Beyond The Fringe

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.

Crimes committed against children by Israel and Palestinian militant groups are highlighted by the UN.

Jerusalem, 6 February 2009 – “Despite the Gaza ceasefires, children continue to suffer and remain in a precarious state of insecurity”, stated Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, after her four-day visit to the occupied Palestinian territory and southern Israel. She was in the region to assess first hand the situation of children.

In Gaza, where 56% of the population is below 18 years old, grave violations against children were committed such as killing and maiming, and denial of humanitarian access. During the recent hostilities, there were no safe spaces for children and the crossings out of Gaza were, and remain, virtually sealed.

One third of Palestinian casualties are reported to be children. Many children have witnessed unspeakable violence against their family members and are severely distressed. The extensive destruction to homes, hospitals, schools and power, water and sanitation networks also has a devastating impact on children. The damage or destruction of hospitals and schools including the American International School, Palestinian Authority-administered, and UNRWA schools – considered protected spaces — was particularly shocking. “Reconstructing the schools and ensuring that children can go back to their classrooms and feel secure again is essential to their recovery,” said Ms. Coomaraswamy.

“There is no doubt that children live in constant fear of missile attacks in Southern Israel. The need for psycho-social support has increased recently,” she said on her visit to Ashkelon. “The indiscriminate firing of rockets into civilian areas is clearly a grave violation of international humanitarian law and should not be neglected simply because they are lower in scale”, she added. The Special Representative urged Hamas and other affiliated groups to immediately stop the rocket attacks on Israel, stating that this only feeds the cycle of violence.

In both Gaza and southern Israel, children expressed anger and despair as a manifestation of their desire for accountability. It is imperative that independent and impartial investigations are conducted and justice is done. The lack of accountability only contributes to a sense of impunity. “The children want answers and the international community must deliver”, declared the Special Representative.

Children in Gaza are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, including the restoration of basic services and the immediate reconstruction of schools and hospitals. “Rehabilitation services for the disabled and psycho-social support programs for the tens of thousands in distress are critical. Education is a basic right, an emergency need and a development imperative. It must be prioritized in any emergency response,” said the Special Representative.

Ms. Coomaraswamy reiterated calls by the international community for Israel to open all crossings for regular, sufficient and facilitated humanitarian access and said the amount and kinds of supplies allowed into Gaza must be significantly expanded for any real improvement to occur. The Special Representative emphasized that humanitarian agencies must not be hampered in assisting the population and their workers authorized easy access into Gaza. The Special Representative stated that Hamas must respect that humanitarian aid cannot be diverted.

“Even though they bear the brunt of the conflict, children remain strong advocates for peace,” said Ms. Coomaraswamy. “Every child has the right to live in safety and security. Children from the region have suffered enough. They deserve a better future,” she concluded.

Further UN report:

NEW YORK, USA, 5 February 2008 – The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, is in Gaza and southern Israel this week to assess the situation of children and advocate for their protection.

In Gaza, Ms. Coomaraswamy, accompanied by a team from UNICEF, visited a community centre, a school and a hospital – all in the north, in and around Gaza City. She repeated calls for the territory’s borders to be opened and access by humanitarian aid organizations to be expanded.

“The children want answers and the international community must deliver,” declared Ms. Coomaraswamy.

Losses on both sides

During her four-day stay in the region Ms. Coomaraswamy also met with residents in the Israeli town of Ashkelon, which suffered from rocket attacks fired from Gaza.

She said that children on both sides of the border had expressed anger, despair and a need for accountability.

At a school that Ms. Coomaraswamy visited in Zaitoun, a neighborhood east of Gaza City, Almaza Hilmi Al Samuni, 13, was attending a counselling session held by a UNICEF partner organization, the Palestinian Centre for Democracy and Conflict Resolution. Almaza said she wanted the Special Representative to meet the children who, like herself, had lost their mothers.

“They died right before my eyes. There was nothing I could do to save them,” she said of her family members.

Ms. Coomaraswamy noted that Israeli children were also still living in fear, and called for an end to the indiscriminate firing of rockets into civilian areas.

Education as a basic right

In Beit Lahiya, Gaza, Ms. Coomaraswamy visited the Omar Ben Al-Kathab school – which is now operating on double shifts to accommodate an additional 400 students from a nearby school that sustained heavy damage in the recent violence.

More than 160 schools across Gaza were damaged during the conflict. All UN Relief and Works Agency schools were reopened on 24 January after being closed for a month.

“Reconstructing the schools and ensuring that children can go back to their classrooms and feel secure again is essential to their recovery,” said Ms. Coomaraswamy. “Education is a basic right, an emergency need and a development imperative. It must be prioritized in any emergency response.”

UNICEF is providing essential education equipment and materials, including School-in-a-Box kits, pens, pencils and exercise books, recreational kits, and math and science kits for children in all six districts of Gaza.

Creating a protective environment

Even before the recent conflict, the children of Gaza suffered from years of conflict, blockade, lack of adequate social services, and poverty. Coping mechanisms of communities had already been eroded prior to the conflict. Access to basic needs and the creation of a sense of security and a safe environment is essential for the well-being of children.

“UNICEF is calling for regular, sufficient and facilitated access of humanitarian goods and aid workers into Gaza,” said UNICEF’s Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Patricia McPhillips, who accompanied Ms. Coomaraswamy during the mission. “This includes educational and recreational supplies … to provide a sense of normalcy for children who have experienced severe levels of distress.”

The Special Representative is mandated by the UN General Assembly as an independent advocate for children in armed conflict. UNICEF is a leading member of the international coordination group working to monitor and report on grave violations of child rights in conflict situations.

Anthony Cordesman from the Centre for Strategic & International Studies releases a draft report claiming no war crimes were committed by Israel in Gaza. His report is sourced mainly from IDF and other Israeli sources and ignores political factors leading up to the conflict including the two year siege on Gaza and the 60 year history of Israeli brutality and occupation.

Global politics can be sleazy, but it doesn’t get any sleazier than this. Nearly 1000 Gazan people have paid with their lives for Israel’s lies – Israel plotted and schemed a massacre whilst smiling in truce with Hamas, then breached the cease fire and tried to blame it on Hamas.

Olmert’s posturing that it is he who tells the US what to do echoes a previous incident attributed to Sharon on October 3, 2001 – later labelled propaganda by Camera (see Syd Walker’s detailed examination of the ‘Gotcha’ phenomenon):

According to Israel radio (in hebrew) Kol Yisrael, Peres warned Sharon Wednesday that refusing to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and “turn the US against us.”

At this point, a furious Sharon reportedly turned toward Peres, saying “every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it.”

Regardless of the veracity of the above quote, what is verifiable are Mearsheimer’s observations:

As one former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, noted on leaving office, ‘you can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.’ Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, ‘when people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them: “Help AIPAC.”’

Thanks in part to the influence Jewish voters have on presidential elections, the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive branch. Although they make up fewer than 3 per cent of the population, they make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties.

…

By February 2003, a Washington Post headline summarised the situation: ‘Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical on Mideast Policy.’ The main reason for this switch was the Lobby.

Is Olmert’s recent swagger merely to play to the electorate, or is he, despite being up on corruption charges, revelling in real power – what are the layers behind his statement?

The Security Council resolution passed on Friday calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza was a source of embarrassment for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who helped prepare it but ultimately was ordered to back down from voting for it and abstain, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday.

Is Condi really humiliated, or has she already been promised a holiday home at Netanya after Obama’s inauguration? perhaps a post at an Israeli University?

Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says that he told President Bush not to vote in favor of the United Nations’ last week resolution on Gaza.

“I told him (Bush) the United States could not vote in favor. It cannot vote in favor of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favor,” said Olmert on Monday.

Last Thursday, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1860, calling for an immediate ceasefire between Hamas and Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip and an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. The US was the only country that abstained while fourteen of the council’s 15 members voted in favor of the resolution.

According to Olmert, Bush had ordered Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to abstain.

“In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favor,” Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

“I said ‘get me President Bush on the phone’. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I did not care. ‘I need to talk to him now’. He got off the podium and spoke to me,” he added.

Elsewhere, Olmert rubs salt in Condi’s wounds – does this put paid to her presumptions that she might birth something alive in the Middle East?

“She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour,” Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

The US tries to cover up or is it telling the truth? is this a repeat of the Barak pre election invasion of Lebanon?

But a US State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, denied Olmert’s claim.

“Mr. Olmert is wrong,” the official said.

Even if everything had gone according to plan, “she would have abstained. That was the plan,” said the official. “The government of Israel does not make US policy.”

Right – so the State Department can maintain a convenient facade to protect exposure of US policy interests when the crunch comes – it’s a win win situation. A sort of “clayton’s defence”, like the media frolics in the last foray by Israel into Lebanon, the possession of that wonderful genie in the bottle – plausible deniability.

A quick browse through the Australian media found the story only at our good old Aunty ABC, who repeat the Reuters take.

Rice shamed over UN Gaza vote: Olmert

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said a telephone call he made to US President George W Bush last week forced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to abstain in a UN vote on the Gaza war.

Pouring on political bravado in a speech, Mr Olmert said he demanded to talk to Mr Bush with only 10 minutes to spare before a UN Security Council vote on Thursday on a resolution opposed by Israel calling for an immediate ceasefire.

“When we saw that the Secretary of State, for reasons we did not really understand, wanted to vote in favour of the UN resolution … I looked for President Bush and they told me he was in Philadelphia making a speech,” Mr Olmert said.

“I said, ‘I don’t care. I have to talk to him now,’” he said, describing Mr Bush, who leaves office on January 20, as “an unparalleled friend” of Israel.

“They got him off the podium, brought him to another room and I spoke to him. I told him, ‘You can’t vote in favour of this resolution.’ He said, ‘Listen, I don’t know about it, I didn’t see it, I’m not familiar with the phrasing.’”

Mr Olmert said he then told Mr Bush: “‘I’m familiar with it. You can’t vote in favour.’

“He gave an order to the Secretary of State and she did not vote in favour of it, a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organised and manoeuvred for. She was left pretty shamed and abstained on a resolution she arranged,” he said.

Fourteen of the Security Council’s 15 members supported the resolution, which has failed to halt Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip and Hamas’s cross-border rocket fire.

Mr Olmert, under police investigation over alleged corruption, resigned as prime minister in September but is serving in a caretaker capacity until a new government is formed after Israel’s February 10 parliamentary election.

Juan Cole hypothesises:

Olmert’s account cannot be accurate as to detail. Bush was not interrupted during his speech in Philadelphia, and the speech was given many hours before the UN vote. But that kind of discrepancy is easily resolved if we want to believe that Olmert is telling the truth. When he called the White House, he may have initially gotten a staffer who said something like, Bush is away at Philadelphia for a speech. Olmert could have misunderstood the staffer to say that Bush was still giving the speech.

…

Then everyone was surprised by Rice’s about-face. And it was reported at the time that she changed her mind after a phone call from Bush.

…

She must have blown him off or been evasive, alarming him that there would be a UN ceasefire resolution before which Israel might have to bow. My own guess is that Olmert had Bush tell her to veto it altogether, but you have to wonder whether she and Khalilzad engaged in their own little final rebellion and so just voted “present,” which allowed the resolution to pass. (Olmert has ignored it.)

…

Olmert reports that Bush had no idea what the substance of the resolution was, and this anecdote is consistent with what we know about how this White House has functioned. Bush admitted to Bob Woodward that an important decision on sending some troops to Iraq had been made by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and that Bush had not sat in on the relevant meetings. So Rice was at the UN on her own, thinking she was a plenipotentiary of Bush, and Olmert was annoyed at this attitude and decided to put her in her place.

…

The likelihood is that Olmert was stung by severe criticism of his government for allowing the UNSC cease-fire resolution to be passed. His Kadima Party is in a neck and neck race with the even more hard line and far rightwing Likud Party, with elections to be held on February 10. Presumably Olmert was trying to deflect the Likudniks’ charges that Kadima was inept or impotent, and to improve the standing of his would-be successor, Tzipi Livni (now the Foreign Minister).

Other than the obvious – that Bush is dumb as two planks and is a serial sadist, Cole points to 2001:

3. Olmert has something over Bush. I remember that Bush had taken on Sharon in September of 2001, calling for a Palestinian state and ordering Sharon to stop colonizing the West Bank. Sharon was so furious that he compared Israel’s situation to that of Czechoslovakia in 1938, when the rest of Europe let Hitler grab part of it. But by spring of 2002 Bush was bending over backward to please the Likud. What changed? Something did. There is a mystery to be explained here. I only point out that along with the previous two explanations, this one would make sense of otherwise baffling behavior on Bush’s part.

For some, the conspiracy buttons wil be pressed. Now here’s some speculation – did Bush have inside knowledge of 911 passed on by the Israelis, information that would blow his presidency out of the water if it became public? What else could the Israelis have on him?

Did Sharon pass on to Olmert a little present prior to his vegetabilisation?

Or was Bush simply unable to stand up to the Zionist Lobby in the fact of its considerable influence on the Congress and Senate?

Laila Al-Arian reveals another side of Condi relating a chance encounter at a hair salon:

Recognizing how rare it is to get face-time with the nation’s top diplomat, Nadia felt she had to say something, anything. “Great job you’re doing in Gaza,” she blurted out. Nadia says Rice then turned to her and smiled. “Ohh thank youu,” she responded, dramatically dragging out each word. “I don’t think she understood the sarcasm,” Nadia told me. “No. I mean is there anything else that the U.S. can say other than all of the onus is on Hamas to end the violence?” she asked Rice.

“We’ve made other statements!” Rice replied, as she walked away. “And it is,” she added, referring to the notion that solving the crisis is solely in the hands of Hamas.

Perhaps these omissions should not have been surprising considering Rice’s bewildering remark that Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon — in which more than 1,000 people were killed, thirty percent of whom were children–was simply part of “the birth pangs of a new Middle East.”

…

“We need very much to find a solution to this problem in the short term,” Rice told the Security Council. “But it really must be a solution this time that does not allow Hamas to use Gaza as a launching pad against Israeli cities,” she added, once again refusing to even mildly admonish Israel for the civilian deaths or acknowledge what had occurred earlier that day.

On Thursday, after nearly two weeks of carnage, the Security Council finally passed a resolution – with a 14-0 vote– calling for an “immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.” The United States, represented by Rice who helped draft the text, abstained from voting.

According to writer Karim Makdisi, “the text of Resolution 1860 makes no mention of international humanitarian laws (let alone offer any condemnation for the breaching of these laws), and it appears to adopt Israel’s narrative of events.” Israel dismissed the resolution as “unworkable” and continued its bombing campaign on Friday, the day Rice told reporters “it’s hard” for Israeli troops to shield civilians in Gaza because the area is so densely populated.

Excuses, excuses, always for the ‘ally’ there are excuses – even for mass murder.

Condi has reaffirmed herself as an Aunty Tom in the last days of the Bush idiot presidency with her lockstep except for the last gaff, collaboration with the torturous Israeli Occupation of Palestine. Does she know or even care that the Israelis have inflicted an illegal, brutal Occupation for many decades, from which much angst flows – the rockets of Hamas are in one sense analagous to the cruel necklacings perpetrated by some rebels during the apartheid era in South Africa. Are the birth pangs to which she has referred Israel being born as regional hegemon, rather than the liberation of the oppressed Palestinians within their own free state? With the US economy flailing, has Tel Aviv conveniently become the new power nexus for the electorally ousted US neoconservatives?

If Iraq was the “tactical pivot”, Saudi Arabia the “strategic pivot”, is Egypt still “the prize”?

What of the thought that we here in Australia, being beholden to the US which is in turn beholden to Israel, are third cab off the rank?

Olmert’s arrogance reemerges with NATO:

Prime Minister Olmert thanked NATO Secy.-Gen. Scheffer for NATO’s cooperation with Israel: “Israel stands behind NATO and fully supports its struggle against terrorism, just as we expect that you will understand us in our struggle against terrorism. The difference between us is that while you are fighting terrorism even if your territory is not in immediate danger, we are defending our territory and our citizens, who are being attacked on a daily basis.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni earlier met on Sunday with the NATO secretary-general. They spoke together about mutual ways to cooperate in a war on terrorism, and discussed actions to prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza.

In reaction to Livni’s hopes for cooperation in preventing smuggling into Gaza, Secretary-General Scheffer stated that NATO has no plans for a peacekeeping force to supervise any ceasefire in Gaza.

The NATO chief told an audience at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies on Sunday that NATO would be willing to play a peacekeeping role only if there existed a full-scale peace agreement, consent from both sides, and a UN mandate. He predicted that those conditions would not be ripe any time in the near future.

The convolutions of the US and Israel stand in terrible bleak contrast to the plight of the people of Gaza, caught in the midst of some grand game.

Khaled Meshaal, Hamas’ political leader states the Gazan government’s present position:

The enemy has succeeded in bringing about a new Holocaust on Gaza.

Let me now speak to Israelis and Zionists. What have you achieved in this war that you supported? You supported your leaders in going ahead with this war, but what have you achieved besides killing innocent children, breaking skulls and creating an ocean of blood in Gaza?

What have you achieved except a Holocaust that your leaders want to use to win the next elections in February? Palestinian blood is now a means for political achievements in your elections.

You complain about the Holocaust that was committed against you, but you today are now committing an even harsher Holocaust. The Palestinians can now make a museum of your Holocaust in Gaza…

What prevented the US from allowing Resolution 1860 being passed a week or two weeks ago? They wanted to give Israel a chance to kill more Palestinians and claim victory over Gaza. But when the resistance did not back down and Israel failed and when the magnitude of these massacres were uncovered and the USA and those who collaborated in this military campaign witnessed the dissent and intifada among the Muslim masses, which carries with it real danger, at that point they let the resolution pass.

But they took the teeth out of (UN Security Council Resolution) 1860. The resolution is a non-binding cease-fire with no date specified for the cease-fire.

The question now is about who should implement the resolution. Those who started the military campaign in the first place, the Zionists, should implement it and immediately pull out of Gaza. This is logic.

Concerning us, we want the immediate and complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the lifting of the unjust siege on Gaza that has led to the current situation.

Our other request is the opening of all border crossings including the Rafah border crossing.

We, with an open mind, will deal with any initiatives and decisions based on these three requests.

Therefore, we will not accept any negotiations for a truce in the light of and under the pressure of a military campaign and siege.

Let the military campaign stop, let the Israelis withdraw, and let the rights of our people be admitted to, let them recognize our rights to live without a siege and closed border crossings, just like other humans, then we are ready to discuss a truce, just like we did before.

We will not accept a permanent truce, because it will take the right of resistance from the Palestinian people. The resistance is against occupation and military campaigns and therefore as long as occupation exists, resistance will too…

We will also not accept the interference of international forces because international forces will come only to protect Israel’s security and any international force imposed will be considered as occupiers.

We will not accept any talks about strengthening the ‘choke hold’ on the resistance concerning its weapons. Some are speaking about the tunnels as if Gaza is a super power with advanced weapons, while we are people with very limited capabilities to defend our territories and ourselves. No body has the right to take our legitimate right for defense and resistance. The US, as if the whole of the Israeli arsenal does not exists, sends hundreds of tons of explosives and artillery shells to Israel.

In this context, we still sent our delegation to Cairo to talk about Egypt’s proposal and other political plans. The November 2005 Rafah crossing agreement, must be reconsidered because this agreement really promoted the blockade on Gaza and we proposed different means and methods.

I call on Mr. Mahmoud Abbas – who called for national unity in the face of Israel’s attacks – to declare to the world that we must agree to a Palestinian partnership between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza, so that we can reach a firm arrangement in Rafah. This is appropriate choice for you. Anything besides this has no credibility when it comes to national unity.

We supported national unity from day one–nNational unity based upon confronting the military campaign, but this needs honesty and credibility. All political detainees must be freed and the Palestinians in the West Bank must be free to hold protests without being arrested. We saw them arrested of course yesterday. We also call on Mahmoud Abbas to stop cooperating with the enemy and to stop negotiations with the Israelis. There is no future for these negotiations…

And to the Arab countries, by God you abandoned and degraded us. But if you made mistakes in the past go ahead and correct your mistakes before it is to late… I call on Arab countries not to welcome any Israeli official in their capitals.

The Arab leaders must coordinate and be aligned with the will of their people. Moreover, I call on Arab countries that have relations with Israel to tell the Israelis either that they should stop their war, or that the Arab countries will stop their relations.

After this resolution, the Muslim Ummah should not calm down and assume the atrocities are over. Resolution 1860 has not brought about any changes on the ground. Israel refuses the resolution and the battle in Gaza is in its most intense phase. What we need is more stern resistance in Gaza and we need more fierce protests in the Arab and Islamic world and the international community to achieve victory for the people of Gaza. We need a third ‘Intifada’ (uprising) in the West Bank and a revolution in the Arab, Islamic world until the enemy withdraws from Gaza, the siege is lifted and the border crossings are opened.

A very important point is that the Muslim world should stand by us. In spite of all these massacres committed by Israel, some say that we are the problem and the massacres are our fault. These are shameful words. What provided the atmosphere for the Zionists to boost their reputation (among their people) and to increase our wounds and impose new circumstances, for example the separation wall, settlement activities and so on, all happened at the time of negotiations.

Concerning are casualties and wounded, resistance cannot liberate without martyrs and casualties. It is better to achieve victory through martyrs and wounded, instead of having casualties without resistance and victory.

Some express fear that after all the sacrifices, the leadership of the resistance may collapse or make a settlement for example. On the contrary, the blood of our women and children and people will increase our cohesion and determination to achieve our aims. It is unjust that after all these massacres to just go and say lets make a truce. On the contrary, the price of this bloodshed is freedom and to decide our own destiny and to end the occupation and siege.

In this psyop war of all psyop wars, the Israel public is held captive to fears of its own creation. The shallowness of the Israeli public perception, bereft of the appallingly sad narrative of their occupied neighbours leads to a one-sided bitterness, perpetuating victimhood and cruelty, engendering callous disregard for needs of others less fortunate. All Palestinians, even babies, clinics, ambulances, schools and even foreign aid workers are the enemy. However unequally matched the protagonists are, this is war, the eternal war, and resistance must be crushed ruthlessly, without any acceptance of criticism.

“It is very frustrating for us not to be understood,” remarked Yoel Esteron, editor of a daily business newspaper called Calcalist. “Almost 100 percent of Israelis feel that the world is hypocritical. Where was the world when our cities were rocketed for eight years and our soldier was kidnapped? Why should we care about the world’s view now?”

Israel, which is often a fractured, bickering society, has turned in the past couple of weeks into a paradigm of unity and mutual support. . Flags are flying high. Celebrities are visiting schoolchildren in at-risk areas, soldiers are praising the equipment and camaraderie of their army units, neighbors are worried about families whose fathers are on reserve duty. Ask people anywhere how they feel about the army’s barring journalists from entering Gaza and the response is: let the army do its job.

1984, anyone?

ADDITIONAL LINKS

The Mysterious Hold of Zionism over American Politicians

Mondoweiss Sphere: Related Content

In a convincing wrapup of events leading to the holocaust being perpetrated on the essentially defenceless people of Gaza, John Pilger refers to the Dagan Plan.

Behind this sordid game is the “Dagan Plan,” named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, Dagan is the author of a “solution” that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan’s achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organization devoted to Israel’s destruction and to “blame” for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. “We have never had it so good,” said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. “The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine.” In fact, Hamas’s real threat is its example as the Arab world’s only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians’ oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as “Hamas’s seizure of power.” Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the “reality” of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a “monstrosity.”

When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a “1948-style solution” – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller “cantonments” and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, “a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed … Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it.”

Although the UN has passed Resolution 1860 calling for a cease fire, Israel is continuing its strikes against anything that moves or doesn’t move in the beleaguered Gaza Strip.

This is unacceptable. The US may already been dragged into being accomplice to war crimes on the eve of Obama’s inauguration – is this Bush’s last petulant tantrum too?

Francis A. Boyle An Israeli War Crimes Tribunal – An Israeli War Crimes Tribunal (ICTI) May be the Only Deterrent to a Global War

Not that again – still at least some folks are waking up to the Machiavellian possibilities neocons may be hoping to ignite in these last desperate days of Straussian ponderosity.

Ari Shavit writes in Haaretz of that perennial classic, the White Man’s Burden

George E. Bisharat Israel Is Committing War Crimes – Hamas’s violations are no justification for Israel’s actions.

Pentagon denies arms shipment to Israel linked with Gaza fighting – interesting because the first time we looked the story said US was sending 3000 tons of ammo on a merchant ship.

In fact, here it is sitting on Reuters UK. So who’s the anonymous informant, and which story is true? ??

U.S. seeks ship to move arms to Israel

Fri Jan 9, 2009 11:42pm GMT

By Stefano Ambrogi

LONDON (Reuters) – The U.S. is seeking to hire a merchant ship to deliver hundreds of tons of arms to Israel from Greece later this month, tender documents seen by Reuters show.

The U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command (MSC) said the ship was to carry 325 standard 20-foot containers of what is listed as “ammunition” on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January.

A “hazardous material” designation on the manifest mentions explosive substances and detonators, but no other details were given.

“Shipping 3,000-odd tons of ammunition in one go is a lot,” one broker said, on condition of anonymity.

“This (kind of request) is pretty rare and we haven’t seen much of it quoted in the market over the years,” he added.

The U.S. Defense Department, contacted by Reuters on Friday in Washington, had no immediate comment.

The MSC transports amour and military supplies for the U.S. armed forces aboard its own fleet, but regularly hires merchant ships if logistics so require.

The request for the ship was made on December 31, with the first leg of the charter to arrive no later than January 25 and the second at the end of the month.

The tender for the vessel follows the hiring of a commercial ship to carry a much larger consignment of ordnance in December from the United States to Israel ahead of air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

A German shipping firm which won that tender confirmed the order when contacted by Reuters but declined to comment further.

CHARTERS “RARE”

Shipping brokers in London who have specialized in moving arms for the British and U.S. military in the past said such ship charters to Israel were rare.

Israel is one of America’s closest allies and both nations regularly sell arms to each other.

A senior military analyst in London who declined to be named said that, because of the timing, the shipments could be “irregular” and linked to the Gaza offensive.

The ship hired by the MSC in December was for a much larger cargo of arms, tender documents showed.

That stipulated a ship to be chartered for 42 days capable of carrying 989 standard 20-foot containers from Sunny Point, North Carolina to Ashdod.

The tender document said the vessel had to be capable of “carrying 5.8 million pounds (2.6 million kg) of net explosive weight,” which specialist brokers said was a very large quantity.

The ship was requested early last month to load on December 15.

In September, the U.S. Congress approved the sale of 1,000 bunker-buster missiles to Israel. The GPS-guided GBU-39 is said to be one of the most accurate bombs in the world.

The Jerusalem Post, citing defense officials, reported last week that a first shipment of the missiles had arrived in early December and they were used in penetrating Hamas’s underground rocket launcher sites.

(Reporting by Stefano Ambrogi; editing by Michael Roddy)

UPDATE ON SHIP

Greek bloggers used Twitter to pressure the Greek government to halt the arms transfer.

Delivery of the munitions was suspended, just as the Greek government was coming under fire from opposition parties, and Amnesty International was calling for an arms embargo.

At first, official sources contested the story from the international news agency Reuters on January 9. But it was picked up by Twitter users and investigated after Indy.gr – an offshoot of the Indymedia Athens group – provided a translation of the article in Greek.

ADDENDA

From Enduring America 9/1/09:

1:10 p.m. Here’s one for the Israel Info Guys in Tel Aviv and New York.

You know the “human shields” line that Hamas hides behind civilians, especially women and children, to conduct their nefarious activities? Well, a released Gazan detainee has offered an inconvenient twist — at least for Israel:

In the first day (of the ground offensive) special forces stormed Beit Lahiya. Maybe a thousand soldiers landed on rooftops then began arresting people….They used us as human shields in military positions they established inside Gaza Strip before they drove us to a prison in Beersheba. They made us sleep on gravel, or on the sand. They stripped us of our clothes.

And here’s a little footnote: “They used a bulldozer to pile up the bodies of the dead.”

Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim – How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

@AJGaza: UN says more than 15,000 people are now internally displaced after fleeing their homes in an attempt to avoid the fighting in #Gaza

Israel crossed the line.

@KABOBFest A UN school in #gaza where people were taking shelter was just tank-shelled by Israel, killing 40 people there. http://tinyurl.com/777edx

@AJGaza US state department says it wants an “immediate” ceasefire in #Gaza, that is “durable, sustainable and not time limited”.

@tweetsfromgaza Israeli tanks fire on 2nd UN school killing and injuring dozens of refugees with nowhere else to go. #Gaza

RT: @syrianews: UN says it “gave the exact GPS co-ordinates” of the location of the UN school which Israel CHOSE to bomb

From the Guardian:

The UN, which said the school was clearly marked, said it was “strongly protesting these killings to the Israeli authorities and is calling for an immediate and impartial investigation”.

“Where it is found that international humanitarian law has been violated, those responsible must be held to account. Under international law, installations such as schools, health centres and UN facilities should be protected from attack. Well before the current fighting, the UN had given to the Israeli authorities the GPS co-ordinates of all its installations in Gaza, including Asma elementary school.”

Just prior to the announcement of the UN school massacre, the Israeli Consulate tweeted:

@IsraelConsulate New Post: How to End the Battle Successfully http://is.gd/eGKS #AskIsrael #Israel #Gaza

Bret Stephens writes in today’s Wall Street Journal on ways that Israel can achieve its military aims without imposing unnecessary hardship on the residents of Gaza.

…

Achieving this aim would not require Israel to take over large swaths of Gaza, but it would require an extended policy of smaller-scale counterterrorism operations, along the lines of the successful West Bank operations.

We shall have to wait and see which post conflict model is adopted, and how free an arm the US gives Israel to complete its balancing act, and whether international monitors will be involved as previously mentioned by Israel.

Khalid Mish’al, head of Hamas Political Bureau says in the Guardian:

“What is being visited on Gaza today was visited on Yasser Arafat before. When he refused to bow to Israel’s dictates, he was imprisoned in his Ramallah headquarters, surrounded by tanks for two years. When this failed to break his resolve, he was murdered by poisoning.

Gaza enters 2009 just as it did 2008: under Israeli fire. Between January and February of last year 140 Gazans died in air strikes. And just before it embarked on its failed military assault on Lebanon in July 2006, Israel rained thousands of shells on Gaza, killing 240. From Deir Yassin in 1948 to Gaza today, the list of Israel’s crimes is long. The justifications change, but the reality is the same: colonial occupation, oppression, and never-ending injustice. If this is the “free world” whose “values” Israel is defending, as its foreign minister Tzipi Livni alleges, then we want nothing to do with it.

Israel’s leaders remain in the grip of confusion, unable to set clear goals for the attacks – from ousting the legitimately elected Hamas government and destroying its infrastructure, to stopping the rockets. As they fail to break Gaza’s resistance the benchmark has been lowered. Now they speak of weakening Hamas and limiting the resistance. But they will achieve neither. Gaza’s people are more united than ever, determined not to be terrorised into submission. Our fighters, armed with the justice of their cause, have already caused many casualties among the occupation army and will fight on to defend their land and people. Nothing can defeat our will to be free.

Once again, Washington and Europe have opted to aid and abet the jailer, occupier and aggressor, and to condemn its victims. We hoped Barack Obama would break with George Bush’s disastrous legacy but his start is not encouraging. While he swiftly moved to denounce the Mumbai attacks, he remains tongue-tied after 10 days of slaughter in Gaza. But my people are not alone. Millions of freedom-loving men and women stand by its struggle for justice and liberation – witness daily protests against Israeli aggression, not only in the Arab and Islamic region, but worldwide.

Israel will no doubt wreak untold destruction, death and suffering in Gaza. But it will meet the same fate in Gaza as it did in Lebanon. We will not be broken by siege and bombardment, and will never surrender to occupation.”

Bt’Selem

Defence for Children International Children killed as a result of Israel military and settlers 2000 – 2008

In addition, from the UN 4/1/09:

As of this evening, the MoH reports casualty figures since the beginning of the Israeli military operation on 27 December of 491 dead and approximately 2,400 injured, out of which figures, at least 20 percent of the fatalities and 40 percent of the injuries are women and children.

List of UN releases relevant to Palestine

Excellent chronology of the occupation by Israel and resistance to it.

As the occupying power, under the Geneva Conventions Israel has the responsibility for caring for the occupied. Despite its claims of having left Gaza in 2005, Israel still occupies it under international law.

UN Office for the Coordindation of Humanitarian Affairs latest updates.

The latest information on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza can be downloaded from the UN Office of Coordination of Human Afairs.

The situation is extremely bleak – Israel, with the unrelenting support of its accomplice, the US Bush administration, continues to violate human rights and Geneva Conventions. A hospital ambulance has been shelled and food distribution has been stopped except in southern Gaza. Hospital generators are about to collapse.

Some quotes from the 4th January report:

“Israeli forces are now deployed in several areas of the Gaza Strip with clashes taking place between Israeli forces and militants. Damage and destruction of roads, infrastructure and buildings has been reported, including to a large gas storage facility. The military incursion compounds the humanitarian crisis following more than a week of shelling and an 18-month long blockade of the territory. There is an increased threat to civilians due to combat in densely populated urban areas. Hospitals continue to be overstretched because of the large number of casualties that have accumulated since the beginning of Israeli attacks, and ambulances and medical personnel face dificulties in accessing casualties. Electricity and telecommunications are down over much of the Strip.

Food distributions have been suspended and all crossing points remain closed.”

This morning, an ambulance of Al Awda hospital in the north was shelled, seriously injuring 4 medical staff. Palestine Square in central Gaza City was also hit, reportedly killing 5 civilians and injuring another 40 persons. Prior to the ground incursion, 15 Palestinians were killed and more than 25 injured when the Israeli Air Force bombarded the Ibrahim Al Makadima Mosque in Beit Lahiya.

There is an almost total blackout in the governorates of Gaza, North Gaza, Middle Area, and Khan Yunis. Most of the telephone network (both land lines and cell phones) in Gaza is also not functioning since it
now depends on back-up generators with dwindling fuel stocks.

All of Gaza City hospitals have been without mains electricity for 48 consecutive hours, depending entirely on back-up generators. The hospitals warn that the generators are close to collapse. At the Shifa hospital, collapse would have immediate consequences for 70 intensive care unit (ICU) patients including 30 in the neonatal care who are connected to machines. ICUs throughout the Gaza Strip are overloaded. The
security situation is also preventing medical staff from reaching hospitals.Ambulances are experiencing dificulty in reaching the injured because of continuous ire. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society continues to work around the clock in order to assist the population. From Friday to Saturday midday, its ambulances transported 78 wounded to hospitals. Fifteen fatalities were also transported.

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document which recognises humanity’s common interests and belongs to us all.

The Declaration represents a contract between governments and their peoples, who have a right to demand that this document be respected. Not all governments have become parties to all human rights treaties. All countries, however, have accepted the UDHR.

….

As the Declaration’s custodians and beneficiaries, all of us must reclaim the UDHR, make it our own. While we are entitled to our human rights, we should also respect the human rights of others and help make universal human rights a reality for all of us. In our efforts lies the power of the UHDR: it is a living document that will continue to inspire generations to come.

One way you can show your support for the UDHR and spread awareness of human rights around the globe is to sign the petition to print the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in your passport .

Australians might contemplate in particular Article 14, so cruelly ignored by the xenophobic and human rights abusing Howard government.

1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Sadly, the right to seek asylum takes second place to border protection in the minds of many brainwashed Australians.

The sixth ‘people-smuggling’ vessel to reach Australian waters since September arrived on December 8.

Its 44 passengers brings the number of suspected asylum seekers arriving by boat over the past 10 weeks to nearly 120.

This is a VERY VERY SMALL number of people compared to the legal migrant intake instituted by the Rudd government this year.

The overall migration program will now be 190,300 for this year, and 133,500 of those places will be allocated to permanent skilled migrants.

Wrongful detention of legitimate asylum seekers committed by Howard’s cold-eyed goons is coming back to haunt us.

Immigration Department may be forced to compensate 191 of the 247 people investigated by the Ombudsman for wrongful detention.

The department has so far offered compensation in 40 of the cases and settlements have been reached in 17. In total, about $1.2million in compensation has been paid so far.

If Australia wishes to minimise people-smuggling within the character of the UDHR to which it is signatory, it needs to address human rights issues in asylum seekers’ countries of origin.

Increased border protection to prevent the entry of desperate asylum seekers fleeing human rights abuses is an ineffective bandaid solution, and as has been amply demonstrated during the Howard years with the Tampa and SievX affairs, can lead to shameful Australian human rights abuse with consequent blowback later on, including diminishment of Australia’s international stature and authority to speak out about human rights abuse elsewhere.

Article 19 of the UDHR is today’s recommended reading for Stephen Conroy and supporters of his web censorwall.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

On December 13, protests against Conroy’s proposed web filters will be held around Australia.

UPDATE

Father Frank Brennan is to head a Human Rights Consultative Panel to consider a wide range of human rights issues, including whether Australia should have a bill of rights. Brennan is a self-professed fence-sitter on whether we Australians would benefit from our individual rights being enshrined in a Bill or Charter of Rights.

Australia is the only democratic country in the world without formal human rights protections – join the Getup campaign to change this.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratic elected leader of Burma and Nobel Peace Price recipient, speaks about printing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in passports.

On Nov 24 the UN General Assembly adopted a final draft Resolution with 85 countries affirmative to 50 negative and 42 abstaining, calling on all countries to provide “adequate protection against acts of hatred resulting from defamation of religions and the incitement to religious hatred in general”.

The US Government representative submitted against the Resolution:

While deploring hateful speech, his Government had a strong view that people should be free to express their opinion in challenge to an ideology of hate. He believed that some States were seeking to restrict expression in the name of defamation of religion, when they should be promoting dialogue involving all peoples. The language appeared to suggest that, like race, one’s religion was a characteristic that one could not change, which was in direct conflict to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration, which said that individuals had a right to change and choose their religion, and to manifest their beliefs through its teaching, practice and observance, or to choose not to practice a religion at all. It was unhelpful and incorrect to suggest that race and religion were the same.

On behalf of the EU, France’s delegate, also responded opposing the Resolution:

… the European Union believed that human rights were indivisible. The right to freedom of expression was at the essence of the right to thought, conscience and beliefs … it was necessary to make distinctions between incitement to religious hatred and the right to discuss or criticize religion, adding that only the former should be forbidden. … He also could not accept the idea of defamation of religion being integrated into the human rights framework. International human rights law should be aimed at protecting people in exercising their freedom of religion, not in protecting religions, as such.

Australia voted too against the adoption of the draft Resolution, which will reach a final vote in the General Assembly this month.

In 2004, Abdelfattah Amor (Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief) identified two cases of concern ‘… when religion is the property of the state, and when the state is the property of religion’, in which light, theistic and totalitarian states are problematic.

After several years of intimidation and death threats, Danish publisher Flemming Rose yesterday said:

This is a global struggle for the right to free speech, which is going on every day in different parts of the world where people are trying to intimidate and silence those who are critical of religion, of authoritarian regimes and movements trying to undermine free speech.

We have to make it very clear that on a global level people who are in favor of free speech have to unite in order to get rid of all kinds of laws around the world that limit the right to free speech — blasphemy laws, laws protecting dictators, laws which are being used to silence people who are critical … in a democracy, you cannot insist on special treatments of your religious feelings. That would be discrimination against non-believers. You have to accept that from time to time you may be offended by what people are saying or publishing in a newspaper, and that this is no reason for violence. Dissatisfaction can be expressed through demonstrations, letters to the editor, lobbying parliament.

The Fringe has a fair idea most people, religious or not, have idiosyncratic beliefs of some sort or another and they are welcome to them, along with any associated legal group hugs. Yet whilst applauding the value of a pluralist society, when those who base their particular world views and rule sets on unprovable faith wish to institutionalise these in bodies politic in order to impose them on unwilling others, the Fringe detector fires up.

The proverbial road to hell is paved with good intentions. Kevin Rudd clearly understands the political aspects of Christianity:

… the Gospel is both personal and social. And if it’s social it therefore has a political dimension as well.

Through High Court decisions, Australians have ‘implied freedom of political communication’.

Issues arising from these decisions include defining when communication is ‘political’ and when the freedom should prevail over competing public interests.

Does the spectacle over the past few years of the ALP ‘engaging’ with fundamentalists to woo votes ‘in the suburbs of outer metro Australia’ echo events leading to the DLP split, after which Labor spent more than 20 years in the wilderness?

The Rudd team’s pragmatism may have helped secure electoral victory when there was a ‘desire for certainty in an uncertain country in an uncertain age, in an uncertain world’ concurrent with a major growth spurt in the pentecostal movement. Climates of fear seem to encourage fundamentalism.

However, continuing to accommodate the political goals of the modern, corporatised, morality-obsessed religious right – with a post-secular public intellectual moralist on the left flank – steering Australians ‘beyond the questions of personal, sexual morality into the broader social domain as well’, may run the risk of alienating adherents of healthy scepticism predominant in Australian culture, with a heavy price to pay down a one-way track. Not to mention the old adage that if ‘you lie down with dogs, you tend to get up with fleas’.

Submissions to the Australian Human Rights Commission Freedom of Religion and Belief in the 21st Century Discussion Paper are open till Jan 31, 09. The paper canvasses amongst many issues whether a legislated national Charter of Rights would add to the freedoms of religion and belief contained in the present Australian Constitution.

Section 116 of the current Commonwealth of Australian Constitution Act states that:

The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

Questions in the discussion paper germane to religion and politics include:

1. When considering the separation of religion and state, are there any issues that presently concern you?
2. Do religious or faith-based groups have undue influence over government and/or does the government have undue influence over religious or faith based groups?
3. Would a legislated national Charter of Rights add to these freedoms of religion and belief?

And more:

1. a) How would you describe the interface between religion and politics and cultural aspirations in contemporary Australia?
   b) What issues does this include?
2. How should government manage tensions that develop between aspirations?
3. How do you perceive gender in faith communities?
4. Do you believe there is equality of gender in faith communities?
5. What do you think should be the relationship between the right to gender equality and the right to religious freedom in Australia?
6. Citizenship and Australian values have emerged as central issues, how do you balance integration and cultural preservation?
7. What are reasonable expectations to have of citizens’ civic responsibility, rights, participation and knowledge?
8. Is there a role for religious voices, alongside others in the policy debates of the nation?

Of contemporary interest related to the Rudd government’s predilection with censoring the internet is this question:

Are there religious or moral implications in the development of new technologies such as the internet and or mobile phones, especially in regard to religious vilification and hatred?

Is it of concern that the proposed HREOC Religious Freedom Act appears to move beyond protection of individual belief to protection of group beliefs?

R2.5

For the purposes of the Religious Freedom Act, religion and belief should be given a wide meaning, covering the broad spectrum of personal convictions and matters of conscience. It should include theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs. It should include minority and non-mainstream religions and belief systems as well as those of a more traditional or institutionalised nature. Religion or belief should be defined as a particular collection of ideas and/or practices:

1. that relate to the nature and place of humanity in the universe and, where applicable, the relation of humanity to things supernatural
2. that encourage or require adherents to observe particular standards or codes of conduct or, where applicable, to participate in specific practices having supernatural significance
3. that are held by an identifiable group regardless of how loosely knit and varying in belief and practice
4. that are seen by adherents as constituting a religion or system of belief.

The definition should not apply to all beliefs but only to those that clearly involve issues of personal conviction, conscience or faith. This definition would not cover beliefs which are caused by mental illness or which are motivated by criminal intent.

R2.6

The obligations in the Religious Freedom Act should apply to individuals, corporations, public and private bodies and all other legal persons who maybe subject to Commonwealth legislation.

R3.15

The federal Attorney-General’s department should convene an inter-faith dialogue:

1. to examine the question of methods of coercion in religious belief and practice and how they should be dealt with
2. to consider whether legal limitations should be imposed on religious groups regarding coercive tactics
3. to formulate an agreed list of minimum standards for the practice of religious groups

R5.3

The proposed Religious Freedom Act should proscribe the advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence as required by ICCPR article 20. The Act should exempt from the proscription of religious vilification, acts done reasonably and in good faith:

1. in the performance, exhibition or distribution of an artistic work
2. in the course of any statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest, or
3. in making or publishing a fair and accurate report of any event or matter of public interest

R5.4
The process and remedies available for contravention of the religious vilification provision should be civil remedies similar to those provided for in the racial hatred provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth).

The Atheist Foundation of Australia makes good points in respect to religious coercion and the rights of children:

‘Religion’ falls into an entirely different category for it is an aspect of culture. Religion has no intrinsic genetic link. A person’s religion is almost universally determined by infant brainwashing and indoctrination by the parents, carers and culture of the child.

This occurs generation after generation without any evaluation of the validity of the particular religion that is being implanted in the receptive mind.

While there are laws against the physical abuse of children there appears to be none against the far more damaging mental abuse. This should not be and is a serious flaw apparent in the legislation of every country.

Furthermore:

The A.F.A accepts the scientific viewpoint that there is no evidence of anything supernatural and until some factual evidence is produced this is the logical viewpoint. The onus of proof lies with the proposer of such a concept.

To posit a belief system on presumed or imagined array of supernatural elements, persons, and places yet be unable to produce a shred of evidence, surely must rate as a scam.

Is the above an example of religious discrimination?

We are protected by law against other scams, so why should religious scams enjoy special protections?

Do religious arguments (i.e. arguments without rational proof) have a place in the Australian parliamentary process, and if so, how can these be balanced against primary arguments for individual rights to free speech and expression? Is there a present danger in Australia of the State becoming ‘the property of religion’ and other bodies of anti-rationalist thought and that ‘defamation of religion’ might be codified by stealth in the proposed Religious Freedom Act?

Cartoonist Kurt Westerguaard, who’s still under police protection after years in hiding, expresses his intimate understanding of religiopolitical phenomena:

Increasing religiosity results in greater intolerance and restrictiveness. Things become complicated when all of life is defined by religion. For those gripped by it and even more for all those who are not.

Life on the Fringe is complicated enough already.

The Fringe engaged in some rare blogkeeping today and after scrutinising all linked sites for deaduns and changed ownership, retrieved a few tasty snippets.

Deltoid’s take on Keith Windschuttle’s rejection of Karoly’s criticisms of Quadrant climate change articles:

It seems that Windschuttle has no confidence in the articles on climate science he has been publishing. Windschuttle rejected without even looking at it, an article by David Karoly correcting the errors and misinformation in those articles.

Enlightenment on the continuing Israeli siege on the ghetto that is Gaza:

On the 4th the IDF invaded Gaza and killed a few Palestinians. Minor detail. Anyway, I’m sure you can see that then cutting off food and medical supplies to 1.5 million people, of about which 800,00 are children, for 11 days is quite a reasonable response. It’s not like that would be collective punishment against a civilian population, which would be a breach of international humanitarian law or a war crime.

And they let the trucks in, 33 of them on the 17th. That’s a lot. Never mind that the UN says 15 trucks are needed everyday to maintain a miniumum supply of humanitarian aid.
Let’s see, the crossings were closed for11 days up to the 17th, 11 days x 15 is………..you know, 33 is a lot of trucks.

Israel’s unconscionable blockade continues and broadens, while as is customary when it comes to issues of justice for the Palestinian people, most western governments pretend the hideous collective punishment of one and a half million people isn’t happening.

Choking the life out of the Gazans isn’t going to make them turn against their Hamas overlords. On the contrary, says my friend Azmi, “Everything that Israeli does isn’t harming Hamas in Gaza. It’s making them stronger.” Starving Palestinians and depriving them of medicine certainly isn’t going to make them like Israelis, or their supporters in Washington, any better.

Meanwhile in the West Bank, illegal Israeli settlers are on a rampage.

Essentially Contested America comments on allowing Gates to stay as Secretary of Defence. Is Obama keeping his enemies close or has he transformed himself with miraculous speed into a very conservative Dem?