"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.

Milady's Cobber Down Under

I saw this observation by David Collier

and (although not directly related to the subject of the Beyond the Great Divide Post  to which David links) I thought of this, by a friend, from their mutual student days, of Baroness Tonge.

From London, retired, and resident in Western Australia, this son of Jewish parents writes:

Mr Garcia-Webb is good at a phrase, and in retirement he authors "social fiction," fiction as a vehicle for social commentary, which often in his  case constitutes propaganda against Israel, sometimes narrated by imaginary Palestinians.  Not surprisingly,  the baroness has left comments appreciative of his work.

Examples of his oeuvre:

Here (written in 2015):

No one aged less than 67 years has lived in peace in Gaza

“What does it mean, to live in peace?” Jala had asked that question innumerable times, starting when she was only only three. “Perhaps you will understand when you are older,” her loving parents had explained....

 Here (written the same year):

 "....It is essential, I have decided, to allow them to think they are winning. To be cocky, or to spit in their eye leads to even worse torture. If they are annoyed, they torture prisoners to death. You may have read of them. They hang themselves. Or die from a mysterious illness despite the very best Israeli medical care....

Insha’Allah"

 Here (likewise):

"Had I ever thought, really thought, considered in depth, agonized, sat on dilemma’s piercing horns, what single thing I wanted most of all in life? Health, wealth, better eyesight or hearing, less pain, to be young again, happiness, improved memory. Or more broadly, an end to world hunger, climate change, war, famine. More narrow the overthrow of the 1%, an end to occupation of Palestine, the collapse of US hegemony, a world without politicians exploiting pseudo-terrorism controlling every day to day thought and action. Democracy. Peace. Death"

Here, 2015 again (the narrator is female):

 '....In January 2012, the national Union of Israeli Students became a full time partner in the government controlled spread of Israeli propaganda. Student were to be paid $2,000 to spend five hours a week spreading pro-Israeli propaganda online. Propaganda is rather an elastic term. They were also paid to be internet trolls. I had been labelled an anti-Semite many times by then. Initially my response was to laugh. Did they not realise that deliberately and falsely labelling a person as an anti-Semite actually denigrated what it was to be Jewish? Sometimes the attacks were simply name calling. On other occasions they threatened bodily harm. It got worse whenever Israel’s attacks on Palestinians got worse, since that would normally be an occasion for me to write an article on the subject. Hate mail really poured in during the atrocities of Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza summer of 2014. For the first time I began to take the hate mail seriously. Sometimes I found myself using reflections in shop windows to check if anyone was following me. Sometimes I awoke suddenly at night trembling at a sound I thought I had heard.

 Then came the elections in Israel. Netanyahu was returned but with a diminished power base. As he manoeuvered to make a government he descended further into what I had for some time labelled as a psychopathic state. The key to what happened next lay in the revelations to the ordinary public that the US, the UK and Israel has worked together to turn the initial student uprising in Syria into a war that would kill over 200,000, injure over a million and displace 7.6 million people. Even worse, if that were possible, Israel funded ISIS at the same time as the US and others claimed to be attacking it. I wrote a number of articles on this theme.

 The shifting levels of darkness jolted and a clear patch opened to revel a conversation between two men. One I somehow knew was from the Mossad. The other was unidentifiable, but spoke with an Australian accent....

 The first time they detained me a car pulled up, two men jumped out, put a sack over my head and manhandled me into the back of the car. I felt a needle in my thigh and woke up in a dark cell. The interrogation that followed was so low key that it should have been laughable. They wanted me to confess to being a terrorist but obviously had no evidence at all. They released me in the backstreets of Perth in the small hours of the morning. When I got back to my flat, I found it trashed. My clothes were everywhere, milk and broken eggs covered the kitchen floor, plates and glasses had been thrown against the walls. Written across the bathroom mirror in red lipstick were the words. “Remember bitch, you can’t tell anyone or it’s 5 years jail”.

 It happened again about a week later. This time the interrogation was tougher. When I got home I found that the flat had been trashed again. The fourth time it happened was two days before I died. I woke up in the small hours again wondering what the noise had been. I reached for the bedside light an turned it on. There were two men in the room. “Come on bitch, it’s time for another car ride.” I screamed and felt the familiar needle in the thigh....

 After a while the door opened. A hand reached in and grabbed my hair and pulled me out of the room, the floor smeared with blood as the rough concrete did its job. A hand reached between my thighs. I looked him in the eye. “Later.” He smiled and frogmarched my down the corridor to another room.

 This was the same room they always used for interrogations. But there was no desk. I was strapped down onto a slab and the torture began in earnest. In the darkness the pain returned in crippling waves. I tried to scream but there was no sound. Just pain, waves and waves of pain....'

 Here, written in 2016 but set sometime in the near future:

"....Overseas, things were a little more complex. Israel now belonged to the right wing Zionists. There were precious few Palestinians alive in the West Bank. Most had been forcibly transferred to the Gaza ghetto where they hovered on the brink of starvation if not extinction. Sufficient food and electricity was allowed for them to stay alive, but not for them to prosper let alone mount a serious revolt. Any spark of resistance was met with Lockheed F-35 fighter jets dropping DIME weapons and cluster bombs. Both the jets and the weapons were paid for by US tax payers; Israel had long since become the major recipient of US overseas aid.

The US propaganda media, which was most of the media, described it as the successful implementation of a two state policy and praised the Administration for helping Israel solve the Palestinian problem..."

The leftwing Mr Garcia-Webb is also a  presence on social media.
Here's just a sample of his what he's posted on Twitter:

 

"BDS Works": Aussie BDSers Claim A Victory & Skew An Online Poll

More on this below

Paul Elliott is an official of the Health Services Union in Australia.

He's a bigshot in its national leadership

And in the leadership of its No 4 branch in the state of Victoria, of which he's secretary.

As reported by Anthony Galloway in the the Herald Sun on 25 August,

'The embattled Health Services Union has invited its members to embrace the anti-Israel boycott movement, prompting a furious response from Jewish leaders....

A motion passed by the union’s Victorian No. 4 Branch offers its support for the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich called on all union members to reject the “divisive” and “misguided” motion.

“It is alarming that the HSU, instead of advocating in matters of concern for their members, has decided to promote a fervently vicious and one-sided resolution that ­unfairly lays all of the blame at the feet of Israel,” Dr Abramovich said.

The branch’s secretary, Paul Elliott, defended the ­motion, saying he hoped it would help solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [Emphasis added]

“The union movement has a long and proud history of supporting international affairs and being involved in international affairs, including being instrumental in the international campaign against apartheid,” Mr Elliott said....'

As a commenter on the Herald Sun article noted: 

'I think the HSU needs to make sure those supporting this boycott are given a list of things they need to boycott - starting with the life saving devices and medicines developed and produced in Israel. so when some life saving medicine is needed, they can then say 'sorry, not using that, we are boycotting all Israeli technology and inventions'

And as pro-Israel stalwart Michael Danby, Labor federal member for Melbourne Ports, observes of this sordid little affair: 

'Nearly half a million people have been killed in Syria in the last four years.300,000 civilians are trapped in Aleppo – surrounded by Iranians and Hezbollah and being carpet bombed by the Russian and Syrian governments – yet hypocritical far-Left unionists like Paul Elliot remain completely silent on the slaughter in Syria.

Displaying their entrenched hypocrisy, Elliot’s far-Left unionists show there are no limits to their attacks on the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, by adopting a ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ (BDS) policy against Israel.

The medical scientists, pharmacists and phycologists who pay their union subscriptions to the ultra-left HSU No 4 branch will need to ask whether the union’s discriminatory BDS policy instructions mean they will have to rip out the Israeli-made computer chips from their computers and cease prescribing medications which were developed or produced in Israel.

[T]hey (the union) should be more concerned with the fact that the general public think they are a union of crooks, rather than taking up the insignia position of the Nazis and boycotting Israeli and Jewish businesses.”

Mr Danby said that the motivations of the people who run the international BDS campaigns are very clear; what they are on about is the elimination of Israel, not some critiquing of its internal politics.'  [Emphasis added]

Meanwhile, the Australian Jewish News's just closed online poll this week concerning trade union activity in the light of the disgraceful HSU motion has been skewed by BDSers.

Sheer ignorance, sheer malice

More BDS shame in Australia, as told by a jubilant BDSer in Adelaide, where BDS activity has been particularly consistent and fanatical:

In the wake of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop's invitation to Bibi to visit Australia next year, more nastiness from a fervent Israel-demoniser:

What, I wonder.is the reaction of these lefty females for Palestine to the misogyny within Palestine now being outwardly preached ("women are witches"), as the Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh reveals here?

BDS & Blisters: Fanatics Afoot

This morning in glorious sunshine outside the Sydney Opera House, a gaggle of As-a-Jews gathered to give an Israeli academic (above, right) at Wollongong University a warm send-off:

But not, of course, to Israel.

No, this ex-pat's Argentinian-born Israel-educated political scientist Dr Marcelo Svirsky, and like the As-a-Jews, and their leftist cohorts, a number of whom were also on hand to wish him well, he's an activist against the little Jewish State.

With pack on back, and no doubt with left foot forward, he's set off on the long walk from Sydney to Canberra, a walk which will apparently last for ten days (other BDS fanatics are expected to join him at various stages of the journey) and for which, it's said, he's been training for months.

Don't forget the corn plasters, mate.

The purpose of the trek is to present the following petition to the federal House of Representatives, in the hope that Australia's will be the first western government officially to endorse BDS.

Presumably because they belong to the other chamber, Senators Lee Rhiannon and Nick Xenophon, who can usually be relied upon to throw a brickbat or three at the Zionist Entity, have declined to introduce the petition, making some BDSers mutter darkly that they have betrayed the cause.

Above: the intrepid BDSer departing Wollongong for Sydney.

Bye bye, mate.

Guess you won't be in shul for the High Holydays, then.

Don't forget the corn plasters.

And be careful not to wallow in any lies swallow any flies.

The D[h]im & The Dutiful: "Tragic" says Marvellous Melanie

Recently, in this land Down Under, the Uniting Church (which, incidentally, is not renowned for love and affection towards Israel) held an interfaith meeting on the illustrated theme, coined in response to the "We'll fight radical Islam for 100 years, says ex-Army lead Peter Leahy" headline that which appeared in The Australian on 9 August.

That headline appeared above this report, in which Professor Leahy, a retired lieutenant-general who is director of Canberra University’s National Security Institute and part of the Abbott government’s team carrying out a comprehensive review of Australia's defence,  maintained:

"Australia is involved in the early stages of a war which is likely to last for the rest of the century. We must be ready to protect ourselves and, where necessary, act pre-emptively to neutralise the evident threat. Get ready for a long war....

They [the government] should advance a narrative that explains that radical Islam­ism and the terrorism it breeds at home and abroad will remain a significant threat for the long term, it will require considerable effort, the expenditure of blood and treasure and it will, of necessity, restrict our rights and liberties"....

He said radical Islamists intent on a new world order were already a threat to the survival of nations in the Middle East and Africa.

If the declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq survived, bases would be established there for attacks on the West and that would embolden “home grown” radicals to attempt attacks in Australia. Military action would be needed to eliminate the threat.

Radicals saw the West as “the far enemy” and they were undoubtedly planning more attacks in Australia. Senior intelligence believes the view that the threat posed by radical Islam would pass was “optimistic”....'

All pretty sensible stuff, we may think, particularly in view of the number of Islamic fighters from Australia known to be fighting abroad, including the father of the seven-year-old pictured recently holding a severed head.

But smacking of "media vilification" in the minds of the above-mentioned conference (at which a rabbi, the not widely known Zalman Kastel of Sydney was present) and its supporters, apparently.

For they issued the the following statement, all motherhood and apple pie and good up to a point, though arguably a reckless over-generalisation, which some "as-a-Jews" as well as some of the more naive (or indifferent to Israel, rationality, and to women's rights) among the Jewish community have hastened to append their names:

'As people committed to building a healthy, cohesive and diverse communities in Australia, we have observed with dismay and empathy the way our Muslim friends have been affected by the language and tone of recent political statements and media coverage. We agree with the concerns of Muslim community leaders that the language and policies of our leaders should not marginalise or vilify people of Muslim faith, and that rhetoric used in relation to Australian security and conflicts around the world should not cause further division in our society, or make anyone feel alienated from the nation they call home.

We believe people of Muslim faith are being unfairly smeared in the eyes of the Australian public by both subtle and overt links to violent extremism in political and media discourse.

This month in Sydney; Herald-Sun photo

We know and understand the deep concern and hurt this is causing to our Muslim friends and the risks this kind of generalisation has for social harmony and cohesion.

The violence and values of extremists like ISIS are not representative of the vast majority of Muslim people in Australia, who are characterised better by their commitment to peace, community and mutual respect.

We stand in solidarity with all people who are suffering the results of war, violence and terror around the world, recognising the dignity of all people and their right to enjoy freedom from persecution and oppression.

We celebrate the diversity of the Australian community and recognise the valuable contribution of people of Muslim faith to our culture and community.

We know that vilification and alienation are not the way to peace or social harmony, but that authentic relationships, solidarity, listening, learning and mutual respect go along way to building the kind of community we’d like to live in.'

And now, worse, far worse, we read in the UK Jewish Chronicle, that the d[h]imwitted British Board of Deputies has dutifully undertaken to make common cause with the Muslim Council of Britain:

'Muslim and Jewish leaders have united in calling for stronger collaboration between their communities in the wake of the Gaza conflict.

In an unprecedented joint statement, the Board of Deputies and the Muslim Council of Britain condemned civilian deaths as tragic and called for efforts to avoid them.

They also condemned any expression of antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism generally, calling on both communities to “redouble efforts to work together and get to know one another”.

But the statement was not without controversy, with both sides unable to agree the exact meaning behind one key line.

The line reads: “The targeting of civilians is completely unacceptable and against our religious traditions.” ....'  (See more here)

Rightly comments the great and incomparable Melanie Phillips, who puts what passes for the Anglo-Jewish leadership to shame:

'It is hard to exaggerate the stupidity of the UK Jewish Board of Deputies in what it has just done. It has signed a joint statement with the Muslim Council of Britain condemning antisemitism and Islamophobia and urging that the Middle East conflict should not prevent good community relations in Britain. Apart from the false equivalence between antisemitism and Islamophobia, which equates a metaphysical global derangement – the cause of centuries of pogroms and genocide against the Jews – with a spurious thought-crime invented to silence legitimate criticism of Islam, these were unexceptionable pieties.

However, the statement also contains this passage:

"The death of every civilian is a tragedy, and every effort should be taken to minimise such losses. The targeting of civilians is completely unacceptable and against our religious traditions."

Daily Mail, 25 March 2009

The MCB is an umbrella organisation, a number of whose member groups are aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and support Hamas. The Board of Deputies may have assumed the second sentence above could only refer to Hamas, since the IDF does not target civilians and goes to great lengths to avoid hurting them wherever possible. But there is no way the MCB would ever suggest that Israel behaves honourably while Hamas does not. It should therefore have been blindingly obvious that the MCB would do what it has immediately done – claim that the Board had agreed with it that both Israel and Hamas had targeted civilians. The Board has thus now enabled the MCB to claim that the UK's Jewish community leadership has condemned Israel for targeting civilians.

Unbelievable. But that's not the full extent of it. The Board seems to be proud that this joint statement is an "unprecedented" achievement. But just look at its new friend.

MCB leaders have in the past strongly supported Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of Hamas who supports suicide bombings against Israelis (and previously, British forces in Iraq) and who has also asserted that the Torah permits Jews to spill the blood of others and seize their money and land.

The MCB boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day, for which it was shunned by the British government until it ended its boycott. In 2009, its then deputy secretary general, Daud Abdullah, signed the Istanbul Declaration which threatened violence against Israel supporters and British troops.

In 2005, it offered its condolences to the family of the leading Hamas terrorist Abdul Aziz al Rantissi after he was killed by the Israelis. Its former Secretary-General, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, branded Israel a "Nazi" state, accused it of "murderous leadership", "Zionist brutality" and "the ethnic cleansing of Palestine", and compared Hamas suicide bombers to Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. Also that year, the BBC TV Panorama programme exposed the influence on the MCB of the Islamist thinker Sayed Maududi, who preached the need for jihad to bring abut the "universal revolution" of Islamic state rule.

In short, it is beyond astounding that the Board of Deputies should have had anything to do with the MCB at all. Its action has also dealt a blow to all who are struggling to deal with Islamic extremism in the UK. For at a stroke the MCB, which in any sane universe should be shunned as a threat not just to Jews but to Britain, has been awarded a kite-mark of respectability and decency by – of all people – the Jews.

The Board of Deputies is not fit for purpose. It has shown that it does not have a clue about the true nature of the threat posed to Jews and to Britain by Islamic extremism. Britain's Jewish community is leaderless at a time when strong, brave and wise leadership has never been more urgently and desperately needed. Tragic.'

As for the often-heard analogy between antisemitism and "Islamophobia", and more specifically that in Europe Muslims are "the new Jews", James Kirchick has a rather splendid refutation here

"The Jews – Once So Oppressed, Now So Oppressive": Odious article by ABC broadcaster Peter Goers

Adelaide-based Peter Goers is a broadcaster with the ABC, Australia's answer to the BBC.

In Adelaide's Sunday Mail a couple of years ago he wrote, inter alia, when regretting the rise of militant atheism:

'I write as a poor Christian, happily raised a Methodist thanks to the quiet and nurturing faith not of the fathers but the mothers.

I will never deny the beautiful faith of my mother and grandmother and my Sunday school education, which was a blessing.

That said, I'm also a bit of an agnostic as are all reasonable people of reasonable faith. None of us knows if there is a God, but there's always hope.

I have enormous respect for agnostics and for people of quiet, personal, fulfilling faith which must always question. I do not believe in proselytising.'

He continued:

Muslims do not proselytise and some of the best Christians I've ever known are Muslims. We would do well to learn from moderate Islam.'  [Emphasis added]

He had nothing to say in that article about Jews, who of course, unlike Muslims and indeed Christians, famously do not proselytise.

Evidently in that astonishing blanket claim about Muslims he has never encountered any of the Islamic proselytisers who spruik their conversionist pamphlets on busy shopping streets in Australian capital cities as they do in the dear old Motherland. But at least his comment indicates where his sympathies apparently lay, and this may be instructive in light of his latest article, referred to below.

(Indeed, in another article he wrote that Australia 

"may be better off as a Muslim nation. Christianity has never been less popular and Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. It's a religion of peace, love, family values and respect, and the only faith to give women equality in its holy book." [!!!!!!! Emphasis added])

Last week Goers visited Palestine with the Australian Friends of Palestine (its home page carries that set of misleadingly mendacious maps) and South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon, who found the situation in Hebron "heart-breaking" according to press reports. 

In today's Adelaide Sunday Mail Goers has an article entitled "The Shame of Israel's Palestinian Apartheid" in which he demonises Israel from start to finish.  It is as offensive an article as any that I have ever read in Australia (and, believe me, I've read a lot of newspaper articles dealing with Jews and Israel, and should be protested by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry).

The article begins on a hyperbolic note, and continues in lacrymose mood:

"Jesus wept. In Palestine, Jesus wept and so did I. I weep for the Palestinians living under the Israeli apartheid ...'

I'm not begrudging Goers his sympathy towards Palestinians.  But this is a damning dangerous article.

There is not one word of understanding for Israel's predicament, no word of sympathy for Israeli civilians suffering terrorist attacks, no attempt to explain why Israel erected its security barrier or how that barrier has reduced suicide bombings, no attempt to set the "refugee"issue in context, no attempt to empathise at all with a country that Goers, in a picturesque analogy, accurately describes as tiny.

He has swallowed the Palestinian narrative hook, line, and sinker.

But it is not only Israel that is demonised by Goers.  So, too, are the Jews.  And Jesus, the Judean, the Jew, is decribed as a Palestinian!

'I weep for those who must live behind the wall.... 

I weep for all 720km of this barbaric wall in Israel, a tiny country twice the size of Kangaroo Island.

I weep for the worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third most holy place in Islam. It’s in the Old City of Jerusalem, next to the Dome of the Rock – one of he most thrillingly beautiful structures in the world....

I weep for the many Israelis who want to destroy the 1400-year-old Dome of the Rock, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Christian churches in this land whence prophets come.

I weep for the Palestinians who are second-class citizens in their own land. Intimidated, harassed, removed....

I weep for the settlements and the 630,000 intrusive settlers in Palestinian territory. I weep for faith, killed by fundamentalism. I weep for the illegal military occupation of Palestine for 47 years after millennia of occupations of this land as old as time. Jesus was a Palestinian born under another occupation.

 I weep for this apartheid....

I weep for Palestinian refugees....

I weep for the oppressive, bellicose Israelis. The Jews – once so oppressed, now so oppressive. Recently the most distinguished Israeli writer Amos Oz decried some of his countrymen as “Hebrew neo-Nazis”. I weep that the Palestinians are “the Jews of the Jews”....

I weep for greed ...

I weep for the 1004 Palestinian children arrested, tortured, abused and abducted last year....

I weep for the pain and cost of all this useless persecution ...

I weep for this land of endless repression....'

See all of Goers' outrageous article here

Malcolm Fraser's Mad Malice: The Israelis deliberately bombed the USS Liberty claims former Aussie prime minister

"Tamie has one.  Malcolm is one".  That was a crudely sexist (Tamie, short for Tamara, is Malcom Fraser's wife) bumper sticker that I remember seeing on vehicles in Canberra after Fraser took office in 1975.

It reflected the raw anger and contempt among sections of the Australian public for the way in which the Liberal Party prime minister had been catapulted into office that year, in an audacious totally unexpected and possibly illegal coup involving the peremptory sacking of the Labor Party prime minister Gough Whitlam by Governor-General Sir John Kerr, an event of the "I-remember-where-I-was-and-what-I-was-doing-when-I-heard-the-news" class. and one which still rankles with many Australians today.

From a conservative's perspective, Gough Whitlam, a patrician lawyer of radical bent, was arguably  the worst prime minister in Australian history, and, in contrast to Fraser, he was certainly no friend to Israel.

But since leaving office Fraser has changed, shifting ever leftwards, as seen in this recent interview with political scientist and public intellectual Robert Manne, whose journey has been similar. A former blogger here in Australia, a chabadnik, expressed this metamorphosis of Fraser's, which includes being an apologist for Islam, well in 2007:

''Former PM Malcolm Fraser (from 1975-1983) is opening his big mouth again and accusing the present government of using "the politics of fear to damage traditional Australian values". He said this and more in a speech at the Australian National University today as reported on ABC news.

 [Fraser] was one of the most right wing PMs we have had and is now reinventing himself as a (small "l") liberal.'

In one of my early blogposts, in 2010, I summed up Fraser thus:

'The supercilious Oxford-educated scion of the squattocracy and of a mother of Jewish descent, Una Woolf, Fraser is widely remembered for three things: the controversial manner of his appointment to office, the much-mocked pronouncement that "life wasn't meant to be easy", and the mysterious loss of his trousers in a seedy hotel in Memphis in 1986 when he was chairman of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group.  While prime minister he was a hard-headed rightwinger, and in 1975 his Cabinet learned of a plot by Palestinian terrorists to assassinate three prominent Aussie champions of Israel - future Labour prime minister Bob Hawke, communal leader Isi Leibler, and journalist Sam Lipski.  Fraser was perceived as friendly to Israel.

Subsequently, however, Fraser - evidently determined to be an elder statesman of international import - reinvented himself as an extreme small-l liberal and a self-righteous exponent of "human rights", founding the organisation Australians All.  He sounded off to the embarrassment of his Liberal Party successors, undermining them, especially the estimable and staunchly pro-Israel John Howard.  He loftily dismissed widespread public fears of large-scale Muslim immigration, made light of the threat from radical Islam, called for Israel to negotiate with Hamas (thereby earning the soubriquet "Mad Mal of Hamastan"), and rounded on "the Jewish lobby" - yes, he used that very phrase - when Zionist leaders pointed to the flaws in his arguments and questioned the wisdom of his views. He flounced out of the Liberal Party in 2009, condemning its conservatism. Early this year he was quick off the mark to urge the then prime minister Kevin Rudd to expel Israeli diplomats from Canberra in reprisal for the use of four Australian passports by the team believed to be responsible for the assassination in Dubai of the Hamas arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Perhaps the kindest thing to be said about Malcolm Fraser is that he should have had the grace and good sense years ago to button his lips and fade quietly into one of those spectacular antipodean sunsets.'

Already dubbed by some "Mad Mal of Hamastan", Fraser has reached a new low in his comments about the small valiant beleaguered Israeli nation. Evidently Fraser has been reading, and giving credence to, one of the darkest anti-Israel theories on the internet, as exemplified by this article by British antisemite Alan Hart.

As the Australian Jewish News (which hit the news stands today) reports, during an interview last Friday on ABC Radio Melbourne, when Fraser (plugging his new book Dangerous Allies) was asked by host Jon Faine

'if he agreed [with former Foreign Minister Bob Carr] that “the pro-Israel and in particular Jewish community lobby in Australia wielded too much power”, Fraser responded, “They certainly do.”

When Faine suggested other religious, ethnic and communal groups, like the Italian community, also lobbied the government, Fraser said, “I don’t think the Italian community, just to take one example, try to get us to follow any particular policies in relation to Italy. And that’s the difference … The Jewish community seek to get Australia to support policies as defined by Israel.”

Shockingly, Fraser also wallowed into the muck of conspiracy theory when he said, referring to the USS Liberty disaster of June 1967:

“Israel years ago, during one of the wars, killed 30 or 40 Americans on a spy ship in the Western Mediterranean.

The Americans tried to cover it up. It wasn’t a mistake. It was deliberate.”

Long-serving Zionist Federation of Australia president and current AIJAC head Mark Leibler is reported as saying:

“To make these allegations about Israel deliberately targeting Americans when there’s no evidence to support it, when successive inquiries by both the Americans and the Israelis have demonstrated that this was an accident, I just think it is appalling beyond description...".

The present president of the Zionist Federation points out

“The [USS Liberty] incident was subject to no less than 10 American investigations and an additional three Israeli investigations, all of which found that it was indeed an accident.

If Mr Fraser has a credible source to back up his outlandish claims, then he is duty-bound to reveal it.”

Read more here

In Sydney, "Hands Off Syria Rally" Spews Hatred Against Israel (video)

In Sydney this month, supporters of President Assad held a "Hands Off Syria Rally":

Hands off Syria group in Sydney has organised a peaceful rally today in Sydney with the following objectives:

1. Protest Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr's open and shameless political support for the imperialist proxy war against Syria!

2. Protest Australian government's record of blindly parroting Washington's propaganda line against Syria!

3. Protest both the moral and material support for extremist terrorist groups in Syria by the United States and its regional allies!

4. Protest the double standards inherent in Australian foreign policy as seen lately by Australia's failure to condemn Israel's recent act of naked aggression against Syria when the IDF attacked Damascus earlier this month! 

The following video shows a female speaker spewing invective against the United States, Israel and Zionists:

Incidentally, also addressing the crowd was that veteran of the BDS movement, Father Dave Smith:

Meanwhile, the UK-based Shia English-language AhlulBayt News Agency (whose television station, operative since 2009, aims to "show the true, undistorted nature of Islam and Islamic civilization to the West") reports:

'Palestinian Hamas movement has called on the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah to quit the fight against militants in Syria.

Hamas' political bureau said in a statement that Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria has caused “sectarian strife.” 

Hezbollah Secretary-General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah recently said the Lebanese resistance movement's presence in Syria is aimed at defending the Syrian and Lebanese people against extremists.

Nasrallah said there is an American, Israeli and Takfiri project to destroy not only Syria but the entire region.

Hezbollah chief went on to say that foreign intervention in neighboring Syria began before the resistance movement got involved in the conflict.

Nasrallah noted that most Syrians support their government, but ironically tens of thousands of militants are sent to the Arab country from undemocratic states in the region to allegedly fight for democracy.

He also emphasized that Hezbollah will not change its position on Syria in the face of threats.

“The world is coming to fight in Syria with their money, with their weapons, and with their media,” Nasrallah added....

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said on June 13 that at least 93,000 people have been killed since the outbreak of the foreign-sponsored militancy against the Syrian government.

In May, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said militants from 29 different countries are fighting against the government in different parts of the country.'

Here's what a convention in Egypt attended by Wahhabi clerics has to say regarding the current situation in Syria.

The Aussie Anti-Israel Arena Acquires A Star Performer

Compare and contrast these two letters, which appeared in the same British newspaper (one not noted for its love for Israel) on the same day:

'The real problem with the Gerald Scarfe cartoon [which, of course, appeared in another British newspaper, the Sunday Times, on 27 January, sparking outrage] is that it perpetuates the "big lie" about the Jewish state.

Not the blood, not the hook-nose: that's what all his cartoons look like. It promotes the idea that Zionism/Israel/Netanyahu/Jews (take your pick) are singularly at fault for the plight of the Palestinians.

Israel is not blameless, but what about Palestinian division and rejectionism? The ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Arab world? The rabid anti-Semitism throughout the Middle East? Last Monday, the day after the cartoon was published, 10 Palestinians were killed just as Scarfe had prophesied... but they were murdered in Syria, a conflict that has claimed more lives in two years than the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.

That is why the cartoon could be described as anti-Semitic even though its author is not.'

A reasoned and entirely reasonable view of the matter, written by a Jewish individual in Hertfordshire.

His letter followed this one, authored by 28 Jewish and apparently Jewish individuals, plus (or are they all members of?) the Brighton-based Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, which reads:

'The suggestion by Zionist supporters that Gerald Scarfe's cartoon in The Sunday Times was anti-Semitic is a classic example of the abuse of the term. It drains the term of all meaning and, like the boy who cried wolf, desensitises people to anti-Semitism when it does rear its head.

Jennifer Lipman's grudging defence ... of Gerald Scarfe described the cartoon's portrayal of Palestinian blood cementing the Separation Wall as "profoundly offensive" because the intention of the Wall was to prevent suicide bombing. We disagree. Palestinian blood is being shed and the security pretext for the wall was a means of further confiscating Palestinian land. That was why the wall didn't follow the 1967 Green Line.

On 23 January, without warning or excuse, Israeli soldiers killed student Lobna Hannash, 21, outside al-Arroub Agricultural College. On 17 January a boy of 16, Saleh al-Amareen, was shot in the head at a refugee camp in Bethlehem. These are but two examples of why the cartoon was extremely pertinent.

Those who constantly raise the bogus cry of "anti-Semitism" whenever Israel is criticised are trading on the memory of the past oppression of Jews in order to justify the current oppression of the Palestinians.

As Jewish opponents of Zionism and racism we wish to declare that we do not believe that there was a trace of anti-Semitism in Gerald Scarfe's cartoon. Holocaust Memorial Day was indeed a fitting time to signal the evils of racism. As the Prophet Micah said: "They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity." (Micah, 3:10).'  [My emphasis]

Several of the signatories to that putrid statement are seemingly ubiquitous anti-Israel activists.  Their names appear on most if not all "as-a-Jew" denunciations of the imperilled little Jewish State.  At least two participated in the despicable disruption of the IPO concert in the Albert Hall in 2011, and, if my memory serves me correctly, have been involved in similar stunts.  The signatories include three out of the four academics who recently implored Cliff Richard to cancel his forthcoming visit to Israel.  Another signatory has addressed Al Quds Day crowds in London as a featured speaker.  Yet another posts anti-Israel messages on a certain social networking site with almost manic frequency and zeal, messages which are sometimes so shockingly intemperate (and attract shockingly intemperate messages of support in return) that the mind boggles at the discovery that the person in question is a Jew.

There's a stand-up comedian on the list, the halachically Jewish son of Communist parents.  His name appears immediately below that of the first signatory, the well-known actress Miriam Margolyes.

Ms Margolyes, the subject of this memorable post by blogger Ray Cook, needs little introduction to readers in either her native Britain or in Australia, where she has maintained a home for some years.  An inveterate critic of Israel, she took part Down Under  in Caryl Churchill's controversial Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, a play seen by many as antisemitic.  That performance, which also starred the well-known Aussie actor and comedian Max Gillies (husband of a prominent critical-of-Israel Jewish publishing executive whose academic press has published anti-Israel works by Antony Loewenstein and Jacqueline Rose) was held to raise money for Australians for Palestine.

Last month, Ms Margolyes (pictured, receiving her naturalisation certificate from prime minister Julia Gillard), became an Australian citizen, and told the Sydney Morning Herald:

'Her desire to become a citizen crystallised when she wanted the right to vote against the former prime minister John Howard [whom I, Daphne, once had the privilege of meeting and who is, incidentally, outstandingly pro-Israel], whom she described as a ''pillock''.

On her agenda as a new citizen are joining the Australian Labor Party, getting to know more indigenous Australians and improving her knowledge of the ''other Australia'' beyond the middle class.

Quoting John F. Kennedy's famous line, ''Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country'', Margolyes said she wanted to help ''Australia become a nation of thinkers''....

She is also worried about the surge of nationalism and ugliness towards foreigners. While she plans to be a loyal citizen, she does not plan to follow blindly.

''This sheila is not going to shut up,'' she said ....'

Shoe Hurlers, "Nazi Scum" & NSW Greens: Recent Antipodean Anti-Israel & Anti-American Demonics (videos) (updated)

In Sydney, New South Wales, some "unwelcome guests" (as the SBS reporter describes them), leading to cries of "Nazi Scum Out!".

Ah, yes.  The Australian pro-Palestine movement can't afford more publicity of this kind (a look at antisemitism in its ranks; hat tip: reader Jean), after all.

Some days ago I posted a video showing Greens ex-state politician Sylvia Hale inveighing stridently against Israel's latest defensive action against Hamas. This SBS footage includes Greens senator Lee Rhiannon, of whose anti-Israel stance the Aussie columnist Andrew Bolt wrote this insightful piece a few days ago (hat tip: reader Shirlee)

Hat tip to Shirlee for this footage of a Sydney rally today:

In Auckland, New Zealand, such ripping fun hurling shoes at the American Consulate and flying the Palestinian flag from its flagpole:

(hat tip: reader Shirlee)

In Brisbane, Queensland, the usual suspects shouting the usual themes:

(This, showing leftist and Islamic marchers screaming various chants, some more familiar than others, is one of several showing a rally last week, which included ear-splitting diatribes in English and in Arabic)

Yet another one (hat tip: Shirlee) in whih one of the speakers identifies the "right of return" as the most important goal of all:

And in Melbourne, Victoria, more of the same:

Crap-talk in Adelaide, South Australia:

The Parramatta 200: Sylvia Hale & others protesting Israel's right to defend itself against terror (videos)

Here's the first footage of the "Israel, USA, how many kids have you killed today?" mob of far leftists and friends in the New South Wales city (or outer suburb of Sydney, as some people describe it.)

The organisers have claimed 200.  I'm told that if they'd claimed 100 they'd most likely be exaggerating.

And another, showing Greens politician and flotilla/flytilla alumna Sylvia Hale yelling hysterically in blood libelling manner:

Hat tip: reader Shirlee

"We Refuse To Outsource [Australian] Foreign Policy To The Lowy Institute" (video)

Here, eyes blazing and voice embittered, is veteran anti-South African apartheid activist Kolin Thumbadoo, who migrated to Australia in the 1980s, viciously maligning Israel, Sydney businessman Frank Lowy and the Lowy Institute, and H. V. "Doc" Evatt, at the Palestine Action Group Sydney's demo a couple of days ago against Max Brenner in Parramatta.  Hear the crowd whoop and call as they eagerly digest his rabble-rousing, ignorant invective.

Towards the end, to the approval of his listeners, he compares Israel with Nazi Germany, and makes the familiar-among-Israel-haters observation about "the children of the Holocaust" that was not long ago condemned so ably by non-Jewish pro-Israel blogger Chas Newkey-Burden:

'[T]here is still one anti-Israel argument that makes my jaw drop. And it is one that is made with unfortunate frequency. It is the "they-of-all-people" argument: the suggestion that the Jews, having faced extraordinary persecution, should know better than anyone not to be oppressors.

Put aside for a moment that the "oppression" which proponents of this argument are accusing Israel of committing is usually imaginary. When directed by gentiles towards Jews, the "they-of-all-people" argument is in its very essence so fundamentally ill-judged and unjust, and voiced with such a breathtaking lack of self-awareness, that my spirit flags when I hear it.

Where to begin in response? The heroic Howard Jacobson made a fine start when he proposed that "they of all people" is the natural successor of Holocaust denial. He wrote that the argument leaves the Jewish people doubly damned: to the Holocaust itself and to elevated moral scrutiny as a result of it.

I agree, and I would go further. I contend that, as a result of the Holocaust and what preceded it, it is we gentiles who should know better. The Holocaust followed centuries of slander, persecution, violence and murder committed by gentiles against Jews. So it is not you who have an increased responsibility to behave morally, but us.

For instance, something that we gentiles should know better than to do is lazily accuse Jewish people, or the Jewish state itself, of any misdemeanour. We have seen what centuries of slander against the Jewish people led to during the 1930s and ’40s. We see the hatred, heartbreak and bloodshed that such anti-Jewish libels continue to provoke, particularly in the Middle East....

Let us strip the "they-of-all-people" argument down to its very basics: gentiles telling Jews that we killed six million of your people and that as a result it is you, not us, who have lessons to learn; that it is you, not us, who need to clean up your act. It is an argument of atrocious, spiteful insanity. Do not accept it; turn it back on those who offer it. For it is us, not you, who should know better.'

Ilan Pappé Demonising Israel Down Under (video)

Nearly fifty minutes' worth of footage here, from arguably the doyen (so to speak) of anti-Zionist ex-pat Israelis in non-Israeli universities, for anyone masochistic enough to want to endure it.

I hate giving oxygen to guys like him, but as he's Down Under I thought I should include it for the record.

While on the subject of Jews who bash Israel, Aussie columnist Andrew Bolt has turned his attention to Antony Loewenstein (hat tip: reader Rita)