The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament 3

"The state was born, but the ideals of renaissance, virtue, and peace have not been realized with it. The society it spawned is as parochial, impulsive, and prideful as its architects. It has lived for over rwo decades in enmity with its neighbours, carried away by concerns with its own needs, and out of touch with the broader perspectives of the Jewish world outside. Most basic to its shortsightedness is its inability to engage in the give-and-take of humane dialogue with the two enities which it must ultimately reach: the modern world and the Middle East." Alan R Taylor, Prelude to Israel: An Analysis of Zionist Diplomacy 1897-1947 (1959)

"The problem with Israel...is not...that it is a European 'enclave' in the Arab world; but rather that it arrived too late. It has imported a characteristically late-nineteenth-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law. The very idea of a 'Jewish state' - a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded - is rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is an anachronism." Tony Judt, Israel: The Alternative, New York Review of Books, 23/10/03

What follows is my critique of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's shameful 12 March parliamentary motion on the 60th Anniversary of the State of Israel, the text and discussion of which eluded both The Sydney Morning Herald (with the honorable exception of its Saturday columnist Alan Ramsey) and Melbourne's The Age:-

Rudd moved "That the House: (1) celebrate and commend the achievements of the State of Israel in the 60 years since its inception; (2) remember with pride and honour the important role which Australia played in the establishment of the State of Israel as both a member state of the UN and as an influential voice in the introduction of Resolution 181 which facilitated Israel's statehood, and as the country which proudly became the first to cast a vote in support of Israel's creation; (3) acknowledge the unique relationship which exists between Australia and Israel; a bond highlighted by our commitment to the rights and liberty of our citizens and encouragement of cultural diversity; (4) commend the State of Israel's commitment to democracy, the Rule of Law and pluralism; (5) reiterate Australia's commitment to Israel's right to exist and our ongoing support to the peaceful establishment of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue; (6) reiterate Australia's commitment to the pursuit of peace and stability throughout the Middle East; (7) on this, the 60th Anniversary of Independence of the State of Israel, pledge our friendship, commitment and enduring support to the people of Israel as we celebrate this important occasion together."

In speaking to his motion, Rudd began by falsely claiming that "the story of the establishment of the state of Israel begins with the unimaginable tragedy of the Holocaust." In so doing, he conveniently ignored the fact that the Zionist movement, which created the state of Israel in Palestine in 1948, predated the Holocaust by almost 50 years, as well as the fact that the Zionist movement's single-minded obsession with setting up a Jewish state in Palestine was at odds with the interests of European Jews both before and after the Holocaust.

Before the Holocaust, the Zionists, instead of resisting the rise of fascism and Nazism, sought an accomodation with them, and elements of the Zionist revisionist movement even tried to forge an alliance with the Nazis against the British. [See Lenni Brenner's Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983)]

After the liberation of Jews from Nazi concentration camps, most Jewish displaced persons (DPs) chose not to go to Palestine, contrary to the expectations and propaganda of the Zionists. And this in spite of the fact that the Zionist movement, totally insensitive to the real needs or wishes of Holocaust survivors, pulled out all stops, including blocking plans to evacuate them to countries other than Palestine, and forcibly, even violently, drafting them in Europe for service in the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948. [See Yosef Grodzinsky's In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Story of Jews in Displaced Persons Camps and their Forced Role in the Founding of Israel (2004)]

The plight and fate of pre-war European Jewry, and the welfare of Holocaust survivors, always came second to the Zionist movement's goal of bringing as many European Jews as possible to Palestine in order to realise its goal of a Jewish state there. To quote just two examples of this attitude:-

"And this time in Eretz Yisrael, there are comments: 'Don't put Eretz Yisrael in priority in this difficult time, in the time of destruction of European Jewry'. I do not accept such a saying. And when some asked me: 'Can't you give money from the Keren Hayesod [Jewish National Fund] to save Jews in the Diaspora?', I said: no! And again I say no!...I think we have to stand before this wave that is putting Zionist activity into the second row." Yitzhak Gruenbaum, head of the Jewish Agency's rescue Committee (Brenner, p 234) And this, from David Ben-Gurion, leader of Palestine's Jewish community and first PM of Israel: "If Jews will have to choose between the refugees, saving Jews from concentration camps, and assisting a national museum in Palestine, mercy will have the upper hand and the whole energy of the people will be channelled into saving Jews from various countries. Zionism will be struck off the agenda not only in world public opinion, in Britain and the US, but elsewhere in Jewish public opinion. If we allow a separation between the refugee problem and the Palestinian problem, we are risking the existence of Zionism." (Brenner p 149)

Rudd went on to say, "By war's end, 6 million Jews had been murdered. By war's end the international community finally began to look again in earnest at the question of a homeland for the Jewish people."

This again is a distortion of fact. The international community had 2 unrelated problems on its hands:-

1) What to do about Britain's failed Palestine mandate, which had come under armed assault by Zionist forces (referred to by the pro-Zionist Churchill in 1944 as "a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany").

2) What to do about Jewish DPs.

With regard to the second, it is quite clear that the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP), set up to examine the Palestine problem in June 1947 (and which included Dr Evatt, Australia's Minister for External Affairs) did not regard Palestine as the solution for displaced Jews: Recommendation 12 of UNSCOP's findings said, "In the appraisal of the Palestine question it should be accepted as incontrovertible that any solution for Palestine cannot be considered as a solution for the Jewish problem in general." Despite this, all attempts by the international community to find an international solution for Jewish DPs were anathema to the Zionist movement and were vigorously resisted by it.

Rudd (and his Zionist boosters and sources) loves to trot out the 'glorious' tale of Evatt's role in Israel's creation: "Australia is proud to have played a significant part in the international process that led to the foundation of the state of Israel. Australia's then Minister for External Affairs, Dr Evatt, was part of the UN Special Committee [sic: Commission]on Palestine which recommended in August 1947 the termination of the Mandate for Palestine. And he was chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee meeting on the Palestinian Question that proposed the partition of Palestine [Again Rudd's got his facts wrong. It was UNSCOP which "proposed the partition of Palestine"]. He strongly believed that the fundamental right of self-determination for the Jewish people and for Palestinians could only be achieved by each having their own state."

Let us take a detailed look at this "process" of which "Australia is proud."* UNSCOP was an 11 member body on which only 2 Asian countries (India and Iran) represented the continent directly involved in its deliberations. Inevitably, when submitting its findings in August 1947, it split along continental lines: a majority of 7, all from Europe and North and South America, favoured the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state, while a minority of 3 (India, Iran and Yugoslavia - Australia abstained) proposed an independent federal state. In other words, European and American states (Africa did not get a look in) got to dictate the partition of an Asian country. As David Horowitz, the Jewish Agency liaison officer with UNSCOP commented: "The Asiatic bloc was solid and unitedly negative. The fact of our complete isolation on this continent, into whose life we aspired to become integrated, pained me..."

When the matter came before the UN General Assembly, meeting as an Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine, a resolution to refer to the International Court of Justice the question of whether the UN had any competence to enforce partition without consulting, or against the wishes of, the inhabitants of Palestine was lost by only one vote. And when the Committee voted on the partition plan, it mustered only a simple majority when a 2/3rd's majority was required. With the exception of Cuba, all the negative votes were Afro-Asian.

At this point, before partition was voted on in the General Assembly, 6 countries became the target for Zionist and US arm-twisting: Haiti, Liberia, the Philippines, China and Ethiopia were pressured into either abstaining or affirming partition. Wrote Horowitz: "America's line of action had swung in a new direction. As a result of instructions from the President (Truman**) the State Department now embarked on a helpful course of great importance to our interest. The improved atmosphere swayed a number of wavering countries. The US exerted the weight of its influence almost at the last hour, and the way the final vote turned out must be ascribed to this fact." In the case of the Philippines, for example, its delegate had made a strong speech in the GA against partition, describing it correctly as a move towards "political disunion and territorial dismemberment," which would "turn us back on the road to the dangerous principles of racial exclusiveness and to the archaic doctrines of theocratic governments," and away from "the modern trend towards inter-racial co-operation and secular democracy." Three days later the Philippine delegation voted for partition. This is the process of which Rudd (aka "Australia") is "proud."

And this matter of manufacturing UN consent is quite apart from the issue of the legality of partition, given that, in the words of Palestinian lawyer, Henry Cattan, "it constituted a trespass on the sovereignty of the original inhabitants, it gave away to alien immigrants a large part of the territory of the country and it denied to the Palestinians the exercise of their natural right of self-determination [The Palestine Problem in a Nutshell, 1971 p 16]." Or the injustice of assigning more than half of Palestine (57%) to less than 1/3rd of its population, mostly foreign immigrants, who had legal title to only about 6% of the land.

Rudd went on to say that "[o]n 29 January 1949 [Australian PM Ben Chifley] announced that Australia would become one of the first countries to recognise the new state of Israel, describing it as 'a force of special value in the world community' As President of the General Assembly, 'Doc' Evatt then presided over the historic May 1949 vote admitting Israel as the 59th member of the UN."

With regard to the latter, Israeli activist and academic, Uri Davis has pointed out: "As...the discussions at the UN Security Council suggest, the holocaust notwithstanding, the UN would have been reluctant to allow the admission of the Jewish state as a member state had the UN not received formal and solemn assurances from the Government of the State of Israel that Israel would abide by Resolution 181 (II) of November 1947 recommending the partition of Palestine with economic union, and Resolution 194 (III) of December 1948 resolving that the 1948 Palestinian refugees wishing to return to their homes...should be permitted to do so...It goes without saying that, under the circumstances, had the new state failed to project itself as anything other than an international-law-abiding state, it would have seriously jeopardized the prospects of its admission as a member state in the UN." [Apartheid Israel, 2003, p 38]

Needless to say, neither resolution has been implemented by Israel (181 was violated when Israel went on to illegally extend its borders by a further 20% in the 1948-1949 war, failed to adopt a democratic constitution, and ignored Jerusalem's intended status as a 'corpus separatum'). Israel, of course, has since gone on to break record after record in its defiance of both the UN Charter and UN resolutions.

The rest of Rudd's speech merely retails such Zionist cliches as the Begin/Sadat love-in of 1979 and the Rabin/Arafat love-in of 1993, as well as the usual platitudes about the "establishment of an independent and economically viable Palestinian state" (though, interestingly, there is no mention that it should be 'contiguous'), and Israel's "robust parliamentary democracy" and "vibrant society and economy."

* Based on the account in GH Jansen's Zionism, Israel & Asian Nationalism (1971) pp 197-199
** Truman had once famously declared: "I'm sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I don't have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my consituents."