Would Brandis & pro-Burqa Bedfellows Expect An Animal To Peer Through a Grill of Mesh?

In the Australian Senate on Thursday, a bizarre-looking, frankly scary, figure with the look of a big black crow sits in the chamber, having been let in with scarcely a concern for security.

An assurance from an acquaintance  that the figure draped in what resembles a garbage bag was who she purported to be was enough to allow the figure to slip in, with no demand that she reveal her face.

The figure was, it soon transpired, indeed the controversial Senator Pauline Hanson, whose wrapping herself in a burqa stunt was performed in order to demonstrate just how lax security in the Australian Parliament is, and to request of Attorney-General George Brandis during Question Time an assurance that, given the terror threat, wearing the burqa be banned in public places in Australia.

As seen on video, George Brandis was not amused by Ms Hanson's stunt and unmoved by her request.  Not that Brandis was unmoved, mark you: his voice trembled and tears bid fair to trickle down his cheeks as he berated Ms Hanson for offending Muslims.

Not a word passed his lips about the offence the grotesque garment called the burqa gives to womankind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDf-5ygFXGk

Conservative columnist Andrew Bolt notes:

'First, Brandis — and Senators of the Left — savaged Hanson for wearing a burqa, but many voters would know these same MPs would have applauded the “courage” of a Muslim MP wearing that alienating sack.

Second, Brandis dangerously elevated the burqa as an important symbol of Islam — a “religious garment”.

Labor’s Penny Wong was as bad, praising the wearing of the burqa as a “sincere act of faith”.

That’s troubling.

Apologists used to claim the burqa was just a backward tribal thing that did not represent nice and sweet Islam at all. But now it apparently does.

Third, Brandis, voice cracking with emotion, then got to the heart of his problem with Hanson’s burqa, and this is not just troubling but alarming.

“It has been the advice of each Director-General of security … and each Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police with whom I have worked that it is vital for their intelligence and law enforcement work that they work cooperatively with the Muslim community,” he blustered.

“To ridicule that community, to drive it into a corner, to mock its religious garments is an appalling thing to do.”

Let me translate: do not mock or criticise the burqa or more Muslims will attack us.

Sorry, but I don’t want us cowed by such threats. The burqa is an abomination, and no threats should stop me from asserting this feminist truth.

Does anyone tell gay activists to stop dressing up as nuns or Christians may blow us up?

What Brandis has in fact said is that Muslims are dangerous, and the burqa represents them.

I hope Brandis is just exaggerating the extremism of most Muslims.

But I certainly know he’s kowtowing to a radical minority who want their women bagged and hidden from view.

That is unacceptable....'

Sure is.  But I'd make an additional point regarding these politicians' motives; they're out to catch Muslim votes, and (as with these pro-Islam wets representing the churches) if women's rights, welfare and dignity have to be sacrificed in order to achieve that aim, then so be it.

Leftist hypocrisy regarding feminism and Islam can be clearly seen in many of the comments on Bolt's article.

One earnest leftist tells those who agree with Pauline Hanson on this issue that they belong in Victorian Britain.  O, how laughable (that is, if it were not so very sad!) A male apologist for that misogynistic oppressive garment the burqa telling those who oppose it that they (and not he) belong in a time and place where women (like females under Sharia today) were in subjugation to patriarchal tyranny!

Inevitably, among the champions of burqa-wearing was Greens leader Richard Di Natale, that weaselly foe of Israel, pictured below (front centre) with some buddies.

As a doctor of medicine, Di Natale cannot be ignorant of the danger to unborn babies the wearing by pregnant women of a garment that blocks out sunshine poses: he has obviously heard of rickets and its causes.  I suppose he's happy with the advice that burqa-clad women compensate by dosing themselves with milk fortified with Vitamin D.

But what about the deleterious effect on women's comfort and eyesight that accompanies being encased in a stifling sack and forced to peer at the world through a grill made of mesh.

Perhaps Senator Hanson should borrow somebody's Fluffy or Fido next time, put its head in a burqa, and watch the reaction of senators to that.

I'll wager that they'll label as cruelty to animals (and rightly so) the cruelty they are content to have women endure.

(Unless, in the case of Fido, they recall something about Muslims considering dogs unclean, of course.)

David Singer On Why The O Word Is Odious: "The world has been duped into the use of language that reflects fiction – not fact"

In this, his latest article, "Palestine – Australia Rejects Fiction To Recognise Reality", Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer explains why Australia's avoidance of the O word is commendable and worthy of emulation.

Writes David Singer:

Australia will no longer be referring to East Jerusalem and the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) as "occupied territories".

Attorney-General George Brandis made this clear when he read a statement to the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee this week indicating the language of "occupation" was:

“judgmental”, “freighted with pejorative implications” and “neither appropriate nor useful” for the peace process.

This injection of sanity into the contribution being made by the international community to help resolve the 130-years-old Arab-Jewish conflict is long overdue and very welcome.

The use of the terms "Occupied Territories" by the European Union or "Occupied Palestinian Territories" by the United Nations has emboldened the Arab League, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA) to maintain their 47-year-old demand that every square metre of land captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War be returned to Arab control.

Their unyielding stance was never contemplated by Security Council Resolution 242 which acknowledged the right of Israel to exist within secure and recognised borders. It has been a major impediment to resolving the Arab-Jewish conflict  –  resulting in offers by Israel to cede its claims to sovereignty in more than 90 per cent of those territories being rejected by the PA in 2000/1 and 2008.

Catherine Ashton – High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy European Union/Vice-President of the European Commission – was pandering to this decades-old Arab demand when she told the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 30 December 2009:

"East Jerusalem is occupied territory, together with the rest of the West Bank.”

Israel’s then Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, penned an article in response in the Wall Street Journal on 30 December 2009 – pointing out: 

"However, little appears to be truly understood about Israel's rights to what are generally called the "occupied territories" but what really are "disputed territories."

That’s because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered "occupied" in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel’s conquest. Contrary to some beliefs there has never been a Palestinian state, and no other nation has ever established Jerusalem as its capital despite it being under Islamic control for hundreds of years.”

Ayalon criticised the perception that:

“... Israel is occupying stolen land and that the Palestinians are the only party with national, legal and historic rights to it. Not only is this morally and factually incorrect, but the more this narrative is being accepted, the less likely the Palestinians feel the need to come to the negotiating table.”

Ayalon was affirming that the West Bank was “no man’s land” – where sovereignty still remained undetermined.

Israel and the PLO –  the PA having been disbanded in January 2013 – still continue to be unable to agree on the final allocation of sovereignty after fruitless negotiations spanning the last 20 years.

The latest round of negotiations ended in total collapse on 29 April with the PLO still demanding sovereignty in 100 per cent of the territories (or perhaps – as has been reported – some land swaps in compensation).

Ayalon's prediction in 2009 has proved to be chillingly correct in 2014 – and will continue to prevail whilst the PLO refuses to acknowledge that Israel has any claims to sovereignty in these areas.

Such claims are based on legal rights vested in the Jewish people pursuant to Articles 94 and 95 of the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, Article 6 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine 1920 and Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

The PLO considers such rights to be "null and void" under Article 20 of the PLO Covenant – seeking to snuff out Israel's claims to what was the heart of the Jewish biblical and ancestral homeland 3000 years ago.

Ignoring this body of international law spells disaster for Israel and the PLO ever resolving their competing claims.

Australia's decision to call a spade a spade will hopefully encourage other countries to follow suit – as well as implementing international action to make some further changes in the duplicitous diplomatic double speak involving the use of misleading and deceptive language which has hindered rather than facilitated any resolution of the conflict.

These changes include:

1. Replacing the term "occupied territories" with the term "disputed territories" to clarify that Jews also have legal rights in these territories in addition to those claimed by the Arabs.

2. Using the 3000 years old term "Judea and Samaria" to replace the term "West Bank" – first coined by Jordan in 1950 to erase any trace of Jews having lived there after having been driven out by the invading Jordanian army in 1948.

3. Substituting "Palestinian Arabs" for "Palestinians" and "Palestinian people" – terms first appearing in the 1964 PLO Charter that excluded former Jewish and other non-Arab residents and their descendants having any rights.

4. Referring to the conflict as the "Jewish-Arab conflict" – which commenced in about 1880 instead of the "Palestinian-Israeli " conflict – which only commenced in 1948.

5. Omitting any reference to the term "State of Palestine" until the provisions of the Montevideo Convention 1934 are complied with.

The world has been duped into the use of language that reflects fiction – not fact. Used often enough it takes on a highly damaging life of its own.

Erasing such language from the international lexicon is long overdue.

The world's nations need to awaken from their fiction-induced slumber.

"Occupied Palestinian Territories": Brandis Riles Rhiannon

In this video veteran pro-BDS stalwart Aussie Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon, the daughter of Stalinist parents, one of them of Jewish extraction, is deliciously put down and accordingly flummoxed by federal Attorney-General George Brandis when she uses the word "occupied" in relation to East Jerusalem and the "Palestinian Territories".

She: "Why did the Australian Ambassador to Israel attend a meeting in occupied East Jerusalem with the Israeli minister for housing and construction; the same minister who is forecasting a 50 per cent increase in settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the next five years?"

 He: 'Well I think I should say, Senator Rhiannon, that the rather tendentious way in which you've put that question and in particular the use of the word "occupied" is not something that the Australian Government of either political persuasion acknowledges or accepts.'

She: 'So you don't use the term "Occupied Palestinian Territories", even though it's a United Nations term used widely by a number of international agencies, European members et cetera…'

He: 'Well it's used by a lot of people. It's used by a lot of communists too. Weren't you a member of the Communist Party once?'

Naturally, Australia's lefties and leftist press are much perturbed at Brandis's stance and what it implies about current Australian government policy, as seen here and here and here

See also here and  here

(Hat tip: readers Ian and Marvin)

The PLO's Dr Hanan Ashwari denounces Brandis's comments thus:

“It is absolutely disgraceful and shocking that on the 47th anniversary of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and Gaza, Australian Attorney-General George Brandis is issuing such inflammatory and irresponsible statements that ‘occupied East Jerusalem’ is ‘a term freighted with pejorative implications, which is neither appropriate nor useful.’  Such pronouncements are not only in blatant violation of international law and global consensus, but are also lethal in any pursuit of peace and toxic to any attempt at enacting a global rule of law.

Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem is beyond ‘pejorative’ and ‘inappropriate’; it is a deliberate and egregious violation, not just of international humanitarian law and consensus, but of the basic norms of responsible behavior that governs relations among civilized states.”

Trying to fabricate or distort the law to fit Israel’s lawless behavior is shameful and dangerous.  Attorney-General Brandis, whether out of ignorance or whether out of blind bias, is trying to render Australia complicit in the Israeli occupation, and is forcing it to become an advocate of international criminal behavior”.

From Eli E. Hertz of the Myths and Facts website, a timely item:

'The term “occupied territory,” which appears in the Fourth Geneva Convention, originated as a result of the Nazi occupation of Europe. Though it has become common parlance to describe the West Bank and Gaza as “occupied territories,” there is no legal basis for using this term in connection to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

[University of Sydney] Professor Julius Stone, a leading authority on the Law of Nations, categorically rejected the use of the term “occupied territory” to describe the territories controlled by Israel on the following counts:

(1) Article 49 relates to the invasion of sovereign states and is inapplicable because the West Bank did not and does not belong to any other state.

(2) The drafting history of Article 49 [Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War] – that is, preventing “genocidal objectives” must be taken into account. Those conditions do not exist in Israel’s case.

(3) Settlement of Jews in the West Bank is voluntary and does not displace local inhabitants. Moreover, Stone asserted: that “no serious dilution (much less extinction) of native populations” [exists]; rather “a dramatic improvement in the economic situation of the [local Palestinian] inhabitants since 1967 [has occurred].”

 See all of Hertz's article here