Thus spake the Attorney-General Senator George Brandis on Q&A last night:
"If you are a dual Australia Israeli citizen and you choose to become a member of the IDF, there is nothing wrong with that... There is no equivalence between the standing army of a foreign friendly state like Israel and a terrorist insurgency like ISIL, and I'm not aware of a single instance that a Jewish man or woman... who has seen service in the IDF has come back to Australia and perpetrated a terrorist crime."
Brandis' assertions raise a number of questions which, unfortunately, didn't get an airing on Q&A:
First, wasn't Israel born of a sectarian (Jews only), terrorist (Hagana, Irgun, Stern Gang) insurgency which cut a swathe through British Mandate Palestine in 1947-49, expelling the majority of its non-Jewish inhabitants?
Second, Brandis needs to be reminded of the case of the ill-fated Australian Jew and Mossad recruit Ben Zygier who got up to God-knows-what in the Middle East, most likely on an Australian passport, thus, potentially, putting all Australian passport-holders at risk. (See in particular my 17/2/13 post Prisoner X 5.)
Third, and foremost, Brandis obviously has no qualms whatever about Australian Jews serving in the IDF, just so long as their terrorism is directed against Palestinians or Lebanese or whoever else takes their fancy. Nice.
What a pity no-one in the Bankstown audience raised such matters with the man, not to mention the fact that he doesn't even acknowledge that Israel is in occupation of the Palestinian territories. (See my 7/6/14 post Lap Dancing for Israel?)
Showing posts with label George Brandis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Brandis. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Brandis & Turnbull Put Boot Into SMH
That valiant crusader for FOSEEP (freedom of speech everywhere except Palestine), Attorney-General Senator George Brandis, might struggle with the term 'Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory'*, but he sure-as-hell knows that federal parliament is Israeli-occupied territory. Hence:
"I thought the [Le Lievre] cartoon was deplorable... I would have thought a responsible media organisation would have a very good look at itself when it publishes a cartoon (of) the kind we haven't seen since Germany in the 1930s.'... Asked if the cartoon amounted to racial vilification and could encourage or incite others to hate Jews, Senator Brandis said: 'It certainly constitutes a racial form of stereotyping. I think The Sydney Morning Herald... ought to be very careful about the almost overtly anti-Semitic tone some of their commentary, including their editorial cartoon, have adopted'." (Brandis slams Fairfax newspaper over 'anti-Semitic' cartoon, Darren Davidson, The Australian, 4/8/14)
(What a God-sent opportunity, BTW, for Brandis to make up for the grief he'd given the lords of the Israel lobby over his move to kill off Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act!)
Another government politician exceedingly mindful of the fact that federal parliament is Israeli-occupied territory is Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Which explains this quite extraordinary intervention:
"It is understood... Turnbull rang [Herald editor Darren] Goodsir to lambast him for running the cartoon, which he deemed anti-Semitic and offensive to many of his constituents in his eastern Sydney electorate." (ibid)
Meanwhile, back in the real world, aka Gaza:
"Mohamed Badran is just 10 years old but already he has lost more than most people will lose in a lifetime. He is the only surviving member of his immediate family of 10 following an Israeli airstrike on his home in the crowded Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza on July 30. Doctors are now trying to save one of his eye sockets so he can have at least one prosthetic eye, but so severe is his head injury that even that is touch and go. Mohamed has no idea that his parents, brothers and sisters are gone, says one of his doctors, Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a volunteer reconstructive surgeon working at Gaza's Shifa Hospital. He is also unaware he is blind. 'He keeps asking why we have switched the lights off,' Dr Abu-Sitta says. 'Mohammed is going to need at least 10 surgeries to reconstruct his eye socket,' he adds, warning: 'Israel is creating a generation of disabled adults... and for these kids, there is no one left to care for them'." (Health crisis looms amid carnage, Ruth Pollard, Sydney Morning Herald, 4/8/14)
[*See my 7/6/14 post Lap Dancing for Israel.]
"I thought the [Le Lievre] cartoon was deplorable... I would have thought a responsible media organisation would have a very good look at itself when it publishes a cartoon (of) the kind we haven't seen since Germany in the 1930s.'... Asked if the cartoon amounted to racial vilification and could encourage or incite others to hate Jews, Senator Brandis said: 'It certainly constitutes a racial form of stereotyping. I think The Sydney Morning Herald... ought to be very careful about the almost overtly anti-Semitic tone some of their commentary, including their editorial cartoon, have adopted'." (Brandis slams Fairfax newspaper over 'anti-Semitic' cartoon, Darren Davidson, The Australian, 4/8/14)
(What a God-sent opportunity, BTW, for Brandis to make up for the grief he'd given the lords of the Israel lobby over his move to kill off Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act!)
Another government politician exceedingly mindful of the fact that federal parliament is Israeli-occupied territory is Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Which explains this quite extraordinary intervention:
"It is understood... Turnbull rang [Herald editor Darren] Goodsir to lambast him for running the cartoon, which he deemed anti-Semitic and offensive to many of his constituents in his eastern Sydney electorate." (ibid)
Meanwhile, back in the real world, aka Gaza:
"Mohamed Badran is just 10 years old but already he has lost more than most people will lose in a lifetime. He is the only surviving member of his immediate family of 10 following an Israeli airstrike on his home in the crowded Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza on July 30. Doctors are now trying to save one of his eye sockets so he can have at least one prosthetic eye, but so severe is his head injury that even that is touch and go. Mohamed has no idea that his parents, brothers and sisters are gone, says one of his doctors, Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a volunteer reconstructive surgeon working at Gaza's Shifa Hospital. He is also unaware he is blind. 'He keeps asking why we have switched the lights off,' Dr Abu-Sitta says. 'Mohammed is going to need at least 10 surgeries to reconstruct his eye socket,' he adds, warning: 'Israel is creating a generation of disabled adults... and for these kids, there is no one left to care for them'." (Health crisis looms amid carnage, Ruth Pollard, Sydney Morning Herald, 4/8/14)
[*See my 7/6/14 post Lap Dancing for Israel.]
Friday, June 20, 2014
The Good Old Days
In the good old days, there was the plain truth.
Now, in the Abbottoir, there's truth and gospel truth.
In the good old days, they were all just taxes.
Now, in the Abbottoir, they might not be taxes. They could be levies... or even... rabbits.
In the good old days, when men in uniform invaded a place and stayed, it was called occupied.
Now, in the Abbottoir, it could be disputed (preferred) or occupied (at a pinch), but Occupied, why that's judgmental at best and anti-Semitic at worst:
"The head of the Palestinian delegation to Canberra, Izzat Abdulhadi, told Guardian Australia that Bishop had explained to the [Arab/Muslim] ambassadors at Thursday's meeting that Brandis had been 'talking about occupied with a capital O as a noun and part of East Jerusalem's name, which the government did not support'. She said she was happy to say East Jerusalem was occupied with a small 'o' as a description." (Ministers set to condemn decision to call East Jerusalem 'disputed', Lenore Taylor, 19/6/14)
Oh, and in the good old days, a foreign minister knew the difference between a noun and an adjective, but now, in the Abbottoir...
Now, in the Abbottoir, there's truth and gospel truth.
In the good old days, they were all just taxes.
Now, in the Abbottoir, they might not be taxes. They could be levies... or even... rabbits.
In the good old days, when men in uniform invaded a place and stayed, it was called occupied.
Now, in the Abbottoir, it could be disputed (preferred) or occupied (at a pinch), but Occupied, why that's judgmental at best and anti-Semitic at worst:
"The head of the Palestinian delegation to Canberra, Izzat Abdulhadi, told Guardian Australia that Bishop had explained to the [Arab/Muslim] ambassadors at Thursday's meeting that Brandis had been 'talking about occupied with a capital O as a noun and part of East Jerusalem's name, which the government did not support'. She said she was happy to say East Jerusalem was occupied with a small 'o' as a description." (Ministers set to condemn decision to call East Jerusalem 'disputed', Lenore Taylor, 19/6/14)
Oh, and in the good old days, a foreign minister knew the difference between a noun and an adjective, but now, in the Abbottoir...
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Lap Dancing for Israel?
Attorney-General Senator George Brandis has just this week gone on record as refusing to recognise the bleeding obvious, namely that the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories are in fact... well, occupied (and even managing an impersonation of legendary US Senator Joe McCarthy at the same time). In fact, Brandis' words on this subject belong up there in flashing neon lights with the Prime Minister's "Climate change is absolute crap," and Treasurer Joe Hockey's "You can call [the Medicare co-payment] a tax. You can call it anything you want. You can call it a rabbit."
Here's the relevant excerpt from ABC Radio National's PM program of June 5:
Alexandra Kirk: Today... George Brandis delivered a statement clarifying the government's stance on the question of Israeli settlements after independent Senator Nick Xenophon tried, without success, to find out about legal advice to the Government and probing by Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon at a Senate hearing last night.
Lee Rhiannon: Why did the Australian Ambassador to Israel attend a meeting in occupied East Jerusalem with the Israeli minister for housing and construction; the same minister who is forecasting a 50% increase in settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the next 5 years?
Brandis: Well, I think I should say... that the rather tendentious way in which you've put that question, and in particular the use of the word 'occupied' is not something that the Australian Government of either political persuasion acknowledges or accepts.
Rhiannon: So you don't use the term 'Occupied Palestinian Territories', even though it's a United Nations term used widely by a number of international agencies, European members etc...
Brandis: Well, it's used by a lot of people. It's used by a lot of communists too. Weren't you a member of the Communist Party once?
Alexandra Kirk: After consulting the Foreign Minister overnight [MERC: who, you may recall, has publicly doubted the illegality of Israeli settlements] Senator Brandis returned to the hearing this morning to explain the Government's position.
Brandis: The description of areas which are the subject of negotiations in the course of the peace process, by reference to historical events is unhelpful. The description of East Jerusalem as 'occupied East Jerusalem' is a term freighted with pejorative implications, which is neither appropriate, nor useful. It should not and will not be the practice of the Australian Government to describe areas of negotiation in such judgmental language.
Frankly, if this is the Abbott government's current position, it appears that Australia is no longer merely perched, with Israel, the United States, Canada and a handful of Pacific Island micro-states, out on a United Nations' limb, in inglorious isolation from the rest of the world, but is actually in the process of climbing onto Israel's lap.
It was precisely this kind of isolation from the international consensus on Palestine/Israel, you'll remember, that former Labor Foreign Minister Bob Carr fought so hard to avoid when, in 2012, he bravely put Australia's international reputation before loyalty to Labor's Israel-entranced leader, Prime Minister Julia Gillard, by refusing to vote against the upgrading of Palestine's status in the UN As he put it in his recent Diary of a Foreign Minister:
"The column of 10 nations, die-hards, glued on Israel supporters - Micronesia and the Marshall Islands - had just been reduced by one. A message to the settlers and the fanatics in Israel, a message to the noble Israeli liberals and moderates, a message to a suffering West Bank population, battered and trapped, a message to the UN membership about Australia, the country they just elected to the Security Council." (See my 20/4/14 post The Carr Diary: Reflections 6.)
The message being sent by the Abbott government to those same parties is now the reverse of the previous government's.
I draw your attention to Senator Rhiannon's initial question to Brandis about the Australian ambassador to Israel's mysterious meeting in East Jerusalem with Israel's Housing Minister, Uri Ariel, to my knowledge simply brushed aside by the Attorney-General. Considering that this particular fanatic, a member of Israel's far-right Jewish Home party, has just invited bids for 1500 new homes in Jewish settlements - 400 of them in occupied East Jerusalem - as, to quote him, a "Zionist response to the establishment of the Palestinian [Fatah-Hamas] terror cabinet," we may now legitimately speculate that ambassador Dave Sharma* was reassuring him of Australia's backing in the UN when the matter of Israel's ever-expanding settlements next came up in the General Assembly.
Unfortunately, with Australia now positioned on Israel's lap, something a little more erotic and enduring than a cuddle, a kiss, and a few whispered endearments could well be in the offing, a possibility I'll be canvassing in my very next post.
[*For a look at the Gillard government-appointed Sharma's extraordinary work for Israel, simply click on his label below.]
Here's the relevant excerpt from ABC Radio National's PM program of June 5:
Alexandra Kirk: Today... George Brandis delivered a statement clarifying the government's stance on the question of Israeli settlements after independent Senator Nick Xenophon tried, without success, to find out about legal advice to the Government and probing by Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon at a Senate hearing last night.
Lee Rhiannon: Why did the Australian Ambassador to Israel attend a meeting in occupied East Jerusalem with the Israeli minister for housing and construction; the same minister who is forecasting a 50% increase in settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the next 5 years?
Brandis: Well, I think I should say... that the rather tendentious way in which you've put that question, and in particular the use of the word 'occupied' is not something that the Australian Government of either political persuasion acknowledges or accepts.
Rhiannon: So you don't use the term 'Occupied Palestinian Territories', even though it's a United Nations term used widely by a number of international agencies, European members etc...
Brandis: Well, it's used by a lot of people. It's used by a lot of communists too. Weren't you a member of the Communist Party once?
Alexandra Kirk: After consulting the Foreign Minister overnight [MERC: who, you may recall, has publicly doubted the illegality of Israeli settlements] Senator Brandis returned to the hearing this morning to explain the Government's position.
Brandis: The description of areas which are the subject of negotiations in the course of the peace process, by reference to historical events is unhelpful. The description of East Jerusalem as 'occupied East Jerusalem' is a term freighted with pejorative implications, which is neither appropriate, nor useful. It should not and will not be the practice of the Australian Government to describe areas of negotiation in such judgmental language.
Frankly, if this is the Abbott government's current position, it appears that Australia is no longer merely perched, with Israel, the United States, Canada and a handful of Pacific Island micro-states, out on a United Nations' limb, in inglorious isolation from the rest of the world, but is actually in the process of climbing onto Israel's lap.
It was precisely this kind of isolation from the international consensus on Palestine/Israel, you'll remember, that former Labor Foreign Minister Bob Carr fought so hard to avoid when, in 2012, he bravely put Australia's international reputation before loyalty to Labor's Israel-entranced leader, Prime Minister Julia Gillard, by refusing to vote against the upgrading of Palestine's status in the UN As he put it in his recent Diary of a Foreign Minister:
"The column of 10 nations, die-hards, glued on Israel supporters - Micronesia and the Marshall Islands - had just been reduced by one. A message to the settlers and the fanatics in Israel, a message to the noble Israeli liberals and moderates, a message to a suffering West Bank population, battered and trapped, a message to the UN membership about Australia, the country they just elected to the Security Council." (See my 20/4/14 post The Carr Diary: Reflections 6.)
The message being sent by the Abbott government to those same parties is now the reverse of the previous government's.
I draw your attention to Senator Rhiannon's initial question to Brandis about the Australian ambassador to Israel's mysterious meeting in East Jerusalem with Israel's Housing Minister, Uri Ariel, to my knowledge simply brushed aside by the Attorney-General. Considering that this particular fanatic, a member of Israel's far-right Jewish Home party, has just invited bids for 1500 new homes in Jewish settlements - 400 of them in occupied East Jerusalem - as, to quote him, a "Zionist response to the establishment of the Palestinian [Fatah-Hamas] terror cabinet," we may now legitimately speculate that ambassador Dave Sharma* was reassuring him of Australia's backing in the UN when the matter of Israel's ever-expanding settlements next came up in the General Assembly.
Unfortunately, with Australia now positioned on Israel's lap, something a little more erotic and enduring than a cuddle, a kiss, and a few whispered endearments could well be in the offing, a possibility I'll be canvassing in my very next post.
[*For a look at the Gillard government-appointed Sharma's extraordinary work for Israel, simply click on his label below.]
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Why I Can't Get Too Excited Over Section 18C
This post was prompted by the report in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald - Jewish community opposes changes to 18C racial vilification laws. Inevitably, the headlined term 'Jewish community' reduces in the text to "the largest Jewish peak body in Australia," specifically, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).
As far as the ECAJ (or those who take it seriously, whether Jew or Gentile) is concerned, the 4 nasties cited in Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, namely 'offending, insulting, humiliating and intimidating', represent more than just racist abuse requiring exposure and condemnation but are the first flickering signs of a potential pogrom or worse. As ECAJ's submission on the subject of 18C is reported to have put it: "Acts of violence begin with words."
Now if the ECAJ were merely just a "Jewish peak body," as Fairfax journalist Sarah Whyte terms it, I might be inclined to take its opposition to Senator Brandis' proposed removal of Section 18C from the Act seriously.
The problem I have, however, is that the ECAJ is also a Zionist organisation, that is a supporter of a Jewish state in Palestine with all that that entails for the dire fate of Palestine's indigenous non-Jewish population. In the words of the Council's constitution, one of its three objects is "To support and strengthen the connection of Australian Jewry with the State of Israel." (3.1(c))
Would that all the Palestinian people had to put up with were the 4 nasties of Section 18C. Or your common and garden bigots. Or the likes of Andrew Bolt.
But no, they've been under 24/7 assault by Israel's 4 nasties - colonization, dispossession, expulsion and occupation - since 1917. Any wonder why I can't get too excited over "Jewish community" objections to the removal of 18C?
As far as the ECAJ (or those who take it seriously, whether Jew or Gentile) is concerned, the 4 nasties cited in Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, namely 'offending, insulting, humiliating and intimidating', represent more than just racist abuse requiring exposure and condemnation but are the first flickering signs of a potential pogrom or worse. As ECAJ's submission on the subject of 18C is reported to have put it: "Acts of violence begin with words."
Now if the ECAJ were merely just a "Jewish peak body," as Fairfax journalist Sarah Whyte terms it, I might be inclined to take its opposition to Senator Brandis' proposed removal of Section 18C from the Act seriously.
The problem I have, however, is that the ECAJ is also a Zionist organisation, that is a supporter of a Jewish state in Palestine with all that that entails for the dire fate of Palestine's indigenous non-Jewish population. In the words of the Council's constitution, one of its three objects is "To support and strengthen the connection of Australian Jewry with the State of Israel." (3.1(c))
Would that all the Palestinian people had to put up with were the 4 nasties of Section 18C. Or your common and garden bigots. Or the likes of Andrew Bolt.
But no, they've been under 24/7 assault by Israel's 4 nasties - colonization, dispossession, expulsion and occupation - since 1917. Any wonder why I can't get too excited over "Jewish community" objections to the removal of 18C?
Thursday, March 13, 2014
The Go-To Man
"A political fight is brewing between Attorney-General George Brandis and the Institute of Public Affairs. Senator Brandis has angered the IPA and other powerful Liberal Party allies, who believe the A-G is using tricky language to dilute his promise to repeal a controversial section of the race discrimination laws... 'After a spirited campaign from some community groups, it seems the A-G has been having second thoughts,' [IPA executive director John] Roskam said. Senator Brandis is now wedged between the Liberal Party's natural allies on the right and a powerful coalition of ethnic groups... Leaders from Australia's Jewish, Muslim, Chinese, Greek, Armenian, Lebanese, Vietnamese and indigenous populations have united against abolishing or weakening the race hate laws." (Think tank says Brandis is backtracking on hate laws, Jonathan Swan, Sydney Morning Herald, 12/3/14)
Some community groups? Hm... funny how the list of such groups invariably begins with 'Jewish'. Maybe Swan will go on to quote one of the leaders of one of the other deeply concerned groups. Armenian perhaps? Or maybe Greek? After all, as we all know, an Armenian or a Greek can't put his head out the door here in Australia without being subjected to a hailstorm of racial abuse, right? Why, only the other day I...
Or maybe not:
"Executive Council of Australian Jewry executive director Peter Wertheim said he could not recall 'any other issue on which there has been such unity of purpose and strength of feeling across such a diverse group of communities'."
Now where have I seen Wertheim's name before on this matter? Oh, yes, in another (dare I say more informative?) report by Jonathan Swan - see my 17/11/13 post The Jewish Paradox.
Notwithstanding "such unity of purpose and strength of feeling" among Armenians and Greeks, it's funny how Mr Wertheim always seems to pop up as the go-to man on the subject. Why is it so?
Some community groups? Hm... funny how the list of such groups invariably begins with 'Jewish'. Maybe Swan will go on to quote one of the leaders of one of the other deeply concerned groups. Armenian perhaps? Or maybe Greek? After all, as we all know, an Armenian or a Greek can't put his head out the door here in Australia without being subjected to a hailstorm of racial abuse, right? Why, only the other day I...
Or maybe not:
"Executive Council of Australian Jewry executive director Peter Wertheim said he could not recall 'any other issue on which there has been such unity of purpose and strength of feeling across such a diverse group of communities'."
Now where have I seen Wertheim's name before on this matter? Oh, yes, in another (dare I say more informative?) report by Jonathan Swan - see my 17/11/13 post The Jewish Paradox.
Notwithstanding "such unity of purpose and strength of feeling" among Armenians and Greeks, it's funny how Mr Wertheim always seems to pop up as the go-to man on the subject. Why is it so?
Thursday, February 27, 2014
George Brandis, 'Hitch-22' & Some Burning Questions
I'm always fascinated by what our politicians do and don't read. Herewith, for example, is an insight into the reading habits of Attorney General Senator George Brandis:
"Senator Brandis has defended, as within his rights, spending almost $13,000 over 4 years on books and magazines including cartoons, [Mickey Mouse? Batman?] the thriller The Marmalade Files and Christopher Hitchens' memoir Hitch-22." (Brandis orders library ladder, Jared Owens, The Australian, 25/2/14)
Just dealing with Hitchens' book, and assuming he's actually read it from cover to cover, a most interesting question arises. Might this singular event constitute some kind of Australian record? I mean, could this be the very first time a sitting federal politician has actually read something on Palestine/Israel that in any way deviates from the hermetically-sealed, Israel lobby-mandated party line?
Read these two passages from Hitch-22 and you'll see why I'm asking:
"Actually - and this is where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable - some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan - 'a land without a people for a people without a land' - disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea?"
"Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building - as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my face over a table at La Tomate in Washington not two years ago - and lands on a bystander in the street below. Now, make the burning building be Europe, and the luckless man underneath be the Palestinian Arabs. Is this a historical injustice? Has the man below been made a victim, with infinite cause of complaint and indefinite justification for violent retaliation? My own reply would be a provisional 'no', but only on these conditions. The man leaping from the burning building must still make such restitution as he can to the man who broke his fall, and must not pretend that he never even landed on him. And he must base his case on the singularity and uniqueness of the original leap. It can't, in other words, be 'leap, leap, leap' for four generations and more. The people underneath cannot cannot be expected to tolerate leaping on this scale and of this duration, if you catch my drift. In Palestine, tread softly, for you tread on their dreams. And do not tell the Palestinians that they were never fallen upon and bruised in the first place. Do not shame yourself with the cheap lie that they were told by their leaders to run away. Also, stop saying that nobody knew how to cultivate oranges in Jaffa until the Jews showed them how. 'Making the desert bloom' - one of Yvonne's stock phrases - makes desert dwellers out of people who were the agricultural superiors of the Crusaders."
Moreover, keeping in mind Brandis' 2009 and 2010 rambammings, what terrible tsunami of cognitive dissonance must have swept over him on reading the above, and with what, if any, result? For example, could Brandis now be the weakest link in the Israel lobby-forged chain of the federal Liberal government?
Oh yes, and will he be lending his copy of Hitch-22 to his recently rambammed protege, Tim (Freedom Fighter) Wilson? (See my 23/2/14 post I Want My Money Back!)
"Senator Brandis has defended, as within his rights, spending almost $13,000 over 4 years on books and magazines including cartoons, [Mickey Mouse? Batman?] the thriller The Marmalade Files and Christopher Hitchens' memoir Hitch-22." (Brandis orders library ladder, Jared Owens, The Australian, 25/2/14)
Just dealing with Hitchens' book, and assuming he's actually read it from cover to cover, a most interesting question arises. Might this singular event constitute some kind of Australian record? I mean, could this be the very first time a sitting federal politician has actually read something on Palestine/Israel that in any way deviates from the hermetically-sealed, Israel lobby-mandated party line?
Read these two passages from Hitch-22 and you'll see why I'm asking:
"Actually - and this is where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable - some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan - 'a land without a people for a people without a land' - disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea?"
"Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building - as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my face over a table at La Tomate in Washington not two years ago - and lands on a bystander in the street below. Now, make the burning building be Europe, and the luckless man underneath be the Palestinian Arabs. Is this a historical injustice? Has the man below been made a victim, with infinite cause of complaint and indefinite justification for violent retaliation? My own reply would be a provisional 'no', but only on these conditions. The man leaping from the burning building must still make such restitution as he can to the man who broke his fall, and must not pretend that he never even landed on him. And he must base his case on the singularity and uniqueness of the original leap. It can't, in other words, be 'leap, leap, leap' for four generations and more. The people underneath cannot cannot be expected to tolerate leaping on this scale and of this duration, if you catch my drift. In Palestine, tread softly, for you tread on their dreams. And do not tell the Palestinians that they were never fallen upon and bruised in the first place. Do not shame yourself with the cheap lie that they were told by their leaders to run away. Also, stop saying that nobody knew how to cultivate oranges in Jaffa until the Jews showed them how. 'Making the desert bloom' - one of Yvonne's stock phrases - makes desert dwellers out of people who were the agricultural superiors of the Crusaders."
Moreover, keeping in mind Brandis' 2009 and 2010 rambammings, what terrible tsunami of cognitive dissonance must have swept over him on reading the above, and with what, if any, result? For example, could Brandis now be the weakest link in the Israel lobby-forged chain of the federal Liberal government?
Oh yes, and will he be lending his copy of Hitch-22 to his recently rambammed protege, Tim (Freedom Fighter) Wilson? (See my 23/2/14 post I Want My Money Back!)
Sunday, February 23, 2014
I Want My Money Back!
"[Tim] Wilson says his agenda at the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) will be to promote liberal human rights, 'like freedom of speech, of association and of movement, of religious worship, of property rights, and the rights of individuals to determine how to live their lives'." (Freedom fighter, Tim Elliott, GoodWeekend, 22/2/14)
Hm... with an agenda like that, you'd imagine that Australia's new Human Rights Commissioner would have a pretty damn good nose for human rights abuses, though I must say that the qualification "liberal human rights" doesn't look all that promising.
Still, with the taxpayer forking out $325,000 per year for Wilson's salary, you'd expect some value for money, right?
For example, you wouldn't expect him to shoot his mouth off about an issue without first brushing up on it, would you?
And you'd probably expect him to have sufficient intellectual and moral wherewithal to see through a transparent attempt to suck him in.
Sorry to disappoint:
"I was very fortunate to go on the Rambam Israel Fellowship program by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), so I did a tour of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and we went down to Sderot... it was an incredibly rewarding trip in terms of seeing Israel, understanding Jerusalem, how the West Bank is divided, and that you really can't understand it until you go and see it. It was one of the most rewarding and fascinating experiences." (Speaking his mind, The Australian Jewish News, 21/2/14)
Hm... You really can't understand it until you go there. Really?
Oh well, I guess then he won't be requiring $20,000 worth of taxpayer-funded books and bookshelves like Senator Brandis, the bloke who appointed him - just enough for airfares. Lots of airfares.
OK, so maybe Wilson's just not at his deepest in an interview. How about on paper then:
"In Tel Aviv I met up with my media colleagues participating in the Rambam Israel Fellowship programme organised by AIJAC. The comprehensive introduction to Israel included a tour of the old city of Jerusalem and the ancient fortress of Masada, and meetings with politicians, academics and journalists. Our Palestinian guide took us to the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem for an uneventful, educational experience about how the locals live. The local Palestinian kids decided to perform and threw rocks at the nearby Israeli soldiers. The soldiers also performed by firing two tear gas canisters in the sky, before one landed 5 metres away, bounced and laid to rest at my feet. Sadly I couldn't find a T-shirt that said 'I was tear gassed by the IDF and all I got was this T-shirt, stinging eyes and a decongested nasal passage.'" (Notes from abroad, The Spectator, timwilson.com.au, 29/11/13)
Right...
OK, so his wit's a bit on the limp side. What about Sderot then? Surely, surely, if anything will, a visit to Israel's Stalingrad should elicit the kind of scepticism you'd expect from someone hoovering up 325,000 taxpayer dollars per annum?
More fool you:
"Tear gas is nothing compared to the experience of the small township of Sderot. If Sderot residents hear the words 'red colour' in Hebrew, they have 15 seconds until it rains Qassam rockets sent from the Gaza Strip only a kilometre away. That isn't very long, especially as it took 5 for our bus to stop and open its door. I counted. Fortunately, Hamas weren't in the performing mood the day we visited. I have only one bit off advice if you are considering travelling to Israel: go!"
Hm... another blank. This is getting kinda frustrating. I mean, I'm actually starting to wonder if we're getting value for money out of our freedom fighter.
Maybe he'll come good on the premier free speech issue of the day, BDS:
"I want to make it clear that I want BDS advocates to 'out' themselves, so people can hold them to account." (tweet, 17/12/13)
Jeeesus! Enough already, I want my money back!
Hm... with an agenda like that, you'd imagine that Australia's new Human Rights Commissioner would have a pretty damn good nose for human rights abuses, though I must say that the qualification "liberal human rights" doesn't look all that promising.
Still, with the taxpayer forking out $325,000 per year for Wilson's salary, you'd expect some value for money, right?
For example, you wouldn't expect him to shoot his mouth off about an issue without first brushing up on it, would you?
And you'd probably expect him to have sufficient intellectual and moral wherewithal to see through a transparent attempt to suck him in.
Sorry to disappoint:
"I was very fortunate to go on the Rambam Israel Fellowship program by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), so I did a tour of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and we went down to Sderot... it was an incredibly rewarding trip in terms of seeing Israel, understanding Jerusalem, how the West Bank is divided, and that you really can't understand it until you go and see it. It was one of the most rewarding and fascinating experiences." (Speaking his mind, The Australian Jewish News, 21/2/14)
Hm... You really can't understand it until you go there. Really?
Oh well, I guess then he won't be requiring $20,000 worth of taxpayer-funded books and bookshelves like Senator Brandis, the bloke who appointed him - just enough for airfares. Lots of airfares.
OK, so maybe Wilson's just not at his deepest in an interview. How about on paper then:
"In Tel Aviv I met up with my media colleagues participating in the Rambam Israel Fellowship programme organised by AIJAC. The comprehensive introduction to Israel included a tour of the old city of Jerusalem and the ancient fortress of Masada, and meetings with politicians, academics and journalists. Our Palestinian guide took us to the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem for an uneventful, educational experience about how the locals live. The local Palestinian kids decided to perform and threw rocks at the nearby Israeli soldiers. The soldiers also performed by firing two tear gas canisters in the sky, before one landed 5 metres away, bounced and laid to rest at my feet. Sadly I couldn't find a T-shirt that said 'I was tear gassed by the IDF and all I got was this T-shirt, stinging eyes and a decongested nasal passage.'" (Notes from abroad, The Spectator, timwilson.com.au, 29/11/13)
Right...
OK, so his wit's a bit on the limp side. What about Sderot then? Surely, surely, if anything will, a visit to Israel's Stalingrad should elicit the kind of scepticism you'd expect from someone hoovering up 325,000 taxpayer dollars per annum?
More fool you:
"Tear gas is nothing compared to the experience of the small township of Sderot. If Sderot residents hear the words 'red colour' in Hebrew, they have 15 seconds until it rains Qassam rockets sent from the Gaza Strip only a kilometre away. That isn't very long, especially as it took 5 for our bus to stop and open its door. I counted. Fortunately, Hamas weren't in the performing mood the day we visited. I have only one bit off advice if you are considering travelling to Israel: go!"
Hm... another blank. This is getting kinda frustrating. I mean, I'm actually starting to wonder if we're getting value for money out of our freedom fighter.
Maybe he'll come good on the premier free speech issue of the day, BDS:
"I want to make it clear that I want BDS advocates to 'out' themselves, so people can hold them to account." (tweet, 17/12/13)
Jeeesus! Enough already, I want my money back!
Saturday, January 18, 2014
With My Own Eyes
At last, the case of Sydney University's Professor Jake Lynch has made it into the Sydney Morning Herald in the form of an article by Richard Ackland on Attorney-General George Brandis' plan to strip the Racial Discrimination Act of its prohibition on 'offending and insulting' ethnic/racial minorities (section 18C) in the interests of professional offenders such as Murdoch mouthpiece Andrew Bolt. Needless to say, Brandis will be spinning it as a blow for free speech.
Ackland makes the perfectly valid point that:
"What is now a distressing hypocrisy surrounding the campaign to reform or do away with section 18C of the act is that its advocates are generally the same people cheering on the use of the act as the basis of proceedings in the Federal Court against University of Sydney academic Jake Lynch. He is being sued under different provisions of the act by Shurat HaDin - the Israel Law centre. The application was filed last October and it alleges that Lynch, from the Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies, refused to support an application by Israeli academic Dan Avnon for a Zelman Cowan fellowship at the University of Sydney. It is claimed that in an act of racial discrimination, he deprived Avnon of his professional rights. Lynch is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. The Shurat HaDin statement of claim goes further and says that by calling for a boycott of Israel, Lynch adds to a campaign that disadvantages owners of Israeli-related businesses and deprives Israelis of cultural opportunities such as seeing Santana and Pink Floyd. Avnon, of the Hebrew University does not seem to have suffered a setback as a result of Lynch's lack of support. He lists on his resume, among his forthcoming appointments, that he will be the Sir Zelman Cowan visiting scholar at the University of Sydney this year. So, on the one hand the act is evil for affecting the free speech in the narrow provisions that deal with offending and insulting ethnic and racial minorities, but is heroic when its broad provisions are engaged as a basis of proceedings against lefty academics in the BDS movement. The whole thing could land Brandis in a bit of a pickle." (Free speech is a double-edged sword, 17/1/14)
Ackland lists a number of organisations - Aboriginal, Greek, Chinese etc - who have been lobbying Senator Brandis not to ditch 18C. Included in the list is the professionally offended Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).
Its involvement in this issue, of course, raises the perennial question of whether Jews, as a purely faith community, should be so involved.
On the other hand, if Jews are seen as an ethnic/racial community, in line with the Zionist 'Jewish people' dogma, which ECAJ subscribes to, one wonders whether Ackland understands that ECAJ, as an organisation that wishes to retain 18C but is part and parcel of the Zionist/Murdoch attack on BDS and its proponents such as Professor Lynch, is also in something of a pickle, its unconvincing attempt to distance itself from Shurat HaDin's litigation by describing it as "inappropriate and counter-productive" notwithstanding.
As Shurat HaDin's Australian operative, Andrew (Akiva) Hamilton, has said:
"There is more than one way to confront BDS and our efforts complement those of the ECAJ." (Shurat HaDin, ECAJ disagree on skinning the BDS cat, j-wire.com.au, 3/11/13)
Took the words right out of my mouth, Akiva! As Irgun leader Menachem Begin might have said in the late 40s: 'There is more than one way to deal with the British and the Arabs, and our efforts complement those of the Haganah nicely, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?'
Still, all credit to Ackland for raising the case of Jake Lynch. I hope he reports on the coming court case in February.
Ackland makes the perfectly valid point that:
"What is now a distressing hypocrisy surrounding the campaign to reform or do away with section 18C of the act is that its advocates are generally the same people cheering on the use of the act as the basis of proceedings in the Federal Court against University of Sydney academic Jake Lynch. He is being sued under different provisions of the act by Shurat HaDin - the Israel Law centre. The application was filed last October and it alleges that Lynch, from the Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies, refused to support an application by Israeli academic Dan Avnon for a Zelman Cowan fellowship at the University of Sydney. It is claimed that in an act of racial discrimination, he deprived Avnon of his professional rights. Lynch is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. The Shurat HaDin statement of claim goes further and says that by calling for a boycott of Israel, Lynch adds to a campaign that disadvantages owners of Israeli-related businesses and deprives Israelis of cultural opportunities such as seeing Santana and Pink Floyd. Avnon, of the Hebrew University does not seem to have suffered a setback as a result of Lynch's lack of support. He lists on his resume, among his forthcoming appointments, that he will be the Sir Zelman Cowan visiting scholar at the University of Sydney this year. So, on the one hand the act is evil for affecting the free speech in the narrow provisions that deal with offending and insulting ethnic and racial minorities, but is heroic when its broad provisions are engaged as a basis of proceedings against lefty academics in the BDS movement. The whole thing could land Brandis in a bit of a pickle." (Free speech is a double-edged sword, 17/1/14)
Ackland lists a number of organisations - Aboriginal, Greek, Chinese etc - who have been lobbying Senator Brandis not to ditch 18C. Included in the list is the professionally offended Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).
Its involvement in this issue, of course, raises the perennial question of whether Jews, as a purely faith community, should be so involved.
On the other hand, if Jews are seen as an ethnic/racial community, in line with the Zionist 'Jewish people' dogma, which ECAJ subscribes to, one wonders whether Ackland understands that ECAJ, as an organisation that wishes to retain 18C but is part and parcel of the Zionist/Murdoch attack on BDS and its proponents such as Professor Lynch, is also in something of a pickle, its unconvincing attempt to distance itself from Shurat HaDin's litigation by describing it as "inappropriate and counter-productive" notwithstanding.
As Shurat HaDin's Australian operative, Andrew (Akiva) Hamilton, has said:
"There is more than one way to confront BDS and our efforts complement those of the ECAJ." (Shurat HaDin, ECAJ disagree on skinning the BDS cat, j-wire.com.au, 3/11/13)
Took the words right out of my mouth, Akiva! As Irgun leader Menachem Begin might have said in the late 40s: 'There is more than one way to deal with the British and the Arabs, and our efforts complement those of the Haganah nicely, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?'
Still, all credit to Ackland for raising the case of Jake Lynch. I hope he reports on the coming court case in February.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
The Jewish Paradox
"Jewish leaders are preparing to fight the [Federal] government's plans to weaken race hate laws, saying they could encourage persecution and racially-motivated violence." (Jewish concern at plan to change hate laws, Jonathan Swan, Sydney Morning Herald, 15/11/13)
Hm... persecution and racially-motivated violence.
Presumably, these guys are concerned about anti-Semitism, right? Jews coming under attack because they're Jews.
But read on and you find it's not that simple:
"Mr Wertheim [the executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ)]* has warned that the 'wholesale repeal' of sections of the [Racial Discrimination] act would not only prevent vilified groups from defending their reputations legally, but would also encourage more sinister forms of hate speech. 'It would... open the door to importation into Australia of the hatreds and violence of overseas conflicts'..." (ibid)
So that's it: what they're really worried about is the spillover effect of overseas conflicts, specifically, the spillover effect of the Middle East conflict on the community they purport to lead.
The trouble is, and the average reader is unlikely to pick this up from such a report, Wertheim and other Jewish leaders also act as lobbyists/apologists for Israel. In that capacity, they emerge as partisans in the very conflict they fear could affect the well-being of Jews here in Australia.
As political Zionists, of course, they routinely conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, which is to say anti-Israelism. For them, criticism of Israel, its ideology and practice, is either anti-Semitism pure and simple, or verging on anti-Semitism, or crossing the line into anti-Semitism, the circumlocutions for smearing a critic of Israel as an anti-Semite being many and varied.
Unfortunately, this is where the matter becomes problematic for the community they supposedly represent - as veteran British journalist and author Alan Hart so lucidly points out:
"In my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the answer to the question of what Zionism would do in the event of mission failure was given to me by Golda Meir in one of my interviews with her for the BBC's flagship Panorama programme. She said that in the event of a doomsday situation, Israel 'would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it.'
"The Jewish paradox comes down to this. Israel was created by Zionism to guarantee the well-being and existence of the Jews, but that well-being and perhaps even existence is most seriously threatened by Zionism's policies and actions.
"How can that possibly be true?
"What we are witnessing today is a rising, global tide of anti-Israelism. It is NOT a manifestation of anti-Semitism, meaning that it's not being driven by prejudice against or loathing and even hatred of Jews just because they are Jews. Anti-Israelism is being provoked by Israel's arrogance of power, its sickening self-righteousness and its contempt for international law in general and the rights of Palestinians in particular.
"The danger for Jews everywhere is that anti-Israelism could be transformed into rampant and rabid anti-Semitism. The most explicit warning that this could happen was given by Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel's longest serving Director of Military Intelligence. In his book Israel's Fateful Hour, published in English in 1988, he wrote this (my emphasis added):
'Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world'." (The Jewish paradox arising from the curse of Zionism, Alan Hart, sabbah.biz, 11/5/13)
(The Attorney-General, Senator George Brandis, who is behind the push to remove those sections of the RDA that make it an offence to offend another person on grounds of race or ethnicity, has the interests of the right-wing commentariat, particularly Andrew Bolt, very much at heart. At the same time, however, Brandis has been rambammed (2009 & 2010) and has form in raising the concerns of the Israel lobby in the Senate. (See my 29/5/09 post Her Brilliant Career.) The question arises: can he please both interest groups with his new legislation? Watch this space...)
[*For a critique of the role of ECAJ and other Zionist lobby groups from within the Jewish community, see my 20/6/13 post Join the Dots...]
Hm... persecution and racially-motivated violence.
Presumably, these guys are concerned about anti-Semitism, right? Jews coming under attack because they're Jews.
But read on and you find it's not that simple:
"Mr Wertheim [the executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ)]* has warned that the 'wholesale repeal' of sections of the [Racial Discrimination] act would not only prevent vilified groups from defending their reputations legally, but would also encourage more sinister forms of hate speech. 'It would... open the door to importation into Australia of the hatreds and violence of overseas conflicts'..." (ibid)
So that's it: what they're really worried about is the spillover effect of overseas conflicts, specifically, the spillover effect of the Middle East conflict on the community they purport to lead.
The trouble is, and the average reader is unlikely to pick this up from such a report, Wertheim and other Jewish leaders also act as lobbyists/apologists for Israel. In that capacity, they emerge as partisans in the very conflict they fear could affect the well-being of Jews here in Australia.
As political Zionists, of course, they routinely conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, which is to say anti-Israelism. For them, criticism of Israel, its ideology and practice, is either anti-Semitism pure and simple, or verging on anti-Semitism, or crossing the line into anti-Semitism, the circumlocutions for smearing a critic of Israel as an anti-Semite being many and varied.
Unfortunately, this is where the matter becomes problematic for the community they supposedly represent - as veteran British journalist and author Alan Hart so lucidly points out:
"In my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the answer to the question of what Zionism would do in the event of mission failure was given to me by Golda Meir in one of my interviews with her for the BBC's flagship Panorama programme. She said that in the event of a doomsday situation, Israel 'would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it.'
"The Jewish paradox comes down to this. Israel was created by Zionism to guarantee the well-being and existence of the Jews, but that well-being and perhaps even existence is most seriously threatened by Zionism's policies and actions.
"How can that possibly be true?
"What we are witnessing today is a rising, global tide of anti-Israelism. It is NOT a manifestation of anti-Semitism, meaning that it's not being driven by prejudice against or loathing and even hatred of Jews just because they are Jews. Anti-Israelism is being provoked by Israel's arrogance of power, its sickening self-righteousness and its contempt for international law in general and the rights of Palestinians in particular.
"The danger for Jews everywhere is that anti-Israelism could be transformed into rampant and rabid anti-Semitism. The most explicit warning that this could happen was given by Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel's longest serving Director of Military Intelligence. In his book Israel's Fateful Hour, published in English in 1988, he wrote this (my emphasis added):
'Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world'." (The Jewish paradox arising from the curse of Zionism, Alan Hart, sabbah.biz, 11/5/13)
(The Attorney-General, Senator George Brandis, who is behind the push to remove those sections of the RDA that make it an offence to offend another person on grounds of race or ethnicity, has the interests of the right-wing commentariat, particularly Andrew Bolt, very much at heart. At the same time, however, Brandis has been rambammed (2009 & 2010) and has form in raising the concerns of the Israel lobby in the Senate. (See my 29/5/09 post Her Brilliant Career.) The question arises: can he please both interest groups with his new legislation? Watch this space...)
[*For a critique of the role of ECAJ and other Zionist lobby groups from within the Jewish community, see my 20/6/13 post Join the Dots...]
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