9 JUNE 2023
Quote: “Most people can focus to see if they’re looking at a bird, a car or a person. Throw in a military scope and the sharp eyes of youth and ask yourself if you would spot the difference before you pulled the trigger. So why does the IDF constantly claim they mistakenly shoot civilians? They’re either well trained, or they’re not. Take that as you will. This time they killed a 3-year-old boy in Palestine. In a car. With his father. Also shot. The father and son were minding their own business on their way to meet relatives. The boy was shot in the head, the father in the shoulder. How blinded by hatred do you have to be not to see that it’s a child? The IDF said it, “regrets harm to non-combatants and is committed to doing everything in its power to prevent such incidents”. 34 children were killed last year and 21 children so far this year.”
Comment: See Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel among world leaders for killing children”, Countercurrents, 15 June 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/apartheid-israel-among-world-leaders-for-killing-children/ .
Quote: “The Israeli-controlled US political establishment would never dare mention what happened on June 8th, 1967 when America’s most treasured ally, the ‘Jewish State’ of Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a US Navy technical research ship which was basically a spy ship, killing 34 and injured over 171 crew members including marines, US Naval personal including officers, seamen and even a civilian employee from the National Security Agency (NSA)… It was clear that Israel and the Lyndon B. Johnson regime wanted no witnesses who could have exposed Israel’s attack to the American public… Call it what you want, but it is a legitimate conspiracy fact that US President Lyndon B. Johnson and his Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara halted a rescue mission to save the remaining survivors. It seems that it was a false-flag operation to get the US to enter the conflict and support Israel at all costs against several Arab countries. A high-ranking official by the name of Admiral L. R. Geis, who was the commander of the Sixth Fleet carrier force told Lt. Commander, David Lewis of the USS Liberty that he challenged McNamara’s orders to cancel the rescue operation. It was reported that McNamara responded by saying that “President Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.”
(4). David Walsh, “Oppose the State Department’s slanders against Roger Waters!”, WSWS, 8 June 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/06/08/fzcl-j08.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “The slanders against Roger Waters are pouring down like Niagara. The musician-activist has come under attack because of his opposition to the US-led war in Ukraine, his criticism of the Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinians and his staunchly anti-establishment political views as a whole. The ruling elites through their corrupt media outlets are attempting to destroy Waters and intimidate other artists, performers and intellectuals from speaking out. This is a desperate and systematic attack on freedom of speech and artistic expression. The Biden administration weighed in on Tuesday. The US State Department asserted in an unsigned email that Waters had “a long track record of using antisemitic tropes” and that a recent concert in Germany “contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust.”
Comment: The genocidally racist US State Department, like the genocidally racist IHRA to which Australia belongs, is flagrantly holocaust-denying by ignoring (deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in brackets) the WW2 Soviet Holocaust (27 million), WW2 Polish Holocaust (6 million), WW2 Chinese Holocaust (35-40 million) and the WW2 Indian Holocaust (WW2 Bengali Holocaust; 6-7 million starved to death in 1942-1945 for strategic reasons by the British with food-denying Australian complicity) (see Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”, 2022 edition).
(5). Latest from Mondoweiss (June 7 and 8):
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/06/israels-punitive-home-demolition-policy-explained/
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/06/black-and-palestinian-liberation-forward-ever-backward-never/ .
Quote: “The Greens' new policy accuses Israel of 'practising the crime of apartheid' against Palestinians. Labor, meanwhile, is dragging its feet… The Australian Greens announced a new policy on Israel and Palestine this week and it’s already causing conniptions in the pro-Israel lobby.After the party released details about its revised position, stating that Israel is “practising the crime of apartheid” against Palestinians, both the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) and Australia-Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) issued statements accusing the Greens of anti-Semitism and extremism… This weaponisation of anti-Semitism demeans the ZFA and AIJAC, whose influence is gradually declining, but more importantly it ignores undeniable facts on the ground in Palestine… Furthermore, just this week, ostensibly every major human rights group in Israel signed a document that found Israel is committing apartheid against the Palestinian people… One of the more important aspects of the updated Greens position is its rejection of the contentious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, an attempt by pro-Israel forces in Australia and globally to frame anti-Zionism and legitimate criticism of Israeli ethno-nationalism as Jew-hatred…. The federal government must be pressured into acknowledging the failures of its current policy. Australia could again lead the world as it once did against apartheid South Africa.”
Comment. Crikey published my comment: “Dr Gideon Polya. “Excellent article by Antony Loewenstein. Previous Labor Party national conferences have passed motions that called on Labor to recognise Palestine as a state when it was in government. However the timorous Albanese Labor Government has violated an important implicit election promise by not implementing that Labor Party policy. Decent anti-racist non-Jewish Australians and Jewish Australians (such as myself) with a sole allegiance to Australia simply cannot vote 1 for a Labor Government that also violates the intent of Australian Foreign Interference laws by breaking Labor Party policy and its election promises in deference to fanatical supporters of a grossly human rights-violating and anti-democratic foreign country, Apartheid Israel (recent polling in the US found that 25% of US Jews and 38% of US Jews under 40 regard Israel as an Apartheid state).”
Quote: “Australia Palestine Advocacy Network: “The Greens are to be commended for their new policy position on Palestine and Israel” said Nasser Mashni, President of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network. “For too long Australian politics has been bogged down in the now defunct ‘two state solution paradigm’, it is well past time for Australian politics to speak to the facts on the ground. Israel is guilty of apartheid.” “Given the power imbalance between Israel and Palestinians there will only be movement towards a just peace when Israel is held accountable for its actions. This new policy is an important step in that process”, said Mr Mashni.“The Greens have really thrown down the gauntlet to the other major parties, as our polling before the 2022 election has shown Palestine is a vote winner. The Labor Party’s long overdue recognition of Palestine is one way that the Labor Party can start to get back on track.” said Mr Mashni. Since 2020 an increasing number of international and Israeli human rights organisations have joined Palestinians in describing the regime of control of Palestinians as apartheid.”
Quote: “The Australian Greens are calling upon the government to join France and the United States by taking actions against two key far-right members of the Israeli government, in a bid to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu away from further worsening the humanitarian situation for Palestinians. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli Minister for National Security, and Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister for Finance, are far-right figures who have in recent months been the subject of escalating international criticism for their role in increasing violence against Palestinians. Ben-Gvir has been convicted for terrorism and incitement related charges against Palestinians, and Smotrich has pledged to “wipe” Palestinian villages “off the map”. As a result of their aggressive anti-Palestinian actions, the pair have faced actions and strong public criticism by France, the EU, and the United States. The US State Department strongly considered refusing a visa to Smotrich, and issued a strong condemnation of Ben-Gvir. The EU has also cancelled diplomatic events over Ben-Gvir’s by attendance. Mainstream Jewish organisations have refused to meet with the pair. … This call by the Greens is underpinned by the Party’s position on upholding Justice and Human Rights in Palestine and Israel, updated across this weekend’s National Conference, reflecting months of worsening oppression against Palestinians by the Israeli government.Developed by the party in collaboration with stakeholders, the Greens’ position upholds the right of Palestinians and Israelis to peace, security and equality and to exercise self-determination as described in the UN Charter, while recognising that Israel’s ongoing colonisation of Palestinian land is rendering a two-state solution unachievable. It also reaffirms the need for action on antisemitism and Islamophobia, while also permitting the criticism of the actions of the Israeli government. The shift does not endorse the official ‘Boycott Divestment Sanctions’ movement but does back the use of targeted boycotts, divestments and sanctions that are human-rights aligned, such as the call made by Mr Bandt and Senator Steele-John today.
(4). Re the Greens, Zionists scream “anti-Semitism”.
Comment: Outstanding anti-racist Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollmann (NY University): “An all out struggle against Zionism by Jews, therefore, is also the most effective way to fight against real anti-Semitism. Furthermore, if Zionism is indeed a particularly virulent form of nationalism and, increasingly, of racism and if Israel is acting toward its captive minority in ways that resemble more and more how the Nazis treated their Jews, then we must also say so. For obvious reasons, the Zionists are very sensitive about being compared to the Nazis (not so sensitive that it has restrained them in their actions but enough to bellow "unfair" and to charge "anti-Semitism" when it happens). Yet, the facts on the ground, when not obscured by one or another Zionist rationalization, show that the Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis” (see “Jews against racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/home . )mm
(5). Khaled Mouammar, “Israel to ‘Judaize’ Galilee and Expand West Bank Settlements?”, Global Research, 6 June 2023:
Quote: “The Haaretz article (read here) shows that Israeli authorities are escalating their discrimination and segregation policies against Indigenous Christian and Muslim Palestinian citizens.Israeli authorities have been enforcing discriminatory land practices since 1948 inside Israel against its nearly 2 million Christian and Muslim Palestinian citizens who represent 21 percent of the country’s population. Christian and Muslim Palestinians citizens of Israel currently represent 53 percent of Galilee’s population and 25 percent of the Negev’s population. The Galilee and Negev regions comprise two-thirds of the land in Israel. The Haaretz article states Israeli authorities are taking major steps to further ‘Judaize’ the Galilee and the Negev by intensifying discriminatory land practices and housing policy, mainly by expanding the Admissions Committee Law so that it applies to communities with up to 1,000 households.The Israeli state directly controls 93 percent of the land in the country, including occupied East Jerusalem. A government agency, the Israel Land Authority (ILA), manages and allocates these state lands. Almost half the members of the governing body belong to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), whose explicit mandate is to develop and lease land for Jews and not any other segment of the population. The JNF owns 13 percent of Israel’s land, which the state is mandated to use “for the purpose of settling Jews.”
Comment: Donations to the JNF in anti-Arab anti-Semitic, pro-Apartheid. Zionsit-subverted, Lib-Lab Australia are tax deductible.
(6). “Important Palestine news ignored by Mainstream”, Mainstream media censorship: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/important-palestine-news-ignored-by-mainstream .
7 JUNE 2023 Gideon Polya Letter to The Australian
The Australian
Dear Editor,
The Australian (6/6) correctly reported that “Previous national conferences passed motions that called on Labor to recognise Palestine as a state when it was next in government”. However the cowardly and unprincipled Albanese Labor Government has violated an important implicit election promise by not implementing that Labor Party policy.*
Decent anti-racist non-Jewish Australians and Jewish Australians (such as myself) with a sole allegiance to Australia simply cannot vote 1 for a Labor Government that also violates the intent of Australian Foreign Interference laws by breaking Labor Party policy and its election promises in deference to fanatical supporters of a grossly human rights-violating and anti-democratic foreign country, Apartheid Israel (recent polling in the US found that 25% of US Jews and 38% of US Jews under 40 regard Israel as an Apartheid state).
Yours sincerely, Dr Gideon Polya [contact details].
5 JUNE 2023
Quote: “The Greens have adopted a new policy position on Palestine and Israel which expresses concern that Israel's "ongoing colonisation of Palestinian land" is eroding the potential for a two-state solution and states that "Israel is practising the crime of apartheid"… The updated resolution — which was backed by Greens MPs and senators and drafted in collaboration with Greens for Palestine and Jewish Greens — was formally adopted at the party's national conference on Sunday. While the Greens have long called for Australia to recognise Palestinian statehood, the party has hardened its language against Israel and urged the government to boycott meetings with far-right Israeli ministers. "The state of Israel continues to deny the right of self-determination to Palestinians and continues to dispossess them of their land," the resolution states.”
Comment: Decent people simply cannot vote 1 for Labor or the Coalition, both of which fervently support Apartheid Israel and hence the evil crime of Apartheid, and under whom Australia shamefully remains a member of the all-European, pro-nuclear weapons, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, genocide-ignoring, holocaust-ignoring, racist, pathologically mendacious and neo-Nazi IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) – the Australian Labor Government and the Coalition Opposition are haram.
Quote: “With imported sacrificial cows, ancient hymns and growing support, some nationalist Jews hope to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem's Old City, at a site at the heart of Israeli-Palestinian tensions… The compound is administered by the Waqf Islamic affairs council of Jordan, whose forces were routed from east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War… For Yizhar Beer, director of the Keshev Centre for the Protection of Democracy in Israel, these "third temple lovers" are in no way marginal. From a few dozen adherents two decades ago, their ideology has "spread to the centre of the political level -- to the parliament, to the government", Beer said. Since December, Benjamin Netanyahu has led a government alongside extreme-right ministers who advocate imposing Israeli sovereignty on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.”
Comment: (a) The Al Aqsa compound is the third holiest site in Islam for 2 billion Muslims; (b) the present day ethnic descendants of the Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestinians at the time of Jesus are the (mostly Muslim with some Christian) Indigenous Palestinians, whereas the Jewish Israelis overwhelmingly descend from Yemeni, Berber and Khazar converts to Judaism in the first millennium CE; (c) the Ashkenazi Jews who dominate Israel, Palestine and the Zionist-perverted West) are not Semitic and derive from non-Semitic, Turkic Khazar converts to usury-permitting Judaism in the 8th century CE; and (d) I come from one of Hungary’s most famous Ashkenazi Jewish families and had my DNA tested – I am 57% Ashkenazi Jewish and 24 % British Celtic but with zero (0) Semitic Middle Eastern, this being consonant with 3 centuries of recorded family history.
(3). “Nationalist Israelis plan new Jewish temple on Al-Aqsa site”, Bangkok Post, 5 June 2023: https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/2585431/nationalist-israelis-plan-new-jewish-temple-on-al-aqsa-site .
Quote: “With imported sacrificial cows, ancient hymns and growing support, some nationalist Jews hope to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem's Old City, at a site at the heart of Israeli-Palestinian tensions. In a suburb of Tel Aviv, a group of choristers were getting ready for the moment they will rejoice at the reconstruction of the Jewish temple some 2,000 years after its destruction, which they believe will accelerate the arrival of the messiah. But for others, realising their goal would massively inflame tensions around the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed Jerusalem”.
Comment: (a) the Ashkenazi Jews running neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel (and the Zionsit-perverted US) are not Semitic (see #2 above); (b) for the genocidal orders given to the Israelites by their “God” according to the genocidally racist and one hopes fictional Old Testament, see "Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide", Palestinian Genocide : https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes ; and (c) Orthodox Judaism forbids return to Zion (Jerusalem) until the Messiah arrives to declare the glory of the Lord to the whole world (e.g. see Neturei Karta in “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .)
4 JUNE 2023
Quote: Every year, Israeli security forces detain about 1,000 Palestinian children from the West Bank and another 1,000 from East Jerusalem. The children are taken from the street, their schools and even their beds. The methods used in these detentions are extremely damaging to children and youths, both physically and mentally. In fact, they’re prohibited under both Israeli law and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child [which Israel only applies to Jewish children], which Israel has signed… Two organisations – Parents Against Child Detention and PsychoActive: Mental Health Professionals for Human Rights – have obtained the signatures of 300 mental health professionals calling for an end to sweeping detentions of Palestinian children and an honouring of the right to dignity from childhood to old age for everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”
Comment: And it is not just Palestinian children - 50% of Israeli children suffer psychological, physical and sexual abuse (17% suffer the latter as compared to 25% in Australia and 17% in the US) – see Gideon Polya, “Horrendous Pro-Zionist, Zionist And Apartheid Israeli Child Abuse Exposed”, Countercurrents, 21 April 2014: https://countercurrents.org/polya210414.htm .
(2). Dr Ramzy Baroud, “A Man Without a Strategy: How Netanyahu Is Provoking Armed Intifada in the West Bank”, Countercurrents, 3 June 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/06/a-man-without-a-strategy-how-netanyahu-is-provoking-armed-intifada-in-the-west-bank/ .
Quote: After signing a military decree on May 18, allowing illegal Israeli Jewish settlers to reclaim the abandoned Homesh settlement located in the northern Occupied West Bank, the Israeli government has informed the US Biden Administration that it will not turn the area into a new settlement. The latter revelation was reported by Axios on May 23. This contradiction is hardly surprising. While Israel’s far-right ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, know precisely what they want, Netanyahu is trying to perform an impossible political act: he wants to fulfill all the wishes of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, but without veering off from the US political agenda in the Middle East, and without creating the circumstances that could eventually topple the Palestinian Authority. Moreover, Netanyahu wants to normalize with Arab governments, while continuing to colonize Palestine, expand settlements and have complete control over Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Palestinian Muslim and Christian holy shrines. Worse still, he wants, per the insistence of Ben-Gvir and his extremist religious constituency, to repopulate Homesh and create new outposts, while avoiding an all-out armed rebellion in the West Bank.”mmm
(3). Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), “Bowing to BDS pressure: G4S to divest completely from apartheid Israel”, 1 June 2023: https://bdsmovement.net/BDS-G4S-Victory .
Quote: “In a major win for human rights activism against corporate complicity, the world's largest private security company Allied Universal, which owns G4S, has decided to sell all its remaining business in apartheid Israel. This follows years of an effective #StopG4S campaign waged by the BDS movement for Palestinian rights.”
Comment: G4S was involved in Australia’s off-shore concentration camps for refugees on Nauru and Manus: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/02/australian-government-and-g4s-settle-lawsuit-by-staffer-in-manus-island-riots and was also involved in an Aboriginal elder Mr Ward being cooked to death in a prison van: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-12/g4s-in-court-over-ward-death/2836968 .
(4). More news from Mondoweiss: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/06/the-us-has-no-strategy-for-ending-the-standoff-with-iran/ ; https://mondoweiss.net/2023/06/gazas-seafood-culture-is-shifting-under-israels-blockade/ ; https://mondoweiss.net/2023/06/u-s-jews-who-are-angry-at-israel-are-endangering-its-existence-cuomo/ .
(5). Gideon Polya, “Australian MPs complicit in horrendous war crimes”, Scoop (New Zealand), 4 June 2023: https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO2306/S00025/astralian-mps-complicit-in-horrendous-war-crimes.htm .
Quote: “Australia has just witnessed the end of a lengthy and hugely expensive A$25 million (and possibly A$40 million) trial involving an Australian Afghan War Special Air Services (SAS) veteran, Ben Roberts-Smith (who had been awarded the Victoria Cross (VC) for heroism) suing major Australian media organizations for defamation over allegations of war crimes and other matters. The Federal Court judge found in favour of the media organizations. Australia has been involved in all post-1950 US Asian wars, atrocities associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation… Australian soldiers are alleged to have been involved in 39 unlawful killings in Afghanistan whereas the politicians who sent them there are complicit in the passive mass murder of 6 million Afghans, a 6 million/39 = 154,000 times worse crime. All war crimes should be properly investigated and all those responsible must held to account, including politicians for grossly violating the Fourth Geneva Convention in passive mass murder of millions of Iraqis and Afghans. Indeed these politicians should be arraigned for horrendous passive mass murder before any Australian or US Alliance soldiers are indicted for unlawful killings of individual Iraqis and Afghans.”
Quote: “On the 19th of May, 2023, I tendered my resignation from the Australian Labor Party and gave my reasons below in a letter to the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and to my local branch… At national Conferences in 2018 and 2021 the following resolution was passed:
(The Labor party) Supports the recognition and right of Israel and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognised borders;
Calls on the next Labor Government to recognise Palestine as a state; and
Expects that this issue will be an important priority for the next Labor Government.
We now have “the next Labor Government” and rather than recognition of Palestine being “an important priority” the Labor party has boycotted the important UN Nakba commemoration and at the same time has published the following congratulations to Israel for its continued existence as a “democratic nation… I know from the devastation and displacement my own family suffered that I cannot remain a member of a party who turns a blind eye to the ongoing persecution of millions of people who have a right to live in peace and freedom in the land of their ancestors.”mmm
Comment: I cannot vote 1 for Labor fior exactly the same family and humanitarian reasons – see Gideon Polya, “85 Ways Zionist Australian Labor Government Betrays Palestinian Human Rights & Humanity”, Countercurrents, 16 March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/85-ways-zionist-australian-labor-government-betrays-palestinian-human-rights-humanity/ and Gideon Polya, “Lying US & Australian Labor Governments Falsely Deny Apartheid Israeli Occupation Of Palestine”, Countercurrents, 14 April 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/04/lying-us-australian-labor-governments-falsely-deny-apartheid-israeli-occupation-of-palestine/ - “Decent Australians will act against a racist, mendacious, pro-war, pro-nuclear weapons, anti-science, climate criminal, pro-Apartheid, pro-Occupation, IHRA-supporting, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, holocaust-ignoring, genocide-ignoring, human rights-betraying and Julian Assange-betraying Australian Labor Government by rejecting both the mendacious, racist and traitorous Labor Government and the even worse Coalition Opposition at the ballot box – they will not vote 1 for either Labor or the Coalition, and will put the Coalition last and Labor second last.”
(7). “Important Palestine news ignored by Mainstream” : https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/important-palestine-news-ignored-by-mainstream .
Comment: This new website is inspired by the fundamental human ethos of Kindness and Truth- in support of Palestinian human rights it succinctly records the latest important Palestine news that is remorselessly ignored by racist and mendacious Western Mainstream journalist, editor, politician , academic and commentariat presstitutes.
1 JUNE 2023
Quote: “The publicly expressed views of the current Israeli government regarding the rights of Palestinians demand action by Australia. Not to act is to condone. Not to act is to become an accomplice. Mr. Albanese, and Ms. Wong, I don’t want to be, as an Australian citizen, an accomplice to this crime against humanity perpetrated by Israel. Please act now. I call upon you to: recognise the State of Palestine; sanction all economic contact between Australia and Australian corporations with Israel or any Israeli entity; move for sanctions against Israel in the General Assembly of the United Nations and committees of that body; and otherwise exercise Australia’s voting rights in the international fora in a manner consistent with our disgust of racism pure and simple.”
Comment: A member of the left-wing Meretz Party and a founder of the Israeli peace movement, Professor Naomi Chavan, said the key stumbling block was the Palestinian demand for the right of 4 million Palestinian refugees to return to their original family lands in Israel. "Full implementation of the Palestinian right of return eventually means the destruction of the state of Israel, and no Israeli Government can accept it" ” ( Simon Collins, “Protest forces backroom meeting with Israeli MPs”, NZ Herald, 27 August 2001: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/protest-forces-backroom-meeting-with-israeli-mps/5HAXOMIVKMJL6C42OWWPSMVCB4/?c_id=601&objectid=211508 ; see also see variously under UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, UDHR, CHAVAN and RIGHT OF RETURN in the June 2023 updated “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/home ; “2023, 75th Nakba Anniversary: Nakba (Catastrophe) & Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/1948-nakba-catastrophe-palestinian-genocide , and "Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide", Palestinian Genocide : https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes ).
30 MAY 2023: Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Age: “Former Israeli Knesset Speaker Naomi Chazan, is reported as simultaneously opining about a “crisis” in Apartheid Israel’s asserted “democracy”, and as a visitor to one-person-one-vote democracy Australia supporting the Australian Labor Government’s cowardly, dishonest and racist rejection of the official Labor Party Policy of recognizing the State of Palestine (The Age, 29/5). 7.5 million sorely oppressed Indigenous Palestinians presently represent over 50% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel (Jewish Israelis 47%) but 73% of them (the 5.5 million Occupied Palestinians) are excluded from voting for the government ruling them i.e. they are subject to egregious neo-Nazi Apartheid as in former Apartheid South Africa. Anti-racist Jewish Australians such as myself with a sole allegiance to Australia scorn such unwanted racist and anti-democracy visitors, and simply cannot vote 1 for unforgivably pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid Australian Labor or Coalition governments”.
27 MAY 2023
I have been an occasional user of Twitter and haven't posted anything for ages. However I was recently informed that for whatever reason I had been removed from Twitter. I have also discovered that a Wikipedia entry about me had been deleted. I have published literally millions of words (overwhelmingly overseas) in 9 huge books, over 100 scientific papers, and hundreds of carefully researched and referenced humanitarian articles. Nevertheless in the last dozen years for defending Palestinian human rights, Humanity, Kindness and Truth I have been rendered invisible in Australia by traitorous Mainstream gate-keepers and false Zionist defamation in the interests of nasty foreign states (the US, UK and Apartheid Israel). However I have used my Voice overseas to vigorously defend eminent Australian writers variously subject to abuse and censorship e.g. Julian Assange, Mike Carlton, Scott McIntyre, Dr Sandra Nasr, Yassmin Abdel Magied, Alan Seymour, Michelle Guthrie, Emma Alberici, Essam Al Ghalid, and Stan Grant (for details see Gideon Polya, “Censorship Of Stan Grant, Indigenous Australians & Palestinians, Julian Assange & Truth Tellers”, Countercurrents, 25 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/censorship-of-stan-grant-indigenous-australians-palestinians-julian-assange-truth-tellers/ ).
The wonderful Stan Grant has paid the price for calmly and politely speaking out about Indigenous human rights in the context of the Coronation. I have published literally millions of words (overwhelmingly overseas) in 9 huge books, over 100 scientific papers, and hundreds of carefully researched and referenced humanitarian articles. However in the last dozen years for defending the human rights of Indigenous Palestinians, Indigenous Australians and other horribly maltreated people I have been rendered invisible in Australia by Mainstream gate-keepers and false Zionist defamation in the interests of nasty foreign states (the US, UK and Apartheid Israel). Nevertheless I have used my Voice overseas to vigorously defend variously eminent Australian writers variously subject to abuse and censorship e.g. Julian Assange, Mike Carlton, Scott McIntyre, Dr Sandra Nasr, Yassmin Abdel Magied, Alan Seymour, Michelle Guthrie, Emma Alberici, Essam Al Ghalid, and now Stan Grant (for details see Gideon Polya, “Censorship Of Stan Grant, Indigenous Australians & Palestinians, Julian Assange & Truth Tellers”, Countercurrents, 25 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/censorship-of-stan-grant-indigenous-australians-palestinians-julian-assange-truth-tellers/ ). We are all obliged to defend Stan Grant, Julian Assange, and all truth tellers.
Quote: “By violently expelling approximately three-quarters of all Palestinians during the period of 1947-1949, the Zionists set the stage for a genocide of the Palestinian people. In 1967, following Israel’s victory in the 6-day war, Israel displaced an estimated additional 300,000 Palestinians. Afterward, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank treated the Palestinians as if they were not there, giving little heed to the Palestinian need for resources, homes, water, agriculture cultivation, infrastructure, and institutions. The only time Israel gives attention to the Palestinians is when they want to take something from them, harass them, or injure them. Israel still has plenty of land for population expansion and its preference to expand by stealing land from Palestinians indicates that nonchalantly making others invisible is a metaphor for making them physically extinct… Considering the prolonged suffering of the Palestinian people, almost 75 years of unendurable oppression, the genocide is superfluous. In the PBS documentary, America and the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt says, “If ‘the time to stop a Holocaust is before it happens,’ then it means you have to lay on the table the ingredients that go into it. Maybe these ingredients don’t add up to it… But if you’re seeing people assembling, in the kitchen, the same ingredients, you’ve got to say, you cannot wait until the meal is prepared.” Well, Ms. Lipstadt and the rest of the world, don’t wait, inform the authorities in the government you now inhabit to get on the ball and thwart the predicted genocide of the Palestinian people.”
Quote: “PayPal has upheld its ban on Palestinians living in the occupied territories. While Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are prohibited from using the service, Israeli settlers are allowed to use the digital payment platform. The company’s decision comes days after eleven Democratic House members called on PayPal to expand its services to Palestinians.”
26 MAY 2023
I have been an occasional user of Twitter and haven't posted anything for ages. However I was recently informed that for whatever reason I had been removed from Twitter. I have also discovered that a Wikipedia entry about me had been deleted. I have published literally millions of words (overwhelmingly overseas) in 9 huge books, over 100 scientific papers, and hundreds of carefully researched and referenced humanitarian articles. Nevertheless in the last dozen years for defending Palestinian human rights, Humanity, Kindness and Truth I have been rendered invisible in Australia by traitorous Mainstream gate-keepers and false Zionist defamation in the interests of nasty foreign states (the US, UK and Apartheid Israel). However I have used my Voice overseas to vigorously defend eminent Australian writers variously subject to abuse and censorship e.g. Julian Assange, Mike Carlton, Scott McIntyre, Dr Sandra Nasr, Yassmin Abdel Magied, Alan Seymour, Michelle Guthrie, Emma Alberici, Essam Al Ghalid, and Stan Grant (for details see Gideon Polya, “Censorship Of Stan Grant, Indigenous Australians & Palestinians, Julian Assange & Truth Tellers”, Countercurrents, 25 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/censorship-of-stan-grant-indigenous-australians-palestinians-julian-assange-truth-tellers/ ).
The wonderful Stan Grant has paid the price for calmly and politely speaking out about Indigenous human rights in the context of the Coronation. I have published literally millions of words (overwhelmingly overseas) in 9 huge books, over 100 scientific papers, and hundreds of carefully researched and referenced humanitarian articles. However in the last dozen years for defending the human rights of Indigenous Palestinians, Indigenous Australians and other horribly maltreated people I have been rendered invisible in Australia by Mainstream gate-keepers and false Zionist defamation in the interests of nasty foreign states (the US, UK and Apartheid Israel). Nevertheless I have used my Voice overseas to vigorously defend variously eminent Australian writers variously subject to abuse and censorship e.g. Julian Assange, Mike Carlton, Scott McIntyre, Dr Sandra Nasr, Yassmin Abdel Magied, Alan Seymour, Michelle Guthrie, Emma Alberici, Essam Al Ghalid, and now Stan Grant (for details see Gideon Polya, “Censorship Of Stan Grant, Indigenous Australians & Palestinians, Julian Assange & Truth Tellers”, Countercurrents, 25 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/censorship-of-stan-grant-indigenous-australians-palestinians-julian-assange-truth-tellers/ ). We are all obliged to defend Stan Grant, Julian Assange, and all truth tellers.
26 MAY 2023
Quote: “Though the United States remains a strong supporter of Israel, there are some indications that the supposed ‘unbreakable bond’ with Tel Aviv is faltering, though more in language than in deeds. Following the provocative ‘Flag March’ on May 18, which is carried out annually by Israeli Jewish extremists in the Occupied Palestinian city of East Jerusalem, the US joined other countries around the world in condemning the racism displayed at the event… And, finally, the dedication of numerous civil society organizations and the widening network of support for Palestinians throughout the US, which allowed courageous lawmakers to push for substantive change in policy. Time will tell what direction Washington will take in the future. But, considering the current evidence, support for Israel is dwindling at rates that are unprecedented.”
(3). The New Arab staff, “'Palestine must be obliterated,' says deleted Times of Israel column”, The New Arab, 22 May 2023: https://www.newarab.com/news/palestine-must-be-obliterated-says-deleted-israeli-column and Global Research, 24 May 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/palestine-must-obliterated-says-deleted-times-israel-column/5820221 .
Quote: “The Times of Israel has deleted a column calling for the obliteration of Palestine on the same day extremist nationalists marched through occupied East Jerusalem chanting “death to Arabs”. “Palestine must be obliterated,” the now deleted column read, “in order to make peace””.
(4). Hebh Jamal, “Germany’s Palestine problem” , Mondoweiss, 25 May 2023: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/05/germanys-palestine-problem/ .
Quote: “At a time when the Palestinian freedom struggle is gaining steam and spreading internationally, Germany remains a fundamentalist supporter of Israel. In September 2017, the German Federal Government endorsed the IHRA Working definition of antisemitism that subsequently conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Then two years later, in 2019, the German Bundestag voted on an anti-BDS resolution deeming all actions that support BDS as antisemitic, and forbidding Palestinian organizations and individuals seen as supporting BDS from accessing public funding and public space. Palestinian journalists have lost their jobs, academics and artists are censured, and activists face slanderous campaigns depicting them as antisemitic by the media and politicians alike. Now, however, Germany’s persistent intransigence against Palestinians has reached new levels. This month, as Palestinians around the world commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, Germany sent a message: advocating against Israel’s historic crimes can be a criminal offense. ”
21 MAY 2023: Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to the Sydney Morning Herald: “Your wonderful correspondent Antony Loewenstein is in the good company of other eminent anti-racist Jewish humanitarians in Australia and around the world who object to racist Israeli policies (Google “Jews against racist Zionism”) . Thus, for example, in 2010 numerous eminent Jewish Australians signed a letter denouncing and renouncing the racist Israeli “law of return”: “We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians”. The numerous signatories included the household names of Miriam Margolyes, Eva Cox, and internationally famed Professors Peter Singer and Dennis Altman. Indeed Australia’s first Australian Governor General Sir Isaac Isaacs (1946): ”The honour of Jews throughout the world demands the renunciation of political Zionism. PS. “Jews against racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/home .”
21 MAY 2023
(1). Mistahi Corkill, “Long live the Palestinian resistance”, Pearls & Irritations, 21 May 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/long-live-the-palestinian-resistance/ .
Quote: “A song that goes out to the courageous Palestinian people and their supporters around the world.
Balfour proclaimed in 1917 a settler state to be, A proxy base in the “middle east” – a colonial entity,
With use of force they knocked down doors, a killing spree – the rest had to flee, Dispossessed refugees, Occupied – Genocide,
Long Live the Palestinian Resistance, One day you will be free,
1948, Nakba! A day of infamy the state of Israel was declared, A Zionist scheme built on tyranny, Backed by U.S. Imperialists,
A reign of state terror, expansion everywhere, Crimes against humanity, The Palestinians’ right to be, No justice – No peace,
Long Live the Palestinian Resistance, One day you will be free,
Gaza – West Bank – Al Quds, under siege, The whole world sees the atrocities, Stand up demand the right of Palestinians to return and to be free,
This has gone on far too long this struggle must be fought and won, This struggle must be fought and won, Palestine will not be denied,
Long Live the Palestinian Resistance, One day you will be free”.
“The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is one of the regions that is most vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change, yet the potential public health impacts have been underexplored compared to other regions… Figure 2 Annual total projections of heat-related mortality risk in each country for the four CMIP6 SSP pathways over the period 2001–2100…
By the end of this century, MENA could experience 123·4 annual heat-related deaths per 100 000 people under a high-emissions scenario (SSP5-8·5), but this death rate would be reduced by more than 80% if global warming is limited to 2°C (ie, the SSP1-2·6 scenario). Iran currently has the highest heat-related death rate and will experience the greatest impacts between 2021 and 2100. Rates will also be high in Palestine, Iraq, and Israel, but the smaller Arab countries in the Persian Gulf (Qatar, Oman, and the UAE) will experience the greatest percentage increases in heat-related mortality rates relative to their current rates despite their prosperity in relation to other MENA countries. Notably, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE are projected to have high future mortality burdens even though the corresponding heat coefficient was the smallest. Much of this increase will be driven by population changes, and so demographic policies and healthy ageing will be key to successful adaptation. Although there was some variation in projected impacts across the different climate models, overall patterns were consistent. Egypt currently has the highest absolute number of heat-related deaths in MENA, with an estimated annual burden of almost 2600 deaths. In general, however, the current overall annual heat-related death rate for MENA of 2·1 per 100 000 people is low compared to other regions, probably reflecting its relatively young population and existing adaptation strategies, including behavioural adjustments during hot weather. In settings with good epidemiological data, current annual heat-related death rates are estimated at 17 per 100 000 population in western Europe, ten per 100 000 in Australasia, and six per 100 000 in North America.”
Comment: Impoverished Occupied Palestine (per capita GDP $3,500; much lower proportion of at-risk elderly but very few air conditioners) is only about 20% worse than rich Apartheid Israel (per capita GDP $55,500; much higher proportion of at-risk elderly but lots of air conditioners). In 2100, assuming a population of 15 million, about 200,000 Occupied Palestinians will be dying from heat stress each year in the worst emissions scenario. For the rapidly escalating warming threat see Gideon Polya, “WMO Warning: 1.5 Degree C Warming Breach Very Soon & With Increasing Frequency. Act Now!”, Countercurrents, 19 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/wmo-warning-1-5-degree-c-warming-breach-very-soon-with-increasing-frequency-act-now/ (#1 in the world if you Google “WMO warning”). Palestinian lives matter.
21 MAY 2023
(1). Professor Stuart Rees MA (Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney, recipient of the Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize, present at the Melbourne Nakba rally), “Gun slaughter of Americans and Palestinians”, 20 May 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/gun-slaughter-of-americans-and-palestinians/ .
Quote: “Despite the horrors of conflicts around the globe, the United States and Israel compete for headlines about their latest killing sprees. These close allies have cultivated cultures of violence, have aided one another with weapons, with military mindsets, with a fascination with violence as the way to solve problems and eliminate opponents. Figures show the extent of bloodbaths but obscure the fear, hatred and anger which ensure that across America and within Israel/Palestine, revenge, cruelty and violence continue… Gun slaughter in the US occurs daily. The first four months of this year have seen a record of over 200 mass shootings – four or more killed in one go… In the first quarter of 2023, more than 90 Palestinians have been killed, four times as many as in the same period in 2022. The principled Palestinian leader Dr. Hanan Ashrawi sends a tweeted message, ‘Constant air strikes, deafening explosions, targeted assassinations, collateral damage of women and children, Gaza plunged into darkness, under siege with two million people held hostage to Israel’s death machine’. Common ground in US and Israeli political cultures sees hypocrisy in claims about democracy but without the pathology being acknowledged.”
(2). World Beyond War, “See 867 US Military Bases on New Online Tool. Interactive Map”, Global Research, 18 May 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/see-867-us-military-bases-on-new-online-tool/5819619 .
Quote: “World BEYOND War has launched a new online tool at worldbeyondwar.org/no-bases that allows the user to view a globe pock-marked with 867 U.S. military bases in countries other than the United States, and to zoom in for a satellite view of and detailed information on each base. The tool also allows filtering the map or list of bases by country, government type, opening date, number of personnel, or acres of land occupied… [6 results for Israel and 16 results for Australia]”
(3). WorldBeyondWar.org, “USA’s Military Empire: A Visual Database”: https://worldbeyondwar.org/no-bases/ .
Quote: “[clickable graphic reveals 5 US bases in Israel]… Personnel (estimated) in Israel: 127
Government Type: Flawed democracy
Opening Date: 1990
Sources: Vine, 2020
Notes: The United States has prepositioned munitions, vehicles and other military equipment for US Marines, Special Forces, and Air Force aircraft, including an estimated $500 million worth of ammunition the United States keeps in Israel for wartime contingencies. At least six sites in Israel are used for storage, including at least three locations called Sites 51, 53, and 54. The specific locations are classified and highly sensitive… 16 results for Australia”.
(4). Lots more on Mondoweiss 18-19 May 2023 re the Apartheid Israeli Flag March, Apartheid, Nakba: https://mondoweiss.net/ , https://mondoweiss.net/2023/05/the-annual-flag-march-is-a-sign-of-israeli-weakness-and-colonial-insecurity/ , https://mondoweiss.net/2023/05/us-press-distorts-or-ignores-violent-jewish-supremacist-flag-march-in-jerusalem/ , https://mondoweiss.net/2023/05/palestinian-flag-march-tells-occupation-gaza-will-not-be-defeated/ , https://mondoweiss.net/2023/05/the-shift-it-looks-like-apartheid-to-me/, and https://mondoweiss.net/2023/05/the-nakba-was-not-an-event/
19 MAY 2023
(1). Jafar Ramini, “The march of death”, Pearls & Irritations, 19 May 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/the-march-of-death/ .
Quote: “Religious fanatics, waving the Israeli flag, chanting ‘Death to all Arabs’ and ‘Your Second Nakba Is Coming’. Last year a new curse was added, “May Your Village Burn” and, of course, the usual cry repeated over and over, “Kill Them All”… Seventy-five years ago those atheist Zionists, under the banner of their Jewish King David committed one of the most horrific crimes in history when they carried out a murderous assault on my country and my people. The result of which was tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, 750,000 Palestinians forcibly exiled and 78% of the historic land of Palestine stolen. In the process of that carnage and theft, 550 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed and buried without trace. The Jewish hero of the 1967 war, General Moshe Dayan, described the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, clearly and succinctly. “Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages…There is no one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”
Comment: For an alphabetically organized compendium of horrifying, genocidally racist Zionist quotations that would violate Australian Law if uttered here see "Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide": https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes .
Quote: “Occupied East Jerusalem – Hundreds of Palestinian stores in the Old City of Jerusalem have been forced to shut their doors ahead of an annual Israeli far-right march, which has witnessed violence in the past. The event, which will take place on Thursday afternoon to mark the capture of East Jerusalem in 1967, is known as the “flag march” and is notorious for scenes of Israelis chanting racist slogans such as “Death to Arabs” and harassing Palestinians as they parade through the Old City. The eastern half of Jerusalem houses the Old City, which was illegally occupied and annexed by Israel in 1967. It is where the vast majority of the Palestinian population in Jerusalem live after they were expelled from the western half during the “Nakba” or catastrophe in 1948. On Thursday, thousands of Israeli police and paramilitary officers were deployed in the Old City from the early morning hours… Dozens of roads from Palestinian neighbourhoods leading to the Old City are shut off to vehicles, creating heavy traffic, with residents made to wait for hours, if they are allowed to pass at all. Even those living inside the Old City are prevented from accessing their homes or moving around in the area.”
Quote: “Armed hostilities between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza Strip continued for the fourth consecutive day, resulting in further casualties and damage. Up to 17:00 on 12 May, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) had verified 32 Palestinian fatalities, including at least 13 civilians, five members of armed groups, and 14 whose status is yet to be confirmed. Among the thirteen civilians were four girls, three boys, four women and two men. Up to 17:00 on 12 May, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, 106 Palestinians were injured, including 36 children and 21 women. Up to 17:00 on 12 May, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) had verified one Israeli woman fatality… Israeli airstrikes and shelling have hit houses and apartment buildings. In some of these properties, residents report receiving warning calls from members of Israeli forces. The hostilities have also led to internal displacement. A total of 73 families, comprising 417 people, have been internally displaced, mostly due to the destruction of their homes.”
Quote: “Two New York lawmakers have introduced legislation that would block local charities from funding illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. State assembly member Zohran Mamdani (Queens) and State Senator Jabari Brisport’s (Brooklyn) Not on our dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence Act would amend New York’s not-for-profit corporation law and establish a civil penalty for nonprofits that helped fund settlements in violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949… “Despite the clear illegality of this pattern of conduct, which has led to the expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians from their land (often in a violent manner), this practice has continued,” reads the bill. “Moreover, these illegal settlement activities have been funded by organizations here in New York State. In fact, between 2017 and 2019 alone, organizations that are known to primarily fund illegal settler activities fundraised over $144 million in New York State.. In short, New York State is effectively subsidizing illegal activity abroad, and has been complicit in violent dislocations of Palestinian people.””
Quote: “It’s quiet now in Gaza after five terrifying days of Israeli bombardment between May 9 to May 13, which killed 33 people, including six children. As the aftermath of the assault sets in, people who have been locked in their homes for the better part of a week are eager to walk freely outdoors. Crowds spill into the streets and observe the spectacle of destruction wrought by the Israeli airstrikes. Families will take their kids to the few free parks that can be found in Gaza, and maybe if they can, they will buy them a shawarma sandwich to try and relieve the pressures of war. A total of 2,041 houses across the Gaza Strip were damaged during the airstrikes, while 31 buildings were completely destroyed, 93 families were made homeless, and 128 homes became uninhabitable, according to a report by the government media office. ”
18 MAY 2023
(3). Ayman Mohyeldin (MSNBC journalist interviewing Palestinian American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib , “Rashida Tlaib on the GOP’s efforts to rewrite Palestinian history”, YouTube 14 May 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eT4AsHcHJI .
Quote: “Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was planning to host an event at the Capitol to mark the 75th anniversary of the “Nakba”, otherwise known as the Palestinian Catastrophe. That is until House Speaker Kevin McCarthy canceled it. MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin speaks to Congresswoman Tlaib on the GOP’s efforts to silence her and rewrite Palestinian history.”
Quote: “Around the time that Israelis celebrate Independence Day, Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or “the Catastrophe.” The Nakba was a series of events, centered around 1948, that expelled hundreds of thousands Palestinians from their homeland and killed thousands. The Nakba isn’t the beginning of the story, but it’s a key part of Palestinian history — and the root of Israel’s creation. Prior to the Nakba, Palestine had a thriving population — largely made up of Arabs — who had lived and worked the land for centuries. But with the founding of Zionism, years of British meddling, and a British pledge to help create a Jewish state in Palestine, things began to change drastically. By 1947, with increasing tensions between Jewish settlers and Palestinian Arabs, the British left Palestine, and the UN stepped in with a plan to partition the land into two states. What followed was known as Plan Dalet: operations by Israeli paramilitary groups that violently uprooted Palestinians. An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, more than 500 villages were decimated, and roughly 750,000 Palestinians displaced. Most who were expelled from their homes couldn’t return to historic Palestine. And today, millions of their descendants live in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, and surrounding countries. The history of the Nakba has been deliberately concealed and often ignored in Western narratives around the creation of Israel.”
Quote: “[Photo: ] The people of Bayt Nabala collecting olives from the ancient groves that dot the hills around their village. This image has been generated using an artificial intelligence tool [Al Jazeera/Midjourney]… More than 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted from their land and thousands were killed at the creation of Israel in 1948. Left behind were the ruins of 530 villages and towns destroyed by Zionist militias and the Israeli army. Seventy-five years later, Al Jazeera recreates one of those villages, Bayt Nabala, and all that was lost, based on memories of survivors and their descendants, artificial intelligence-generated representations and documented history… Today, Bayt Nabala is virtually unrecognisable except to those who were intimately familiar with the village. As its residents fled eastwards during the Nakba, plans were under way to demolish their homes. On September 13, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, made a formal request for the destruction of Bayt Nabala to the Ministerial Committee on Abandoned Property, an arm of the state that methodically aided the confiscation of Palestinian lands for Israeli use. By the end of that same month, almost every building in the village had been reduced to rubble… The park [Shoham Forest Park on the remains of Bayt Nabala] is run by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an organisation that has a history of forcibly evicting Palestinians from their lands and repurposing them for Israeli settlement. Shoham is one of 46 parks built on 372 Palestinian villages since 1948.On the remains of Bayt Nabala’s orchards, which were levelled during the Nakba, the JNF has grown new olive and almond trees. Visitors are invited to explore parts of the park, marked out with welcoming names like “The Orchards Path”, but there is nothing to acknowledge that Palestinian hands once tended these orchards. After Bayt Nabala was razed to the ground, the land at its southwestern end was used to build a moshav – a cooperative agricultural community pioneered by the Labour Zionists at the turn of the century – called Beit Nehemia. It is currently home to more than 890 people. On a weekday, the streets of the moshav are quiet, while the playground is empty. Israeli flags are festooned at the entrance of many homes.”
Comment: In pro-Apartheid Israel and hence fervently pro-Nazi Apartheid Australia under the Zionist-subverted, US lackey Australian Labor Government, donations to the Jewish National Fund (JNF) are tax deductible : https://www.abr.business.gov.au/ABN/View/18614066527 . While Australian state schools are grossly under-funded, the Australian Labor Government with fervent Coalition Opposition support commits about A$100 million annually to Zionist schools involved in attempted brainwashing of innocent children about the morality and indeed moral obligation of invading, devastating and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the homeland for millennia of the Indigenous Palestinians – egregious intellectual child abuse.
Quote: Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by the same Israeli bullets directed against her fellow Palestinians. Those bullets have continued to fly, and the Israeli war machine has taken the lives of nearly 300 Palestinians in the past year. Shireen's was one of them… “Israel was established on the mere principle of ethnically cleansing Palestinians, including journalists,” Eid [Yara Eid, 23, a Palestinian human rights advocate and reporter] explained to Mondoweiss. “They’re really threatened by journalists,” Eid continued. “They always had the intention to attack Palestinian journalists,” she said. “And that’s because they’re threatened by the other narrative, they’re threatened by the narrative Palestinians show.” The fact that Abu Akleh was wearing her PRESS vest is what appalled the international community in Israel’s targeted shooting at non-combatants. The fact that not even those words emblazoned across her chest could save her is what horrified Palestinians. Because, at the end of the day, she was a Palestinian first”.
Comment: See Gideon Polya, “Remember Shireen Abu Akleh: Apartheid Israel Leads The World For Killing Journalists”, Countercurrents, 6 June 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/remember-shireen-abu-akleh-apartheid-israel-leads-the-world-for-killing-journalists/ .
(2). Philip Giraldi, “Is the United States Moving Its Capital to Jerusalem?”, Global Research, 16 May 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/united-states-moving-capital-jerusalem/5819356 .
Quote: “It would seem that American politicians and media think that the entire world should rightly conform to the marching orders emanating from Washington, even though that pretense has become a bit shopworn after more than twenty years of pointless wars initiated and sustained by a serious of clueless presidents and Congress. Increasingly, the international community is looking for a way out of the tight embrace offered by the White House, a growing sense that a multipolar world would be much better than “rule of law” dictated by any self-proclaimed superpower. Recently there have been indications that rather than Washington being the center of the universe that title should rightly belong to Jerusalem as an extremist-led Israel has demonstrated its power over the self-anointed idiots who fancy themselves to be the “leaders” of the United States of America… Clearly, for the vast majority of politicians in Washington and even at the states level, allegiance and subservience to Israel and its interests are more important than protecting constitutional rights or managing a sane and responsible foreign policy. One wonders whether Ron DeSantis, if elected president in 2024, just might hold his inauguration in Jerusalem, just as he did when he became governor. It would actually be something of a relief – at last the ultimate acknowledgement of who is really in charge back here in America. ”
Comment: See Gideon Polya, “Zionist-subverted America: Jewish Zionists Are One Third Of The Biden Cabinet”, Countercurrents, 27 January 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2022/01/zionist-subverted-america-jewish-zionists-are-one-third-of-the-biden-cabinet/ .
(3). Rayhan Uddin, “Nakba: Britain and the Secret 1948 Palestine Memos”, Global Research, 16 May 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/nakba-britain-secret-1948-palestine-memos/5819405 .
Quote: “Classified cables found by MEE reveal that the UK knew of mass killings and displacement of Palestinians in May 1948, but downplayed them and refused to intervene… It’s late April 1948, in Haifa, northern Palestine.After more than 25 years, British officers are leaving their “mandate” over the territory and have set a withdrawal date: 15 May. The exit is not going smoothly. Ethnic cleansing and violent atrocities are taking place across areas Britain is about to vacate. Zionist armed groups, allowed to flourish in Palestine by the British over three decades and subsequently trained and armed by the colonial power, are sweeping across Palestinian towns and villages, forcibly displacing residents from house to house. Palestinians put up some resistance, helped by nominal forces from neighbouring countries, but are vastly outnumbered and under-equipped. Britain states that it is remaining neutral… But 15 May 1948 would not just be remembered as the day that Britain left Palestine. It was also the day that the State of Israel was declared, and the date generations of Palestinians continue to mark as the Nakba – or Catastrophe – 75 years later.At least 13,000 Palestinians were killed and hundreds of villages were destroyed. In the end, 750,000 people were forcibly displaced from their homes. More than 6,000 Israeli Jews, including 4,000 soldiers and 2,000 civilians, were killed. Previously classified diplomatic cables, seen by Middle East Eye at the National Archives in London, show that Britain was well aware of mass killings and displacement, in Haifa and beyond, during the final days of its Mandate. But London would play down the scale of the events, refuse to intervene or allow others to do so, and would eventually label Palestinians and their allies as masters of their own downfall.”
Comment: For a comprehensive, alphabetically-organized compendium of Nakba links, facts, figures, images, testimonies, books, art, poetry, articles, analyses, expert opinions etc see “2023, 75th Nakba Anniversary: 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) & Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/1948-nakba-catastrophe-palestinian-genocide and Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/home .
Quote: “For the first time in history, the United Nations is officially commemorating the Nakba, the annual Palestinian commemoration of their mass displacement during the establishment of Israeli. The international body is marking the 75th anniversary of the displacement on Monday to "serve as a reminder of the historic injustice suffered by the Palestinian people" and to spotlight the ongoing refugee crisis, organizers said. For decades, the Nakba had not garnered universal international recognition, as countering narratives have downplayed the plight of Palestinians. Resistance remains: The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom [and Australia] were among 30 countries that voted against the U.N. resolution to adopt this year's commemoration. Israeli officials, meanwhile, are urging U.N. member states to boycott the event.”
(5). Palestinian Chronicle, “For First Time in History, UN Commemorates Palestinian Nakba”, 15 May 2023: https://www.palestinechronicle.com/for-first-time-in-history-un-commemorates-palestinian-nakba/ .
Quote: “For the first time in its history, the United Nations General Assembly is commemorating the Palestine Nakba on Monday. “This year marks the 75th anniversary of the mass displacement of Palestinians known as ‘the Nakba’ or ‘the Catastrophe,'” the UN said in a statement posted on its official website. “The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba at UN Headquarters in New York,” the statement stated, noting this is the first in the history of the international body… A Special Commemorative Event will be held in the General Assembly Hall in the evening from 6 pm to 8 pm New York time.”
(6). Mustafa Barghouti, “A just and democratic society that benefits all: that’s what Palestinians are fighting for”, The Guardian, 16 May 2023: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/15/nakba-democratic-society-palestinians-mustafa-barghouti .
Quote: “We can’t change the past. On the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, we strive for a single state where all citizens have equal rights… For us Palestinians, 15 May marks the 75th anniversary of the Nakba (the “catastrophe” of 1948), during which about 70% of the Palestinian population was forcibly displaced and more than 500 communities were wiped out completely, in addition to the massacres committed by Zionist militias. The Nakba of 1948 marked the destruction of the indigenous Palestinian population’s way of life and the establishment of the state of Israel. In the 1967 war, another important turning point, Israel occupied the remaining 22% of historic Palestine. Yet, in successfully gaining control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel inadvertently unified Palestinians who joined a common struggle for freedom, self-determination, and the right of return to the lands that so many had been violently forced to flee. Certain Israeli leaders even warned of the consequences of maintaining the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The illegal Israeli occupation gradually transformed into a system of apartheid. According to Ronnie Kasrils, who was one of the Jewish leaders of the anti-apartheid struggle and a member of Nelson Mandela’s government, Israeli apartheid in Palestine is even worse than the apartheid that used to exist in South Africa.”
(7). Al Jazeera, “Palestine’s Abbas calls on UN to ‘suspend’ Israel as Nakba marked”, 16 May 2023: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/16/palestines-abbas-calls-on-un-to-suspend-israel-as-nakba-marked .
Quote: “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas insists that Israel must respect UN resolutions on Palestine or cease as a UN member… Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has urged the United Nations to suspend Israel’s membership in the world body unless it ends its aggression against Palestinians and implements UN resolutions establishing separate Israeli and Palestinian states as well as the return of Palestinian refugees.Abbas spoke on Monday during the first official UN commemoration of the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from what is now Israel amid the violence of the partition of Palestine 75 years ago. In an hourlong emotion-filled speech, Abbas asked the world’s nations why more than 1,000 resolutions adopted by UN bodies regarding the Palestinians had never been implemented.He held up a letter from Israel’s foreign minister, Moshe Sharett, after resolutions were adopted in 1947 and 1948 promising to implement them and said: “Either they do respect these obligations, or they stop becoming a member. “We demand today officially, in accordance with international law and international resolutions, to make sure that Israel respects these resolutions or suspend Israel’s membership of the UN,” Abbas said in his speech.”
(8).Dalia Hatuqa “The Nakba: Five Palestinian towns massacred 75 years ago”, Al Jazeera, 15 May 2023: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/15/the-nakba-five-palestinian-towns-massacred-75-years-ago .
Quote: “Every year on May 15, Palestinians mark a sombre occasion: the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic) that befell Palestinians in the lead-up to and during 1948, when they were expelled from their historic and ancestral land by Zionist militias.During the Nakba, a mass expulsion ensued where hundreds of villages [530] were depopulated, homes were destroyed, and thousands were killed. Jewish Irgun, Haganah and Stern Gang militias committed a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres. Here are five of the massacres that took place [deaths in brackets] : Balad al-Sheikh [60-70]… Saasaa [tens]… Deir Yassin [>110]… Saliha [60-94 in a mosque]… Lydda (Lydd/Lod) [200]”.mmm
(9).UK Parliament, “75th anniversary of the Nakba”, 11 May 2023: https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/60885/75th-anniversary-of-the-nakba .
Quote: “Motion text [9 signatures] That this House notes that Monday 15 May 2023 marks 75 years since 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from Palestine in what is now known as the Nakba; notes that there are now over five and a half million Palestinian refugees worldwide and supports these refugees' rights in line with international law; affirms the need for the Government to continue to fund UNRWA' which carries out important work with and for Palestinian refugees; further recalls the 800,000 Jews who fled or were expelled from Arab states from 1948 onwards; further notes the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza by the Israeli authorities; calls on the Government to immediately recognise an independent Palestinian state which will help breathe new life into the peace process; and urges the Government to continue to pursue a two-state solution and a lasting peace in the region””.
(10). Samidoun (Palestinian prisoner solidarity network), “Berlin bans Nakba demonstrations once again in 2023”, 12 May 2023: https://samidoun.net/2023/05/berlin-bans-nakba-demonstrations-once-again-in-2023/ .
Quote: “The German state intensifies its attack and bans demonstrations on Nakba Day 2023. A statement from the Revolutionary Solidarity Coalition: “The German state authorities are escalating their attack on all Palestinians, Arabs and supporters of the Palestinian cause in Germany, with the Berlin police’s banning of this year’s demonstration in Berlin to mark the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, scheduled for Sunday, 14 May 2023. This repressive attack is taking place as Israeli fighter jets bomb the besieged Gaza Strip, killing 33 Palestinians to date, including 6 children and 3 women. More than 100 people have been injured in the aerial bombing and hundreds of people were denied emergency medical care due to siege and enforced border closures. The number of martyrs in Palestine has risen to 147 since the beginning of the year.Around 80,000 Palestinians live in Berlin. Despite having lived in Germany for many years, many of them do not have a secure residence status and are often precariously employed and exposed to discrimination and harassment by the state””.
(11). Jennifer Holleis, “What is the Palestinian Nakba and why does it matter?” Deutsche Welle, 15 May 2023: https://www.dw.com/en/what-is-the-palestinian-nakba-and-why-does-it-matter/a-65539735 .
Quote: “On May 15, Palestinians around the world commemorate 75 years of having lost their homeland. What is the Nakba, how does it tie into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and why is it still relevant today?... The Arabic word Nakba means catastrophe or disaster. In reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , the term Nakba or al-Nakba refers to the Palestinians having lost their homeland during and after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It's thought that around 700,000 people in what is now Israel either fled or were forced from their homes. Many Palestinian refugees abroad [7 million] remain stateless to this day.”
(12). Armani Syed, “Why the U.N. Is Commemorating Palestinian Displacement This Year”, Time Magazine, 15 May 2023: https://time.com/6279800/united-nations-nakba-palestinians/ .
Quote: “For the first time ever, the U.N. will commemorate the Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, in which at least 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forcibly expelled from their homes during the creation of Israel in 1948. On May 15, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will deliver a keynote speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, as part of a high-level special meeting to mark Nakba Day. In a statement outlining the event, the U.N. said the occasion aims to “highlight that the noble goals of justice and peace require recognizing the reality and history of the Palestinian people’s plight and ensuring the fulfillment of their inalienable rights.”As the 75th anniversary of the Nakba approached, the 193-member General Assembly voted in November on whether to host a commemoration event; the plan was approved by a vote of 90-30 with 47 abstentions. The U.S., a longtime military and financial supporter of Israel, voted against the event and confirmed that no American diplomats would be present.” mmm
(13). Relief Web, “Israeli Apartheid - The Legacy of the Ongoing Nakba at 75 [EN/AR]”, 16 May 2023: https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/israeli-apartheid-legacy-ongoing-nakba-75-enar .
Quote: “Seventy-five years have passed since the Palestinian people were ethnically cleansed and forcibly expelled from their homes, lands, and property in their ancestral land during the 1948 Nakba (meaning ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic). Palestinian society was decimated during the Nakba, 531 Palestinian villages were destroyed, and more than 70 massacres were carried out against innocent civilians, killing more than 15 thousand Palestinians between 1947 and 1949. The legacy of the Nakba events is that about two-thirds of the Palestinian people became refugees in and around 1948 and a quarter of those who remained within historic Palestine geography were internally displaced and denied their right to return to their villages, towns, and cities of origin ever since. Since 1948, Israel established a regime of racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people primarily in the domains of nationality and land. In the immediate aftermath of the Nakba, Israel adopted a series of laws, policies, and practices, which sealed the dispossession of the indigenous Palestinian people, systematically denying the return of Palestinian refugees and other Palestinians who were abroad at the time of the war. At the same time, Israel imposed a system of institutionalized racial discrimination over Palestinians who remained on the land, many of whom had been internally displaced. Such Israeli laws have constituted the legal architecture of the Israeli apartheid that continue to be imposed on the Palestinian people today.”
(14). Middle East Eye, “Nakba: Thousands march in London to mark Palestinian mass displacement”, 14 May 2023: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/nakba-thousands-march-london-mark-palestine-displacement .
Quote: “Thousands of people marched in London on Saturday commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, which refers to the mass forced expulsion of Palestinians by Zionist militias to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948. The demonstration, titled "Nakba 75 – End Apartheid, End the Occupation", gathered in the heart of London outside the BBC headquarters before participants made their way to Downing Street, where the office of the British prime minister is located. "The Nakba was not just a singular event, today we are still living the effect of the Nakba," Leanne Mohammed, a British Palestinian activist attending the rally, told Middle East Eye. "Seventy-five years ago my family was expelled from their home in Haifa, Palestine, by Zionist militias. They ended up as refugees in Lebanon. Three-quarters of a century later they are still living in that same refugee camp," she said.”
(15). Xinhua [China], “Palestinians mark 75th anniversary of Nakba”, 16 May 2023: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202305/1290777.shtml .
Quote: “Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip marked the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba day, or the day of "catastrophe," on Monday with large-scale rallies and demonstrations. The Nakba Day is observed annually on May 15 by Palestinians to remember the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes after the establishment of Israel in 1948. In Gaza, dozens of Palestinians took to the streets, marching through the main thoroughfares, hoisting Palestinian flags, and displaying banners emphasizing the right of return.The demonstration culminated at the headquarters of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process in the western part of the city.”
(16). Daniel Boguslaw, “Rep. Rashida Tlaib Asks Congress to Condemn “Israel’s Ongoing Nakba” Against Palestine”, The Intercept, 10 May 2023: https://theintercept.com/2023/05/10/israel-palestine-rashida-tlaib-resolution/ .
Quote: “A Israeli bombs ripped through residential buildings in the Gaza Strip, Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a resolution calling on Congress to recognize “the ongoing Nakba and Palestinian refugees rights.” Tlaib’s resolution comes ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe” that is widely used to describe the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes through violent raids in 1948. The resolution asks Congress to “condemn all manifestations of Israel’s ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people, including Israel’s illegal theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; Israel’s displacement of Palestinians by destroying their homes and forcing them from their land; and the daily brutality and violence inflicted by the Israeli military and Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians.”In addition to memorializing the Nakba, Tlaib’s resolution calls for a prohibition on U.S. weapons being used to destroy Palestinian homes and land, and a ban on diplomatic buildings being constructed on land expropriated from Palestinians by Israel. The resolution will be co-sponsored by Reps. Betty McCollum, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush, all of whom signed onto a version that Tlaib introduced last year. Both versions of the resolution recount the history of the mass expulsion that led to millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring countries like Jordan.”
(17). Farnaz Fassihi and Hiba Yazbek, “In First, Palestinian Displacement Commemorated at United Nations”, New York Times, 15 May 2023: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/world/middleeast/palestine-displacement-israel-un.html .
Quote: The United Nations for the first time on Monday officially commemorated the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the war surrounding the creation of Israel 75 years ago, drawing a sharp response from the Israeli ambassador to the world body.The event — marking the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” by Palestinians — was attended by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas; many member states from Asia, Africa, Central and South America and the Middle East; and representatives of the African Union and the Arab League, who delivered speeches. The United States and Britain did not attend.“This resolution represents a recognition by your organizations of the ongoing historic injustice that fell on the Palestinian people in 1948 and before that date, and that continues after,” Mr. Abbas said. He added that it was also a rebuttal “for the first time by you of the Israeli Zionist narrative that denies this Nakba.” The event was the latest arena for a decades-long narrative battle between Israelis and Palestinians. To Israelis, the creation of their state was a heroic moment for a long-persecuted people that deserves celebration. But to Palestinians, it was a moment of profound national trauma.The United Nations General Assembly, composed of 193 member states, has often been sympathetic to Palestinians. Its commemoration on Monday came at a tense period in Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where violence has surged this year. While Palestinians celebrated the U.N. action as validation, the Israelis saw it as an attack on their state. Mr. Abbas called for the suspension of Israel’s membership from the United Nations, saying that the Jewish state never “fulfilled nor respected its obligations and commitments” as a prerequisite to its membership, and had violated resolutions.”
(18), Daily Sabah, “United Nations commemorates Palestinian Nakba in historic first”. 15 May 2023: https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/united-nations-commemorates-palestinian-nakba-in-historic-first .
Quote:” For the first time Monday, the United Nations officially commemorated the Nakba that marks the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from what is now Israel on the 75th anniversary of their exodus. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is headlining Monday's U.N. commemoration of what Palestinians call the "Nakba" or "catastrophe," an action stemming from the U.N.'s partition of British-ruled Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, called the U.N. observance "historic" and significant because the General Assembly played a key role in the partition of Palestine. "It's acknowledging the responsibility of the U.N. of not being able to resolve this catastrophe for the Palestinian people for 75 years," Mansour told a group of U.N. reporters recently. He said that the catastrophe of the Palestinian people is still ongoing since they still don't have an independent state and don't have the right to return to their homes as called for in a General Assembly resolution adopted in December 1948.”
(19). Teheran Times, 15 May 2023: https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/484696/UN-to-mark-75th-anniversary-of-Nakba .
Quote: “On May 15, 2023, the United Nations will stage a high-level special meeting to observe the 75th anniversary of the Nakba – the mass displacement of around 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland in 1948.It is the first time that the international body is marking the date, which organizers said serves “as a reminder of the historic injustice suffered by the Palestinian people.” Certain countries, including Britain that helped create Israel and the U.S. that has been blindly supporting this artificial regime, have opposed the move.”
(20). The Wire “Nakba: nationwide rallies to mark 75 years of Palestinian resistance”, 11 May 2023: https://www.thewire.org.au/day/thursday-11-may-2023/ .
Quote: “This coming Monday, 15 May, sees the 75th anniversary of Palestine’s Nakba – the start of Palestinians’ continued violent dispossession”.
(21). BBC, “Why Nakba is the Palestinians' most sombre day, in 100 and 300 words”, 15 may 2023: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-44114385 .
Quote: “On 14 May 1948, Israel declared independence, and in a war which began the next day, up to 750,000 Palestinians who had lived on that land fled or were expelled from their homes. Neither they nor their descendants have been allowed by Israel to return. The Palestinians' displacement has led to years of upheaval. There are around five million Palestinians currently recognised as refugees by the UN. Most live in Jordan, followed by the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and East Jerusalem. Palestinian territories: Timeline of key events . Returning to their former homes is a key Palestinian demand, but Israel says it would be overwhelmed.”
(22). Dawn, “”The long Nakba”, 15 May 2023: https://www.dawn.com/news/1753266/the-long-nakba .
Quote: “This year, Israel celebrates 75 years as a nation state. But for the Palestinian people, there is little to celebrate as the Nakba — catastrophe in Arabic — which accompanied the establishment of Israel, and entailed the ethnic cleansing of the Arabs from their ancestral homeland, has never really stopped. In fact, the Palestinians have suffered a continuous Nakba at Israeli hands, as the latest massacres occurring in Gaza and the occupied West Bank show. The latest bout of violence began on Tuesday, when Israel launched an assassination campaign against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance group. High-ranking members of the armed group were targeted by Israeli strikes in Gaza, many as they slept, their wives and children also inconveniently slaughtered as ‘collateral damage’. Islamic Jihad reacted by unleashing a barrage of rockets targeting Israel. At the time of writing, over 30 Palestinians had been killed, including six children, as hundreds of homes in the impoverished Gaza Strip were partially or totally destroyed in Israeli attacks. Hospitals in the tiny enclave are reportedly overwhelmed, while Israel has also responded with deadly force in the held West Bank.”
17 MAY 2023. Gideon Polya Letter to The Guardian: “Congratulations to The Guardian for publishing Moustafa Barghouti’s excellent article (16/5) on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba in which 800,000 Indigenous Palestinians were violently expelled from the country continuously inhabited by their forebears for millennia. This Zionist atrocity occurred just 4 years after my people were decimated in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust in Hungary. Yet decent anti-racist Jews and non-Jews protesting the Nakba have been targeted and falsely defamed by fanatical Zionists. Thus outstanding anti-racist Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein has correctly exposed the side-lining of anti-racist Jewish critics of Apartheid Israel. As an anti-racist Jewish Australian and the author of 9 huge books and hundreds of carefully researched and referenced humanitarian articles I have been rendered essentially invisible in Australia (if not overseas) through sustained and false Zionist defamation. The Australian Coalition Opposition, the Federal Labor Government, the Labor governments of Victoria and South Australia, and Melbourne University have all adopted the false and racist definition of anti-Semitism of the Zionist International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) of which Australia is one of 35 members. The IHRA definition is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic and anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim critics of neo-Nazi Israeli Apartheid as anti-Semitic), holocaust-ignoring (by ignoring all WW2 holocausts other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust and some 70 holocausts and genocides), and has been condemned by over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations.
Outstanding anti-racist Jewish American Professor Bertell Ollman: “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis” (“Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ ). Fervently Apartheid Israel-supporting and hence neo-Nazi Apartheid-supporting Australia needs de-Nazification.”
17 MAY 2023
Quote: “Nuclear armed, serial war criminal and international law-violating Apartheid Israel is a genocidally racist settler-colonialist obscenity, and ranks on a per capita basis among the world’s top militarized countries in 30 key areas of military capacity and ghastly application of military power. On a per capita basis it ranks number 1 in terms of military expenditure, tanks, warplanes, US military aid, killing journalists, population expulsions, and genocide. How Apartheid Israel ranks among the worst in military assets, militarism, invading, abusing, and killing people in 30 areas is set out below… This [8,000 words, 55 references] account has merely sketched how Apartheid Israel is either #1 in the world or among world leaders in 30 areas of militarization, killing, gross human rights abuse and genocide. Citizens of other top military states will no doubt be interested in how their country ranks. A detailed and comprehensive account awaits a latter-day equivalent of the post-WW2 Nuremberg War Crimes Trials… The core ethos of Humanity is Kindness and Truth but genocidally racist Zionism has perverted this to Racism and Mendacity. Decent folk must act by (a) informing everyone they can (the journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes of the Zionist-subverted Western Mainstream certainly won’t), and by (b) urging and applying rigorous Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel and all its evilly pro-Apartheid supporters.”
Quote: “All Israeli wars on the Palestinians throughout the years have been promoted and justified by Tel Aviv in the name of ‘security’ and ‘fighting terrorism’.Israel’s biggest challenge throughout many of these wars was hardly the Palestinian Resistance, however steadfast and resilient. The challenge has always been Tel Aviv’s ability to kill many Palestinians, including civilians, without tarnishing its image internationally as an oasis of democracy and civilization. Israel has been losing the public relations battle and rapidly so and, now, it is losing a different kind of battle as well… Though Hamas, the PFLP and others have fully supported the Islamic Jihad in its ongoing fight, Israeli officials still refrained from resorting to their usual threats of assassinating all Palestinian Resistance leaders. The only exception was comments made by Israel’s Minister of Energy of Infrastructure, Israel Katz, who threatened, in an interview with Israel’s Kan 11 News, to ‘eliminate’ top Hamas leaders in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif… But the uncontested truth is that the Palestinian Resistance has managed to challenge, if not to reverse, the rules of engagements like never before.More importantly, Palestinians on the ground have shown us that unity is not expressed through cliched language, empty slogans and press conferences in luxury hotels. It is the unity of those resisting on the ground, from Gaza to Nablus, and from Jenin to Sheikh Jarrah, that matters most.”
Quote: “Israeli raids on the besieged Gaza Strip were continuing for the 5th day “leaving at least 33 Palestinians dead, including children, the elderly and members of Palestinian armed resistance groups who responded to the attacks… As both Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Network and Masar Badil — Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement have made clear, “these attacks are ongoing Zionist war crimes, funded and supported by US and Western imperialism, a key example of the ongoing colonial violence perpetrated against the Palestinian people, as well as the strength and steadfastness of the people and their resistance.” Israel’s calculation was to conduct a ‘shock and awe’ campaign, slaughtering targeted families and terrorizing the Gaza Strip. But given how the Palestinian armed resistance has mobilized itself forcing Israel to evacuate at least 85 towns around the Strip, including Sderot in western Naqab, Israel’s terror tactics are once again falling on deaf ears.”
Quote: “We also—unsurprisingly—don’t have the impact of the Times, the Post, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, ABC, CBS or NBC , etc., either singularly much less collectively. We have responded in true guerrilla fashion by developing news sources of our own and fighting battles of largely our choice. I’m thinking here outlets such as “Democracy Now,” Z Network, Counterpunch, Common Dreams, AlterNet, Truth Out, Monthly Review, Tom Dispatch, Green Social Thought, Labor Notes, The Nation, The Progressive, Mother Jones, (and, from India, Countercurrents), etc… The problem, however, is that basically, this left media is in a bubble, sealed off from broader US society by mainstream media from non-leftist audiences, no matter how important or how accurate our perspectives…I argue—and especially for those of us who have gained the legitimacy of advanced degrees and especially those of us who have gained positions in higher education—that we need to consciously begin writing for and seeking to get our writing into the mainstream media… Right now, we have to begin very small: an initial goal might be: how can we get our work included in op-ed pages of a local paper? And perhaps the next step might be to try to meet someone in a media outlet—perhaps a journalist, perhaps even an editor—and get them to consider us a “trusted source.” (What’s not appreciated sufficiently is how dependent good journalists are on trusted sources: Maggie Haberman’s excellent work in the NY Times would not be near as good without her sources.) We must fight to get our thoughts, our opinions into the mainstream media, if for no other reason than to remind people that the “news” isn’t the only way to see the world.I don’t have any grand solutions. But I know we’re failing in the mainstream media world.”
(5). Mouin Rabbani, “75 years”, Jadaliya, 15 May 2023: https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45040?utm_source=Arab%2BStudies%2BInstitute%2BMailing%2BList&utm_campaign=1865419ab6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_05_27_08_02_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa9122f438-1865419ab6-158617745&mc_cid=1865419ab6&mc_eid=37b66f39d4 .
Quote: “The 15th of May 1948 marks the seventy-fifth commemoration of the Nakba, or Catastrophe, denoting the elimination of Palestine from the map, the ethnic cleansing of its indigenous inhabitants, and the dispossession of an entire people that persists to this day. The Nakba commenced almost immediately after the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), on 29 November 1947, adopted Resolution 181(II) recommending the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. But the groundwork for it had been laid during the previous half-century. First, by the Zionist movement which during the late nineteenth century initiated the colonization of Palestine with the ambition to transform it into a Jewish state. Second, and more importantly, by Great Britain, which seized control of Palestine at the conclusion of the First World War and for the next several decades ruled it with the objective of developing a European Jewish protectorate that would safeguard the eastern approach to the Suez Canal. Without the benefit of what the pre-eminent Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi termed this “British Shield”, the Zionist movement, which possessed neither the military, economic, geopolitical, nor demographic resources to achieve its objectives, would have entered the history books, if at all, as a failure born of delusion.”
14 MAY 2023. Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Age: “Outstanding anti-racist Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein is correct in exposing the side-lining of anti-racist Jewish critics of Apartheid Israel (The Age 13/5). As an anti-racist Jewish Australian and the author of 9 huge books and hundreds of carefully researched and referenced humanitarian articles I have been rendered essentially invisible in Australia (if not overseas) through sustained and false Zionist defamation.
The Coalition, the Federal Labor Government, the Labor governments of Victoria and SA, and Melbourne University have all adopted the false and racist definition of anti-Semitism of the Zionist International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) of which Australia is a member. The IHRA definition is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic and anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish, Palestinian, Arab and Muslims critics of neo-Nazi Israeli Apartheid as anti-Semitic), holocaust-ignoring (by ignoring all WW2 holocausts other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust and some 70 holocausts and genocides), and has been condemned by over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations. Outstanding anti-racist Jewish American Professor Bertell Ollman: “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis”*. Pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid Australia needs de-Nazification.*“Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ollman-bertell-professor-bertell-ollman-nyu-slams-racist-zionist-anti-semitism .”
13 MAY 2023
Quote: “The anti-racist BDS movement, led by the largest Palestinian coalition ever, provides the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. After 75 years of settler-colonialism and apartheid, and facing an Israeli government that has shed all masks, we demand international recognition of the fact that Israel’s regime of oppression constitutes apartheid, as well as an end to state, corporate and institutional complicity in it as a fulfillment of legal duties and a moral obligation to do no harm… We call on our partners worldwide to use this unprecedented opportunity to build people’s power. This demands two parallel tracks: (1) Broadening our principled, intersectional coalitions to grow our cultural, academic, sports and economic boycott and divestment campaigns, and to push in the mainstream, including the UN, the obligation to impose targeted, lawful sanctions to dismantle Israeli apartheid, just as South African apartheid was abolished; and (2) Forming new tactical alliances with many new critics of the far-right Israeli regime with whom we may not agree on many things except the necessity of meaningful pressure on the Israeli government. This entails at the very least cutting military-security trade and military funding, as the case may be; banning settlement goods; and divestment from Israel Bonds and from corporations and banks that bankroll this regime. ”
Quote: “Palestinians have their backs against the wall. In Gaza, they are subject to a devastating economic blockade and regular Israeli air offensives. In the West Bank, they have every aspect of their lives controlled and regulated by humiliating and often violent restrictions. Within the 1948 borders of Israel, they are routinely harassed, denied basic democratic rights and hounded out of their homes and off their land. In every part of historic Palestine, there are escalating levels of brutality, intimidation and repression. Nevertheless, there are flickers of resistance. Israel and its backers in the West are not the only forces oppressing the Palestinians. In the West Bank, the population is ruled by the Palestinian Authority. The PA has long ceased to be a body for Palestinian resistance and is now the ruling class of the West Bank, albeit one that is limited by Israel. The PA is run by a corrupt and wealthy class of Palestinians renowned for siphoning funds from ministry budgets. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas and his family are notorious. Abbas is worth around US$100 million. His family is worth even more…
The PA employs all public servants, organises basic services and runs “security” in the area. In fact, the Israeli state has outsourced much of its policing of the area to the PA, which arrests opponents of Israel and those who speak out against its own rule. There is no story that illustrates this more clearly than that of Nizar Banat. Banat was an outspoken critic of Fatah, the party that dominates the PA. He campaigned against corruption and the mistreatment of Palestinian political prisoners. For his activism he was physically threatened multiple times. In May 2021, his home near Hebron was attacked by masked gunmen on motorbikes. After that, he decided it wasn’t safe to stay home. According to a Guardian article, he told his wife he was leaving because he “didn’t want to be killed in front of his children”. The following month, he was woken early in the morning, dragged from the bed in his “safe house” by fourteen men from the Palestinian security service, who were given permission by Israel to enter the area. He was beaten to death. The PA said his death was from natural causes. But according to an autopsy commissioned by his family, the activist died after suffering 42 injuries inflicted with metal pipes.”
(4). Peter Schwartz, “May 8 and the rehabilitation of Nazism in [pro-Zionist, pro-Israeli Apartheid] Germany”, WSWS, 12 May 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/05/12/agbd-m12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “On 8 and 9 May, Berlin traditionally hosts numerous commemorative events to mark the end of the Second World War in Europe. On these two dates, the German Wehrmacht signed the unconditional surrender in 1945 in Reims, France, and in Berlin-Karlshorst, Germany. The Nazi regime was finally crushed. Adolf Hitler had committed suicide eight days earlier. The main burden of the struggle against Hitler’s Germany was borne by the Red Army of the Soviet Union, which defeated the Wehrmacht under immense sacrifices. At least 13 million Soviet soldiers and 14 million civilians lost their lives in the war. But at the Berlin commemorative events this year, the displaying of the Soviet flag was forbidden. The Berlin Senate called on more than 1,500 police officers to enforce the ban on the three Soviet memorials in Treptower Park, Tiergarten and Schönholzer Heide. There were more police officers than visitors. On the other hand, it was permissible to show the Ukrainian flag, which was only used by collaborators who were deeply involved in the crimes of the Nazis during World War II. For example, the Melnyk wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-M) used the blue-yellow flag with a trident, as it is also used today in Ukraine.While the vast majority of Ukrainian men and women, along with their Russian and other Soviet comrades in the Red Army, fought against the Nazis, the OUN-M and the rival wing around Stepan Bandera (OUN-B) [post-2014 Ukrainian national hero] joined German SS units and participated in mass murders that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Jews, Poles, Russians and Ukrainians. The political significance of this decision is unequivocal: 78 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime, it is forbidden in the German capital to show the flag of the liberators. The flag of collaborators and war criminals is welcome.”
Comment: German authorities have recently also cracked down on some pro-Palestinian human rights events.
11 MAY 2023
(1). Dr Teow Loon Ti, “A mind held captive”, Pearls & Irritations, 11 May 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/a-mind-held-captive/ .
Quote: “Famed and seminal Palestinian American scholar Professor] Edward Said’s “Orientalism” encapsulates the essence of why the West resists the rise of China as a major economic and military power. Even though “Orientalism” was first published in 1978, just as China was opening up its economy to the rest of the world and well before it acquired its present economic prowess, it provided insightful views about western discourse on the orient and the perception of an unchanging world under Western domination… This vision and desire to keep the orient under Western domination is embedded in what Said calls “Orientalism” for which he has a long and involved definition. Suffice to say that “Orientalism” is described as a system of cultural and political beliefs hatched out of the Western world’s relations with the East, undergirded by domination, especially colonialism… Today, the stability of the world is further shaken by the Western power’s resistance not just to the rise of China but to an arisen China whose economy and military strength is almost at parity with the US. China appears to want a new world order based on multilateralism and a multipolar world. Under the present circumstances, Orientalism is still alive, a source from which the West derives, and feeds into, its right to rule.”
Quote: “Khader Adnan was not a ‘terrorist’ with ‘Israeli blood on his hands,’ as pro-Israeli propagandists have been repeating in the news and on social media.If the former Palestinian prisoner, who died in his Israeli prison cell following 87 days of an uninterrupted hunger strike was, indeed, directly involved in armed resistance, the story would have had a completely different ending. Armed Palestinian resistors are either assassinated or detained and tried by Israeli military courts to spend prolonged sentences in Israeli prisons, following brief trials that lack any fairness or due process.Adnan was a charismatic leader, but not an actual fighter by the strict definition of the word. He inspired Palestinians from his humble home in the village of Arraba, southwest of Jenin which, along with Nablus, is the home of Palestine’s toughest resistance.Adnan had a math degree from the University of Bir Zeit, graduating in 2001. Due to repeated arrests by Israeli occupation forces, Adnan, then a young man in his early 20s, was denied the opportunity to pursue his Master’s Degree from the same university in the West Bank. … From the Israeli viewpoint, releasing Adnan would have set a precedent – the same way that Adnan had forced Israel to set a precedent when he weaponized hunger strikes to gain his freedom years ago, and several times since. Also, Israel did not want Adnan back on the streets, leading mass protests against the Israeli occupation, speaking of resistance and protesting those who collaborated with the Israeli military. So, they simply allowed him to die.”
Quote: “At the Marriott Hotel in Toronto where my brother and I were staying on the 7th of May 2023, we noticed posters advertising an event called “The Changemakers Evening.” The “changemaker” turned out to be Tel Aviv University (TAU) in Canada, which was marketing its Center for Nanoscience and boasting of “advancing society” and “changing the world one discovery at a time.”… For all its vaunted technological discoveries, the Center for Nanoscience has yet to make the discovery that Zionism is a fascist, racist regime… The fact is that TAU itself is not the source of innovation. It is the Israeli military that recruits graduates to do the work and pours money into it. Tel Aviv University is not only complicit; it is also a fig leaf for the Israeli military.”mmm
(4). Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, “Canada Must Condemn Israel’s Assassination of Palestinians and Their Families in Gaza”, Global Research, 10 May 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/canada-must-condemn-israel-assassination-palestinians-their-families-gaza/5818820 .
Quote: “Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is calling on the Canadian government to condemn Israel’s unprovoked acts of aggression in the occupied Gaza Strip. Overnight, Israel unilaterally broke its ceasefire with Islamic Jihad to conduct extrajudicial killings of three of its leaders, deliberately targeting units in residential buildings and killing them with their families as they slept. 13 Palestinians were killed in the attack, including 4 children and 4 women, and another 18 were injured. Further casualties have been reported from renewed airstrikes today. In addition to a formal condemnation, CJPME urges Canada to immediately suspend all military trade with Israel, among other concrete measures to hold Israeli officials accountable for this massacre… Israel’s reckless attack on Gaza violates a week-old ceasefire and is likely to escalate into further violence against civilians. This echoes a similar chain of events in August of 2022 when Israel launched an unprovoked assault which lasted 3 days and killed 49 Palestinians, including 17 children.”
10 MAY 2023
(1). Jafar M. Ramini, “The on-going Palestinian Nakba”, Countercurrents, 9 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/the-on-going-palestinian-nakba/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “May 15th, is the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe). And counting. I say ‘and counting’ because the theft of our land, the occupation, the siege on Gaza, the disposition of our people, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and replacement of the Palestinian nation, with Jews, often of dual nationality, from around the world, continues more aggressively than ever. So does the building of illegal settlements to house those interlopers. They too are still going on apace with no end in sight. Add to that toxic mix, the total indifference of western leaders and the conniving and betrayal of some Arab leaders, not to mention the shameful capitulation and collaboration of the Palestinian Authority and the picture is complete… And I haven’t even got around to mentioning the Israeli prisons which are full of Palestinian men, women and children, tortured and held in disgusting conditions without charge or legal recourse. As if all of this was not enough to emphasise the cruelty and inhumanity of the occupation of our land, the longest in history, the Israeli Occupation Forces continue to raid, unhindered, cities, towns and villages all over Palestine.”
(2). Gideon Polya, “Charles III Coronation Ignored Imperialism, Colonialism, Genocide, Trauma, Deadly Colonial Legacy & Palestine”, Countercurrents, 9 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/charles-iii-coronation-ignored-imperialism-colonialism-genocide-trauma-deadly-colonial-legacy-palestine/ .
Quote: “Briefly summarized below are (A) past mass mortality associated with rapacious and genocidal British imperialism and colonialism, and (B) the present-day avoidable mortality consequences of British imperialism and colonialism… Poverty kills as revealed by under-5 infant mortality data. Thus, for example, in 2020 the ratio of “under-5 infant mortality as a percentage of population” for Apartheid Israel over that in Japan was a modest 4.1 (i.e. Apartheid Israel did 4.1 times worse than Japan) but the ratio for Occupied Palestinians was a shocking 37.7, 9 times greater (i.e. Occupied Palestine did 37.7 times worse than Japan in 2020). In absolute terms, in 2020 under-5 infant deaths totalled 1,834 (Japan, population 126.5 million), 512 (Apartheid Israel population 8.7 million, 80% non-Palestinian), and a shocking 2,743 (Occupied Palestine, population 5.0 million) … We all enjoyed the pomp, pageantry and glorious music of the Coronation of King Charles III. However this $200 million occasion usefully prompted dissenting views from Indigenous people and from former colonies of the British Empire around the world. History ignored yields history repeated, and the truth must be told about the immense imperial and colonial crimes committed in the name of the English Crown in the last millennium of English and British history. In particular, as summarized here, there must be truth telling about (a) the past mass mortality associated with rapacious and genocidal British imperialism and colonialism, and (b) the present-day horrendous avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality consequences of British imperialism and colonialism due to intergenerational poverty, trauma and neocolonialism. The continuing cruel subjugation of the 15.5 million Palestinians is a continuing blot on Humanity. Palestine must be free, from the river to the sea! The “2 state solution” has been rendered impossible by the illegal and war criminal Zionist ethnic cleansing of 90% of Palestine, and there is now a de facto “one state solution” in which the 47% minority Jewish Israelis highly abusively rule a 52% majority of 7.5 million Indigenous Palestinians in a cruel and neo-Nazi Apartheid system. Yet those who adhere to the key ethos of Humanity involving Kindness and Truth advocate a decent democratic and secular solution as in post-Apartheid South Africa.”
Quote: “The Israeli military killed 15 Palestinians, including three Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) commanders along with their wives and children, in a fresh attack on the Gaza Strip.A total of 40 fighter jets participated in bombing different locations in the besieged enclave just after 2am local time on Tuesday, according to the Israeli military. Another air strike in the afternoon targeted a vehicle in Qarara town in Khan Yunis. The Palestinian health ministry said at least four children, five women, a dentist and his family were among those killed. Another 22 people were wounded, including three children and seven women, some of whom are in a serious and critical condition… More than two million Palestinians are packed into Gaza, one of the world's most densely populated areas. Under blockade by Israel since 2006, the besieged coastal enclave has been described as "the world's largest open-air prison". Israel withdrew its troops from the Strip in 2005, but maintains tight control of Gaza's airspace, land and sea borders, which has reduced its economy to a state of collapse.”
(4). Ben Jamal, “75 Years of Nakba: A Stark Reminder of Israel’s Colonialism”, Global Research, 8 May 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/75-years-nakba-stark-reminder-israel-colonialism/5818534 .
Quote: “Next Saturday, May 13 2023, thousands will gather in London to attend a march organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign and partners, supported by 10 national trade unions. They will march to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, not as an historical moment of collective national trauma but as an ongoing process of colonisation, dispossession, and occupation… The union members, students and citizens of conscience marching with us on May 13 know the truths of Palestinian history and the realities of the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people and refuse to be silent in the face of them. They understand that there is no coherent anti-racist position that does not have at its heart resistance and opposition to Israel’s system of apartheid. They understand the responsibilities owed by British citizens in the context of more than 100 years of British complicity in Palestinian oppression, stretching all the way back to Balfour in 1917.”
(5). Justus Leicht, “Berlin police ban a series of pro-Palestine demonstrations”, WSWS, 9 May 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/05/09/70c9-m09.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “In recent weeks, several demonstrations by Palestinians have been banned in Berlin. The city’s police banned a rally planned for April 15, as well as a demonstration through the suburb of Neukölln set for one day later to mark the “Day of Palestinian Prisoners” in Israeli jails… Police justified the bans on the grounds that there was a risk of incitement, antisemitic shouting, the glorification of violence or actual violence at the planned gatherings. According to press reports, the police banned a total of five pro-Palestine demonstrations in Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Berlin-Mitte for April 14-16. In the city of Cologne, the police also prematurely ended a Palestinian demonstration on April 15 despite its being peaceful. In the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which is also governed by a CDU-Green coalition, one of the most repressive assembly laws in Germany is in force.”
6 MAY 2023
Quote: “Photo: IGNORANCE IS A CHOICE on a Palestinian flag… A succession of events starting in Barcelona, Spain, in February, and followed in Liège, Belgium, and Oslo, Norway, in April sent a strong message to Israel: The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) is alive and well. In Barcelona, the city’s Mayor canceled a twinning agreement with the Israeli city of Tel Aviv… BDS continues to be a success story, and the latest critical decisions made in Spain, Belgium and Norway attest to the fact that grassroots efforts do pay dividends. There is no denying that the road ahead is long and arduous. It will certainly have its twists, turns and, yes, occasional setbacks. But this is the nature of national liberation struggles. They often come at a high cost and great sacrifice. But, with popular resistance at home and growing international support and solidarity abroad, Palestinian freedom should, in fact, be possible.”
Quote: “Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza have agreed to a ceasefire after a night of Israeli air strikes that pounded the besieged coastal enclave, while rockets were launched towards Israel following the death in prison of prominent Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan… Adnan was arrested 12 times and spent about eight years in Israeli prisons, most of it under so-called “administrative detention” in which Israeli authorities can hold Palestinians in prison for renewable six-month intervals without trial or charges. Since 2011, Adnan had conducted at least three hunger strikes to protest his detention without charges from Israeli forces. Adnan’s lawyer, Jamil Al-Khatib, and a doctor with a human rights group who recently met Adnan in prison accused Israeli authorities of withholding medical care.” Other early May Al Jazeera reports: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/4/israel-raid-kills-3-palestinians-accused-of-deadly-settler-attack and https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/5/2/israel-palestine-live-hunger-striking-prisoner-khader-adnan-dies .
Quote: “The death of Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan must be accounted for, UN experts* said today, calling Israel’s mass arbitrary detention of Palestinians “cruel” and “inhumane.” The 45-year-old Palestinian prisoner died in his prison cell on Tuesday morning after a hunger strike that spanned nearly three months. He was protesting Israel’s widespread policy of arbitrarily detaining Palestinians against fair trial guarantees and in abhorrent conditions… Israel currently holds approximately 4900 Palestinians in its prisons, including 1016 administrative detainees who are held for an indefinite period without trial or charge, based on secret information. The number of administrative detainees in Israeli detention facilities is at its highest since 2008, despite repeated condemnation from international human rights bodies and recommendations for Israel to immediately end the practice. In recent years, many Palestinian prisoners have resorted to hunger strikes to protest the brutality of Israel’s detention practices.
5 May 2023
Quote: “Israel is trying to persuade country representatives not to attend the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba at the UN headquarters in New York, Israeli TV Channel 13 has reported. The event is scheduled to be held on 15 May. The channel quoted a senior Israeli official as saying that, "If necessary, [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu will personally participate in these efforts and will not hesitate”… The Nakba ("Catastrophe") is the name given to the ethnic cleansing of more than three-quarters of a million Palestinians driven from their homes and land by Jewish terror gangs such as the Irgun, Lehi and Haganah, and the creation of the Zionist state of Israel in Palestine in 1948."
(2). Progressive International, “End the Nakba”, 3 May 2023: https://progressive.international/movement/campaign/end-the-nakba-fca8bb31-3454-48d5-b574-fea96ae61e9d/en .
Quote: “In May 2023, the world commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Nakba — a campaign of ethnic cleansing that saw at least 750,000 Palestinian people forcibly exiled from their homes and their land by Zionist militias. Over 450 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed during the Nakba. In the process, Zionist forces committed mass atrocities, including the massacres in Deir Yassin and Tantura. Mass graves continue to be unearthed in Palestine to this day. Over the course of 1948, about three-quarters of all Palestinians were deprived of their homes, their land, their livelihoods and, in some cases, their lives. Those that survived were condemned to live in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, and countries neighboring Palestine. The events that took place that year are referred to as the Nakba — the Arabic word for “catastrophe”. But the Nakba never ended. Since 1948, the people of Palestine have lost more than 85% of their land to the Israeli state in an ongoing process of settler-colonialism and expansion”.
(3). Asharq Al-Awsat, “75 Years After the Nakba, Palestinians Still Long for Return”, 2 May 2023: https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/4306236/75-years-after-nakba-palestinians-still-long-return .
Quote: “From her modest home in the blockaded Gaza Strip, Amina al-Dabai remembers the very different world in which she grew up more than seven decades ago. Born in 1934, Dabai was still only a child when Israel was created on May 14, 1948. Now she is one of 5.9 million Palestinian refugees living in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria according to the United Nations. They are descendants of more than 760,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes 75 years ago. The event is known by Palestinians as the Nakba, or "catastrophe", during which more than 600 communities were destroyed or depopulated by Jewish forces, according to the Israeli organization Zochrot. … Dabai recalled the day "Jewish soldiers in disguise" arrived in her hometown of Lydda, now known as Lod in central Israel. Because the fighters' faces were covered in keffiyehs, a scarf that has come to symbolize the Palestinian struggle, locals thought they were reinforcements sent from Jordan. People were so delighted they "rushed for the fountain" in the town center to celebrate. But realizing the soldiers were Jews, they "fled into the mosque and their homes". "They (soldiers) stormed the mosque and killed everyone inside," she added. "I was young and saw it with my own eyes." ”
3 MAY 2023
(1). “Withdraw foreign forces from Syria, Arab states call”, Countercurrents, 2 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/withdraw-foreign-forces-from-syria-arab-states-call/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “The foreign ministers of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq said on Monday after meeting in Amman said the government in Damascus should re-establish the rule of law on all of Syria’s territory, ending the presence of foreign armed groups and terrorists... Parts of northern Syria are currently under control of Turkish-backed militants, while the area northeast of the Euphrates River is held by U.S.-backed Kurdish militias. Several hundred U.S. troops are also in the country in violation of international law, controlling most of the Syrian oil wells.”
Comment: US- and Australia-backed, neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel has annexed the Syrian Golan Heights, illegally occupied and largely ethnically cleansed since 1967.
Quote: “Al Jazeera’s reporter in Gaza, Hisham Zaqout, said, “There have been multiple Israeli airstrikes on several sites for the Palestinian resistance in the southern part of the Gaza strip, as well as in the southwestern part of Gaza City.” The attacks come after rockets were launched following the death of Khader Adnan, who Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups say was withheld medical attention in an Israeli prison. Adnan had been on hunger strike in protest of his administrative detention.”
2 MAY 2023
(1). John Pilger (famed expatriate Australian UK journalist), “John Pilger on the Coming War. Speak Up, Now”, Global Research, 1 May 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/john-pilger-coming-war-speak-up-now/5817726 .
Quote: “Beijing could strike within three years,’ they warned. ‘We are not ready.’ Billions of dollars are to be spent on American nuclear submarines, but that, it seems, is not enough. ‘Australia’s holiday from history is over’: whatever that might mean…Yet China-bashing that draws on Australia’s long history of racism towards Asia has become something of a sport for the self-ordained ‘experts’. What do Chinese-Australians make of this? Many are confused and fearful. The authors of this grotesque piece of dog-whistling and obsequiousness to American power are Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott, ‘national security reporters’ I think they are called. I remember Hartcher from his Israeli government-paid jaunts… The rise of fascism in Europe is uncontroversial. Or ‘neo-Nazism’ or ‘extreme nationalism’, as you prefer. Ukraine as modern Europe’s fascist beehive has seen the re-emergence of the cult of Stepan Bandera, the passionate anti-Semite and mass murderer who lauded Hitler’s ‘Jewish policy’, which left 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews slaughtered. ‘We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,’ a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews. Today, Bandera is hero-worshipped in western Ukraine and scores of statues of him and his fellow-fascists have been paid for by the EU and the US, replacing those of Russian cultural giants and others who liberated Ukraine from the original Nazis… In Britain, the silence of the liberal intelligentsia is the silence of intimidation. State-sponsored issues like Ukraine and Israel are to be avoided if you want to keep a campus job or a teaching tenure. What happened to Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 is repeated on campuses where opponents of apartheid Israel are casually smeared as anti-Semitic. Professor David Miller, ironically the country’s leading authority on modern propaganda, was sacked by Bristol University for suggesting publicly that Israel’s ‘assets’ in Britain and its political lobbying exerted a disproportionate influence worldwide — a fact for which the evidence is voluminous… A few years ago, Terry Eagleton, then professor of English literature at Manchester University, reckoned that ‘for the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life’… All through that [Vietnam] war, the propaganda said a victorious Vietnam would spread its communist disease to the rest of Asia, allowing the Great Yellow Peril to its north to sweep down. Countries would fall like ‘dominoes’.Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam was victorious, and none of the above happened. Instead, Vietnamese civilisation blossomed, remarkably, in spite of the price they paid: three million dead. The maimed, the deformed, the addicted, the poisoned, the lost. If the current propagandists get their war with China, this will be a fraction of what is to come. Speak up.”
(2). Professor Rima Najjar, “Masar Badil’s Liberation Conference in Ottawa asks us to reexamine what we think we know about our world order”, Countercurrents, 1 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/masar-badils-liberation-conference-in-ottawa-asks-us-to-reexamine-what-we-think-we-know-about-our-world-order/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “At the Palestinian Liberation Conference on April 29, 2023, Masar Badil [Alternative Path] (Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path) asked us to check what we thought we knew at the door and consider several issues we are likely to have gotten “mixed up”: What US imperialism means to much of the developing world and especially in Palestine and West Asia, the opportunities opening up for Palestine as a result of the decline of US imperialism and the rise of China on the global scene… The United States can count unequivocally only on Israel to keep the Arab world, into which Israel has been injected like an incubus, pro-Western. To that end, it has toppled regimes that threatened to move out of its orbit with little regard to the welfare of their populations, often falling into glaring contradictions between its rhetoric of democracy and social justice and its imperialist concerns… The nature of the warfare the US launches to topple socialism and democracy in the region and to safeguard its own economic interests is hybrid. Its policy pillars are militarism, sanctions (economic coercive measures), foreign aid and dollar diplomacy. The consequences are severe (the Syrian population, for example, has been depleted by half)… If one measure of the benefit is saving lives, look at it this way: The Saudi-Iran détente would save lives; the end of the war in Yemen would save lives. And Palestine? The feeling at the Liberation Conference was that at no time in history has the success of the Palestinian struggle for liberation been more possible than now.”
(3). Professor Bill V. Mullen (Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Purdue; author of “James Baldwin: Living in Fire”), “Entering the book of ghosts”, Mondoweiss, 29 April 2023: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/04/entering-the-book-of-ghosts/ .
Quote: “Isabella Hammad's new novel, "Enter Ghost," uses theater and the lives of Palestinians in the diaspora to uncover the relationship between culture and politics, colonialism and self-determination, and love and freedom… In an afterword to her brilliant new novel Enter Ghost, British-Palestinian writer Isabella Hammad thanks members of the current Palestinian Theater, and Palestinian actors working in Palestine, for speaking to her in preparation for writing the story. Her finished book is a moving, masterful staging of the Palestinian present using theater, theatrical tropes, and the lives of Palestinians in the diaspora as a proscenium for the relationship between culture and politics, life and art, colonialism and self-determination, love, and freedom. ”
1 MAY 2023
Quote: “As my birthday approaches, I grow more and more anxious because a professional organization of trained terrorists that calls itself an army wants me to be one of them. And if I say no, a prison sentence will be the result. As a soon-to-be 18-year-old Israeli high school student, enlistment is the only thing waiting for me after I finish my studies in six months. We have speeches every other week, telling us how important it is to serve and complete a “meaningful service” for the country. Of course, meaningful service means serving in fighting roles, roles that include violence… I don’t want to take any part in enforcing apartheid, colonialism, and violent oppression. For the IDF though, this is not enough. As I learned recently, the army does not exempt anyone purely because of ideological reasons. In other words, I can hate the army, I can hate the country, its government, and the things it stands for, but I cannot refuse to become a soldier. Because the punishment for that is a prison sentence. ”
Quote: “At Friday’s session of Masar Badil’s Liberation Conference in Ottawa, April 28, 2023 (SAW Gallery, 67 Nicholas St., Ottawa, ON), an anecdote told in consternation by participant Neveen Abu Elula, a young Palestinian woman from Shafa Amr currently studying in St Louis, Missouri, helped me give form to the various strands of the discussion that took place throughout the day after each presentation. …Neveen recounted an experience she and her friends had in St. Louis [Missouri] in 2021. At the time, Neveen Abu Elula hadn’t yet heard of Masar Badil-The Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, but her activism meshed with that of the movement — rejecting the “peace process” — ie, the “two-state solution,” and supporting the liberation of Palestine “from the river to the sea” through continued resistance leading to one secular democratic state in Palestine and return of refugees. So, when she and a group of friends were out supporting Sheikh Jarrah and confronting a pro-Israel group on the other side of the street, they chanted “Free, free Palestine from the river to the sea.” At that point, according to Abu Elula, another young Palestinian activist there rushed to the other side of the street and apologized to the pro-Israel group for the “extreme” rhetoric of Abu Elula and her friends. It’s natural for Abu Elula to feel a deep sense of betrayal at this occurence. Upon reflection, however, it is easy to understand what that young activist was attempting to do and why she did it. She was placating the other side to assure them that “from the river to the sea” does not mean throwing Jewish Israelis into the sea, and that she, and the people with whom she organizes, simply want to co-exist with them in peace.”
(3). UN, “The question of Palestine”: May 2023: https://www.un.org/unispal/events/2023-05-03/ .
Quote: “On Wednesday 03 May 2023 at 10 a.m., the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People will convene for its 411th Committee Meeting in Conference Room 2 at UNHQ in New York”.
29 APRIL 2023
Quote: ” When Sheikh Khader Adnan of Islamic Jihad first went on hunger strike in 2011, the term “administrative detention” entered the vocabulary of many people around the world for the first time. His action became the longest one-man strike in history. Administrative detention is when a state arrests and detains an individual without trial. Human rights groups rallied behind Sheikh Khader’s action. On the brink of death, he was finally freed as a result of local and international pressure and his own amazing will… On Monday, April 24, an online event in support of Sheikh Adnan’s current heroic hunger strike (it was his 79th day on strike) was organized by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, which was established in 2011 as a response to Sheikh Adnan’s call during his hunger strike then… “He was freed in 2018 and rearrested in 2023.””
Quote: “On May 15, 2023, the Palestinian Nakba will be 75 years old. Palestinians all over the world will commemorate the tragic occasion, known as the ‘Catastrophe’, when nearly 800,000 Palestinians were made refugees and nearly 500 towns and villages were ethnically cleansed of their inhabitants in historic Palestine between late 1947 and mid-1948. The depopulation of Palestine carried on for months; in fact, years after the Nakba was supposedly concluded. But the Nakba has never actually concluded. Until this day, Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem, in the southern Hebron hills, in the Naqab Desert and elsewhere, are still suffering the consequences of Israel’s quest for demographic supremacy. And, of course, millions of refugees remain stateless, denied basic political and human rights. In a speech before the ‘UN World Conference against Racism’ in 2001, Palestinian intellectual, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi aptly described the Palestinian people as “a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing Nakba”… In fact, the current Israeli occupation and entrenched racial apartheid regime in Palestine are not simply the intended or unintended outcomes of the Nakba, but direct manifestations of a Nakba that never truly concluded. … Indeed, UNGA Res. 194 (III) of 1948 resolved that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”
26 APRIL 2023
(1). Paul Heywood-Smith (Adelaide KC, initial chairperson of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, author of “The Case for Palestine”), “Antisemitism and the IHRA definition” , Pearl & Irritations, 26 April 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/antisemitism-and-the-ihra-definition/ .
Quote: “I discussed the vote by the South Australian Legislative Council to officially adopt the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism. I drew attention to the criticism that the definition had received worldwide as having the effect of censoring criticism of Zionism. I also drew attention to the fact that ALP members of the [SA] Legislative Council had received a directive to vote in favour of the definition from Foreign Minister Penny Wong… Monash and Melbourne Universities had so adopted the definition. However, it was further noted that six universities, (ANU, ACU, Flinders, Griffith, the University of Divinity and QUT) had rejected it. The authors of the article noted that at the UNSW, Adelaide, Sydney and Deakin Universities, the matter was still being considered. I am pleased to now advise that the University of Adelaide has rejected the definition.”
(2). Dr Gideon Polya, “2023 Paradox: 75th Anniversary Of 1948 UDHR Launch & Start Of South African & Israeli Apartheid”, Countercurrents, 25 April 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/04/2023-paradox-75th-anniversary-of-1948-udhr-launch-start-of-south-african-israeli-apartheid/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “2023 marks the 75th anniversary of the launch of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. Unfortunately in 1948 inhumanity prevailed with the launch of Apartheid in South Africa by the newly-elected neo-Nazi Afrikaaner National Party, and of genocidal Apartheid Israel in Palestine by the neo-Nazi Zionist settler-colonialists who murderously depopulated Palestine of over half of its Indigenous Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe)… Exclusion of Palestinians from the all the human rights set out in the 1948 UDHR has meant 75 years of appalling abuse that I and other decent folk have been calling out for decades… In the absence of such immediate restoration of all basic human rights to the Palestinians, decent humanity will continue to urge and expand comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel and all people, politicians, parties, collectives, corporations and countries supporting this evil, genocidally racist and neo-Nazi (Zionazi) ethnocracy.”
(3). The ABC TV continues to promote its high profile Q&A program - compered by Indigenous journalist Stan Grant who now starts the program in Wiradjuri - using the following edited comment by UK playwright Sir David Hare: “Not to allow Palestinians to speak in this country is just repellent”. However this highly laudable happenstance that is quite extraordinary for Palestine-ignoring PC racist Australia appears to be utterly ignored by the Zionist-subverted MSM. Thus a Google Search for this quotation in inverted commas yields just 1 result: Gideon Polya, “PC Racist Australia: Voice For Indigenous Australians But Censoring Supporters of Indigenous Palestinians”, Countercurrents, 19 April 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/04/pc-racist-australia-voice-for-indigenous-australians-but-censoring-supporters-of-indigenous-palestinians/ .
(4). Relief Web, “Occupied Palestinian territory: Protection of Civilians Report | 28 March - 17 April 2023”, 20 April 2023: https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/occupied-palestinian-territory-protection-civilians-report-28-march-17-april-2023 .
Quote: “Highlights from the reporting period. Israeli forces killed six Palestinians, including one child, and one additional Palestinian died of wounds sustained during search-and-arrest and other Israeli forces’ operations in the West Bank, some of which reportedly involved an exchange of fire with Palestinians… The total number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank so far in 2023 is 17, compared with eight in the equivalent period of 2022… During the first quarter of 2023, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces (84) was almost four times higher than during the same period in 2022”.
(5). Law For Palestine, “Palestine’s Legal Scene | Issue. 172 | | 16-22 April 2023”, 23 April 2023: https://law4palestine.org/palestines-legal-scene-issue-172-16-22-april-2023/ .
Quote: “The Permanent Representative of the State of Palestine to the United Nations sent letters to three UN officials on Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, noting that Israel has arrested more than 800,000 Palestinians since its aggressive military occupation of Palestine in 1967. The letters also explained that many prisoners remain arbitrarily and illegally detained in Israeli prisons and are consistently subjected to the worst forms of inhumane treatment.”
23 APRIL 2023: Unpublished Gideon Polya to Letter Adelaide Advertiser: “The esteemed University of Adelaide has laudably followed the Australian National University (I have worked at both) in sensibly not adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of anti-Semitism, but in response a Zionist group has falsely defamed wonderful and progressive Adelaide as the “anti-Semitism capital of Australia” (The Advertiser, 21/4). How dare they! The horrible reality is that the Zionist IHRA is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic and anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim critics of genocidal Apartheid Israel as “anti-Semitic” ) and holocaust-ignoring (by ignoring all WW2 holocausts other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust, and indeed ignoring some 70 holocausts and genocides). Over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations have condemned the IHRA.”
23 APRIL 2023
(1). Ola Marshoud, “Undercover in Broad Daylight: Israeli Military Raids in West Bank Cities”, Global Research, 19 April 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/undercover-broad-daylight-israeli-military-raids-west-bank-cities/5816441 .
Quote: “Disguised as Palestinians, Israeli forces infiltrate neighbourhoods when they are most crowded and turn them into battlefields… Since 2021, the Israeli army has intensified its raids into West Bank towns, where detention and assassination operations are usually conducted by undercover special forces. Israeli soldiers would appear in Palestinian neighbourhood dressed like locals – including disguised as Muslim clerics, workers, journalists, or medics – to conduct highly secretive military operations. The undercover forces have since managed to enter Palestinian towns using trucks and vehicles that carried names of Palestinian companies and food factories, or cars with Palestinian number plates. Surprisingly, most of the raids were conducted at peak hours in overcrowded markets and neighbourhoods, turning them into battlefields. One month before the undercover raid in Nablus, on 22 February, Israeli forces stormed the city and killed 11 Palestinians.”
(2). Mitchell Plitnick, “The one-state reality goes mainstream”, Mondoweiss, 21 April 2023: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/04/the-one-state-reality-goes-mainstream/ .
Quote: A new article in the establishment journal "Foreign Affairs" bursts the illusions underlying the two-state solution and the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel… For years, Palestinians have been telling the world that Israel and the territories it has occupied since 1967 are one territory administered with intense discrimination by Israeli authority. In recent years, that point has been echoed by an increasing number of observers who can see the obvious reality before their eyes. But when an article making that case appears in as mainstream, even conservative, a journal as Foreign Affairs, it demands attention. In an essay published in part to promote their recent book, The One State Reality, scholars Michael Barnett, Marc Lynch, Nathan J. Brown, and Shibley Telhami state firmly that “it is no longer possible to avoid confronting a one-state reality”… “A better U.S. policy would advocate for equality, citizenship, and human rights for all Jews and Palestinians living within the single state dominated by Israel. Theoretically, such a policy would not prevent a two-state solution from being resurrected in the unlikely event that the parties moved in that direction in the distant future. But starting from a one-state reality that is morally reprehensible and strategically costly would demand an immediate focus on equal human and civil rights.””
21 APRIL 2023
Comment: For a very large, steadily evolving, multi-media, multi-faceted, detailed and documented “Virtual Exhibition” for the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba in 2023 see: Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/home and 2023, 75th Nakba Anniversary: Nakba (Catastrophe) & Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/1948-nakba-catastrophe-palestinian-genocide .
Quote: “The violent and repeated Israeli military raids at Al Aqsa – and limited, though deadly attacks on Jenin, Nablus, and other parts of the West Bank – were meant to achieve political capital for the embattled government of Benjamin Netanyahu. But this strategy could only succeed if Israel manages to keep the violence confined to specific, isolated regions.… For Lapid, and other Israelis, the future of Israel’s ‘deterrence’ is now facing an unprecedented challenge. If the Israeli military is unable to operate at ease and at the time of its choosing, Tel Aviv would lose its ‘military edge’, a vulnerability that Israel has rarely faced before. While Israeli politicians and military strategists are openly fighting over who has cost Israel its precious ‘deterrence,’ very few seem willing to consider that Israel’s best chance at survival is peacefully co-existing with Palestinians according to the international principles of justice and equality. This obvious fact continues to elude Israel after decades of a violent birth and troubled existence.”
Quote: “Politically correct racist (PC racist) Australia ignores a shocking reality: while 60% of Australians rightly support a Constitutionally-enshrined Recognition and Voice for Indigenous Australians, pro-Zionist MPs are advocating adoption by Australia’s 43 universities of the anti-Semitic International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of anti-Semitism that threatens the freedom of speech of academics and students in relation to the human rights of Indigenous Palestinians. The irony of this bizarre and offending scenario is that the most resolute Australian supporters of the human rights of the sorely oppressed Indigenous Palestinians are indeed the Indigenous Australians (in addition to the decent Australian Greens and the Socialists)… Decent humanity must act by (a) informing everyone they can about the US Alliance commitment to nuclear terrorism, war, occupation, racism, genocide, Apartheid, human rights abuse and lying, and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all people, politicians, parties, collectives, corporations and countries supporting genocidally racist Zionism (Zionazism). Decent Australians will refuse to vote 1 for either Labor or the Coalition in Australia’s preferential voting system. Because the Coalition is worse than Labor they will put the Coalition last and put Labor second last… One recalls the universal global condemnation of neo-Nazi Apartheid in the 1960s onwards that led to the ultimate downfall of Apartheid in South Africa in 1993. Australia needs de-Nazification… ”
Quote: “The Red Army won World War II. The cost to the Soviets was between 9 million and 11 million military deaths. Adding in the Russian civilian deaths, the Soviet Union won the war at the cost of between 22 million and 27 million Soviet lives. In contrast the US had 405,000 soldiers killed during WW II of which 111,600 died fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. (“D-Day Normandy Invasion after 75 Years. The Falsification of History” By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Global Research, 6/7/ 2019) [224]. What we have to remember is that throughout most of World War II, the U.S. and the British faced 10 German divisions combined. The Soviets were facing more than 200 German divisions. The Germans lost approximately 1 million men on the Western front. They lost 6 million on the Eastern front. There is reason why Churchill said the Red Army tore the guts out of the German war machine. However, that’s not what Americans learn… Operation Bagration, the Red Army offensive into Byelorussia from June 23 to August 19, 1944, resulted in the destruction of 28 of 34 divisions of the German Third Panzer, Fourth, and Ninth Armies of Army Group Center… Not only could American corporations make money like no other place in the world under Hitler’s Third Reich, even after Pearl Harbor, but America has pursued capitalism and monetary gain in other Fascist regimes including Spain, Portugal, Greece, Chile and many Latin American countries after World War II, effectively confirming that no matter what atrocities were to befall, the bottom line is profitability. ”
(3). Law For Palestine, “Palestine’s Legal scene, Issue 171”, 16 April 2023: https://law4palestine.org/palestines-legal-scene-issue-171-8-15-april-2023/ .
Quote: “The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) warned about the possible repercussions of any imminent Israeli military aggression against the Gaza Strip and called for the international community to take proactive positions to help prevent such aggression. (April 9, 2023)”
(4). As late as 15 April ABC TV continued its 6-week running of the [edited] video promo for Q&A involving playwright Sir David Hare: “Not to allow Palestinians to speak in this country is [just, you know, to me] repellent”- for the Q&A episode see: ( ABC TV, Q&A, “Words that offend and referendums”, March 2023: https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NC2304H006S00 ).
Quote from the original Q&A episode by Sir David Hare (UK Playwright): “I always want freedom and that means not re-writing Roald Dahl, and it also means not having this ridiculous attempt to boycott Adelaide Writers’ Week which is just absurd. Not to allow Palestinians to speak in this country is just, you know, to me repellent” .
16 APRIL 2023
(1). Jafar Ramini (Palestinian writer), “In thy God I don’t trust”, Pearls & Irritations, 16 April 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/in-thy-god-i-dont-trust/ .
Quote: “So far, this year the Israeli Occupation Forces have slain over 100 Palestinians. That’s it, I said to myself. ‘I must kick this argument about their God, the omnipotent, the peaceful and the compassionate into touch. Almost every inhumane bloody massacre of entire cultures and nations over hundreds and hundreds of years has been as a result of the war cry, ‘In The Name Of God!’… Look at what today’s God fearing Christians, have done to us, the Palestinians over the last century. Christian Europe persecuted the Jews in Europe to near extinction. Then to assuage their guilt, they promised them a home-land in a land that didn’t belong to them and was already inhabited. My homeland, Palestine. This belligerent act was not done in the name of saving the Jews but to get rid of them. Those Zionist Jews who came to Palestine in the early 20th century, with a bible in one hand and a gun in the other, also had just one purpose. To get rid of us, the Palestinians. In the name of their God. David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel, once infamously said, “I don’t need a mandate to rule over Palestine. The bible is my mandate.” This religious fervour has carried on through all the massacres that were inflicted upon us and is still the banner under which most of the current Zionist leaders operate… On the American greenback, it says ‘In God We Trust.’ How appropriate. What God I wonder? I say to them, your God is about conquest, subjugation and greed. Your God is about the superiority of avarice over the truth. Your God is about coveting what other nations have and getting it, no matter what sins are committed in the process. Your God is Mammon. In that God I do not place any trust. In that God I want no part.”mmm
(2). Samidoun (Palestinian prisoner solidarity network), “Defend Al-Aqsa, Defend Jerusalem, Defend Palestine! Protests and actions around the world”, 7 April 2023: https://samidoun.net/2023/04/defend-al-aqsa-defend-jerusalem-defend-palestine-protests-and-actions-around-the-world/ .mm
Quote: “On 4 and 5 April, the scenes of Israeli occupation forces invading Al-Aqsa Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan and brutally attacking Palestinian worshipers were displayed around the world on video. The beatings, the mass arrests, the vicious assault on Palestinians gathering in the mosque or in prayer once again exposed the reality of the Zionist colonial project in Palestine — that of the most vicious colonial assault that aims to strip the land, identity and holy sites away from the Palestinian and Arab people in order to make way for an invasion by a few fanatical settlers a few hours later… We urge you to join the events and actions below in your city to defend Al-Aqsa, defend Jerusalem and defend Palestine. If your event is not listed here, please email us… Sunday, 16 April, Berlin, Germany – CANCELLED due to State Repression, Rally for Palestinian Prisoners” .
(3). Australian Government, Smart Traveller, “Israel and the Palestinian Territories”, 16 April 2023: https://www.smartraveller.gov.au/destinations/middle-east/israel-and-palestinian-territories .
Quote: “We advise: Exercise a high degree of caution in Israel and the Palestinian Territories overall due to civil unrest and the threat of terrorist attack, rocket fire and military confrontation. Higher levels apply in some areas.”
Comment: The lying and racist US Government and the lying, racist and US lackey Australian Labor Government now officially omit “Occupied” from what the rest of the world correctly describes as the “Occupied Palestinian Territories”. For details see Gideon Polya, “Lying US & Australian Labor Governments Falsely Deny Apartheid Israeli Occupation Of Palestine”, Countercurrents, 14 April 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/04/lying-us-australian-labor-governments-falsely-deny-apartheid-israeli-occupation-of-palestine/?swcfpc=1 .
15 APRIL 2023
Quote: “The Zionist-subverted, US lackey, mendacious and traitorous Australian Labor Government has followed the Zionist-subverted American Government in falsely and extraordinarily denying the horrendous actuality of Apartheid Israeli Occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) that is acknowledged by the other 3 members of the Anglosphere 5-Eyes Club, the UK, New Zealand, and Canada, by major EU countries, and indeed by most countries. This extraordinary, blatant, in-your-face, Orwellian lying and denial of reality by the Australian Labor Government and the US Government in the interests of a nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, serial war criminal, and grossly human rights-abusing neo-Nazi state, Apartheid Israel, demands exposure, censure, and sanctions by the world, and indeed by the citizens of Australia and the US in particular… The Australian Labor Government blatantly lies, and falsely denies the realities of Israeli Apartheid, the Israeli Occupation, Israeli ethnic cleansing, and Israeli denial of basic human rights to Occupied Palestinians. The Australian Labor Government also falsely denies the massive power asymmetry between impoverished and essentially unarmed Occupied Palestinians and an extremely rich, US-backed, NATO-backed, EU-backed, Western Mainstream media-backed, nuclear–armed Apartheid Israel with one of the biggest high-technology armed forces and war industries in the world. The deeply racist Australian Government also opposes peaceful anti-Apartheid resistance measures such as Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) while defending disproportionate Israeli killing and wounding of Palestinians as Israel’s “right to self-defence”… Decent Australians will act… they will not vote 1 for either Labor or the Coalition, and will put the Coalition last and Labor second last.”
(2). Professor Dr Rima Najjar, “JVP, Zionism breaks every human value, not just every “Jewish Value” ”, Countercurrents, 14 April 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/04/jvp-zionism-breaks-every-human-value-not-just-every-jewish-value/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “It took some doing, but at long last, Zionism is being denounced openly for what it is, a racist, settler-colonial Jewish regime aided and abetted by imperial forces and delusional Christian fanatics. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), for example, recently addressed its Jewish constituency on the question of Zionism by publishing a statement titled “What is Zionism? Why are we anti-Zionist?” It featured a poster of a young, presumably Jewish activist holding a sign that says, “Zionism breaks every single Jewish value!” Zionism, of course, breaks every human value… Nazi and Zionist ‘race experts’ consulted each other in the 1930s.” In other words, Israel was not built in Palestine as “a haven for the Jewish people.” It was built to squash rising liberalism and assimilation and to maintain Jewish separatism… What JVP needs to do is come up with a universalist critique of Zionism… “It would do this in the name of the people of Jewish background who contributed so much to modernity, from [Baruch] Spinoza onward, whose legacy towers over Zionism. The failure to do this is catastrophic””.
(3). J Jankovsky-Novak alias Jay Janson, “ WWII & Holocaust Could Never Have Happened Without American Corporations Investing & Joint Venturing with Hitler’s Poor Nazi Germany – Chapter 13:
Quote: “Chapter Thirteen – Hitler Orders a Genocidal Racist Invasion of Russia and Extermination of Jews in the Largest Land Invasion in History - Hitler Led Nazi Anglo-Saxon Affinity – UK Allies With the Soviet Union, an Alliance To Avoid War Previously Rejected by Britain… Notice how Adolf Hitler’s classification of Jews, Russians and other Slavs as sub-human contrasted with his attitude toward ‘fellow Aryan’ English and the “part Aryan” French. Hitler had frequently expressed admiration for Britain, and during the Battle for Britain air war, he continually sought neutrality or a peace treaty with Britain… The Hitler led racial policy of Nazi Germany portrayed the Soviet Union (and all of Eastern Europe) as populated by non-Aryan untermenschen (“sub-humans”), ruled by Jewish Bolshevik conspirators”.
Quote: “If human existence becomes precarious, if pessimism about a future provokes no chink of light, if values to glue a semblance of humanity are regarded as pointless, nihilism reigns. That is the life destroying condition suffered by Palestinians in Israel, on the West Bank, in Gaza, and by Israelis brave enough to argue that their Supreme Court has been an abuser of human rights and contributes nothing to democracy. Viewing current violence, chaos and protests in Israel, prompts search for an apt judgement. Nihilism [rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless] provides that judgement. A less dramatic conclusion would fail to identify a nihilistic state, which would be equivalent to doctors not telling individuals they have a terminal cancer which needs life-saving treatment.”
(2). Dr Gideon Polya, “Zionazism: Genocidally Racist Apartheid Israel Is Presently Attacking 5 Countries”, Countercurrents, 11 Aoril 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/04/zionazism-genocidally-racist-apartheid-israel-is-presently-attacking-5-countries/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “Western Mainstream media (MSM) are reporting the Israeli police violence against worshippers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, token rocket responses by Palestinians, and horrendously disproportionate Israeli bombing of Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. While the West rightly condemns the Russian invasion and occupation of 20% of Ukraine, it fervently supports genocidally racist Zionazi Apartheid Israel that in 2023 is violently attacking 5 other countries and still illegally occupying the territory of 4. By way of comparison, before its genocidal invasion of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1941 that would ultimately kill 27 million Soviet citizens, Nazi Germany had invaded 10 countries… (v). 1 January 2023 – 10 April 2023 Palestinian violent deaths / Israeli violent deaths = 90/17 = 5.3. (vi). 1 January 2023 – 10 April 2023 Palestinian deaths from violence and imposed deprivation / Israeli violent deaths = 1,100/17 = 64.7… It is sobering to compare this Hitler-ordered reprisals death ratio of 10 with that achieved by the Zionists and Zionazi Israelis.”
12 APRIL 2023. Unpublished Letter by Gideon Polya to The Australian and other newspapers: “I support the Yes vote for the Indigenous Australian Voice and praise Coalition MP Julian Leeser for doing likewise. However paradoxically pro-Zionist Leeser is a co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) that is urging all Australian universities to adopt the IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism that is seen by numerous anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish academics as a serious threat to academic and student free speech re the sorely oppressed Indigenous Palestinians. * In my informed view as an anti-racist Jewish Australian scholar with a sole allegiance to Australia, the IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic and anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim critics of genocidal Israeli Apartheid as “anti-Semitic”), and holocaust-ignoring (by ignoring all WW2 Holocausts other than the Jewish Holocaust, and indeed ignoring some 70 holocaust and genocide atrocities). *An Open Letter to University Vice-Chancellors, “Dear Vice-Chancellor, Opposing the Adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Guidelines on Antisemitism in Australian Universities. We, Jewish and non-Jewish current and former academic and university staff, write to you concerned for the preservation of research autonomy, teaching and free speech in Australian higher education…” (see: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ofPnniCqcwvpFo7_w7bgjO2zbyk0aqaR/view ). “
11 APRIL 2023. Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Australian: “Re your editorial “Israel’s borders under terror attack” (11/4/23), Israel’s “borders” now encompass all of Palestine, part of Lebanon and a big slice of Syria, with Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently offending Jordan by denying the very existence of Palestine and the Palestinian people at a podium decorated with a map showing Greater Israel’s borders encompassing all of Palestine plus all of Jordan! * Further, terrorism is as terrorism does, and 1 January 2023 – 10 April 2023 Palestinians killed / Israelis killed = 90/17 = 5.3. Including Palestinians killed by imposed deprivation, the ratio becomes 1,100/17 = 64.7.
Re disproportionate reprisals, in 1944 Hitler ordered the killing of 10 Italian men for every German soldier killed by partisans, and his order was carried out immediately in the Ardeatine Caves Massacre (335 Italian men and boys killed in reprisals for the killing of 28 German soldiers the previous day). *“Jordan parliament votes to recommend expelling Israeli ambassador”, Al Jazeera, 22 March 2023: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/22/jordan-parliament-votes-to-recommend-expelling-israeli-ambassador .”
11 APRIL 2023
Quote: “As Russian troops continue their assault on Ukraine, Western countries persist in invoking international law, imposing crippling sanctions against Russian leaders and entities while publicly supporting Ukrainian armed resistance and opening their borders with open arms to refugees. However, we see such support utterly absent for people enduring Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as its blockade of Gaza. Why is there such blatant double standards in the mainstream support for people resisting apartheid colonial oppression and ongoing aggression?... The concept of the rule of law is to deter violence, but Israel is clearly above the law. In short, unless the victim is white, European, and Christian (US -and Israel- friendly) resistance is terrorism, international law doesn’t apply, vetoes apply, – refugees have no right to return (and are unwelcome), and the aggressor has the right to self-defense and to acquire territory by war.”
(2). Peter Slezak, Larry Stillman and Martin Munz (scholars variously associated with UNSW, and Monash and Sydney Universities, respectively), “A fizzled campaign to muzzle free speech”, Pearls & Irritations, 11 April 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/a-fizzled-campaign-to-muzzle-free-speechopen-letter-link-n/ .
Quote: The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition on Antisemitism that has been shown to suppress discussion about Israel/Palestine and intimidate critics is being promoted internationally by Israel and pro-Israel organisations as a benchmark with a quasi-legal status. After the key professional Zionist lobbying organisation, the Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, called for the adoption of the IHRA definition in August 2021, the peak Jewish communal organisations followed suit. Not unsurprisingly, the Zionist Federation of Australia welcomed the establishment of the Federal Parliamentary Friends of the IHRA weeks before it was publicly launched in late October 2022. At that launch its first order of business announced was lobbying Australian universities to adopt the definition… Universities should not bind themselves to something with quasi-legal force such as the partisan IHRA definition. There is already a plethora of legislation and university guidelines dealing with racism that Vice-Chancellors have referred to when responding to the Open Letter. Critically, free speech is still important in universities. Unfortunately, the campaign to suppress speech about Palestine and Israel is likely to continue.”
Quote: “Worshippers in Al Aqsa attacked, Gaza bombed again. But the Western media still equates the neck and the guillotine… Here we go again. The state of Israel is committing unchecked barbarism against Palestinians and the Western corporate media has decided it all comes down to “clashes”. The latest round of so-called “clashes” – sparked when Israeli police decided to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan by repeatedly attacking Palestinian worshippers at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque – has produced predictably disproportionate casualties. Hundreds of Palestinians have been arrested and wounded as Israeli forces have once again flaunted their handiness with rubber bullets, batons, stun grenades and tear gas. In return, the police have suffered minimal injuries, while also undertaking to accompany illegal Israeli settlers into the mosque compound. And apparently not satisfied with simply unleashing violence in Jerusalem, Israel has also launched a barrage of air strikes on the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon [and Syria] following reported rocket fire. As with all previous instances of Israeli-Palestinian “clashes”, the media’s choice to deploy such terminology serves to obscure the Israeli monopoly on violence and the fact that Israel kills, maims and mutilates at an astronomically higher rate than its supposed counterpart in “clashing”. It also obscures the reality that Palestinian violence is in response to a now nearly-75-year-old Israeli policy defined by the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the occupation of Palestinian land and the periodic perpetration of massacres – pardon, “clashes”.
9 APRIL 2023
(1). Jafar Ramini, “For Palestine, “peace processes” have meant expansion of Israeli occupation”, Pearls & Irritations, 9 April 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/for-palestine-peace-processes-have-meant-expansion-of-israeli-occupation/ .
Quote: “Successive Israeli governments have pretended to engage in a ‘peace process’, but in reality they have continued to consolidate and expand the occupation. While our unelected representatives pontificate they, the Israelis consolidate. From Oslo to Sharm el-Sheik, Palestinians have been on a long arduous and thorny road to nowhere.”
(2). Richard Becker, “Vatican renounces colonial era ‘Doctrine of Discovery’. Will US Supreme Court do likewise?”, Pearls & Irritations, April 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/vatican-renounces-doctrine-of-discovery-when-will-supreme-court-do-likewise/ .
Quote: “More than five centuries after it was formulated in a series of papal decrees, the Vatican issued a formal announcement on March 30 repudiating the Euro-supremacist “Doctrine of Discovery.” In essence, the “doctrine” said that all lands not occupied by “Christians” passed into the hands of the European conquerors as soon as they were “discovered,” and their inhabitants enslaved. Composed of decrees issued between 1452 and 1497, it served as the quasi-legal justification for the expropriation of entire continents in the name of spreading the Catholic faith. The repudiation by the Pope is the culmination of decades of struggle by Indigenous peoples in the United States, Canada and around the world demanding its withdrawal. But while the Pope has now renounced it, the U.S. Supreme Court has not… The high court continues to treat the “doctrine” as an integral basis of U.S. law, particularly in regard to the rights — or lack thereof — of Native peoples. Most notable in recent times was a 2005 decision authored by the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg which invoked the “Doctrine of Discovery” in her majority ruling against the Oneida Indian Nation.”
Comment: What about the Palestinians? My take on Zionist Ginsberg: “On the occasion of the death of the remarkable, pro-women’s rights US Supreme Court judge but fervent supporter of genocidally racist Zionism, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG), one notes that in her outstanding over 60 year career she was utterly silent about the human rights of Palestinians, and that women and children are 75% of the 14 million sorely oppressed Palestinians… Silence is complicity. Kathryn Shihadah has written about these horrendous historical realities and has described Judge Ginsburg’s Palestinian Genocide-complicit silence as “Progressive Except Palestine” (PEP)” (Gideon Polya, “Pro-Women’s Rights Supreme Court Judge Ruth Ginsburg Utterly Ignored Palestinian Genocide”, Countercurrrents, 20 September 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/09/pro-womens-rights-supreme-court-judge-ruth-ginsburg-utterly-ignored-palestinian-genocide/ .)
(3). Jean Shaoul, “Netanyahu attacks Lebanon and Gaza, with full support of Israel’s opposition leaders”, WSWS, 8 April, 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/04/07/dakm-a07.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “Israeli fighter planes pounded targets in southern Lebanon and Gaza early Friday morning, following rocket attacks blamed on the militant clerical group Hamas that controls the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza. The rockets, many of which were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defence system, caused little damage and minor injuries. Israel’s furious bombardment takes place amid escalating tensions following the police’s deliberately provocative attacks on tens of thousands of Palestinian worshippers at the al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem this week. It is bound up with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s determination to whip up war-fever by attacking Israel’s enemies—the Palestinians, Iran and its allies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—as a means of suppressing opposition to his government’s plans to assume dictatorial powers.”
(4). J Jankovsky-Novak alias Jay Janson , “WWII & Holocaust Could Never Have Happened Without American Corporations Investing & Joint Venturing with Hitler’s “Poor Nazi Germany“, Chapter 8”:
Quote: “The Colonial Powers at Times Openly at Times Backhandedly Assisted European Fascism and Hitler’s Preparations for War. Capitalist Speculative Banking Run Colonial Empires Continued to Allow and Assist Hitler To Violate the Prohibitions of the Versailles Treaty Meant to Prevent the War Empowerment of Germany… In October [1933], Hitler had Germany withdraw from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference. Nazi Germany’s departure from the international organization was followed by its massive military buildup, undertaken in violation of international agreements. Germany was still completely powerless to resist the British and French armed forces if they took drastic measures. But nothing was done – (just perhaps because such action might well have brought about a change of regime in Germany).”
Comment: Post-WW2 the same degenerate capitalist Establishment has fervently supported genocidal Zionazi racism and neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel.
6 APRIL 2023. Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Age: “2023 marks the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (800,000 Indigenous Palestinians expelled from their own country, with 15,000 killed and 530 villages ethnically cleansed) and the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht (Nazi German SA and SS attacks on Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues). True to its genocidally racist form, Apartheid Israel marked these anniversaries by sending its armed police to violently attack worshippers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site of Islam, in the holy month of Ramadan. And, of course, cowardly and unprincipled silence from the Zionist-beholden and anti-Arab anti-Semitic Australian Labor Government and Coalition Opposition.”
5 APRIL 2023
(1). Ali Kazak (a former Palestinian ambassador and head of delegation to Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific region) “Exposing Israel’s violations upset the Israeli lobby”, Pearls & Irritations, 5 April 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/exposing-israels-violations-upset-the-israeli-lobby/ .
Quote: “Given the AIJAC [the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council], the Australian Zionist Federation (AZF), which is a branch of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) headquartered in Israel, and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), admit their lobby activities on behalf of a foreign government, people are asking, shouldn’t the Australian authority be concerned of the strong relations of this lobby with the Israeli government, the powerful influence it developed through its political donations and free trips to Israel? Isn’t it in Australia’s national interest to see such organisations registered under “The Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme”, and why are they not? We all know if there were such groups and organisations with a strong connection to China, Russia or any other country, working on their behalf, how the government and media would have reacted, so why are Israel and its lobby exceptional? Is it because they became so powerful that they are so intimidated.”
(2). Alex Kane, “Jamaal Bowman and Bernie Sanders Urge the Biden State Department to Investigate Israeli Use of US Weapons”, Jewish Currents, 29 March 2023: https://jewishcurrents.org/progressives-in-congress-urge-the-biden-state-department-to-investigate-israeli-use-of-us-weapons?emci=6a80acbe-0dd3-ed11-a8e0-00224832e811&emdi=b02a4ffd-1cd3-ed11-a8e0-00224832e811&ceid=64354 .
Quote: “Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Senator Bernie Sanders are leading an effort to urge President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to investigate whether Israel is using US weapons to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians, in violation of United States law, according to a letter and e-mail sent to other members of Congress obtained by Jewish Currents. The letter was written by Bowman, while Sanders is spearheading efforts to garner support from other senators, according to Bowman’s office. The letter has so far been signed by eight additional lawmakers: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Summer Lee, Rashida Tlaib [Palestinian American] , Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, Betty McCollum, André Carson, and Ayanna Pressley… The laws mentioned in the Bowman-Sanders letter—the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act—stipulate that US weapons can only be used for purposes of self-defense and cannot be used to commit human rights abuses such as torture, extrajudicial killings, and any other “flagrant denial” of “the right to life.” The letter demands that the Biden administration “ensure that all future foreign assistance to Israel, including weapons and equipment, is not used in support of gross violations of human rights,” and that the administration respond to the lawmakers with a “detailed plan” on how the US will make sure Israel does not illegally misuse future aid. The wide-ranging letter expresses concern over the government’s now-delayed plans to gut the power of the Israeli judiciary. The lawmakers say these changes could enable corruption and “open the path” to further annexation of Palestinian territory, which they acknowledge is already occurring.”
(3). J Jankovsky-Novak alias Jay Janson, “WWII & Holocaust Could Never Have Happened Without American Corporations Investing & Joint Venturing with Hitler’s Poor Nazi Germany – Chapter 5”, Countercurrents, 4 April 2023:
Quote: “The economic facilitation of a second world war equally came to mean an economic facilitation of a multi-nation Holocaust…These wealthiest of investors and bankers on Wall Street and eminent CEOs of America’s major corporations could not have foreseen that their empowering Nazi Germany militarily would bring about Hitler’s 1941 orders to kill all Jews in Nazi occupied Europe, however they most certainly did know of the vicious, and often murderous, persecution of Jews in Germany that began immediately upon Hitler’s accession to power in 1933. In 1933, new German laws forced Jews out of their civil service jobs, university and law court positions, and other areas of public life. In April 1933, laws proclaimed at Nuremberg made Jews second-class citizens. These Nuremberg Laws defined Jews, not by their religion or by how they wanted to identify themselves, but by the religious affiliation of their grandparents. Between 1937 and 1939, new anti-Jewish regulations segregated Jews further and made daily life very difficult for them… Similar to IBM and GM’s automotive rivals, General Motors was sued by Holocaust survivors for assisting the Nazi war machine. During the trials at Nuremberg after the war it came out in testimony that the German translation of Henry Ford’s The International Jew was required reading for the Hitler Youth… Four months before Kristallnacht [9 Nov 1938 – 10 Nov 1938], the Roosevelt administration had organized a conference in Evian, France, and invited delegates from 32 countries to discuss the Jewish refugee problem. The delegates reaffirmed their unwillingness to liberalize their immigration quotas, and the British refused to even discuss Palestine as a possible haven.”
(4). Dr Ramzy Baroud, “Lying about Lying: Why We Must Revisit the Definition of ‘Fake News’”, Countercurrents, 4 April 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/04/lying-about-lying-why-we-must-revisit-the-definition-of-fake-news/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “The phrase ‘fake news’ continues to be deployed routinely in US politics… In the modern definition, ‘fake news’ has grown to also include people with opposing opinions, whether these opinions are based on facts, selective facts or utter fiction. Many of us, as journalists, are caught in this impossible labyrinth. No matter what we do to demonstrate the authenticity of our sources, we continue to be haunted by ‘fake news’ allegations… Palestine was invaded by Zionists based entirely on ‘fake news’, claiming that the land – historic Palestine – had no inhabitants – “Land without a people ..”. The Palestine-linked ‘fake news’ is arguably the most powerful of any colonial lie. CNN fact-checkers hardly bother to prove that God did not ‘promise’ Palestine to the Zionists and that Palestinians are not the aggressors, but the victims of Zionist-western settler-colonialism. It behooves us all to expand the definition of ‘fake news’ beyond the US-western-centric purely political definitions waged by Republicans against Democrats and vice-versa. Lies, deceit, half-truths, misinformation and outright ‘fake news’ have been the driving force behind corporate media reporting for many years. It is now becoming more obvious simply because those manipulating the media discourse “from above” are losing control over their own narratives.”
Comment: See Gideon Polya, “Fake news through lying by omission”, MWC News, 1 April 2017: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/2017-04-01 and Gideon Polya, “Australian ABC And UK BBC Fake News Through Lying By Omission”, Countercurrents, 2 May 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/05/australian-abc-and-uk-bbc-fake-news-through-lying-by-omission/ .)
(5). Thomas Scripps, “UK: Corbyn barred from standing again as a Labour MP”, WSWS, 4 April 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/04/03/ncat-a03.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been barred from standing again as a Labour MP. Last Wednesday the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) voted 22 votes to 12 to refuse to endorse him as a candidate, passing a motion claiming the party’s electoral chances would be “significantly diminished” by his standing… This is a tissue of lies. Bogus claims of an antisemitism crisis in the Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership (2015-2019) spearheaded a campaign by the Blairite right-wing, the Tories, Zionists and the media to purge any trace of left-wing sentiment from the Labour Party… Corbyn’s only response was to state that he would “not be intimidated into silence. I have spent my life fighting for a fairer society on behalf of the people of Islington North, and I have no intention of stopping now.”
Comment: Another victory for the mendacious, genocidally racist neo-Nazi Zionists. The new extreme right-wing Labour Party and the Tories – like the dirty Zionist Australian Labor Government and the dirty Zionist Coalition – adhere to the anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic and holocaust-ignoring IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism that has been rejected by anti-racist scholars and over 40 anti-racist Jewish or organizations (see Gideon Polya, “85 Ways Zionist Australian Labor Government Betrays Palestinian Human Rights & Humanity”, Countercurrents, 16 March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/85-ways-zionist-australian-labor-government-betrays-palestinian-human-rights-humanity/ ).
4 APRIL 2023
(1). J Jankovsky-Novak aka Jay Janson , “WWII & Holocaust Could Never Have Happened Without American Corporations Investing & Joint Venturing with Hitler's Poor Nazi Germany - Chapter 4”, Countercurrents, 3 April 2023:
Quote: “Chapter 4 – Profiting Well with Hitler – Hitler’s Rule Was Especially Profitable For American Corporatocracy’s Enterprises and Joint Ventures with Nazi Germany… For the purpose of profit repatriation, corporations could also call on the experienced services of the Paris branches of some American banks, such as Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan, and of a number of Swiss banks. Chase Manhattan was part of the Rockefeller empire, as was Standard Oil, IG Farben’s American partner; its branch in German-occupied Paris remained open throughout the war and profited handsomely from close collaboration with the German authorities. On the Swiss side there also happened to be some financial institutions involved that — without asking difficult questions — took care of the gold robbed by the Nazis from their Jewish victims. (“IBM and the Holocaust,” Edwin Black) … William E. Dodd, ambassador to Germany, in 1936, in a letter to President Roosevelt wrote: “A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime…. Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extend aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.””
Comments: There was extensive Zionist collaboration with the Nazis before and during WW2 – see “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ and scroll down to Brenner, Lenni and Brand, Joel.
(2). Simon Hooper, “UK Sanctions Enforcer Targets Aid Charities Working in Gaza”, Global Research, 3 April 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/uk-sanctions-enforcer-targets-aid-charities-working-gaza/5814540 .
Quote: British aid charities working in Gaza have been told they must provide details about their operations and finances in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory to the UK government’s office responsible for enforcing financial sanctions. In a letter sent earlier this month, the Treasury’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) asked charities for information including payments to local authorities and for utilities and services purchased in Gaza since December 2020 when Hamas was added to a UK counter-terrorism sanctions list. The letter is described as a “formal request” for information required by OFSI to monitor compliance with sanctions regulations. It says the charities have been contacted because they are registered on the Charity Commission’s public register as operating in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
(3). Jean Shaoul, “Israel attacks Syria and Palestinians as an answer to anti-government protests”, WSWS, 3 April 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/04/02/jjon-a02.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have carried out a series of attacks against targets in Syria, criminal acts of aggression in defiance of international law. Part of the US-Israeli covert war against Iran, they were carried out to support US imperialism’s efforts to counter its declining economic and political position in the Middle East and to oppose Iran, which has intervened militarily to defend the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad. With the Syrian regime backed by Russia, Israel’s intervention is also directed at supporting the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine. It brings ever closer the threat of a broader military conflagration in the region… Friday’s attack indicates that Israel is now directly targeting the IRGC, which has taken increasing control of Iran’s foreign policy. Tel Aviv has accused the IRGC of funding both Hamas—the clerical group that controls Gaza, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—as well as Hezbollah. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said recently, “We openly declare our support for the resistance front,” a reference to the groups opposing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.”
(4). David Reed, “What do the protests in Israel mean for Palestinians living under apartheid?”, Mondoweiss Podcast, 1 April 2023: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/04/what-do-the-protests-in-israel-mean-for-palestinians-living-under-apartheid/ .
Quote: “Protests continue in Israel. Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walked back his government’s push to overhaul the Israeli judicial system, but did not abandon the effort. Instead, the government will take it up again in a few months when the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, returns from its spring recess. As part of the agreement to delay the legislation, a new national guard force will be created under the control of the National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Dr. Yara Hawari, senior political analyst at the Palestinian thinktank Al-Shabaka, says, “Itamar Ben-Gvir is an extremist, he’s someone who has consistently called for violence against Palestinians throughout his political career.”
(5). Jonathan Ophir, “Meet Avichai Buaron, the new Likud lawmaker who advocated for ‘extermination camps’ for Israel’s enemies”, Mondoweiss, 31 March 2023: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/03/meet-avichai-buaron-the-new-likud-lawmaker-who-advocated-for-extermination-camps-for-israels-enemies/ .
Quote: “Avichai Buaron is a radical right-wing activist who has been a leader of the movement to maintain the illegal West Bank outpost of Amona, which is illegal even by Israeli law. This week Buaron became the newest member of the Israeli parliament in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, replacing lawmaker David Amsalem who resigned his seat to serve in the Justice Ministry. Buaron is notable because, as if his far right-wing advocacy wasn’t enough, in 2010 he published an editorial calling for “extermination camps” for Israel’s enemies. Yes, you read right, extermination camps. The editorial referenced support for extermination camps for “Amalekites,” a common Jewish euphemism. The Amalekites were a people often mentioned in the bible as bitter enemies of the Israelites, where in Deuteronomy the Israelite God commands to “blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” In contemporary Israel, it is widely understood that “Amalekites” are a reference to Palestinians. With this in mind, we should look at Buaron’s (unsigned) 2010 editorial (reported in Haaretz )”
Comment: For an alphabetically ordered listing of utterly appalling genocidally racist Zionist quotes from Herzl to Netanyahu see: "Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide": https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes .
1 APRIL 2023
Quote: “There is “no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as the Palestinian people,” Smotrich preached to an enthusiastic crowd of supporters on March 19, during a recent visit to France. “The Palestinian people is an invention that is less than 100 years old,” he added. To make matters worse, Smotrich was speaking from a podium that featured a map of the so-called ‘Greater Israel’, which includes modern-day Jordan and other Arab lands. Three days later, the Jordanian Parliament voted in favor of a resolution that recommends the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador in Amman.… And, finally, the racist notion that Palestinians do not exist, although functional in terms of dehumanizing Palestinians, is also an old trope. It is directly linked to the old Zionist slogan that Palestine was a “land without a people for a people without a land”. Many derivatives of this racist colonial slogan were uttered by Israeli politicians throughout the years, the most famous of which being that of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in an interview with the Sunday Times in 1969. “There were no such thing as Palestinians … They did not exist,” she said. Though the world may have grown less tolerant of such racism, Israel itself remained the same. Indeed, the Smotrich and Ben-Gvir generation is but the logical descendant of that of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir. Therefore, condemning Smotrich’s comments, while continuing to embrace Israel and celebrate Zionism is not only hypocritical, but also useless.”
Quote: “The Western Mainstream media (MSM) are extensively covering the massive Israeli protests against threats to judicial independence by the new extreme right wing Netanyahu government. However the pro-Zionist, pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid Western MSM maintain the obscene myth of asserted Israeli democracy and overwhelmingly ignore the gross abuse of the human rights of 16 million Exiled, Occupied and Israeli Indigenous Palestinians… As an anti-racist Jewish Australian Humanist and taxpayer I utterly condemn (a) the appalling crimes of democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel, and (b) the egregiously racist lying by omission by the ABC and SBS that demands their radical de-funding.… Set out below is a quick sketch of this shockingly differential media coverage of the Israeli protests. (A). Decent non-European and left-wing media and writers note the gross violation of the Indigenous Palestinians by Apartheid Israel… (B). Western Mainstream media overwhelmingly ignore continuing gross Zionist violation of Palestinian human rights… What can decent people do? Decent anti-racist folk committed to Kindness and Truth must (a) inform everyone they can, (b) eschew mendacious Zionist-subverted Mainstream media, and (c) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all people, politicians , parties, collectives, corporations and countries supporting Apartheid Israel and hence the utterly vile crime of Apartheid.”
Quote: “This is the first chapter of a 18 chapter book by J. Jankovsky-Novak alias Jay Janson to be serialised in the next few days in CC [Countercurrents]. Impossibility of a Prostate Disarmed and Captive Nazi Germany Rearming Itself While Under British and French Armed Enforcement of Prohibitions of Versailles Treaty Law. The Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War forced reduction of the strength of the German army from 4,500,000 in 1918 to 100,000. Its navy was not to exceed 15,000 men, including manning for the fleet, coast defenses, signal stations, administration, and other land services…There is simply no way an impoverished and utterly demilitarized Nazi Germany, with no air force, a tiny navy, no armored vehicles, no heavy weapons and a tiny army, could have on its own, built its armed forces up to the most powerful military in the world during the first six years of Hitler’s rule without the colossal and crucial investments in, and joint venturing by, powerful US corporations in low wage Nazi Germany in outright evasion of the Versailles Treaty prohibition of German rearmament… Fascism Shown as a Deliberate Cultivation by the Rulers of Anglo-American Imperialism… “The target for the Western sponsors of the Nazi war machine.” The real target for the Western sponsors of the Nazi war machine was an attack on the Soviet Union in order to destroy, in their view, the source of international revolutionary socialism.” Mmm
(4). Nir Hasson, “[Jewish] Anti-Christian hate crimes in Jerusalem soaring this year”, Pearls & Irritations, 1 April 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/anti-christian-hate-crimes-in-jerusalem-soaring-this-year/ .
Quote: “Church sources accuse Israeli police of downplaying acts of violence towards them, and attribute Jews’ vandalism to a growing national legitimisation of discrimination. Vandalism and assaults targeting Christians and Christian institutions in Jerusalem have risen sharply since the beginning of the year, something leaders of churches in the city link to the tone of the new government.Church sources say the police do not treat the situation seriously enough and refuse to identify the growing list of violent incidents as a trend”.
(5). Jean Shaoul, “Israel’s protest leaders enter talks to stabilise Netanyahu government”, WSWS, 3 March 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/30/btjl-m30.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “The day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he was “pausing” his plans to overhaul Israel’s judicial system—the only arm of the state that his far-right coalition does not control—to prevent “civil war,” opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz entered talks with his government. While the media portray Lapid, Gantz and the host of former generals, intelligence and security chiefs, the Histadrut labour federation and heads of Israel’s tech sector as leading the movement against Netanyahu’s dictatorial legislation, they are acting swiftly to betray it. Their aim is to agree some cosmetic changes to the planned legislation that will demobilise the largest protest movement in Israel’s 75-year history and prop up the rule of Israel’s oligarchs against the people. These leaders, many of whom have served in previous governments headed by Netanyahu, do not represent a progressive alternative. They have few fundamental policy differences with him. Equally committed to the Zionist project, Jewish supremacy and the suppression of the Palestinians within a system of apartheid rule—along with the enrichment of Israel’s corporate elite—they fear his measures will destroy Israel’s democratic fig leaf and endanger its relationship with the United States that is crucial for the country’s economic and military security. To this end, these forces will readily swallow their dislike of Netanyahu and form a government of national unity, displacing his fascistic partners.”
(6). ABC Radio National, Saturday Extra with the esteemed Geraldine Doogue, Saturday 1 April 2023, 7.40 am, interview with the Deputy Editor of the Jerusalem Post.
(i). Throughout the interview the term “Israeli democracy” was repeatedly used. However “Israeli democracy “is an outrageous falsehood: notwithstanding a century-long Palestinian Genocide ( 2.2 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.1 million, and imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, and successive mass population expulsions, 800,000 in the 1948 Nakba and 400,000 in the 1967 Naksa), today 7.5 million Indigenous Palestinians represent 50% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel but 73% of them (the 5.5 million Occupied Palestinians) are excluded from voting for the government ruling them. 2 million Israeli Palestinians are permitted to vote under “Israeli democracy” albeit as Third Class citizens under 60 Nazi-style discriminatory laws.
(ii). Finally at the end of the interview the esteemed ABC interviewer asked about the Palestinians (variously also referred to as Arabs in the interview in deference to Zionism – just imagine if Australians were routinely described based on ethnicity rather than country) .
(iii). The Deputy Editor of the Jerusalem Post falsely stated that the West Bank and Gaza were “self-governing”. Reality: under Israeli Apartheid 5.5 million Occupied Palestinians are highly abusively confined under Nazi-style military occupation to ever-dwindling West Bank ghettoes or to the bombed and blockaded Gaza Concentration Camp, and the GDP per capita is $3,500 for Occupied Palestinians and $55,400 for Israelis (evidence of gross violation by neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel of Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that state that an Occupier is obliged to provide its conquered subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”).
(iv). The word “apartheid “ was absent from the interview (apparently the word is banned by the ABC in the context of Palestine although numerous anti-racist scholars, writers, leaders, and human rights groups expertly, as well as the South African Government and heroes in the fight against South African Apartheid, refer to Israeli apartheid ; see BDS – Boycott Apartheid Israel: https://sites.google.com/view/bdsopinions/home ).
(7). Complaint to the ABC (see https://www.abc.net.au/contact/complain.htm ) on 1 April 2023.
31 MARCH 2023
(1). Patrick Martin, “General strike and mass protests stagger Israeli regime”, WSWS, 27 March 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/28/pers-m28.html .
Quote: “The self-proclaimed leaders of the protest movement, mostly officials of the previous government that gave way to Netanyahu after elections last year, like Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, are themselves committed defenders of the Zionist state and its oppression of the Palestinian people, as is the judicial system which they defend. They do not represent a “progressive” alternative, objecting to Netanyahu’s measures only because they fear that he will destroy the democratic fig leaf of the state of Israel… Despite its enormous scale, however, this mass movement has a weakness that will prove fatal if not combatted: It has not so far embraced in any way the struggles of the Palestinian people. There has been a sea of Israeli flags, with not one attempt to mobilize support from Israeli Arabs, let alone the Palestinian population of the occupied territories”.
(2). Thomas Scripps, “Israel protests to continue despite Netanyahu’s “pause” of dictatorial legislation”, WSWS, 29 March 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/28/dzek-m28.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “Demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands, of a population of just over nine million, have been held for the last 12 weeks against the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to stage a coup against the judiciary. His plans, pursued alongside his fascistic coalition partners, are part of a broader project to dramatically escalate the Israeli state’s persecution of the Palestinians, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and to clamp down on growing social and political opposition in the Israeli working class… But whatever the intentions of Lapid, Gantz and the rest, the split in Zionist forces is an expression of a deeper crisis of the Israeli state and world capitalism which has blown apart the myth of a common Jewish people unaffected by the deep class divides and social tensions which scar the country. As the World Socialist Web Site wrote Monday, it has “brought Jewish workers and youth face to face with the historical necessity of a political reckoning with Zionism.””
(3). Al Jazeera, “Israeli gov’t in crisis, Netanyahu to speak on judicial plan”, 27 March 2023: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/27/mass-protests-in-israel-after-netanyahu-fires-defence-minister .
Quote: “Ofer Cassif (Israeli politician and Knesset member for the leftist Hadash party) stating: “What the government wants to do is not to correct or to fix or amend the judicial system, so that it will be more just. Exactly the opposite. They want to take control over the judicial system. I think that we should refer to the situation not as a judicial overhaul, but as a regime coup. Netanyahu wants to turn Israel from an ethnocracy – because Israel in my view has never been a democracy, because this state is based on a Jewish supremacy, so it cannot be regarded as a democracy from the first place – but it’s going to be under the coup that the government wants to pursue, Israel is going to turn into a full fledged fascist dictatorship”.
(4). Rachel Beit Arie (Director of Zochrot, an Israeli NGO researching and exposing the Palestinian Nakba) , “The limits of the protest movement in Israel have been frustrating for those of us focused on ending Palestinian oppression. But it has also created an opportunity to destabilize apartheid. We have to take up this challenge… The Israeli protests have opened a crack in apartheid. Our job is to widen it”, Mondoweiss, 18 March 2018: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/03/the-israeli-protests-have-opened-a-crack-in-apartheid-our-job-is-to-widen-it/?emci=c63fd9e6-96cd-ed11-a8e0-00224832e811&emdi=0bcb50ea-63ce-ed11-a8e0-00224832e811&ceid=64354 .
Quote: “To those of us who have been protesting the Israeli regime and its oppression of the Palestinian people for years, this wave of dissent is both perplexing and frustrating. The protestors are calling to “shield our democracy”; they are ferocious in their defense of the high court of justice and of the balance of power. We know that the same court for decades has approved killing, torture, house demolitions, land confiscations, and deportations of Palestinians. It’s the court that, from the very establishment of the state of Israel, and with very few exceptions, willingly positioned itself as one of the arms of an un-democratic, oppressive regime and provided It with a decent facade. Only last year, the supreme court green-lighted the transfer of thousands of Palestinians from Masafer Yatta, whose lands the army declared a “firing zone,” and this is but one example of dispossession allowed by the court”.
(5). Mairav Zonszein, “Israelis Are Trying to Save a Democracy That Never Existed”, Daily Beast, 23 March 2023: https://www.thedailybeast.com/israelis-are-trying-to-save-a-democracy-that-never-existed .
Quotes: . Jessica Corbett: “While silent on Apartheid, Israelis protest Netanyahu firing minister who urged halt to judicial coup … Decades into the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, massive crowds flooded Israel's streets on Sunday for another round of demonstrations to "save a democracy that never existed," as one journalist recently put it… earlier in the weekend, Israeli soldiers forced Palestinian worshippers out of the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.” [
Dr Ramzy Baroud: “A proper engagement with the ongoing protests is to further expose how Tel Aviv utilizes the judicial system to maintain the illusion that Israel is a country of law and order, and that all the actions and violence in Palestine, however bloody and destructive, are fully justifiable according to the country's legal framework… Yes, Israel should be sanctioned, not because of Netanyahu's attempt at co-opting the judiciary, but because the system of apartheid and regime of military occupation constitute complete disregard and utter violation of international law… Whether Israelis like it or not, international law is the only law that matters to an occupied and oppressed nation".
Yonah Lieberman ( co-founder of the US group IfNotNow): "Furious young people fighting an authoritarian for their rights. Reminds you of popular uprisings that have happened over and over again across the world. But if these were young Palestinians they would have been shot—the Jewish privilege inherent in Israel's apartheid system. A popular uprising to overthrow Netanyahu and his extremist government will not lead to democracy and equality for all in Israel. Only overthrowing the entire apartheid system will lead to democracy and equality for all".
(7). “Netanyahu Delays Plan to Overhaul Top Court”, New York Times, 28 March 2023: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/03/27/world/israel-protests-netanyahu .
Quote: Raja Abdulrahim in “Palestinian citizens of Israel see the protests as ignoring their cause” (New York Times) quotes Sawsan Zaher (a lawyer who defends Palestinian rights in Apartheid Israeli courts): “For us, the legal war has already been decided with the nation state law. These protests are Israeli Jewish protests for their own image as a democratic state. For Palestinians, it never was a democracy because of the history of institutionalized racism””.
31 MARCH 2023. Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Age: “Re “Nation kicks own goal by taking sides” (The Age, 31/3), Russia has been rightly excluded from numerous sporting competitions over the war criminal Russian invasion, devastation and occupation of 20% of Ukraine in 2022. The same exclusion should be applied to the war criminal and highly abusive Israeli occupation of 100% of Palestine plus a significant part of Syria for 56 years. Indonesia has been unfairly punished for ethical Indonesian objections to Israeli sporting participation because of its war criminal invasion, occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”
29 MARCH 2023. Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Age and o0ther newspapers:” There is massive media coverage of hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis demonstrating for judicial independence and asserted “democracy”. However, resolutely ignored by the taxpayer-funded ABC and SBS are that (a) the demonstrations are occurring in towns and villages ethnically cleansed of circa 800,000 Indigenous Palestinians 75 years ago in the genocidal 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe), and (b) of the circa 16 million mainly impoverished Indigenous Palestinians today, 8 million are Exiled Palestinians excluded from their own country, 5.5 million are Occupied Palestinians under violent foreign Occupation (cf Ukraine) and deprived of all human rights specified by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and 2 million are Israeli Palestinians who can vote for the government ruling them albeit as Third Class citizens under 60 Nazi-style race-based discriminatory laws. As an anti-racist Jewish Australian Humanist and taxpayer I utterly condemn (a) the appalling crimes of democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel, and (b) the egregiously racist lying by omission by the ABC and SBS that demands their radical de-funding.”
28 MARCH 2023
(1). Paul Heywood-Smith QC (Adelaide QC of some 20 years, initial chairperson of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, and author of “The Case for Palestine, The Perspective of an Australian Observer”), “FOI exposes Australia’s attempts to protect Israel on apartheid status”, Pearls & Irritations, 28 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/foi-exposes-australias-attempts-to-protect-israel-on-apartheid-reports/ .
Quote: “Foreign Minister, Penny Wong has asserted that Australia does not accept that Israel is an apartheid State. Freedom of information (FOI) documents have exposed that this position is not based on DFAT legal advice. The concerns of many Australians that their government, through trade and other dealings, or by even visiting Israel, might be making them an accomplice in a crime against humanity have been left unaddressed in order to protect Israel... In recent weeks P&I has dwelt at length on the issue of AUKUS and the submarine deal. A number of writers have raised the question of Australia compromising its sovereignty by its involvement. I ask, “Has Australia surrendered its sovereignty on issues appertaining to Israel?”, and given the apparent obvious affirmative answer, I ask “Why?””
Comment: For a comprehensive analysis of Zionist Labor’s cowardly and racist betrayal of Palestinians and Humanity see Gideon Polya, “85 Ways Zionist Australian Labor Government Betrays Palestinian Human Rights & Humanity”, Countercurrents, 16 March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/85-ways-zionist-australian-labor-government-betrays-palestinian-human-rights-humanity/ .
(2). Bethan McKernan and Sufian Taha, “Concern over violence as Palestinians prepare for Ramadan in Jerusalem”, Guardian 22 March 2023: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/22/concern-over-violence-as-palestinians-prepare-for-ramadan-in-jerusalem
.Quote: “Bloodshed and hardline Israeli politics raise tensions on eve of Muslim holy month… At least 88 Palestinians, of whom about half were militants and half civilians, and 16 Israelis, of whom 15 were civilians, have been killed since January, according to rights groups, making 2023 the deadliest start to the year in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in two decades. The bloodshed has led to speculation that the region is at the beginning of a third intifada, or Palestinian uprising… Settlers in the Old City, and other devout Jewish Israelis, have visited the Temple Mount in increasing numbers over the last few years. Under a longstanding compromise, they are allowed to visit but not pray at the site, and any perceived attempt to alter the status quo acts as a lightning rod for violence.”
(3). Eve Geddie, “EU needs to acknowledge the reality of Israeli apartheid”, Relief Web, 21 March 2023: https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/eu-needs-acknowledge-reality-israeli-apartheid-enar .
Quote: “12 Israeli human rights groups have since expressed “grave concern” about attempts to associate Amnesty’s [Israeli apartheid] report with antisemitism, and they have rejected the [European] Commission’s failure to recognize Israel’s apartheid. These organizations argue that weaponizing antisemitism to silence legitimate criticism actually undermines attempts to address rising antisemitism.”
27 MARCH 2023
(1). Jafar M Ramini (Palestinian writer and political analyst), “From Oslo to Sharm El-Sheik”, Countercurrents, 26 March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/from-oslo-to-sharm-el-sheik/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “A long arduous and thorny road to nowhere. This mad journey was started back in 1974, during the Arab summit in Rabat, Morocco, where the Arab league took it upon itself to elect the Palestine Liberation Organisation as our sole representative. It was a fait accompli. The Palestinian nation was not consulted. On the 15th November, 1988 our fate was sealed when the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, announced by PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, formally established the State of Palestine. We were not consulted. From then on, the Palestinian Cause and the fate of all Palestinians took a downwards spiral… When Mahmoud Abbas, the current president of the Palestinian Authority, signed the first accord in 1993 there were under 100,000 illegal Israeli settlers, scattered over thirty illegal settlements in the West Bank and Gaza; now there are over 700,000 and over 140 illegal settlements and outposts… At the end of last year, the Israelis voted into government the most far-right, fascist element of Israeli society. These members of government are now calling for open genocide in Palestine and as recently as Sunday, March 19th, at a conference in Paris, Mr Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli finance minister, in charge of settlements, denied our very existence. He said, as quoted in ‘The Times’ of Israel: “Is there a Palestinian history of culture? No. The Palestinians are an invented people from less than a hundred years ago.” Yet, according to Herodotus, Greek historian, 484-425 BC:“Palestina is part of Syria along the Mediterranean coast.” Even more telling is this extract from the old testament of the Bible. “The people shall hear and be afraid; sorrow shall take over the inhabitants of Palestine.” Exodus 15:14 [written circa 500 BC in Babylon about asserted but uncorroborated events in 1000 BC Palestine].”
Comment. The King James version Exodus, chapter 15: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2015&version=KJV :
9 The enemy [Egypt] said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.
10 Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters [no non-Biblical evidence] .
11 Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?
12 Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them.
13 Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation.
14 The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina.
15 Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan [Palestine] shall melt away.
16 Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thine arm they shall be as still as a stone; till thy people pass over, O Lord, till the people pass over, which thou hast purchased.
17 Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established.
18 The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.
26 MARCH 2023
Quote: “The development came a day after an Israeli and Palestinian delegation at a meeting in Egypt, mediated by Egyptian, Jordanian and U.S. officials, pledged to take steps to lower tensions roiling the region ahead of a sensitive holiday season… As the negotiators were issuing a joint communique, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich delivered a speech in Paris saying the notion of a Palestinian people was artificial. “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language,” he said in France late Sunday. He spoke at a lectern draped with what appeared to be an image showing the map of Israel that included the occupied West Bank, Gaza and Jordan.”
(2). ABC TV Q&A, “Words that offend and referendums”, 6 March 2023: https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/2023-06-03/102019930 and subsequent ABC TV ads for Q&A.
Quote: “David Hare, playwright: So, as a playwright, my bias is always in favour of freedom. It always has to be. I always want freedom and see very, very few reasons to shut it down. I personally would never write a word where I supported the powerless against the powerful, and I am offended when I see that, but on the other hand, I don’t know that I would wish to shut it down. And so, in those circumstances, yeah, I always want freedom, and that means not rewriting Roald Dahl, and it also means not having this ridiculous attempt to boycott Adelaide Writers’ Week, which is just absurd. Not to allow Palestinians to speak in this country is just, you know, to me, repellent.” (the video of David Hare saying “Not to allow Palestinians to speak in this country is just, you know, to me, repellent.” has been subsequently frequently used in ABC TV ads for Q&A).
(3). Ellen Isaacs (physician, anti-racist and anti-capitalist activist and co-editor of multiracialunity.org.), “Palestinians don’t exist?”, Countercurrents, 25 March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/palestinians-dont-exist/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: ““Palestinians don’t exist.” (https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/03/paris-israels-smotrich-says-palestinian-people-dont-exist-calls-them-fictitious) This was the recent statement by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that made shocked headlines around the world. And, of course, he meant it as an affirmation of Jewish nationalism, the right of Israeli Jews to dispose of all Palestinians from the Jordan to the Sea. Sounds kind of like the Nazis, no? But in a perverted way he was right (forgive me, read on). People exist, all people exist, but there are huge divisions between us. In this universally capitalist world, the divisions that truly describe our station in life and the power to control our lives depend not on our ethnicity but on our class, workers versus bosses and their henchmen.”
(4). Jean Shaoul, “Netanyahu given UK backing amid deepening Israeli crisis and repression of Palestinians”, WSWS, 25 March 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/24/neta-m24.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “On March 21, UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen signed the 2030 Roadmap for UK-Israeli Bilateral Relations, “boosting economic, security and technology ties,” during discussions than covered NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine and “the threat posed by Iran.” The Conservative government’s announcement boasted of a trade relationship “worth around £7 billion”, “more than 400 Israeli tech firms operating in the UK” and Israeli investment “adding around £1 billion gross value to the UK economy and creating about 16,000 jobs in the last 8 years.” Its most politically significant passage promises that “the UK and Israel will work together to tackle the singling out of Israel in the Human Rights Council as well as in other international bodies. In this context, the UK and Israel disagree with the use of the term ‘apartheid’ with regard to Israel.” The day before Netanyahu’s leaving for London, at least 75 protesters were arrested during the latest anti-government “day of disruption” in Israel. That same day the Knesset passed by 64 votes to 47 the first part of legislation shielding him from prosecution for corruption. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara is now prevented from declaring Netanyahu unfit for office, even if he uses the judicial overhaul to overturn criminal charges.”
(5). Billy Van Aukun, “US bombs Syria in defense of its illegal occupation”, WSWS, 25 March 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/25/mfbz-m25.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “The US Air Force carried out a series of strikes against targets in Syria’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor Thursday night, acts of illegal aggression to defend Washington’s criminal occupation of the country in defiance of Syrian sovereignty and international law. According to the Pentagon, the bombing raids were ordered by US President Joe Biden after a drone struck a US military maintenance facility at the Kharab al-Jir military airport near the city of Hasakah in northeastern Syria, killing one military contractor and wounding five US military personnel along with another contractor.”
Quote: “Highlights from the [14 day] reporting period: Israeli forces killed 14 Palestinians, including one child, and injured 55 others, including 30 with live ammunition, in four operations that involved exchange of fire with Palestinians in Jericho, Jenin and Nablus.”
Comment: This fortnight toll implies 350 killings annually. Since 2000 the Israelis have violently killed an average of 550 Occupied Palestinians each year (a further 4,000 presently die avoidably each year from imposed deprivation).
23 MARCH 2023. Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Age: “The AFL rules permit the Israeli flag to be flown at AFL matches (The Age, 22/3). However the Israeli flag is of profound offence to anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish humanitarians opposed to the horrendous crimes of nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, genocidally racist, serial war criminal, and democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel that persecutes and kills Palestinian footballers, and has excluded thousands of Palestinians from playing football by badly wounding them. 50% of Israeli Subjects are Indigenous Palestinians (Jewish Israelis 47%) but 73% of them are excluded by Israeli Apartheid from voting for the government ruling them. Just imagine if Australia reverted to the pre-1967 policies persecuting Indigenous Australians.”
23 MARCH 2023
Quote: “After a decade in which Democrats have shown increasing affinity toward the Palestinians, their sympathies in the Middle East now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, 49% versus 38%.Today’s attitudes reflect an 11-percentagpoint increase over the past year in Democrats’ sympathy with the Palestinians. At the same time, the percentages sympathizing more with the Israelis (38%) and those not favoring a side (13%) have dipped to new lows.”mmm
(2). Ali Kazak (former Palestinian ambassador and head of delegation to Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific region.), “Does the ABC regard Palestinians as humans, equal to Ukrainians?”, Pearls & Irritations, 23 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/does-the-abc-regard-palestinians-as-humans-equal-to-ukrainians/ .
Quote: “An open letter to the ABC, 22 March 2023. In a series of aggressions, Israel has been occupying Palestine from the river to the sea for over 74 years, by ethnically cleansing two-thirds of its people through over seventy massacres, killing and executing Palestinians daily (at least 89 Palestinians, including 16 children and a woman, have been killed and executed in the last ten weeks alone), exercising the crime of racial discrimination and apartheid of Jewish supremacy over Palestinians, documented and condemned by Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights organisations such as; Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Southwest Asia, Al Haq, Adalah and B’Tselem among others. And yet, despite all this, the ABC never interviewed an Israeli ambassador or official to question them about Israel’s brutal occupation, racial discrimination and gross violations the way it questioned the Russian ambassador on the 7.30 TV program on Monday, 20 March 2023.”
Comment: Answer: No! For a detailed alphabetically-ordered listing of expert opinions about Israeli Apartheid see: “BDS – Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/view/bdsopinions/home .
For a detailed alphabetically-ordered of expert opinions for a One State Solution see: “Secular, democratic, one state Palestine”: https://sites.google.com/view/onestatepalestine/home .
(3). Michael Bradley, “The proto-Nazis in Victoria deserve our wrath – but the law is a blunt tool”, Crikey, 21 March 2023: https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/03/21/nazi-march-salute-melbourne-victoria-law/ .Crikey published the following comment by Dr Gideon Polya:
“Victoria has criminalized non-religious display of the swastika, is moving to criminalize the repugnant Nazi salute, and various other states are preparing to act likewise. However free speech considerations advise caution. Free speech is vital for democracy, and banning free expression is far more dangerous than the offensive symbols of a tiny minority of stupid, ignorant, racist and bigoted neo-Nazis. Indeed banning free speech (backed by draconian and deadly penalties) was a hallmark of the Nazis.
There is considerable Labor and Coalition hypocrisy here. Thus one notes that Australia under the new Federal Labor Government shockingly joined with the US in voting No to the annual UN General Assembly Anti-Nazism Resolution whereas under the Coalition Australia had merely abstained. For 6 million obvious reasons even appallingly racist Apartheid Israel voted Yes.
Further, in an appalling white-washing exercise, under both the Coalition and Labor Australia celebrates 21 March as “Harmony Day” whereas decent countries worldwide mark it as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that is held on the anniversary of the 21 March 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in neo-Nazi Apartheid South Africa. Apartheid continues in Apartheid Israel as acknowledged by leading Jewish and non-Jewish scholars and human rights groups (for their opinions see “BDS – Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/view/bdsopinions/home ).
Indeed a key hallmark of Nazism was genocidal invasion of other countries. Australia has been complicit in all post-1950 US Asian wars, atrocities associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation. Labor at least opposed the Vietnam War and the war criminal invasion and devastation of Iraq (5 million Iraqi deaths from violence and deprivation from 1990 onwards).”
(4). Noel Turnbull, “Guardian Essential Poll: AUKUS support collapses, 3-in-4 oppose”, Pearls & Irritations, 23 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/guardian-essential-poll-aukus-support-collapses-3-in-4-oppose/ .
Quote: “Reflecting the diminishing public support for the AUKUS deal, a new Guardian Essential Poll has found that only one quarter of Australians support paying the $368bn price tag to acquire nuclear submarines. For decades Australians were gung ho about going to war – almost any war. Today – despite the best efforts of the Nine Media (Peter Hartcher in particular) and other media – they are now far more hesitant.”
Comment: Anti-China, anti-Asian and Zionist-subverted US, UK and Australia are the most fervent supporters pf Apartheid Israel and hence of the crime of Apartheid. The racist Zionists hate China because it won’t tolerate Zionist subversion and supports Palestinian Human Rights.
(5). Melissa Parke (awardee of the 2023 Jerusalem (Al Quds Peace Prize), staunch defender of Palestinian Human Rights and human rights in general, Australian Ambassador for ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons).and the Former Federal Member for Fremantle and Member, UN Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen.), “Josh Wilson’s welcome concern: AUKUS will cost the earth”, Pearls & Irritations, 23 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/josh-wilsons-welcome-concern-aukus-will-cost-the-earth/ .
Quote: “I welcome the speech given by Josh Wilson MP, my successor in the federal seat of Fremantle, in the Australian parliament on 20 March in which he raised concerns regarding the AUKUS agreement. I also welcome the contributions from former Prime Minister Paul Keating last week (15/3) and former Foreign Ministers Bob Carr (17/3) and Gareth Evans in the Guardian (21/3). There ought to be a thorough debate in the parliament and in the community over this ‘deal’ that is set to cost the earth in more ways than one. First, the agreement impinges on Australian sovereignty… France and China already use LEU to power their nuclear-propelled submarines .Insisting upon LEU naval fuel, particularly for the proposed new SSN-AUKUS subs that are decades away, is something the Australian government can still build into the AUKUS deal to mitigate the proliferation risk. Australia can most convincingly demonstrate its bona fides in this matter – as Labor’s national policy platform commendably commits – by signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons [TPNW]”.
Quote: “The scene of Israeli Ambassador, Sharon Bar-Li, along with other Israeli delegates, being escorted out of the opening ceremony of the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on February 18, was historic. The very moment that was meant to crown twenty years of Israeli diplomacy on the African continent, in a few seconds, turned to represent Israel’s failure in Africa. Unable to fahom the breakdown of its diplomatic and political efforts, Tel Aviv responded to Bar-Li’s removal by waging a war of words against African countries, accusing them of spearheading a campaign aimed at blocking Israel’s observer status. Referring to a “small number of extremist states like South Africa and Algeria,” a spokesperson for the Israeli foreign ministry alluded to a plot, supposedly hatched by Iran, and carried out by African governments that are “driven by hate” for Israel.”
Comment: The South African Government has condemned Zionist Israel as an Apartheid state (see: “BDS – Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/view/bdsopinions/home .)
Quote: “When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left Tel Aviv for Rome on March 9, he was flown to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv by a helicopter because anti-government protesters blocked all the roads around it. Netanyahu’s visit was not met with much enthusiasm in Italy, either.… Italy’s foreign policy is also accountable to the collective policies of the European Union, of which Rome is an integral member. The EU supports the UN’s position that East Jerusalem is an occupied Palestinian city and that Israel’s annexation of the city in 1980 is illegal. Moreover, Italy’s recent landmark deal with Algeria’s state-owned gas company, Sonatrach, in January, makes it particularly difficult for Rome to take an extreme position in support of Israel. The delicate geopolitical balances resulting from the gas crisis, itself a direct outcome of the Russia-Ukraine war, make any shifts in Italian foreign policy on Palestine and Israel akin to an act of self-harm. For [neofascist, pro-Apartheid Israel] Italy, at least for now, Arab gas is far more important than anything that Netanyahu could possibly offer.”
(2). Michael Bradley, “The proto-Nazis in Victoria deserve our wrath – but the law is a blunt tool”, Crikey, 21 March 2023: https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/03/21/nazi-march-salute-melbourne-victoria-law/ .
The following comment by Dr Gideon Polya was published by Crikey:
Victoria has criminalized non-religious display of the swastika, is moving to criminalize the repugnant Nazi salute, and various other states are preparing to act likewise. However free speech considerations advise caution. Free speech is vital for democracy, and banning free expression is far more dangerous than the offensive symbols of a tiny minority of stupid, ignorant, racist and bigoted neo-Nazis. Indeed banning free speech (backed by draconian and deadly penalties) was a hallmark of the Nazis.
There is considerable Labor and Coalition hypocrisy here. Thus one notes that Australia under the new Federal Labor Government shockingly joined with the US in voting No to the annual UN General Assembly Anti-Nazism Resolution whereas under the Coalition Australia had merely abstained. For 6 million obvious reasons even appallingly racist Apartheid Israel voted Yes.
Further, in an appalling white-washing exercise, under both the Coalition and Labor Australia celebrates 21 March as “Harmony Day” whereas decent countries worldwide mark it as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that is held on the anniversary of the 21 March 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in neo-Nazi Apartheid South Africa. Apartheid continues in Apartheid Israel as acknowledged by leading Jewish and non-Jewish scholars and human rights groups (for their opinions see “BDS – Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/view/bdsopinions/home ).
Indeed a key hallmark of Nazism was genocidal invasion of other countries. Australia has been complicit in all post-1950 US Asian wars, atrocities associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation. Labor at least opposed the Vietnam War and the war criminal invasion and devastation of Iraq (5 million Iraqi deaths from violence and deprivation from 1990 onwards).
21 MARCH 2023. Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Age: “The Victorian Government has criminalized non-religious display of the repugnant swastika, and there are now calls to criminalize the repugnant Nazi salute. Free speech considerations advise caution. Further, anti-racist Australian voters will note that Australia under the Federal Labor Government joined with the US in voting No to the annual UN General Assembly Anti-Nazism Resolution (under the Coalition Australia abstained), and under both the Coalition and Labor Australia made 21 March “Harmony Day” whereas decent humanity worldwide mark it as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on the anniversary of the 21 March 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in Apartheid South Africa. Apartheid continues in Apartheid Israel as acknowledged by leading Jewish and non-Jewish scholars and human rights groups. *
*see “BDS – Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/view/bdsopinions/home . “
21 MARCH 2023
(1). Your say, “Criticising the nation of Israel is justified. Demonising Jewish people is not”, Crikey, 17 March 2023: https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/03/17/anti-semitism-israel-jewish-people-ihra-definition/ .
Crikey published the following comment by Dr Gideon Polya: “Dr Gideon Polya writes: Decent anti-racist people are morally obliged to denounce Israeli human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories, and doing so is certainly not anti-Semitic. What certainly is repugnantly anti-Semitic is the IHRA and its adherents falsely defaming ethnically and/or culturally Semitic anti-racist Jews, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims as allegedly “anti-Semitic” for criticising the horrendous crimes of apartheid Israel. Anti-racist Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman (New York University) said: “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis.””
(2). Dr Gideon Polya, “Iraq invasion 20th anniversary: 5 million dead in Iraqi Holocaust”, Countercurrents, 19 March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/iraq-invasion-20th-anniversary-5-million-dead-in-iraqi-holocaust/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “The 20th anniversary of the war criminal US, UK and Australian invasion of Iraq in 2003 will fall on about 20 March 2023. On this occasion mendacious and racist Western media will at best remember the Iraq War as a US policy mistake. However decent people will remember the carnage. From 1990 onwards Iraqi deaths from US-imposed violence and deprivation have totalled about 5.0-5.5 million, similar to deaths in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust ( 5-6 million)… Violent deaths and avoidable deaths from violently-imposed deprivation in the Gulf War (1990-1991) and the Sanctions period (1990-2003) totalled 0.2 million and 1.7 million, respectively. During the Sanctions period the US, UK and Israeli air forces relentlessly bombed Iraqi infrastructure with consequent huge avoidable deaths from deprivation. On May 12, 1996, Madeleine Albright (US UN Ambassador and later US Secretary of State) defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a “60 Minutes” segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Madeleine Albright replied “We think the price is worth it” [6]. This was a singular instance in which the US admitted to its genocidal carnage… Decent anti-racist folk around the world will demand truth-telling and justice for the devastated people of Iraq and will impose Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on the perpetrators just as BDS is applied to Apartheid Israel and all its supporters complicit in the ongoing Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million deaths from violence, 0.1 million, and deprivation, 2.1 million, from WW1 onwards)”.
(3). Professor Michel Chossudovsky, “The Engineered Destruction and Political Fragmentation of Iraq. Third War against Iraq initiated by Obama”, Global Research, 16 March 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-destruction-and-political-fragmentation-of-iraq-towards-the-creation-of-a-us-sponsored-islamist-caliphate/5386998 .
Quote: “March 2023 marks 20 years since the US-UK led war on Iraq in 2003. And that war is still ongoing… In August 2014, Obama launched a so-called “counter-terrorism operation” against the ISIS which was firmly entrenched in Mosul. This “fake” counter-terrorist operation was launched against terrorists who were supported and financed by the US, UK, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel (among others). Three years of extensive bombings AGAINST IRAQ under a fake counter-terrorism mandate. (2014-2017). America’s ultimate intent was to destroy, destabilize and fracture Iraq as a nation State. That objective has largely been achieved. The “Liberation” of Mosul by US and allied forces constitutes an extensive crime against humanity consisting in actively supporting the ISIS terrorists occupation of Mosul, and then waging an extensive bombing campaign to “liberate” the city. .. The above map [showing US –planned break-up of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan] was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006). “
(4). South African Government, “The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination 2023”, 21 March 2023: https://www.gov.za/EliminationofRacialDiscrimination2023 .
Quote: “The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is observed annually on 21 March. On that day, in 1960, police opened fire at a peaceful demonstration in Sharpeville, South Africa, against the apartheid pass laws; 69 people were killed, and 180 were injured… Since then, the apartheid system in South Africa has been dismantled. Racist laws and practices have been abolished in many countries, and we have built an international framework for fighting racism, guided by the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The Convention is now nearing universal ratification, yet still, in all regions, too many individuals, communities and societies suffer from the injustice and stigma that racism brings”.
Comment: Apartheid flourishes in genocidally racist, neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel fervently backed by the pro-Apartheid states of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and the EU (see “BDS- Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/view/bdsopinions/home ; “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ ; 2023, 75th Nakba Anniversary: 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) & Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/1948-nakba-catastrophe-palestinian-genocide . ) The South African Government condemns Israeli Apartheid (Thabi Myeni, “South Africa calls for Israel to be declared an ‘apartheid state’. The South African government has remained a strong ally of Palestine, providing both material and public support for its liberation cause”, Al Jazeera, 26 July 2022: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/26/south-africa-calls-for-israels-proscription-as-apartheid-state : ““The Palestinian narrative evokes experiences of South Africa’s own history of racial segregation and oppression,” Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s minister of international relations and cooperation, said at the second meeting of the Palestinian Heads of Mission in Africa, held in the capital Pretoria. “As oppressed South Africans, we experienced firsthand the effects of racial inequality, discrimination and denial and we cannot stand by while another generation of Palestinians are left behind,” she said. Pandor said Pretoria believes Israel should be classified as an apartheid state and that the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) should establish a committee to verify whether it satisfies the requirements. Palestinian foreign minister Riad Malki, who attended the forum, spoke to the state-run South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) after the session.“If there is any country or countries that can comprehend the suffering and the struggle for freedom and independence of Palestine, it is the African continent and the people of Africa,” Malki said.”
(5). The Australian Human Rights Commission, “Fact Sheet - International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination [21 March] ”: https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/race-discrimination/publications/fact-sheet-international-day-elimination-racial .
Quote: “The Australian Human Rights Commission has developed this fact sheet about the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (IDERD) to demonstrate how 'harmony' hides structural and systemic racism. The fact sheet is designed to support individual and organisational conversations about the importance of keeping the focus of IDERD on mobilising against all forms and manifestations of racial discrimination and injustice. The fact sheet describes how ‘Harmony Week’ is an example of the way language can be used to reframe anti-racism, and operates to reinforce inequality and maintain the status quo”.
Comment: The pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid Australian Labor Government celebrates Harmony Week (Monday 20- Sunday 26 March): Australian Government, “Harmony Week”: https://www.harmony.gov.au/ . Politicians who support Apartheid Israel and hence Apartheid are utterly unfit for public life in a one-person-one-vote democracy like Australia – put the Coalition last and Labor second last; decent people cannot vote 1 for either Labor or the Coalition; a sustainable argument: there is bestiality, paedophilia and incest, and then there is voting for the Coalition or Labor.
18 MARCH 2023
(1). Ajamu Baraka, “On the 20th Anniversary of Invasion of Iraq It Must be Clear: The U.S. Is the Greatest Threat to World Peace and Collective Humanity” , Global Research, 17 March 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/twentieth-anniversary-invasion-iraq-it-must-be-clear-us-greatest-threat-world-peace-collective-humanity/5812280 .
Quote: “We say that despite the complexities of the moment, what is consistent is the hegemony of U.S. criminality on a global scale. Instigating a war in Europe, carrying out a terrorist attack on Nord Stream pipelines, antagonizing the Chinese on Taiwan and engaging in the reckless talk of winning a nuclear war reflect the dangerous psychopathology of decision makers in the U.S. that make them a threat to everyone. As we come off a National Day of Action Against Police Terror in the settler-colonial state of the U.S., conscious Africans understand our relationship to the colonial state domestically and abroad. We understand that the war being waged against the Palestinians, the subversion against the revolutionary nations of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, Cop City in Atlanta and the militarization of the domestic army known as the police, the strengthening of AFRICOM, the proxy war in Ukraine, are all part of the commitment to Full Spectrum Dominance. We are clear.”
(2). Henry Reynolds (eminent Indigenous Australian historian), “[Zionist] Penny Wongs’s faltering foreign policy”, Pearls & Irritations, 18 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/penny-wongss-faltering-foreign-policy/ .
Quote: “DFAT reaffirmed Australia’s support for the objectives of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which we endorsed in 2009 have not yet been ratified. The provisions of the document are not widely known. How many people appreciate that Article 30 relates to military activity on indigenous land? There are the relevant two clauses: Military activities shall not take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples unless justified by a relevant public interest or freely agreed with or requested by the indigenous people concerned [and] States shall undertake effective consultation with the indigenous peoples concerned, through appropriate procedures and in particular through their representative institutions prior to using their lands or territories for military purposes.”
Comment: And the Indigenous Palestinians?
(3). Michael Bradley, “Does being anti-Israel mean you’re anti-Semitic?”, Crikey, 14 March 2023: https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/03/14/anti-israel-anti-semitic-university-ihra-definition/ .
(4). Richard Hil and Gideon Polya, “Imperial power: The Iraq war, 20 years on”, Pearls & Irritations, 16 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/iraq-and-imperial-power-20-years-on/ .
Quote: “at the outset of the First World War, the British invasion ushered a long period of conquest for oil and imperial hegemony. The upshot was death and destruction on an epic scale, with avoidable deaths from deprivation between 1914-1950 totalling about 4 million… post-1990 war-related Iraqi deaths from violence and deprivation totalled around 5 million”.
Comment: Deaths from violence and imposed deprivation: 2 million (WW1 onwards Palestinian Genocide) and 5-6 million (WW2 Jewish Holocaust).
(5). Yeonathan Tommer, “Judicial coup threatens Israeli democracy”, Pearls & Irritations, 17 May 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/judicial-coup-threatens-israeli-democracy/ .
Quote: “Israeli Arab citizens who constitute a significant 20% minority of Israel’s population of 9.7 million, are notably absent from the demonstrations. They consider the public uproar over judicial reform to be an issue affecting Jews only, though individual Arabs participate in the protests because they realise that if the reforms harm the civil rights of minorities, the Arab sector will be the first hit. Their ten MK’s remain publicly silent on the matter. Their agenda since the Six Day War remains radically anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian in solidarity with the Palestinians of the West Bank under Israeli occupation and Gaza under Hamas rule. And so, they have paid less attention to the national needs and quality of life of their own citizens in Israel and to facilitating their integration as an accepted ethnic minority in the national mosaic of Israel”.
Comment: Israel is not a democracy – 73% of its 7.5 million and now 50% majority Indigenous Palestinian Subjects cannot vote for the government ruling them.
(6). Dr Gideon Polya, “85 Ways Zionist Australian Labor Government Betrays Palestinian Human Rights & Humanity”, Countercurrents, March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/85-ways-zionist-australian-labor-government-betrays-palestinian-human-rights-humanity/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “The new Australian Labor Government was elected in May 2022 with the help of Greens preferences in the Australian compulsory and preferential voting system. However despite pro-Palestinian moves by the Labor Party membership, the US- and Zionist-beholden Labor Government has grossly betrayed Palestinian human rights, Australian voters, Australia, and indeed Humanity in 85 ways that make Labor utterly unfit to govern and trash Australia’s International reputation… Anti-Apartheid hero and Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela famously stated “The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”. However as summarized below, under the new Australian Labor Government Australia continues to shockingly betray Palestinian human rights, and human rights in general, in 85 ways… Labor’s sole merit is that it is arguably better than the utterly appalling, corrupt, incompetent, climate criminal, war criminal, racist and mendacious Coalition. Enough is enough. Faced with escalating existential threats from nuclear weapons and climate change, decent, anti-racist Australians will put the Coalition last and Labor second last – they will find it impossible to vote 1 for either Labor or the Coalition. The racist, mendacious, climate criminal, war criminal, Zionist-subverted, traitorous, and US lackey Australian Labor Government has betrayed the Labor Party, Australia and humanity, and is utterly unfit for public office and public life.”
16 MARCH 2023. Gideon Polya Letter to Crikey: “Decent anti-racist people are morally obliged to denounce Israeli human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and doing so is certainly not anti-Semitic. What certainly is repugnantly anti-Semitic is the IHRA and its adherents falsely defaming ethnically and/or culturally Semitic anti-racist Jews, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims as allegedly “anti-Semitic” for criticizing the horrendous crimes of Apartheid Israel. Anti-racist Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman (New York University): “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis.” *Bertell Ollman, “Letter of Resignation from the Jewish People”, Dialectical Marxism, 2004: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/resignation.php .
15 MARCH 2023
(1). ABC TV, Q&A, “Billy Bragg on Q&A”, Monday 13 March 2023: https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/2023-13-03/102059702 .
Quote: Antoinette Lattouf (multi award winning journalist, TEDx Sydney speaker and author of How to Lose Friends and Influence White People) on Gary Lineker and the right of BBC (or other) employees to voice opinions on major moral issues: “And you’re not at work all the time. Like, I imagine, even with the Voice, I wanted, and I hesitated to put my position. You know, I want to be on the right side of history, and I think Australia needs to get this right. But I hesitated and thought, “Oh, should I...? Should I put that out there, what I think?” Equally, people like me, who hail from the Middle East, struggle, really, to weigh into the ongoing human rights atrocities and the apartheid-like state and the treatment of Palestinians. Again, that’s an issue that needs balance. But when there’s a power imbalance, sometimes, the issue doesn’t need power imbalance. Where there’s a clear victim, sometimes it doesn’t need a balance. And I think there needs to be a bit of room for people who have skin in the game. And when the data and the evidence proves so clearly who the victims are and who the perpetrators are, you should be able to just go for it.” [a Zionist Labor MP spoke next but didn’t respond to “the apartheid-like state”].
(2). Jonathan Cooke, “It’s Not Just the Settlers – or Israel – Responsible for the Torching of Huwwara”, Global Research, 13 March 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/its-not-just-settlers-israel-responsible-torching-huwwara/5811855 .
Quote: “Endless indulgence from Israel’s supporters in the West has cleared a path to a fascist government intent on ‘wiping out’ Palestinian communities… A sustained violent attack by hundreds of Jewish settlers on the Palestinian town of Huwwara last week – as well as the response of Israel’s new far-right government – has divided Jewish opinion in Israel and deeply discomfited Jews abroad. The [Zionist] Board of Deputies, which claims to represent Britain’s Jewish community and is usually a reliable defender of Israel, felt compelled last week to issue a short statement condemning comments by a senior Israeli government minister, Bezalel Smotrich, after he called for Huwwara to be “wiped out”. At the weekend, the distinguished British historian [and Zionist] Simon Schama described the events in Huwwara as “absolutely, utterly horrifying” and urged fellow Jews to speak up… At the weekend, the United Nation’s rapporteur for the occupied territories, Francesca Albanese, told the BBC that Israel should be investigated for crimes against the Palestinian people.”
(3). Jewish Voice for Peace, “JVP rabbis teach Torah of Divestment at hotel as Smotrich speaks at Israel Bonds fundraiser”, Press release, 12 March 2023: https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2023/03/torah-of-divestment/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=torah-of-divestment .
“Quote: “Jewish Voice for Peace members and allies made their voices heard in DC and across the country — Divest from Smotrich and Israeli apartheid. Washington DC — As far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich fundraised for apartheid at the Israel Bonds conference at the Grand Hyatt hotel, JVP rabbis and students attempted to take over the hotel’s atrium, planning to transform it into a Beit Midrash (house of study) and teach the Torah of Divestment... After they were forced out of the hotel by security, seven JVP rabbis and rabbinical students, flanked by a dozen JVP members, took the Torah of Divestment outside to the streets. Holding a banner proclaiming “Apartheid is funded here,” the rabbis cited passages from the Torah and explored how to apply them right now, as Israeli state violence against Palestinians is at a record high.. Jewish Voice for Peace members demand divestment because the money Israel Bonds raises for the regime is used to support its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Israel Bonds make up 25% of Israel total foreign debt. Smotrich’s appearance at the Israel Bond conference makes it abundantly clear — buying Israel Bonds is supporting Israeli apartheid. American Jews say enough is enough. It is time to divest from Israel, and its extremist, far-right, violent occupation of Palestinian land… Smotrich is a Jewish supremacist extremist with genocidal beliefs, who recently said that the Palestinian village of Huwara, which was attacked by a violent Israeli settler mob while the Israeli military prevented access to medics, should be “wiped out.” Jewish Voice for Peace members demand divestment because the money Israel Bonds raises for the regime is used to support its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Israel Bonds make up 25% of Israel total foreign debt. Smotrich’s appearance at the Israel Bond conference makes it abundantly clear — buying Israel Bonds is supporting Israeli apartheid. American Jews say enough is enough. It is time to divest from Israel, and its extremist, far-right, violent occupation of Palestinian land.”
13 MARCH 2023
(1). Dr Ramzy Baroud, “Silent in Ukraine: Weapons perpetuate, do not end wars”, Countercurrents, 12 March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/silent-in-ukraine-weapons-perpetuate-do-not-end-wars/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “Since hundreds of millions already live in extreme poverty, a massive section of the human race will no longer be able to afford proper food, drinkable water, education, healthcare, or shelter. So, our silence on the inhumanity and futility of the war is not just immoral, in this case, it also constitutes a betrayal of the fate of hundreds of millions of people around the world. The war in Ukraine must end, even if one party is not fully and completely defeated, even if NATO’s geopolitical interests are not served, even if not all of Russia’s goals, whatever they are, are achieved. The war should end because, regardless of the outcome, long-term instability in that region will not cease completely any time soon; and because millions of innocent people are suffering and will continue to suffer, in Ukraine and around the world. And because only political compromises through peace negotiations can put an end to this horror. Practically, this means that Palestinians are left with no other option but to carry on with their resistance, indifferent – and justifiably so – to the UN and its ‘watered-down’ statements.”
Apartheid Israeli reactions to Iran and Saudi Arabia accepting China's mediation:
(2). “Mediated By China, Iran And Saudi Arabia Restore Ties”, 10 March 2023: https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/03/mediated-by-china-iran-and-saudi-arabia-restore-ties-there-are-winners-and-losers.html : “The losers are: Israel, because the chances for its attempts to get the U.S. into a war with Iran are now diminished. Its hoped for coalition with the Saudis will not come into being. The U.S. for having been outplayed on its traditional 'home grounds' in the Middle East. Anti-Iran hawks everywhere. The Emirates for losing at least some of the sanction busting trade with Iran to Saudi Arabia.”
(3). ”Israeli leaders accuse each other over Saudi-Iran rapproachement mediated by China, 10 March 2023”: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-733960 : “Saudi-Iran deal destroys Israel's defense wall against Iran, Lapid charges. Former defense minister Benny Gantz said that he believes Netanyahu has abandoned the security of Israel and its citizens.”
(4). “Saudi-Iran Rapprochement: In China's Middle East, Israel Has Little Influence”, 10 March 2023: https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/2023-03-10/ty-article/.premium/saudi-iran-rapprochement-in-chinas-middle-east-israel-has-little-influence/00000186-cc34-d739-a9cf-dc7ecd530000 : “Israel's dream of forming an Arab alliance against Iran was shattered on Friday with the news that Iran and Saudi Arabia have agreed to restore diplomatic ties within two months. The dramatic announcement is likely to redraw the regional map of friends and foes, and will have global reverberations. An unnamed senior Israeli political official blamed former Prime Ministers Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett Friday for the China-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran renewing diplomatic relations, following criticism from the opposition to the Benjamin Netanyahu government at missing opportunity to improve relations with Arab states.”
12 MARCH 2023
Quote: “An outdated initiative for Israeli and Palestinian executives reflects the business world's unwillingness to tackle the conflict's root causes, say insiders. In January, during the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in the Swiss town of Davos, Israeli and Palestinian business leaders met behind closed doors as part of the Breaking the Impasse (BTI) initiative… Indeed, at no point during its meeting in January, which focused on the economic wellbeing of Palestinians, did these influential figures discuss how Israeli apartheid and occupation infringe on the Palestinian economy. And from a series of conversations with sources close to the BTI, in addition to documents such as the agenda and attendee list, seen by +972, it is clear that the BTI’s normalization of the status quo and refusal to address more fundamental issues that would substantially improve Palestinians’ livelihoods make it deeply unfit for purpose…The BTI’s composition is likely a factor in its refusal to engage with the deeper issues of the Palestinian struggle; as some of the individuals involved are directly complicit in upholding Israeli apartheid. Dorit Dor, for example, is the Chief Product and Technology Officer of Check Point Software Technologies, one of Israel’s largest companies, which sells internet security products across the world. In 2019, Dor was listed by Forbes as one of Israel’s 50 most powerful women. Prior to her foray into the private sector, however, she was a career cyber-spy who spent eight years in the Israeli military. She served in the elite intelligence unit 8200 and won the Israel National Defense Prize in 1993, awarded by the president to those who have made significant contributions to the defense of the state of Israel. ... Even former leaders of the BTI have been harshly critical. The initiative’s leadership typically comprises one Israeli and one Palestinian, and used to include the world’s richest Palestinian, Munib al-Masri, also known as the “Duke of Nablus.” But Masri left the BTI because of its failure to have any substantial and lasting impact… [Al-Masri:]”The Israeli agenda has always been to strip Palestinians of all of their land, and this initiative was only making fools out of all of us involved. Breaking the Impasse is dead and has been for a long time.””
Quote: “Former soldiers in Israel’s famed Unit 8200 Intelligence unit have gone on to produce many of the world’s most successful cybersecurity startups like Check Point, Forte, Armis Security, Guardicore and Wiz, just to name a few. And there is a good reason why. With mandatory service participation by every Israeli citizen, Unit 8200 has its pick of the best of the best. Its recruiters comb the country's schools and after-school feeder programs for the brightest students with good analytical capabilities and coding skills. Applicants are then asked to complete a raft of online tests before they are admitted. Sentra is the latest such startup founded by ex-Unit 8200 soldiers.”
Iraqi view: MENA (https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/2021/09/26/iraq-condemns-meeting-that-called-for-normalising-relations-with-israel/ ) : “Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi has rejected a meeting of prominent tribal leaders and dignitaries that called for ties with Israel to be normalised. More than 300 people attended the conference in the [US- and Israeli-backed] semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq demanding the normalisation of relations. It took place on Friday and was arranged by the US think tank, Centre for Peace Communications. "The government confirms, from the outset, that these meetings do not represent the people of Iraq and its residents. This was an attempt to confuse the general situation and revive the hateful sectarian tone," Mr Al Kadhimi's office said on Sunday.” [Since 1990 the Israeli and US Alliance war on Iraq has killed 5 million Iraqis, mostly children, through violence and egregious deprivation. Jewish deaths in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust totalled 5-6 million according to the late Professor Sir Martin Gilbert, eminent Oxford expert on WW1, WW2, Churchill and Jewish history].
10 MARCH 2023
(1). George Browning, “Palestinians are not terrorists”, Pearls & Irritations, 10 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/palestinians-are-not-terrorists/ .
Quote: “Australia supports, indeed resources, Ukrainian armed resistance to Russia’s invasion and its attempt to forcibly exert its sovereignty over Ukrainian soil. Very few Australians appear to find fault with this position. For what reason is Israel’s provocative and continuing colonisation of Palestine not seen in the same light? Human convenience is served through words that place perceived opponents or potential antagonists in a universally despised category. In international affairs one such word is terrorist… Australia supports, indeed resources, Ukrainian armed resistance to Russia’s invasion and its attempt to forcibly exert its sovereignty over Ukrainian soil. Very few Australians appear to find fault with this position. If you like, it is seen as a “just war” by Ukraine and its allies. For what reason is Israel’s provocative and continuing colonisation of Palestinian land, Palestinian homes and Palestinian rights not seen in the same light? May 15, 2023, is the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe, the loss of 78% of mandatory Palestine to become the State of Israel; the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the refusal to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, and the attempted erasure of any notion of there ever having been Palestine or Palestinians.”
(2). Susan Abulhawa, “Responding to the campaign to ban me from Adelaide Writers Week”, Pearls & Irritations, 9 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/responding-to-the-campaign-to-ban-me-from-adelaide-writers-week/ .
Quote: “Much has been said about me in the Australian press, but none except a single online publication called Pearls and Irritations actually invited me to comment or respond. In fact, I wrote an op-ed, which was submitted to multiple media outlets, but all of them rejected it. I understand that several corrective submissions by others were likewise rejected. Silencing or perverting Palestinian voices is endemic, and I’m used to it—we all are—which is why I’m so grateful to Louise Adler and the Board of the Adelaide Festival for bravely ensuring that we do and will have space to speak and interact with readers on a cultural landscape… On the assertions that my stand on Ukraine is abhorrent, I’d like first to point out that my views of this war are shared by huge swaths of humanity, stretching from East to West Asia, to Southeast Asia, South America, and throughout Africa. In essence, most of the Global South, who, in fact, make up the majority of humanity. I have indeed been harshly critical of Volodymyr Zelensky, and I remain so… I come from an ancient people who have lived in Palestine for millennia. My family’s documented and verifiable lineage in the land is something that 99% of Jewish Israelis cannot claim. All Palestinians have such lineage,… For that indigeneity, we are exiled or forced to live under Israel’s brutal military occupation, as they slowly wipe us off the map, as if the last few thousand years never happened. They terrorise Palestinians daily, such that a whopping 97% of our children display symptoms of PTSD. A terrifying percentage of children under the age of five in Gaza have lost the will to live. Israel is killing us, destroying us, and stealing our homes and heritage bit by bit, as they import more foreign Jews to replace us.”mmm
(3). Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), #IWD2023 - Palestinian women embody resistance and steadfastness”, BDS, 8 March 2023: https://bdsmovement.net/IWD2023-Palestinian-Women-Embody-Resistance-And-Steadfastness .
Quote: “So far 2023 has been a grueling year for Palestinians. In just two months Israeli occupation forces and settlers, under apartheid Israel's far-right settler-colonial government, have carried out violent attacks and pogroms. At least 70 Palestinians, including 14 children have been murdered by Israel… We reiterate that justice is always a feminist issue, including in Palestine, and the rights of women are fundamental to our movement’s pursuit of a safe, just and dignified world for all… The icon of the Palestinian press, Shireen was part of every Palestinian and Arab home. She did not leave a Palestinian village, city, or camp without reporting a journalistic story about it or from it, until she was assassinated by apartheid Israel’s occupation forces while she was covering their storming of Jenin’s refugee camp on 11-5-2022.”
(4). Dr Ramzy Baroud, “Palestinian Children’s Art Exposes Israel’s Cultural Genocide”, Dissident Voice, 8 March 2023: https://dissidentvoice.org/2023/03/palestinian-childrens-art-exposes-israels-cultural-genocide/ .
Quote: “The following text tells the whole story of what pro-Palestinian communities around the world are fighting for, and what pro-Israelis are fighting against: “We are delighted to report that Chelsea and Westminster Hospital has removed a display of artwork designed by children from Gaza.”. That was the summary of a news report published on the homepage of the pro-Israel group, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). The group is credited for being the party that managed to successfully persuade the administration of a hospital in West London to take down a few pieces of artwork created by refugee children from Gaza. Explaining the logic behind their relentless campaign to remove the children’s art, UKLFI said that “Jewish patients” in the hospital “felt vulnerable and victimized by the display”.mmm
(5). Greg Guma, “Fiji’s Pacific Ways: Troubles in Paradise”, Global Research , 9 March 2023: https://www.asia-pacificresearch.com/fiji-pacific-ways-troubles-paradise/5631543 .
Quote: “In a review of Rabuka’s official biography, pointedly titled No Other Way, Professor Som Prakash noted that the coups ultimately produced the results they were designed to prevent: breaking the Commonwealth tie with Britain and opening the country to foreign infiltration. “It is the Rabuka-backed government,” Prakash wrote, “which brought about the establishment of the Israeli embassy in Fiji and the strengthening of French connections. And this was an invitation to the Libyans, Palestinians and others to destabilize Fiji further.”
Comment: Apartheid Israel was involved in the 1987 and 2000 Fiji coups by covert provision of arms (the US and Australia were also variously involved).
8 MARCH 2023
(2). “Syria Condemns Illegal Visit of Top US General. Biden Wants to Keep Troops in Country”, Global Research, 5 March 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-condemns-illegal-visit-top-us-general/5811060 .
Quote: “The US military steals 80 percent of daily Syrian oil output, inflicting damages of up to $107 billion since the start of the war in 2011… Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates:…“Syria strongly condemns the illegal visit of the US Chief of Staff to an illegal US military base in northeastern Syria, and affirms that it is a flagrant violation of the sovereignty, the sanctity of its lands and unity… Syria calls on the US administration to immediately stop its systematic and continuous violations of international law and stop its support for separatist armed militias … and Syria affirms that these US practices will not deviate it from its approach to combating terrorism and preserving its sovereignty, security, and stability,”
Quote: “Ongoing attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank make it clear that the pogrom-like rampage by hundreds of Israeli settlers on the town of Huwara on February 26, while Israeli troops stood by, is part of a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing. Waged by Zionist settlers, it proceeds under the protection of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and is led politically by the newly installed government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which includes fascistic, racist and ultra-religious parties. Their declared aim is to annex the Palestinian territories and implement apartheid rule, as embodied in the “Nation-State Law” enshrining Jewish supremacy as the legal foundation of the state… Vigilante mobs attacked Huwara, beating residents with metal rods and rocks, killing one person and injuring 400 more, as well as setting fire to scores of homes and shops and hundreds of vehicles in a four-to-five-hour orgy of violence. They also attacked Burin and Einbus in the northern West Bank. All are in a part of the West Bank under Israeli security control and just minutes away from an army brigade headquarters. But Israeli soldiers stood by during the rampage. Not a single government minister condemned the atrocity. Just 10 people were arrested, of whom all but one were released.”
Quote: “Israel's right to exist" has been challenged in expert testimonies by leading scholars Professor John Dugard and Professor Avi Shlaim… Commenting on the IHRA and possible financial sanctions that may be imposed if schools refused to adopt it, Shlaim said: "This is a highly controversial and, in my opinion, discredited definition which was promoted by Israel's friends. The two-sentence definition is vacuous, but it is followed by 11 'illustrative examples' of what might constitute antisemitism. Seven of the 11 examples relate to Israel. The real purpose of the definition is not to protect Jews against antisemitism but to protect Israel against legitimate criticism."Shlaim was one of 77 Israeli academics in Britain who united in response to [former Education Secretary Gavin] Williamson's infamous intervention. In January 2021, they sent a letter to vice chancellors and academic senates in England urging universities not to adopt the IHRA document, which they viewed as being "detrimental not only to academic freedom and to the struggle for human rights, but also to the fight against antisemitism."
(6). Professor John Dugard, “An expert opinion on the question if Israel’s right to exist”, CAGE: March 2023: https://www.cage.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/CAGE-Expert-Opinion_Prof_Dugard.pdf .
Quote: “A State has a right to its territorial integrity and political independence and not to be forcibly attacked by another State. See Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. This, however, is not a right to exist… That there is no right to exist as a State is demonstrated by the fact that a State may be recognized as a State by some States but not by others. Consequently it is a State for those State that recognize it but not for States that do not recognize it. Palestine, for instance is a recognized as a State by 138 States but its statehood is disputed by those States that do not recognize it.”.
Comment: Re “state” and “country”, Article 13 of the UDHR: “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country”; Article 15: “Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality”; Article 21: “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures” (see UDHR: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights ). Occupied Palestinians are excluded from every article of the UDHR by neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel (see Gideon Polya , “Apartheid Israel Excludes Occupied Palestinians From All Provisions Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights”, Countercurrents, 20 May, 2012: https://countercurrents.org/polya200512.htm ).
(7). ABC TV, moderator Dan Bourchier, The Drum, Tuesday 7 March 2023: https://www.abc.net.au/news/programs/the-drum/2023-03-07/the-drum-tuesday-3-march/102065926 .
Quote: Visiting Pakistani writer Fatima Bhutto in the context of a panel discussion about “the War on Women” whether in the US (abortion rights and Me Too), in Iran (Kurds, minorities, mandatory hijab) , Afghanistan (education, burka, suppression), Indigenous women incarceration in Australia: “We don’t talk about Palestinian women who have faced 75 years of forced expulsion, dispossession, arrest, lack of mobility, they literally cannot move from zone A to zone B… the conversation needs to be had locally as well as internationally”.
(8). ABC Radio National, moderator Andrew West, conjointly interviewing a young Jewish Israeli socialist man and a female Palestinian Israeli medical worker trying to improve hospital Emergency access for Occupied Palestinians, The Religion and Ethics Report, Tuesday 7 March 2023: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/religionandethicsreport (the audio of this episode not yet up on the web page).
Quote: A very revealing, wide-ranging interview. When Andrew West asked about intermarriage there was a sudden chill and neither party wanted to talk about it.
4 MARCH 2023
(1). Gideon Polya, “Zionists attack Palestinian writers, free speech”, Green Left, 3 March 2023: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/zionists-attack-palestinian-writers-free-speech .
Quote: “Acclaimed Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd, invited to the Adelaide Writers’ Festival in South Australia, have encountered a storm of false defamation from Zionists, pro-Zionist mainstream media and pro-Zionist politicians. Abulhawa and El-Kurd have been falsely defamed for alleged “anti-Semitism” and “hate speech” for criticising the century-long genocidal abuse of indigenous Palestinians by Zionists. Abulhawa has also been falsely defamed for her pro-peace views on the Ukraine war… Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. A large body of anti-racist Jewish scholars condemn racist Zionism, Israeli Apartheid, Apartheid Israel and the century-long and ongoing Palestinian Genocide.Anti-racist Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman (New York University) said: “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis”… Those supporting Apartheid Israel must be exposed as unfit for public life. The world must apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and its racist supporters.Decent anti-racist and anti-Apartheid Australians simply cannot vote 1 for either Labor or the Coalition. Abolition of foreign ownership of Australia’s media would stop its present mendacious subversion by the fervently Zionist US Murdoch media empire. Free speech and truth are core values of good universities, and academic staff and students around Australia are protesting this worsening threat to democracy and academic free speech.”
(2). Jafar Ramini, “An open call for genocide in Palestine”, Pearls & Irritations, 4 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/an-open-call-for-genocide-in-palestine/ .
Quote: “Some might think that state genocide is a new phenomenon in Israeli occupied Palestine. I can assure you that this is the very essence of Zionism. The point was, and still is, to occupy the land, get rid of the people by any and every means, and change the topography and the demography of Palestine to favour Jewish supremacy. The founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl back in 1895 was clear in his vision for a Jewish State in Palestine.“We shall have to spirit the penniless population across the border … while denying it any employment in our country…Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly”… To add even more wood to the fire, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) just approved this week the first reading of a bill that calls for the death penalty for any Palestinian who kills an Israeli citizen. Or commits a crime against the state of Israel. In the land of Israel, self determination is an exclusively Jewish privilege. While the death penalty is exclusive to the Palestinians under its occupation”.
Comment: For an alphabetically-ordered compendium of explicitly genocidal Zionist quotes from proto-Nazi Theodor Herzl (1895) to serial war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu (2023) see: “Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide", Palestinian Genocide : https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes .
(3). Dr Alison Broinowsky AM (AM is a former diplomat, author and academic, and is President of Australians for War Powers Reform): “What our media don’t tell us: Has the D-Notice returned?”, Pearls & Irritations, 4 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/what-our-media-doesnt-tell-us/ .
Quote: “Even before Pearls & Irritations’ timely publication of Seymour Hersh’s (literally) explosive expose of the Biden administration’s long-planned operation to prevent Russian gas reaching Germany, online readers were exchanging views about it. Why, some wanted to know, had major newspapers and tv channels not revealed this before? And why, as days and weeks followed, they are still asking, have the big media still not carried Hersh’s story or at least fact-checked it?... If Australia has replaced D-notices with something else, its existence is a secret between its government and selected media members. Its operations to protect national security – that means, often, our allies’ secrets – would certainly explain why the establishment media in Australia, and those the US and UK, don’t see it as in the national interest for the public to be better informed about Nordstream.”
3 MARCH 2023
Quote: “Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour is “very happy that there was a very strong united message from the Security Council against the illegal, unilateral measure” undertaken by the Israeli government. The ‘measure’ is a specific reference to a decision, on February 12, by the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to construct 10,000 new housing units in nine illegal Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. Expectedly, Netanyahu was angered by the supposedly ‘very strong united message’ emanating from an institution that is hardly known for its meaningful action regarding international conflicts, especially in the Palestinian-Israeli case. Mansour’s happiness may be justified from some people’s perspective, especially as we seldom witness a strongly worded position by the UNSC that is both critical of Israel and wholly embraced by the United States. The latter has used the veto power 53 times since 1972 – per UN count – to block UNSC draft resolutions that are critical of Israel…. [BUT] The [US softened] UN statement in question is just that: a statement, with no tangible value and no legal repercussions.”
Quote: Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd have been falsely defamed for alleged “anti-Semitism” and “hate speech” for criticising the century-long genocidal abuse of indigenous Palestinians by Zionists. However anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism because a large body of anti-racist Jewish scholars condemn racist Zionism, Israeli Apartheid, Apartheid Israel, and the century-long and ongoing Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million Palestinians killed by violence, 0.1 million, and imposed deprivation, 2.1 million). Thus anti-racist Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman (New York University): “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis”. Likewise anti-racist Jewish Canadian writer Naomi Klein: “There is a debate among Jews – I’m a Jew by the way. The debate boils down to the question: “Never again to everyone, or never again to us?”… [Some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free card…There is another strain in the Jewish tradition that say[s], “Never again to anyone.” Famed anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish writers and scholars Tariq Ali, Russell Banks, John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Eduardo Galeano, Charles Glass, Naomi Klein, W.J.T. Mitchell, Harold Pinter, Arundhati Roy, Jose Saramago, Giuliana Sgrena, Gore Vidal, and Howard Zinn have condemned “[Israel’s] long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation” (Google “Jews against racist Zionism” and “Non-Jews against racist Zionism”). Indeed 25% of US Jews and 38% of those under 40 say that Israel is an apartheid state.”
2 MARCH 2023
(1). Helen McCue, “Ha’aretz: Israel is now a “formal, full-fledged apartheid regime”, Pearls & Irritations, 2 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/haaretz-israel-is-now-a-formal-full-fledged-apartheid-regime/ .
Quote: “Sunday’s attack on the Palestinian town of Huwarra was the most violent of such settler attacks in decades. Located near Nablus in the Occupied Palestinian Territory of the West Bank there are reports of 30 homes, 40 cars and other buildings, schools and mosques being torched. The fires were so great that the local fire brigade struggled to contain the flames. Other neighbouring villages were also attacked. Some 400 settlers were reported to take part in the attack. Videos show settlers dancing in the street following these attacks. No one has been arrested. Even Israeli TV has reportedly referred to this attack as a pogrom and a tweet by the New Israeli Fund Australia commented similarly “Settlers are unleashing violence on the Palestinian residents of Huwarra. This is a pogrom, full stop. We strongly condemn these vile acts because violence in the face of violence is never justice. “The Palestinian Health Ministry reported the death of a 37-year-old man who was shot and killed by Israeli fire. Another person was shot, another stabbed and yet another beaten with an iron bar. There was extensive tear gas inhalation with some 95 Palestinians requiring treatment. Settlers reportedly stopped ambulances from entering the town and were supported doing so by the Israeli army. Huwarra is a Palestinian town of approximately 6,000 residents”.
(2). Brett Wilkins, “Conservative US Jewish Groups Issue Rare Rebuke of Israeli Settler Violence ”, Common Dreams, 28 February 2023: https://www.commondreams.org/news/settler-violence .
Quote: But attacks viewed by the Rabbinical Assembly and Orthodox Union as an aberration are seen by human rights groups as inherent in Israeli policies and actions… B'Tselem placed blame for the violence squarely upon the "Jewish supremacist regime" .”The Huwara Pogrom was an extreme manifestation of a long-standing Israeli policy," the group argued. "It was carried out by the state of Israel." Ironically, anti-Jewish pogroms—organized terror campaigns—in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries were a major driver of Zionist migration to Palestine. Refuting claims that the murderous settlers were "out of control," B'Tselem asserted that "this isn't 'loss of control.' This is exactly what Israeli control looks like." "The settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it," the group said. "It's a synergy."”
(3). Jean Shaoul, “Zionist settlers carry out murderous pogrom on Palestinian town”, WSWS, 1 March 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/28/dgks-f28.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “In the most violent settler attack on Palestinians in decades, 400 Israeli vigilantes went on the rampage in Huwara, a town close to the northern city of Nablus in the West Bank, Sunday evening. At least one Palestinian was killed and more than 100 were injured on the pogrom-style attack. There were horrific scenes of settlers, some masked and carrying guns and other weapons, setting fire to scores of homes and shops, destroying 35 and damaging at least 40 more. They torched more than 400 cars and destroyed agricultural property, leaving the town aflame for hours afterwards. Nine Palestinian families had to be rescued from their homes, according to Israel’s public broadcaster, Channel 12 news. Palestinian health authorities said that a 37-year-old man had been shot and killed by Israeli fire. Two people were wounded by gunfire, a third was stabbed and a fourth was beaten with an iron bar. Ninety-five others were being treated for teargas inhalation, stabbings and beatings. Settlers also attacked other towns in the area, as well as Ramallah and Salfit. One Israeli commentator made the comparison with Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” the state-orchestrated pogrom carried out by the Nazis against the Jews in Germany in 1938.”
1 MARCH 2023. Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald: “Re the false description and demanded censorship of eminent, humanitarian and anti-racist Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd (Julie Szego, The Age 1/3), anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism as evidenced by a large body of anti-racist and accordingly anti-Zionist Jewish scholars and writers including myself, and as notably exampled by Professor Bertell Ollman (New York University): “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis”, and indeed by the first Australian-born Governor General of Australia, Sir Isaac Isaacs: “The honour of Jews throughout the world demands the renunciation of political Zionism” (Google “Jews against racist Zionism”). * *“Jews against racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .
1 MARCH 2023
25 FEBRUARY 2023
(1). Susan Abulhawa, “Australian politicians in lock step with pro-Israeli forces over Adelaide Festival”, Pearls & Irritations, 25 February 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/australian-politicians-in-lock-step-with-pro-israeli-forces-over-adelaide-festival/ .
Quote: “The Israel Lobby… I will say, however, that it’s quite remarkable how quickly your politicians and ministers fell in lock step with pro-Israeli forces trying to sabotage the Adelaide Festival because I and Mohammad [El-Kurd] refuse to be silent on more than seven decades of systematic Israeli terrorism against us. The fact that some people think our words are too harsh means they either do not know the full extent of Israel’s daily barbarity and apartheid, or they do and support it… As you know, I have been critical of Ukraine’s right wing government, as many Ukrainians are, too. But we don’t hear from the opposition in western media, in part because Zelensky’s regime banned, assassinated, shut down, or otherwise silenced internal opposition. This war concerns me greatly, as it should all citizens of the world, as the repercussions are global. As a US citizen, it is my duty to examine our role in this war, which goes back to the dissolution of the USSR and broken promises made to Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastward. We know the US was involved in the overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 to replace him with the current right wing government… That said, my criticism of Zelensky does not absolve Russia. The fact is that I disdain hero worship of politicians as we see happening with Zelensky. I do not idolise politicians, nor do I love them. So the claims that I am a cheerleader for Putin are sensational fabrications… I have been very critical of Mahmoud Abbas, and was even more critical of Yasser Arafat during his time. No one ever accused me of spreading Zionist propaganda. Leaders have a responsibility to first and foremost protect their people. Zelensky failed on this most basic premise and the world deserves to know how and why. Australians should have the right to hear different narratives and viewpoints, particularly views about this war that are shared by huge swaths of humanity, primarily in the Global South, who make up the majority of the world…The devastation in Syria is unimaginable. It is worth noting that Israel took the opportunity to bomb Syria as the country was reeling from deaths in the tens of thousands, trying desperately to dig survivors out of the rubble.” Comment: Decent, sane humanitarians will agree with Susan Abulhawa – humanity and truth versus saturation falsehood from the Zionist subverted US lackey Mainstream presstitutes in Australia and the West. Zionism is genocidally racism and Nazism without gas chambers but with high technology war and subjugation, plus 100 nuclear weapons. Apartheid Israel is a genocidally racist and serial war criminal neo-Nazi state. The Russian invasion is war criminal but was US provoked. Zelensky has betrayed his people.
(2). Media reports giving 2 sides i.e. Palestinians, Arabs, anti-racist Jews and non-Jews Jews versus witting and unwitting agents of the genocidal, anti-Arab anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi Zionist Lobby and serial war criminal America : Francisco Silva, “‘There is a distinction’: branding pulled from festival after Ukraine criticism” , LSJ, 23 February 2023: https://lsj.com.au/articles/there-is-a-distinction-branding-pulled-from-festival-after-ukraine-criticism/ . Daniel Keane, “Ukrainian authors reveal reasons for decision to withdraw from Adelaide Writers' Week”, ABC News, 25 February 2023: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-24/ukrainian-authors-speak-out-on-adelaide-writers-week/102012440 . Henry Belot, “Adelaide Writers’ Week withdrawals ‘sad’ and ‘unfortunate’, director Louise Adler says”, The Guardian, 25 February7 2023: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/feb/25/adelaide-writers-week-withdrawals-sad-and-unfortunate-director-louise-adler-says .
(3). Media reports falsely accusing the Palestinian writers and their supporters of “antisemitism”, “hate speech” and supporting the war criminal Russian invasion.Patrick Hannaford, “The Adelaide Writers’ Festival is set to lose another major sponsor as the backlash over two speakers anti-semitic comments gains more steam”, Sky News, 23 February 2023: https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/the-adelaide-writers-festival-is-set-to-lose-another-major-sponsor-as-the-backlash-over-two-speakers-antisemitic-comments-gains-more-steam/news-story/eb1f3aee93c638b8488304577c1c1acb .And then there is the mendacious, racist, hate-filled, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, genocide-ignoring, holocaust-ignoring, pro-war and vomitogenic Zionist press.
23 FEBRUARY 2023
(1). Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, “Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd must speak at Australia's Adelaide writers' festival”, The New Arab, 21 February 2023: https://www.newarab.com/opinion/adelaide-fest-susan-abulhawa-mohammed-el-kurd-must-speak .
Quote: “Next month’s 38th Adelaide Writers’ Week is historic. For the first time, one of Australia’s major literary festivals is programming a significant number of the world’s most prominent Palestinian writers in conversation with Palestinian and Indigenous writers and poets in Australia. There is absolutely nothing surprising or original about the controversy that has since erupted over the two internationally renowned Palestinian writers: Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd. Palestinian-American novelist Abulhawa, is alleged to espouse “extremist views”, “Russian propaganda” and “hate speech” about Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. She has also been condemned for describing Israel as “the only nation that systematically kidnaps and tortures children daily”. El-Kurd has been condemned for Tweets calling Israel “demonic”, “sadistic” and “a death cult.” The case against him also references a dossier produced by the Anti-Defamation League which accuses El-Kurd of invoking a medieval antisemitic blood libel trope in one of the poems published in his debut book, Rifqa…. As a Palestinian Australian writer, who has been publicly vocal about Palestine since the early 2000s, and on the festival’s circuit in Australia and internationally since 2005, none of this surprises me. The pressure and influence of Australia’s pro-Israel lobby on media institutions and politics is well documented and something we Palestinians are highly familiar with. For Palestinians, public platforms are not spaces often offered, but rather spaces we are forced to fight for.”
Comment: The comments by Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd are quite reasonable from an anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish humanitarian perspective.
Quote: “Abulhawa, a Palestinian-American writer known for her bestselling novel Mornings in Jenin, has recently been in the media over tweets criticising Volodymyr Zelensky. In March last year, she accused the Ukrainian president of dragging the world into World War III. She has also supported calls to “de-Nazify Ukraine” – an idea which is often regarded as Russian propaganda. El-Kurd, a writer and poet who creates work about conflict and displacement in East Jerusalem, has previously published tweets saying Zionists have an “unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood & land” and had “completely internalised the ways of the Nazis”.”
Comment: The comments by Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd are quite reasonable from an anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish humanitarian and pro-peace perspective. Zelenskyy and his colleagues have praised Stepan Bandera (WW2 Nazi collaborator and mass murderer of Jews) as a Ukrainian hero.
(3). Gideon Polya (severely abridged), The Age Letters, 23 February 2023: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/dahl-would-understand-the-need-for-change-20230222-p5cmk0.html .
“Writers smeared
Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd have been falsely defamed for alleged “anti-Semitism” and “hate speech” for criticising the century-long genocidal abuse of indigenous Palestinians by Zionists. Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.
Gideon Polya, Macleod”.
What my Letter said in full:
Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd have been falsely defamed for alleged “anti-Semitism” and “hate speech” for criticizing the horrendous and century-long genocidal abuse of Indigenous Palestinians by Zionists (The Age 22/2).
Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. What do eminent anti-racist Jewish scholars have to say about this, for surely they are not “anti-Semites” who “hate” their ilk?
Eminent anti-racist Jewish American economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia) demands freedom and human rights for the sorely oppressed Palestinians. He condemns the war criminal Russian invasion of Ukraine , but correctly states that “The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement”, and that Zelenskyy and Biden have blocked necessary peace negotiations.
Likewise anti-racist Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman (NYU) has declared that “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis”. For numerous such eminent opinions Google “Jews against racist Zionism”. Indeed Jewish Zionist Zelenskyy and his colleagues have lavishly praised Stepan Bandera (WW2 Nazi collaborator and mass murderer of Jews) as a Ukrainian national hero.
Quote: “"Based on what ASIO is seeing, more Australians are being targeted for espionage and foreign interference than at any time in Australia's history," Mike Burgess [ASIO head] said in a speech on Tuesday night. "More hostile foreign intelligence services, more spies, more targeting, more harm, more ASIO investigations, more ASIO disruptions. From where I sit, it feels like hand-to-hand combat."… In one disrupted plot a "lackey" was recruited to lure "senior journalists" on all-expenses-paid "study tours" of a foreign country to obtain privileged information. "Once in-country, the lackey was expected to introduce the journalists to 'local officials' who were really spies in disguise." The spies would use these opportunities to ingratiate themselves with the reporters, try to elicit insights on political, economic, defence and other issues, and identify any vulnerabilities that could be leveraged later."”
Comment: The countries subverting Australia were not named but Apartheid Israel is a long-established culprit e.g. for just a snippet of what is on the public record see:
(i). Re extensive Zionist propaganda junkets for politicians and journalists to Apartheid Israel - “I’ve been to Israel too”, Middle East Reality Check: http://middleeastrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2009/03/ive-been-to-israel-too.html .
(iii). Phillip Dorling, “US shares raw intelligence on Australians with Israel ”, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 2013: http://www.smh.com.au/national/us-shares-raw-intelligence-on-australians-with-israel-20130912-2tllm.html .
(iv). Former Palestinian Ambassador, Ali Kazak: “There is nothing ASIO [Australian Security and Intelligence Organization] suggests any Chinese lobby of doing that the Israeli lobby has not been doing for over 30 years. Any Chinese lobby is child’s play in contrast to the well-established Israeli lobby. No country has more interfered, spied and endangered Australia’s security, sovereignty and the integrity of its national institutions than Israel and its powerful lobby. By their own admission, the lobby receives funds from Israeli institutions, coordinates and cooperates with the Israeli government and embassy, and has “established a long tradition of strong public advocacy on behalf of Israel” to shape the opinion of members of the Australian public, media organisations and government officials in order to advance [Apartheid] Israel’s own political objectives” (Ali Kazak, “Why should Israel’s lobby have different standards?”, Independent, Australia:, 9 November 2017: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/does-the-nation-have-a-new-white-australia-foreign-affairs-policy,10913 .)
(v). Gideon Polya, “50 Ways Australian Intelligence Spies On Australia And The World For UK , Israeli And US State Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 11 December, 2013: https://countercurrents.org/polya111213.htm .
(vi). Gideon Polya, “Australian xenophobia targets China but ignores huge Israeli subversion of Australia”, Countercurrents, 7 July 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/07/australian-xenophobia-targets-china-but-ignores-huge-israeli-subversion-of-australia/ .
(vii). "Subversion of Australia": https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/ .
(viii). Gideon Polya, “Racist Zionism and Israeli State Terrorism threats to Australia and Humanity”, Palestinian Genocide, 2010: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/racist-zionism-and-israeli .
(ix). Andrew Greene, “Israeli company denies 'security rumours' as Defence removes multi-billion-dollar technology and quarantines Army IT systems”, ABC News, 7 May 2021: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-07/israeli-company-elbit-systems-of-australia-removed-army/100121238 : “Defence has begun stripping Israeli-developed technology from Army equipment because of fears it could be used to harvest sensitive data from military hardware and systems… However, the ABC can reveal Army Headquarters last month issued a directive ordering Defence to "cease use" of the Elbit BMS Command and Control (BMS-C2) in preparation for a replacement system."The employment of the BMS-C2 system version 7.1 within Army's preparedness environment is to cease no later than May 15 2021," the order states. Military sources have told the ABC that Defence believes the Elbit technology may compromise sensitive data, triggering a directive that it "not be configured or accessed" on certain Army systems.”
(x). Gideon Polya, “AUKUS & Quad In Context: Australia Violates All Indo-Pacific countries”, Countercurrents, 9 December 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/12/aukus-quad-in-context-australia-violates-all-indo-pacific-countries/ : “Australia has formed the anti-China AUKUS (Australia, UK and US) and Quad (Australia, India, US and Japan) Alliances to contain a supposedly aggressive China. In reality a US lackey, nuclear terrorist, climate criminal, serial invader and subversive Australia violates ALL Indo-Pacific countries.A detailed and documented analysis of Australian violation of all 81 Indo-Pacific countries has been published here: Gideon Polya, “Australia violates all Indo-Pacific countries”, Stop state terrorism, 9 December 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/2021-12-09-australia-violates-all-indo-pacific-countries ... Australia-complicit regime change. Australians were variously involved with the US, UK and Apartheid Israel in effecting regime change in the following Indo-Pacific countries: (i). Indonesia 1960-1965… (ii). Laos 1960… (iii). Cambodia 1970… (iv). Chile 1973… (v). Australia 1975… (vi). Fiji 1987… (vii). Fiji 2000… (viii). Australia 2010” [the last 3 involving Apartheid Israel and agents].
22 FEBRUARY 2023. Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Australian: “Accusing Palestinians such as writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd of “anti-Semitism” and “hate speech” for criticizing the century-long genocidal abuse of Indigenous Palestinians by Zionists (The Australian 22/2) is a false but politically successful ploy in Australia that is second only to America as a supporter of Apartheid Israel.Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. What do eminent anti-racist Jewish scholars have to say about this, for surely they are not “anti-Semites” who “hate” their ilk? Eminent anti-racist Jewish American economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia) demands freedom and human rights for the sorely oppressed Palestinians. While condemning the war criminal Russian invasion of Ukraine , he says that “The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement”, and that Zelenskyy and Biden have blocked peace negotiations. Likewise anti-racist Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman (NYU) has declared that “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis”. For numerous such eminent opinions Google “Jews against racist Zionism”. In contrast, Jewish Zionist Zelenskyy has lavishly praised Stepan Bandera (WW2 Nazi collaborator and mass murderer of Jews) as a Ukrainian national hero. ”
21 FEBRUARY 2023
(1). Denis Muller (Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne), “Are calls to cancel two Palestinian writers from Adelaide Writers’ Week justified?”, The Conversation, 17 February 2023: https://theconversation.com/are-calls-to-cancel-two-palestinian-writers-from-adelaide-writers-week-justified-200165 (see also ArtsHub: https://www.artshub.com.au/news/opinions-analysis/are-calls-to-cancel-two-palestinian-writers-from-adelaide-writers-week-justified-2613590/ ).
Quote: “The SA opposition leader, John Gardner, has fallen into this trap with his opportunistic call on the festival organisers to cancel both writers. He compared Abulhawa’s tweets to spreading vaccine misinformation. That is nonsense. Both speakers have engaged in tweets that are clearly polemical. But they are comments, not assertions of fact. Misinformation is a statement of erroneous fact. Liberal democracies tolerate political opinions – however extreme, distressing or offensive – that fall short of violating the harm principle. For that reason, as well as for considerations of proportionality, the calls to cancel Abulhawa and El-Kurd are unjustified.”
Comment: Susan Abulhawa’s comments are quite reasonable (under Zelenskyy the Nazi collaborator and mass murderer of Jews, Stepan Bandera, has been made a national hero with statues and plaques; the Russian invasion is war criminal, as are numerous US and Israeli invasions, but was certainly provoked by the US , and the failure of the US and Zelenskyy to negotiate peace (as recommended by eminent pro-peace people like extremely eminent anti-racist Jewish American economist , humanitarian and vocal supporter of Palestinian human rights, Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs of Columbia) (see “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/anti-racist-jewish-opinions-on-zionism-o-t ) has wrecked Ukraine, starved parts of the Global South, damaged the global economy, and threatens nuclear war). Mohammed El-Kurd has good reason to be angry about war criminal and genocidally racist Zionists but anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism e.g. 38% of under-40 US Jews – and growing - say that Israel is an Apartheid state. Indeed anti-racist Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman (NYU) has stated that: “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis”.
Quote: “A major sponsor of the Adelaide Festival of Arts has cancelled its support for this year's event in a gesture of protest, saying it was concerned about the potential for "racist or anti-Semitic commentary" at Writers' Week. Law firm MinterEllison said it has "strongly expressed" reservations to event organisers over the appearance of novelist and scholar Susan Abulhawa and poet Mohammed El-Kurd. Festival organisers have hit back, saying while they respect the firm's decision, they are resolved to ensure next month's Writers' Week remained a platform for "civil dialogue and the contest of ideas… Ms Abulhawa's upcoming appearance was last week the subject of controversy, when the Association of Ukrainians in South Australia expressed its opposition to the Palestinian-American, whose public statements have included repeated criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Mr El-Kurd is a critic of Zionism and has described Israel as a "terrorist, genocidal nation" characterised by an "unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood and land".
Quote: “Australia’s largest law firm, MinterEllison, has cut ties with the Adelaide Festival over the inclusion of two Palestinian writers with a track record of hostility against Jewish people and Ukraine.Minters chief executive Virginia Briggs said on Tuesday that the firm had not only withdrawn its support for the Writers’ Week part of this year’s festival, but also the entire program, which covers a broad spectrum of the arts… “I don’t want us to be party to cancel culture,” Ms Adler [Writer’s Week head] said.”
Comment: Louise Adler is an eminent anti-racist Jewish Australian and an eminent publisher who courageously published anti-racist Jewish Australian author and Jerusalem Al Quds Peace Prize awardee Antony Loewenstein’s “My Israel Question” at Melbourne University Press.
19 FEBRUARY 2023
18 FEBRUARY 2023
Quote: “The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network is deeply concerned at the biased and flawed process by SBS Management that saw renowned journalist Essam Al Ghalib suspended, pending investigation. APAN unequivocally supports Essam, and all journalists who pursue truth with integrity on Palestine in the face of targeted campaigns and harassment from lobby groups. We call on SBS Management to dismiss its investigation. “At a time when Israeli forces and settlers have killed more Palestinians in the West Bank in one month than at any other time in the past few decades, worrying about a journalist’s tweet from 10 years ago is a callous distraction,” APAN President Nasser Mashni said.“As Palestinians, we rely on journalists to hold Israel to account because our governments certainly don’t. “It is not for any Zionist group to determine what is proper journalism; this is the role of regulators, media unions, and networks themselves.”
(2). Zionist medium report on suspension of journalist Essam Al Ghalib: https://www.australianjewishnews.com/sbs-world-news-reporter-suspended/ .
Quote: “An SBS world news reporter with a track record of posting anti-Israel comments and false claims about the Jewish State on Twitter – including using the hashtag #F**kIsrael – was suspended earlier this week. On Monday, an SBS spokesperson confirmed to The AJN that Essam Al-Ghalib is a cross-platform journalist employed on a casual basis with SBS, and action has now been taken in regard to this matter. “In light of some tweets published between 2014 and 2015, which we’ve become aware of, he [Al-Ghalib] has been stood down from all duties, pending an internal investigation,” the SBS spokesperson said. Earlier, on February 1, media monitoring website Honest Reporting exposed a series of Al-Ghalib’s tweets he made between 2014 and 2015, including one which said, “A f**king Israeli soldier choking a Palestinian boy”. Other tweets by Al-Ghalib in that period claimed that Israel put Palestinians in “concentration camps”, that Israeli soldiers are “bloody murderers”, and that Israel is “the biggest terrorist in the world”.
Comment: The comments quoted by the Zionist s above seem quite accurate and reasonable to me. Indeed a range of eminent anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish people from Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT) to the Catholic Church variously describe Gaza as an “open air prison” and a “concentration camp” (see “Gaza Concentration Camp”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/gaza-concentration ; for compendia of related humane antiracist opinion also see:
Apartheid Israeli state terrorism: (A) individuals exposing Apartheid Israeli state terrorism, and (B) countries subject to Apartheid Israeli state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/apartheid-israeli-state-terrorism .
“Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/.
“Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .
“Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .
“One-state solution, unitary state, bi-national state for a democratic, equal rights, post-apartheid Palestine: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/one-state-solution .
“Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .
“Palestinian Genocide essays”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/ .
"Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide": https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes .
(3). HonestReporting (a Zionist organization) in its own words (that do not mention the repugnant and genocidally racist ideology of Zionism): “We embrace the principle that a healthy democracy requires a well informed citizenry. Accordingly, the mission of HonestReporting is to ensure truth, integrity and fairness, and to combat ideological prejudice in journalism and the media, as it impacts Israel. We engage the next generation and educate the public to understand and value the above aspirations… Our roundup of everything you need to know about how the media is covering Israel. Stay informed with the most up-to-date stories… Since 2004, HonestReporting has been organizing trips to the Jewish state, providing you with the opportunity to observe the real facts on the ground. You will discover the beauty and complexity of Israel and receive insights that go beyond the headlines during exclusive closed-door briefings with top officials and academics. (“About us”, HonestReporting: https://honestreporting.com/about/ ).
(4). Not the first egregious attack on truth by a dirty SBS – see Gideon Polya, “ Australia Trashes Free Speech – SBS Sacks Journalist Scott McIntyre Over Anti-War Tweets”, Countercurrents, 4 April 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya040515.htm .
Quote: “Free speech has been trashed in jingoistic, pro-war , US lackey Australia. Scott McIntyre, a courageous young sports journalist with Australia's substantially taxpayer-funded, multicultural Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), was sacked after he tweeted a succession of truthful anti-war comments on Anzac Day (Australia's war dead remembrance day). Only a few, notably John Pilger, came to his defence, and the rest was silence or strong condemnation of McIntyre. To better understand this latest trashing of free speech in Australia you need to appreciate some Australian history and the high level of ignorance, jingoism, racism, politically correct racism (PC racism), political cowardice and censorship in Australia... [what Scott McIntyre said: ] “Innocent children, on the way to school, murdered. Their shadows seared into the concrete of Hiroshima”, “Not forgetting that the largest single-day terrorist attacks in history were committed by this nation & their allies in Hiroshima & Nagasaki”, “Remembering the summary execution, widespread rape and theft committed by these ‘brave' Anzacs in Egypt, Palestine and Japan”, “Wonder if the poorly-read, largely white, nationalist drinkers and gamblers pause today to consider the horror that all mankind suffered”, “The cultification of an imperialist invasion of a foreign nation that Australia had no quarrel with is against all ideals of modern society”.”
War is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate (e.g. ongoing Palestinian Genocide by genocidally racist Apartheid Israel).
Numerous anti-racist Jews, non-Jews, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims are highly condemnatory of war and the ongoing Palestinian Genocide by genocidally racist Apartheid Israel but presumably would be censored, suspended or sacked by SBS for saying so even as private citizens exercising fee speech in Australia. A Zionist-subverted SBS has evidently joined the anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, holocaust- ignoring, genocide-ignoring, and Zionist-subverted Australian Mainstream media.
If SBS were to act similarly to censor, suspend or sack journalists with the outcome benefiting the interests of a nuclear weapons-armed foreign state other than Apartheid Israel, specifically peace-loving China, Australia’s biggest trading partner, then I daresay it would be rapidly defunded, investigated, and all its people put on an ASIO watch list.
17 FEBRUARY 2023
Quote: “Adelaide Writers' Week has been accused of "promoting extremist views" by providing a stage to an author [acclaimed Palestinian writer Susan Abulhawa] who has been vocal against Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But festival director Louise Adler said the event had a long history of welcoming debate and civil discussion, which would not change in 2023… Over the past year since the war began, Ms Abulhawa has tweeted views opposing Mr Zelenskyy's motives and handling of the war."Zelenskyy would rather drag the world into the inferno of World War III, instead of giving up NATO ambitions. He would rather pull us all into slaughter than allow Ukraine to prosper as a neutral nation," she tweeted in March last year.”
Quote: “For a whole year, Israel has struggled in its attempts to articulate a clear and decisive position regarding the Russia-Ukraine war. The reason behind the seemingly confused Israeli position is that it stands to lose, regardless of the outcome. But is Israel a neutral party? Israel is home to a population of almost one million Russian-speaking citizens, one-third of them arriving from Ukraine shortly before and immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those Israelis, with deep cultural and linguistic roots in their actual motherland, are a critical constituency in Israel’s polarized political scene… Later on, Bennet alleged that Zelensky had asked him to obtain a promise from Putin not to assassinate him. … The future will further reveal Tel Aviv’s role in the Russian-Ukraine war. However, what is quite clear for now is that Israel is no longer a neutral party, even if Tel Aviv continues to repeat such claims.”
Quote: “ The leadership of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) launched an impressive rally in besieged Gaza resiliently protesting the Criminal “Caesar Law”.The Caesar Law refers to the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act (HR/31), which commands a hermetic siege on Syria disguising to protect the Syrian people and defending human rights in the war-striven country. Following the deadly earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6, many voices around the world, including in Palestine, have been unanimously demanding the lifting of US-led Western sanctions. Scores of PFLP activists with wrath written on their faces at a boiling point, flashed a large banner that read “All the Solidarity with Arab Syria … No to the Siege … Down with the Criminal American Caesar Law”.”
(4). Bill Van Auken, Earthquake-ravaged Syria abandoned as Washington continues to pursue its goal of regime change”, WSWS, 16 February 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/16/wwtp-f16.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .mm
Quote: “The official death toll in Syria from last week’s catastrophic earthquake has risen to nearly 6,000, with many more dead lying in the rubble, still to be counted. The United Nations estimates that as many as 5.3 million Syrians have been left homeless by the quake. Many of them were already internally displaced by the 11-year, US-orchestrated war for regime change that devastated the country and cost the lives of over 300,000 civilians. UN officials have acknowledged that while the lion’s share of international aid has gone to Turkey, Syria has been starved of assistance… These conditions are due in large measure to a crippling unilateral US sanctions regime, which under the so-called Cesar Act imposes severe punishments on any country or overseas financial institution or other entity that dares to engage with Syria.This deliberate starvation of the Syrian population has been supplemented by the US military occupation of the country’s northeastern oil and gas fields, which has denied the country access to its principal sources of energy needed for reconstruction. Behind these policies lies the unstated and thus far failed aim of precipitating the downfall of the government of President Bashar al-Assad. What Washington failed to achieve through the arming and funding of Al Qaeda-linked militias, it now seeks to accomplish through deliberately inflicting mass misery upon the people of Syria in the hope that they will be forced to rise up against the government. This tactic, likewise employed against Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, has thus far failed, while inflicting immense suffering.”mmm
(5). The Right have weighed in against Susan Abulhawa, notably The Advertiser: “‘Abhorrent views’: Libs demand Mali step in over festival uproar. The SA Opposition has demanded the Premier “use his power” after Writers Week booked two speakers accused of spreading “propaganda” against Israel and Ukraine.” (see: https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=AAWEB_WRE170_a_GGL&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.adelaidenow.com.au%2Fentertainment%2Fadelaide-festival%2Fadelaide-festival-backs-booking-of-controversial-writers-week-guests%2Fnews-story%2F68844bbc441da44f4b40c839ea2fc74c&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=dynamic-groupa-control-noscore&V21spcbehaviour=append ) and The Australian: “Festival gives platform for pro-Putin writer. Ukrainian and Jewish leaders have condemned Adelaide Festival Writers Week for giving a platform to an author who has defended Vladimir Putin and another who accused Israel of staging its own Nazi “Kristallnacht” against Palestinians (see: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a_GGL&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fnation%2Ffestival-spreading-putin-propaganda%2Fnews-story%2Fa8a5c56a0312e32df4b66b47b6d1e5ba&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=dynamic-groupa-test-noscore&V21spcbehaviour=append ). ”
16 FEBRUARY 2023
Quote: “Israel’s far-right government has launched an escalated phase of state violence against Palestinians, which is the root cause of every senseless and tragic death. In the first six weeks of 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 50 Palestinians, including 11 children. Last year was already the deadliest for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2004, and 2023 is now set to out-pace it. Attacks carried out by Palestinians in illegal settlements in Jerusalem, and gunfire from Jewish-Israeli citizens carrying weapons during these attacks and shooting at attackers, have resulted in the killing of 11 Jewish-Israelis. The Israeli government’s domination and oppression of Palestinians is the root cause of each of these deaths… The United States is fully complicit in the violence of Israel’s current and past government. In addition to the $3.8 billion dollars in unconditional annual military funding sent from the U.S., the Biden administration has actively sought to silence Palestinians seeking accountability at home and in the international arena.”
Quote: “U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says “shared values” bind the U.S. and Israel. He must mean settler-colonialism…I n his recent visit to Israel, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reaffirmed the U.S.’s “ironclad” support for the Israeli state, which recently voted in the most fascist, anti-Palestinian, far right government in its history. In a stunning display of doublespeak, Blinken said: “Throughout the relationship between our countries, what we come back to time and again is that it is rooted both in shared interests and shared values. That includes our support for core democratic principles and institutions, including respect for human rights, the equal administration of justice for all, the equal rights of minority groups, the rule of law, free press, a robust civil society — and the vibrancy of Israel’s civil society has been on full display of late.” It does seem true that the relationship between Israel and U.S. is rooted in “shared values,” as Blinken suggests, but these values are more accurately described as settler-colonialism, displacement, oppression, ethnic cleansing, denial of Palestinian rights to freedom and equality, crimes of apartheid, land theft, evictions, home demolitions, checkpoints, building of settlements on confiscated land, harassment of Palestinians by armed settlers, a 15-year siege of Gaza, dehumanization, night raids of homes, imprisonment of children and annexation of the West Bank.”
Quote: “Israel’s new fascist government has increased the collective punishment of Palestinians — a war crime… Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s religious Zionist coalition, which was sworn in on December 29, 2022, declared in its manifesto that Jews have the “exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel.” To that end, in a little over a month, the Israeli regime has killed Palestinians, demolished their homes, mounted incursions into occupied Palestinian territory and endeavored to change laws and policies to accelerate the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from Palestine. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Nakba — the Arabic word for “catastrophe.” In 1948, Israel assumed control over more than three-quarters of Palestine. Upwards of 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes or forced to flee and Israel confiscated much of their land. Now, Israel’s new extremist regime — the most anti-Palestinian in Israeli history — aims to finish the job by incorporating all of the occupied Palestinian territories into Israel. Many people in the new government want an “out-of-state solution” in which Palestinians would be forcibly transferred (or in desperation, leave) to nearby Arab countries.”
Comment: For many years Professor Marjorie Cohn published pro-peace and pro-Palestinian human rights articles for MWC News (the now finished Canada-based Media With Conscience News) as did other decent folk around the world, including myself.
15 FEBRUARY 2023
(1). Paul Heywood-Smith (Adelaide QC of some 20 years, initial chairperson of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, author of The Case for Palestine), “Why did Australia oppose an ICJ advisory opinion on Israeli settlements?” , Pearls & Irritations, 15 February 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/australia-opposed-an-icj-advisory-opinion-on-israeli-settlements-why/ .
Quote: “The new government is united in its intent to kill the two-state solution, and openly says so. The effect of all that is to put the final nail in the coffin of the ‘two-state solution’. The result is that our major parties’ assertion that Australia looks to a two-state solution resolved through negotiations is little more than a mantra, a political fantasy that died years ago. The two state solution is definitely a dead horse. It is time for our government to get real on this issue. To do so it must come out strongly in condemnation of the fact that Israel is an apartheid state, and it must recognise the state of Palestine on the 1967 borders. In parenthesis, I note that recent ALP National conferences have called for such recognition. It must then consider what sanctions are appropriate for the Australian government to impose on Israel until Israel ends the occupation of all lands east of the Green Line (the 1967 borders).”
Comment. Decent people opposed to anti-Arab anti-Semitism, anti-Jewish anti-Semitism, holocaust ignoring and Apartheid cannot vote 1 for Labor or the Coalition.
(2). Gideon Polya , “20th Anniversary Of Huge Demonstrations Against Impending Iraq War”, Countercurrents, 15 February 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/20th-anniversary-of-huge-demonstrations-against-impending-iraq-war/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: Between January 3 and April 12, 2003, 36 million people across the world globe participated in some 3,000 protests against the Iraq War … Apartheid Israel has illegally annexed the Syrian Golan Heights, and the US illegally maintains a major base in Syria. The active and passive killing of Iraqis and Syrians by the US and Apartheid Israel continues. Despite the immense earthquake horrors in north west Syria, the US and its allies maintain deadly sanctions against war- and earthquake-devastated Syria. Apartheid Israel continues to routinely bomb Syria and Iraq. Indeed Apartheid Israel tried to broker a Ukraine-Russia peace deal to bolster Russian cooperation over Israeli warplanes in Syria but this was scotched by the genocidal US… The late Professor Sir Martin Gilbert of Oxford University (author of over 80 books and an expert on WW1, WW2, Winston Churchill, Jewish History and the WW2 Jewish Holocaust) [37, 38], successively estimated Jewish deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust as 5.1 million [39] and 5.8 million [40] i.e. 5-6 million. This carnage can be compared with that of the 2003 onwards Iraqi Holocaust (3.6 million Iraqi deaths from violence and deprivation), the 1990 onwards Iraqi Holocaust (5.5 million deaths) and the 1914 onwards Iraqi Holocaust (9 million deaths).
11 FEBRUARY 2023
Quote: “Though the Occupied West Bank – in fact, other Arab countries, too – has been used as a testing ground for Israel’s war machine, no other place has allowed Israel to sustain its weapon experimentation for as long as Gaza, making Israel, as of 2022, the world’s tenth largest weapons exporter. There is a reason why Gaza is ideal for such grand, albeit tragic experiments. Gaza is a perfect place for gathering information once new weapons have been deployed and used on the battlefield. The Strip is home to two million Palestinians who live squalid lives with virtually no clean water and little food, all of them confined within 365 km² (approx. 181 mi²). In fact, due to Israel’s so-called safety belts, much of Gaza’s arable lands which border Israel are off limits. Farmers are often shot by Israeli snipers, almost at the same frequency as Gaza’s fishermen are also targeted, should they dare venture beyond the three nautical miles allocated to them by the Israeli navy. “The Lab”, an Israeli award-winning documentary released in 2013, discussed in painful detail how Israel has turned millions of Palestinians into actual human laboratories for testing new weapons. Gaza, even before, but especially since then, has been the main testing ground for these weapons. Gaza has been ‘the lab’ for Israeli political experimentations as well.”
(2). Jack Montgomery, “Western Powers ‘Blocked’ Ceasefire Early in Ukraine War: Former Israeli PM Bennett”, Global Research, 9 February 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/western-powers-blocked-ceasefire-early-ukraine-war-former-israeli-prime-minister/5807635 .
Quote: “Naftali Bennett, the Prime Minister of Israel towards the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, says the West “blocked” a ceasefire he was helping to broker early in the war. Bennett, who was prime minister and then alternate prime minister in Israel during a confusing period of coalition politics prior to the return of Benjamin Netanyahu as head of government in December, said that “there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire” before the Western powers “curbed” negotiations in a wide-ranging interview uploaded to YouTube… By way of example, Bennett cited Israeli interests in Syria, where “once or twice a week we attack the Iranian presence… Russia, the superpower, has the S-300 there, and if they press the button Israeli pilots will fall. “Who will save them? Biden? Zelensky? It [would have been] my problem,” he said, having earlier suggested that he had “made sure that Israel would have free rein in Syria” during his first in-person meeting with President Vladimir Putin — an ally of the Syrian and Iranian governments — prior the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.“[M]y focus is on Israel’s interests… My people,” Bennett said, explaining why he chose to position himself as a more non-aligned mediator between Putin and Zelensky after the outbreak of hostilities — and claiming that, without Western interference, his efforts might have succeeded.”
(3). Michael Jansen, “Israel Must be Held Accountable by the International Community”, Global Research, 9 February 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-must-held-accountable-by-international-community/5807878 .
Quote: “Last week, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports sharply critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians living in the 1967 occupied territories. On February 1, Amnesty called on Israel to “dismantle the system of apartheid which is causing so much suffering and bloodshed”. Amnesty argued that since the British-based organisation launched its “major campaign against apartheid one year ago, Israeli forces have killed 220 Palestinians, including 35 in January 2023 alone. Unlawful killings help maintain Israel’s apartheid system and constitute crimes against humanity, as do other serious and ongoing violations by Israeli authorities such as administrative detention and forcible transfer”. Amnesty called for Israel to be held accountable by the international community. The organisation’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard made the point that the failure to do so “has given Israelis] free rein to segregate, control and oppress Palestinians on a daily basis, and helps perpetuate daily violence. Apartheid is a crime against humanity, and it is frankly chilling to see the perpetrators evade justice year after year”.Callamard accused Israel of attempting to “silence findings of apartheid with targeted Smear campaigns, and [argued] the international community allows itself to be cowed by these tactics”. Amnesty reported, “Under apartheid, Israeli authorities control every aspect of Palestinians’ lives and subject them to daily oppression and discrimination through territorial fragmentation and legal segregation. Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories [OPT] are segregated into separate enclaves, with those living in the Gaza Strip isolated from the rest of the world through Israel’s illegal blockade, which has caused a humanitarian crisis.” In addition to enforcing apartheid on Palestinians, Amnesty listed other war crimes Israel is committing in the occupied territories: planting Israeli colonists in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, forcing Palestinians to leave their home areas (to make way for colonies or military zones), and demolishing Palestinian homes and entire villages.”
(4). Bill Van Auken, “As Syria digs earthquake victims from the rubble, US occupation denies access to direly needed energy supplies”, WSWS,0 February 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/10/wppv-f10.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Comment: “Behind the backs of the American people, the Biden administration has continued the illegal occupation of Syria by US troops. Syrians are desperately struggling to dig victims from the rubble of Monday’s massive earthquake—with 3,317 deaths recorded in Syria as of Thursday—and to survive horrific hunger and cold. Under these conditions, the military occupation, along with a crippling US sanctions regime that blocks the flow of relief supplies, amounts to a crime against humanity. Some 900 American soldiers are deployed in Syria, the vast majority of them at a base in the middle of the al-Omar oil field, the country’s largest, in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor. They are supplemented by special forces operators and other units that are routinely rotated in and out of the country from among the 30,000 US military personnel deployed in the region under the US Central Command (CENTCOM). The Western media has reported that Russian troops deployed in Syria with the permission and in support of the Syrian government have thrown themselves into the relief effort, while social media videos have shown them working alongside Syrian civilians to pull people from beneath collapsed buildings. The media has failed to pose the question: what are the American forces doing?”
(5). Nick Everett, “Palestinians resist amid Israel’s West Bank crackdown”, Red Flag, 6 February 2013, page 13: https://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/issues/RF225.pdf .
Quote: “Israeli occupation forces carried out a four-hour killing spree in the Jenin refugeecamp in late January that left ten dead, including a 61-year-old woman, Majda Obaid, and two teenagers. Their killers arrived ina cheese truck. Before departing, they fired tear gas at a nearby hospital, leaving children choking and coughing. Israeli state violence has killed 36 Palestinians in the first month of 2023 and at least 220 last year,48 of whom were children. The latest attack is part of a nine-month military campaign that has targeted Palestinian militants in the West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Jerusalem just four days after the attack and reaffirmed Washington’s role as the number one sponsor of Israeli state terrorism. In a speech given alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blinken declared his government’s “ironclad” commitment to Israel. The US funds Israel’s military to the tune ofUS$3.8 billion each year. Blinken expressed his “condolences” to the families of seven Israelis killed in what he described as a “horrific terrorist attack” outside a synagogue on the outskirts of East Jerusalem. The attack was carried out by 21-year-old Alqam Khayri, a lone Palestinian gunman, in reprisal for the Jenin massacre the previous day. Blinken made no mention in his speech of the Palestinians killed in Jenin. Nor did he mention the many more killed over the preceding year, including Shireen Abu Akleh,..”
(6). Good news from Google Searching: the Truth will out!
If you Google Search the phrase “Melbourne University” with the word holocaust you get 775,000 results of which number 1 on page 1 is Gideon Polya, “Melbourne University Adopts Anti-Semitic & Holocaust-Ignoring IHRA Definition Of Anti-Semitism”, Countercurrents, 5 February 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/melbourne-university-adopts-anti-semitic-holocaust-ignoring-ihra-definition-of-anti-semitism/?swcfpc=1 .
If you Google Search the phrase “Melbourne University” with the word racist you get 103,000 results of which my article is number 11.
9 FEBRUARY 2023. Gideon Polya Letter to The Guardian: “Congratulations to the excellent Guardian (Australia’s leading Mainstream newspaper by far for ethical, truth-telling journalism) for publishing Jalal Abukhater’s timely article on Indigenous Palestinian evictions and house demolitions in Occupied East Jerusalem (The Guardian 8/2). The 5.5 million Occupied Palestinians have been variously denied all the human rights listed in the 30 Articles of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and have been highly abusively confined under violent foreign military rule for 55 years to ever-dwindling West Bank ghettoes (presently 3.3 million people) and the blockaded and regularly bombed Gaza Concentration Camp (2.2 million people). While 7.5 million Indigenous Palestinians represent 50% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel (Jewish Israelis representing 47%), 73% of them (the 5.5 million Occupied Palestinians) cannot vote for the government ruling them i.e. they are subject to egregious Apartheid as perceived by international and Israeli human rights organizations. The “lucky” 2 million Israeli Palestinians can vote for the government ruling them, albeit as Third Class citizens under 65 race-based discriminatory laws. Poverty kills as surely as bombs and bullets (see Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”), and the GDP per capita is $3,500 for Occupied Palestinians as compared to $55,400 for Israelis, indicative of gross violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention by the Occupier. About 4 ,000 Occupied Palestinians die avoidably from Israeli-imposed deprivation each year out of a population of 5.5 million i.e. 727 avoidable deaths per million of population. However, lest Australians congratulate themselves over how much we love our Indigenous First Nations people, about 4,000 Indigenous Australians die avoidably each year from democratically-imposed deprivation out of an Indigenous population of 0.9 million i.e. 4,444 avoidable deaths per million of population, about 6 times worse than for Indigenous Palestinians. ”
6 FEBRUARY 2023
Quote: “In 2022 Melbourne University (MU), formerly Australia’s top university, succumbed to racist Zionist subversion by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish staff and students as anti-Semitic for criticism of Israeli Apartheid. MU has now adopted the false, racist and defamatory International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of anti-Semitism that is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, and near-comprehensively genocide-ignoring and holocaust-ignoring. Not content with merely falsely defaming anti-racist students and staff as “anti-Semites” for criticizing Israeli Apartheid crimes [1], the Melbourne University Management (MUM) administers a Code of Conduct that now implicitly includes the false, racist, defamatory, anti-Semitic and holocaust-ignoring IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism [2, 3]. The MUM thus threatens the free speech of academics and students at MU. Because MU has been regarded as the top Australian university this attack by MUM on the core academic ethos of Kindness, Truth and free speech also constitutes a grave attack on the reputation of all 43 Australian Universities and indeed of Australia… 2 decades ago I concluded an analysis of “current academic censorship and self-censorship in Australian universities” [15] with 8 concrete suggestions, the last of which stated: “viii. Finally, we should publicly insist that universities that constrain free speech are not fit for our children.” Friends, graduates, staff and students of Melbourne University, of all Australian universities, and indeed of all universities in the world, must take action to save this formerly great institution of learning from this egregious, genocidally racist Zionist attack on the core human and academic ethos of Kindness and Truth.”
Quote: “What is the new Labor government’s record on Palestine? Some small positive steps were taken last year but the Anthony Albanese government still has a long way to go. Its reversal of Scott Morrison’ commitment to move the Australian embassy to (West) Jerusalem was a positive step. Australia’s contribution to the major Palestinian aid organisation, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), was raised to $10 million (after being cut by the Coalition) bringing Australia’s support for Palestinians to $27 million over 2022–23. Last June, Canberra declined to support a United States-led attack on an interim report on Israel to the United Nations Human Rights Council… Albanese remains opposed to the Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement, despite Australia’s strong support for such action against apartheid South Africa.He supports a “two-state solution”, neglecting the imbalance of power between Israel and Palestine at any negotiating table. He has publicly endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, ignoring the way it has been weaponised to silence legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and its unjust treatment of Palestinians. Albanese has done nothing to change the Coalition’s formal declaration, shortly before losing office, of Hamas being a terrorist organisation, neglecting that it has been elected in Gaza. Shamefully, Australia has maintained its block on aid to Gaza after Israel controversially convicted World Vision’s Gaza manager… Australia joined a minority of UN member states to vote in November against requesting the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to provide an advisory opinion on the “legal consequences of Israel’s prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967… Labor has made it a priority to appease the Zionist lobby and not recognise Palestine as a state despite most of the world doing so: 139 countries or 72%... Wong does not agree. “Labor does not agree with the use of the term ‘apartheid… Labor is a strong friend of Israel”… Wong says Australia does not have a stated position on the legality of Israel’s 55 year occupation of the West Bank, stating: “We understand there are different views on this issue.””.
Comment: Labor and the Coalition are excrement for supporting the anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic and holocaust ignoring IHRA. Decent Australians cannot vote 1 for either Labor or the Coalition. There is bestiality, paedophilia and incest and then there is voting 1 for either Labor or the Coalition.
(4). Kevin Bray, “Netanyahu’s collective punishment of Palestinians”, Pearls & Irritations, 5 February 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/netanyahus-collective-punishment-of-palestinians/ .
Quote: “Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-right government’s reported response to the “terrorism” of the Palestinian who killed seven people at a synagogue in east Jerusalem on 27 January 2023 includes the likely collective punishment of the family of the attacker, such as loss of citizenship, house demolition and deportation... In most real democracies, which Israel certainly is not except for privileged Jewish citizens under its “Nation State” law, collective punishment of families or groups for criminal behaviour by individuals is prohibited. One can recall other cases of collective punishment – by Nazi Germany, the Pinochet government and others. Analogous behaviour by Israel under Netanyahu’s heavy-handed response is reprehensible.Even so, today’s collective punishment is simply a more devastating form of that employed for years by Israel against Palestinians, particularly in the Gaza Strip, where thousands of innocent Palestinians have been killed or maimed as “collateral damage” during a series of one-sided “operations” against Hamas. Detailed reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, as well as Israel’s human rights groups B’Tselem and Yesh Din all point to Israel being an Apartheid state, responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Wherever they live, whether in Gaza, the oPt (including Jenin, where, preceding the above-mentioned synagogue deaths, an Israeli raid killed ten Palestinians), or in Israel itself, Palestinians are ruthlessly deprived of all their rights by Israel.”
(5). Peter Rodgers, “A Middle East diplomatic memoir with heft”, Pearls & Irritations, 5 February 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/a-middle-east-diplomatic-memoir-with-heft/ .
Quote “[Dr] Bob Bowker’s recently published memoir enriches our understanding of the Middle East and reminds us that the corpse of the two-state solution in Israel-Palestine has been lying in the sun for years, though many countries, including Australia, determinedly hold their noses and avert their gaze… Bob Bowker’s recently published memoir, Tomorrow there will be apricots—an Australian diplomat in the Arab World, both holds our interest and enriches our understanding of a region that has always mattered to Australia. Bowker’s is a rare knowledge, built over almost 50 years working on the region as an Australian diplomat, a UN official, and academic and author.”mmm
(6). Barry Grey, “Republicans remove Ilhan Omar from House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democrats capitulate”, WSWS, 3 February 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/04/jewj-f04.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “On Thursday, House Republicans voted to remove Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat from Minnesota, from the Foreign Affairs Committee, where she has served since taking office in 2019. The resolution passed on a party-line vote of 218-211, with all Republicans save one, who voted “present,” voting to remove Omar and all voting Democrats opposing the move… Trump has directly attacked Omar at rallies, saying she hates America and should go back to Somalia, prompting his audience to chant “Send her back!” She and other targets of Republican fascist agitation such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have received multiple death threats… None of this has prevented the Democrats, including Omar, from groveling before the fascist right. For the Democratic Party, no less than the Republicans, the Israeli regime is a critical ally in the drive by US imperialism to establish global supremacy, focused presently on the escalating war against Russia in Ukraine and preparations for war against China. In particular, it stands in the forefront of US imperialist provocations against Iran, which are being intensified under conditions where Iran is supplying drones and other weapons to the Putin regime.”
3 FEBRUARY 2023. Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Age: “The invasions and occupations of Ukraine by the Russians, of Palestine by Western-backed Zionists, and indeed of over 50 countries violated thus by the US since WW2, are all racist war crimes (war is the penultimate in racism, genocide the ultimate). Those who supported Nazi Germany could reasonably be described as pro-Nazi. Those who supported Apartheid South Africa (the Americans, British, Australians and Israelis) could reasonably be described as pro-Apartheid. Those who support Apartheid Israel (the Americans, British, Australians, Canadians, French, Germans and Zionists) could also be reasonably described as pro-Apartheid. The Lib-Labs who collectively get about 70% primary vote electoral support in Australia are fervently pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid, noting that Apartheid is condemned by the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid as one of the worst of crimes. The Australian Greens (10% of the vote) and the Socialists (1% ) are genuine anti-racists and accordingly support Palestinian human rights so cruelly and violently denied Indigenous Palestinians for 75 years by Apartheid Israel. Those supporting Apartheid Israel and hence Apartheid are utterly unfit for public life in a one-person-one-vote democracy like Australia.”
1 FEBRUARY 2023
(1). Professor Stuart Rees, “Explaining Israel’s oppression: cruelty, evil, apartheid and colonisation” , Pearls & Irritations, 1 February 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/explaining-israels-oppression-cruelty-evil-apartheid-and-colonisation/ .
Quote: “But that [requisite narrative] change requires analysis dependent on key words: cruelty; evil; apartheid; colonisation. Concern over assumptions about ‘negotiation’ and the means of ‘de-colonisation’ would also need to be re-interpreted. … Amer Zahr, a Palestinian American activist academic, advised Melbourne participants [of the Palestinian Solidarity Conference] not to be sucked in by the alleged complexity of arguments about the divisive nature of Zionism. ‘Get to the point, keep it simple’ “
(2). Julie Nathan , “Report on antisemitism in Australia 2022”, Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), January 20233: https://www.ecaj.org.au/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/ECAJ-Antisemitism-Report-2022.pdf .
Quote: “Australian governments adopting the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism has been adopted in Australia by the following federal, state, and local government bodies: Australian government (Oct. 2021) with bipartisan support; NSW state government (Dec. 2021); NSW state parliament’s Legislative Council (March 2022); Victorian state government and parliament (May 2022); South Australian state parliament’s Legislative Council (July 2022); Waverley Council, in Sydney (Nov. 2021); Glen Eira City Council, in Melbourne (April 2022)”
Comment: This report deals with ugly, verbal, written, graffiti, image-based and rare physical aggression-based anti-Jewish anti-Semitism in Australia that must be unequivocally condemned. Unfortunately this antisemitism report without making any explicit allegation wrongly mentions “Free Palestine”, and the names of some outstanding anti-racist Australian organizations and figures promoting Palestinian human rights e.g. AFOPA, APAN, Bob Carr, Julian Burnside KC, Jeff Sparrow, Greens, David Shoebridge (Green), Professor Jake Lynch, Abigail Boyd (Greens), Shaoquett Moselmane (Labor), Wally Secord (Labor), Tammy Franks (Green), Dr Monique Ryan (Teal), Anthony D’Adam (Labor), Opera Australia, UMSU, SU SRC, ANUSA, UWA Student Guild, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative, Muslims, Anti-Israel movement, BDS. The IHRA Definition is egregiously false, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, and near comprehensively holocaust- and genocide-ignoring, and has been condemned by over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations.
(3). Dr Ramzy Baroud, “Palestinians Are Not Liars: Confronting the Violence of Media Delegitimization ”, Countercurrents, 31 January 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/01/palestinians-are-not-liars-confronting-the-violence-of-media-delegitimization/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “the head of the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate (PJS), Naser Abu Baker, shared some tragic numbers during a press conference in Ramallah. “Fifty-five reporters have been killed, either by Israeli fire or bombardment since 2000”.
Comment: Gideon Polya, “Remember Shireen Abu Akleh: Apartheid Israel Leads The World For Killing Journalists”, Countercurrents, 6 June 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/remember-shireen-abu-akleh-apartheid-israel-leads-the-world-for-killing-journalists/ .
(4). Green Left Calendar: Rally | Solidarity with Palestine: Stand against Israeli violence
Quote: “An aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky openly linked the Israeli drone attack on Isfahan and the use of Iranian drones in Ukraine. There has been considerable speculation in the US corporate media that the Biden administration is seeking means to disrupt Iranian drone production or otherwise retaliate against Tehran for its de facto alliance with Russia. Earlier this month, the US and Israel carried out their largest-ever joint military exercises, involving 7,500 troops and encompassing air, sea and ground forces. In an interview with CNN Monday night, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby declared that these exercises were directed primarily against Iran, which he called the principal security threat to US interests in the Middle East and to the state of Israel.”
(6). Stephen Sahiounie, “The West Bank: To End the Violence, Israel Must End the Occupation”, Global Research, 29 January 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/west-bank-end-violence-israel-must-end-occupation/5806420 .
Quote: “Yesterday, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) killed nine Palestinians in a deadly daylight attack on Jenin in the occupied West Bank. A tenth Palestinian was shot and killed by the IDF in al-Ram while protesting the attack on Jenin.. Jenin has become a hot spot of clashes after the IDF continues to frequently attack it. Local young men have taken up arms in self-defense of the refugee camp which houses over 10,000 Palestinians, with the adjoining city of Jenin home to about 50,000 persons. The Jenin refugee camp was established in 1953. In 2002, the IDF occupied the camp after ten days of heavy attacks, which destroyed 400 houses and displaced about 3,000 persons
(7). Patrick Martin, “Israeli drones, warplanes strike Iran and Syria”, Countercurrents, January 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/01/israeli-drones-warplanes-strike-iran-and-syria/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “Israeli military and intelligence units carried out multiple acts of aggression over the weekend against Iran and Iranian forces in Syria. The attacks were the first offensive military operations under the ultra-right government newly installed in Israel, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Comment: Australia’s response was to apply sanctions to the victim of this aggression, Iran.
29 JANUARY 2023
(1). Jafar M. Ramini, “Violence begets violence!”, Countercurrents, 28 January 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/01/violence-begets-violence/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “Almog Cohen, a member of the Israeli parliament and “Jewish Power” party, celebrated the [Jenin] massacre yesterday, tweeting: “Nice and professional work by the fighters in Jenin. Keep killing them.” This kind of open call for genocide against the Palestinians is not new. Israeli citizens often demand it.”
(2). Gideon Polya, “Why Australia Should Quit Military Links With Serial War Criminal America”, Countercurrents, 28 January 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/01/why-australia-should-quit-military-links-with-serial-war-criminal-america/ .
Quote: “Israel’s military, police and security agency, the Shin Bet, carried out a mass slaughter of Palestinians in the refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin Thursday, killing nine people, including an elderly woman. At least 20 were wounded, four of whom are in a critical condition. Another died in clashes that continued Thursday evening. It was by far the deadliest such raid in years. The Israeli army blocked Palestinian emergency services from reaching the scene, adding to the horror. Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaileh said that Israeli forces had also “stormed Jenin Government Hospital and intentionally fired tear gas canisters at the paediatric department in the hospital… The massacre followed the near nightly search and arrest raids in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied illegally, along with East Jerusalem which it annexed, Gaza and Syria’s Golan Heights, since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. In 2022, Israeli military raids led to more than 2,500 arrests and left 271 Palestinians dead, mostly in the West Bank.”
28 JANUARY 2023
Comment posted by Gideon Polya:
Of the 35 members of the IHRA, (i) all are European, (ii) the 5 located outside Europe (Argentina, Australia, ,Canada, Apartheid Israel, and the US) were all created based on the genocide of the Indigenous People, (iii) 9 members were part of the genocidal WW2 Nazi Germany Alliance, (iv) 4 are nuclear terrorist states, (v) 28 belong to the 30-member nuclear-armed NATO that accepts mass incineration of billions of men, women and children as an acceptable military strategy, (vi) 14 were notably involved in the brutal conquest and genocide of Indigenous non-European people over 5 centuries, (vii) ) only 2 (Austria and Ireland) have had the moral decency to sign and ratify the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), and (viii) all but 3 shockingly voted No to the annual UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution in 2022 that condemns Nazism, neo-Nazism and related racist obscenities.
The IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism is false and defamatory of anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish critics of Israeli apartheid. The IHRA Definition of antisemitism is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic and anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jews, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims opposed to Israeli apartheid and the ongoing Palestinian Genocide), holocaust denying (by ignoring all WW2 holocausts other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust, and indeed of 70 other genocide and holocaust atrocities including 30 involving Australia), and has been condemned by scholars around the world and by over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations. This repugnant decision by Melbourne University damages the reputation of Melbourne University (formerly Australia's top university), all Australian universities, and Australia.
20 JANUARY 2023
(1). M.K. Bhadrakumar (eminent Indian diplomat), “Russia consolidates in East Mediterranean”, Pearls & Irritations, 20 January 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/russia-consolidates-in-east-mediterranean/ .
Quote: “Simply put, Erdogan felt embittered that he was left holding a can of worms and Obama had scooted off. Worse still, the Pentagon began aligning with the Syrian Kurdish groups linked to the PKK. (In October 2014, US began providing supplies to Kurdish forces and in November 2015, US special forces were deployed in Syria.) … Last week’s meetings in Moscow show that Russia’s standing in the West Asian region is far from defined by the Ukraine conflict. Russian influence on Syria remains intact and Moscow will continue to shape Syria’s transition out of conflict zone and consolidate its own long-term presence in Eastern Mediterranean. OPEC Plus has gained traction. Russia’s ties with the Gulf states are steadily growing. The Russia-Iran strategic ties are at its highest level in history. And the return of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister means that the Russian-Israeli ties are heading for a reset. Clearly, Russian diplomacy is on a roll in West Asia. Conventional wisdom was that Russia and Turkiye’s geopolitical interests would inevitably collide once the floodgates were opened in Ukraine. Herein lies the paradox, for, what has happened is entirely to the contrary.”
Quote: “The global energy order is being reshaped as deepening energy ties between [pro-Palestinian human rights] China and the Middle East signifies the rise of the petroyuan, which could challenge the petrodollar, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing Credit Suisse analyst Zoltan Pozsar. According to Pozsar, China has been boosting purchases of crude and liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and some African nations using its national currency. However, President Xi Jinping’s meeting with the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in December marked “the birth of the petroyuan,” he said in a note to clients. At the summit, the Chinese leader confirmed that Beijing is ready to make energy purchases in yuan instead of the U.S. dollar with GCC countries.”
Quote: “The Zionists, whether ‘political Zionists’ like Theodore Hertzl or ‘Spiritual Zionists’ like Ahad Ha’am’ – and now Netanyahu and Ben Gvir – have all used the Jewish religion to achieve the same end, colonizing all historic Palestine and ethnically cleansing its native population. Sadly, major part of this sinister mission has been achieved, though Palestinians continue to resist with the same ferocity of their ancestors. The historic truth is that Ben-Gvir’s behavior is only a natural outcome of Zionist thinking, formulated over a century ago. Indeed, for Zionists – religious, secular or, even atheists – the war has always been or, more accurately, had to be, a religious one.”
(4). Dr Philip M. Giraldi, “Ukraine War Spills Over Into the Middle East. US and Israel will prevent the sale of Iranian drones to Russia”, Global Research, 18 January 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-war-spills-over-into-middle-east/5804983 .
Quote: “Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have walked away from renewing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear monitoring agreement with Iran even though Tehran was prepared to make concessions and it is in the US national security interest to have such an agreement in place. Newly reinstalled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already addressed the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and called for a “close alignment” with Washington to work aggressively against Iran. A series of meetings between Israeli and US intelligence and national security personnel are now scheduled to be held in January. And, of course, the Biden State Department and National Security agencies are full of advocates for a hard line vis-à-vis Iran, Russia and now even China. Most of them are also outspoken Zionists, many with close ties to Benjamin Netanyahu, which makes them partial to Israeli interests. Iran, which does not actually threaten either the US or any identifiable strategic interests of Washington, is already on the receiving end of virtually every sanction imaginable put in place over more than forty years by successive American presidents. And now, because Iran is friendly with Russia and supplying that country with weapons that are surely welcome but unlikely to change the course of the war, the US is again preparing to make and take on yet another enemy, possibly with Israeli clandestine or even open help”
17 JANUARY 2023. Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Age: “Peter Hartcher (The Age, 17/1) criticizes Dominic Perrottet for offensively dressing up as a Nazi for his 21st birthday party, notes his apology, and asks for “better education” about “anti-Semitism” and “fascism”. As a WW2 Jewish Holocaust-impacted, anti-racist Jewish Australian I was horrified that in 2021 Coalition-ruled Australia shockingly Abstained from the annual UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution entitled "Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance". The US and Ukraine voted No. However in 2022 Labor-ruled Australia appallingly voted No to this annual UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution. Indeed 31 of the 35 members of the all-European, and pro-Zionist International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), including Australia, the US, and 8 WW2 Nazi alliance countries, voted No to the annual UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution in 2022 (120 countries voted Yes, 50 No, with 10 Abstentions). The Coalition- and Labor-backed IHRA’s Definition of Anti-Semitism is both anti-Jewish anti-Semitic and anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish, Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim critics of Apartheid Israel as anti-Semitic) and holocaust-ignoring (by ignoring all WW2 holocausts other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust, and indeed ignoring 70 other genocide and holocaust atrocities).”
16 JANUARY 2023
(1). My comment on a Crikey article about NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet wearing a Nazi uniform to his 21st birthday party (see: https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/01/13/perrottet-rumours-picture-nazi-costume/ ) was eventually approved for publication by Crikey:
“In 2021 a shocking 51 countries by Abstention (49, including Coalition-ruled Australia) and No vote (2, namely the US and Ukraine) refused to support the UNGA’s 2021 Anti-Nazi Resolution for “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”. All of these countries except Japan were European. Excepting Argentina and Israel, the members of the all-European, US-allied and pro- Zionist International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) (including Australia) rejected the Resolution by abstention or a no vote. 130 countries voted Yes (see: https://countercurrents.org/2022/10/zionist-ihra-us-alliance-rejected-unga-anti-nazi-resolution/ ). However, come December 2022 and 50 countries, including Labor-ruled Australia, voted No to this annual UNGA anti-Nazi Resolution, 10 Abstained, and 120 voted Yes (including Israel and Russia for 6 million and 25 million reasons, respectively) (see: https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/unga-adopts-anti-nazi-resolution-with-us-eu-voting-against-i ). NSW Coalition Premier Dominic Perrottet has apologized for his offensive wearing of a Nazi uniform at his 21st birthday party. The former Coalition Government should abjectly apologize for Abstaining from the annual UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution in 2021, and the present Labor Government should apologize even more abjectly for further trashing Australia’s international reputation by voting No to the UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution in 2022. “
(2). As far as I am aware similar letters I sent to The Australian, the Daily Telegraph, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on 14 January 2023 have not been published. Indeed a Google Search for “anti-Nazi resolution” coupled with the word Australia yields zero (0) Australian reports except for a report in Sydney Criminal Lawyers ( Paul Gregoire, “US votes against UN adopted anti-Nazi Resolution, while Australia abstains”, Sydney Criminal Lawyers, 22 December 2021: https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/us-votes-against-un-adopted-anti-nazi-resolution-while-australia-abstains/ ) and articles published overseas by an “invisible” Dr Gideon Polya.
(3). As far as I am aware the last Letter by me to The Age that was actually published (not for want of trying) was on 24 June 2009: “Frivolous debate ignores vital issues”, Letters, The Age, 24 June 2009: https://www.theage.com.au/opinion/frivolous-debate-ignores-vital-issues-20090624-ge7y8m.html :
“PARTISAN debate rages in Australia over how many emails were sent by government officials in support of a pro-Labor car dealer. Vastly more important is the pro-coal, pro-war Rudd Labor Government's complicity in US alliance war crimes (9 million-11 million excess deaths in the Bush, now Obama, wars, 1990-2009) and worsening climate genocide (global warming contributes to 16 million excess deaths annually).
Top British climate scientist Dr James Lovelock has estimated that fewer than 1 billion people will survive global warming this century. This constitutes a prospective climate genocide that will kill 10 billion non-Europeans.
Australia is the world's biggest coal exporter and a world-leading greenhouse gas polluter. Australia's domestic and exported annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution is 54 tonnes carbon-dioxide-equivalent per person per year - 10 times that of China, 25 times that of India and 60 times that of Bangladesh.
Yet pro-coal Rudd Labor policy means that Australia will increase its domestic and exported greenhouse gas pollution to 80 per cent above the 2000 level by 2050.
Gideon Polya, Macleod”.
(4). A possible contributor to my “public invisibility” in Australia from 2009 onwards (notwithstanding my publication of a further 5 huge books and hundreds of lengthy, carefully researched and carefully referenced humanitarian articles in this period) was a decade of false Zionist smearing that I have recorded here: “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/home , and scroll down to Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/polya , with this commencing as follows:
“Obnoxious Zionist smearing of [anti-racist Jewish Australian] Dr Gideon Polya in a succession of annual "Reports on anti-semitism in Australia" - you be the judge.
Antisemitism Report 2009, 1 October 2008 – 30 September 2009, pages 63-64 : https://wjc-org-website.s3.amazonaws.com/production/document/file/49/781a970bf9cafeaf4de310e62986fa8bc347f5b9.pdf .
QUOTE. “An individual of concern who maintains a blog, contributes to other blogs and has been published in the fringe left-wing press is Gideon Polya. In his ―MWC News‖ Polya claimed ―These sacred injunctions from the WW2 holocausts of of ―zero tolerance for racism‖, ―never again to anyone‖ and ―bear witness‖ are grossly violated by the anti-Arab anti-Semitic Zionist fanatics running Apartheid Israel and their genocidal, anti-Arab, anti-Semitic, war-mongering, Bush-ite, neo-Bush-ite and neo-con supporters (excess deaths in the 1990-2009 Bush Wars now total 9-11 million, mostly women and children; see ―9-11 Excuse for US Global Genocide. The real 9-11 atrocity: Millions (9-11 million) Dead in Bush Wars‖).‖ (12/11/08). In a letter in New Matilda, Gideon Polya wrote ―We are ALL Palestinian (see ―We are all Palestinian. Apartheid Israel‘s Gaza Concentration Camp & Palestinian Genocide‖ http://mwcnews.net/content/view/19915/42)and ALL decent people must adhere to the sacred messages from the Jewish Holocaust of ―Zero tolerance for racism‖, ―never again anyone‖ and ―bear witness‖. Yet in Australia we live under Zionist-promoted anti-Terrorism laws that potentially proscribe up to life imprisonment for a Muslim (or indeed anyone) who gives a donation to a direly deprived Gaza hospital –because the Lib-Labs view the overwhelmingly democratically-elected Hamas who control such hospitals in the Gaza Concentration Camp as ―terrorists‖ (see ―Australian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005‖: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik/AustralianAnti-Terrorism Act 2005 ). (27/11/08)… “”
My indignant conclusion: These recurring Australian Government rejections of the annual UNGA Anti-Nazism Resolution have an extremely bad look and is far, far worse than Perottet’s thoughtless and tasteless indiscretion in his youth for which he has profoundly apologized – at the best it simply means that Australia does what America tells it to do no matter how dirty and repugnant . However decent, anti-racist people around the world will hold Australia, Mainstream Australia, the Coalition and Labor to account over this continuing Australian Government rejection of the UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution. In the absence of abject apologies, decent people around the world will not buy Australian goods and services, decent Australians will be unable to give a first preference vote to the Coalition or Labor, and indeed decent Australians will urge the disappearance of these unforgivably dirty political parties from Australian public life.
16 JANUARY 2023 (1). Dr Helen McCue (pro-Palestinian human rights advocate and a consultant to the UN on ME refugees), “Israel’s ‘most right wing government’: Who are they?”, Pearls & Irritations, 16 January 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/whos-who-in-the-new-israeli-government-and-what-does-this-mean-for-palestinians/ .
Quote: “The new government is headed by Netanyahu, who is presently on trial for allegedly accepting bribes, breach of trust and fraud. With 48.36% of the vote, he has been able to form a four-party coalition government by making major concessions to several religious parties mostly comprising of settlers themselves. The settler movement aims to expropriate all Palestinian territory. These Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are in violation of international humanitarian law. These settlers, now in senior positions in government, have emerged from the Kahanist movement named after the extremist anti-Arab Rabbi Meir Kahane from New York, a convicted terrorist, banned from politics and later assassinated in 1990. Twenty Kahanist organisations are on the Australian government’s Consolidated List of sanctioned terrorist entities. The successor of Kahane’s Kash party is now the third largest political force in the Israeli Knesset… Netanyahu also made his ambition to annex Palestinian territory when he tweeted on 28 December 2022 that “The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.””
(2). Professor Stuart Rees (eminent scholar and author, friend of FPM, pro-Palestinian human rights advocate and founder of the Sydney Peace Prize), “Prince Harry’s outrage, spare a thought”, Pearls & Irritations, 16 January 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/prince-harrys-outrage-spare-a-thought/ .
Quote: “Amidst the despair unfolding in the world, buying Prince Harry’s Spare means you’ve been fooled into taking something seriously instead of discarding it at first sight. The Taliban forbid women to go out alone or attend universities, Israel confirms it is a racist, apartheid state, Rohingya refugees despair, executions continue in Iran, Russia is reducing Ukraine to ashes, the Myanmar military promote brutality, fascist-like Republicans shackle the US Congress, asylum seekers are punished by UK and Australian governments, and Julian Assange still languishes in a top security prison. Despite all this, media time has been diverted to something allegedly more worthy of public interest: the contents of the Duke of Sussex, alias Harry Windsor’s ‘Spare’, which, on the first day of sales, 400,000 people are reported to have bought. ‘Bought’ is the operative word. It can mean you’ve been fooled into taking something seriously instead of discarding it at first sight… Better still, investigative journalists’ publicity about the policies of the Taliban, Iran, Israel, Russia, the Myanmar military, and about official indifference to asylum seekers and to Julian Assange, should raise public interest in lives lived with no freedom, but with untimely death the only certainty. Humanity needs that publicity. Spare more thoughts, but don’t buy ‘Spare’.”
(3). Asa Winstanley and Ali Abunimah, “Israel helps Ukraine whitewash its Nazis”, Pearls & Irritations, 16 January 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/israel-helps-ukraine-whitewash-its-nazis/ .
Quote: “Representatives of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion have been touring Israel to drum up support for the unit’s imprisoned fighters. They have been meeting with Israeli politicians and soldiers… The Electronic Intifada’s 2018 exposé of Israel’s arming of Ukrainian Nazis caused a minor diplomatic incident, when Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel wrote a formal complaint to Haaretz after the newspaper echoed our reporting. [Israeli human rights lawyer] Mack petitioned Israel’s highest court to stop the state arming Ukrainian Nazis. The government responded by requesting hearings be held behind closed doors and imposing a gag order on the press.”
(4). Jim Miles (Canadian writer), “Imagining Palestine – cultures of exile and national identity”, Countercurrents, 14 January 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/01/imagining-palestine-cultures-of-exile-and-national-identity/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “Imagining Palestine – Cultures of Exile and National Identity. Tahrir Hamdi. I. B. Taurus, (Bloomsbury Publishing Plc), London, 2023…In her recent work, “Imagining Palestine”, Tahrir Hamdi has made an intriguing, thought provoking, and challenging discussion on the idea and reality of Palestine. Imagining Palestine is the ongoing process of remembering and living the ongoing tragedies of the nakba – and keeping alive the culture, geography, and ideals of the Palestinian people. There are two main themes that stand out throughout the ‘imagining’ process: the ideas of exile and the necessity of violent resistance… As recognized by the writers reviewed in Imagining Palestine the idea of resistance is paramount, “the colonized must liberate themselves by ‘use of all means, and that of force first and foremost.’”. International law allows for an occupied people/territory to legally resist the occupying/colonizing power. For those imagining Palestine, culture comes first then the resistance struggle – signifying a unity of purpose, an inclusiveness and not a mixture of individualized ideals. In other words, by dividing the Palestinian people into apartheid regions, into different ‘terrorist’ organizations, into different levels of control superseded by the Palestinian Authority acting as security police for Israel, the Israelis – and factions within Palestine itself – preclude an organizing, organic whole necessary for successful resistance against an occupying force.”
Comment: I fervently support Gandhi’s sane and hugely successful (Indian Independence) policy of non-violent resistance, and endlessly repeat the mantra: “Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity” – speak out!.
14 JANUARY 2023. Unpublished Gideon Polya Letter to The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian: “Re NSW Premier Perrottet, in 2021 a shocking 51 countries by Abstention (49, including Coalition-ruled Australia) and No vote (2, namely the US and Ukraine) refused to support the UNGA’s 2021 Anti-Nazi Resolution for “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”. All of these countries except Japan were European. Excepting Argentina and Israel, the members of the all-European, US-allied and pro- Zionist International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) (including Australia) rejected the Resolution by abstention or a no vote. 130 countries voted Yes.* However, in December 2022 an appalling 50 countries, including Labor-ruled Australia, voted No to this annual UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution, 10 Abstained, and 120 voted Yes (including Israel and Russia for 6 million and 25 million reasons, respectively). ** NSW Coalition Premier Dominic Perrottet has apologized for his offensive wearing of a Nazi uniform at his 21st birthday party. However, the former Coalition Government should apologize profoundly for Abstaining from the annual UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution in 2021. If it wants to be re-elected the present Labor Government should apologize even more abjectly for further trashing Australia’s international reputation by voting No to the UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution in 2022.
* https://countercurrents.org/2022/10/zionist-ihra-us-alliance-rejected-unga-anti-nazi-resolution/ .
14 JANUARY 2023
Quote: “In the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Israeli forces killed 146 Palestinians – the largest number since 2004. Among the persons killed were five women and 34 minors, the youngest of them 12 years old; seven were 50 or older, and the eldest was 78 years old. Israeli civilians killed five Palestinians, including one minor. Three other Palestinians, including a minor, were killed in incidents in which both Israeli forces and Israeli civilians participated, and it cannot be determined who killed them. In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces killed 32 Palestinians, including three women and eight minors, all in another round of fighting (“Operation Breaking Dawn”).In Israel, Israeli forces killed four Palestinians.”
Quote: “Netanyahu, having won another general election — the fifth one in four years — has assembled the most extremist cabinet of racists and fascists. The coalition government includes the Religious Zionist party (RZ), ultranationalist and religiously fanatical parties. For instance, the RZ includes militants from the group Jewish Power, an organisation that can accurately be described as an Israeli KKK. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the Jewish Power group, is a far-right adherent of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. The latter was the founder of an ideological and political trend now known as Kahanism, a form of Judeo-supremacy. Kahane advocated the expulsion of all Palestinians from the occupied territories, the building of settlements, and the creation of a Jewish-supremacist state. Ben-Gvir is the new minister of national security.”
11 JANUARY 2023
Gideon Polya, "Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability", Korsgaard Publishing, Germany, 3rd edition, 782 pages, 2023:
Publisher’s summary: Repetition of immense crimes against humanity is made less likely when the responsible societies acknowledge the crimes, apologize, make amends, and accept the injunction "never again to anyone". This book is concerned in part with the 2 century holocaust in British India that commenced with the Great Bengal Famine of 1769-1770 (10 million victims), concluded with the World War II Bengal Famine (6-7 million victims), and took hundreds of millions of lives in between through imposed deprivation. However, these events have been largely written out of history and removed from general perception. In the absence of effective global action, these horrors will be repeated on an unimaginably larger scale in the coming century.
Some key quotes concerning the ongoing Palestinian Genocide:
18.2. The “forgotten” 2-century Indian Holocaust in the context of a catalogue of mostly European-imposed genocides and holocausts. To the end of humane bearing witness it is useful to catalogue over 60 holocausts and genocides, mostly of recent centuries and European-imposed. Estimates of deaths in holocausts, genocides and famines and deriving from actual violence and from imposed deprivation are given in brackets as follows for the following alphabetically listed atrocities… 1916 onwards Palestinian Genocide and Palestinian Holocaust (2.2 million)…
18.6. Anti-Arab anti-Semitism, anti-Jewish anti-Semitism, holocaust-ignoring, nuclear terrorism, and colonial atrocities of US- and Zionist-subverted IHRA countries…
18.18. All human rights for all including the sorely oppressed Palestinians… The most determined Western ignoring of human rights violations is reserved for the sorely oppressed Palestinians. Of 15 million mostly impoverished Indigenous Palestinians in the world, 8 million are Exiled Palestinians, 5.2 million are Occupied Palestinians and 2.0 million are Israeli Palestinians The 8 million Exiled Palestinians represent about 10% of the World‘s refugees, are mostly confined without civil rights to dire poverty in refugee camps, and are prevented on pain of death from returning to the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for over 4,000 years…
The 5.2 million Occupied Palestinians are highly abusively confined without human rights to ever-dwindling West Bank ghettoes or the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp – the per capita GDP is $3,400 for Occupied Palestine as compared to $46,400 for Apartheid Israel, and careful analysis shows that Occupied Palestinians are excluded from all the human rights set out in the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Despite a century of ethnic cleansing, colonization and Palestinian Genocide (8 million Exiled Palestinians and 2.2 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.1 million, and imposed deprivation, 2.1 million), today Indigenous Palestinians represent 50% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel but only the 2.0 million Israeli Palestinians can vote for the government ruling them, albeit as Third Class citizens subject to 65 Nazi-style, race-based discriminatory laws…
bring to an end the appalling, highly abusive, deadly, and 55 year occupation by nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, genocidally racist, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, serial war criminal, grossly human rights–abusing, child-abusing, mother-abusing, women-abusing, democracy-by-genocide, neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel. The two-state solution has been a convenient fig-leaf for pro-Apartheid Western dishonesty and inaction over Palestine. The ethnic cleansing of 90% of Palestine has rendered the two-state solution dead but the continuing obscenity of a grossly human rights-abusing Apartheid Israel is intolerable to decent people around the world. However the racist Jewish Nation-State Law makes it abundantly clear that the racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel are resolutely committed to a neo-Nazi Apartheid State and endless, deadly subjugation of the Indigenous Palestinians with the ever-present threat of 100% ethnic cleansing of Palestine i.e. the forcible removal of all Indigenous Palestinians from Palestine. The world must act firmly and decisively over Apartheid Israel as it did over Apartheid South Africa. A clear, humane solution to the continuing human rights catastrophe in Palestine is a secular and democratic unitary state (a one state solution) as in post-Apartheid South Africa that would involve return of all refugees, zero tolerance for racism, equal rights for all, all human rights for all, one-person-one-vote, justice, economic justice, truth-telling, goodwill, reconciliation, airport-level security, nuclear weapons removal, internationally-guaranteed national security initially based on the present armed forces, and untrammelled access for all citizens to all of Palestine. It can and should happen tomorrow…
18.20. Speak out! History ignored yields history repeated. Genocide ignored yields genocide repeated. Holocaust ignored yields holocaust repeated. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Zero tolerance for lying by commission and lying by omission. We cannot walk by on the other side. All people are created equal. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. All human rights for all. All species and ecosystems are priceless. We are responsible for what we do and for what we do not do. We are running out of time. There is no Planet B. Bear witness. Tell everyone you can. Make noise! Speak out! Speak out! Make Kindness and Truth prevail!
10 JANUARY 2023
(1) . SBS, “Why Israel’s new national security minister wants to remove Palestinian flags from public spaces”, 9 January 2023: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/israels-new-far-right-national-security-minister-wants-to-remove-palestinian-flags-from-public-spaces/ymllvmktj?dlb=[2023/01/09]%20del_newspm_bau&did=DM21201&cid=sbsnews:edm:acnewspm:relation:news:na:na .
Quote: “Israel's new far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Sunday that he instructed police to remove Palestinian flags from public spaces.Israeli law does not outlaw Palestinian flags but police and soldiers have the right to remove them in cases where they deem there is a threat to public order.”
(2). Paul Heywood-Smith (initial AFOPA chair, QC, author of “The Case for Palestine, The Perspective of an Australian Observer”), “Australia’s DFAT blocks FOI request on Israel apartheid status”, Pearls & Irritations, 9 January 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/apartheid-in-palestine-and-what-it-means-for-australia/ .
Quote: “In November 2022, I brought a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the Australian Government to disclose the basis of its non-acceptance of the reports that apartheid exists in Israel. Last week, DFAT rejected the request on the risible basis that to process it would “unreasonably divert the department’s resources… In an associated development, I note that on 30 December a vote was taken in the UN General Assembly whereby the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is requested to give an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s “occupation, settlement and annexation … including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures”. The resolution was passed by 87 votes in favour to 26 against. There were 53 abstentions. Australia voted against. As far as I am aware there has been no airing of the issue nor explanation by the Australian government as to the reason for its opposition. There has been no public debate. Surely the Australian people are entitled to such an explanation as to why the government has so acted in their name.”
(3). Huthifa Fayyad (a writer for Middle East Eye), “The deadliest year for West Bank Palestinians since the second Intifada in numbers” , Pearls & Irritations, 8 January 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/the-deadliest-year-for-west-bank-palestinians-since-the-second-intifada-in-numbers/ .
Quote: “At least 220 people have died in Israeli attacks across the occupied territories, including 48 children. Of the total death toll, 167 were from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and 53 were from the Gaza Strip. An additional five Palestinian citizens of Israel have been killed in the same period... According to UN data, nearly 9,500 Palestinians from the West Bank have been wounded in the same period. Meanwhile, Palestinians have killed at least 29 Israelis, including one child, the highest death toll since 2008.The death tolls of 2022 make it the most violent year in the West Bank since 2005, the year many consider the end of the Second Intifada.”
(4). Dr Ramzy Baroud, “On Giuseppe Trani and the “human condition”: positive vibes for 2023”, Countercurrents, 7 January 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/01/on-giuseppe-trani-and-the-human-condition-positive-vibes-for-2023/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “It is incorrect, let alone unfair and fatalistic, to associate the ‘human condition’ with nothing but greed, selfishness and propensity to violence… Rayan, Gaza, football triumphs, spiritual occasions and numerous little and big defeats and victories keep reminding us that we are a community; we mourn and celebrate together, and no war or pandemic is great enough to crush the indefatigable human spirit.”
(5). “An Open Letter to University Vice-Chancellors Dear Vice-Chancellor, Opposing the Adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Guidelines on Antisemitism in Australian Universities” – endorsement of letter: Endorsement of the letter to Australian Vice Chancellors (jotform.com) ; Letter and signatories: 6 Jan 23.pdf .
We, Jewish and non-Jewish current and former academic and university staff, graduates, and educators write to you concerned for the preservation of research autonomy, teaching and free speech in Australian higher education. The campaign1 by the recently convened federal Parliamentary Friends of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)2 for Australian universities to adopt the Working Definition on Antisemitism3 is regrettable. The IHRA definition, if adopted by universities, as demanded by the Parliamentary Friends group in their letter to you of 30 November last, will have far-reaching implications for academic teaching, research and publications, and will interfere in student politics. The claim in their letter that adoption of the definition will not interfere with free-speech in higher education is either disingenuous or naive. The IHRA Definition at Work4 report of 4 March 2022 reports on the negative effects adoption of the definition has had on universities, amongst other institutions, internationally. Significant other criticism of the international IHRA campaign is presented below…”
(6). Hans Stehling, “The Likud Party of Netanyahu, a terrorist organization?”, Global Research, 5 January 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/likud-party-netanyahu-terrorist-organisation/5803746 .
Quote: Israeli forces have killed more Palestinians in the occupied territories during 2022 than in any year since 2005 when the second intifada ended, according to Middle East Eye‘s (MEE), which relies on UN, Palestinian, Israeli and rights groups’ data. The report found that at least 220 Palestinians were killed, including 48 children, 167 of them in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and 53 in Gaza. Some 9,000 were injured in the West Bank, MEE stated, citing UN sources. It stated that 95 Palestinian civilians were shot by Israeli troops during raids or while taking part in anti-occupation protests, 21 Palestinian fighters were killed during clashes with Israeli troops; and in the cases of a further 20 people killed in Israeli raids, it was not clear whether or not they were civilians or combatants… Any armed force that kills unarmed civilians is a terrorist organisation that employs terror as a political weapon; often uses religion as a cover for its terrorist activities. ”
6 JANUARY 2023
(1). Dr Chandra Muzaffar (president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Malaysia), “The UN General Assembly Drags Israel To The World Court “, Countercurrents, 5 January 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/01/the-un-general-assembly-drags-israel-to-the-world-court/?swcfpc=1 (see also https://www.globalresearch.ca/un-general-assembly-drags-israel-world-court/5803747 ).
Quote: “The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted last week to refer Israel to the International Court of Justice (World Court) for its on-going violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza and for adopting measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem. Before we analyse the significance of the vote, let us probe the actual voting pattern. 87 states voted to refer Israel to the World Court. This represents almost all the Muslim majority states including those that had recently established diplomatic relations with Israel. It shows that on this issue at least, the diplomatic manoeuvres of Israel and its backers have not helped the Zionist state. Other largely non-Muslim majority states in Latin America, Africa and Asia also endorsed the resolution. It is notable that both China and Russia supported the move to haul Israel before the World Court. 26 countries voted against the UNGA resolution. Among them were of course the US, Britain and a number of other Western states. A huge number — 53 — also abstained. India which at the time of the creation of Israel in 1948 was in the forefront of the struggle to defend the rights of the Palestinians was one of the abstentions. Its growing ties with Israel, especially in the military sphere have often been cited as the main reason for this change in attitude.”
Comment: Zionist-subverted Australia under pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid Labor voted No.
Comment: Despite a century of a Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million deaths including 0.1 million violent deaths and 2.1 million deaths from imposed deprivation) and 2 mass population expulsion events (800,000 in 1948 and 400,000 in 1967), 50% of Apartheid Israel’s Subjects today are Indigenous Palestinians but of these 72% have zero human rights and are excluded from voting for the government ruling them.
(3). Clara Weiss, “Ukrainian parliament, army leadership celebrate birthday of fascist mass murderer Bandera”, WSWS, 5 January 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/01/05/jnwx-j05.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: On January 1, 2023, hours after the Ukrainian armed forces engaged in an airstrike on a Russian military base that led to the death of at least 89 Russian soldiers—most of them raw recruits—the Ukrainian parliament, army leadership and local officials celebrated the 114th anniversary of Stepan Bandera, the figurehead of Ukrainian fascism. Bandera advocated the establishment of an “ethnically pure” Ukrainian state in alliance first with German and then with US imperialism. He personally participated in multiple targeted political assassinations of Polish politicians in the 1930s. During World War II, the Bandera-led Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its paramilitary wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), participated in the Nazi-led genocide of hundreds of thousands of Jews in what is now Ukraine and Poland; in 1943-44, the OUN-B and UPA engaged in massacres of an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Poles. Amidst the impending defeat of Nazi Germany, the OUN-B reoriented toward an alliance with US and British imperialism. Throughout the post-war period, it collaborated with Western governments and intelligence agencies in efforts to undermine and ultimately destroy the Soviet Union.”
Comment: The WW2 Jewish Holocaust was foundational for the creation just several years later of the race-, Apartheid- and genocide-based State of Israel in Palestine by British-armed, British-trained and genocidally racist Zionist settler-colonialist terrorists.
(4). Jean Shaoul, “Jewish supremacist Ben-Gvir stages provocation at al-Aqsa mosque compound”, WSWS, 5 January 2023: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/01/04/nqvw-j04.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .
Quote: “The fascistic and far right forces within Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s new coalition government have lost no time in demonstrating who now determines the trajectory of Israel’s politics. On Tuesday morning, National Security Minister and Jewish Power leader Itamar Ben-Gvir staged a provocation, visiting the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City under heavy security protection. Islam’s third-holiest site and the location of the Jewish Temple 2,000 years ago, the compound has long been a major flashpoint in Israeli-Palestinian relations. It was a move guaranteed to further inflame tensions, under conditions where 2022 saw more than 167 Palestinians, including 48 children, killed by Israeli security forces and settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, illegally occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab Israeli war, the highest number since 2005.”
6 JANUARY 2023
(1). Dr David Faber (historian, currently an Adjunct Research Scholar at Flinders University), “‘Antisemitism’, mendacity & zionist propaganda in Australia”, Pearls & Irritations, 4 January 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/antisemitism-mendacity-zionist-propaganda-in-australia/ .
Quote: “To speak of Israeli crimes against Palestinians is no abstract hyperbole. In 1948, Zionist militia broke out of their enclaves to attack Palestinian communities who had been disarmed during British repression of the Great Arab Rebellion of 1936-9, that had protested British imperial demographic engineering of the Mandate. Three quarters of a million Palestinians, about half the national population of the country, were displaced at gunpoint by terrorist militias and their threatening propaganda. They had been trained in `irregular warfare’ by British Army specialist Orde Wingate, deliberately shooting up Palestinian villages under `Plan Dalet’ or D, on the basis of long prepared intelligence. This Palestinian `Catastrophe’ or Nakba was inextricably linked with the unilateral foundation of the State of Israel. Given subsequent events, it must be recognised that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine still proceeds apace. In 2020, serried ranks of Israeli Defence Force snipers injured with fragmenting battlefield ammunition over 6106, amputating limbs and killing 183, including a young woman who had been shot in the head tending to the wounded as a Red Crescent nurse. The IDF boasted of its workmanship, claiming every shot had found its mark. It was all bravely done against unarmed protestors from behind the ‘separation fence’, backed up with a ditch and earthen mound rampart that was never breached. These militaristic methods of crowd control mock Israel’s claim to be a democracy. The repeated aerial bombardment of civilians in Gaza is a case in point. Such a mendacious ethnocracy needs to misrepresent the truth and undermine free speech and criticism by lawfare prosecutions and the pseudo-definition mongering necessary to prepare it. The misleadingly named `International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’ has been rolling out its pseudo-definition of ‘Antisemitism’ for some time to criminalise free speech criticism of Israeli human rights abuses and is violations of international law.”
Comment: The all-European IHRA (of which Australia is a member) is anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Arab, Palestinian and Muslim critics of Apartheid Israeli crimes), anti-Jewish anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish critics of Apartheid Israeli crimes), and holocaust denying (by ignoring all WW2 holocausts other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust, and indeed some 60 other holocausts and genocides).
(2). UN Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner, “Commission of Inquiry welcomes General Assembly Resolution requesting an ICJ Advisory Opinion relating to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory”, 31 December 2022: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/12/commission-inquiry-welcomes-general-assembly-resolution-requesting-icj .
Quote: “The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, welcomes General Assembly resolution 77/400 deciding to request an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) relating to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory… In its report to the General Assembly, presented on 27 October, 2022 the Commission found there are reasonable grounds to conclude that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is now unlawful under international law owing to its permanence and to ongoing actions undertaken by Israel to annex parts of the land de facto and de jure. The Commission recommended that the General Assembly urgently request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences of the continued refusal on the part of Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, amounting to de facto annexation, of policies employed to achieve this, and of the refusal on the part of Israel to respect the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and on the obligations of third States and the UN to ensure respect for international law.”
Comment: Labor-ruled Australia shamefully voted No - it has betrayed Palestinians about 20 times in a mere 7 months. SHAME ON ALBANESE, WONG & LABOR POLITICIANS
but inevitable given Australia is US deputy in Pacific Region and Israel is US deputy in Middle East.
These are the countries that abstained or voted against the UN General Assembly resolution for an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on the illegal nature of the Israeli occupation of the 1967 territories.”
3 JANUARY 2023
Quote: “Political Israeli pundits competed on a parochial platform to validate their Zionist’s credentials by promising to exact the most hardship on Palestinians and relegate them irrelevant.For example, the alternating prime minister of the “less” ex-rightwing Israeli government, Naftali Bennett boasted during election campaigns on killing “lots” of Palestinians, and bragging that “there is absolutely no problem with that.“ The outgoing Israeli government of Yair Lapid/Bennet according to a UN report on December 15, 2022, had presided over “the deadliest” year of “settler violence and excessive use of force by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.”A murdering wave crowned by the assassination of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and more than 200 Palestinians, including approximately 50 children. Nonetheless, Israeli voters opted for the promise of more brazen Zionist credentials instantiated by Netanyahu’s customized coalition… It’s worth noting that the current governing Israeli coalition, which would be labeled racist by any Western standards, embodies the founding principles of political Zionism and the tenets of the Zionist doctrines, not an exception.”
(4). “1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) & Palestinian Genocide”, Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/1948-nakba-catastrophe-palestinian-genocide .
Quote: “ 2023 will mark the 75 th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) in which Zionist militias expelled about 800,000 Indigenous Palestinians (over half the Indigenous Palestinian population) from the land that had been continuously inhabited by their forebears for thousands of years. 15,000 Palestinians were killed by the genocidal Zionists. A further 400,000 Arabs were expelled from the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights in the 1967 Naksa (Setback). Today the Exiled Palestinians violently excluded from Palestine number 8 million. About 7 million Palestinian refugees represent about 10% of the world's refugees.… This alphabetically-ordered web page documents accounts, expert analyses, comments, commentaries and works (novels, poems, books, photographs, videos, movies, paintings) of the 1948 the Nakba, and notably in the context of the WW1 onwards Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million Indigenous Palestinians killed by violence, 0.1 million, and by imposed deprivation, 2.1 million) since the British invaded the Middle East in 1914 for oil and imperial hegemony. This detailed, well-documented and evolving website is provided to "bear witness" to the Nakba, and in particular to assist those wishing to publicly commemorate the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba atrocity in 2023.”
1 JANUARY 2023
Quote: “Executive summary. The government that Israelis elected on November 2, 2022, is the most right-wing and overtly racist in the country’s 74-year history. The governing coalition ranges from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard right establishment Likud party, to right-wing ultra-orthodox religious parties, to the extreme right fascists of the Jewish Power party. Together, they won a majority of 64 out of 120 seats in the Israeli Knesset (parliament). All the parties in the government support a continuation of Israel’s discriminatory apartheid rule over indigenous Palestinians inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders and in the Palestinian territories occupied by the Israeli military since 1967 (West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza). Some of the parties, including Religious Zionism and Jewish Power, want to formally annex parts or all of the West Bank and expel (or kill) Palestinians who resist. Others, like Likud, want to continue de facto annexing the West Bank through the expansion of illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land to avoid the international condemnation formal annexation would cause, as Israel has been doing for decades.”
(2). Jafar M Ramini (Palestinian writer and political analyst. He was born in Jenin in 1943 and was five years old when he and his family had to flee the terror of the Urgun and Stern gangs), “Happy New Year For Palestine?”, Countercurrents, 31 December 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/12/happy-new-year-for-palestine/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “It is New Year’s Eve, 2022, by all accounts the year that has been the hardest for Palestinians living under the yolk of Apartheid Israel. At least 207 people killed, 47 of whom were children. That Israel is an Apartheid state is not just an off-the-cuff remark, or yet another adjective to throw at Israel, it is what Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Watch have called it and most tellingly, it is what an Israeli human rights, NGO, B’Tselem called it. Apartheid… Last week we had a new government in Israel, number 53 since 1948 and number 6 for Mr Netanyahu as Prime Minister. This new government dropped all the facades and the pretences that Israel is a democratic state for all its citizens. It is the most hard right, religious government to be elected into office into Israel. It is a coalition of convicted criminal racists, extreme religious zealots and people who call publicly for the expulsion of Palestinians, for the murder of Palestinians and for the expansion of the illegal settlements in the West Bank and the annexation of the West Bank.”
(3) Dr Ranjan Solomon (political commentator and human rights activist ), “Make BDS happen”, Countercurrents, 31 December 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/12/make-bds-happen/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “The world awaits in keen anticipation to see how the several combinations of resistance will end the beastly apartheid-colonial system that Israel has chosen as their apparatus of misrule… the popular sentiment among Palestinians tilts towards non-violent resistance. Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) is one of the foremost and formidable tools of resistance. Launched in 2005 by more than 250 Palestinian civil society organisations calling for the international community to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel, this movement draws parallels from the BDS Movement in South Africa movement… The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is gaining momentum. There is no doubt about this. The Palestinian-led campaign for an educational, cultural and business boycott of Israel aims to get justice, freedom and equality by ending the colonial machination of the regime in Tel Aviv. 2023 is bound to show galloping leaps and bounds in the BDS Movement. Each of us in small ways can contribute to this. In the end, it is the fusion of grassroots, micro-level actions that will join the ocean of global resistance to dump the racist-fascist Zionist regime.”
(4). Dr Ramzy Baroud (eminent Palestinian writer, author and journalist) , “The Price of Betraying Palestine: Moroccans Challenge Normalization with Israel”, Countercurrents, 31 December 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/12/the-price-of-betraying-palestine-moroccans-challenge-normalization-with-israel/?swcfpc=1 .
Quote: “Two years ago, Morocco and Israel signed the US-brokered “Joint Declaration”, thus officially recognizing Israel and instating diplomatic ties. Though other Arab countries had already done the same, the Moroccan official recognition of Apartheid Israel was particularly devastating for Palestinians… On the second anniversary of the “Joint Declaration” agreement, tens of thousands of Moroccans demonstrated against normalization in 30 different cities, including Rabat, Agadir, Tangier and Meknes. The protests were mobilized by the Moroccan Front for Supporting Palestine and Against Normalization… Israel wants to normalize with the Arabs and tap into their massive markets and economic largesse without having, in return, to relinquish its military Occupation or grant Palestinians basic freedoms. Politically engaged Arab masses understand this well, and are growingly mobilizing against their governments’ betrayal of Palestine.”
2022
DECEMBER 2022