"While not without fault, Israel has proven its long-term commitment to democracy and liberty and to improving the lives of all Israelis, whether Jewish or not." (Janet Albrechtsen, It is time for Middle East to police its own region, The Australian, 29/1/14)
Not!
Clearly, Planet Janet hasn't read Max Blumenthal's must-read Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel (2013):
"In the eyes of Palestinians, there are few symbols of Israel's occupation more recognizable than the Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer. Custom-fitted with explosive-resistant armor, the 49-ton tractor was the instrument responsible for Rachel Corrie's death and the demolition of more than 1500 civilian homes in Rafah between the years 2000 and 2005. Since the dawn of the occupation in 1967, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), the State of Israel has destroyed well over 26,000 Palestinian homes. Most of these demolitions occurred in and around occupied East Jerusalem and in the Gaza Strip, but also in places such as the Jenin Refugee Camp, where a drunken bulldozer pilot nicknamed 'Kurdi Bear' reduced densely populated neighborhoods to a canyon of doom, boasting that he 'left [Jenin's] residents with a football stadium so they could play.'
"As the state stepped up its campaign of 'Judaization' under the watch of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian neighborhoods in mixed Israeli cities were becoming acquainted with the US-manufactured Caterpillar-D9 as well. Fifteen minutes east of Tel Aviv, in the Lod Ghetto, where Palestinian citizens lived surrounded by lower-class Jewish communities, I visited a de facto refugee camp filled with the residents of an entire neighborhood that had been leveled to the ground the night before.
"On December 13, 2010, 17-year-old Hamza Abu Eid was taken out of class at his high school in Lod and summoned to the principal's office. 'The Israelis are destroying your house right now,' the principal told him. 'It is best that you remain here. The last thing we want is for you to have a confrontation with a police officer.'
"But Abu Eid could not stay. He rushed to his family's house, hoping to salvage whatever belongings he could before the bulldozers from the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) rumbled through. When he arrived it was too late. The bulldozers had destroyed virtually everything - all seven homes belonging to the Abu Eid family were reduced to rubble. A black-masked Israeli riot police officer grabbed Hamza, restraining him while the bulldozers finished their work and preventing him from attempting to save his belongings. Three refrigerators and a TV set were among the appliances that Hamza's family lost in the destruction.
"In the end, 74 people were left homeless - including 54 children - and were forced to sleep under the open sky during the coldest period of the year. No government social worker arrived with assistance, nor did the state offer any temporary aid. The families gathered whatever belongings they could, pitching tents like so many Palestinian refugees have done in the past, and placing a sign over their land plot. It read, 'Abu Eid Refugee Camp.'
"When I arrived at the encampment, the area looked like Rafah after Israeli operations during the Second Intifada, or the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza after Operation Cast Lead. Unlike these occupied areas, however, the Abu Eid camp was located only 15 kilometers from Tel Aviv in the Abu Toq neighborhood of Lod. All of Lod's Palestinian residents are citizens of Israel, but they are treated by the state like foreign aliens, or worse, as an existential threat to the survival of Zionism.
"For years, the Abu Eid family applied for permits to allow them to renovate their homes to accommodate their growing family. But the state zoned their neighborhood as agricultural land and refused their requests (applications for renovation and building permits are almost always denied to the Arabs inside Israel). Finally, the state ordered them to seek residency elsewhere because their homes were slated for demolition.
"Directly beside the Abu Eid refugee camp, building has begun on a yeshiva directed by an Orthodox rabbi from the United States named Yaakov Saban. And plans were authorized to build a road directly through the center of the neighborhood. Pressure on the Palestinian Israelis of Lod to leave intensified day by day, thanks to the far-right takeover of the city.
"Widespread corruption had prompted the collapse of the elected municipality, enabling the Israeli Ministry of the Interior to install an emergency government consisting of hand-picked military officials. With the Ministry of the Interior under the control of Eli Yishai, who led the right-wing religious Shas Party, the new municipality became a means for meting out the wrath of anti-Arab populists against the local Arab population. 'They are poor in culture, poor in behavior. No ambition,' the mayor of Ramle, a neighboring city, said of the Palestinians of Lod.
"By the time the Abu Eid family's homes were demolished, as many as 30 demolition orders hovered over the Arab residents of Lod. The Arabs of Lod were not only denied the right to renovate their own houses, they also claimed they were forbidden as Arabs from living in a giant, new public housing complex built in the heart of the city. Thus they were confined to an overcrowded ghetto doomed by state plans that prioritized Judaization.
"I arrived at the Abu Eid camp on January 25, 2010, to observe a protest by Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity, a national movement that grew out of the protests against East Jerusalem evictions of Palestinian families, and which was establishing a presence in mixed cities around Israel, as well as in the most threatened areas of the West Bank. Amiel Vardi, a veteran activist, explained to me, 'For years I've been trying to say, 'Don't think the occupation will stop at the Green Line.' Now we see it's not stopping. They're using the same methods with the settlements, with the courts, and with the Shabak [Shin Bet] on both sides of the Green Line. Go to the Abu Eid camp in Lod or to Al-Arakib [a repeatedly demolished Bedouin village in the Negev], and there's absolutely no difference from what I see in the Hebron Hills.'
"I entered the remains of the Abu Eid family dwellings at the end of Lod's Helen Keller Boulevard, finding small groups of grizzled men seated around open fires and sipping tea, while small children clambered in and out of tents erected beside piles of rubble, debris, and shattered home appliances. A forlorn-looking middle-aged man named Riyadh Abu Eid met me at the entrance and took me into the makeshift camp.
"'This place was here before 1948,' he said. 'They destroyed it because they said we had no permit. But we can't get permits because we are '48 Arabs. We asked many times and were denied every time. They say we are terrorists. But look around - this is the real terror. Throwing children into the street on the coldest day of the year - that is terror.'
"According to Riyadh Abu Eid, many children from camp were unable to attend school because they could not concentrate. A 9-year-old girl who was especially traumatized had refused to leave her bed for days. Riyadh did not try to conceal his desperation. 'We do not feel safe here,' he said. 'We want to ask the United nations and Obama for international protection from a fascist government that has proven capable of massacring the unarmed.' He added, 'The days of 1948 have come again'." (pp 165-67)
Friday, January 31, 2014
Thursday, January 30, 2014
She's Baaack
Whaddya know, Planet Janet's back on The Australian's opinion page with more of her all-leather chutzpah after an unnoticed and unmissed absence of...?
And blow me down if she hasn't "humbly draft[ed] a speech for President Obama after spending the last few weeks in the US where newspapers have been busily reporting continuing crises in the Middle East, and failed peace talks, because Sunni and Shia, the two main branches of Islam are once again pitted against one another." (It is time for Middle East to police its own region, Janet Albrechtsen, 29/1/14)
That just about says it all really.
You see, in the beginning was the word, and the word was Sunni-Shia Divide (S-SD), the latest USraeli propaganda construct designed to deflect attention away from the actual roots of violence in the Middle East - 'good' old-fashioned imperialism and colonialism. In the scribblings of USraeli propagandists these days everything that moves or stirs in the Middle East is a manifestation of the dreaded S-SD.
And Planet Janet's Obama has had a gutful:
"It is a speech I must give because, to be frank, America is sick of its role as the international policeman of first resort... America - and I am sure our great allies abroad - has grown tired of being called upon to solve these conflicts."
Poor old Barack! He's like: 'OMG, these never-ending interventions are such a drag! I mean, America's had it up to here being dragged kicking and screaming into conflict after conflict in the flogging Middle East. Enough already! She is so fucking droned you wouldn't believe.'
After all:
"In the name of human decency and liberty, we helped free the Iraqi people from a government that gassed and slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens. We helped liberate the Afghan people from the brutal yoke of the Taliban. We then provided support to put an end to the murderous regime in Libya."
It hardly matters for Planet Janet, of course, that Iraq only had an attack of the S-SD after the Yanks waded in in 2003. Or that the Yanks paved the way for the Taliban by backing its 'Holy Warrior' forbears against a secular, Russian-backed Afghan regime from 1979 to 1992. Or that, in the case of Libya, the Shia half of the equation has been conspicuous by its complete and unremitting absence since the year dot.
Planet Janet's Obama, of course, has only one thing on his mind:
"The world cannot wait for Sunnis and Shia to continue to slaughter each other in the name of Mohammed and a centuries old conflict about his rightful heir."
Thankfully, on the Syrian front of the S-SD, our sock-puppet Prez has the advantage of the foreign policy expertise and wisdom of the world's leading statesman:
"The Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, best described the conflict in Syria as one between bad guys and bad guys. He is right. We need more of this frankness."
That the conflict in Syria has bugger all to do with the S-SD, and everything to do with the sectarian genie unleashed in Iraq by those wonderfully 'decent, liberty-loving' folk, Bush, Blair and Howard, a genie which has slipped across the border into a secular Syria, bristling with CIA-supplied arms and wallets stuffed with Gulf petrodollars, is of course neither here nor there to Planet Janet.
Then there's that other unfinished business in the Middle East, which has bugger all to do with the S-SD - the unresolved issue of Zionist ethnic cleansing and colonization in Palestine (1948-2014):
"Finally, as part of the resolution of this conflict in the Middle East, I call on Hezbollah and Hamas, and all Arab governments which haven't yet done so, immediately to recognise Israel as the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people. Until that happens there will be no enduring settlement of outstanding issues in the Middle East, whether they are conflicts over land or religion. While not without fault, Israel has proven its long-term commitment to democracy and liberty and to improving the lives of all Israelis, whether Jewish or not."
Planet Janet, of course, neglects to mention that Shia Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas are on the same side here, and also that Jewish Israel is the mother of all sectarian entities in the Middle East.
And quite how the Palestinians are expected to get an "enduring settlement" out of giving the thumbs up to Israel's wholesale theft of their country is anyone's guess, but face it - what else would you expect one of the rambammed (2008) to say?
Notice here that, with respect to the Zionist entity, Planet Janet covers her svelte, leather-clad arse with the lawyerly formulation, "while not without fault." Typically, such faults are never spelt out by the likes of Planet Janet (too long a list maybe?), just glossed over with tripe about Israel "improving the lives of all Israelis... Jewish or not," about which matter I'll be returning in my very next post.
And isn't it amazing that not even the spectacle of Planet Janet putting her tongue in Barack Obama's mouth does it for certain old grumps:
"Nothing can save Barack Obama from ignominy, not even Janet Albrechtsen's formidable skills as a speech-writer." George Fishman, Vaucluse, NSW (The Australian, 30/1/14)
And blow me down if she hasn't "humbly draft[ed] a speech for President Obama after spending the last few weeks in the US where newspapers have been busily reporting continuing crises in the Middle East, and failed peace talks, because Sunni and Shia, the two main branches of Islam are once again pitted against one another." (It is time for Middle East to police its own region, Janet Albrechtsen, 29/1/14)
That just about says it all really.
You see, in the beginning was the word, and the word was Sunni-Shia Divide (S-SD), the latest USraeli propaganda construct designed to deflect attention away from the actual roots of violence in the Middle East - 'good' old-fashioned imperialism and colonialism. In the scribblings of USraeli propagandists these days everything that moves or stirs in the Middle East is a manifestation of the dreaded S-SD.
And Planet Janet's Obama has had a gutful:
"It is a speech I must give because, to be frank, America is sick of its role as the international policeman of first resort... America - and I am sure our great allies abroad - has grown tired of being called upon to solve these conflicts."
Poor old Barack! He's like: 'OMG, these never-ending interventions are such a drag! I mean, America's had it up to here being dragged kicking and screaming into conflict after conflict in the flogging Middle East. Enough already! She is so fucking droned you wouldn't believe.'
After all:
"In the name of human decency and liberty, we helped free the Iraqi people from a government that gassed and slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens. We helped liberate the Afghan people from the brutal yoke of the Taliban. We then provided support to put an end to the murderous regime in Libya."
It hardly matters for Planet Janet, of course, that Iraq only had an attack of the S-SD after the Yanks waded in in 2003. Or that the Yanks paved the way for the Taliban by backing its 'Holy Warrior' forbears against a secular, Russian-backed Afghan regime from 1979 to 1992. Or that, in the case of Libya, the Shia half of the equation has been conspicuous by its complete and unremitting absence since the year dot.
Planet Janet's Obama, of course, has only one thing on his mind:
"The world cannot wait for Sunnis and Shia to continue to slaughter each other in the name of Mohammed and a centuries old conflict about his rightful heir."
Thankfully, on the Syrian front of the S-SD, our sock-puppet Prez has the advantage of the foreign policy expertise and wisdom of the world's leading statesman:
"The Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, best described the conflict in Syria as one between bad guys and bad guys. He is right. We need more of this frankness."
That the conflict in Syria has bugger all to do with the S-SD, and everything to do with the sectarian genie unleashed in Iraq by those wonderfully 'decent, liberty-loving' folk, Bush, Blair and Howard, a genie which has slipped across the border into a secular Syria, bristling with CIA-supplied arms and wallets stuffed with Gulf petrodollars, is of course neither here nor there to Planet Janet.
Then there's that other unfinished business in the Middle East, which has bugger all to do with the S-SD - the unresolved issue of Zionist ethnic cleansing and colonization in Palestine (1948-2014):
"Finally, as part of the resolution of this conflict in the Middle East, I call on Hezbollah and Hamas, and all Arab governments which haven't yet done so, immediately to recognise Israel as the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people. Until that happens there will be no enduring settlement of outstanding issues in the Middle East, whether they are conflicts over land or religion. While not without fault, Israel has proven its long-term commitment to democracy and liberty and to improving the lives of all Israelis, whether Jewish or not."
Planet Janet, of course, neglects to mention that Shia Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas are on the same side here, and also that Jewish Israel is the mother of all sectarian entities in the Middle East.
And quite how the Palestinians are expected to get an "enduring settlement" out of giving the thumbs up to Israel's wholesale theft of their country is anyone's guess, but face it - what else would you expect one of the rambammed (2008) to say?
Notice here that, with respect to the Zionist entity, Planet Janet covers her svelte, leather-clad arse with the lawyerly formulation, "while not without fault." Typically, such faults are never spelt out by the likes of Planet Janet (too long a list maybe?), just glossed over with tripe about Israel "improving the lives of all Israelis... Jewish or not," about which matter I'll be returning in my very next post.
And isn't it amazing that not even the spectacle of Planet Janet putting her tongue in Barack Obama's mouth does it for certain old grumps:
"Nothing can save Barack Obama from ignominy, not even Janet Albrechtsen's formidable skills as a speech-writer." George Fishman, Vaucluse, NSW (The Australian, 30/1/14)
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Just How Bright is Julie Bishop?
As I once wrote, I just don't do agreement with The Australian's 'Suppository of All Wisdom', Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan - except in one instance when he lashed out with this unequivocal statement:
"Julie Bishop... has not produced a single sentence of substance or originality while in the portfolio." (See my 17/2/11 post Sheridan Biffs Bishop, MERC Cries Foul.)
I was reminded of the above by the following item in yesterday's issue by The Australian's Middle East Correspondent John Lyons:
"A group of eminent Israelis has urged Australia to continue to support 'the international consensus' that Jewish settlements on the West Bank are illegal. The group said it noted 'with deep concern' Foreign Minister Julie Bishop's recent comments about settlements. Separately, four leading lawyers, including former attorney general Michael Ben-Yair, have 'reminded' Ms Bishop that it is the unanimous position of judges of the International Court of Justice that settlements are illegal. The lawyers say that status has been confirmed by resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council and is the longstanding position of the Red Cross, the EU and most countries. The Times of Israel reported that Ms Bishop had questioned whether settlements in the Palestinian territories were illegal. 'I would like to see which international law has declared them illegal,' it reported the Foreign Minister as saying." (Israeli lawyers caution Bishop, 27/1/14)
Is it not a damning indictment of Bishop that she has to be reminded of the fundamentals of international law by the leading lawyers of an Occupying Power?
"Julie Bishop... has not produced a single sentence of substance or originality while in the portfolio." (See my 17/2/11 post Sheridan Biffs Bishop, MERC Cries Foul.)
I was reminded of the above by the following item in yesterday's issue by The Australian's Middle East Correspondent John Lyons:
"A group of eminent Israelis has urged Australia to continue to support 'the international consensus' that Jewish settlements on the West Bank are illegal. The group said it noted 'with deep concern' Foreign Minister Julie Bishop's recent comments about settlements. Separately, four leading lawyers, including former attorney general Michael Ben-Yair, have 'reminded' Ms Bishop that it is the unanimous position of judges of the International Court of Justice that settlements are illegal. The lawyers say that status has been confirmed by resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council and is the longstanding position of the Red Cross, the EU and most countries. The Times of Israel reported that Ms Bishop had questioned whether settlements in the Palestinian territories were illegal. 'I would like to see which international law has declared them illegal,' it reported the Foreign Minister as saying." (Israeli lawyers caution Bishop, 27/1/14)
Is it not a damning indictment of Bishop that she has to be reminded of the fundamentals of international law by the leading lawyers of an Occupying Power?
'Great' Minds Thinking Alike
Australian Catholicism's Godfather, Cardinal George Pell:
"We should know more about Asia, but we do not belong to Asia. We are not of that world. We are an outpost of Western civilisation. It is one thing to oppose England in the cricket, but it is foolish not to acknowledge the British origins of our institutions - except the Catholic Church. Parliament, the law, schools, hospitals and military all follow British models. And Europe, like the Americas and Australia, cannot be understood without the Judeo-Christian tradition. For these reasons... I commend the national school curriculum review. A curriculum which does not mention James Cook and has no secondary references to the First Fleet or the Anzacs is badly skewed. Christianity is mentioned only 11 times, once more than Islam." (Today's a day for us to rejoice in history's page - our page, Sunday Telegraph, 26/1/14)
Zionism's Godfather, Theodor Herzl:
"We should [in Palestine] form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism." (The Jewish State, 1896, Dover edition, p 96)
"We should know more about Asia, but we do not belong to Asia. We are not of that world. We are an outpost of Western civilisation. It is one thing to oppose England in the cricket, but it is foolish not to acknowledge the British origins of our institutions - except the Catholic Church. Parliament, the law, schools, hospitals and military all follow British models. And Europe, like the Americas and Australia, cannot be understood without the Judeo-Christian tradition. For these reasons... I commend the national school curriculum review. A curriculum which does not mention James Cook and has no secondary references to the First Fleet or the Anzacs is badly skewed. Christianity is mentioned only 11 times, once more than Islam." (Today's a day for us to rejoice in history's page - our page, Sunday Telegraph, 26/1/14)
Zionism's Godfather, Theodor Herzl:
"We should [in Palestine] form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism." (The Jewish State, 1896, Dover edition, p 96)
Monday, January 27, 2014
Just Another Dumb Middle East Correspondent
From Observer journalist Harriet Sherwood's goodbye to Gaza:
"This was my last trip to Gaza before returning to London to live and work. I moved to Jerusalem in May 2010, to report principally on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... I arrived eager to learn more about what is frequently called the world's most intractable conflict, and to try to understand the powerful feelings of historical injustice on both sides." (Goodbye Gaza: our correspondent reflects on her time in the Middle East, 26/1/14)
To stop you there, Harriet. I'm mystified. Please tell us about the terrible historical injustice inflicted upon Israelis by Palestinians.
"This was my last trip to Gaza before returning to London to live and work. I moved to Jerusalem in May 2010, to report principally on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... I arrived eager to learn more about what is frequently called the world's most intractable conflict, and to try to understand the powerful feelings of historical injustice on both sides." (Goodbye Gaza: our correspondent reflects on her time in the Middle East, 26/1/14)
To stop you there, Harriet. I'm mystified. Please tell us about the terrible historical injustice inflicted upon Israelis by Palestinians.
Adam Goodes vs the IDF
According to our politicians, Abbottoir and Israel have heaps in common. Abbottoir's new Prime Headkicker, Tony Abbott, for example, has even declared that "Australians are all Israelis."
I simply cannot comprehend, therefore, how our two countries could have come up with such widely divergent choices as these:
The 2014 Australian of the Year is Indigenous man, Adam Goodes, who "wants to help break down the boundaries between races and won't rest until all Australians are treated as equals." (Goodes has racism in his sights, Adam Gartrell, au.news.yahoo.com, 25/1/14)
The 2014 Israeli Person of the Year, on the other hand, is the Israeli soldier "who protect(s) all of us 24/7 by fighting against terror." ('Jerusalem Post' Person of the Year: The Israeli soldier, jpost.com, 26/1/14)
Now if I may may be allowed, as an expert here, to translate the above from the Israeli language, Hasbara - a tongue notorious for veiling and obscuring reality - into plain English, it'd go something like this:
The 2014 Israeli Person of the Year is the Israeli soldier 'who protects our colonial-settler land-grab (1948-2014) by separating, confining, obstructing, intimidating, abusing, robbing, beating, arresting, gassing, shooting, shelling, and bombing the Indigenous Palestinian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories 24/7.' (For just some of the gory details see my 5/12/12 post As Though They Owned the Place.)
I simply cannot comprehend, therefore, how our two countries could have come up with such widely divergent choices as these:
The 2014 Australian of the Year is Indigenous man, Adam Goodes, who "wants to help break down the boundaries between races and won't rest until all Australians are treated as equals." (Goodes has racism in his sights, Adam Gartrell, au.news.yahoo.com, 25/1/14)
The 2014 Israeli Person of the Year, on the other hand, is the Israeli soldier "who protect(s) all of us 24/7 by fighting against terror." ('Jerusalem Post' Person of the Year: The Israeli soldier, jpost.com, 26/1/14)
Now if I may may be allowed, as an expert here, to translate the above from the Israeli language, Hasbara - a tongue notorious for veiling and obscuring reality - into plain English, it'd go something like this:
The 2014 Israeli Person of the Year is the Israeli soldier 'who protects our colonial-settler land-grab (1948-2014) by separating, confining, obstructing, intimidating, abusing, robbing, beating, arresting, gassing, shooting, shelling, and bombing the Indigenous Palestinian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories 24/7.' (For just some of the gory details see my 5/12/12 post As Though They Owned the Place.)
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Abbottoir Day 2014
Herewith the latest news about our Dear Leader on Abbottoir Day 2014:
"Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has met with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu. They met at the 2014 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. At the start of their meeting, Australian Prime Minister Abbott told Prime Minister Netanyahu, 'I daresay you had an interesting day. I want to stress the affinity of Australia to Israel and remind you that apart from Israel, Australia is the only country on earth that's had a Jewish person as Commander in Chief of the army, Chief Justice and Head of State." (Abbott meets Netanyahu, jwire.com.au, 24/1/14)
LOL, that Head of State (from 1931-36) was, of course, Governor-General Sir Isaac Isaacs, a confirmed anti-Zionist.
"Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has met with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu. They met at the 2014 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. At the start of their meeting, Australian Prime Minister Abbott told Prime Minister Netanyahu, 'I daresay you had an interesting day. I want to stress the affinity of Australia to Israel and remind you that apart from Israel, Australia is the only country on earth that's had a Jewish person as Commander in Chief of the army, Chief Justice and Head of State." (Abbott meets Netanyahu, jwire.com.au, 24/1/14)
LOL, that Head of State (from 1931-36) was, of course, Governor-General Sir Isaac Isaacs, a confirmed anti-Zionist.
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