Some Gems from Morrison's 'Address to the Sydney Institute'

The complete text may be accessed at pm.gov.au, 15/12/18:

Look at this sentence from Morrison's lengthy (and thoroughly USraeli) tirade against the UN General Assembly and tell me what it means:

"We won't turn a blind eye to an anti-Semitic agenda masquerading as defence of human rights as a nation like Australia."

Here he plays the Doc Evatt card (without of course mentioning the former Labor foreign minister's name):

"We proudly recall that it was Australia that chaired the Committee that recommended to the UN General Assembly the creation of the state of Israel and then voted in favour of the partition of Mandate Palestine."

To begin with, Evatt's Committee (UNSCOP) didn't recommend "the creation of the state of Israel." It recommended that Palestine be divided into Jewish and an Arab states. And there was no implication that the said Jewish state was anything other than those parts of Palestine where Jewish settlers had congregated. In fact there were almost as many Arabs living in the proposed 'Jewish' state as there were Jews - with no implication, of course, that they would be ethnically cleansed, as indeed they were the following year.

And another thing: to the extent that Evatt involved Australia in recommending that Palestine be partitioned over the heads of its people, we were complicit in depriving the Palestinian Arab majority of its right to national self-determination, in violation of the UN Charter, and in setting the scene for Zionist terror gangs to create the Palestinian refugee problem, still unresolved to this day.

Speaking of which refugee problem:

"And we continue donations to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East of $41 million in 2017-19."

Which begs the question: why is Morrison touting this as some kind of virtue when, in fact, thanks to Evatt, Australia was complicit in creating the very Palestinian refugee problem which UNRWA was set up to deal with?

"Though a two state solution remains the only viable way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, the obstacles, we must admit, to achieving such a solution are becoming insurmountable."

And they are? Morrison shies away from telling us. Elsewhere in his speech, however, we find this clue: "[Israeli] settlements undermine peace - and contribute to the stalemate we now see." But, hey, you wouldn't expect a rapture-ready fool to see, let alone forthrightly state, the bleeding obvious, would you?

Now here's a curious thing. For Morrison, while the General Assembly is a seething hotbed of anti-Semitic bullies, the Security Council (with its trusty US veto!) is quite another matter:

"I also required that their [ie, departmental secretaries from Prime Minister and Cabinet, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Defence and Home Affairs] deliberations respect Australia's obligations under international law and UN Security Council resolutions - two things that are fundamental, I think, to Australia's interests in in a rules-based order... respect for UN Security Council resolutions is a relevant factor for Australia that we can't put to one side as we consider our position on these issues. Now, Australia is subject to UN Security Council resolutions that apply to the Jerusalem issue, including Resolutions 478 and 2334."

Indeed, but is Morrison aware that Security Council resolution 478, adopted (14-0) in 1980 in response to Israel's illegal annexation of occupied East Jerusalem, included a call for "those states that have established diplomatic Missions in Jerusalem to withdraw such Missions from the Holy City"? And if so, does he really think that his ploy of a "Trade & Defence Office in West Jerusalem" passes muster as "respect" for a resolution containing these words?

As for resolution 2334 (2016), which condemned (14-0) Israeli settlements as a "flagrant violation" of international law, does he really expect his mealy-mouthed talk of "insurmountable obstacles" to a two state solution to fool anyone?

"At the end of the day, it all comes down to what you believe in."

Well, he's right there. Without doubt, Morrison is the most Zionist prime minister this country has ever had.

Australia's Senate Hard at Work

So good to see our talent in the Senate hard at work serving Australia the state of Israel, and earning every cent of their near $200,000 p.a. salary.

Senator Leyonjelm, you'll remember, recently returned from the apartheid state, determined to put pressure on the Australian government to end our funding for the United Nations Relief & Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which, quite coincidentally of course, just happens to be on Israel's to-do list. (Parenthetically, given Evatt's role in the partition of Palestine in 1947, which gave the Zionists all the excuse they needed to go on the warpath and create the very problem UNRWA was set up to deal with, I'd say helping fund it is the least we can do for our part in this ongoing crime against humanity.)

But Leyonjelm's just an unproven, raw recruit in the ranks of those Australian senators who've got the hots for Israel. If you really want to see a master at work, check out Tasmanian Liberal senator Eric Abetz's latest (31/5) media release:

"Liberal Senator Eric Abetz has welcomed Foreign Minister Julie Bishop's letter to the Palestinian Authority asking them to explain whether Australian aid funding is creating space within their budget to fund the so-called Martyr's [sic] Fund. Senator Abetz, a Member of the Australian Senate's Foreign Affairs Committee, has long advocated for the Australian Government to use its influence in an effort to end the Martyr's [sic] Fund which rewards the families of Palestinian terrorists who kill or harm Israeli citizens, including civilians. In 2017-18, Australia is providing more than $43 million in aid to the Palestinian territories. 'The Palestinian Martyr Fund [?] not only encourages murder and terror attacks, it is a major barrier to peace in the Middle East. The 'please explain' issued by the Foreign Minister is a strong and very welcome action that will hopefully apply pressure to the Palestinian Authority to end this murderous programme,' Senator Abetz said. 'Australia's strong defence of Israel in the United Nations shows a clear determination by the Government to back Israel as the only free and democratic nation in the Middle East. I am very pleased that the Foreign Minister has taken on board the representations made by myself and colleagues on this important issue which goes to the heart of our Australian values. Should the Palestinian Authority continue to fund murder and attacks through this or other PA funds, I am hopeful that the Australian Government will take the further step of pausing all Aid until the programme is eliminated,' Senator Abetz concluded." (Government issues 'please explain' to Palestinian Authority, abetz.com.au)

When Doc Evatt Did a Job on Palestine 4

This is the final aspect of the 1947 session which I would like to address. I find it the most significant in terms of what I believe it reveals of Evatt's bias and of the deliberate subversion of proper procedure in this case as a result of his bias.

We have already seen that the case of Palestine was a challenge and a proving ground for the new UNO. However, the partition resolution of 1947 was only a recommendation, although it carried "tremendous moral force" in Evatt's words (Freilich, p 161) and was exploited by the Zionists to lend an air of legitimacy to their future actions in Palestine. The UN of course had no means at its disposal to implement such recommendations, and all participants were well of this fact. The Arabs, for instance, said that they would continue to resist the Zionist settlers regardless of what the UN decided.

In the interests of sustaining this "moral force" it could well be argued that Evatt should not have steam-rolled the partition decision through a weary and often resentful Special Committee in order to finish the deliberations in November. The Jews and Palestinian Arabs had been fighting for two decades anyway, and some tired delegates argued to Evatt that a few more months would make little difference. But Evatt was adamant. (Evatt, p 148)

His opposition to a proposal to put some of the legal problems before the ICJ for a ruling was perhaps part of the unseemly haste which he imposed on proceedings, and worse, perhaps it also reveals his real opinion as to the legality of the proceedings. I can think of no other reasons for this opposition, because Evatt had emerged as one of the leading supporters for a major role for the ICJ in all UN problems.

At the San Francisco conference he had championed the concept that the ICJ must become a key UN institution. In an address given shortly after the conference to the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, he said: "The future working of the world organisation would be greatly helped if access to the ICJ is made possible wherever international disputes of a legal or justiciable character are not disposed of by conciliation or direct negotiation... By such means the Court would be given an opportunity of developing a code of sound international law and practice which could help greatly in balancing the Security Council." (Australia in World Affairs, 1946, p 20)

As Sir Frederic Eggleston commented in 1946: "Dr Evatt advocates not only an expansion of the ambit of international law but also an extension of the power of the ICJ." (26. ibid, Preface)

I have already noted that during October 1947 while Evatt was rushing the Special Committee through its agenda, he found time to deliver lectures at Harvard Law School on Frankfurter's invitation. In these lectures, published soon after, Evatt described his own role in pushing for a more democratic UN structure. One of his nine main objectives had been "to declare that justice and the rule of law shall be principles guiding the actions of the Security Council, and for this purpose to require the maximum employment of the Permanent Court (ICJ) in determining the legal aspects of international disputes." He continued: "Faults have become apparent in the working of the UN. The International Court has so far been denied almost totally the opportunity of working..."

In his third lecture, he repeated this theme: "Article 96 (of the UN Charter) provides that the General Assembly or the Security Council may seek advisory opinions from the Court on any legal question... Yet to date not a single advisory opinion has been sought from the Court... It is clearly necessary to make every effort to ensure the fullest possible use of the functions assigned to the Court. To this end Australia has introduced an important resolution into the present Assembly, seeking a recommendation that each organ of the UN and each specialized agency should regularly review the difficult and important questions of law which have arisen in the course of their activities and which involve questions of principle which it is desirable to have settled." (27. The Task of Nations, p 42)

This resolution, inspired by Evatt, was actually adopted on November 14 by UNGA in plenary session while its sponsor was apparently doing his best to see that the Palestine 'hot potato' did not in fact come before that. august body.

For at one of the late night sittings of the Special Committee in the last week of November, the proposals to refer several matters concerning Palestine to the ICJ came to the vote. Evatt wrote in his memoirs of that occasion: "The only matter on which there was any substantial disagreement was whether the UN itself had jurisdiction to reach a decision as to the future government of Palestine. The voting on this point was very close but the proposal for its reference to the Court was defeated. As to the validity of the action proposed to be taken by the UNGA, I never had any doubt... " (28. pp 155-6)

He himself had decided that some of the points which the Arab delegates wanted to refer to the ICJ were "patently absurd, for instance whether or not the Balfour Declaration was a legally binding declaration. Obviously it was political in essence and in character... " (29. p 157)

Precisely - yet the Balfour Declaration, promising a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, had been explicitly written into the text of of the British Mandate as if it were a legally binding declaration (with the aid of Frankfurter, as we have seen). The policies of British rule in Palestine had been based on the "authority" of the 1917 Balfour Declaration in this way. Evatt himself wrote that one of the main arguments against the Arab proposal for a unitary state was that "the promises of the Balfour Declaration would have been dishonoured."

The ICJ would very likely have handed down a ruling that the Balfour Declaration was legally invalid, and perhaps that the Mandate which imposed Jewish migration on the unwilling indigenous inhabitants was also invalid.. Any such ruling would have been disastrous for the Zionist cause at that time, and would have made the partition vote even harder to swing.

Furthermore, regarding Evatt's pronouncement on the validity of the partition resolution, obviously it was not Evatt's opinion that was being sought by a number of members of the Special Committee, but that of the body designed and set up to give the legal judgements which they felt were needed in order to help them in their deliberations.

A spokesperson for this group was the Pakistani representative, Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, a distinguished lawyer who himself later became a judge on the ICJ. He wrote that by the end of the sittings of Evatt's Special Committee he no longer believed in the good faith of the delegates. He analysed the voting pattern concerning referral to the ICJ: "As to our legal questions, the Committee rejected the resolutions on all the first 7 questions, but on the eighth question, i.e. whether the UN had any legal authority to do what they were proposing to do, the resolution to the effect that it had the authority was passed by 21 votes to 20. It is interesting to analyse those figures. In all, the Committee were 57. Only 21 who gave a positive vote were satisfied that the UN had authority to do what they were proposing to do and 36 were not satisfied." (30. Khalidi, p 716)

Evatt was highly satisfied that the ICJ, the instrument of international law whose 'maximum employment' he so ardently sought in theory, and whose prestige was a matter of such concern to him, was once again bypassed on this occasion. Yet idf ever a learned opinion and a considered judgement by the top legal authorities of the UNO was appropriate, it was in the case of Palestine in 1947.

This brings this paper to its conclusion, though there are other important aspects to consider such as the actual outcome of the decision. Evatt's attitude to the Arabs and the Palestinians, and his double standards on the issue of migration (in the case of Australia, he was a firm supporter of the White Australia policy and the right of Australians to have complete control over immigration policy, a right he wanted to deny to those inhabitants of Palestine who were opposed to Jewish immigration.

I conclude with a brief postscript.

Evatt was elected to the Presidency of the UNGA for the 1948 session, which was held in Paris.

In Palestine itself, violence had erupted almost immediately after the UNGA vote was announced.

In India, where partition was actually being enacted as the Special Committee was sitting, 225,000 people had been killed by inter-communal violence by October, 1947. Mahatma Gandhi believed that generations to come would continue to pay the price for the mistake of partition.. By the same token he came out strongly against the partition of Palestine: "... Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct... The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred... As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them." (31. Khalidi, p 367)

By the middle of 1948 there were already over 800,000 homeless Palestinian refugees and the state of Israel had been proclaimed. The UN-appointed Count Bernadotte, a patrician Swedish idealist, as its mediator in Palestine. His brief was to recommend final border plans for Israel, which had already occupied more land than had been allotted to it in the partition plan. He reported to the UN that "it would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish emigrants flow into Palestine." (32. David Gilmour, The Dispossessed, p 74)

On September 17, Count Bernadotte and his aide, Colonel Serot, were assassinated by members of the Stern Gang in Palestine. This occurred on the very day on which Evatt commenced his reign at the UN. At this fateful moment, "the flag-draped coffins of Count Bernadotte and Colonel Serot, gunned down in Jerusalem, arrived at the airport on the day that the President of France handed over the golden key of the Palais de Chaillot and declared it United Nations territory for the time of the Assembly. The two coffins lay at the airport, a reminder of what came of the United Nations intervention." (33. Tennant, p 232)

When Doc Evatt Did a Job on Palestine 3

The Question of UN Competence

This question did not interest me quite so much as the more personal one of Evatt's bias and the influences on Evatt - also I am no expert on international law. However this is, of course, the more important question in terms of legal principles. I will merely attempt to raise some of the issues and quote from some contemporary critics.

Certainly the Arabs have never accepted UN competence any more than they accepted the legality of the Balfour Declaration and the British mandate over Palestine. As the Arab states saw it, legality was subverted at each step along the road to the partition resolution. Nor were the Arabs alone. Many legal experts and diplomats agreed. Ambassador Loy Henderson, Director of the US Office of Near Eastern & African Affairs, wrote a confidential memorandum to the State Department in November 1947: "What is important is that the Arabs are losing confidence in the integrity of the United States and the sincerity of our many pronouncements that our foreign policies are based on the principles of the Charter of the United Nations." (22. Henry Cattan, Palestine & International Law, 1973, p vii)

Or international legal expert Pitman Porter, writing for the American Journal of International Law in 1948: "The United Nations has no right to dictate a solution in Palestine unless a basis for such authority is worked out, such as has not been done thus far... it might be held that the Mandate is still in force and that supervision thereof has passed to the United Nations, which is somewhat hazardous juridically. The Arabs deny the binding force of the Mandate, now or ever, as they deny the validity of the Balfour Declaration on which it was based, and again they are quite correct juridically." (23. Cattan, p 77)

Palestine was referred to the UNGA under Article 10 of the UN Charter, which empowers the UNGA to discuss questions and to make recommendatins, but does not empower the UNGA to create new states or to recommend the partitioning of a country. Decisions as to the future form of government clearly lay with the people of Palestine, if we are to take seriously Article 1 (2) of the UN Charter.

After the League of Nations was dissolved, the UN Charter became the paramount instrument of international law. At the San Francisco Conference which framed the Charter, Evatt had been happy to support the inclusion of the phrase "based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples" as a basis for Article 1(2) of the Charter. (24. Hassan bin Tallal, Palestinian Self-Determination, 1981, p 81) In spite of some argument over obscurities in the formula, subsequent practice has treated self-determination as a right, and of course it was later enshrined in the two Covenants of 1966.

Cattan has written: "In accordance with the principle of self-determination of peoples recognised by the Charter, the people of Palestine were entitled to affirm their national identity and to preserve the integrity of their territory. The carving out of a substantial area of Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state and the subjection of part of the original inhabitants to its dominion was a patent violation of this principle." (24. p 79)

Evatt himself had previously spoken out in support of the principle of self-determination in 1945, in support of the case for Indonesian independence from Dutch rule. He then stated: "Political aspirations of peoples who are fit for self-government... Not only have the sympathy of the vast majority of the peoples of the democracies but the Charter of the United Nations recognises the legitimacy of the claim for Self-Government... and imposes on the present Nations a sacred trust to assist them." (25. Renouf, p 167)

There was never an attempt to argue that the Palestinian population of 1947 was unfit for self-government and in fact the old Class A Mandate which the British operated gave Palestine "provisional recognition" as an "independent nation."

Obviously the inhabitants of Palestine in 1947 should have decided by referendum which for of government they would choose to live under- there is no other way to implement the principle of self-determination. It is inconceivable that Evatt could have been unaware of the ways in which the partition resolution circumvented the very principles espoused by international law and by himself personally. The case of Palestine was a complex one, admittedly- for all manner of reasons. Therefore - by way of introduction to the final section - it seems all the more strange that the matter never went before the highest level of authority of the UNO- the body set up to deliberate on precisely such important problems of international law- the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Next installment: Failure of the Special Committee to Refer to the ICJ

When Doc Evatt Did a Job on Palestine 2

Evatt's Bias

One key legal principal is that a person or body required to make decisions in accordance with the rules of natural justice must not have an interest in the causes which might prevent impartial decisions. It is common and accepted practice for persons with interests, including acquaintance and/or friendship with one party in a dispute, or a known bias, to disqualify themselves from a tribunal. This kind of interest is less clearcut than the grosser forms of interest, e.g. pecuniary; however the failure of a biased tribunal  member to disqualify him/herself can leave it open to the complaint to show that the decision of the tribunal or administrative body against her/him was vitiated by bias. This may not necessarily render the decision void, but at the very least it casts a dubious light on the proceedings. (6. D Benjafield & H Whitmore, Principles of Australian Administrative Law, 1971, Ch. VII)

Was Evatt "interested" in promoting the partition of Palestine, in the legal and technical sense of interest? And, if so, should he have disqualified himself from chairing the Special Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine?

Oddly enough, critics of the UN partition decision, like the Palestinian lawyer Sami Hadawi, for example, suggests that Evatt was doing the bidding of the British and Americans, in a general sense, in his role as chairman; but no-one to the best of my knowledge has ever raised the problem of Evatt's strong relationship with prominent Zionists and his prior support for their tactical goal of partition. Evatt was known as a supporter of partition both by the leaders of the international Zionist movement and by at least some of his associates.

For example, Alan Renouf, one of Evatt's first diplomatic cadets, wrote: "The issue was close to Evatt's heart. Near associates recall him as saying, as early as September 1945, that the Jewish people had to have a permanent home, where they could live with dignity and self-respect, and that they had full historical rights to Palestine. If the Arabs refused this, the United Nations had to decree and guarantee it." (7. Let Justice Be Done: The Foreign Policy of H.V. Evatt, 1983, p 247)

From the late 1930s Evatt had become friendly with one of the most influential and effective American Zionist leaders, Professor Felix Frankfurter. Frankfurter had worked on behalf of the Zionist project in Palestine since the turn of the century, in tandem with his uncle, the famous and greatly respected liberal judge Louis Brandeis, a personal hero of Evatt's. Brandeis had been a close counsellor and friend of President Wilson and had also had a hand in drafting the 1917 Balfour Declaration, through which the British government supported a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. (8. J.M.N Jeffries, Palestine: The Reality, 1939, p 244)

Frankfurter had been a consultant to President Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference and helped to draft the wording for the British Mandate over Palestine, which incorporated the promise of the Balfour Declaration. (9. Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest, 1971, p 195) Though Brandeis died in WW2, Evatt was befriended by Frankfurter and they were very close, at least until the 50s. (10. Kylie Tennant, Evatt: Politics & Justice, 1970, p 146)

In 1938, Evatt visited Harvard, where Frankfurter was Professor of Law, while on leave from the Bench. Frankfurter invited Evatt, as an eminent and progressive Australian lawyer, to give the Oliver Wendell Holmes series of lectures, and Evatt's biographer Kylie Tennant gives us some idea of the impact that the Harvard/Frankfurter interlude had upon the gauche but ambitious Australian: "He felt, in the freedom of that university, as if all his life he had been exiled in a foreign country. Felix Frankfurter insisted that he meet Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and each man recognised a nature cordial to his own... After such encounters Evatt found the tedium and the small hostilities of the High Court almost intolerable..." (11. Tennant, p 102)

Back in Australia, Evatt wrote to Roosevelt analysing the composition of the US Supreme Court and recommending that Frankfurter should be appointed to make it "more progressive." (He was in fact appointed on Bradeis' retirement, though Evatt's letter probably did not help him in any way). (12. A. Renouf, p 16)

Evatt left the High Court for Parliament in 1938, and as Minister for External Affairs he sent an urgent telegram to Felix Frankfurter after the fall of Singapore in 1942, asking that its contents be passed on to Roosevelt. Frankfurter obliged. (13. Renouf pp 65-66)

Then, in 1947, in the period when he was actually chairing the Special Committee on Palestine at the UN at Lake Success, Frankfurter once again invited Evatt to give the prestigious Oliver Wendell Holmes series of 3 lectures at Harvard, which he did on October 17, 20 and 24.

Though this friendship was based on shared legal and social views, and though Evatt did not at first share the Frankfurter-Brandeis passion for the Zionist project, since he knew little if anything about the Middle East and its history, it would be surprising if Frankfurter failed to influence Evatt towards the Zionist goal of partition.

In 1943, an Australian Zionist deputation was given an audience by Evatt and received the promise of his "utmost support... When the time comes"- somewhat to their surprise as they had imagined that he would have been influenced against Zionism by his old acquaintance Sir Isaac Isaacs: the judge and later Governor-General, and a lifelong Jewish opponent of Zionism. (14. Freilich, p 114)

By 1944, Max Freilich, a leading Australian Zionist, could claim that he had developed a "warm personal friendship" with Evatt "during the critical and historic days for Zionism... when the partition of Palestine was dealt with by the United Nations at Lake Success..." (15. Freilich, pp 114)

Freilich and the Zionist Federation organised a reception for Evatt before he left Australia to attend the 1946 Peace Conference, and a welcome home reception on his return. In 1947 Freilich was able to tell Zionist leaders in London, members of the World Zionist Executive, that Dr Evatts "was in sympathy with Zionist aspirations." (16. Freilich, p 114-5)

After another meeting with Evatt just before he left for the 1947 UNGA session, Freilich recalled: "We left Dr Evatt with the confident feeling that the Australian Government would support the recommendation to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states." (17. Freilich, p 155)

These are just a few examples of Evatt's open support for partition. There were other indications of bias, such as his private meetings with leaders of world Zionism who had arrived in the US to witness the progress of the Palestine question in the UN and to speak in the Special Committee hearings chaired by Evatt. (18. Freilich, p 197)

The Zionist movement hoped that the partition resolution would be put before the UN before the end of the 1947 session, thus allowing an immediate expansion of immigration into Palestine. Therefore they did not want the matter referred to the International Court of Justice, which would have caused a perhaps lengthy delay and an uncertain outcome. Also, they were entirely opposed to the unanimous UNSCOP recommendation which proposed an international solution to the problem of the Jewish refugees (i.e. a plan for all UN member states to take a quota, thus relieving the pressure on Palestine). They did not want the question of Palestine to be considered as part of a more general solution, as this obviously would draw attention to the fact that a Jewish state in Palestine was not the only panacea for European Jewry. (19. Khalidi, pp 491-4)

President Roosevelt favoured a plan for a world budget for resettling all displaced persons, including all Jews, with each nation taking a share of immigrants. (20. Khalidi, pp 529-30; Dr Alfred Lilienthal writes that in 1946 secret instructions were given to Jewish advisers in the occupied German zone to prevent Jews going anywhere except Palestine. The Zionist Connection, 1978, p 124) Although no surveys were taken about the wishes and hopes of Jewish DPs, it was estimated by officials on the spot that a majority did not want to go to Palestine. The Chief of UNRRA operations in Europe, 1945-6, wrote that "in reality, there were few among the travellers who, of their own free will, would have gone elsewhere than to the USA".

But of course neither the Indigenous Palestinian Arabs not the "displaced" victims of European anti-semitism were systematically canvassed as to their choices about their own fates. Meanwhile, Evatt fulfilled Zionist hopes for the outcome of the Special Committee on Palestine to the letter.

I have not the space to detail Evatt's total opposition to European fascism or his sympathy with its victims (with a liberal this can be taken for granted). On the other hand nor have I been able to detail his opposition, along with the rest of the ALP Cabinet, to a non-Zionist Jewish proposition to settle some 50,000 of the Jewish refugees in the Kimberleys in 1944, pleasing the Zionists but not, I imagine, the 50,000 hopeful immigrants. (21. See M. Blakeney, Australia & the Jewish Refugees, 1985)

To conclude this section: Evatt's bias towards partition was quite widely known an appreciated from at least 1945, both in Australia and overseas. It was therefore most improper, and contrary to the principles of natural justice, for Evatt to have accepted the chair of the body which had the duty of deliberating and deciding upon the UNSCOP partition recommendation in 1947.

Next installment: The Question of UN Competence

When Doc Evatt Did a Job on Palestine 1

Over the next few days I intend posting - in 4 parts -  an important critique  - Justice Evatt & Palestine: The Limits of Justice - of Australian Labor Party icon, Herbert Vere Evatt's role in the United Nations' partition, and therefore criminal destruction, of Arab Palestine, in 1947. It was written in the 80s by Caroline Graham, Lecturer in Politics, Faculty of Humanities, University of Technology in Sydney. I am not aware, apart from my own posts on the subject of Evatt, of any other attempt to take Evatt to task on this subject. Given that pro-Zionist Labor politicians invariably cite Evatt's deplorable role in the partition of Palestine, and hence the creation of the state of Israel, with pride, Graham's critical analysis should be read by everyone. Here is Part 1:

"To his old man Foreign Affairs was big time. Heroic figures. A conversation on that subject nearly always led to talk of Herb Evatt, his father's only Australian hero, to talk of his work for the UN, and how Robert Menzies had finally destroyed him."

That quotation from a short story by Greek Australian Angelo Loukakis encapsulates the strong feelings of reverence, combined with sympathy, aroused by Evatt in most progressive Australians. He was our hero, destroyed by the forces of darkness and reaction.

On the question of Palestine, added to Evatt's status and martyrdom has been the fact of bipartisan and broad support for the state of Israel, and so it is easy to understand why no serious critique of Evatt's leading role in the UN's 1947 decision to partition Palestine has been attempted.

It is an unpleasant task to highlight the mistakes of a national hero, but perhaps it is time to take a closer look at what was in my view the greatest blunder of his career, in both a moral and a legal sense. His active promotion of the partition of Palestine was the action in which he swung furthest away from his own ideal of a reign of international law and justice, implemented through the UNO.

The decision itself and the process at the UN by which it was reached actually subverted international law and basic legal principles. This did not go unremarked - a number of eminent international lawyers and diplomats, amongst others, expressed serious reservations and criticisms at the time.

With the benefit of hindsight we also have to add that partition has never been implemented. It is and always was unworkable without the support, however lukewarm, of the parties to the conflict. Then as now, neither Jewish nor Palestinian leaders have supported partition except for temporary tactical reasons and Evatt's "fair and just solution" still lies on the drawing board of history.

Before embarking on a detailed critique, I will summarize Evatt's role in what he once called "the Palestine job." It is well known that Evatt, as Minister for External Affairs in the Curtin-Chifley Labor government from 1941-9, had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the postwar formation of the UNO. By the late 40s his reputation there was such that he knew he could achieve the honour of becoming President of the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Indeed, he won the presidential election of 1948. That he regarded this as the crowning point of his career is emphasised by the epitaph on his gravestone in Canberra Cemetery, which reads simply : "President of the United Nations General Assembly." None of his other distinctions rates a mention.

He had been a candidate for the 1947 presidential term but had narrowly lost out to Dr Aranha of Brazil. Evatt made it known that he would stand for 1948, and Dr Aranha wanted to assist him. Naturally it would be in Evatt's interest to take some prominent and helpful role in the UN arena in the lead up to the next presidential election. He was already chairing the UN Atomic Energy Commission in 1947, but the urgent problem of Palestine emerged early in that year as the most dramatic and high profile issue facing the UN in the next UNGA session.

In April 1947 the British Labour Government, unable to stem the violence in Palestine dumped the problem in the lap of the UN. The UNGA immediately convened a Special Session to confront this development. After a fortnight of hearing from Palestinian, Arab and Jewish leaders a Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was appointed to investigate further and to recommend a solution to the next regular UNGA session in September. (It's important in this narrative to know that the UNGA's regular annual session are from September to the end of November, and that it is obviously extremely difficult to convene at any other times.)

UNSCOP consisted of representatives from 11 middle ranking or third world nations, including Australia. After conducting hearings in Palestine, boycotted by Palestinians and other Arabs in accordance with their rejection of the UN's competence to decide on the future of Palestine, it completed its report on 31st August.

"It recommended unanimously that the mandate should be terminated and independence granted at the earliest possible date; that the economic unity of Palestine should be preserved; that the sacred character of the Holy Places should be safeguarded and access to them assured; and that the General Assembly should immediately make an international arrangement for solving the urgent problem of the 250,000 displaced European Jews in Europe... A majority of 8 members proposed the partition of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish  States and an International City of Jerusalem, to be administered under permanent United Nations trusteeship... A minority of 3 members [India, Iran Yugoslavia], all with substantial Moslem populations, called for an independent federal government with Jerusalem as [its] capital and for Arab and Jewish states having jurisdiction over such matters as education, social services, public health and agriculture... The Arab Higher Committee rejected both partition and a federal state. The Jewish Agency accepted UNSCOP's majority proposal as an 'indispensable minimum'." (1. Margaret Arakie, The Broken Sword of Justice, 1973, pp 55-58)

The significance of the partition proposal for both Arabs and Jews is clearly spelt out by British historian David Hirst:

"For the Zionists, the Partition Plan ranked, as a charter of legitimacy, with the Balfour Declaration which., in their view, it superseded and fulfilled. Certainly, it was a no less partisan document. Palestine comprises some 10,000 square miles. Of this. the Arabs were to retain 4,300 square miles while the Jews, who represented one-third of the population and owned some 6% of the land, were allotted 5,700 square miles. The Jews also got the better land; they were to have the fertile coastal belt while the Arabs were to make do, for the most part, with the hills. Yet it was not the size of the area allotted to the Jews which pleased them - indeed, they regarded it as the 'irreducible minimum' which they could accept - it was rather the fact of statehood itself. Conversely, it was not merely the size of the area they were to lose, it was the loss pf land, sovereignty and an antique heritage that angered the Arabs. The Partition Plan legitimized what had been, on any but the most partisan interpretation of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, illegitimately acquired. The past was, as it were, wiped out. Overnight, the comity of nations solemnly laid the foundations of a new moral order by which the Jews, the great majority of whom had been in Palestine less than 30 years, were deemed to ave claims equal, indeed superior, to those of the Arabs who had lived there from time immemorial." (2. The Gun & the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the middle East, 1977, p 132)

Equally important, as Hirst points out, "the proposed Jewish State was... to contain more Arabs - 509,780 - than Jews - 499,020." (ibid, p 133)

On receiving the UNSCOP's recommendation the General Assembly formed a special Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question (on which all member states were represented) to reach a conclusion on the recommendation as soon as possible. Divided into 3 sub-committees, the first (consisting of 9 member states, including the US and the Soviet Union) supported partition. The second (composed of the 6 Arab states, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Colombia) drew up plans for a unitary state. The third focused on the forlorn hope of reconciliation.

Evatt was elected chairman of the committee. In his own words: "This committee was to be a committee not of any limited character but comprising everyone of the 57 nations. Accordingly its decisions would probably determine the final UN Assembly vote on the Palestine question and indeed this proved to be the case... (Dr Aranha) assured me that they were all anxious that I should accept the responsibility: " I tell you most sincerely that the future of the Assembly depends on the success of the Palestine Committee and in the interests of the United Nations I ask you to do the job." ... I was also alive to the fact, and Dr Aranha did not attempt to conceal it, that the Palestine job was the "hot potato" in the Assembly and that quite a few of the delegates were expressing the opinion, perhaps the hope, that the proceedings of the committee would end in deadlock... I was greatly impressed by Aranha's point of view. He was tremendously keen on success of the 1947 Assembly. It seemed to me that if the United Nations could reach a fair and just solution of the Palestine question, it would greatly increase its own power and prestige; it would make history well worth making." (3. H.V. Evatt, Task of Nations, 1949, pp 129-131)

As history shows, the Special Committee was expertly and energetically chaired by Evatt, often holding as many as 3 meetings a day in order to rush proceedings through by the end of November. This time the Palestinians and other Arabs decided not to boycott the process, and the committee heard from a lengthy line-up of speakers from both sides.

Towards the end of November the committee began to vote on a number of divisive issues. First came the question of whether the UN had jurisdiction to reach a decision on the future government of Palestine - this was only narrowly won. A proposal that the whole question of jurisdiction should be put before the International Court of Justice was narrowly lost.

Then came the vital vote on the UNSCOP partition plan. Of the 57 votes, 25 were in favour and 13 against, with 19 abstentions. Thus the partition proposal went forward to the UNGA and it was a foregone conclusion that this voting pattern would be closely repeated in that forum, with exactly the same membership. However, in accordance with UN by-laws, this was a vote on a substantive issue and so would require a majority of two-thirds of the votes of the plenary Assembly.

It is not within the scope of this paper to describe the pressures which were now exerted on a small and dependent member states like Haiti, the Philippines and Liberia to change their votes. This scandal has been documented by a number of writers and participants. The taking of the vote was postponed by the UN Secretary General Trygve Lie apparently for no other reason than to allow the arm-twisting to continue behind the scenes. At the last possible moment before the 1947 UNGA session was adjourned, partition won by 33 votes to 13, with 10 abstentions.

In Australia, Evatt has received voluminous praise for his role in all this. For example, Alan Renouf has written: "no better testimony exists to Evatt's pursuit of justice than the part he played in the establishment of the state of Israel." (4. Let Justice Be Done: The Foreign Policy of H.V. Evatt, 1983) The Zionist lobby were especially fulsome: for example, Rieke Cohen, then president of the Women's International Zionist Organisation branch in Australia, called Evatt "an instrument of God for the rebirth of the Jewish state." (5. Quoted in Max Freilich, Zion in Our Time: Memoirs of an Australian Zionist, 1967) Evatt's biographers - Kylie Tennant, Alan Renouf, and Allan Dalziel - do not suggest that there could be another side to the story, let alone that Evatt may have erred.

However I will take up three issues surrounding the case, and Evatt's role, which I think call for critical analysis. These are the problem of Evatt's bias or interest in the outcome; the question of UN competence to recommend partition of a country; and the question of the failure of the Special Committee to refer the case to the International Court of Justice. (Evatt was in a position to exert a major influence in deliberations on the latter two issues).

Next installment: Evatt's Bias

Deconstructing Trumble's Cut & Paste

A critical look at PM Trumble's pro-Israel propaganda piece in The Australian of 22 February, specifically the first 3 paragraphs, yields much of interest for those of us who still harbour a preference for facts over myths and a respect for the historical record.

Trumble kicks off with this sentence:

"Our friendship is as old as the state of Israel itself."

Now compare that with the opening sentence from the second section of former Labor foreign minister Stephen Smith's Australia & Israel speech, delivered on 19 May, 2009:

"Australia's support for the State of Israel goes right back to its creation."

Now consider the next two sentences in Smith's speech:

"Foreign Minister H.V. Evatt, one of my predecessors, played an important role through his Chairmanship of the United Nations International [sic: Special] Commission on Palestine in 1947. Evatt understood the justice of Israel's right to full international citizenship at a time when many still did not."

As a Liberal, of course, Trumble had no use for those two sentences about a former Labor foreign minister (1945-49), whatever services he may have rendered to the Zionist movement in the late 40s. So the Evatt references ended up on the cutting-room floor.

Trumble's next sentence reads:

"Australia was the first country to vote in favour of the 1947 UN partition resolution adopted by the General Assembly, which led to the establishment of Israel in 1948."

Now compare that with Smith's next sentence. As you'll see, both sentences are based on the curious idea that Australia, like some over-the-top, competitive schoolkid with his hand up, screaming Sir! Sir! Sir! to a teacher's question, just couldn't wait to give the Zios a leg up in Palestine:

"When a vote was called that year on General Assembly Resolution 181 to establish separate Jewish and Arab states, the Australian delegate was the first to vote. And the first to vote in favour of the proposal."

(Actually, in Trumble's version, the implication seems to be that the Australian delegate somehow, preternaturally knew he was voting for 'Israel', which was still 6 months away from being declared!)

Smith then proceeds to tell us that Evatt "presided over the historic May 1949 vote admitting Israel as the 59th member of the United Nations."

Again, Evatt has been trimmed from Trumble's piece,

Smith continues:

"Following that vote, Israel's distinguished representative Abba Eban acknowledged the contribution that Evatt and the Australian Government had made to the international recognition of Israel, when he said: 'The manner in which you steered to a vote this second historic Resolution... the warmth and eloquence with which you welcomed Israel into the family of nations, have earned for you the undying gratitude of our people'."

Now here's Trumble's near duplicate version:

"Following the vote, Israeli representative Abba Eban acknowledged Australia's contribution. 'The manner in which you steered to a vote this second historic resolution... the warmth and eloquence with which you welcome Israel into the family of nations, have earned for you the undying gratitude of our people'."

Notice that, in Trumble's version, Eban is portrayed as as praising Australia for "steering to a vote" the 1947 partition resolution (181) of November 1947 (as chair of the UN's Ad hoc Committee on Palestine - and after succumbing to the blandishments of Australian Zionists - he favoured partitioning Palestine over seeking an ICJ advisory opinion), whereas, in fact, he was praising Australia's vote with respect to the May 1949 admission of Israel to UN membership (conditional, BTW, on Israel's implementation of UNGA resolution 194, allowing the return of Palestinian refugees displaced by the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948). The reference to "second historic resolution" (the first referring to the 'partition' resolution) confirms this.

IOW, what we have here is nothing more or less than a cheap cut and paste of an earlier Labor speech, itself probably cribbed from some Zionist propaganda document. Obviously the work of one of Turnbull's minders, it's a perfect example of what is known as 'received wisdom', never examined factoids, endlessly recycled as fact by the mainstream media and junk 'scholarship'.

But it's particularly on this one-sentence third paragraph that I wish to dwell. Because nothing could be further from the truth:

"The key role Australia played in ensuring the security and prosperity of the Jewish people should be a source of pride for us all."

One implication here is that Australia (and, presumably, the other countries which voted for partition in November 1947) was thinking primarily about the fate of Holocaust survivors, many of whom were living at the time in Displaced Persons Camps in Europe. And contrariwise, that those countries which voted against the partition of Palestine were one and all Jew haters.

Now consider the following excerpt from the anti-partition speech of Pakistan's representative, Sir Zafrullah Khan, and note, in particular, his sarcastic reference to Australia:

"What has Palestine done? What is its contribution toward the solution of the humanitarian question as it affects Jewish refugees and displaced persons? Since the end of the First World War, Palestine has taken over 400,000 Jewish immigrants. Since the start of the Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany, Palestine has taken almost 300,000 Jewish refugees. This does not include illegal immigrants who could not be counted.

"One has observed that those who talk of humanitarian principles, and can afford to do most, have done the least at their own expense to alleviate this problem. But they are ready - indeed, they are anxious - to be most generous at the expense of the Arab.

"There have been few periods in history when members of the Jewish race have not been persecuted in one part or another of Europe. When English kings and barons indulged in the pastime of extracting the teeth of Jewish merchants and bankers as a gentle means of persuading them to cooperate in bolstering their feudal economy... Arab Spain provided a shelter, a refuge and a haven for the Jews.

"Today it is said: only the poor persecuted European Jew is without a home. True. And it is further said: why, then, let Arab Palestine provide him, as Arab Spain did, not only with a shelter, a refuge, but also with a State so that he shall rule over the Arab. How generous! How humanitarian!

"The United Nation Special Committee on Palestine, as we know, in recommendation VII, one of the unanimous recommendations, urged that the General Assembly take up this question of refugees and displaced persons immediately, apart from the problem of Palestine, in order to afford relief to the persecuted Jew so that there should be an alleviation of this humanitarian problem and an alleviation of the Palestinian problem.

"What has this great and august body done in that respect? Sub-committee 2 made a recommendation and drew up a draft resolution on that basis (resolution II, document A/AC.14/32). First, let those Jewish refugees and displaced persons who can be repatriated to their own countries be repatriated; secondly, those who cannot be repatriated should be allotted to Member States in accordance with their capacity to receive such refugees; and, thirdly, a committee should be set up to determine quotas for that purpose.

"The resolution is put forward for consideration. Shall they be repatriated to their own countries? Australia says no; Canada says no; the United States says no. This was very encouraging from one point of view. Let these people, after their terrible experiences, even if they are willing to go back, not be asked to go back to their own countries. In this way, one would be more sure that the second proposal would be adopted and that we should all give shelter to these people. Shall they be distributed among the Member States according to the capacity of the latter to receive them? Australia, an overpopulated small country with congested areas, says no, no, no; Canada, equally congested and overpopulated, says no; the United States, a great humanitarian country, a small area, with small resources, says no. That is their contribution to the humanitarian principle. But they state: let them go into Palestine, where there are vast areas, a large economy and no trouble; they can easily be taken in there.

"That is the contribution taken by this august body to the settlement of the humanitarian principle involved." (Sir Zafrullah Khan's speech on the question of Palestine, themuslimtimes.info)

So let us revisit PM Trumble's final paragraph:

"The key role Australia played in ensuring the security and prosperity of the Jewish people should be a source of pride for us all."

If PM Trumble is referring here to Jewish Holocaust survivors in DP camps, most of whom would have gone to the US if given half a chance*, then he's messing with history.

If, on the other hand, he means "the Jewish people" (as in the Balfour Declaration's "a national home for the Jewish people"), that stock standard Zionist ideological construct which supposedly provides the rationale for the Jewish state of Israel, he needs to explain quite why Australians should take "pride" in "ensuring the security and prosperity" of a sectarian, apartheid state founded on the mass dispossession and expulsion of Palestine's indigenous Arab population.

[*See my 4/8/10 post Humanity or Zionism. Just click on the label for Yosef Grodzinsky below.]

Bob Hawke's Crazy Love

In an Australian Financial Review op-ed published yesterday, former Labor PM and die-hard "friend of Israel," Bob Hawke, confesses to being worried about "the danger of Israel being blinded to the threat to its very soul and the vision of its future."

In Time to recognise the state of Palestine, he describes a meeting he had with former Israeli PM Golda Meir, at the end of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973:

"I listened with admiration and in total agreement as this wonderful woman, still traumatised with grief, looked into my eyes and said there could be no peace for Israel until there was an honourable settlement of the aspirations of the Palestinian people."

"Soul"? "Vision"? We're dealing here with a-worse-than-apartheid-state for God's sake, with no other "vision" than to cram in as many Jews as possible, and knock off as many Palestinians as circumstances allow. As for that "wonderful woman," Golda Meir, wasn't she the one who said, "There is no such thing as Palestinians"? (See my 17/8/08 post The Zionist La Passionara.)

Unfortunately, despite all his free time and a taxpayer-funded retirement package an aged pensioner could only dream of, he still hasn't taken the time or trouble to revisit, research, revise and apologise for his youthful infatuation and where it led him.

Clearly, the old codger's still not over it.

The only thing, it seems, which perturbs his rosy vision of an imagined Israeli golden age, is the current "sentiment of Israeli political leadership" as exemplified in "the inexorable expansion of Jewish settlement in the West Bank," where "some 580,000 Israelis live in 123 government-authorised settlements and about 100 unauthorised outposts on the West Bank and 12 major neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem." Not to mention those recently announced.

"The least we can do," he concludes, "in these most challenging of times, is to do what 137 other nations have already done - grant diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine."

The appalling thought arises: Will this be it? Will Hawke's be the one and only opinion piece in the lead-up to Netanyahu's visit in the Australian press that deviates from the usual, bipartisan kowtowing to Israel?

Perish the the thought.

But there's more to Hawke's piece than meets the eye. Something quite astonishing in fact. This:

"It was our great foreign minister Dr H.V. Evatt who chaired the UN Special Committee on Palestine and it was the resolution of that committee that authorised the partition of Palestine into two states. It was on the basis of this resolution that the state of Israel was established in 1948. The resolution gave the already settled and the newly arriving European Jewish settlers - who by then constituted a third of the population and owned less than 6% of the land - exactly 56.47% of the Palestinians' best cultivated land and cities. The two-thirds population of indigenous Palestinians who owned more than 94% of the land were given 47% of their own country."

Think about it...

If:

a) Evatt had a hand in proposing that the indigenous Palestinians be divested of 56.47% of their patrimony, to be handed over, lock, stock, and barrel, to a minority of recently-arrived European settlers who had purchased only 6% of it (and he did);

b) and if the partition proposal enshrined in the UNGA's resolution of 29 November, 1947, was as draconian as has been described (and it was);

c) and if said partition resolution was, at least in part, Evatt's legacy in Palestine (and it was), then how the hell can Hawke describe Evatt as "our great foreign minister"?

In fact, it was the partition resolution of 1947 that gave Zionist fanatics such as David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir all the excuse they needed to embark on the military offensive they'd been preparing for for decades, drive out the indigenous Palestinian population, occupy 78% of their ancestral homeland, destroy hundreds of their villages, steal their land, and strew it with settlements (called at the time kibbutzes).

If Hawke really wanted to make a statement at this time, the very least he could have done would be to repudiate Evatt's legacy in Palestine, demand Israel withdraw to its 1947 partition borders, and call on it to implement all relevant UN resolutions, particularly UNGA resolution 194, enshrining the right of Palestinians ethnically cleansed in 1948 to return home.

SMH: Lightweight. Increasingly.

As the Sydney Morning Herald shrinks, almost too light now to even reach one's front lawn, so too does the quality of its editorials. For example:

"Back decades... Labor foreign minister, attorney-general and eventually leader H.V. (Bert) Evatt played a key role in establishing the UN... He helped develop the Universal Declaration of Human Rights* and counted the creation of Israel among his greatest contributions at the UN." (Turnbull makes serious blunder rejecting Rudd, 30/7/16)

IOW, our Bert created Israel.

OFFS!

Here is what actually happened at the time:

In 1947, Evatt was chair of the UN's Ad hoc Committee on Palestine. When, on 25 November 1947, the Committee voted to recommend to the UN General Assembly that Palestine be partitioned into Jewish and Arab states, Australia/Evatt voted for partition. The final Committee vote was 25 for, 13 against with 17 abstentions. That is, of the 55 votes cast only 25 favoured partition.

Some arm-twisting of UN member states (by the US at the behest of the Zionists) had, therefore, to be undertaken in order to line up the required majority of votes for partition before the UNGA met to decide on the matter on 29 November. I have dealt with this thuggery in several posts, accessible under the label 'Palestine partition'. The point I wish to make here, however, is that the Herald's ZIONIST hyping of Evatt's role in the sordid affair of partitioning Palestine over the heads of its people cannot be allowed to stand.

To put Evatt's role in perspective, I offer this summation by one of Australia's leading Zionists of the time, Max Freilich:

"On 18th December the Zionist Federation gave a dinner reception to Dr. Evatt paying tribute to him for the skilful way in which he had conducted the meetings of the Ad hoc Committee on Palestine so that it was made possible for the United Nations Assembly to arrive at the decision for the partitioning of Palestine into Jewish and Arab States." (Zion in Our Time, 1967, p 199)

So much for Evett creating Israel.

Having said that, Evatt still needs a retrospective caning for, in Freilich's words, "conducting the meetings of the Ad hoc Committee on Palestine so that it was possible for the United Nations Assembly to arrive at the decision for the partitioning of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states."

[*There is no mention of Evatt's name in relation to the development of the UDHR in the Wikipedia entry for this subject. More hype?]

Melissa Parke MP: Nice Girl in a Place Like This

New Matilda journalist Max Chalmers' excellent piece on Labor MP (Freemantle, WA) Melissa Parke, who has announced she will be stepping down at the next election, is called Labor's conscientious objector: inside Melissa Parke's war on indifference (28/2/16). It could just as well have been called What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? 

Chalmer's essay is a fascinating reflection on the interface between a thoroughly decent, principled, and beautiful human being and a thoroughly indecent, unprincipled, ugly-as-sin party machine. Or, to put it another way, the interface between a human being so morally and intellectually courageous that the issue of Palestine is central to her outlook on life and a party machine committed to ensuring that it is consigned to history's dustbin. Which is to say, a rotten-to-the-core Zionist party.

I would urge all of you to read the essay in its entirety. For now I wish only to highlight the following passages and say a few words:

"The issue of BDS in Australia, and of the Israel/Palestine conflict generally, remains politically unrewarding. Support begets accusations of anti-Semitism, and as The Greens have learnt, dogged attacks from the conservative press. If you are unlucky you might even end up in court. Meanwhile, most Australians couldn't tell you the first thing about the aging conflict. The repercussions for pushing it onto the public consciousness are severe, and the political payoffs somewhere between questionable and nonexistent."

Now isn't that the naked truth?! And yet, it seems to me, that even as good a journalist as Chalmers is afraid to spell out the bleeding obvious; whether Lib, Lab or Green, the Zionist lobby has Australian politics by its non-existent balls.

Example? Melissa Parke MP is tabling a petition in support of BDS by a dissident Israeli academic resident in Australia, Marcelo Svirsky. Writes Chalmers: "Despite being delivered to a near-empty chamber, Parkes' remarks were punctuated by outraged interjections."

Near-empty chamber... outraged interjections. Says it all, really.

So why has Parkes embraced the cause of Palestine? Simple. Being the intellectually and morally courageous individual she is, and having seen what she's seen, she simply cannot look away. From this:

"As the Second Intifada raged [2000-2005]... Parke was in Gaza... working as a Legal Officer for a UN refugee agency... At the time, Israel was deploying what Parke describes as 'a sort of shock and awe bombing campaign.' She says thirty-six bombs were dropped on her first night in Gaza city, shaking her building and its surrounds. She lay awake. Then Israel started targeting leaders of Hamas - too bad if you're the one who gets stuck in traffic behind them when the IDF locks on. 'You could be driving behind the car targeted with Hamas in it and you're gone as well,' Parke says. She was scared, and her fears were soon vindicated. The same year as Parke arrived in Gaza, a place she stayed for two and a half years, fellow UN worker Ian Hook was shot in the back by an Israeli sniper from a nearby building. Hook was in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank but was inside a UN compound at the time he was shot. He'd been there to help rebuild homes. Israel contests the exact details of the killing, but those like Parke believe the shooter must have known who they were about to slay. Despite some outrage, and conciliatory calls from Israel's then foreign minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to the English government, a UN resolution condemning the murder was vetoed by the United States.

"The killing of Hook and lack of international response outraged Parke, and she carries the injustice of it with her still. So too the many others she witnessed directly in the shelled and reshelled streets of Gaza. 'I didn't go there with a preconceived view,' Parke insists. 'I obviously had read about the situation. But it's not until you're there on the ground that you come to appreciate the absolute imbalance of power. You're talking about the fourth largest military power in the world with the latest technology and with an army, navy, airforce, versus an occupied people - an impoverished, occupied people.' These experiences soaked deep into Parke. When I tried to move the interview on, at one point, she moves us back to Palestine. This is what she wants to talk about and part of the reason she came to Parliament: to grab the megaphone and to use it."

Inevitably, the subject of Tanya (Once was warrior) Plibersek arises:

"Both Parke and Plibersek secured progressive inner-city seats and have an affinity for development and international affairs. Both are used as counter-examples by party faithful disillusioned with the middling leadership of Bill Shorten. Both have a powerful charisma and independent streak. But only one has played the disciplined insider game: Plibersek now finds herself on the ladder's penultimate rung. Yet... Tanya Plibersek underwent a transformation over the period of her ascent, especially in regards to international affairs. In earlier times, Plibersek decried Ariel Sharon as a war criminal and blasted the US but by the time he died in 2014, she was thanking the former Israeli leader for his 'courageous stand' for peace."

Yet another example, if one were needed, of the extraordinary power of the Israel lobby in this country. The appalling reality of Australian political life, as of American, is that the path to the the political ladder's penultimate rung passes through the Zionist lobby.

Finally, a quibble: "[Parke] is drawn to Labor's history and points to Doc Evatt... as [a source] of inspiration."

Melissa, should ever get around to reading this post, please, please, please take the trouble to click on the Dr Evatt label below and find out a little more about this Zionist icon.

Why Peter Beattie?

As readers of this blog will know, Murdoch's Israel fanzine The Australian routinely and relentlessly campaigns against any and every manifestation of public support, however small, timid or symbolic, for the rights of the Palestinian people.

The latest such manifestation, of course, is a proposal by NSW Labor Friends of Palestine to call for the adoption at this month's NSW Labor conference of a ban on party members joining Israel lobby-sponsored propaganda tours (aka rambammings) of Israel.

An integral feature of these campaigns is the trotting out of a handful of Zionist spear-carriers (so far we've heard from Vic Alhadeff, Michael Danby, Warren Mundine & Michael Forshaw) to 'slam' or 'blast' - the preferred terminology - the pro-Palestine initiative as 'misguided' or 'divisive' or 'counter-productive,' and/or smear the offending party as 'anti-Semitic' or 'verging on the anti-Semitic.'

Which is where Peter Beattie now comes in:

"Former Queensland premier (1998-2007) Peter Beattie says the Labor Party risks becoming politically irrelevant over its 'Stalinist' approach to Israel, which he argues has become obsessive." (Beattie blasts ALP's 'Stalinist' stance on Israel, Sharri Markson, 4/2/16)

Now let's not get too excited over what Beattie says - 'Stalinist' is just another smear in the arsenal after all. What's far more interesting is what kind of public figure in this day and age, when the verdict is well and truly in on the matter, is still prepared to go into bat for Israeli apartheid?

If Wordsworth's principle that 'The Child is father of the Man' is any guide to an individual's conduct in later life, maybe we should be examining Beattie's childhood for signs which might herald a future going over to the dark side.

Fortunately, Courier-Mail journalist and novelist, Matthew Condon,* has sketched Beattie's early years. It seems that the lad had, as they say, a few issues:

"Beattie targeted the humanitarian stream in his final two years in school. One classmate recalled: 'He used to say to me - why are you studying those subjects? He would only study what would get him the best results. Peter Beattie was always for Peter Beattie. He always did everything so he looked the best. He wasn't very popular. We always thought he was up himself. He was a crawler that's for sure, and he always knew who to influence and who to make friends with.' Another classmate said Beattie was almost addicted to trophies and tangible symbols of achievement. 'In the scouts he had so many badges on his sleeves they were actually curling underneath the sleeve hem,' he said. 'In his bedroom at the house in Robert Street you couldn't see the walls for all the ribbons and pennants he'd put up. There was everything there on display; even those little minor ribbons you wouldn't think twice about, going right back to primary school. He loved to surround himself with symbols of success. Another student recalled a young myth-maker already at work: 'He used to say he was related to (Otto von) Bismarck (founder of the German Empire), or had some German aristocratic background. It was ridiculous. He'd make up the most fantastic stories'."

And now he's calling NSW Labor - not the Qld mob, note - 'Stalinist'.

"In 1970 - his final year of high school - two issues involving Beattie left a sour note amongst his fellow students, and are still heatedly debated amongst them today. The first was a question of loyalty. Peter Beattie was school captain, and his female counterpart was Jenny Whebell. In the middle of that year a young boy was ordered by a prefect to pick up some papers he had dropped in the schoolyard. He refused. The boy was the son of the principal Morrie Harnell. When the matter was brought to Mr Harnell's attention, the prefect was stripped of her badge. Jenny Whebell and the other prefects felt the principal's actions were unjust. They all resigned their positions until a meeting of the school council could be held. The only one not to turn in his badge was Peter Beattie. 'Peter wouldn't hand his badge in,' one source said. 'Being a small town, the whole thing hit the fan over the weekend. He had his gold medal and he wouldn't let it go. He lost a lot of face over that. The rest of them were prepared to put everything on the line, but not Peter Beattie. Jenny Whebell, now Jenny Butler, confirmed the incident but declined to comment. Another contemporary of Beattie also said the story was accurate. She added: 'I never had much to do with him. I didn't associate with him outside of school. I do know he was interested in himself. That will stick in my brain forever.'

Me, myself & I. So telling that.

"The second issue was the awarding of School Dux to Peter Beattie. His name is painted in gold on the wooden honour board at Atherton State High School today. Some contemporaries still believe the award was granted to Beattie 'by default.' The 1970 Barrinean records that the only academic awards Beattie was granted in that final year were for English and Geography. As is custom, Beattie's final year results as Dux were published in the following year's school magazine. He achieved a single 7, three 6's, one 4 and one 3. In the senior exam at the end of the tear, several former students claimed Beattie was only third or possibly fourth in the class. The School Dux honour was awarded by Principal Harnell, as was tradition, prior to the final senior exam. 'He was very ordinary, academically,' one former student said 'We always felt he was Dux by default'." (Peter Beattie: The Atherton Years, Moo Ink, mathewcondon.blogspot.com.au, 25/11/05)

Very ordinary, academically? Sounds about right. Take Beattie's grasp of history, for example.

Markson quotes him in her 'report' thus:

"Mr Beattie said Australia had played a crucial role in the formation of Israel and should continue to play that constructive role."

This, of course, is a reference to Labor's 1945-49 foreign minister, 'Doc' Evatt, who, as head of the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestine Question in 1947, was instrumental in recommending the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state as opposed to referring the matter to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an opinion. The resulting UNGA partition resolution emboldened the Zionist movement in Palestine to embark on a campaign of ethnic cleansing that reduced the Palestinian majority to a minority and led to the Palestinian refugee problem which is still with us 67 years later.

And that, according to the Dux of Atherton High, was constructive?

Next post: Beattie's Obsession with Israel

[*Matt Condon is the author of a 3-volume (2013-15) study of the corrupt former Qld Police Commissioner, Terry Lewis.]

November 29: Australia's Day of Shame

Today, November 29, is the 66th anniversary of the day the United Nations General Assembly, then more of a white man's club than a body which truly represented the people of the world, voted for the partition of Palestine, without consulting its people, into a 'Jewish' and an Arab state. (This kind of decision, of course, would be inconceivable today.)

Not for nothing has November 29 been designated by the UN as International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

November 29 should be seen by Australians in particular as a day of shame because of the vital role played in the partition of Palestine by Australia's then foreign minister, Dr Herbert Vere Evatt (1945-49).

As chairman of the UN's Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, Evatt voted against referring the Palestine problem to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion and voted for partition when the matter came before the UNGA on November 29.

Evatt, who went on to become President of the UNGA, is viewed today an 'icon' of the Australian Labor Party. And don't we just love our icons? God knows why, but in our naivety, we often assume that they act out of some kind of superior knowledge or wisdom intrinsic to themselves. How wrong we are. In fact, Evatt knew virtually nothing of Palestine or Palestinians, and cared even less.

What explains his shameful role in the dismemberment of Palestine is those who had access to him, those who had his ear. Meet Max Freilich and friends:

"In my capacity as President of the Zionist State Council and member of the Department for Zionist Policy, I was actively associated with this public relations effort. But perhaps more than any of my Zionist colleagues I realised that such public relations activity is a long-term educational process, a process not conducive to, or capable of, getting immediate results. As victory for the Allies was in sight and the war's end was drawing nearer I was deeply persuaded that to be effective and to achieve immediate results we must aim for a direct and short-cut approach to the political leaders of the country. I often had occasion to discuss this problem with my friend Abram Landa, Labor Member of the NSW Parliament, who agreed with my viewpoint. Abe was a close friend of Dr Herbert Vere Evatt, Minister of External Affairs in the Labour Government of the Commonwealth of Australia and Dr Evatt was the logical Cabinet Minister to approach. The executive of the Zionist Council, as far back as August 1942, at my suggestion, decided that Dr Evatt be requested to receive a deputation which would put to him the Zionist case... A deputation led by Saul Symonds, President of the NSW Jewish Advisory Board, was received eventually by Dr Evatt, presenting to him the Zionist case and the tragedy of European Jewry. Dr Evatt received us most cordially, assured us of the Commonwealth Government's deep sympathy and promised his utmost support 'when the time comes'. The formal approach to the Government and the result, favourable as it certainly appeared to be, did not satisfy my sense of urgency... The opportunity for personal contact with members of the Government of the day came to me in mid-1944 when the Commonwealth Government decided to hold a referendum on amendments to the Constitution... Through the good offices of Abram Landa I was able to serve in some small measure the cause of the Government. This brought me into contact with Mr Ben Chifley, then Federal Treasurer, and Dr Evatt, Minister for External Affairs and Attorney-General in John Curtin's Cabinet... [M]y association with Dr Evatt developed into a warm personal friendship during the critical and historic days for Zionism in the pre-state period, when the partition of Palestine was dealt with by the United Nations at Lake Success." (Zion In Our Time: Memoirs of an Australian Zionist, 1967, pp 114-115)

Not for nothing did AIJAC's Daniel Mandel call his 2004 book on Evatt, H.V. Evatt & the Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist.

And speaking of undercover Zionists, our current crop have just sided in the UN with Israel, the United States, Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Palau to vote against the adoption of a UNGA resolution declaring 2014 as International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (110 for, 56 abstaining).

Labor Isn't a Brand, It's a Zionist Cause

"Delegates, sometimes when reforming our great Party is talked about, people say there is a problem with the Labor brand. But delegates, Labor isn't a brand, it's a cause." (Prime Minister Julia Gillard, NSW ALP State Conference, 15/7/12)

But what kind of cause? Alas, a deeply Zionist one.

Just follow the thread:

"A story of plot and counter plot, of frustration and ultimate success was told by The Right Honourable Dr HV Evatt to over 400 people at the Maccabean Hall when the Jewish National Fund opened its Jubilee Year last Monday night. Dr Evatt was President of UN committee on Palestine in 1947, and in 1949 was chairman of the Paris Assembly which debated the Trusteeship of Palestine. Later as Australia's delegate to UN he exercised his chairman's casting vote and was instrumental in having Israel admitted to UN membership. 'Australia stood for justice and had a knowledge of what justice demanded,' said Dr Evatt. 'When the debate was taking place on the establishment of Israel as a State, Australia did not avoid its responsibilities - it voted 'yes' and also voted for full recognition instead of de facto recognition.' Dr Evatt said Israel would stand side by side with Australia in the name of democracy and law and will do all it can to avert war. Mr A Landa, MLA, declared that if it were not for Dr Evatt in the years of 1947-49, Israel - who knows - may not have been in existence today... Mr Landa described Israel as a bastion of democracy in the Middle East. Mr HB Newman presented Dr Evatt with a parchment which was a certificate showing that a forest of 10,000 trees had been contributed by the Australian Jewish community and planted in Israel in Dr Evatt's name." (Dr Evatt at JNF Jubilee, Sydney Jewish News, 24/3/52)

"The ACTU president, Mr [Bob] Hawke, said yesterday that if he were the Israeli prime minister he would drop an atomic bomb on invading Arabs." (Hawke: I'd A-bomb Arabs, Chris Forsyth, The Daily Telegraph, 16/2/74)*

"UNION CHIEF WHO SAID: 'I'm proud our nation helped to kill Hamas terrorist in Dubai'... come hear outspoken Paul Howes." (JNF ad for its 2010 AGM, The Australian Jewish News, 7/5/10)**

"... ALP officials, Eric Roozendaal and Mark Arbib have spoken to me and requested that I should have my speeches vetted, visit the Holocaust Memorial, visit Israel and meet with members of various Jewish organisations..." (Julia Irwin, former Labor member for Fowler, August 2010)***

[*See my 13/7/10 post The Heart that Throbs for Bomber Bob; **See my 8/5/10 post Zionism Red in Tooth & Claw; ***See my 11/8/10 post Julia Irwin Spills the Beans.]

Bob Carr Makes Amends

Normally, Foreign Minister Bob Carr is not a man lost for words, but the following is all you get in the item, Jewish community meeting, posted on his blog, Thoughtlines with Bob Carr:

"On Friday, June 1, I met with several leaders of the Australian Jewish community. The group included Dr Danny Lamm, President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Mr Peter Wertheim AM, Executive Director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Dr Colin Rubenstein AM, Executive Director of the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council, Mr Jeremy Jones, Director of International & Community Affairs of the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council, and Mr Philip Chester, President of the Zionist Federation of Australia." (bobcarrblog.wordpress.com, 4/6/12)

Let me guess the missing bit of his meeting with the boyZ:

My visitors were most concerned by the government's decision to donate $90m to UNRWA. I was not to be deterred, however! Drawing on my broad knowledge of history, something I take considerable pride in, I informed them that without Palestinian refugees there'd be no need for either UNRWA or donation. I then invoked UNGA resolution 194 of December 11, 1948, stressing that Israel had an obligation under international law dating back to 1948 to repatriate and compensate said refugees. To say they looked gobsmacked is putting it mildly.

And then - the coup de grace. I reminded them that when Israel was granted UN membership, it was conditional on its promise to implement resolution 194. I even quoted the relevant paragraph of resolution 273, number 5 to be precise: "Recalling its resolutions of 29/11/47 and 11/12/48, and taking note of the declaration and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel before the Ad Hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions..."

Finally, I said that I thought an Australian Labor government had a particular responsibility to make amends for its hand in the destruction of Arab Palestine, bearing in mind the disgraceful part played by my predecessor, Doc Evatt, in the creation of the absolutely outrageous UN partition resolution of 1947, and that I therefore intended raising the matter of Israel's continued UN membership in the General Assembly as a matter of high priority at the first available opportunity.

At which the boyZ (as we call them when that pesky Danby's not nipping at our heels) fell in a collective swoon on the floor of my office, a most comic spectacle let me tell you. Then, after unceremoniously reviving them with a bucket of water, I resumed my chair, placed my feet on the desk, and said, as they struggled to their feet, "You do know where the door is don't you, gentlemen?"

The Kevin Rudd Road Show 1

MERC first got wind of the bigger-than-Ben Hur KRRS back in October (See my 25/10/10 post Record Rambam) and has been waiting with the proverbial baited breath ever since for this, the third, the largest, and, it has to be said, the steamiest of Melbourne Zionist promoter and publicist Albert Dadon's Ozraeli love-ins.

Those of you who regularly visit this site might remember his first and second Australia Israel Leadership Forum (AILF) shindigs. In these earlier (2009) productions, starring then DPM Julia Gillard, The Australian Jewish News discerned merely a 'shared sense of joy', with Gillard going so far, at the second, as to dance the hora, a sort of Israeli boot scootin (See my posts Gillard Gets a Gong (29/6/09) & Just Do It, Bitch (11/12/09)). Anyway, lest you think steamy a tad over the top, just wait and see.

Now many of you may have been somewhat distracted by Oprah's recent Sydney lovefest, and so overlooked Rudd's galah performance in Jerusalem. Not that I can really blame you, but to tell the truth, it was really only given its due in The Australian Jewish News and its Maxi-Me, Murdoch's Australian. So sit back while I fill you in on this mother-of-all rambammings in a series of posts, beginning with The AJN's coverage, followed by The Australian's, and concluding with Fairfax's far less attentive fare.

The AJN's coverage was, as you'd expect, full-bodied and exceedingly fruity. Its issue of December 17 bore the brunt with a front page shot of a kneeling, kippah-ed Rudd laying a wreath at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum, his figure illuminated by a flame burning behind him. This was accompanied by the kind of words that tell you all you need to know about the politics of the AJN: "ETERNAL FLAME, ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP: This week, 50 Australian politicians, journalists, and business and community leaders travelled to Israel. From the Kotel to the Knesset, Yad Vashem to Tel Aviv, the special relationship between the two countries was embraced and cemented."

Inside, under the headline Peres spreads the love, we learned that "Israel's President Shimon Peres described the relationship between the Jewish state and Australia as one of love... 'Australia is a beloved country in Israel... Love is the diplomacy that exists from the standpoint towards Australia'."

Did I say steamy? Peres' lust for Kevvie was obviously so great at this point that it quite overpowered his syntax. This was Peres' version of Oprah's 'I love Australia. I love Australia. I LOVE AUSTRALIA'. Fortunately for those assembled, despite the pull of Kevvie's obvious charms, Peres' first and only love reflexively kicked in when he began barking about Israel's "moral superiority" vis a vis a certain "brutal Islamic regime" in Iran: "He accused Iran of trying to turn the Middle East into an 'extremist empire' and 'the centre of terror'. 'They destroyed Lebanon - it was a nice country - they destroyed Yemen, they are entering Sudan and Somalia and they are going to South America because the Middle East is too small for them'."

Iran - IRAN! - I-R-A-N! - destroyed Lebanon (and everything else within cooee it seems), and our assembled pollies, journos, business and community leaders no doubt lapped up every lunatic word, having completely forgotten, if they'd ever known in the first place, that Peres was the Israeli prime minister who presided over the first Qana massacre of 1996 with its 109 Lebanese civilian deaths. Alas, this was not the only occasion when the historical record was sent packing from the room.

In another story, Rudd: Time for peace running out, on Kevvie's keynote speech to the AILF (of which, more later), the AJN's Naomi Levin managed the extraordinary feat of topping Peres' gloriously delusional rant when she asserted that "Rudd's call [for an urgent resolution to the Middle East conflict] stands in contrast to some members of the Israeli Government, who are promoting a slower, nation-building process for the Palestinians and imploring the world to focus efforts first on Iran, then on Israel and the Palestinians."

Yes, that's right, we've been wrong all along, Israel's actually been building Palestine, not destroying it! And boy, did the punters go for that one. How do I know? Why, the AJN's editorial, A beautiful friendship: "Values can seem an abstract concept, but they became concrete to the 50-strong Australian delegation, as they questioned, queried and listened intently to some of Israel's most prominent political minds. The all-comers - from Perth to the Gold Coast to the NSW South Coast and everywhere in between - embraced the new perspectives on the peace process and the Iranian threat in particular."

Building Palestine - slowly. Smashing Iran - now! Brace yourselves as these Israeli talking points start proliferating in the Australian ms media.

But the centrepiece of the AJN's coverage of the KRRS was Kevvie's December 13 "keynote address" to the AILF.

Rudd led off with a perfect pearl, which, when and if a book titled Kevin Rudd: The Complete Joke(s) is ever published, will surely occupy pride of place, and which had The Australian's extremely foreign foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan literally squirming in his seat and led to the production of an equally fine pearl, destined for inclusion in Sheridan's own similarly titled book (of which particular pearl, more in my next post). But here's Kevvie's: "It is an honour to be among Israeli and Australian friends tonight here in Jerusalem, at the King David Hotel. Shimon Peres, Israel's President, who we met earlier today, said some years ago that when you come to the King David, you come not just as a guest, but you come also to a place which has seen almost the complete cast of players across the history of the modern State of Israel, often in this room in which we gather here tonight. From the 1930s, this hotel became the British field headquarters for what was then British Palestine, until Menachem Begin undertook some interior redesign."

Finished pissing yourselves yet? Rudd's referring of course to the blowing up of the King David Hotel by Begin's Irgun terrorists in 1946 at the cost of 88 British, Arab and Jewish (15) lives. And it is telling that our wit refers to it merely as the "British field quarters", when in fact it also housed the civilian wing of Britain's mandate government in Palestine. After all, it wouldn't do to suggest that the King David was as much a civilian as a military target, now would it? Both the 'joke' and the studied omission were a signal to his hosts that all is forgiven, that the only real terrorists in the Middle East are, have always been, and always will be, Arab. Not, of course, that the Australian contingent even knew what he was talking about. What were our Israeli hosts sniggering about at the start of your speech, prime... sorry, foreign minister?

Moving along, Rudd praised the oleaginous Shimon Peres as a "living treasure of Israel" and "one of the world's truly wise men." This assessment, of course, tells one nothing of Peres and everything you ever needed to know about Rudd. For a correct assessment of Peres, whose name graces a Center for Peace and who is always trotted out on these occasions as the smiling face of the Zionist fist in Palestine, I'll quote from Rannie Amiri's counterpunch.org article Israel's Master of Deception: "The international community has long been enamored by current Israeli President and former Prime Minister, Shimon Peres. Regarded as a voice of reason and a dove among hawks, he adroitly assuages fears and reassures critics with soothing, yet empty words advocating dialogue and the creation of a Palestinian state. By duping the world into believing significant differences exist between his 'left-wing' views and those of Israel's far right, he has proved himself a master at deception." (14/5/10)

As a fan of Peres, Rudd is more than happy to parrot his vacuous... sorry, wise words: "Shimon said earlier today that as we deal with the problems of our current age, we should not be trapped by the language of the past, but rather engage in the language of the future; the language of the generation of today. The language of the generation which thinks increasingly beyond that which is national, to that which is truly global." Needless to say, Peres hasn't had a new idea since he smashed his parents' radio when he found them listening to it on the Sabbath back in 1920s Poland.

Inevitably, of course, when Rudd is regaling a Zionist audience, he'll start banging on about Doc Evatt's hand in the destruction of Arab Palestine... sorry, the creation of Israel: "My distinguished predecessor as foreign minister, [Dr HV] Evatt, chaired the UN Commission on Palestine in 1947... This was the commission that recommended the establishment of both an Israeli [sic: Jewish] state and a Palestinian state. And when its recommendations were taken to the UN General Assembly, Australia was the first state to vote in support of the establishment of the modern State of Israel."

Par for Rudd's course, of course. A new element in these ritualised proceedings, however, was injected with some first rate Holocaust breastbeating: "Of course, in the years following the war, Australia also received tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors and other Jewish refugees from Europe as they came to Australia to make their home. Regrettably, history records that we were not always so generous. As I acknowledged last night at Yad Vashem, when Australia met with 31 other nations at the Evian Conference in 1938, we refused to open our hearts and we refused to open our doors to the Jewish people of Europe, despite the unfolding persecution against them. Disgracefully, our representative at the time said we could not help, that Australia had no racial problems at the time, nor did it wish to import any. The ancient scriptures have long enjoined us all never to harden our hearts, and yet still we and the other Christian nations of the world did just that."

This is truly gobsmacking stuff. Here we have the man (?) who, as PM, hardened his heart with a "tough but humane" policy toward the current wave of refugees from wartorn Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, invoking the historical record on the Evian Conference before an audience of Zionists and their sundry Australian dupes and fools, and apologising for supposed Christian complicity (Christian nations) in the Nazis' persecution of German Jews, when the fact of the matter is that the Zionist supremo of the day, David Ben-Gurion, was instrumental in nixing the conference: "The Jews could only have one destination - Eretz Yisrael. So in June 1938, shortly before Allied representative met in Evian, France, to seek ways of rescuing Jews, Ben-Gurion frankly voiced his concern to colleagues in the Jewish Agency Executive. He did 'not know if the conference will open the gates of other countries... But I am afraid [it] might cause tremendous harm to Eretz Yisrael and Zionism... Our main task is to reduce the harm, the danger and the disaster... and the more we emphasize the terrible distress of the Jewish masses in Germany, Poland and Rumania, the more damage we shall cause'. So be silent, Ben-Gurion cautioned his comrades... And in the silence... Evian failed." (Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire, Dan Kurzman, 1983)

After the obligatory references to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and William Cooper (See my 12/12/10 post The ABC of Zionist Propaganda), Mr Guilty asked, "So why do I reflect on these things at some length this evening? To say to our Israeli friends that none of us come to the history of modern Israel with hands that are completely clean. But in Australia, through the actions of successive governments since the war... we have honoured our friendship with Israel in good times and in bad. We have supported you in all the major wars you have fought, because in Australia you are among friends."

In short, because we feel we didn't pull our weight in the 30s by taking in German Jews, even though that was the last thing your founding fathers would have wanted us to do, we will give you now a free pass to grind the faces of the Palestinians, the Arabs, the Iranians, and whoever takes your fancy... in perpetuity.

Then he turned to Israel's much-hyped "security challenges," shamelessly parroting the same old, same old, proven bogus wiping-Israel-off-the-map mantra: "The Iranian leader's proclamation that Israel should be removed from the map of the world was a chilling reminder of the rank anti-semitism from decades past." And ditto for Hezbollah and Hamas, who, of course, cannot possibly be conceived as anything other than Iran's supposed "terrorist" proxies, with nothing better to do than mindlessly launch their rockets and make Israeli lives an absolute misery.

Eventually, we reach the fabled peace process, which had Rudd crying into his beer: "Sometimes it seems as if we have been wandering in the desert for the last 40 years... I am increasingly concerned that the window for peace may be beginning to close." His nightmare vision? "What happens to the security of Israel if the peace process collapses completely?" Remember the dreaded Second Intifada, he enjoins: "I remember touring the Old city then and touring it alone. There was no-one on the streets. People were afraid." Israeli people, that is. Who gives a rat's for Palestinian fear? Certainly not Rudd or his handpicked camp followers. Certainly not the Israeli officials lapping all this up.

"What will happen in Egypt? What will happen in Jordan?" he wailed. "And what dividend would a collapse in the peace process deliver to Iran and its quest for political legitimacy and the expansion of its diplomatic and security footprint across the wider Middle East and beyond." Doesn't bear thinking about, eh?

But, my friends, "there is another scenario to consider": The Israeli lion lieth down with the Palestinian lamb, the Arabs beat their swords into ploughshares, Iran and its proxies vanish in a puff of smoke, and "7.5 million Israelis" get to make a grab for those lucrative Arab markets.

But, hey, don't think I'm trying to impose anything on you blokes, no, these are just "scenarios worthy of careful analysis," cuz always remember, my beloved friends in Zion, "Whatever the future holds through this peace process and beyond, you will forever have strong and reliable friends in Australia."

Yes, you heard it. Forever! As Oprah would say, "Who is feeling the love right now? Do you feel sexy, Australia?"