The attacks on Greens senator Lee Rhiannon, the only federal Greens politician with the guts to stand up for Palestinian rights, continue:
"The government was yesterday forced into an embarrassing retreat after voting down an opposition motion condemning the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement to protect the Greens. Labor joined with the Greens in the Senate to oppose a motion by NSW Liberal Arthur Sinodinos noting comments by NSW Green Lee Rhiannon that her party lost votes in inner-Sydney Marrickville in Saturday's council elections because of its support for the BDS movement*, which equates Israel with apartheid-era South Africa**. The motion noted that Marrickville Greens candidates had continued to offer support for BDS and called on the NSW party to explicitly reject any policy of BDS." (Labor has second thoughts after saving allies in BDS motion, Christian Kerr, 13/9/12)
[*I'm aware of no such comments. **This is an embroidery by Christian Kerr. Sinodinos' motion (based on Imre Salusinszky's attack on the Greens in the Australian of September 7 - See my post of the same date, No Thanks, I'm Choosy Who I Talk To) made no mention of apartheid.]
Sinodinos and his fellow Liberals, of course, get a real kick out of playing games like this. This is because they know they can exploit Greens leader Christine Milne's cowardly failure to put principle first in this matter. Thus we get:
"Greens leader Christine Milne attacked the motion, saying supporting BDS was not NSW nor Australian Greens policy." (ibid)
(Typically, the Australian has omitted the only fighting words in Milne's response: "... for the benefit of Senator Sinodinos and the Australian.")
The question arises: would Sinodinos (or any other of his mob) have bothered to move such a motion if he'd known that Milne would reply confidently and unapologetically thus:
BDS? Yes, as a party of unswerving principle, standing for a just peace in the Middle East, the Greens are committed to it 100%. As you should know, the BDS call is for Israel to 1) end its occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands [occupied in 1967] and dismantle the wall; 2) recognise the fundamental rights of the Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and 3) respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties, as stipulated in UN resolution 194. Principle mandates support for all 3 demands, and BDS is simply a strategy that enables people of conscience outside occupied Palestine to exert pressure on the Israelis to comply.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Reality Overboard in the NSW Knesset?
On June 12, I posted Goings On in the NSW Knesset, in which I reported that NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell announced at an Israel Independence Day function that he would be establishing a parliamentary committee "to examine how the government can strengthen racial vilification laws in NSW." I went on to speculate that he could actually be moving to criminalise criticism of Israel by defining it as anti-Semitism.
If this sounds a little far-fetched, allow me to draw your attention to Resolution HR 35: 'Relative to anti-Semitism', passed just last month by a vote of 66 to 80 in the California State Assembly, the lower house of the state legislature. HR 35 defines not only the daubing of swastikas and Holocaust denial as anti-Semitism, but the following:
* "language or behavior [that] demonizes and delegitimizes Israel;"
* "speakers, films, and exhibits" that indicate that "Israel is guilty of heinous crimes against humanity such as ethnic cleansing and genocide;"
* describing Israel as a "racist" or "apartheid" state;"
* "student- and faculty-sponsored boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel;"
* "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination;"
* "applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation;" and
* "actions of student groups that encourage support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah."*
[*Taken from California passes resolution defining criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism, Tom Carter, globalresearch.ca, 4/9/12.]
This bill, of course, has absolutely nothing whatever to do with combating genuine manifestations of anti-Semitism, which would be quite rare in any case. Rather, it is aimed squarely at anti-Israel activism on college campuses, in particular such campaigns as Israeli Apartheid Week and the BDS strategy. As such it not only criminalises free speech but gives official sanction to the discredited and false narrative and ideology of political Zionism. It is akin, if you will, to the state coming to the rescue of the flat earth brigade, with the exception that the latter, if they still exist, are mere harmless eccentrics.
Certainly, if this kind of sleight of hand, or a variation thereof, is in fact what is being contemplated by the O'Farrell government (in collusion with the Labor opposition of course), it will be a black day indeed for free speech and open debate in this country. And, it should never be forgotten, if it ever finds its way into law, it will constitute a quantum leap in the already advanced Zionist process of gutting the term anti-Semitism of meaning by conflating it with principled opposition to Zionism and its crimes in Palestine.
If this sounds a little far-fetched, allow me to draw your attention to Resolution HR 35: 'Relative to anti-Semitism', passed just last month by a vote of 66 to 80 in the California State Assembly, the lower house of the state legislature. HR 35 defines not only the daubing of swastikas and Holocaust denial as anti-Semitism, but the following:
* "language or behavior [that] demonizes and delegitimizes Israel;"
* "speakers, films, and exhibits" that indicate that "Israel is guilty of heinous crimes against humanity such as ethnic cleansing and genocide;"
* describing Israel as a "racist" or "apartheid" state;"
* "student- and faculty-sponsored boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel;"
* "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination;"
* "applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation;" and
* "actions of student groups that encourage support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah."*
[*Taken from California passes resolution defining criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism, Tom Carter, globalresearch.ca, 4/9/12.]
This bill, of course, has absolutely nothing whatever to do with combating genuine manifestations of anti-Semitism, which would be quite rare in any case. Rather, it is aimed squarely at anti-Israel activism on college campuses, in particular such campaigns as Israeli Apartheid Week and the BDS strategy. As such it not only criminalises free speech but gives official sanction to the discredited and false narrative and ideology of political Zionism. It is akin, if you will, to the state coming to the rescue of the flat earth brigade, with the exception that the latter, if they still exist, are mere harmless eccentrics.
Certainly, if this kind of sleight of hand, or a variation thereof, is in fact what is being contemplated by the O'Farrell government (in collusion with the Labor opposition of course), it will be a black day indeed for free speech and open debate in this country. And, it should never be forgotten, if it ever finds its way into law, it will constitute a quantum leap in the already advanced Zionist process of gutting the term anti-Semitism of meaning by conflating it with principled opposition to Zionism and its crimes in Palestine.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Shill for Israel
Unfortunately, when readers of the Sydney Morning Herald read the following from its columnist Paul Sheehan...
"The Sydney bastions of the Greens where they had exercised influence were mostly disasters. In Leichhardt, the swing against the Greens was 11%. In Canterbury, it was 10%. In Marrickville, a council made notorious by Greens ideological excesses and obsessions about Israel, the Greens vote dropped 7.4% while the Liberals picked up an 11% swing." (Greens stay silent after abject elections, 13/9/12)
... they won't necessarily remember that Sheehan has twice (2006 & 2008) been on a NSW Jewish Board of Deputies/Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs junket to Israel.
But then we can hardly expect the Herald to remind us of all this in a clunky disclaimer at the foot of such columns as the above, now can we?
I have a simple answer. Why not just append the letters SFI - Shill for Israel?
"The Sydney bastions of the Greens where they had exercised influence were mostly disasters. In Leichhardt, the swing against the Greens was 11%. In Canterbury, it was 10%. In Marrickville, a council made notorious by Greens ideological excesses and obsessions about Israel, the Greens vote dropped 7.4% while the Liberals picked up an 11% swing." (Greens stay silent after abject elections, 13/9/12)
... they won't necessarily remember that Sheehan has twice (2006 & 2008) been on a NSW Jewish Board of Deputies/Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs junket to Israel.
But then we can hardly expect the Herald to remind us of all this in a clunky disclaimer at the foot of such columns as the above, now can we?
I have a simple answer. Why not just append the letters SFI - Shill for Israel?
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Greg & Tony Do Monash 1
From yesterday's Australian, classic Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, annotated:
"When Tony Abbott and I were involved in the Australian Union of Students, this was a very extreme organisation. It sent money compulsorily collected from students to support the Palestine Liberation Organisation which was then engaged in acts of murderous terrorism. It had a policy that all men were complicit in the crime of rape. And it defined men as being males over the age of 7. So that was it. Turn 8 and you're a rapist.
"In 1977, Abbott and I drove down from Sydney to Melbourne to attend an AUS conference at Monash University. The AUS conference was extremely hostile for two modestly conservative boys like Abbott and me [who seem to have had a particularly hard time coming to grips with the phenomenon of lesbianism]. The stench of marijuana lay heavy in the air, and every communist and Trotskyist sub-group had assembled, it seemed, its entire national membership. We found the atmosphere of the conference so uncongenial, and so threatening, that we went across the road and asked the Catholic college if we could stay there for the duration of the conference.
"No doubt the silliest thing we did at the conference was to attend a Palestinian film night. Because AUS was spending our money, we wanted to assert, non-violently, our right to be there. So we heckled the film a bit. [That these boofheads might actually have learnt something from watching the films obviously did not occur to them.] Although we were outnumbered at least 10 to one, and new reinforcements from other hard-left groups soon turned up, the film was stopped and we were told we had to leave. We were making the point that we shouldn't have to leave because the evening was being funded by our compulsorily collected student union dues. One woman from the far Left came up behind Abbott, took off her wooden clog and whacked him hard over the back of the head. I'll never forget Abbott's response. He turned round, paused and said: 'Madame, if you were not a lady, I'd be tempted to strike you back.' Then we left.
"This incident came back to my mind as I read the scabrous propaganda of David Marr in his Quarterly Essay, Political Animal, the making of Tony Abbott. Marr claims that in 1977, when Abbott was defeated for the presidency of the Student Representative Council by Barbara Ramjan, he went up to her, came within an inch of her nose and punched both sides of the wall beside her as an act of intimidation. Marr records Abbott's denial of this but says he, Marr, believes the incident took place as described by Ramjan. Marr is wrong. And this mistake reflects his overall sloppiness as a journalist, failure as a historian and distorting bias as a polemicist. [The pot calls the kettle black.]
"Yesterday I spoke to Jeremy Jones, who was elected to the SRC on the same night Abbott lost that election to Ramjan. Jones was a member of the Labor Party and led a Labor ticket in student elections. He was no ally of Abbott. He went on to occupy very distinguished communal leadership positions within the Jewish community. He is a leader in particular of inter-faith dialogue and was very reluctant to let me quote him because he doesn't want remotely to enter partisan politics. But he knew every in and out of student politics at that time. He knew every accusation that each side made against the other. He is certain he would have heard of any such alleged incident by Abbott and he is also certain he never heard any such allegation made. In other words, he is certain it didn't happen. Abbott flatly denies it and says: 'It never happened.' [On Jones, see my 28/11/11 post My Brush With Superman.]
"Abbott was my best friend at that time. We talked over everything. The meaning of life, the purpose of politics, who'd win the rugby league grand final, what girls we planned to ask out, petty squabbles we might have had with our parents. I remember the night in question quite well. No such incident was ever discussed by Abbott or by anyone else in his circle. It is utterly inconceivable. Marr could have found this out if he were a competent historian. But Marr is instead what he accuses Abbott of being, an undergraduate pamphleteer desperately seeking to distort any bit of so-called evidence he can find to support a pre-existing narrative he has all mapped out. [For Sheridan's pre-existing narrative of the Middle East conflict see my series of posts, West's Wild East (18/8/09 - 26/8/09).]
"I feel a bit like Jones: disinclined to enter the controversy because it makes me look too partisan. [Greg Sheridan too partisan? Never!] In my time in student politics there was quite a bit of real violence. Michael Danby, now the federal Labor member for Melbourne Ports and the chairman of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, was severely bashed by a group of Maoist thugs. Peter Costello had his arm broken on a serious assault by a leftist claiming allegiance to the anarchist cause. At the AUS conference I attended there was a scuffle at one point and the leader of the Maoist group screamed at one of our friends: 'There's a bullet with your name on it. You'll bleed tonight.'
"I knew Abbott very well and he was never, ever, violent. He was a good bloke then, he's a good bloke now. Marr's dishonest and obsessive agit-prop is a fraudulent caricature that manages to reverse reality at almost every point. But I'll let Marr in on a little secret. There was one reason the Left really hated Abbott. It was because he won." (The Tony that I - and others - remember was never violent at uni, 12/9/12)
And here's Marr's Quarterly Essay account of Tony (alas, Sancho doesn't get a mention) doing Monash:
"After a summer in Western Australia spent surfing, carousing in pubs and selling pots door to door, Abbott turned up at Monash University in January 1977 for his first AUS conference determined to fight the good fight and make a name for himself. In both he exceeded his own high expectations. A wilderness of factions were in play, factions often controlled, as the [Bob Santamaria's] Democratic Clubs were, from behind the university gates. The right's determination to control or crush AUS had been revitalised by the students' decision a few years earlier to support the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The anti-PLO campaign brought together the Liberals, the right of the Labor Party, the National Union of Jewish Students and Santamaria's people. It proved to be the training ground of a new cohort of leaders on both sides of politics: Abbott, Peter Costello, Eric Abetz, Michael Yabsley, Michael Danby, Michael Kroger, Nick Sherry and, a little later, Julia Gillard*. Abbott was asked by the Weekend Australian to write an account of the conference that appeared under a banner headline: 'I ACCUSE Phoney student thugs/ Use spit and abuse/ To create terror... by Tony Abbott' In his eyes, this 'tragic farce' was a time of scuffles in corridors, angry confrontation, factional bastardry - always of the left - fear, provocation, systemic danger and facile causes in which nothing of any consequence was achieved. 'Generally the air was heavy with the not-unpleasant odour of marijuana. The conference hall was gaily decked with gaudy Maoist flags and communist slogans. Some delegates wore badges cheerfully urging the 'smashing' of Fraser and the shooting of Kerr. Books on sale covered everything one wanted to know about abortion, street fighting, subverting universities, indoctrinating the young, and homosexuality.' These thousands of words - ending with a pure Santamaria flourish about the great risks these influences posed to 'those who will eventually lead society' - were Abbott's debut in mainstream journalism. Whether his account was fair or wildly exaggerated is by now impossible to judge." (pp 12-13)
[*On Gillard and AUS see my 25/7/10 post Me, A Zionist? How Very Dare You!]
"When Tony Abbott and I were involved in the Australian Union of Students, this was a very extreme organisation. It sent money compulsorily collected from students to support the Palestine Liberation Organisation which was then engaged in acts of murderous terrorism. It had a policy that all men were complicit in the crime of rape. And it defined men as being males over the age of 7. So that was it. Turn 8 and you're a rapist.
"In 1977, Abbott and I drove down from Sydney to Melbourne to attend an AUS conference at Monash University. The AUS conference was extremely hostile for two modestly conservative boys like Abbott and me [who seem to have had a particularly hard time coming to grips with the phenomenon of lesbianism]. The stench of marijuana lay heavy in the air, and every communist and Trotskyist sub-group had assembled, it seemed, its entire national membership. We found the atmosphere of the conference so uncongenial, and so threatening, that we went across the road and asked the Catholic college if we could stay there for the duration of the conference.
"No doubt the silliest thing we did at the conference was to attend a Palestinian film night. Because AUS was spending our money, we wanted to assert, non-violently, our right to be there. So we heckled the film a bit. [That these boofheads might actually have learnt something from watching the films obviously did not occur to them.] Although we were outnumbered at least 10 to one, and new reinforcements from other hard-left groups soon turned up, the film was stopped and we were told we had to leave. We were making the point that we shouldn't have to leave because the evening was being funded by our compulsorily collected student union dues. One woman from the far Left came up behind Abbott, took off her wooden clog and whacked him hard over the back of the head. I'll never forget Abbott's response. He turned round, paused and said: 'Madame, if you were not a lady, I'd be tempted to strike you back.' Then we left.
"This incident came back to my mind as I read the scabrous propaganda of David Marr in his Quarterly Essay, Political Animal, the making of Tony Abbott. Marr claims that in 1977, when Abbott was defeated for the presidency of the Student Representative Council by Barbara Ramjan, he went up to her, came within an inch of her nose and punched both sides of the wall beside her as an act of intimidation. Marr records Abbott's denial of this but says he, Marr, believes the incident took place as described by Ramjan. Marr is wrong. And this mistake reflects his overall sloppiness as a journalist, failure as a historian and distorting bias as a polemicist. [The pot calls the kettle black.]
"Yesterday I spoke to Jeremy Jones, who was elected to the SRC on the same night Abbott lost that election to Ramjan. Jones was a member of the Labor Party and led a Labor ticket in student elections. He was no ally of Abbott. He went on to occupy very distinguished communal leadership positions within the Jewish community. He is a leader in particular of inter-faith dialogue and was very reluctant to let me quote him because he doesn't want remotely to enter partisan politics. But he knew every in and out of student politics at that time. He knew every accusation that each side made against the other. He is certain he would have heard of any such alleged incident by Abbott and he is also certain he never heard any such allegation made. In other words, he is certain it didn't happen. Abbott flatly denies it and says: 'It never happened.' [On Jones, see my 28/11/11 post My Brush With Superman.]
"Abbott was my best friend at that time. We talked over everything. The meaning of life, the purpose of politics, who'd win the rugby league grand final, what girls we planned to ask out, petty squabbles we might have had with our parents. I remember the night in question quite well. No such incident was ever discussed by Abbott or by anyone else in his circle. It is utterly inconceivable. Marr could have found this out if he were a competent historian. But Marr is instead what he accuses Abbott of being, an undergraduate pamphleteer desperately seeking to distort any bit of so-called evidence he can find to support a pre-existing narrative he has all mapped out. [For Sheridan's pre-existing narrative of the Middle East conflict see my series of posts, West's Wild East (18/8/09 - 26/8/09).]
"I feel a bit like Jones: disinclined to enter the controversy because it makes me look too partisan. [Greg Sheridan too partisan? Never!] In my time in student politics there was quite a bit of real violence. Michael Danby, now the federal Labor member for Melbourne Ports and the chairman of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, was severely bashed by a group of Maoist thugs. Peter Costello had his arm broken on a serious assault by a leftist claiming allegiance to the anarchist cause. At the AUS conference I attended there was a scuffle at one point and the leader of the Maoist group screamed at one of our friends: 'There's a bullet with your name on it. You'll bleed tonight.'
"I knew Abbott very well and he was never, ever, violent. He was a good bloke then, he's a good bloke now. Marr's dishonest and obsessive agit-prop is a fraudulent caricature that manages to reverse reality at almost every point. But I'll let Marr in on a little secret. There was one reason the Left really hated Abbott. It was because he won." (The Tony that I - and others - remember was never violent at uni, 12/9/12)
And here's Marr's Quarterly Essay account of Tony (alas, Sancho doesn't get a mention) doing Monash:
"After a summer in Western Australia spent surfing, carousing in pubs and selling pots door to door, Abbott turned up at Monash University in January 1977 for his first AUS conference determined to fight the good fight and make a name for himself. In both he exceeded his own high expectations. A wilderness of factions were in play, factions often controlled, as the [Bob Santamaria's] Democratic Clubs were, from behind the university gates. The right's determination to control or crush AUS had been revitalised by the students' decision a few years earlier to support the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The anti-PLO campaign brought together the Liberals, the right of the Labor Party, the National Union of Jewish Students and Santamaria's people. It proved to be the training ground of a new cohort of leaders on both sides of politics: Abbott, Peter Costello, Eric Abetz, Michael Yabsley, Michael Danby, Michael Kroger, Nick Sherry and, a little later, Julia Gillard*. Abbott was asked by the Weekend Australian to write an account of the conference that appeared under a banner headline: 'I ACCUSE Phoney student thugs/ Use spit and abuse/ To create terror... by Tony Abbott' In his eyes, this 'tragic farce' was a time of scuffles in corridors, angry confrontation, factional bastardry - always of the left - fear, provocation, systemic danger and facile causes in which nothing of any consequence was achieved. 'Generally the air was heavy with the not-unpleasant odour of marijuana. The conference hall was gaily decked with gaudy Maoist flags and communist slogans. Some delegates wore badges cheerfully urging the 'smashing' of Fraser and the shooting of Kerr. Books on sale covered everything one wanted to know about abortion, street fighting, subverting universities, indoctrinating the young, and homosexuality.' These thousands of words - ending with a pure Santamaria flourish about the great risks these influences posed to 'those who will eventually lead society' - were Abbott's debut in mainstream journalism. Whether his account was fair or wildly exaggerated is by now impossible to judge." (pp 12-13)
[*On Gillard and AUS see my 25/7/10 post Me, A Zionist? How Very Dare You!]
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Q&A, September 17
Q&A next Monday, the 17th is a must-view.
The advertised line up includes Ilan Pappe, Israeli historian and author of must-read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006); barrister Irving Wallach, a former head of the Revisionist Zionist youth movement Betar and the Zionist Youth Council of Australia; Greg Sheridan, The Australian's foreign editor and no stranger to MERC readers; Clover Moore, Lord Mayor of Sydney; and Robyn Davidson, an Australian author.
Considering that the first 3 speakers at least have an interest in the Middle East conflict in common, I can't really understand the inclusion of Moore and Davidson, neither of whom have an interest in the issue that I'm aware of. More relevant would have been at least one Palestinian Arab speaker and maybe anti-Zionist blogger and journalist, Antony Loewenstein, who has never appeared on Q&A, for reasons best known to its producers.
Noting Pappe's expertise on the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, I recall a May 2009 Q&A stoush between Guy Rundle and Sheridan. Rundle had cited another Palestinian Nakba scholar, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, and referred to "dozens of massacres of Palestinians in 1948." Sheridan, who probably wouldn't know Benny Morris from Betty Boop, responded: "all rubbish... just rubbish." (See my 9/5/09 post Sheridan: Nakba Denier)
Sheridan has also ludicrously averred in an opinion piece that there has been only "one authentic Jewish Israeli terrorist, Baruch Goldstein." (See my 30/7/11 post Leave Our Islamophobes Alone, OK?)
Someone out there might like to put questions directly to Sheridan about these utterly bizarre assertions. With Pappe at hand to set the historical record straight, I'm expecting Sheridan to emerge groggy and bloodied at best, if not KOed outright.
Just to give you a flavour of Pappe, here are two extracts from his autobiographical Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel (2010):
1) The Palestinian Nakba of 1948 in a nutshell:
"In February 1948, within a year of the British decision to leave Palestine, the Zionist leadership began ethnically cleansing it. Three months later, when the British left, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were already refugees, pressuring the Arab world to take action, which it did on 15 May 1948. But the limited number of troops it sent to Palestine were no match for the efficient Jewish forces and they were defeated. The ethnic cleansing continued and at the end of it almost a million Palestinians became refugees (half of Palestine's population) and with them disappeared half of the country's villages and towns, erased from the face of the earth by the Jewish forces." (p 187)
2) Pappe's journey out of the Zionist cult:
"The year 1982 was also when I began the journey described in this book during and after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that summer. The first turning point was an invitation by the Israeli Embassy in London to speak at a pro-Israel rally in the north of Britain. The spokesperson explained that the ambassador, Shlomo Argov, was critically ill from an assassination attempt and it would be too dangerous to send his deputy. It was not only the willingness to sacrifice me, should there be another terrorist attack, but the presumption I had no reservations about or objections to the invasion that served as a wake-up call. From then on, I embarked on a journey of no return. Powerful as the Zionist grip is on one's thoughts and life, as an Israeli Jew, once you have extracted yourself from its hold, you cannot understand how you could ever have been captivated by its lure, logic or vision. This book is a modest attempt to try to decipher the riddle of an ideology that was once seen by this author as the ultimate expression of pristine humanity, but when abandoned, as a racist and quite evil philosophy of morality and life. Yet the 'divorce' from Zionism is in no way a desire to sever links with what is a vital and vibrant society, in which I still have family and dear friends and about which I cherish many fond memories. But in order to preserve the positive side of Jewish life in Israel, I believe that not only would Palestinians fare better under almost any non-zionist regime, so would most Israeli Jews." (p x)
The advertised line up includes Ilan Pappe, Israeli historian and author of must-read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006); barrister Irving Wallach, a former head of the Revisionist Zionist youth movement Betar and the Zionist Youth Council of Australia; Greg Sheridan, The Australian's foreign editor and no stranger to MERC readers; Clover Moore, Lord Mayor of Sydney; and Robyn Davidson, an Australian author.
Considering that the first 3 speakers at least have an interest in the Middle East conflict in common, I can't really understand the inclusion of Moore and Davidson, neither of whom have an interest in the issue that I'm aware of. More relevant would have been at least one Palestinian Arab speaker and maybe anti-Zionist blogger and journalist, Antony Loewenstein, who has never appeared on Q&A, for reasons best known to its producers.
Noting Pappe's expertise on the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, I recall a May 2009 Q&A stoush between Guy Rundle and Sheridan. Rundle had cited another Palestinian Nakba scholar, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, and referred to "dozens of massacres of Palestinians in 1948." Sheridan, who probably wouldn't know Benny Morris from Betty Boop, responded: "all rubbish... just rubbish." (See my 9/5/09 post Sheridan: Nakba Denier)
Sheridan has also ludicrously averred in an opinion piece that there has been only "one authentic Jewish Israeli terrorist, Baruch Goldstein." (See my 30/7/11 post Leave Our Islamophobes Alone, OK?)
Someone out there might like to put questions directly to Sheridan about these utterly bizarre assertions. With Pappe at hand to set the historical record straight, I'm expecting Sheridan to emerge groggy and bloodied at best, if not KOed outright.
Just to give you a flavour of Pappe, here are two extracts from his autobiographical Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel (2010):
1) The Palestinian Nakba of 1948 in a nutshell:
"In February 1948, within a year of the British decision to leave Palestine, the Zionist leadership began ethnically cleansing it. Three months later, when the British left, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were already refugees, pressuring the Arab world to take action, which it did on 15 May 1948. But the limited number of troops it sent to Palestine were no match for the efficient Jewish forces and they were defeated. The ethnic cleansing continued and at the end of it almost a million Palestinians became refugees (half of Palestine's population) and with them disappeared half of the country's villages and towns, erased from the face of the earth by the Jewish forces." (p 187)
2) Pappe's journey out of the Zionist cult:
"The year 1982 was also when I began the journey described in this book during and after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that summer. The first turning point was an invitation by the Israeli Embassy in London to speak at a pro-Israel rally in the north of Britain. The spokesperson explained that the ambassador, Shlomo Argov, was critically ill from an assassination attempt and it would be too dangerous to send his deputy. It was not only the willingness to sacrifice me, should there be another terrorist attack, but the presumption I had no reservations about or objections to the invasion that served as a wake-up call. From then on, I embarked on a journey of no return. Powerful as the Zionist grip is on one's thoughts and life, as an Israeli Jew, once you have extracted yourself from its hold, you cannot understand how you could ever have been captivated by its lure, logic or vision. This book is a modest attempt to try to decipher the riddle of an ideology that was once seen by this author as the ultimate expression of pristine humanity, but when abandoned, as a racist and quite evil philosophy of morality and life. Yet the 'divorce' from Zionism is in no way a desire to sever links with what is a vital and vibrant society, in which I still have family and dear friends and about which I cherish many fond memories. But in order to preserve the positive side of Jewish life in Israel, I believe that not only would Palestinians fare better under almost any non-zionist regime, so would most Israeli Jews." (p x)
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Fairfax Press Peddles the Marrickville Myth
It began with speculation in the wake of last year's state election that the Greens' Fiona Byrne just missed out on the seat of Marrickville because of her support for BDS*.
This was fuelled by the loose talk of ex-Green Ian Cohen and then Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, and assiduously fanned by Murdoch's Australian: BDS is electoral poison. It became one of those memes known as 'received wisdom'.
And here it is again, in the immediate wake of the NSW local government elections, putting in an appearance in the Fairfax press:
"The result is likely to be interpreted as a backlash at the council's support of boycotts of Israeli business under the Greens and its focus on international relations." (Tide turns in era without Brown, Heath Aston, The Sun-Herald, 9/9/12)
"In some municipalities such as Leichhardt or Marrickville, where the Greens controlled the council, it might have been the anti-incumbency effect. It is tough keeping everyone happy with childcare centres, garbage collection and parking rules, especially if you are seen to be distracted by things such as the Palestinian cause or uranium exports." (Editorial: The voters are restless, 150 election results are telling us, Sydney Morning Herald, 10/9/12)
Apparently, we're supposed to believe that Marrickville voters in particular found BDS such a turn-off 18 months ago, when Labor pipped Ms Byrne by a mere 1.8%, that they maintained the rage right down to this Saturday when they took a baseball bat to the the Greens - even though the BDS banner was nowhere in view!
[*See my 4 A Myth Is Born posts 29/3/11 - 31/3/11.]
This was fuelled by the loose talk of ex-Green Ian Cohen and then Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, and assiduously fanned by Murdoch's Australian: BDS is electoral poison. It became one of those memes known as 'received wisdom'.
And here it is again, in the immediate wake of the NSW local government elections, putting in an appearance in the Fairfax press:
"The result is likely to be interpreted as a backlash at the council's support of boycotts of Israeli business under the Greens and its focus on international relations." (Tide turns in era without Brown, Heath Aston, The Sun-Herald, 9/9/12)
"In some municipalities such as Leichhardt or Marrickville, where the Greens controlled the council, it might have been the anti-incumbency effect. It is tough keeping everyone happy with childcare centres, garbage collection and parking rules, especially if you are seen to be distracted by things such as the Palestinian cause or uranium exports." (Editorial: The voters are restless, 150 election results are telling us, Sydney Morning Herald, 10/9/12)
Apparently, we're supposed to believe that Marrickville voters in particular found BDS such a turn-off 18 months ago, when Labor pipped Ms Byrne by a mere 1.8%, that they maintained the rage right down to this Saturday when they took a baseball bat to the the Greens - even though the BDS banner was nowhere in view!
[*See my 4 A Myth Is Born posts 29/3/11 - 31/3/11.]
Monday, September 10, 2012
Some Questions for Labor Voter, Kate Brettell
In the wake of the weekend's NSW local government elections, it was inevitable that Murdoch's Zio-conservative Australian would be pinning the blame for the swing against The Greens in Marrickville on their support last year for BDS.
Today's issue, for example, had this to say on page 1:
"Gillard government supporters attributed the result to the Greens' obstruction of the government's asylum-seeker changes and contentious local government policies such as a trade boycott of Israel... Mr Albanese, whose inner-western electorate of Grayndler has shown strong support for the Greens in recent years, said Labor had increased its vote by running a 'local affairs not foreign affairs' campaign. The campaign sought to highlight the Greens' interest in issues such as a boycott of Israel rather than policies that mattered more to local residents." (Labor steps up Greens attack, David Crowe)
A trade boycott? This is Marrickville Council, not a commercial entity. Local, not foreign affairs? Wherein lay the Greens' interest in foreign affairs this time around?
And this, the reason for my post, on page 4:
"Kate Brettell considers herself a long-time supporter of the Greens. But like many others across NSW she chose the council elections to lodge her displeasure with their 'airy-fairy' policies. Ms Brettell, a 34-year old community services worker, felt this time the Greens had failed to connect with local issues. 'I normally vote for the Greens so I was willing to listen, but they weren't really talking about concrete issues,' she said yesterday. In particular, Ms Brettell thought the move by Greens councillors last year to establish an embargo against Israel had pushed residents away. 'I think that really turned a lot of people off because it just isn't a local issue,' she said. 'Whether or not you agree with it is beside the point. It is not something I want my local council to be spending their time on. Their policies just seem a little bit airy-fairy.' For Ms Brettell, the local Labor candidate focused on local issues such as cleaning up the streets and improving traffic conditions. 'It was obvious they had been consulting,' she said." ('Their policies were a bit airy-fairy', Harry Edwards)
1) Kate Brettell, are you the same Kate Brettell mentioned in this AusAID reference to a Global Youth Peace Summit: "Youth ambassadors in Thailand... Kate Brettell... attended the last world youth peace summit (Asia-Pacific region) at the United Nations' regional headquarters in Bangkok," helping to "develop a regional vision and action plan for world peace" (Global Education, ausaid.gov.au)?
2) If so, did not that particular initiative strike you as a tad airy-fairy and altogether too non-local?
3) Why was your reported displeasure with Marrickville Council's airy-fairy support of BDS last year not assuaged when it ceased to be Marrickville Council policy early last year?
4) Seeing you voted Labor, do you consider that party's unequivocal support for the state of Israel - throwing birthday bashes for it in federal parliament, sending their troops, both federal and state, on junkets there, lining up with it against the rest of the world in UN forums, soliciting campaign funds from its wealthier supporters, hopping-to when its lobbyists snap their fingers, and tolerating members of its external intelligence arm flashing Australian passports when on the hunt - not only worse than airy-fairy but downright inimical to both the national interest and the maintenance of world peace? Is Israel really something you want your state and federal governments spending their time on?
5) Finally, have you ever watched that wonderful BBC comedy series The League of Gentlemen? I'm sure you'd very much enjoy Tubbs and Edward Tattsyrup with their signature refrain, This is a local shop for local people. There's nothing for you here. It's sooo you, Kate!
Today's issue, for example, had this to say on page 1:
"Gillard government supporters attributed the result to the Greens' obstruction of the government's asylum-seeker changes and contentious local government policies such as a trade boycott of Israel... Mr Albanese, whose inner-western electorate of Grayndler has shown strong support for the Greens in recent years, said Labor had increased its vote by running a 'local affairs not foreign affairs' campaign. The campaign sought to highlight the Greens' interest in issues such as a boycott of Israel rather than policies that mattered more to local residents." (Labor steps up Greens attack, David Crowe)
A trade boycott? This is Marrickville Council, not a commercial entity. Local, not foreign affairs? Wherein lay the Greens' interest in foreign affairs this time around?
And this, the reason for my post, on page 4:
"Kate Brettell considers herself a long-time supporter of the Greens. But like many others across NSW she chose the council elections to lodge her displeasure with their 'airy-fairy' policies. Ms Brettell, a 34-year old community services worker, felt this time the Greens had failed to connect with local issues. 'I normally vote for the Greens so I was willing to listen, but they weren't really talking about concrete issues,' she said yesterday. In particular, Ms Brettell thought the move by Greens councillors last year to establish an embargo against Israel had pushed residents away. 'I think that really turned a lot of people off because it just isn't a local issue,' she said. 'Whether or not you agree with it is beside the point. It is not something I want my local council to be spending their time on. Their policies just seem a little bit airy-fairy.' For Ms Brettell, the local Labor candidate focused on local issues such as cleaning up the streets and improving traffic conditions. 'It was obvious they had been consulting,' she said." ('Their policies were a bit airy-fairy', Harry Edwards)
1) Kate Brettell, are you the same Kate Brettell mentioned in this AusAID reference to a Global Youth Peace Summit: "Youth ambassadors in Thailand... Kate Brettell... attended the last world youth peace summit (Asia-Pacific region) at the United Nations' regional headquarters in Bangkok," helping to "develop a regional vision and action plan for world peace" (Global Education, ausaid.gov.au)?
2) If so, did not that particular initiative strike you as a tad airy-fairy and altogether too non-local?
3) Why was your reported displeasure with Marrickville Council's airy-fairy support of BDS last year not assuaged when it ceased to be Marrickville Council policy early last year?
4) Seeing you voted Labor, do you consider that party's unequivocal support for the state of Israel - throwing birthday bashes for it in federal parliament, sending their troops, both federal and state, on junkets there, lining up with it against the rest of the world in UN forums, soliciting campaign funds from its wealthier supporters, hopping-to when its lobbyists snap their fingers, and tolerating members of its external intelligence arm flashing Australian passports when on the hunt - not only worse than airy-fairy but downright inimical to both the national interest and the maintenance of world peace? Is Israel really something you want your state and federal governments spending their time on?
5) Finally, have you ever watched that wonderful BBC comedy series The League of Gentlemen? I'm sure you'd very much enjoy Tubbs and Edward Tattsyrup with their signature refrain, This is a local shop for local people. There's nothing for you here. It's sooo you, Kate!
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