The legitimate call to boycott Israel comes from over 170 groups from Palestinian civil society, because despite scores of UNSC and UNGA resolutions (other countries are invaded by the US & Co. for breaking even 1 UNSC resolution), and the failure of the disingenuous ‘peace process’ which serves as cover for Israel to steal more Palestinian land, Israel has not amended its appalling criminal behaviour. In fact, the currrent regime has passed three more discriminatory laws in the past week or so to add to more than 30 existing such laws whilst tightening the illegal siege, which constitutes collective punishment, on the people who inhabit the open air prison that is Gaza once more and committing its customary panoply of human rights violations throughout the West Bank.
Palestinian people are guaranteed justice and rights under international law, yet Israel denies them these, with the collusion of the US and its sycophantic subalterns like Australia, the UK and Canada. Boycotts, divestments and sanctions are a grassroots, global, non-violent means of specifically targeting the institutions and organisations which support the illegal Israeli occupation and apartheid regime because all other methods have failed to attain Palestinian people’s just rights.
A partial settlement boycott is insufficient, because Israel’s crimes are not only those of occupying and stealing Palestinian land in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but also consist of denying Palestinian Israelis full equal rights and refusing to recognise the right for Palestinian refugees to return to their lands although this right is supported by a raft of international laws and UN resolutions.
From the filthy tactics used on Greens candidates, Goldstone and others (see the Masada and other hate lists) and initiatives like those afore-mentioned, it’s clear that human rights defenders are putting themselves on the line to protest against this extremist, unrepentant regime and its ongoing crimes. By its own actions and actions of those who support its impunity and injustices, the Israel regime delegitimises itself.
“this is a reality that has been in existence since 1948 and [these soldiers should not be indicted] just as they never thought to put Ehud Barak or Danny Yotam on trial when they were photographed on the wing of a plane while stepping on the body of a terrorist [1972, AP].”
He chastised the military establishment for their handling of the situation, saying that a decades-old practice is falling on the backs of a few soldiers. He added that these are “good soldiers, and this is a job for the head education officer.”
that the judge was ready to work to have the UN report withdrawn. He has demanded a public correction from Yishai. After a response from Yishai was not immediately forthcoming, Goldstone issued another statement opposing the rescission of his commission’s report.
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Despite Foreign Ministry efforts to issue a correction, Yishai delayed a response several hours and ultimately released a short statement correcting the record after midnight.
Around 1:30 A.M., Goldstone, who was in California, was informed of Yishai’s statement, but he had already gone to the media denying Yishai’s earlier remarks and saying that he had never discussed the report in his conversation with Yishai. A Foreign Ministry source said the spat with Yishai will make it much harder for Israel to get Goldstone to approach the United Nations regarding its stance on Cast Lead.
This stance by the Australian government is also out of step with Australian public opinion. We are being very poorly represented on this question. An online survey by Research Now of 1021 Australians last year, by Griffith University researchers Eulalia Han and Halim Rane, showed: “The majority (55%) understand the Israel-Palestine conflict to be about ‘Palestinians trying to end Israel’s occupation and form their own state’.”
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Where governments refuse to act, the onus passes to a responsible citizenry, to continue to explain the issues, and to take our own action where appropriate, including through local councils and political parties.”
The ferocity of the response to Fiona Byrne (for Marrickville
Council’s BDS stand) and now the attacks on Ms Rhiannon, are a clear reflection of the effectiveness of the BDS strategy. Those with a vested interest in the Occupation are evidently threatened by these exemplary women and their principled stand.
Thanks in no small part to the efforts of the garrulous bevy of Israel (and US) protectionists at the Murdoch press, BDS has now hit the mainstream well and truly as an issue in Australia.
Murdoch’s motley grab of gutter rags have aimed their mendacious clumps of dirt serially at Greens and their candidates who back BDS, their supporters and journalists who fairly report the issue and are critical of Israel’s crimes.
I stand by my article and Parker’s quotes and I have the notes to back this up. …
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In the days after my New Matilda piece on the Greens ran, Parker called me a few times to discuss the Middle East and BDS and did not dispute the accuracy of my article. In fact, he said he liked it and wanted it to be widely read.
In a statement to New Matilda today, Parker says:
“An article published in New Matilda last week by independent journalist Antony Loewenstein outlined my experience during the recent NSW election campaign. Certain quotes are attributed to me which do not reflect the language that I have always used in relation to the conflict in the Middle East.”
Parker does not deny the quotes. He is, however, clearly keen to distance himself from the issue.
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Again today the Australian mentions my article and the Parker quotes and tries to undermine the credibility of both the new Greens MP and me.
Parker further explained his position that was articulated in my story:
“The [New Matilda] article does reflect my belief that there is no place for bullying or intimidation in Australia’s political process, encouraged by either interested players or certain sections of the Murdoch press. The level of rhetoric and vitriol directed against the Greens — such as swastikas on our posters, hate calls and death threats — needs to be addressed and I have raised my disappointment with a range of people including members of the local Jewish community.
“I have the utmost respect for all of the groups with which I have been working but I strongly believe that there should have been a very clear condemnation of the hate-filled language which included the Daily Telegraph comparing the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) motion by Sydney’s Marrickville Council with the murderous rampage of Kristallnacht across Austria and Germany in 1938. We have seen this inflammatory and extremist language continue yesterday with comments by Murdoch columnist Andrew Bolt on ABC’s Insiders which compared my election in Balmain to the rise of the Nazis in 1933. It is time to end the extremist language and focus on peaceful initiatives that will promote justice for all.”
Indeed. Condemnations of the outrageous illegal defacements of Greens’ electoral posters immediately prior to the NSW election have been conspicuously absent from the Murdoch media hasbara which instead has focussed on slandering the Greens, Greens candidates and BDS whilst protecting the prestige of the apartheid Israeli regime and its immoral Australian sycophants.
Australians should take note of the latest announced plans by the Israeli IDF to breach sovereignty across the globe in order to pursue those whom they feel are ‘delegitimisers’ of the apartheid Israeli regime, including human rights defenders who support BDS.
The Israeli Knesset has been reviewing the proposed “Prohibition on Instituting a Boycott Bill” aimed at fighting the growing momentum in support of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli oppression, occupation and apartheid.
If proven they participated in a boycott, individuals who are not citizens or residents of Israel can also be punished by having their right to enter the country denied for at least 10 years, according to the proposed legislation.
Knesset members are also working on an “anti-subversive” bill aimed at anarchists and supporters of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). If approved the law would allow Israel’s Interior Ministry to bar international activists from entering Israel.
The law would apply restrictions to anyone who acts against Israel, denies the Holocaust, works to boycott Israel and/or attempts to place Israeli leaders on international trial for what they did in the line of duty.
“Many people why call themselves call themselves ‘peace activists’, along with all other Israel-haters who often are called ‘human rights activists,’ often act against the rights of Israeli citizens and are free to travel in the country without any restrictions,” said Nochi Eyal, director of the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, a proponent of the bill.
What sort of nation considers these sort of putrid tactics? certainly one worth boycotting. As ever, Israel is its own worst enemy, and it delegitimises itself.
Michael Brull: ‘I think this brings us to the question: does a boycott of Israel establish someone’s evil malice to Jews? No. The reason is obvious: many people of good faith believe Israel has established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories. Anyone who thinks it was right to boycott South Africa because of apartheid there presumably is about as reasonable in boycotting apartheid in Palestine.’
‘Israel deserves harsh criticism, not because it makes “mistakes”, but because it is a state built on the suppression of an entire people.
The Israeli system is deliberately designed to obliterate a nation (Palestine), destroy a people’s culture, history and way of life and crush their legitimate resistance.
Israel practises routine methods of cruel subjugation that deny Palestinians their political, religious and national and human rights.’
Find out more about the upcoming US tour organised by Jewish Voice for Peace who are bringing Mira, Amer, and Hanna, three young Palestinians to share the challenges facing Palestinian students under Israeli military occupation, and their hopes and aspirations for a better future, where everyone’s human rights are respected. How zionists appropriate Palestinian land. ‘Nasser outlined the details of plan based on documents he obtained. He said the project would cover 661,000 sq meters of land in historic Issawiyya and Tur, known as Karm al-Rumi, Ras al-Salm, Zaafarana, Maraj, Rabie, Dya and Khulla al-Jawz.’ Shabak Strikes Again, Israeli Palestinian Boy Arrested Under Gag for Alleged Security Offenses People of Gaza have celebrated Orphans Day to alleviate the sufferings of those Gazan children that lost their parents during the 22-day Israeli-imposed war in late 2008. Israel to promote itself on Facebook : Deputy foreign minister meets networking site’s managers to discuss plans for online PR Avraham Burg in Haaretz foresees the end of zionism: “There is no other country in the Western world from which the international community has been willing to put up with acts of state violence for five decades, other than Israel. There is no other country that is permitted by the international community to maintain a vast, unsupervised nuclear arsenal, other than Israel. And there is no other colonialist left in the world, other than “the only democracy in the Middle East.” The world is still putting up with all this, but not for much longer – it will soon be over.
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We have done very little in Israel to develop an internal national-identity model that is not dependent on the definitions of the external persecutor. It is convenient, albeit not pleasant, to place responsibility for our identity in the hands of the enemy. Let Hitler decide who’s a Jew. And if Hitler is gone, then some poor man’s Hitler, like Yasser Arafat or Ahmadinejad. Every generation and its Pharaoh, every era and its wicked Haman.
Is there another possible way to understand and live the reality? Plainly. Hatred exists in the world, but we do not have a monopoly on it. In the past, anti-Semitism was the primary focus of Western hatred. Because in the heart of the First World, the Christian world, we were the ultimate strangers, set apart by the two basic activities that define a society and a community: eating and procreation. The strangers are those people who live in our midst but with whom we do not eat and do not marry. And for thousands of years “we” and “they” refrained from sharing the same bed and the same table. ” MI5 files: Lehi planned to assassinate Churchill : Britain’s Security Service uncovers files suggesting Eliyahu Bet-Zuri, who was hanged for murdering Lord Moyne, plotted to kill British prime minister, Foreign Secretary Bevin in 1944 Jerusalem committee to discuss approval of 942 apartments beyond the Green Line
Ms. McGowan Davis said that the Government of Israel refused to cooperate with any aspect of what it called the “Goldstone process” and expressed gratitude to the Palestinian Authority for the extensive cooperation provided throughout the term.
Ms. McGowan Davis went on to say that Israel had dedicated significant resources to investigating over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza, but given the scale of this undertaking, much remained to be accomplished. There was no indication that Israel had opened investigations into the actions of those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw Operation Cast Lead as called for by the Fact-Finding Mission report.
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With regard to the de facto authorities in Gaza, the Committee acknowledged that they had made efforts to provide specific information concerning criminal investigations into alleged human rights violations committed by their security forces. However, there had been no investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.
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During the interactive dialogue speakers said that Israel had not cooperated with the Committee nor had it allowed access by its members, and some expressed dismay at the utter disrespect by Israel of its obligations and the total disregard to the resolutions of the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.
EU: Concerning the report of the Committee, the European Union continued to be concerned that the functioning of Israel’s military justice systems did not fully meet the criteria of independence and impartiality. The lack of transparency regarding the different stages of the investigations had not allowed all victims to have access to existing judicial mechanisms.
The Goldstone Report documents eleven incidents where the Israeli military directly targeted civilians. Four other fact-finding missions underscore these findings: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and the National Lawyers Guild.
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To date, the Independent Committee of Experts, chaired by New York Judge Mary McGowan Davis, has reviewed the domestic investigations process twice, and both times it found Israel’s investigations to be inadequate.
Erekat is unsatisfied with the outcome of Goldstone’s attempted qualifications:
Regardless of what may have been his best intentions, Goldstone has negligently, one hopes not deliberately, undermined the laws of armed conflict and emboldened those states, like Israel, who believe that it is a surmountable nuisance.
Interestingly, Goldstone’s ‘retraction’ (according to Arutz Sheva, he couldn’t sleep at night because of the “Jewish reaction”), has followed the above-mentioned interactive dialogue. It may also be significant that the Israeli regime claims it has only recently realised it can be indicted to the ICC for its war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Operation Cast Lead massacre through the invocation of the Uniting for Peace Resolution 377 in the United Nations General Assembly. Perhaps though, Goldstone’s backdown may in fact influence outraged UN members in the opposite direction than which the Israeli regime would prefer. Curious too is the inclusion of the Itamar murders, phrased in such a way that Hamas might be implicated, in Goldstone’s Op Ed. Since when does Israeli media publish stories about murders in the US, unless they involve Israelis?
According to Bell, Goldstone insisted at the debate that all the investigations showed that, thus far, the facts were as they were reported. “Later on he apologized and said there may be people who would disagree with what he said, like Professor Bell” said Bell, quoting Goldstone.
Bell told Haaretz that, in his opinion, the whole experience of the last few months – where Goldstone has heard what many people have to say about him and his report – “caught up with him.”
A further Ynet oddly phased report says the New York Times refused to publish Goldstone’s op ed – was this because the NYT had already published a story about Goldstone’s harassment last year and folks might have joined too many dots? or does the NYT have additional information it could bring to the table? since when doesn’t the NYT publish hasbara?
A source close to Goldstone stated that in the past few days the judge had approached the editor of the New York Times opinion pages requesting to post the article he wrote in the paper – and was told his article was rejected.
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Dr. Alon Liel, a friend of Goldstone’s from his days as a Foreign Ministry representative in South Africa, went a step further and said that Goldstone has “been through hell” and that has contributed to his decision to publish a letter of regret.
“He was being constantly harassed, received threatening letters, and was forced to change his phone number and email addresses,” Liel said. “When Israel decided to boycott him, it was an overwhelming insult.’I’m a Jewish judge, a respected Zionist – and Israel doesn’t trust me?’ He was a broken man.
“I’m not saying that the threats he received and the hell he went through are what made him publish his article, but there is no doubt in my mind that it influenced his decision.”
UPDATES
Elise Hendrick exposes Israel’s intentional crimes which Goldstone has attempted to make disappear, and notes that Israel itself admitted its intentionality of committing war crimes.
Indeed, it is clear from the Report that the most criminal of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, the white phosphorus bombardment of a UN field office and fuel depot where civilians were taking refuge and two hospitals, were intentional by Israel’s own admission.
Ali Abunimah considers the probability that Goldstone’s distancing himself from the United Nations Fact Finding Commission assists in a lead-up to another massacre by Israel of people in Gaza.
International complicity also continues to send Israel a clear message that its impunity is guaranteed. The Obama administration’s recent veto of a UN Security Council resolution that merely restated US policy on Israel’s settlement construction in the West Bank was one sure sign that Israel still has a blank check from the United States.
Tragically, the biggest contributor to renewed confidence in Israel that it could once again get away with murder in Gaza, may be Judge Richard Goldstone himself. Israeli leaders have seized on his apologetic 1 April op-ed in The Washington Post as vindication and proof that Israel never committed war crimes in Gaza, and was the victim a “blood libel,” as Jeffrey Goldberg, former Israeli occupation army volunteer and The Atlantic blogger put it.
While Goldstone was clearly trying to appease Zionists who subjected him to an intense campaign of personal vilification and ostracism his article did not in fact repudiate one single concrete finding in the report that bears his name.
Over in the US empire, the State Department slavishly brays joy at Goldstone’s supposed recantation. How many US politicians and public servants have actually read the United Nations Fact Finding Mission Report, one has to wonder?
Israel’s new Dahiya Doctrine for Lebanon with intentional targeting of civilians under the false justification that military installations are located therein is exposed in the Daily Star.
But his words carry no weight whatsoever: he wrote the piece to the Washington Post as a person, while the Goldstone Report is an official report sanctioned by the UN. There is a big difference. Of course, this lousy man who has a history of white supremacy while he worked as a judge in South Africa (yes, he saw the light about racism, years later like all white supremacists) did not accept to take his job unless he is allowed to the investigate possible war crimes by the Palestinian victims. If this man was around during the holocaust, he would not have accepted to investigate Nazi war crimes without having a mandate to investigate war crimes of concentration camp survivors.
South African jurist Richard Goldstone said Tuesday that he did not plan to seek nullification of his highly critical U.N. report on Israel’s 2008-2009 offensive in the Gaza Strip and asserted that claims to the contrary by Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai were false.
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“As appears from the Washington Post article, information subsequent to publication of the report did meet with the view that one correction should be made with regard to intentionality on the part of Israel,” the judge said. “Further information as a result of domestic investigations could lead to further reconsideration, but as presently advised I have no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time.”
‘It is therefore regrettable that the Israeli government and many in the media have portrayed Goldstone’s op-ed as a retraction of everything in the 575-page report. “The one point of light,” Gabriela Shalev, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said of Goldstone’s op-ed, “is that if we have to defend ourselves against terror organizations again, we will be able to say there is no way to deal with this terror other than the same way we did in Cast Lead.”’
‘”Our Palestinian people feel shocked and angered regarding the European vote on Friday, March 25, 2011 in the 16th term of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva,” the letter said.
EU representatives voted against a resolution which started a process that could lead allegations of war crimes during Israel’s 2008-2009 war on Gaza to the International Court of Justice.
“We were expecting a European position that supported the resolution,” the letter added.
While member nations of the UNHRC passed the motion, Palestinian officials denounced “the fact that the majority of European countries did not vote in favor of the resolution.”‘
In particular, Amnesty International has called on the General Assembly to consider the Fact-Finding Mission’s report at its 66th session starting in September 2011, and submit the report to the UN Security Council with a recommendation that the latter body consider referring the situation to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). This recommendation was also included in a resolution passed by the Human Rights Council on 25 March 2011.
Amnesty International also urged the ICC Prosecutor to seek a legal determination from the Pre-Trial Chamber on whether an investigation could be launched on the basis of a 2009 declaration by the Palestinian Authority accepting the Court’s jurisdiction over crimes committed on the Palestinian territories. Finally, we have consistently called for national authorities of other states to exercise universal jurisdiction over war crimes committed during the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict, just as we urge states to exercise universal jurisdiction over war crimes in other conflicts where the domestic authorities are unwilling or unable to act.’
and re Israel’s massacre of the Sammouni family:
‘Justice Goldstone’s op-ed mentions only one of these incidents, an Israeli attack on 5 January 2009 which killed 21 members of the al-Sammouni family, which is the subject of an ongoing Israeli military investigation. Assessing whether specific Israeli attacks on civilians during the conflict were deliberate is extremely difficult because the Israeli military has not released the evidence that would allow independent parties to evaluate its conclusions. Amnesty International has not argued that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) targeted Palestinian civilians “as a matter of policy”, but rather that IDF rules of engagement and actions during the conflict failed to take sufficient precautions to minimize civilian casualties. Justice Goldstone’s recent comments do not dispute this assessment.’
‘The report is an officially approved United Nations document, and Goldstone is but one among four authors.
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He thus adopts the Israeli position that any misdeeds during the Gaza assault were caused by individual deviants, not by policies or rules of engagement ordered by military leaders.
Yet the original report never accused Israel of widespread deliberate attacks on civilians, and thus Goldstone retracted a claim that had never been made. Most of its essential findings remain unchallenged.
Goldstone’s newfound confidence in the Israeli military’s self-investigations is inexplicable. The Goldstone Report itself concluded that they “do not comply with international standards of independence and impartiality.” Another body of U.N. experts led by retired New York Supreme Court Justice Mary McGowan Davis found, “there is no indication that Israel has opened investigations into the actions of those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw Operation Cast Lead.”
Hence nothing should impede the progress of the Goldstone Report through the United Nations system, including, ultimately, to the International Criminal Court. Israel’s impunity from international law must end not only to provide justice to its victims – but also to promote durable peace in the Middle East.’
Israeli Soldiers Admit to War Crimes in Gaza War.
Following the recent “revolutions” in the Arab world, Ilan Pappe, historian, answers questions from Frank Barat, coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. (russelltribunalonpalestine.com/?en/?)
“Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians” by Ilan Pappe and Noam Chomsky (edited by Frank Barat) is out now.
is this an April Fool’s joke or really Richard Goldstone backing off the findings in his report? Goldstone has proved once more that zionists obfuscate to protect Israel from proper scrutiny of its crimes. By sanitising his report and repudiating his original, correct thoughts that Israel had committed war crimes, whilst whining about undue attention to Israel in the UN, Goldstone is either consiciously or unconsciously giving the zionists a green light to continue more of its disgusting atrocities and possibly initiate another massacre. Speaking of undue attention in the UN, should every murder of an Israeli be a matter for concern in the UNHRC as Goldstone suggests with the Itamar murders? So who really wrote Goldstone’s op ed? come on hasbaroids, own up. The inclusion of the unrelated Itamar murders is a dead giveaway.
Over two years since the fighting in Gaza has ended it is clear that neither Israel nor Hamas is going to conduct credible investigations into the charges leveled against them by the UN fact finding mission. The experts’ report summarized:
The Committee heard the respective parties’ claims that their systems have established mechanisms to ensure accountability and justice. Yet, after listening to victims, witnesses and human rights organizations, it is clear that the needs of victims are not being adequately addressed.
For this reason, it is obvious that it is now time to follow-up on the recommendation of the Goldstone Report and refer the case to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to conduct a proper legal investigation.
“Everything we said was proven to be true. Israel did not willfully harm civilians,” Netanyahu explained, adding, “Israel’s investigating authorities are worthy, while Hamas investigated nothing. The fact that Goldstone withdrew his conclusions must lead to the retraction of the report once and for all.” ‘
We are further concerned that the government of Israel has not sought to implement the recommendations from the 2003 Or Commission to tackle discrimination against Israel’s Arab community, or the 2008 Goldberg Commission, which recommends recognising most of the remaining unrecognised Bedouin villages. The demolition of Bedouin houses and villages continues.
‘Former Foreign Ministry director-general Alon Liel, speaking on Channel 10 Sunday, said he is a friend of Goldstone and that the retired Jewish judge “couldn’t sleep at night” because of Jewish reaction to his scathing report against Israel. “The Jewish reaction definitely influenced him to write his op-ed in The Washington Post,” Liel stated. “He added that his daughter Nicole’s reaction also had an impact on him.”‘
‘The Hamas de facto administration has completely failed to prosecute perpetrators of crimes under international law. As detailed below, Israel’s Military Advocate General has indicted four soldiers on criminal charges in three different incidents relating to the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict. Given the scale and gravity of the Israeli violations identified in the report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict headed by Justice Richard Goldstone,3 Amnesty International concludes that two years after the conflict, the Israeli authorities have also failed to prosecute suspected perpetrators of crimes under international law.’
‘But I do think that the op-ed raises questions that could easily be laid to rest were Judge Goldstone to make explicit his views on whether Israel has discharged its obligation. In the original op-ed, he wrote.
Indeed, our main recommendation was for each party to investigate, transparently and in good faith, the incidents referred to in our report. McGowan Davis has found that Israel has done this to a significant degree.
Is a “significant degree” a “sufficient degree”? According to McGowan Davis, no. According to Judge Goldstone in the Bill Moyers interview, an internal IDF investigation would not be sufficient’
In his op-ed, Goldstone wrote that Israel’s own investigations (see below) “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy”. This in particular has been seized on as an indication that a core element of the Report has been ‘retracted’.
This is misleading. The Report never claimed that Israel set out to intentionally murder civilians, but said that Cast Lead was “deliberately disproportionate” and intended “to punish, humiliate and terrorize”. Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, has been making this point on Twitter. He commented, that the “crime of indiscriminate warfare” – not “deliberate killing” – was indeed “state policy”, and that there had been “no retraction” on that part.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that there was an attempt to bar Richard Goldstone from attending his grandson’s bar mitzvah in Johannesburg. While a Jewish group in South Africa had threatened to stage a protest if Mr. Goldstone attended the event, they did not attempt to prevent him from attending the celebration. He attended the celebration without incident.
Justice Arthur Chaskalson, who served with Judge Goldstone on South Africa’s Constitutional Court, said the threats “reveal a level of bigotry and intolerance meant to shut down any diversity of opinion.”
He said he hoped his friend would reconsider — and come anyway.
Late last month the UN’s Human Rights Council, which set up the fact-finding mission, recommended that the General Assembly refer the Goldstone Report to the Security Council – the decisive stage in moving it to the International Criminal Court.
It is expected that the US, which has consistently opposed such a referral, will block the report’s progress to the ICC – further embarrassing Washington after its recent veto at the UN of a Palestinian resolution against Israeli settlements.
History shows us that rebellions armed by the United States and Britain are ethically and morally bankrupt. Have we forgotten about the Contras of Nicaragua, the Mujahedeen of Afghanistan and the Cuban dissidents of Miami? These are the ‘freedom fighters’ we support and arm to the teeth, but what happens when they kill their own people? All part of the struggle for that Great Western Democracy they have been fighting towards for so long, I suppose?
The settlement colonialism is the main reason today, usually the only one, for the opposition, sometimes bordering on hatred, that Israel arouses among much of the Western intelligentsia. It’s not the enemies of Zionism and the anti-Semites who are delegitimizing Israel, but Israel itself, with its own two hands.
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The disgraceful flight from a confrontation with the right in the Knesset will not soon be forgotten, and the center’s moral bankruptcy will be recorded as a disgrace. The greatest enemies of democracy and the sources of fascism’s strength have always been not the radical right’s independent power, but the opportunism, conformism and cowardice of the center.
“Fascist” was a title infamously hard-earned by Brown Shirts in places like Germany, Italy and Bosnia, where racial laws were passed and genocides were carried out.
Isaac Molho, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s senior adviser and top negotiator on the Palestinian channel, made a secret trip to Moscow on Wednesday and met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The purpose of the visit was to dissuade Russia from supporting the European Union’s intention to present in two weeks’ time a plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
@phbarratt There will be one state in Mandate Palestine and Israel’s grandchildren will wonder why they are a minority in an Arab state. #
@Jinjirrie Racist Australians support Israeli crimes against Palestinians as they do Australia’s crimes against Aboriginals .#
Winner of the first Israeli Apartheid Video Contest offers a comparison of South African Apartheid To Israeli Apartheid. Read the full story about the contest at Electronic Intifada.
My published (corrected as I must have still been waking up when I wrote it) comment:
‘Learn more about the non-violent call from Palestinian people for justice and rights at bdsmovement.net before casting aspersions at those who support human rights against oppression, please, Glenn.
Leading anti-apartheidists like Bishop Desmond Tutu say Israeli apartheid is far worse than that perpetrated by white South Africa. The South African Human Sciences Research Commission has identified Israel practising colonialism and the three pillars of apartheid.
While Israel continues its land theft and settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, inflicts apartheid on Palestinians and denies Palestinian Israelis full equal rights, those Australians who are in tune with Martin Luther King’s example who see injustice anywhere as a threat to justice everywhere won’t stop highlighting Israeli crimes against humanity. Australia was at the forefront of the anti-apartheid movement against white South Africa – it’s time we Australians stood up again to insist our government acts to support the principled boycott against Israel.’
There is absolutely nothing in the BDS Call by Palestinian Civil Society of 2005 that says “Israel should be just a one-state country”. In fact, the statement merely says that BDS “should be maintained until Israel meets its obligations to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination”. It also clearly states that there is no alternative but to call for such non-violent punitive measures since “all forms or international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply” with its obligations under international law.
How that could be considered an “extreme” policy or one that goes against reconciliation, peace or justice, makes the mind boggle. But that’s precisely the theatre of the absurd into which Australia has fallen.
The inspiration for that initial call came from the South African struggle against apartheid, a struggle against injustice and oppression. And in case Australians have not heard what eminent South Africans have had to say about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians through all the fog of misinformation and hysteria, it bears repeating that Archbishop Tutu, Nelson Mandela, former government minister Ronnie Kasrils, former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Professor John Dugard, former head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Willie Madisha, and also the current one, Sidumo Diamini have all said that what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is worse than anything that was done in South Africa. It is apartheid.
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BDS then is neither extreme nor likely to “strengthen the hand of extremists”. It is Israel’s and its apologists reactions to BDS that are extreme. When two women have already been subjected to virulent attacks for their support of BDS, one has to wonder how much of this smear campaign is to neutralise the Greens and how much to quash the BDS campaign for good in Australia.
There was a de facto anti-Green alliance of both major parties, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and the Australian Jewish New, a powerful alliance that ran a slanderous campaign asserting that the Greens are anti-Israel (or anti-Semitic) because they support BDS and Palestinian rights.
The anti-BDS and anti-Greens campaign in Marrickville – which reached fever pitch in the last two weeks of the election campaign – included the outrageous accusation that the Greens are “fascists” and “Nazis”. Greens billboards in the Marrickville electorate were plastered with swastikas, as well as racist and sexist abuse.
The attempt to slur those who criticise Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as fascists – or supporters of the Nazi’s attempts to wipe out the Jewish population in Eastern and Central Europe during the World War II – is a crude and desperate attempt to silence critics.
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The argument that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic is ridiculous but it is routinely used by supporters of Israel to try and silence its critics. The accusation that critics of Israel’s policy towards Palestinians ignore other human rights abuses around the world and just pick on Israel is also wrong. Anti-racists are just as outspoken about Western justifications for imperial wars, the treatment of refugees, and the treatment of Indigenous people in this country.
On the other hand, most of the people doing the smear job on the BDS campaign are not noted for speaking out against these injustices.
It is true half the nation is afraid of missiles on Ben-Gurion International Airport but the other half is even more from afraid of having Lieberman as prime minister.
Commenting on the racial laws recently enacted in Israel, Dror Edar wrote an article which was published in ‘Israel Today’ newspaper under the title “The priority is for Jews”. He said that the first priority is to preserve Jews’ rights, and not the rights of the Arab minority in Israel.
“The repeated claim that the Arabs are a minority in Israel, thus we need to preserve their right is a false one. The Jews are the majority in Israel, thankfully, but they are the minority in a threatening unstable Arabic and Islamic environment”, he said.
He added “Reserving the rights of the Arab minority in Israel can’t be at the expense of preserving the rights of the Jewish minority in the region.”
Michael Anderson: ‘the New Way Sovereignty Summit in Canberra will challenge Australia’s application for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
“Australia does not have the right to be nominated, let alone have a seat there. How can a colonial state of England have such a right? We will make every effort to lobby against Australia getting nominated.”’
