Beyond The Fringe

For more from this presentation, please go here.

A question from the audience after Obama’s poor SCOTUS speech reveals Obama has a shocking ignorance of the history of the Middle East and transparent double standards when it comes to the protection of the human rights of the stateless, defenceless Palestinian people. Has the Middle East been plaguing itself? He is a vapid tool of the Israel lobby.

The full transcript of Obama’s woeful answer is here.

This is a six part vid of a brilliant address on equal rights and justice for Palestinians by Ali Abunimah.

The Israeli ziocolonialist land thieves are the real ‘water pirates’.

Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, or “water pirates” as Israeli occupation forces prefer to call them, are siphoning off drinking water pipes in an effort to secure water to irrigate their farmland.

Water is an increasingly disputed resource between Israel and the Palestinians.

A World Bank report has accused Israel of using four times more water than Palestinians from the so-called Mountain Aquifer that bridges Israel and the territory and runs along the West Bank. Israel disputes that claim and says the Palestinians are jeopardising the resource through illegal use.

Palestinians argue they are being denied access in order to force them off their land.

This exclusive report from Al Jazeera shows Israeli occupation forces dismantling a farmer’s water pipes in the agricultural village of al-Baqa.

Badran Jaber, a Palestinian farmer, told Al Jazeera: “We were surprised by a large group of soldiers and settlers who surrounded the entire area. We asked them: ‘why are you doing this and what do you want?’ They refused to speak to us.

“Men who came with the soldiers stormed the field and pulled out all the irrigation pipes, destroying the crops.”

Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reports on how Israeli rules blight the lives of many Palestinians.

The Israeli New York Consulate response to the Goldstone Report is a case study in deception. I’ve posted a comment which has not as yet, after three days waiting at their checkpoint, been published, now published. Here it is:

I notice you are still regurgitating the same hasbara about “thousands” of Hamas rockets despite this information including confirmation from your own ex-Shin Bet chief about the efficacy of the ceasefire from June 08:

“Time magazine in a report published four days earlier on December 15 backed The Associated Press report, and calculated the ceasefire, until the Israeli military raid, had resulted in a dramatic decline in projectile attacks.

“From the beginning of the year until June 19, Israel was struck by 2,660 projectiles fired from Gaza. From June 19, when the tahdiya went into effect, to Nov. 4, the total was 65. But on Nov. 5 a new round of “negotiations” — with weapons — began when Israel struck what it said were militants tunneling under the Gaza fence. Hamas responded with a barrage of rocket fire that has continued for most of the past month,” the Time report said.

A month earlier Yoram Cohen, until recently the Deputy Director of the Israeli intelligence service Shin Bet, wrote a similar account for the Washington Institute.

“Last week, Israeli forces entered Gaza, destroyed an underground border tunnel, and battled Hamas fighters, leaving several militants dead. In response, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired around eighty rockets into southern Israel, including the Israeli city of Ashkelon,” he wrote

“On June 19, 2008, Israel and Hamas began observing an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire, which was intended to last six months with an option to extend. In general, Hamas has observed the ceasefire; the number of attacks and rocket launches has decreased significantly, and Hamas has prevented other Gaza militant organizations from striking Israel,” wrote Cohen.”

Hamas has said they would cooperate with Goldstone’s recommendations.

Israel refuses to cooperate – a clear indication that it has plenty to hide.

Waiting, waiting … and in the interim, there is movement at Hasbara Central.

Nutanyahoo has announced his intention to set up an investigative committee to inquire into the findings of the Goldstone Report – Goldstone welcomed this, adding

“I would be delighted if Israel established a committee to investigate our allegations. That?s what we asked for – a transparent open investigation into our allegation I hope Hamas will also go for it.”

What is the likelihood any committee set up by Nutanyahoo will be transparent and independent?

Recent research by Riaz Hassan is Australian Professorial Fellow and Emeritus Professor at Flinders University, Adelaide, points to the alleviation of injustice and social suffering to reduce the incidence of suicide bombings :

The Suicide Terrorism Database in Flinders University in Australia, the most comprehensive in the world, holds information on suicide bombings in Iraq, Palestine-Israel, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which together accounted for 90 per cent of all suicide attacks between 1981 and 2006. Analysis of the information contained therein yields some interesting clues: it is politics more than religious fanaticism that has led terrorists to blow themselves up.

The evidence from the database largely discredits the common wisdom that the personality of suicide bombers and their religion are the principal cause. It shows that though religion can play a vital role in recruiting and motivating potential future suicide bombers, the driving force is not religion but a cocktail of motivations including politics, humiliation, revenge, retaliation and altruism. The configuration of these motivations is related to the specific circumstances of the political conflict behind the rise of suicide attacks in different countries.

….

Revenge is also a response to the continuous suffering of an aggrieved community. At the heart of the whole process are perceptions of personal harm, unfairness and injustice, and the anger, indignation, and hatred associated with such perceptions.

Men attach more value to vengeance than women; and young people are more prepared to act in a vengeful manner than older individuals. It is not surprising, then, to find that most suicide bombers are both young and male.

The meaning and nature of suicide in a suicide bombing are strikingly different from ordinary suicide. Suicide bombing falls into the category of altruistic suicidal actions that involve valuing one’s life as less worthy than that of the group’s honour, religion, or some other collective interest. Religiously and nationalistically coded attitudes towards acceptance of death, stemming from long periods of collective suffering, humiliation and powerlessness enable political organisations to offer suicide bombings as an outlet for their people’s feelings of desperation, deprivation, hostility and injustice.

…

The causes of suicide bombings lie not in individual psychopathology but in broader social conditions. Understanding and knowledge of these conditions is vital for developing appropriate public policies and responses to protect the public.

Suicide bombings are carried out by motivated individuals associated with community based organisations. Strategies aimed a finding ways to induce communities to abandon such support would curtail support for terrorist organisations. Strategies for eliminating or at least addressing collective grievances in concrete and effective ways would have a significant, and, in many cases, immediate impact on alleviating the conditions that nurture the subcultures of suicide bombings. Support for suicide bombing attacks is unlikely to diminish without tangible progress in achieving at least some of the fundamental goals that suicide bombers and those sponsoring and supporting them share.

The wailings and bleatings of Segev since the release of the Goldstone Report on the perfidious attack on the people of Gaza are a sure sign the Ziocolony is flustered and paranoid that it will be dragged into an endless mire of litigation. Already, the blustering Ziocolony is refusing to countenance an independent enquiry as recommended by Goldstone. It is unlikely, given the usual US veto used to prevent civilised censure of its favourite pet and collaborator in oppression, that the Ziocolony will be referred to the ICJ to account for its abominations. Furthermore, the Ziocolony does not assent to that court’s jurisdiction. The ICJ does have jurisdiction to investigate the Ziocolony’s crimes against humanity and breaches of the Geneva Conventions to which the Ziocolony is a signatory. Goldstone’s report details why the Ziocolony has committed the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, against the Palestinian people.

Israel’s economic blockade of Gaza in the years before the war amounted to “collective punishment intentionally inflicted by the government of Israel on the people of the Gaza Strip”.

Israeli actions depriving Gazans of means of subsistence, employment, housing and water, and denying their freedom of movement, “could lead a competent court to find that the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, had been committed”.

Even if Israel’s long awaited appearance at the international courts at Le Hague is stymied by its mutually parasitic unprincipled protector, the painstakingly prepared 574 page report appears to have laid rock solid grounds for a truckload of civil prosecutions.

The Goldstone Report is available for download from the UN Human Rights Council.

Boycott Israeli apartheid now – governments eventually submitted to the will of their peoples to end support of the apartheid South African regime. Let’s make them do the right thing again for the occupied people of Palestine.

Julia Gillard and those who accompany her on their current cuddle-up tour of the usurping, apartheid Israeli pseudo-state should be ashamed of themselves.

As Joseph Wakin comments in the Canberra Times:

The answer may lie in the clinking of champagne glasses at the gala dinner to be held at Jerusalem’s prestigious King David Hotel. After our delegation attends the Australia Israel Leadership Forum on June 25-26, there will be a festive celebration that showcases Australia’s finest music, films and food. While nationalistic art is appreciated and applauded, while Australians and Israelis dance and dine, Semitic cousins on the other side of the apartheid wall in the West Bank and Gaza continue their diet under constant checkpoints. Like a movie scene, this is hauntingly familiar.

The forum is not intended to explore differences of opinion, but to exchange commonalities between the two countries, such as educational programs, climate change and water management. A true friend would not shy away from telling the truth. This is in line with Obama’s landmark speech in Cairo: ”As the Holy Koran tells us, be conscious of God and speak always the truth.”

Imagine if Gillard, in the spirit of cultural exchange, tells her counterpart about Australia’s own landmark sorry speech and the annual Sorry Day on May 26. Imagine if she reciprocated her statement that Israel is a country with much to teach us. Imagine her own speech: ”G’Day, Shalom, Salaam, Israel. As an honest friend, who cares for your future, and understands the crossroads and the consequences, I must share with you the profound and positive effect of our public apology to our own indigenous people. This is something I urge you to adopt for your own indigenous people, whose plight and narrative has undeniable commonalties with ours. As our Prime Minister stated, step one is bring home the facts the cold, confronting, uncomfortable truth facing it, dealing with it, moving on from it.”

After all, this is what democracies do: listen to the majority opinion, not acquiesce to the loudest sounds.

On the Insiders, Gillard states:

In the Australian community there’s obviously a debate, a very real debate about matters in the Middle East and so I suppose a politician’s visit, whether it’s me or whether it’s Peter Costello or anybody else, a politician’s visit is going to be remarked upon.

Of course the policy position of the Rudd Labor Government, the policy position of the Labor Party, has been well known for a long period of time. We are strong friends and supporters of Israel. We are also strong supporters of a two state solution with secure borders to recognise the needs and aspirations of the Palestinian people. That will be my message in Israel. It’s been my message at home and of course there’s been developments in the Middle East peace process of significance, particularly with President Osama’s speech in Cairo and I expect that, amongst other things, to be the subject of discussion at the Australia Israel Dialogue.

Some ALP representatives are not impressed. Federal MP for Fowler, Ms Julia Irwin says:

When leaders and academics are distancing themselves from Israel following its attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, Australian politicians are taking part in this public relations exercise.

Please take some time to ring your Federal Member, ask how they feel about Israeli apartheid, the horrendous three year siege of the people of Gaza, 42 year occupation and 61 year dispossession of the Palestinian people. Let them know about the international and local movements for boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel. Enquire about how much electoral campaign funding they receive from supporters of Israeli apartheid.

In discussions of Netanyahu’s reprehensible, cunningly concocted response to Obama, with its preposterous, humiliating demands for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state despite 24% (and rising rapidly) of its citizens being Palestinian, the grudging formation of an unviable, demilitarised, powerless Palestinian serf state with no control over its borders or airspace, for Jerusalem to belong to Israel, and for ‘natural growth’ of the noxious illegal settlements, a friend mentioned the King of Jordan’s interview with the Times a month or so ago. When the Dark Prince spoke of his willingness to conduct direct negotiations with Arab leaders anywhere, even Jerusalem, he may well have been aiming his words at the King.

In his Times interview, the perceptive King said if Netanyahu stalled in negotiations, it would undermine Obama (and of course delay peace, the much-forestalled formation of Israel’s borders and the return any of the land misappropriated by Israel). Americans seem to be cottoning onto Obama’s stated wish for real peace – his popularity is such that they are turning against the spoilt Zionists – Prince Nut may well have over-estimated the patience of Israel’s longstanding benefactors. Obama however sanctioned 10 years of military aid well in advance of his speech.

The King of Jordan also said that if negotiations for a viable Palestinian state drag on, there will be another war in 12-18 months. Israel recently conducted its largest ever military exercises – focussing on a war with multiple targets, including Syria, Iran, Lebanon and Gaza. Who are the Israeli hegemons planning on tricking into a conflagration this time on yet another false pretext to perpetuate victimhood and an overweaning need for self-defence? How many of the 57 states that don’t recognise the pariah state will they again antagonise against the US and what will that do for Obama’s efforts for peace? how will an Israeli war against multiple states lessen the threat of terrorism against US citizenry, once more offered up for sacrifice to the hungry apartheid fascist jackals who perpetually seem to attain the highest office in chronically shell-shocked Israel? Will Obama call Nutanyahoo’s bluff, or have the deals already been done, the cake divided and the crumbs packed in tinselled paper for the people of Palestine, with a rehearsed military smackdown in the wings if they do not eat what they are given?

It’s on the cards that the Prince seek a firy diversion from negotiations for a permanent settlement with the Palestinian people. Since 1948, It has always been so.

Ronnie Kasrils delivered an excellent address in Capetown on the extent of Israeli apartheidism.

Both apartheid South Africa and Zionist Israel were colonial, settler states created on the basis of the harsh dispossession of the land and birthright of the indigenous people. This is unblushingly documented in Israel’s case from the time of Herzl through Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan to Sharon et al. Both states preached and implemented a policy based on racial ethnicity; the sole claim of Jews in Israel and whites in South Africa to exclusive citizenship; monopolised rights in law regarding the ownership of land, property, business; superior access to education, health, social, sporting and cultural amenities, pensions and municipal services at the expense of the original indigenous population; the virtual monopoly membership of military and security forces, and privileged development along their own racial supremacist lines – even both countries marriage laws are designed to safeguard racial “purity”. The fact that the Palestinian minority within Israel is allowed to vote hardly redresses the injustice in all other matters of basic human rights. In any case those Palestinians allowed to stand for election to the Knesset do so on condition that they dare not question Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

Israeli apartheidism, based on fascist ideals of ethnic purity, is exposed as far worse even than that practised by its benefactor and ally, the white South African state.

When former deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad and I visited Yasser Arafat in his demolished headquarters in Ramallah as part of a South African delegation in 2004, he pointed around him and said “See this is nothing but a Bantustan!” No, we responded, pointing out that no Bantustan, in fact not even our townships, had been bombed by warplanes, pulverised by tanks. To a wide-eyed Arafat we pointed out that Pretoria pumped in funds, constructed impressive administration buildings, even allowed for Bantustan airlines to service the Mickey Mouse capitals in order to impress the world that they were serious about so-called “separate development.” The Bantustans were not even fenced-in.

Abhorrently, Israel’s colonial racism continues to be condoned by the west.

What is so shameless about this latter-day colonial sham is that Zionist Israel has been permitted by the West to aspire to such a goal even into the 21st Century.

… It needs to be frankly raised that if the crimes of the Holocaust are at the top end of the scale of human barbarity in modern times, where do we place the human cost of what has so recently occurred in Gaza, the numerous bloodstained milestone since 1948 or the crimes in Lebanon in 1983 and 2006?

How do we evaluate the inhumanity of dropping bombs and blazing white phosphorous on civilian populations, burning people alive, roasting and gassing them in a Gaza ghetto under relentless siege with no place to run or hide. For 22 days relentless bombardment whole families vaporised before the horrified eyes of a surviving parent or child.

In agreement with Kasrils, we also doubt Obama’s milquetoast sermon will produce any change in the ziofascist enterprise. Can fascism be successfully fought with moderation? While we back boycotts, divestments and sanctions, the US government delivers 10 more years of military funding to Israel in advance.

Dare we believe that an America led by Barak Obama will make a difference? Some raise the hope that after 15 years the stalled Road Map might spring back to life and with it the chimera of a Two-State solution. One notes that President Obama only calls for a freeze in settlement construction – and precious little else. Can 12% or a few percent more in horse- trading provide for a viable Palestinian state? One doubts it.

Why is the concept of one multicultural state (the United States of Palestine?) not on the table? Israel in its present ultra-nationalist form, a faux democracy without individual protections provided by a constitution or bill of rights, currently led by racist ultra rightwingers, is a belligerent threat to the region and via its oppression of Palestinians, a threat to the US.

The formation of two ’states’, where Israel, the ‘north’ holds most of the important resources, particularly water, where its pestilent illegal settlements still riddle the Palestinian landscape, where it holds the strategic advantage and Palestinians remain disempowered and beleaguered in the ’south’, continuing to provide cheap exploited labout for the elite ‘north’, is unviable and undesirable. Such an outcome may well provide the spark longed for by Israeli ethnic supremacists for transfer of Palestinians who still live in Israel to the new Palestinian institutionalised crypto-bantustan.

Dr. Norman Finkelstein speaks at Northwestern University on the Gaza Massacre.

ADDENDUM:

Here’s a list of useful resources for peace and human rights in Palestine.

Max Blumenthal, journalist and maker of the above video reports:

“You see how few we are,” said a demonstrator holding a sign reading “Obama, Yes-U-Can.” “This is about all the Israelis who really oppose the Occupation — it’s very small. Most of the Israelis don’t care about the Occupation and what goes on in the Occupied Territories and about the suffering of the Palestinians. I think it must come from the — the pressure must come from the outside… From here, there’s not enough.”

This video report is the sequel to my hotly debated, heavily trafficked “Feeling the Hate.” Many bloggers who focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict urged me to make a video that showed the “other side” of Israel, the culturally progressive element that believes in peace and international cooperation. Well, here they are. There are very, very few of them, they are marginalized, even persecuted, and in desperate need of American support.

Max Blumenthal records Israeli atrocities against those who protest against their dispossession by Israel in Ni’lin in the Occupied West Bank.

Boycott Israeli products now!

Sign the petition to free courageous protestor Ezra Nawi, who tried to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins in the South Hebron region. Israel’s occupation is illegal under international law.

From Sally Rose at Open Forum:

Hi I thought you’d be interested to know that the next instalment in the AGIMO eGovernment consultation trial has arrived. It is an online discussion forum for the National Human Rights Consultation Commitee (an independent body supported by a Secretariat from the federal Attorney General’s Department) and it’s being hosted by us (Open Forum an independent, non-profit organisation). People can leave comments on the forum which are then considered by the committee as part of their community consultation process. All comments are published automatically in real time, NOT filtered through a government department screening process first. Please check it out and contact me if you’d like more info. Really want to spread the word so more people participate. www.openforum.com.au/NHROC

Best Regards

Sally Rose