"Palestinians in Australia are Positioned as Settlers of Colour"

"The State of Israel was created on stolen land 72 years ago."

That's just one of the glaring canards contained in a recent statement (drafted by poet Sara M. Saleh along with academics Dr Micaela Sahhar and Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah) signed by innumerable Australian academics, artists and activists, well-known and obscure, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, Muslim and non-Muslim,  that appears in the radical left Australian literary journal Overland, created in 1954.

Signatories include academics Linda Briskman, Bassam Dally, John Docker and his son Ned Curthoys, Ann E. Fink, Gary Foley, Ghassan Hage, Jake Lynch,  Peter Manning, Stuart Rees, Nick Riemer, Peter Slezak, and Marcelo Svirsky; broadcaster and writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied; feminist Sara Dowse; playwright Samah Sabawi, journalist  Maher Mughrabi (features editor, The Age newspaper), and poet Sunniya Wajahat.

Bizarrely,  one high profile signatory, ABC and BBC media favourite Ms Abdel-Magied, who should need no introduction to most readers (see here if you need to), is a participant in this forthcoming "Festival of Jewish Arts and Music" forum!

But I digress.

Most of the  signatories' names will be instantly recognisable to watchers of anti-Israel initiatives in Australia.  If not, googling should pay dividends. It certainly did for me in the case of Susan Stryker, an American gender studies professor in the United States who, it turns out, is not currently based here but was a visiting professor on an Australia campus in 2004.

The statement, inter alia (emphasis added):

 ".... The State of Israel was created on stolen land 72 years ago. Its illegal military occupation of the West Bank – which imposes a punitive legal system on Palestinians in contrast to their Israeli settler counterparts, who enjoy the rights of full Israeli citizens – has been ongoing for 53 years. Throughout this time, Israel has continued to commit war crimes in breach of the Geneva Conventions, and to violate the most basic of Palestinian human rights, ultimately denying Palestinians the right to be sovereign in their own homeland.

Israel’s annexation plan will cement the apartheid reality that currently exists. It confines Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza within 115 bantustans that are physically, economically, socially, and politically cut off from each other. The Israeli state has subjected Palestinians to land confiscation, ethnic cleansing, forcible population transfer, home demolitions, settler violence, severe and discriminatory restrictions on their right to freedom of movement, excessive use of force, torture, and a racist legal system and state apparatus which explicitly operates by granting preferential political, legal, social, cultural and economic rights to Israeli Jews ....

We draw great inspiration from current global justice movements committed to the eradication of racism, fascism, imperialism, and apartheid — a collective and intersectional emancipatory process of decolonisation. As iconic civil rights campaigner Angela Davis writes, “When we are engaged in the struggle against racist violence…we can’t forget the connections with Palestine. In many ways, we have to engage in an exercise of intersectionality. Of always foregrounding those connections so that people remember that nothing happens in isolation.” As Davis makes clear, an unequivocal stance against all forms of racial oppression must include support of Palestinians.

From Minneapolis to Jerusalem to Gadigal land, all sites of recent state-sanctioned violence, we affirm the critical ongoing and historic solidarities between different movements against systemic and institutionalised state violence, systemic oppression, and brutality. Palestinians in Australia are positioned as settlers of colour and have proudly sought and affirmed solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our indivisible anti-colonial struggles....'

Coming hot on the heels of that statement in Overland is this piece in the same magazine.  By postgraduate student Tasnim Mahmoud Sammak, it evidently seeks a One State Solution, entailing the elimination of Israel, as the following extracts [emphasis added] indicate:

"It wasn’t long ago, in December of 2018, that Scott Morrison recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital while holding back on moving the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv (my colonised home city of Yaffa) to West Jerusalem. The move made Australia the only western nation to follow the United States in in supporting the expansion of the Zionist settler-colonial project across internationally-recognised Palestinian land ....

As a Palestinian, I consider it an insult that Western politicians summon the two-state solution in our support as though it were anything but a position of forced surrender....

 This lip-service to two-state solution is the premise for opposing the annexation across political parties in Australia. This includes the Greens, in spite of their more sympathetic record to Palestinian rights.... 

The Palestinian struggle is connected to the global BLM movement through an interlinked vision to dismantle racist settler-colonial structures and systems....

As Palestinians, we have suffered the consequences of the legitimisation of Zionism as a settler-colonial, ethno-nationalist project....

We should demand that our global protest against annexation be tied to our imaginaries [sic] of a Free Palestine. Committing to anything less is a racist’s peace and a racist’s justice.

It is not enough to expect pro-Palestinians to accept the utterance of words of support against annexation from politicians supporting Orwellian peace agreements. The time for feigned pro-Palestinian support should be over. Genuine support for the Palestinian struggle demands opposition to Israeli settler colonisation itself."

 It appears, since images of their logos (along with those of certain private bodies) appear at the base of its website, that Overland receives financial support from the Australian Government, from Creative Victoria (an agency of the Victorian state government), from the Melbourne City Council, and from the Australia Council for the Arts.  These four bodies are financed by the Australian taxpayer, including Jewish taxpayers. It is outrageous that taxpayers' money should be used to finance a magazine that publishes material opposing the existence of the state of Israel and which publishes material that is arguably antisemitic.  It is to be hoped that Australia's Jewish and Zionist representative organisations will strongly protest about the use of taxpayer's money to fund this magazine.

In Oz, BDS Bigots Not Playing by the Rules

Adelaide BDSers campaiging against Israeli-made irrigation systems in Oz

The Facebook page BDS Australia comes with a statement that declares, inter alia: 

"This is a page for open discussion, and comments should not be assumed to reflect the views of BDS Australia.
Comments are moderated and will be removed if they:

1. are off topic, i.e. derail discussion about the post or are unrelated to BDS and a just peace for Palestinians
2. are defamatory or inflammatory towards individuals or groups
3. are racist, sexist, homophobic or use other offensive stereotypes
4. contain threats or personal attacks, or explicit language and/or images
5. are spam, repetitive or disruptive, or attempt to close down reasonable debate
6. spread lies, misrepresentations, false analogies or stereotypes
7. are commercial in any way
Moderation is at the discretion of admins."

A cursory look at the site, however, suggests that "open discussion" attempted by pro-Israel commenters does not stay up, and it shows that comments which are covered by some of those points, particularly comments that are anti-Jewish, are allowed to remain.

Why, there are even "lies, misrepresentations, false analogies" in the shape of the "Jesus was a Palestinian" chestnut.  Just look at the contents of this egregious example, provided to the BDS site by this fella, an American!

A comment following a post regarding Bethlehem has drawn what is surely "an inflammatory" remark by this bloke from Hobart, Tasmania, who I see is a Facebook friend of British 9/11 Truther and Reading PSC founder Tony Gratrex:

 Other inflammatory comments spotted include:

Poison regarding Jews:

This, incidentally, is a recent post by Nugent in his/her Facebook page: note the scum (more of Kelly's antisemitism here as well as here, on the timeline of one of his four Facebook friends)  it's attracted:

On the BDS Australia page:

A sample of comments (note, incidentally, the odious one regarding Australia's tragic bushfires):

Rowland joins in:

Some more quick-sample smears and falsehoods on the BDS Australia page:

 

I could go on.  But I think I've made my point. Yes, it's clear that there's no "open discussion" or systematic moderation on that grubby site!

In the Lucky Country, Jewish Schoolkid Forced to Kiss a Muslim Schoolkid's Feet

Back in 2012, I drew attention on this blog to a disturbing trend identified at schools in north-west England.

The repellent state of affairs had been revealed by the noted Anglo-Jewish historian Professor Geoffrey Alderman:

 'Last November, in my capacity as a visiting professor at York St John University, I had the privilege of hearing a presentation by doctoral student Joy Schmack. Mrs Schmack, an extremely experienced teacher and inspector of secondary-school religious education, is researching the use of the word "Jew" in teenage classrooms in the north-west of England. She presented chilling evidence of the unmistakeable revival of the word "Jew" as a common term of abuse amongst teenagers, who apparently habitually use it as a synonym for "cheat" or "swindler", or "snitch". "Don't you dare Jew me", one Merseyside youngster might say to another - perhaps hardly realising the significance of these words.

Scarcely four months after hearing this presentation I received a communication from a retired gentleman whose family escaped from Nazi Germany in 1934 and who now devotes his retirement to talking about antisemitism to youngsters in schools in Cheshire, Merseyside and Lancashire. He had been moved to write to me because of his experience at one such school, where his presentation was discourteously received and where a teacher confessed to him that the word "Jew" had now replaced the word "gay" as a playground term of abuse. The teacher said: "If kids wish to insult each other, they now use (the word) Jew" [Emphasis added]....'

 Now, the Australian Jewish News, in a scoop, reveals the antisemitic targeting that Jewish schoolkids at non-Jewish day schools in Melbourne have been enduring, causing them extreme anxiety and distress, and of the craven, odious response of the school authorities when the abused kids' parents (having tardily learned of the abuse from their persecuted offspring).  That response was basically: "It's not antisemitism, it's bullying, and your kids should learn to toughen up".

They refused one set of parents' request to teach the school body about the realities and consequences of antisemitism.

One of the two kids on whom the Australian Jewish News's spotlight falls is a five-year-old boy who showed every sign of wanting to avoid school, to his parents' puzzlement, until, unable to cope any longer, he collapsed onto the floor one breakfast time telling his mother that she shouldn't love him because

"I'm a worthless Jewish rodent.  I'm vermin."

 The other is a  twelve-year-old keen footballer who was constantly picked on by a pack of bullies who called him such charming things as

 "Jewish ape ... Jewish nigger ... Jewish gimp ... a cooked up Jewish c**t"

They also made his life a misery outside the school grounds, and on one occasion forced him to bow down and kiss a Muslim student's feet, eagerly capturing the incident with their mobile phones (see above).

Jewish daycare education is prohibitively expensive in Melbourne for many Jewish families, but it is heart-warming to learn that this unfortunate young person, who left his school as the result of threats from the principal antisemitic bully's older brother, has with the help of a sympathetic communal leader now found a place at one, as his now-deceased Holocaust survivor grandfather always envisioned.

As for those  despicable school authorities, they might at least have pointed out to their students, assembled together, that Australia's greatest soldier, First World War hero Sir John Monash, was a Jew.

I wonder what the antisemites would have made of that.

Read the schoolkids' sorry saga here 

As-a-Jews Astray

What a sweet-looking old fella.

He doesn't look like a tiger, does he?

But he is.

He's John Tiger Casley, an Aussie who describes himself as a "Christian Jew".  A  "Christian Jew" without much Christian charity towards the great majority of Jews who support the State of Israel.

Read all about it on the website of his very own, um, political party.

The last time Tiger made headlines was during Australia's recent Federal Election, comfortably won, of course, by Scott Morrison and the Coalition:

'Labor has been forced to reprint how-to-vote cards in the Melbourne seat of Goldstein, following revelations it had preferenced a candidate who runs a fan club for an anti-Semitic lecturer.

Independent candidate John Tiger Casley, previously linked to One Nation, is the convener of the “David Icke Club Melbourne”, a fan club for British lecturer David Icke, who claims the world is run by a secret society of shape-shifting Jewish lizards.

Labor yesterday moved Mr Casley from fourth place on the how-to-vote card to last, after incumbent Liberal MP Tim Wilson and United Australia Party candidate Wayne Connolly. The party was also forced to dump Northern Territory Senate candidate Wayne Kurnorth over the weekend, after The Australian revealed he had shared Icke’s bizarre theories online.

Labor successfully campaigned to ban Mr Icke from coming to Australia earlier this year.

Earlier this month, former Labor MP Melissa Parke stood down as candidate for the Perth seat of Curtin following revelations she had likened Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to apartheid.

Mr Casley contested the 1998 election as a One Nation candidate in Liberal MP Kevin Andrews’s seat of Menzies.

He has also been engaged in a long-running legal feud with ABC radio host Jon Faine, who is Jewish, over the manner in which his talkback calls were treated between 1997 and 2010, and last year lost his Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal bid to have the public broadcaster sanctioned for allegedly “discriminating” against his political beliefs....'

Tiger's in the news again because this offensive poster has been spotted outside a dwelling in the up-market Melbourne suburb of Brighton, prompting complaints to the local council, which has given the culprit until Monday to remove the sign before further action is taken.

Photo: Australian Jewish News

According to the Jewish press:

'Local Jewish resident Rodney Edelsten reported the sign to The AJN after he passed it while driving to his home over the weekend.

“I found it quite abhorrent,” he said, adding that his wife lost many family members in the Holocaust. "What upset me most was actually seeing a swastika inside a Magen David.”

The Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) also received several complaints.

“Enough is enough. We cannot treat this despicable incident as business as usual. No one in Melbourne of 2019 should be menaced by this sickening symbol of hate and oppression which is aimed squarely at Jews, though deeply offensive to the entire community,” commented ADC chairman Dvir Abramovich.

.... When asked by The AJN how he thought Shoah survivors would feel if they saw the symbol of the swastika within the Star of David, he [John Tiger Casley] retorted, “I don’t think that is logical thinking. Because I think it’s terrible what the Nazis did to the Jews; and I also think it is very nasty what the Zionists are doing to the Palestinians. It’s the same thing.”

He said the sign “espouses love” and its aim was to “educate everybody to understand that Zionism is an evil force”.

“They are the new Nazis and we don’t want them. Zionism is apartheid, racist, terrorism."....'

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have a very cynical attitude towards many "As-a-Jews", those members of the Tribe who wear their Jewishness lightly but suddenly discover it when there's an anti-Israel petition to be signed.  Numbered among them, to my certain knowledge, are people who happen to be married to a Jew or to the descendant of a Jew, have never converted to Judaism, have no intention of doing so, but assume a Jewish "identity"of their  own in the Israel-bashing cause.  As-a-Jews personally known to me include the non-Jewish leftist grandson of a Jewish paternal grandfather, his non-Jewish leftist wife, and their non-Jewish leftist son.

The following Jewish Voice for Labour petition in support of Israel-bashing MP Chris Williamson.

It's got many a non-Jewish Corbynista regretting that they're not eligible to sign.

Here, though, is a very telling Facebook exchange regarding the petition that suggests why, whenever a "Jew" is called upon to sign a statement that isn't in Israel's best interest, there is no shortage of signatories!

Oy!

In the ALP, Might Melissa's Malignance Mirror Mounting Malice?

She was hoping to get back into the thick of Aussie federal politics, former UNRWA lawyer and unreformed Israel-hater Melissa Parke, who when representing (2007-16) the safe Labor seat of Fremantle, Western Australia, was a junior minister in the latter stages of Kevin Rudd's government, swept from power in 2013.

In selecting the glamorous blonde to run against conservative Celia Hammond in the normally safe Liberal WA seat of Curtin, relinquished by glamorous blonde Liberal former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, Labor bigwigs evidently thought her high profile meant Ms Parke had a fighting chance of wresting the seat away from the less stellar Liberal hopeful.

But it's all gone awry for Parke and her backers, because she's now quit as a candidate in order to save her embarrassed party the "distraction" caused by her loathsome antisemitic slurs on Israel, scathingly compared in today's Melbourne Herald Sun by political commentator James Campbell as "actually manag[ing] to say something new" in the "long history of slanders" of the Jewish people.

A proponent of BDS in its economic and cultural guises, who in 2017 was one of about 60 prominent Australians (including APAN's president, ex-Bishop Browning) publicly opposed to Bibi Netanyahu's visit to Australia, Parke last month told the launch of WA Labor Friends of Palestine (to quote a report in WA Today) that

'Australia should recognise a Palestinian state and likened Israel's settlements to China's island building activity in the South China Sea.

She also took aim at Israel's influence in Australian politics and said there was no doubt Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, while illegal under international law, were "a reaction to and a consequence of decades of brutal occupation".

Ms Parke, a former lawyer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in Gaza, said Australia had to break away from its "strategic dependence" on the United States and recognise Palestine as a state, which is contrary to Labor policy.

"There are already 137 nations that recognise the state of Palestine, that is more than 70 per cent of the world," she said.

"And, inshallah [Arabic for 'God willing'], Australia will join that consensus once we have a Federal Labor government.

An APAN illiterate has his say

"It's also time finally for Australia to support an end to the brutal occupation of Palestine and for the right of return of the Palestinian refugees."

In her speech to Palestinian supporters, which was held in the Perth offices of the United Voice union, Ms Parke said the discrimination experienced by Palestinians in Israel was because of a "fully fledged system of Apartheid"....

"A false narrative sold to the western world is that Israel is a beacon of western democracy and human rights."

Ms Parke said Israel "propagates the myth that it is a small country that just wants to live in peace".'

Moreover,

'WAtoday also revealed earlier this week WA Labor senator and Senate Deputy President Sue Lines told the same meeting of pro-Palestinian activists that a powerful "Israel lobby" had been influencing her party's policy on Palestine and peace in the Middle East.

Senator Lines said policy in the area had stalled because "the Israeli lobby is so powerful within the party and outside of the party".'

 The report quotes Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin as follows:

'He said Ms Parke had the "inglorious distinction" of being the first, and only, Labor MP to publicly endorse the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which seeks to force Israel to withdraw from occupied or contested territories and aims at "the complete and total isolation of the state of Israel and to dismantle the national home of the Jewish people".

"BDS was rightly condemned as a form of antisemitism by Julie Bishop, who Ms Parke is now seeking to replace as the federal member for Curtin," Mr Ryvchin said."BDS has also expressly been repudiated by the Australian Labor Party and rejected as national policy even by the Greens."It is regrettable that such an extreme and divisive figure should receive the endorsement of the Australian Labor Party, particularly at a time when it is vital to strengthen the political centre and diminish the appeal of low populism and false and polarising rhetoric."

 Parke also, as widely reported today, for instance the Sydney Morning Herald here, declared:

 "One case I remember vividly, a pregnant refugee woman was ordered at a checkpoint in Gaza to drink a bottle of bleach," she said.

"It burnt out all her throat and insides. Fortunately her baby was saved.

"Another refugee was forced to put her baby through the X-ray machine."

It is that vile canard in particular that disgusts the Herald-Sun's James Campbell, who pointedly observed that another Labor candidate, Josh Wilson, was at the meeting addressed by Parke and did not take issue with her remarks.

Campbell adds that while current federal Labor leader Bill Shorten is committed to friendship with Israel, the fears of pro-Israel Australians that, post-Shorten, the party (remember the lurking presence of Bob Carr and cobbers?) might fall into the hands of a Corbynista-type leadership remains a realistic prospect.

ScoMo for me, I think.

In Australia, Claims of Bigotry, Blackballing & a Baklava

 As seen at left, and below, in very recent Tweets, Lebanese-born New South Wales Labor MP Shaoquett Moselbane is a vigorous pro-Palestinian proponent. 

In March 2013, Mr Moselmane sparked outrage when he gave, inside that chamber, what Dan Goldberg writing in Haaretz described as "a firebrand speech ... a vituperative tirade" alleging that the creation of Israel was a “corruption of justice,” that Gaza is “the world's largest open-air prison camp,” and that Israel ran “torture camps” in southern Lebanon.

Continued Goldberg:

'Moselmane also accused Israel of “massive violations of human rights,” saying: “If there was ever a group in need of protection from war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, it is the Palestinians.”

The first Muslim ever elected to the NSW parliament added this: “I salute the [Lebanese] resistance. Imagine what the response would have been in 1941 or 1942 if we had condemned resistance against Nazi Germany. Guns would have been blazing at us for not resisting Nazi Germany. In Lebanon the resistance was able to force the Israelis out.”

Moselmane was supported by fellow Labor MP Linda Voltz and by Greens MP David Shoebridge, both known for anti-Israel activism.

Afterwards, the CEO of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, Vic Aldaheff, who had sat in the gallery during the entire three-hour debate, said, according to the same report: 

“It was very disappointing to hear such outrageous slurs and baseless comments made against Israel in an Australian parliament.

Fortunately, they came from a handful of marginal MPs and were quickly and appropriately condemned by Labor and Liberal MPs.”

He described Moselmane’s comparison with Nazi Germany as “outrageous” and “beyond belief,” adding: “I would describe it as a one-off rant but a one-off rant that showed the depth of animosity from a marginal group within the parliament.”

Alhadeff ... said he was in the gallery during some of the debates about the Israel boycott in 2011.“While there were hostile critics of Israel no one ever made a comparison to the Nazis,” he told Haaretz."

 During the past week Mr Moselmane has sparked outrage again.

 Reported political editor Andrew Clennel in The Australian (14 August):

'The first Muslim MP in the NSW parliament has sparked a row overnight, refusing entry to a respected Jewish leader to a Labor Party multicultural launch.

Upper House MP Shaoquett Moselmane refused entry to Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff at the launch of the Labor Union Multicultural Action Committee launch last night saying, according to Mr Alhadeff, that he was not a Labor Party member before offering him a baklava on the way out.

The baklava was declined.

Mr Alhadeff had had an invitation to the Sussex Street event by Labor General secretary Kaila Murnain and Unions NSW chief Mark Morey.

But his invitation only came after Mr Alhadeff had questioned why Mr Moselmane had not invited him in the first place.

“While I appreciated the goodwill in receiving an invitation from Kaila Murnain and Mark Morey, it is unfortunate that Mr Moselmane would defy his party leadership and deny entry to a leader of the Jewish community,” Mr Alhadeff said.

“Given that the invitation which Mr Moselmane sent to others specifically said he hoped this new organisation would become a conduit between the multicultural community and Labor and the union movement, it made no sense to exclude the CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies when we represent the Jewish community and are an active component of multicultural NSW.”

NSW Opposition Leader Luke Foley said he has apologised to Mr Alhadeff for what occurred.

“He did receive a written invitation to the meeting,” Mr Foley said. “Unfortunately Mr Moselmane says there was a miscommunication. NSW Labor maintains healthy and constructive relations with Vic and other leaders of the state’s Jewish community, and that will continue.” ....'

Taking to Twitter, Mr Moselmane declared:

(The Australian is the flagship newspaper of Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorporation empire Down Under, and is the most pro-Israel of this country's broadsheets.)

But, wait, there's more!  It seems that the Jewish media outlet J-Wire, as well as the Australian Jewish News, failed to receive invitations to cover events to which they might reasonably expect to be able to cover.  Here's how the Sydney Daily Telegraph (16 August) reported the matter:

Here's Mr Moselmane's reaction:

Of the apparent snub to the Jewish community Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer, no stranger to readers of this blog, comments over at J-Wire:

 'The NSW Labor Party appears to be following in the footsteps of the openly brazen Jew-hatred displayed in the UN Human Rights Council – as emulated by the British Labour Party through its leader Jeremy Corbyn.

NSW Labor party leader Luke Foley needs to deal with Moselane firmly and promptly to prevent the spread of this disease in his own backyard. If Foley allows his party to continue to be tainted by Moselane’s actions – Foley will bear the electoral consequences that must inevitably flow from his inaction.

I hope to see J Wire and the Australian Jewish News receive the same respect and recognition accorded to other ethnic media in NSW.'

Oh, and talking of NewsCorp and Jeremy Corbyn, The Australian's foreign editor Greg Sheridan has an absolute humdinger of an article about antisemitism, Corbyn and the Corbynistas today! Too bad it's behind a paywall. Catch it if you can.)