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)

Senator Leyonjelm's New Job

I know I've been lax of late in reporting the rambamming of our politicians. My laziness in this respect, however, should not be interpreted to mean that the practice is in decline. My only excuse is weariness of the whole damn business. I promise I'll try to keep up with this under-the-msm-radar business from now on.

Suffice it to say that no reckoning of the moral and intellectual degeneracy of Australia's political class would be complete without a reference to these endless propaganda junkets to the apartheid state.

Here are the names of the latest group of AIJAC Rambam Program junketeers, fresh from their 'study tour,' followed (or maybe that should be 'dogged') by their utterly predictable, inane and sycophantic 'report backs' to their AIJAC handlers. The star of the show this time around was obviously our lone Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonjelm:

"Senator Leyonjelm said that while he has tracked events and political trends in the country very closely, the trip added 'considerable detail' to his understanding. He was struck by the size of Sderot, which he'd initially thought from news reports to be a small, isolated village rather than a fully integrated town, as well as the widespread agriculture in the Negev. He discussed his impression of Palestinian refugee camps, which he characterised as 'ramshackle' neighbourhoods rather than tent cities. 'I've seen worse,' he said, 'much, much worse in Asia and Africa.' As a result of his briefings on how Australian money for the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) is spent, Leyonjelm says he intends to push the government to cease funding the organisation. He maintained that as long as the Palestinian attitude towards Israelis is so hostile, there won't be a resolution of the conflict. He is dubious about the two-state solution under the current circumstances." (Politicians' impressions of Israel, jwire.com.au, 25/5/18)

It's apparently of no consequence to our 'close tracker of events and political trends in Israel' that those Palestinian refugee camps (and their inhabitants) have been in existence since 1948. Leyonjelm's deep ignorance of the history of the issue would, of course, preclude such knowledge. The really interesting bit here, however, is that he's come back with a job to do, unsurprisingly one quite integral to Israel's foreign policy agenda, namely the scuttling of UNRWA. Who needs an Israel lobby when you can get an Australian taxpayer-funded senator ($199,000) to do your work for you?

Trent Zimmerman (Lib MP for North Sydney) "said he also learned so much during this trip, although he had already fallen in love with Israel because of its rich history and spirit of innovation. The trip made him realise the 'security pressure' on Israel stemming from its tiny size and proximity of its enemies, and said that given the flaws in the Palestinian Authority 'the preconditions for a peaceful settlement just simply don't exist'."

I note that Trent's love affair with Israel, btw, is nowhere mentioned in his 2016 maiden speech.

Two other rambammed pollies, Rick Wilson (Lib WA) and Kevin Hogan (NSW National MP for Page), failed to 'report back.' Maybe they just went along for the ride.

Over One Million Nakba Refugees

It's Nakba Day, 2015, the day we remember the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Israeli terrorist forces in 1948-49. That's 67 years of dispossession and refusal by the Jewish supremacist state of Israel of the Palestinian refugees' right of return.

The usual figure given for the number driven from their homeland is 750,000, but Palestinian diplomat and academic, Fayez Sayegh (1922-1980), has argued for a far higher figure.

The following excerpt on the subject comes from his 1952 book, The Palestine Refugees:

"To give an accurate estimate of the number of the Palestine refugees has so far proved rather difficult, partly because of the working definition of 'a refugee', which United Nations agencies had to start from, and partly because of the various technical difficulties encountered in the field. Thus Mr John B. Blandford, Jr, Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWAPRNE), states in his Report to the General Assembly, submitted on September 28, 1951:

'One of the first tasks undertaken by the UNRWAPRNE was to organize a census operation to determine who should and who should not receive relief. In spite of these efforts... it is still not possible to give an absolute figure of the true number of refugees as understood by the working definition of 'a person normally resident in Palestine who has lost his home and his livelihood as a result of the hostilities, and who is in need.' If the object had been to establish the true number of Palestinians now in other countries, the results of the census would have been more accurate, but the Agency's mandate was expressly limited to those 'in need'...'

"The authors of the Memorandum under review [The Arab Refugee Problem. How It Can Be Solved. Proposals submitted to the General Assembly of the United Nations, December 1951], aware of these difficulties, report the results of various estimates made by either United Nations agencies or Israel sources... although they do not commit themselves clearly to the acceptance of any of the estimates, they seem to have accepted the figure of about 700,000 as a safe working estimate...

"Now the actual number of the refugees, although difficult to estimate with accuracy, is nevertheless an objective fact which is subject neither to arbitrary determination nor to a compromise between varying estimates.

"The statistics of UNRWAPRNE constitute a helpful starting-point. According to the latest report, the refugees registered on the Agency's relief rolls numbered 875, 998. It must be remembered, however, that this figure takes into account only those refugees whose status fulfills the three conditions embodied in the working definition enjoined on the Agency - namely, those who (1) are normally resident in Palestine; (2) have lost their homes and their livelihoods as a result of the hostilities; and (3) are in need. But, even allowing liberally for some duplicate registrations and occasional failures to report deaths, these figures fall below the actual number of the Palestinian refugees, inasmuch as the working definition is too restrictive in scope and leaves out of account three categories of bona fide refugees - namely:

1. Those who have lost their livelihood and become destitute, although they have not left their homes - and who therefore do not fall within the strict definition. There are, according to Mr Blandford, approximately 127,000 of this class (67,000 in Jordan and 60,000 in Gaza), although General Kennedy had reported the existence of some 150,000 of them a year earlier.

2. Those displaced Palestinians who have found gainful means of employment in the neighboring Arab countries and who are not destitute or needy. They are no less 'displaced persons', however, than the more needy refugees. Statistics on refugees of this category are not available.

3. Those displaced Palestinians who emigrated to countries outside the Middle East and who therefore - whether needy or not - are not counted by any of the agencies concerned with the refugees.

"It is evident that, when all these categories of refugees are taken into account, the number will be found to exceed one million. In fact, Mr Blandford speaks, in the forward to his last Report, of 'the crushing burden of a million Arab refugees'." (pp 20-22)

Perpetual Nakba

So that Australian (and American, and British, and...) Zionists can lay back in comfort and fantasise about a supposed genetic connection to a set of mythical Middle Eastern figures known as Abraham, Isaac and Joseph, and even, in a manic moment, act on that fantasy by (LOL) ascending ('making aliyah') to Israel, millions of people, refugees from the former Palestine, must perforce remain in exile from their homeland, condemned to lives of never-ending dispossession and turmoil.

More of UNRWA Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi's moving speech (on the other side of 'the Zionist dream') cited in my previous post:

"Of course, all civilians suffer in Syria. But Palestinians, unlike many Syrians, do not have support networks beyond where they live. They have been buffeted from camp to camp in search of safety. Vastly compounding their plight is the fact that options for external flight are extremely limited. About 53,000 have approached UNRWA in Lebanon, a country hosting also hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, and where the situation of close to 300,000 Palestinians in existing camps is already dire and inhospitable - with limited or no access to jobs, property and services.

"Jordan has an explicit no-entry policy for Palestinians from Syria. Approximately 11,000 have sought assistance from UNRWA there. Throughout the region, in support of Palestinians fleeing Syria, we promote humanitarian principles of non-refoulement and equal treatment of refugees, but to little avail in the case of Jordan. Palestinians are also no longer granted visas to Egypt. Some 5,000 fled the Syria conflict there and are in need of assistance. Making it possible has been a complex exercise in a country undergoing its own, difficult transition.

"Palestinians from Syria are reportedly seeking safety further afield, including in Turkey, in Gaza, even in Asia. Last fall, we saw them board boats by the hundreds towards Europe, and sometimes, tragically, lose their lives at sea. This matches the sad and resigned explanations we are now hearing from Palestinians in Syria and those who have fled to neighboring countries: 'We are not wanted here, we cannot manage any longer. I want my children to have a new life, away from this region, which for us is only trouble.'

"We estimate that at least 70% of the Palestine refugee population in Syria have been displaced, whether inside the country or beyond its borders. It is in fact the largest displacement of Palestinians since 1967, although - one should say - displacement and insecurity have been main characteristics of the Palestinian condition: including the expulsions from Kuwait and Libya, the destruction of camps in the Lebanese civil war and more recently of Nahr el-Bared, and the grave violations of human rights against Palestinians that occurred a few years ago in Iraq.

"And look carefully at pictures of Yarmouk - of the distribution of small parcels of food to thousands of desperate women, men and children coming out of the besieged area. The stark grayness of the people and the rubble remind me of the black-and-white archive pictures from the Palestinian diaspora in 1948: children in tattered clothes and unkempt hair warming themselves by small fires, old people looking into the camera, their lined and leathered faces deep with concern.

"Um Ahmad and many others told me that what is happening to them is as bad as the Nakba of 1948, and in some ways even worse. I first heard this in December 2012, and it has taken me some time to process. How can it be as bad as the seminal story of expulsion and flight from cities and villages, worse than the original forced exile from the homeland? Then, of course, I understood. In 1948, Palestinians fleeing their land were welcomed throughout the region in solidarity. In 2014, there is simply no more welcome. Hence Um Ahmad's question: where do we go? In 1948, they fled with families and neighbours and then set up camps with UNRWA's help that maintained familial and community networks and support systems. Now - in the much more complex patterns of forced displacement that have emerged in the global age - they are often compelled to flee individually, while those networks, built over many years of exile, quickly disintegrate. Economics and logistics dictate that families are separated; young people go alone using the family assets to pay smugglers. Cohesion is lost, solidarity is weakened, hope is threatened. This is a major crisis affecting the scattered Palestinian nation.

"One must understand the special significance that Yarmouk has played in the Palestinian conscience in preserving the precious notions of identity, culture and belonging throughout the exile. Yarmouk was the centre of Palestinian life in Syria, and recognized region-wide as a positive embodiment of diaspora life. An economic and cultural centre, where Palestinian identity was nurtured. It was the example of how Palestinians, though refugees, could thrive on the many opportunities provided by stability, peace, official hospitality and UNRWA services. It was a relative oasis of prosperity in a long and difficult journey. It made the absence of a just solution to the question of Palestine refugees less unbearable. It enabled people to be patient, as they waited for that solution to be found.

"The unfolding tragedy of Yarmouk is therefore devastating to the psyche of every Palestinian refugee in more ways than the sheer suffering of those directly affected by it. There is a ripple effect of anxiety and fear emanating from the Yarmouk experience. Yarmouk has defined Palestinian solidarity and hope, and it now defines the loss and uncertainty not only for its residents, but also for Palestinians all over Syria, and of the wider community.

"Yarmouk has come to represent all places where - for Palestinians and especially refugees - control over one's life is an illusion, where the safety of decades can disappear overnight, where land is confiscated, homes are demolished, rights are denied, travel is restricted, jobs are lost, resentments and prejudices prevail. Yarmouk is Gaza, the open-air prison. Yarmouk is Nahr al-Bared, destroyed by bombs. Yarmouk is Jenin, it is Sabra & Shatila, it is Tel az-Zaater. Yarmouk is the expulsion from Kuwait, it is 1967, all the way back to the Nakba. It was a beacon of resilience. Unless we act quickly, it risks becoming a symbol of dispossession, and of a history of repeated dispossessions."

The Unpalatable Truth About Martha Gellhorn 3

The October 1961 issue of The Atlantic Monthly carried a lengthy report by Gellhorn called The Arabs of Palestine.

Here's the editor's preface:

"Martha Gellhorn, novelist, journalist, and former war correspondent, has recently returned from a journey to the Middle East, where she went to see the 'Palestinian Refugee Problem' in terms of real life, real people. Here she reports how the Arab refugees and Arab Israelis live, and what they say about themselves, their past and their future."

Gellhorn's introductory paragraphs set the tone for what is, in effect, a journalistic hatchet job. Were she speaking to us directly, it'd go something like this:

Listen, I know what refugees are. I saw them "in Germany at war's end... [T]he whole country seemed alive with the roaming mad - slave laborers, concentration camp survivors who spoke the many tongues of Babel, dressed in whatever scraps they had looted, and searched for food in stalled freight cars though the very rail-yards were being bombed." Now I knew that in the Middle East "there would be no high explosive, no concentration camps, but the imagined, expected scene was bad enough, lice and rickets and tuberculosis, bodies rotting in the heat, the apathy of despair [but] nothing I had read or heard prepared me for what I found." So what did I find? You're not going to believe this: A bunch of people as happy as pigs in clover, living off the fat of the land, and spoilt rotten, one and all, by Aunty UNRWA!

First a camp for Palestinian Christians in the hills near Beirut:

"The camp consisted of little cement or frame houses rambling over the hillside, a village of poor people, disorderly and beflowered and cheerful. School was letting out for lunch; troops of children... meandered home, shouting bye-bye at friendly, giggling length. They are Roman Catholics here, but the young teachers are refugees, not priests. They have to teach the children about Palestine, since most of them have never seen the country and even the oldest cannot remember it. The children are taught hate, the Garden of Eden stolen from them by murderers; their duty is to live for Return and Revenge.

"The miniature white clinic had only one customer, a nice-looking girl of 21 who had brought her fourth baby for a checkup. Her husband works in Libya... The resident nurse, a buxom elderly woman, said they had no real sickness... My [Palestinian UNRWA] guide announced that if any refugee needed an operation he was taken in an ambulance to a hospital in Beirut where UNRWA reserved beds and paid for everything; you would have to be a rich man in Lebanon to get such good and speedy treatment."

Luxury! What more could they want? Their country back? No, no, no. According to Gellhorn, her guide tells her:

"It can all be solved with money... if every man got a thousand dollars for each member of his family... he could be a citizen in any Arab country he likes, he would not think of Palestine any more. Then he could start a new life and be rich and happy... [T]hose who really do own something in Palestine must be paid for what they had there. But those are not many. Most had nothing, only work'."

Why, this guide could almost be a product of the good old Israeli propaganda mill:

"Out of the blue, my guide announced: 'There is no crime in the camps. No thefts, no fires, no blood feuds. It is much better than it was in Palestine..."

As could Gellhorn herself, chiming in with:

"And this is true. In all the camps. Exile has taught one valuable lesson: how to live lawfully and peacefully together."

Then it's off to Gaza:

"The refugee camps are much larger than those in Lebanon, small towns by Middle Eastern standards. They are by no means luxury establishments, but many people live in a nastier state in American and European slums. The poor villagers of Gaza are not as well housed or cared for as the refugees. The Gaza Strip is not a hell hole, not a visible disaster. It is worse; it is a jail - with a magical long white sand beach, and a breeze, and devoted welfare workers (UNRWA) to look after the prisoners. The Egyptian government is the jailer."

We should be so lucky!

Now check out these happy little vegemites:

"The Vocational Training School at Gaza is a freshly painted group of buildings, with well-kept lawns, flower borders, scrubbed Spartan self-respecting dormitories, and impressive workshops equipped with the complex machinery that modern life seems to depend on. The boys were on their playing field that afternoon, a holiday, marking white lines for various sporting events to come. A few of them drifted back and wanted to show off every inch of their school. Did they like it here, did they enjoy their work, were they happy? Needless to ask; the answer glowed and shone on them. The graduates of this school find good jobs for which they are trained; amongst its many other parental functions UNRWA operates a placement bureau throughout the Middle East. This is the new generation, the UNRWA graduates, and you find them everywhere in the Arab refugee world. They have not yet been crippled by exile, regret, or hate, and they may well be the brightest citizens of the Arab future."

So nice to see that, unlike the UNRWA school in Lebanon, hate is not on the curriculum.

Gellhorn bids adieu to Gaza's Club Med thus:

"I left Gaza, wishing that I could take all the young people with me, and not to Palestine, but out into the wider world. Their destiny should not be to go back, but to go forth. They need exactly the opposite of what the Jews need. There is plenty of room for both needs."

Now let me get that straight: Palestinian 'refugees' need to be dispersed throughout the Arab world. 'The Jews', on the other hand, need to be crammed into Palestine - sorry - Israel.

Talk about taking the words right out of Israel's mouth!

To be continued...

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?"

Wiping Palestinian Refugee Rights Off the Map 2

Further to yesterday's post...

As in The Australian Jewish News of June 1, so too in The Australian of June 2. Here's Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, foreign editor of the latter, singing from the same Israeli songsheet as his mate, Michael Danby, whom he hilariously describes as "the Australian politician who knows more about the Middle East than any other":

"UNRWA is a notorious UN boondoggle (1) of vast waste and political dysfunction. It defines as a refugee every descendent of any Palestinian who left Palestine at the time five Arab nations launched a war against Israel in 1948. (2) Thus if you are a citizen of Jordan with your own business, even a member of the Jordanian cabinet (3), but your grandfather came from Palestine, you are a refugee, according to UNRWA. As a result it makes the Israel-Palestine dispute insoluble.(4) Unlike all other refugees, this status in inheritable infinitely through the generations and never extinguished despite gaining other citizenship (5)... So why on earth does a policeman in Dandenong, a shearer in Scone, a miner in Mt Isa, have to pay taxes to maintain this vast UN folly (6), apart from the forlorn view that by sucking up to UN pieties we might wear the shabby tinsel of a seat on the UN Security Council for two years?"

(1) Boondoggle? As in 'a wasteful, pointless and unnecessary activity', such as Murdoch's subsidising of The Australian 's continued existence for no other reason than to provide a platform for the likes of his mouthpiece, Greg Sheridan.

(2) As per the old Zionist myth that the Palestinians remained in situ until the very moment (May 15, 1948  to be precise) they saw the Arab cavalry coming their way, barking such orders as, Oi, you lot! Outta the bloody way! How do you expect us to drive the Jews into the sea with you lot standing around and getting in the way? - at which point the Palestinians one and all (some 750,000 to be precise) pulled up stakes and headed for the horizon. In fact, the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the refugees that tend to flow from that kind of thing, began in December 1947 and was in full swing by April 1948, long before the Arab cavalry intervened. (Anyone care to purchase and post a copy of Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine to Greg over at News Ltd?)

(3) Yes folks, 2 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, and the vast majority are either making money hand over fist or stacking the Jordanian cabinet, which, according to the Not Guinness Book of Records is the largest in the world, with a cast of thousands.

(4) Insoluble? Yes it does rather. If only they were Jewish, then they'd be in like Flynn! But hey, that's how it is, so what's a Jews-only apartheid state to do?

(5) Inherited refugee status unlike all other refugees? Now I could mention the alleged expulsion of Jews from Palestine by the Romans in 70 AD, and remind you that, according to Zionist dogma, their right to return was inheritable through the generations (not to mention the millenia) and never extinguished despite gaining other citizenship, but I won't. Instead, I'll refer you to the article Exploding the myths: UNRWA, UNHCR & the Palestine refugees, in which UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness patiently explains that all refugees and their descendants, whether managed by UNRWA or the UNHCR, retain the status of refugees "until that status lapses through the achievement of a just and lasting solution" to their plight, with voluntary return to their country of origin being universally recognised as "the optimal solution." (unrwa.org, 27/6/11)

(6) Indeed! Why should the Australian taxpayer foot the bill (or part thereof)? I guess it's only because policemen in Chicago, farmers in Nebraska, and miners in Kentucky have to pay taxes to keep Israel afloat to the tune of $8.2 million a day (US military aid & the Israel/Palestine conflict, ifamericansknew.org). Turn that tap off, facilitate the refugees' return to their homes and lands in Israel (im)proper, and hey, no more need for UNRWA!

Wiping Palestinian Refugee Rights Off the Map

Having created the Palestinian refugee problem, Israel and its agents and dupes in the West have finally embarked on a campaign to redefine it out of existence.

In Australia, the campaign first emerged in the press with a report in The Australian Jewish News of June 1, Carr, Danby at odds over Palestinian aid:

"Foreign Minister Bob Carr's announcement that Australia will boost aid to a controversial United Nations organisation for Palestinian refugees..."

(Controversial is a code word for anything, or anyone, that Zionists don't like.)

"... has raised the ire of Labor Party colleague and chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence & Trade, Michael Danby."

Is there any initiative in support of the Palestinians that wouldn't raise Michael Danby's ire, I wonder?

Danby, of course, is Israel's principal enforcer of the Zionist line in the federal Australian Labor Party. A 2009 profile in The AJN suggests that, in his zeal, he's part cattle-dog, part yapping terrier: "Jewish voters concluded they... need[ed] a Jewish MP... to keep in line a Labor opposition... and after November 2007 to act as a watchdog within the new Rudd Government... He corrals his parliamentary colleagues and forces them to think long, hard and seriously about matters that often conjure knee-jerk reactions." (A decade of Danby, 27/2/09: See my 1/3/09 post Nipping at their Heels.)

"'I don't support it. Aid could certainly be more appropriately targeted', the Melbourne Ports MP told The AJN after Carr's office announced the $90 million worth of funding for the United Nations Relief & Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA)."

The chutzpah is obvious.

Let me spell it out for you: Israel expels the Palestinians from their homeland in 1948, confiscates their homes, lands and other assets, and refuses to allow them to return despite a UN resolution calling on it to do so... but should an Australian Labor foreign minister see fit to lift a finger on their behalf, even if at one remove, through a UN agency, he risks being bailed up in the corridors of federal parliament by a certain pampered ($185,000 base salary) parliamentary pooch and subjected to a furious yapping.

"Danby slammed UNRWA for its ballooning definition of Palestinian refugees, which includes not only those who lived in Palestine in 1946-48 and lost homes and livelihoods in the 1948 war..."

The klutzes! Always losing things!

And that ballooning definition - I like that! Wouldn't be anything like Zionism's ballooning definition of anti-Semitism, would it? Here's the latest in that department: "All criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic because of the specific historical circumstances under which we currently live. That is to say, the historical circumstances under which Israel and the Jews exist in the world today render any non-anti-Semitic criticism of Israel impossible." (Yes, all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic!, Benjamin Kerstein, The Jerusalem Post, 20/5/12)

"... but their descendants..."

How dare these refugees have kids! The nerve! Actually, they only have the little buggers for one reason:

"... noting Palestinian supporters use these figures to pressure Israel."

Unsurprisingly, the real centre of the Zionist campaign to disappear the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees, however, is in the United States:

"Palestinians in the occupied territories, the diaspora and in refugee camps protested earlier this month on the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, commemorating the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians by nascent Israeli forces in the late 1940s. Palestinians were sending a message to the world that the right to return to their homes would not be forgotten, and that millions of refugees are awaiting a solution. One senator from Illinois, though, wants to write off those millions and change who is classified as a Palestinian refugee. Mark Kirk, a hawkish Repblican whose political career has been boosted by right-wing Israel advocates, is leading a drive to fundamentally redefine who a Palestinian refugee is in the eyes of the United States. Critics see the move as just one step in a larger strategy to take the issue of refugee rights for Palestinians off the negotiating table, and to cut funding from UNRWA, the UN agency that assists Palestinians... On Thursday May 24, a senate committee passed an amendment by unanimous voice vote that would require the State Department to differentiate between Palestinian refugees who were displaced first-hand and those born after to families who were refugees. The senator behind the amendment was Kirk, who is close to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and has received over a million dollars from Israel-oriented political action committees during his political career." (How the Israel Lobby's favorite senator is trying to erase Palestinian refugees, Alex Cane, alternet.org, 2/6/12)

And if you thought Danby was rich, here's Kirk's statement following the passing of his amendment: "With US taxpayers providing more than $4 billion to UNRWA since 1950, the watershed reporting requirement will help taxpayers better understand whether UNRWA truly remains a refugee assistance organization or has become a welfare agency for low-income residents of the Levant." (ibid)

This, from a Zionist stooge, advocating for a foreign power - an apartheid state, in fact - that has bilked the US taxpayer of $103.6 billion in military aid from 1949 to 2008, with a further $30 billion promised between 2007 and 2018.*

[*See US military aid to Israel, aidtoisrael.org]    

A Resistant People

"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." Article 13(2) Universal Declaration of Human Rights

In his explicitly racist apologia for Israel's running amok in Gaza last December-January, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheehan trotted out one of the classic tropes of Zionist propaganda: "Because the existence of Israel radiates an affront to the Muslim world, only Palestinians have been sequestered from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to a special agency. That agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency [UNWRA] for Palestine Refugees, has warehoused displaced Palestinians for decades because it has been in the interests of the Arab world for this problem not to be solved. Gaza has become a giant warehouse of misery. It has no economic growth, no prospects, almost no civil order, yet about half the population is under the age of 17. The population has exploded amid economic privation. Women, living under Sharia law, are used primarily as breeding stock." (It's too easy just to blame Jews*, 12/1/09). [*See my 13/1/09 post Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH.]

I was reminded of Sheehan's little stinker when I came across a 1973 interview with American Harry N. Howard, UN adviser, Bureau of Near Eastern, South Asian & African Affairs, 1949-1956. Howard's testimony not only refutes the hoary Zionist canard of Palestinians as pawns of the Arab states, but provides a fascinating insight into US cluelessness in the Middle East in general and the grip of the nascent Israel lobby on the US Congress in particular. Best of all, through Howard's recollections, comes a real sense of the stubborn resistance of the Palestinian people, well before the rise of the armed Palestinian liberation movement, to all attempts to deflect them from the path of return to their homes and lands in 1948 Palestine.

Tellingly, Palestinian refugees (1948 -) are referred to throughout the interview simply as 'Arabs', surely a major impediment to a simple understanding that all the Palestinian refugees ever wanted (and still want) was (is) to return to their Palestinian homeland, rather than be fobbed off on one or other of the surrounding Arab states. Zionists, of course, routinely refer to Palestinians, either in or outside Israel improper, as Arabs, a linguistic circumlocution designed to perpetuate the idea that Palestinians qua Arabs can comfortably be accomodated in any of up to 25 Arab states and territories. A convenient untruth indeed. The complete interview can be found at trumanlibrary.org:

Richard D McKinzie: "You were an adviser to the UN delegation at the time when a lot of relief activities were being sponsored by the United Nations. I speak specifically of the Arab refugee problem. Do you recall particular problems in getting... Department of State acceptance for that? There was some talk against some of these projects as being 'international WPA'. [Works Progress Administration - the largest of President Roosevelt's New Deal agencies. The WPA employed millions of unemployed Americans on public works projects in 30s America.]

Howard: Yes, and that the money was all wasted, and the Arab refugees were living high and so on... I served as the Acting US representative... on the UNRWA Advisory Commission. I got around to practically all of the refugee centers during the 7-year period that I was there. Generally speaking, I think even Americans who have dealt with the problem - even Department of State officers - have not understood what has happened. This is certainly true of many Senators and Congressmen who visited the area. We have put into UNRWA more than $500 million. [Firstly,] we have assumed that the Arab states have done nothing at all except raise hell about the [refugee] problem. As a matter of fact, by my own calculations, which are based on UN documentation, the Arab host governments and other Arab governments, directly and indirectly, have probably contributed... at least $200 million in goods, services and cash. The assumption here is that they do nothing constructive at all. Secondly, there is also an assumption that these people, who are poor, are not worth the candle. Thirdly, there is a misconception that all the refugees have done is to lie [around] rotting in camps, being too lazy to work in the earlier years, and are now [1973] guerillas fighting in their frustration. It is assumed that all UNRWA has done is to spend money on food and shelter and keep the problem from being 'solved'. [However,] UNRWA also has an educational program which meets some of the educational needs of close to half a million people, from first grade through to secondary school. It issues scholarships of about $550 per year which send qualified Arab refugee students to the American University of Beirut, the American University in Cairo, Damascus University, and the new Jordan National University. [UNRWA] also has one of the best vocational training programs. As a matter of fact, the largest percentage of UNRWA funds now go into education and training, not into relief, ie food and shelter. One of my friends, who used to direct it, tells me that the UNRWA Health Service, run on the basis of some 4 cents per day per refugee, is probably the best public health service in any developing area. As a matter of fact, the entire budget for UNRWA represents about 10 cents per capita per day. Once, when the US representative at the UN General Assembly was raising hell about the UNRWA budget, charging that UNRWA was supporting guerillas who were attacking Israel, and urging various cuts in expenditure, the UNRWA Commissioner General, Lawrence Michelmore, replied: 'Let's be clear about what we're talking about. We are talking about 10 cents a day for people... not $50, or $100, or $200 a month, which we have here in this country, but 10 cents a day'. I, frankly, was very much impressed with what I saw and what was done, and, as I say, I went all around.

McKinzie: All that was assumed to be quite temporary?

Howard: We assumed in the beginning it would be very, very temporary, and it is very interesting to read the records on this point. Back in 1949 and 1950, it was assumed that the problem was going to be solved within roughly a year or so. This was a basic assumption, I would say, clear down to 1956 - that any day now it was going to be ended. Well, it wasn't. People like Gordon Clapp, who used to head the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and who headed a UN Economic Survey Mission in the Middle East in 1949, had a much clearer view of the long-range, complex character of the refugee problem. Gordon Clapp made one basic point about some of the things which were then being contemplated as a solution. He said that to engage in large scale economic development projects as a solution to [the refugee] problem was only to invite frustration and failure. The Arab refugees were not ready for this approach. Neither were the Arabs generally, nor the Arab governments. Three years later, in January 1953, we went in for a big $150 million program. We tied all that up with refugee resettlement. That ruined it immediately. President Eisenhower sent out Eric Johnston as his personal representative to examine the situation and push the project. Ralph Bunche [UN's Chief Palestine Mediator following the Stern Gang's assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte] told me once that Eric Johnston was the worst qualified person he had ever known going out to the area to work on that problem. Among other things, he was a member of the American Christian Palestine Committee, a strongly pro-Zionist group. Well, every time Johnston went out to the Middle East, he would come back here and make a statement. One such statement, for example, said: 'We are now at the one-inch line'. He did not say which goal post it was. He added that as soon as the project, largely covering the Jordan Valley, was completed, some 250,000 refugees could be resettled. He had no idea, of course, that he was killing the project with the remark about resettlement. The average Arab response to that kind of statement was: 'The hell you say, you are not going to resettle anybody'. That did not mean that the Arabs did not believe in economic development. It did, however, mean that they were not going to support economic development if we were going to tie it up with refugee resettlement. I'll give you another example. In 1961, Senator W Stuart Symington was in the Middle East. He is a very able Senator and, among other things, wanted to look into the refuggee problem. We took him down to UNRWA Headquarters for a briefing session. He had just read a truly dreadful article by Martha Gellhorn, also from St Louis, on the refugee problem in the October 1961 Atlantic Monthly.* It was one of the worst articles I've ever read on the subject, although he obviously believed it. We got together other items for him to read, including Don Peretz's book Israel & the Palestine Arabs, one of the very best books on the subject. Both Don and Martha Gellhorn happen to be Jewish, although Don is a scholar and knew something about the subject, while Martha Gellhorn knew nothing about it. After the briefing session with UNRWA officers, we took Senator Symington, with John Newhouse, his assistant, down to the new vocational training centre for refugees near Sidon, and also took him through the Ein Hilweh refugee center nearby, which is not a bad place. John Newhouse and I were determined that we would also get Senator Symington, if he had time, to see the worst, since, like Martha Gellhorn, he had the impression that the Arab refugees were living high off the lamb - if not the hog. As it turned out, Senator Symington did have an extra day or two in Lebanon. So we took him over to a refugee center named Gouraud, named after the French Field Marshal, just around the corner from the ancient ruins of Ba'albek. This was an old Ottoman army barracks used after World War I for some 300 French soldiers. Some 3,000 Arab refugees were now housed there. It was about the dirtiest, filthiest place one could imagine. As we went through the refugee center, Senator Symington kept repeating: 'This is very sad, this is very sad', and I will never forget it. I think he did forget it, but we'll let that pass. I told the UNRWA area officer, Khalil Ja'abari, a Palestinian Arab from Nablus - something of an extremist - that Senator Symington was very pro-Zionist, but very able as a senator, and should be completely free, in view of the character of the place, to go wherever he wanted to. Senator Symington kept repeating that this was all 'very sad', and my friend Khalil remarked: 'Well, Senator, I guess you have seen another side of this problem'. Senator Symington asked me to ride back into the mountains with him when we had finished the tour. On the way I offered to take him through another dreadful refugee center, named after the British Field Marshal Wavell but he protested that he would become ill if we did. Then he asked the usual silly question - the fundamental question - 'What do you think is the solution of this problem?' I replied: 'Well, if you are thinking of a political solution, I don't even think in those terms at all'. Senator Symington remarked: 'Don't you think that it is primarily because of [Israeli] Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's intransigence?' Symington would never have said this publicly. I remarked that, in my opinion, as long as Ben-Gurion lived, and as long as his spirit dominated the political scene in Israel, there would be no hope of a political settlement, and that I would not now want to wager that the Arabs would make an adjustment if Israel did move in the direction of compromise and peace. Then we talked about projects for economic development. I told Senator Symington that Eric Johnston used to come out to the Middle East on the matter of the development of the Jordan Valley and the sweet waters of the Nile Valley. But he made the same fatal mistake, every time he returned to the US, of saying: 'When we finish the project, some 250,000 people will be resettled'. I added: 'That ended the project'. 'But', Senator Symington added: 'If I didn't say that, I'd never get the money out of the US Congress'. I replied: 'This is precisely the case. If Mr Johnston did not say it, he wouldn't get the money out of the US Congress; if he did say it, he wouldn't get the project'. And that was that. There are nuances in this kind of development which, I am afraid, Americans have never really understood or appreciated. Harry Labouisse left his post as director of UNRWA in the spring of 1958... When he paid his farewell call on [Jordanian] Prime Minister Samir Rifai, the latter begged him to ask the US Government not to force him to make a public statement of his own conviction that the Arab refugees would be staying right where they were, not returning to their former homes. He would be murdered, he thought, if he said so publicly. Well, there was much in that sort of thing, and I think we have never appreciated this nuance in this country - not at all. When Norman Burns was head of the AID program (USOM) in Jordan in 1959, he negotiated an agreement with the Jordanian government on the construction of the East Ghor irrigation canal, which included land reform. The project involved only the US and Jordan, not Israel. You will read the agreement in vain to find any reference to the fact that there were some 100,000 refugees in the East Ghor of the Jordan Valley who would benefit both from the irrigation and the land reform. The Jordanian and US governments knew this. Both knew that to put it down on paper would be disastrous for the project, so there was no mention of it in the agreement."

[*The Arabs of Palestine. More on Martha in a later post.]

Get UNRWA: the Ins & Outs of a Massacre

When Zionist propagandists attempt to justify the legitimacy of an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine, they usually cite United Nations General Assembly resolution (181) of 1947, which proposed the partitioning of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state*, as the international community's stamp of legality for their apartheid project. Nevertheless, despite the UN's role in giving birth to Israel, they seldom miss an opportunity to lash out at it. This should come as no surprise given that, as the upholder (however imperfect) of international law, the UN cannot but blow the whistle on Israel as a serial flouter of same.

[* For the politics of partition see my posts The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament 3 (14/3/08), Insatiable (4/5/08), & Talking Turkey on the Two-State Solution (11/11/08)]

The United Nations Relief & Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) is the UN agency Israel-firsters most love to hate. For example, the US Congress (Israeli-occupied territory as Patrick Buchanan reminds us) on 28/1/09 passed a bizarre resolution "that the UN should take immediate steps to improve the transparency and accountability of the UNRWA... to ensure that it is not providing funding, employment, or other support to terrorists."*

[* My favorite paragraphs of resolution 29 are the ones that point out that Ismail Haniyeh, the democratically-elected Hamas prime minister of Palestine, was the graduate of an UNRWA school, and that "on March 16, 2007, the New York Times exposed a new al-Qaeda cell, Fatah al-Islam, that was organizing, training and plotting attacks against the US from an UNRWA-administered and run camp in Lebanon."]

Most recently, however, Israel has been irked by UNRWA personnel indignantly speaking out against the damage inflicted on some 50 UN facilities by the recent Israeli firestorm unleashed on all and sundry in the Gaza Strip. Presumably, they should have simply gritted their teeth and muttered quietly to themselves (and the smoking walls of their schools and compounds). It was inevitable, then, that a beleaguered Israeli propaganda mill would seize on any opportunity to get UNRWA.

This presented itself when the UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Jerusalem issued a clarification that an IDF mortar strike, which killed 43 Palestinians in Jabaliya on 6 January, killed them not while they were sheltering inside an UNRWA school but in the street outside. The clarification came because another branch of the UN, its humanitarian affairs agency, the Office for the Co-ordination of Human Affairs (OCHA), which had, like UNRWA officials, reported on 6 January that the massacre had taken place in the street outside the school, mistakenly reported on 7 January that the school itself had been hit. (Why UN 'reversal' over Gaza school should be treated with caution, Jonathan Miller, antiwar.com, 5/2/09)

Such a slip, however, is grist to Israel's propaganda mill and will be used from now on by all the usual suspects as a stick with which to beat the UN in general and agencies like OCHA and UNRWA in particular.

First cab off the rank here, of course, was The Australian with an extract from Canada's The Globe & Mail in its Cut & Paste attacking UNRWA's Gaza director John Ging for not "setting the record straight" (UN disseminates lies & a willing media swallows them, 4/2/09). Of course, Ging wouldn't have had anything more pressing to do in Gaza, now would he? Next day Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan got in on the act with "Even in this recent Gaza operation, remember the outrage at the Israeli rocket fire on the school in the Jabaliya refugee camp? This dominated the news for days and now it turns out no Israeli munition ever hit the school." (There may be the will but not necessarilly the way)
And then, on 6 February, with Jerusalem correspondent Abraham Rabinovich's report UN backdown on 'school massacre' in Gaza war, it was front page news.

This revelation of UN 'duplicity' was accompanied by a particularly seedy editorial, The evidence is in on Islamist reform: From Melbourne to the Middle East, terrorists want to kill, occasioned by the 15-year sentence imposed by a Melbourne court on Abdul Nacer Benbrika for "terror offences." The editorialist had concocted an extraordinary melange, in which Benbrika, the World Trade Centre terrorists, an alleged Iraqi recruiter of suicide bombers, Hamas, and the UN were blended together: "While Islamic extremists sometimes dress up their motives in the language of conventional politics, they are at war with everybody who does not agree with them. The vast majority of Muslims understand this and recognise there is no place in their faith for terror of the Hamas and Benbrika kind... It is also time for enemies of Israel to stop blaming the Jewish state for war crimes it did not commit, presumably on the assumption that anything that makes Israel look bad helps Hamas, the ostensible ally of innocent Palestinians. Last month, UN officials in Gaza said Israeli forces had mortared a school where they knew civilians were sheltering. It made international headlines and undoubtedly encouraged Muslim anger all over the world. But it wasn't true - and the UN knew it." S0, for The Australian, there is no difference whatever between Benbrika's jihadi cell and an Islamic resistance movement such as Hamas; Hamas is not the democratically elected government of Palestine, but only an "ostensible ally of innocent Palestinians"; accusing Israel of war crimes makes one an "enemy of Israel"; and the UN, like Hamas (and presumably Benbrika), is an enemy of Israel!

Oh, and those 43 dead Palestinians: don't you feel a whole lot better knowing that they were murdered outside rather than inside the school?