the evening the crowds were thinning out. But on Abu Nawwas street young Jewish intellectuals were still gathered in the Dar al-Beida coffee-shop.
"Suddenly, the convivial atmosphere was shattered by an explosion. A small bomb, hurled from a passing car, had gone off on the pavement just outside. By chance no one was hurt. But the incident shook the Jewish community. They were convinced that Iraqi extremists wanted to kill them. The fainter-hearted began to murmur 'it is better to go to Israel'. The next day there was a rush to the offices where Jews wishing to renounce their Iraqi citizenship had to present themselves for registration. Their right to emigrate had been officially acknowledged by the government on the feast of Purim a month before. Its object was to prevent emigration by illegal means... In all, about 10,000 Jews signed up to leave after the bomb; the big Ezra Daud synagogue had to be set aside as a registration office... The panic did not last very long, however, and registration tapered off...
"Then there was another explosion. This time it was at the US Information Centre, where many young Jews used to come and read. Again the theory was that an extremist Iraqi organization had planted the bomb, which only by chance failed to hurt anyone. Once again, therefore, there was a rush on the Ezra Daud synagogue; only this time the panic - and the number of would-be emigrants - was less than before. The year ended, and March 1951, the time-limit set for the renunciation of citizenship, was approaching.
"The third time there were victims. It happened outside the Mas'uda Shemtov synagogue... That day in January the synagogue was full of Kurdish Jews from the northern city of Suleimaniyyah. Outside a Jewish boy was distributing sweetmeats to curious onlookers. When the bomb went off he was killed instantly and a man standing behind him was badly wounded in the eyes.
"And this time there was no longer any doubt in Jews' minds: an anti-Jewish organization was plotting against them. Better to leave Iraq while there was still time. The queues lengthened outside the Ezra Daud synagogue... A few days later the Iraqi parliament passed a law confiscating the property of all Jews who renounced their citizenship... The planes started arriving at a rate of 3 or 4 a day. At first the emigrants were flown to Nicosia accompanied by an Iraqi police officer. But after a while even that make-believe was dropped and they went directly to Israel's Lydda airport - the police officer returning alone in the empty plane. Before long all that was left of the 130,000, abandoning home, property and an ancient heritage, was a mere 5,000 souls.
"It was not long before a bombshell of a different kind hit the pathetic remnants of Iraqi Jewry. They learned that the 3 explosions were the work not of Arab extremists, but of the very people who sought to rescue them; of a clandestine organization called 'The Movement', whose leader, 'commander of the Jewish ghettoes [!] in Iraq', had received this letter from Yigal Allon, chief of the Palmach commandos, and subsequently Foreign Minister of Israel: 'Ramadan my brother... I was very satisfied in learning that you have succeeded in starting a group and that we were able to transfer at least some of the weapons intended for you. It is depressing to think that Jews may once again be slaughtered, our girls raped, that our nation's honour may again be smirched... should disturbances break out, you will be able to enlarge the choice of defenders and co-opt Jews who have as yet not been organized as members of the Underground. But be warned lest you do this prematurely, thereby endangering the security of your units which are, in fact, the only defence against a terrible pogrom'.
"The astonishing truth - that the bombs which terrorized the Jewish community had been Zionist bombs - was revealed when, in the summer of 1950, an elegantly dressed man entered Uruzdi Beg, the largest general store in Baghdad. One of the salesmen, a Palestinian refugee, turned white when he saw him. He left the counter and ran out into the street, where he told two policemen: 'I recognize the face of an Israeli'. He had been a coffee-boy in Acre, and he knew Yehudah Tajjar from there. Arrested, Tajjar confessed that he was indeed an Israeli, but explained that he had come to Baghdad to marry an Iraqi Jewish girl. His revelations led to more arrests, some 15 in all. Shalom Salih, a youngster in charge of Haganah arms caches, broke down during interrogation and took the police from synagogue to synagogue, showing them where the weapons, smuggled in since World War II, were hidden. During the trial, the prosecution charged that the accused were members of the Zionist underground. Their primary aim - to which the throwing of the three bombs had so devastatingly contributed - was to frighten the Jews into emigrating as soon as possible. Two were sentenced to death, the rest to long prison terms.
"It was Tajjar himself who first broke Jewish silence about this affair. Sentenced by the Baghdad court to life imprisonment, he was released after ten years and found his way to Israel. On 29 May 1966 the campaigning weekly magazine Ha'olam Hazeh published an account of the emigration of Iraqi Jews based on Tajjar's testimony. Then on 9 November 1972, the Black Panther, militant voice of Israel's Oriental Jews, published the full story...
"When Ben-Gurion made his impassioned pleas for immigrants to people of the new-born state of Israel, he was addressing European Jews (from both the New and the Old Worlds) in particular. Not only had European jury founded Zionism, it was the main source of that high- quality manpower, armed with the technical skills, the social and cultural attitudes which Israel needed. But with the Holocaust over, the source was tending to dry up. So the Zionists decided that 'Oriental' Jewry must be 'ingathered' as well. It is often forgotten that the safeguard clause of the Balfour Declaration - 'it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the exisiting non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in other countries - was designed to cover Diaspora Jews as well as native Arabs. But the uprooting of a million 'Oriental' Jews showed that, for the Zionists, it was a clause to be ignored in both its parts. Everywhere they applied the same essential techniques, but nowhere perhaps, with such thoroughness as they did in Iraq. 'Cruel Zionism', someone called it." (pp 155-160)
Thursday, December 23, 2010
The Company We Keep
On the subject of foreign minister Kevin Rudd's just concluded trip to Israel and the Middle East, the Sydney Morning Herald naively editorialised on 21 December that he had "not thrown Australia's diplomatic weight, for what it is worth, at the critical pressure points in the jammed machinery of the region's peace process," and suggested that his "public appearances were a feel-good profession of Australian support for Israel." (Mid-East peace: a time to speak) (See my last post for more on same.)
The key question of just why our political revellers... sorry, representatives - some 17 of them - were off partying hard in Israel did not occur to the editorialist, or, if it did, would no doubt have been dismissed with the thought, No, it's simply not worth the hassle going there.
Australia's callous indifference to Palestinian suffering and patently dysfunctional relationship with the Israeli apartheid state could, of course, have been predicted well in advance. All the editorialist needed to do was examine how and with whom we voted on the question of Palestine in the United Nations General Assembly last month (GA/11027), a matter for which Rudd and PM Gillard are currently and directly responsible, and which, incidentally, is part of a dismaying pattern unchanged since the Howard years.
By way of introduction, just to show you there was really nothing to frighten the horses in the 6 Palestine-related resolutions adopted, here are the first three paragraphs of the UN's 30 November press release on the subject:
"Convinced that a just, lasting and comprehensive settlement to the question of Palestine - the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict - was imperative for lasting Middle East peace, the GA today stressed the urgent need for sustained international involvement, including by the Middle East diplomatic Quartet, to support both parties in resuming stalled peace negotiations. That position was echoed in a broad-based resolution on the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine, adopted by a recorded vote of 165 in favour to 7 against (Australia, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and United States), with 4 abstentions (Cameroon, Canada, Cote d'Ivoire, Tonga)... The text was one of 6 adopted by recorded vote in a flurry of action that capped the Assembly's two-day discussion of that issue along with the broader quest for peace in the Middle East. By the terms of the text, the Assembly reaffirmed the illegality of Israeli actions intended to change the status of Jerusalem, and expressed deep concern at closures and severe restrictions on the movement of persons and goods, the establishment of checkpoints and the imposition of a permit regime throughout the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, which had created a humanitarian crisis. Reaffirming its commitment to the two-State solution of Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security within recognized borders, the Assembly also stressed the need for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem."
Now let's see how Australia voted on the other 5:
1) Draft resolution on the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People: 112 in favour; 9 against (Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, US); 54 abstentions
2) Draft resolution on the Division for Palestinian Rights of the Secretariat: 110 in favour; 9 against (Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, US); 56 abstentions
3) Draft resolution on the Special Information Programme on Palestine: 167 in favour; 8 against (Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, US); 2 abstentions
4) Draft resolution on Jerusalem: 166 in favour; 6 against (Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, US); 4 abstentions (Australia, Cameroon, Panama, Tonga)
5) Draft resolution on the Syrian Golan: 118 in favour; 7 against (Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, US; 52 abstentions (Australia...)
Australia's (and Canada's) vote in the GA acts as a vital diplomatic fig leaf covering the nakedness of Israel's pariah status on the world stage. Our very public proximity to this pariah's genitalia makes us a standing joke on the world stage.
And just to rub it in, here's how we've been voting since Rudd's visit (GA/11040, 20/12/10):
Draft resolution on the Oil Slick on Lebanese Shores*: 163 in favour; 8 against (Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, US)
[*"By another text, relating to the oil slick on Lebanese shores, the Assembly requested for the fifth consecutive year, that Israel expediently and adequately compensate Lebanon for the costs of repairing the environmental damage caused by the Israeli Air Force's destruction of oil storage tanks near the neighbouring country's El-Jiyeh electric power plant, and to do the same for Syria, the shores of which had been partially polluted." un.org]
Draft resolution on Permanent Sovereignty of the Palestinian People in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab Population in the Occupied Syrian Golan over their Natural Resources: 167 in favour; 8 against (Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, US)
Make no mistake, you become the company you keep.
The key question of just why our political revellers... sorry, representatives - some 17 of them - were off partying hard in Israel did not occur to the editorialist, or, if it did, would no doubt have been dismissed with the thought, No, it's simply not worth the hassle going there.
Australia's callous indifference to Palestinian suffering and patently dysfunctional relationship with the Israeli apartheid state could, of course, have been predicted well in advance. All the editorialist needed to do was examine how and with whom we voted on the question of Palestine in the United Nations General Assembly last month (GA/11027), a matter for which Rudd and PM Gillard are currently and directly responsible, and which, incidentally, is part of a dismaying pattern unchanged since the Howard years.
By way of introduction, just to show you there was really nothing to frighten the horses in the 6 Palestine-related resolutions adopted, here are the first three paragraphs of the UN's 30 November press release on the subject:
"Convinced that a just, lasting and comprehensive settlement to the question of Palestine - the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict - was imperative for lasting Middle East peace, the GA today stressed the urgent need for sustained international involvement, including by the Middle East diplomatic Quartet, to support both parties in resuming stalled peace negotiations. That position was echoed in a broad-based resolution on the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine, adopted by a recorded vote of 165 in favour to 7 against (Australia, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and United States), with 4 abstentions (Cameroon, Canada, Cote d'Ivoire, Tonga)... The text was one of 6 adopted by recorded vote in a flurry of action that capped the Assembly's two-day discussion of that issue along with the broader quest for peace in the Middle East. By the terms of the text, the Assembly reaffirmed the illegality of Israeli actions intended to change the status of Jerusalem, and expressed deep concern at closures and severe restrictions on the movement of persons and goods, the establishment of checkpoints and the imposition of a permit regime throughout the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, which had created a humanitarian crisis. Reaffirming its commitment to the two-State solution of Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security within recognized borders, the Assembly also stressed the need for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem."
Now let's see how Australia voted on the other 5:
1) Draft resolution on the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People: 112 in favour; 9 against (Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, US); 54 abstentions
2) Draft resolution on the Division for Palestinian Rights of the Secretariat: 110 in favour; 9 against (Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, US); 56 abstentions
3) Draft resolution on the Special Information Programme on Palestine: 167 in favour; 8 against (Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, US); 2 abstentions
4) Draft resolution on Jerusalem: 166 in favour; 6 against (Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, US); 4 abstentions (Australia, Cameroon, Panama, Tonga)
5) Draft resolution on the Syrian Golan: 118 in favour; 7 against (Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, US; 52 abstentions (Australia...)
Australia's (and Canada's) vote in the GA acts as a vital diplomatic fig leaf covering the nakedness of Israel's pariah status on the world stage. Our very public proximity to this pariah's genitalia makes us a standing joke on the world stage.
And just to rub it in, here's how we've been voting since Rudd's visit (GA/11040, 20/12/10):
Draft resolution on the Oil Slick on Lebanese Shores*: 163 in favour; 8 against (Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, US)
[*"By another text, relating to the oil slick on Lebanese shores, the Assembly requested for the fifth consecutive year, that Israel expediently and adequately compensate Lebanon for the costs of repairing the environmental damage caused by the Israeli Air Force's destruction of oil storage tanks near the neighbouring country's El-Jiyeh electric power plant, and to do the same for Syria, the shores of which had been partially polluted." un.org]
Draft resolution on Permanent Sovereignty of the Palestinian People in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab Population in the Occupied Syrian Golan over their Natural Resources: 167 in favour; 8 against (Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, US)
Make no mistake, you become the company you keep.
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